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Please don't tell anyone, but as the months have ticked by, I've slowly but steadily taken to starting work later in the day. Only by a few minutes, mind, but still: I have a guilty pride about those minutes - if you can feel pride and guilt at the same time, which I'm pretty sure you can.The working day, and please add air quotes as appropriate, begins at 8 at Eurogamer, but I'm generally at my PC by 7.50 playing a certain platforming roguelike that I almost definitely reference too often in articles. I have just a single run-though in the morning, starting from the very beginning, and for a long while, it was all over briskly enough to see me sending emails by 7.55. Now, though, I'm often still playing a little past 8. It is strange for me: one of the only times I can genuinely remember getting better at a game. So novel.
The daily challenge completes Spelunky, I think. It takes a platformer that was merely one of the best games ever made, and it makes it, as far as I am concerned, the definitive greatest game of all time. What's interesting is how it does this. Spelunky is a thing of rules, but the daily challenge belongs to the world of rituals. Spelunky's creatures and items and powers control the flow of the game itself, but the daily challenge controls the flow of Spelunky within your own life. It renders it unmissable. I feel a little bit weird if I skip it. And yet it's just one game per day, so there's no danger of becoming burnt out - or strung out - like my many friends who love Destiny so much.
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