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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
I finished the 2025 indie darling The Roottrees are Dead, in one sitting, and I think I finally have enough evidence to say that I just don't like puzzle or mystery games.
Not that I disliked Roottrees — quite the opposite, actually; I enjoyed it a fair bit. It reminded me of a mix of The Return of the Obra Dinn (which I played and DNFed years ago) and Dead Letter Department, the horror typing game I wrote up a few months back. Dead Letters is a bad comparison, kind of a Boss Baby situation — it borrows the lightest possible version of the internet research systems from games like Roottrees or Hypnospace Outlaw specifically for the purpose of lulling you into a false sense of security before the horror begins. But that was the comparison that came to mind while playing, because the games conjured similar feelings albeit with very different valences.
Essentially, Roottrees is structured like one big puzzle, where you have to reconstruct a branching family tree of a candy magnate and his many descendants — and maybe even discover the black marks in their history they meant to hide — in the wake of the tragic death of the candy company's fifth President. The game is set in the nineties, so you're doing this on dial-up, searching forums, VHS archives, and old digitized periodicals. And I enjoyed this — like Dead Letters, which was one of my favorites last year, it reminded me of an insurance job I used to do, trying to find missing clients from internet information alone; it reminded me of some of the more obscure research rabbit holes I've fallen down recently, the ones where there's not enough information on a topic to produce an accurate AI overview. Discoveries in Roottrees were often rewarding, and it felt good to doggedly chase a lead until I found that one bit of information, a sentence fragment that let me fill out a missing name or occupation on the tree.
Towards the end, I felt like the game got a little particular about which queries it would accept and give you actionable information for. At that point it the process started to feel less like an internet search and more like a password field that would only unlock clues if you put in the exact right keyword (it wasn't case-sensitive, at least). The immersion kind of breaks at that point, and I had to rely on a couple hints from the game's useful contextual hint system to fill out the last couple names. Ultimately I did get the full 50/50 family tree completed, with all optional spouses and photos to boot, though it required a few short jumps in logic that I'm not quite sure would have been intended.
The game also has one big "final puzzle" about a hidden Roottree excluded from the tree, but I found all the necessary information to solve it trivially easily, in the midgame, so it was a bit of an anticlimax. Still, the ending conversation where that backstory got explained was satisfying, and the game tries to use it to make a point about the importance of collective memory and how we shouldn't let (queer) history be erased.
Then, the game informs you that it has an additional mode called Roottreemania! which I assume is like a new Roottree family tree to reconstruct with new family members and an entirely different history, and I realized that there was nothing I wanted less in the world than to play Roottreemania. I was exhausted; I had a headache like I'd just been pulsed in a mental blender. I started searching Reddit for negative posts about the mode so I could justify not playing itm before I realized, "wait, no one's forcing me to play more of this game." Like I said, I DNFed Obra Dinn, as well as Hypnospace Outlaw; I loved Outer Wilds's ending, but not the puzzles leading up to it; Roottrees took me 5 hours to complete, and while I had a good time, I thought it ran out of steam at the end, and I was nauseated by the prospect of playing it for even a minute longer. I think I just don't have the patience, or the right type of mind, for these deduction-style puzzle games. I'll probably continue to dabble in the genre anytime a new "one of the best games of the year"-tier ones comes out, and I'll probably continue to be unreasonably frustrated by them anytime I get even a little stuck.
I also completed a third playthrough of Pathfinder: Wrath of The Righteous, this time doing an evil playthrough on the Demon path. It was only on this playthrough that I actually grasped one of the game's core themes about evil and intimacy — not least because of the two fantastic female companions, Camelia and Wenduag, who will only join you, or at least let you follow their questlines, if you're sufficiently evil. I mean to write a longer essay on the topic one of these days, discussing Wrath's interesting and nuanced view on the tired good-evil conflict/theme/narrative construct, but suffice it to say that the game takes an interesting position on what evil is, and what makes a person irredemable, that you wouldn't expect from the title and the premise. Shame that it took me three hundred hours to fully catch on; I fully intend to play two hundred hours more, albeit with a long break first.
