Author: Kluwes

Next Fest: Umigari – The Fish Might be People, The People Might Be Fish

KluwesLeave a comment

I downloaded a few demos for this quarter’s Next Fest but played very few. Rather than trawling through categories to find interesting demos, I let Steam pick for me via the “Recommended for You” section. Having recently playing the likes of Hell is Us, Yuppie Psycho, along with a smattering of Devour and Outlast Trials, it is understandable that Steam suggested mostly horror titles.

One was a typing battle royale. Like playing Russian Roulette with Mavis Beacon. Sadly, I didn’t find it all that fun. Umigari caught my eye because there’s a big ole’ unsettling fish on the thumbnail. Horror and fishing? Sign me up!

Hmm what’s that? Have I heard of Dredge?

Yes! It’s even in my library, I really should play it some day…..Anyways, back to Umigari.

I started the demo awakens on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. The only other inhabitant? A fish merchant who tells me to go catch some puffer fish so I can buy upgrades from him. Seems like he’s the enterprising type then.

Armed with a harpoon, off I went to spear some fish dutifully placing them in my ship so I could sell them to the Fish Merchant. Who, by the way, looks vaguely like a fish himself. I think it’s the eyes, those bulging, spaced out eyes.

I gathered enough fish to upgrade the reel speed of my harpoon and increased the boat’s speed. The rest of the money I used to gas up the boat and set off for a nearby island.

This too was a small island. It’s only inhabitant a school girl. She asked for a ride back to the island I just came from and got in the boat.

On the way, I catch some tuna, and right before we reach the island, the girl disappears! Maybe she didn’t like all the dead fish touching her feet. At least she left a map with a treasure chest and what looks like another gas station location.

The tuna sold for more than the pufferfish so I was able to upgrade my boats fuel capacity. I ventured off towards the treasure chest on the map which lead me to a sunken wind farm. I used my harpoon to hit the targets on the windmill blades to get them spinning. One of them dropped the treasure, a sonar system for the boat.

Much easier to catch those fish now that they can’t hide.

I purchased the final upgrades for the boat and harpoon. I’m assuming it’s the final ones for the demo.

I set off towards the next gas station. I didn’t take the most direct route which resulted in my boat running out of fuel and sending me back to the original island mere feet away from my destination.

Once againI set out, this time on a straight course. Along the way I spotted a massive fish the shape and size of a freight train breaching the surface. It didn’t seem to take notice of the small vessel right next to it. Lucky me.

As I once again approached my destination, I saw the burning husk of my previous vessel. What does this mean? Am I doomed to return to the Fish Merchant until I unravel the mysteries of this ocean? Wandering the oceans and facing it’s horrors until the end of time? I do not have time to ponder these questions. The boat needs gas, the Fish Merchant needs fish.

My fish were still aboard unharmed. I picked those up and sold them to the fish seller (the same one from before!) on the new island.

Across the way was a high school, half submerged. There were new fish to catch here. They looked strange from my boat, bigger, and wrapped in something. They were also very fast. I managed to land one and as pulled it out of the ocean, it was indeed wrapped in something, a jacket by the looks of it.

I ventured off the boat into the high school and that’s where I found even more of these clothed fish. I…I…I think these fish may have been people at one point. Now I’m harpooning them to sell for boat upgrades. Such is life in Umigari.

There wasn’t an option to save that I could find and I had to step away from the demo. It didn’t kick me out and I think there was at least a little more there to do. I didn’t feel like repeating the hour I’d already done and an hour is plenty of time with a demo for me.

Umigari is going on the wishlist. I’m intrigued to see where this one ends up. Are the fish actually people? What’s the deal with the Fish Merchant? Can I harpoon that giant, train sized, fish with my human sized harpoon? I kinda have to know.

The Scariest Part of Yuppie Psycho is the Save System

KluwesLeave a comment

Lately, I’ve been playing through Yuppie Psycho. A pixely, horror, adventure game released in 2019. It being October and all I thought I should play at least one horror game. This has been on my radar since the No Sleep Podcast was hawking it, so probably 6 years now. Having just completed Hell is Us, I was still in the mood for the puzzling/adventure style game and Yuppie Psycho fit the bill.

