#computergames — Public Fediverse posts

Charnock is lost in a world of imaginary dress making.

#computergames

Linux Project 2: The Gaming PC (Part 3)

https://countzeroor.com/2026/09/02/linux-project-2-the-gaming-pc-part-3/

#VideoGames #ComputerGames #ComputerProjects #Linux #VideoGames
#bot

Have to say, #echoesofaincrad #swordartonline is my new favourite action adventure #rpg . Previous best, for me, was #DRAGONSDOGMA2 , but it needed more dungeons.

Can only assume that the self-proclaimed EgoTube ‘influencers’ deriding the game have no taste for actual exploration and fun. Glad I never listen to their opinions.

#SwordArtOnlineEchoesofAincrad #ps5 #gaming #computergames #jrpg

RE: https://mastodon.world/@paninid/117090189450514112

Now I know what #DonaldTheDeplorable #Trump and #KimJongUn talked about when they met for no apparent reason; #ComputerGames. https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/31/politics/north-korea-hacking-crypto

#Resist the #kakistocracy led by and for the benefit of the #TrumpCrimeFamily.

My thoughts on: Motorslice; a review

Motorslice is a pretty fresh action-adventure game, released in May of 2026. It was developed by Regular Studio and published by Top Hat Studios.

I grabbed it the moment it dropped on GOG, but it took me a while to finish it and write this review, as you can see by the date of this post… Having a job and things to do kinda take away idle time.

But I’m here, ready to boldly proclaim my opinions on this gem to the uncaring void… and the LLM data scrappers. And the eventual human reader, if there is any.

Aesthetics

You’d think that environments consisting of sand, steel, concrete and yellow orange paint would get stale. They don’t. There’s a surprising variety and it all looks coherent. And quite good to boot. Each area has its own theme that subtly alters the feel of each area, making them unique, despite being so limited.

And the game regularly lets you marvel at the distance you’ve managed to conquer. The vistas of the megastructure are really, really nice. And they are further enhanced by the fact that you’ve been there — they aren’t some skyboxes or flat unreachable scenery. You could say it’s a little marvel you don’t often get to experience.

The character model looks nice enough, though I guess some may be discouragead by the heavily stylised look of P but I don’t have anything against it. And the animations look good, with a few amusing idle ones, as well as all the little things, like the interactive main menu or selfie screenshot mode.

The three types of enemies look abut as good as you could expect from construction vehicles… maybe with some subtle almost eldritch flair. While the bosses are damn good looking. Despite, or maybe precisely because of, being essentially environmental set pieces that need to be climbed and motorsliced (yes, that’s a titledrop) in special areas.

When it comes to the audio side it’s rather minimalist… Or at least it felt like that. Most of the time you’ll hear the environmental sounds, P’s footsteps or her chainsaw’s engine as they echo in the empty concrete halls and corridors.

There are few music tracks of course, and they are pretty nice. I quite liked the one that plays on the bridges between chapters.

Gameplay

The way it plays brings to mind the Prince of Persia games, especially the 2006 reboot. The bulk of the game consists of platforming in the PoP style: running on walls, swinging on conveniently placed horizontal poles, walking on thin beams or clinging to pillars and cracks in the walls.

While I’ve completed the game using the Xbox controller, I did try out a single chapter on keyboard and mouse. Both control schemes worked very well, so it’s more of a matter of preference.

Bulk of the time is spent doing just that, with the occasional gibbed red splat caused by a misjudged leap, bad timing or a fumble with controls. Or deliberately jumping to P’s doom.

Admittedly sometimes the game freaks out and gibs you seemingly for no reason, but those cases were extremely rare… And I’m about 95% sure were caused by physics engine freaking out on a moving platform… And in one place while moving down a vertical crack in the wall in chapter 7.

And then there is that minor wonkiness of switching the face of the grabbed pillar (and pole), but those are relatively minor things (and are an issue on both K&M and a pad).

The game is a linear series of platforming sequences topped by platforming challenges in the guise of bossfights. And damn the bosses are a spectacle and a joy (if sometimes frustrating) to slice. And while it is linear, the path is a cooling and winding one, giving you glimpses of what lies ahead and, conversely, letting you look back and see the path you’ve taken.

The game does have some actual combat sequences, but they are brief palette cleansers… When they aren’t part of a platforming challenge. There are 3 enemy types: the excavator, the drone and the roller. They don’t really matter, as I said, they are there more as a change of pace than anything else. You could almost consider them another obstacle in the platforming than genuine combat encounters. And in general, combat is pretty much vestigial. Which is totally fine, it’s a great platformer first and foremost and they nailed that.

There is the optional objective of finding and collecting orb drones placed all over the levels… But it felt hollow, at least in GOG version, since the developers/publisher did not decide to add achievement support there… Nor any form of offline/local “achievement page”.

