A short hyperfixation hiatus.
Here are the games I've been playing.
It has been a while since I wrote a review or blog post. The last one was Two Point Museum and that was… wow, almost a month ago?! I’ve been so hyperfixated and downright addicted to this game, and with good reason!
I’ve already shared my love declaration for Two Point Museum on this blog before, so definitely check that out if you like dusty dinosaur bones, crafty copper contraptions and… cheese? Yeah, sounds about right.
And then, when I was starting to get out of that hyperfixation, I somehow latched back onto Minecraft and RimWorld - my two most favourite games.
So instead of busting out a handful of backlog games, I’ll tell you about these games and why I keep going back to them.
Minecraft
I was actually quite “late” to hop on the Minecraft wagon. My friends had been playing it for a while, I think I joined them halfway 2012. That puts me at 13 years (and counting) of playing Minecraft on and off, sometimes playing little else and other times not touching it for a couple of months - but I always find my way back to it eventually. My only regret is that there is no way of knowing how many hours I’ve sunk into it, but maybe that’s a good thing. Yeah.
Minecraft is my ultimate comfort game. This has been my go-to answer to the “if you could only play one game for the rest of your life” question, on the condition that mods are allowed.
Somewhat surprisingly, maybe, because I usually don’t do well with open sandbox games, but somehow Minecraft seems to be an exception. It’s not too open, and while there may not be a (tutorial) quest line, the survival aspects gives the right amount of ‘push’ to get started, and then my own goals like build a castle or collect all the animals take over.
I’ve played vanilla for a long while before finding my way to mods. Minecraft’s modding community is amazing, there are so many mods, most of which remain maintained throughout all the game versions and if not, adopted and ported. There are so many things these mods can add, like extra dimensions, different dungeons, new enemies - Minecraft effectively becomes a completely new game with the right combination of mods, and I think that’s the strength of it: it behaves like a very good engine for modders to go wild in.
One of my favourite mods, Millénaire, has not been updated beyond 1.12.2, which is a shame. It adds villages of different cultures to your game, and changes your zombie survival game to a more economic, cultural trading game. I miss that mod very much, alongside Thaumcraft, which adds a whole magic and construct system to the game and likewise hasn’t been updated beyond 1.12.2. So I remained stuck on 1.12.2 for a long while, until the 1.3 update added a lot of interesting underwater things and I was finally pushed to update my game and remain up to date.
Missing Millénaire, I now play MineColonies, which scratches that itch fairly well. The goal of MineColonies is to build your own colony, with NPC that you give jobs, who will gather resources, build and upgrade their town, cook food, breed animals, etc. Sort of a non-tech automation process that adds a lot of life to the otherwise devoid of humanity (testificates don’t count) post-apocalyptic world.
So that’s what I’ve been doing, building my town and exploring for treasure.
RimWorld
One of my favourite things to do is take the futuristic, tech-advanced scifi game that RimWorld is, strip it of all its advanced technology and play it like a Medieval RPG trading simulator. I know, sorry, Tynan. Great work, though. 👍
The Vanilla Factions Expanded Medieval mod recently got a complete rework so obviously I’m playing that, combined with Medieval Overhaul and some questing mods. The result is me not trying to get off the planet like the gods intended, but instead suffering through the attacks of various scaria-infected animals making my life a little harder, while building an inn where visitors can spend a couple of nights and, most important, pay me silver for doing so.
You can find my current mod list here.
I’ve already elaborated on RimWorld before on this blog, so definitely go read up on that if you are bored with your current life and are looking for something to sink your every waking moment into.
Want to tackle ignore your backlog as well?
Or just want to chat about mine? Click here to join us on Discord!
Not sure yet and want to see how I keep it up first? That’s fair, too.