1338's recent activity

  1. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 13: Today I played a much more recent purchase, it's one I bought this year! Dorfromantik is a very chill game. You place tiles to build a landscape. It's like civ but without all the depth,...

    Day 13:

    Today I played a much more recent purchase, it's one I bought this year! Dorfromantik is a very chill game. You place tiles to build a landscape. It's like civ but without all the depth, strategy, and competition. There's surface level goals around building a contiguous forest, river, railroad, or town, but it's mostly just deciding where to put the next tile you draw. Like Townscaper in vibe but with basic game components instead of being a pure toy. It was a nice and relaxing time. I played it while keeping an eye on my established hens through the camera as they spat with my new pullets, quite a contrast. The gameplay seems fundamentally shallow, but they do at least have several game modes and a good number of tiles you unlock over time, so there's variety and progress. I don't know it's able to keep my attention enough for me to play it often, I intellectually like sand mandalas but I struggle to engage with them. Maybe if I'm especially stressed one day.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 12: Today I tried out the game Understand, bought during last year's burner. It's a very unique game whose entire defining feature is a lack of instruction. Each level is simple, you have a...

    Day 12:

    Today I tried out the game Understand, bought during last year's burner. It's a very unique game whose entire defining feature is a lack of instruction. Each level is simple, you have a grid with some shapes and need to drag a line between shapes. Where to start, where to stop, what to intersect in the process, and what you can't intersect with, is all unspecified. The rules change between each level and inside each level are sub-levels, rules mostly stay the same between the sub-levels, so there is a bit of "ramp up." It's unique, like I said, but I don't find it very interesting. There's not much to say about why, I just don't find "guess what the game maker had in mind over and over again" very compelling game play.

    3 votes

  3. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 11: Today I went with another 2D factory type game, Node Farm. This one I enjoyed a lot more. Instead of leaning puzzle, this one lean towards idle/clicker (which is a guilty pleasure of...

    Day 11:

    Today I went with another 2D factory type game, Node Farm. This one I enjoyed a lot more. Instead of leaning puzzle, this one lean towards idle/clicker (which is a guilty pleasure of mine). Like the name suggests, it's cooking/farming themed and structured in a very graph-like manner with edges between nodes serving as flexible conveyor belts. It seems to have a good bit of depth to it, with more complicated recipes being required to satisfy goals, make progress, and unlock more types of nodes. You have to meet a goal of producing X amount of a given recipe to beat "bosses" and earn points to unlock things. It also has an prestige mechanic, though prestige gives the same "currency" as playing normally so it seems semi-optional. I got through the first three recipes, which opens up the second page of node types, and "ascended" just to see what it's like before I stopped for the day. The prestige system does seem a bit weak, but I suppose the main draw is restructuring your factoryfarm after you've earned better buildingsnodes.

    The game definitely has some depth I didn't get around to trying, there's other game modes and difficulty/mechanic tunables, and there's a logic circuit mechanism I didn't get a chance to try out even though I found myself wanting to use it before unlocking it (I wanted basically an overflow splitter mechanic, so I allow items to be dumped only after storage is full). It has pure simple logic gates, which is refreshing.

    The tutorial is a bit obnoxious with the way it pops up windows and I hit a weird bug with hover tooltips not working right, but controls were overall reasonable and the design is in that valley of not being super noticeable one way or the other.

    I'll play it again.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 10: I played Programming Factory today. It's, as you might expect, a factory game themed around programming. You "mine" a specific value (though the game calls them variables), then the...

    Day 10:

    I played Programming Factory today. It's, as you might expect, a factory game themed around programming. You "mine" a specific value (though the game calls them variables), then the building perform basic operations on them like addition or modulo. This is more the type of factory game I was thinking Shapez was going to be at first, you go level by level and have to generate the specific values required, then you start over from scratch on the next level.

    It's primarily a Chinese game, though it has English translation for everything side-by-side. That they put the languages side-by-side rather than conventional localization is par for the course: it's quite lacking in polish.

    The hardest thing of the game is that the factories don't have dedicated input/output spots, or some sort of dedicated clock signal, so the only way to control whether whether the addition building is doing a+b or a+a or b+b is super careful control of timing and rates of inputs, which is complicated by the fact that the buildings don't display their rates anywhere.

    The part that annoys me the most in playing is that you can't move while placing the cursor. In virtually every 2D factory game you click to put the conveyor down and then hold D to place a line of conveyors going right. But in this doing that doesn't work.