Story

There isn’t much of a story, really. P, a “slicer” arrived at a giant structure with the objective of tearing it down. She’s accompanied by a floating… Spherical drone, “Orbie” (which is technically the player character, according to the credits). The duo proceed to do just that: parkouring through the giant structure and destroying aggressive construction machines.

Though, admittedly the game regularly drops bits and bobs of background lore and setting info. Mostly during the “slacking” scenes, where P says a few lines or interacts with Orbie. Which gives some interesting things to ponder about, like the mention of heresy, or the “resets”.

And I have to give them credit: they did set up a sequel beautifully. And a prequel is also possible for pretty much the same reason… Even if that ending is a little bit… flabbergasting. I mean, people complained about Iron Keep in DS2…

Summa Summarum

All in all it’s a damn good fun. In an almost old-school way, with some of the quality of life things of the modern era.

The only bad things I could say about the game have already been said. For me those are tiny, though I’d love to see achievement support for GOG version.

Aside from that its a great game, with almost nostalgic design. Solid 5. Maybe you can tag on a minus, or two if you are bothered by the lack of Achievements… or the looks bother you… But I couldn’t justify anything lower, really.

Go play this gem.

Abyssus ist ziemlich cool, ein #Brinepunk-#FPS-#Roguelite, das unter Wasser spielt und so eine gewisse oldschoolige Ästhetik hat. Nice.

#Computerspiele #ComputerGames

“Damn, these things are cute”

That’s what my better half said after I showcased her some of Palworld‘s Pals. Specifically the go-to cute ones. The game still needs its giraffe, but maybe some day down the line.

Let me muse about Palworld for a moment.

The game hit its 1.0 release recently and I was playing it with friends during my time-off from work and other things (like writing.) I gave the single-player mode a go, but found that it has less drive to it than teaming up with two other knuckleheads who concentrate on different things. Additional mods made it that much more fun, and in some situations, bearable with mechanics I simply abhor, namely Stamina. While I’m not too keen on the whole survival thing that’s become popular and the necessity to constantly keep an eye on hunger stats and so on, Palworld still managed to entertain. These elements didn’t take away from the adventure.

Adventure is something I feel has been lacking in modern games quite a lot, and sadly survival seems to be a genre filled with it. Personally, my taste in keeping an eye on different degrading stats and slowly building a base with ever-increasing complexity in necessary materials in the tech tree is nothing short of monotone grind. Get an advancement, make a new base or rebuild the old one, rinse and repeat. I’m not sure how I’d do it any better, but something like having static, constantly available options that require ready materials rather than being unlocked via level-up points might do better in my mind. Better materials could be used at any point, you just have to go get them. Getting there would be the point too, and levelled static options wouldn’t outright obsolete the first things you make. The stats would need to be static as well, meaning the play itself would require more skill, and thus more design time. However, the genre has standardized quite a lot, and coming this late to the genre I feel like any criticism I might make has already been handled.

Nevertheless, the adventure is still there. I wish the world was somehow generated, so that the map would always change based on a seed, but on the other hand a well-designed overworld will always beat a generated one. Palworld‘s dungeons aren’t anything to write home about. I wish they had been hand-designed and part of the whole adventure as a whole with each one being far lengthier and more a challenge than what they are. Randomly mashed rooms with a regional big boss monster doesn’t really get me there, and feels like I just want to run through them. Some simple puzzles to advance would’ve been great, but again, that sort of random generation makes that sort of design approach hard. It’d be worse to have a few puzzle type rooms that would just repeat endlessly.

Hence why the overworld shines in comparison. Venturing back and forth can take time (unless you import a better mount from another save right from the start and mod in all the saddles), which puts the whole adventure thing in the right groove. I love that there isn’t an on-screen mini map, and I would like it even better if the map screen didn’t show your position. Sure, it would be cumbersome at first, but it’d add to the adventure in these unknown lands. I don’t think this’d fly nowadays, seeing even seasoned veterans of gaming want to be held by their hands, unable to cope with the game gating its progress behind actual necessary play. Instead of calling it what it really is, they call it a Quality of Life improvement. If only these people realised how much they yearn for the arcade experience without ever having stepped inside one.

However, the overworld doesn’t pop. Its world is very generic and perhaps even a bit aimless in art direction. The characters and Pals have an anime-esque quality to their design, but clothing and structures are rather realistic, if not stylised. The world tries to look the same, and ends up being rather bland. Some areas may initially look interesting, but end up repeating the same pattern. I don’t really nitpick when it comes to graphical fidelity, but I noticed rather repetitive use of textures here and there, something I would’ve passed twenty or thirty years ago. The scale of the world is rather big though, but some areas feel a bit empty. For example, even in biomes where you’d expect to have dense forests or loads of river creeks, there really aren’t any.

