I played Two Point Hospital recently (thanks to a kind gifting/donation) and loved the hell out of it. Theme Hospital 2.0, basically. Definitely recommended.

Playing Layers of Fear now in the dark to get in the halloween mood. Yeah, I know it's technically over already.

Still working my way through my backlog. A few notables.

The Flame in the Flood... it's a crafting survival type game. Not bad. I'm not sure if I'll be able to full get into it like I need to in order to really appreciate it, but it seem interesting.
Hand of Fate ... it's a card game, sort of, but also kind of an RPG and a bit roguelike. It's surprisingly good. I went in expecting it to suck but I'm now more than halfway through the story. Check it out if you want to.

Some ones I hated.

Eidolon. Else Heart.Break(). Europe Univeralis III (crashes on boot). Girls like Robots (stupid puzzle game). Hot tin roof (ugh). Human: Fall Flat (puzzle game, buggy).

Still so many more games to play. BTW, we finally built Shiny a new PC.

I'm playing Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain. It kinda plays like the Far Cry series but it's more episodic and you get to go to a few different countries. Technically it runs almost perfect, quick load times, no crashes and the graphics are pretty good.

Gameplay wise its quite good. Theres minor base managment, R&D and you can balloon people off into the sky . Overall I think its one of best games i've played recently.

I find your attempt to minimize your backlog very amusing (and intriguing) Satis. Any particular reason? Just putting your house in order? Virtually, in this case. I'm actually doing something similar but not as quickly and extensive as you.

I hated Else Heart.Break() too. I wanted to like it, because the premise was interesting, but it just turned me off so bad. And I really tried getting into it. I've seen a friend playing The Flame in the Flood and it looked fun enough.

Finished Dying Light today and good lord that was a fun game! I think Peltz gifted it to me at some point? Thanks man!! I'm even considering picking up the expansion now, I had that much fun with it.

Started playing Original Sin 2 with my friend in coop, but only just started. Looks extremely promising and polished though (we have the definitive edition thanks to procrastination). Oh I gave Door Kickers a few tries and I really kind of disliked it....I feel like I'm missing a mechanic to play it properly. I'll give it another spin today, and if I still don't like it it's going on the refuse pile.

It's been a good time for games: first I bought Return of the Obra Dinn for my birthday, and that was an amazing experience. My GOTY even. I would absolutely recommend you to play it (and/or to read my steam review if you're not sure).

Then I got massively addicted to Rimworld, the Dwarf Fortress clone in space (but with better controls and graphics) that Derf has been trying to push on me for ages. And he was right, it's glorious. Too glorious, almost, spent a full two weeks seriously addicted to it and 'wasted" a whole weekend on just the game. I need to keep myself in check. That game is like crack cocaine.

What have you guys been up to?

I finished phantom pain story. There's something oddly satisfying ballooning people off into the sky. I've been doing the optional side-quests so not quite done with it.

Bought X4 Foundations. Unless one is a fan of this series, one would probably feel money-not-so-well-spent.

Will probably pick some more games up during winter sale.

I liked X3, but that series is a major chore. Much time and effort to get into it, but a pretty good pay off it you do.

Just finished Far Cry 5 with Shiny (co op for pretty much the whole game). It's very repetitive, like most Far Cry games. Not bad, but not amazing.

Playing Shadow Warrior 2. It's fun, but very, very repetitive. I got it with all the DLCs... not sure if they would normally cost extra. If they did, not worth it. For a while I thought the levels were procedurally generated.. then realized that no, they're not. Their level designers are just apparently on all kinds of speed.

Glad you finally got into Rimworld. I love that game. I need to play it again since it was updated. I haven't played it since before it went to 1.0.

I picked up Kerbal Space Program again... that's a great game. I'm not quite so hopelessly addicted as I was previously, but it's still compelling. Nothing quite like going from barely launching a Kerbal into the air and not killing them to successfully launching to the moon and returning them. That's about as far as I am now... going to the other planets is even more difficult (and rewarding when it works).

I'm seriously considering picking up Kenshi. I think I could become hopelessly lost in that game for a long time.

Regarding my tearing through my backlog of games... I figured I would either do that, or never play most of those games. The latter seemed like a waste, so I just started playing. I kind of burned out for now, but I'll probably resume playing all those games early next year.

That sounds like it could be good and bad. Good as in, "jesus christ this is out there" and bad as in "What the fuck were they thinking?". Care to clarify? Could be a little from column A and a little from column B, I guess.

Yeah Rimworld is great and incredibly addictive. I've now expanded from my original base in the frozen wastelands to a second base that I'm carving out of a mountain. Spent ages finding a suitable location, but I've cut out the main components (bedrooms, indoor farm, kitchen, security complex) and am now working on the plans for the rest of the base. I'll upload a printscreen at some point. I still am missing a lot of features in the game that could have made it even greater but fuck it, that's what mods are for.

i love the rimming world

Regarding Shadow Warrior 2 level designers being on speed....

.. to me, many of the levels make no sense design-wise. They're very large and fairly varied, but the layout of the buildings or city or park or whatever you're in just make absolutely no sense. Inevitably I just ended up running around in circle or following quest markers on the map to get stuff done. Though parts of the game were very fun, the incoherence of the maps took away from the experience (in my opinion).

I've stopped playing Kerbal Space Program again.... started playing Rise of the Tomb Raider. It's pretty decent, but not something I can play for extreme stretches. I've also burned out on World of Warships for now.

