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Cake day: January 1st, 2024

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  • I mean, you say that, but a new player looking to get into Stellaris or CKII is looking at a $300 bill if they want all the content. In fact that’s what prevented me from getting into Stellaris, I own the base game, but when I discovered I’d need to shell out an additional several hundred dollars, even during a sale, for not only new species but just for base game mechanics, I stopped in my tracks.

    Compare with Civilization, I own Civ V and Civ VI and all the released content for each, pretty sure I bought each of those for less than $20.








  • In a very basic sense a “clock” is just a fixed oscillation. In CPUs, for instance, all your data is carried by bursts of electricity that you can think of like Morse code. Bits are delineated by the clock, which is one wire that lights up on a regular interval and does nothing else (the “clock signal”). Every other process uses that clock signal as a reference point to know when one piece of data ends and the next begins. Essentially the time between one clock signal and the next is one “frame” of CPU time and you’ll usually have a few million or so of those every second.

    So if we think of this in a physics sense instead of a computer science sense, a physics clock could be any particle or particle interaction that happens repeatedly on a regular schedule. It could even happen on an irregular schedule, there’s no law saying the clock has to be consistent. I think it’s probably on a regular schedule, but for all we know the pico-femto-Planck or whatever the basic unit of time ends up being defined as might have slight variance caused by who knows what. But the important idea to take away is that a “clock” in a fundamental sense is basically just any action that repeats. It could be or look like anything. Maybe time is tied to quantum foam fluctuations, or gravity in a general sense, or specifically the up quark doing something. I have no idea and I think this researcher probably doesn’t either.








  • Hell yeah I would.

    If you enjoy roguelikes, I got you in spades.

    • Slay the Spire is currently $8 USD on sale and is one of my most played games of all time. Deck building roguelike.
    • Caves of Qud is the single greatest modern classic roguelike that I’ve ever played and is also in my top 5 of most played games of all time. $20 USD. If you understand what the string of words “modern classic roguelike” means and that intrigues you then you’re in for a treat and a half.
    • Dead Cells speaks for itself on its store page and is technically out of price range for this at $25 when not on sale, but it’s worth the extra five bucks. It’s also worth the additional $25 for all the DLCs, after you’ve sunk 200 hours into the base game already.
    • Cult of the Lamb - ditto above about the price tag, you actually largely can’t go wrong with most things published by Devolver Digital. I own a significant percentage of their lineup and haven’t been disappointed. Devolver isn’t the dev company, but they take a lot of indie teams for publishing and I like them a lot. They’re good folks that sell good games.
    • Risk of Rain 2 - is also $25 but worth the squeeze. I’ll try to keep everything else in the price range.
    • Rift Wizard - $14.99, and the very similar but slightly superior Rift Wizard 2 at $17.99 are fun little strategy-heavy games about playing what amounts to wizard chess. The store page videos will describe this game better than I’m able to. It’s actually quite a good little game for people that enjoy games that require you to become ludicrously overpowered to survive.
    • Balatro - $14.99, the significant buzz around this game is entirely warranted, cursed poker will consume the next four months of your life. You have been warned.
    • Path of Achra - $9.99 A self described “broken build sandbox” that is, and very much looks like, a game made by one dude in his spare time. Don’t let the art fool you, I love it to pieces. Another game for people that enjoy games that require you to get super overpowered to survive.
    • Tiny Rogues - $9.99 I only recently got into this one. Great game, great replay value, check out videos to see if it’s for you.

    Outside of the roguelike genre there are also a couple good ones that I’ll name, though I do admit this list will probably be shorter:

    • Siralim Ultimate - $19.99 is one of the grindiest monster collector games I’ve ever played but if you enjoy grinding that sort of game, you can build teams that would dunk your competitive Uber Pokémon team into the shadow realm. It has a ridiculous number of creatures with a ridiculous number of absurd abilities and you’ll find yourself farming this game on and off for like six years. Or I did anyway, I’ve been following the evolution of the game since Siralim 2 in 2016. You can also play any of them on your phone, which I actually find to be the superior experience for the most part because it’s a good game to play in 10-minute bursts over long periods of time. If you’re going to get any of them go straight to Ultimate, don’t bother with the others, it’s the same game significantly evolved over time.
    • Exanima - $14.99 Top down physics based melee combat RPG. Check the store page videos and youtube to figure out if this interests you. It very much did interest me, and after several years of dev silence the game is now being actively updated again, which is very exciting.
    • Ultrakill - $25 currently (I know, I know, I said I wouldn’t do this anymore…) Buy it on sale if you’re a fan of fast paced FPS games, say new Doom for example. Don’t read, just buy. Trust me on this one. I wouldn’t steer you wrong, I promise.
    • Hollow Knight - $14.99 The greatest metroidvania of our age and spawned more knockoffs than the genre namesakes did. Pls give silksong.
    • Sunless Sea - $18.99 This is a very slow and very story driven game about being a sailor in hell. Familiarity with the general setting of Fallen London is very beneficial but is not required. This game is slow. But if you can vibe with it, it will deliver one of the most deeply touching RPG stories I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing. This game is truly a treasure that won’t be appreciated by most people. But even so I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t at least mention it for you to look at.

    I have to stop myself here because I could go on about this all night and still not be done. Gaming is my main hobby and indie games are the main games I play. Name me a genre you enjoy and I’ll scroll around for recommendations if none of the above catch your eye.