You feel the tug of an unseen hand, pulling you toward something. What that something is, you are unsure. The one thing you do know is that it is immensely powerful—powerful enough to control the creatures of the sea, powerful enough to drive men mad. It calls to you, draws you in, compels you. As the darkness hangs over you and you reflect on the things you have seen, the things you can never unsee, you feel a hollowness inside yourself. You feel empty, as you have always known it would end this way, and you are powerless to stop it.
Hiding behind its 8-bit aesthetic, SKALD: Against the Black Priory from High North Studios AS is a dive into darkness, madness, and Lovecraftian horror. It is a retro-inspired fantasy roleplaying game. In this turn-based game, you start as a simple mercenary on a mission that is dear to you. You venture to the Outer Isles, where you must understand how the isles have been plunged into chaos. After a brief prologue, you wake up on the beach with nothing but a few rags after your ship wrecked, leaving you stranded. The isle of Idra is flush with madmen and mutated creatures who will attempt to rip you to shreds with reckless abandon.
As you navigate the unyielding darkness that surrounds your boat, you make one last effort to grip your sanity and hold off the unstoppable madness breaking through. For you have ventured too far from the safe haven of port, and the night has ensconced you. The lights on your ship have gone dark, you see things that aren’t there, and more terrifying yet, there are things there you cannot see. You race for the safety of Greater Marrow, guided only by the lighthouse, a beacon of sanity, illuminating the sky. You race forward, hoping to arrive with a grain of your sanity remaining, for the light will save you. As you dock your small vessel, you feel the release of the eldritch horrors pulling on the final thread of your mind, you are safe—for now.
DREDGE, by Black Salt Games, may seem like a cozy fishing game on the surface, but very quickly you will learn there is much more to the game. Upon your arrival at Greater Marrow, you are loaned a boat and you must fish to pay off your debt. Once your debt is paid, you continue to fish. When you reel in your first aberrant fish, you begin to feel like something is not right here. The combination of the unsettling tone upon retrieving the fish and the grotesque visuals of the fish itself begin to give you an unsettling feeling. There is more going on here than a simple fishing game.
I am back, and I’ve made a large number of changes and updates to the blog. I wanted to quickly go over the changes and what you can expect to see in terms of content on this site moving forward. First and foremost, you will notice that we have a new look. The old style was fine, it was very simple, and I wanted to keep the same vibe, but have it be a bit more pleasing to the eye. Secondly, I’ve added support for webmentions. This allows better cross-linking with other content creators we link to, and who link to us. This will help create a more connected, platform-agnostic internet. I highly recommend looking into it. I’ve also added more standard features for a blog: you can share links to social media from each article, and there’s a tagging system to make finding related articles easier
I haven’t been streaming nearly as much lately, this is partly due to my life being much busier lately, but secondarily, I am less inclined to use Twitch, since I am actively working to push back against large platforms, and there isn’t one much larger than Amazon. I’ve considered getting back to streaming on Owncast exclusively, but my motivation has been low. I may try to get on more often to support a smaller platform and help it grow. I plan to write a deeper dive on Owncast. while I believe that a decentralized, federated internet is the direction we should be heading, Owncast has a long way to go to become a player against Twitch.
It’s been a few weeks since I last streamed on any of the platforms where I create content. The reason for this is that I’m currently playing Starfield, and Starfield does not run optimally on my PC. However, I am prioritizing playing it despite these issues. As many of you already know, content creation is not my primary source of income; as a result, I can prioritize games I want to play over those I can stream. I’ve encountered two major issues with Starfield since its release. The first is that it causes my graphics card drivers to timeout. Consequently, if I were to stream the game, I would constantly crash in the middle of the stream, resulting in a poor experience for viewers. This is particularly concerning because, supposedly, Starfield was optimized for AMD cards, and I have an AMD card. The second issue is that, for some reason, when I attempted to stream Starfield, it maxed out my CPU, causing dropped frames. Unfortunately, Starfield, while playable, is not suitable for streaming. Despite these issues, I am enjoying the game. I’ve already invested about 50 hours into it, and it’s a solid, enjoyable game. I plan to continue playing it a bit more, but I’m also eager to get back to streaming.
Once I’m done with Starfield, the streams will return. I’m pretty excited to get back to streaming. Right now, I’m starting to get the itch to play Factorio again. This will be my third playthrough, and this time I’m going to look to build some foundational blueprints for future playthroughs. I intend to write a more detailed article about Factorio in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. In my last playthrough, I launched the ship in under forty hours. I suspect this time it will take longer, but I will have a stronger foundation for future games to continue scaling my factories upward. I’m looking forward to this playthrough; it will be the first time I’m focused more on optimizing my builds instead of finishing the game as fast as possible with limited experience.