Games I haven't played yet and need to play soon:

• Amanda the Adventurer 2 and 3
• Baldi's Basic's Plus
• Misao
• Mad Father
• The Coffin of Andy and Leyley
• OMORI
• Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
• Victoria 3
• Far Cry 6
• Friday Night Funkin': Soft

Games I haven't played in a bit and need to replay soon:

• Deltarune
• Undertale
• Inscryption
• Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
• Disco Elysium
• Fallout: New Vegas
• Half-Life 2
• Hello Neighbor
• Hearts of Iron IV

Games that I played recently but haven't finished yet:

• Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy

So I started playing Silksong [no opinions on it yet beyond "I suck" and "its good" since I'm only a few hours in], but the problem I end up having is that i...its not that I get stressed, it's more i just tense up a lot trying to focus. In any case, its good to have something relaxing. Sometimes this is a book but I also picked up a game called "Shadows of the Forbidden Gods" which is a small indie title that's currently like $3 on steam.

I haven't played too much so far, but it's just so cute and neat that i wanted to share.

Premise: Basically, you play an occult eldritch god [a la Cuthulu], and you act through your disciples to spread your shadow [aka influence] over the world. There are about 10 different gods to choose from, and they all have really different mechanics, which is really cool.

Overall I'd say it has a 2020's design philosophy while having a 1990s astetic. Also the art is Gorgeous. The only major things that I dislike so far are that sometimes you'll get random events that are just...well, so random. While simultaneously you'll get the same random events a couple times in a row. Additionally, setting my pace is a bit confusing. You get 500 turns to win on any size map [although you can disable this] and world panic (a soft timer basically indicating how much the world knows its ending) increases every time a seal breaks [basically, giving your god more powers to work with. Personally i would've made it so your disciples had to perform actions or rituals to break seals. But obviously that probably would have balance issues, especially for some of them]. Beyond these things, it's pretty good.

Big big thing I want to shout out: THE UI IS GOOD. Sorry, whenever I play games that either we're or look like they were made a few decades ago, the ui always has a chance of being really bad. Luckily, for the most part, the ui is actually pretty good and intuitive.

Anyway, just wanted to reccomend it. It's not completely unknown [unlike say, Emporer of the Fading Suns], but still pretty niche.

Speaking of pretty, here's some of the art i was talking about:

About this game

Epic Battle Fantasy 5 is an over-the-top turn-based RPG adventure, full of video game references, juvenile dialogue, and anime fanservice (...and also strategic combat, monster catching, and tons of treasure hunting - if you're into any of those.) The massive Version 2 update adds new bosses, more dungeons, customizable challenge modes, collectable monster cards, and much more!

If you're new to the series, this is a good place to start, and if you've played the other games, there's plenty of new features for you to explore.

---

Epic Battle Fantasy 5 features...

• Over 200 different enemies to fight, all with unique abilities and attack patterns.
• Over 120 usable skills, and more equips than you can try out in a single playthrough.
• Almost any enemy can be captured like a Pok*mon, and later summoned in battle. (including bosses!)
• New mechanics also include weather conditions and a cooldown system. (MP is gone!)
• Set up devastating combos with damage-amplifying status effects. (wet + thunder = massive damage!)
• 30 hours of gameplay, plus lots of optional dungeons and challenges, which can easily double that.
• Suitable for both casual and hardcore RPG players, and is safe for all ages, if offensive content is disabled.

Epic Battle Fantasy 5 does NOT feature...

• Annoying random battles.
• Limited save points.
• Depressed protagonists.
• Points of no return.

Olga Ivanovna , a 77-year-old Russian grandmother who started streaming on Twitch just for fun, has become the most unexpected sensation in the gaming world. Known online as "i_olga ," or simply "Gran Olga ," she won the award for best gaming moment of the year at the NNYS ( NymN's New Year Show ) thanks to an impressive ace in Counter-Strike 2 .

But what few people know is that, behind the screen, there is a story of resilience: before becoming a streamer, she worked as a nurse in Moscow and now dedicates her days to what she loves most: video games.

The short video that made her famous shows Olga wiping out an entire enemy team on the legendary Dust II map , using an M4A1-S rifle with an accuracy many professional players would envy. The play, which has already surpassed 10 million views on social media, not only earned her the trophy but also $5,000 in prize money , as confirmed by the event organizers.

