cobysev

How do you do, fellow gamers? I'm back with another set of video game screenshots! And today's game is a simulator game. I actually love simulator games; I have a whole category in my Steam library dedicated to them. It's the only library collection I've made that's specifically for a genre of game.

I got Tavern Manager Simulator on sale yesterday, and whereas there are probably better simulator games in my collection, I did enjoy this one in particular.

It opens with you acquiring a run-down tavern just outside a large castle. The place is boarded up and you need to remove some planks in order to get in the back door and open up the tavern.

The place is in disrepair and you spend some time picking up trash and cleaning stains on the floor before you can open the place.

The large piles of garbage are too much for you to deal with right now, so you just throw a cloth over them to get the place open and running.

You have a small private room just off to the side of the bar room. There's a bed in here where you can sleep until 6 AM the next morning. There's also a desk where you do all the "paperwork" for the tavern. This desk is where you can upgrade your tavern and its amenities. The more you level up your tavern, the more variety of foods you can sell, and the larger the tavern will grow. Literally; it will actually expand into a proper dining hall if you upgrade it enough.

Although the most important category is the Delivery tab, where you can order resources (food), furniture, and decorations.

You will need to make regular food orders as your supplies dwindle. You can place an order anytime and it will be at your back door in less than a minute. You can actually watch a horse-drawn cart show up down the road as soon as you order. Almost half the wait time is just watching it turn in a loop before stopping for you to unload it.

Next, you need to fix your sign out front. This is what you will use to signal when you're open.

When it's facing the tavern, you're closed. But when it's turned to face the road passing by your tavern, you're open. You can switch it anytime, day or night, to start or stop the flow of customers. You can also customize your new sign. Here is my tavern's sign, turned to signal that I'm open for business:

To start, you'll only have ale. Pouring ale is a bit of an art; you have to hold the pour button until it fills to the green line on a bar. Any less and it's just a "good" ale. In that green, it's a "perfect" ale and will have a sparkle to it. And if you go over, you will spill on the floor (requiring a clean-up) and it will be a "bad" ale, with a puke-greenish tint to it.

Make sure you hand out as many good or perfect ales as you can to customers! You're earning reputation to help improve your customer base and upgrade your tavern, so keep those customers happy! I don't know what the customers will do if you serve them a bad ale. I've just been dumping them in the trash and taking the financial loss so I don't hurt my reputation. Here was my very first customer:

You have a limited supply of dishes, so make sure to clean them as often as you can in the kitchen sink. You can get water from the well behind your tavern, and every dish you scrub counts for 2 cleaned dishes. It's super easy to clean, just swirl it in the soapy water for a few seconds and all the gunk will disappear from the dish.

You also have to clean your tavern as you go. Most patrons will leave a mess on the table when they leave. Collect their coin and dishes, but also don't forget to wipe down the tables as needed. Some customers will also leave footprints all over your floors. Don't forget to sweep them up!

Most customers will only make a single food/drink request, then leave when they're done. But this guy kept requesting more beers until he passed out on the bar. You can literally pick up these drunk customers by the scruff of their neck and toss them out. You can also ask anyone to leave anytime you want, but it's more fun to throw them out while they're black-out drunk. Plus, you collect a ton of coin from all the booze they consumed.

There are also beggars who might come into your tavern. You can give them what they ask for, which will give your tavern a boost in reputation, or you can tell them to scram. Later, you acquire a frying pan, which you can brandish as a weapon against unruly patrons or beggars.

This beggar lady came by pretty often. I had one guy come by saying he was dying of thirst and just needed some water. I went to the well out back and got a pail of water and he was very satisfied with that.

Over time, you start to expand the menu; first to sausage, then vegetable soup, and then grilled meat. It gets more complicated as you go on, because you now have to pay attention to customer's requests and not just hand out ale to every customer. Eventually, your kitchen gets fixed up as you level up your tavern and expand your menu. It starts to look like a nice place to work!

You will also unlock fairy helpers, whom you can assign jobs in the tavern. Which is nice when you have to cook soup, grill meat, chop firewood for the stove and grill, pour ale, clean the outhouse, and do dishes. PLUS ensuring customers are getting the food they want in a timely manner, cleaning up after them, and ordering more food when your supplies are getting low. It can get intense. Thankfully, I have not been completely swamped with customers yet. I got maybe 1-3 orders at a time, so I have a little time to balance everything. Just having a fairy to do dishes is a huge relief during open hours.

When you're closed up for the day, if you explore the grounds outside your tavern, you'll find hidden tributes to other medieval fantasy series. So far, I've seen references to Zelda, Dark Souls, Shrek, World of Warcraft, and Lord of the Rings. Let me know if you find any others!

If you catch a break (which I rarely did), you can chat with your customers, which gives you a +1 to your reputation. Although they usually just have either something weird to say, or a medieval dad joke.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable game. I had fun running back and forth, trying to keep food and drink prepared and dealing with customers as they came in. I had to make a lot of orders in the middle of the day to keep my stock up initially, but as I got used to the game, I was able to more effectively plan my food and drink and I was mostly able to make an order at night and be ready for the entire next day. It helps that none of the consumables ever went bad, so I could prep a bunch of stuff and leave it sitting out until customers ordered it.

I always felt there weren't enough hours in the day, though. Every minute of the day was a real-time second, so I basically had 24 minutes max to host customers every day. I'd run my tavern until I was almost out of everything late at night, then I'd spend the last few hours of the night/morning restocking and prepping for the next day. If I went to bed, it was usually with only an hour or two of sleep before getting up the next day. So far, I don't think sleep deprivation is a thing in this game. I ran my tavern for 3 days straight without any side effects at one point.

So if you like restaurant managing/waitressing games, this was a pretty fun medieval spin on the genre. Come grab a pint and enjoy!

Happy (belated) Veteran's Day! Sorry for posting this so late; I'm a recently retired veteran, so yesterday ended up busier than I expected.

And speaking of busy... I started these daily posts as 1.) a writing challenge for myself, 2.) a way to geek out about the games that I've been enjoying lately, and 3.) with the hope of adding some interesting and unique content to /c/games. But my ADHD/hyper-focus has been taking the wheel lately, and I've been taking longer and longer to write these up, not counting the several hours of gaming I do every night to acquire screenshots in the first place.

I was trying to find something to play the night before last and I ended up bouncing between several games that I just couldn't get into. Then I found Remember Me and it was so much fun, I didn't want to stop playing to write about it. I stayed up until dawn playing, then had so much on my schedule for that day, I didn't have time to write until later that night.

Basically, I've been spending most of my free time preparing these posts (which is a lot, considering I'm 100% retired now), and as much fun as it is, I need to cut back a bit and focus on other stuff in my life. Like actually finishing some of the fun and interesting games I've been writing about. I can't complete most of these games in a single night, despite my best efforts. But I don't want to make multiple posts about the same game several days in a row; I want to provide new and interesting content for you to read.

I'm not going to stop writing detailed (and spoiler-free) posts about video games, but I will cut back a bit on my posting schedule so it's not eating up all my free time. I never promised to do daily posts anyway; that was just a personal writing goal of mine and I've made it to 50 posts with only 3 days missed (including this one), so I'd consider that a win. I'll try to aim for an absolute minimum of a post a week; although I may post more often as I find and play interesting games. I still have a list of games I want to write about, so there's still plenty of content to come.

