So You Want To Be a Mind Scanner

Kluwes2 Comments

Imagine a world where your family member is being kept from you and the only way to see them again is to work for Their captors. You only get one shot, if you fail to do the job well, you’ll be thrown from the city and lose the only chance you have of seeing them.. How long until you abandon your morals? Would you “treat” seemingly healthy patients to pay the rent? Would you risk your patient’s mind to get the job done?

This is the setup for Mind Scanners. A dystopian, sci-fi, techno-therapist simulator from The Outer Zone.

In Mind Scanners, you take on the role of a Mind Scanner, whose job it is to scan minds and treat whatever insanity you discover. Or, more accurately, what your corporate overlords see fit to treat. Every day, you’ll receive new cases, travel to patients, assess them, and treat them if deemed necessary. There’s also the small matter of paying your new employer a maintenance fee to continue working for them.

A typical day for a Mind Scanner looks like this. Wake up, get a pep talk from a large, talking, tube and/or receive a passive aggressive fax from The Structure. Receive your new list of patients the system has identified as needing treatment and head out into the city. Determine which patient to travel to and eat up anywhere from 15-30% of your time per day commuting.

Arrive at the patients home and place the scanning device over their head. To the best of your abilities interpret the meaning of what they say they’re seeing in the machine from the predetermined answers the machine spits out. Better get your interpretation right or you’ll be losing time asking another question.

Once interpretation is complete, decide if your patient is Sane or Insane. No, there’s no merely a little stressed, or might have a bit of anxiety, it’s either Sane or Insane. Choose one. If Sane: close the case. If Insane: start Treatment.

Treatment consists of using devices that match the “insanity types” the mind scan has discovered. You’ll be using cutting edge technology such as:

  • The Lunasucker: Suck out the Strange and negative energy from your patient.
  • The Stroboschocker: Keep patients in balance with amplified light drawn from luminescent zycnoka crystals.
  • The Throatarizer: Transforms the insanity into frequencies and forces them out using the vocal chords of the patient.

As you can see, all very technical, sciencey devices.

Each device has it’s own, unique mini game that require a bit of practice to master. If the device isn’t used correctly you will start to stress out the patient. Treatment is over when all insanity types have been cleared or the patient is too stressed out to continue.

If you’re not careful, your patient might become a functioning husk without a personality. Sadly, many of my patients have ended up this way because I focused too much attention on clearing their insanity and not enough of their personality bar. Don’t worry, you’ll still get paid as long as you finish treatment.

The it’s off to your next patient until you run out of time for the day. Crawl back to your corporate hovel, sleep, have terrible dreams about your daughter, wake up and do it all over again.

Sounds fun, right?

Don’t forget about your maintenance fee! Just 7 kapok a day to keep your job. You make 15 kapok from “curing patients” and 3 kapok for declaring them sane…I think you can see which one The Structure prefers you do.

Oh, and if you can’t make the rent? You’re getting tossed into the Outer Zone. You can be certain you’ll never see your daughter again once you’re out there.

Mind Scanners does something very interesting with it’s gameplay mechanics. I don’t know about you but trying to learn a new mini game or think about the right sequence of insanity types to remove while a timer is ever ticking down kinda makes me a little stressed.

If you think about it, you’re playing as someone so desperate to see their daughter that their working for her captors for a chance to see them again. They’ve just become a certified Mind Scanner, they barely know how to use their tools, and their constantly having to worry about how to make enough money so they aren’t kicked out of the city.

That kind of situation would stress me out too. That’s some immersion right there.

I probably wouldn’t have played this game if I wasn’t participating in UnwiseOwl’s Blaugust Reviews: Humble Choice. I thought it would be fun to pick a game I had never heard of before to play and review. I’m glad I did. My short time with Mind Scanners proved to be quite the experience. I’m going to finish my play through and see what ending I get (there are many).

Would I pick up August’s Humble Choice just for this game? Probably not. However, if there’s another game or two in the bundle that you’re excited for give this one a whirl too!

