This week I put another 20 or so hours into Vintage Story. Recently got back from a trip to Ireland and am now recreating the ruins and castles I saw in-game
Approximately Up
Once I start, it’s really hard to put down. My only gripe is that you never have enough signal cable. It limits all the cool stuff you could build.
I want my bottle, I don’t want my bottle.
I want my bottle, I don’t want my bottle.
Elite dangerous. It is so vast and there’s so much going on that it doesn’t feel like a game, it’s a second reality. I’ve been playing for months and I still have a bunch of brand new things to try out and master, which are going to be super fun.
I’ve got a big expedition coming up soon too, if I play enough I’ll see another 0.01% of the wonders the galaxy has to offer.
It fulfils my childhood dreams of exploring space, and there’s just so much it’s hard to stop
Life
The Banner Saga series. I have had the first one in my library for perhaps a decade, tried to start it a few times and never got into it.
Until a week ago, that is, when I got past the slow start and oh my does it pick up from there! Currently nearing end of the second one and I’ve been devouring these games, outright unhealthily to be honest, but I’m going to let it take me, I think the third one ends the saga, so this has a natural end and I’ll let myself go wild until that.
It’s pretty amazing how much one can do with so little, kind of. When the story is good and writing too, and the art style works, it doesn’t need all that much in terms of technical fidelity to be amazing.
Edit: If anyone has suggestions for other games like this, I’d be more than happy to hear them. I hear king of dragonpass and its lineage is almost a perfect fit, and I remember trying one of the newer ones a decade or so ago and having a blast but never finished. Are there others?
The Last Caretaker
You play as the last functioning robot in a post-human flooded Earth with the goal to restart humanity by growing and sending them into orbit with a rocket.
You explore the entire world on a small barge going between massive abandoned platforms with the last remaining infrastructure that you need to utilize the send the rockets to orbit. You spend a lot of time recycling the leftover scrap into better equipment to protect and power you and your ship.
It subverts a lot of my least favorite tropes of factory and survival games and just has a great sense of discovery. My favorite game design choice is that almost all of your enemy interaction is offensive instead of defensive so you have the opportunity to prepare before going into a big fight and can easily retreat.
It admittedly has a long way to go in terms of performance and stability. One thing that was counterintuitive is that turning on all the raytracing options significantly improved performance for me. But the gameplay loop is like nothing else out there. There is also no multiplayer yet, although the developer has said it’s not off the table in the long run. They’ve also openly stated that there will never be paid DLC. All future content is included with the purchase of the game.
It has a demo and is definitely worth checking out.
I forgot this one. When released, it had some serious performance problems that got worse and worse as you explored the ocean. Dropped it and totally forgot about it.
Need to revisit, because it was good, long as it worked.