Well, that’s not a problem in Palworld. It stands on the shoulders of other games and devs have admitted that they gladly take elements they like from other games and make them their own. This approach of course makes it a mish-mash of concepts that you might find from an unofficial mixtape of sorts. It makes the accusations of plagiarism and such stand out a bit more than normal. Palworld can’t really escape the shadow of Pokémon because it chose to wear that mantle. I agree that capturing Pals with Spheres is too on the nose with this, but in all honesty, throwing spherical shaped objects is very much ingrained into humanity that there really isn’t a better option.

Pokémon wasn’t developed in a vacuum and Red and Green wield its influences as a badge of honour, from having Casshern‘s Super Destruction Beam as Hyper Beam and the whole monster collecting coming from real world insect collecting and Ultraseven‘s Capsule Monsters, as well as gashapon capsules, to name a few. Nevertheless, the way it used balls to nab monsters and then using those to carry a limited number of them with you to use in battles was new and inventive in a manner. This core concept is why we have the idea of a Pokémon clone in the first place, where different games have tried to come up with all those different manners of devices and methods to capture and release creatures.

Summoning a creature to fight on your behalf wasn’t new in 1996 when Pocket Monsters was first out per se. After Pokémon, multiple other tools and devices have been used in this role. Temtem uses cards as Pokéball replacements, as does the upcoming Palworld clone Pickmon. You could also say that Shin Megami Tensei Trading Card: Card Summoner is another one, where demons are summoned via cards. Both Nexomon and Bugsnax use traps as the capturing method, with at least Nexomon also implying that’s the carry method from where the creatures are released from. Spinners for Coromon, medals for Yo-Kai Watch and Fossil Fighters, and pretty much everything between generic leashes to magical song weapons have been used to capture and release monsters.

Sure, Palworld could’ve invented the wheel again and there could’ve been a new way to capture monsters in a novel way, but this is one of those concepts that just work. Capturing animals and making them fight wasn’t a new thing in Pokémon, real world animal fight scenes have a long real-world history, but no other game had the whole capture-with-a-ball thing going on for them. Megami Tensei is often cited as a major precursor in this, but I’ve got to nitpick; Megami Tensei has been about recruiting those demons, not capturing them. The player doesn’t throw the COMP at the demons, but persuades them to join his ranks, then uses a Demon Summoning Program on his COMP to summon the ones he has recruited. Dragon Quest V follows the same template, where monsters may join you after a battle, yet this is a similar recruitment to Megami Tensei rather than intentionally capturing one being the main point of wild encounters.

However, that’s more or less all Palworld has taken from Pokémon. The creatures are largely original designs, some with clear sources of inspiration. I find their design lacking for the most part, but there are a few standouts. Neptilius and Eidrolon Ignis are a few that pop into my head as very nice, sleek designs. Dynamoff as well, got to love that fat bastard. I noticed that some of the blandest designs appear very early in the game, with designs getting better the deeper you get in the game.

Combat is more or less whatever in most cases. Generic 3D survival combat, where rolling is your friend. The difference being, now you’ve got an assortment of creatures to help you. I’ve always found this style of combat very bland and somewhat uninteresting. However, I think there’s something special about Raids, where you can summon your Base’s max number of Pals to help you and have them either combat directly, or man stations you’ve built. It’s the kind of absurd, over-the-top fun when properly levelled Pals start dishing out their wide-range attacks, multiple beams, explosions galore and even the kitchen sink at the Raid Boss. Add a few friends and their own Pals to the mix and you’ve got a riot. Whenever the game scales its battles up and has unique set pieces, it suddenly starts to shine. Hence why giving your green monkey friend an AK-47 to help you is just fun.

Having Pals working at your base is interesting micro-management for a while, but I wished their working skill levels would be based on the trust they have with the player rather than based on how many other same Pals you sacrifice to boost them. It’d make it more personal rather than capturing tons of them to boost the perfect Pal you bred. Much like how in other monster raising games, Palworld lacks in the taming and training part. All you really need is to carry them with you and use them in battles. Maybe it’s that long shadow of Pokémon rearing its ugly head that no monster capturing and training game has made the training part an essential, big part of the whole thing. Instead, we get minigames to raise IVs and whatnot. It’s boring busywork. I don’t personally have any interest in starting another round of Third Reich-level genealogy research to breed the best creatures I can get. I did that once back in Pokémon Silver, and that was enough for me. I’d rather have training as part of the main play element, where training outside battles would increase stats and enable new skills. The idea would be that even the weakest stat monster you could nab could become one of the best with proper training. I don’t think any monster raising game has managed to realise this properly.

I would gladly take a game, where you could choose to train the creatures instead of constantly battling or breeding them. Mid-90s parents asking their kids how battling is training were, in the end, right. It ain’t.

