Attending Combo Breaker is the highlight of my year every year. In 2025 I was able to fit Frosty Faustings into my travel budget too. Managed to place 17th in Mystery Bracket both times, and they were very wild bracket runs. I saw Gyakuten Puzzle Bancho and turned to my opponent to utter a sentence no one wants to hear in Mystery: "I'm sorry, I know how to play this game." Also at CB I was able to make it out of pools in Under Night In-Birth II, and it was a hella stacked bracket so I'm pretty happy with that one.
Been focusing more on my mahjong career, attended Riichi Nomi Open and Philadelphia Riichi Open as my first two tournaments. Didn't do so hot though. But of course, when I win it's because I'm skilled, when I lose it was just bad luck.
New arcade opened up near me with modded Maimai, Wacca, and Chunithm cabinets. I told myself I'm never going back to Round 1 again, though R1 does have the new official international Maimai now so I guess that's something. I also got back into Dance Dance Revolution a little, but I'm still not very good.
As for actual new releases, Deltarune is obvious. Kirby Air Riders is a sequel I waited 22 years for, and it was worth the wait. The original is one of my favorite games of all time and I'm blown away by how much higher they raised the bar. Online City Trial is everything childhood me ever dreamed of. And I have to shout out Rhythm Doctor finally exiting Early Access, the final chapter is a wonderful conclusion that gave me a lot of emotions.
(*note some of these were Let’s Play’s I watched instead of played as combat mechanics like Clair/Wukong don’t interest me.)
I also spent a lot of time with an old friend, Heroes of Might and Magic V, Tribes of the East.
Edit/PS: Have to include Tactical Breach Wizards. Hilarious and very different take on the “Xcom-esque” genre. Great characterization and story. Requires a very different style of thinking to master it.
I’m exactly the same. Dark Souls 1 & 3, Elden Ring, Sekiro, Oblivion, Skyrim, and Hitman probably make up >95% of my playtime in recent years. I just replay them over and over again. I’ll occasionally replay other games I used to play one time, but I very rarely will try out a new game, and if I do I almost always default back to one of my staples after a couple hours.
That other comment talking about it due to exhaustion is definitely the reason for me I think. The last ~2.5 years I’ve had a lot more responsibilities at work, and now I’ve got a baby at home, so on the rare occasion I actually have energy to play a game, it’s gonna be something I know I’ll have fun with. It’s going to be even worse soon I suspect due to work. I applied for a manager job and feel pretty confident I’m gonna get it, but of course that means I’ll likely have even less energy after work to play games. Oh well. Such is life.
Derail Valley Simulator is actually quite chill, once you have an idea of how to handle your trains. I have almost $7,000,000 saved up to see how big of a boom I can cause without going into debt, or hurting my engines and caboose.
It’s a game where you place tiles to build a map and you get scored based on how well the placed tile matches the rest of the tiles. Extra score comes from additional goals which usually mean finishing a certain area.
It’s my go to game when I’m burnt out and can’t think or I’m so sick I can’t focus on anything, because the game is perfect when you’re low energy. There is no clock, there is no mental overhead of keeping track of something. The game gives you all the information you need and you can play one tile at a time. The music is calm and the tiles you place create this idyllic world that’s pleasing to the eye.
What am I supposed to explore when I am going back the way I came? The simplest way of doing fast travel still generally requires you find POIs by actually going to their location before you can travel to them instantly.
I’ve done my exploring, now I want to sell all the shit I found and get back to finding more!
Best way of handling this is to load the environment with random events that can occur on various return trips. Sea of Thieves and Red Read Redemption 2 do this, though it doesn’t work for every game.
The other good way to handle it is a fun movement system, eg Insomniac games.
And those get pretty repetitive and aren’t rewarding enough that I wanna go through that every time. Especially RDR2’s fucking habit of spawning some kind of big animal right the fuck on top of me giving me zero chance to react and making me lose all the animal pelts I’d been collecting right as I am walking up to the motherfucker who buys 'em. 🤬
(I’ve been playing that one recently and it’s reminding me why I stopped)
I’m broke so a new game to play would hit the spot, thank you so much! I like crafting games, cozy games, and arcadey retro style games, but really I play a bit of everything.
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