This was also my first Wrath playthrough where I understood the game well enough to make my own builds! In playthrough one I used the auto-level-up options (which produces some truly bricked characters); playthrough two I used a lot of online build guides; this playthrough, I came up with things myself, only relying on the wiki and in-game systems for information. Pathfinder 1e is a real fucking boondoggle of a system, so I was really proud of myself for coming up with a party of characters that could function on Core difficulty (the one that warns you "this difficulty is only for REAL Pathfinder fans") and even, by the endgame, to complete the final Inevitable Excess DLC on Hard (the second-highest out of a half dozen difficulties, the last one with any semblance of real balance or playability) — this was even better then the build guides I followed for playthrough 2 performed! I can now consider myself somewhat okay at Pathfinder! And, again, it only took three hundred hours.
Melvor Idle:
Reached total level 1300 and the cracks are already starting to show. I don't rate it particualrly well as an idle game because it feels like Malcs based it way too much on Old School RuneScape and the design kinda suffers for it.
Smithing for example follows nearly the exact same lopsided melee gear progression as OSRS, with Steel requiring level 25 - 37 Smithing to craft gear that otherwise requires 5 Attack or Defence to wield. Rune gear requires 70 - 87 Smithing to craft but only 40 Attack/Defence respectively. And unlike in OSRS, you'll want to grind Smithing because you can trim armour pieces with silver and gold bars which grants additional strength bonuses, which are an incredibly big deal for damage output. This also applies to Dragon armour (which is smithable and is second-best in slot.)
Other skills are kinda badly designed. Township (basically a skill where you run your own town and have it update in hourly ticks) isn't good because it often bottlenecks you on certain resources and floods you with others (right now, my main bottleneck is stone and the main useless resource taking up my storehouse is food.) Tasks do go some way to helping you progress the skill but you only get 5 casual tasks once every 5 ticks, and they often involve grinding for a resource you're already abundant in.
Fellowship:
Booted it up again yesterday to try out their Season 3 update. The game now gives you the option to either stick to Holy Trinity (1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS) or Odd Comp (any combo of roles, with party buffs based on composition) in matchmaking, which isn't really advertised unless you look deep in their path notes.
This is actually a huge deal and I'm shocked that this hasn't been advertised more plainly. My core complaint about Fellowship was very long queue times and that the game seemed dead without a strong community. The ability to choose whatever role you want, pick up and play with zero-fucks-given is a big deal, whereas before DPS would have been oversubscribed and there'd be a shortage of either tanks or healers.
Yes, Odd Comp groups don't have leaderboards of their own, but that's not really a problem when Fellowship's core reliance on the Holy Trinity of MMO combat presented a major accessibility problem. If you can't even find groups, you can't play the game meaning you can't obtain gear, meaning you can't climb the ladder, meaning you cannot access tougher content.
Blizzard really need to start taking notes from Fellowship and add an odd comp system of their own along with solo queue Mythic+ to World of Warcraft. Elitism, toxicity and generally not having the patience to deal with the community's bullshit is why I haven't even touched WoW since the last TWW tier. Haven't even tried, let alone purchased Midnight and it remains the first WoW expansion I haven't even bothered with.
40k Mechanicus has been scratching a itch I hadn't realized I needed to scratch. It seems to perfectly distill down the items I like from XCOM into a smaller, more streamlined package with some inspiration from Darkest Dungeon.
The cliff notes is that you are an exploratory group of the Adeptus Mechanicus, who are a group of cybernetically modified humans (simplifying, but true) that stumbled on a planet that is a tomb world of the Necrons, (to oversimplify again) a mass of Egyptian themed robots that give a horror combination of zombie apocalypse and Terminator.
I really have enjoyed the devs properly catching the mood of both factions from 40k while providing a gameplay loop that allows both sides to show off how they are freaking scary and overpowered in their own ways.
The game itself is not that deep. I'm probably going to be done with it somewhat soon but thats part of the charm. It's not overstaying its welcome. You go on various missions that, once you have enough knowledge, allow you to take on the "boss" enemies of the Necrons. I feel strong enough to do that now, and am looking forward to using my preferred flavor of cheese to bring them down.
DopeNet
Life is unfair. There are some things in this world that deserve criticism, but are completely immured in a impenetrable anti-criticism shield. Like war. You try to make an anti-war movie, and boom! You end up with a rollicking adventure that glamorizes violence and deifies its heroes. Or toxic masculinity. You stick it to the incels by making Fight Club, and all people remember is the fun middle part before consequences set in.
