I spend far too much time on Twitter. Not only is it my main way of keeping in touch with all of my pocket friends, I’m also following a bunch of gaming related topics, bloggers, and content creators. When you consider that most of my friends are nerds, well, it means an awful lot of gaming-related stuff shows up on my feed pretty regularly.
The other day, the thing making the rounds was a checklist style image with a bunch of game franchises listed along under the question of “What is your variety gamer score?”. Normally, I adore these kinds of lists, but as I looked over this one, I felt a little overlooked as someone who has spent her entire life with the PC being my primary gaming platform. My score was a rather low 24, but I felt like for me, as a PC gamer, there were a lot of pretty serious omissions on the original list.
The original Variety Gamer Score template that was on my Twitter timeline recently.
So I did what anyone with strong opinions and way too much time on their hands would do – I made my own list of 100 video game franchises that – to me – felt less console-centric. Which means now, it’s probably PC-centric, but hey, at least now there’s one for both types of gamers. Obviously, there’s some overlap, but I definitely feel like I replaced some smaller franchises with some ones that a lot of people will be a bit more familiar with. Or maybe it’s just me, and that’d be ok too.
My version of the Variety Gamer Score checklist.
Does either of these lists speak to you more than the other? Leave me a comment or tag me on Twitter (@OhaiKrikket) with your Variety Gamer Score (and let me know which version you’re using)!
I reserved my mid-grade Steam Deck shortly after reservations opened back on July 16 of 2021, and tried not to think about it too often since then. I knew it was going to be a long time before I had one in my hands. However, since we’re Steam is now sending purchase notifications to folks who have Q2 reservations, it’s on my mind more and more. I’m pretty consistent about checking my email, so it seems unlikely I’ll miss my purchase window, but every now and then I feel the need to pop back onto the Steam Deck page every now and then to make sure it’s still (at least potentially) my turn.
I’m not sure if it’s new or if it’s been there awhile, but I’ve just noticed that there’s a button you can click to take you to a page that shows the Steam Deck compatibility of the games already in your library. Now, my library is vast, and I have no delusions that every game I own will work well on a portable device. But I couldn’t resist taking a peek to get an idea of which games I can expect to play on the Steam Deck when mine finally arrives.
This is just a small portion of the games that I own that have already been verified as being fully Steam Deck compatible. For me, the major appeal of a handheld console that works off of my Steam library is that I might actually get around to some of the smaller story-focused titles I tend to not gravitate towards while sitting at my desk. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Fran Bow, Heaven’s Vault, Kentucky Route Zero, and Town of Light all fall into that category; I think I will enjoy them, and I feel like they’ll do just fine on a smaller screen. Alternately, I’d like to be able to relax with some more chill experiences that require somewhat of a lighter focus. For that group, I’m looking at Abzu, Graveyard Keeper, and Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles. The final type of game that I think will translate very well to handheld play are turn-based games that are focused on small battles, like Nexomon and Slay the Spire.
Most of these titles have been in my library for quite awhile, and I’m hoping that a change of venue is exactly what I need to actually dive into them. I swear, when I bought them, I wanted to play them!
There were a couple of things I found quite surprising when I took a look at the compatibility check for my personal library. First was how many beefy titles have been verified. I don’t see myself playing games like Mad Max, Hitman, Dying Light, or The Witcher 3 on my Deck, but I could if I wanted to – provided I had the storage space.
The second was just how many games have yet to be tested. While I realize I’m probably an outlier by the sheer size of my library, over 80% of the games I own are still big question marks when it comes to this new hardware. I don’t expect I’m tech-savvy enough to do a lot of customizing, tweaking, or sideloading alternative software to make things work, so I’m unlikely to use my Steam Deck for any games that aren’t at least considered “playable” by Steam. But with so many titles yet to be checked, I expect I’ll probably be finding out through trial and error long before there’s an official designation on a lot of them.
If you’re reading this on the day it posts, you still have a (very little) bit of time to grab a copy of the Itch.io Bundle for Ukraine for yourself!However, if you’ve missed it, you may still want to consider checking out some of the great indie games that were donated – even if it’s too late to support the cause by buying the bundle, it’s never too late to support the developers that helped raise over 5 million dollars for humanitarian aid.
