It can be anything, big or small! I think it's valuable to be able to change your opinions and not cling to them out of loyalty, so let's celebrate our flexibility! I'll go first.

I never used to listen to audio versions of books that I haven't already read, because I felt safety in the fact that I already knew what was going to happen and didn't feel concern over missing a passage from distraction. But in the past few months I realised that I listen to podcasts constantly, and that audiobooks (of the right kind) can be thought of as longer form podcasts.
So I've been jumping more into audiobooks for when I'm on long drives or commuting to university, and honestly it's great. I've been really enjoying Stephen Fry's Greek mythology series, and was finally able to finish "reading" the Hitchhiker's Guide series. As I have a bit of a mental block on actual reading that is unrelated to my masters, it's extremely cool to still be able to enjoy non-academic books without the feeling of guilt.

Where do you think Tildes will be in 10 years? Will it still be around? How will the world be different from today? Do you think the world will be a better place? Be as positive or morbid as you want. Or, just say something, share something, post a link, tell a joke, give some advice. Then in ten years we can all come back to this thread and have a laugh... hopefully.

Self-hosting has been a rabbit hole of wonder that I've explored and delved into over these past few months. I'm curious to hear what others use it for, what apps they love, and their rationale for doing so?

I'll go first.

First, in terms of rationale, this is a wonderful article that I think is worth checking out that encapsulates much my of ethos about pursuing self-hosting.

https://kylechayka.substack.com/p/essay-the-digital-death-of-collecting

The TL;DR is that we no longer have control over the things that we 'own' digitally for these massive cloud companies. For instance the songs / artists you listen to on Spotify may suddenly and unexpectedly become unavailable, certain things (most recently podcasts) may be forced upon you in unpleasant ways. Having complete control of your digital data is a very liberating feeling.

In terms of apps:

Hyperbackup - I use a synology NAS, so hyperbackup has been wonderful and use both external HD's and a cloud interface to create encrypted backups of everything which gives me peace of mind.

Plex - One of my most used apps, being able to stream anything remotely has been a dream. Plexamp has given me back control of my music library in a way I never thought I would have.

Tautulli - Great for more informatics on my plex usage

Calibre / Calibreweb - Phenomenal for keeping track of my book collections

PiHole - Ads be gone!

*Arr apps - Specifically Sonarr/Prowlarr/Radarr, really like Overseerr for an interface tying everything together

Daily Notes - A clean interface for keeping regular notes

Some things that I'm not currently self-hosting but would love to hear if others are using alternatives...

Instapaper - I know there are a few similar FOSS apps out there but haven't found one as convenient and well laid out

TickTick - To do app, but similarly haven't found a FOSS alternative that was as robust and nice to use

OneNote

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

This is my running list of the strangest films I have seen (and managed to write down). This list is by no means exhaustive, so please feel free to add to it!

For list formatting purposes I don't lead with A, An, or The. An example: Fall, The (2006)

Altered States (1980)
Aria (1987)
Bad Boy Bubby (1993)
Black Moon (1975)
Blood Tea and Red String (2006)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Boxing Helena (1993)
Brazil (1985)
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The (1920)
Clerks. (1994)
Clerks II (2006)
Cowards Bend the Knee (2003)
Crash (1996)
Delicatessen (1991)
Dogtooth (2009)
Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947)
Elephant Man, The (1980)
Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)
Fall, The (2006)
Faust (1994)
F for Fake (1973)
Freaks (1932)
Funky Forest - The First Contact (2005)
Gozu (2003)
Grizzly Man (2005)
Gummo (1997)
Holy Mountain, The (1926)
In My Skin (2002)
Kamikaze Girls (2004)
Kids (1995)
Last Wave, The (1977)
Li'l Quinquin
Liquid Sky (1982)
Lost Highway (1997)
Love Serenade (1996)
Lucio (2007)
M (1931)
Marat Sade (1967)
Meet the Feebles (1989)
Muriel's Wedding (1994)
Naked Lunch (1991)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Rabbit a la Berlin (2009)
Rubber (2010)
Saragossa Manuscript, The (1965)
Sick - The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997)
Slacker (1991)
Sonic Outlaws (1995)
Spectres of the Spectrum (1999)
Spirited Away (2001)
Stalker (1979)
Survive Style 5+ (2004)
Sweet Movie (1974)
Talk to Her (2002)
Thing, The (1982)
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The (2005)
Topo, El (1970)
Tribulation 99 - Alien Anomalies Under America (1992)
Trouble Every Day (2001)
Tuvalu (1999)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Videodrome (1983)
Visitor Q (2001)
Waking Life (2001)
Welcome to Woop Woop (1997)
WR - Mysteries of the Organism (1971)
You, the Living (2007)

So like many others, I'm a refugee from the Rexxit, and the collaborative, positive enthusiasm here is infectious.

