renegadefolkhero | Entries tagged with video games

I've been having fun with the short visual novel Billionaire Lovers, which doubles as a paranoia simulator. It's about an MC who unexpectedly inherits $100 million and suddenly has a lot of hot guys in their life being especially nice and/or clingy. It's light on the romance side, but I found the reveals fun and I especially like how quickly the game can end if you're not paying attention.

My only gripe is the MC gets addicted to an annoying Gacha game on multiple routes and I appreciate they were making a point but it was tedious to RP a loot box addict.

If you like VNs that go off the beaten path, this one's a no-brainer at $3 and 2-4 hours playtime. This was an impulse buy based on title and the promise of being scammed. Would definitely get scammed again.

A deck building simulator... thing.

Grabbed this on sale for like $1.50 with zero expectations. Husband extols you to build the deck, so you must. When you build the deck, you get money. At first, the floppy physics are frustrating, but I stuck with it to build one deck and after a few upgrades I was pleasantly surprised by how the game flow improved. You hammer nails (don't hit hand, ouch!) and build the deck for money, which you use to upgrade hammers, nails, planks, bugs, and so on to make more money.

Some of the nails yell at you, others whisper ominous portents. I still haven't figured out how to reliably squash bugs with my hammer for the big cash prizes (and I'm honestly not sure if you can really "aim" beyond just getting lucky when they crawl under your nail). This is becoming a weirdly cathartic game experience for me.

Also, I want to be very strong for Husband.

> .club for pics

I love digging mechanics, so A Game About Digging a Hole seemed like a no-brainer.

The funniest thing about this one is it actually has a setup. You buy a house that is advertised as having treasure in the back yard. You buy an automatic shovel to aid in this. If your battery runs out, the shovel blows up (meaning you lose your ore).

As ores are gathered and sold on the internet, you gain money to upgrade your shovel size, inventory size, battery life, and jet pack ability. You have treasure detecting equipment that goes off if you get near an object of interest, guiding you to it.

A Game About Digging a Hole doesn't really get satisfying until you unlock the larger shovels. My first hole was such a sprawling mess I decided to start over and focus on building a very tidy, organized hole, and I've only just gotten to the point where my shovel is big enough to be fun. I needed a game I could mindlessly play to blow off steam, and if you're into games like Powerwasher Simulator you'd probably enjoy it, since it is essentially that with some exploration mechanics. As time wasters go, I like it okay. I'm generally going to prefer a survivors like or puzzle game to eat up my time, but once you get some upgrades under your belt and the digging opens up it can be satisfying.

Factorio is the defacto factory-building game by Wube Software. After your ship crashes on a planet, you must harvest resources and research technology until you can build a rocket to escape. In the meantime, the Biters living there are most displeased with your encroachment, and reasonably seek to destroy everything you've built.

Factorio has been on my short list for a while now because I went through factory phase and every time I researched this type of game the answer was always, "Play Factorio." A lot of people say Factorio is the last factory game you'll ever need, so I took their word for it and played a few others first, understanding all roads would eventually lead here.

I took the plunge this weekend because I needed something to distract and occupy my mind, and it has been wonderful. The overhead view makes it much easier to build than the first-person perspective in Satisfactory, and the early game balance of building and fending off the Biters (as the local wildlife is known) provides a nice push and pull.

My first factory I expanded a bit too aggressively and my factory was too sprawling with minimal defenses, so when my pollution (I think?) got high enough to trigger recurring waves of Biters I was constantly on defense and felt like I was treading water repairing defenses and manufacturing ammo and couldn't really catch up.

I love restarting factory games! Starting over with a nice open playfield is really satisfying after I've set up a Frankenstein mess out of my control. So I already started a new game. This time, I'm keeping things scaled down and slowly building up defensive pockets. My first map had pockets of the 4 main resources all together. This map has stone, which is vital for defenses, a ways away, so I'm taking a more modular approach.