    I only got through half an hour.

    3 votes

  5. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 9: I tried to play Crazy Machines 2 today, but it didn't want to install right. Instead I went with Lucid. Lucid is a SameGame variant where you have goals of specific colors and occasional...

    Day 9:

    I tried to play Crazy Machines 2 today, but it didn't want to install right. Instead I went with Lucid. Lucid is a SameGame variant where you have goals of specific colors and occasional power-ups that randomize the map. It was a little nostalgic from when I was younger, playing Jawbreaker on Pocket PC. I got bored after 10 levels or so and played some more DigDigDrill.

    4 votes

  6. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 8: Today I went on a Curious Expedition. I started out in South America where I helped a woman on a religious mission make contact with an indigenous tribe. Then on my second expedition I took...

    Day 8:

    Today I went on a Curious Expedition. I started out in South America where I helped a woman on a religious mission make contact with an indigenous tribe. Then on my second expedition I took a job to steal an idol, which I did but then got confused on how I was supposed to deliver it so I lost rep (apparently you don't get credit at the end of the mission, but at the start of the next mission). On my third expedition I went to the arctic and got in a last minute fight with an arctic wolf of some sort. The combat system is not super obvious and, unless I somehow missed some tutorial, not explained at all. But I was on easy, so I survived. On my fourth, and last, expedition, I went to Cuba and my sanity dropped too low, which introduced me to the mechanic where the map goes completely red with scary monsters everywhere. I barely survived the last minute fight with some shadow monster and got to the golden pyramid.

    It's an interesting game. It's like a turned-based strategy adventure thing I guess. If I had it on mobile I'd probably end up playing it way too much, like I have with polytopia. On desktop I'll probably play it a few more times at least, don't know that it'll quite hook me into racking up a high playtime. It looks like it has a developer supported modding system, which is always awesome to see.

    I bought this $1.61 last summer. I also bought its sequel, which maybe I'll try later this month.

    3 votes

  7. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 7: I gave Tametsi a shot today. I bought it a year ago when I got those mining games, but that was long enough for me to totally forget what it was supposed to be about. As I started playing...

    Day 7:

    I gave Tametsi a shot today. I bought it a year ago when I got those mining games, but that was long enough for me to totally forget what it was supposed to be about. As I started playing through the tutorial my reaction was "oh this is just minesweeper" followed by "oh it's minesweeper with different grids" then "oh wow, this is minesweeper for grownups" and finally "oh fuck, I do not have the mental energy for this." It seems like a fun challenge, but lack of sleep and work being annoying meant my stopping point was level 11.

    I then went back to Death and Taxes and finished my run, many people died.

    3 votes

  8. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 6: Today was definitely the first time I played it on Steam, but I'm not totally certain if this is the first time I ever played Death and Taxes. The whole time I played it I had low-grade...

    Day 6:

    Today was definitely the first time I played it on Steam, but I'm not totally certain if this is the first time I ever played Death and Taxes. The whole time I played it I had low-grade deja vu, but whether that was from playing the Headliner games during last year's burner, watching someone play it on twitch years ago, or actually from playing it on playstation or something, I can't decide.

    But this time around I got exactly halfway through the month, killed a bunch of people, and gave a cat a toy hamster to torture. All-in-all not a bad time. I only got far enough to get a sense for the background narrative, which is much more subtle than Headliner. But the design and writing/humor side of D&T is top-notch.

    This is yet another game niche I know I enjoy, though I'm less sure what to point to as the genre archetype for this compared to the earlier Portal or Motherload descendent games.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

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    Oh ya, that's definitely a defined game niche. When I bought DigDigDrill I bought a bunch of other mining games at the same time: Galactic Mining Corp, Mining Mechs, Super Mining Mechs, Wall...

    Oh ya, that's definitely a defined game niche. When I bought DigDigDrill I bought a bunch of other mining games at the same time: Galactic Mining Corp, Mining Mechs, Super Mining Mechs, Wall World, BORE BLASTERS, Ad Fundum, DigDigDril -- I think steam might have been doing a genre sale on mining games at the time.

    2 votes

  10. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 5: I needed a game that wouldn't use much VRAM, so I decided to go with DigDigDrill. It's fairly basic graphically, just 2D sprites. It's a mining/digging game a la motherload. There's no...