I've had an odd observation about my brief time here - when I think I can contribute to a thread, I find myself trying to step up my posting game - doing a bit of extra research, making sure I add links, and double checking my grammar (as best as I can!). I want my thoughts to have value or be meaningful here, moreso than anywhere I've contributed to in the past.

Do others feel the same way?

This is a good time to repeat the prompt made by @0d_billie back in 2020, and I will also reuse the questions in their post.

So are any tilderen martial artists? If so, tell me about it!

• What do you practice?
• How long have you done it?
• How does it benefit you?
• Do you attend classes or practice solo?
• Would you recommend your martial art to a beginner?

I'm curious to know what martial ars everyone likes the most, and why!

Recently went to a Baskin Robbins, and I was surprised by how indecisive I was. I ended up going with a childhood favourite of mine (cotton candy), but it was far too sweet for me now. I'm curious, what are your favourite ice cream flavours? What interesting combinations have you tried? Any weird ice cream flavours you've tried before?

Hi everyone - newly minted Tildes user and Reddit refugee.

I want to know how many of my fellow DIY amateur (or absolute pro) musicians are around, and where your recent jams are posted.

What kind of music do you like making - what's your workflow?

Started way back in 2013, but due to injuries at work I took a break until beginning on this year. Finally found a friend to start back up at it with a local school in Vancouver. Love it.

I've done some Rapier and Smallsword, but focusing on Longsword right now. Entering my first tournament this Friday. Excited to get my butt kicked.

Anyone else practicing HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts)?

Our school is more focus on Fiore's teachings and Italian fencing, but from time to time we get other more experienced practitioners from other school to teach German, British, etc. Fighting styles.

The recent PKM thread had me thinking about what folks are using as journaling app/portal. I do use Obsidian for my second brain right now and genuinely love it. But I find the mobile app on Android to be a bit clunky, if I'm honest. Seems slow to open even with very few plugins. For jounaling I've used DayOne for years. I started back when it was iOS/MacOS only, but then switched phone to Android and haven't been back. But now they have an app and web app for that. What I don't like is the somewhat goofy format it saves in and it's on their servers. They used to allow you to at least leverage your own Dropbox, but no longer.

For the past several months I've tried several FOSS options. Main criteria is that I could host it myself, supports offline entries stored in an open file format (preferably MarkDown), and had either multi platform app or a decent web app. That lead me to try these:

Memos
Pros:

• Great persistent web app
• Slick UI that is light and snappy
• markdown support
  Cons:
• Stuffs the .md inside a database file so can be a bit cumbersome to export data
• No offline support. There is a 3rd party app that hopes to implement it

Flatnotes
Pros:

• Incredibly simple
• Another easily deployed app
• Flat Markdown files
  Cons:
• Web app on mobile is almost unusable as in it doesn't scale well to smaller screens
• Very early development, but very likely to stay as minimalistic as it is now.
• No offline and very unlikely to ever have it

Joplin
Pros:

• Multi platform apps that perform well
• End-to-end encryption supported
• Could replace both DayOne and my To-do solution (Google Keep)
• Offline support
  Cons:
• More database stuff instead of flat markdown files

One solution I've been testing lately is using IAWriter to write to a 'Journal' folder within my Obsidian vault on Google drive Obsidian Vault > Journal > 2023.... for example. This works surprisingly well. Of course IAWriter is a bit spendy at $29 for Android and then more $ for other platforms as they're sold separately.

So I'm curious what other people are using for just simple daily journaling, random thoughts, etc. If there's an approach I've missed I'd love to hear it. Joplin is so dang close but not having the structure of plaintext files is a no go for me as I don't want to be trapped by any one product should something happen to the development down the road. Doesn't have to be free, but I want control of the entries either on my own server or cloud storage.

I adore the available themes and it makes browsing quite pleasing to do. Currently I'm in a fight between Solarized Dark and Dracula. I'm curious though if there's a clearly preferred theme here or if people are using all kinds of stuff.

