GWJ Conference Call Episode 485

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, Oxenfree, Lifeline, Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, Karate Master 2 Knock Down Blow, Aviary Attorney, Snow Day Games, Your Emails and More!

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This week Cory, Sean Sands, Allen and Amanda talk about their favorite games to play on a snow day.

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Comments

Please give me all your endearing "I fell asleep while using technology" stories. They're delightful and it makes my day every time I read them.

Yay! Deadly Tower of Monsters!

Fantastic game!

00:02:58 Oxenfree
00:05:52 The Deadly Tower of Monsters
00:11:19 Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak
00:18:44 Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
00:25:28 Karate Master 2: Knock Down Blow
00:30:52 Aviary Attorney
00:36:40 Lifeline
00:42:06 Snow Day Games
00:54:00 Your Emails

Oxenfree - what you wish oxen cost halfway through a run of Oregon Trail

Late one night, when I was but a wet-behind-the-ears Eve Online newbie, I found myself autopiloting a ship carrying most of my otherworldy possessions from one end of a high security area to another. Now, while there's nowhere in Eve that you're completely safe, my entire route had been mapped through "High Security" areas patrolled by NPC police.

Well, about 20 jumps into my long, slow, uneventful journey, I began to nod off. It must have only been a few moments later (as I hadn't traveled much further) when I was awoken by the sirens and alarms of my ship being target locked and taking damage. By the time I had complete control of my senses, I watched as everything I owned in the game turned into a loot pinata for a band of pirates. While the NPC police force arrived and destroyed my attackers, a pirate-aligned neutral ship had already scooped away my life savings and disappeared into the void.

Lesson learned.

What do you mean, Cory, you never listen to the game's soundtrack? **gasp** I always do. I love game soudntracks, it's probably 75% of my music library. And I'm not the only one!

Per Amoebic's request, here's my latest and greatest (sarcasm) story about falling asleep while gaming. I was playing (well, replaying for like the fifth time, really) Blackwell Deception on my iPad mini while in bed last night and basically fell asleep while playing it. The iPad never locked or powered down because I was in game and I woke up around 1am with the game still running and the music still playing (it's really nice, very jazz-like). Basically swapped my phone for my iPad mini to charge it up, turned over and went back to sleep. My only excuse is that I was jetlagged. But to be honest, I've done this a bit lately, ever since I've gotten the iPad mini, I'll play in bed and fall asleep playing FTL or Lords of Waterdeep, simply because I'll game until I drop, apparently.

I was laughing through the Snowpocalypse talk, because it's been years since I've had a decent amount of snow (last time was probably 2002, the last time I went skiing in the Alps, and before that, maybe 2000 when I was living in DC) and I miss it. Sure you go out in the snow! You build snowmen! You lie in the snow and do snow angels! Or maybe I'm still 12, apparently.
Nowadays, I don't really have a snow day game, maybe Guild Wars 2. If we were snowed in, we'd probably be too busy keeping the kids from going stir crazy.

"Big, long, thick, epic games."
"Really thick boardgame."

Something on your mind, Sean?

I've definitely drunkenly moved games forward and my brain has quietly faded away (in a frequently boozey stupor), only to boot the game up the next day and wonder where I was and what plot points I'd missed (looking at you BG2.)

Inventory management post blackout sessions was always fun. "Huh... I thought I had a bunch of healing potions... Weird. Wait, when did I get to level 12?! Oh... Oh no... I shouldn't have had the punch at that President's Day party...."

Played Mombasa last night. Whoa. What a crazy, rich smorgasbord of mechanics that works goddamned beautifully. Hard to get everything right in the first go round, this game is perfect for long term play and developing strategies. Highly recommended.

Amoebic wrote:

Please give me all your endearing "I fell asleep while using technology" stories. They're delightful and it makes my day every time I read them.

I grew up playing point & click adventure games with my sister, so whenever I was home from college on break, we would have marathon adventure game binges lasting late into the night. We had all these little rituals around those nights, setting the atmosphere, getting the proper snacks, etc - it was the best. Anyway, it would always become this test of wills to see who could stay awake longest, only ending when one (or both) of us had to grudgingly cop to having no idea what was going on, due to having been mostly unconscious for the last plot development. Very fond memories for me. No idea if/when we'll ever get to revisit that experience now that we're both married with kids, but I hope to again some day!

Amoebic wrote:

Please give me all your endearing "I fell asleep while using technology" stories. They're delightful and it makes my day every time I read them.

I have a Steam category called "Drunkies" for precisely this purpose. It's populated by games that I can't screw up through a bourbon/exhaustion stupor. No multi-hour epic stories (because I won't remember vast swathes of it). No twitch reactions required. Nothing that I can screw Future Me over with boozy bad decisions (e.g. RPGs).

