Tag: Update

Happy Thanksgiving

July 2025 Update

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It’s the beginning of the third quarter, so we have another JK Geekly update for you. Hey, hey, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here. JK Geekly has continued a once-a-day production schedule for several months now. Woo hoo! We’re keeping a couple of months ahead with most of our schedule, so by the time you’re reading this, we’re probably working on autumn/winter posts. Autumn and winter already? Is 2025 ending this quickly? Yikes!

Quizzes

Disney Princess Color Palette 01

We kept up with our quizzes, but we may slow production of one or two types (multiple choice and matching). Not too many people are viewing these. Instead, we have a new quiz type: Sweet Emoji. These quizzes will have a topic and a set of emojis for clues. Can you figure out what each clue means based on the emojis?

Next month (August 2025) will feature a Sweet Emoji quiz every Tuesday and Thursday. When the calendar reaches September, we’ll weave Sweet Emojis with Color Palettes, Timelines, and Multiple Choice/Matching. Multiple choice and matching won’t go away entirely; they’ll just alternate on the day one would appear. Let us know if you like this new kind of quiz.

TV Show and Movie Reviews

Geekly began posting TV show and movie reviews the day after the show or movie dropped, but we’ve found that the Friday or Saturday (or even the following Monday) after the show or movie drops is plenty of time to gather our thoughts and provide a longer breakdown of what we think. We’ll continue with this trend going forward. Let us know if you have a preference for when we release show and movie reviews or first impressions.

Whatcha Series

The Whatcha series is going strong. The Geekly Gang enjoys sharing what they’ve been doing over the past month, and you get to know us better. We’ll continue cycling through “Whatcha Playing?,” “Whatcha Watching?,” “Geekly Tunes,” and “Whatcha Reading?” every Wednesday in that order. You won’t have to wait long to see what the Geekly Gang has been getting into lately. Feel free to share what you’ve been playing, watching, listening to, and reading. We’re all part of the Geekly Gang.

Friday Potpourri Turning Into Writing/Design Diaries

Sure. We mentioned TV show and movie reviews earlier, but that’s only one type of post you may see on a Friday. Geekly has been testing the waters with memes, Geekly castings (where we fan-cast upcoming movies), and deep dives. Our first Geekly casting involved the MCU X-Men. Our first deep dive was Autism Representation in the Big Bang Theory. Let us know which of these posts you like best. We’ll continue with Geekly castings and deep dives, but they’ll be woven in with our usual Monday/Saturday posts. This will free up Fridays for writing and game design diaries.

Kyra Kyle will get even more personal with their writing and game design process. Beginning this September, they’ll alternate between the two diary types.

Quick scheduling note for this month’s deep dive. With so many releases occurring during July (the bulk of IronHeart, Superman, and Fantastic Four: First Steps), we won’t have another deep dive until August, but we’ll make up for it with a double dose of deep dives.

JK Geekly Discord Server

We haven’t seen many people join the JK Geekly Discord Server. We’re struggling to advertise it. We’ll post it here again and see if we get any new users and figure out other ways to promote the server. We’d love to see you on Discord, Geekly Gang.

Closing Thoughts

That’s all we have for now. We’ll have another one of these posts ready for October. Until then, stay safe, thank you for reading, and wherever you are, we hope you’re having a great day.

Happy Thanksgiving

April 2025 Update

Published on by KyraLeave a comment

Here is the second of our quarterly JK Geekly updates. I don’t know if we’ll continue doing these. Let me know if you like to see them coming. I figured this would be a good way to let folks know what we’re up to and what we have planned.

Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. Geekly has been chugging along with our new editor Season and new writer Skye. We’re staying a good couple of months out with our schedule. By the time you’re reading this, we’re probably working on summer posts. Yay!

Our regularly scheduled content being set this far in advance affords us to review the occasional TV show or movie. We’ve increased our weekly content.

Quizzes

Disney Princess Color Palette 01

We’ve been releasing color palette quizzes for the past few months. We hope you’re enjoying them. Here’s a link to the ones we’ve already produced. A new color palette quiz has been released each Thursday. Which ones are your favorite? Which franchises would you like to see get a color palette quiz?

