Category: Gaming

Winter Burrow Finished

Posted on by Nimgimli

Winter Burrow is a pretty short game (12 hours for my playthrough) but it still took me something like 6 weeks to finish it, what with everything going on in my life right now.

That’s only relevant because I think stretching things out over such a long time took away from my experience with the game. I really enjoyed it at first, but over time I was less and less enthusiastic about it. The gaps in play sessions had a lot to do with this. At launch there was no map. It’s not a huge game so that wasn’t too much of a problem until I stepped away for a week and came back and had to re-explore everything to remember what was where.

Shortly before the holiday the devs released a patch that adds a map and that’s when I started focusing on the title again. I like maps.

Oh, sort of getting ahead of myself. If you’re unaware, Winter Burrow is a (self-proclaimed) cozy survival game where you play as a mouse. It has a really cute art style and that’s a big part of the burst of fun right out of the gate. If you played it over a few evenings that cute glow-up will probably last the entire experience, but as with anything familiarity breeds apathy and after a while I needed more than cute.

The actual gameplay isn’t far removed from most survival games. You gather, you craft, you fight baddies. You have to eat to stave off starvation, and you have to stay warm. Staying warm is enough of a challenge that I’d argue against the ‘cozy’ label. Cozy aesthetics? Absolutely. Cozy gameplay? Not so much. Being chased by a giant spider while you’re losing health from freezing isn’t my idea of cozy! Not that the game is hard; the cold mechanic just makes things a little tedious as you constantly have to cut short expeditions to return to someplace warm. This gets particularly tedious when, like me, you’ve been away from the game long enough that you can no longer remember where X is, even though you know you’ve been there before.

You have a home that needs repairs and such, but you don’t build any structures from scratch. You can build better tools, warmer clothes, and there are a LOT of recipes for furniture that is used purely as decoration. I’m not big into decorating so that whole aspect was more or less lost on me. If you’re someone that loves to spruce up housing in your games you’ll probably love this aspect.

Crafting is limited to Woodworking, Knitting, Cooking and some very lite (and generally not needed) farming.

There are a handful of NPCs you’ll meet and run errands for. Most of these quests are pretty simple “go find X” or “go craft Y”. They’re enough to nudge the story along, though. And all the NPCs are different small animals that nontheless appear huge to a tiny mouse.

My overall rating after finishing is that it was fine. I liked it, didn’t love it. But again, part of that is on me for playing so infrequently. The only truly ‘bad’ thing about the game, for me, was the ending which is really abrupt and is basically just “The End, Thanks For Playing” without any kind of summary or epilogue or something to just help you reflect back on your journey.

Other things I didn’t like were much more subjective. The cold mechanic just felt like busy work (you can eventually craft campfire kits and kindling to alleviate this aspect if you’re willing to put in the time to gather materials to craft them), inventory is crazy limited, and I often had trouble differentiating interactive objects with decorations. This rock I can hit with a pick and get resources, but that rock is just part of the scenery. That kind of thing. Not a huge deal, though.

I played on Game Pass, but Winter Burrow is currently 20% off on Steam ($16.99 USD), and there’s a demo available. I’d say this is an OK price but the full price of $20 feels a little high to me, though maybe I’m just cheap. The developers did add some Solstice content in the same patch where they added the map (the image at the top of the post is of the Solstice Tree that you can craft post-game, thanks to this new content). If they keep on adding bits to it (for free) it’ll make the price more palatable.

November 2025

Posted on by Nimgimli

Been crazy here this month, and next month will be just as crazy. I really thought that spreading out this move over a couple months would make it easier and in a lot of ways it does, but it means instead of one absolutely crazy moving-week we’re experiencing weeks and weeks of moderate craziness. But things are coming along and we’re pretty excited about the new place. We’ve made two trips there so far. The first was brutal, the second much easier which was interesting because I think my body is actually just growing stronger that quickly. Or more flexible anyway. Whatever the reason, hauling boxes of books up and down stairs didn’t take nearly as much out of me during the second trip.

Somehow I’m still sneaking in a fair amount of gaming, but I’m going to rip through all this pretty quick cuz…. boxes need to be packed!

Playing

Wuthering Waves: Shelved for now. I did a couple of months of the subscription thing (where you get premium currency every day) and the paid version of the battle pass thingie. Made good use of both of those but, as is VERY typical for me, they also made the game feel a bit like a chore. When I started playing a swore to myself I’d just play for the main story line but alas, that was dropped in favor of logging in every day and doing all the things that give you battle pass progress and stuff. I did get in something like 150 hours before burnout hit though so… not a bad run.