I realize I just hit you with a long rant about differences in taste, and the idea that not everything is for everyone. Obviously, I know that my choices aren’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, however, I wanted to shed a little bit of a spot light on some of the games I’m most looking forward too out of this overwhelmingly large collection.
Links throughout this post will all lead back to the Itch.io pages for the games in question. Many of them are also available on Steam, however.
Safari Zone is a creature collection game with roguelite elements that had somehow completely flown underneath my radar until I spotted it in this bundle. I may have missed out on the Pokemon-craze growing up, but I got pretty intensely into pet battling in World of Warcraft, and the Siralim series of games, so I’m always looking for a quirky new take on the genre.
Lucifer Within Us puts the player in the shoes of a “digital exorcist”, requiring mostly text based detective work to find and deal with demonic possessions. I really enjoyed the demo when I played it, but held off on purchasing the game due to concerns about length.
Nauticrawl is an atmospheric roguelite puzzle game where your survival depends on your ability to figure out how to pilot a stolen vehicle and escape from your impending doom. The way the game is described, it brought to mind The Outer Wilds, as you should expect to fail over and over in order to gather the information you need to succeed.
As someone who loves both scheduling and Alice in Wonderland, I find the concept of Wonderland Nights fascinating. It’s a narrative adventure game that tasks you with figuring out the agenda for the annual Wonderland Summit. You’ll need to learn about all the major players and set things up in such a way to keep interpersonal quarrels from interfering in the future of Wonderland.
Although this isn’t the first charity mega-bundle to include Baba is You, it’s a game I’ve been cautiously interested in for quite awhile. If you’re the type of person who likes to bend the rules, you might enjoy this rules manipulation puzzler – just be aware, the challenge level in this one has been dialed up to eleven.
In the realm of video game mash ups I didn’t know I wanted, Rogue Slide combines the puzzling mechanics of 2048 and Threes! with classic dungeon crawler gameplay. Just released in February, the game features multiple unlockable characters and a daily dungeon mode.
I’ve also put together a list of a dozen games I’ve previously played that are included in this bundle, and you can see those here, as well as a more robust list of games of interest from this bundle.
Are there any games you’re particularly excited to see in this bundle? Tell me about them in the comments!
The original Adam Ellis webcomic that spawned a thousand memes.
As much as I like to talk about games, and sometimes even myself in relation to the games that I play, I generally try to avoid Gaming Discourse. Gaming discourse is full of a whole bunch of anonymous folks on the internet who want to tell me that my opinion isn’t valid because I’m (a) female, (b) old – well, middle-aged at least, and (c) Not A Real Gamer for some reason or another (see points a and b). Heck, the last time I commented about someone else’s gaming opinion, I wasn’t even trying to start an argument, and I got jumped on and told how incredibly, terribly wrong I was. Really, it hardly seems worth it most days.
I actually starting writing this post shortly after that, but I let it linger in drafts because I wondering if perhaps it was too confrontational. I don’t like picking fights, I don’t even really care much for a spirited debate anymore. People – especially people on the internet – seem to want to die on the tiniest of anthills these days, and I can only assume being right – even if it’s just in their own mind – gives them some sort of satisfaction in an increasingly unsatisfying world.
… but we all do something in the name of escapism.
Which is kind of a perfect time to loop back to talking about gaming, because I would guess that escapism is precisely what most people get out of video games. Most folks who played games as a child, and are still gaming in their forties or fifties, and maybe a whole lot folks younger than that, probably remember a time when your gaming choices were limited to a handful of titles, and maybe you liked them a lot. Maybe you didn’t like them much at all, but you played them anyway because they were what was available to you at the time.
But if you’re playing video games right now, in 2022, even if you’re on a budget, that’s really just not the case anymore. Each game on Steam has a unique number in its URL, and those numbers are currently seven digits long for new games being released. That’s over a million games right there! Obviously, games have disappeared from the platform over the years, but once you start adding in other PC platforms, console games, and mobile games, I feel pretty safe in saying that there are – quite literally – millions of games you could be playing right now instead of reading this post.
