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

I finally beat Noita for the first time recently. After a solid year of failed runs, even reaching the Sampo once before, I have taken Completed the Work. Both times, I had invisibility, which let me sneak down to the Laboratory intact. This time, I had the Kiuaskivi when I got to the Laboratory, so my strategy was to fly over Kolmisilmä, kick the air to initiate the earthquake and dodge the falling debris that ended up hitting Kolmisilmä. It worked, I won!

With a little confidence under my belt, I entered the pyramid for the first time in a serious way last night and defeated Kolmisilmän Koipi boss there. Anyway, a year of disappointment and a single, fleeting moment of a sense of accomplishment over a vanishingly trivial deed. Ain't that life?

I've been playing and enjoying a few puzzle games:

• Cat Mail Co.
• Strange Horticulture
• Strange Antiquities

All three are strong recommends. Cat Mail Co. tasks you with keeping pace with varied packages and really scratches the catalogue/sort itch. The two Strange games are narrative puzzle games where you collect and identify plants and artifacts, respectively, building on a series of clues while solving map-related puzzles until you eventually deal with a major problem that builds up over the course of the story. Peak worldbuilding on both, Antiquities is the later game and is considerably more polished but Horticulture is still quite good.

I played some Crypt of the Necrodancer, which I got dirt cheap during the sale. I'd seen it many times before, but it was one of those games I'd never actually played myself. As a roguelite it's a game that takes not very long or forever, depending on your perspective, so it's not the kind of game I want to play all in one go, but I had some fun with it so far.

I started Deer & Boy, a moody indie platformer with beautiful art, short, encapsulated problem-solving segments and visual storytelling. In other words, it's very similar to Planet of Lana, although in this one, (so far) the pet has to be carried, but doesn't help much. Mui just might be the superior pet!

Previous

I’m playing Pathogenic, which I picked up on their launch sale. It’s pretty, the music is decent, and the loop is right up my alley.

You play as a pathogen (naturally) and work your way up the organs of the poor lab technician who broke a test tube and cut his ankle.

There are several archetypes of organism (bacteria, fungus, etc - I haven’t unlocked them all yet) and maybe two dozen internal and external organelles you can equip. You collect DNA that helps you evolve (gaining organelles or changing shape).

The mechanics are cool, you have to balance internal and external slots and each part works together in some way.

There’s a meta currency that you collect to permanently upgrade each archetype, and it is a bit grindy, but it’s designed to encourage you to switch organisms and not just keep playing your favourite (I like amoeba, which is even more customizable than the others).

I haven’t beaten it yet, but nor have I gotten tired of the loop. I recommend it, though the Steam reviews are louder than me at %96 positive. I got it on sale, but full price is more than reasonable!

Kowloon’s Gate on the PS1.

The release of the English patch/fanTL coincided with an IRL event that basically made it a game that made me feel compelled to play it.

It’s an old, janky, first person dungeon crawler, with a lot of FMV and pre-rendered backgrounds in the overworld(I think it’s just a whole movie that plays forwards and backwards as you navigate, in a Google Maps style navigation).

You play as a Feng Shui master, who had no name, no face, and nothing otherwise, that gets tasked to be sent into “Yin”, to restore its balance by reviving the Four Symbols(Genbu/Xuanwu and Co.), you meet plenty of strange people before you enter the first dungeon, many many different merchants more or less, who help you by giving you tasks and items to prepare to enter the “Hutons” which are basically the game’s version of dungeons, but instead of relying on FMVs, you just… walk in a 3D space, but in first person, as you’d expect.

The battle system is fairly interesting in that there are no random encounters but the “Guilu”, objects that have malicious human spirits in them, stay in one place in the map and you can detect them when you are near them by your screen getting funky, when the screen starts turning Purple(Or green, for the spots that have encounters that don’t end), then when you get closer to the Guilu, the purple becomes kinda wavy, then the encounter starts if you step on the encounter/Guilu tile. The battle system is basically rock paper scissors but with 5 elements, you either absorb enemies to add them to your 5 elements(Can’t stack the same element), or shoot a stored element that the Guilu is weak to.