My Time At Sandrock: I started this a year or so ago right after finishing My Time At Portia but soon realized I needed a break between two titles that are so similar. Glad I did because I am HOOKED on Sandrock now. If you’ve never played a “My Time At…” game they’re a lot like a Harvest Moon or Stardew valley, except in 3D and they take place in a post-apocalyptic world. But a pretty, mostly friendly, post-apocalyptic world. The tension is between two factions, one that shuns technology since it ruined the old world, and one that wants to rediscover technology to make the current situation better. You kind of straddle that line and mostly spend your time harvesting, building, farming, mining, fighting and trying to befriend the natives. It’s pretty casual and stress-free in site of all that stuff you have to juggle. One setting that I can’t remember if Portia had is the option to slow down time so each day goes by more slowly. I turned that down so I could just putter around without a lot of time management stress.

Ball X Pit: I wrote a post about this… still playing!

Winter Burrow: Wrote a post about this too. Also still playing. This one has turned out to be a bit harder than I thought it was going to be due to the lack of a map and the ‘cold’ mechanic that means you have to be careful of how far you wander from home. Also your inventory is pretty small. It’s cute as heck but that doesn’t mean it’s super easy, as it turns out. Or maybe I’m doing something wrong which is always possible.

Octopath Traveler: Picked this up on sale and I’m playing it on the Steam Deck in the evenings when we’re at the new place. Very early days and everyone interested in this game is familiar with it, so just sticking a flag in the sand to say I’m playing.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage: This game follows Bassim who was in AC Valhalla and I did NOT like him in that game so I had no plans to play Mirage. But then it hit Game Pass so I figured “What the heck.” I’ve barely gotten started on it, though.

That’s too many games to be juggling, isn’t it? Sandrock is by far the title I spent the most time on this month.

Watching

Nobody Wants This S2: This is the Kristen Bell sitcom about her dating a rabbi and all the trouble that causes because she is not Jewish. Loved S1, loved S2. Can’t wait for a Season 3 which I assume is coming.

Talamasca: This is set in Anne Rice’s vampire mythos. It was a PartPurple pick. The Talamasca is a shadow organization that keeps tabs on supernatural goings-on and in this show a new recruit is sent in to spy on an ancient vampire. It was actually pretty good, but I’ll never admit that to Purple.

The Witcher S4: I didn’t really miss Henry Cavill so much, though PartPurple did. We’re in the part of the story where a lot of the emphasis is on Ciri anyway. I enjoyed it but it is VERY similar to what I remember reading in the books. Almost too much so since I know what was going to happen next every step of the way.

Tales from Woodcreek: This is a D&D Campaign hosted by Deborah Ann Woll on YouTube. This is the 2nd time we’ve watched one of her campaigns (the other being Relics and Rarities, also on YouTube) and we really enjoy them for a few reasons. First, each episode is a manageable length: about an hour. Second, she brings in guest players, often ones who’ve never played D&D before, and generally her guests are actors. It’s fun watching the regulars help the newbies and being actors, the newbies tend to really get into their characters. Third, her campaigns tend to be really interactive with props and such. In this one she actually leads the party to new physical locations to set the scenes and such. Now I do not play D&D so I can’t speak to how authentic this all is, but it’s really fun to watch.

Reading

The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories — A collection of Isaac Asimov’s short stories, mostly written in the 1970s. Lots of robots. Lots of concerns about AI that seem pretty similar to the concerns we have today, for reals.

microserfs (Douglas Coupland) — A novel in the form of a journal. The narrator is a 20-something Microsoft employee and super-nerd, living in the 1990s when working 100 hour weeks was considered slacking. He and his colleagues decided to leave and start a company making a Lego-like videogame called Oop. (Oop, as described, seems a little bit like Roblox, though the game isn’t the focus of the story.) I really enjoyed this though it is hard to quantify why. In the end there isn’t much story there; it’d be like, well, reading the journal of any mostly ordinary person. I lived through this era so there was a lot of nostalgia for me. The team going to visit 3DO HQ, or going to CES and seeing the Ninteno VirtuaBoy. I was at that CES so, y’know, maybe brushed shoulders with these ficticious characters. It came out in 1995 but looks like it was re-issued at some point [Amazon link]. If you enjoy ‘nerd culture’ you might enjoy it. [I found this while purging to move and intead of sending it to the donation bin I held onto it to read.]

Old science fiction and fantasy magazines: I found a cache of these in the back of a closet. Most of them are from the 1990’s which means I’ve lugged them through 3 or 4 moves. Now I’m finally reading them and they’re pretty fun since in a lot of cases their “future” is our present and boy did they get a lot wrong (and some stuff right).