Still, Palworld is no worse than its inspiration sources. It’s an interesting case that I’ve followed on the side, as the real-world events with the Nintendo-Pocketpair lawsuit has been full of ups and downs. The flamewar between Palworld and Pokémon fans has its moments too. Much like nature, markets abhor absence. If one product isn’t fulfilling the wants and needs of the customer, another one will pop up to take its place. Patents and trademarks be damned, fans and the Chinese will do as they please. Palworld‘s not a replacement for anything, except maybe for ARK, but it’s got its own groove that’s unique enough to stand out. I’m not sure if Palworld will become a world-wide franchise train, the designs aren’t quite up to the task without some design revisions. Pokémon was thought to be a flash-in-the-pan, but intentions and tactics changed after the Pokémon shock incident. If Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh! are still trucking along, why not add Palworld to the mix? It has found its cult following, it’s the best point from which to move forwards.

I hope Palworld gets the No Man’s Sky Treatment and sees lots of updates that make the game more fulfilling. There’s quite a lot of room to expand, be it in building part options or optional clothing for Pals or just optimising the game further. (Give me changing weather!) It’s still rather buggy and prone to crashing, but that’s what I expect from modern games, sad to say. However, when the time comes for the next “mainline” title that isn’t a mobile phone MMO, Pocketpair needs to make sure it has all the things this first game has been criticized for lacking in. That might be the make-it-or-break-it moment for the whole IP. If Nintendo, The Pokémon Company, and GameFreak see Palworld as dangerous competition, then they need to stop sitting on their laurels and kick themselves back into high gear and revolutionise the games. Not that they really need to do that, Pokémon games are mostly there to generate new content (monsters) that can be licensed the fuck out of.

Last thing about Palworld. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen derivative games being made. Each genre had its initial point, a “true” progenitor that was followed by truckloads of copycats of all legal varieties. Back in 1979, Nintendo themselves developed and published Space Fever, a blatant Space Invaders clone. Pac-Man‘s Maze Chase clones included Crazy Otto, which became Ms. Pac-Man. Rogue‘s copycats are all the roguelikes in the genre. Perhaps the same could be said of Elite and its derivatives, like Wing Commander: Privateer. Dungeon Master, Sim City, DOOM, CnC and Dune II, Diablo, GTA, and so on and on have all seen derivatives of themselves. Derivatives are an important aspect of gaming culture and industry, where genres get polished by different developers and publishers, competing against each other in making the best possible version of that one or few initial progenitors. If anything, we need copycats in order to create competition and drive innovation in design and play further. No genre should be left to only one game series, as the only result from that is stagnation and repetition. Some games are well enough made to make competitors seem obsolete, as what happened with Ocarina of Time, but if you look at the Legend of Zelda series, it went into a slump right after with no real competitor showing up. It wasn’t until Breath of the Wild, when the series returned to its roots with an open world design, the series found the celebration it used to enjoy.

The point of derivative games is to iterate and improve on an existing concept. Genres advance in steps through competition. The question for these should always be How well it’s made? before How derivative is it?

Wenn Computerspiele zu real und immersiv werden! /
When computer games become too realistic and immersive!
#computergames #Computerspiele #Videospiele #videogames #aiartwork #aiart #gigeralien #aiartcommunity

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to the Harbour Masters team for the Ship of Harkinian version of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:

https://www.shipofharkinian.com/

My son & I have just finished playing through it together and it was magical.

#Gaming #PCgaming #Zelda #Nintendo #OcarinaofTime #computergame #videogame #computergames #videogaming #videogames

Has anyone played #IAmDead on a video games console (it's an indie game, available for Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, probably Steam also)? #VideoGames #ComputerGames #Story #Afterlife #Limbo #Reincarnation #Death #Memory #Memories #Beauty #Wonder #Life #IsThatEnoughHashtags

"PlayStation will stop releasing games on discs in 2028"

And Sony will start regularly "expiring" the licenses to purchased content when? 2029? 🤨

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0ryjyvjq41o

#Gaming #ComputerGames #PlayStation #Capitalism

At $1,050, the #SteamMachine is DOA. This is the end of PC Gaming 😥

- $1,049 - 512GB
- $1.130 - 512GB + #SteamController
- $1,350 - 2TB
- $1,430 - 2TB + Steam Controller

You're paying $1,000 for 4-year old hardware: #Zen4 6@12, 16GB RAM, RDNA3 8GB VRAM (similar to RX 7600M, RTX 3060~ Desktop).

This makes the #PS5Pro look cheap 🤯.

#Videogames #Gaming #Games #Steam #Valve #AMD #RDNA3 #RDNA #Zen #AMDZen #PCGaming #PC #PCHardware #PCGames #Hardware #Technology #Computer #Computers #ComputerGames

A thing I miss from my childhood

https://legends.house/a-thing-i-miss-from-my-childhood/

Lots of announcements for Skulls 2026, but the only things that I might one day get round to are Chaos Gate: Deathwatch and Dark Heresy. Lots of the rest of it looks meh-to-rubbish.