I also think it’d be fair to say that your average person probably won’t play a million games in their lifetime, never mind every single video game ever made. It’s not a rational prospect. Time, energy, and attention are all finite resources. So maybe, you think, maybe it wouldn’t be awful if there were a whole lot less choice out there.
But here’s the thing – there are almost 8 billion people on this planet. Now, I’m not trying to say that every single one of them plays video games regularly. I won’t even try to say every single one has at least tried (or will try) a video game at some point in time. But there’s a lot of people out there, and a lot of that lot might play something every now and then, and guess what? A lot of them are going to like some things, and hate other things, and the things they like and hate won’t be the 100% the same as everyone else’s preferences.
I feel like I’m getting reductive now, but the increased availability of technology at a reasonable price point means more people have access to video games. More types of games are being made, catering to niche markets and are attracting new people to the hobby. While I’m sure there are some people who obsessively decorate their island in Animal Crossing one day, and wreck noobs in Call of Duty (is that still even a thing?) the next, you’re likely to find more people who play one or the other, but not both.
It was the release of Elden Ring – a game I will likely never play – that brought me back around to this topic. My interests don’t align with the vision of FromSoftware Inc, but I would argue that they have every right to make an extremely challenging game without difficulty options, as well as that I have every right to not buy or play that game. I’ve decided it’s Not For Me. That’s not a value judgement in any way; it’s just a statement of fact.
When I say something is Not For Me, I mean precisely that. When for one reason or another, a game doesn’t work for me, I move on. There’s someone, or a hundred someones, or a million someones who would say that same game is everything they want it to be. I’m happy for those people, but it isn’t going to change who I am, or what I do (or don’t) enjoy.
It took me quite awhile to get to the point where I understood that there’s a big difference between something being bad and something not being to my taste. It took even longer for me to realize that absolutely no one cares why I don’t like the thing they love. This blog is my playground, and I still try to be conscientious of noting the difference between something that’s technically flawed and something I just didn’t personally enjoy.
And this is why – at least I think it’s why – I keep defending games that are niche, unpopular, or just poorly marketed. I may not like them all. I may not even like most of them. But the vast majority of them aren’t bad games. If all the truly bad games disappeared tomorrow – the games that don’t work right for anyone, or that absolutely no one has ever enjoyed – I don’t think the overall number of available video games would decrease significantly.
Whether or not you personally like a thing has no bearing on whether or not that thing should be allowed to exist. It has no bearing on whether that thing should be available. And it has no bearing on whether or not the creator should have spent their time and energy making the product they wanted to make. It’s just not up to you.
From Steam’s policy on what is allowed to be sold on their platform.Do I love this policy? No. Will I absolutely defend their right to have this policy? Yes, indeed I will.
Here’s another story for you: someone I played World of Warcraft with for many years has stopped playing that and moved over to Final Fantasy XIV as his main game. He still hangs out in our guild Discord, as do many other friends who have stopped playing for one reason or another. Heck, we even have dedicated channels for other MMOs because we all do a dabble from time to time.
Why is this relevant? Because despite me saying over and over that FFXIV is Not For Me, he continues to try to persuade me by telling me how great it is, and I politely (but with increasing frustration) remind him that I’ve tried it more than once, and it just doesn’t work for me. It’s not that I think everyone I know who loves the game is wrong, or lying, or lacks taste. I’m glad it exists, and I’m glad it’s successful and people are enjoying it. That doesn’t mean I want to play it myself.
In fact, I love when people tell me about games they’ve enjoyed. I love it even more when they take my specific tastes into account when making recommendations. Heck, I even love when people are excited about things that I have less than zero interest in. But sometimes, pushing the point over and over feels more like being told that I’m wrong or stupid, and that I don’t love so much.
So, um, believe people when they tell you what they like or don’t like, ok? I promise you, they know better than you do.
I’m not sure why this disconnect exists for so many people who are invested in this hobby. Why there are so many people who feel they have the sole right to be the arbiter of what is good and what should or should not be available to other people? For the most part, people who are screaming about the things they don’t personally like aren’t even trying to come at it from a place of valid criticism, but rather, a need to feel their choice of leisure activity is better, and therefore superior, to someone else’s choice so they can feel good about themselves at someone else’s expense. It could be about difficulty, or genre, development budget, or platform, but it happens over and over and over again.