It’s strange to be reading physical magazines again! Remember “Continued on page 104…” WHAT? Why do I have to jump around you crazy editors!

OK, back to moving and by the time the December recap rolls around we should be (more or less) settled in our new dig! Happy Holidays!

Winter Burrow Early First Look

Posted on by Nimgimli

Earlier this week Winter Burrow hit Game Pass and launched on Steam the same day. I’d seen previews and it was so darned cute I had to try it right away.

So far at least, it’s been a fairly typical survivalbox game, only this time you’re a mouse so everything is on a tiny scale. You’ve returned to your childhood home to find it in a state of disrepair; first order of business is to fix things up! You need to go collect twigs and pebbles to make tools and effect repairs. Then you need to use the tools to harvest better materials to make better tools in order to fix more things. It’s a familiar loop that we’ve all done many times and by now you probably know whether or not you enjoy this kind of game.

Aside from the cuteness, it’s the winter setting that makes the game a little different from most survivalboxes. In addition to gauges for health, hunger and stamina, you have a cold meter that is always dropping when you’re outside. You can knit (SO ADORABLE, your little mouse self sitting there knitting) warmer clothes to mitigate this, and there’s a day/night cycle as well. Colder at night of course.

A tiny mouse in his burrow knitting warm clothes
Knitting some warmer clothes by the fire

It’s billed as a cozy game but the cold mechanic kind of invalidates that designation to me, because you do frequently have to run home to warm up or you’ll start taking damage, and as far as I can tell there’s no map, so you can get lost and freeze. In the name of epic journalism I stayed outside in the cold until my health hit zero. When that happens you ‘pass out’ and somehow ‘stumble home’ to the burrow [aka you respawn at home], but you drop any items other than tools that you were carrying. You can go back to the spot of your misfortune and re-collect what you’ve dropped, though, so it isn’t a harsh penalty.

A tiny mouse outside the door to his burrow. The screen is feezing up!
The colder you get, the more the frost encroaches on your window into the game world. Better get inside!

In addition to gathering/crafting there’s some farming elements as well.

There’s also combat and hunting. So far I’ve attacked passive beetles to get meat that I can roast, and once been attacked by a different kind of beetle that was aggro. There’s also a setting in the options to toggle spiders on or off for folks with arachnophobia so expect some 8-legged enemies at some point.

I’ve only played for a couple of hours but wanted to share my very early thoughts, particularly for Aywren who was curious about the game.

So far I’m really enjoying it but have to stress the cuteness is the real hook here. Being a little mouse wearing snowshows and a yak beanie is just so adorable and did I mention the knitting?!

I’ll circle back once I get further in, but the initial TLDR is, not super original in the gameplay, but the aesthetics are keeping me engaged for now.

Two tiny mice having a chat
You’re not completely alone in the world!

Ball X Pit – Weird and Addicting

Posted on by Nimgimli

I was really late to the Vampire Survivors party. By the time I discovered it, it was old news. If you haven’t played it, it’s a top down APRG where your character auto-shoots. All you do is steer around. You level up quickly and as you do you get a choice of power-ups to choose from and in so doing put together a build for that run. When you die, you hit a store to buy upgrades to make you stronger, then you try again. It doesn’t sound like much, but the sheer number of enemies on screen, each of which drops a bit of exp when they die, make it like a constant dopamine drip.

Anyway, now we have Ball X Pit which is scratching the same kind of itch. This time the gameplay feels like the love-child of Vampire Survivors and Breakout. The main gameplay has you in a tall narrow corridor with enemies marching down the screen from the top while you fire balls at them to destroy them. Both enemies and you have a health pool and generally one hit from a ball isn’t enough to destroy a baddie. If the bad guys reach the bottom of the screen they smack you for a chunk of your health, and some fire arrows or other projectiles at you as them make their way down the screen.

Meanwhile the balls you fire bounce around like they do in Breakout, the major difference being that you can aim them fairly precisely, and if you want you can hold them and then fire. There’s also an “auto-fire” mode that makes it a lot more Vampire Survivor-ish and it is how I usually play. But just like in Breakout if you can sneak a ball to the back of the enemies it will careen around and hit a ton of bad guys, doing a lot of damage.

I feel like a video will be a better explainer than I ever will be:

There are different kinds of Balls. Hero balls, and baby balls. Baby balls are weaker little projectiles that you don’t really control. Hero Balls come in a number of flavors. Fire balls cause enemies to burn for a bit (doing DoT). Earthquake balls cause area damage. Vampire balls heal you when they kill an enemy. And so on. You can hold 4 types of Hero Balls at once, and 4 passive powerups that offer bonuses like faster movement or enhanced damage when you hit an enemy from behind.

