I realized that I’ve never really posted my art here on Mastodon. Sketches here and there, but not art from before. If you knew me from Twitter, well, you’ll get to see some things again. 😂 Here’s a #watercolor painting of a client’s two #Cats. The blanket they’re on was also sentimental to her so it was included. #mastoart#art#cozy#pets
Folks, "The Birds I Pull," by Sharang Biswas is available to read on our site right now! Cozy up, settle back, and enjoy. 🐦🪶❤️ https://www.augurmag.com/the-birds-i-pull/
Welcome to my cozy little isometric bedroom, where the bed is soft, the lighting is warm, and the lines are... not exactly straight. Who needs perfect lines when you have pixelated charm? Just don't step on the legos hiding in the shadows. 😜💤
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.
The game's intro has you (intro makes it clear you're a man) out to sea in your fishing boat, which gets shipwrecked near a small fishing village, whose previous village fisherman has disappeared under unclear circumstances.
You are pressed into service as the new village fisherman, and given an old boat, and a loan you must repay. The village & villagers are all slightly unsettling.
The game then revolves around catching & selling fish, & dredging the bay to upgrade your boat so you can go further & faster to ensure you can get back safely to dock each night.
Fish are all different sizes & shapes, so part of the game is a puzzle minigame to arrange the caught fish in the most efficient way.
If you don't get back to dock before 6:30pm in-game, weird stuff starts happening, & your "panic" levels increase.
I played Dredge for 3 hours straight last night, because Dredge is:
Apr 8, 2023 - Day 98 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 105
Game: Terra Nil
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Mar 29, 2023
Library Date: Apr 7, 2023
Unplayed: 1d
Playtime: 3.3h
I first played the Terra Nil demo about 9 months ago during the Steam Next Fest.It had a lot of rough edges, but it was quite charming, and there was definitely something there.
It was released on the 29th of March; it then popped up as part of Fanatical's Easter sale.
Take a dash of ADHD, a touch of exhaustion, and a habit of buying new games as a coping mechanism; shake them all up, and I found myself the owner of both Dredge & Terra Nil (there went my savings towards a new motherboard).
Terra Nil is an "environmental strategy game". You find yourself in the middle of a wasteland, with the job of terraforming the land to restore the biomes and biodiversity that are long gone, and finally removing all traces of civilisation.
While Dredge is "cozy horror", Terra Nil is just cozy. There are challenges to achieve during the rewilding process, but there are no threats, no impending doom, just a delightful experience of watching a dead wasteland brought to glorious life, accompanied by a delightful soundtrack that seems to slowly fill in as you move towards the goal.
It did not feel like 3 hours had passed; Terra Nil is:
May 13, 2023 - Day 133 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 149
Game: FixFox
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 31, 2022
Library Date: Feb 14, 2023
Unplayed: 88d (2m29d)
Playtime: 37m
FixFox is a top-down pixel art sci-fi puzzle game. Fix machines with weird tools, try and escape the planet.
It's a "cozy" game, so it's very chill and laid back. There's a touch of Stardew Valley about it.
I read the description of it before it was released, and it seemed like it would be interesting, so I wishlisted it, and then was on special in February for 75% off, so I bought it.
I kind of regret it. Conceptually it seemed like a nice idea, but in practice it doesn't rise above the pixel art to grab me the way some other games have.
While it is kind of cute & cozy, it's also just... boring. I wanted to like it, but it just didn't do anything for me.
May 16, 2023 - Day 136 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 152
Game: Bad North: Jotunn Edition
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 17, 2018
Library Date: Dec 25, 2022
Unplayed: 145d (4m24d)
Playtime: 43m
Steam went down while I was writing this, which was a little disconcerting.
Bad North: Jotunn Edition is the "definitive edition" of Bad North, which I'd never played. It's a real-time cozy tactics strategy roguelite.