Some previous threads on themes (some are about themes in general and aren't Tildes specific):

• https://tildes.net/~comp/iyy/what_is_your_favourite_light_theme
• https://tildes.net/~comp/j14/what_are_your_favourite_low_contrast_themes
• https://tildes.net/~tech/cfq/light_themes_or_dark_themes
• https://tildes.net/~tildes/1yd/the_thing_i_want_most_atm_is_a_dark_theme
• https://tildes.net/~tildes/19c/why_so_much_blue_for_the_dark_themes

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Maybe it's just because I've lost my bookmarks so many times, one way or another. I now avoid using website-specific bookmarks, you never know when the website could shut down or you could lose the bookmarks some other way. not saying Tildes will shut down; I'm sure it won't be any time soon, but I still can't get myself to use it even though it's so convenient ☹️ does anyone else feel the same way ?

As the games industry continues to grow there are many new things introduced which sometimes players don't like, but then overtime we either get used to them, while still disliking them (only a bit less maybe) or we realize "hmm, yes it's good to have this actually". Of course any such mechanic can be implemented very well or quite poorly. I'm not asking about specific implementations, but the mechanic itself as a whole.

Personally I can think of some quality of life changes that at first I thought are not needed or would make a game needlessly easier. When playing I would always try to go for full immersion, but overtime as I've had less and less time to be able to play in long uninterrupted stretches I've come to appreciate things like fast travel and quest markers and other features which would help resuce "wasted" time when playing.

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Hey ya'll

Just getting used to this here Tildes now.

Is there a crypto group yet. I know we all ain't gott be into it, but it seems finance here is the best closest place to call it out of who in or wants a sub.

Can we have one, what's the best way to go about setting it up!?

Ever since I caught the FromSoftware bug in 2020 it's been difficult for me to enjoy action games anymore, but on the plus side, it has led me to spend more time exploring and enjoying cozy games! In particular, I love cozy games that don't involve any kind of violence or death mechanics.

It seems to me like these games are what people think of as being targeted towards kids, but kids these days aren't really interested in them because they are very calm, slow, relaxing and meditative, and everything kids actually consume in the "Screen Era" tends to be the exact opposite.

For me, these cozy games are a great way for me to get in touch with my inner child as an adult and they help me a lot with emotional regulation, making sense of my own childhood, all sorts of stuff, really.

Do you play cozy games? Are you interested in exploring cozy games? Do you stream cozy games? I'd love to hear from you and your experiences playing cozy games as an adult! Everything from recommendation requests, to reviews, to let's plays, and beyond.

Hey tabletilders,

It's been another week. Let's share what we all played this week!

For me it was a single play of Pax Renaissance with a promo expansion that changes the starting state of the board. I completely dominated the trade routes and accumulated a huge stash of cash, but was unable to get the comet out to activate the win condition that would leverage it. My opponents then mowed down my commissions, so I had to pivot quite heavily. But I wasn't too worried as I had so much cash, so could nab any card I wanted, including the next comet.

Unfortunately two of us took our eyes of the ball and our third player managed a sneaky protestant victory. Annoyingly there was an apostasy I could have bought that would have nixed this, but I totally didn't see it coming. Great game.

After that we wound down with a quick game of Scout. Fun little game that makes me want to explore the trick-taking space a bit more, but it seems all the highly praised ones I read about are out of stock. I might see if any of these can be played with a poker deck.

So what have you all been playing?

Curious how many of you use Linux as your main gaming OS? I started 3 years ago and switched to Arch about a year and a half ago.

I play a lot of total war (mainly historical). Recently got into Isonzo which has been a lot of fun.

Do you love a good trail? Are you a hiker, backpacker, trail runner, or neighborhood saunterer? If so, this conversation is for you! Share your favorite routes, dream trips, the gear you love, where you find inspiration, or essential advice. Got any cool trips planned, in the near or distant future? Whether you’re a newbie or trail-tested veteran, share what you know!

Coming out is a different experience for everyone, for some it's a fraught and stressful experience, for others it's an easy and smooth process.

People react differently to the news, geography and demographics can play into the likelihood of a negative reaction, so many factors that can be difficult to handle or worry about.

So how did you go about it and how did it go?
How have things been since and is there anything you'd do differently?

For me personally (a trans woman) it's a long and ongoing process. I first came out to my best friend in 2018, she's trans just like me so it was easy and she and I were always very close and trusting. We've since started a relationship and are now engaged. I literally just spoke to her and talked about my feelings and she accepted me immediately.

