My 2026 Combat Master Wishlist

This feedback comes from someone who wants this game to succeed.

Combat Master has real potential, but it’s being undermined by basic feedback, presentation, and focus problems. These are fundamental issues, not minor tweaks… and addressing them would make an immediate difference.

Fix hit and kill sounds

Let’s start with the basics: feedback.

The hit marker “tick” and kill “beep” sound cheap, flat, and completely disconnected from what’s happening on screen. They break immersion instantly.

This is a shooter. When bullets land, it should feel like something happened.

Right now, hits sound like tapping a calculator. Kills sound like a phone notification—not the end of a firefight. That’s a problem.

BloodStrike gets this right. Its hit feedback is squishy, meaty, and immediate. You hear the damage. You feel the confirmation. It reinforces immersion instead of killing it.

Replace the current hit and kill sounds with proper SFX… sounds that communicate impact, lethality, and momentum. That alone would be a massive improvement.

Why I Miss Eternal Card Game in 2026

Looking back from 2026, Eternal Card Game is still pretty awesome, even though it's in maintenance mode, sadly... It sits in a sweet spot that most digital CCGs never quite get right nowadays. 

The economy is fair: you earn cards, build decks, and play every mode without the game constantly pushing your credit card. Progress feels generous and fast, and it’s clear the devs want people to play and experiment, not just pay. (I'm looking at you Warhammer 40k: Warpforge!)

The game also has a real personality of it's own. The world of Myria mixes fantasy with weird-west vibes: magic, gunslingers, strange factions, alternate dimensions. It all fits together quite well without feeling forced or odd. On top of that, the card pool is deep and interesting, with (back then) frequent sets, events, and formats like ranked and draft that keep brewing fun and unsolved.

The community and the client seal the deal. Players talk decks, help each other, and stick around, even years later. And the client just works. It's fast, clean, cross-play on PC, mobile, and console. 

In 2026, most card games are built around monetization and it sucks. Eternal feels like proof that fair design, style, and depth can coexist. That’s why I'm so bummed that it's in maintenance mode. 

Evernote, What Happened to You?

I remember when Evernote was my go-to productivity tool. I always had it open in a tab, ready to capture notes or compose a quick draft at a moment's notice. Those were the good times!

Last time I logged in a couple years ago, Evernote told me I couldn't sync more than ONE DEVICE. One device? That's not syncing—that's basically Notepad with extra steps.

Now, in 2026, I log back in to see if anything's improved and... BAM! Free accounts are limited to ONE NOTEBOOK and 50 NOTES. Are you kidding me?

Evernote went down the toilet harder than almost any product I've watched over the years. It's sad and kind of spectacular to witness. 

My 2026 BloodStrike Wishlist

 I’ve been an avid FPS player for over 25 years. Doom, Duke Nukem 3D… Half-Life, Counter-Strike… Then, over the last few years, I jumped into Battle Royale–style shooters like Call of Duty, PUBG, Valorant, and many more… including BloodStrike.

And yeah… I have a serious love/hate relationship with BloodStrike.

On one hand, the gunplay is absolutely fantastic. Weapons are punchy, responsive, and satisfying. On the other hand, the game is fucking sweaty. 

So I figured I’d put together a list of improvements that could make the game less exhausting, more readable, and way more enjoyable for casual players, without killing its identity.

Let’s get into it.

My WH40K: Warpforge Farewell Rant

Disclaimer: I genuinely had a great time with Warpforge. This is a post-mortem-rant kind of thing—why I’m walking away, and what I wish had been done differently. This is not written in anger alone. This isn’t a call to boycott.

I’ve played a lot of CCGs over the years and Warhammer 40K: Warpforge is one of my favorites. IMO, it used to be better than most other similar games on the market. But not so much nowadays, mostly because of intense corporate greed.

Warhammer 40K is dope, man. And it’s an excellent IP for a digital card game. At release, the game had interesting components and felt very streamlined. Simple yet effective mechanics. Starting the game at 2 power. Ephemeral cards acting as hero powers. Each turn you have something interesting to do, decisions to make. That was good.

On Slowing Down to Write

 Man, do we live in a world designed for the “scroll.” Everything we consume (mostly online) is in fifteen second bursts. Clickbait headlines, comments, reels… You name it. 

But what about writing? I mean… Real writing? 

The creative process behind writing good stuff demands a serious gear shift. You gotta slow down and think. Slow down and write. Man, is it hard nowadays. 

Even if you’re writing short poems. Pretty simple, right? No overarching narrative, nothing special. Still, you gotta focus and invest time and effort to create something legit and genuine. 

You can’t “life-hack” your way into writing. Let alone use AI to fill the gaps and save some time. What do you want to create? Something real? Or yet another bucket of stupid AI sludge? 

In our day and age, slowing down to write and create feels like falling behind. There’s a constant pressure to go fast, post stuff and move on to the next thing. It makes it kind of unthinkable to close down everything, sit at a desk and write… And ONLY write. 

This is something I want to work on in 2026. 

To be continued… 

FlatPress needs to move towards native Markdown

 I've been reading a lot on Markdown blog engines recently. I even considered moving this blog to GitHub Pages, so that I could blog natively in Markdown. Why? Let's see... 

Consider this:

• Blogger is an outdated platform that’s barely maintained by Google.
• WordPress is a greedy, unsecure platform that everyone and their mom are using.
• Medium.com, Substack… do you even own your content anymore?
• GitHub Pages and Jekyll are awesome, but building and running a blog with them is more complicated than it should be.
• Don’t even mention Tumblr.

Don’t get me wrong, the classic blogging platforms aren’t going away… In fact, they’re not going anywhere… and that’s mostly the issue. They’re stuck in 2010 when hacking together a blog was cool. The result? Most blogs are old and look old…

Writing about Writing Part 3

There's nothing like coming back full circle. And I did, again!

Last time, I was excited to share how I created my own custom writing environment by enhancing Dropbox Paper with the Stylus Chrome plugin. As you’ll see below, the final result is pretty rad and I love it. It's a good setup for long-form writing. 

And Then from StreamLabs to Nothing

2023 and 2024 have been good years for streaming on Twitch. I reached about 10 or 20 followers. While that doesn't seem like much, considering how clumsy and unreliable I was in the beginning, it’s quite an achievement!

Then, in August 2024, I received life-changing news—I found out I would become a dad. Suddenly, I had no more time for streaming.

I did try streaming on X, which is not focused on gaming at all, but their streaming system is well-designed and simple; it works.

Unfortunately, time constraints meant I still couldn’t continue streaming.

A month ago, we welcomed our son. What a joy!

Will I stream again one day? Sure! Will it be on Twitch? Unlikely. On X? Maybe. Time will tell.

Catch you later!

Writing about Writing Part 2

 2 years ago, I wrote a blog post about writing. Or rather, how not to write. How, when writing, I’d do anything else than the actual writing. 

Writing about Writing

https://num7.paranormalis.com/2022/04/writing-about-writing.html

Now that 2024 is nearing its end, I finally have a proper writing setup that I'm happy to share. To my greatest surprise, it’s on a platform that I’ve been gravitating around and using now and then for a decade: Dropbox Paper. It only needed a couple of tweaks to reach the stars, and here we are. 

It all started about a year ago. I was writing a John Titor 2K fanfiction on Paranormalis, and the more I was re-reading it, the more it looked like shit…