Just saw the game came out yesterday and of course I had to try it. I finished the two tutorial missions and the first real one, which was more of a speedrun.

The game is more of a side-scrolling platformer. I only go by the first line usually before trying a game, so I was expecting more of a stealth/tactics game. Levels are divided into two parts: the casing, and the escape. During the casing you progress through the level and set up what you need for the escape. During the escape (after you grab the artifact) you are being chased by attack drones and have to leave through the escape route as fast as possible.

The platforming uses a parkour system in 2.5D where you gain a speed bonus if you press X while vaulting over an obstacle. It offers suitable verticality to follow alternate routes and get a better escape time.

The game gives short history lessons on the artifact and the culture to which it belonged, but nothing too deep. Could be a good primer into African cultures if you don't know anything about the continent, giving you a foundation to do further research.

The first real mission for example has you get back the silver bull of Dahomey, which you can see here https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/318416 in higher res than the game's (and yes this is the Met Museum lol)

I assume the gameplay opens up more later. The first three missions were a bit underwhelming: you have 2 tutorial missions (why?) and then the first 'real' mission can be escaped in 33 seconds, so it's kind of more tutorial. A lot of cutscenes too, hopefully they wind down later on. It's the old adage: show, don't tell.

The escape portion is kind of a speedrun, and you are rated on time taken to escape at the end of the level. So you better set up everything beforehand so you can escape as fast as possible. Reminds me of teardown in this regard. Apparently in later levels you have to grab more artifacts but the first one will trigger the alarm, so you have to figure out a route first.

The most unrealistic part really is the heist team has a French guy helping them lol.

If you play on linux: Unreal Engine doesn't play well with the compatibility layer. In your wine config, replace dll "winmm=n,b" (winmm.dll replaced with native, builtin) and the game should work. Thank you deepseek for finding a 10 year old Russian forum thread that had the fix lol.

you download game

but oh no game dont work on linux!

you download switch rom

now game work on linux!

emulator: Eden with 19.0.1 firmware and same production key (get on prodkeys website). Different emulators work differently, you can install a bunch, point to same games folder, and switch between them. It's on flathub.

get roms: add NSW Torrent Library bot to your telegram, type game name, it provide torrent file from their own website.

(Mirror.)

My dad is the kind of man who will find a game [that] he enjoys and stick to it. While I have always flitted about, hopping between different genres, he remains the only person I know who does absolutely everything it has to offer. When people ask, “who actually finishes these enormous games?”, I can respond with confidence that it is a geordie man in his 60s with a love of Lego and creative swearing. Age of Empires II had a grip on him for well over a decade.

The game came out in 1999, when I was five years old, and I am not exaggerating when I say that it was a permanent feature of our domestic life right up to when I moved out thirteen years later. The only thing that changed were the laptops he played on, which became progressively less bulky over the years. The sound effects, from the iconic “wololo” of the priests and the villagers’ warbles of acknowledgment as you sent them to chop wood, were the soundtrack to my childhood.

When I got old enough, I picked up my dad’s interest in the game, and it was one of my earliest exposures to historical media. I do think it helped develop my own engagement with history, which eventually led to me becoming a historian. I’m not alone in this. When I speak at conferences about history and video games, I have on many occasions had historians of a certain age sheepishly approach me to say that Age of Empires II got them into this field.

Greg Jenner is a public historian and host of BBC Four’s history podcast You’re Dead to Me. He played Age of Empires II while doing his A-levels, and found that the game captured his historical imagination as well as complimenting his studies — so much so that it became an early recurring joke on his podcast. “The game definitely reinforced my passion for the past, likely broadened my historical vocabulary, and gave me a wider range of global references that I wasn’t getting at school; Genghis Khan, for example,” he says.

The technology tree, which shows the game’s various tech and units available to the player, particularly caught his imagination. “As a historian, I’m now way more cautious of the tech tree approach to thinking about societies,” he says. “It’s interesting to look back at it, because at the time it definitely resonated with, and indeed bolstered, my historical tastes.”

