I change the font and size, it snaps my brain out of “I already know this text has no errors, I’ve been looking at it while writing it” mode and allows it to more easily read it anew

Oh, didn’t know. I played it with zero microtransactions. I’m sure there’s a certain way though

Games of about 10hs from before 2019?

• King of Dragon Pass: Tribe management game/text adventure with illustrations. Felt it was interesting in both mechanics and vibes
• Plants vs Zombies: Addictive comedy-themed tower defense
• Alundra: PS1’s Zelda
• Gris: Atmospheric 2D puzzle platformer
• Celeste: Rewarding 2D platformer with nice music
• The Lion’s Song: Graphic aventure light on gameplay and heavy on story and atmosphere. 4 chapters about early 20th century Austrian artists and scientists with themes like art, gender, identity, memory, society, etc.
• Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You: You play as a government employee tasked with finding people deemed as terrorists by the gov by scouring their social networks. There’s different ways to play it
• Papers, Please: Similar to above but as a border control agent
• The Banner Saga: Tactical RPG bases on viking mythology
• Rebuild: Gangs of Deadville: Management of a group/colony of customizable survivors in a zombie apocalypse. Web game

These are more recent but they should require very low specs:

• Roadwarden: Very well written and immersive text adventure with RPG elements. Low fantasy world, you’re assigned as a roadwarden by a far away nation to a dangerous and sparsely populated wildland.
• Landnama: Viking tribes settling Iceland. Plays like a well designed board game in video game form. Real time with pause.
• Citizen Sleeper: Incredible cyberpunk text-heavy adventure with RPG elements and a narrative focused on being humane in a not so humane world with a not quite humane body

I’ve never had this problem in English nor Spanish but you made me realize those two words are very similar in Spanish too (reenumerar, remunerar)

1) Hybrid visual novels (ie visual novels with some gameplay element, be it some basic adventure/exploration/mystery mechanics like the Ace Attorney series, RPG or Tactical RPG elements, management, deckbuilding or whatever) that have very good writing (think something like Roadwarden or Citizen Sleeper) and/or a loveable cast of characters (like Ace Attorney).

2) Sci-fi and/or fantasy books that have good writing (by which I mean not that hollow, mass-produced, repetitive, overly simple YA-style prose —don’t want to offend YA lovers, I’m just tired of it). Bonus points if they have some elements of social criticism, and even more bonus points if they have very compelling worldbuilding and characters. I’m thinking of stuff like Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness and Rocannon’s World, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Ted Chiang’s short story “Story of Your Life”, most of Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories, Angélica Gorodischer’s Kalpa Imperial, Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, Dino Buzzati’s short story “The Seven Messengers”, Ursula Vernon’s webcomic Digger, Winston Rowntree’s webcomic Watching, Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, etc.

3) Logical puzzle games that have the same quality of atmosphere and setting as Return of the Obra Dinn.

4) Turn-based videogames (they can be RPGs, roguelites, management games, visual novels, text adventures or whatever else as long as it’s not action-focused, based on reflexes or time-sensitive without pause) that have very strong setting, atmosphere and writing (if they don’t have a traditional story, at least good writing in the occasional dialogue lines). Some preferred settings are:

• Decadent worlds (like Darkest Dungeon, Dredge, Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Cultist Simulator, Book of Hours, The Shrouded Isle)

• 18th to 20th century history/alternate history (like The Great Ace Attorney, The Lion’s Song, The Last Door, Amnesia: Rebirth, Return of the Obra Dinn)

• Sci-fi in general —can be cyberpunk but not necessary— (like Citizen Sleeper, Tacoma, Soma, The Talos Principle, The Red Strings Club, Chrono Trigger, 2064: Read Only Memories, Subnautica, Stellaris)

• Very current (as in 2020s or close) focused settings (like Unpacking, Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You, one night hot springs, missed messages., What Remains of Edith Finch)

• Traditional and/or generic fantasy but well written (like Roadwarden, Wildermyth, Final Fantasy Tactics, Legend of Mana, The Banner Saga, Suikoden II, Terranigma, Grandia, Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, Alundra… many of these I played young so their writing might not be as good as I remember)

• Other historical/alternate history settings previous to 18th century as long as they’re well written (like King of Dragon Pass, Landnama)

But I’m also open to anything I’m not used to in videogames as long as it has those elements (strong writing, setting, atmosphere), like urban fantasy/new weird/fantastic realism type of stuff like Disco Elysium, whimsical settings a la Undertale/Deltarune or ambiguous mindscapes like in Celeste and Gris.

5) Mechanically speaking, something that reaches the same heights as Slay the Spire. I don’t know what it is, I’ve played many other deckbuilding roguelites and/or roguelites with a tree-style map chasing that same high. And some were better than others (I guess shout-out to Monster Train, FTL, Pirates Outlaws, Griftlands, Roguebook, Iris and the Giant, Dicey Dungeons, Star Renegades). But none have absorbed me like it did despite it having uninteresting (to me) writing and visuals. Maybe it was just because it was my first with those ideas.

6) I was exposed to a lot of anime/manga when I was a teen and even if I never feel like I want to watch/read most of them these years, I still have some lingering weakness for some of its tropes and aesthetics when applied to videogames. I’m talking about trainwreck-style games that are awful and strangely compelling at the same time, like Danganronpa and Zero Escape. Or, to speak of one that feels much higher quality while still having some puzzling choices, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. It’s hard to describe this vibe (maybe “anime aesthetics, very ambitious in some ways but messy and still beholden to certain clichés, occasionally managing to be deep but usually just coasting on pseudo-philosophical anime bullshit”) and I really never feel like actually playing these games but once a year or so when there comes a day I just don’t feel like doing anything I don’t mind laying in my bed watching full no-commentary gameplays of these kinds of games. So if you know of something similar to those I’d like to bookmark that for the future.

