The past month I’ve been back in Trove. I tend to revisit the game every summer to see what’s been added. Surprisingly, the game still gets at least one big update every year despite being run by Gamingo for the last 6 years or so. At this point, Trove’s been a Gamigo game longer than it was a Trion game.
The game turned 10 years old this year and there’s a month long, Sunfest event going on with a lot of rewards including new mounts styles and allies. Who would have thought it would have lasted this long? I’m pleasantly suprised every year that passes that Trove has evaded maintenance mode.
It’s hard to believe I’ve been playing Trove for a decade. For better or worse, it’s been my game. The one I come back to when I don’t know what to play or I want something to do while I listen to a podcast. It’s grind heavey, it’s got time gates for almost all of the progression, but nothing quite gets me in a flow state like Trove. It’s by far my most played game on Steam by multitudes. It’s mindless but it’s fun. Where else can you ride a shark who shoots lasers out of it’s head? Or a hot dogs with legs?
It also helps that Blades is just as enamored with it as I am. The best online game to play are the ones your friends play right? Trove brought the Welp Squad together nearly 10 years ago too. It was the first game we all played together and we played it almost exclusively that first year.We branched off to other games but we still get together every weekend to play games and that all started with our weekly shadow tower runs in Trove, back when those were the end game content. The squad doesn’t play this one together, outside of Blades and I, but those were some of my fondest gaming memories.
I’ve gotten a lot done in the past month. I hit 45k Power Rank which gives me a chance of getting Crystal 5 Gear from the Gearcrafter’s Vaults. It’s a low chance, but I typically get 1-4 chests per dungeon so they add up quick. I was able to get all 3 pieces of Crystal 5 Gear for my Shadow Hunter and I’m only one upgrade away from maxing them all out. There’s one more tier of gear, Mystic, but I’m waiting to figure out how that all works until Blades catches up with my progression.
I’ve also done some work on my Geode Mastery which I’ve been avoiding, pretty much since Geode came out. Geode is this mining mini game, there’s no combat, and it’s really slow, but Geode Mastery grants Light which increases your damage. So it’s kind of a must do at some point. I’m at that point now, it’s not so bad, but I’m only doing it a little at a time so I don’t burn out on it. I’m currently working on maxing out my Vaccumm so I can get crystals faster, which will in turn, make getting Geode Mastery even faster.
Blades and I have also been leveling up our Club. We’ve had the Club for 9 years but never knew how club xp worked. Leveling up the club grants access to fixtures that provide bonuses for everyone. It turns out, you get club xp from completing adventures from the club, something we had never done. We’ve been working on it this month and have even recruited a few people to join too. We’re up to level 6 and we’ve got a few fixtures in place. I think we might make it to level 7 before the xp requirement gets too high for two people to make any meaningful progression.
I’m planning on playing regularly until the end of the month when the anniversary event ends. Then I think I will have had my fill of Trove, that is, until next year!
While thinking of something interesting I could do for Blaugust this year(interesting for me at least), I have come up with this idea to take the month to play and learn a complex game that I would typically bounce from and write about it along the way. My first thought was Crusader Kings 3, but I had played a number of hours of that already and I wanted something fresh to dive into. I scrolled through my library and passed Dwarf Fortress which I’ve never played but I didn’t know if I wanted something quite that complex for this. I was searching for something in that vein though that’s outside my normal gaming wheelhouse and might give me some good stories to tell.
I came across Caves of Qud, a roguelike with a science fantasy setting, some weird lore, and lots of procedural generation. It also plays out like an RPG rather than just a quick run type game. It seems complex enough for my idea but not too complex that I’ll get frustrated with it. Maybe dying over and over again will get to me, but there’s a Roleplay mode where there are some checkpoints to prevent permadeath.
With Caves of Qud in mind, I went down the rabbit hole to see what other “traditional roguelikes” were out there. Here’s what I found:
Originally released in 1994, ADOM seems to be one of the biggest roguelike influences out there, well aside from Rogue that is. There’s a steam version with updated graphics (i.e not ACSII). According to the steam page, it’s most known for being the first roguelike with towns, NPCs, and a rich story. It could be a fun one to take a look at in the future. The map has graphics, the menus are still all DOS looking and text based which gives it an interesting flare. Sometimes it’s fun to go play an old game just to see how far things have come. It makes it a bit more enticing when the old game has had a graphical face lift as well.
I have played many, many hours of TOME and I am not even close to unlocking everything the game has to offer. This one is like a diablo dungeon crawl roguelike with tons of classes, races, skills and loot. So much loot. It’s also known for being the Steam game with 1700+ steam achievements. It’s an open source game, free to play here on it’s site but also available along with it’s DLC for purchase on Steam. It’s a fun game, but maybe not the right candidate for this idea. For one, I’ve already played it and it’s more of a tacticle dungeon crawl with less random RPG elements.
