I find myself in that precarious Blaugust situation where the scheduled posts have run out, it’s late, and I haven’t written a word yet. While I’m not explicitly going for 31 posts (it’s more of a low-key thing), I didn’t want the streak to end so early. So, as is the long standing tradition here at Many Welps, it’s time to pull out the ol’ Saturday screenshotspost!
I spent this week back in Guild Wars 2 finishing up the Living Story Season 2. Over the winter, the game had finally clicked for me after starting a new Sylvari Gaurdian. I ran him through the core story, up through the Living World Season 1 content, and about half way through Season 2 before quietly drifting away.
Finishing season 2 is the farthest I’ve gotten a character over the years. Despite that, I’ve owned Heart of Thrones and Path of Fire for what feels like forever. I played enough Path of Fire to get the Raptor mount when it first came out but I’ve never stepped foot in Heart of Thorn’s I’m excited to see what lies ahead!
You ever go to boot up a game that you could have sworn you played a few months ago, only to see its, in fact, been several months? I find this happening to me constantly. It’s like, I have such a strong memory of playing it that it must have been just last week. Or, at the very most, last month. It always leaves me with a funny feeling. Like time has suddenly rearranged itself around me. It’s quite jarring.
I found myself in this situation, once again, this week. Never quite to this extent though.
Blades suggested playing Sanctum 2 this week. If you’re unfamiliar, its’s a first person shooter,tower defense game from the people who brought us Goat Simulator. It features shooting bugs with guns and setting up bigger guns to shoot more bugs.
It was our main game for quite a while. We finished up the base game and purchased the DLC. We even beat most of that too. So I was down to revisit an old favorite.
I could have sworn we last played it over the winter but, lo and behold, Steam had it listed as last played in 2020. 4 years ago? I couldn’t believe it! Then I went digging through posts to see if I’d ever written about it. I was shocked (SHOCKED!!!)to find I wrote one in August 2019. I guess Sanctum left quite an impression on me.
Stepping away from a game for 4 weeks let alone 4 years is tough. Trying to pick up where I left off never ends well. The controls came back easy enough but trying to figure out what my load out was and why I had chosen it way back when was borderline impenetrable. I went with it anyway, past me knew what he was doing right?
We tried starting on the map we assumed was the one we left off on. That ended quickly. I think are some mechanics we forgot about over the years because we lost our core very quickly. Defeated, we went back to one of the easier levels on endless mode to get acquainted again.
I wish I could say it was exciting to revisit. I had really liked it before, after all.
But, as it all started coming back to me, so did the feeling of having done this all before. I’ve fought these enemies, built these towers, and ran around with these character for 40 hours already. There wasn’t anything new here. It was too familiar, and not in a good way.
Some games are just played out and are better left back in the “Recent Activity” graveyard.
I got an email the other day from Greenheart Games that the demo for their new game, Tavern Keeper, was available. Admittedly, I didn’t actually read the email, just skimmed the subject and kept a mental note to check it out some time. Had I read the email, I would have known this was a limited time demo ending on July 29th. Lucky for me, because of the recent changes to Demos on Steam, the demo was extended for a few days. I couldn’t track down the new end date of the demo, though I didn’t try harder than clicking on the latest game news in Steam. If it’s a game you want to take a look at, you should probably check it out sooner rather than later.
You might know Greenheart Games for their last successful venture, Game Dev Tycoon circa 2013. That’s one of those games that’s always recommended when I’m trawling Reddit for “recent” tycoon games. I played it, it’s holds up to the hype, it’s on mobile, PC, Switch, and Netflix – wait Netflix has games now?
I digress, I’m here to talk about the demo for Tavern Keeper!
Do you like cozy, fantasy vibes? I like cozy fantasy, vibes and Tavern Keeper’s got ’em. The graphic’s are of the inoffensive, cartoony variety. Though, the people don’t seem to have arms connecting their wrists to their shoulders which is, well, a little unnerving. And the music! The music is lush and warm and makes me want to curl up with a book in front of a large fire place. If there’s a soundtrack I will buy it, without question, on release.
You’ve probably already guessed the premise of the game. You run a Tavern. Surprise! But not a serious tavern, no this is a rather silly place. Full of parody’s of fantasy characters and staff who were fired from their last job for impersonating the elderly. The writing is full of quipy, quips made even better when narrated by our Narrator, Steven Pacey. I didn’t know who that was but when I got around to reading the demo announcement email it says:
You might know Steven’s work from the many audio-books he narrates, for example from Joe Abercrombie’s fantasy works, and several books of the Doctor Who bibliography, to name just a few. Recently, he’s also been featured on House of the Dragon, World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, and Love, Death & Robots.
Well I don’t know Steven’s work, but I would sure like to. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I have a bunch of audio books to put on hold.
There are some patron’s who you can interact with via a book above their head. There are two of these in the demo and they are read and voiced by the Narrator. You have two choices at the end of every page that seem like they are the “Nice Response” and the “Mean Response”. Depending on your choices different events can happen. With the narration as good as it is, I’m definitely looking forward to going through more of these on release.