I’ve been enjoying it so far. It’s a little more action-stealthy than I thought it would be but there’s still puzzles and a good bit of exploration to do. I like the juxtaposition of it’s bright pixel graphics with it’s horrific scenes filled with blood and monsters. There’s a printer that crawls around on four human giant hands for crying out loud! But it’s pixel art so it’s all kind of cozy. Even so, I have been tempted to call it a day and shelve the game due to it’s save system.

See, you can’t save whenever you want and there are hardly any auto saves. You might be asking, “well what’s so bad about save points, have you never played a game with save points?”. And I would say “Of course I have! This is different.” While there are save points, photocopiers to be exact, you need to find witch paper to be able to be able to photocopy your soul to save. Spooky! And witch paper is a consumable item found in various drawers and filing cabinets throughout the building.

Consumable saves, that’s a new one for me, I saw this and the question “What happens if I run out?” immediately came to mind.

Well, I haven’t run out yet. Nor have I found myself in a situation where I wanted to save and couldn’t. I have been close and it does add a lot of tension to the game. Will I find that next piece of paper before I meet my untimely demise? There isn’t a whole lot that will straight up kill you in the building but when there is they tend to come out of nowhere and lock you in a room together.

I’m not the most up to date on my video game history but I had a feeling that this save system was nod to an older game. It just has that feel of old game design. A few quick searches later, and it turns out I was right! The original Resident Evil, which I haven’t played, uses a similar system with ink ribbons and typewriters.

This kind of item based system does make me think differently about how and when to save. I have been caught plenty of times saving right before a big piece of dialogue and then having to go through it again if I die before the next save point. So I’ve been pressing my luck sometimes to see if I can make it until the next story beat to save. Other times, I don’t want to save while my health is low so I’ll look around for healing items before coming back to save. But if I die during that, I’ll have to find all those items again.

It also dictates how I have to interact with the game. It can’t just be a quick pick up play and save. I need to have the time to complete the section before I shutdown the game. This can be frustrating, but typically, the time between saves have been at most 20 minutes. Still, losing 20 minutes because I died still feels bad.

With this type of save system, the game feels less like an open ended exploration game and more like a level based game. Except, I determine how long the levels are by when I choose to save. Fail the level and die, you have to do it all over again.

I’m torn on this system as a whole. On the one hand, it does a great job of building tension when exploring new areas. Will I be able to find the next save point? If I do, will I have enough paper to save? I’m low on paper should I really save now, or risk another area? It works for a game like this where it’s harder to build a sense of unease with visuals. On the other hand, it’s no fun to have to run through sections again, redo dialogue with multiple NPCs, or find all the items again when you die. Not being able to save when I need to close the game is also inconvenient.

It’s certainly a novel system, but I still prefer being able to save when I want not when the game says I can.

Hell Is Us

KluwesLeave a comment

I just finished up Hell is Us this week. I hadn’t heard of this game until I read this RPS article a few weeks back. Admittedly, the article doesn’t give the game much praise but I was intrigued by the prospect of a “souls-like” in a more modern setting.

Hell is Us takes place in an alternate 1993 in a country called Hadea where civil war has broken out. The Palomists and the Sabinians are engaged in a viscous war full of all sorts of horrible atrocities. Talking to the various NPCs, they don’t even know why they hate each other so much, they just always have. There are also these creatures that have appeared and seem to be linked to strong human emotions.

The story itself is a mix of government conspiracy in Hadea and story line of ancient orders and fanatic cults of Hadea’s past. So there’s still some gothic fantasy going on here. There’s also the story of the main character, Remi, looking for his parents and unraveling his own past which ties everything together. I’m loving the mix of “modern” Hadea filled with computers, office buildings, and secret labs and also unraveling the story of “historic” Hadea through the various books, artifacts, and monuments throughout the game. It’s a slow burn but it never lost my interest.

Hell is Us executes well on the “souls-like” style of exploration and storytelling through environments and objects in the world. I spent time combing each zone for secret passages, shortcuts, and new items that revealed a bit more information about Hadea. I was often more excited to find an item with something to read on it than any new piece of gear.

There are so many different things to find. There are research items which explain Hadea’s troubled history, there are miscellaneous items like diaries and newspaper clippings that give contexts to present day events. There are also items that lead to puzzles or “Good Deeds” where you have to give the correct item to the right NPC which help connect the player to the world.