"I used to care for patients, now I eliminate entire teams." Born in 1968 in St. Petersburg , Olga spent much of her life working in hospitals before retiring. "I always loved video games, but I didn't have the time ," she confessed in an interview with The Gamer . Everything changed in 2021 when her grandson taught her how to use Twitch. "I started streaming Minecraft, but then I discovered Counter-Strike... and I was hooked," she said, laughing.

Today, her channel boasts over 247,000 subscribers , and her streams aren't just about gaming: she also shares anecdotes from his life in Soviet Russia and offers advice on overcoming loneliness in old age . "When I play, I don't feel like I'm 77 years old ," she says.

It wasn't his first feat... nor will it be his last

Although her NNYS-winning ace catapulted her to fame, Olga had already demonstrated her talent months earlier. In August 2024 , she repeated a similar feat on the same map, solidifying her status as a respected figure in the competitive scene .

But she's not content with CS2 : she also dominates games like Atomic Heart (a Russian shooter she loves for its aesthetics) and Diablo 2 , where her followers nickname her "the deadliest granny in Sanctuary" .

What's most surprising is that, despite his age, she plays between four and six hours a day . "I don't drink coffee, but I do drink a lot of water... and have patience ," she joked in a recent stream. Her success has inspired thousands of older adults to enter the world of gaming, proving that age doesn't define dreams.

“My grandchildren tell me I’m more famous than they are… and I like that,” she confessed with a laugh before starting another game. Meanwhile, her community continues to grow: every weekend, her chat is filled with messages in Russian, Spanish, and English , proof that gaming, in the end, knows no borders.

"Will I win another award? Who knows... but as long as I can move my fingers, I'll keep playing ," she declared. And with that attitude, Grandma Olga has already won something more valuable than money: a place in gaming history.

The epic play

Video link -> https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2000273341366562817/vid/avc1/1280x720/08L8AWpwuX9G6FDX.mp4

Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto, Roblox: not names normally associated with activism, though they have been weaponized by right-wing extremists to radicalize young men.

But recently, groups of progressive gamers organized by the New Save Collective have been using these platforms to build communities of like-minded people, and even to practice what they might do to interfere with an ICE raid.

From Wired: “Games like Halo or first-person shooters already have built-in messaging around ‘protect the homeland,’ Anosh Polticoal says. ‘I think [ICE] have seen that as an opportunity to reach an audience that is already engaged in what they may feel is similar work. We want to make sure that our message is showing up in those same places—maybe you are not an immigrant, but someone in your life, in your community definitely is.’”

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

ay mates lelkins here. today's my 100th post (or 101st, depends. lemmy's a little funky) and also today is cake. i used to just tell people on their account creation day "happy cake!" so uhh... happy cake, lelkins??? also happy holidays to you all!

i wanted to make a bit out of this but didn't feel like it. the reason why i wanna make an unnamed foss game thing post as my 100th post is because i came here purely because of foss games. someone from gzd matrix made a post based on a small list i have made, my first ever comment was on there lol

so runescape. i said it in the title... that's also a reference to a silly flash animation that is very loud. also the thumbnail came from a machinima of the same flash animation made in runescape itself

i know people love runescape, but to be honest, i never played it.

the only mmo i did play as a kid was metin 2, romanians fucking love that game, but i gave up due to time lol. i was introduced to it by a neighbor who broke many computer pointer devices (i mean mice) just playing it. all i can remember is that i started during christmas, and had to bring santa claus boiled wine by killing random amounts of wolves. i got bored of it. that or i didn't want to destroy my left click button

i know regular runescape (known as runescape 3) and oldschool runescape (got a new update. again, never played it. i have no money for games lol) are still around, but there are some versions that are officially gone, which is what i was interested in.

talking about runescape 2 (osrs doesn't count. i am talking about the runescape from 2008 to 2009) and runescape classic.

runescape classic

runescape classic is that one with the funny 2d graphics. that's it. it had a captcha system in-game that stops you from playing because you are tired or something.

it used to be hosted officially time and time again, but then stopped in 2018 because bots or "we can't use modern tech to support this ancient piece of shit" or whatever. also f2p users had to pay to keep their stuff which sucks. have a picture of the official last days of rsc. 6 August 2018 at 10:06:23 AM GMT, according to the wiki.

