I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
April 7, 2024 - Day 463 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 491
Game: Techtonica
Platform: XBox Game Pass UItimate
Released: Aug 16, 2023
Installed: Apr 7, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 11h6m
Techtonica is not in the Humble Bundle. If it was, I'd be torn between yelling "BUY IT IMMEDIATELY", and "RUN AWAY, SAVE YOURSELF!"
It's a first person factory automation adventure game set on an alien planet. It's not Factorio, because it's first-person, and it's got an actual narrative built into the game, instead of tacked on as an afterthought.
You're a "breaker", who's been woken up from artificial hibernation, because something has gone in this mission to colonise an alien planet.
The design and lighting and music are all utterly gorgeous, and I wish I'd never met it.
GG.deals had a link to Pacific Drive on special (that I can't afford), and when I clicked through to look at the pricing, I saw Techtonica in a bundle with Pacific Drive (that I also couldn't afford), and I went back to GG.deals, to discover it's included in XBGU (oh no).
I lovehate factory automation games. I own several of them, and I shouldn't play them.
My theory is that they scratch that DEEP itch for systemisation that my autistic brain loves so much. I have lost entire days of my life in this kind of game.
What Techtonica does, however, is that it ties the narrative progression to the in-game tech-tree progression, and producing enough widgets to open the next level of the tech tree and find out more of the story.
I barely moved all day. I barely ate. I managed to drink a little bit of water here and there, but I was fundamentally staring at the screen for 11 hours straight.
They built a damn Skinner box that was specifically tuned for my brain, and I locked myself inside.
This game is a dopamine-hit nightmare, and I love it, but I'm not sure if it's healthy for me to keep playing it, because it verges on "addictive" territory for me.
I hate to say it, but I must; escape while you still can, don't do what I did, because Techtonica is:
🧵 1/6
September 1, 1983: The trail down the far side of Smarts Mountain was in worse shape than the ascent had been, but what did that matter to a man surrounded by that kind of magnificence? The AT lunged downward across more of those dripping, mossy rocks.
Thank you all for these cool titles for Yip Quest!
Even if one of these titles was not chosen as the title for the first Yip Quest game, it could be still taken for one of Yip Quest's successors (with mentions in the credits, of course!)
Did you know that an inofficial fan demo of "Monkey Island 5" was released in 2004 called "The Return of LeChuck"?
Released by Team Flibble Studio It was created with AGS and can be run on ScummVM!
Testing the German version of Brok the InvestiGator on my Huawei Mate 20 Lite. It's cool playing on the smartphone and the combat mode works pretty well.