Another open source, free to play rougelike that always seems to pop up in recommendations as I’ve been searching to learn more about roguelikes. I downloaded it, since it’s free, and did the first tutorial, but I haven’t done much else. From everything I’ve read, it’s a very balanced game but, like TOME, more of a tactical dungeon crawl, as the name would suggest, rather than an RPG.
This one is more of a survival game than an RPG. It’s a post-apocalypse zombie/horror themed game where the goal is to survive in a procedurally generated world. It’s another game that I downloaded, ran a bit of the tutorial and put aside for now. It seems to meet the complexity requirement and the procedural storytelling element I’m looking for so it could be a candidate.
Elin is the sequel to a game called Elona. It’s an open world sandbox with a JRPG flavor and base management. You can play roguelike Stardew Valley or go out and be a standard adventurer. You can even be a piano playing snail…I played a bit of the demo and it seems like a strong contender for this little project. It seems like a mix or resource management, dungeon crawl, and sandbox RPG all in one, wrapped in JRPG graphics.
From everything I’ve read, Caves or Qud is going to be the closest to what I’m looking for in terms of complexity and procedural story telling while still being an RPG. It also has a unique theme and an interesting world full of things to discover. I have run through the tutorial and I am intrigued to see where this game goes. It’s probably going to be the winner here but I will try out a few of the others before I commit to the choice.
Out of all of these, Caves of Qud and Elin are my top contenders for this excersie. My idea is to go in blind and only use the information the game gives me. No guides outside the tool tips in game and the tutorial. I’m still leaning towards Caves of Qud, it’s got a weird setting and a unique look that intrigues me. But I also am a sucker for Elin’s JRPG style. I’ll play through the tutorial for both of these and decide when it’s time to start this thing!
Next month, on May 19th, Twitch is purging highlights from channels with over 100 hours of stored videos. This announcement came out back in Febuary with the original date being April 19th. Since then, I’ve been working on exporting WelpSquadTV’s archived streams over to Youtube. We have been saving our entire broadcasts as highlights since we started streaming in 2017. It has long been a running joke that we must be costing Amazon a ton in video storage.
Turns out, we were right. The reasoning Twitch sent out to channels affected by this, and later added to their FAQ, is that storage is expensive. Which, fair, but it’s got to be less costly if you’re Amazon and you own all the storage right? My favorite bit though, is that less than 0.5% of Twitch channels are effected by this. I’ve never been in the top 0.5% of anything so I’m taking this as a win! I guess accumulating 3353 hours of saved video over the past 8 years will do that.
A few years ago, we did start moving some of our older videos over to Youtube with Twitch’s built in export feature. Back then, I remember it being a gamble whether or not the video actually got exported. Which lead to exporting one or two at a time, waiting 10 minutes to see if they showed up on Youtube and then start the next few videos. It seems that this feature has improved over the years and at least I’m able to “bulk export” videos out. I still have to click the export button on each video but they all make it over to Youtube.
There seems to be an upload limit for Youtube. At some point, the exports just stop working. I haven’t figured out if this is a video limit or a video hours limit but I seem to hit it after uploading about 100 videos (the most Twitch Video Producer will show on a page). And this appears to reset every day. It’s still pretty lenient, these videos are 2+ hours long after all.
So for the last 2 months, I have been dutifully moving everything over to Youtube. I’m going to just get everything uploaded before Saturday (the original April 19th deadline) and I will be glad to have finished this project. Though now that the deadline has been extended I may be a little more lax on hitting those upload numbers.
In case you’re wondering what the analytics of a Youtube channel uploading one hundred, 2 hour long plus videos a day, without tags, descriptions, or thumbnails:
I find it interesting that the average watch time is just about 18 minutes. I’m surprised anyone is clicking on these in the first place, let alone letting it run for 18 minutes. They must be sleeping through an auto play or something….Speaking of clicks, I love that impression click through rate is impressively low, but .4% or 450,000 impressions is still many, many clicks!
Yet again I find myself in a familiar situation. It goes like this: The Squad is discussing what we should play with this past weekend.I bring up Devour. It’s been a few months since we last played it, there were a few maps added since we last played, and we always have a good time with it, so let’s check that out. Then I head over to Steam to make sure it’s still installed, only to find that it’s been 3 years since we last played.