We also reintroduced older quizzes that Geekly used to make and began posting alternating quizzes (among multiple-choice, matching, and timeline quiz types) every Tuesday. Since we have plenty of color palette quizzes (to match the number of the other quizzes), we’ll begin cycling through all four quiz types (to include color palettes) every Tuesday and Thursday. We’ll continue with this schedule until at least the next update in July. Let us know which quiz type you like best.

TV Show and Movie Reviews

Geekly has been keeping up with the weekly release of Disney+ and Max shows centered around the Marvel and DC Universe. We plan on covering some more movies, specifically ones that will release this summer. We can’t wait for Fantastic Four and Superman. Summer 2025 movies are looking great.

Let us know if there are any shows or movies you’d like for us to cover that we aren’t already covering.

Geekly News

We’re still figuring out how we want to present Geekly News. Should we go with a big headline with smaller stories throughout the week or weeks? Or should we come out with focused news stories for individual topics? We could always do a weekly Geekly News with no headline, too. In short, Geekly News is a work-in-progress.

New Weekly Posts

The Geekly Gang is filling out the rest of its weekly schedule with two different types of posts. We’ll start with the Whatcha Wednesday posts. Each Wednesday, the Geekly Gang will share which games they’ve played, shows/movies they’ve watched, books they’ve read, and even which songs made the previous month’s soundtrack. Feel free to join in the fun, because you’re part of the Geekly Gang, too.

Our other weekly post is inspired by Harper Ross, one of JK Geekly’s commenters. These posts will be called Geekly Casting and will be released one Friday each month, starting with April 18, 2025. Skye’s our resident movie geek, so she’ll share her ideas on who should play certain roles. Season likes to conduct research, so she’ll unearth casting rumors. And my contributions may vary. We’ll see. Again, you’re more than welcome to share who you think should play which role, Geekly Gang.

But Geekly Casting will only post on one Friday of each month. The rest of the Fridays will have various posts. We’ll make it up as we go for Potpourri Friday.

Fantasy and Mythological Creatures

We’ve struggled to get the fantasy and mythological creatures series off the ground. We figured this might be the case. It’s difficult to coordinate with more people, but we will produce this series whenever we get the chance.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Geekly intends to release a series of game mechanism posts where we send game designers a questionnaire about specific game mechanisms. XD We do intend to do this and hopefully, the pitfalls we encountered with the fantasy and mythological creatures project will inform us on what to do with the board game mechanism series.

JK Geekly Discord Server

We started a JK Geekly Discord Server. We’ll try to be active on this server as much as possible. Discord could help with reaching out to potential content creators and you. We’re all part of the Geekly Gang. Let us know what kind of posts you’d like to see. We could even hang out on the server and play games. Who knows?

Closing Thoughts

That’s all we have for now. We’ll have another one of these posts ready for July. Until then, stay safe, thank you for reading, and wherever you are, we hope you’re having a great day.

Honkai Star Rail Update

Geekly Update: Honkai Star Rail New Region Amphorius

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Honkai Star Rail Version 3.0 was released on January 14, 2025. Geekly has had some time to play the new patch, and we have some initial impressions.

Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. I finished the first chapter of the new planet Amphorius. Yes. Honkai Star Rail (HSR) introduced a brand new planet. Any HSR patch that includes a new planet is a massive one, but HSR Version 3.0 tops most other HSR patches because it introduces a brand new path, Remembrance.

For those who may not know, Honkai Star Rail paths dictate which playstyle a character will have. Abundance heals. Preservation shields characters. Harmony buffs. Speaking of Harmony, one of the latest new characters, Sunday, suggested that a certain playstyle would see more play: summons. As a Harmony character, Sunday buffs, which becomes a stronger buff if the character he’s buffing has a summon.

Since Sunday had an interesting game mechanism that we had yet to see, I expected any new path or characters to feature summoning. I anticipated Propagation. Instead, HSR added Remembrance. Turns out, Remembrance focuses on summoned creatures.

The following is conjecture. Judging from Remembrance Trailblazer (they receive a new path and element this patch) and the upcoming Aglaea, Remembrance will focus on summons that support, while Propagation (which will most likely be released at some point) may focus on summons that deal damage. Enough conjecture. Let’s return to the first impression. What I’ve seen of Remembrance is fun and provides more design space. Honkai Star Rail developers added a new path before the game’s formula grew stale. Remembrance does give hope for the future.