    Day 5:

    I needed a game that wouldn't use much VRAM, so I decided to go with DigDigDrill. It's fairly basic graphically, just 2D sprites. It's a mining/digging game a la motherload. There's no story or anything, you're just a mining robot. This one is fairly chill/peaceful, with no combat or danger/HP to it -- there's not even gravity so no fall damage. You can't even really run out of fuel, instead using "batteries" simply fills up your inventory (which is conceptually bizarre) and if you exceed your capacity, you move slower.

    The neatest part is around the upgrade mechanisms. Instead of the ores you mine only being sold, there's a system where you craft drills, with strength and bonuses driven by how you combine the ore using a shape/mold filling system. You can unlock new features based on max depth reached, so it seems it probably expands that mechanism over time.

    The English translation is not great but usable, a few points confused me but only momentarily. Overall I quite liked it, it beats some of the more ambitious mining games I bought at the same time, such as Wall World.

    1 vote

  11. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 4: "I'm not sure I like this sub-genre of automation game" and then suddenly it's an hour later. I gave shapez a try today. I bought this in June 2023, at the same time I bought My Time in...

    Day 4:

    "I'm not sure I like this sub-genre of automation game" and then suddenly it's an hour later. I gave shapez a try today. I bought this in June 2023, at the same time I bought My Time in Sandrock (which I've put over a hundred hours in), so I guess I got a bit distracted. At first I thought shapez was going to be just quasi-puzzle where you figured out how to make a thing and things aren't very additive, but when I realized the map was huge (if not infinite) and you weren't going to be taken to another level after working through the 4 resources near the hub... things clicked a bit. While I don't think shapez is ever going to displace Satisfactory in my factory game heart, it's definitely an enjoyable experience. I do find the controls a bit wonky, specifically trying to place the conveyor, but it's the type of wonky I see myself getting used to. I can definitely see myself playing it more... and then getting the sequel.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 3: After a couple decade-ago games, today I tried out a game I bought a year ago: The Pedestrian. It's a puzzle platformer with really cool design and mechanics. It seems to be a really short...

    Day 3:

    After a couple decade-ago games, today I tried out a game I bought a year ago: The Pedestrian. It's a puzzle platformer with really cool design and mechanics. It seems to be a really short game, if I'm reading the menu right I got through a third of it. It's not very deep mechanic-wise but it's super polished and well designed. It must have been fun to make. I'll probably finish it.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 2: I tried out Polarity. I purchased this the same day as the previous game, but it was in a Developer Alliance Bundle for $0.45. It's an indie Portal-like where the main mechanic is toggling...

    Day 2:

    I tried out Polarity. I purchased this the same day as the previous game, but it was in a Developer Alliance Bundle for $0.45. It's an indie Portal-like where the main mechanic is toggling your affinity between red or blue states, which controls whether you can walk through red or blue walls. It had some potential, unfortunately I hit some control bugs where jumping would only work randomly a fraction of the time and my aim would suddenly jump. Those bugs made the game pretty unplayable and the discussion shows other people with the same issue going back years (comments suggest it could be solved by lowering refresh rate, but mine was already low).

    2 votes

  14. Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games

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    Day 1: I'm starting with a list of 439 games in my steam unplayed backlog. Hopefully this time that number decreases. My first game is Marble Mayhem: Fragile Ball, purchased December 2016 as part...

    Day 1:

    I'm starting with a list of 439 games in my steam unplayed backlog. Hopefully this time that number decreases.

    My first game is Marble Mayhem: Fragile Ball, purchased December 2016 as part of the EQ Games Puzzle Pack for $0.30. It's a simple game where you rotate a platform map with your mouse with the goal of getting a ball to the destination. There's not much more to it than that. Some levels have a bouncy ball, others you explode if you hit the wall too fast, and some have spikes you have to avoid. It's the perfect time where having a button to adjust your DPI/sensitivity is useful, some levels you need to make fine tune adjustments to avoid going fast while others you need to swing fast so you can fall "up and over." I played several levels before I got bored of it. The graphic design is abysmal, it's of course simple 2D graphics but it's bad clip-art with next to no attempt at being aesthetically pleasing. But it's pleasantly simple and focused.

    3 votes

  15. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

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    I recently finished A Study in Scarlet, the original Sherlock Holmes book. I haven't read any Holmes books before and I've consumed very little Holmes content in general so I wasn't sure what to...