This happens to me all of the time. I have such vivid memories of playing something that I could have only played it recently it but then find it’s been many months or years since the last boot up. All thanks to sorting my Steam library by recent. It used to suprise me. Now I just laugh at how long it’s been this time, if I even remember to check. It’s definetly an interesting personal phenominon. In general, my memory can be, shall I say, lacking at times, in day to day life but apparently I can recall fine details about a video game I played a year and a half ago. Go figure…
Anyway, back to Devour. It remains to be the best $5 I’ve spent on Steam. It’s a co-op, horror game, where you and up to 3 friends collect 10 of some sort of animal to sacrifice to exorsise a demon. As your sacrifices increase so does the monsters level of aggression. There are six maps, each with its own theme and flavor. The original map, The Farmhouse, has you and your team picking up goats and sacraficing them at an altar to stop the demon who chases you around the whole time. It’s fun to watch your friends get scooped up out of nowhere, less fun when it unexpectedly happens to you! Each map offers it’s own challenges and the two newest maps, The Slaughterhouse and The Manor have a few tricks up their sleeves that made our return visit feel fresh.
I’m sure you can already guess the theme of The Slaugherhouse map – It’s a Slaughterhouse!It’s a big, open square area with two levels. At first, we couldn’t figure out what to do because every single door was locked and we couldn’t find any keys to open them or release the pigs that needed captured. That’s a thing on every map, you typically need to release whatever it is you’re sacraficing from a cage that their already in. Seems coutner intuitive…
I eventually found a big square hole in a wall on a whim after running around in circles for 10 minutes. Turns out, this map has some vents to crawl through instead of going through doors. Once we spotted the vents, things moved much more quickly. We found the ritual room with a giant meat grinder. For science, I jumped in to it to see what would happen. I expected to die when I hit the ominous blades but this wasn’t the case. However, the walls of the grinder were just a little too high and I couldn’t jump out of it. Luckily, or unluckily for my unwitting character, Blades and Toast fueled up the ginder and turned it on which downed me! But that just meant I was crawling around waiting for a revive. Much to my suprise, I was able to climb out of the grinder while downed even though I couldn’t jump, not quite sure how that works. Oh, and we also found the guy who would be chasing us around.
After the whole debacle, the doors actually opened and things really started to get going. We found some keys, let some pigs out but couldn’t find the object needed to lure the pigs so we could pick them up. If you just run at them, they run away even though they aren’t very fast, you can’t pick them up with out putting an item down to distract them. The item in question was a bone, a femur by the looks of it, which seemed to only drop from some crawling lesser demons on the ground. Typically, these items spawn around the map and it’s a matter of finding them but tying them to an enemy that had to be killed wasn’t made this a chore. It was hard to find the enemies and there weren’t enough of them around to find them quick enough to deal with the increasing difficulty after every sacrifice.
One of the cool things about this map was when you got caught by the monster, you spawned under the map in a small area with a bunch of traps and some of the crawling enemies. After a little trial and error, we figured out that you didn’t respawn back into the map with everyone until you killed the crawlers. This means your teammates can’t revive you until your back on the map. Writing it out, it sounds like it would be kind of annoying but it was fun seeing how fast I could kill the things and avoid the traps to get back into the game.
We got to five out of ten pigs before we all died and called it quits on that one. I do wonder if it would have been better with one extra person. We were only running with 3 people. Perhaps another person would have made finding the crawlers easier.
Next up was The Manor, which was a big ol’ house with “grounds” around it. There was going to be a wedding but the groom died and the bride tried to summon a demon to bring him back. That – didn’t go well and she was possesed instead. On this map we were tasked with finding….heads….yeah heads and reattaching them to the corpses in the graves around the house. Fun times.
This one was more interesting than the slaughterhouse and is a bit of a departure from the previous maps in general. The ritual is much more involved. The heads are, uh, well they’re crawling around in a mirror world…and they want…cake. The steps are as follows: find the cake in the real world, go into a mirror and find a head, lure it with some cake, then take it to a basin to drown it in, which then turns it into a normal head, then find the matching body for said head in the graves outside, and finally, burry the body. That’s one sacrifice!
This map definitely made us think and come up with some new new startegies. Our usual strategy is to do mutiple sacrafices in a row to decrease the amount of time we have to deal with the monsters aggro. But that doesn’t work on this map because there is only one shovel to complete the final step of burrying the body. However, you can gather up a bunch of heads before hand. It seems like the max is five before they stop spawning in the mirror world. But there are crows in the real world who will pick up the heads and move them to random places so you can’t put the heads next to the matching grave and chain bury them one after another. We ended up putting all of them in the shed and have one person fend off the crows.
It lead to a much more intense experience as we had to fight off the monster multiple times and it just got worse as we burried more bodies. In the end we made it to six out of ten heads before we were all downed.
Out of the two maps, I think we could complete The Manor if we spent more time on the map learning where things are. Again, I think another person would have made a big difference but it looks doable with three.
For a $5 game, I’m suprised they’ve managed to put out so many maps, what looks to be about one a year. I was even more suprised to see that another map is coming this year with a carnival theme. We will be back from that one for sure.
Conan Chop Chop takes the top spot this month, in no small part because it is easy to play on the Steam Deck. While I’ve fallen off my daily runs, I think I still might revisit this one and unlock a few more items before shelving it completely. Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap just came out last week and my playtime thus far is a testament to how much I’m enjoying it (a lot!).