Or take Monopoly, the beloved board game lovingly ensconced in the back of every cottage and rec room closet. Many a rainy day has been spent setting out down Mediterranean Avenue and buying up as many railroads as you can until someone invariably loses, usually in dramatic fashion. As an adult, you can see that Monopoly is a way to show how capitalism works; play enough rounds, and someone will end up owning the entire board. But as kids, the lesson is lost in favor of fun. For all of its cultural impact, Monopoly has completely failed as a criticism of the capitalist system It's just too fun.
So how can you criticize capitalism? How can you stand back and explain this thing that you, me, the world is inextricably a part of? How can encapsulate all of that into a single video game, and make it fun?
Meet DopeNet, the drug dealer simulator that is the apt metaphor that explains the billionaire era we find ourselves in.
Taking its inspiration from the ol' Dope Wars, DopeNet is "Spreadsheets: The Game", tasking you to navigate menu after menu of number values, challenging your mettle as a gangster who knows his product by challenging you to "buy low, sell high." You'll start out with a pittance and build an empire, traveling around the world with impunity as you ply your illicit wares without consequence, operating above the law without any fear of reprisal.
Sounds like what a criminal would do. It also sounds a lot like what the elite that have profited the most from the capitalist system would do.
DopeNet shows us a fantasy world which is completely true. The limitless growth of a rags-to-riches drug overlord parallels the success stories of your Forbes cover story (before they go to jail, that is). For people with capital, doing trades is all a game, one where you escape consequences when no rules apply to you. Why make a living through honest work when you can amass a fortune by using your privilege to always be in the right place at the right time.
DopeNet is a very basic game when it comes to graphics and story. It's at its best on the phone when you're stuck in a queue rather than devote a block of your weekend to complete as a campaign. The people that will enjoy it the most are those natural-born killers (interesting movie, bad satire) that enjoy making the right call, knowing that their win is someone else's loss.
As a sign of the times, gambling games have really taken off lately, but DopeNet isn't a gambling game, as much as it may appear. It's an exercise in showing you have the killer instinct, that you know when to pull the trigger, that if you, somehow, were in the same situation, that somehow you had the means and opportunity to make big trades, that you would not falter. Because you are a killer, too.
All I remember is that his name is Robert Paulson.
If I were David Fincher, I'd be pretty mad about now. You make a neat movie with a plot twist, and nobody references it because the audience can't let go of a middle part that they never want to end.
In fact, the ending is so incongruent to the minds of its viewers that you could insert full frontal male nudity into the ending of this movie and nobody would care because no one would ever remember it.
I love everything about this comment!
Space Bear
Take a million monkeys typing randomly into typewriters, and eventually you'll get Shakespeare. Take one bear typing random inputs into a non-branching linear adventure and you've got yourself Space Bear, the non-interactive, interactive game you've been waiting for all your life.
No more will you be oppressed by accuracy-obsessed typing tutors. Space Bear features a typing interface designed for 10-ft tall ursine-adjacent individuals who'd rather be catching salmon with their teeth than use "fingers" to press the correct key. Overwhelmed by the possibilities of Todd Howard's next Fallout pitch? Space Bear snaps the branches off interactive fiction to present a narrative straight enough to serve as an Appalachian family tree.
Space Bear is
Space Bear is exactly the kind of vehicle it needs to be to deliver its weapons-grade payload of self-referential, pop-culture-referencing jokes that are subtly hidden in throwaway lines, all ready to be taken out with the trash. Stop panicking at Mass Effect's vanishing dialog meter; quit squinting at the floating word bubbles of Heavy Rain's dialog choices; choices don't matter. Smash your keyboard to take the only branch available in this unilateral, non-branching, non-adventure game where you paradoxically never know where you are going next.
Quiet City
Discovery is at the heart of the video game experience. Through player agency, skill, dilligence, and maybe a little luck, a whole new world is opened up, a feat that becomes an achievement in itself when compared to non-interactive art forms. But what if that discovery reveals something unexpected, or unwanted?
Quiet City is a modest little game that challenges the idea of cities as livable spaces. As a crudely realized game in the Humble Vault, Quiet City does not have a lot going for it: no music, very basic graphics, primitively rendered stickmen created without the decency of ASCII art. Instead of impressing its audience, Quiet City digs deep and finds the resourcefulness to use the discovery inherent in a video game as a viable technique to tell the story it needs to tell.