As in VS, every enemy leaves a gem which gives you experience. You have a variety of stats (Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity) and when you level up one or more of those get bumped up a point or two, and you get to pick a ball or a passive to add to your quiver or level up. Every so often (haven’t figured out what triggers these) you’ll get a little glowy thing spawning. When you pick one of those up you get some boon. Sometimes it’s random level ups for your existing skills, and sometimes it’s the chance to combine Balls into something new. So maybe you fuse a Fire ball with a Vampire ball and you get, well, a Fire X Vampire ball that both burns and returns health, and when these two fuse you now have an open slot to add something new.

Anyway eventually you die or beat the boss which ends a level. Then you go to your village. Here you can spend your rewards to buy farms and buildings and so on. Farms (wheat, forest, stone) just give more resources to buy more buildings. Houses (which you need to find a blueprint for in the ball-busting part of the game) unlock new characters, and combat buildings (eg Barracks) make your characters start the next run stronger.

But even in your village the ball motif continues. Once you place your farms and buildings and such, you have to aim and fire your characters at them in order to collect, and these characters bounce off things like your balls do. To build a building you have to hit it x times (5 maybe? I never counted). To harvest a farm  you have to fire a worker over it. And so on. Once you’ve built and harvested, it’s back to the pit for another run.

Here is what that looks like:

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Runs take about 15 minutes once you get a little ways into the game and have leveled up a bit (very early you might die much more quickly). This makes it a great game to drop into when you don’t have a lot of time but just want a gaming fix.

Anyway, I’m finding this one really addictive.  It’s available on Steam (Steamdeck Verified), Xbox and Playstation and it’s $15 everywhere. There’s a demo on Steam as well, and it has an overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam with over 6,000 reviews.

October 2025

Posted on by Nimgimli

Happy Halloween, Hapy Samhain, Happy Too Much Candy Day. Whatever your denomination, happy end of October. Now we can say summer is truly gone and I no longer fear my electric bill (the air conditioner is finally silent). We’re all ready to receive our average of approximately zero trick-or-treaters. But that’s OK, PartPurple did a great job decorating and several neighbors have come by to compliment her display. Our new place has a much smaller entryway so I think going forward any decorations will have to be much more modest. So one last “it should be visible from space” decorating hurrah seemed appropriate.

I messed up this month. I went the whole month without taking any kind of notes on what I’ve been playing or that we’ve been watching. I’m going to have to rely on memory, which is never my strong suit. With the move coming up fast I’ve spent more time chorin’ and less time doing fun stuff anyway, so it might be there’s not that much for me to remember.

Playing

The Outer Worlds — I finished this and… it left so little an impression on me that I can’t really remember how it ended. I do know I got to an ending though. The sequel is out now but I haven’t tried it. At some point I will, just to see if they’ve made any quality of life improvements, because QoL was what really bothered me about the first game. But I talked about all that last month so…

Wuthering Waves — After being well and truly hooked on Wuthering Waves for a good long while, I think I’m ready to take a break from it once my Lunite Subscription (via which you get a daily login reward of premium currency) ends. I still really enjoy the game it’s just that sometimes familiarity breeds contempt and I just need to step away for a bit. I did pull Zani last night though and I really enjoy her so maybe I’ll spend some time building her to see how she plays. Currently my main team is Havoc Rover, Carlotta and Shorekeeper, though none of the three are 100% built yet. Those talent trees take a while to complete.

Little Rocket Lab — THIS has been my obsession lately. I find myself playing it any time I had at least 10-15 minutes free. I talked about it in a mid-month update but as of last night, I finished it. 🙁 I might actually play through it again. Once you finish the game once you unlock “Hard Mode” which could be interesting, or I could just impose some rules on myself to make a 2nd run-through a different sort of challenge.

Answering a few questions I had in my Mid-Month post, you never really are gated by a lack of resources, though one or two are slower to gather than the rest. There doesn’t seem to be any time limits so you can just play around and do whatever you like. There are Seasons but really they’re just cosmetic and they advanced based on you finishing certain tasks rather than being based on the number of days that have passed.

The team is still working on the game, adding QoL improvements and they’ve teased new features in a very vague way. So I’ll probably set it aside for now and revisit after some updates. There WERE, to be fair, parts of the game that felt sort of half-finished. For instance there are stores but I never really felt a need to use them. I did jobs to earn money to unlock some upgrades (there are only 3 of these) but once those were unlocked I had no use for money. There are also plants and shells and things that you can collect but I never found a use for them. I think you might be able to give them to villagers as gifts but I’m not sure what the point of that would be.