It’s okay not to like something that’s popular.
It’s okay to love something that other people hate.
It’s okay to look at something and know it’s Not For You.
It’s been a long time since there was a game I was enjoying as much as Lost Ark that made itself so very very hard to play. The leveling process is probably a bit too simple, where everything is solo-friendly and you can just mount up and ride through anything you don’t want to deal with. It’s easy to just roll through fifty levels ignoring just about every system the game tries to oh-so-slowly introduce you to, which is just as well, because I feel like there’s very little past the basics that the game actually bothers to explain instead of just opening up and expecting you to figure out.
Personally, I was just as happy to mostly bumble through things. I looked up skill guides, sure, but glossed over the parts about engravings and stat priorities and gear sets. I just equipped things with little arrows on them, indicating a higher item level. I did a bunch of guide quests that were supposed to explain the new systems (but really didn’t) and clicked through the option that says “I understand” in order to collect my reward. So, yes, I realize a not insignificant portion of this is my own fault, but now that I need to get actual end-game-ish gear to progress to the next questing area, I am finding myself frustrated more often than not.
I don’t know that I’ve ever played another game that feels so open, but is actually so very interconnected. Most nights, I log on intending to do one thing, and finding several other things that need to be completed before I can finish my intended task. I’ve finished up questing in Shushire, and to go to the next story area, I need to get my gear up to 460 item level. Since this was a 200+ item level jump, I knew it was time to start poking around in content I’d been avoiding, either because it was scary, or because I didn’t understand it.
Checking out a few of the island quests seemed to me to be the least scary. I picked one – pretty much at random – and followed the convoluted quest chain to it’s conclusion. But instead of gear, or something else I needed to get stronger, what I ended up with was an item that I could bring to one very specific trader (yep, I had to look it up outside the game) to exchange for a mount. Not exactly what I was expecting.
Since then, I’ve managed to dip my toes into Chaos Dungeons, which are less actual dungeons than something akin to Greater Rifts in Diablo 3. It’s basically a whole bunch of running around, gathering up tons of monsters and then blowing them all up with an ability or two. I can do my two-per-day limit in about 20 minutes or so, and – as it turns out – they’re not scary, or even really difficult. This has gotten me all the gear for my base T1 set, and I’ve (mostly) figured out honing and gear transfer, and while I realize I’m probably supposed to be more concerned with getting the right secondary stats, I’ve been mostly just using the pieces that seem to have a higher quality indicator.
… I know, I’m clearly still not getting it.
I’ve done a couple of Chaos Gates (which are absolutely not the same thing as Chaos Dungeons, obviously), which I think you can do once per day. The biggest benefit I’ve seen from these seems to be that there’s a gold auction at the end, and everyone who participated in the event gets a cut of the gold spent in the auction. I have no idea if I’m performing well, or even passably, in this content, because it’s so damn hectic, and I don’t really foresee a time when I’m going to have enough gold in my own wallet to even think about bidding myself.
Although I appreciate the construction that pretty much never leaves you without something you can be working towards, even if you play far more every day than I do, I’m almost always overwhelmed. Everything feels so very incremental, which hey, that’s not a problem, but doing tiny bits of work on 50 systems just doesn’t feel as satisfying as knocking out a pretty solid chuck on any single one.
There are also too many types of currency in my opinion, although I do prefer that to a whole bunch of currency-like items clogging up my inventory. I still don’t even understand what some of them are for, and some I have only figured out when I was unable to progress something that I thought was totally unrelated. I was stuck for a few days attempting to level up my stronghold since I couldn’t figure out where to obtain pirate coins in any significant number. Then, I stumbled upon a guide quest that awarded several thousand, so I should be set to keep doing research and sending out dispatches, at least for a bit.