December 2024 Goals in Review:
Explore the Road to the Black Sea DLC in ETS2: Missing from my most played games in January is Eurotruck Simulator 2 so this one was a bust. I was playing this almost exclusively in December but hardly touched it in January. Mostly because I got tired of moving the whole setup around when I wanted to drive virtual trucks and then moving it again when I wanted to use my computer for anything else. It’s not exactly hard, it involves moving the wheelstand and chair around and moving my monitor mount. But it’s inconvenient enough that it started to be a barrier to playing. I did drive around Romania for a few hours this month, ticking off cities as I went. Romania is full of windy roads up mountains and through dense forests. It’s a pretty area for sure. Maybe I’ll be a little less lazy in February and clock some more time behind the wheel.
Play games I bought during the Winter Sale: I played almost everything I bought from the Winter sale at least once this month. The only title I didn’t play was Vermintide 2 and that’s because I missed the night the squad was playing it. Otherwise, I’ve tried them all, which may be a first for any sort of Steam Sale I’ve participated in!
Post 8 times this month: Hey I did that! I got exactly 8 posts out in January and it felt like a very good cadence for me. Think I’ll try it again in February.
Books Read this Month:
Lost Man’s Lane by Scott Carson was my favorite book I read this month. Part supernatural mystery, part slice of life story about a kid in highschool in 1999. I couldn’t put it down and there’s just something about the writing style that I found compelling.
I listened to Darth Plagues by James Luceno on audio. I read Drew Karpyshyn’s Darth Bane trilogy last year and this was recommended as a good follow up to that series. The audiobook is fantasctic, with sound effects, music, and the narrator does an awesome job with all the voices. It’s more of a collection of stories about Darth Plagueis and Palpatine that spans decades. It ties right in to the Phantom Menance so if you ever wanted to learn more abut the Trade Federation here’s the book for you…It’s slow, doesn’t have a lot of action, and is mostly Star Wars politics but it held my interest enough to see it to the end.
Hammers on Bone was a short detective noir story except the dectective is an eldritch horror who eats other eldritch horrors. I’m not super in the Lovecraftian mythos but I’ve liked everything I’ve ready by Cassandra Khaw and this one is no exception. I’m definitely going to read it’s sequel, A Song for Quiet in February.
I just finished reading Lost Man’s Lane by Scott Carson. That’s not the topic of today’s post but it’s a good book. You should read it. It’s got a ghost-snake. It’s also got some awesome rock climbing scenes. Upon finishing it, I wondered if there were any rock climbing games out there. This is the way my mind works.
I immediately thought of Jusant a game about climbing a tower which was a part of October 2024’s Humble Choice. I also came across the Cairn demo a few weeks back which looked interesting enough to download but not immediately play. Both seemed to be what I was looking for.
I tried the Cairn demo first, because it was shorter and it was already installed. It bills itself as a survival-climber which it is to a tee. You climb, and you have some meters you need to keep full to continue to climb. The demo focuses a lot more attention on the climbing bit which is exactly what I was looking for. You control Aava by taking control of one limb at a time, finding hand and foot holds to climb the cliff side. It’s slow, it’s methodical, and it is way more satisfying than it should be to reach the next flat area to rest. I felt like I had climbed some rocks and needed a breather, which of course, is absurd. I think this effect is achieved by a mix of micro decisions on the best placement of each arm and leg coupled with no background background music and Aava’s heavy breathing. The focus is on climbing so the survival elements are rather simplified. One odd thing I encountered is health and stamina are shared on one bar. I had to go digging around in the Steam discussions to find out why I was losing health while running. Overall, it is exactly the kind of experience I was looking for but it was short. It took me just under 45 minutes to complete my first climb. I am looking forward to the full release, which is slated for sometime this year. I hope sooner rather than later.
The map of my first successful route.
Then there’s Jusant which is another game about climbing but with a focus on storytelling and puzzle solving. You control each of your arms while climbing, which did give me a sense that I was, in fact, climbing something. But not quite in the same way as Cairn The climbing paths are per-defined and while there is some freedom in the ways you can tackle a situation, it’s still mostly a linear game. There are collectibles to find and letters to read. Even some cairns to place a stone on top (see what I did there?). So there are reasons to go off the beaten path, but it doesn’t quite have enough freedom. I am constantly seeing things in the distance that I want to be able to get to and the game won’t let me. Even when it does, there isn’t anything there. The game could do with just a little bit more exploration.
The story revolves around the cliff/tower the main character is climbing and is told through these letters. The ocean has receded leaving only a desert behind. The remaining people who inhabited the tower have gone on an expedition to the top to find water in the clouds. As you explore, you’re going through a ghost town, but one that looks recently abandoned. It’s got a cozy, post-apocalyptic vibe, if you can even have such a thing.
