Gone Home

Today  I played through a short game called Gone Home. It is story about the family and I need to solve why the house is empty. That game gave me a lot of to think about and I have to say it wasn't anything I thought it would be. It took me two hours to explore the game but it was worth playing it through.  I do not add screen shots to this posting so I am not accidentally reveal anything special about the game.

The truth is that I am bad when playing point and click games. I often get jammed somewhere and do not realise how to go forward. Now the story was meaningfull and puzzles made sense. It was only about exploring the story through to learn what had happened when my character was gone from home. 

The story was good and I believe many will see it in different lights. To me it was kind of comforting story after all even there are also darker shades on it. But honestly, if you haven't ried this, you should. It won't take long anyways to play it through despite all the exploring.

Check the trailer from below and enjoy the atmosphere of the game where you do not need to hurry at all. 

The cottage part 2, towards insanity

I wrote about my pwn rpg last autumn. It was about the Cottage and you can read first part from here.

What happened in the Cottage?

Basic idea was that characters lives through a tramatic weekend and they begin to fall. The truth about characters will be revealled when the layers are peeled from their minds. Fist they think that they're workers of the hospital. Slowly their own personalities will come out and there you will have  persons with mental issues. So eventually players realise that they were not workers in the hospital, they were the patients.

One of the characters was paranoid being suspicious about everything. Other character was imaginating that she lived in the fantasy world and third one was overly violent and aggressive. From these three first two offered best options to play. Playing aggressive is hard and it is only going into rage if things won't go the way character wants. If I would keep the rpg again I would change these mental disorders into different ones. I didn't use real diagnoses either since I thought I didn't have enough knowledge to do so.. So even the game was happening 1990´s, it was still some kind of fantasy world.

What triggered characters then?

The cottage wasn't empty. Actually characters had a bad luck that there were two robbers in the cottage at the same time. And these robbers had used drugs what made them aggressive so they even fight with each other. Characters didn't see the fight but they found corpse of the other robber from the lake. And at the same time they were facing sabotage so they couldn't escape from the place. Eventually polices arrived into to place but before that players were trying to survive alive what they did more or less.

This kind of surprisemoment can work only in the game what is meant to play during one evening.  Playing campaign with characters like these could be very tiring especially when the characters were written by DM not by players. But this was worth of trying and it was fun evening.

The Sims Medieval

When I was a teen.. I had a slow computer and The Sims. I was so excited about the game that it didn't matter even it took a lot of time to play the game since my computer wasn't good enough for the game. Still I sit in front of the computer during summer nights and realised at some point that it was morning already.. I had played through the night. Scary!

Making a new queendom.

Of course I want my queen to be adventurous.

Queen Sonja loves red.

Now I am not playing that long time anymore but still it is nice to return to play Sims serie every now and then. Nowdays I play either Sims 2 or The Sims Medieval and now it felt good to go into medieval time. Even the game is rather different comparing to basic Sims. The Sims Medieval is a game where you do make your own kingdom and create characters in different professions to play it there. All of them have tasks to do but rather different ones. When you play a ruler your duty is to make new laws, listen your folk and make decisions what are best for your country. As  a healer you will try to find new cures and medicines and heal people.  Still tasks are rather simple ones  and you can finish them rather fast. After that you can concentrate to gain some money and to decorate your buildings.

Queen Sonja is holding a court.

People will come to get an advice from a queen.

Sometimes decision is the right one.

The new thing is that now you're doing quests (Alright, I think same idea was at least in the Sim game where you were showrecked into tropical island). You can choose quest what you want to do but after choosing one they're rather straightforward what to do. Still they have been rather interesting ones.. at least to a person who is tired after work and want to play hour or so relaxing a little. And there are always some extra things what you can do like go to adventuring. When you choose to do so, you will get some options what you will do and depending what you choose the game will tell what happened. What a lovely idea.

Queen Sonja loves adventuring.

The queen has to defen her land from outlaws.

