The best thing about playing multiplayer games, especially survival-crafting games, and especially with friends, is getting super immersed in exploring a new world, finding the dangers, coming together to deal with them, and getting strong enough to start in the next place. It is a super addictive gameplay loop.
I did Dune: Awakening and then immediately went to Windrose, so that was probably a good four or five months knowing: this is the game I will play when I get online; it’s this one. People are depending on me and none of us can do it alone. It’s the same thing that got me into MMOs, back when MMOs were games that had that same loop — an unknown world, but with your friends, you’ll grow powerful enough to make your mark. MMOs aren’t like that anymore. But once they were, and I was down for it.
I’d bought a Switch 2 when it came out specifically to play Pokemon Z-A, and once that was done, I didn’t really have a game #2 I wanted to play on it. But then! I have kids, and what’s more, grandkids, and when I got them a Switch 2 for Christmas, I had no idea what a hit it would be for them.
I’d already been pretty sold on Pokopia even before it was released; it was Pokemon, I am going to buy it and play it. I was shocked, when I bought it, when I found out everyone in my daughter’s house was playing it and that they had bought a second Switch 2 so they could play it as a family.
In Pokopia, you play as Ditto, who has decided to form itself to look like their trainer, whom they miss for some reason. And then it decides to fix the world so that humans might someday return. And then it makes opportunities for other Pokemon to be released from storage and making them happy. And it’s just so, so strange, because none of these Pokemon fight each other. They don’t have any desire to do so. They just want to hang out and live their lives.
Ditto is literally making a Pokemon Utopia just by itself, something that never occurred to Ash Ketchum.
I haven’t got to “roll credits” yet; not sure if there is one, for this game. I’m less than ten Pokemon from filling the Pokedex and my special island is city sized, with three different distinct residential districts (for Pokemon) as well as some satellite neighborhoods and the big industrial facilities. Probably I am close to finishing it.
Now, for Tomodachi Life, there are end credits, and I didn’t really expect that. I thought it was more or less an “open world” game that just keeps going on. But no, there are end credits that roll when your island reaches level 100, and then the game just continues on.
Usually, when credits roll, a switch clicks in my brain and I can’t play the game anymore. I am done with it. And yet, I kept playing. I had this concept that I would put myself and my partner in the game, and we would get married in the game.
But they wanted more characters, so I put my son in. And then, what the hell, I put in Eric Bloom, lead singer for Blue Oyster Cult, and because I needed more girls, I put in Frieren (from the anime). So then Kasul (my partner) in the game decided he loved the bachelor life, and my character ended up marrying Eric Bloom instead. We had a baby, who I named after my second daughter, Shannon. Since my daughter and her family were also playing, I expected I’d pick up their Miis when I next brought my Switch 2 over.
Nope! They did not put themselves in the game. Well, not deliberately. My granddaughter had one that looked a lot like her (she denied the resemblance), so I took her, renamed her after my granddaughter, and she’s in. She also sent over someone named Jasmine, whom she said was not related to her cousin (my niece) Jazzmin, but that’s fine. I renamed her and redid her Mii a little. The third one was Flea, bass for RHCP. She’d asked my daughter for someone famous to put in, so they looked up Flea online and put him in game.
So anyway, my first daughter isn’t in game yet. I’m waiting for my avatar and Eric Bloom to get busy again.
My son eventually married Frieren. Kasul was still a problem; he wasn’t interested in anyone. I put Felicia Day in the game, and she did a full court press on him and eventually he relented and they married a couple days ago. That’s Eric, Kasul, me and Felicia in the picture above.
I’m not really sure how long I’m going to continue playing. I guess I should put the rest of my family in, since the people themselves aren’t helping out.
I was browsing through the Steam offerings and saw a recommendation for a game that was supposed to illustrate the need for accessibility controls in games, called “an unplayable game?!‘. The game is a very short platformer, with the twist that you have to play with the onscreen controller, with your mouse, and so you can only click one button at a time. That makes it a little tough to hit the “jump” and “move right” buttons at the same time.