All of my screenshot posts have been archived on a blog, which you can find here. I draft them on the blog initially, then copy/paste to Lemmy and post both simultaneously. I have another blog where I review movies, although I've been ignoring it for over a year now and would like to get back into it; another reason I want to slow down these gaming posts. You can find a link to that blog on my blog profile if you're interested.

And now back to today's game...

Remember Me is a fascinating cyberpunk game taking place in Neo-Paris in the year 2084, a dark future where people have merged their brains with technology and can now have their memories accessed digitally. This has created a market for buying, selling and trading memories. This has also led to a surveillance society, where corporations can access memories and either wipe or replace them as they desire.

You play a French woman named Nilin, a memory hunter who can not only access memories, but has the extremely rare skill of editing details within them to give a person false memories. She's part of an underground resistance movement, fighting against Memorize, a corporation trying to create a monopoly on human memories. She's classified as an Errorist, which is not only the name for people who can create "error" or false memories, but is also a brilliant take on the word "terrorist."

I'd like to point out that this is a game developed by a French studio, the story takes place in Paris, and the French language is written on signs and billboards and graffiti throughout the game's world, so I felt it was appropriate to play this game in French with English subtitles to get the full effect. It's such a beautiful language and it felt wrong to play this game in English. Especially when Nilin has a British-English accent in the English version.

Unfortunately, this game originally released in 2013, so it wasn't designed for 4K displays and despite having that resolution option on the Steam version, the subtitles don't scale to the size of my screen. They're extremely tiny in these screenshots, so I apologize in advance for that. If you see a fuzzy white line across the bottom of a screenshot, open the image in a new tab and you can zoom in to read the subtitle.

Remember Me opens with Nilin squirming on the floor of a prison cell as her memories are erased. When the procedure completes, a doctor approaches her and asks her name. Surprisingly, she's able to remember her name! She doesn't remember much else though, so the doctor consults the head of the department, Dr. Quaid, and Nilin is scheduled for a more detailed memory wipe to scrape out any remnants.

Barely able to stand, she's directed to follow an orange line down the hallway, where she joins a queue for another memory wipe. While waiting in line, a voice pops into her head. A guy by the name of Edge, who claims he's attempting to rescue her.

The power goes out and a blast door next to Nilin raises a little bit, exposing a small gap. She's instructed to slip through the doorway. Her escape is detected though and she's pursued by a large robot, which she's barely able to stumble away from in her dazed state.

Eventually, she falls down an air vent and stumbles across a machine loading up bodies into caskets. She's told to climb into a casket, which she does begrudgingly. The machine seals her in the casket, then launches her out of the prison facility and into a river.

Edge explains who Nilin is and why she's had her memory wiped. Apparently, their resistance movement failed and everyone was rounded up except for their leader, Edge. Nilin was his best fighter though, so he's rescued her so she can help recover their resistance.

Her casket drifts up to Slum 404, a garbage-filled slum of Neo-Paris. She's freed by some scavengers known as Leapers. The correlation to lepers is not lost; deformed and monstrous, they're the corrupted and insane remnants of citizens whose memories have been edited too many times. Their instinct is to attack Nilin when they find her.

Suddenly remembering some basics on how to fight, Nilin is quick to take them down. Her memories start coming back a little at a time throughout the game, although only enough for her to remember key details. Edge informs her to travel to Tommy, her best friend and former memory hunter who is loyal to their cause. He runs a bar in the slums called The Leaking Brain.

He is grateful to see her, even though she doesn't remember him. He rescued her glove that she uses to manipulate memories, as well as her combat skin. He comments that it's a good thing they caught her on her day off, or else they would've gotten their hands on her high-tech gear.

But just as soon as she's suited up, a bounty hunter jumps out of the shadows! Olga Sedova, one of the best in the business, and she's out to collect the bounty on Nilin's head.

Before she can secure her though, Nilin gets her glove close enough to Olga's neck to grab hold of her memories. We're transported into her memory from three hours ago, when Olga was at a hospital watching Dr. Quaid tend to her husband.

Her husband had deleted too many memories over time, causing a syndrome that is breaking down his mind. It's implied that he may be turning into a Leaper. Dr. Quaid promises he can fix it; although it will be very expensive. A bounty for Nilin pops up and Olga promises she can pay, heading off to hunt Nilin.

At this point, you're able to fast-forward and rewind the memory, finding small glitches that you can edit in the details, like unfastening the husband's mask or removing one of his wrist straps. Changing these little details leads to a different outcome for the memory. Your goal is to find the right edits to make Dr. Quaid appear to have killed Olga's husband instead of saving him.

This part may take a while and some tinkering with various details until you find the right combination of edits, but once you figure it out, Olga is forced to watch as her husband dies a violent death due to Dr. Quaid's incompetence. Snapping out of the memory, Olga suddenly decides to side with you as revenge against Memorize for killing her husband! She offers to give you a lift to your next objective.

From here, you carry out missions for Edge, fight more people from your past whom you barely recall, return to the prison to regain more of your memories from their memory backups, and along the way, question who you really are and what you're actually fighting for.

This game is kind of like a cyberpunk version of Assassin's Creed. You're part of a shady underground organization, sneaking around, climbing all over the structures of Neo-Paris, and fighting the controlling organization ruling over the land, all while stealing and/or editing people's memories.

You can't free-roam like in Assassin's Creed though; you're stuck on a singular path toward your objective, which prevents you from back-tracking even a couple rooms as you progress forward. It does help keep you focused on the story, though. I've played nearly 7 hours and I just finished episode 4 out of 8 total. So the lack of exploration doesn't make this a quick story to burn through.

The combat is extremely fluid, too! You have combo streaks that you can build yourself from various types of attacks (power, healing, cooldowns for special attacks, and chain abilities). Completing combos will grant you points to eventually unlock even longer and more powerful combos, which can make defeating even the toughest enemies no effort at all.

Not to mention, Nilin is extremely light on her feet. Every time an attack is incoming, you can just press your jump button and she immediately cartwheels out of the way, or even flips over enemies' heads if she's up close in combat. You can weave and dodge in and out of a dozen enemies without taking any damage because they always indicate when they're about to strike.

You can also find collectibles in each level called Mnesist memories, which are cultural memories of Neo-Paris, preserving actual history so corruption from edited memories doesn't wash away what actually happened. These are more background lore, if you're interested in world building. They give a history of the fall of Paris during a global war in the 2040s and how Neo-Paris and its current social and economic structure sprouted from the ashes. As well as many other detailed bits of lore to flesh out the world.

One of the only things I didn't enjoy about this game is the camera controls. They're a bit dated and erratic. It is an older game, so it doesn't have smooth modern camera controls. It keeps trying to default the camera to a position that doesn't give a good view of your surroundings, so I found myself constantly adjusting the third-person camera, which didn't want to move smoothly and precisely most of the time.

Also, the shadows and lighting effects are pretty bad. There were tons of dark scenes where I could hardly make out Nilin or others. Her skin tone is so unnaturally dark and shaded in this game, it looks like she spent way too long in a tanning bed. The only time she looks halfway normal is when her face is directly illuminated in a bright space. But if the light wasn't directly on her face, even in bright sunlight, she was unnaturally shadowed.

But again, those are problems due to the age of the game. Physics engines have evolved a ton in the past decade, and if this game was remade today, it would look absolutely stunning. Even for its time, this is a gorgeous look into a future cyberpunk Paris. And the story is captivating and kept me engaged for hours. This is an incredible game, it just needs some tune-ups to the graphics and controls to be perfect.

