Many Welps

Here’s a Blaugust tip: If you have a very long post, split it up and slap a Part 1 and Part 2 in the title. Now you have two posts!

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post where I continue to expand on the games I’ve played this year.

May

Secrets of Grindea

This is the game that was on my Steam wishlist the longest. After years, it finally released in Febuary of this year and I immediately bought it. At it’s core, it’s action JRPG but it has a gimmick where you can “grind” monsters to drop cards which are permanent passive buffs for your character. Each monster has their own card to drop and I found it very satisfying to collect as many as I could. I was close to the end when I stopped playing, I may have to go back at some point to finish it up.

Disney Dreamlight Valley

My wife bought this game for the Switch on a sale. She loved Animal Crossing but was bored after a while without any direction. Disney Dreamligt Valley fixes that with a never ending stream of quests and unlocks. I started playing because she was playing (she doesn’t play many games) and it was fun to compare where we were at or who we had just unlocked. The Switch version of the game, however, doesn’t run very well. It runs worse the more characters and object you add to the valley and sometimes just crashes the entire game. I fell off playing because of the technical issues but bought the game on Steam when it was on sale. It’s probably the game I’ve played the most consistently this year.

Garden Paws

While I couldn’t deal with the issues of DDLV on the switch I was looking for other “cozy” games to play that had the same vibe. Garden Paws was in my library and recommended across the board as a similar game. It’s got this off kilter charm and also has a never ending series of quests. I found it a great game to turn the sound off and listen to podcasts while I played. It definitely added to the weirdness of the game, in a good way, to listen to the No Sleep Podcast while playing

Littlewood

This is another “cozy” game that I found with a nice grind to it. The premise is you’ve just saved the world from a great evil and now you’re settling down to help rebuild a town. There’s no combat, but there are a set of skills that you can level up to help out the town. This was a great game to play on the Steam Deck in short chuncks or long play sessions.

June

Trove

Trove remains my most played game of all time. It’s not that it’s a fantastic game, it has many faults, but it perfectly tailors to that mindless grind part of my brain. In March, there was a gear update that introduced a new tier of gear and made the old top tier gear easier to get. I spent the month of June getting the Gearcrafting skill maxed, getting Crystal 4 gear sets compete, and hunting for Crystal 5 gear. There was another update in June wich even added a new difficultly tier. I still can’t believe this game, which is 10 years old at this point, is still getting updates.

Battlefield 2024

The squad picked this up cheap on sale for $7. I know this game had issues at launch but was extremely playable for us now that it’s late in it’s life cycle. I played 20 hours and I know the rest of the squad spent much more time with it.

Crusader Kings III

I cannot remember what compelled me to play this game. There was something that made me go search for it in my library. It might have been an idea that I would like to play a complex game or something. I played through the tutorial and liked it enough to buy a bunch of DLC that was on sale. Then I started up a game and played it for quite some time. I remember thinking, this would be a great game to write a bunch of posts about. Then I just never went back to it. Might be a good one to return to.

Dark and Darker

I played this one co-op with Blades for 3 hours. That’s all I can really tell you about it. I have never had such “meh” feelings about a game. I didn’t like it enough to play it again and I didn’t hate it enough to never want to play it again. It’s still installed on my machine more out of laziness than a desire to return.

July

Lethal Company

While not exclusively played in July, per se, it was the most played game in July. Our group has been playing this off and on since release. I swear, this game seems to has comedic timing coded in to it. It’s never not a good time, and with mods, there’s always something new. We’ve been enjoying the TooManyEmotes mod immensely. The mod adds 200 emotes, many of which add music. You get separate funds to buy emotes in a run from the computer. There’s always a new one we haven’t seen every run. We’ve probably spent more time trying out different emotes and laughing uncontrollably than actually playing the game.