While Jusant has weaker climbing mechanics than Cairn, it’s a full game and I will continue to play it. It’s not very long, 5 hours or so, and I think I’ll see it through to the end.
Here’s a list of things I know about the Conan the Barbarian IP:
It was a movie starring Arnold Schwartzenneger
Before it was a movie, it was a series of books.
There was a 2000s era MMO set in the Conan Universe – Age of Conan – which is apparently still running!
Oh, and there’s a survival sandbox, Conan Exiles, which was big a few years ago.
I’ve seen the movie once or twice. I haven’t read any of the books. I tried the free to play version of Age of Conan a handful of times but never stuck with it. I apparently own Conan Exiles but I haven’t played it. All this to say, I am probably not the target audience for a cartoony, Conan the Barbarian parody game, announced as an April Fools joke. But here I am, and I can’t stop chopping!
I vaguely knew of this game’s existence from the Massively OP Podcast. I don’t know how or when it showed up in my Steam library so it’s probably from a bundle. Shortly after finishing Wytchwood, I went looking through the “Great on Deck” category in search of something else to play on the Steam Deck. I scrolled past Conan Chop Chop a few times before deciding to just give it a shot. I’m not usually one for action rougelites, preferring games that don’t make you start over when you lose, but it looked like a game well suited for the Deck. I thought I’d do a run or two and get bored but I was hooked!
So what is it? Conan Chop Chopis a 2D, action rougelite, set in the Conan universe. Honestly, it’s kind of generic. You know the type of game, you’ve probably played it before. You collect random items to make a build, you clear out rooms to advance to the next room, you unlock chests for a chance at better items, you fight bosses, and when you die, the run is over and you’re sent back to town. There is permanent progression in the form of unlocking new items with a special currency found during run and hero progression through experience gained towards your Warrior level at the end of a run. When you level up, you unlock skill points that can be used to make your chosen heroes stronger. But at the same time, there’s cartoon Conan with stick figure legs. It is a game that doesn’t take itself seriously but is also strangely compelling. I have been booting it up everyday for a run or two.
The runs aren’t very long, I’ve been averaging under an hour, and consist of four stages. Before you start, you have a chance to buy some items in town to kick off your build before venturing off. Within each stage, there are a set of rooms with enemies. You need to clear all of the enemies before advancing to the next room. Some rooms are optional and lead to chests or merchants where you can get better gear. Some times there are mini bosses down these routes or additional health. Each stage leads to a dungeon which has a few different enemy types and environmental hazards floor traps and spiky walls. At the end of every dungeon is a boss. Once you defeat the boss, you complete the stage, and go back to town where you can upgrade your gear again before moving on.
The stages open up in the same order every run and have the same final boss. Starting with the Darkwood and a fight with Thrak, followed by the desert of Koth where you’ll face the Giant Sand Worm, then the ice mountain of Vanaheim ruled by the Frost Giant, and finally Hyperboria with the Fire Skull. At the moment, I can consistently get through the Darkwood and Koth. Sometimes I get to the Frost Giant but I can’t consitently defeat him yet. I have been to Hyperboria twice but I’ve only faced the Fire Skull of Hyperboria once. It wasn’t a very long fight…
There are a few things that have helped my runs go further. First, I’ve unlocked most of the skills for Valeria which includes upgrades like more health, movement speed, and damage. She also has a skill which stacks bleed damage with every attack which adds even more damage. There are a total of four characters but I don’t plan on trying to unlock all the skills for them at the moment. I’ve also unlocked a good amount of the weapons, charms, armor, and shields. They aren’t necessarily better items, but they do have new effects to synergize with other items for more build variety. My favorite so far is the charm that doubles your bombs and the charm that leaves a bomb decoy behind you after using your dash. Used together, you drop two decoys every dash so there are explosions going off all the time!
I’ve also got better, mechanically, after a bunch of runs. Learning to use every tool at my disposal has been key. The bombs are good for some decent AoE damage on normal enemies and some extra damage on bosses. The bow can sometimes do more damage than your primary weapon, but aiming it can be a little weird on the Steam Deck some times. The biggest thing was learning some patience and using my shield effectively. If you time your blocks right, you can parry attacks which can stun enemies and trigger some effects depending on what shield is equipped. But you can also block through attacks without a parry. Eventually your guard will break but it negates damage until it does. It took me a while to stop trying to kill enemies faster than they can attack and learn to block every once in a while. I ended up having more health for longer which let me go farther into the runs.
I’ve settled into an equipment priority list as well. Enemy health goes up with every new stage so I always make sure to prioritize upgrading my weapon first. Next is armor, because it typically gives you more health which covers my mistakes. The bow comes next. I’ve found that a decent bow can dish out a lot of sustained, single target damage, that is until you run out of arrows. I won’t prioritize this as much if I’m going with an explosion build since bombs and arrows share the same resource meter. Shields are up next, so I can block through more damage and my last priority is charms. I’m a fan of using whatever I find during the stages to use as charms. I’ll rarely buy them in town, unless I have enough money and there’s a synergy I want to try.