I did buy Kenshi and am playing it. It's amazing. I highly highly recommend you grindy people check it out... there's no real story, it's just open world. But you can play with a single character, or dozens. Everyone learns skills by practicing them (kind of like Elder Scrolls), so it's not uncommon to load your people up with a bunch of heavy crap and just run them around a city for a few hours to bring their strength up. There's research and building (kinda like Rimworld, but no digging out mountains). There's crafting and farming and cooking. There's selling, but I don't think the economy is too well thought out yet. Getting your ass kicked is an integral part of progression... every time you get your ass handed to you, it increases your fighting and toughness, making you better next time. Just don't lose a limb or die or get captured by slavers (yes, they can all happen).

So... yea... anyway, if you're looking for a game to gobble up a lot of your free time, check out Kenshi.

I don't really like grinding as much as you think, but that game does sound pretty interesting. A sort of Rimworld meets Skyrim in 3D persistent world. Are you playing it with Shiny or with other people? I have too many games I'm gonna want to spend a lot of time on first so not gonna join you yet, unless it's really cheap. I'll have a look later.

Was still lost in Rimworld until I got on the plane. Relocated my entire colony from the frozen wastelands into a mountain base after surveying for in-game weeks for good locations. Sent out a mining/construction party to carve out the main rooms and set up the basic base systems (food production, security etc) and supplied them whenever needed with drop pods from the affluent main base, then I slowly transported all of the base resources and colonists to the new one. Took a LOT of drop pods haha, especially for the heavy as fuck uranium. I kept the main base in the icy north mostly intact (it still has a functional security perimeter, heating and a working hydroponics farm) but abandoned it. I'm considering reclaiming it at a later point though, and scaling it down. Now that it has very low wealth the raids are rather small and I should be able to hold them off with only minimal staffing. Then it could always act as a backup for the main base, in case I fuck it up.

Loving the new base though -it's virtually impregnable. Sieges don't hurt me as they can't punch through an overhead mountain, and sappers are put off by how deep in the mountain my base is. They usually manage to dig 20 tiles deep before giving up and going home. If they live that long after passing over an IED trap or suffering from hypothermia, or simple running out of food. And most 'normal' raids get slaughtered in the massive killbox I set up, doesn't even require colonists as it's all turret based. The only real problems are infestations, which tend to be insanely big now that my base has all this wealth. But I never lost a colonist to them so far (mass hospitalisation though). I'm working on ways to deal with the threat. Anyway, I'm super stable, have all my colonists in full marine armor and with great weapons and have a metric shit tonne of food in the stockpile. I even have a backup to the backup of my power supply. So now I'm focused on megalomaniac vanity projects like tiling my entire main hall in gold, and decking out my legendary 84-year old brawler in full Arotech body parts. And I started raiding and destroying enemy faction settlements right before leaving for the airport. Crushed a pirate settlement of like 15 enemies in a matter of minutes with only minor injuries. I will enjoy razing their other bases.

Thanks for the explanation re: Shadow Warrior 2. I really ought to play the game soon, I'll let you know if I agree with you. But it did already look a bit more multiplayer focused from the videos and reviews, which sadly usually spells uninspired level design (for single player anyway).

Kenshi's single player only, I believe. Be pretty cool if it allowed multi, but no such luck. I had to scale down some of the settings for raids... it was becoming frustrating having to abandon my base every day or two because Band of Bones or Kral's Chosen showed up to raid me. Grab my food, run away to Squinn for a day or two until they give up, then head back and pick up farming or whatever. I scaled down the size and frequency of the raids via the options, so now I can just kill them with my turrets. With any luck I'll start exploring soon and maybe raiding some of ruins. I'm up to a dozen people... 6 farmers and 6 main people (for raiding and fighting mostly). The 6 mains are Shiny, Satis, Ox, Peltz, and two others.

It's been a long time since I played Rimworld. I have no idea what marine armor is, and I've never used drop pods. Hell, I don't think I ever moved bases or raided other settlements. I have beaten the game by building a ship, so that's something. I know you can also travel to an AI, but I've never beaten it in that way. Some day I'll download it and play again.. maybe on vacation.

The travelling to an AI option is basically just migrating to a place that already has a pre-built ship, which you then need to start up and defend from raids. It's basically just a different way of building the ship. But yes drop pods are a fairly recent addition (and greatly improve your mobility on the map) and marine armor used to be called power armor I think (if you even know what that is ). I'm not sure if raiding enemy settlements was a thing before but it's definitely one now haha.

So what's my speciality (my character in Kenshi I mean )? If I'm even still alive haha. I'd love to see some printscreens too.

Oh, I'm playing Kenshi in the "reload if shit goes south" kind of way. I'll probably replay it a little more hardcore in the future. It can be very unforgiving. Considering how grindy it is, I didn't want to lose all that work.

Regarding your specialty, you're one of my tanks. I have you wearing heavy armor and using a big sword. I'll attach some pics with more info. I've progressed a great deal in the game. I've raided a lot of different ruins and gotten tons of ancient science books and whatnot. Even some AI cores, which are stupidly rare. Recently I found the Bugmaster, but he competely pwnt my entire raiding party to the point I had to load a quicksave.

0 science, brute, and eat a lot of food. Sounds about right. Am I still alive at this point? Assuming you're still playing.

I've stopped playing The Long Dark after I was killed by a surprise wolf after a glorious 30+ day run on interloper, and started playing a new XCOM2 campaign after a friend gave me the War of the Chosen expansion for Christmas. The expansion is actually really cool and adds a lot of depth and flexibility to the base game that was missing a bit. And the Chosen from the title are just a ton of fun to fight against in general. If you never played the base game I think it's definitely worth picking it + the expansion up on a sale.