I'm a slayer, ask me how.

(I actually played this awhile ago – first in Feb 2020 and then again in November 2020, but what is time anymore really so let’s just go with TODAY I played?)

I picked up ‘Icarus’ after watching Michael Whelan’s review on Dicebreaker:



I was very new to the world of RPGs at the time, but the idea of something that was pure storytelling really appealed to me. In addition, the fact that the game was GM-less also piqued my interest because I didn’t have any friends who could run games for me (yet) and I wasn’t brave enough yet to venture out into the real world to find them (**pats late-2019 Sam on the head**…it’s going to be awhile).

After searching online stores and finding the stock limited, I gave in to my FOMO and I bought a physical copy, only going on what Wheels had told me.

In ‘Icarus’, you use a series of prompt cards to create a civilization, piece by piece, telling the story of its rise to power, and then charting the hubris of its citizens. During the game, you create a dice tower in the center of the table and eventually that tower will fall and so will your world.

My first play-through (Feb 2020) was not very elegant. I invited over two friends and, along with my partner, we played the game. Turns out, storytelling games are not my partner’s cup of tea. He told me it “felt like work” and lost patience with it about halfway through – he kept playing but his heart wasn’t in it. My friends were also very new to the genre, but they chugged along and we eventually had our post-it notes covering the table, though I barely remember what happened to our civilization in the end. It was my first time trying to play a game like this and also my first time trying to TEACH a game like this, so I learned a lot about how to do those things but my friends probably didn’t get the best experience while I struggled to explain how it all worked.

Fast forward several months, mid-pandemic and yes I backed Icarus creator Spenser Starke’s new game Alice is Missing on Kickstarter. The Roll20 version was released and I found some people on the Hunter’s Entertainment Discord group to play with. I kept in touch with one of them and in the late Fall, I mentioned really wanting to try ‘Icarus’ again. He said he had access to a very basic online edition of the game and if I could get some people together, we could give it a go!

This play-through went a lot better! All four of us were into storytelling games, even if two had never experienced something quite on this level, and after playing Alice is Missing, I think I had a better handle on creating ideas for the story that would help move things forward and better understanding the mechanics of the game.



Hunters Entertainment published “Free Content Fridays” which included a few scenario suggestions for ‘Icarus’ in the set. We went with one that started out feeling very Dinotopia – with humans and dinosaurs coexisting in an amazing city, but as events unfolded, we revealed a darkness and betrayal hidden beneath it all, with the humans using the dinosaur blood and bones for health benefits. When a plague hit the land, and the dinosaurs became ill, everything fell into chaos and the final moments of our civilization were filled with references to Jurassic Park and the dinosaurs getting their revenge by eating up our characters!

You really have to get the right group of people together for this game. You need storytellers, you need people who understand the “yes, and” at the core of improvisation. This is not a competitive game, one to be won or lost, it is all about the journey. While you create a character for yourself, no one player really owns anything in the game, and the group collaborates and expands on each other’s ideas to create a city that you can all admire and then all mourn when the dice come tumbling down.

Honestly, it was hard to even think about picking up this game after the events of March 2020, as it felt like I was seeing the dice tower wobble in real life (there is even a card in the game with a pandemic as a prompt!) so poor Icarus sat on the shelf for awhile. But by the end of the year, I just wanted to play ALL THE THINGS and even if I didn’t actually get to open up my copy of the game since we were playing online, I was really glad I revisited it and experienced it now that I am a more confident player. I hope to play it, online or offline, and create another world to explore with my friends.

I backed this game on Kickstarter, not fully understanding what it was. But DAMN. This isn't your average RPG, for so many reasons. It's the real world, it's raw, it's emotional, and it is all done via texting.

WATCH THE STREAM VOD HERE ON TWITCH

I cannot wait to play this with friends. It's going to be a wild ride, there will probably be tears but what a game. I love how Starke uses games to explore different themes and emotions and make people feel. This isn't about fighting dragons or demons, but confronting emotions and feelings and life. I find the debrief after the game to be a fascinating idea and maybe I am just new to games so it feels new to me, but I love the idea of working through what you just experienced afterwards and not just shrugging it off as a game.