Spoilers for the ending to a 5-minute game that you won't play and I don't necessarily recommend
As its name suggests, **Quiet City** begins as a lifeless cityscape, devoid of people. Through your interactions, you begin to populate the city, breathing life into its streets and playgrounds, creating a frenetic bustle that hums with activity. But then, the real discovery happens when the player is recast as a harbinger of silence; instead of bring people out to play, your interaction cuts their actions short, revealing that a broken arm was to blame for not playing sports anymore, or that children shouldn't play out at night, or that the streets are too dangerous for bike riding.The kicker comes at the ending in a cutscene populated, as it were, by stickmen. An old woman admits she called the police in to investigate a noise complaint, but it all... just solved itself. Your previous spirit haunting was the detective work that revealed that people doing things outside ultimately had their own reasons for stopping.
And to be clear, the game doesn't take sides. Although many of the "noisemakers" were children at play in playgrounds or people playing sports, some of them were definitely up to no good. Some of the stick people are shown fighting, urinating on the sides of buildings, having sex (oh yes that's right, Quiet City depicts nudity and sex with its stick people, good thing this is hidden inside a spoiler tag)... for all the people that made noise and bothered the old woman at the end, not all of them were innocent.
And that's the best thing about Quiet City: it gives such a mixed, bittersweet message. Living in a city may be noisy, it may not be ideal, but its residents give it life. Take that away and you're left with a silence that won't satisfy. There's such a strong feeling of ennui at the ending of Quiet City that its use of crude, black-and-white-rendered stick people finally makes sense. The game shows us that if you want to be alone, you'll get your wish, for we are all alone... takes a drag off a cigarette held between the thumb and index finger and looks into the middle distance
Heeey Park-Boy
Mark my words: Heeey Park-Boy is a hidden indie gem that is destined for greatness... if it ever makes it to full release on Steam.
I played Heeey Park-Boy on Humble Vault, and it's very clear its an old build. The game is indeed playable and is going to delight the cosy crowd with its consequence-free farming and Cartoon-Network-type character designs. But it's missing something. It lacks a "B" story that takes the focus away from the decidedly non-cosy ambitions of power farming to make cash. It lacks more gameplay mechanics that give stakes in the game, like giving attributes to different colours of flowers so that harvesting too much of one type will harm the park in some way. It lacks a "chillout mode" that allows you to enjoy the beauty of the park you made, allowing the player to enjoy the view from above as it does in the trailer.
For me, Heeey Park-Boy is kind of an anti-farming game. You don't get to choose your crops, and you always have enough to harvest to make money for the next upgrade. The question becomes: how much of your current crop are you willing to sacrifice to achieve that? If I had to guess, this would be the big thing that the dev is trying to fix, trying to achieve a balance that remains fun to play.
For me, the game is weird, but not weird enough. Like, the characters are quirky and speak in glips and glops, but right now Heeey Park-Boy lacks the malevolence of Katamari Damacy that showed its dedication to the bit.
If I could change one thing about this game, I would change it so that the flowers speak to the hero Yuu-Boy (?) when he walks by. Nothing fancy, more like he's a rock star and all the flowers are enamoured with him. So when he harvests them to sell, the flowers don't mind (and even encourage him), but will make a slight screaming sound when they are snuffed out, their bright, smiling faces disappearing as they're plucked.
At this point, this is a great time to mention that I was inspired to play this game by @kwfyre from his/her inclusion of it in the recent Backlog Burner, and that s/he wanted to know my thoughts on it. There you go: a fun, cosy farming game that is not macabre enough.
It's been years in the making, but if/when Heeey Park-Boy finally makes it to Steam, it will be something special to watch out for.
I just completed Baby Steps. A literal walking simulator where the objective is to climb up obstacles by carefully moving only your characters feet one step at a time. It was co-created by Bennett Foddy (of Getting Over It fame) which means it also has a wide range of insidious level designs, rage inducing dynamic sounds and very awkward cut-scenes. Basically they took all the easy, addictive and manipulative unwritten rules of AAA game design and did the exact opposite. I think only players who are masochistic enough to put up with all the rage-bait will enjoy this kind of challenge.
