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Cloud Catcher Chronicles was a bust. I started a new farm in Stardew Valley this weekend.

After (other Amy) started BOTW on September 13th, I decided to delete my League of Legends and start mine up. I'm not looking anything up so I'm spending countless minutes exploring. This is all in preparation of playing Skyrim next.

Lowell wrote: "I’m still drowning in FF14.

Finished Heavansward and the post-expansion, and started stormblood this week.

Heavensward was really, really good. Stormblood is.. not as good."

Agreed on all of this, Lowell. I loved the latter parts of ARR's patch content and all the way through Heavensward.

Speaking of FF14, after a little over a year of playing it, and getting to the end of Stormblood's main story (got to the first credits roll), burnout hit and I couldn't stand the idea of playing it anymore. Not even the prospect of Shadowbringers is enough incentive, sadly. Maybe I'll go back to it, but that hasn't happened with any other MMO I've "taken a hiatus from," so...

At present I'm playing through the main game of Solitairica for the third time (just the four single-color classes to go), and barely starting Dragon Quest Builders 2 on PS4.

Back to playing my way through Loop Hero for solo play & working through an online Gloomhaven campaign with my friend.

I just found out there are 900 koroks in BOTW and I've only found like 200 after running around the entire map for days.

Yes to the koroks!

So, so many koroks!

I had to find all 900 koroks! And I have to say I loved it and really makes you explore everything although some of those throw rocks in the center of a ring of rocks in water would enrage me 😂😂😂

Yup, still in FF14�� and shadowbringers is a breath of fresh air after the stormblood slog. Feels so much more focused and well written. Plus the first instance is really well designed, IMO.

I am only a little bit into it, but much bigger emotions and reactions to villains and heroes than anything in stormblood - and much more focused than heavansward.


I do want to play other things, I swear�� just hopelessly addicted at the moment.

Resident Evil 4 VR! It's been crazy awesome to replay my favorite RE game...but be inside the game.

I bought a PS5 a couple months ago and I played Returnal endlessly for a few weeks there. Such a cool game. I love all the lore.

I can finally see the light at the end of that endless tunnel that is Skyrim and its expansions.

Shane wrote: "Resident Evil 4 VR! It's been crazy awesome to replay my favorite RE game...but be inside the game.

I bought a PS5 a couple months ago and I played Returnal endlessly for a few weeks there. Such a..."

Did you see the new RE trailer?

Anyone have recs from the Steam sale that can be played while listening to audiobooks?

Don't starve together.

Anna wrote: "Anyone have recs from the Steam sale that can be played while listening to audiobooks?"

You might like Guards, which is a junior rpg. simple, fun, but brain can turn off a bit. Maybe Stardew Valley? I haven't played yet, but it's a feel good farm sim.

Thanks, I'll take a look at Guards! I know Stardew, and haven't been interested, but you're right that it could be something to do for mindless hours while listening.

honestly, the best "what to listen to while doing audio books" game I can think of isn't on steam and probably won't ever be.

Minecraft. since resource gathering can be grindy, audio-books are my go to when i'm playing that and doing serious building prep.

I usually play something on my phone or iPad while listening, but I'm kind of out of games at the moment, and thought why not see if I could switch things up. But it's probably true that mobile games are generally more suited to this, so I should probably take another deep dive into what's new.

(Guards isn't compatible with MacOS.)

What about faster than light?

Limbo
Shovel Knight

torchlight

My brother tried to get me to try Limbo, but I'm not exactly looking to be *more* anxious.

I mean my go to right now is

Aww...

I had the same reaction to Limbo. It didn't help that I was playing it late at night. It was impressive how scenes so sparsely rendered could be so creepy.

Anna, it sounds like you are looking for an idle game - plenty to explore in that category and often free to play. I have been playing Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms.

Chris yes exactly! I need to look at that 👍🏻 (Baldur’s Gate will always be 😍 so anything related will be checked out.)

Baldur's gate 3?

I don't really think Baldur's Gate is a game you can play while listening to audiobooks.

Anyway, I'll probably forget about this whim and keep playing mobile games while listening.

I just found my 92nd Shrine on BOTW and I'm starting to lose steam. I only have a few quests that might give me leads. Guess I'll have to go back town to town talking to every single person.

Have you used your Sheikah sensor to help you find the shrines?

Several months back, I got Dreadhalls for free* on my Oculus Quest (a virtual reality device) but never got around to playing it. I finally tried it a few weeks ago. My initial thought was, “This isn’t scary. Why does everybody say it’s so scary?�� A few minutes later, I was screaming bloody murder. Then I was like, “Why did you get scared? This isn’t scary.��

I think a lot of it is the sound effects; that’s usually what I find myself reacting to more so than the visuals. Plus all you can do is run, you have no way to defend yourself. Aside from the random screaming, I keep finding myself backed up against a wall in the room I’m playing in even though I started in the center of the room.

*(On rare occasion, Oculus offers $10 credits, so I use it to get $9.99 games which I may or may not someday find time to play. They then always send me an urgent reminder that I still need to spend my 1 cent balance before it expires!)

Over the recent U.S. holiday break, I started Xenoblade Chronicles on the Switch and am about 1/4 of the way through (at a guess). I'm not particularly missing playing an MMO after quitting FF14, but this one scratches a similar itch with a big open world to explore, plenty of goodies to collect, and side content to enjoy, and without the stress of being judged by total strangers. The combat is fun and action-y, and the characters are cute (the designs are much improved from the GameCube version, imo).