If you store all 5 elements however, the malice overtakes you and you game over, because you yourself have became a Guilu, so you have to store 4 or less elements, and manage accordingly.
A funny bit about that is than an NPC early on asks you what’s your favorite object, in my case, I picked a Microwave since that question was so random, and my game overs now is a microwave that opens its door and you see an coming out from its inside.

The jank mainly comes from the google maps navigation, sometimes to enter the door immediately to the left of you, you need to move forward, face backwards, and you’ll see while you rotate that you can go to the door that was to the left of you when you turn to the right.
The dungeon navigation is awkward, and slow.
And the game feels obtuse at times, right now I’m stuck in the 2nd dungeon(Which looks like and is connected to the 1st one), and I feel like I did most of what I could do.

Paper Perjury, which is a detective game (y'all know me and my detective games), recently came out with a couple free DLC cases. So I played the first bonus case over the weekend. And it was decent. PP is one of the easier detective games out there, so not much of a challenge. Started the second bonus case yesterday, too. Supposedly much shorter than the first.

Because I wanted more sleuthing, I randomly tried the demo for Cyberpunk Inquisitor. Which is basically a procedurally generated Clue-like whodunit game. At first I was like "Idk, do I really want to play cyberpunk Clue?" But it was surprisingly addicting. And the full game was on sale for like <$6. Since it's procedurally generated and there's a turn/time limit, and the choices the player makes matter, the player can't always solve a murder. Which is a nice change from these linear mystery/detective games.

On the not-a-detective-game side of things, picked up Norland. Thought it was gonna be like a medieval Rimworld, but it's really more like an RTS. Kinda like a mix between The Settlers and Warcraft. Seems a little clunky, but I'm willing to keep at it.

And then since Build 42 of Project Zomboid FINALLY released after about a year and a half, a few friends and I are back in zombie-filled 90s Kentucky. Haven't tried much of the new features yet, but the world does look better. Feels more polished than before. Since none of us have played in awhile, we're having to relearn it a bit.

I replayed Outlaws. Not the newer Star Wars game, but the old LucasArts wild west themed FPS.

First of all I absolutely love the atmosphere, art style, soundtrack, voice acting and sound design, though a LucasArts game barely warrants mentioning that. It's very colorful with strong contrasts, with an exaggerated comic book style to characters and in particular the weapon sprites.

Story wise it's a simple revenge affair told mostly through well animated, voice acted cutscenes between levels. The levels make sense in terms of the story, but if you didn't watch the cutscenes you'd have little idea of what's going on, so it isn't Half-Lifing you through a detailed, integrated narrative.

I like the moment to moment mechanics as well. You can reload as many bullets or cartridges as you want between shots, which adds an interesting and satisfying element to the gameplay. The guns sound powerful and usually are. If you dispatch someone near a tall ledge, the game goes out of its way to throw them in that direction, adding a fading scream as they fall down. Bad guys appropriately (if unrealistically) fly away if you catch them point blank with a shotgun blast. When they can't see you they wander about while taunting you. "Where aaare you Marshal?"

One slight issue is that the difficulty settings are pretty far and thin. There are three settings, ranked by difficulty "Good", "Bad" and "Ugly" (great names, right?). "Good" is basically no challenge at all. You can be shot several times before the damage even registers on the health markers. This is compounded by the fact that enemies are terrible at aiming at this difficulty. But "Bad" is quite steeply more challenging. You're basically 1-3 close range shots from dying at any time. Once you get over that you can't play it like Doom it's not that bad though. I don't think I even tried Ugly, but I do think it could have used another difficulty setting between Good and Bad. The game is very liberal with health pickups though, so it's not altogether without run-and-gun situations.