Combat is not the main focus of Hell is Us. It’s there, and it can be challenging at first, but once I got the rhythm down and found a weapon I liked, it was almost trivial. Combat ends up being just one more puzzle to solve to get to where you want to go, rather than a main focus of the game. There aren’t difficult bosses, there’s no leveling or character builds, there’s hardly any combat customization save a few weapon choices and skills.

Death doesn’t punish you either. Enemies killed before you die stay dead, no health is lost, and, typically, there isn’t a long run back to where you died. There’s no “souls” to collect and sometimes dying is the better outcome because all your health is restored.

For me, this is more of a welcome relief than a deal breaker. My favorite part of Souls games has always been exploration. The combat tends to leave me frustrated, especially if I have to do the same section and kill the same enemies over and over again. The only time enemies respawn in Hadea is if you leave an area without closing the Timeloop. Something I always made sure I did so I didn’t need to repeat fights.

As a result, there are some mechanics I engaged very little with during my playthrough. You’re able to swap between two weapons but I never found the need to. If there are resistances and weaknesses of the enemies based on weapon type, I didn’t notice. I powered through everything with my Rage Pole-arm. I also had a Grief Pole-arm equipped but hardly ever used it. Defensive equipment can also be upgraded, something I forgot about and still found the final fights manageable. There are consumables littered throughout the world but I hardly ever needed them either. I did play on normal so this might be different on a higher difficulty.

I found Hell is Us to be the perfect length. It took me 27 hours to finish the story and I never once felt like it was dragging on. I did a lot of exploring and I read everything I came across, made sure to do the optional Good Deeds as I found them, and went out of my way to solve optional puzzles. There’s still plenty of things out there that I could have done or found but by story completion, I felt like I had a firm grasp on how everything connected together. I don’t feel a need to go back through and find everything I missed.

Deadzone: Rogue First Impressions

Kluwes1 Comment

Deadzone: Rogue is sci-fi rouglite FPS that combines frantic combat with randomized rooms, loot and upgrades. It wasn’t particularly on my radar though I had seen it a few times on my Steam home page. I clicked on it once, thought it looked neat, and went on to something else.

My friend, Blades, came across it the other day, bought it, and asked if anyone else wanted to pick it up. Seeing that it was just released out of Early Access and it was only $20, I went for it.

We did our first run last night and, much to our surprise, even completed it. I have to imagine it mustbe harder as a solo player.With the two of us we were able to split up the enemies in a room or have one of us draw enemy fire while the other one attacked from behind. There were a few tense moments but otherwise felt a little easy.

Deadzone: Rogue doesn’t stray from the tried and true roguelite formula. Each run consists of 30 random rooms. A room must be cleared of enemies before moving on to the next one. After clearing the enemies, there’s a reward where you choose either an Item or Augment/Perk depending on which chest spawns. Both provide passive bonuses that make up your build. There’s also equipment that drops from enemies that help further specialize your build.

Every couple of rooms there’s a store to buy new equipment or upgrade existing equipment. Every 10 rooms there’s a boss and when you finish the run or die, you’re able to grab some permanent upgrades.

The only thing missing is a choice in what room you go to next. I like that approach though. It forces you deal with whatever situation you find yourself in next with the resources you have.

It’s standard roguelite stuff but it feels really good to play. The combat feels tight and responsive. There’s a directional dodge, which took a little getting used to but feels like it could be very effective once mastered.

I’ll have to go back some time and try a solo run. With two people, the run felt fairly easy, though we were on Standard difficulty so that may change with a bump in difficulty. We might have also gotten lucky with our weapons/upgrades too. You never know, that’s the beauty of randomization.

There are three Zones which, according to the map, are different parts of the ship. I’m assuming there will be some variety between the zones, but we’ve only done Zone 1 so far. Intriguingly, when I choose Zone 1, it says my progress in it is 20%. I’m not sure what that means, whether it’s referring to difficulty or items to collect in there or what. I’ll have to dig into that a bit more.

Our run took about an hour so I think there’s some decent gameplay time here. A quick google says there are four difficulties. So, if each run takes about the same amount of time, that’s at least twelve more hours of gameplay for $20 which is pretty good!