I'm to the point where I need to double up my power grid, but last time doing that may have been what triggered the increased Biter activity, so I'm gonna focus on solar panels which have zero pollution for now and keeping the current factory chains I have as efficient as possible. I'm overloaded with copper plate, but iron is always needed. I checked the wiki and confirmed copper wire is used in electronics and a few others things, but I'm probably gonna condense and retire about half of my copper setup soon to focus more on iron.

Anyway, this is a very fun game if you like to optimize All The Things, free form spacial puzzle solving, and build manufacturing chains with the occasional hazard break. Researching and unlocking technologies means there's always something new to push for and try out. The goal of the game is to build a rocket and escape the planet.

On a technical note, you can purchase this game direct from the website and get a DRM free offline version plus a Steam key. They have mod and multiplayer integration through their site, and the whole thing is polished and gives a nice sense of community. The game has tons of starting options and a few different scenario types. You can really get lost in this one, and I plan on it.

While waiting for Farm Together 2 to leave early access, I embarked on the Great Farming Game Binge of 2024 and got this trash-picking-upping game believing it was a farming game. It's not really a farming game. It's a post-apocalyptic kinda-farming-but-mostly-cleaning-up-pollution game. The citizens of Earth abandoned our beloved planet for Mars, and those who remain are struggling with the trash they left behind.

The trash picking uping is generally satisfying, as is clearing out the areas. People compare it to Powerwash Simulator, which I actually didn't like. I like this a lot better because cleaning up the trash (by drilling down trash heaps and vacuuming up loose trash) opens up areas, reveals chests, uncovers passages, and so on. After you clear away trash, you can build structures and plant trees and crops almost anywhere. There are also robots, which you stun with water and tear apart with your drill.

Recipes must be purchased before things can be crafted, so you need to explore to find seeds so you can grow vegetables for upgrades. The game gives you craptons of seeds, so there's always plenty to sow about. You rescue animals and befriend them to convince them to live in the pens you've built for them. Animals can be named and given hats. If you put balloons on a pig, it floats away.

The farming is basic. You put seeds in turned plots and water them until they sprout. There are no seasonal restrictions or anything like that. You water crops with a big fire hose thing which is also pretty satisfying.

There are some good QOL features. One thing I particularly enjoy is there is no need to sleep, and if you die you simply respawn at home. This adds to the overall chill vibe of the game, where you simply take your time and do whatever you feel like doing. The game has fast travel, which is unlocked through exploration.

There is a fair bit of jank, a constant reminder this is a thoroughly indie endeavor. Unfortunately, since the progression and crafting is somewhat structured, it sometimes feels like "a thing to do" rather than a fun game to get lost in, and the garbage vacuuming aspect can compound that. The dialogue and story is also boring IMO. But gradually cleaning up the world is a good way to vibe.

I've been remiss in posting gamelogs (I write them and never get around to posting them, and then the moment passes and I'm onto something different). I'll try to remedy it.

Grindstone is a puzzle "battle" game by Capybara Games. This color-match puzzle thingy has been on my list for a while, mostly because of its enticingly weird aesthetic. I finally pulled the trigger and now battle Donut for Switch time (they are playing a lot of Minecraft and Ultimate Chicken Horse this summer).

You are a mountain climber type dude named Jorj who quests on Grindstone mountain to kill jerks, the color-coded inhabitants of this place, and find grindstones and random loot. Most jerks start out passive, happily bouncing on their assigned grid square, but some fly into a rage. Enraged jerks will attack you if you're in their attack radius, so part of the strategy is chaining enemies while avoiding landing in a square that will deplete your HP.

Increasingly, Donut has observed the protagonists of our favorite video games are wrong and should be stopped. Case in point, the jerks are happily being their jerk selves, and are not bothering anyone. Jorj came into their territory on Grindstone mountain, where they were innocently bouncing on squares, and began attacking them. Of course, some jerks would be angered by this provocation--rightly so! What business do I have coming into their place, breaking all the crates, and taking all the grindstones? They are defending themselves, and their home, from a hostile invader who offers nothing nothing but resource theft and murder. It is Jorj who is wrong. I find it interesting, and unfortunately unsurprising, my nine-year-old has a more empathetic and sophisticated moral compass than almost all the adult Republicans I know.