Positive: Discounts on games on Steam and GOG
Negative: No obvious Humble Bundle book event running alongside it

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/2eknkrto/skulls-2026-the-warhammer-video-games-festival/

#GamesWorkshop #Skulls #ComputerGames

https://www.europesays.com/uk/959464/ Buckle Up for Two Weeks of Motor Madness in GTA Online – Rockstar Games #ComputerGames #games #Gaming #GrandTheftAuto #GTA #GTA5 #GTAOnline #GTAPlus #GTAV #HomeEntertainment #HomeGaming #LANoire #LANoire #LibertyCity #LosSantos #MaxPayne #MaxPayne3 #NewVideoGames #PCGames #PlayStation #PS5 #RDR #RedDeadOnline #RedDeadRedemption #Rockstar #RockstarGames #SanAndreas #Technology #UK #UnitedKingdom #ViceCity #VideoGames #Videogames #Vinewood #Xbox #XboxSeriesS #XboxSeriesX

Only Civ VI players will understand. Completing the Eiffel tower in a rush using Gustave Eiffel to avoid a dark age.

#computerGames #CivVI

Ampere Analysis makes speculation on female gamers, not hard data

Ampere Analysis presented a study earlier this year where they concluded that women make up 48% of the gaming community. We can say that’s effectively half. That’s approximately 922 million people across 21 countries. Big numbers for sure. Supposedly, the gaming industry is largely ignoring this major possible market segment, as there is a serious lack of games for women who would like to play story-driven single-player games with a social aspect and romance. They came to this conclusion by looking at what kind of media outside games these women consume and made a beeline assumption that women want the same thing from their games. What their data seems to indicate is that there is a large section of women who are interested in playing games but don’t. Either they don’t know how to play games or don’t know what kind of game content exists.

Let’s pause here and point out that Ampere showcases data in a biased manner. That 48% includes any woman who has played a game, be it Candy Crush or FarmVille. If you’re a woman who has played a game of any kind, you’re counted in this number. The quality of these stats is messy, as that equates players who spend about ten minutes with games per week with people who spend most of their waking hours gaming. This is an important point, as any person wanting to sell something realizes that these two kinds of customers are completely different and need to be valued in a different manner.

The inquiry had 52 video and computer games listed. Only three titles had more women playing than men: Animal Crossing: New Horizons, The Sims 4, and Roblox. From a list of 50 mobile games, some 13 titles had more women players. This would indicate, then, that the higher concentration of women in gaming can be found outside the usual big sellers, and on mobile devices rather than consoles and computers.

The market is functioning as you’d expect; nothing has really changed in behavioural differences between the two sexes. Early on in this blog’s life, I wrote about girl games as part of a series where I illustrated how video and computer games aren’t a special phenomenon in and of themselves, but a continuation of a long play culture. Gaming in general mostly adheres to boys’ play culture, as it builds on competition and readily set rules. It’s much easier to make a soccer or a tennis video game because these rules exist and are set in stone. Playing house is something classically part of girls’ play culture, as playing with dolls and other miniature house equipment readies them for motherhood. It’s much harder to make a simulacrum of playing house because it has no readily set rules. Here’s mother, dad, kid, and maybe a dog. Here’s the house. Now play house. I’ve used The Sims as an example of this being successfully adapted, and I’m not surprised The Sims 4 is on the above list.

Making girl games is hard because historically they’ve been misunderstood and misapplied by powers that be in the gaming industry. You might have a good memory of some Barbie game out there, but none of them would win any prizes. What most of these girl games lacked in the 1980s and 1990s was holding power, or the way a game keeps attracting the player back to itself to maintain their attention span and immerse them in its world. Because gaming is largely based on boys’ play culture, its holding power over girls is less due to the different schema the two have classically worked under. In a manner, girls and women as gamers were treated like some sort of invalids because of this. Girl games were colourful, with horses and puppies galore, with about as much gameplay as a wet towel on a wall.

However, as demand grew for games specifically catering to girls and women, a few began to understand that the differences in play cultures were a possibility rather than a ball and chain. Brenda Laurel founded Purple Moon in 1999 to make, as she called it in 2009, a cultural intervention. Purple Moon’s games targeted girls between 8 and 14, and rather than making games about competition and confrontation, their games were more like interactive story worlds the players could explore. However, as we can see from Ampere’s data, games-for-all are more popular among modern women and girls than games directly aimed at girls.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu2kZwk1Ym4?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=863&h=486]

Purple Moon games were criticized for doing the same gender stereotyping they wanted to intervene

In a way, girl games dried out early in the millennium because games in general had already begun to emphasize story framing and expanded world-building in mainstream titles. I would hazard a guess that World of Warcraft offered much of the very same story-driven exploration and interactivity, not just with the game but with other players as well.

