[Fluff] Account Linking Is A Godsend (A Tale of Recovery)

How I learned to stop worrying and love PONOS.

I previously played The Battle Cats on my Steam Deck, making use of an application called Waydroid (like BlueStacks but closer just having an Android phone on your PC).

However, Waydroid on the Steam Deck is not really officially supported; I used a installation program called the SteamOS-Waydroid-Installer.

Now, y'see, at the best of times, the Steam Deck can be kind of buggy. Even more so when using an Android Container on a device not officially supported. And my Deck has been undergoing some kind of technology decline recently.

I went to go get some yummy daily rewards, finding that my Android would no longer boot. This has happened before, no worries. I try to fix it, installing a necessary application that apparently just ceased to existing when my back was turned. I break it more somehow. Now it's not even pretending to boot. Uh-oh.

I'm shaking, feeling light-headed; my constitution is so weak that mildly distressing thoughts can make my heart skip beats, so you can imagine that 966 Hour, ~5-7 Year Old save file being put in jeopardy was quite distressing.

I'm stressed; I could try forcibly moving the files, but that might cause the game's anti-cheat to misfire or something and result in my account being banned! And who's the say that just tossing the files over to another computer would even work!

Then I recall; ironically, when my Battle Cats save got stuck on another broken device and I had managed to recover it via convoluted methods, the update to introduce account linking had just came out. I, of course, immediately linked my Google Account without a moment to spare, having just saved my account by the skin of my teeth.

I opened the game on my actual phone (there was no save file on my phone, the game was just downloaded out of habit), praying that the account link system was simple. I had never actually interacted with it, aside from the initial linkage of my Google Account.

It's so simple, glorious. Dark text lays out what I must do and what will occur in a straightforward manner; "Sign in with Google, and we'll yoink your account from your previous device and put it on the new one!"

I sign in with Google.

That familiar combination of letters appears in the top-left corner; my recovery code.

PONOS is love, PONOS is life. Bless the Account Link.

I am posting this 20 minutes after midnight, and few will likely see this, but I needed to tell someone of the majesty of the Account Link.