Anyway, this stream just blew me away. I watched it on my phone and the text was so tiny but I couldn't bring myself to look away because watching the conversations and the story unfolding was riveting.

First week of work went really well. It is hard wearing the mask all day but we all found time to kind of sneak away and breath. We're a small group so it wasn't too hard to social distance and we were all wearing masks so even if we did get a bit closer than we should have, we weren't breathing on each other.

The good news is that we are not opening to the public until July 6th (initially it was June 15). We are starting curbside and phone service tomorrow. Curbside is a BRAND NEW service so we have no idea what to expect from our patrons. We have SO MANY BOOKS on the hold shelf right now, hopefully they do not all show up tomorrow LOL.

The world is on fire and I have swung back and forth all week, looking at the news, then hiding from it. I've donated money to several organizations and I can't really think of what else to do besides social media support, emailing representatives etc. I am not brave enough to go to a protest. Just looking at the images of all the people gives me anxiety and you all know I dealt with crowds at PAX and what not. But I will try my best to be better, do better.

So, yeah, still playing Animal Crossing every day for a moment of mindless fun. My crokinole board arrived last week also and I LOVE it. I wish Tim liked it LOL. He just doesn't like games he can't win? I still love him though...I guess. :P Sylvia played with me and she enjoyed it. I'm thinking about visiting my parents, maybe wearing our masks and playing outside, if it is a nice day. That would probably be safest.

I'm wondering if I could visit them before July 6th. We've been pretty safe, and I feel like my staff has also been following the rules so I doubt any of us have the virus. But once we start working with patrons, all bets will be off. So maybe...I dunno. It's a thing in my brain.

I also did a bit of retail therapy and ordered some tabletop games from a local store to support them. And I had a coupon for an online store so I ordered some more miniatures to paint. Of course no one will play with me right now but whatever. I also backed a few games on Kickstarter because I HAVE A PROBLEM! But those won't show up any time soon.

Okay, need to get to bed and read for a bit. I started Accused! The Trials of the Scottsboro Boys: Lies, Prejudice and the Fourteenth amendment because I had it in my pile at work and this felt like the right time. The saddest part is, if I tweeted the headlines in this book, you wouldn't be able to tell they were from 1931...you'd think they were from yesterday. And people don't believe there is a problem.

Everyone stay safe, stay healthy, and support change. We won't fix things by tomorrow, but we can get things moving in the right direction.

Steam is hosting an online game festival, highlighting some new and upcoming indie game titles and, in some cases, offering their in progress demos for a limited time over the next four days. Here are the titles that I sampled today:

Chicory: A Colorful Tale



As you can see from the art, whimsical is a good word for this game. You play as the apprentice to the town Wielder, a magical creature in charge of keeping the town “in color” using a paint brush. When the Wielder goes missing, you pick up the paint brush and go into town to look for her.

You wander through town, painting houses for friends and collecting clothing for your character and eventually you find the previous Wielder, who beckons you to follow her into an evil looking cave.

This seems like a really cute and fun adventure game and the painting element is a great twist. Apparently there is also a co-op option where a friend can help you paint. I will be curious to see how that evolves over time. Definitely adding this to my wishlist.

Garden Story



I actually walked by the booth for this at PAX East 2020, but the line was long so we opted not to try it. It was nice to play this in the comfort of my home in a more chill setting because this game is very chill.

You play as Concord (the grape, get it?) and you are on a quest to rebuild your town. There’s a bit of that Animal Crossing vibe as you run around collecting supplies, but then there is also more typical RPG things of fighting off the “rot” that is taking over the town and keeping the citizens from returning. Dungeons also appear to have a puzzle solving element too, pushing blocks around to trigger doors to open

I’ve added this to my wishlist to watch as it progresses. The art is really cute and I think the combination of town sim, rpg, and puzzles will make it one to pick up when it finally arrives.

Mystic Pillars



This was a fun puzzle game that has a story based in Ancient India. It really eases you into the puzzles and at first you think that it is too easy and then you finally hit one that just breaks your brain and you have to walk away for a bit.