I can see this style of writing and parody wearing thin for some after a while. Personally, I think it’s great and want more of it/ It’s like a family friendly version ofHello from the Magic Tavern.
Along with managing your staff and ordering ale from the traveling merchant, you are tasked with decorating the place. Now I’m not a huge fan of free form building systems, and especially not ones where every piece can be move around on an x,y,z axis. I’m just not that creative. But if you do like that, Tavern Keeper seems to do it pretty well.
Look I made this owl with a top hat and placed a rug underneath the table and it wasn’t horrible:
You can also do some wonky things, like create the tavern’s new Teapot overlord:
The UI can get cluttered at times. It didn’t get in my way of doing things but with a bunch of menus up things can get a little claustrophobic. I also found it slightly confusing when I unlocked some furniture but couldn’t use it in the demo.
Overall, the demo did it’s job. My interest in Tavern Keeper has been peeked and I have not removed the game from my wishlist all in under an hour of game time. You can tell they’re holding some systems and menus back from the demo. There are still some menus that are boarded up and haven’t been unlocked during the demo. Furniture and items seem to have a durability meter so maybe they can break. It also looks like things can be set on fire so I’m interested to see how that all plays out. It looks like Tavern Keeper will have some added complexity over Game Dev Tycoon with more resources to manage. But it looks like it will maintain the cozy, chill vibe, that Game Dev Tycoon has as well. With that said, it’s not an immediate buy for me right now when it releases in Early Access at the end of this year. I’m not in the market for a tycoon game at the moment but in a few months I might be.
Every year, the Cleveland Orchestra puts on a movie score concert series. In the summer, they play at Blossom Music Center, a huge outdoor music venue that usually hosts popular artist. It’s got a pavilion with assigned seats and a massive lawn for first come, first serve general admission. If you’ve never been to this kind of show, the movie is stripped of it’s score and the orchestra provides the music live in time with the film. If you have a local orchestra who does this, I highly recommend going, it’s a unique experience.
Last year, my wife and I saw Jurassic Park and had a blast sitting out on the lawn, watching the movie, and listening to a John William’s score. For the last couple of years, they’ve been playing the Lord of the Rings movies in the summer, one each year. This weekend was The Return of the King.
When we saw Jurassic Park, the place was pretty empty. We’ve been there plenty of times to see popular bands so it was nice to be able to park close to the venue and have space around us on the lawn to spread out. Expecting a similar experience this year, we planned to arrive about an hour before show time to get some snacks and settle in before things started. When we got there we were shocked to see the sea of cars ahead of us. The closest parking options were in the back grass lots which are like a mile out.
Our parking spot for the evening waaaaay out there.
Thinking about it now, it makes sense. While Jurassic Park is a classic it probably doesn’t have the mass appeal and/or fandom of something like Lord of the Rings. The Cleveland Orchestra has played Harry Potter movies as part of this series before and I’m sure that draws a similar amount of people. Blossom holds upward of 23,000 people and the place was packed an hour before the show. Fortunately, there were only two of us so we were able to slot in to a decent spot where we could see the orchestra and the screen.
I’m a fan of the Lord of the Rings as much as anyone who was a kid when the movies were coming out. It was all the rage in middle school. I saw all of them in the theater with my family and probably watched The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers dozens of times on DVD. Even still, I hadn’t seen either of them in at least 15 years. I only remember seeing Return of the King once.
With that in mind, my wife and I had a Lord of the Rings marathon last week so we could get caught up. We split the first two movies up over 4 days because neither of us are good at sitting through long movies these days. I’m glad we did, because I missed so much as a kid. I remembered the general plot lines and how cool all the battle scenes were but didn’t follow many of the side stories going on. There’s so much going on that’s not Frodo going to Mordor that blew past me all those years ago.
Like I said, I’ve only seen Return of the King once but, as I was watching the movie this weekend, I was surprised to find I remembered much of it. Not because I have a good memory, mind you but because I played the A TON of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on the Gamecube.
Ahhh, so much nostalgia packed in to one image.
Shelob’s Lair, The Black Gate, the Battle of Helm’s Deep (technically the Two Towers), the Southern Gate, and the King of the Dead were all my favorite levels from the game. They all happen to be major plot points in the movie too. My wife also has fond memories of this game from playing with her brother back in the day. We kept turning to each other and saying things like “This level was hard” and “I remember fighting that guy so many times”.
Side note: this was the first “T” rated game I ever owned. I went with my dad to buy it and remember being nervous my mom would make me return it when she saw the rating!
Anyways, back to the show. If there’s one thing I took from this weekend, it’s just how much music is in the movie. There is a very small amount of overall time where there isn’t music of some sort accompanying the on screen action. I find it amazing that the orchestra play so precisely for so long. Of course, they are professional musicians but it’s still a feat to play for over three hours.