The bosses can also be pretty terrible and unfair. Most enemies die with one or two shots but bosses take several more and will absolutely pulverize you within a second of seeing you. Maybe there's a clever strategy to it, but on some levels the bosses will also catch you by surprise for spawning when you've shot enough bad guys and then wandering around pretty freely before you reach them and can easily catch you off guard. There is a double barrel shotgun that at the right range will dispatch even bosses quickly, though, but on this playthrough I found myself savescumming around bosses because they were oneshotting me at full health.

In the level design I think you can feel a bit influence from LucasArts' specialty. I won't spoil anything, but some of the puzzles required to progress are not very obvious, sometimes to the point of frustration. Not quite Monkey Island but definitely more demanding than what you'd see in Doom or Duke Nukem 3D. Or Dark Forces for that matter. Some levels are very open ended. For example one level takes place in a whole small town taken over by bad guys. There is a train level that feels like it should be very linear, but the game has you going back and forth and up on top of wagons before you get to the end. There's a military fort that you can almost approach any way you want. One level feels like a large, open desert canyon you'd think you'd get lost in, but IMO actually does a great job at subtly guiding you through it. All the levels give enough of a general impression of a realistic location without compromising too much on what's actually fun.

There are some weapons that I just found myself never using for a lack of need and for a lack of conviction that they're actually useful. Maybe I'm spoiled by Blood, but the dynamite here is nothing to write home about. The throwing knives look and feel cool right until you see them nearly just fall out of your hand after you charge up a throw. There's a semi-stationary gatling gun which immobilizes you while it's equipped, which is usually a death sentence in any situation you'd want that kind of rapid firepower. I mostly found myself using the revolver, the rifle and two shotguns. The gatling gun was brought up exactly once near the very end of the game :)

Some weapons have alternative firing modes. For example, that makes you fan the hammer of the revolve to fire quick, inaccurate shots. It fires individual barrels of the double shotguns. It stabs with the throwing knives. It's a quick but less powerful jab when you don't have a weapon equipped. For the dynamite, it's just how you light the fuse. You can pick up a scope for the rifle so that you can snipe enemies from afar more easily.

There's a remastered version of this game that was released not long ago, but I was playing the earlier GOG release through Lutris in all its 4:3 glory and had a great time with that. It's easily my favorite wild west action game.

Aside from the occasional Destiny 2 dungeon or raid with my clan, I've been playing a lot of Warhammer 40K: Darktide to complete all of the class penances (achievements) and weapon masteries. I'm playing the classes in the reverse order I made characters for them, so it's like going back in time. So far, I've finished all of the weapons and most of the penances for Skitarius, Hive Scum, Arbitrator, and Ogryn, which just leaves Veteran, Zealot, and Psyker. This is what's stood out to me so far:

• The penances for DLC characters were A LOT quicker to finish than the Ogryn's were. Either Fatshark figured they didn't want penances to take as long for paid characters, or they realized the penances for the original classes were just way overtuned in terms of how much you needed, or they learned how to create penances that you'd finish reasonably quickly through just regular play.

• Ogryns are an incredibly strong class, and I actually prefer them over arbitrators. They won't be deleting monstrosities in one hit or melting everything in sight with low effort but they can still dish it out and take it like nothing else.

• Trappers are bullshit and they shouldn't be allowed to shoot while behind other enemies.

• The drip options for base classes you can unlock for free are actually pretty good, which is nice because I hate this game's paid cosmetic store and will never spend any money there. The drip options for the DLC classes are basically nonexistent though, paid or otherwise, and that's kinda sad.

Veteran and Zealot will be interesting to finish since I've never used the stealth skills on either of them despite having almost 700 hours in the game. This really is the most replayable horde shooter in terms of build variety and skill expression, bar none.

Sir, We Have An Orc Problem came out a few days ago and I bought the full game based on how much I enjoyed the demo.

Unfortunately, I wish there was a lot more to the game. The demo is 5 stages compared to the full game's 12, and what makes this particularly egregious is that 95% of the game is just a repetitive grind to farm enough currency to buy tower upgrades. You can tell the developer unnecessarily padded the entire game and didn't add much beyond the content in the demo.

