The cottage part 1, the basics

Today I was dungeonmaster in a game called the Cottage. I had made characters beforehand and gave them to players. There were four characters who were working in the mental asylum where they kept prisoners. Employees who were friends with each other needed a break and they had rent a cottage for a weekend. The story started when they left from the city towards countryside.

I wanted to keep system a simple one. There was three skills.. physical (like strength, dexterity), mental (wisdom, intelligence etc.) and effectiveness (like charisma) and I had shared ten points between these to every character.. Like one of the characters was porter and I had given him these stats:

Physical 5

Mental 2

Effectiveness 3

When I asked players to roll the dice they always rolled one six sided dice and added their skill to the result. If it was 8, it was success. If it was 1 it was always fail and something bad happened. Simple system since this game was supposed to last only couple hours. And to be honest we finished it in three hours.

The other characters were nurse, psychologist and psychiatric nurse. Unfortunately there was only three players so one of the written ones was dropped away. This time no one wanted to play psychologist, so she was out of the adventure.

In the beginning all the friends had had a rough week at work and they needed a break desperately. They had morning shift on Friday so they could leave together from work and could travel towards the cottage after buying some food for the weekend. 

I will analyze the plot on the next part then.

Back to Stardew Valley

It seems I want to grow things when it is spring. Because I am usually killing plants in the real life, Stardew Valley was good option to try out again. Still that simple game is fascinating and there are those little renovations what gives little extra to it. Like now you can date also Shane and Emily.

Being friends will Emily can be odd.

Haley  tries out  life in the farm.

I suppose Stardew Valley is a good game when I am too tired to play anything longer since you can still save the game every morning. There are still some new areas what I didn't unlock even on the first time so I should focus to explore more and to do quests. But it is taking time when I am still wanting to grow crops as well. Multitasking takes time and progress is slower. But day by day I will go further.

Emily is showing off her skills.

Fishing still gives challenge.

Harvey saw a plane.

Stardew Valley is still a game what I can recommend to play. It was worth of buying if I have been sopending around 200 hours playing that game. That is a lot more than what I usually spend with the most of the games. 

Reigns

Being a king isn't ever easy. Not especially when you usually have two bad options and you need to choose less bad from those. If you make wrong decision you will use resources. If your rescources goes to zero, new king will arise. 

Time for the second king.

The old king is haunting the living ones.

13 years he lasted before dying.

Reigns is an indiegame what has a simple idea but it isn't too easy anyways. You need to keep your king alive and every year you're making a choice. Sometimes they bring resources (money, religion, army or people) but usually they uses one or more from those. So you need to find a balance because if one of the resources will go to zero, your time of ruling ends.  And be careful.. always the decision what sounds good isn't any better than the other ones.

Decisions decisions..

What a destiny to become lost.

Lost in the dugneon.

For once the kingdom remained over ten years.

Reigns is nice game when you have short time to play  or you do not want to take things too seriously. But just remember.. Decisions made by ealier kings bight stillf affect in the future so you should also always think about the options. For some reason my kindgoms usually fall before they have seen ten years.. but still I like to return to try once again with a new king.

Dragon Age Inquisition; Clothes

I have been busy by making live action role playing game so there hasn't gotten much time to play computer games or anything else. But every now and then I have played Dragon Age Inquisition once again. I didn't begin a new story, only continued the older one. I have written about the game before but on this posting I will tell more about clothings in that game. When I look at the characters I often think that they're very well dressed, even the chracters who are only standing on the streets and making world lively.

This atmosphere and clothes are so lovely.

The better folk has more expensive fabrics.

I simply love these dresses.

Especially Orlais  is full if various fabrics. When you step into the court it is easy to see that costumes are made from expensive fabrics. They're decorative and details are carefully thought. I rarely even notice clothes that well when I do play so they really has paid attention to this. And it is also nice to see difference between places. In Orlais many dresses a lot better than in Ferelden. The fashion is also different between places and in the cities they care more  about how they look.

Orlesian folk is well-dressed even not in court.

Varric and Blackwell shows their style.

My lady is wearing her casual clothes.

In Ferelden clothes looks a lot more practical. If I would see orlesian peasant I believe their clothes would also be practical ones. But Ferelden also seems colder place than Orlais so people has to wear more than silks and corsets. If you haven't noticed clothes just yet in DAI I would recommend that you look around in the game. Beautines is everywhere despite the threats what the whole world is facing. And still this  game is sso tempting that I keep seeing dreams about it, so definetely worth of trying.

The Flame in the Flood

When the river is your friend and the worst enemy. The Flame in the Flood is indie game where you travel along the rivers and try to find things for survival. There are wild animals who are threat to you if you face them unprepared. And yet the biggest threat is the weather. Rain soaks and make you feel cold. How to survive when everything is against you?

You can play either campaign or free endless game.