The orchestral soundtrack gives this game a very cinematic feel, too. I wish they released the soundtrack on Steam so I could listen to its music outside of gameplay.

Say No! More is a relatively short but comical game about empowering people to say "no" more often. It mostly plays itself, with you interacting enthusiastically at key points throughout the gameplay.

The game starts with you creating a character. You can pick one of their 16 presets, or create your own. I modeled mine after my wife, because she's really good at saying "no." 😅

Next, you pick the way you say "no." There are 17 languages, with both a masculine and feminine voice to choose from. I think my favorite is Irish Gaelic. Instead of a 2-letter word, theirs is long and super complicated sounding.

Then the game opens up on a video game called "Wizards of Nay," where you play as a wizard who fights imps and a Devil King by using the word "nay."

When you get a game over, it zooms out of your cell phone to show your character sitting on a park bench. Your roommate approaches you and offers you a custom lunchbox he made, with a home-cooked meal inside. How nice!

But was he just buttering you up? Because the very next thing he asks is if you can cover the rent this month... AGAIN. He has all sorts of excuses as to why. He's short on cash, still job hunting, etc. You try to respond to him and all you can muster is a "..." Which he takes as "we'll discuss it later" and he lets you run off. It's your first day of work at a new company!

You arrive at work and meet up with two other interns, who are already waiting with your new supervisor. He reprimands you for being late and when you can't respond with an excuse, he threatens to fire you before lunch if you don't learn to speak up. But he's one of those supervisors, who tries to play off all aggression as just a joke.

He instructs all three of you to say "yes" all the time if you want to promote within the company. The other two interns are motivated and on board, but again, all you can muster is a weak "..."

He decides to have a practice run. He claims he's hungry and wants your lunchbox. What do you say to that...?

When you can't give a straight response, he laughs it off, saying it's just a joke and no one will take your lunch. At least, not yet...

You and the other interns go off to the tiny cramped corner behind the vending machines that has your new desks. After the other two interns are called away, your supervisor pokes his head around the corner and claims he actually forgot his lunch and really needs one today. So...?

Unable to give a response, he takes it as a "yes" and runs off with your lunchbox. You bang your head on your keyboard, defeated.

That is, until a cassette player drops on your head from somewhere. Inside is a cassette tape labeled, "NO!" You put on some headphones and listen to it.

You're introduced to the confident voice of a motivational speaker! He instructs you to have confidence in yourself and speak one magic word: NO!

He has you practice using the word a few times, then shows you how to laugh at people, to confuse them and break their confidence so your "no" is that much more powerful against them.

You chase down your supervisor in the office and use the new word you just learned against him. It's super effective!

You relentlessly pursue him through the office, throwing your powerful word at him, attempting to shake him so he gives your lunchbox back. All your coworkers jump in your way to ask you to do menial "intern tasks" for them, but you can knock them back with the word "no!"

From here, your lunchbox gets passed around to various levels of leadership in the office, while you continue to chase after it.

Thanks to the motivational speaker on your cassette tape, you learn how to say no in different ways to affect different types of people. You have the standard angry no, but you will also learn a cold no, bored no, and wacky no. On top of that, you learn an add-on response to shake your target and make your "no" more brutal. You start with laughing at them before hitting them with a "no," but you will also learn how to slow clap, nod in agreement before saying "no," and a sarcastic "hmm" before landing that solid "no."

Eventually, your coworkers notice you speaking up against management and they start rallying behind you. You go out to lunch together and teach them all how to say "no" as well. Before you know it, you have a whole crowd of employees willing to say the word "no."

The game gets more wacky and outlandish as you go on, with all sorts of hilarious twists and turns to the plot. It's a fun journey through a day in an office where the word "no" is banned. Like I said, the game mostly plays itself and you just shout the word "no" at every opportunity you can. You can probably beat it in about an hour, but it's so much fun, I've already played through it a few times.

Despite all its silliness, this game comes with a pretty decent moral at the end about standing up for yourself, but also knowing when to say "yes" too. So take charge of your life! Learn to say "no" instead of caving to social pressure! And empower those around you!

Note: I set this game to display in 4K resolution, but it enabled a resolution scale and wouldn't scale larger than 1080p for some reason. After I beat the game, I realized I was in borderless windowed mode. Changing it to fullscreen granted the full 4K resolution. So these screenshots are all going to be 1080p instead of my usual 4K.

Death From Above takes place in the Ukrainian town of Nenatsk during the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. You play a Ukrainian drone operator who is captured by invading Russian forces. But you're freed by a little old lady whom the Russians took for granted.

You grab a drone and a bunch of grenades and set out to clear the region from Russian invaders.

You can customize your drone and its pilot. As per usual, I switched to a female drone pilot. I also chose a camo pattern for my drone with Ukrainian colors and a Ukrainian flag trail behind it. Not very good camouflage in real life, but colorful and fun for a game!

You set out to restore communications with your military unit. There's an antenna nearby, guarded by several Russian military members, so you move to engage them. You can switch between your pilot and your drone, and for the most part, you only fight with your drone. Your pilot can't pick up a weapon and engage the enemy, so you want to keep them tucked away somewhere safe. Your drone has some seriously good range on it though (and unlimited battery life), so raise it high enough in the sky so as not to be seen by enemy forces and go scope out the target area ahead.

You can also turn on thermal imaging to make people and vehicles show up easier. Good for finding those stubborn forces hiding in the woods.

An interesting detail is that every time you kill a Russian combatant, their body immediately sprouts sunflowers. The sunflower is Ukraine's national flower, and if you haven't heard the story, there was a Ukrainian woman recorded on video who approached an occupying Russian military member and offered sunflower seeds to put in his pockets, so his dead body would blossom sunflowers. (Source)

Once you restore communications, you receive a message from Special Forces HQ, asking you to clear out Russian forces in the nearby village. From this point, you'll receive messages from HQ after each mission, directing you toward your next mission.

Also, you'll see a wanted poster of Putin on the wall in this room. Make sure you improve the poster for a huge score bonus. There are several of these posters to be found around the map. Don't forget to deface all of them!

To take out enemy forces, you switch your drone to a bomb view, giving you a target reticle directly below your drone. In this mode, you can drop your grenades on enemies.

Also, you can ask troops to surrender using the drone.

I've only had one guy surrender to me so far, but I got blown away by a tank before I could accept his surrender. The tanks just sat there idly, unmoving. I didn't realize they were armed and ready to target my pilot as soon as she wandered close. Oops.

The Russian troops were looting washing machines from homes, but after you clear out the enemies, you can pick up the washing machines with your drone and drop them onto designated pallets for homeowners to reclaim when they move back in. It doesn't matter which pallets in an area you drop them on; they get beamed up into the sky every time you drop one off, as well as giving you a score bonus.

Once you take over a Russian command post, you'll find the FPV drone. It acts like a guided missile; when you launch it, it shoots rapidly in the direction you're facing and blows up whatever target it hits.

You have some control over its direction, but it needs space to make big turns and it has a very short battery life that will drain in seconds, so make sure you're prepared when you launch it toward a target.

I should mention that you have unlimited ammunition in this game. Despite blowing up the FPV drone on each use, it will respawn in your inventory after a few seconds. Also, your regular drone can only hold 6 grenades at a time, but every time you fly it close to your pilot, it automatically refills all your grenades. So go nuts and take down as many enemies as you can from a safe vantage point!