How I Got Started in Content Creation

Kluwes3 Comments

Well that sounds like a click-baity title….

Today, I’m writing from one of the Blaugust Prompts that related to this week’s Introduce Yourself theme. Taking a look at this list, most of these would fit the theme for this week so if you’re struggling to come up with something but want to write about yourself head over to the prompt list!

I’m working off of prompt #1: How did you get started in content creation?

I started writing on the Internet in 2014 after replying to someone on Reddit looking for people to review comic books for their site. At the time, I was just getting in to comics and thought it would be a fun way to spend my time.

There wasn’t any pay, of course, but I did get a whole slew of free comics from multiple publishers every week. It allowed me to stretch out my writing muscles that I hadn’t used since college and learn a thing or two about WordPress. It was also really cool to see something I wrote appear on a website. A novelty then and a regular occurrence now.

That project lasted for about a year. The site owners moved on to creating a Sports site which I had no interest in contributing to. The comic site shutdown a few months later just in time for me to lose my interest in comics.

A little while later I stumbled upon book bloggers. As a lifelong reader, I toyed with the idea of creating my own. Ultimately, I didn’t feel like I read fast enough or prioritized reading over gaming enough to produce a steady stream of content for a book blog. I shelved that idea but the research for it taught me how to go about setting up a blog.

It wasn’t until 2016 that I would start this blog under the name I’m Not Squishy. The Newbie Blogger Initiative was the catalyst that got me to start my own gaming blog. I heard about it through Massively OP and saw an opportunity to try something new. Up until NBI 2016 I didn’t even know game blogs existed nor the amazing community that wrote them. I had such a good time writing, reading, and meeting bloggers that year. I’ve been here ever since.

In 2017, my group of friends and I decided to start a Twitch channel. We had been playing games together for about a year at that point and collectively decided it would be a fun group project. Thus, Welpsquadtv was born.

We found some small success early on. We had anywhere from 10-20 viewers every stream. Twitch was easier in 2017.

I was really in to learning the ins and outs of OBS, tweaking my audio, and finding new technologies to incorporate into our streams. The whole affiliate program rolled out and we were affiliated within a few days. I was so excited but there didn’t seem to be anywhere to go from their. I wasn’t looking to make a living off of Twitch, we already had a small community and I had already accomplished all of the goals I set out to accomplish

That was probably about the time that my interest started waning. Streaming showed me just how much time one needs to put in to be a “content creator” on the platform. I also realized I didn’t really like the whole solo-streaming thing. Unless I was playing with a friend, I get very little enjoyment trying to entertain people and talking to a live chat.

We’re still streaming, albeit, to a much smaller audience these days. It’s mostly my friend Greg who streams these days.. I still like playing with the tech and finding fun ways to use our 4 man group streams as a shtick. My favorite implementation has been using Discord screen sharing to see all of our view points at once. But my focus and individual contributions to the channel have wound down significantly over the years.

Oh look another Blaugchevemnet!

A Major Life Change

Kluwes2 Comments

I don’t tend to talk about my personal life here much. Part of it is because I’m a relatively private person but I also just find it hard to write about myself sans hobbies. It took me forever to write my About page when I first started blogging and I rarely revisit to update it.

I have exactly one introduction post from 3 years ago that I wrote for Blaugust 2019. That was also shortly before I changed the blogs name.

I thought using the “Introduce Yourself Week” for Blaugust as motivation to post a bit more about myself sounded like a pretty good idea.

And there is some news I would like to share with you all:

Recently, my Mrs. Kluwes and I have become new parents. The last 4 months have been a a wild ride to say the least. Baby Kluwes was 6 weeks early and thankfully had very little complications from being such an early arrival. She did have an extended stay at the hospital which was incredibly hard for us. But she was discharged much quicker than the other children and families around us and it was all worth it when we finally got her home.

3 months later and she is thriving!

