Morning Folks! I've been spending some time playing that other new survival game that does not involve catching them all... #Enshrouded. This morning I share some of my very early thoughts about the game after having played around six hours.
"When designing homes for extreme heat, the overarching goal is simply to keep the building occupants cool enough to avoid health risks, particularly when the power is out or A/C is not available. Consider the following when designing a house to be resistant to extreme heat and extend the "hours of safety" that it can provide:" #heatwaves#retrofit#homes#survival#DisasterPreparedness
Repeat >> PNNL: Creating a Cool Room for Extreme Heat Events
"Given the reality of global climate change and the increasing likelihood of extreme heat events, designing and retrofitting homes for resistance to extreme heat and power outages should be considered in all climates. Extending the "hours of safety" that a home can provide when air-conditioning is not available can be life-saving. However, it is not necessary for an entire home to be resistant to extreme heat. Instead, the design or retrofit can concentrate on just one room. "
Not sure just how many types of lichen are growing on the rock in this photo...maybe 8? According to my intro guide, I think I see:
Physcia caesia (white-gray near bottom), Physcia adscendens (gray spiky middle right), Xanthoria parietina (orange-yellow with cups), Usnea cornuta (green-gray branched top left), Teloschistes velifer (orange tips sticking out of the p. adscendens), a type of Candellariella, plus others?
Tips on staying safe in Winter Conditions and when the power goes out, from the National Weather Service.
If Your Heat Goes Out
Close off unneeded rooms to avoid wasting heat.
Stuff towels or rags in cracks under doors.
Close blinds or curtains to keep in some heat.
Eat and drink. Food provides the body with energy for producing its own heat. Drinks lots of water and other non-caffeinated, non-alcholohic drinks to prevent dehydration. Cold air is very dry.
Wear layers of loose-fitting, lightweight, warm clothing. Remove layers to avoid overheating, perspiration and subsequent chill.
Have you just over exposed your hands to the cold and don’t have hand warmers, then there are two locations that can help. First stick your hands under your armpits and second is by your groin. Additionally, to retain more warmth make yourself as small as possible and try find shelter from the elements like hide behind a wall for wind protection.
These are two areas that the body tries to keep alive for biological reasons. Thus this trick works great in a pinch.
🧵 Going to start a little thread of games I'm looking forward to this year that are ALLEDGEDLY going to be playable in some state (including early access/alpha). I typically go for #sandbox#survival and #mmorpg#EarlyAccess Maybe I'll be able to revisit this later and see which ones actually came out or that I was able to try!
Enshrouded is a survival/crafting co-op (16 players). I'm excited about the voxel building. It reminds me of Everquest Landmark (RIP). It also reminds me of a more magic-ey Valheim (which I also enjoyed) This video pretty much sold me on it because I love being able to do detailed builds in these types of games.
The {ggsurvfit} package made its v1.0 release! 🕺🏻🕺🏻
Check it out for your survival/time-to-event visualization needs! The plots are fully ggplot and integrate seamlessly with all the ggplot functions you you already know 📈
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.
Niffelheim is a Norse-themed 2D survival crafting game with some RPG elements.
As part of my two remaining goals of attempting to review 400 new games by the end of the year, and to get my unredeemed keys list down to under 200 (current count: 201 left), I had no idea what this key was actually for.
At some stage I'd overtyped the title without noticing. Niffelheim it is.
The game opens up with a Viking funeral boat, aflame and disappearing into the mist, while a narrator intones about how my boat has been hijacked on the way to Valhalla.
I then found myself at a character selection screen with a choice between three burly male warriors, and a well-endowed Valkyrie.
My Valkyrie then found herself armed with some basic weapons, and a basic hut, and a series of quests delivered by a raven.
Other than that, you're in pretty standard survival game mechanics; kill things, cut down trees, gather food. The 2D aspect makes playing with a controller natural, and before I noticed, I'd been in-game for 45 minutes.
I found Niffelheim strangely compelling, so let's say that it's:
January 7, 2024 - Day 372 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 407
Game: The Red Lantern
Platform: Steam
Released: Dec 9, 2021
Installed: Jan 7, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 34m
Rating: 3 - OK
The Red Lantern is a first-person narrative-driven game about dog-sledding, with some roguelite & survival elements.
It's the sixth game in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and it's an interesting title, that I wouldn't have picked to play.
Making a snow-change, you open the game by meeting a series of dogs, needing to select 4 of them to build a dog-sledding team in Alaska.
Once you've picked your doggos, you reach your destination, and have to make a several-day sled trip to a remote cabin through a procedurally generated environment. The game is the story of that trip.
If you fail, you wake up again in your van, "from a nightmare", and start the sled-trip over, with more resources based on your previous experiences, with your ultimate goal to reach the cabin that's marked by the red lantern hanging outside.
If you're a dog person, this game might definitely be up your alley.
January 27, 2024 - Day 392 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 428
Game: Palworld
Platform: Xbox Game Pass for PC
Released: Jan 19, 2024
Installed: Jan 27, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 4.9h
Rating: 4 - Good
Palworld is a third-person tree-punching survival game with a new game mechanic of seeking to be sued out of existence by The Pokemon Company.
If you haven't heard of the game that sold 8 million copies in a week on Steam, and is currently sitting at #2 behind PUBG on the Steam chart for record number of concurrent players, the elevator pitch for Palworld is "Pokemon with guns"
I didn't expect it to be quite so literal.
I'd read a piece about survival games by Zack Zwiezen a few days ago, in which he referred to them as "tree punchers" (which I've stolen from him), and he touched on Palworld in the review; so I had no intention of buying it.
However, after rebooting my PC yesterday, I found myself staring at the Xbox app and an install button for Palworld via Game Pass, which meant I didn't need to buy it, and the die was cast.
The gameplay loop is certainly addictive; I can understand why so many folks are playing it.
It starts out like most survival games; wake up in a random location with no idea how you got there, and start punching trees. It's the same gathering-and-crafting loop we've been doing since Minecraft (and probably even before).
Then there's the Pokemon... sorry, "Pals". I'm not a Nintendo girl. I didn't have any Nintendo stuff growing up, and the first Nintendo console I owned was the N64 I bought for our kids for Christmas 2000 (Christmas 2000 sounds like an awesome B-grade movie).
My first encounter with Pokemon was Pokemon GO. I lack the encyclopaedic memory of all the different Pokemon I encountered in PoGo, but upon encountering -and killing- Pals in Palword, they were definitely giving off Pokemon vibes.
You can also collect the Pals, by attacking them with a weapon until they're weakened enough to capture in a Pokeball... erm, Palsphere.
Once captured, you can put them to work in your base, or, uhh... butcher the cute little PokePals, to feed the other PokePals working in your base.
Best not to think too deeply about a game that is also apparently survival horror.
The Pokemon vibes ceased to be vibes and became "you're going to get sued for IP infringement" when I encountered Gumoss.
Gumoss is a grass-type Pal (yes, they've snarfed the 'type' concept too), which feels unarguably like Ditto in an acorn cap.
If I, with my limited recall of Pokemon, can recognise this, I've no doubt the Pokemon fans calling Pocket Pair out are on the money, and it makes sense that the notoriously laid-back-and-not-at-all-protective-of-their-IP, The Pokemon Company, are "investigating".
Which is primarily why I didn't buy it on Steam; I don't want to lose A$44 when they get sued out of existence for IP infringement.