Let’s be honest though, it’s probably more than that. There’s no way we don’t lose a few runs (ok, more than a few…) along the way.

Blaugust from the Inside-Outside-In

Kluwes4 Comments

To everyone out there participating in Blaugust, I hope it’s going well for you! Especially now as we round past the halfway point and into the back half of the month aka where streaks go to die. Atleast for me.

But not this year!

No, that’s because I haven’t been on a streak this month. I am signed up for Blaugust, yes, but I had no intentions of reaching 31 posts or 20, or 15. A humble 10 would do for me but it’s looking like even that may be too much as I hit publish on my fifth post this month.

It feels different, not racing towards 31 posts with everyone else. While Blaugust isn’t about the number of posts, it is a community event. By declining to even consider posting daily, I feel as though I might be missing out on some of that communal malaise (misery?) that comes with week three of writing everyday.

Perhaps what I’m feeling is the lack of stress that comes when there isn’t an expectation of posting everyday!

This isn’t to say that, by not participating to the fullest, I feel I’m missing out on the amazing Blaugust community that comes with this event every year (really all year long – stick around you’ll see). You won’t see me on the Blaugust Discord too often, I am a lurker by nature and spend most of time reading there and not so much engaging, but as the number of bloggers have grown, I’ve seen the community there has only gotten stronger. It continues to be an incredible group of people supporting each other through through a tough challenge and coming together for the shared love of writing words on the internet.

Outside of August, I tend to stick close to the video game blogosphere and don’t venture out too far. This year, I made it a goal to focus more on reading the blogs of Blaugust, rather than writing my own. My feed has been a treasure trove to sift through each day and sample new voices from the void of the internet. I have encountered ideas, topics, and musings that I would not have discovered otherwise.

While Blaugust has been different for me this year, my enjoyment of the event has not. But I do find myself craving a bit of that “what am I going to blog about today?” energy. So instead of breaking the streak during the third week of August, maybe I’ll start one, just for a little while…

See you tomorrow 😜.

Mid-Year Freakout Book Tag

Kluwes1 Comment

I was tagged for this by JD Weber of alligators and aneurysms!. Thanks JD!

These sorts of round up posts are fun to write because they make me think back on everything I’ve read this past year. Though, I tend to forget what books are about about a day or two after I read them, so that makes things more difficult….I really had to wrack my brain for some of these.

How Many Books Have I Read So Far?

I’ve read 24 books this year. My goal for the year is 30 so I’m well on my way to meeting that. Unlike last year, the majority of books I’ve read so far have not been novella’s. In fact, I only read 3 books under 200 pages this year. Quite a change from last year, where 25% of the books I read were short. This year, I wanted to focus less on the number of books read and read some longer books. I appears I’ve done a good job of that. I’ve read 5 books this year over 500 pages as opposed to 1 last year.

Best Book You’ve Read So Far in 2025?

Lost Man’s Lane by Scott Carson.

Technically, I started reading this one at the end of 2024 but I finished it in January. So it counts! It’s one of those books I couldn’t put down when I started it and still think about occasionally. It’s such a perfect mix of childhood nostalgia and weird, supernatural horror. Also, it had some oddly satisfying rock climbing scenes and a ghost snake. Can’t forget about the ghost snake.

Best Sequel You’ve Read so Far in 2025?

Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros.

Can I call the third book in a series a sequel? I guess it’s a sequel to the second book, so I’m going with it. I thought Iron Flame was kind of a drag, which I’ll get to later, but the ending intrigued me enough to solider on to Onyx Storm and I’m glad I did. It breathed some much needed new life into the series for me and felt likemuch more of an epic adventure than the previous books.

New Release You Haven’t Read Yet But Want To?

Immaculate Conception by Lin Lin Huang.

I read Natural Beauties last year and loved it. I’m excited to reading more from this author. It just so happens to be the next book my book club is reading. So I’ll definitely get to it this year!

Most Anticipated Release for the Second Half of the Year?

I don’t typically keep up with new releases but the one I am looking forward to is King Sorrow by Joe Hill. My wife and I are both Joe Hill fans and typically read his books together. I usually enjoy his short story collections more than the novels but I’m excited to read this one along with her.

Biggest Surprise?

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros.