The story is that a spirit is up to something, raising these pillars to stop the townspeople from accessing the resources they need. As your mysterious traveler solves the puzzles, impressing the spirit, it begins to tell you the story of what happened in the towns.

The puzzles consist of moving the golden stones from pillar to pillar, trying to make it match up with the final solution you are given. The number of stones on the pillar limits how far you can move around. 1 stone = 1 move, 2 stones = 2 moves etc. Again, it SOUNDS simple, but I got to level 23 and had to take a break because I was stuck!

If you like logic puzzles, this seems like a solid one to pick up. Beautiful artwork too, as you can see just from the image here. It is out now on Steam and will come to tablets/phones soon.

Roki



As soon as I saw this feisty red head in her knit cap, red backpack and winter boots and mittens, I was excited about this game. The demo opens with Tove wandering into a cave that has a tree covered in eyeballs! She is searching for a missing friend.

The demo reminded me of a point-and-click adventure but with a bit more style. While exploring the area, Tove found a rope and a bear trap and combined it to make a useful tool.

Tove seems unfazed when she meets a troll sitting under a bridge and a creature hiding in a broken barrel so this is a world where fairy tales have come to life.

I just really love the art style. This one is in VERY early production but the demo was enough to make me want to know more about this adventure.

Flickr is being weird about uploading my photos (I didn't bother to edit before I hit upload so it is taking a LONG time and I keep seeing things I probably should have deleted but oh well).

So, in the mean time, here is the ONE panel I went to with my beloved Dicebreaker crew talking about ridiculous D&D characters.

I don't actually play D&D - all of my experience has been through watching YouTube playthroughs of OutsideXbox and Dicebreaker. BUT my friend has never played or seen it at all and he was cracking up, so really this is just about silly character designs. And it is also educational! Look, just sit back and watch these lovely people be silly for 45 minutes. You might even hear my laughing (oh god, I hope not...I was right next to the camera though...it's weird because the video is from the exact angle I was sitting so it is almost like a video of my memories)

Me downloading Fallout 76 for the free trial this week because WHY NOT!?



Bethesda is listening to the complaints and adding some NPC characters to give the world a bit more life. We will see if it is interesting enough to play. Tim is downloading it too so at least we can try together, which is kind of the point of the game.

I got news about a thing today but I can't talk about the thing. Hopefully I can say something later this week.

I watched OutsideXbox’s “7 Moments So Scary We Stopped Playing” video this morning and immediately started to think of which games creeped me out the most.

Sidenote: I am really loving this on-going series of Outsidexbox and OutsideXtra videos where the gang does their personal stories. Just feels like we’re all hanging out together and chatting about games.

Silent Hill 3 — I had played the second Silent Hill game before picking this one up so I knew I was in for some disturbing moments. But something about this one sequence caught me in a moment of panic. You play as Heather, a teen girl with ties to the mysterious town. The game starts in a mall, of course. At some point, I was trying to escape something and ran through the first door I saw. My heart was already racing and I walked into what I had hoped was a new passageway but turned out to be a dead end. And not just a blank brick wall – it was a mirror. I could see Heather’s reflection in it. And then I heard a weird squirting sound and noticed blood pooling on the floor. NOPE! I turned away from the mirror and ran to leave the room but OMG! the door was gone! Freaking out, I spun her around because there was no where else to go and what did I see? Heather in the mirror but now she was covered in blood!

In a moment of sheer panic, I threw the PS2 controller away from me. But here is the real horror story – when I tossed the controller, I managed to hit the “Start” and “select” button at the SAME TIME! This REBOOTS THE PS2!!! I lost all of my progress so far in the game and I realized that meant I was probably going to have to go back into that room to continue!

Yeah, that sat in the player for a while, untouched. I did eventually go back to the game and now that I knew that the room was going to become a horrifying blood soaked nightmare, I was ready for it. Which is good because I think after that it resets back to normal and there is some kind of item in there you need to go on.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem — Andy mentioned this one and everything he said about the sanity meter toying with your emotions was true. But after this incident with Silent Hill 3, I was particularly triggered by the sanity breaking moment where the game pretends to reboot your Gamecube, just stopping and bringing up the Nintendo logo. I remember yelling at the TV “WHAT?!?!” Then it flashed back and you were in the game again, but that was enough for me. I can deal with bleeding walls and screaming voices, but don’t make me think my game system is on the fritz!

