The Nerdsletter Issue #86 – Getting Muddy

~ Terminally Nerdy

Hey guess what I actually did stuff this week! Amazing! Let’s dive in!

GAMING

First and foremost, we have 3, yes 3 new videos! Let’s start with the first, Return from Core:

This game has promise but due to the horrible translation (feels like they used Google Translate) and the issues with text cutting off I cannot enjoy it nor recommend it. It’s hard to like something when I have no idea what is going on most of the time. Visually wonderful though!

Next, we have Cyber Knights Flashpoint!

This one has a lot of promise going on and I really like the idea behind it. It’s just very early in its development, but I can recommend it right now. It’s basically XCom in a Cyberpunk World, with an Oceans 11 theme. I am keeping a close watch on the updates for this one, as Trese Brothers are very active and like to update nearly weekly.

Finally, we have Star Traders: Frontiers, another game by Trese Brothers but a bit older.

I really like this one as well, save for one thing. The ease at which a death spiral can occur. This is a situation where one bad event or roll can just spiral out of control and chain into even more. For instance: I ended up in a region with no ports that would work with me due to reputation, ran out of fuel, had 4 crew mutinies happen, and when I finally found a port to land at, half my crew deserted, and I could not replace them. This led to getting into a fight afterwards that destroyed me. Stuff like this is surprisingly common. Still like the game, I just need to figure out how to avoid stuff like this. Maybe ping pong between ports instead of letting the game navigate for me. Also, occasionally the random encounter rate seems high. I once got 3 pirate attacks back-to-back, and combat is kind of, well, slow. I think there is an auto combat option though.

But guess what, these are NOT the only games I was into this week! Oh no, we got plenty more to talk about. For instance, I have been playing a little indie game called Cardboard Town. I got this on a whim during the steam sale with my patreon cash (same way I got the two Trese Brothers games to be honest) and I am hooked. It’s a, no joke: Card Based Deck Building Roguelike City Builder. Yes, that word salad is the best way to describe this game. Basically, it’s like a puzzle game. You place buildings on a map via cards, connected via roads (also cards), and try to maintain a balance of your resources while growing your population. It can be very difficult at times if you draw poorly. Like you need road cards, but don’t draw any, and end up with a hand that fills up with cards. To make things worse there is a trouble meter that gives you debuffs when it fills up and it increases every turn, and some cards make it go up too. These can absolutely ruin you, on top of the red building cards you get, which can give you a fail token if you don’t build em. Your game is over if you get 3 of the failure tokens. I still like it though but it’s very swingy.

I also tried out a crap ton of MUDs, the text based multiplayer games that still exist. I have tried quite a few this week in addition to keeping up with my usual DISCWORLD MUD, so let’s go over those!

  • Unofficial SquareSoft MUD: This is an odd one. It’s basically a MUD version of a Final Fantasy game, it covers many of the FF games, plus Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger. I am still dabbling in it but it’s very grindy. While it has storyline missions for each “game world” many of the quests are things like Kill 20 Imps and Kill 15 Bees and it’s kind of MMO ish in design. I am unsure how I feel about this one.
  • Procedural Realms: This one has a great web client for one, and an interesting premise of just exploring various realms. My big issue is that it has a high focus on crafting and gathering and plays almost like a text-based version of a survival game, like ARK. You can ignore that, but then you miss out on a lot of content. I will prolly go back and check this one later down the road. Oh and the combat is actually turn based and party based, with a mercenary system. Real creative!
  • Achaea Dreams of Divine Lands: I have tried this one a few times over the years. This last attempt was my third and honestly final attempt. I just cannot enjoy how the game “plays” in combat, and it’s a combat heavy MUD as all Iron Realms muds are. First, you have no auto attack at all. You HAVE to constantly manually attack. Further still, after some research I found that if you do not spend money, at around level 60ish you will start getting blasted by enemies because your gear won’t be scaling well enough. Apparently, there are also some players who consider free players to be “rot” and don’t like engaging with em. I just prefer to avoid this at this point.
  • Alter Aeon: This one I am actually trying to play more and more. The class system is fairly interesting in that its multiclass focused. While you start as one of five classes, you eventually will want to level all of them. For instance, I started as a Cleric, but now I am a Cleric 7 / Necromancer 4, as an example. Combat has auto attacks (thank god) as well as spells and abilities you can use. It’s also got a lot of story heavy quests which are more than just Kill X stuff. The world is pretty interesting as well, and they have a client you can use to connect that includes a nice auto map and lots of windows so you can keep things open as you need em.

I got a list of other MUDs I am poking at as well. I am mostly trying to broaden my horizons in this genre a bit. I also started to play The Outer Worlds again thanks to a Let’s Play by Neon Bird Games. Check out the first episode below!

Thats it about it for me gaming wise!

FINAL WORD AND SONG OF THE WEEK

This week has been my first full week at my new job. So far, so good! Interestingly enough this company gives new hires PTO (And all of the years PTO up front, which is wild to me) AND we also get MLK Day off paid. So I have a day off on Monday already.

Thats about it right now. Stay nerdy, treat each other kindly, and I will catch ya next week.

Published by Terminally Nerdy

I am an older guy who loves gaming in just about every form. I enjoy writing and occasionally making videos about gunpla, warhammer, miniature wargaming, wrestling, and video games!

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