Not much has really changed in terms of tower availability. Only a few extra tower types like laser towers, tesla coils and grenade towers were really added, along with another bonus ability which is dogshit), and the only real substantial change they've made to existing abilities is nerfing Strafe Run to no longer repeat, which was admittedly overpowered-as-fuck in the demo.

Otherwise, I've been playing League of Legends Classic and League of Legends Wild Rift. Classic isn't a good experience at all, because I'm currently 0-4, nobody takes the mode seriously and there is zero consequence to actively inting a game. I have found a whole lot more success with Wild Rift though...

Dragon Quest III Remake

Finished I-II Remake and moved on to this one. You can really tell that they made this one first because although it's in the same engine, it feels rougher in a lot of ways:

• Performance is noticeably worse. There's no shader compilation at startup and the UE traversal stutter happens all over the place.

• There's very little added story or characterisation. All of your party members are generated characters, so there's also no party chat. You're given the goal of following your missing father's footsteps and defeating the demon lord, but the demon lord and his followers don't actually appear in the early game at all, so there's no feeling of any narrative being developed as you progress. You're just visiting places and solving their local problems as you go.

Despite a slow start, it's pretty enjoyable once the world opens up and I'll stick with it.

Staffer Retro

Sequel to the mystery / puzzle game Staffer Case. I've completed 2 of the 5 cases so far.

It's a nice follow up.

• This entry is set in idyllic Sicily instead of the oppressive authoritarian London of the first game. The protagonist is no longer a cop but a kid caught up in unfortunate circumstances. Instead of every case being a gruesome whodunnit, they just start off as odd mysteries. It's a noticeably lighter tone in general, although I can see a build up to something bigger.

• Gameplay-wise, it's pretty similar to the first game. The menu is cleaned up a little in that you now get clear choices to deduce, speak and move, but the same problems are still here. Sometimes you'll know the answer but the game will only accept one specific combination of clues where another seems to get at the same point. Other times, the translation feels weirdly stiff or is outright different from the Japanese voiced line. A lot of the text is also tiny and calls for the use of the magnifying lens tool.

• Based on the steam page, I had thought that the story branched depending on how you solve the cases, but it's the same system as in the first game. The main story is linear, but each case has an easier but wrong solution and a 'dark side' solution with the correct (but inevitably darker) reasoning. This is a lot better signposted than in the first game and it's much more obvious where they branch.

This game also put me onto aglio e olio pasta which I can confirm is both easy to make and delicious.

Just finished the Planet of Lana sequel, and enjoyed the blazes out of it. Artsy puzzle games are my jam, and while none of Lana's are harder than the fox/goose/bag of grain, the soundtrack, visuals, and storytelling are absolutely top-notch. The 5+5 note theme at the core is etched into my head as hard as anything John Williams has ever done.

Some folks dislike that the in-game conlang has no translation key or subtitles. It enriched the experience for me; it's internally consistent enough that as you play, you'll catch yourself understanding bits and pieces.

I'm doing as many adult mods as I can on Cyberpunk 2077 on my RTX 2060 but there's only so much I can do.

Pales in comparison to Skyrim mod ceiling. Maybe we'll get there someday!

In the past month I've put close to 40 hours into Revita, which I received through @cheep_cheep's generosity in a recent key giveaway.

In this fast paced twin-stick roguelite platformer, you play as an unnamed child ascending an ominous clocktower in pursuit of their lost memories. Harvest and sacrifice souls to grow your power in order to challenge procedural encounter rooms and intimidating bosses!