Not only do you need a full orchestra for this score you also need a full choir. The orchestra was great, don’t get me wrong, but hearing the choral scores from this movie live gave me goose bumps. The woman who did the vocal solos had an incredible range. I found that while the movie was going, I sometimes forgot there was a live orchestra but something about a live choir just sounds different enough that I noticed it every time.
Seeing a movie with thousands of people also brings with it a lot of audience interaction. We cheered for the musicians when they played our favorite themes or big, musical moments. We also cheered for the characters and storylines we saw on the screen.
The highlight of the night was during Theoden’s speech before the Riders of Rohan charge into the battle of Mines Tirith. The whole crowd yelled “Death!” in time with the movie at the end of his speech. It just added to the epicness of the scene and music.
If anyone’s interested in learning more about the music of The Lord of the Rings, Irecommend The SoundTrack Show’s three part series on the music of The Fellowship of the Ring (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). David W. Collin’s does a terrific job of explaining film scores and music theory even if you don’t have any background in music.
I’m not sure what will be there next summer with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy finished up. Whatever it is, I’m definitely going back. I would like to get pavilion seats next year to see the orchestra better. We’re considering going to see the Cleveland Orchestra play the Muppet’s Christmas Carol for the holidays later this year.
Here’s a Blaugust tip: If you have a very long post, split it up and slap a Part 1 and Part 2 in the title. Now you have two posts!
This is a continuation of yesterday’s post where I continue to expand on the games I’ve played this year.
May
Secrets of Grindea
This is the game that was on my Steam wishlist the longest. After years, it finally released in Febuary of this year and I immediately bought it. At it’s core, it’s action JRPG but it has a gimmick where you can “grind” monsters to drop cards which are permanent passive buffs for your character. Each monster has their own card to drop and I found it very satisfying to collect as many as I could. I was close to the end when I stopped playing, I may have to go back at some point to finish it up.
Disney Dreamlight Valley
My wife bought this game for the Switch on a sale. She loved Animal Crossing but was bored after a while without any direction. Disney Dreamligt Valleyfixes that with a never ending stream of quests and unlocks. I started playing because she was playing (she doesn’t play many games) and it was fun to compare where we were at or who we had just unlocked. The Switch version of the game, however, doesn’t run very well. It runs worse the more characters and object you add to the valley and sometimes just crashes the entire game. I fell off playing because of the technical issues but bought the game on Steam when it was on sale. It’s probably the game I’ve played the most consistently this year.
Garden Paws
While I couldn’t deal with the issues of DDLV on the switch I was looking for other “cozy” games to play that had the same vibe. Garden Paws was in my library and recommended across the board as a similar game. It’s got this off kilter charm and also has a never ending series of quests. I found it a great game to turn the sound off and listen to podcasts while I played. It definitely added to the weirdness of the game, in a good way, to listen to the No Sleep Podcast while playing
Littlewood
This is another “cozy” game that I found with a nice grind to it. The premise is you’ve just saved the world from a great evil and now you’re settling down to help rebuild a town. There’s no combat, but there are a set of skills that you can level up to help out the town. This was a great game to play on the Steam Deck in short chuncks or long play sessions.
June
Trove
Trove remains my most played game of all time. It’s not that it’s a fantastic game, it has many faults, but it perfectly tailors to that mindless grind part of my brain. In March, there was a gear update that introduced a new tier of gear and made the old top tier gear easier to get. I spent the month of June getting the Gearcrafting skill maxed, getting Crystal 4 gear sets compete, and hunting for Crystal 5 gear. There was another update in June wich even added a new difficultly tier. I still can’t believe this game, which is 10 years old at this point, is still getting updates.
Battlefield 2024
The squad picked this up cheap on sale for $7. I know this game had issues at launch but was extremely playable for us now that it’s late in it’s life cycle. I played 20 hours and I know the rest of the squad spent much more time with it.
Crusader Kings III
I cannot remember what compelled me to play this game. There was something that made me go search for it in my library. It might have been an idea that I would like to play a complex game or something. I played through the tutorial and liked it enough to buy a bunch of DLC that was on sale. Then I started up a game and played it for quite some time. I remember thinking, this would be a great game to write a bunch of posts about. Then I just never went back to it. Might be a good one to return to.
Dark and Darker
I played this one co-op with Blades for 3 hours. That’s all I can really tell you about it. I have never had such “meh” feelings about a game. I didn’t like it enough to play it again and I didn’t hate it enough to never want to play it again. It’s still installed on my machine more out of laziness than a desire to return.
July
Lethal Company
While not exclusively played in July, per se, it was the most played game in July. Our group has been playing this off and on since release. I swear, this game seems to has comedic timing coded in to it. It’s never not a good time, and with mods, there’s always something new. We’ve been enjoying the TooManyEmotes mod immensely. The mod adds 200 emotes, many of which add music. You get separate funds to buy emotes in a run from the computer. There’s always a new one we haven’t seen every run. We’ve probably spent more time trying out different emotes and laughing uncontrollably than actually playing the game.
Many Welps 