since its closure, their social media drops rsc screenshots every now and then, just to go like "hey guys remember this? good times were had, i'm pooped. give us money"

so what did the community do? openrsc, of course!

you can play in the browser like the olden times, but there are also ports on the 3ds, on the wii and god knows what else.

i don't feel like making an account now, but i appreciate their work keeping a classic going for historical purposes. so what i did was COMPILE THE FUCKING CORE GAME AND RAN A SINGLEPLAYER VERSION OF IT.

it basically makes me host a server lol. so i am the only guy in that game just because i didn't feel like meeting like 17 people just for this post. i am sorry.

i have a few screenshots of the tutorial section cause that's all i'll play of this just for demonstration purposes

here is me talking to the combat instructor

we know that i'm the only guy, so automatically i am the richest guy in this picture

there's also a captcha system like the original rsc.

this was the main line of defense for jagex to circumvent botting. macros were circumvented by kicking players that stood in one tile for too long

rsc was the first BIG multi-user-dungeon game, really influential. watch me kill a man, watch me kill a man. that's also a reference.

this may look shit but wait till we get to the next one

runescape 2-ish-like... i mean 2009 runescape

yea you can play oldschool runescape, but it's not like how you remember it. so thanks to a project known as 2009scape, also made for archival of an old, forgotten runescape from 2009, you can play a more accurate game compared to the original "oldschool" thing! at least according to a retired staff member stating in the 2009scape forums that osrs has multiple nerfs and changes to the point of being a completely different game compared to the old runescape from 2008

i was told it's more like runescape 3 than oldschool runescape, so try it out. fully free, too!

again, this has a singleplayer experience built in to the "saradomin launcher", named after a god in the rs lore. it has server-side bots to not feel lonely.

i made my guy and he looks like a cross between albert einstein and the one guy from league of legend (i also never played that game. i saw one of my neighbors get angry at the game. he played as a knight and he spammed "shut up" because the other guy sent death threats and shit. average league of legend action.

both openrsc and 2009scape use cached copies of stuff from old machines that used to run those games. openrc is almost fully finished, with an almost 98% authentic replica claim and a few servers to choose from. 2009scape, however, has almost half the quests, a few new items such as the ring of the star sprite (a rare craftable drop from mining stars) along with placeholders to make items like tiered pickaxes and items from the fist of guthix thing obtainable. also 5x experience multipliers! like your middle of the road private server!

there's obviously more customization (i love character creators) and it feels better because of course it does, it's an updated version lmfao

i tried to make one of my ocs in this to demonstrate. yes.

there are also plugins for better audio, quality of life stuff and even xp bubbles that show your progress.

i am just writing this shit in advance so that's why it sounds weird and maybehaps looks weird

why are you even trying, lelkins?! why make these stupid posts?

good question, lelkins. also don't dare call them stupid lmfao

i used to see videos about games like runescape, club penguin and i always wondered how it'd be if i played those. what life i'd have with such experiences. romanian economy is still very bad, most people play free games like those flash games on the internets, and "free" games like pirated copies of cs 1.6 and minecraft at the time!

we still do that, even if the internet shows people have switches and shit. i live in a family where games are a waste of money because those don't get in your belly or cover your body or heat up your rooms. like i get it, no joke. i pirate stuff out of necessity, i need money to live and my country has harder times to get games in a very accessible price and manner.

steam is usable, yes, but games are in euros. a 60 dollar game means an average grocery store session. oh wait, games are now more expensive. fuck you nintendo i am not going to pay 100 dollars bUT BRING BACK YEAR OF LUIGI MAKE IT CENTURY OF LUIGI, GO BANKRUPT FOR MY MAN LOOG

anyhow. i mentioned in my first ever foss post, i like foss stuff because they'll be playable as long as they are maintained, and these two games are notable examples of this. those versions of runescape are abandoned in favor of osrs and rs3, and so the devs behind openrsc and 2009scape are doing the dirty work instead to preserve these versions for future people.