My wife wanted to read this one after everyone in our book club highly recommended it. It’s not a book I would have read on my own, but I thought it would be fun to read together. I didn’t know much about the series outside of the fact that it was a romance book with dragons. My wife loves romance books and I do not, so it was fun talking about the book with her.

I ended up enjoying it much more than I expected. Since I’m not a huge fan of romance, I skimmed over most of the spicier scenes (one was a whole chapter…come on!). I am, however, easily entertained, give me a magic school where people fight each other to the death and ride dragons and I’m perfectly content.

According to my notes, I thought the world was a bit one dimensional. Dragon riding people vs Griffon riding people but, considering how thing play out, I suppose it’s meant to be like that. I also really liked the supporting characters enough that I wanted to find out what happened in the next book.

Biggest Disappointment?

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros.

It was hard to come up with a book for this one. If I’m disappointed by a book I’m not going to read it. Life’s too short to read bad books. I also don’t keep track of them, so I have no idea what I’ve started and never finished.

Considering how much I liked Fourth Wing, I felt Iron Flame was a weak follow up. It was longer than it needed to be and dragged on quite a bit. It could have been two different books,really, and would have been perfectly fine that way. I got really tired of Violet and Xaden arguing about the same things over, and over, and over again. I did read this right after finishing Fourth Wing, so perhaps, I needed a longer break from those two. The rest of the characters remained great though!

Favorite New Author?

For this one, I’m going with a new to me author because finding out if I’ve read a book by a new-new author is more work than I’m ready to put in right now. So I’ll go with Matt Dinniman. I’ve been ripping through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series over the last few weeks, reading three in a row. I’ll probably take a little break and read something else, but I fully intend on finishing the series.

Newest Fictional Crush?

Princess Donut from Dungeon Crawler Carl.

A fluffy, Persian cat who knows what she wants and shoots lasers out of her eyes. What’s not to love?!?

New Favorite Character?

Carl from Dungeon Crawler Carl.

Ever since finishing the Dresden Files, I’ve been looking for a new fantasy/sci-fi male protagonist written in first person. Last year, Mennik Thorn, from Shadow of a Dead God, filled that void for me last year. This year it’s Carl. I have another 4 books in the series, so he’ll be my Dresden stand in for a while.

Underrated Gems you Discovered Recently?

Luminous by Silva Park.

This was my second choice for my favorite book of the year so far. Ithas such a unique setting where humans and robots are almost indistinguishable. It explores what it means to be human in such a world. Or robot for that matter. It’s a beautiful story and another one I’ve kept thinking about long after finishing.

Book That Made You Cry?

Beta Vulgaris by Margie Sarsfield. I found this one as a recommendation for new horror from Bookbub. From the blurb, I thought this was going to be a campy horror story about killer beets. Instead it was a book about a woman who was not happy with her life, could not deal with her depression or her anxiety, and her anxiety would not let her reach out to her support system. That’s the scary part, there just happened to be beets.

This book reflected my own anxieties and thought patterns back at me. It made me incredibly sad, but it was an excellent book.

Book That Made You Happy?

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. This book is just pure happy vibes. Like, when I think about it, not a lot happened in 300 pages but it was a delightful read all the same. It also made me really crave coffee….

Favorite Book-to-Movie Adaptation You’ve Seen This Year?

I don’t watch many movies to begin with and the ones I’ve watched recently have been Disney movies with my three year old daughter. So, unless we’re counting Cinderella and Tangled as a book-to-movie adaptation of Grimm’s Fairy tales, I don’t think I’ve seen any.

Most Beautiful Book You’ve Bought This Year?

I don’t buy many physical books these days. I usually get them from the library. But I really like the covers of the hardcover editions of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I think they capture the essence of the wacky, over the top, campiness of the books and they look cool too!

Caves of Qud: The Life and Times of the Mighty Marsh Taur

Kluwes2 Comments

See that guy over there, bitten to death by a wet giant centipede? Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here.

Well would you look at that, I’m actually keeping up with a plan for once! Well, one post a plan does not make but – it’s a start.

So here I am, finally starting up Caves of Qud, or at least going back through the tutorial. I did this before, a few times actually, but this time I took notes! And the controls are weird, (no “Press WASD to move” here!) so I needed a refresher.