    I recently finished A Study in Scarlet, the original Sherlock Holmes book. I haven't read any Holmes books before and I've consumed very little Holmes content in general so I wasn't sure what to expect besides the general mythos of the detective. I certainly wasn't expecting the second half of the book where it gives the backstory of the crime totally detached from the European narrative. Like half the book is about Mormons. And strange how much effort was put in place to legitimize the "criminal" which, of course, led to the ending suddenly going in a different direction. I have to wonder if ACD hit the end and realized "oh shit, I can't have him just prosecuted now." Overall I liked it, might read some more Sherlock in the future.

    Currently I'm reading The Empty House by Michael Gilbert, another UK crime fiction book but from a century later. I'm halfway through and it's starting to drag on, something about the writing style really flattens out what I suppose is supposed to be exciting bits. The "of the time" aspect is interesting, like where they describe the knowledge of the existence of DNA as this very cutting edge thing. Having the main character be an insurance adjuster is amusing but I had to roll my eyes when it was revealed he had a photographic memory. I'll be glad when I get done with this one.

  16. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

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    Still making gradual progress on my book tracker. Got past the point of just focusing on my re-architecture and spent some time on polish, bug squashing, and dashboard features. I even spent some...

    Still making gradual progress on my book tracker. Got past the point of just focusing on my re-architecture and spent some time on polish, bug squashing, and dashboard features. I even spent some time on improving design. I got a version deployed to "prod" and then, of course, discovered some critical issues with the HA support. But running with just one server seems to be working well enough so I've started properly dog-fooding it. Hopefully in the next couple months I'll be at a point of trying to find if any people are interested in helping me test it.

    Some screenshots:

    https://i.ibb.co/RkRxpR8F/Screenshot-from-2026-04-29-23-37-45.png

    https://i.ibb.co/4RYwKcnH/Screenshot-from-2026-04-26-14-17-56.png

    https://i.ibb.co/0y1rLXXz/Screenshot-from-2026-04-26-14-17-29.png

    3 votes

  17. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

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    There's a lot of services like that. Snug or Demumu for example. I've considered signing up for one myself at times, just because I live alone and have pets I don't want starving.

    There's a lot of services like that. Snug or Demumu for example. I've considered signing up for one myself at times, just because I live alone and have pets I don't want starving.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

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    Still working on my book tracker, still ironing out the wrinkles of the duckdb -> sqlite rearchitecture. But also made some improvements to the 'log progress' UI and added in configurable units....

    Still working on my book tracker, still ironing out the wrinkles of the duckdb -> sqlite rearchitecture. But also made some improvements to the 'log progress' UI and added in configurable units. Hoping this weekend I can finally stop noticing other issues and redoing the DB long enough to get to configuring the default dashboard.

    1 vote

  19. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

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    Still working on my book tracker. Ended up having enough trouble with duckdb/ducklake that I decided to rip it out and replace it with my original thought, which is a sqlite solution. I'm using...

    Still working on my book tracker. Ended up having enough trouble with duckdb/ducklake that I decided to rip it out and replace it with my original thought, which is a sqlite solution. I'm using litestream and application-level user pinning to solve persistence and concurrent access woes. For the size of data and the data access patterns I have in mind the cost of downloading a sqlite DB from object storage isn't a big issue, but it certainly feels dirty and I definitely fear the edge case bugs that lead to a user's sqlite DB getting overwritten. Might have to enable object versioning (if my host even has that available), I already have some defenses written in code and I'm trying to get tests that'll help me catch the edge case/timing possibilities. Though my e2e test harness is already starting to feel larger than my actual application.

    1 vote

  20. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

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    Still working on my book tracker. Got the dashboards fairly capable and customizable, even threw in a cheap AI helper for generating the queries that power all the widgets. Main issue is I really...

    Still working on my book tracker. Got the dashboards fairly capable and customizable, even threw in a cheap AI helper for generating the queries that power all the widgets.

    Main issue is I really need to spend some time on the design side. The generic styling, inconsistent sizing and spacing, bad UX, etc is bugging me now that I have a sense for how I see it coming together. Though I also need to get an importer built so I can pull in realistic data and start dogfooding it, lord knows what might change once I start trying to actually use the thing instead of blasting in functionality.

    A couple screenshots
    https://ibb.co/SwF8SjvJ
    https://ibb.co/0jNM3DPV

    3 votes