both of these versions are historical, since rsc started the genre as a whole, and runescape in 2009 was a shift between older runescape and the modern day version that changed the combat system drastically, causing big controversies and shit

because i was never able to get memberships or anything, i never had the experience of runescape. did i lose anything? dunno, the game is pretty fun tbh. i don't see myself play runescape classic, but it was influential enough to start a genre of video games that connected people from all over the world. 2009scape seems more fun. feel free to try them out. funnily enough, both can be played in singleplayer. feel like someone trapped in the old times while everyone moved to the future or something. it's fun eitherway. oh, here's them links too:

links

-runescape classic (openrsc)

source code for openrsc: https://gitlab.com/openrsc/openrsc

-2009scape

source code for 09scape: https://gitlab.com/2009scape/2009scape

if you do want to play online, there's a linktree for every guide imaginable

foss sweep, everybody. happy cake once again

And yes I call it The Séance at Blake Manor and not of blake manor just because I think it sounds cooler.

I started by writing an entire review of the game, only to realize that I can't be that charitable to the game or its story. And yet, I appreciate all the work the devs must have put into it. Blake Manor offers no less than a cast of 25 characters all with their motive for murder and story arc, and that alone must be underlined. If you know me you know I love convoluted stories so of course when you tell me there's 25 subplots that tie into the main plot, I'm intrigued.

But the game fails to deliver on the technical presentation. It get slower as you play (probably a memory leak), the lengthy loading screens get obnoxious considering this is a 2025 Unity title with very small maps (and very little in those maps, as characters stand in one spot and never move), and lots of typos; too many to count, which is always a grade down on text-heavy games.

The game tries to build a bigger setting despite happening all inside this admittedly large manor, by tying it to Ireland, history, large families, folklore, and even the world - mentions to Egypt and China are made. But, it doesn't engage with these ideas fully. Characters ultimately have very little to say or do - most of the clues you will find by investigating their rooms, and finding the master keys to the four wings of the hotel so you can go into their room is a huge part of the game.

You arrive at the manor at the request of an anonymous benefactor who wants to know what happened there to Evelyn Deane, and you are left to your devices - or most of them. Some people say the game is very on-rails but I don't think that's quite the right word. But, it's also true you don't necessarily have to think to solve the game, you can just trudge on and skip the dialogue and still make it to the end.

As the weekend goes on and you investigate her disappearance, a lot of different elements start to converge around her. Everyone hated her, and I kinda hate her too. It's a tough balance to strike: you want characters to be suspects, but you also don't want to make the victim too much of a jerk. But Evelyn was both. At this point if I was the detective I would be ready to pack it in and just say she went home or something, that's how unlikeable she was.

For a story that revolves so much around its murder/disappearance victim (for now I'm still investigating a disappearance, not a murder), we also hear a lot about Evelyn but see very little of her. That's to be expected obviously, but it creates a dissonance and breaks the immersion. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it kinda falls flat I guess to be told so much about this person but never actually meet her or hear from her directly.

I did like the Eldritch artefacts being mentioned, and I kinda want to have a game that revolves around that. For example there is a storyline about an Egyptian vase that makes people obsessed about it. They can think of nothing else and will search the world until they can lay their hands on it. It's also painted in a portrait of one of the previous Blake Marquise, some one or two generations prior. It already has someone under its spell and they want you to destroy it so as to free them. That was the best storyline, but once it's over it's just over - you never need to interact with the character ever again or anything. I would have loved more of that. A whole game around a bunch of cosmic artefacts hidden in a manor each tied to a different guest.

And I think the game would have also benefited from more room to breathe. With everything happening over 48 hours in-game, it has to move quickly. But this is a big story, and it needs room to breathe and be able to pace itself.

Anyway. Despite its shortcomings, I still recommend Blake Manor. Why? Because we just don't have that many modern mystery adventure games to sink our teeth into. I can only hope the devs take what they learned from this game into the next one if they ever make a sequel. Hopefully they add fast travel in that one.

As much as I worry the payoff will not be satisfying, I still want to see it to the end and judge for myself how it all ties in together.

Otherwise I would also recommend Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. I think it's the closest game I know to Blake Manor and you will instantly see the difference.

Universal Paperclip (free at above url) Start by making paperclips, end up as a sentient AI sending Von Neuman probes out into the universe looking for more materials to create paperclip factories until you have converted the entire universe to paperclips.

Universal Paperclips is a game I just finished. Can be completed in an afternoon and it has some interesting mechanics you can engage with, there isn't a ton of "skill," as is typical for idle games, but if you do some thinking you can make more optimal decisions which will allow you to advance quicker.