That said, it IS a proper uniquely challenging game which outside of precision platformers seem to be rare these days. If you can stomach some of the childish humor and the brutal challenges it can feel pretty rewarding to complete. I'll likely play it again sometime to see all the areas I missed.
One that I've been playing on and off recently Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip.
It's fairly short and definitely weird, but the variety of strange tasks you do while trying to get your car ready to launch into space were fun.
I have been playing through Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. I played and loved the third entry in the series as a teenager back in the Xbox 360 days, and having had them sit in my library for years, I decided it was time to give them a proper shake. What I found was a third person shooter than definitely set gameplay standards for its genre for years to come, and has a tone and narrative so absurd I can't help but love it.
The gameplay of these still holds water, with its slowmo diving and movement being a focus of its identity. Not only does it look cool to dive past a door frame headshotting three dudes in the span of a second, the game rewards you for it by seemingly shrinking your hitbox while in mid air or decreasing the enemies' accuracy. The weapons are varied enough to build out a somewhat distinct set of tools for use in blasting. Surprisingly enough, its the tone and atmosphere of the game that actually keeps me hooked.
The levels all have this haunting empty and slightly liminal feel to them. A deserted New York in the midst of a blizzard, feeling more like a purgatory for the unluckiest man on the planet than a place anybody has ever actually lived. The only things in it were props to be used, a backdrop for the show in front of you. The characters are all noir caricatures, goons being classic dopes with amusing and moronic conversations, the toxic melodramatic detective with a new overly depressing with every other line of dialogue. The femme fatale who catches the eye of a man grieving from the loss of his wife and young child less than a day ago. The police chief who chains smokes and pops pills every time you have a conversation with him. The graphic novel presentation instead of cutscenes. All of it makes the game feel like a half sleeping fever dream, a personal hell for Max and an entertaining pastiche of the Noir genre for the player.
Now being about halfway through the second game, I can happily say it only leans further into the absurdity. It plays better than the first, looks better than the first, sounds better than the first. The writing is even more intense shlocky noir, and gives depth to the supporting cast. And the stageplay purgatory vibe still shines through, even in high definition (for 2003). Looking forward to replaying the 3rd again with the context of the full series.
Simultaneously, I have been dipping back into No Man's Sky after being lured in by the latest community expedition, which splits the players in three factions working toward the same galaxy wide goal. Each faction interacts with the system in unique ways, based on different playstyles of the game. You get sped up progression on a new character to give everyone an even playing field. It feels very Helldivers inspired, in good way because I thought the galactic goals were a key part of the magic of that game. It's been fun revisiting the game for the first time since launch, with so much changed and having been added. Like a pokemon battler for the procedurally generated alien species you find on the planets you explore, which sounds pretty neat if executed well. If I make it to that before burnout that is.
My best advice for playing Max Payne 3 after playing the first two is to reject the cover system and play Max Payne 3 more like the first two games. All the mechanics are there and it's fully realized to play that well. The cover system really is just tacked-on, and encouraged by the tutorial for some unknown reason. The game plays much better when it's ignored.
Well, not entirely unknown. I strongly suspect that there was a lot of infighting and "studio notes" involved with Max Payne 3 that resulted in some odd results, like the unskippable cutscenes.
I got TombStar and Tower of Guns from @kfwyre[+] in the Games Giveaway! I can say that these two games helped me appreciate last week's games much more.
TombStar
To be blunt, this is just worse than Gungeon in every way which isn't a crime on its own besides the way it keeps trying to piss me off. I put 8 hours into it, each run takes about 1 hour to win, and that's about all I could stomach before giving up on maxing out the profile level. Much less variety in perks, guns, levels, bosses, and the enemy types are much more annoying with how strong their tracking is, them attacking from off-screen, and how some of them have excessive i-frames.
There are 8 levels, but it just repeats the first 4 biomes. The key and ammo scarcity is the exact same as Gungeon except the weapon chests don't have a rarity indicator (not that rarity actually means anything here, the sonic screamer was a green and vastly out-dps'd every other gun I've used) and only a max of 4 guns + the default gun can be carried which strongly pushes towards using the basic gun for ammo preservation. As such, all my money was funneled towards upgrade tokens to power up perks as the primary way to get stronger though some perks only get a 2% boost from leveling them which is obviously terrible in opportunity cost.
The game also feels unoptimized from its indie 3D model style. It's 10GB in file size and I have to put it on low to get stable 60FPS and the art style doesn't exactly give much visibility contrast to enemy bullets.
