What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

Sega released a little game called The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog for free on Steam for April fools. It's a real game! You play as a trainee conductor on a train hosting Amy's birthday party. Amy is running a murder mystery LARP and the player has to help Detective Tails uncover the mystery. Later, Robotnik gets involved and things turn more serious.

The gameplay involves (way too easy/impossible to fail) investigation sequences in which the various train cars are explored and characters questioned, as well as progressively harder runner-style ring collection sequences.

The game was unsurprisingly well received. The art is good and, despite stiff dialogue, the characters have way more personality than what you see in your average Sonic game. The plot is not bad, either - I would have enjoyed this as a real game with a more complex mystery, true clue gathering and questioning mechanics that made full use of the inventory and dialogue systems (I think everyone would). Regardless, for what it is, the game doesn't overstay its welcome.

It's always cool to see a company release these unexpected games that seem to be so completely outside their comfort zone. It reminded me of when Child of Light was first announced.

I've also been playing Tinykin. I hadn't been expecting to like that game as much as I am. The plot is nothing special and the quality of the dialogue leaves much to be desired, sometimes annoyingly so - so! many! exclamations! I can't tell if the writer was bad or if they were writing for a very young audience.

The quality of the platforming, however, is excellent. The game feels really good to play with a controller; the controls do not get in the way of quickly accomplishing what you want to accomplish, and there's a bunch of stuff hidden everywhere to collect if you're that type of player (which I am). The sets of the insect society within the much larger rooms of the house are well made and a delight to explore. There are also all kinds of subtle pop culture references in certain insect interactions or insect names.

I haven't encountered any bugs (if you'll excuse the pun).

I'm way behind the curve on this one, but I recently bought Factorio. I haven't put that many hours into it yet and haven't gotten beyond red and green science packs. It's fun, if a little cognitively exhausting. I'm in absolute awe at the complexity of experienced players' factories. It's the sort of game where it feels like the tutorial -- not the actual in-game one, but the experience of learning the game -- is easily hundreds of hours. Reminds me a bit of Paradox games in that regard, although that's about the extent of the similarity.

I'm not sure if I have it in me to spend enough time on the game that it starts to not feel overwhelming. That's sort of the issue with complex sandbox type games. They provide thousands of hours worth of replayability, but you have to get to the point where you want to replay it endlessly for it to pay off. And that usually entails many hours of constantly feeling like you have no idea what's going on.

I've been playing Dredge on Switch for the past 5 days or so.

A week ago if you would have asked me what I thought of a mashup of Darkest Dungeon, Stardew Valley and Tetris, I'd say "hard pass; that sounds like a hot mess". And yet... Somehow Dredge really pulls this off. The core gameplay mechanics are really fun (and not extremely complicated) and the story really just kinda sneaks up on you. "Fishing Horror" is a genre that - as far as I know - has only one entry, but it's pretty compelling thus far. I think I'm about 80 percent done with it and it's been really fun.

Nomad Survival

It’s off-brand Vampire Survivors, but I actually like it better than VS because you’re not locked into specific choices like you are with VS’s evolutions. I can take whatever combination of weapons and passives I want, so I was able to play the game with a lot more build diversity which helps its longevity.

It’s perfect for playing while listening to audiobooks or second-screen watching. I finished out all the achievements for this on my Steam Deck while watching documentaries.

World of Warcraft Classic - Vanilla.

Classic Era servers present the game as it was by the end of the Vanilla lifecycle before any expansions. I made a character in the unofficial server for the Hardcore Challenge, Bloodsail Bucaneers.

Classic Hardcore is a community challenge that imposes several restrictions that are partly enforced by the Hardcore addon. Among those, you cannot use the auction house or trade in any way, and in the event of death, you must delete the character.

The first thing I noticed is that the human starter zone was filled with people doing the initial quests, making for a vivid setting. I was invited to a guild seconds later, and, in the course of just a few minutes, it went from 50 members to about 200. People were nice enough, and I would describe the atmosphere as highly social, playful, energetic, enthusiastic, and almost euphoric. Everyone is happy to be there, enjoying every silly fetch quest. The General channels are actually used for something other than advertising -- people are chatting, exchanging tips, cracking jokes, being silly, using every avenue possible to make their presence known. Every once in a while, the Hardcore Addon shows a nice-looking notification memorializing the most recent death, with everyone typing "F" to show their condolences.

I haven't been in a position of real danger yet, but the HC mentality makes a lot of difference already. I'm not rushing through the lower levels, which now feel like an integral part of the experience. I'm not sure if that's entirely a consequence of the challenge or a property of Vanilla itself. But, right now, I think I made the right choice.

Maybe that's more of a happy accident than an engineered result, but in some ways the HC challenge emulates or recreates the social environment most people associate with the classical MMORPG experience. And that's awesome.

Someone pointed out that Vanilla Paladins are really boring to play, so I swapped it for a Rogue (which is a shame, because I really like Paladins for the RP aspect -- even if I'm not RPing. I'm not sure if I'll be able to create a connection with my rogue. Maybe I'll write her some backstory...).

I still have to figure out the best way to record and/or stream my run, because my neighborhood suffers from power outages and it would be tragic to lose my character that way. The HC community accepts death appeals, and video is essential to guarantee that my request will be granted.