Balatro and Vampire Survivors, as usual. My wife and I are trying to enjoy the Diablo IV expansion, but the new class isn't clicking for either of us yet.

Finally got into the stratosphere in Balatro recently and will continue chasing this high:

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I have been replaying Mario & Luigi: Bowser's inside Story. Not a lot of time/energy for games at the moment though.

I've been bouncing around a bunch of games because nothing is really catching me. I had today off and in the last 24 hours I've played for like 20 minutes max each: Rocket League, Just Cause 4, Card Shop Simulator, Grand Theft Auto 5 online, Mindustry, vampire survivors and I just opened up Yakuza 4 and watched the opening cutscene but honestly I can't focus on it

anxiety fucking blows

Final Fantasy XI. I think I'm hooked again on it, want to try and shoot for level cap on this private server I'm on.

Guilty gear strive: new patch is wack. Like they let so many bugs get through testing, itll be like 6 months of fixes before we can even start on balance.

Frostpunk: city builder where you try not to freeze or starve in a -80C earth. Game is alright. Its extremely snowbally depending on how strong you open in the first 3 days or so. I don't like how the game tells you youve gone too far if you save everyone but have secret police. Like this society is still a step up from modern society despite the fact that the planet is inhospitable. Also i kinda despise the faith tree, but it's just better on higher difficulties. Hospitals that can be run by children are op.

Dipping my toes back into Planetside 2 recently. The massive large scale combined arms battles are still incredible, such a shame there's nothing else like it out there. Definitely been a considerable population drop since release, but it seems like a recent server merge is bringing some people back, and the servers seem quite populated during peak times. The only downside is that there's only one continent open at a time because of the population though.

I've just started Unicorn Overlord. I know it's as all Vanillaware games are but as a studio they are permanently committed to the bit. It's a fun SRPG and the fantasy setting is really enjoyable.

Obviously don't play if you don't like horny anime art (guys and gals btw, they are equal opportunity at least). But it's good and the studio has amazing sprite art.

Webfishing

I gave it a try because I've been considering finding the right avenue for doing online peer support in a live setting. VR Chat seems pretty resource intensive and so it sets the bar higher than I'd like. Also idk if they have private servers or not.

So I stumbled across Webfishing recently and gave it a shot. It's completely outside of my genre. The game is like a contained Animal Crossing with a co-op feature. (This is my only reference point for the genre, having played Animal Crossing for like an hour at some point in my life.)

I had to learn how to play the game from scratch. But it's a charming little game based around fishing with some really fun aspects that aren't exactly minigames but side aspects to the core gameplay. It's hilariously woke too:

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It was really interesting observing how quickly I get impatient and frustrated with myself when I'm learning something new and I don't immediately do well at it. If the game was less charming I probably wouldn't have stuck it out.

Some of the servers seem empty but I'm guessing it's because people are in other spots that I didn't check or know how to access but the people there seem generally to be pretty lovely too. I was just about done trying to learn in the game in my first session playing it and I had just bought a guitar for my character when someone kindly pounced on me while I was briefly wielding the guitar and they patiently dragged my ass through a one-on-one tutorial on how to play the guitar in-game. I went with it because those opportunities don't always come up. By the end of it, trying to learn the game, battling with server or internet problems, taking instruction on the in-game guitar, and then also trying to actually learn the basics of music and guitar tablature (because I don't have the foundations for it) where the G string (no wrong one, it's the other G string) becomes a D which is played by pressing the letter Q in the game gave my dyslexic ass a headache. I'm really not designed for top-down learning.

But that's all to say that if the game was annoying or it lacked charm or if other people were shitty in the servers then I would have abandoned it rather than sticking with it through my frustrations with myself over my own limitations.

And the intent I have for the game seems to be pretty ideal. The game itself only costs a few dollars. The server numbers are limited but that makes for easier moderation and it's less pressure than having a room of 20+ people all demanding my attention at once (I've been there in my professional life before). And it's nice because it doesn't feel like you're stuck in a lobby - you can potter around the game or you can fish and do other activities too. This is always so much better for drop in peer support imo. Being able to have some sort of activity that people can engage in, anything at all, means that people can engage or disengage as they see fit while not just awkwardly standing there in silence. It takes a lot of the pressure off, on both sides of the equation.

I did a small trial run of running a drop in space in a private server by making a post here on Hexbear yesterday and it went well. The feedback was 100% positive from it. I'm looking forward to holding another session soon and I'll try offering it around more broadly and giving people more of a heads-up for when I'm holding sessions in future.

Popful mail on sega cd. Its very cute

Been working through Zone of the Enders! I never personally owned it back in the day, but played it a lot (along with the MGS2 demo) at friends' houses way back when. It's been fun to finally experience the story from start to finish for once (almost like finally watching every episode of DBZ or Gundam Wing, instead of whatever episodes are on TV) lol

Still UFO 50

Played some pirated Space Marine 2, I hate that there are 8 kinds of boltgun, all of which are useless. Tyranids are a boring enemy that completely lack any personality. The selection of what is and isn't a major boss is very strange. Zoanthropes? Normal enemy. Neurothropes, aka a very slightly better Zoanthrope? Boss with a giant health bar. The health and armor systems also just feel worse than SM1; I'm basically always at like 10% HP and have to hide around corners to recharge my armor because you can't easily get executions on swarms of gaunts.

I started a cookie clicker run, then I made a quick and dirty auto clicker out of a pi pico board I had lying around.

Killer7. Been meaning to get around to this one for the better part of seventeen years and boy howdy I wish I'd done it sooner. This one was a pretty clear inspiration for the Hotline Miami games, and i'm a big fan of those.

Been playing Dragon Age Veilguard basically nonstop since it released. I'm very pleasantly surprised that it's as good as it is after the development hell that it had, definitely missing some of what made the older games special in terms of story and characters but actually playing it has been a blast.