Next was my mum, my family are friendly and loving but none of us are overly close or open about our feelings with each other, I have a long history of anxiety which created a barrier for me coming out, I don't think I came out to my mum until either late 2019 or early 2020. She was in the living room on her own and I asked to speak, we sat down and had a heart to heart and she was understanding and supportive, though she didn't know much about trans people. Things seemed fine initially but a few days later when she picked me up form work she broke down in the car crying, saying how it's a big change and how she felt like she was losing her son. It was a lot, more than I could handle and this may be selfish of me, but it was the opposite of what I needed at a time when I was feeling very fragile. We talked more and she came around and has since been very supportive and helped me a lot.

Other family members I never really formally came out to, but folks have slowly cottoned on to what's happening and it hasn't been an issue.

Work however is a different situation. That aforementioned anxiety has prevented me from coming out to this day. In work I hide my feminine features and pretend I'm a guy. It's getting harder by the day to hide it but not knowing how folks will react is worrying. Legally I'll be protected from harm, but socially this could ostracise me from my colleagues. I live in the UK and anti-trans rhetoric has been on the rise in recent years, and if the folks I work with directly don't take it well, while they couldn't openly discriminate, they could make my work life unpleasant and difficult. It'll have to happen eventually (possibly soon) but I'm putting it off until the last possible moment. The fear is paralysing.

On the topic of work, at my last employer I did come out to my two closest colleagues privately, they're still my friends to this day and have had no issues. It was difficult, my heart was pounding and we were saying farewell to another colleague who had been a strong LGBT+ ally in the workplace, it felt like the right time and things worked out well, there were hugs all around which was honestly a far better reaction than I could've hoped for.

So for me, to this day I'm still coming out, slowly, one step at a time. I'd probably do it differently if I could go back, just rip off the whole thing with everyone at once, but that would rely on me being braver than I actually am. The approach I have taken however has been safe and cautious, and has mostly worked out for me.

Apologies for the long story! I'd love to hear all of yours.

Back when Tildes was in cozy mode we had a small contingent of LGBT users across the site who all pretty much came to know each other over time. Now that we're undergoing a huge influx of users though, there are so many new names and faces! I'd love for everyone to get to know everyone, but rather than just sharing how you identify, I'd love this to be a place where people can share their story -- the road of how you arrived at being the person you are and identify as.

So, feel free to share as much of your story as you are comfortable with, and feel free to change/omit any identifying details if maintaining your personal privacy is important to you.

Also, a note to new users: a few years ago we had a vote to determine whether we should change the name of the group from ~lgbt to something else like ~lgbtq or ~queer. The vote came out in favor of keeping it as ~lgbt, but opted to add text to the description of the group clarifying that it is inclusive:

The umbrella term "LGBT" includes all minority sexualities and gender identities. Everybody is welcome to participate.

So, even if your identity is not included in the LGBT initialism, this is still a space for you! If you're ace, pan, intersex, gender non-conforming, gender fluid, non-binary, or any of the other many identities that fall under the LGBT umbrella, this is your community too. Even if you're not sure yet -- that's okay too! We're happy to have you here.

Also, to users who are cis/straight and are still subscribed to ~lgbt, you're welcome here too. We love our allies!

javascript:window.location='[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UU%27+ytInitialData.metadata.channelMetadataRenderer.externalId.substring(2)](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UU%27+ytInitialData.metadata.channelMetadataRenderer.externalId.substring(2)

This puts every video of a channel into one playlist. Makes listening to music channels so much easier.

I also use Pilgrim.

P.S. https://tildes.net/~tech/10ko/little_12ft_io_bookmarklet

I'll start:

• Cooking everything on high.

• If you stick a meat thermometer all the way through the meat, you're measuring the temperature of the pan.

• Thinking I disliked all cooked vegetables. Turns out I prefer them either raw or cooked until crispy.

I came from the generation that played obsessively through middle and high school, and there’s a part of me that really misses when I’d be able to absorb myself into a video game for weeks at a time.

Now that I’m a working adult, it’s a bit more difficult to convince myself that spending all day playing a video game is worth it as opposed to doing chores, practicing some more “productive” hobbies (art, exercise, cooking) or socializing. Part of it also seems to do with the fact that when I do get fully immersed into another video game and spend hours and hours playing at a time (thank you elden ring), my standard for dopamine seems to increase, and I’m not as interested in reading or playing music when I could get that instant dopamine hit from playing a video game, if that makes sense. The games I tend to play now lean towards relaxing/cozy games, generally offline games I can play at my own leisure, where I used to be very into the Overwatch/CSGO/Call of Duty scene.

