The Way to Your Heart Bloghop

I thought long and hard over which of my loves to share with you guys for this hop: knitting, my brats, or my obsession with Disney princesses (don't knock it). But as I spent last month decompressing after a particularly stressful couple of months, I thought I'd share my favorite relaxation activity with you.

And that dear readers, is gaming. (This time I do mean the video games. Sorry if you were waiting for that story about the time we werewolf howled on campus green and got campus security summoned on us. Another time perhaps.)

If I had to look at one person to blame for this love, it would be my dad. He's always been fascinated with technology and he passed that love down to his kids. My brother and I grew up with family time as racing games and Counterstrike. He used to teach us life lessons through a battle of Mortal Kombat. As long as I can remember, his room has always been stocked with consoles. Some of my best memories with my dad and brother are us sitting together in the living room trash talking one another as dad kicked our butts (he's surprisingly good...It's kind of shameful actually)

And thus, my love of gaming began. I've done most of them: Online gaming, RPGs, FPSs, and while I was in Japan, I developed a love for Otome games. I was one of the girls that sat in the gaming room at conventions trash talking with the best of them. (And my father has never been prouder of that fact)

These days, I'm not so big on the online gaming. I stopped playing WoW over a year ago (You can't call it quitting when you still have a subscription) and nowadays, I only play Star Wars consistently. I've toned down on the FPSs too apart from playing matches with family and friends. My dad still summons me for mandatory runs on Halo.

But RPGs, I love the stories. One in particular that's caught in my mind lately is a PS2 game called Odin's sphere. It was made at the very end of the life of the Playstation 2, but it has an amazing story about love and the end of the world (five stories to be exact). It's actually what inspired my latest story as one of the twists took my heart and stomped all over it.

And there's one genre on my list that even the savviest of gamers may not be familiar with and that's Otome games. Primarily, they're visual novels with different paths depending on both your choices and the guy you choose to romance. They're targeted toward women and in Japan are considered to be a niche market. Some of them have extremely rich stories with creative retelling of history. One of the best western examples I can give is Cinders, which is an extremely awesome take on the Cinderella story. I usually play it while knitting (hands free reading? Heck yes!)

And of course, there's the classic favorite, Sims. Oh Sims. No matter how bad things are in my life, your lives are always worse. It would probably help if you had a less capricious player. Oh well.

Check out the details of my giveaway below and don't forget to say Happy Birthday to LT3 and check out the other posts on the hop {here}

{The Giveaway}

 

I have a beautiful paperback copy of Shadow of a Dream to give away. This picture does not do it justice! It's shiny! It's gorgeous! And I want to give it someone. Probably you!

On the other hand, if you've decided that you are not down with that paperback nonsense (or perhaps you're an environmentalist. I respect that.) I have another proposition for you. I will buy you a copy of Cinders (It really is that good. Seriously.). We can arrange it via email. Just make sure you meet the basic system requirements (though honestly, if you have less than 512mb of ram, my heart goes out to you). It works on both Mac and Windows machines.

{To Enter}

Leave a comment on the post telling me about your favorite ways to relax when life is getting you down. And hey, if you're a gamer, tell me some of your favorite games! I'm always looking for good recommendations.

Make sure you leave your email for me to contact you!

The giveaway ends on April 14^th (The last day of the blog tour!) and the winner will be chosen via Random.org. The winner will be notified and they will have 48 hours to respond. If they do not respond, I shall choose another winner and so on.