When you enter the raft for the first time.

Dog will be your best friend, and usually the only one.

I have to say that music is very smooth and nice in the game. If the music would be threatening, the game would be creepier. Now you hav a dog and nice music to help during your journey. And both of those helps quite a bit to keep the atmosphere the right one, despite the endless rain. The game is hard.. when you still learning what to do the death is sudden and unexpected. When you try the same thing again, it works a lot better and you will survive a bit longer. But be careful about everything.. rain, wild animals, food, poisons, insects, cold can be deadly to you.

Uups.. Damn snakes.

The horrible way to die when raft is falling apart.

At least I can see the road how logn I survived before dying.

When you float along the river there are little islands where to land. It might be an old campsite, or ruined hospital but all of those offers something useful to gather. Forage all the time when you have the possibility since it is a key to find new things. When accidents happens you have to be prepared or your condition might become worse fast. This is the main things what you will learn from the beginning in the game. Every rag, dandelion or yucca has a way to help you to last longer. The only problem is that you can't carry everything with you, so finding the best combo helps you further. When you forage new items you will learn new recipes how to make more difficult things. Try them out and make your living easier.

Make sure your basic needs are taken care.

Many dangers are floating in the river what might crash your little raft.

This game has a good balance. It is challenging but still I ended up to try it again and again and I learnt from my earlier mistakes. The islands aren't holding same things all the time so what you will be finding is randomly selected. But if you love surviving and challenges this the game you should try. I liked it even still hasnät gotten through the campaign... But I am close ending it! And at least I do have a hope that when I die, I can always begin from the point during journey and keep the stuff I had at that time before dying instead of doing everything again from beginning. But if this feels too merciful feel free to make a whole new beginning and challenge yourself even more!

Zup!

Do you wish to play a game without thinking too hard? Try Zup! It is a little game what is made from blocks. You simply blow up red blocks so that blue one ends up on the green flat. Sounds simple? Well it is as simple as it sounds. When the blue block end up in the green flat gate will be opened and you can go to try next level. 

These are the rules.

First round is simple.

Gate opens, when blu block remains on the green flat.

I was a bit stressed before christmas and I needed a game what I can play without thinking. Zup! is a short game but I liked the idea. Minipuzzles what are based on physics. So blocks won't fly randomly. Usually right timing helped to go through. The whole game was short, it took me less than hour to play it through, but luckily the price wasn't very high either. 

Kaboom! Blocks flies.

Each from the red blocks will explode if you click them.

The more the merrier.

If you like Indie games and little puzzles, check this game. It is nice for those evenings when you are so tired that you can't focus  to follow any longer stories.

Dragonmeet 2016

Dragonmeet is tabletop convention and one of largest its kind in London. I have taken part to it once before, maybe the year was 2013 and now I got a chance to go there again. And definetely it was thrilling to be there once again. So I booked flights and bought a ticket and went for a visit.

There  were a lot of exhibitors in the huge room what was so noisy so that it took a lot of efford to hear what others were saying. At first I simply walked around and looked what the convention was to offer for a random visitor. During the convention I was able to test out a couple of board and card games + I took part into short role-playing game introduction.

First game I tried was made by Cubiko Games. The game itself was called Jamsumo and it was played with 6 sided dies. The idea of the game was simple so even the kids could play it. But still game challenges you since it isn't basing on luck. I also liked the game board very much. It was very well made. I didn't buy it just yet but been thinking if could be a nice game to buy anyways.

The other game I tried was Beastly Bust Up. The game isn't released just yet but we had a possibility to try the game. The idea of teh game was simple. You have several areas and animal fighters fought over them. Rules were simple and game was played through in 15-20 minutes. So perfect game when you need something fast to play through. The game was made by Fat Matador games and I hope they will have it as a kickstarter.

But how about rpg's? Yes... I wasn't able to resist temptation.. and bought some new games to fill my shelves. And of course some new dices! I haven't played these games before but I will tell about them a lot more when I have hosted games to my friends. But here is the short list what I found from Dragonmeet:

• Into the Odd: Steampunk dungeon crawling with magic. Game where you better avoid bad fights and use your brains to gain glory without any harms.
• Cthulhu Drak 0: The horror game where you're playing the poor people from the cities. You have no money nor chances to avoid the striking horrors so survive or face your darker destiny.
• Era Survival: The world has turned into wasteland in 100 years. No one knows where the destroying virus arrived but last survivors tries to make their living somehow. And keep up hope for better future. This game I also teste in Dragonmeet already and found it interesting. It was the main reason why I end up to buy it.
• Adventures in Middle-Earth: Middle-Earth using D&D 5th edition rules! Awesome! I have plenty of adventures to play in Middle-Earth but now system is far more playable than those old ones. I am just waiting to have a Dungeonmaster guide as well. 

My precious what I found from Dragonmeet.