gamerdad Ah, so between some sick time on the couch and a few days of I’ve kinda gone a big overboard with this game.

In fact, at just a week since launch I’ve logged a full twenty four hours in game and have made some serious progress in building out my little farm. Should I be proud? Or a bit embarrassed?

The dynamics of the game tweaks that have added some new features to the game, along with a few years of experience playing previous versions, has me digging in and churning through a lot of contracts and expanding my operation. I’ve set some basic rules for my game play and I’ve been trying to avoid cheats or crazy manipulation on the simulation aspect which a lot of people who post online seem to lean into maybe just to make their videos but maybe also to wheel past the slow grind of the agricultural simulation which can be a bit tedious if you don’t multitask and diversify your efforts from the get go.

On the other hand, I’ve also been leaning into the quirkier aspects of the game, like the fact that you can literally kinda sorta go for a trail run through the woods… call me silly but It’s a vibe.

gamerdad Ah, well. Call it a break from farming or whatever but between my efforts of school bus spotting and actually doing the farming bits, I may have accidentally gone for a run.

Backup. Ok. So I’m a runner. In real life. If you are just stumbling on this and looking for a short short bio. I run. It’s my other hobby.

Running is a vibe. All those other games make running look like effortless sprinting, you know? Run in No Man’s Sky for example and your avatar is bounding and striding and galloping It’s not realistic. It’s simply utilitarian and fast.

I didn’t expect much for Farming Simulator 25 but between the nature trails and the bird sounds and the sluggish and basically awkward jog by little Farmer Brad, this game has the vibe. You know. It feels like trail running. It sims it better than most. Call me crazy but there’s something there.

The video started as a gag, a bit, but there’s something there. Really and I had to share it up.

gamerdad I can’t honestly explain why I’m in such a vibing place for this silly game.

I mean, maybe it’s the prospect of a game with low stakes flow, you know? Like, nothing to kill, nothing to evade, nothing to quest, nothing to skill-based reflexively button mash. Just, like, build a farm from scratch and chill.

I rarely #preorder games. What with the whole game industry releasing beta junk and patching later thing that has been going on, and as much as initial reviews are complaining that this is yet another incremental update to the series, that’s kinda what I wanted. The latest version to replace the one in my library that will be going away when my PSPlus subscription deliberately lapses next month.

We were on vacation when this went live, on our way home though, and so I remoted into my PS5 and installed it anyways and then played it using the Remote app on my iPad to push through the #tutorial level—which honestly I didn’t need to play but figured, y’know, just in case something changed that was important enough to put in the tutorial.. gotta play it. The controls via the app are a #pita though so I finished the recap of the skills and I’ll dig in properly when we’re home and in from of my big screen. Until then, here we go…

gamerdad Almost exactly three months after picking up our copy of this game while on a vacation in the mountains, we’re back in the mountains at the same hotel, playing yet another round in our ongoing campaign.

This time the weather is a little cooler and our “romantic village” is as much a distraction from the cold and rain outside as it was a reprieve from a long hike those months back.

That said, as we progress through our campaign we’re starting to get a vibe for the strategy and being a little bit smarter about playing tiles. Our game this evening netted us our best score yet and advanced us along yet score sheet a few extra steps over usual.

gamerdad I keep logging in because I keep seeing news and posts about new content, but when it settles I ultimately just end up spending an hour grinding resources and exploring.

The value of a relaxing game like No Man’s Sky is that after a long day of work or writing it is awfully nice to just run around and not worry about anything but just dabbling and dawdling through a procedurally generated planet never previously seen by human eyes.

It’s been a crazy week at home, at work, and around the world. I needed some chill time so between tending my virtual farm in Farming Simulator and collecting ferrite and salvaged data in the infinite multiverse of No Man’s Sky I’ve needed some down time, offline time, and time to progress in something that is indifferent to the universe being screwed up.

gamerdad Now that I’ve paid my pre-order for the updated version of this game, I’ve been itching to play. But FS22 is still sitting there in my game library (tho only for another couple months) with a save that I’ve got about 20 hours of progress on.

Two play sessions ago I had started a big contract—and I do mean big, like $85k worth of work, which for those in the know is a solid ten hours of simulator grind—and I had made my way about 75% of the way thru whilst listening to an audiobook. And for all the times I’ve left off half way thru game quests in my life, for some reason this hanging contract was nagging me to finish before I moved on from the game in nine days. That, and it was the evening before daylight savings and I needed some motivation to stay up en extra hour and time shift my brain. Three more long his of digging potatoes later, and I was getting asked if I was coming to bed anytime soon—but I got it done and got paid.