You have to struggle through the first couple challenges, but then accessibility options begin to show up in the options that allow you work through these issues.
Once you complete the game, you get to replay it with the developer commentary; it was really insightful. There was a BlueSky button that I clicked so I could follow him, but it was NOT TO BE because he got there ahead of me and pre-blocked me.
I was blocked by the developer.
It’s gotta be the Daily Blogroll. Either that, or because I sometimes use AI images (though I really try not to do too much of that on BSky because people are fucking rabid about it there). But probably, the Daily Blogroll. I suppose I should have made a second account for it, but I didn’t, and so it is what it is. Sorry, dev dude. I liked your game. Sorry that I, personally, suck. He joins Kimimi the Game Eating She-Monster in my (hopefully short) list of people doing interesting stuff that have blocked me on BlueSky without having ever interacted with me. Dude, every single #DailyBlogroll post has that hashtag. You can block the hashtag, you’ll never see it ever again and we can still be friends?
Terra Randoma has been in my Steam library for years; I played it a little when it came out. It’s basically a roguelike. Not “a game that bears no resemblance to the actual game Rogue” roguelike, but a real roguelike. It has that cool mini on a grid look, monsters move when you do and never when you don’t, there’s towns and quests and dungeons and stuff that comes up. It’s fun and you can play it in little bits. You can go with permadeath; I don’t. But you can.
About six years ago or so, I kickstarted A Fox Tale, a platformer that was cute and had a demo that I could actually finish and feel pretty accomplished in, and I’ve been looking forward to it, and then it finally came. I spent a couple hours getting as far as I could but then it’s all split-second timing. Plus for some reason I played it in German, so when the fox encounters other animals, I kinda get the gist of the plot (nobody has seen foxes in nearly forever, but now everyone who remembers them remembers they hate them, Fox is looking for her family, comes across a dog mom who initially acts hostile but apologizes, just hadn’t seen a fox in a long time and was surprised). I think that’s as far as I got before I couldn’t go on any further, so I don’t know if she eventually finds her family before she ascends at a divine shrine or something.
It’s a good game, and I would love to get further, but it just isn’t happening for me. Maybe the dev needs to play an unplayable game?! and make some changes.
The game that has taken up the majority of my free time these days, though, is Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, sequel to Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I didn’t play the first one. Somehow I thought I had, but then I figured it was probably the first Path of Exile. Anyway, it was cheap, I wanted a good RPG, so I dove in.
Pretty much cold. I had no idea what I was doing. My character concept was a Shadow Knight, like the ones I played in the EverQuests. So I made a Dhampir (vampire) character; I can’t remember what class it was for reasons that will become clear in a little bit. I just wanted something that would be able to wield a scythe and be tanky.
Well, it turns out that vampires can’t be healed by positive energy, just negative energy, so basically some party buffs hurt me. I took a level of cleric to get “inflict wounds” spells, but then I didn’t actually get any spells; I got some sort of weakness ray. Whatever class I originally had got a sabertooth tiger pet who just died all the time. I think I was supposed to ride it into battle, but I could not because I was too big, but I guess there was a buff to make it bigger. Anyway, so I had like three levels in the mount rider class and two in cleric and I just wasn’t enjoying it. I saw Hellknight in the list and thought, that sounds like a Shadow Knight, but it said I should start off again as a Fighter subclass, Armiger, then move to Hellknight. Well, I just started with Armiger levels and then moved to Hellknight and then I thought I should restart.
Kasul asked if there was any respec guy in the game. No clue. I looked it up and there WAS! So anyway, I restarted as a Slayer that is specced for cleaves and crits with her scythe, which is intelligent and thinks it’s a soldier who went missing some time ago.
I also figured out why none of my casters did any damage with their spells. They only ever cast cantrips! I had to physically choose tabs for other spell levels, and mem them, and then scribe scrolls into spell books and stuff. So now my casters can do damage.
Also, I think now I’m going to be a Lich? So that’s a thing that happened.
Anyway, you’re up to date!