I’m kind of surprised I’ve been so taken with this game, it’s not something I would typically seek out. The combination of a relatively short run time and that little mental reward of doing slightly better than last time has keep me engaged with it. I plan on continuing along until I either win a run or unlock all the items. Whichever comes first. The thought being, with everything unlocked, it’s not an item issue it’s a skill issue. By that time, I’ll be ready to put the game down regardless of if I complete the run or not!
When I pick a game for the monthly Blaugust Reviews Humble Choice, I try to pick something that I wouldn’t normally buy on it’s own or play. I’ve found some great games this way but sometimes I run into games that just don’t click with me. The Pegasus Expedition is one such game available in the January 2025 Humble Choice. I am not a 4X player but every once in a while I’ll give one a shot, just to see if my tastes have changes. What piqued my interest in The Pegasus Expedition was the story. Every other game in this genere that I’ve tried has been a sandbox experience. I tend to go through the tutorial and enjoy that. But once the training wheels come off, I struggle to figure out what to do next. I thought the story would provide some needed direction for me.
The story starts strong, with Earth in a losing war against and extraterrestrial threat, the Colossals. So humanity bands together, as they always do in these situations, to launch an expedition into another galaxy to look for an advantage against the threat at home. You play as the Director of the EU fleet and are the first to arrive in the Pegasus Galaxy. The fleet is immediately attacked by the locals. Because when a foreign ships shows up, unannounced, what else are you going to do? You attack back so that we can all have an excuse to do a combat tutorial.
You aren’t in direct control units in battle directly. You select the formation you want to use and position the battle groups. There’s a few additional options that provide buffs to your units, some of which are free while some consume resources.. Then you have to decide if you how you want to fight the battle. Do you take a neutral stance, do you try to fight with as little needless casualties as possible, or do you want to win at all costs. These options supposedly affect your diplomatic standing in the galaxy but I chose the win at all cost route many times and my standing didn’t go down. Then you watch your little blue dots do battle with the little red dots. Whoever runs out of dots firsts wins!
With the tutorial out of the way we get our first quest. In true human fashion, we’re going to exterminate the locals and take their territory….so Ai take my first system and – it’s on to the building tutorial. Systems contain buildable and habitable worlds that outposts can be built on that generate different resources. Only one outpost can be built on each planet, something I didn’t realize until I tried to build 3 different outposts on a single planet and my outpost kept getting replaced. Habitable planets can support people, and they’re much rarer than buildable planets so systems containing them are a high priority. I was tasked with taking systems from the locals, the Ror, in order to build up resources with the ulitmate goal of taking the Boh system which has their only habitable planet. We’re the good guys!
Every few turns, there are cutscenes to move the story along where you interact with your council of advisors. There seem to be dialogue options that seem like they might branch the story, but they all seemed to lead to pushing the Ror out of their systems.
The story also doesn’t take in to account the game state. I over extended my fleets before I realized that they were very low on health. I couldn’t figure out how to build more units, I don’t recall getting any information on that during the tutorial. I found an option to repair my fleets at a system with a Shipyard but that put my fleets on a 3 turn cool down where they couldn’t defend or attack. Before I knew it, the Ror destroyed my fleets, took all but two of my systems, and I was bleeding resources. My advisors kept commending me on how well we were doing! How my decisive wins have helped us strengthen our position!
I finally figured out how to build more units thanks to the in-game manual, but it was far too late. It also seems like some of them took too long. Some units I tried to build were going to take 5 turns to build, that’s basically forever! I went back to my only system with a shipyward to build some units and recruit some admirals to the cause. I slowly worked my way back into Ror space to retake some systems. By then I reached a point in the story where we encounter the Tamian Empire, who have ruled the Pegusus galaxy for a thousand years. So naturally, the humans hatch a plan to topple the empire. I tried to steer the story with a more diplomatic approach. We were in no state to start a another war, especially with an empire! It seemed to work for a turn or two but eventually I was given no choice but to invade their home planet to – get this – kidnap the Empress. Great plan guys, we’re just going to swoop down, scoop up the Empress, and leave. I’m surprised I got this far, with the sorry state of my military and my economy. But I did manage to get three fleets to their home world and kind of accidentally blew up the planet the empress was on..which lead to the breakup of the Tamian empire. So mission accomplished?
Maybe maybe not…
This is where the tutorial and tool tips end and the real game begins. I tried to play a few more turns but I was so far behind, it was not a fun for long. I couldn’t generate enough resources to build more ships and I couldn’t figure out what was using up my resources every turn. After a while I threw in the towel. I could start over with my new found knowledge but I didn’t want to have to go through the same story beats again. Maybe that’s a downside of a story in this type of game.