As goofy as this game premise is, there is something about farming sims in general that speak to a primal kind of urge to build something into the world and to grow, well, anything. Online, as the release of the new version draws near there are guys lamenting the bittersweet transition: a new game but an old play left behind. They are posting screenshots of their accomplishments and digitally weeping for the change In not quite that far sunk, but I get the vibe. It is something.

gamerdad I realized that the previous version of this sim game was probably one of the last reasons In have been hanging onto my Playstation membership (being the only monthly game giveaway I still play and haven’t purchased outright) so having made the decision to cancel that when it comes up for renewal in January, I put the money instead into pre-ordering the next edition—which comes out in about 2 weeks.

I figured out the general vibe of the game on version ’22 and I think this might be a game I can really see myself sinking into for some casual playtime. Really. I must be getting old huh?

gamerdad What with my first stab at something resembling an actual tabletop RPG last night—and what with the Dungeon Masters Guide (2024) releasing in about two weeks—I figured it was finally time to tiptoe into the first steps of Dungeons & Dragons.

What I had not mentioned was that my Players Manual appeared on our doorstep a month ago, thereabouts, and though I’ve spent some quality time thumbing through it and reading the processes and rules and charts, none of it actually started to make much sense until I did the hard manual printed paper and pen approach to building a character from scratch.

Sure, I’ve got the Beyond app downloaded and sure I eventually messed around and created a second character using that, but as soon as-called-simple as it is to use that tool, I will grant myself the +5 Wisdom that comes from taking the time to puzzle it out from the print edition first, because that app would not have made as much sense before I did that—or maybe—who can say? Either way, I’ve now got a couple of rawly generic characters built that seem like they might be worth putting through some kind of game—if only I knew how to do that.

gamerdad We were a couple people short of a proper crew for a #ttrpg but Chris put on a game of Mansions of Madness for us. The game uses an app-based Dungeon Master to lead a cooperative crew through a mission and solve a mystery that unravels with each turn.

gamerdad I got a string of annoyed comments from the Kid who wanted to watch something on our main television last night that wasn’t me playing an obtuse card game.

The problem with #roguelike games (in this particular context, at least) is that, no, I cannot give you an estimation of when I will be done and we can turn off the playstation so you can watch netflix, sorry.

To make matters worse I was having a great run, had made it further than I had to date, and kept pulling great hands to match my collection of multiplier-joker cards.

“I thought you said you were almost done.”

No, in fact I specifically said I couldn’t tell when I would be done, only that I had never made it this far before and there was no way this lucky streak could last. Which—it didn’t, and soon enough I had put down the controller and we had got on with family-tv-watching night.

Now, usually I wake up in the morning, make a coffee, feed the dog and thumb though the news on my ipad. This morning I made my coffee, fed the dog, and booted the playstation back up making sure to mute the television in the quiet house while everyone was still sleeping. I didn’t quite recreate my lost lucky streak, but—hey—the day is still young.

gamerdad A confluence of events and stuff meant that I cashed in my Playstation Stars and bought a reward points copy of this #roguelike card game. I had been listening to one of my favourite video game casts a couple weeks ago and they had mentioned this with enough enthusiasm that it made its way onto my #wishlist and’s spoiled my curiosity. Who doesn’t need a chill sit on the couch and play a low stakes card game game? Huh?

I’ll report more when I come up for air again?

gamerdad I actually wanted to play Tropico on my console, it was that kind of afternoon, but alas the video game sale gods thwarted my ambitions and that title was not on sale. What is the next best thing, and doesn’t involve buying another copy of a game I already own on Steam? How about Anno 1800? I vaguely recall hearing something about that previously.

They all start to blur together tho don’t they?

The real blur after playing all these top down, #realtimestrategy #citybuilder type of games is that in my forty years of gamer experience I’ve honestly lost track, and playing a game like this should be like riding a bike—but with a control pad, blah blah blah, you get my point. I don’t want to put too many black marks on my initial two hours with Anno 1800 but this was not exactly the case. In fact, I lost my first 30 minutes of play because the game not only let me paint myself into a resource corner, it egged me on while I did so. That’s to say, it gave me two goals for which I only had the resources to do one, and when I did the first and obvious one I couldn’t make the resources for the second because the outcome of the second was a building that manufactured those resources. I restarted rather than trying to puzzle it out—which i’m not even sure puzzling it out was possible.

In the end I played a lot further, fought a few more control and interface puzzles that really should have been better (read: more conventionally) designed and will probably start this whole level/campaign over next time just because I’ve actually learned a bunch more about what’s going on with that first couple hours: a common complaint online which usually was hit with the caveat that is a good game after the learning curve.

But again, um Ubisoft, why are you reinventing the wheel here, huh?