Tower of Guns
FPS Roguelike that I put 3 hours into before completely bouncing off. There's a choice of one gun and one perk at the start of the run from the unlockable arsenal, but it's practically the only gun in a run so I stuck with the grenade launcher + no self-damage combo. The rooms are big and roomy to circle-strafe the hordes of enemies that all fire projectile weapons and filled with secrets behind the corner or intangible walls. I've never enjoyed FPS secret hunting though and the game hides quite a bit of supplies with them which is one way I didn't mesh with the game. The other is how all the passives are just stat boosts or extra jumps, only one weapon mod can be equipped, and the active items are wonderfully vague in what they do. After a point, I just realized that I didn't really care about playing this. I'm sure someone else might enjoy it more from all the steam reviews, but the game feel just felt pointless to me.
D1AL-ogue
It's a short and free VN that is very VA-11 HALL-A inspired, but with Match 3 mechanics to do android repairs instead of mixing drinks. It's apparently a 2 month project when going to the publisher steam page so I'm reasonably impressed with what was made and there are dev logs for their planned full product. It is obviously translated though and the game leans a little horny? There are 3 girl android clients, 2 of whom clearly want to get into MC's pants because MC privileges though at least the rescue worker felt platonic, and the repair process is just laden with innuendo along with a side view of them. There is 1 guy client, but he always keeps his camo on which leaves him looking like a dark silhouette and he just orders parts rather than needing repairs.
I had a game I started a couple of months ago but sort of stopped after clocking in 8 hours for a bit.
But yesterday I finally finished Million Depth's true ending, it's the best game I played in 2026, and likely will stay my favorite throughout 2026.
It's a roguelike game with some progressive elements, like unlockables that can randomly appear in later runs.
The battle system is a bit weird, like Super Hot, everything moves only when you move or attack/control your weapons.
And your weapon is a "morphing mallet", you use blocks you find during your run to improve that mallet by placing them in a grid, certain combination gives you offensive or defensive effects, so you can end up with weird combinations like a hilt in between 2 blades with a shield attach to the side of a blade.
Both the battle system and weapons work better than they sound.
What makes it stand out to me are the music and atmosphere, with some plot elements.
The game starts with you controlling a girl in a spaceship contacting a person on earth, because her entire spaceship is now dead people, and because she wants to see why the person she contacted stopped replying, she decides to descend to earth.
The places you go through are underground caves with some notable special event floors.
The music is fantastic, and I got the soundtrack, but have yet to give it a listen (outside of game).
I think this captures the feeling and vibes of Made in Abyss way better than the official game, despite the official game being more "" accurate"" by being more tedious.
Firstly, I picked up Forza Horizon 6 on release and I’m still playing it here and there. It’s what you expect, we’ve had 5 of these before, but the Japan setting is perfectly done, the presentation of the game is improved over the last couple games, and it overall feels less grindy and frustrating. It’s as fun as ever to collect and tune cars and street race them or drift down mountains. I love it!
I’ve also been back on Destiny 2. It’s ironic that the final content update put the game in one of the best states it’s ever been in. Every activity is engaging and rewarding, the UI and UX is vastly improved, the sandbox is excellent (weapon and ability balance), and it’s just dumb fun to play again. I’m back to doing dungeons and raids with friends now that all of the content is updated to the newish weapon and armor systems. Everything just feels great and there are so many new possibilities for build crafting with the multiple artifacts, all the new armor bonuses, etc. I would recommend any D2 players who fell off since The Final Shape to give the game one more shot, even if it’s just to explore the monument of triumph activities and get a nice little bow on the game and possibly franchise (I’d love a Destiny 3, but Bungie is in a rough spot).
Most of my gaming time (and hobby time) has been spent on miniatures gaming instead and I’m loving it! Painting has become one of my favorite things to do and it’s a huge bonus that I get to put my dudes on the table to battle other dudes. I’m still playing Kill Team and maining the Raveners (tyranids) at this point. I’m impatiently waiting for Starcraft to hit store shelves. I also finally finished painting my Age of Sigmar Spearhead. Lastly, I took advantage of the new Warhammer 40K edition to split an Armageddon box with a friend. I got the space marines and started buying up deals I’m finding in local discord servers to assemble a Crimson Fists army! I’m having a ton of fun building and painting and I can’t wait until I can put a full army on the table!