By the way, the soundtrack for this game is awesome! Starring all Ukrainian bands. You can download it on Steam. The title song, also called "Death From Above," was made and performed by the band Antytila. They have three versions of the song: an English version, Ukrainian version, and a 21-minute instrumental version. I've been playing this song on repeat for months now; it's my favorite on the soundtrack!

There's also the band Surface Tension, who released their single "Завтра (Tomorrow)," both the original song and an instrumental version.

The band Odarka Zyrko released their single "за тобою (Behind You)," also the original version and an instrumental version.

Finally, there's GO_A with their single "Kalyna," which is the Ukrainian name for the guelder rose. It's a prominent symbol in Ukrainian culture, showing up in a lot of their media. This is probably my second most favorite song on the soundtrack.

You can hear "Death From Above" playing on radios scattered all throughout the game. But in the first village you come across, if you follow the sound of music, you'll find the actual band jamming in a house! Sadly, you can only watch from a single window. I had to take 2 screenshots to get all the band members in there.

This game actually benefits Ukrainian forces in their ongoing war. The publisher, Lesser Evil, claims that 30% of their proceeds are donated to two organizations helping the Ukraine war effort: "Come Back Alive" and "Army of Drones." Once they've earned back their production costs, they'll change their donation amount to 70%, using the remaining 30% to continue improving this game.

So if you want to show support for Ukraine (while also experiencing what it's like to operate a combat drone in occupied territory), I highly recommend playing this game. It's only $10 on Steam, or $16.46 for the supporter's edition, which includes this rockin' soundtrack and more skins for your pilot and drone.

If I had anything to complain about, it's that the controls currently can't be changed. I'm used to using Shift and Ctrl to go up and down in helicopters in other games, but you use E and Q to fly your drone up and down in this game. It took me a while to adapt to their controls, and I kept getting them confused and dipping into enemies instead of flying away. Developers, please let us change the controls!

Also, the game is relatively short. The whole game takes place on a single large map, but you are directed toward missions in specific regions of the map. There are 8 missions in total (plus a secret warship mission!). If you rushed through it, you could probably beat the whole game in an hour or less. But you earn points toward your total score for every little thing you accomplish in game - every enemy you kill, every vehicle you destroy, every flag you raise or propaganda site you discover. Heck, every washing machine you return gives you a boost to your score. So if you were to run around doing everything you possibly can... well, it took me about 4 hours to complete, and I know I missed a bunch of stuff.

Your total score gives you a global ranking, which you can see on the main menu. I started last night at #5,549 (I had previously played the first mission then quit), and by the time I beat the game, I was #194 globally.

So long story short, this was an extremely fun game with an amazing soundtrack, if not a bit short on gameplay and clunky controls. I hope they continue to improve on it and make it much more enjoyable. Lesser Evil, on their Steam page, claims, "We are uncompromisingly anti-authoritarian, anti-prejudice, and pro-democracy. We publish video games with clear political or social intent and messaging. We publish games that take a stand." So even though it's a short game, it's meant to deliver a message against fascism. And I think it did a pretty good job in getting that point across in the span of its gameplay. Slava Ukraini!

Cult of the Lamb is a cute game about building, maintaining, and running a cult in order to overthrow the four Bishops controlling the Old Faith. But is there such a thing as a good cult...?

You play as The Lamb, about to be put to death by the four Bishops. They've eliminated all of your kind to prevent a prophecy of "The One Who Waits" returning. With your sacrifice, the prophecy will be impossible to fulfill.

As soon as the blade lands, you wake up in a strange land, in front of The One Who Waits. He's imprisoned by four chains. He says that the Bishops, in trying to keep you from him, ended up sending you directly to him. He claims that he will grant you life again if you would start a cult in his name. Your choice is either "yes" or "absolutely." No middle ground option, I see.

He gives you his Red Crown, which revives you and grants you the power to command the loyalty of your followers and strike fear into the hearts of your enemies. You awaken at the sacrificial grounds, renewed with life, and fight your way out, taking out some of the Bishop's cultists along the way.

On your way out, you run into Ratau, a former vessel of The One Who Waits. He was instructed to help you with starting your cult. He will pop in and give you advice and guidance from time to time.

He also instructs you to save a poor soul about to be sacrificed. The grateful sacrifice will be your very first convert.

From here, you learn how to build your own cult grounds. It takes some work! You can't just leave your cult members to their own devices; you need to check in on them, provide food and shelter, task them with jobs, and overall just ensure they're happy and loyal so they continue to praise and worship you.

The more loyalty they have, the more power you build and the larger you can build your cult. Placing a shrine in the middle of your cult grounds will give your followers a place to pray and grant devotion, a sort of currency that you can use to upgrade various aspects of your cult.

You will also need to build a temple in order to give sermons, enriching your followers and also collecting more devotion from them.

Cultists can be tasked with collecting resources, which are needed to build up your cult grounds. But you also need money and more followers, both of which can be obtained by fighting your way through the lands of the Old Faith.

You ultimately need to end the lives of the four Bishops in order to release your imprisoned leader, so working your way through each of their lands is your overall goal. But it takes time to build up a cult and gain power, so you will slowly work your way up to each Bishop. As you gain more followers, each of the four lands will open up so you can travel through them for resources, money, followers, and power.

Good luck in building a faithful following! And remember:

Did you know you can save Doretta's head in the Escort Duty missions? I make it my goal to always return home with her. No dwarf (or machine) left behind!

Deep Rock Galactic is my second-most played game on Steam, with about 546 hours. Which may not seem like a lot for you hardcore gamers, but with almost 3,600 games in my Steam library, it's impressive that I've put that much time into a single game. Their Halloween event just wrapped up this morning, so apologies for the Halloween decorations in some of these screenshots.

For the uninitiated, Deep Rock Galactic is an FPS bug-shooting and resource-gathering game, with dwarves as the playable characters. Except you're on a space station, mining minerals from Hoxxes IV, a scorched, tidally-locked planet orbiting the blue star Creus. Every mission, you board a drop pod and are dropped deep into the caverns of the planet to accomplish some sort of mining expedition.

You can have up to four players per game, and there are four classes to play as: the Driller, Engineer, Gunner, and Scout. You can play on a team with any combination of classes you want; you're not stuck with just one of each. There are also tons of cosmetics you can deck out your dwarf crew with. Here are each of the classes with my own custom cosmetics:

The Driller specializes in drilling tunnels and igniting alien bugs with his flamethrower:

The Engineer crafts sentry turrets to protect the team and can shoot platforms against the wall for easier vertical climbing:

The Gunner is the tank of the group, laying down heavy suppressive fire, and he can also shoot ziplines across rooms for the team to traverse:

And the Scout is the lightweight, able to travel quickly across the caves with his personal zipline and illuminate the darkest rooms with a powerful flare gun:

As you can tell, I've sampled all the classes, but I play almost exclusively as the Gunner. It's a running joke among my friends that I'm gold-obsessed (because I'm always making them harvest all the gold they can find in each mission), so I leaned into it and decked out my gunner in all gold. He even juggles a couple gold nuggets at the end of each mission.

There are nine separate types of missions to play, scattered randomly across 10 diverse cavernous regions within the planet.

You can either select random missions to play, or you can pick an assignment from the Assignment Board, which will have a series of specific missions you need to accomplish in order to achieve the assignment and collect its rewards. There is always a Weekly Priority Assignment and a Weekly Core Hunt, both of which have several missions to complete in order to reap the rewards.

