I dunno if there is a subculture of printing the models at home. I would think resin printers would have more than enough resolution to make good miniatures. Is that frowned upon? There is no reason to buy overpriced licensed shit.
You could try Animal Well. Dark yet pastel-oriented colorschemes. Minimal “combat” but more of a puzzle and exploration style of gameplay. More mysterious than scary. Mild peril. Not romantic in the slightest, but very original.
I knew this was a fucked up industry when I heard they were successfully diversifying into women-centric gatcha games where the game is also centered on gooning over various character designs but the gatcha pulls correspond to specific romance scenes and interactions.
Japanese companies really have minmaxed exploiting every demographic. They have this garbage for the young people and pachinko parlors for old people and rural folks.
I used to do this when I was below 30 and it works pretty well for a time. If you work and have a family, this is the only segment of time you can carve into, to create more time for yourself.
One thing to be careful about though- there is growing evidence that not getting enough sleep earlier in your life like this can lead to dementia when you’re older.
Honestly all of this bullshit is why I went with a Steamdeck a few years ago. As a working adult with a family I have different economic obligations and priorities.
I need to build a new PC soon (mine is now 10 years old) but I can’t justify spending $5K on a gaming rig. If I built now with a flagship card, just the card itself would cost more than I spent on my entire rig when I built it in 2014/2015. Pair that with Microsoft’s ridiculous operating system enshittification, and the PC situation gets even more complicated for me.
Consoles have gotten to be a bad value proposition for me as well. Paper launches, scalping during the pandemic, DRM etc., services going offline. All that garbage leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I’m having a decent enough time with Steam sale games, Indy games, and retro emulation.
I bought the original on Steam sale about a year ago. Played 2-3 hours. Didn’t really feel hooked by the story or the gameplay. Graphics looked great to me on the SteamDeck.
I enjoyed a lot of the game objectives… Automating the farm, going to the bottom of the mine and the desert thing, completing the community center, courting a spouse etc.
A lot of the grindy bits weren’t as fun, such as missing some season-specific cutscene or event and not having the exact right item, the feeling of needing to speed grow certain crops at the beginning of each season, etc.
Overall it was a chill and positive experience. The music is awesome, character interactions not too laborious. This game plays great on SteamDeck and with proper settings it sips battery. For a long flight, I would pair this title with stuff like Animal Well, Dead Cells, and Cave Blazers.
Trespasser was a vibe in some ways. The clean screen and unique control scheme was innovative at the time. Granted it doesn’t hold up very well now, but there were some cool concepts at least.
I dunno, my rich uncle is a boomer and back in the 90s he was one of the only people I knew who could afford a gucci PC and every big box FPS game. So it kinda makes sense from that perspective.