Not a specific game but I have recently discovered that FSR4 support is now available in Linux via
proton-experimentalfor my RDNA3 card. Wow! Talk about extending the life of my card! It's a big upgrade over FSR 3.With upscaling, I can now enable all ray tracing options and the image looks great at 1440p. A few years ago the ray tracing experience on Linux was abysmal, especially in radv so we've certainly come a long ways.
I just wrapped up my time with Drop Duchy, which was excellent. It's a battle tetris deckbuilding roguelike where you develop your econ as you go to buy / upgrade cards. Once you get a good deck going, it's very fun to watch the numbers go up. The tech tree provides good progression and there are a lot of archetypes to play with (plus a few factions, each with unique buildings). There's also a lot of strategy in placing the enemy's buildings disadvantageously. I played it basically nonstop on a trip and it was perfect for short bursts.
It's also the first thing I really dug into on my Steam Deck and it was very pleasant! I had some battery anxiety (why doesn't it warn you when you hit 20% left??) but it was smooth overall.
This game is in the current Humble Choice bundle, if anyone is interested in picking it up cheap along with Tunic and a few others.
I've beaten Stella Glow. First I thought it was a harem anime game. And, well, it's not not that. But it's also genuinely charming, has really engaging characters, and really fun gameplay. I'm glad I gave it a second chance.
I am now playing The World Ends With You. I had a hard time deciding on Final Remix, Solo Remix or the original, and decided on the original, because I like the idea of having my partner fight at the same time..I don't think I'm good at this game, I feel I'm mostly smashing buttons. But the story is really fun so far.
Good choice. As far as I recall, the remakes strip out what made the original a classic. I also never felt good at the game but it does get better with some practice. Some fights can get really tough!
So far, I've only game over'd two times, once because I got stupid confident with a new partners and chained a bunch of noise in a row, and once against a boss fight with the new black noise.
I think I just need to figure out which pins I like. I'm trying to use then all because I want to level them and don't want to waste exp, but maybe that's a waste of time and I should just use the ones that feel better to use.
Super Mario Sunshine through Super Mario 3D All Stars: I never played the original as a kid so this is the first time I'm experiencing Sunshine. This game is rage inducing to me for some reason. Part of it I think is I'm just used to the QoL niceties in modern games. Part of it I feel as input lag? Not sure if its the game or my TV or my controller but timing things just right is really hard and there are certain things that I've just given up on because I couldn't figure out how to adjust my timing for the input latency. That being said though, fun game overall.
I've been playing Monster Sanctuary for a while. It's like a better version of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker in most ways, but I miss the synthesis mechanic.
It's hard to put down, and I spent way too much time playing it. The level scaling works; you don't get bandits with enchanted armour like in Oblivion, and their version of rare candy fits my playstyle more than in Pokémon.
It's easy to get a new team to the level of your old one, which is good because you'll need to change teams frequently. An ice based team works for a lot of Champion Monsters, but than you run into ones resistant to water or debuffs.
All the debuffs are set to a specific element, so using chill/congeal for everything stops being feasible after a while.
Spoilers
I'm stuck on the second fight with Zosimos, in the Abandoned Tower. I've maxed out my level, I'm using a bunch of powerful equipment, and I'm still losing. I've always beaten Keeper Battles by level grinding before, but I've reached the point in the game where there's no more levels. I've got a new team I'm thinking of trying out, but I need to catch a Griffonix first. I don't have anything that can levitate, so I need to find a Diavola. I hope this works, because if it doesn't I'll need to go find a bunch of other monster to try the fight with. And after Zosimos I have to fight Chymes and Marduk.I'm this close to just spending the rest of the game fighting dinosaurs.
I have been playing Octopath Traveler II for a while now, 85 hours into the game, and right before the last chapter for all of the characters, but I'm feeling kind of burnt out on it, so I needed a break with another game.