There are several robots that aid you in your missions. First and foremost is the Mining Utility Lift Engine (aka M.U.L.E., or "Molly" as the dwarves refer to her). She's a walking mine cart, collecting all the minerals that you mine so you don't have to be weighed down during your missions. There is no limit to the amount of resources she can carry, so call her over to you and regularly empty your bags!

Then there's the APD-B317 (aka "Bosco"), who is a flying drone that helps solo dwarves with their missions. If you're not on a team, Bosco joins you. You can point him at minerals and he will automatically dig them up for you. Pointing at blank walls will cause him to illuminate the space for you. And if threats appear, like alien bugs, he will automatically engage them. Although he has weak firepower, so don't expect him to take on all threats on his own. You can change his appearance and color scheme on the space station, as well as upgrade his abilities, so have fun customizing him for your missions!

Finally, there is the Drilldozer (aka "Doretta" or "Dotty"). She appears only in escort missions, where you have to protect her (and refuel her) while she slowly ventures toward an Ommoran Heartstone.

Doretta will take damage from bug attacks, so make sure you hop on top of her and repair her damage as you go. Once she reaches the Ommoran Heartstone, she will begin drilling into it (when you're ready) and you need to protect her from waves of bug attacks, as well as several defenses from the Heartstone itself.

Don't forget to find and collect her head after the Ommoran Heartstone explodes open! She's still "alive," and I'm sure she appreciates being brought home.

Every mission has a primary objective and an optional objective, which can be seen at the top right of your screen while on the planet. The optional one is usually collecting a particular resource, but not always.

The main mission ranges from harvesting minerals or alien eggs, refining liquid resources, eliminating giant deadly aliens, and salvaging lost equipment left behind by dead teams. Every cave is procedurally generated, so you never play the same area twice. It's always a unique mining expedition.

Deep Rock Galactic has recently started doing seasonal content, and the seasons have brought more missions to the game, including industrial sabotage against a competing dwarven mining company, and deep scans, to pick up rare minerals buried very deep beneath the planet's cave structure. As well as various events to encounter within the missions.

The best part about their seasonal content is that you can always acquire all the season rewards, even if you're just starting the game today. Not only can all unclaimed cosmetics be found in various chests scattered throughout the game, but you can actually select which season you want to play and earn the rewards from that season. You're not forced to jump into the latest season. Which is awesome, because there are story missions connecting all the seasons together. You can play through them relatively quick and get caught up with what's going on with the in-game lore. Or just enjoy the unique events that only happen during specific seasons.

So grab a beer at the bar, dance to some jukebox tunes on the dance floor, kick some barrels into the launch bay (to annoy the bureaucrats in Mission Control), then go explore some bio-diverse regions of Hoxxes IV!

I think Subnautica was the first crafting game I ever played, and I didn't really understand the genre, so I found it frustrating and slow. I prefer my games to have an ongoing story, and this... didn't. Not to say there isn't a story here, it just takes a backseat to the gameplay, which is exploring and crafting.

The game opens with you jumping into an escape pod. Something's wrong with your spaceship, the Aurora, so you're abandoning ship. As you fly away, you watch a massive explosion erupt from your former ship. The blast damages your escape pod and you're hit in the face with a metal panel. When you come to, your escape pod is on fire!

You jump up from your seat and grab a nearby fire extinguisher. Putting out the flames, you realize your secondary life support system and radio are both broken. You need parts to build a repair tool. You climb out of your escape pod to find yourself floating on a water planet, with the wreckage of the Aurora nearby.

In desperate need of resources, you dive into the ocean and start exploring. At first, all you can do is pick up a few resources found on the shallow ocean bed. But with the right kind of components, you can craft a scanner at the fabricator on your escape pod.

The scanner allows you to scan almost everything in your environment, collecting data from this strange alien world. It may also help you to unlock new crafting recipes. You find scattered wreckage all over the ocean floor, and scanning broken components will help you to reassemble their recipes so you can craft them yourself.

Once you've found the necessary resources, you can build a repair tool, which you can then use to repair your secondary life support system and radio.

Almost immediately, your radio picks up a message. Listening to it, you hear survivors of another escape pod. They're nearby, and under attack from a giant sea snake of some sort.

You swim out to their location, only to find the remains of their escape pod. You pick up a PDA left behind in the wreckage and download its data, which will give you the crew's log.

Your own PDA has been communicating vital information to you throughout your journey so far. Around this time, you may hear her say that the Aurora's drive core is going critical and is about to explode. You can actually watch the explosion from the surface, just make sure you're not swimming anywhere near it at the time.

From here, you're just responding to radio signals, exploring and collecting resources to build more and more advanced technologies, and eventually, you can build an entire underwater base to live in.

I didn't get much further than this, because this game is so incredibly slow for me. I enjoy the crafting game Satisfactory because all the resources I need to get started are right nearby, almost within eyesight of my landing pod, and I can scan for the location of more resources as I start to branch out. Plus, your hub gives you instructions on what to build, so you have some direction to progress toward.

Subnautica, on the other hand, just dumps you in the water with no explanation and expects you to just swim around and collect stuff until you figure out what to do with it. The first time I played this game, several years ago, I spent maybe 2 hours swimming in circles, unsure what I was supposed to do. Eventually, I realized that I needed to repair my escape pod, and then I started getting radio broadcasts.

But even then, every escape pod I tracked down was wrecked with no survivors. It was just demoralizing for me. I was hoping for some sort of plot, or an eventual rescue or something. But instead, I found myself just floundering about in the water for hours, not really sure what I'm doing or if this gameplay is going anywhere.

Not to mention, this is a survival game, so on top of trying to figure out what I'm doing, I was also trying to figure out how to find food and water to stay alive. And despite being a game about exploring an alien ocean, I could barely be under water for 30 seconds before I was drowning. It took an exceptionally long time for me to find appropriate resources to build more advanced oxygen tanks so I could stay underwater for longer. I couldn't ping for resources, I kept getting lost or turned around under water, and I could never find exactly what I needed to progress in the game.

I know this game is exceptionally popular and I rarely ever hear a bad thing about it. But I personally just can't get into it. I gave it a second chance last night, and I progressed much faster than I did my first time playing, but it was such a slog. I have no idea if it gets better later, but it's frustratingly slow and I just can't enjoy it.

Pacific Drive is a fantastical driving/survival/crafting game, where you are sucked into a reality-altering unstable zone, with the only working car the trapped residents have seen in ages. This is a very story-rich exploration game.

In 1947, the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state became a staging ground for developments in a new technology. Unfortunately, it didn't go as planned, and by 1955, the government had walled off parts of the peninsula. 30 years later, after expanding the radius of the walls many times, the government finally sealed all access and abandoned it. No one ever found out what happened inside the wall. All was quiet until you happen to be driving by in 1998...

Finding the road blocked by the wall, you turn off on a dirt road parallel to the wall, hoping for a path through the region. The ground in front of you starts shifting and morphing until you drive near it and it pops back into stability... until a large enough burst of energy kills your car's engine completely.

You sit in dark silence for a moment, until a massive burst of red glowing energy suddenly swells next to you, dragging your car off the road and into the vortex!

You wake up on the ground, surprised to see bits and pieces of your car floating through the air. The slightest tingle of radiation courses through the air around you. You realize that you're inside the walled-off peninsula now.

Wandering down the path, you find an old station wagon in a garage, flashing its lights at you. Over its radio, you hear someone chime in. They've detected strange but familiar energy readings coming from your vicinity. They identify themselves as Tobias Barlow and Francis Cooke.