Everything I’ve said is positive or explains the state of Honkai Star Rail. If you haven’t noticed, I’m stalling. I wanted to like Amphorius and the new patch, but unfortunately, Version 3.0 is the worst.

The latest Honkai Star Rail patch features wooden characters, a derivative storyline that an Edge Lord thinks is unique, voice acting for equally Edge Lord characters, and HSR’s answer to Paimon. No. That insults Paimon. Mem is worse than Paimon. I didn’t think it was possible, but Hoyoverse has unleashed a character far worse than a character so annoying it’s become a meme. Any one of these reasons could be why I say Version 3.0 is the worst Honkai Star Rail patch, but the patch suffers the most from level design.

Bear with me. This will be relevant. I conducted an experiment. Each HSR planet has a unique currency that players can turn in at a shop (or some other venue) for upgrades. I fast traveled to the closest space anchor (fast travel location) and ran to each shop to see how long it would take me to reach the upgrade shop. Every other planet (including the Herta Space Station) took an average of 2 seconds to go from the space anchor to the shop. It took me almost 19 seconds to go from the closest space anchor to Amphorius’s upgrade shop. Amphorius increased the time to do a simple task ten-fold.

You may think that 19 seconds to visit an upgrade shop isn’t bad, but Amphorius does this with almost every task. Everything in Amphorius takes 8-10 times longer to complete. It turns HSR into a walking simulator. A five minute action on any other Honkai Star Rail location would take you between thirty minutes to an hour on Amphorius. Yes. You can smash some flying pigs and double your speed, but even after the speed boost, you’re speed is still (effectively) nerfed, and that’s if you remember to smash a flying pig or one’s available. Ugh!

Some of you may say that Amphorius’s scale is larger-than-life. This increase in size makes sense for the space. Sure. I didn’t lead with this, but I like Amphorius’s art design. When I say design, I mean level design as a game designer. Make no mistake, this shift in Honkai Star Rail’s game design philosophy marks a naked attempt to keep gamers logged into HSR longer. The design team could’ve done anything to denote the size of Amphorius. Keep the vaulted ceilings. Design options like this makes a space seem bigger.

Heck. You could keep the stages the same size. But if you insist on increasing the stages by ten, include ten times more chests. Each stage has the same number of chests, which makes Amphorius seem empty. There’s a whole lot of nothing.

Okay. Rant over. I want to enjoy Amphorius. Despite the poor level design choices, I have hope that Honkai Star Rail Version 3.1 will be better, and I’m excited to see what the developers will do with the new path Remembrance.

That’s all I have for now. Thank you for reading. And wherever you are, I hope you’re having a nice day.

Monthly Update: Whistlestop Pets Title Card

Monthly Check In

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Hey, hey, folks! Just checking in with another personal update. It’s been a month since the last update, and we’ve had weekly posts up until this point. I’ll have another post later today. Hopefully, that won’t be too many emails from me in a single day. 😊



I’m still waiting to hear back from the company who said they were interested in Spill the Beans. I discussed this game more in last month’s update. They had promised me that the contract would be finished by the end of August, and I haven’t received an official contract yet. I believe they had some issues with their upcoming Kickstarter; it was supposed to launch in June or July at the latest and hasn’t yet hit Kickstarter. Fingers crossed that everything is okay.



I won’t hear back from publishers for another couple of months for the other game I submitted Whistlestop Pets. From what I’ve seen and heard, it takes about three months or more for a game publisher to respond to an email query. There isn’t a standard, so it could be a longer wait.

Speaking of waits, I also heard back from a literary agent for my novel Crooked as a Dogwood last month. The agent asked for a full manuscript. Yay! But it will also take an additional couple of months for a response. It takes time to read a full novel and even longer to figure out if it’s something an agent would like to take on. Fingers crossed for some good news in a couple of months.

So, it looks like I’ll have to busy myself with projects, so I don’t dwell on all of that waiting. Eek!

As a result, I’ve pursued other projects. Let’s begin with tabletop games. There a few games that far away from discussing here, but one stands above the rest: Pick Your Poison.



The phrase “Pick Your Poison” comes from the Prohibition era. Not only did prohibition ban alcohol, they added literal poison (like thallium and strychnine) to household products like after shave and the like (this is also called denaturing alcohol) in order to dissuade people from switching to drinking those household products. So, when a bartender at a speakeasy would say, pick your poison, they knew they were serving their customers poison.