Fatal Frame II — Honestly, not much I can say about this game because it freaked me out way too much right off the bat and even though my friend was nice enough to buy it for me as a present after I talked about how I liked scary games, I could not bring myself to play it. The whole set up for the game is that you play as two little girls, twins and you have a magical camera that lets you see ghosts. You don’t fight the ghosts with swords or magic wands – you use the camera to capture them by taking photos of them. Each photo drains their power. You can only see the ghosts when you look through the camera. Did I mention this takes place in Japan so all the ghosts look like the creepy girl from The Ring? So you walk into an empty room, notice that you can now see your character’s breath so that means something is in the room with you, so you have to put the camera up to your face to see. BONUS: to do the most damage/fight the most effectively, you need to let the ghost get as close to you as possible. From a distance, of course, they look relatively normal, but the closer they get, the creepier they get. I don’t think I made it through one ghost before the game was back in the box, on the shelf and shunned.

Alien: Isolation and Call of Cthulhu — I watched my brother play Alien: Isolation on Twitch and just watching someone else play was freaking me out. I tried to play on my own but found, like Ellen, I was too on edge from the start. I recently completed Call of Cthulhu and there was a sequence in there that almost made me quit and it made me realize something – I do NOT like being chased in the dark when in first person mode of a game. Third person is fine, first person is too much for me. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to Alien:Isolation but I did end up Googling a walk-through for the bit in Call of Cthulhu that upset me the most then the rest of the game was fine.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice — LOVED this game. It was very atmospheric though and I my brother insisted that I play it with my headphones on to get the full experience. It is beautiful and terrifying. It definitely got my heart racing many times, especially since each time Senua dies in battle, you see a bit of the darkness creeping into her veins and it is just very upsetting. I can’t pinpoint a single moment, but there were several sessions of this game where I would play and then need to walk away and calm down again, maybe play some Stardew Valley to lose the jitters. But I’m mentioning it here because everyone should play it even if it is intense.

How about you? What were some scary moments in games that are now burned into your memory because they caught you off guard or just generally creeped you out? Share in the comments!

I’m not really sure how I ended up with Call of Cthulu game on my Steam wishlist. My guess is that it was either on a “If you liked ‘Layers of Fear’…” game list or/and it was while reading up on The Sinking City, another video game with the Cthulu mythos as a central theme.

Whatever the reason, it was on my wishlist so when the holidays rolled around, my husband purchased it for me as a gift. This month, I finally got around to playing it!

The plot revolves around a detective named Edward Pierce. The setting of the game is the early 1920s, Pierce is a veteran of the first World War, drinking to forget what happened during that time and taking investigation jobs around Boston to pay the bills. When the father of Sarah Hawkins bursts into his office, begging for Pierce to investigate the arson case that claimed her life, the evidence proves too much for Pierce to resist and he sets off to the island of Darkwater. But this whaling town hides a gruesome mystery…

I finished the game in about 9 hours. This is definitely a story-driven game. It’s not open world, but also not completely on rails. If you take your time to investigate, you can find extra clues hidden around. You spend a lot of time talking to characters, trying to figure out this strange town and the rest of the time searching for clues that Pierce can interpret. There are a couple of stealth sequences, but only one section that creeped me out so much that I had to Google a walk-through because I was so scared I couldn’t think straight.

You can level up Pierce’s skills, either putting it into his ability to investigate, understand human psychology, improve his eloquence or beef up his strength. Higher levels in these areas open up new conversations and the ability to find more clues to solve the mystery. I spread out my points, managing to max out one of the categories by the end, but if I had just focused on single category, in theory I could have found new ways to interact with things.

Pierce also has skills in medicine and the Occult but those can only be leveled up by finding books hidden around the game. There is also a sanity meter which made me think of Eternal Darkness but turned out to not be quite as menacing as that game. It did make me worried about reading the creepy books lying around because I was worried that Pierce would just go completely insane.