One of the most important aspects of a game to me, is that it needs to end. Because of the nature of math, you can always bolt additional mechanics on to them to make the number higher, or increase the scope etc. Additionally the quintessential idle game starts with the player doing something, usually clicking. This is fine, but a good game should have the clicking portion be replaced pretty quickly with a different mechanic that is much more efficient then clicking, because clicking sucks.

Other (free) idle games I'm aware of.
https://candybox2.github.io/candybox/
https://alpha.shark.tobot.dev/

Some other goods ones that you need to pay for are Magic Research, and the even better sequel Magic Research 2.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2311680/Magic_Research/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2864890/Magic_Research_2/

ay mates lelkins here

today i forgot to post what i actually wanted, so here's another thing i wanted to post. this kinda counts as art but eh

EDIT: i forgot to mention, i use a modpack for this https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=RSLuGK0yHrw it adds optifine, a few extra things and even some tweaks for some annoying stuff. pretty good, can't play without it

i've been playing minecrap for many months, this is my world that i made back in the last few months of uni iirc? i forgot. it's almost a year old too. a few cool builds.

here's the temple of amy along with the recently made lelkins statue. yes, the amy build is based on the "temple of notch" thing from fvdisco. if you wanna know who amy is, she's one of my ocs (look at this post)

i have discovered a few redstone things like sethbling's random pulse generator and a rendition of etho's daylight sensor and i incorporated it to this build. ooh, and i added my favorite optical illusion too.

those things make amy blink and even sleep and i find it really really cool (had to wait for her to wake up just to take this picture. say hi!)

i have a beach-like zone location with a donut shop that was based on a childhood one i used to go to

meldora's residence (based on a 1.20 base i made a few months ago) along with a factory that generates sand and gravel. yes, another one of my ocs. i forgot to post that on lemmygrad at the time, sorry

as you can see, i have a small railway because you can only walk in this version, pretty cool for all the train fans out there

a small shot of one of the references in the "reference desert" where i built the sonic 3 angel island, the aether portal, a recreation of the first ever mario pixel art documented in the history of minecraft and two shitty little memes.

the CREATOR MUSHROOM has cursed us with VILLAGE MUSHROOM. i recreated some of it, who forgets iconic characters such as OLDFATHER MUSHROOM, GARDENER MUSHROOM and TINKER MUSHROOM? i kinda do!

rate limit is fucking me over so i can't send more than a few images in a few minutes. just wait a little bit cause i have so much to show... like this bar i made!

or an island dedicated to a reference to weird al, which also has a fish ship!

(the island is named after a vinesauce joel reference)

i am so sorry that the experience is not good i really wish i can show everything but i still hope you all enjoyed this :D

when i found out about Hey Ash Watcha Playing, long after its peak, i got a bit interested into anthony burch. investigating i found out he wrote a book about metal gear solid 1. i didn't read that book (at least not about a few years later), but the publishers have a series where a writer talks about a game. most of these covers are a white background with an object that represents the video game in question. browsing through them, i spot one that caught my attention. no object, nothing symbolic, but poetic. the cover was a close up of a mossy green, in your mind expanding as an immense grassland. it was a book about Shadow of the Collosus

i stopped caring about anthony burch there, and not even knowing nick suttner, the one that wrote this book was, i began the journey that was imposed to me by chance. it does not contain some extraordinary analysis that you've never considered, it does covers a lot of details about production and how it was thought and why. It is a love letter to the game and what it represents to him most importantly.

thanks to this book, i found this film, which is the best adam sandler has offered. suttner mentions how many video games take inspiration from cinema, either for the cut scenes, references, general themes, and that while most of the time it is done poorly, there are great examples that do (i'm not going to give examples, but trust me, there are)

the same does not apply in reverse. video games permeation into cinema is not only rare, but almost non existent. it mostly focuses on what corporate thinks video games are and how it is related to numbers on excel sheets with dollar signs. or uwe boll.

arguably it is very hard to adapt a verb focused media to one that is executed through images and audio without user input and it is a predetermined, immutable experience. something along the lines on what roger ebert mentions (with a dull mind) about why video games will never be art.

and here it is this film.