I’d really love to hear how other people have experienced this, if at all, or what your experiences have been. Have you noticed a shift in the types of games you play? Do you specifically try not to play games to keep a healthier balance with your other obligations and hobbies too?

We often talk about the environment in abstract terms, using phrases like "good for the environment", "bad for the environment", "environmental problems", and so on. Obviously there is a place for this, but I think it also serves to abstract what is a very immediate and concrete thing that we interact with each day — our local environment.

So I wanted to ask, how familiar are you all with your local environment?

• Do you recognize (or even identify) different plant and animal species in your area? Do you know which are native and which might be invasive?

• Do you notice changes in your environment throughout the year? Do you know why these changes happen?

• Thinking longer term, if you have lived in one location long enough, have you noticed changes over the years? If so, what?

• Do you know what the most pressing local environmental issues are?

I'm hoping this can be a thread for people to talk about their local environments, but also to share tips on how to be more tuned in to your local nature.

I myself would not say I am very familiar with the flora and fauna of where I live, but I have been trying to get better. I use the app Seek (which is similar to iNaturalist for those who might be familiar, but with better recognition capabilities in my experience) to identify plants around where I live, and I'm slowly trying to get better at recognizing them. The process of stopping to take a photo has really helped me slow down and pay attention to things around me — I notice a lot more garbage, roadkill near the big crossings, etc. In addition, seeing pictures of some of these plants online have made me realize just how water deprived a lot of the ones around me are, which is no doubt an effect of the drought my area has been experiencing. This has lead me to be more intentional with seeking out news regarding water laws and rights and trying to be more tuned in to these issues.

Edit

Some great additional questions from this comment of @skybrian's:

• Do you know where your water comes from?
• Do you know where sewage goes?
• Where is the landfill that your garbage goes to?
• How is recycling done?

Where do you share the art that you make with the world? Do you use a social media site? A personal website? Do you keep it all to yourself? Is your art something that can't be shared online so easily?

Hey guys!

I do traditional archery, make my own gear, and I love talking about it. If you're not an archer, please feel free to peruse the comments and ask questions if you have any! As for my questions for you:

• How did you get into it?
• What's your setup like?
• What are your archery-related goals and expectations for the year?

My first exposure to archery began as early as Zelda 1 for the NES. I instantly understood the value of being able to attack moblins and gohmas from afar. It was not until the pandemic some 30 years later that I picked up my old man's bow and fell in love with something that I feel I've been missing all of my life. My setup is a 50" cartel doosung epic zen korean bow that reaches 50# @ 32" max draw length with a modified cowhide and deerskin grip. I use only wooden arrows. I tend to draw my bow only to 28", however, which reaches 36#, and that's enough for now as I'm recovering from some shoulder pain. My goals this year are to recover, stay in form, and to make an educational video about arrows.

Since there are topics about cult classics and movies that everyone loves, I figured I'd make another thread about movies that you love that everyone else hates!

I've got to start with Jupiter Ascending. A lot of you know that I'm an unabashed fan of the Wachowskis, and this is almost universally recognized as their worst movie. It's pretty easy to see why; it's a confused mess. But even so, you can see the vision behind it. The story goes that they wanted this to be a three-film series much like they did with the Matrix sequels, but at one point the studio decided that they just wanted to make one film, so we got a very long hyper-compressed version where things weren't allowed to make much sense. The visuals are fantastic as you would expect from a Wachowski film, but the real diamond in the rough here is Eddie Redmayne's performance.

Branded is an almost objectively terrible movie. It's a fairly well put-together movie, but the idea behind it was bad. To make matters worse, the company that promoted it released trailers that basically just lied about what it was about, basically just scamming the audience into thinking it was a much more interesting movie. The IMDB page still has a fairly misleading description to this day. Thankfully I went into it blind, and I actually enjoyed it. The message was good, even if the storytelling wasn't, and it had a surprisingly excellent soundtrack.

While listening to the album this morning, I had a thought. You Only Live Once is a perfect transition from The Strokes previous two albums (Room On Fire, Is This It), to the evolved, more mature sound on display in this album. It bridges the albums so perfectly. What do you all think? What are your favorite album openers?

Also, I'm new to tildes, a reddit refugee (redfugee?). Really glad to be joining the community!

Lately I've been into La Fin du Monde, which is a Triple Blond from Canada. When I took the first sip it put a smile on my face. Very complex flavors. It has that Trippel flavor but I detect some of what I'd call 'berry and spice'. I'm not some beer expert, nor do I have the vocabulary to accurate explain the profile. All I can say is it's worth a shot!