I am curious about replaying this game and seeing what difference my choices would have made. The game allows different save slots, but since you couldn’t just save at any time, I’m not sure when you were supposed to create multiple saves. It would have been nice to find turning points in the game and save that spot for later. I did play through the ending checkpoint twice and got two separate final scenes. I know there was at least one option – the “occult” choice – that I could not access because I didn’t read all the occult literature.

While the graphics weren’t as pretty as Witcher 3 (that bar is set pretty high though) they were good enough to creep me out. What really got me was the sound design – the eerie whine that is in the background of the game, making it sound like the whole world is creaking.

I would love to see some DLC for this game, maybe a prequel that let us do a few other investigations with Pierce before his run in with the cultists. I did like the style of investigation and piecing things together.

The game retails for $45 on PC which feels like a lot for something I finished in 9 hours, but there is definitely some replayability. The story is well done though and I’m sure people who know more about the Cthulu tabletop game it is based on or just Cthulu mythos in general will get an extra kick out of seeing these creatures come to life. If you’re a fan of psychological horror games and need something to play while waiting for Layers of Fear 2 to get a release date, this is a good one for your collection.

Has anyone else played this? What were your thoughts?

I decided to do the final mission in Witcher 3 today, to find out how the whole main quest played out.

And now I'm thoroughly depressed because my got the DARKEST TIMELINE ending. Pretty much everything SUCKED except for Skellege, where Geralt managed to get the daughter of Crach crowned as queen and she was a good ruler. Everwhere else, BAD.

And Ciri...**CRIES** OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE?! WHAT DID I DO WRONG?!?

Apparently there are little interactions during the game that change how it all plays out at the end. I found this out when I saw what I refer to as the Bad Dad article on Kotaku. And, like this player, I tried to have Geralt treat Ciri like a daughter, with encouragement and love but maybe I turned out to be a Smother (or the Witcher Dude equivalent) and that made Ciri less capable of facing the peril.

I have over 100 hours in the game and I'm kinda thinking about starting over just to try again and maybe NOT get the worst ending ever.

To make it worse, I know that Tim and my brother both got the "happy" ending for Ciri and Geralt. I know I could Google and find the videos of the final cut scenes but that's not the same. I need to earn it. I want to unlock it myself.

I feel like I let Geralt down.

So how was your weekend?

Tim got me the Nintendo Switch for Christmas + Legend of Zelda so if you don't see me on here much, blame him! LOL. This thing is dangerous since I can play it on TV but then turn it into a handheld and crawl into bed with it (which is what happened last night and I ended up staying up way past my bedtime).

Had a lovely Christmas and it looks like most of you did too! We even got a bonus day off today (since they usually give us Christmas Eve off, but that was a Sunday, they gave us today off) so I was able to sit and really play the game a bit more since I had only barely done the tutorial zone last night. It is so fun and adorable and so Zelda.

He also got me the new Buffy Board Game, which I'm excited to play! I got him 'Betrayal at Baldur's Gate', which is supposed to be a really fun co-op board game we can do with friends. Sylvia got me some yummy tea and a Star Wars crochet book so I guess I'm going to learn how to crochet at some point this year! My crazy parents got us a Casio keyboard so I am also going to have to dig deep into the recesses of my brain and find those piano lessons I took when I was 10 LOL.

My Mom got me a second Star Wars purse so now I'm torn between whether I should use my R2-D2 purse or the more subtle Han Solo purse.

Speaking of, I *STILL* need to type up my Last Jedi thoughts. I keep saving the links to everyone else's reaction posts on here because I don't want to read anything that will sway my thoughts. I have a piece of paper in my work bag with all these notes scribbled on it about things I want to talk about haha. I swear, every day I think of something else I really enjoyed about the movie and the writing.

And I want to do some year-end lists because what else does one do the last week of December?

Hoping to have some friends over for New Year's Eve, maybe a little more low-key than last year. Hoping my brother can make it too. My friend got me the expansions to 'Joking Hazard' so I'm hoping we can play that, plus the Rick & Morty card game and I think my brother is bringing a game that was made by The Decemberists of all people! RANDOM!

Anyway, better go to bed at a normal hour since I do have to work tomorrow, even if it is the 1-9 shift.

Toodles!