We got to live that new newborn life style/sleep schedule for an extra month and a half but we’re now rounding a corner. Baby goes to sleep earlier than we do now and almost sleeps through the nights. I had just about forgotten what sleeping multiple hours in a row was like…it’s all been an amazing experience so far.

Now that everyone is in more of a routine, I find that I can eek out an hour or maybe even two of free time a day after Baby Kluwes is asleep. Being awake enough to really enjoy it is an added bonusI fill most of my new found time with gaming and writing here.

It’s funny, when I had all the time in the world blogging was just another thing I did sometimes. Now that time is limited I have to prioritize my activities. I’ve been writing here for just over 6 years now and I don’t want it to completely fall by the wayside.

Audio Drama Sunday: Bringing it Back!

Kluwes2 Comments

Three years later this feature is making a come back here on the blog. I didn’t realize I started this during Blaugsut 2019 until I went back to look at the previous posts. It ran for a whole 4 weeks before falling to the wayside. But I’m bringing it back!

Like I said in Friday’s post, I’ve been finding more time to listen to podcasts in this post-commute world I find myself in. Today I’d like to introduce two fiction podcasts I’ve listened to recently that I think are worth a exposing your ears to.

Forest 404

Forest 404 is set in the 24th century, after a data crash called The Cataclysm. Pan, our protagonist, is a young woman with a boring job sorting and deleting old sound files that survived the crash. She uncovers a set of sound recordings from the early 21st century that haunt her.

The story follows Pan after she finds a vibrant recording of a rain forest. It’s unlike anything she’s ever heard before. Pan sets out to find out what the recording is and why she’s never heard these sounds before. All while being chased by people who would rather the recordings not get out to the public.

Following each story episode is a short talk relating to something from the episode as well as a short soundscape recording. It’s an interesting mix of audio drama, informational podcast, and relaxing sounds that I haven’t run into before or since.

Slumberland

This audio drama invites your ears to visit Slumberland, a small island town in the US. Come along with Thomas Edward M, the freelance soundman. He’s been hired to meet the locals and record their oral histories for the town’s time capsule. The unfolding history of the town mixes folklore, paranormal, mystery and humor.

Slumberland is one of my new favorite shows as of late. It’s been ongoing since 2013 and released their 99th episode in May. I particularly like the use of an oral history project as a plot device to explain why these recordings exist. I’m also a fan of the setting being somewhere in the middle of one of the Great lakes.

It’s funny, quirky, a little bit spooky, and with episodes ranging from 4-35 minutes I was able to binged it in just under a month. New episodes don’t release consistently which is a bummer now that I’m caught up but I’m very much looking forward to the next installment of Thomas Edward M’s adventures in Slumberland.

This Week in Melvor Idle: 50% Completion

KluwesLeave a comment

When thinking of ways to get more posts out for Blaugust I thought it might be fun to track my progress in Melvor week by week. Well, fun for me at least.This gives me a guaranteed easy post topic and will fill up the pesky weekend slot on Saturday. So it’s a win-win really. Well, again, at least for me.

I’ve been playing Melvor Idle on and off for the past year and a half. Mostly off until recently when I remembered it existed again in June. As I’ve said before, idle games are my guilty pleasure and Melvor Idle is basically Runescape without having to walk around or ever log off. It’s even published by Jagex now so it’s official.

At some point, I must have started my Standard character over though I’m not sure when or why. When I came back to the game in June this new character had been sitting doing nothing but had maxed out Woodcutting and Fishing. For all intents and purposes this is a new character.

In June, I also started a Hardcore character, which gets deleted on death, and an Adventure Mode character, which unlocks individual skills with money. It’s also restricted to leveling skills up only as high as it’s combat level. I have since relegated both of these characters for now to fishing while I focus on my Standard character. The hardcore character is fishing for Leaping Broad Fish which provide a tiny amount of Strength XP. The adventure mode character is fishing for whales which are a great money maker.