The vehicle is extremely beat up, rusted, missing several panels, two doors, and the front left wheel. You find a wheel sitting nearby and install it yourself. You try the engine and surprisingly, it starts up!

You can't respond to Tobias and Francis, but they're tracking the energy your car is giving off. They instruct you to drive a few miles up the road to a safe zone, before the incoming instability scrambles you. You pull up to an auto shop, right as your left front wheel falls off again.

This shop belongs to Dr. Ophelia Turner, or Oppy, as the two guys call her. But without working vehicles, the shop has been mostly abandoned for years. When you turn on the power in the shop, she's alerted to a trespasser and threatens you over an intercom. But Tobias quickly sends out an emergency broadcast, insisting that you're there on official business for them. Oppy is annoyed, but intrigued that you have a working car. She lets you patch it up in her garage and assists you in your journey, if only to help you find a way back out through the border walls and out of her hair.

This will become your staging area for the rest of the game; you'll always return here after each mission. This is also the only place you can save your game. You can't save during a mission; you either need to complete your mission and return home, or abandon it.

At this point, the game becomes a crafting game, except almost exclusively for your vehicle. You learn how to repair, build and replace parts, and even upgrade and add components. You can also upgrade various stations in the garage, and even upgrade your gear to better protect yourself in the wild.

Oppy instructs you to use this strange "repair putty" on the damaged parts of your car. It's a pale green glowing goop that seems to magically restore parts to their full strength! It's in limited supply, but you can always make more at the workbench. This is how you repair your car as it gets beat up in the field.

She also has you fill your trunk with cardboard boxes and a craft mat. The boxes will be your excess storage, outside of your backpack. The craft mat will let you build tools and resources on the road. Your tools have a limited durability and will break after so much use. But as long as you have resources on hand, you can easily craft another one from the trunk of your car.

Finally, Oppy has you install an Arc Device in your passenger seat, her own personal invention. This will be your map, as well as a guide to warn you as anomalous storms approach. It auto-rotates to face you no matter where you're standing, so you can glance over at it while driving, or you can run up to the passenger window and view it quick.

Also included is a status screen on your dashboard, which will inform you of the "health" of your car's parts. As you take damage, each component will turn from green to yellow to red, then gray as they break off the vehicle. Be sure to repair your car as needed!

There is a giant map on the wall of the garage, and Oppy is able to remotely access a projector to display data on it. This is where you'll pick your missions. She instructs you to go find parts to build an antenna for the garage; otherwise, you'll never be able to travel far. The zone within the walls is unstable and entire regions could be erased entirely, or reconstructed into another land that didn't exist previously, so you need to be able to receive data about each region before - and during - your travels there.

It's explained to you by Tobias that your car is a Remnant, which is essentially a shabby cast-off item imbued with strange properties, that randomly appears within the zone. He gives the example of a broken microwave that freezes food instead of heating it, or a rusty paint can that produces every color of paint in existence. Your car gives off this same energy, which is exciting for him because it's been several decades since the last remnant appeared, and it remains to be seen what strange properties your car will produce.

Most of the game is spent exploring regions and scavenging all the parts you can find. You're told that most all of the zone is abandoned and each region could cease to exist if a wave of instability passes through, so you might as well loot everything that's not bolted down. Be aware of aggressive machines roaming the lands. These floating guys in particular will just grab your car and drag it into the woods before abandoning it.

While out scavenging for parts, I ran into these creepy mannequin-like guys stuck in the ground. They pulse red from the head or chest, and if you bump into them, they explode. The creepiest part is, if you get close enough to them, then look away, when you look back at them, they'll be much closer to you. You never see or hear them move, and they never attack you or anything, but if you're not paying attention near them, you might turn and walk into one suddenly. You need to stare them down while backing far away, so they don't pursue you behind your back.

Once you've completed your objective in each zone, you need to find and grab a stable anchor, a round glowing ball sitting on a large semi-circle device, and feed it to your Arc Device. It will cause some instability in the vicinity when you pull it, so be careful.

Grab as many of them as you can! Your map will point them out in the region. There are always a few of them scattered around, and you use their energy to unlock more advanced technologies and blueprints back at the garage. So the more you find, the quicker you can upgrade your crafting capabilities.

Once you have at least one, you will be able to use the Arc Device to open a gateway directly back to the garage. But only activate it when you're ready to leave, as it will quickly collapse the stability in the region. Make sure you know where the gateway is and that you're relatively close to it, Then once you summon it, drive like mad into the giant sky beam! Be prepared to do a bit of off-roading for this part.

As you explore, you can find paints, decals, and other trinkets to deck out your car. Plus, keep upgrading its components to make it stronger and more efficient. Here's my car after applying some glow-in-the-dark decals, adding off-road tires, and replacing all of the panels and doors with steel.

This has been an extremely entertaining game so far! I'm enjoying the open world exploration, scavenging parts off other vehicles or wherever I can find them, and of course, I love driving games! That's your main mode of travel in this game, so you'll be doing a lot of it. Your car is your lifeline, so stick near it at all times!

This game is pretty in-depth, and with 11 hours of gameplay already, I've barely scratched the surface of the plot. I've been so preoccupied exploring around and looting everything that I can get my hands on, that I haven't actually made it very far into the story yet. I'm debating taking a brief hiatus from posting these so I can really enjoy this game.

Little Kitty, Big City is a cute game where you play a cat who fell out of their owner's window, way atop a high-rise apartment.

Miraculously surviving the fall (thanks to some well-placed obstacles and a bird you cling to), you find yourself on the street level several blocks away, unable to find your way home.

The bird admonishes you for your poor flying skills, then offers to get you a fish when you insist you're too tired and hungry to climb all the way back up your building. But you need to pay him in "shinies," which you can find lying around all over the city. You will need to find 4 total fish around the city before you'll have the stamina to climb your way back home.

From there, you're traveling around the city, interacting with other animals and collecting cute hats to wear. You either find the hats lying around in places, or you can pay 5 shinies to the bird at a vending machine and he'll get you a hat out of the machine.

You rescue a rambunctious tanuki stuck in a pipe and he professes to be an inventor. He offers to let you be his test subject for interdimensional travel.

He's been messing with the spacetime continuum and has connected all the sewer pipes through a sort of wormhole. This is your fast-travel in the game, so you can cross the map quickly without having to run across the whole city.

He calls it the Petwork™ and insists you unlock each one with a single bird feather.

Another cat will teach you how to sneak up and pounce on birds, causing them to drop a feather. Don't worry, it's a catch-and-release game; you let the birds fly away as soon as you catch them.

You also meet a duck who has lost his four children. You agree to track them down for him, but be warned that he won't take them back until all four are accounted for. So you'll have a trail of ducklings following you everywhere until you find all of them.

Another fascinating character you'll run into is a chameleon who can't change his colors to match his surroundings. He's convinced you're a magician (like he is!) because you can always see him. He gives you riddles, then "hides" and you have to track him down across the city.

There's also a beetle, who is the manager for Taffy, a wealthy social influencer cat. The poor guy is stressed beyond belief and hanging by a thread. #JusticeForBeetle! He gives you a phone, which you can use to take selfies. In Steam, snapping a selfie will actually take a screenshot.

There are a few other cats who will teach you how to behave more like a street cat, unlocking different cat reactions you can use throughout the game.

