What Did We Play Yesterday?

Back when I was interested in the oldest examples of console roguelikes, I discovered this gameboy game. More recently, as I revisit the gameboy, I discovered it again. It offers four types of quests: killing enemies, collecting gold, freeing fairies, or collecting orbs. Part of the strategy is learning the enemy behavior patterns, but like many of these types of games avoiding enemies is generally the way to go. It works extremely well as a casual handheld game for short pick up and play sessions.

Still truckin' in Against the Storm, though I realize I should have cranked up the difficulty much sooner. I'm currently working on Veteran but I may need to dip into Viceroy soon.

I decided to give Ball X Pit another go, and I've done better this time focusing on area damage. I also recently unlocked buildings that allow the player to passively earn resources, which should help, but for the most part I'm still just bumbling along.

I've got a ridiculous amount of hours in this. I was a little slow on the uptake, and didn't start actively working toward repairing the seals (and thus permanently extending the storm cycle) until recently. The forward momentum has felt a little slow, but I think that may be because I was casually playing and not working towards the main goal.

So I guess I'm obsessed with this now. And I'm aware, back in my hindbrain, this game is extremely repetitious, so I feel a little weird about my fixation in the, "Why do I like this?" sense. I haven't played many city builders but in a lot of building games one of the most fun parts for me is starting out. That's why I continually restart my game in Shapez and Factorio and so on. This game has me constantly restarting every hour or so. So that part mashes buttons in my brain that like to be mashed. The meta progression is pretty slow IMO, but as a result, I feel like I'm developing a really solid feel for the mechanics.

It helps that you can speed things up. I sit on 3x speed most of the time now.

The screenshot is one of my better towns. I've begun experimenting with setting up multiple hearths rather than having a sprawling mess where my workers are constantly scurrying back to the home hearth. Now I set up additional hearths and warehouses as soon as I have space (their radius cannot overlap), and I move houses over when I do that.

After dieying twice I decided to switch up my strategy. I used to go for the small glades, but now I completely ignore them and go for a big glade as soon as possible. I nearly always have enough time to figure out how to manage the threats before anything terrible happens, even early in the level. The rewards are much better and the level of tree hate is more manageable comparatively. I always keep an eye out for tools, because sending caches back to the Queen is a necessary boost of reputation. I'm also a lot better about sacrificing fuel during storms to keep hostility/tree hate down.

I've encountered one situation where I couldn't fulfill deeds (based on the territory, deeds were locked), and that made things much harder, because the only way to reliably get a boost of reputation was to send back caches or have extremely high resolve. That's the only hazard I would consistently avoid at this point.

I finally looked up pipes and figured out I haven't unlocked the rainpunk update that lets me actually use them. I wish they'd explained the rainpunk generally a bit more, because I assumed I needed to connect collectors to buildings or something, but could never figure out how. Turns out you treat it like a mine upgrade and just plop down x pipes for a bonus. Currently, I usually start collecting rain in the mid-stage of a town because I can use the water for crafting and quests.

Playing a lot of this. Had a few losses now. One, I expanded too far out without fortifying my hearth area. On the other, I completely lost track of the Queen's impatience and lost by a hair, basically. I got greedy and looted all the caches instead of sending some periodically back to the Queen. I sorta forgot (?) about the ability to reduce hostility by making sacrifices at the hearth, so I'm doing better with that. Rainpunk is still a ??? I'm harvesting rain down but IDK about the pipes and I keep forgetting to look it up.

Wandered into Scarlet Orchard, which is a more dangerous place. Things were a little dodgy for a while. The soil there cannot grow, so you have to forage or buy food, and I was always kinda low. This is the first time I had a villager leave me (sob). In the beginning, I had a LOT of impatience built up but the tide eventually turned.

There's an archaeology feature here, and treasures to be found, but I wasn't able to get into that I was mainly focused on keeping everyone fed and happy.

Exploring new biomes, and starting to get the hang of various production lines. The jungly one is probably my favorite, in part because the trees sometimes offer other resources beyond wood.