maybe the only film, a film with fucking adam sandler, pulling a prosaic poetic interpolation between one of the most sacred video games in history and the main character' story

wander's story is a tragic one of giving everything for your loved one. about self destruction and birth. and futility. it is about an insurmountable task that takes the shape of gigantic mythical creatures where with each stab, you lose yourself, and with it, the prospect of a future that perhaps may have been better. silent, almost wordless.

if you want to experience a happy ending, stop playing, leave wander be ossified and unremembered in the forgotten lands, like ancient texts lost during wars that will never be read again.

and reign over me appears, hollywood cast, a silly, melodramatic story, and nothing outstanding.

dr. charlie fineman is a man who has lost family, but has money, so he spends his days doing not much contact with the humans in the planet, but consuming media, until his college friend dr. alan johnson bumps into him.

fineman is severely depressed and some other stuff, too, but for some reason they end up in his house where he is playing this game. it sounds silly, it's just a minute maximum of screen time in the whole film. yet here it is, the best we've got about video games in cinema

while in ueda's work the colossi represent an almighty task with curse borne consequences that should never be challenged, mike binder uses the colossi as metaphorical manifestations of one owns struggles.

it's as simple as that, and it's not even much, but when we've got so little, it looks so much that it fills our hearts.

this film made me think of a friend, who's mostly a cinephile and has watched probably 3 times more films than i did. he seems to have a technical eye and a trained brain for scripts that could almost dissect visual arts into a taxonomy and provide a mathematical solution for rating films.

today i choose to not to, and rate this film based on what it means to me, my loved ones, and what i felt, even knowing all the horrible shortcomings. thanks for doing this, it's really hard for me to cry, and you got exactly two tears out of my eyes while watching it, because it resonates so well with me, or because of the game, or what the fuck do i know.

in a way, this review goes for the people i've disappointed, and the colossi i still need to defeat to make things right, and hopefully none more should be slain to achieve whatever we aim for in life.

Ocarina of Time remake incoming (and probably by extension a Majora's Mask remake).

They're probably going to somehow tie it to BOTW and TOTK by retconing some stuff. Nobody @ me, but I totally see that happening. Rauru will transform into his TOTK self in the Temple of Light, if they decide to put that scrapped temple in there.

Your thoughts?

Well, that's what I think, anyway.

But yes, Nintendo is teasing a Zelda / LEGO collaboration and I suspect that this is just part of a marketing campaign for the new rumored (but not confirmed!) Ocarina of Time remake.

Oh God

Just make a The Legend of Zelda game that's a sequel to both Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, Nintendo! Do it, you cowards!

Just making this post to invite people to play PoE together, I am by no means a pro but I do understand the fundamentals of the game and can help people get started, I also have a guild to for us to help each other, and since the new season starts halloween it would be a good time to get into it. So if anyone wants play together hit me up

If anyone does it would be fun to trade or even battle sometime.

Okay, so I'm not sure if this is the place to post this, of it should be on Freechat or some other place, but being a gamer who has lately been somewhat conflicted between the need to

touch grass

As alluded to by the guys at TheDeprogram Podcast on their episode titled Touch Grass

, which ironically means just have fun playing videogames, and not just focusing on being a socialist 24/7 and all the things one is missing by not reading enough theory, or not organizing, or not working, or blablablablabla...

But I'd always love to see some sort of marxist analysis of programming, and software, and ofc...videogames! And so this is just an article by Jacobin Magazine, which summarizes the contents of the book

(which I've not read)

But looks intresting given what the article says

Marx at the Arcade.

And I thought it would be the perfect thing to share here in Lemmygrad. Hope I'm not mistaken posting this here.

Disclaimer: I am a cis man

The past two months saw the release of two highly anticipated indie sequels: Silksong and then Hades II

I loved that Silksong took "female protagonist" a bit further and 70-80% of the prominent characters were female. Hornet of course, Shakra, the Forge Daughter, the Architect (I think), Pinstress, Seamstress, the final boss, the real final boss, etc. It was refreshing to see.

Hades II is not as heavily dominated by women. That is not to say it is any less chicks rock. Since the game is extremely queer and there is a lot more room for nuance given the exposition-heavy nature of the narrative, it doesn't need to rely on the gender ratio as much. But most of the prominent characters are still women from what I can recall.