But just building conveyor belts and machines to process goods and to constantly tweak things to optimize the delivery of rocket parts and such? That was fun even though my setup was the mechanical equivalent of spaghetti code by the time I was finished!! So yeah, another play-through to be faster, neater, and more efficient is kind of appealing.

Screenshot from Little Rocket Lab showing a chaotic mess of conveyor belts
It just kind of evolved into this…

I was surprised to learn, when the credits rolled, that this was built by a very small team. Two programmers are listed, and one of them is also the game’s designer. There’s considerably more people in QA and localization but I’m guessing that the core game was just the two people.

Watching

Invasion (Apple TV+) — We finished our rewatch and the new season. Liked it all quite a bit. Season 3 put less of an emphasis on the kids, which I appreciated because some of the kids [looking at you, Luke and Sarah] were really annoying. Season 3 ended in such a way that it was a satisfying ending if there isn’t a 4th season, but there’s a few cracks that they could tease a new plotline out of if they did want to come back for Season 4. All in all I find it to be a good, not great, sci-fi show.

Foundation (Apple TV+) — Foundation is dense but really good. You probably don’t want to watch it casually but, if you decide to watch, give it your full attention. I’ve somehow never read the books and I think I might have to do that. I liked this one a lot, but my sense was that PartPurple wasn’t as thrilled with it and I think that’s because she constantly multitasks when we watch shows and I think she just missed stuff.

Interview With the Vampire (Netflix) — This one was for her. She loves sexy vampire stories so… I thought it was OK but she really enjoyed it.

Nobody Wants This (Netflix) — Season 2 of the Kristen Bell romcom hit Netflix earlier this week and we’re in the middle of it. Loved the first season and I might like S2 even more. I feel like the secondary characters are getting a lot more of the spotlight and I’m coming to enjoy them every bit as much as the leads.

Reading

Not much. In the middle of packing I found a copy of Isaac Asimov’s “The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories” and I’ve been reading that. It is kind of eerie how many things he got right about AI and robots and future society, given that he was writing these stories in the 60’s and 70’s.

And that’s October in the books. I don’t know if I’ll do a November recap just because our plan is to do a kind of slow-motion move starting right before Thanksgiving and ending in mid-December, so it remains to be seen whether I’ve got my stuff together enough to write a post in the middle of that. We’ll see.

Mid-Month Random Mutterings!

Posted on by Nimgimli

Felt the itch to write a blog post so…. here’s a blog post!

I’m not sure where I’ve said what these days, but we’re getting ready to move from Raleigh, NC, to the suburbs of Wilmington, NC. So after years and years of talking about moving North to get to cooler weather…we’re moving south about 2 hours. So it’ll be even hotter! BUT, we’ll also be about 30 minutes from the beaches and even closer to Wilmington and its boardwalks and fun-seeming things to do. We’ve lived in Raleigh for 13 years, on the outskirts, and have gone into downtown Raleigh about 3 times. It just holds no appeal for me. But Wilmington is a bit tourist-y, and there are rivers and bays and oceans to explore if I don’t mind driving for 20-230 minutes. So I’m hoping I’ll become a bit more active. Since our doggo Lola passed I barely move and it is starting to have a real impact on my health and energy. I watched both my grandmother and mother lose their mobility by doing exactly what I’m doing (ie sitting indoors all day every day) and I don’t want to follow in their footsteps (none of the men in my family lived long enough for this to be an issue).

Anyway, we’re excited, both for the new locale and for going from a 2 bedroom to a 3 bedroom townhouse. This means 1 bedroom to use as a bedroom, then we each get an office/cave. I’ll finally have my own space again!! Right now we share an office and Ms Crafty McCrafterson has it PACKED with crafting tools and supplies to the point it’s hard for me to even get to my PC. But now I’ll have a nice gaming space with star-babe posters on the wall and open space for doing some VR and stuff. Woot!

But the actual process of moving is daunting for us, as we’re old and un-fit and every time we do something we have to take a day to recover from the exertion. I suppose we’ll get in shape during the process (our lease doesn’t start until just before Thanksgiving so we have over a month to prepare). We’ll hire some young strong folks to move the big stuff but hope to move a lot of the boxes and things ourselves, but we’ll see how that works out and if the economics make sense.

But yeah, big exciting changes coming up!

Gaming Updates!

Meanwhile, maybe partly due to having all these moving-related issues in my brain, I’ve been gaming quite a bit once again. Two games in particular have grabbed me.

