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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2829 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 7, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Video Game Thread

What are you playing?

Only a couple hours of Deus Ex this week:

Paul is alive and Jaime has joined us too. Maggie Chow was electro-shocked and chopped to bits with the Dragon's Tooth inside the Universal Constructor area. :) Soon after I ran into a bug back in NYC where the Illuminati contact, Stanton Dowd, wouldn't talk to me. Later discovered I had to shoot him in the head with a firearm. That actually worked. Next up, the Naval base.

Then I started a new Civ V game, intending to go wide. I finished the Liberty tree and ended up having only 3 cities by midgame. Whoops.

BTW, does anyone have any recommendations for games to play with my daughter?

She likes Nuclear Option, but in all honesty too much of it is hidden behind regularly reading the map and the killfeed; she can't really understand what's going on purely by what is visible on screen. Too much of the game state lives invisibly in the player's mental model of the game.

Are there any other similarly calm, technical games that are more readable for an illiterate five-year old?

I would have played Sprocket with her, since she expressed an interest in tanks, but the game seems to have developed away from its earlier, simpler form into a full-on 3D editor for turboautists, so that's out.

Kerbal Space Program she doesn't care for. Launching rockets and getting them to orbit takes too long, and there's not enough to see on the way.

I considered Factorio, but I think the overall complexity is far too high.

Any ideas?

And yes, just not playing video games at all and going outside instead is what I'd usually do. But I have a flu right now, so we're not as outdoorsy as usually for a few days, and the usual indoor plan A of doing physical exercises together will also have to wait. Plan B is just playing with building blocks, Lego, RC cars etc., and that seems like the likeliest choice.

Stardew Valley isn't really technical but really does appeal to lots of people, children and adults. It works at semi-literate level, but you do have to explain that she's playing an as an adult and that giving people trash or things they dislike does make them mad at you. And the game is serious that crops need to be grown and harvested before season end or they rot.

Also one of the town's two semi-functional alcoholics (Shane) is suicidal in a single cutscene, which can be avoided by just never talking to him.

Why not start the illiterate five-year-old on the edutainment classics? Things like Reader Rabbit, Treasure Mountain, Challenge of the Ancient Empires, or The Treehouse? @gattsuru's suggestion of Zoombinis is also great if she's a bit technical.

I've never played anything that could be described as "technical" with my daughters.

Travellers Rest and Stardew Valley were what I played with them. Mostly I played the game and they wandered around exploring and changing outfits.

She's about the right age to play the first few levels of The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis herself on easy mode. You'd need to assist for the later levels, but it's well-enough designed that adults can give hints without giving answers.

Nom Nom Galaxy is a bit factorio-meets-terraria, but at a much smaller and simpler scale, and clearer visuals. Still a lot happening off-screen, but it's a two-or-three item mental map, not the hundred-deep, and each step is pretty visible. May or may not be a good compromise.

The Witness's general story (to the extent it has one) is going to be way too much at that age range, but the actual puzzles are pretty simple and generally all in one screen or room. Just skip The Challenge.

Slime Rancher and Slime Rancher 2 have some dialogue and math, but the whole 'grab slimes and put em in a bin, combine em' is pretty straightforward. The Tarr might be a bit much, depending on her tolerance for peril, though.

Tiny Glade is just building, nothing else. Might still be meditative, and gives a lot of options for interaction, but may be too simple for you. Cloud Gardens is a similar boat, but a little more guided.

The Witness

I'll be honest with you: The Witness was too opaque for myself, right out of the gate.

For me too. I played for an hour or two, wandered around as I took actions that seemed to have no meaningful effect on the world, and eventually said "eh fuck this" and refunded the game.

I’m trying to think back to my earliest gaming memories.

I sort of remember firing up sim city 2000 and populous and ThemePark and Civ2 from DOS. And Baldies. I don’t know what tolerance kids have for old graphics. But I would highly recommend Baldies.

Technical games for illiterate kids... Hm. Not sure. But have you considered the Lego games? There's a new Lego Batman that's supposed to be good.

How about Roller Coaster Tycoon? Or similar? Any of the classic 18 billion SimX games... I know SimTown was deliberately designed as a younger age version of SimCity, for instance.