Jonman wrote:
Amoebic wrote:

Please give me all your endearing "I fell asleep while using technology" stories. They're delightful and it makes my day every time I read them.

I have a Steam category called "Drunkies" for precisely this purpose. It's populated by games that I can't screw up through a bourbon/exhaustion stupor. No multi-hour epic stories (because I won't remember vast swathes of it). No twitch reactions required. Nothing that I can screw Future Me over with boozy bad decisions (e.g. RPGs).

I don't know. Boozeborne was my GOTY and I had some really great nights with Wastedland 2, Falloutofmychair 4, Divinity: Original Sin Cider, and Shadowrun: Flagonfall.

Deadly Tower of Monsters and Deserts of Kharrak both sound so good. I'd especially like to get the Homeworld game but for my complete spending freeze. I'd love to support the devs as much as possible.
...

I'm so grateful this time every year that snow is never a factor in my life unless I go looking for it. It's so horrible.
...

I was pretty meh on Lifeline. It was interesting, but I didn't really enjoy it. Was pretty shallow and short, it seemed like the first few pages of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Also the writing annoyed me, you'd think a stranded astronaut would have less time to complain about the metric system, actually you'd think an astronaut would understand the metric system.

I'm a bit surprised Alan is still playing after a week. It took me that length of time on my iPad which I leave at home, so only really checking in every 12 hours or so. I do want to go back and try for a few more ending in fast mode.
....

Never really had an embarrassing gaming moment, but the listener's adventure writing over a save game reminded me of Diablo II. I had my favourite falchion stored in the horadric cube with a few odds and ends, including some gems, while I was trying out a different weapon. But when I was fiddling around I hit the button to convert and turned the falchion into a socketed longsword and lost everything else.

I just leaned over and hit the power button to turn my PC off. Didn't help, it had already saved.

Amoebic wrote:

Please give me all your endearing "I fell asleep while using technology" stories. They're delightful and it makes my day every time I read them.

A friend and I stayed up until about 5am one night playing Super Puzzle Fighter I Turbo on Playstation. We both fell asleep while playing (albeit at different times) and agreed bedtime was in order. The funky thing was when we woke, we both admitted to visualizing gigantic colored blocks with breaker gems cascading through our dreams! This imagery has stayed with me even now, almost 20 years later.

Many years ago, I was visiting a friend and ended up getting snowed in at his house. This led to a Twisted Metal gaming session that went late into the night.

I dozed off while playing, and woke up to his laughter and saw that I had both the accelerator and machine gun buttons held down in my sleep, and was spinning my tires in a corner and shooting the wall. Good times.

OldMud wrote:

Many years ago, I was visiting a friend and ended up getting snowed in at his house. This led to a Twisted Metal gaming session that went late into the night.

I dozed off while playing, and woke up to his laughter and saw that I had both the accelerator and machine gun buttons held down in my sleep, and was spinning my tires in a corner and shooting the wall. Good times.

The original Twisted Metal? Played that a ton back then! My friend would always sneak a peak at the split screen to see where I was..cheater

I played some Twisted Metal 2 with friends at sleepovers. So great to stay up late snacking on frozen pizzas and pizza rolls and doritos and coca-cola.
I've never fallen asleep gaming though.

Anybody ever load up Holland (big & flat with nowhere to hide) with Twister (highest speed, lowest health) on hard mode, with as many opponents as possible gunning specifically for you?
It's basically impossible, we/I just wanted to see how long one could survive. Took out maybe one or two opponents.
Eventually I realized she gets damaged when doing her own damn special attack, that really made it hopeless.

SO GLAD Lifeline was brought up. Got the game free and loved it. The writing is fantastic and the gameplay/game interaction is unlike anything else I've experienced. After I finished it, I immediately bought the sequel, Lifeline: Silent Night, and Lifeline 2!

Amoebic wrote:

Please give me all your endearing "I fell asleep while using technology" stories. They're delightful and it makes my day every time I read them.

Oh, wait. I'm super late, but I have one of these. But not me.

Okay, so for a while there me and some friends were playing WoW. We had this setup in one buddy's room where three of us could cram in and ... well, play WoW. So on this particular occasion we're all doing our own thing. Friend 1 is playing a paladin, and gets into a fight. Friend 2 starts watching over Friend 1's shoulder, giving helpful advice. And Friend 1 is tanking, healing, tanking, healing... took kind of too long to buff himself... needs a heal... needs a heal. "Hey, are you gonna kill that thing? It's gonna eat your face. Guy?" *poke* "Uh, hey Zudz. Friend one just fell asleep mid-tanking that guy."

"He what? Did he die?"

"Well, yeah. He was asleep."

"Huh..."

And then we went to Taco Bell without him.

Okay, it's not exactly riveting. But you asked for it.