The first is Little Rocket Lab which I tried on a whim, not expecting to really play it (it was on Game Pass and I needed to play a Game Pass game for MS Rewards Points and this was a small download). I LOVE it. It is basically Stardew Valley only instead of farming you’re manufacturing stuff. Initially you’re banging rocks with a hammer but you very quickly move on to automated drills, conveyor belts, machines that assemble things, machines that move items, and so on. I’m still early days so I don’t know how complex it gets. It’s a game that doesn’t appear to have any time pressure. You get quests and stuff but (so far at least) no deadline for getting them done. Like Stardew Valley it runs on a ‘day’ system where you eventually collapse if you don’t get to bed in time, but there’s no stamina meter or anything like that.

Resources do run out and I wonder if that will be a kind of gating mechanism eventually, but there seem to be ample outcroppings of iron, copper, rock and coal available, which is all I’m working with so far. And we just repaired a port and are importing container ships full of old computers and stuff. We’re going to be recycling the circuit boards from these if I ever figure out how to use a crane to unload the boat. But I wonder if we’ll get other materials from recycling, too.

Anyway I’m finding it a delight. It’s on Game Pass but also on Steam; there’s a demo on Steam and right now it’s on sale for $15. If you like Stardew Valley and are interested in, or curious about, automation games, I think this might be a must-play. Extra bonus points for me: it’s a “Play Anywhere” title on Game Pass so I can play at the PC or from the couch on the Xbox, and work on the same save.

The other game I’m really sucked into is Wuthering Waves. I finally got some characters to level 90, and I’ve been playing through the main story quests in an attempt to catch up. Those quests are long though, and feel like they’re best consumed in a single sitting. This has kept me up much too late for more than one night! And I’m still quite a few updates behind even though I’ve clocked 150 hours or so, I would guess.

I also completed the Pioneer Podcast (their version of a Battle Pass) last time around and I’ve got a good start to doing so again. It’s week one and I’m already to level 20 (of 70) so I feel good there. I start each night working on Daily and Weekly Pioneer Podcast tasks, which includes burning through the day’s stamina (Waveplates, I think Stamina is called) and I use the goodies I get from doing that for improving character and slowly building up some new characters I have in the works, after some lucky pulls.

My current team is Havoc Rover, Carlotta, and Baizhu (spelling?). I’m working on Shorekeeper to replace Baizhu on healing/support duties. I’ve gotten pretty good with Rover in terms of dodging, blocking and using her abilities, to the point where if I’m really in the grove I can beat an early-game boss without ever switching to a different character. I button-spam with Carlotta and every time I fight with her I think “After this I have to go through her tutorial to learn how to play her” then promptly forget to do that. She’s uses a gun and jumps around like Yoda so I’ve been doing OK button-mashing with her. But I should really learn to play her better.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on around here in the middle of October. Exciting changes afoot, exciting games being place.

[Note on the images used in this post:  Images are screenshots from Little Rocket Lab or Wuthering Waves. The image at the top of the post was modified via AI to remove UI components from the shot, which is why it has a Gemini watermark in the bottom corner.]

Microsoft Changes the Game Pass Game

Posted on by Nimgimli

Microsoft just changed the price of Game Pass fairly substantially and as far as I can tell, with no warning. Prices jumped as much as 50%, with Ultimate going to $30/month, which feels pretty darned steep to me.

But that’s not all they’ve done. A lot of us frugal types tend to stack-up game pass subscriptions via Microsoft Rewards points, particularly during sales. Microsoft seems to be making that harder. You can no longer spend Rewards points directly on Game Pass. Instead you have to trade in points for Gift Cards and then spend that money on Game Pass. Why does this matter? Because as far as I can tell (someone please correct me if I’m wrong) you can’t extend your membership using cash, unless of course it has expired or is coming due.

From a pop-up on https://rewards.bing.com/

[Important update] Changes to Rewards Catalog
Starting October 1st, you will no longer be able to directly redeem your Rewards points for Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. To continue enjoying Xbox Game Pass using your Rewards points, you will need to first redeem your Rewards points for an Xbox gift card and then redeem your Xbox gift card for your desired Game Pass subscription, as follows:
Step 1: Visit the Microsoft Rewards catalog.
Step 2: Redeem your Rewards points for an Xbox gift card[TD1] in a denomination that is sufficient to cover the cost of your desired Game Pass subscription. If you do not have enough Rewards points for the desired Xbox gift card denomination, you may use an alternative payment method to cover the rest.
Step 3: Use your Microsoft Account balance from your redeemed Xbox gift card to purchase your desired Game Pass subscription. If your Microsoft Account balance is insufficient to cover your desired Game Pass subscription, you may use an alternative payment method to cover the rest.
When your Game Pass subscription expires, you can buy another Game Pass subscription by either (i) repeating Steps 1-3, above; or (ii) using an alternative payment method to purchase a Game Pass subscription.