Despite all of this, I still find myself wanting to log in every day, and each day, I make an effort to try out something new. Nothing so radical as, say, actually playing with other people in content where coordination matters, mind you, but … just a little something different. I don’t see myself in a raid, or even in a guild, anytime soon, and I’ll probably run into a brick wall because of it at some point. There are still ostensibly important systems I’m completely ignoring because I cannot figure out how to make them work. My storage is full of chests that I haven’t opened because I don’t know what I’m supposed to choose from the items inside.
I may not know where I’m going still, but I intend to keep muddling along until I figure it our or I hit a dead end.
Yet again, indie developers have come together in force on Itch.io to put together one hell of a bundle for charity. Put together by the folks at Necrosoft Games, the developers of Gunhouseand Oh, Deer (which was highlighted as a Humble Original back in their Feb 2017 Monthly), there are just under 1000 individual items in this bundle from over 700 different developers, some of which just made their game available on Itch.io to be a part of this bundle.
While I have no doubt this collection is absolutely full of hidden gems, there’s also quite a few titles that you probably have heard of. Just at a glance, I spotted Celeste, Baba is You, SUPERHOT, Crosscode, and Wandersong. While I’m sure there will be quite a bit of overlap with the megabundles from the last two years, I’ve already seen enough that’s new to me to make it worth the $10 buy in.
Proceeds from the bundle will be split equally between International Medical Corps and Voices of Children, which is a Ukrainian based organization dedicated to helping children with PTSD.
Magi did a great post recently about some indie games that are expected to release sometime this year that he’s most looking forward to, and it made me realize that even though about half of my Steam wishlist is pre-release games, I hardly ever talk about things that aren’t out yet. So, since I think imitation is still the sincerest form of flattery, I decided to highlight a few titles I’m waiting oh-so-impatiently for.
When the game is a farming sim / community builder in space, it’s not going to be a hard sell for me. In fact, I’ve been looking around for the next great farming sim to sink a few hundred hours into, and have even backed a few on Kickstarter. Obviously, being in outer space is going to set One Lonely Outpost apart a little bit, but I also really like the idea that you’re not entering into an already existing community, but building one from scratch. You also have the choice to focus on traditional style farming, or go high tech with gene-splicing and synthetic animals. Did I mention that it’s being designed to be played in co-op?
There haven’t been too many developer updates on Steam, but their Twitter feed is still active, and there is a Discord for the game. Last I heard, they’re expecting beta access for backers near the end of the first quarter, with an early access release likely sometime this summer.
This is one I’ve already committed to, via backing it on Kickstarter. Fata Deum feels like it’s heavily influenced by Black & White, with a lot of indirect manipulation and freedom to be a benevolent god or a wrathful one. There will also be differences in gameplay relative to the day / night cycle, which is an interesting twist that I’m hoping works well.
I feel like I’ve been playing video games for an eternity, and there have been so few really good god-style games, so I’m pinning a lot of hope on this one.
Sometimes, you just want to be an agent of chaos. Sometimes, you just want to be a cat and do cat things. Grand Theft Gato: Vice Kitty is shaping up to be the kind of game that lets you do a little of both. Sure, it’s an absolutely ridiculous parody game, but I can see myself losing hours upon hours to it.
An absolutely adorable concept, with an ecological-minded twist. World Turtles is a city builder from a solo dev that looks like it’ll be an absolute delight to play. Everything I’ve seen so far leads me to believe that this won’t be a combat focused game, rather a game where you provide for the people and care for the environment. This one is probably going to have an extended early access period, but I plan on buying in early and playing along as it develops.
A little bit of creature collecting, a little bit of match-3 puzzling, and a really interesting retro board game aesthetic catapulted Beasties: Monster Training Puzzle RPG near the top of my wish list. The beta is already available on itch.io for less than $5 and buying in early will get you a Steam key when it comes out there later on this year. I really enjoyed the demo when I played it, and am looking forward to seeing the game evolve through beta and early access.
This is the first of my two games that I think we probably won’t actually see in 2022, but wouldn’t it be wonderful? I don’t know that there’s any other way to describe Paralives than to say it’s an indie version of The Sims. Now, I’ve dropped a lot of hours into multiple incarnations of The Sims over the years, and having finally jumped off that runaway train, I cannot wait to see what a smaller company can do with a modern day life simulation. It’s obviously a huge undertaking for a small company, and it may still be years away, but until it does release, it’ll probably be on my most anticipated list every year.