I also thought about getting a xenoblade chronicles as it actually looks cool. But I didn't know that it was an MMO, I actually thought it was a single player open world game.

But recently I started playing the new Pokémon game on the switch.

Florian, it is a single-player open world game! It just reminded me of a MMO. One of the other Xenoblade games (I think it's 2) is also available on Switch as a download.

Ah ok, then I misunderstood you^^

Beth wrote: "Over the recent U.S. holiday break, I started Xenoblade Chronicles on the Switch and am about 1/4 of the way through (at a guess). I'm not particularly missing playing an MMO after quitting FF14, b..."

!! When I bought my switched, the previous owner had this installed. I put a good many hours into it but then changed the owner over to myself and lost the game. I need to complete that, it was becoming a great story. I love the world and the clouds. RPGs are usually so inventive.

Nicol wrote: "Have you used your Sheikah sensor to help you find the shrines?"

Yes but most of the shrines i'm finding now are opening with a quest. I got the royal bridle for my horse and just happened to run into the bird that sings you riddles. I just found the two rings threaded by a single arrow and the lone tree where a white bird had something important in his stomach. This put me at 96.

I can't figure out how to get the ball from Impa.

(Xenoblade Chronicles)
Andres wrote: "I love the world and the clouds. RPGs are usually so inventive."

I love that the entire world you're exploring is (view spoiler)[on the body of a monstrous mech, or whatever the biological/bionis equivalent of "a mech" is. (hide spoiler)] It's fabulous and also doesn't make any dang sense.

I just started playing Night of the Dead, an alpha release survival/tower defense game and I'm hooooooked.

Nicol wrote: "Have you used your Sheikah sensor to help you find the shrines?"

I went back through with your advice and only hit 109 shrines. I'm missing 5 shrine quests somewhere it says but I think I'm done. I don't really like looking things up. Might be time to face Ganon and follow Beth's lead, start over Xeno...

Gave up korok hunting to pop a new game into the switch thinking I was grabbing Xeno but ended up getting Octopath traveler.

Andres wrote: "Gave up korok hunting to pop a new game into the switch thinking I was grabbing Xeno but ended up getting Octopath traveler."

I have been wondering about that one. I hope you'll let us know how it goes.

I have been looking at visual novels lately. I played Normal Lost Phone last weekend. Honestly it was kind of satisfying to just sit down and get through something in one sitting. Otherwise, still playing Stardew Valley.

@Andres Did you beat all the divine beasts? I know there are some shrine quests you can only get after you beat them.

And find all the ones in the giant mountain? And all of Kass��?
Though I have no problem with looking at a map of all the shrine locations and seeing what I’m missing lol

FFVIX�� the latest expansion, Endwalker, went into early release last Friday, with full release was.. Monday? Tuesday? Dunno.

I finished the main story quest tonight. For anyone who is invested in the story of 14��. Yeah. This was big, and long, and glorious.

Nicol wrote: "@Andres Did you beat all the divine beasts? I know there are some shrine quests you can only get after you beat them."

Yeah I gave up at 118 shrines and 231 koroks. I found Kass on top of a mushroom and he had a book about all of his locations. I wrote those down and found him, unlocked those shrines. Found the tablets on the beach and the lady wanting pictures of guardians. I know I'm missing the blood moon shrine by kass but I have no clue where number 120 is. I'm missing about 35 spaces in my compendium but I feel like I got the majority of it done. I wasn't able to find all the zora monuments. I'm missing 2. Most of my armor is upgraded I'm missing star fragments for the earrings.

meh, just got bored. Octopath traveler feels like an old school RPG so far, the voice overs are very cool.

I played Horizon Zero Dawn years ago but never got to finish it because I borrowed it from an old friend...

I've recently started to play it again and oh boy, I didn't remember how good it was. Found a few bugs in the way that got me killed a few times lmao, but still enjoyable.

I have a PS3 system and have owned it for years. The game I play the most is Skyrim Legendary Edition. I have two characters. One character is up around 65. I am trying to get that character leveled so I can fight the Ebony Warrior at level 80. The other character is around level 46.

The open end world for this game has always intrigued me and there are millions of different things that will happen every time I play the game. It is rare but fighting two dragons at once is fun! It doesn't happen often but I have only had it happen about three times since I have owned the game.

Other games I love playing are:
Fallout 3 (another cool open world game)
Fallout: Las Vegas
Dishonored
Need for Speed Most Wanted
Rage
Burnout Paradise

I love Skyrim so much. Going back to it is always like going home.

I played Skyrim for over 100 hours on XBox 360, exploring every little nook and cranny on the map. After a while I realized that a lot of the thief dens and dwarven ruins, crypts, etc., were pretty much the same with the art assets moved around, but it completely absorbed my brain for a very long time up to then. I couldn't figure out how to get my sneaky archer to beat one of the bosses from the latter part of the game, so I never finished it. It's still a win if you enjoy it! At some point I'll go back and play it as a mage or something.

One thing I remember vividly was a bug where eventually your retainer's weight capacity went down to 0, so you couldn't use them to carry things. There was a walkaround where you could put the items you wanted them to carry into a nearby chest, and have them take the items from the chest.

I'm all but done with Solitairica, and have also been playing Forklift Load, an indie game where an AI-run forklift does physics-based tasks/quests for other vehicles. With 16 missions doesn't seem like it'll be very long.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I love Skyrim so much. Going back to it is always like going home."

I totally agree. Sometimes I won't play it for awhile - like three or four months while I am playing something else, but when I get back into the game, I just seem to fall right back into the game no matter where I am at within the game. :)