Anyway, this is a fairly mindless puzzle type game with a fun artstyle and lots of bells and whistles in the form of challenges, bonuses, unlockable equipment, collectibles, and so on. Chaining is satisfying, and I've enjoyed picking my way through the levels trying to max all the collection goals (generally: unlock the next level, gain a crown, and open a chest). I don't know if there's much to say beyond you get into these types of games or you don't, and my kid likes watching me play this one and will chime in to offer chaining suggestions, which is always a bonus.

The Switch port takes advantage of the touch screen, which is nice since my joycons are still borked (I bought a kit and took the joycons apart, but didn't replace them, I think because I couldn't get the screws out without risking stripping them, even after buying several different screwdrivers. Incidentally, I will NOT be buying Nintendo's next console until I'm confident they didn't intentionally ship faulty controllers. Fool me once.).

I went into this one assuming I would get bored of it sooner rather than later, because I figured difficulty would be primarily increased by having less blocks of color, or less chainable configurations, which means "less of the fun part." In fact, difficulty is increased by having breakable barriers that require a certain level of chaining to break an dropping in mini-bosses that have more (sometimes way more) HP than the jerks. So I can see myself blowing through a few levels every night for a while.

I can't imagine completing all 250+ levels like, ever, but I appreciate how thorough the game interrogates its premise.

I was enjoying watching Donut build a sweetberry farm in Minecraft, and I had an epiphany... I really love automation farming! It scratches a really specific itch in my brain, yet I've never sought out a game exclusively for that purpose. I still play Farm Together, in fact I created a whole-ass website just so you guys wouldn't have to scroll past my weird, crunchy posts on that game, but 150 hours in much of my fun centers around figuring out mechanisms that let me automate... basically anything, so I can passively rack up resources while I'm running around decorating houses.

Factorio is the go-to automation game, but I wanted something more farmy and after poking around a bit, I landed on Assembly Planter. I played for about 30 minutes, and was like eh I'm over it. But I came back later that afternoon and at some point the hook got sunk deep. Deep my friends.

Assembly Planter is a 20-level optimization sandbox puzzle. The early levels, which walk you through the game mechanics, require you to plant seeds to farm resources, but once you hit later levels the farming gets abstracted to the point it's more of a factory automation game. I really enjoyed the middle section of the progression, where I had a convoluted farm chain that really slapped and I could sit there and watch it do it's thing. As you progress, much of the challenge hinges on fitting increasingly elaborate machines into the limited building area. You unlock a Shrinker feature that allows you to shrunk larger machines into 1 block machines to save space. The boxy machines are less fun to watch, but it is still satisfying to see all the resources popping out.

I feel like the pacing is good. Every level a new production goal is set, and I usually end up completely tearing down whatever I had built because the new goal requires serious optimization and my current Frankenstein setup isn't gonna cut it. I love optimization (as a coder, I spent so much time refactoring code, purely for fun) and within the confines of Assembly Planter it's mostly fun, but around level 15, I started to get just kind of... overwhelmed with it. I kept trying to create self-feeding machines in the shrinker, which it turns out is impossible until you actually unlock self-feeding collectors. I got past this by setting really specific intermediary goals, like creating a crate assembly line so I can expand my stack size, or farming earth orbs to expand my farm area.

Level 16 unlocks transmutation, which are resource shortcuts. So you can go from 30x lead > Gold, rather than Dirt>Sandlion>Sand>Cactus>Compacted Sand>Gold. This changes things up and gives you a lot more options for the long-tail crafting resources.

I'm currently on level 18, and my goal is to figure out a way to craft 1 gold per second passively. But before I do that, I think I'm gonna have to solve my dirt generation problem and build another crate factory. If this sounds terrible to you, you might hate this game! But it's $5, so if you wanna try the genre this might be a good entry point.