And that's pretty much the jist of the game. There are a few other characters to meet and plenty of small puzzles to figure out. Ultimately, you need to get your stamina up so you can scale your building and get home. Which will be a challenge in itself, even with a full stamina bar. But there are plenty of fun things to do around the city on your way there.

Or just find one of many nap spots all across the city and take some time to relax.

I was almost forced to take a hiatus from posting today! I was up all night playing this game, when around 5 AM, my PC popped and shut off suddenly. It felt hot, so I just left it to cool down and went to bed. This afternoon, it wasn't booting back up, so I opened it up and blew all the dust out of it (it was due for a cleaning anyway). Nothing looked broken, so I flipped off the power switch and flipped it back on... and it started right up! Woo! Adventures in custom-built PCs...

Anywhoo... today's game is The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. This game is like a blend between Satisfactory (minus the automation) and Deep Rock Galactic, with a Lord of the Rings theme. It's a crafting game, but takes place deep in the mines of Moria. You can play solo, or play online co-op with up to 8 players on PC or 4 players on console. The mines are procedurally generated, so no single gameplay will play out the same.

You get to custom-build your own dwarf to play as, including their appearance, name, and origins. Of course, I like to play as women in my games (my mother was a strong, independent type, so I'm drawn to strong women in my life and games), so I made my dwarf a woman. I named her Nordri. I seriously debated giving her a beard (that's an option!) but it made her almost indistinguishable from the men... so clean-shaven for now! You can edit your character any time from the main menu, so you're not stuck with a single look for the entirety of your gameplay.

Gimli declares that it's time to stop waiting for Durin's potential return and that the one true home of the dwarves, Moria, needs to be rebuilt. He calls on dwarves from all regions of Middle Earth to converge on the Misty Mountains and help excavate it. But for some reason, they can't get through the Doors of Durin.

While attempting to use explosives to blow their way in, you end up falling through a fissure that opens up and land deep in the mines. Unable to be heard by anyone, you decide to make your way to the Doors of Durin from the inside.

Along the way, you find Aric, a Raven of Erebor. He's also trapped in the mine, but some "ill curse" prevents him from leaving. So he scouts ahead for other routes out of the mine while you forge ahead on your own.

This is where you get your introduction to crafting and building. Crafting helps you build tools and weapons, while building will create structures that you can use to improve a home, or in this case, climb a wall.

You make your way to the Doors of Durin, only to find them sealed with a shadowy curse from the inside. No wonder no one could get in! It looks like you need to venture further into the mine and find a different exit.

If you explore in the halls near the door, you'll find signs of the Fellowship!

Venturing further into the mines, you find that it's orc-infested. They're pretty cowardly on their own, choosing to run instead of engage you, but be careful of packs of them roaming in the middle of the night. They can be aggressive when they're prepared and in larger numbers.

You run into Aric again and he suggests you rebuild an old camp nearby, so you have somewhere to shelter and prepare food. You fix up an old stone hearth, a furnace, and a forge, and you now have the basics for crafting! You can find mushrooms, berries, and some other plants growing around the ruins, and you can kill roaming rats and wolves for meat. All these resources respawn pretty regularly, so you're never in short supply.

You need to eat at least 2 meals a day to keep from getting hungry. If your hunger bar runs out, you'll take the occasional small bit of damage to your health. You also need to sleep at least once a day to prevent exhaustion. Your stamina bar will get smaller and smaller the more tired you are, until you can barely trudge from one place to another. Sleeping will fast-forward the clock 6 hours.

There is a day and night cycle, and the luminescent stone ceiling in the mines will mimic the time of day, so it's extra dark and cold at night and decently bright during the day. Make sure you keep a torch on you at all times, to keep your courage up in the darkest corners. There are small buffs you get depending on various situations, and you'll see them in the bottom left corner of your screen. Also, certain meals will give you an additional buff if you eat them at certain times of the day.

Occasionally, a pack of orcs will attack in the middle of the night, targeting your current camp. Be prepared to fight them off before they break everything. I learned the hard way to build a wall to keep out the orcs. The first time I came under siege in the night, they just walked in and wrecked my stuff.

Fortunately, you can make a hammer that will restore damage to structures; both your own constructions and to the ruins of Moria. If you spent enough time, you could technically fix up all of the ruins, single-handedly restoring Moria!

If you find damaged statues, be sure to rebuild them. You'll get recipes from some of them which will expand your crafting capabilities. I've mostly received improved armor and weapons from them so far.

Of course, what would a game about dwarves in a mine be without some mining? You need to mine ore in order to smelt various types of metals for armor and weapons, as well as some fancy furniture and structures later on. While mining, you get the option to sing an inspirational tune, which will give you a buff. There are various songs that may be sung and your character may comment on the songs too! They put some serious effort into this detail instead of just designating one mining song that you always sing.

I once found a barrel of ale in the ruins of an old tavern, and it was still good! I drank and sang merrily for a bit, which gave me a little buff.

There are more than just endless dark ruins in the deep. You can find other places, such as an Elven Quarter to explore, and the Great Forge of Narvi, which you can repair to gain more forging abilities.

Keep pressing deeper into the mines to find more advanced crafting and building options, and be sure to move your camp forward as you go. I learned the hard way that sticking with my original camp meant hoofing it a long ways back to drop off supplies or forge new supplies. Eventually, I learned that I need to make a new hearth and rebuild my camp, then move my supplies forward so I'm not spending 90% of my game time running back and forth.

This would probably be easier with multiple players, as you can move all your resources quickly. I had built up my original camp so much, I had to make at least 3 trips to collect everything. I was also stockpiling resources instead of using them, so that made it more difficult to move.

This was a very fun game! It just released in August, so it's relatively new and still being tweaked by the developers. I haven't had any issues with it yet, besides my beefy desktop computer overheating for the first time ever. But that was after 7 hours of continuous gameplay, and I maxed out all graphics settings, so I may have been pushing it a bit on this one.

Otherwise, it was very enjoyable, not only exploring Moria, but getting to fix it up and restore it as I go. Definitely scratched that itch for a good crafting game that Satisfactory gave me. And like I said, mining resources, tunneling through caved-in halls, and fighting occasional roaming enemies felt like a medieval fantasy version of Deep Rock Galactic, another game I thoroughly enjoy. I give The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria top marks!

Road Redemption is a unique game, in that it's a motorcycle racing game, but also a fighting game.

There is some lore, presented with a single screen of text. According to the Steam store page, this takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, ruled by a brutal dictator. Biker gangs rule over segments of the country. You're part of the Jackal gang and basically racing against other biker gangs through their territory, pursuing an assassin for the bounty.

Every once in a while, some other Jackals will show up to help you (see first screenshot with the peace symbol over a Jackal's head), but you're on your own for most of the races.

This is a game of stamina. There are 17 total races across 3 gangs' territories, and your status carries over to each one. Any loss of health, nitro, and if you've unlocked it, your jump boost, all carry over to the next race and require you to replenish them during races.

You either pick up resources on the road, or kill other gang members to collect resources. Or you can also gain a small bit of nitro every time you have a "close call" with an oncoming car. Just steer so you nearly miss oncoming traffic and you'll be rewarded with some nitro. Which is needed to catch up to the racers in the lead; you'll never gain on them otherwise.

There are two main types of races: 1.) a straight race to the finish, either finishing in 3rd place or better, or just survive to the finish line by a certain time limit; or 2.) enemy takedown, which requires you to eliminate a certain number of enemies before the finish line. Sometimes the cops show up alongside the gangs to fight everyone, sometimes the cops are the takedown enemy.