Barbie Fashion Designer may have sold well and left an unwanted mark, but a game like New Style Boutique 3 found itself with a cult following from the opposite sex. The game didn’t just require players to design new clothing combinations, but had a framing narrative of the player needing to run a clothes boutique, making the game deep enough to have holding power over both boys and men as well as girls and women. Unlike the Barbie game, this 3DS game had some depth to it. The lack of a license probably hurt the game’s sales, but its cult status shows that games stemming from girl play culture can have universal acceptance, even if it’s marginal. Of course, The Sims is the titan in this.

Girl game as a term has become rare, as it became associated with terrible shovelware. They were represented as the opposite of boys’ games, which frankly is just the de facto standard for the game industry. That’s not to say girls and women were ignored, as Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda games still make big sales and are more or less equally popular between the sexes. As gaming has moved away from public places and now solely resides at home, there is no longer any pressure for girls and women to give whatever games they might fancy a go. Why did more females play Tetris than Pac-Man? Because the physical placement of the game had moved away from arcades to home computers and consoles.

This study seems to ignore a few genres that have an overwhelming female audience, and they even make the whole girl game concept sound good: otome games and romance video games. Otome games have been specifically designed to cater to the sensibilities girls and women have, so it’s not surprising that over 90% of otome game players are women. We can argue whether or not visual novels count, but some fantasy otome games also have elements like running a kingdom, meaning they’re not just text but have meaningful gameplay elements that impact the social aspect.

As games have gotten heavier on delivering framing and allowing players to wander the world, we’ve seen a sort of coming together between the two play cultures. Especially with RPGs like Dragon Age series or The Witcher 3, we see that social aspect becoming a major component, with the ability to romance characters and that being an essential part of the story. However, the bulk of the play is still dictated by rules and regulations that largely stem from boys’ play culture. Acknowledging this, we can see how the two complement each other in a manner where they couldn’t exist separately. You get action gameplay with whatever character you choose to make, and then engage in extensive dialogue options between NPCs that might affect anything from what coloured shoes they wear to who stabs you in the back.

I see that if gaming would take its interactivity into account more, allowing players to dynamically change framing directions as much as systems could, and not stick to linear storytelling as seen in films and literature, we could find ourselves in places where games combine the two play cultures in a more holistic manner and embrace the medium’s inherent properties rather than stick with ready-made stories.

However, that wouldn’t automatically mean more women would want to play such a game. The number of hardcore male gamers who put more money into gaming is larger than females, and that is a lifestyle choice. The linkage between visual novels and women reading books is easy to understand; they’re almost the same thing in different packaging. However, there is no hard proof or individual linkage showcasing cross-media consumption. Anecdotes and niche demographics do suggest an overlap, but a large number of romance book readers don’t play games, even when there are already options that cater to them.

Even when we ignore romance as a genre, there are no studies that link cross-media consumption. Ampere is making the argument that because women consume X kind of content in media Y, then they should also be interested in X content in media Z. While this seems like a no-brainer at surface value, it’s a pretty big leap from opening a book and reading what’s on the page to installing a 50GB game on your computer and learning system mechanics that enable a similar story to that of a Harlequin book. That’s why girl games had that bad reputation; they tried to meet a supposedly invalid audience by cutting away gameplay to match a level where other media offered a more enjoyable pastime. The claims Ampere makes are circumstantial at best. We would first need studies showcasing that people, especially women, actually consume the same kinds of genres and styles across all media. Ampere’s conclusion about what women would look for in a game based on what they watch and read is no less than harmful stereotyping.

The argument of women needing an easier entry point for gaming is petty at best and sexist at worst. It’s the whole notion of girl games and females being seen as gaming invalids raising its head again. There has never been a better time in history to get into gaming than now. Endless amounts of YouTube tutorials and guides exist, games quite literally hold the player’s hand to pass even the slightest obstacle, no-failure states exist across the board, and even gameplay can be skipped in some cases. Saying that there’s a subset of female non-gamers who are interested in gaming but lack the knowledge of how to play these games and what content is out there, and then demanding entry-level content, is misguided. If women are interested in something and want to give it a shot, they are just as capable of finding things out themselves. They need the same thing as men: motivation and reason.

We have more games than ever before, from small indie developers to large AAA studios, and they’re all easy to find as long as your search skills are decent. However, if there is no reason to take up gaming as a hobby or lifestyle, then that person is not as valuable a customer as someone who already is. You can’t force people to become something, just like you can’t force men and women to choose a certain kind of career path simply because statistics look off. The same applies to hobbies. It might be cultural or biological; it doesn’t matter.

When you have people who are not interested in your product and are aware it exists, they’re not even untapped customers. You would have to fundamentally change their perceptions to turn them into customers. Ampere disregards its own results: 47% of female non-gamers say they would never consider playing. That’s 10% less than non-gaming males. If there are more boys and men willing to give gaming a shot than girls and women, then wouldn’t that be the more viable market segment to pursue?