The ultimate goal on my Standard character is to get 100% Completion. This entails leveling up all of the skills to max, finding all the items in the game, facing off against all of the monsters, acquiring all of the pets, and maxing out all of the skill mastery. I hit 50% overall completion this week. Halfway there!

The Mastery system adds a secondary leveling system to individual items within a skill. Leveling the mastery up on an item applies permanent bonuses for that item. It’s also the completion category that’s going to take the longest.

Here’s where I stand right now skill wise:

Combat Skills

Attack 79/99Strength 95/99Defense 72/99
Hitpoints 80/99Ranged 74/99Magic 83/99
Prayer 86/99Slayer 64/99

Non-Combat Skills

Woodcutting 105/99Fishing 117/99Firemaking 99/99
Cooking 101/99Mining 105/99Smithing 102/99
Thieving 85/99Farming 111/99Fletching 99/99
Crafting 87/99Runecrafting 87/99Herblore 85/99
Agility 71/99Summoning 94/99Astrology 79/99
All skills over 99 are virtual levels based on additional experience gained after level 99 cap.

Pets

My current project has been unlocking all of the Dungeon Boss pets. In addition to counting towards completion these pets also provide small passive bonuses. The first 9 dungeon bosses have a 1/350 chance of dropping a pet. So far, I’ve gotten the pet from the first 8 dungeons.

I unlocked Ayyden (provides +2% slayer coins) from the Deep Sea Ship dungeon on Tuesday after 454 kills. Followed by Artic Yeti (+2% ammo preservation) from the Frozen Cave dungeon after 129 kills on Thursday.

Ayyden (left) Artic Yeti (right)

Much of my leveling over the last few weeks has revolved around getting my combat skills up to snuff to take on the next dungeon. The Deep Sea Ship was my excuse to get my Magic level up. There’s a rock-paper-scissors combat triangle in Melvor where Magic does more damage to Melee monsters, Ranged does more damage to Magic Monsters, and Melee does more damage to Ranged monsters.

I could have done the Deep Sea Ship with melee combat but since it’s filled with other melee monsters I figured this was a good opportunity to start leveling Magic. Training Magic led to the need to level up Runecrafting which lead to needing to leveling up Herblore so I could make potions to more efficiently craft runes to use for magic attacks. It was a whole thing. It took about two weeks but I’m happy at where my skill levels are now to continue to take on more dungeons.

The next Boss pet I’ll need is from the Dragons Den dungeon. This is another dungeon filled with Melee Monsters so it looks like Magic is the way to go again. However, the boss here, the Elder Dragon, can dish out more damage than I can auto heal for. So unless I want to run and heal manually I’ll need to start acquiring some sources of damage reduction.

Welcome to Blaugust!

KluwesLeave a comment

I’m going to be that guy who welcomes everyone five days in to the event. But you know what? It’s within the first week so, technically, it still counts.

If you’ve been posting everyday so far, congrats you’ve almost made it to the end of week one. If you haven’t signed up yet, no worries! There’s still plenty of August and blogging to go so sign up!

Bel posted early this week that, this year, there have been more first time Blaugust participants signing up than years past. Twenty-two in total at the time of the post. That’s twenty-two whole new-to-me blogs to add to my RSS Reader.

Over the years, I’ve really appreciated how Blaugust has morphed from a posting challenge into a replacement for the Newbie Blogger Initiative. I started my blog during the last NBI and was pretty bummed when it didn’t come back the following year. I look forward to this event every year (this is my fourth time participating!) for the new bloggers it brings out, the new-to-me bloggers I’m introduced to, and the return of some bloggers who haven’t posted in a while.

So whether you just started your blog or have blogged for years: Welcome all of you event newbies!

My plans for this years Blaugust are a very much not plans. I am striving for the whole 31 posts but at this point I’m pretty happy with my 5 post streak. I managed to schedule out the first four at the end of July so now the real fun (and challenge) begins.