Other than that Sam Adams Summer has been great for the hot days.

How did you learn to cook? Who taught you? What factors were important? Looking back, what do you think could have been better?

Or, if you're learning to cook: how is it going? What are you finding tricky? Is it easy to find teaching resources?

There are some very groovy mixes out there. Which ones are your favorite?

Mine is Alice by Pogo, whimsical and slightly spooky, just like the movie it's sampled from.

So apparently Pogo has held some problematic opinions in the past, I'll go with my second most favorite being this Breaking Bad remix.

I would like you to think of two things that you associate with your favourite colour. For example, if your favourite colour were black you might choose "the night sky" and "New Zealand rugby." Try not to put too much thought into it, and don't expand the spoiler sections below until you have your two things.

In general, I found a lot of real gems this year! The indie scene is thriving like never before, and smaller teams are being enabled by the likes of Unreal Engine to create really beautiful games on a budget. So I had a lot of free time today and yesterday, and decided to go through my discovery queue and check out a few demos. That quickly ballooned into sitting down and playing right through over a dozen demos, two of which (The Lies of P and Wizard with a Gun) I didn't get far enough into to give any coherent thoughts on. How many demos did you check out? Are there any games you're looking forward to on that basis?

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood: 5/5
From Deconstructeam, a Valencian studio with a strong emphasis on narrative, choice, and empowering the player to create their own art, this demo was one of the big winners for me. Gameplay revolves around conversations, VN style, but those conversations often happen in the context of you performing, essentially, tarot readings where the cards are all designed by you. I had a lovely, relaxing time making my own cards, and the challenge of interpreting them to the people around me in a way that felt… true, I guess, was memorable. There is an impressive level of responsiveness to your choices on display here, both on a micro level and, it seems, on a macro level, so I have to think that the game will be pretty replayable. My one gripe was that the dialogue felt a bit stiff and unnatural at times. The game isn’t voice-acted, and the lack of rhythm or cadence in a lot of conversations kept them from flowing well. But that said, even if individual lines of dialogue fell a bit short, placed in context, the conversations felt meaningful, engrossing, and interesting. I will be buying this on release.

Death Must Die: 4/5
I’m a sucker for the “Survivors” genre. My first experience with it preceded Vampire Survivors, the little $3 game that swept the world last year and popularized the new gameplay style; I started with the mobile game that inspired VS: Magic Survival. I had tens of hours in that game. And each subsequent entry into the genre; VS, HoloCure, 20 Minutes Til Dawn, etc., etc. have only worn me out more. These games are all the same: more enemies fill the screen; you get more autofire weapons to deal with them and dodge around to avoid contact damage. Fun for half an hour, but don’t really leave you wanting more. Death Must Die is different. Isometric rather than top-down, the combat here is all manual. You click to fire off an attack that needs to be well aimed; enemies don’t deal contact damage but instead have telegraphed attacks that you have to dodge. It feels very ARPG, actually; a bit Diablo. And the level-up system, which sees you selecting boons from different gods, is clearly inspired by Hades and offers considerably more interesting choices (so far, at least) than the usual Survivors game. Feels a lot more skill based, and a bit more build-craft-y, than usual. And I even caught a whiff of a story, though how well it’ll be executed remains to be seen. I look forward to the full release. Just wish there were more defensive options – maybe a parry?

El Paso, Elsewhere: 4/5
This is cute. A Max Payne-style third person shooter that’s well written in a surreal, noir sort of way; corny enough to be delightful; dark enough to maintain the tension. Visually, it’s a low res, low poly callback to the PS1 era. The gameplay is pretty tough; I didn’t finish the demo, but I imagine it would be a lot of fun to master. I’m keeping my eye on this one, even if it’s not my usual type of game. A special callout: there are biblically accurate angel enemies in this game, which makes me a very happy woman.

Escape from Mystwood Mansion: 3/5
I like escape rooms, and this demo is just a well-constructed escape room – actually, it skews very closely to the types of puzzles and mechanics I’ve come to expect from physical escape rooms. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing; I do wish the game used its medium to get a little more wild with it. But the puzzles were generally pretty well constructed and offered a few fun “aha!” moments when I solved them, and I didn’t need to look at a walkthrough or lean on hints to get through. That said, the hints that I did use were pretty lackluster, and in one case, actually wrong, so that system needs some revision. Some of the sound design got a bit grating, too. I don’t know. Were this a co-op experience I’d probably like it a bit more. The appeal of an escape room is the excitement of solving it with a friend, and there are certainly enough self-contained puzzle sequences here to support that. But no; Mystwood Mansion is a solo experience, and I’m not sure if it’ll be that fun to solve multiple predictable escape rooms alone, staring at a computer screen.