As of right now you can stil purchase Game Pass gift cards from retailers like Amazon, so you can spend rewards points on an Amazon gift card, use that money to buy a Game Pass gift card, and then apply that to your Game Pass account, but we’ll see how long that lasts.

Or maybe this is temporary and once the pricing settles they’ll bring back direct redemption for Game Pass.

Another big change I don’t see talked about is that Microsoft is now capping Rewards Points at $100/year. Or at least that’s how I’m reading this:

Ultimate subscribers can now earn up to $100 per year (100k points globally) in the Store just by playing games.

I’ve never stopped to do the math, so before I get out my pitchfork and torch I should do that. I feel like I earn more than $100 worth of points per year, though. But it could be that $100 is the mathematical cap if you do all the quests they offer.

In any case it looks like the golden age of Xbox Game Pass is coming to an end. And PSA: You can still buy 3-Month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate gift card for $60 on Amazon so if you want to stock up, now is the time to do so.

September 2025

Posted on by Nimgimli

September is such a cruel month here in North Carolina. All the advertising and marketing people start their campaigns about “Now that the weather is getting cooler…” and showing folks in sweaters taking comfortable walks in brisk Autumn weather, and here it’s still in the 90s, at least some of the time. The nights are cooler, so that’s something. But damn do I miss a proper Autumn walk!

Anyway I actually played a few games this month!

Playing

The Outer Worlds — A few months ago I decided I should finally play through this, what with the sequel coming soon and all. And I did, finishing it just a few days ago. Honestly, I did not like it very much, but I think that was because I played on console. The combat was fun, and the humor was OK, but Quality of Life issues on console frustrated me. Inventory management was a nightmare between huge pop-ups (needed since we’re reading from across the room) that would obscure most of the inventory, and having no way to sort or filter what you had in order to figure what was worth keeping and what was junk. There was also too much of it, with every location you went to filled with containers holding a few coins, or one of a zillion foods/drinks, many of which did the same thing and most of which I never needed to use. It’s funny how I used to think RPGs with tons of containers to rifle through [looking at you, Elder Scrolls games] were pretty cool, but now it just feels like needless busy work. I’m hoping the sequel is easier to play in terms of console user interface, because the actual GAMEPLAY was pretty good.

Vampire Survivors — Late to the party on this one but now I get it. If you’ve never played this game it’s basically an auto-battler where you control the character. You just steer it around, the character attacks automatically, and when it levels up you pick what skill you want to improve. And that’s it, but the game throws SO many enemies at you once it gets going that it’s like a constant dopamine drip since everything you kill drops an experience gem. Hard to describe, and it’s really slow to start, but once you’ve done some runs and earned some gold to buy perks you’ll start going farther and farther and the gameplay gets more and more insane. Fun stuff when you want something that’s basically casual but still satisfying.

Wuthering Waves — This is where I spent the bulk of my gaming time this month, logging in every day to get my goodies and do dailies. My intent was just to beeline my way through the main story quests but wouldn’t ya know it? I got hooked. Now I’m actually following a guide of sorts (<– link to a google doc made by someone else; I think I found it on reddit) so I can play through the Companion, Exploration and Side Quests in some kind of logical order to maximize story enjoyment. In the meantime I’m making a real go at completing the battle pass thingie. If my math is correct I’m going to make it. Woohoo! At the rate I’m going I’m not sure I’ll catch up on content before I inevitably get distracted, but we’ll see.

Watching

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount+) — I guess maybe some folks didn’t like this season as much, but I still did. Sad it’s over but on the other hand now I’m not giving CBS any money, so that’s good.

Invasion (Apple TV+) — The end of Season 2 of this series was a gigantic cliff-hanger, then it took 2 years for Season 3 to arrive and it is…. weird. Instead of picking up at the end of S2 it jumps ahead 2 years. A lot of characters are just gone and (so far at least) we don’t even know exactly what happened after the cliff-hanger. It almost feels like a kind of reboot? The season isn’t done yet so maybe they’ll find a way to wrap it all up and have it make sense but I’m not hopeful. Also all the kid actors are growing like weeds of course so look nothing like they did when the show started. Maybe that’s why they did the time skip? We’re going to finish it, but sadly I’m not sure I can really recommend it.