Again, I don’t actually expect to be able to play Palia in 2022, as it’s only currently in pre-alpha, and I cannot even imagine everything that goes into making a fully functional MMO. That said, I have signed up to be an early tester, so while I don’t expect we’ll see anything approaching a full release, I may still get a peek at it before the year is out.
There has been a hole in my gaming life for a chill, cooperative MMO since Glitch went dark, and I have yet to see any part of Palia that doesn’t feel specifically tailored to my aesthetic. Sure, MMOs as a whole might be declining, but cozy games seem to still be trending upward, so I’m hoping that Singularity Six can weave all the threads into a beautiful gaming tapestry.
I don’t know if it’s just my tiny corner of the Twitter-verse, but man, my feed has been weird lately. I realize that society as a whole has become more than a little extra bonus loopy as of late, and sure, social media is going to reflect that, but the sheer bitterness towards whatever things other people are enjoying has seemed – at least to me – to have ramped up a whole bunch since the start of 2022.
Through the magic of likes & quote re-tweets, I saw a tweet today from Jeff Vogel, founder of Spiderweb Software, that got me started thinking about a potential new project. He posits that the current trend of approximately 10,000 new indie games a year is too much, and throws out a suggestion to try to play even 1% of those games.
Note: In the threadthat follows the original post, Mr. Vogel almost immediately corrected his math error. Ten thousand games a year is closer to 30 games a day than 300. He does not, however, back down from his original point that it’s too much.
I’m still not sure if the original point was that these indie game developers shouldn’t waste time creating, or that they should just let their passion projects fester on their hard drives. I’m a firm believer that if you want to create something, you should absolutely be creating something. Draw poorly. Write meanderingly. Make a wonky game or twelve. Give your soul the food it needs to survive this world, and if you can find someone who wants to pay you for the things you make? Take their money with a smile.
One percent is a mere 100 games, and my first thought was “That is absolutely completely doable.” Now, mind, I’m not saying it’s feasible for everyone; I have the luxury of significantly more free time than most people, a fairly broad interest in different genres, and a blog that would synergize nicely with just such a project. Several years ago now, I did a full calendar year of blogging about a different game every single day. That project was far less restrictive than this would be – I didn’t restrict myself only to new games, or even just games on Steam. In fact, I didn’t even restrict myself to PC games. If it was any kind of video game, and I played it, I could write about it.
It was just the tiniest seed of an idea, and I probably would have forgotten all about it in a day or two, but then, Mr. Vogel decided to double down.
See, I am going to enthusiastically defend the glut of indie games until the end of time. I do play them. In fact, I would wager I play far more indie titles in any given year than I do big budget games. Now obviously, this isn’t true of most people, and it’s probably not even true of most gamers. But I am glad these game exist, and that they are so readily available, and I know I am not alone. I’d be far more likely to “surrender to despair” if my only gaming choices were big budget titles that played exactly like the 27 big budget titles that came before. I love quirky passion projects, solo developers, bonkers concepts, and stories that break my heart. I want even more indie games for more types of gamers.
I’m so tired of the idea that there’s only one correct way to enjoy this hobby. I’m tired of gatekeeping. I’m just tired.
No, I feel like the biggest impediment to taking on this sort of project would be financial. Assuming an average price of $20 per indie game, this project would cost me roughly $2000 over the course of the year if I was purchasing everything I played. Obviously, I could bring that cost down with things like GamePass, bundles, and requesting review copies, but it would likely still be a hefty price tag.
At any rate, as much as I’d like to jump right on in – I have some difficulty resisting this kind of challenge, and the double-down definitely elevated the original suggestion into a challenge – I would most definitely need to give it more thought and get the parameters defined. Would demos of newly released indie titles be adequate? Would I need to do it for a calendar year, or is it something I could look at on a rolling basis (i.e. as long as the game was released less than one year from the day of posting, I’d be covered)? Where do Early Access titles fit in – would it be only the first year from EA release, or would only full-release games be applicable?