Ok, so maybe not weird for Roguelike but weird for me.

I can’t recall a game that I’ve played in the past that uses the NumPad as directional. In the context of a 2D, grid based, world it makes sense. 8 for up, 4 for left, 2 for down, 6 for right, and 7,9,1,and 3 to move diagonally. As I write this, I am noticing my NumPad actually has arrows on these keys, just in case I forget.

The arrow keys can also be used but having to press shift+arrow key to move diagonally doesn’t feel great. The mouse can also be used to move, in fact, you can play the whole game with just the mouse, but some actions take a lot of clicks and learning the keyboard shortcuts seems like it will be quicker overall.

Plus they make me feel like I’m playing some bespoke relic of the past and that’s fun in and of itself.

Back to the tutorial!

The tutorial let me know that building a character in Caves of Qud was somewhat of a process and we certainly don’t have time for that. This is a tutorial after all.

I was presented with 6 pre-made characters but was only offered the choice of one, the Marsh Taur. Part human part marsh! Well, actually, I think it’s just a human with four legs but it shoots freezing rays out of its hands and can run down enemies from great distances. Probably on account of having four legs. From the description it is the most survivable starting build. If that’s the case, I have my work cut out for me here….

Choosing a character, I was plopped into one of the titular caves “powdered in salt and dust from across the ribbon of time”. I learned how to move, how to fight, and how to look at things.

I’ve played a decent amount of Tales of Maj’eyal so I am familiar with the style of Qud’s turn based combat system. using L to look and choosing which tile to look at took some time to get used to. I could also right click with the mouse but taking my hands off the keyboard to do so is a bit weird. From playing TOME, I also kept wanting to press Z to auto explore which doesn’t do anything. Qud seems to be more about exploring where as TOME is more focused on getting you to the next fight.

I fought some Snapjaws which are a type of humonoid/dog pack hunting monsters. After my victory, I fought a wounded bear. That’s right, I,the mighty Marsh Taur was able to defeat a badly wounded bear!

I also leaned how to pick things up and equip them. The inventory screen is the one place that I’m using the mouse. There are too many key presses there to equip or unequip something and it’s way easier to just drag it to an equipment slot like every other game.

Eventually, I found a the stair well out of the cave and was taken to the world map which , to be frank, is kind of hard to look at:

In fact, that’s one part of the game that has taken a lot of getting used to. It’s kind of hard to see what’s going on and to tell what something is from a glance. I’m sure the more I play I’ll understand what things are, but as it stands, I am constantly “looking” at things to see if they are friend, enemy, item, or perhaps just a tree.

After emerging on to the surface, the tutorial had me go to the town of Joppa where it abruptly ended. Leaving me in town to figure out what to do next. I found a guy who gave me a quest. When I doubt do a quest. There was a creature eating the watervines of Joppa in Red Rock and I was tasked with defeating it.

So I set off, two squares to the north of town on the world map to look for this mysterious creature. When I arrived, I was immediately attacked by a pack of rock throwing baboons. I fired my frost ray at one but it has quite the cool down so I was forced to chased the monkeys through the fields and a volley of rocks to take them out one, by one with my axe. After killing one or two, I started picking up the rocks they were throwing and throwing them back. Take that!

I wandered around for a bit to see where I was suppose to go next. I’m not sure if it’s one to one but I did confirm that traveling between screens does move you around the world map eventually. I ended up two squares away from Red Rock by the time I realized I wasn’t going the right way. On my return to Red Rock via the world map, I found a stair case down to a cave.

Entering the cave I saw a cave spider which I quickly dispatched with a few tossed rocks. Then I encountered an amoeba which didn’t seem to do much damage but left my weapon Slimy after it was defeated. I couldn’t tell what the Slimy status did other than leave a trail of slime behind me for a while.

Further into the cave I encountered two snap jaw scavengers. It turns out, my freezing ray does damage in a line up to 9 squares so I was able to take out both snapjaws with one blast!

Feeling confident, I ventured further into the cave and found a wet feral dog. Looking at it told me that it was friendly. I walked over to it to see what my interaction options were. I could talk, trade, pet, attack, or examine. Talking to it and trading it did not produce results. I did pet it a couple times hoping it might join me on my quest. While I was petting the dog, I was attacked by a centipede.