I think the tutorial could have explained more about building units but otherwise it was pretty good at onboarding a new player. I liked the story, while it seemed like my choices didn’t matter, I was engaged with it and wanted to know what was going to happen next. The only real complaint I have is that it’s hard to tell what buildings are in which system. I only had a few, and it was still annoying to have to click into each system to see what’s where, especially when looking for a Shipyard to park my wounded fleets at.
I want to reiterate that I am not a 4X player so most of the issues I have with the game are probably on me. The Steam reviews for The Pegasus Expedition are Mostly Positive and praise a story based 4X game that still has some depth to it. If you’re getting this month’s Humble Choice for another game, perhaps Against the Storm, it’s worth checking out!
We’re almost 2 weeks into the new year! Are you having a good year so far? Seems kind of the same as last year to me…Anyways, I’ve been marinating on my goals for 2025. You might call it procrastination, but I was thinking really hard about them (ok probably not). Looking back, I’ve never actually done a year long goal post. Or at least not one that I remember or can be brought up in a quick search through old posts. I set a reading goal every year, but that’s about as far as my long term goals go. So after seeing a bunch of these types of posts, I thought, that’s a great idea. I should do that. Then I can come back at the end of the year an see how I did.
Like I said, I make a reading goal every year. Historically, that’s been a set number of books I would like to finish. It usually ranges from 20-30 depending on how ambitious I’m feeling when I click the button in whatever reading app I’m using. Storygraph has a pages read yearly challenge that I started last year and will continue this year. It also has a minutes read goal, but that seems like a pain to track and would most likely drive me crazy. Best to stay away from that one. But I thought, how can I make my reading goals more interesting? I’ve been doing this whole “count the books” thing for a while, let’s spice it up. So this year, I’m not only focusing on how much I read but what I read:
Read 10% of my To Be Read List
Surprised I could find a screenshot with a book in it.A talking book, no less.
That’s right, I’m tackling that never ending TBR list that haunts me every time I go to the library. Mine is currently home to 201 books. Some of them have lived there long enough to be in middle school now. I loosely tried this out last year and read a number of books from my TBR. The “problem” (not an actual problem) was that I kept adding to it. So I started 2024 with 200 books and ended 2024 with 201 despite reading 10 or so from the list. Regardless, it’s something I’ll be trying this year with a little more focus.
I read, on average, around 30 books a year. 10% of my TBR is 20 books which leaves some room to read books that catch my eye during the year. I’m also giving my self some leeway here. I’m going to count any books I didn’t finish as part of this 10%. Last year, while test driving this out, I found books I was interested in years ago just didn’t spark the same level of interest by the time I got around to reading them.
Within this goal, I have a couple mini goals. One is to finish the Expanse series and all of it’s related short stories/novellas. I read four of them in 2023 and didn’t return to Jim Holden and his intrepid crew in 2024. I’d like to see how things play out before I forget what happened in the first 4 books. This would also get me 50% of the way to meeting this goal. The other is to read the oldest books on the list. They’ve been there forever, it’s a read them now or take them off kind of situation.
Then I thought, what if I applied the same kind of goal to gaming….
Play 10%of my Unplayed Games on Steam
Me, buried in my backlog.
I would like to note, mostly to myself, that I said play not complete 10% of my unplayed games. I’m defining unplayed as less than 2 hours in a game, which happens to be the majority of my Steam library. I feel like 2 hours is a fair amount of time to determine if I like a game and, if I don’t, it’s enough time to see if it get better.I f it does, great I’ll keep playing it, if not it’s being banished to the Hidden Games category, never to be seen again.
After sorting through everything via How Long To Beat, I’ve arrived at the magic number of 44. It’s a mix of unplayed games, games with less than 2 hours of playtime, and games that I’m still interested in playing more of.
Is it ambitious? Yes. Do I have that kind of time? Probably not. But it could be a fun way to focus some gaming choices. Or, it will be needlessly oppressive and I will abandon it. Only time will tell! The next goal will probably help with this one:
Play More Games on the Steam Deck
I’ve had a Steam Deck for 2 years now. When I bought it, I thought I’d use it like crazy. I have always loved the idea of handheld gaming, probably due to all the interations of gameboys and sony handhelds I had growing g up. In reality, it sits on my desk most of the time.
The problem is, I have a hard time starting games on it. I tend to feel a little cramped when going through tutorials on a smaller screen. Even those green check marked “Verified” games sometimes have font that’s just a little too small for me to read comfortably. I’m much more likely to use it to continue a game I have a few hours on PC first.
With that said, I’m going to try to make it a point to use it more. It’s a niffy little machine, and it deserves some love. I just need to find the right games for it.
Write 100 Posts this Year
Actual footage of this goal creeping up on me throughout the year.
