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.
In Sound Mind is a first-person psychological survival horror game, and that's a three out of three for a express train to nopeville.
I tried to give it a fair shake. The atmospheric design is pretty much exactly what you'd want in a horror game, as is the audio.
The environmental design is considerably more frustrating, with the things you can use being highlighted with an icon, and everything else just being... there.
You play as a psychologist who appears to be going quite mad, having woken up in the basement of a building in a completely flooded town.
You need to solve some puzzles, as the atmosphere got increasingly tense, I was less and less inclined to keep going.
For complex reasons, I get no enjoyment out of horror games, and this game has not changed that.
I'm sorry, In Sound Mind. It's not you, it's very definitely me, saying:
October 25, 2023 - Day 297 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 317
Game: Mr. Prepper
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 19, 2021
Installation Date: Oct 25, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 32m
Mr. Prepper is the final game in the October Humble Choice. It's 2.5D cooker-themed... sorry, "prepper"-themed survival sim.
It basically feels like Fallout Shelter if it were about SovCits. And written by SovCits.
You play as the titular "Mr. Prepper" who literally goes by that name in-game, introducing himself as that to other NPCs.
The US government has been taken over by some kind of fascist organisation that stopped Mr. Prepper from escaping from his home town in the midwest, and is now monitoring him for subversive behaviour.
You need to build a bunker for him, and build a whole lot of stuff for the bunker, all while hiding it from the regular government inspections.
This is another game where if the theme of the game were different I might enjoy it more, but the whole real-world prepper/conspiracy theorist Venn diagram takes the shine off it, and just gives me a case of the icks.
Now a very special one:
"Enshrouded" by @KeenGames is an open world survival rpg with basebuilding, terraforming, grappling hooks, multiple classes, 16p co-op and who-knows what additionally.
Honestly I have no idea how the (rather small) team is able to put it all into the game and is crafting a mix of Zelda + Valheim + Action Combat.
Best thing: couple of me friends are working on it 😀!
I made a Slatt's Rescue paracord belt. I needed a narrower belt for my hiking pants. It has about 49 feet of paracord. I was worried I needed more paracord but the belt ended up being 58 inches long. It will be easy to shorten though. It currently weighs in at 6 ounces. Slightly less than my leather belt.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Five Total Strangers comes a thriller about a group of four classmates forced to navigate the wilderness for a school project with nothing but the pages of a survival handbook—and each other—before the sun goes down.
3 things to do if you’re caught in an #ActiveShooter situation
#Threat assessment experts say you should consider the situation ahead of time, because a little forethought may save precious seconds & allow you to act when your instinct is to panic.
Every situation is different, but here are the basics, acc/to law enforcement agencies such as the #FBI & other orgs that teach #survival skills.
Looming environmental and social breaking points, like climate change and massive inequalities, are becoming increasingly apparent and large in scale. In this book, Gaya Herrington puts today’s key societal challenges in perspective. Her analysis, rooted in her research on a 50-year-old model of the world that forecasted the onset of global collapse right around the present time, brings some structure to what otherwise might feel like the overwhelming task of achieving genuine societal sustainability.
Herrington's research, first published in 2020 in Yale‘s Journal of Industrial Ecology, went viral after it revealed empirical data tracked closely with the predictions of this world model, which was introduced in the 1972 best seller The Limits to Growth. Her book Five Insights for Avoiding Global Collapse contains an exclusive research update based on 2022 data and is written in a more personable and accessible style than the journal article. Herrington also elaborates more in this book on the many interlinkages between our economic, environmental, and social predicaments, and on what her findings indicate for future global developments.
Herington lays out why “business as usual” is not a viable option for global society and identifies the root cause of this unsustainable path. Most importantly, her book teaches us what systemic changes humanity still has time to make to achieve a better tomorrow. A future in which society has transformed beyond the mere avoidance of collapse and is truly thriving.