…which improves the metaphor even further, genius!

• Disco Elysium
• Outer Wilds
• Morrowind
• Rimworld
• Subnautica

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko. Really weird, abstract and interesting. Anyone labeling it as Dark Academia or a magic school book is both completely correct and dead wrong at the same time.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar both have very interesting concepts and great executions.

When it comes to interesting concepts in fantasy/sci-fi, Adrian Tchaikovsky has some bangers. Elder Race, Children of Time, or Alien Clay are some random example recs.

China Mieville’s New Crobuzon trilogy is really out there too. 2nd book is the best and can be read independently but does spoil some things from the first.

…the house elves are in Hogwarts too. They are not staff, they are school property. Harry owns a house elf after book 5. The books openly ridicule Hermione for being the only sane person and trying to end house elf slavery because apparently the house elves like being enslaved and she’s just overreacting. Need I go on?

It’s perpetually in progress but what’s there is already pretty much a complete game, dev just can’t stop adding/revamping things. I’ve played it like 5 years ago, spent 50+ hours and had a great time. There’s also an active modding community.

Nah, humans are great at pattern-matching, even just being aware that some find 67 funny is enough for you to start spotting it. I started finding some amusement in it just due to exposure from younger coworkers.

I don’t listen to this band much but I’m quite partial to Siamés - the Wolf. The animation, limited color palette, and the music all together feel very satisfying.

Depends where you live, it’s somehow still alive and well in Poland! You’d usually use the lowercase xd for a more refined and low-key vibe tho, the full caps ones are reserved for special occasions.

In Poland we use standard qwerty keyboards with Polish keyboard layout set (called Polish Programmers), you press alt+character to get the special version (like alt+s gives you ś, alt+a gives you ą and so on, the only nonintuitive one is alt+x which is ź, because alt+z is taken by ż). Combine with shift or caps lock for capital versions. No issues.

Fun, but I don’t love the Polish word selection because a lot of these are supposed to contain special characters and they’re not actual real Polish words without them.

Like blad - that’s not a word. Błąd is a word, it means a mistake. So does this count or no? Or kal vs kał, one is a word (means feces) and one is just some letters.

Fair warning: lots of roguelikes on this list. Just seems like the devs of these games really like 2d non-demanding visuals. And I don’t know how low do you need to go, so check these individually.

Don’t even need a sale for Moonring, which is a retro turn-based RPG, completely free. Runs on a potato.

Original Monster Train should work decently well, it’s 90% off.

Shogun Showdown is really cool, 50% off. Necesse is a very fun Terraria-like, coming out of EA in like a week and on sale now.

Look into Reus 2, very fun, but it’s got some more visual effects so may be a bit too much. Same with Astral Ascent, one of my fave action roguelikes but, well, it’s action. Needs a decent framerate. Same with Dead Cells, Cult of the Lamb and Chronicon - great games, 2d, but may require a basic dedicated video card or a beefy integrated one.

Spellcaster University is not a forever game but it’ll be fun for a while.

Cook Serve Delicious series is really good. You can start with 1, they are each a bit different.

Cross Code if you want an RPG. Citizen Sleeper or Road Warden if you want an RPG that’s borderline a visual novel. Slay the Princess if you straight up want a visual novel.

Library of Ruina and Lobotomy Corporation if you’re a masochist who likes a good story.

Then there’s eternal classics like Stardew Valley, Balatro, Terraria,FTL, Into the Breach, Slay the Spire or Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.

And on the incredibly niche side of things, I recommend Intergalactic Fishing and Rings of Saturn.

Hopefully something from this list catches your fancy!

In this case:

• this comic artstyle is very characteristic of AI, down to the line weight, facial expression (these soulless eyes and smile), and how the character is positioned;
• the bus has no door;
• the picture has a yellow-ish tint, which has been plaguing certain AI image generators ever since the AI Ghibli trend. They likely overtrained their slop machines on Studio Ghibli works and various other “cozy” artstyles/pictures.

I’ve played this briefly when it launched, but was annoyed that for people playing solo the map outside your bases fully resets every time you save and load, I’d prefer if the areas I cleared of the fog would stay cleared. I get that in a multiplayer setting it’s better to reset because then everyone has the same opportunities to get loot/xp, but my map-clearing goblin brain was disappointed.

Unless they’ve changed it, but last I’ve heard there were no plans for that.

Other than that it was a lot of fun already at EA launch, probably got even better by now.

Honestly, thank fuck for the AI studio Ghibli trend, they overtrained the models on that stuff and caused the easily recognizable piss filter to appear. Makes finding AI slop at a glance easier.

Not necessarily? Icy water would have been rare, but even in the summer water from a stream or a lake is colder than the air, which is enough to make it refreshing. And well water can be very cold.

I’ve been trapped in a Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time addiction ever since that came out. I’m a huge fan of the original 3DS game, but it was kinda forgotten by gaming history. And now we have a much bigger and more polished game for more platforms! For those who haven’t heard of it: it’s a bastard child of singleplayer Final Fantasy XIV and Animal Crossing. Very cute and cozy, mercilessly addicting, simulates the experience of having ADHD incredibly well.

This is how it typically goes: you want new furniture for your house. You’re out of a specific kind of wood that’s needed, so you go to a place that has it. On the way there you see an NPC with a quest - some poor farmer is besieged by overgrown carrots, and wants you to kill 10 of them. Might as well, it’s only a slight detour. You kill the carrots, and then help yourself to some more crops on the farm, and get a rare carrot that you need to cook a dish to advance your Chef Life! Better get to that immediately, before you forget. You go back to town and cook the dish. You still don’t have that new furniture you set out to get.

About the only thing I don’t like is that the story quests are less weird than the original game, everything else is a straight upgrade.

I got the testicle part :P it’s just that “piroshkis” doesn’t sound Polish at all, and since we’re talking about Poland… Even “pierogis”, with its unnecessary “s” would be better.

As a note, as this story is about a Polish radio station the word you’d want to use is “pierogi” or “pierożki”, no “s” at the end either.