I wouldn't have guessed I've spent damn near a full work week playing this just since July, because I'm not sure that I'm enjoying it that much. I'm very intrigued by the premise and themes (the bosses you fight are the five stages of grief, there's allusions to you possibly being in some sort of underworld or purgatory), and the mechanic of swapping health for power-ups keeps an interesting tension throughout, but the feeling I'd walk away with at this point is grind rather than fun. I feel like I've been on a treadmill, slowly unlocking items that all seem kinda cool and probably would make for crazy runs once they're all available, but in the meantime I constantly feel underpowered unless I get a combo of relics that more or less carries me. It's a shame, because there seems to be a TON of content in here - eight different weapons, hundreds of relics that affect gameplay and synergize in various ways, over 100+ secrets/achievements, etc. and it has a bunch of reviews calling it super underrated.

The only other twin-stick roguelike/lite I've played is Enter The Gungeon, and while I have more than 600 hours sunk into that, it never felt anywhere near this grindy, even before the updates/rebalances that made the game much easier. I feel like I'm seeing some clear influence from EtG in the design (others have compared it more to the Binding of Isaac, so maybe it's just roguelike tropes in general, I dunno) so I'm not sure why this one is missing the mark for me. I'll keep giving it a go for a bit, as I'd really like to see the endings, get the full story, etc. but I don't think I'd enjoy putting in the time to get good enough to unlock everything myself.

Aside from that, I'm still also playing V-Rally 4, which has kept me entertained for the past year and more. It has the perfect simcade balance to scratch my racing itch and enough variety in the track layouts and race types to keep things interesting. I really like that it rewards practice and mastery of the mechanics without needing to go full Dirt Rally 2.0 sim rig.

Dunkadillo

I saw the GDQ run of this game a few weeks ago and bought it on sight. Just got around to playing it now.

It's a super cute platformer where you're an armadillo that's also a basketball, so you're constantly bouncing. Levels are short, but you die with a single hit, so it's all about timing your bounces past enemies, finding your way through the levels, and picking up the optional card collectibles along the way.

The game has a ton of charm. It's got a bright, vibrant color palette, adorable characters and animations, and just overall amazingly good vibes. Each of the collectible cards you pick up has a character on it with cute little names, and it wasn't until the credits rolled that I found out that the names were created by the dev's 4-year-old child. My favorite was "Burgurgular".

The default price is a little steep given that the game is quite short. Admittedly though, I think the game is intended for younger kids. It took me just over an hour to 100% it, but I imagine they would get more time out of it. That said, it's still great fun even for adults, and doesn't overstay its welcome. I had some friends over this past weekend and we ended up hot-seating our way through most of the game again.

If this goes on sale, and you're a platformer fan, I highly recommend picking this up. I'd consider it a bona fide hidden gem given that it currently only has 19 reviews on Steam.

Last year I played Project Zomboid for the first time on a friend's server with a hundred mods that made it fairly easy to see most of the content in a week or two. With the game's recent major update I decided to start a new vanilla server and wow is it punishing. A dozen deaths later and I think I'm starting to get the hang of it, even though I feel somewhat shoe-horned into picking easier starting traits. I think there is enough food and generators to survive for some time now if I'm careful around the hordes.

Putting a pause on my playthrough of Bravely Default HD for Switch 2. I was really enjoying my return to some classic JRPG after a while. There's lots I love about the game with it basically being Final Fantasy in all but name with a job system that rewards creative combinations.

The inclusion of auto-mode to run the same moves quickly during grinding sessions, control of spawn rates, speeding up combat, etc. makes the game a much easier pill to swallow. The boss fights are all pretty interesting up to a point where you start getting 1-shot near the end of Chapter 4 that makes you realize it's all sort of a puzzle to figure out what combination to run to counter boss mechanics.

However, just for into chapter 5 and saw all the sub-quests pop up and realized something was fishy, so looked up without spoilers and was horrified at the very random pacing they introduced at what felt like the end of the game. I understand it is part of the twist and meant to give you a chance to repeat some fights on a higher difficulty and getting better rewards, but I couldn't abide what was essentially padding / grinding (I know, it's a JRPG...) to be strong enough to see the actual end 4 chapters later.