We should, of course, question Ampere’s data, as it’s all done via surveys. Ampere gave out a generalised survey that doesn’t really go into detail, nor did they conduct any behavioural study over time. 46,000 respondents self-reported their preferences and habits. This is probably one of the worst ways to gather consumer information, as customers don’t always know what they want. I often use the example of why there are so many different kinds of tomato pasta on store shelves. Consumers think they know what they want, but often don’t. It’s not because they’re unintelligent, but because we are creatures of habit and environment.

Everything in this study is just speculation. There are no strong scientific grounds presented.

No industry would take a study like this and its recommendations seriously. You can’t turn someone who doesn’t want mustard into a mustard customer. It simply won’t happen.

The approach is also flawed. Rather than directly asking what games women play or what media they consume elsewhere, a study examining what kinds of games and play current girls engage in would yield more valid data. Similarly, researching past play habits of adult women and their current non-digital hobbies could provide valuable insights. This would be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. It would also require researchers who understand differences in play cultures across various societies if conducted globally.

However, there’s still one thorn in my side I need to pick: games for general audiences. I mentioned Mario and Zelda earlier, and the reason they attract both sexes is because they are well-designed, high-quality games. Data over decades suggests that boys and girls, men and women, gravitate toward games that are enjoyable and have strong holding power. The more explicitly gendered a game is, the worse its design tends to be, and the less successful it becomes.

My thoughts on Toziuha Night: Order of the Alchemists; a review

To be fair, the cover art of the game would have made me skip it while browsing GOG’s catalogue, which would make me miss out on a great metroidvania. Fortunately a fellow member of one of the discord servers I’m in was singing praises for this title, so I got it and I do not regret.

Label

Speaking of, Toziuha Night: Order of the Alchemists is an indie metroidvania made by Danny Garay, on Godot 3.6. It released on the end of October 2025 and is available GOG, Itch and Steam. It’s also the second game in the series (you can get the first on Itch and Steam).

Aesthetics

It’s a pixelart game for the most part. And it looks gorgeous. The game offers the option of playing with the CRT-emulating filter, Grid LCD filter or without any. I personally preffer playing without any of those, but – as they say – Your Mileage May Vary.

The environments are varied; offering lush forests, underwater caverns, ruined cities, abandoned steampunk industrial areas snowy mountain and more. The character and enemy sprites also look very nice.

I did say the game was mostly pixelart. Where it breaks from that are character portraits during dialogues. These are presented in a VN style, with the drawing of the speaker being presented above the text box. They don’t look bad, but I’m not too enthusiastic about them.
The other break are a few artworks that appear as part of a cutscene a few times.

And then there is music and general audio side of things. Each zone (and I’m pretty sure the bosses too) has it’s theme, and they all sound pretty damn good. Or at the very least I enjoyed the music immensely, as untrained in music as I am. There wasn’t anything that stood out to me, in either good or bad way, when it comes to rest of the sounds of the game.

Gameplay

TN:OotA is a 2D side scrolling metroidvania, so the game revolves around running around the rather big map, fighting enemies and looking for upgrades that let you access previously-out-of-reach areas, where you run around. Or, in a few cases run around lost, because you don’t know where to go next.

By the way, while the game supports controllers, I played similar exclusively on the keyboard.

Exploration

Which brings me to the exploration, which is a pretty important part of gameplay.

The general movement feels pretty good. Though to get some options aside from running, jumping and doing a backflip will take a little. And yes, forward dodge is an unlockable move… That comes online somewhere around halfway through the game.

Eventually the repertoire of moves gets pretty decent; with sliding, wall jumping, double jumping, air dashing and swinging on the whip feels pretty damn nice.

Maybe aside from the swinging, it can be somewhat… “off” for a lack of better term.

The game has platforming sections ranging from a nice change of pace to infuriating to roadblocks that take dozens of attempts. At least the worst ones aren’t mandatory… Which is both a blessing and a curse, because of you get there a bit too early, you’ll realise that you gave get through it again.

And then there’s the aforementioned getting lost. Either due to lack of indications where to go next… Or a somewhat misleading ones, that tell you to go somewhere you can’t go yet… Or telling you to find an item before going to a place… That you can only get after visiting that very place.

Combat

Combat on the other hand is rather simple. You have a whip attack and you can modify it with various elements by making “alloys”. Though I wonder why having a rust whip produces wind blades…

Of course, this being a metroidvania, some of the upgrades affect combat more directly, such as turning a single whip attack into a three-hit-combo string, adding a heavy strike and a powerful strike that will be very helpful against bosses and though enemies…

That and swapping between loadouts, because for some reason that’s an upgrade.