While I am sure there are many military historians whose passionate interest in trebuchets started with this strategy game, my own historical expertise is in the social and cultural. Playing through Age of Empires II’s scenarios and watching my dad endlessly battle against the computer really highlighted to me that it wasn’t the knights or castles that interested me — it was the villagers. I placed my houses and farms in a pleasing way that I truly believed would provide these little automatons with a good quality of life, even as they existed purely to generate the resources for war. And frankly it was annoying when enemies would insist on laying siege to my town and setting fire to my crops. I see echoes of this in my current historical work, which focuses on the everyday. I wanted to know about the lives of the people whose labour enabled these big events.

Age of Empires really took ahold of me when I discovered the map editor. Here, I was free to build my towns and create stories about who these villagers were, without the game rudely insisting on making me engage with its mechanics. Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster, a historian of medicine at Edinburgh University, had a similar experience. “I only enjoyed the map editor — any kind of setup or planning, building landscapes, drawing coastlines, establishing where settlements would lie. I wasn’t that interested in the main gameplay element — not a big fan of fighting, although I liked harvesting fields.”

Agnes is also an expert in nostalgia and reflected on the game through this lens. “I think it absolutely informed my interest in history. I think a lot of professional historians, myself included, start out life as nostalgics — longing for periods in the past they haven’t lived through — and Age of Empires, along with other games like it, indulge some of that nostalgia. And, I suppose, it’s about playing with the past — which is basically what historians do for a living, whether they like to admit it or not.”

She makes an excellent point. While some of us are more explicitly playful in our methodologies than others, historians all inhabit a space of experimentation and play as part of the research process.

Where I was introduced to this game by my dad, Mathew Lyons, an author and historian, reflected poetically on playing it with his son. “It was lovely to discover the game as a result of becoming a parent — one of those strange unlooked-for gifts that parenting gives you,” he tells me. “It felt like a brilliant way to explore the idea of empires rising and falling, and the wider idea of historical impermanence, in the context of the constancy and certainty of parental love.”

Play can be a powerful source of connection; to the past, to ourselves, to one another. Twenty five years after its launch, we can now nostalgically reflect on the impact Age of Empires II had on us. As with any piece of historical media the game is not without its issues in how it represents the past. But for me, and plenty of other historians of a particular generation, it provided a spark of joy that developed into something more. It also kept my dad entertained for two decades and gave us a point of connection. For those two things, I’m very grateful.

I'm not the most avid enjoyer of either of these franchises [just a personal preference, I find civ to be too "board game" like, when I prefer more simulation like games], but I was trying to think of why the new system [civ switching] felt off to me. Maybe this was obvious to other people but I finally realized what bugged me about it.

It's just too rigid. You're always switching from Rome into spain or something like that. But the problem is that it doesn't feel like your civ is evolving, because it isn't. It's just changing into a different one.

Imo, the best way to make these systems is to not have a "civ" at all. Rather decide the characteristics of your civ. This could be as broad as "sailing culture" to replicate civs like the Polynesians and phonecia, or it could be as specific as to what writing system you use, or if you even have one. But instead of just being "Spain but slightly different" it actually feels like you're going on a journey and forging your own civilization through a story. This would be great if you could get some anthropologists to work on it, along with political economists.

In another example, maybe certain traits could be decided over a long period of time. I.e, being stable could give you a trait that promotes staying at peace and not expanding, but at the cost of making changes in government harder and harder the longer you are in that position [i.e, pre-1911 china].

Or they could be instigated by some event and become more ingrained if they aren't changed. For example, you could choose between forms of government justification. Perhaps you would have bread and circuses, which would make you really stable as long as you have a surplus of food and amenities, but unstable if you lacked them. Conversely a divine right of kings would make people more docile in general but requires an organized religion and you need some religous or legal justification for wars against people on the same continent [or something. Idea is WIP obviously]. The game should also force some amount of instability on you, but should also make that a good thing in some cases. If you have a government that's too stable, like mentioned above, then maybe you slow down tech and cultural advancement, or economic ones. Or at a certain point it's just impossible to keep your government if the modern economy is incongruent with your civ. [This shouldn't require a complex pop system or anything. Just as you advance through the tech tree your settlements will have a system of deciding economic and political power of classes(as in, economic decides who the main producers of society are and political decides what change can be enacted). So if x settlements have dominant proletariat economic power but dominant Bourgeois political power, then in times of instability there can be a revolution to replace the Bourgeois power with proletarian power. [Note:this should actually be a tiered system, or have a third thing called control I.e, peasants and serfs could be the dominant economic power but can't actually take political power without the help of another class like the Bourgeoisie or proletariat. So a settlement could have peasant economic power, Bourgeois political fervor, and land owner political control.]