Mandatory plug any time someone asks about games for a child, regardless of any other context: Once she becomes literate I'd recommend the old Super Solvers and Operation Neptune games, which were legitimately enjoyable as games even without the educational aspect.

calm, technical games that are readable for an illiterate five-year old

  • Mini Motorways and Mini Metro (draw road/rail networks and watch cute multicolored cars/trains drive through them; imminent failure is indicated with lists of missing travelers or with big red circles slowly filling in, not numbers; no-failure endless mode is available)

  • Bridge Constructor (design bridges, drive cars/trucks over them, watch them turn red/blue with compression/tension and break, and redesign with more triangles)

  • Freeways (draw highway interchanges and watch cute multicolored cars drive through them; control scheme with no undo button may be difficult for a young child to understand and use, especially for multi-level interchanges)

  • Come up with a fun house idea and tell/help the child to draw a matching floor plan, with pencil and paper or on the computer with QCAD

I played a little more Doom: Dark Ages. Got to some giant robot level where the major mechanic was dashing to dodge, triggering a special attack opportunity. Since it'd been so long since I last played, this completely overwrote all the reflexes I'd built up playing the first 2 levels. Along comes the fourth level, and now I'm trying to get on foot Doom Guy to dash. He can only block. I keep dying repeatedly because my reflexes have been hacked.

Randomly this game Thronefall came across my vision, and I figured it looks like a good game to play to relax. It lived up to my expectations.

New game that just came out Corsair Cove. It's a city builder but the city you are building is a pirate haven in the Caribbean.

The challenge comes from trying to balance production chains on the island, and create efficient pathways around your cliff city.

You send pirate ships off on missions.

Sounds similar to Anno, but piratey.

I did play one anno game, but got a little overwhelmed with micro stuff. Something about the nature of this game discourages perfection.

Welcome back, Tropico 2!

A bit like Tropico for sure. Though I didn't think setting up zipline systems would be one of the funnest parts of this game.

CoH3's new Final Stand expansion pack(?) has been a ton of fun. Also picked up Fields of Mistria, which I'm liking more than Stardew Valley (but less than my nostalgia says I liked the not-yet-remastered Friends of Mineral Town). Only drawback is I can't quite fully recommend it to the missus, as she likes her cozy games sans delving and combat ("why would my character work in any mine, especially one that has dangerous monsters?"). Perhaps there'll be a mod at some point that'll take care of that for her, though.

I've heard Fields of Mistria being referred to as "Stardew Valley but gay", which confuses me given that Stardew already doesn't lack for such options. Cute waifus seem present too. Is it just the overall aesthetic?

The game does ask for your pronouns and loves its pastels (which isn't even gay, just cutesy). That's all I've noticed so far. Everyone's also romance-able as either sex, but that's been a farming sim staple for awhile now.

I have been playing Cyberpunk but hit a couple of snags that derailed me. I kind of want to go back but am not sure if I will. First, I've been having performance issues where the game will freeze entirely for a second or two. I can't pinpoint why exactly this happens but it seems to be when I turn around (maybe the engine loading or unloading things). It's really annoying though, moreso because I'm playing a melee build so I bounce around a lot as I go from enemy to enemy.

Second, I'm finally doing the Phantom Liberty content and I got to the tank boss fight. I died in the third phase (after the repair drones come out) and was frustrated because it was kind of a slog. There are a ton of weak points to hit in phase 1 so it takes a hot minute, which was even more annoying with the aforementioned performance issues going on. So I put the game down for the evening and haven't gotten back to it yet. We'll see.

In the meantime I finally started on the DLC for FE Engage, figure I'll knock that out before Fortune's Weave next month. And I also gave into the itch to start another P5R playthrough, though that's lower priority than other stuff.

I feel like Cyberpunk really struggles with bullet sponge enemies toward the late game, which has so far killed my interest in attempting subsequent playthroughs. I love so much of the game, but anytime you're unloading multiple magazines into a single enemy, that's bad design. Kiting enemies around corners taking potshots for 20 minutes while my cyberware recharges gets old real quick.

More Rimworld. But I just haven't been able to scratch the itch. For a good while, I've been craving a proper base-defense/siege kinda playthrough, a fortress against overwhelming odds. This hasn't worked very well:

  1. Raids are regularly derailed by the appearance of ridiculously overtuned enemies. Some modders make overtuned factions, which could be borne if it wasn't for the fact that the internal "cost" of the gear was set too low. Two dudes with god-tier equipment should not be considered equivalent in difficulty to five tribals with spears. It's comical how bad it can get, and I had to sort the problem by driving them over with my car. It's a bit more dignified than using dev mode to delete them, which is what I usually do.
  2. My mod list is surprisingly stable, but not performant. My 9800x3d only manages to run the modlist at 50% higher TPS than the default maximum game speed, despite several good performance optimization mods. Something is eating up a lot of compute, and I need to use Dubs Performance Analzyer to find it, it's not trivially automated by an LLM.
  3. This is worsened by the fact that I wanted to play on large maps. One of the most annoying aspects of Rimworld is that enemies spawn on what's effectively your front door. You need a massive array of turrets or a ton of traps/terrain blockers to slow things down enough for your pawns to get to their defenses, unless you have a very compact base. Large maps fix this, but come at a noticeable tax on your TPS.

Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord. I've been leading a band of captured bandits this time, turning them into a legitimate mercenary force. I smithed myself a swingable polearm right at the start and I feel like I'm playing Dynasty Warriors with how easy combat became.

I recently played a campaign, tried to climb the ranks in Vlandia, but was snubbed when King Derthert died just barely before I made it to Clan Tier 6 (even though all the Lords loved me and I hard carried the whole kingdom militarily). And that was after I also did not get the town I wanted, which I personally captured after giving back all but one of my held fiefs! So I left the Kingdom in disgust, renounced my remaining fief, and started a civil war from the outside, taking outlying castles and working my way in. And won it, of course, because the AI is useless. And then I quit, because what more can you do in Bannerlord? Map-painting is just too repetitive.

Yeah, once I take a land on my own thats usually when the countdown to growing bored sets in and I start back over.

More games need the old Sid Meier Pirates thing where you choose when to retire and are graded on your achivements against the cost in your character's health in the time spent in the game.

XCOM 2, Commander Ironman mode, of course.

My strongest memory: Missing 95% chances at point blank range is a bunch of bs.

I tend to think of those as if I make 40 shots in a battle, I'm likely to miss 2 of those in most battles.

I wonder how much frustration could be mitigated by listing the odds as 1/20 chance of failure rather than 95% success. I notice I subconsciously round anything 90% or higher to 100% and get mad when RNG fails me. The fraction reminds me that I will fail the "almost guaranteed hits" from time to time.

I don't know if XCom does this, but I've heard the Fire Emblem games will tilt the displayed vs. actual odds to be closer to how players mentally perceive chance... i.e. if the game says you have a 75% chance to hit, you're going to hit more than 3 out of every 4.

Older Fire Emblem games imply a roll of 1d100 in the user interface, but actually use 2d100 ÷ 2, resulting in a bell-shaped distribution. Newer ones use even more complicated rigmarole.

XCOM 2's RNG is biased toward the player (and does not match the user interface) on all difficulties except the hardest one.

But also it doesn’t make sense as presented.

I know what they’re trying to do: the D&D simulation where there’s a tiny chance (1/20) even on an easy shot that your foot will slip or they duck at the wrong moment or a grenade throws off your aim or something. And that works in an on-paper sim.

But when you can see in 3D and the whole thing is animated it’s just this guy getting a dreamy look on his face and aiming his gun three feet to the left for no reason.

The issue isn't that a 95% success chance will have you fail 5% of the attempts, I understand and accept that. The annoyance comes from how a shotgun aimed at point blank range directly at the enemy could somehow not hit. There's just no explanation for it.

I guess that just doesn't bother me because XCOM is essentially a 19th century tabletop game where the computer automates the measuring, note-taking, and manual referencing. Despite what the game is showing me on the screen, the "board" is not reality. It's a simplified mathematical abstraction of a more dynamic system. My guy isn't necessarily actually pointing his shotgun right at the enemy's face, so much as his minifig just happens to be positioned like that during this combat phase. The 95% misses are no more immersion breaking to me than the fact that everybody patiently waits their turn to move and attack.

Despite what the game is showing me on the screen, the "board" is not reality.

Then why is so much computing power wasted on showing a fancy but worthless simulation of reality on the screen? Compare the original X-Com (as well as Phoenix Point), where the probability of hitting actually is based on the 3D models.

I think the turn-based visuals really make it look goofy, as opposed to (say) the Ayys knocking your barrel aside right as you pull the trigger, or your character looking a bit more panicked at being right next to a berserker.

Yeah. "That's XCOM, baby!" Still bollocks though.

I relapsed on League of Legends this week. Classic is literally like if they released a new strain of crack. They brought back a lot of stuff I used to love playing back in seasons 2, 3, and 4. They even brought back the old map and music. Hearing the music feels as good as heroin does, I assume.

All of that being said, Riot is a complete cesspool of a company, even worse than the average.

Old-school LoL? Don't tell me such dangerous things!

I was amused to discover a few weeks ago someone had stolen my old Riot account that I hadn't touched in well over a decade.