The Invincible: 3/5
I am of two minds about The Invincible. This game is an atompunk sci-fi walking sim adapted from a novel (my roommate tells me) by Stanislaw Lem, and so, suitably, what we have in this demo is a slice of high-concept sci-fi steeped in personal stakes. I have a hard time thinking of anything bad to say about this game. It looks good, runs well, has an interesting story that left me wanting more. And yet, one day after playing it, I just do not want to pick the game up again. I suppose part of it was the pace. Some of the best walking sims – What Remains of Edith Finch – tell incredible stories in the space of two hours. Meanwhile this demo was 40 minutes long and felt like only a small piece of some grand, sprawling story. Environments are huge and your walking speed is pretty slow, so there’s a lot of time between set pieces where your character is just having headaches or struggling to breathe, which really wore me down. I can’t imagine playing this game for 10 hours; 5 might be pushing it. It’s not super tempting when I could just read the book.

Loodlenaut: 2/5
Oh boy, Loodlenaut. Where to begin. Okay, so, I actually like this game. It’s pretty, and relaxing; an ocean exploration game where your job is to clean up trash, rescue wildlife, and climb the tech tree. I have played through the entire demo, done everything there is to do, which took about an hour. And I will absolutely not be playing the full game. If you’ve played Powerwash Simulator, you know how satisfying it can be to get rid of muck and watch a meter climb up to 100% clean, and Loodlenaut scratches a similar itch. The problem here is that the game feels so clunky and limited that the frustration often outweighs the satisfaction. For example, you have a cleaning gun that picks up trash, destroys goop, and breaks boxes. But you don’t aim the gun, the game does, and it’s not really based on where you're facing or what you're closest to so much as it is on the game’s capricious moods. Say you’re trying to pick up a glass bottle, but there’s a crate nearby that you can’t break yet because you don’t have the right upgrade. Well, Loodlenaut will snap the gun to the crate and repeatedly try to break it, until you wiggle around enough to get it to change its mind and pick up the bottle. Wielding the gun is a constant frustration, as is sluggishly moving through the ocean. Your swim speed is slow, and your boost recharges slowly, so going back and forth between central base and the area you’re cleaning – something you have to do pretty frequently – takes what feels like an eternity until you sink lots of resources into infrastructure. None of this is a bad idea – incentivising players to craft boost rings to improve traversal is a good idea; auto-targeting is more comfortable than aiming on a controller – it’s just these systems are poorly implemented, which leads to frustration.

Luna Abyss: 5/5
Luna Abyss is a fucking wild demo. I downloaded it because the game’s description used they/them pronouns for its protagonist. I had no idea what I was getting into. So, okay, the best comparison I have for this game is to Returnal. Like that game, Luna Abyss is a high-production value 3D shooter where hitting your shots is easy, and the difficulty comes from avoiding the attacks of bullet-hell style enemies. And like Returnal, it has a strange, unsettling atmosphere, tight movement, and punchy, satisfying guns. Of course, Luna Abyss isn’t a roguelike, and it appears much more straightforward with its story beats so far. I don’t know, I’m having a hard time capturing what makes this game so great. Let’s start with the world, which is bleak and dark and oppressive. You run through cavernous metal structures, all black and grey, lit in harsh red. Enormous metal pipes twist and curl and embrace each other like enormous, mechanical intestines, and you run across them to get to your next objective. This place was not designed for you, and you feel that so clearly as you traverse it. You jump off the pipes and enter into combat, where a generous aim assist ensures that all your shots will hit. But there are a couple of enemy types to prioritize. You fire your shieldbreaker at a flying enemy, killing it, and time slows to a crawl, increasing the impact of the shot and giving you a tiny moment of respite to see what bullets you’ll have to dodge and decide what enemy you should prioritize next. A miniboss spawns in, grinning facelessly, and releases a flower of projectiles. You sprint and jump and dodge and you keep firing until she’s dead. The room is clear, and the demo is over, and your screen is awash with the bright, striking red of the UI. “Thanks for playing,” it says. I felt like I should be thanking it, instead.
It’s impossible to say, at this juncture, whether the game will be good. The crumbs of story were certainly engrossing; the combat fun; the world, striking. At the very least, Luna Abyss looks like it will be one of the most interesting and unique games of the year, whenever it comes out. I can’t wait.