Obviously this does lose a large chunk of the appeal of civ being more board game like and leading a civ with a leader who both give bonuses you need to play around to win. But I feel like both humankind and civ 7 need to go "all in" on the idea for it to work, rather than going half and half and pleasing no one.

[Note: Obviously all of the ideas here are half baked examples. This came to me right after i woke up from a nap. Also no I will not try developing it myself because I'm not an anthropologist and more importantly my coding skills are less than abysmal. I more just wanted to rant because trying to figure out my problem with both of these games was bugging me]

I have played Nioh 1 and completed 2 so I was looking forward to the demo. I was able to give it a whirl over the weekend so here's my thoughts about it.

Overall I found the game to be pretty difficult. It's not clear intuitively how to approach the fights, especially boss fights. I completed the demo yet I have no idea when to be in ninja mode and when to be in samurai mode. For the boss fights I just beat my head against the wall until I won. The full game will be a painful experience for me if I can't get better.

Regarding the ninja/samurai switching, I'm not too excited about it. I don't like the cognitive load of figuring out this system. Maybe if I "get" it at some point I'll have a more positive opinion of it.

The approach to open world is nice. Areas are clearly segmented on the map and each area has a recommended level. So you clear an area and then move on to the next. Clearing an area is pretty straightforward. As you clear, points of interests get marked on the map so there's no need to peer into every nook and cranny.

I might get the game when it goes on sale because I can't find any physically discs in the market.

I am playing through the Steam version of the game right now. Haven't finished it yet. There are three things that somewhat baffle me. The first is how much stuff there is in the game. The game released close to when I was born so I find it impressive how many eras and locations there are in the game. The second being how smoothly the game flows. When one arc ends it is clear where you need to go next just by following the dialogue. Lastly, I love how the game is somewhat scant on dialogue lines but makes good use of the ones that are there. It is an antithesis of MGS3 cutscenes (which I also love).

The combat system is also actually really fun. The bosses make you think about how to approach them. Does the original SNES version have the "active" battle system that the Steam version has? If yes then that's very impressive. I see it as somewhat of a precursor of the battle system in the FFVII remake games.

It might be better to just get a PS5 Pro in my case.

I am not even joking, that's where I am right now with gaming in 2026.

Your thoughts?

What games from the Steam Winter Sale have you gotten?

Might get the, erm, Japanese Stonks simulator on this list LMAO

I started playing it last week. It has been on my to-play list for a long time. It was a launch exclusive for the PS5 so it made good use of PS5 gimmicks like DualSense haptics and speakers.

The game is a third person shooter bullet hellish roguelike. I find the gameplay to be tight and smooth. It is fun for sure. I beat the fourth boss today. The problem for me is that the game is a little bit too difficult. In the fourth biome for example, the first room contains a ton of enemies and all you have the pistol (starter weapon) with no bonuses. I end up losing a chunk of health and feeling like shit there. This is probably a skill issue too. I am noticing I don't move around and use melee as much as I should. Another problem I have is that the bosses feel a bit same-y. A large chunk of the fight is maintaining distance, unloading clips and dodging enemy projectiles. It is still fun though and I have only seen four bosses so far.

Atmospherically the game is designed well. It conveys the feeling of being stranded and held captive on an awful planet nicely. I haven't paid much attention to the lore. The story unfolds very slowly which I don't like. Lore revelations also come at points where I am panicking and scrounging up bits and pieces of health and items trying to stay alive or healthy.

Overall the game is pretty good. I got it used for cheap and it's been worth it so far. Hopefully I can finish this game. I have abandoned the last four or so games I have tried.

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

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.

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:

Steam link:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1741640/Shadows_of_Forbidden_Gods/

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.