They didn't compromise the password or email. They apparently just asked for the account and got it. I only found out because they tried to change the email - did successfully change the email in fact - and password. You would assume at this point, the account was gone. Not so. I just asked for it back, and got it. Their automated support was like "yeah, sure whatever, sounds right. here ya go". Then I changed the password and email, and now it's mine again.

What is even going on? How does the internet work any more?

They probably claimed "I lost access to my email and forgot my password" which is somewhat plausible for an account that has been inactive for a decade. There isn't really a good way to verify identity in a case like that. I guess Riot figures that the account doesn't have anything of transferrable value anyways - it's not like a crypto wallet where they can clean it out. Worst case they just give it back.

I lost my Civ4 game in 1898 when my neighbor and his two vassals attacked with 3 separate stacks that I could not repel. It was an amazing campaign that I put about 50 hours into over the last month. I’m playing with modded AI on prince difficulty. It’s a real puzzle to win. I’d highly recommend it. Peak Civ “one more turn” and a reminder of how far Firaxis has fallen with Civ7.

I started a new campaign last night and really like the start location I rolled. 2 food resources and 2 silver. Great natural boundaries. 4 neighbors. Let’s see if the Reich can win this time.

I’ve said it before, but we are truly blessed with at least 3 to 4 evergreen versions of the Civilization game. If you include mods, there is a lifetime of variety here and there’s really no need for a modern Civ. Maybe one day AI will be able to crack the civ5 and 6 DLLs and there will be a mod resurgence. Firaxis is dead as far as I’m concerned.

What's the AI mod you use?

AdvancedCiv.

Nearly zero gameplay modifications other than things like changing unit movement from the end of a turn to the beginning of a turn to help with reloading a save and not have to move everyone again.

It’s much more carefully developed than other mods which just turn all the AI into warmongers. There’s an elaborate set of mechanics governing how the ai interacts with you. It’s terrific.

Thanks. In return I will tell you not to waste time on the Cavemen2Cosmos mod. It has the fun idea of expanding the Civ timeline starting from the prehistoric era, but the AI can't handle the hodgepodge of new systems and resources.

More Darktide with my brother and, occasionally, some of my buddies. I finished all the penances for my Zealot, and only need two more missions to do the same for my Veteran. I find myself gravitating more towards support builds, away from burst-DPS. Maybe I'm just trying to be a Dad, but I want to be the last guy standing, and the first to pull the others back on their feet. Apart from that, having tried two of the DLC classes, I have to say I find them somewhat lackluster. The Skitarius at least has a ton of tools to play with, but the Arbites is pretty much a two-trick pony (whose tricks are "Dog" and "Stagger"). Neither is remotely as fun to build and play as the four base classes.

And then I played some Quasimorph. I'm running a fairly successful campaign, thanks to knowing the game fairly well already, and this time I avoid travelling like the plague in order to not give the NPC factions any time to tech up. Having asked other players on the Discord about this problem, they pretty much just went "LOL no, git gud, this is not an issue", which I deemed not very helpful. So here I am, only travelling when the missions run out and the planets align (literally). It works.

I'm also a huge fan of support builds in Darktide.

What are you using for that? I bounce between taunt ogryn, bubble psyker, and CDR-drugs hive scum.

Chorus Martyr Zealot with Eviscerator, and Voice-of-Command Veteran with whatever ranged weapon I want to level up. Either of those builds has the obvious get-out-of-jail-free active ability, and good overall staying power so long as he stays at his preferred range. It's what I play most of the time, especially when my buddies with low frustration tolerance are along for the ride.

Other than those guys, my Ogryn is all-in on firing the Twin-Linked Heavy Stubber nonstop, which is great fun until he runs out of ammo and becomes useless, and my Psyker is a pure melee built that uses Scrier's Gaze with the Force Greatsword, which has mad DPS until I fumble and die instantly. And then I have some other builds I play occasionally, like Crit-Bleed Zealot with the Eviscerator, which is fun for chasing kills-per-second records, and a comfy swiss-army-knife Skitarius that prints ammo and deletes bosses. Come to think of it, the latter is also sort of a support build, with the medical servo-skull and the toughness regeneration for allies.

Started a fresh Quasimorph save recently as well. It is, as usually, a bit tiresome that some upgrade branches are bottlenecked by things like raw ore which seem to only be found in a very select few stations in the inner system, or half a year of travel away.

You don't necessarily have to travel to get specific items. You can get them as mission rewards from factions that produce them (for ore, that's Coreward MG, usually). You can also send a loaded barter shuttle to a location that produces the item you need and gamble on getting it in return. Both of those are RNG-based, but so is the whole game. Travelling to buy an item is really a means of last resort.

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