Sea of Stars: 3/5
This one is alright. The world is beautiful, the music peppy, the character designs good. I just honestly have not played enough turn-based isometric RPGs to compare it to anything. I did have two big disappointments: I thought the writing was a little… on-the-nose, I guess? Characters just stated their objectives and everything was pretty surface-level. Dialogue wasn’t attacking or defending, only conveying information. And while the combat was fun and had a challenging timing element, it ended with a boss who I spent like ten minutes fighting for a single attempt, used all my items, did everything I could, and still lost to in dramatic fashion with no indication I had done any real damage. My suspicion is that the boss is simply meant to be an organic end to the demo, a scripted loss, but I don’t know; if not, it probably indicates that this type of game isn’t for me, since I found it to be quite a slog.

Stray Gods: 2/5
I really wanted to like Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical. It is, essentially, a choice-based VN in the style of a broadway musical about ancient Greek gods struggling to live in modern society. A tantalizing premise, if a bit theatre-kid-y. But my degree is literally in theatre criticism, so I have a lot of tolerance for the genre’s usual excesses. I can’t think of another musical video game, but Stray Gods’ demo did not convince me that the idea could work. The performances aren’t the problem here; Laura Bailey is a charismatic lead with pipes good enough to carry the show, and the supporting cast of big names (Troy Baker, Felicia Day, Khary Paton) are no slouches either. But so much about this game is just not working for me. Let’s start with the sound design. This is one of those games where it feels like all the actors are recording in totally separate rooms. There’s a lot of dead air, not a lot of dynamism or one person bouncing off the other during conversation. It robs scenes of a lot of momentum and impact. And when I say “dead air,” I mean dead air. Bafflingly, the game seemingly has no room noise, no background audio, so when people aren’t talking, or music isn’t playing, everything is completely, uncannily silent. It’s genuinely weird.
The musical numbers alleviate this weirdness by filling the soundscape but do little else to pull me in. We get to see four songs in the demo; two from the opening act, two picked from later in the game. All of these songs are very similar – fugues or duets, where one character has one perspective and another character (or chorus) has another perspective, and their conflict is expressed and then resolved through song. Which is a fine structure for a song in a musical, don’t get me wrong, but it is not a fine structure for every song. Even our main character Grace’s “I Want” song, the song that establishes her, her desires, and internal landscape and should absolutely be a solo, is a duet with a woman she’s just met. It does not work. And when the game has you making dialog choices during songs, it robs them of a natural arc; there’s no organic progression from the characters’ starting points to their ending points. Some part of me hopes that this game will be good, but I’m not optimistic. Stray Gods is no Hadestown.

Vampire Hunters: 3/5
In the Death Must Die blurb, I praised that game for refining the “Survivors” genre by making tweaks that allow for more skill and expression. But fuck that. Vampire Hunters is a braver game than Death Must Die will ever be, because it dares to ask, “What if Vampire Survivors was a boomer shooter where all your guns were on screen at the same time?” The result is absolutely wild; by the end of a run, more screen space is devoted to your guns than the entire rest of the game. It feels pretty weird to play, too; all of your guns have different ammo counts and may or may not be automatic, but all fire with the same button, so it can be tough to manage all of their separate ammo pools. And XP drops have a tiny pickup radius, so you really have to move to get them all. The neatest trick the game pulls is that it increases enemy spawn rate when you sprint, so moving at a high speed carries a lot of risk. But apart from that, this game is maybe too audacious to be enjoyable.

Viewfinder: 4/5
I am not a frequent puzzle game player, but I, like most every PC gamer, have a soft spot for the kind of reality-warping sci-fi-y puzzle genre originated by Portal and carried forward by the likes of Superliminal and, now, Viewfinder. First: this game is a technical marvel. You are able to, in essence, carry around entire environments, often with a wildly different art style from the rest of the game, and place them seamlessly and instantaneously in the world. I played this at 1440p, >100 FPS with nary a stutter on my midrange system. The ability to place photos and enter them is genuinely incredible on all levels other than technical, too; it feels magical, like stepping into a painting that you yourself made. My only question, one that the demo did not answer, is whether Viewfinder will be able to construct interesting puzzles out of this mechanic. This was something that I think Superliminal often failed to do, too; when the central mechanic of your puzzles is so unique and novel and powerful, how can you limit it in such a way that players actually have to think and put in effort to solve problems? For me, at least, every puzzle in Viewfinder was solved pretty much instantly, with no “aha!” moments, and that does worry me a bit.