Warehouse 13 (Amazon Prime) — We always watch some older, comfy show during lunch. Something we’ve already seen since often work interupts and we don’t finish an episode. This month we picked Warehouse 13, and it turns out that we never finished the series when it was initially on, so that was a delight. Finding new episodes we hadn’t watched, I mean. I have to say, I REALLY love this show. Maybe more now than when it first came out. Just the chemistry between the characters feels so genuinely warm and family-like. The last season is short and I didn’t realize it was and when the final episode ended and I realized the show was over, I was genuinely sad, and I don’t say that too often. If for some reason you’ve never watched it, it’s currently on Amazon Prime Video in the US. Check it out. It’s a weird, silly concept with a great cast. [After it ended we moved on to Haven so maybe I’ll have something to say about that re-watch next month.]

 

And that’s September. If things work out right, we might be moving in early December, which means we’re going to start packing pretty soon. That might impact October some, but it’ll probably be November before things get chaotic. But if I fall off the face of the earth it’s probably just because I’m too involved in moving headaches to post stuff.

[The Header image is a partial screenshot from Wuthering Waves. I used Flash 2.5, aka “Nano Banana”, to strip some UI elements out of the image. Ergo the Gemini watermark in the bottom right.]

Is Ananta an Anime GTA?

Posted on by Nimgimli

This is going to be really short, but Ananta is one of these upcoming anime titles I’ve been interested in. However I thought it was a social, slice-of-life kind of title with some casual action. Then I saw this long video about it and now I’m seeing all kinds of fun influences: Grant Theft Auto, Yakuza and Watch Dogs, right off the top of my head.

Take a look:

I’m now SUPER excited for this game. I just need a release date, dammit!

That’s all I got. I just wanted to share this video for folks who aren’t aware of this title.

Checking in on My Wuthering Waves Progress

Posted on by Nimgimli

In the last few posts here I’ve talked about being in a gaming-slump where I just wasn’t interested in playing games. I said then that I knew it was going to be a temporary thing, and it was. I’m back to gaming regularly, but I’ve been staying pretty focused on Wuthering Waves. Playstation says I’m at about 90 hours total, and I sometimes play on PC too so I figure I’m around 100 hours all told.

At first my plan was to ‘catch up’ with the story, mostly so I could watch Dusty Monk’s videos talking about it without being spoiled. I pushed hard for that but then realized I was WAY more behind than I thought I was. (I was equating in-game Chapters and Acts with game versions, so when people talked about version 2.4 I thought they meant Chapter 2, Act 4 but noo… not even close.)

Anyway contrary to my usual self-defeating behavior, I decided to give up on that plan and just play the game however I wanted. Crazy idea, right? I’ve been pushing the “Pioneer Podcast” (think battle pass) pretty hard, being sure to spend my Waveplates, do Daily Quests, and things of that nature. I have 4 characters at my current cap (80) but they all need more work in various areas. My Union Level isn’t high enough to push them to 90 yet but we’re getting there.

What keeps me coming back, besides the aesthetics which I just adore, is actually getting better. I don’t mean just progressing characters, though that is part of it. Having to farm materials for these characters means going up against the same bosses over and over, and as I do this I’m getting more skilled at playing. Again, this isn’t radical stuff, except it kind of is for me. I’m usually a button masher but now I’m learning timing and combos. When I go against a boss that I used to barely scrape by on, and now can almost take down without switching out characters due to being better at parries, dodges and pulling off combos, it feels really good.

Which I guess is what folks love those Souls-like games, eh? A boss that smushes you flat the first time eventually becomes trivial as you get better. I can finally see the appeal.

But this got me thinking about why I love Gacha games and this is what I came up with: they’re not that hard. They can BE hard if you want because there are always a variety of ‘tiers’ of enemies to take on. But the developers definitely don’t want you getting frustrated and quitting; it’s in their best interest to keep you logging in all the time. So they always seem to offer some path forward, whether it be leveling up characters to get stronger, choosing an easier world tier, or just getting more skilled as a player. And I love that. Again, no world-shaking revelations. Just me taking a moment to think about why I like the things I like.

Anyway, that’s about it for today, but before I go I wanted to share some un-related news.

I have had a 2nd blog since 2017 and it has mostly been collecting virtual dust. I’ve now starting using it to “learn in public” in order to keep myself motivated. It’s probably not going to be very interesting to 99.9% of the people who stumble on it, but here is the link to the first post in my new Learning Journey, in case anyone wants to keep me honest.

I might start posting my AI stuff over there too, since I know that’s kind of niche.