OP, I hope whatever news you got blows over or the situation improves.

I finished Spyro the Dragon from the remake trilogy. It only took about 5 hours. I'm not a completionist so I didn't 100% the game and get the secret level though. I dont really like the Flight levels. Also I got softlocked out of a really early level because I played at 144 FPS and it turns out the game has lots of potential problems above 30 even though higher settings are in the menu. Mainly with the Druids who move the environment in the Crafter's zone. Stuff just doesn't move and you can't continue. I didn't bother to go back after I found that out.

Also, I noticed there are 0 female/feminine presenting dragons out of the 90 or whatever you rescue. Only the Faeries. But there's dragon eggs. Game doesn't explain what it means by this.

I started Final Fantasy X-2 instead of going straight into the 2nd Spyro. I finished X probably like 3 times and the last time I did all the international super bosses. Planning to do that with X-2. The magical girl transformations are hype.

On a digital purge for a bit, so only solo tabletop games and rpg journaling!

Picked up a new oracle (mythic gme) and two different core systems I’ll mix (2d6 dungeon and perilous wilds), it’ll be my first time playing a system that isn’t as ‘on the rails’ so to speak as Ironsworn.

But in the meantime I’m finishing up a dungeon dive in Iron Helm, then I’ll take those notes and turn that into a short story hopefully early this week and then next weekend I can dive into Perilous Wilds and 2d6 Dungeon

Not much gaming this week, but played a bit of SOVL
It's a free wargaming thing, pretty good tbh

Started playing kentucky route 0 today. My dog friend is called homer.

A mix of Vampire Survivors and Total Warhammer 3. Just hit the halfway point of the Castelvania DLC in VS and still have a way to go. So far seems like they should've made two maps or something because there are a LOT of characters, weapons, and secrets, but only the 1 stage.

Finished up a Kislev ROC campaign, and now might try Chorfs in IE, or maybe ROC if their campaign looks interesting. I'm real sick of just having to wait dozens of turns to end the campaign again. Kislev seems pretty unfun to me because while their units are okay when taken together, they aren't actually that strong on their own, and their lores aren't especially powerful. At least you can make an "Oops, all bear cavalry" doomstack and autoresolve your way through it.

Settling back into Capcom’s 19XX: The War Against Destiny. With work taking up more of my time the past few years, I’ve been settling back into arcade titles. It offers a nice challenge, but it’s not soul crushingly difficult the way something from Cave, Raizing, or Takumi is.

The soundtrack is great, Capcom really were cooking with their Qsound-era stuff.

I finished Wolfenstein: The New Order and moved on to Wolfenstein: The Old Blood. I already made a couple of posts about it, but The New Order was legitimately a great game and I was surprised by how well-written it was for a big dumb console FPS. The characters and dialogue were on point- like they could've easily made BJ Blaskowicz some boring generic badass soldier archetype but he's instead a kind, good-natured but kinda dumb himbo. The game as a whole gave me really strong Half-Life 2 vibes throughout.

I've enjoyed The Old Blood so far too. It doesn't have as much going on narratively and it definitely feels like a smaller scale project but I like creeping around a medieval castle killing Nazis who are up to supernatural shenanigans. It simultaneously reminds me of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Indiana Jones as well as the spookier levels from the PS1 Medal of Honor games

Just waiting for Civilization 7 release at the moment. Will play that for a while after it launches. Watching the show Dune Prophecy right now-might make a thread on it when im done.

A ton of "puzzle box" style games recently! Quick run down:

The Room Series - GOATed, genre-defining

Doors: Paradox - Okay, with points for the aesthetic variation in the levels

Access Denied - Not great and really short

Access Denied: Escape - Pretty good, improved over the previous game

Boxes: Fragments - By the developer who did Doors, and a massive step up in every way. Might be my second favorite in the genre so far

Machinika Museum - Fun, probably my third favorite so far. Has some eurojank vibes that I enjoy

I've got the House of Da Vinci series to play, and after that I'll have to move on to \more conventional escape room games--Escape Academy, Escape First Alchemist, Escape From Mystwood Mansion, and Escape Simulator

playing Atelier Ryza 2 while I wait for this big month of games. Ryza 2 is a better video game compared to 1 and they start your off exploring dungeons and doing alchemy right away compared to Ryza 1 where the first 50% of the game dragged on and was just an episodic slice of life anime experience where nothing much happened plot wise. Not sure how much I'm vibing with the game, it's just okay. Will probably finish it just to get it out of the backlog lol

I'm waiting for Yakuza Pirates and Monster Hunter Wilds this month

I put some hours into Heroes of Hammerwatch 2 the other day. It was good.

I kinda like the mostly mindless killing a bajillion enemies and picking up powerups. You can definitely do some character building, but it's not very in-depth or anything. There's a meta-progression that's whatever so far, but I did feel pretty dope when I got a fat haul of resources after a really good run and felt like my next one would start substantially more powerful. I think I unlocked a shortcut too? Hopefully, because one thing I'm not very positive on with this game is that the environments are quite large and there's a lot of running. I'm also not sure if there's any way to "extract" and take all your loot back with you. I hit a point where I was like, "I definitely want to just end the run and get out," and it didn't seem like there was any choice but to keep pressing forward, even though I was very several levels deep into the run.

Overall a pretty comfy game to dissociate to while you listen to the news. Also plays pretty well with controller, although some classes might work better than others.

Otherwise I haven't been playing a lot of vidya outside of my Dominions turns. (Still a handful of spots in Lucid's tournament! If you search lucid tactics discord you should find it.)

I have been enjoying playing Lancer with my tabletop group the last few weeks. After a long time of playing pretty narrative-heavy campaigns, it's been very satisfying to get into some real serious tactical combats where we're planning out across multiple turns to eke out a victory.