The Sims Mediaval feels familiar  and yet there is slighty different things compared to the Sims, Sims 2 or Sims 3.  It is nice to play more straightforward game and finish your duties when you can see your kingdom improving. Still the game is very light one and at least for now I haven't needed to worry about wars or nasty neighbours. So if Civilizations feels competitive games, perhaps making a kingdom in the Sims is your thing then. 

Overwatch as a noob

Ha! Sometimes I do play games were I match against other players. I am not good at it but still I do play games such TF2 or Overwatch. Sorry to my teammates who have to tolerate my faults when playing!

The battle begins 

When I was a tank.

Overwatch is first-person shooter game what you do play online. There are plenty of different characters what to choose and I do like that variation. So far I have enjoyed to play either healer or those characters who shoots and flies at the same time like Pharah. My aiming is bad but still I return back to play the game. But why?

I see often my kill cam

Not that good match for me

I work better as a healer

First of all.. I think it is rather easy to learn basics how to shoot, attack and defence yourself.  It depends a lot from a character how you can do these things but they're possible to handle. And the game looks like a candy! The areas are nicely made and they do not repeat each other. and third reason is that spawning time isn't overly much. To a player who dies a lot it become very frustrating if you can't return back to battle fast. I have played TF2 before so at least Mercy in Overwatch works same way than healer in TF2. Maybe that is the reason why playing Mercy works for me.  When I am playing tanks like D. VA I am not usually very effective.. as you can see from above. But maybe I will learn since I am still level 10 so noobie!

Halloween loot box.

What I got from a loot box this time.

When you gain levels, you will get loot boxes from the game. Those will give you new looks for the characters, new voices to them and such things. It is good that you do not have to wait good weapons from such from the boxes since you have to buy the game anyways to play it.  But so far this games seems good.. I am not feeling annoyed even though there is always more experienced players in my team. But I am still beginner so I will send another posting when I am improving in the game and learn to play it better. But for now.. if you wish to find me from Blizzard games, just seek Redsonja.

Wasteland 2, Director's cut

Somehow time passes very fast.. I thought it was only several months when I played Wasteland 2: Director's cut but when I checked my saves.. I realised it was about a year when I played it last time. Still I remembered pretty much from the game and wanted to continue the story. Playing Wasteland 2 helps me to orientate to be a dungeonmaster in the pen and paper role-playing game, Era Survival. Known world has fallen and only the strongest survives.. That combines both of these games even reasons for the collapsing are different ones.

Stats for my main character.

Everyone has their quirks.

My team.

When I returned to play Wasteland 2 I didn't want to make new characters, I rather used my premade group so that I could continue adventuring instead of making new characters. I still had pictures about creating characters and you can see them above. I tried to make a team where one can heal, one is good to speak and has some intelligence, one is strong and one can use snipers and also knows how to improve weapons. Usefull skills and it is necessary to have several skills in your group if you do not want to have troubles to go forward all the time. Lockpicking, safecracking, alarm disarming are rather handy when you wish to find a good loot.

Conversations  gives useful information.

Travelling is dangerous, remember to have water and check radiation.

When I started to play game again I remembered fast why I liked this. The game gives impression that we aren't the only team who is working in the world. There are others and we can hear the reports as well. That gives small hints about new places but also creates story that we are part of something bigger. I like that idea and also it feels nicer to travel as a group than travel alone in the dangerous world. So everytime I go adventuring I always have whole group with me. That simply helps to survive.

Team moves as a group.

Giant rabbits don't eat carrots. They love meat.

Decisions! Awful decisions. I am gamer who would like to help always almost everyone.. but now you simply can't.  You have to do decision what to do and you will know that if you help some, someone else might suffer. It feels horrible but it also gives impression about harsh world.  Life sucks when even water and bullets are valuable. Wasteland 2: Director's cut is still a good game and it seems there is plenty to play..  My goal is to finnish game before they release the third part in 2019. Here is short trailer about  Wasteland 3.

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.