I threw "cozy" in there, because of all the games this reminds me, it's actually Townscaper that it comes closest to in terms of atmosphere.
It's somewhat minimalistic in design, but that gives it a unique character. You defend a series of islands against Viking invaders, so it's like the anti-Assassins Creed Valhalla.
I wish I had more to say about it, but I've come down with some kind of not-COVID (according to two tests so far), and couldn't stay awake last night to post the update.
I then went to bed and couldn't sleep, so it's a lose/lose.
I really must look up the difference between roguelike and roguelite, because all of these subcategories are doing my head in.
June 14, 2023 - Day 165 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 183
Game: Tinylands
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jan 22, 2021
Library Date: Dec 25, 2022
Unplayed: 171d (5m20d)
Playtime: 37m
Tiny Lands is a cozy isometric puzzle game. It's those old "compare these two images and find the differences", but with tiny little low-poly side-by-side dioramas that you can rotate and zoom.
They're very pretty, with an almost tilt-shift style, and a wonderful away of sound effects intermittently plays in the background while a very chill & laid back soundtrack accompanies you.
Set up my new WQHD work monitor tonight to test it, and this was the perfect game for it.
However, it is possible to, in a word, cheat.
If you've ever deliberately gone cross-eyed to trigger a 3D illusion, that some technique works almost flawlessly here. The differences in the images suddenly pop out at you as you rotate the tableaux, but it defeats the purpose of just chilling out and letting your mind wander.
June 26, 2023 - Day 177 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 196
Game: Before We Leave
Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 14, 2021
Library Date: Aug 21, 2022
Unplayed: 309d (10m5d)
Playtime: 38m
Before We Leave is a cozy city-building strategy sim. Set on a post-apocalyptic planet, your "peeps" have come up from underground to a newly green planet to repopulate & rebuild civilisation.
In some ways, it's not unlike Timberborn, which I reviewed earlier this month, which is unfortunate.
Even with the post-apocalyptic, "mine the remains of the previous civilisation" thematic similarities, it feels very different.
Before we leave, in keeping with the "cozy" idea, uses big cutesy hex tiles, on a round planet that you can explore to find other island and settle.
The downside is that unlike other city-builders, the use of hex-tiles with the big graphics makes everything feel cramped. I found myself getting frustrated with the game early on, because virtually everything needs to be connected to a road, but with large hex tiles in a relatively small space, I felt like most of the space was taken up with roads.
While the whole "mining the bones of the past" enables skipping over several steps that would be involved in getting from ore to metal in other games, in Before We Leave, mining the remains creates areas of pollution that, once again, suffers because of the "large hex tiles in a small area". The areas of pollution easily end up overlapping areas I'd rather they not, and given the fixed location of the ruins, it then becomes a question of whether I rip up all my buildings and start again, or just start the level over.
There's still something there that kept me playing beyond my initial 15 minutes; it remains to be seen as to whether that's sustainable long-term.
July 1, 2023 - Day 182 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 201
Game: A Little to the Left
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 9, 2022
Library Date: Jun 30, 2023
Unplayed: 1d
Playtime: 33m
A Little to the Left isn't about becoming increasingly progressive, but rather a cozy puzzle game about organizing household items.
I'd had it on my wishlist for a while, and Steam seasonal sales are my kryptonite.
To be honest, after the last week, it was really kind of what I needed last night.
Also, there's a cat.
The cat likes to reach in at infrequent intervals and mess up the pile of things I'd just organised, and to be honest, I didn't mind at all.
There's a lovely, whimsical feel to the design of the game. The puzzles (so far) aren't terribly complex, but there's a wonderful feeling of satisfaction with each solved puzzle.
It's not just the satisfaction of solving the puzzle itself (and one does love a good puzzle game), but the solutions themselves are usually deeply satisfying to my autistic brain, that wants to organise & systematise everything.
I think the only other game that's really scratched that itch for me is the delightful (and LGBTQ+) Unpacking.