They are killing the murder industry

I’m playing Stellaris right now and one of the things I miss the most about Sid Meier 's games is it being 100% turn-based vs real time with pause (over long sessions it tires my hand a lot for some reason)

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It’s somewhat common for me to read in my dreams but I can barely see the text for a second (it is decipherable though): My perspective instantly shifts “inside” the book, or rather the story it’s telling becomes the new focus of my dream and I can visualize it just fine (sometimes I don’t even come back to the previous world, my dream is now about this new story). Same thing if i’m playing a game: for a second I see the frame of the monitor on the borders of my vision but quickly it disappears and all I see is the content of the screen. Sometimes it keeps looking like the game (like, Civ always looks like Civ) and others it becomes more flexible and cinematographic I guess, a new story that can go anywhere.

What I’ve heard is that it’s very much like Chrono Trigger aesthetics-wise but very different regarding writing quality. Now, a lot of people play JRPGs not necessarily for their plot, story, character motivation/development and quality of prose but for their particular atmosphere crafted by their use of graphics, music, animation/sprites, etc and there’s nothing wrong with that, so maybe it will be your vibe

Oh I think I just worded it poorly. English is not my native language. I took it out now, but basically I meant that while Wanderbots has shown to be explicitly progressive a couple of times, Splattercatgaming has not. Actually now that I think about it when there’s explicit moral/ideological decisions in-game he does tend to pick the most “right-wing” ones, but I know that shouldn’t be posited as indicative of anything IRL. Like in this one (link to the video but also to a comment from someone else highlighting how he usually does just that).

For videogame gameplays, I like 2BSkyen. It’s a secondary channel of his (his main ones being TBSkyen and TBSkyenShorts or something like that) and I tend to find that secondary channels are the ones that are usually less plagued by chasing trends and sponsored stuff. In his main channels he has a focus in character design but I like him because he’s sort of an all-rounder: he’s insightful, knows a bit about everything and is much more eloquent than the average youtuber. I also like that he wears his progressive politics on his sleeve and that he’s not scared of playing like a patient gamer and reading the lore. He’s also a bit of an insider in the videogame industry and sometimes shares interesting stuff regarding that.

If you like to discover indie games, I have two channels for you: Wanderbots and Splattercatgaming. The first one is a progressive guy that explores all kinds of indie games (but I do think he likes bullet heavens and turret defense games because there’s a lot of those), he also sometimes plays with his wife and friends. The second one has quite a high quality channel and he periodically revisits what feels like every single RPG and/or strategy and/or roguelite and/or space related indie game out there giving his insights on each version of them along their development. Both of these channels tend to play just a bit of the game, not full walkthroughs: that way you can choose if you’d like to play the actual game yourself and support indie devs.

My last gameplay channel recommendation would be MKIceAndFire. Now I don’t know if this fits your criterium exactly because he does very much upload the latest mainstream games the second they come out, and very often before they do because game companies seem to give him early access. The reason for that is that it’s the biggest no commentary gameplay channel in YT. So… it kinda feels like and old school YT channel if you used to watch no commentary let’s plays on YT, which is something that I did. And if there’s a mainstream game I want to watch that I know I won’t find an insightful letsplayer playing it… then I know I can watch it in MKIceAndFire. It’s not often that I need him, but he’s always there. He also has a lot of Mortal Kombat and fighting game videos if that’s your thing.

For non gameplay channels, there’s a number I follow that do their own thing and disregard the algorithm:

• Brian David Gilbert: He just does weird song videos, his humor is kinda 2000s YT.

• Errant Signal: He does good video essays analyzing videogames, usually indie ones. He also has a phenomenal series he has been slowly building lately called Children of Doom which I absolutely recommend if you like videogame history. I don’t even like FPS games and I found it entrancing.

• New Frame Plus: The guy does video essays on videogame animations. I particularly like his Final Fantasy ones, where he goes through the animation of every FF game starting from the first one, and the Best Game Animation of the Year where he shoutouts a lot of noteworthy animation in videogames for the whole year. I like how it feels he loves and relishes every single detail of animation work.

• Innuendo Studios: This one doesn’t upload very often but he does interesting political essays on the alt right from a leftist perspective.

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BTW anyone reading this that made it to here: if you have channels you would recommend me based on the things I’ve said I like I’d love to hear it.

Yep! The second one

I watch a few, but the first worthy one that comes to mind is TBSkyen.

Let’s see who gets this one:

Find your 107 pals (if you bother to do it), build up your castle and go up against that psycho dude weirdly fixated with porcine epithets.

It’s between Final Fantasy Tactics and Suikoden II. I think it goes to the latter.

+1 for jumping to Suikoden II. If you love it you can check III and I

EDIT: I tried the BoF and Wild Arms sagas years ago too. The one that stood the most to me was BoF4

When I think about actually being in space I always imagine standing inside a space ship/station, putting my hand on the wall and knowing that like a meter or so away there’s deadly, pitch black, unending abyss. Just a meter of relatively fragile material separating me from virtually infinite death. It just feels so antithetical to human life (at least on an instinctual level). It kinda makes me think of cosmic horror too (in the subdued way in which it was portrayed in a good chunk of Lovecraft’s stories, not in the more visual and physical way it’s usually shown nowadays).

Shop Titans (played on PC). It’s just predatorial and I got caught in its addictive gameplay loop for every waking hour of 2 days. I’m lucky that it was only 48 hours (compared to other people) and that I hate playing on mobile unless it’s short sessions of non-mechanical stuff because it seems mobile is full of games like this.