I was planning on making a standalone post with slightly more commentary, and I still might (let me know if there is interest in that), but I could give some short cliff notes here I suppose.

• Curse of Resthaven - Pentiment meets Euro-style board game, with a time loop setup and Lovecraftian setting. Fully voiced, beautiful hand-drawn art, feature complete, very promising and unique merge of narrative investigation and roguelike trading/city building game.

• Rain of Lead - Victorian Dieselpunk lesbian love story (or is it?) told as a 2D Katana ZERO-esque slasher/shooter where everything dies in one hit - both the enemies and you. Crisp, razor-sharp controls and super fast cocacine-fuelled combat with satisfying effects and gore that make succesfully clearing a room an absolute dopamine factory.

• Every Man for Himself and God Against All or, for a shorter name: TimeLeft - You're a prisoner on death row, playing Blackjack with the warden with seconds of your life as the stake. As the death clock is mercilessly ticking down, you have to try to solve hidden puzzles and explore the prison, each run maybe learning a little more about how to outplay (or cheat?) the warden.

• Walk-Off 199X - A charming baseball-themed roguelike deckbuilder created entirely from free (fully credited!) Creative Commons and Public Domain assets, instead of GenAI vomit. UI design is great, spinning a wheel to take a pitch is an inspired bit of design, the systems and mechanics work well and are dripping with flavour. The 90s VHS aesthetic is perfect, too.

• Mind Vessel - Build your own little Rube Goldberg machines in this roguelike creature collector/autobattler. A very flexible body part system allows for great customization for your creatures, and the way combat works (first your left creature goes, then your right, then you multiply their scores) combined with all the effects you can reorder and reorganize within each creature lets you set up fun chain reactions and sequences of combos that really run your score up.

• Dictatorship Simulator - Armed with a smartphone and a cigarette case you're undermining democracy one Bullying, Heckling and Blackmail Dossier at a time, looking to eventually become a dictator. The combat has a unique spin where you only damage your enemy indirectly. By attacking nodes such as "Contentment" or "Their Following", you can eventually start wearing down your opponent through indirect damge. Cards are very flavourful in both name and art and I like the overall presentation. A "No GenAI" sticker on the store page also helps sway me, as does the promise of part of the profits being donated to the Godot and Blender foundations.

It's taking significantly more effort than usual to sift through the slop, but beneath all the Claude Code vomit there is more or less the usual amount of gems. They're just even more buried in the sand than usual.

But interest noted. I might get around to that, I still have some more demos to play though while there is time.

Also, as an ex Dota player I appreciate your username! Drow was never my hero, though.

It's on my wishlist, but we'll see if I end up buying it or not (I have a ton of games to get through). I've watched some gameplay of it though, including a ringing endorsement. Looks very very good, although it gets quite difficult once you start to get deep into it.

Anything that helps community discovery is good in my book.

This is especially because the FIA’s own analysis shows that of the 200kg that car weight has gone up over the past 20 years, only 40kg of that was related directly to improved safety elements like the halo, stronger chassis sides and higher energy absorption areas.

I have no idea where the narrative that modern F1 cars are so huge and heavy for safety reasons came from. A lot of the weight comes from batteries, and almost all of the size is because of performance reasons: you can fit more aero on a larger surface area and that makes the cars go faster.

No Soulslikes for me this weekend; Steam NextFest is ongoing so I am NextFesting for all I'm worth. Standing with a pan in the river of slop like a goldrush hopeful trying desperately to sift for any nuggets washing downstream. Which, thankfully, I've been able to find at least some gems even among all the soulless single-prompt Claude Code vomit.

As for what made me "git gud" well... I have avoided Sekiro and Khazan for a reason. And that is that I don't think any Soulslike I've played so far has truly forced me to "git gud", and I'm currently perfectly content with that remaining the case. Maybe that is a hurdle I am physically able to overcome with patience and effort, maybe it isn't and my reflexes are shot. At the moment, I'm more interested in experiencing a whole slew of new and wildly differing games than spending months finding out.

That's beautiful.

"Rage against the dying of the light" is one of the all-time greatest lines.

Is it really worth it to use Linux on a PS5 instead of just buying a PC?

"Just buying a PC" is a pretty grim proposition given today's hardware prices, so I don't blame them at all for wanting to transform available hardware into a makeshift one for free.

What a beautiful creature.

Once you've found an efficient lunch that is nutritional, easy to make and doesn't taste bad, why would you not keep eating it. You just solved lunch! It's a joyous occasion!

I guess that's fair. It's not like the car is competitive anyway.

Maybe he can convince Cadillac to dump Bottas (who has been unfathomably bad) and let go of the American Dream, that's pretty much his only out. Ocon is an okay midfield driver but I doubt many teams will see all that much upside in him.

Always has been.

They are elegant, graceful and slender beings. I'm apprehensive of the species that are actually dangerous, I wouldn't want to handle one of those. But I'm not afraid of snakes in general. I've always found them very beautiful and delicate.

There is like a 40cm spacer, between the clutch and the gears I think, just to make the cars longer (for better aero).

Turns out the invisible hand of the market isn't so much a hand as a single outstretched middle finger.

And it's only going to get worse, unfortunately...

That's a very thoughtful reply. I would expect nothing else from you.

::: spoiler spoiler I think the one thing about Star that irks me is that line about a potential cure. That is the one that makes me feel like they're just throwing a copium-bone to the players that desire it. If it was just about travelling away from the hellhole that is Night City and spending your last days with your newfound family in peace, then I would like it a lot more. :::

Wading through the slop pile that is NextFest trying to find some scraps of hope for gaming's future.