So I started playing Shin Megami Tensei IV on the 3DS, and so far it's been a real hoot, it's fun to fuse demons and slowly getting stronger, I've just gotten to the part when the game really starts opening up a bit, and I'm really impressed with how cool this game is on the system, it really made me start wonder, do we actually need something bigger than the 3DS, Something about the restricted system really brings out fun different things that just better graphics never did, compromises making things interesting in a lot of places, things like more mixed media with using 3D where it makes sense, and then other parts as 2D sprite-ish things, I'm really enjoying coming back into some 3DS stuff again, and it's really nice to have a system that is small enough to be easy to put in a pocket, and also something I'm not afraid of bringing along, as cool as the switch lite is, it's kind of huge, and I always worry about the sticks (mine are already kind of wonkey) when I stuff it in a backpack.
I still play the occasional Slay the Spire 2 run by myself or with a friend. I've not kept as close an eye on the patch notes as I would like since I enjoy following the development of this, but I also don't have tons of time to play. I've been slowly grinding the ascensions on The Defect and Silent. The other characters are fun and I'll play more runs with them eventually.
I also recently started playing through Pikmin 1 again on my phone. It holds up really well, but I also feel like I've become less coordinated with games that use a controller compared to how I was when I was a kid. I don't remember if I ever fully beat Pikmin 1 and while I know I played a lot of Pikmin 2 I also don't think I beat it either.
I plan to beat this and then finally beat Custom Robo that I started playing through a year + ago now that I have my bluetooth controller working again.
Started playing ManorLords a few weeks ago. The promise is it intends to be a mix of a city builder (think more Banished than Tropico) and a Total War / strategy game. As you build your town, rival towns (or bandits) will occasionally attempt to annex your fiefdom/town, by sending their villagers to invade a la a total war game.
The game has some bugs, and issues, and isn't inherently self-discoverable (requires a little bit of googling here and there to understand how systems work). The military piece is functional and fun, but isn't particularly fleshed out, or strategic.
But if you like a game like Banished, its basically Banished 2, and much, much larger and more immersive. In that sense, the game is wonderful. The art design is fantastic, the graphics wonderful, the towns you build feel alive and real, the systems are engaging.
Maps are set up with multiple fiefs. Peasants are not allowed to cross fief boundaries, or work across borders (realistic). Trading between fiefs is difficult (mostly the result of undeveloped game systems). This has the end result of causing you to build 1 town per fief.
In my most recent game, this resulted in me building 6 distinct towns, each specializing in a different class of items (to trade with the other fiefs), all around a small mountain range. And then along the top of the mountain/hill, I built a main castle overlooking the entire fiefdom.
To say I have spent probably an hour or two, just in cinematic mode marvelling at how gorgeous this valley is now that it is built, or walking around as my character within the towns (I wish there was a 1st person view, not just 3rd), is an understatatement, and a testament to how well polished the pieces that are complete, are.
So in short, if you like banished, and like the idea of an open world, larger, more realistic and immersive version of the game, but are okay with it being incomplete and sometimes a little buggy? By all means, grab ManorLords
Boardgames:
Panda Spin is a new discovery for me. It's Carl Chudyk's take on climbing/shedding. What I look for in this genre is relatively simple rules and a great deal of thinking ahead and mindgames. Panda Spin delivers. The decisions about which cards to try to flip to their blue side and how to (hopefully) use them in future turns are great. So far only had a chance to play this on BGA but will definitely grab a physical copy as soon as it comes back into print.
Fliptoons: Season 2 is another one I've been enjoying. A nice refresh to one of my recent favorites without adding too much rules complexity
I've been spending a lot of time with Ridgerunners lately. It's a very tightly designed first-person racing game where you slide along mountains and use a rocket launcher to boost yourself and a jetpack to adjust your trajectory.
If you've played/seen the Starseige: Tribes series and undestand some of its meta, it's basically the skiing aspect of that game turned into a fast-paced game on its own, with the combat PVP aspect of Tribes removed altogether. You can either race other players in real time, compete at your own pace in time trials or just ski around freely. The maps are randomly generated, defaulting to a daily seed, but if you want a private room with friends you can just generate a random seed and make everyone join that world.
Here's a video the dev made of a really fast run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxKilguRjPw
That looks like fun, if I were any good at it.
Someone very patient once tried to teach me how to glide properly in Tribes 2 but I never really got the hang of it.
It's one of those "you had to be there" kind of games, where if you manage to find a good group of people early you can really get that practice in.
Ridgerunners seems much less frantic. More Haste, less Unreal Tournament. Probably a better place to practice than a Tribes2 match you're getting shot at by 20 year vets of the game.