A spectacle fighter it is not, but it’s not the point. The combat is decent; with wide cast of enemies having varied elemental weaknesses it’s interesting enough, even if you can get though most of the game using the flashbang magnesium alloy that is gained at the very start, coupled with the decent selection of spells (again, electro spheres, one of the first gained will be useful almost everywhere) make it interesting enough.

Story

And then there is the story. It’s a simple, yet serviceable one, serving more as a spice enhancing the whole, rather than the core ingredient. I see no issue with it being the background for why we whip things with an iron whip that spawns fireballs and jump around various areas.

The protagonist has a grudge against a cult leader. Said cult attacked a city and Xandria (the protagonist) rushed there, with the aim of facing the cult leader… But one of his lieutenants, a Chlorine Alchemist, almost killed her before she could fight him.

The recovery time and expenses was the reason for the loss of her abilities. The rest of the game revolves around finding out what the cult is planning and stopping them, all the while Xandria in pretty focused on revenge.

Or well, it feels more like we randomly stumble upon something that pushes the plot ahead. Sometimes a bit randomly, like the whole hallucination section (which I very much liked, as it was a neat change of pace… though it felt close to overstaying its welcome), which is one of the very contentious places, if you visit the forums.

The game also offers multiple endings: the depressing one, the bad one, the tragic one and the good one. The depressing one is the first one you can get, and is potentially missable. Fortunately all of them can be done on the same save, though that requires reading the written notes… or consulting the guides on the internet.

The game also offers a chain of optional sidequests, such as finding a lost child, finding that child’s cats, photographing birds and delivering fruit.

Summa Summarum

Toziuha Nights: Order of the Alchemists is a very good metroidvania, with pretty visuals, good music, and fun overall gameplay.

There are a few issues that didn’t bother me enough to lower the grade further. Or at least they affected me little enough for them to fade from my mind.

Furthermore, the game is getting updates, with additional options (like the optional post game mode letting you play as a different character) and QoL changes (like drops being pulled in after a few seconds).

And so, I’m giving it a 5-.

How the classic computer game Doom became a tool for science https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00813-4 #science #doom #computergames

I played four #ComputerGames yesterday, and, funnily enough, one of them wasn't with 4 Guys Co-op, which got canceled due to illness, injury, and travel. I got sucked into Hideo Kojima‘s Death Stranding over the weekend. It recently came to Xbox Game Pass—an odd #cRPG, whose main mechanic is trying to stay upright while carrying a lot of stuff. I also played Eternal Strands, Metamorph ReFantazio (sic), and Octopath Traveler, all fun #JRPGs. Damn that #Xbox rewards gamifying system!

https://www.europesays.com/uk/729278/ Make an Honest Living in Three New GTA Online Odd Jobs – Rockstar Games #ComputerGames #games #Gaming #GrandTheftAuto #GTA #GTA5 #GTAOnline #GTAPlus #GTAV #HomeEntertainment #HomeGaming #L.A.Noire #LANoire #LibertyCity #LosSantos #MaxPayne #MaxPayne3 #NewVideoGames #PCGames #PlayStation #PS5 #RDR #RedDeadOnline #RedDeadRedemption #Rockstar #RockstarGames #SanAndreas #Technology #UK #UnitedKingdom #ViceCity #VideoGames #Videogames #Vinewood #Xbox #XboxSeriesS #XboxSeriesX

"Free Games Collection
Free games available on GOG that will help you relax and pass time at home"

#Games #VideoGames #FreeGames #GOG #ComputerGames ...

https://www.gog.com/en/partner/free_games

Useless Facts, Badly Drawn #485: .kkrieger.
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#kkrieger #computergames #gaming #worldrecords #germany #theprodukkt #strangebuttrue #wtf #3dgames #doom #quake #firstpersonshooter #geek #funfacts #facts #uselessfacts #uselessfactsbadlydrawn

We played Baldur's Gate for the first time in several weeks last night. The holidays interfered too much with it. I would say we are about halfway done. It can be a little bit of a grind, but it’s still pretty fun. Tonight, 4 Guys Co-op will probably play Tiny Tina‘s Wonderland, a Borderlands spinoff. We are not huge Borderlands fans, because it is a bit too easy, but it is a fun looter shooter. It certainly is colorful.
#crpg #rpg #ComputerGames

If the term "CRPG" didn't exist, or "RPG" didn't exist, we'd be calling them:

#ComputerGames #VideoGames

I've been writing this post for ages, but now it's time to post it: my overview of what I've been playing recently-ish. Have a look at my little personal games journey of the last few years - it's not all adventures, I promise!
https://blog.bibra.eu/2025/12/22/the-years-of-games/
#games #computergames #videogames #adventures

Playing Double Dragon in the 90's was like....
#doubledragon #computergames #watercolour #artwithcapitala #comics

Coding Blackness

https://v2.nl/works/coding-blackness/