One feature I’m looking to bring back this month is Audio Drama Sunday. I used to be a huge audio drama fan per-pandemic but once I didn’t have a commute I struggled to find time to listen to them. Lately, I’ve been finding a bit more time and some new activities that pair well with podcast listening. Bringing this back will be good way to fill up those pesky weekend slots and get my thoughts down about what I’ve been listening to.

Other than that, it will be business as usual around here. I might even shoot for some of those new, fancy, Blaugchievements.

Oh look, here’s one now!

The Tables Have Turned Larry

KluwesLeave a comment

I don’t have a particular attachment to the Alien franchise. I’ve seen some of the main line movies once or twice but couldn’t tell you what happened in them. Well, except for face huggers and xenonorphs of course. Alien vs Predator, now that I’ve seen several more times than I probably should . My middle school self just thought they were so cool. I was always more of a Predator fan though.

My main exposure to the Alien universe has been through Alien: Isolation. It was the first game I used the PS4’s Shareplay feature to play with a friend who had it. The game was dripping with atmosphere and tension. I have fond memories of hiding in lockers, fearing the sight of vents, and feeling general unease every time I heard the Alien, who we affectionately named “Larry”, walking around in the walls. Every time we thought we had finished Larry off he came back even meaner than before.We never did finish it but it’s still one of my favorite co-op experiences.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite lets me enact my revenge. No longer will I cower in fear. No longer will I run frantically to find a locker to hide in. We have guns now Larry and this time and we’re here to mow down your entire family!

Backlogged: Summer In Mara

KluwesLeave a comment

Platform: PC

Time to Finish: 25.6 hours

After I finished up Yonder I was looking for a similar game to play. Prideful Sloth has another game called Grow and while it looked interesting it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. So it was off to the internet to see what other people were recommending. I kept coming across recommendations for Summer at Mara. It had no combat, a vibrant art style, some farming, some exploration, and a lot of fetch quests. Sounds like Yonder to me!

Summer at Mara just happened to be on sale at the time I was looking for something new to play. I thought about waiting for the Steam Summer Sale but $10 was a good price point for me. It helped that it was bundled with the OST and one of their other games, Deiland, which is Deck verified.

Things I Liked:

Story: Unlike Yonder, Summer at Mara’s quests are much more story heavy. There is a main story which revolves around the main character, Koa.

Koa, lives on an island in the middle of the ocean with her grandmother where they run a little farm together and take care of the island. Unfortunately, after the tutorial, Koa’s grandmother passes and she’s left alone on the island. She repairs her grandmother’s old boat and sets off to explore the rest of Mara.

There’s a whole host of supporting characters along the way. Each have their own sub plots and lengthy quest lines that intermingle with one another. I found these side quests much more interesting than the main story line and loved seeing all the characters interact with one another.

Quests: There’s just something about this that tickles my brain in all the right ways. This is another game full of fetch quests. You’re either bringing an item from one character to another, growing or crafting items a character needs, or going out and finding someone who sells the needed item. I found myself saying I’ll just do one more quest before I save for the night..over and over again.

Exploration: The exploration aspect of this game is done just right. At first you’re only able to sail to a few islands around the main town. As the story progresses you’re given the opportunity to upgrade the boat which opens up a bit more of the map. There are a few quests that can’t be completed until you find the right crafting material so every time I unlocked more locations I had a reason to visit each one to find the right items.

The map isn’t that large either. It never felt like a pain to get from one end to the other once I unlocked all of the locations. Once I built up enough money I was able to use the fast travel system to get around even faster. This is more of a convenience than a necessity and I would have been fine without it.

Summer Vibes: The colorful graphics, the island settings, the music, and the writing all make this game feel like a summer vacation. It’s so bright and cozy. The perfect game to play for the summer and probably even better to play in the winter.