The most ambitious goal yet! I’ve never written 100 posts in year and I’ve been out here for 9 years. Wait – 9 years? Really? Time flies….The closest I’ve gotten was back in 2020 with 81 posts. I want to challenge myself this year purely to see if I can do it. Doing the math it’s like 2 posts a week which sounds achievable to at the moment. Especially if I’m going to be playing all these games. Get ready for a bunch of impressions posts! Factor in Blaugust, which could count anywhere between 10%-31% it just might be achievable. Or you’ll never hear from me again, 50-50 on which way it goes. But in all seriousness, I am trying to carve out a writing habit, something I’ve been meaning to do for 9 years. Why not let 2025 be that year?
Alright, time kick off the first Backlogged post of 2025! Let’s see, the last time I did one of these was *checks notes* – Horizon Zero Dawn back in July 2023. Wow, been a while the . That tracks though, it’s probably the last time I finished a game. So Wytchwoodmust of done something right if I saw it all the way through. (It did!).
Last spring, I was really into cozy games. My wife had just picked up Disney Dreamlight Valley on the Switch and was playing it constantly. Which is out of the norm for her. Typically, she only plays games featuring a certain plummer in a red hat whose having a party.
What stood out to me while watching her play was the quest system. It wasn’t just a Disney skinned Animal Crossing but a Disney skinned Animal Crossing with crafting and gathering quests! It seemed like the perfect Steam Deck game but it stubbornly refused to go on sale. So I went in search of a game with a similar vibe. What I ended up finding was Littlewoodwhich satisfied my need for endless crafting quests up until Dreamlight Valley finally went on sale a short time later. But ran into Wytchwood recommendations constantly on my search.
Flash forward to this year’s Winter Sale where Wytchwood once again caught my eye. I was looking for a low key game with quests that I could play on the Steam Deck (I’m trying to use it more this year).
Wytchwood tells the story of a Witch (suprise!) who has enters a magical contract with a goat. Well, more like some sort of supernatural entity trapped in the body of a goat. There’s a shrine near the Witch’s home that contains a woman in a magical slumber. The Witch has no memory of the woman, or the goat for that matter, but seeing as she’s in a shrine on her property, she must be important. The goat informs her he’ll wake the sleeping woman once the Witch gathers twelve souls, from villans who wronged the sleeping woman in some way, to complete the contract. So off she goes to collect the souls.
Things I Liked:
The QUESTS!
It’s a good thing too because that’s why I bought it. Wytchwood is a crafting adventure game which means every quest is a crafting quest. It’s one of those games where everything is a gathering node. Logs, plants, animals, people, they all drop something that’s neededto craft something else. There are certain items that have to be crafted to continue the story so I was constantly running back and forth between zones to get materials.
I quite enjoy games with this mechanic. Most notable for me are Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles and Summer in Mara. At the start, there’s a phase of discover when everything is new and I’m figuring out where to get the things I need. Later, there’s a phase of mastery where I know where everything is and all I need to do is go out and get it.
I also thought the progression was well done. The story is split into three chunks where the Witch needs to gather four souls. The crafting requirements start off simple with with only a few materials needed to make each item. As the story goes on, you might need to craft multiple items to craft one story item for the next step in the quest. Towards the end, I even had to craft multiple items just to craft an item I needed to gather a certain material. It never feels overwhelming though.
The Length
One of the reasons I didn’t initially buy Wytchwood is because one of the complaints I kept running across was that it was too short. I should have probably gone over to How Long to Beat to verify that, or maybe I did and thought that 10 hours was too short at the time. Now that I’ve played it, 10 hours is plenty. Any longer and it would have out stayed its welcome. I can only run back and forth, gathering wood yet again, before I say enough already. With that said, I didn’t have to spend too much downtime in between quest steps gathering materials. The crafting recipies range from 1-8 materials so I usually only needed one or two more of each ingredient to complete the recipe.
The Docks Theme
As a whole, the Wytchwood soundtrack is serviceable. It’s not overly exciting, but it does it’s job and sets the mood for the world. But, for whatever reason, The Docks theme has been stuck in my head for the last two weeks and I can’t make it stop. I even plucked it out on the piano a few times. This particular track reminds me of the Summer in Mara OST. For that reason alone, I’m sticking music under things I liked. Oddly enough, The Docks theme doesn’t actually play in the Docks, it plays in the Village and the Market areas. The actual Docks theme is missing from the official OST. Which is a shame, because I quite liked that one too!
Things That Could Have Been Better:
Steam Deck Battery Drain
Wytchwood made my Steam Deck work for it. The battery lasted about an hour when I was playing. I haven’t played that many titles on the Deck, but I don’t recall another game draining the battery quite so quickly. It’s fine though, I rarely played longer than an hour at a time on it, but I thought it was notable.
Many Welps 