Cars are especially hard to take down. Explosives are pretty much the only way I've found to stop them. During takedown races, they'll also plow through oncoming traffic, denying you that needed nitro boost to gain on them. It can be very difficult if you're stuck behind a car with no nitro left.

The last race in each territory is a takedown enemy race against the gang's leader. They're pretty tough and you need to kill them before you reach the end of the race.

There is one random event that may take place called "Hallucinogenic Chemical Zone," which will have cars and trucks randomly spawn in the sky and fall onto the track, creating hazards to navigate around. None of these vehicles have their parking brake on, so if they land on their wheels, they'll slowly roll across the road, making it harder to determine the best path around them. You never know which direction they'll start rolling until it's almost too late to change direction.

After each race, you spend the money you earned taking out enemies or meeting the objective to upgrade your current stats or replenish health or nitro.

Whether you win or lose each race, you'll automatically continue on to the next race. But your health bar will shrink if you lose the objective.

The races continue until you die. Then you get to spend all the XP you've earned on permanent upgrades, which will make it easier the next time you play. You likely won't beat the game in your first playthrough. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even beat the first territory until I'd upgraded my permanent stats quite a bit. I've replayed the campaign race many times over and I've finally made it all the way to the assassin, but I still haven't beat him. Gotta keep upgrading my character!

Before each game, you get to select your bike and character. Both come with various stats and weapons, so pick what works best for your play style. You can unlock more bikes and characters as you accomplish certain criteria throughout the game.

I like to play with Admiral Uganda (a Captain America knockoff) because he has 35% resource gains from regular kills, 140% resource gains from shield kills, and 115% max nitro. He also doesn't use guns, which is fine with me. I'm terrible at aiming a gun while also steering my bike, so I mostly fight with close-range weapons that only require a button press to use.

There are other joke characters like Santa Claus, who's a pacifist and can't kill anyone except for bosses; Helloween Rider, a Ghost Rider knockoff; PC Master Racer (see screenshot above); or Theranos, a blonde woman with Thanos' golden gauntlet. Plus a ton more to unlock.

My personal play style is to just kick other bikes. It sends them flying off to one side, and if you time it right, you can kick them into obstacles or off bridges and kill them instantly. Much easier than hacking at them with a sword or beating them with a lead pipe, etc.

Most races are on roads cross-country through mountains, snowy terrain, or post-apocalyptic cities. But the most interesting races (in my opinion) take place across building rooftops. You spend the entire race speeding from rooftop to rooftop, and it's easy to knock people off to their doom. Or fall to yours, if you're not careful. These levels are where the jump boost comes in really handy, keeping you airborne longer if you don't time a jump between buildings well.

Then there's the extra rare rooftop race through a hallucinogenic chemical zone! Don't get hit by falling cars while soaring across rooftops!

I've mostly described the campaign mode for this game, but there is also a 4-player split-screen mode where you can play together or against each other, or you can play online with other gamers.

There's a DLC you can buy on Steam called "name a character" that lets you put a custom name into the game itself. You'll notice that every time you take someone out, it shows their name across the bottom of the screen, then scratches it out in red. Supposedly, these are all names added by other players over time. So the next time you play, keep an eye out for cobysev...

I normally don't like games that force me to replay them over and over, grinding just to level my stats enough to continue the plot (I'm looking at you, Hades). But the gameplay is so enjoyable in this one, I can't help but play it over and over. I don't even care if I don't finish; the racing and fighting is so much fun! Every time I play this game, I end up doing nothing else for the rest of the day.

October is over, and that means I'm back to playing all variety of games, not just horror or Halloween-themed games. But I did miss one day in my daily October marathon, and I said I'd try to make up for it.

So... consider this game to be a happy medium. The Invincible isn't exactly horror - more sci-fi mystery/thriller than anything - but it is kind of a personal fear of mine: being stranded alone on an alien planet with amnesia, limited oxygen, and no certain escape. I definitely shared in the anxiety and fear that the protagonist suffered at times on her journey.

The Invincible is a blend between a walking simulator and a visual novel. You spend most of the game walking from one point to the next and performing some basic tasks along the way, while also communicating back and forth with your ship's commander. It's not a particularly strenuous form of gameplay.

There are dialogue choices, but for the most part, the game plays out the same regardless of your choices. Although certain choices can open up deeper philosophical discussions into the theme of the plot. Also, investigating the areas around you might help you learn more about the planet itself, which provides a richer story experience than just trying to get to the end of the game as quick as possible.

Also, as the game progresses, your story path is documented in comic form, which you can pause and read at any time.

This game is actually based on a Polish novel of the same name, published in 1963 by Stanisław Lem. Although I would recommend not reading the summary of that book, as its main plot gives away most of the mystery in this game's story.

The Invincible opens up with Yasna waking up on a rocky desert planet, with no memory of where she is or how she got there. Her radio is broken, her locator beacon is missing, and she's all alone. The only thing going for her is that she seems uninjured, and her space suit and oxygen tank are still intact.

She checks her notes and discovers she's there with her team of researchers. Using her logs and hand-drawn maps, she triangulates her approximate position, then sets out to find their main camp.

Along the way, bits of her memory start coming back to her. She remembers her research ship's commander, Novik, who is known for making rash decisions. Previously, his insistence on making an unscheduled stop for a valuable mineral cost him a broken leg and severe pain.

Now, the team was finally on their way home when Novik awoke them early from cryogenic sleep. He made the decision to stop at yet another planet, Regis III, because he has intel that it's potentially valuable to the Alliance, and he wants to find out what is so valuable that it would draw them there.

The book followed characters from the Alliance aboard their massive ship, The Invincible. This game, however, follows a small research team of the Interplanetary Commonwealth, an opposing faction. So it's important to Novik that they do their research quick, then get off-planet before the Alliance arrives in their deadly ship.

Yasna reaches her team's base camp, only to find one of the members in a stupor, babbling unintelligibly. His vitals are all normal, but he's unresponsive and helpless. Yasna takes his radio and is finally able to speak with Novik, who is aboard their spaceship orbiting the planet.

Novik has been unable to reach the team for a while now. He's grateful to speak with Yasna and instructs her to find the rest of the team. She catches up on their research notes and sets out to round up the team.

The team was investigating a strange metallic structure sticking out of the ground. It proved impossible to unearth, and scans with their metal detectors showed it stretching underground like tangled metal roots. One of the research team, Dr. Gorsky, ventured off in search of the end of this metal root structure, so Yasna pursues his trail.

She bumps into a damaged probe and, with the help of Novik, is able to boot it up. Using the probe, Novik is able to remotely control it and assist Yasna more directly on the ground. You get the opportunity to pick its name, if you like.

Pursuing her team, Yasna explores complex metallic structures, finds herself lost in underground caverns, and even has run-ins with the Alliance!

Finding all of her team members and getting off-planet proves to be a challenge, with setback after setback. It's up to you whether she'll find the courage to proceed, or succumb to hopelessness and depression.

This was a fantastic story that explored deeper philosophical topics on life and biology, evolution and invasion, and of course, the will to survive. It's an easy-going game, where the most dramatic twists and turns come more from the dialogue than the action. If you want a simple sci-fi game that lets you ponder life's greater mysteries instead of shooting aliens, this may be for you.

Plus, you get to drive around in a little rover! How cute is this thing?