The Flow: The more I got in to this game the more I started to developed a routine for each day. Summer in Mara has an energy and time which work together to limit how much you can do in a day. My daily routine was to harvest crops that were ready, plant new ones and water them, feed the animals, set out to the main town, Qälis, to buy more seeds and sell items as needed, run around doing quests until about 17:00, then return home to feed the animals again, craft anything needed for quests, and sleep.

Things That Could Have Been Better:

Controller Support: This seemed like it would be a good game to play with a controller. I was playing with an Xbox One controller until I unlocked the boat. When I got in the boat I was pretty confused why I couldn’t get the boat to move. Up until then, everything had been working flawlessly. As it turns out, the right bumper is suppose to be the button to sprint and accelerate. I wasn’t aware that there was even a sprint option until that point.

Apparently the fix is to start the game and then connect the controller via Bluetooth. Unfortunately, my computer doesn’t have a Bluetooth receiver. At least the keyboard and mouse controls weren’t bad.

XCOM 2 Blogger Succession Game: Operation Spider Walk

Kluwes3 Comments

We seem to be in a much better spot than the last time I was in command. The pips on the Avatar Project have been greatly reduced and we have a much better supply of resources and…supplies. There wasn’t a whole lot to do on the Avenger. The Shadow Chamber was working on a project decoding data fragments from the last Codex experiment which took up all other research.

Without much to do on the ship I went to go check out the Geoscape situation. With the Avatar Project progress reduced for now I felt like I had a few more options this time around. Eastern Europe needed contacted and we were just under the required amount of Intel. West Asian had a Life signs location that also awarded intel so I flew the Avenger over than to scan. Halfway through my 4 day scan the Shadow Chamber project completed.

From the Shadow Chamber project, we learned that the alien overseers known as the Elders have a gnarly medical condition that makes their muscles rapidly atrophy. They’ve been scooping up species from the worlds they visit trying to find a cure. They’ve stopped on Earth to see if there’s something in humans that might be able to cure them.

So that’s nice. Nothing like a little Alien/Human experimentation am I right?

Tygan has given us a new objective: Use the skulljack on a codex to breach the alien network. This has also opened up available research slots now that the Shadow Chamber work is done for now. I opted for the alien data cache research to boos our intel supply. When that was completed there was an opportunity to have the Archon Autopsy research which I took. That gave our Rangers a nice weapons upgrade for their machetes. After that I began researching powered armor, I have a feeling we’re going to need it sooner rather than later.

One of our main objectives was to upgrade the Shadow Chamber. We had enough resources so I kicked that off. Engineering then informed me we were out of power capacity. A room just opened up so I set out to build another power relay.

Over in the Geoscape I was able to finish scanning for the intel and even made it down south to collect some more supplies. With enough intel in hand I popped on over to East Europe to make contact and that’s when the new mission arrive.

Honestly, I think that’s the longest I’ve gone in the Geoscape portion before a mission alert.

Operation Walking Spider

I was worried going in to this mission since the difficulty was “Very Difficult”. On top of that it’s also an extract the VIP type mission and the few of those I’ve done have had some nasty surprises the closer I got to extraction. I was very much hoping our high level soldiers would carry me to victory so I assembled the best we had available.

As it turns out, the mission itself wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It started off with a Codex and two ADVENT soldiers. I had Rakuno shove the skulljack into it’s head and hacked the alien network. Magi and Endalia took care of the codex afterwards while Black Widow and Bookahnerk took out the ADVENT soilders.

So far so good. I started advancing forward a little and that’s when this guy showed up.

I always love to hear “We’ve never run into this alien type before.”

The cutscene hyped this new alien type up. After one round of playing ring-around-the-rosie while it teleported around the building we were on top of and a bit on Mind Control shenanigans the squad made short work of it.

With no enemies in sight, I started moving the squad and the VIP up towards extractions. I pushed Rankuno up just a bit too far from everyone and was spotted by 2 vipers and a Gatekeeper. Magi picked off the two Vipers leaving Naithan and Rankuno the only ones close enough to deal with the Gatekeeper.

