Status Report #22: 25th of January, 2026

Good morning folks, it's Amalia here, bringing you a new Status Report! Though this time around, there's not too much going on. We've been out of commission with a cold for most of the past two weeks.

But in any case, let's talk about....

Active projects!

Well, this area was hit the hardest by the illness, though it's not all bad news. In terms of music, well, the cold sort of elongated the rut we found ourselves stuck in already.

Though at least now we're at the tail end of the cold. We even whipped out our Banjo yesterday and did a bit of pickin' for fun.

Actually, we'll probably put our current song project to the side and start working on something new, just to cleanse our palette and get ourselves unstuck. Probably more on that for the next report.😉

Well, beyond our music, you've probably seen our new post on Teardown. The one productive thing we had energy and time for during our illness.

If you haven't read it...... well, why not, silly? Go on, it's right here!

And we've also got a bunch of shorts out, with a fair few more scheduled to release in the next few weeks, so here's a playlist for that, if you're interested.

I can also happily report that Michael and i have been playing more Planet Zoo, and the gameplay for Casualia Parks chapter 4 is well underway.

....... hm, you know what, now that i wrote all of that, maybe the cold didn't slow us down as much as we thought. >_>

Well anyhow, let's move on to our....

Non-Project stuff!

Okay, now in this area, there isn't much to talk about.

In the past couple of weeks, we mainly sat there with tissue papers at hand, watching MacGyver (The original, not the reboot) and wondering of we should try and do something more productive.

There was one single notable DCS flight, which was our first night operation in the Apache:

Not gonna lie, that was seriously operator. We even landed on a Tawara at the end. Tom Clancy would be proud.

But yeah, aside from that, only one thing of note happened.

You see, there's a game out there called "Nuclear Option", which is a cool little indie sim-lite game, kinda like VTOL VR without the VR part. A kind of in-between of full-on arcade games like Ace Combat and nerdy sims like DCS.

Basically, it's got the approachability of a game, with a standardized control scheme across aircraft, no need to study a manual for each machine and so on, but unlike your typical arcade game, it actually does simulate things like radar detection and tracking, fuel and ammunition limitations, non-health-bar damage modeling and so forth.

It's a very cool game, and it's right up our alley. So what's the notable thing that happened with it?

Simple. We only just found it, even though it's been available for over two years.

..... we just found that interesting because in this modern world world full of algorithms trying to figure out exactly how to sell you stuff, that's an astonishing failure, really.

I mean, this is -exactly- what we've been wanting for a while. A game like VTOL VR that you can play without having to dig out the VR headset every time. Good for when you have that DCS itch, but you wanna keep it a bit simpler.

So the fact that until about a week ago, we'd never heard of this game is frankly baffling.

And of course, the timing is terrible! It's less than 20 euros, so you can bet that if we'd have heard about it before, we'd have picked it up in the blink of an eye, but now we're in 2026, with a new year's resolution to buy exactly 0 new games! Agh!

..... well, i suppose it can be our carrot on a stick, this year. Knowing that next year, we get to play Nuclear Option. The first proper test of how committed we are to our new year's resolution.😉

Oh, and speaking of flight sims, i recently made this new picture of myself:

I am Amalia, queen of the nerds!

.... i liked the idea. Don't judge me. 😜

But yeah, that'll be it from us, this week. We're still ever-so-slightly ill, but the worst is long past us. So here's hoping that the next two weeks can be nice and productive again!

We'll let you know in the next report, and until then dear readers, do have a good one!