I do currently have 48 yet-to-release indie titles on my Steam wish list (with Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 being the only non-indie outlier), as well as another 48 that have released since February 2021. That doesn’t even take into account available indie titles on GamePass or that are already in my Steam library.
… I kind of feel like I have to do this now. I just need to figure out the shape of the thing.
It’s been a slow few days around here, at least as far as my engagement with nerd stuff is concerned. After three days in a row where there were Many Things That Needed to be Done, Sunday was spent in full on recovery mode, and today was mostly about playing catch up. This pattern actually has a lot to do with why I normally have so much time to spend on hobbies – my limiting factor is almost always my energy, not my time.
Now, it’s Monday evening, and perhaps there’s enough time to start up something new, but since I’m also very aware that I have a few small commitments over the next few days, and that I should be able to dive in Psychonauts 2 sometime tomorrow, I don’t really want to start something new.
These weird “gaming gaps” aren’t really that uncommon for me. I’ve finished – whatever that means for me – the last thing I was playing, and I don’t really have the energy or mental bandwidth to jump into something new. However, during a Blaugust where I’ve already missed a couple of days, they’re awfully inconvenient.
For today, I have another small thought experiment. Feel free to steal the questions / images for your own blog post, or just to chat about things in the comments.
For the purposes of this thought experiment, I’m going to say that when considering the questions I’m adding an unspoken “for one year” because man, forever is a long time. I’m also going to look at each question individually rather than assuming I’d have to do all of these concurrently. If you choose to answer, obviously, you can set your own parameters.
Would you rather play games only on console? OR Would you rather play games only on PC?
This one, at least for me, is a no brainer. I do own a Switch, so it’s not like I don’t even have a console to consider at all, which was the case until about 6 months ago. However, I would still absolutely choose my PC every time. Firstly, my library is so much more robust for the PC, but there are also so many more games available.
Would you rather play only singleplayer games? OR Would you rather only play multiplayer games?
While I am guessing most gamers would struggle with this question as well, and although I would miss the few multiplayer games I dabble in, single player is the clear winner for me. I grew up playing almost exclusively single player titles, most of my preferred genres are either designed for the single player experience, or work just fine without multiplayer. There’s definitely more I would miss here than I would by giving up the console, but I could absolutely give up my multiplayer game time.
Would your rather play only games you already own? OR Would your rather play only games you would need to still acquire?
Sure, this question was more than a little bit inspired by my Low Spend 2020 plan that went completely off the rails. In spite of that, I think my choice would be to play games I already own. That covers a lot of territory, and although I am very much distracted by the new and shiny, I think it would be somewhat easier to avoid that temptation than to be locked out of all my comfort games.
Would you rather play only games that challenge you mentally? OR Would you rather play only games that challenge you physically?
Discounting for a moment how little it takes to challenge my physically, I’m still going to go with mentally. I don’t want to play Dark Souls anyway, or any game that wants to be like Dark Souls, or arcade shooters, or precision platformers. All of those things make me crazy anyway, so giving them up wouldn’t represent much of a hardship. However, I love strategy games, and puzzle games, and I think those are the types of games I’d sorely miss.
Would you rather play only long / endless games? OR Would you rather play only games that are less than 20 hours long?
This one is going to hurt either way. I’ve really been enjoying shorter games over the past year or so – there’s something very satisfying about a compact experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Even still, I think I would go with the long or endless games, because that would give me a good excuse to tackle some mammoth RPGs interspersed with some rogue-lites, some city builders and simulation games, as well as still spend time playing my preferred MMOs, which for all practical purposes, are never over until they go offline for good.
Would you rather play only games released in the last 10 years? OR Would you rather play only games released more than 10 years ago?
I know this one is my own fault because I came up with these questions, but this one is downright evil, and I spent more time thinking on this one than all the others that came before it. I absolutely love diving back into classic games, but I think I would still go with the last 10 years, just because of the absolutely blossoming of the indie game scene in that time frame. It would also (maybe) push me to play some of the newer entries in series that I keep putting off because I feel like I should play them in order and I don’t want to play the early titles.
Nerd Girl Thoughts 