Will probably come back to it, but at this point need a pallet cleanser and likely do it over a longer period of time instead of dedicating as much time to it when I feel annoyed playing it.

I played Shelldiver last week at a friend's recommendation and I really, really disliked it.

The game has exactly two stages.

• Get to endgame
• Play each area one more time and win

During the first section, the gameplay loop is incredibly repetitive with no changes in game mechanics. Your numbers scale up and the environment numbers scale up at about the same rate so you just repeat the same run a bunch of times spending the same amount of time collecting jellyfish and rocks. There is no functional difference between any of the levels.

Then you reach the last level and unlock the "blow up the whole level at once" upgrades and grab a few more materials and the game is complete.

I've been playing Outriders for 13 hours, exclusively on my Steam Deck.

It's a 3rd person looter shooter, notably not open world. It's a "one and done" game, not a GaaS like Destiny or Division.

Humans destroyed Earth, rich survivors escaped on a giant ship, and "outriders" were sent on a beautiful lush planet to assess things and decide if the rich people could safely land on it. Things go wrong, the beautiful planet has terrible storms that disintegrate people (or turn them into mutants), and you get put in stasis for 30 years. You then wake up in a warzone, everything is terrible, everyone is terrible, you're also a terrible person, and you assemble a ragtag team to find a mcguffin. It takes itself a bit too seriously, but the fact that almost everyone is a miserable asshole kinda makes it comical.

And, surprisingly, it's a great game. The gunfights are solid (that's all I can ask for a shooter), the unlockable superpowers are satisfying (my pyromancer can make a dozen enemies explode together) and there are enough difficulty settings to satisfy everyone. The loot is also ridiculous and leans into the power fantasy side, whether it's in terms of stats or the look. I also appreciate the fact that you don't drown in trash loot: the game is linear, caches have set places, and you don't have to grind during the story. Can't speak for the endgame yet, but I doubt I'll stay once I'm done with the story.

Steam Deck note: it runs surprisingly well (40-60fps) while looking good. Negative point though, it's always online.

I'm also slowly progressing through the story in Destiny 2 and while the gameplay is solid and missions are fun, I'm really having a hard time getting over the terrible UI.

More often not, I have to alt-tab to my browser to find how or where to begin a mission. And the fact that each mission has a literal "click here to start" button that is somehow always greyed out is maddening. I don't get how an interface can be so pretty while being so impractical and infuriating to use.

I held back during the summer sale and only spent $20-ish then and really held back from Denshattack and Fogpiercer, so now I kinda spent $30 on 3 brand new games. Go impulse control.

Kusan: City of Wolves

It's a fast-paced top-down brawler/shooter ala Hotline Miami with one-hit deaths, but instead of a drug-filled haze, it's every action movie cliche about a former veteran with a powerfist arm being forcibly recruited by the local government security agent to rescue and secure the psychic clone-daughter of his missing army comrade (who was obviously his love interest). Damn if it doesn't nail the presentation though with its pixel art and comicbook cutscenes. It took me about 6 hours to beat the game with a few resets to secure my S rank for each stage, though the game caps out at double S rank and I plan to replay the game for max score.

In between missions is the shop where upgrades can be applied to the grid inventory; when the grid itself is expanded, so too are the available shop options (though the game shows all the upgrade options from the start). Most upgrades can be powered up to take one less slot, but some of them have sub-upgrades that take up more space like the various gun upgrades. There's nowhere near enough space for everything though so you'll have to specialize. I generally leaned towards movement speed and reliability of each weapon.

Now the 3 tools of the trade are:

• The powerfist. The simple melee option with the charged attack upgrade given for free. It can one-shot normal enemies, it can punch doors across the room to take someone out, and it can parry almost everything in the game. Melee weapons? Parry. Charging bulls? Parry. Bosses? If they throw a punch, you punch back. Bullets? With the right upgrade sure, headshot them with their own bullet, the gun enemies here have just enough firing delay to react to. Jin just makes it look stylish in cutscenes too.