It’s just a centipede, how hard could it be right? Ok, it’s a giant centipede, but still…Frost Ray! Dismember! Still not dead? I’ll just attack it one more time. But, alas, it was one time too many. The mighty Marsh Taur fell after about 30 minutes.

I have a lot to learn if I’m going to keep playing this….

Dungeon Crawler Carl and Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

Kluwes5 Comments

I didn’t know a whole lot about Dungeon Crawler Carl before picking it up. I had heard of it, of course, but only to the extent that it was a LitRPG and a well written one at that. Other than that, I was going in blind. I came across The Gate of the Feral Gods, the fourth book in the series on the :”New” shelf at the library. I thought the cover looked interesting and, after reading the jaket, I wanted to know what was going on with this guy and his cat.

So I patiently waited for the first book to come in and then promptly devoured it (The story, not the book, that’s frowned upon).

Dungeon Crawler Carl

This book was so fun! I didn’t know what to expect going in to it. When I hear LitRPG, I think guy trapped in a video game and not, forced to fight in a dungeon, on an intergalactic, reality TV show. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to be reading scifi when I started this but I’m here for it.

I love a story where I’m learning about the world along with the characters. I think I can thank a childhood spent reading Harry Potter for that. That’s exactly what the first book in the series is and it does it very well. Carl’s thrown into this world with very little information about what’s going on, with only the clothes (or lack there of) on his back and his ex-girlfriends cat a Princess Donut. Lucky for him, the world functions like a video game, including a tutorial. Isn’t that nice!

This whole first book is Carl and Donut exploring the first two floors of the dungeon. I really got a sense of progresssion and understanding as they learned more about the dungeon, the game, and how it all functions.

After years of reading video game blogs, I felt right at home with this book. Often times, when I read about games, I get this image in my head of what a game should be, from reading people’s experiences, but when I go to play it, the game never quite lives up to the game in my head. The benefit of this setting is that the game doesn’t exist but the rules of the game do. Reading it is almost like a game itself. I found myself keeping track of Carl and Donut’s stats and items and then trying to figure out, given that information, how they could possibly get out of whatever situation they were in.

This was such an easy, and enjoyable read. I am not a fast reader and I got through this 450 page book in less than a week. I finished it so fast, I had to wait another week for the second book to come in!

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario

The second book took me a little while to get in to. It takes place on the third floor of the dungeon and picks up right where the first one left off. Carl and Donut now have a firm grasp on how the game works and what to do next, which wasn’t as exciting for me. It takes place in the Over City, which is just an endless city, with some interesting lore to it, but the majority of the book takes place in one settlement.

This floor introduces quests for Carl and Donut to do – well – ok, are forced to do. It’s less, let’s explore a dungeon and see what’s around the next corner, and more like let’s hang out in a town and solve a mystery. It’s not that’s abad thing, I just found the prep work they needed to do beforehand more interesting than when they were doing the quest.

There is a portion where Carl is on his own and it made me realize how much I enjoy Carl and Donut’s dynamic and banter. Donut is the definatley what I imagine my cat’s personality if she could talk. She always knows best, and is kind of bossing Carl around. Carl, on the other hand, is protective of Donut and really cares for her, even though she drives him crazy and get’s him into some wild situations.

There’s some flash backs to Carls previous life that are suprsinhly touching for the over the top tone of this book. For a book mainly focused on killing monster and leveling up, I wasn’t quite prepared for Carl’s character to have some emotional depth.

Even though I wasn’t hooked from the get go, I still blazed through this one. This time, I had the foresight to put the third book on hold as soon as I checked this one out so I wouldn’t have to wait as long. I can’t wait to see where this story goes next!

Happy Blaugust!

Kluwes1 Comment

It’s the first day of Blaugust! One of my favorite days of the year. It’s awesome to watch my RSS feed fill up with posts, more posts than I could ever hope to read. It’s always fun to check out the new blogs that join the event and see blogs from past events come back to life (hey, kinda like this one!).