In the game Pick Your Poison, you play as a public figure in the final year of Prohibition, and you dictate how much poison is in those household products. For prohibition to succeed, one needs to kill enough citizens…but not too many or you’ll incur the public’s wrath. Players add or subtract marbles from test tubes that will show how many people die from denatured alcohol each round (which is every two months).



If your role card is face down, you win the game if Prohibition has a positive public opinion at the end of a year. If your role card faces up, you win the game if Prohibition has a negative public opinion. Pick Your Poison is a semi-cooperative game for 3-6 players.

I’m ironing out the details but intend to submit Pick Your Poison to next year’s Zenobia Award. It’s a contest for designers belonging to underrepresented groups. The games must be based on history. I think Pick Your Poison fits that bill.



In terms of writing (not related to Geekly), I continue to work on the unnamed novel that’s based in the same universe as Whistlestop Pets and two other games in the offing. I should have a working draft by the end of the year. NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) is in November, and I typically participate each year with the Omaha chapter. I encourage others to reach out to their local NaNoWriMo groups if they’d like to write a novel. You could make new friends. And I’ve noticed that my group holds people accountable. They’re focusing on getting people published.

And of course, Geekly has been another escape from remembering that I have multiple projects out for review. I appreciate everyone who has spent time and who does spend time reading these posts. Thank you!

That’s all I have for this month’s personal update. This may become a monthly thing. We’ll see.

I hope that wherever you are, you’re having a great day.

~ Kyra

Way Overdue Update

Published on by Kyra1 Comment

Hey, hey, folks! Long time, no upload. I’m Kyra Kyle, and JK Geekly has returned.

A lot has happened since we last updated this website. Some events spanned the globe like the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown. Glad that’s over.

I had a few personal events occur. I’ve been diagnosed as autistic and ADHD. I didn’t know one could have both, but I’m an AuDHDer. Is that how I spell it? The two don’t always play well with each other. I attended the Origins Game Fair last year and was alternately over and under stimulated. Meltdowns are fun. Other times, the two play too well with each other. I paced a trail into the carpet. It’s okay; we needed new carpet.

Pacing aided me to finish writing a novel or two. I’m pitching my first novel, Crooked as a Dogwood, to agents. I’ve gotten further than I’ve ever gone before with this process, so that’s great. I’m unsure if it’ll get picked up but that hasn’t stopped me from editing the next one and writing the one after that. Just keep writing. Just keep writing. Autism loves the routine; ADHD wants some strange. So, I’ll pace in between stories.

Speaking of stories, my short stories and poems have been published in several journals since the last update. I’ll have to look back and see which ones were published in which journals over these past several years. I’m fighting the urge to backtrack these past few years. No. I’ll do it later. Ack! I’m so bad at making shameless promotions for my work. Consider this a generic, hopefully modified soon plug.

On a somber note, my mom passed away last year. I’m still processing the loss over a year later, but I’ll do something in her memory, perhaps a top five tabletop games that she liked to play on her birthday in November. Or a list of games that I play that remind me of her. There may be at least a few games that have been released around or since her passing that Mom would’ve enjoyed.

Mom also liked that I design tabletop games, and it turns out that I’m also pitching multiple games. I’m less familiar with this medium’s pitch process, but I’ll learn. One company has already expressed interest in Spill the Beans, but as of this post, I have yet to sign a contract, so I’m still pitching until a deal is reached. Here’s an initial Spill the Beans sell sheet.



And here’s the sell sheet for a second game I’m pitching to board game companies, Whistlestop Pets.



Whistlestop Pets factors into one of the books I’m working on as well. There may be some crossover possibilities.

I have several other projects (both game designs and writing) that aren’t as far along or I’m not at a stage where I’m comfortable talking about them here, but I’ll keep you updated. Hopefully.

And that brings me to the last point: What will happen to JK Geekly? In short, I don’t know. The site can go in many directions. I have one article I want to upload this November (love you, Mom), but aside from that I don’t know. I’ll probably try several things. If anyone has any suggestions, leave them in the comments.

I hope that wherever you are, you’re having a great day.

~ Kyra