• The throwing knife. It auto-targets the closest enemy in range and is reusable after walking over to pick it back up. As can be expected, you'll want one of the upgrades that auto-returns it to make it less cumbersome to manage. There is an upgrade to make it aim where you want, but it's 4-5 blocks of space and some of the other throwing knife upgrades only activate when it takes out someone behind Jin.

• The gun. There's a low ammo capacity, so this is pretty much to counter gun enemies if you're not sure the knife will target them. Still, this also needs to be mixed in for extra style points for ranking.

  • Handgun: The basic reliable option. One shot will disable a human target for a while and the next will take them out. Its upgrades give it better ammo drops on-kill with it.
  • Crossbow: The charged piercing option. Slower firing rate, but its upgrades let it pierce through doors as well and it gets an active release option to fire faster.
  • Shotgun: Low capacity, but fires multiple pellets with spread. I stuck with this through the campaign.
  • Revolver: Chance to crit; this one-shots a normal enemy and deals increased damage to bosses.

Kinny and the Cosmic Cauldron

It's a roguelike builder which tosses 20 random ingredients from your list into the cauldron and having to surpass the client's score requirement in 3 rolls. There's 6 weeks of 5 encounters then shop and the 7th week just has the final boss to win. It's surprisingly addicting to start a new run, keep rolling, and trying out new synergies plus the pixel art looks pretty. Still could use some polishing though; the game doesn't point out which of your ingredients is pulling its weight even though the game over screen shows the best ingredient and a lot of builds in the beginning are simply unviable because their build paths haven't been unlocked yet which makes a lot of things a trap to take. The higher difficulties just pump up the score requirement and it's a little hard to judge which archetypes are worth it in terms of set up, immediate scoring, scaling, and potential ingredient bloat.

1st successful build was was getting 2 legendary warriors and some slime generators to keep increasing their permanent score. 2nd successful build was getting a bunch of chicken relics which allowed the deck to win even when generating a near 300 ingredient deck and having the occasional cat to cause all the eggs and chickens to spin around in the cauldron. 3rd build was a sushi build with a relic that kept scaling up the sushi's bonus score plus some dolphin to keep them spinning. 4th was another legendary warrior build. Did have a Great Demon Lord build going but the build died because the Great Demon Lord absorbs all the other ingredients for their score and the Sniper Rifle relic kills one of the most common ingredients in the pot which by default...

How Many Dudes?

If Kinny above is about continuously refining the deck and shifting archetypes to accommodate for the drops and shop relics, then this is a roguelike auto-battler where you pick 5 types of dudes to join your team in the first few rounds and lock in with them for the rest of the run to solve the age old question of how many dudes it takes to beat an animal in a fight (and toddlers for the memes, but there's an option to change them to teddy bears which better matches the animal theme in my opinion). This is presented more as a bunch of micro-decisions: the easier or harder fight? Here's the post-fight chart report, which dude do you want more of? Is the relic choice worth it or reroll? For the most part, my runs have been improving by prioritizing more healers first to make sure everyone survives, and focusing on the tank bruisers too since pure glass cannons do fall apart in the final rounds against enemies that deal burst/AoE and ignore taunt. The game flow does get a little long though since a normal game on base difficulty is 105 rounds which leads to some progress fatigue, but it's otherwise turning your brain off and watching the bros fight (and having usables ready in case the fight is going south). I'm finishing up on getting Gold Stars for each dude on Tier 1 difficulty which requires drafting at least 15 of the dude type when finishing a game since they need to be gold star'd to be playable on the next difficulty up. The samurai dude is the last one I'm missing and his weeb ass is not putting in the work.

I just finished Kathy Rain and enjoyed it. The puzzles were logical and made sense, and the story was more interesting than I expected. I tend to enjoy these point and click adventures on my Steam Deck more than other games. Easy to pick up and put down at a moment's notice, and as long as I don't wait too long between play times, I remember what I'm supposed to be doing.