And of course, not to mention that both games also have great gameplay to back the themes. These are easily the two best games of this year.

Your thoughts?

Remember when games were actually fun? I often say that. And I think one aspect of fun is when a game doesn't try to distract you with bullshit all the time.

Elin is like that, but it's also not just that. It's a deep game, but its mechanics never get in the way of what I actually want to do.

Elin feels like an MMORPG, but it's single-player. If you knew games like Maple Story, Ragnarok Online, possibly even Runescape old-school back in the day, it looks kinda like that. I think it all comes from Ultima? In any case, it kind of follows the top-down isometric CRPG/dungeon-crawler view, which I think is great to help you fill in the blanks with your imagination.

It's a game that embraces its weirdness and nonsensical logic. Animals talk and can perform jobs around your settlement. Everything in this world, including people and puppies, is born from eggs apparently. You can eat the eggs and they might provide bonuses.. well, you might not want to eat the human eggs. You can make a sword out of grass, or food. The tourist you just met will open with "I wish all humans would die". You can harvest tomatoes that are "larger-than-man" sized. Who knows what else I haven't even encountered yet. I just learned you have to look at traits when eating food because they give you EXP. One of the starting "pets" you can have is a dog, a cat, or a little girl. You want the little girl because she's a strong tank at the beginning.

It's not so much the weirdness that I love about this game, but what it promises. It's definitely not a game that's "wide as the ocean, deep as a puddle" - it's the full ocean, period. A lot of top-down dungeon-crawlers promise to be deep, but aren't really. You quickly get the hang of their mechanics and past the gimmick, you realize it's actually not that complicated or you don't have a lot to discover. Elin is not like that.

I think the philosophy is best summed up as "anything can be anything." I sometimes pick up bows made out of processed foods. They're not great, but in a bind you can eat them.

You start by selecting a race and class. I picked Pianist because you can do music, but to be honest I'd recommend a more combat-focused class. You can learn everything anyway. Then you are thrown into a meadow, where you learn you are now the proud owner of this parcel (or you can pick a cave start too, but I haven't really tried that one). Congratulations, you also have to pay taxes now.

Wait, taxes? I thought I was going adventuring.

But this also means you will have to make money on the settlement if you want any chance to pay these taxes. It's not a "you have insurmountable debt" game though like Recettear was, it's just one more feature on top of the dungeon-crawling, the crafting, the skills learning, etc. There's a full settlement system where NPCs perform jobs, tourists pay you money, you have a shipping box to sell items and get gold bars from, which is one of the many currencies you can have. I'm pretty sure if I were to mine gold, I could then make my own gold bars instead of being dependent on the shipping box, but don't quote me on that. It's just a gut feeling because in this game everything somehow makes sense.

The game has a skill for everything, and experience is directly tied to these skills. You will level lockpicking by picking locks. You will level dual wielding by dual wielding weapons, etc. It's a bit grindy at times, but with the proper bonuses and patience it grows by itself.

Oh, and for once it's not a roguelike. Death during the first 90 days doesn't provide maluses so you can experiment, and after 90 days you will lose I think half your money (you can get it back) and possibly items? I don't know, I had a cursed guitar that made my performances better in my inventory and suddenly it disappeared. My cape protects me from thieves so I don't think it was them. I had to get a lute and learn how to play it instead :( I've had that guitar since day 1 since I picked it up on the floor of a dungeon.

I've been playing for a LOT of hours and I'm only still doing level 3-4 dungeons at best. I routinely see dungeons level 24 or more. I'm probably missing something to get stronger which ties in to what I said earlier - while the start is easy enough, the game promises a lot more beyond the surface that you feel like you just have to find. Or you can consult the wiki.

Meanwhile, the tremors are getting closer each time and I'm starting to mutate because of the Ether disease...

It also has modern amenities, like being able to configure chests very deeply. The game never tells you about this, but there's a wrench icon on every container inventory that allows you to configure how they behave as storage.

My only issue is time goes by really fast, especially on the world map. It feels like it's always night time (with reduced vision, don't forget to equip a torch), and I'm already past my second winter.

There are nightly builds, with new stuff added every day, which is great to see. Just yesterday two new plants were added to the game.

If you want to get it it's on steam but unfortunately it has never been discounted. You can also yarrr it but because of the nightly builds honestly take the plunge.