Easily the most effective for me has been to develop, review, and/or do one action item off a plan to be able to leave the job and work towards something I want to spend my time working on. Knowing I have a plan, remembering it and seeing that it’s a good plan, and taking steps on that is a concrete reminder that the job I hate is temporary and I’m not stuck. That reduces the scaries significantly for me.

Then I also like to clean my place, light a scented candle, and read/watch something to make where I live feel cozy, comforting, and home-y. A reminder that even though the job is shit, I have at least built a home that I come back to. Might call a friend and talk it out too - works on both levels.

What do you do?

And here’s the itch.io link: https://minusonepublishing.itch.io/frontiers-of-the-mind

He was allegedly trying to meet up with the minor at Twitch-Con, so you may be right.

Yeah, that really brings me back. I had like 4 tokens on Steam to give the game away when they were trying to get more people to play. There was some other hero shooter MOBA a little after that too, by Epic or something. Didn’t last very long and wasn’t all that great, but I still played the shit out of the falcon character that could “fly”. Man, I need to jump into another one of these games.

Oh shit, I hadn’t heard of that. I’ll definitely check it out; thanks for the recommendation.

It was a hero shooter MOBA but with some verticality, so that’s about as far as the Overwatch comparison goes. I had a great time with it. I like traditional MOBAs but don’t have the skill/patience/time for them, so hero shooter MOBAs are the perfect way for me to be able to play them more casually. In my opinion, of the few I’ve tried, Paragon was the best implementation of a hero shooter MOBA; the core gameplay just felt really tight to me.

Or Paragon even. That game was so fun back in the day before it got killed. If anyone can make something that fun again, it’s probably Valve.

Cool system; thanks for the run through!

Is it here in the post? I’ve looked all over and can’t find mention of that. There’s the video of the author clearing it, but that doesn’t imply that all levels are beatable.

Cool idea! I’m not really into survival or tower defense games, but I like the theme and the look of the whole thing. Survival games seem to be getting a lot of attention these days, so I hope you’re able to attract some of that because it seems like a cool idea for those into it.

Hopefully it also gives emulator devs a push to separate out the ROM decrypting piece from future emulators and make them only work with decrypted roms. Then the decryption piece can just be shared under the table, and the biggest piece of development, the emulator, will be protected.

It’s heavily inspired by Chrono Trigger…heavily. It’s got dual-techs, the writing feels very similar at times, the equipment has predictable scaling as the story progresses, and lots more. The dialog is a bit saccharine for my taste; I’ve far preferred Chrono Trigger’s. Chrono Trigger has pleasant and supportive characters, but it hasn’t ever felt over the top. Sea of Stars also has some modern niceties, like timed presses for defense and offense, some interesting spell-boosting mechanics, it’s very pretty at times, etc. And it plays on jrpg tropes at times in a fun way, and didn’t feel like it overstayed its welcome. Since you love Chrono Trigger, my best guess is that I think you’d have fun with Sea of Stars. It won’t blow your mind by any means, but I don’t think you’d regret spending time with it.

I’ve started and stopped it a number of times over the past 20 years or so, and I’m finally playing it all the way through right now. At least one of those times was because I thought I HAD to fight Lavos through the bucket and thought I was expected to grind until I could defeat it lol. This time, I’ve found it really remarkable how tight it is and how well it still holds up today. Even though Sea of Stars came out last year, it feels like Chrono Trigger could have been released alongside it and it would only feel a bit more dated in some respects.

Props to you for using strikethrough instead of deleting in your edit so the context still makes sense. I think you bring up an interesting point about competitive fps games. I imagine companies structure their development similar to games-as-a-service because they are essentially two flavors of the same thing, right? I had never really considered whether the growth of the competitive scene was part of the drive towards GaaS and away from tight single player experiences.

I think underlying all of this is that publishers want a guaranteed profit margin. That doesn’t exist in art, of course, but they still want it. And if that means choosing what they think is a safe bet, they’ll choose it. I think Bungie made GaaS look way easier than it actually is, and maybe the competitive scene contributed to that too. “Look at all the money these hero shooters are making, let’s get a piece of that pie.” Formulas just never quite work out that simply in real life.

I’m not sure that’s really true what you’re saying about single player FPS games being mostly competitive or that it’s a bad idea. See: Doom, Metro, Ghostwire, Dying Light, System Shock, people seem stoked for Space Marine, etc.

Wait til he hears there will actually be 3 parts.

It does serve as a wonderful example of exactly what they are talking about, funny enough.

Yeah, this is why I’ve urged so many people to shop around for a country like they do a job. See what country aligns with your values, with your goals, with benefits, etc. and start working to get there. You don’t have to stay miserable if you feel like your country is not where you want it to be and you’re not the one to help fix it.

A question no one has asked yet: how often are you farting and how smelly are we talking? Because there may be a diet change worth considering if you’re putting around like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

…so these Hexbear folx have got a chip on their shoulder, huh?

From scanning through their comments, I’m guessing they don’t actually believe the shit they’re saying? Only because, if they did, I would think they would actually try to have a discussion with people instead of whatever firestorm is happening on this thread. I’m not up to date - is this a troll instance?