The Gatekeeper looks like a little ball of fun doesn’t it?

This is the first time I’ve encountered this enemy type. I have to say I was a bit worried when it started resurrecting people to fight for it. Rankuno got a full clip into this thing and had. it on the ropes. Looking to finish it off I sent Naithan to wack it with the new and imporved Fusion Blade.

It apparently explodes when it dies. Sorry Naithin…I somehow always manage to get your character injured.

After the explosion Naithan and Rankuno were sitting at half health but no enemies to be seen. The squad made one more push to extraction. At this point, I was expecting something real bad to show up. maybe a Sectopod or something. But all that was waiting for us an ADVENT Officer and two soldiers. Easily the least threatening group of the mission.

Endalia and Maji picked off the solider and Bookanerk took down the officer and we all everyone made it out.

Aftermath

Overall the mission went as smooth as it could have. You wouldn’t know it by looking at the return screen though. Unfortunately, that little Gatekeeper self destruct incident leaves Naithan Wounded for 5 Days anmd Rakuno Gravely Wounded for 8 days.

Endalia did receive a promotion though! I went with the Serial perk which refunds an action for every kill made with a Sniper Rifle. It seemed better than Fan Fire which just lets you fire the pistol 3 times at a target.

We even got a bit of loot and a shiny new Avatar Corpse. I’m sure Tygan is just dying to do the autopsy on that one.

Up next is UnwiseOwl, good luck commander!

July 2022 Recap

Kluwes2 Comments

The summer is in full swing which means there’s a little less time for playing games and a little more time spent outside. It’s been super nice here in North East Ohio this month and we’ve been getting out to enjoy the weather whenever we can.

It’s sad to see July go since we’ll only have another few weeks of summer. But it’s always exciting to see August 1st roll around with the kickoff of Blaugust! I’ve got 2 posts scheduled and the rest I’ll be winging.

Top 5 Games in July

  1. Melvor Idle
  2. Summer in Mara
  3. Generation Zero
  4. Farm Together
  5. Fallen Earth

July was all about two games for me: Melvor Idle and Summer at Mara.

After finishing up Yonder in June I was looking for something like it that I could dive into. Apparently I hadn’t quite had my fill of fetch quests. Summer at Mara came highly recommended from the internet and I was able to scoop it up just before the Steam Sale ended. I managed to beat the game a few days before the end of the month. I figured I’d save my Backlogged post on it for Blaugust!

Melvor Idle quietly suck it’s way on to my top 5 games in June after I remembered it was on my phone. I hadn’t played in months and I started slowly getting back in to it. Now it’s become a daily game for me to check in on periodically. This month I’ve been tackling some of the earlier dungeons and working catching my Ranged and Magic skills up to my Melee skills.

The squad picked up Generation Zero in the Steam Summer Sale. We played it a few times this month and it is a blast. The game itself isn’t bad but I’ve been having so much fun running down robots and beating them with a baseball bat. Sure there are guns, and sure it’s suppose to be a stealth game, but it’s so statisfying. Also if you hit a car enough times with a baseball bat you can blow up all your friends. We’ve even got a video of our first play session here.

Good times.

June Gaming Goals

I’m still deciding on whether to keep including this goals section but it seems wrong to leave June’s goals hanging.

Play My Turn in the XCOM Succession game: I did this at the last minute, and by last minute I mean yesterday afternoon. I was really trying to knock this one out in the begginign of the month but wasn’t able to. The post for it will be up tomorrow!

Continue playing Cozy Grove daily: This hasn’t exactly been a daily thing for me like I thought it would be. It’s more of an every couple day thing. It’s the perfect game for the Steam Deck but it also feels like the only game I’ve been playing on the Steam Deck so I was trying out some other games when I had the chance. I’m still looking forward to playing more of this but I’m not sure how much more right now.

Write 6 posts: Well I didn’t quite make this one. My post count for July was 3. No worries though, I’ve got a whole month of potential blogging ahead of me.