There’s not much that compares to the disappointment I experience when I attempt to have a conversation about a great game I’m playing and get nothing but blank stares in return. Too often I find myself with an amazing little gem of a game that no one in creation has heard of. Why? Searching the Internet shows that nearly every game news site simply has no information about them at all. No hype, no previews. If I’m lucky, there’s a name and an inaccurate release date.

This got me wondering. How many amazing games have been lost to obscurity simply because no one bothered to care or get the word out? Too many. With that in mind, I felt the need to share some of the gems I own that the world has never heard of. These games deserve far more than the dismissive, innacurate information pages about them.

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Not all that long ago, I sat down to have a look at the upcoming games of 2011, and I found myself sad to see the inevitable and expected decline of the DS and the PSP. I didn’t see much on the list to excite me, either. Most that looked interesting to me are for systems I don’t yet own, but with a little searching I found some genuinely interesting games that I’m really looking forward to play.

High on my list is Jikandia: The Timeless Land. From the same team that made Half Minute Hero, Jikandia looks like a kind of RPG platformer that features time-based gameplay. The time you set for a dungeon determines what can be found there (enemies, loot and traps), and the more times you play through the game, the more story events are unlocked. I’m looking forward to a lot of replay value.

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I always find, this time of year, that part of me looks forward to Christmas and part of me loathes the holiday season with a passion. I hate many things about Christmas; the mad shopping rush that drives every shred of sanity out of otherwise rational human beings; the incessant “classic” Christmas music that accompanies every commercial, plays in every store and buries itself deep inside your subconscious until you’re singing or humming the words and melody you’ve known by heart since you were 5; the sappy feel-good commercials promoting products that having nothing more to do with Christmas than trying to make money by dressing the products and actors up with red and green and white (who promotes toothpaste and spaghetti with Santa?); jingle bells—not the song, the bell sound used by every commercial, TV show or song meant to indicate Santa’s sleigh and herald Christmas. By the end of the first week after Thanksgiving, my ears and head are ringing with the sound of bells and repetitive Christmas music.

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I’m not a fan of blogging, I’ll admit, mostly because it feels awkward to me. But I suppose it’s long past time to try and get past that in this day and age. So why not start my first post here with an introduction?

I’m Lieren, though most of my friends know my as Leamonde, Halcyon, Lachrimae or Lavieta. Most of my friends I met online through either forums or MMOs, and those are my screen names. Though I was obsessed with books before gaming, I’ve found the two hobbies to be very compatible. When better to read a few pages than while waiting for a long loading screen or for something to charge/accrue?

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