If you’re new to Blaugust, welcome! If you’re returning, welcome back! If you somehow stumbled upon this blog and don’t know what Blaugust is check out Krikket’s post here!: https://nerdgirlthoughts.game.blog/2025/07/10/blaugust-2025-is-coming/

If you haven’t been to my blog before, Hi, I’m Kluwes! Apparently, I’ve been blogging for nine years. I could have sworn it was only six or seven. Must have lost count a few years ago! I tend to write about video games but I’ve been known to wander on to some other topics sometimes. Not much has changed since the last time I wrote and introduction post so I’ll go ahead a quote myself from last year:

“I’m Kluwes, this is my blog Many Welps. I write about video games and sometimes fiction podcasts/audio dramas. What you’ll find here are mostly accounts of play sessions either on my own or with my friends (like this). They’re my favorite blog posts to read and also my favorite to write! You’ll also find summaries of games that I finish in my Backlogged posts which I don’t like to call reviews but kind of end up being them anyways.”

I don’t have much of a plan for Blaugust this year. I won’t rule it out from the get go, but, I have a strong suspicion I will not be getting anywhere close to 31 posts this year. Possibly 10? That sounds like a reasonable goal. Let’s do that.

There I have a goal!

A few weeks ago, I was toying with the idea of using this month to play a game in a genre I don’t frequent, Traditional Rougelikes, and write about that. I’ve settled on playing Caves of Qud for this, now I just need to actually play it…

Anyways, happy Blaugust, can’t wait to read what everyone else is writing!

More Light, More Light!

KluwesLeave a comment

Last week, I upgraded my last piece of Crystal 5 gear to max which is a big step in my Shadow Hunter’s progressive. It also means I now need to gather new materials in the Long Shade Adventure world, which is the current end game area of Trove, to upgrade all my gear to Mystic tier.

I popped my head into the Long Shade to see how much damage I’m doing and it’s not nearly as much as I thought it’d be. I can do damage, and I can kill dungeon bosses but it requires using a health flask to activate my Martial Emblem to do 250% increased damage for 3 seconds. It’s slow going. I also don’t feel quite right checking out new (to me) content without Blades.

So while I wait for him to catch up in the upgraded gear department, I’ll busy myself with squeezing out some more damage.

The best way to increase my damage, now that my gems and gear are fully upgraded, is to increase my Light stat.

I know it increases damage but I didn’t know what it actually did until I read the wiki. The Light stat, decreases the effect of the Darkness stat of enemies. Great ,what’s darkness? Darkness, it turns out, is just damage reduction that only applies to enemies. Light comes from gear, gems, collected dragons, the star chart and Geode Mastery. I’m currently sitting at 11.6k light the majority of my missing light is from Geode Mastery.

That’s because I’ve been avoiding Geode for years.

Geode is a separate game mode, where you wander around a cavern collecting crystals and materials to craft upgrades to Geode specific modules. The more you upgrade your gear the longer you can survive in the cavern and the deeper you can go to find rarer materials.

I have mostly ignored Geode for the majority of my Trove career because it is a slow and tedious game mode but every level of Geode Mastery provides 10 light. I’m currently at 60 out of 100 Geode Mastery so I’m over halfway there!

The good news is, I only need crystals from Geode. Every other material needed to upgrade modules or craft collectables for mastery can be bought off the player market. It’s not cheap, but it saves a ton of time and I generate a decent amount of flux by just running dungeons to complete my daily star bar that I can log in for 20 minutes a day and have enough flux for materials.

On Mondays, the daily bonus includes triple crystal drops, so I’ve spent a few Monday nights on Geode runs. As a result, I was able to upgrade my Vacuum module (which sucks up all of the crystals in an area) to max. Not only does this increase the range but it has the added benefit of doubling all crystals collected by the vacuum.

I didn’t realize, until yesterday, that the majority of Geode Mastery comes from craftable collectibles and not, as I previously assumed, leveling up modules. I, wrongly, assumed I had crafted most of this stuff years ago. I have many costumes, allies, and tomes to craft that will give quite a significant boost to my Geode mastery. This was a relief because, compared to the modules, they’re all relatively cheap to craft. The only bottle neck, again, is crystals.

Now that I’ve been doing it regularly, Geode isn’t as bad as I thought. It’s something different to do to break up a play session and it works just as well for listening to a podcast. There’s also a chance to loot Crystal piniatas which sell for 40k a pop. So there’s some money to be made there as well. At least enough to cover the next upgrade/collectable!