Mini-review: Beholder

When Beholder became available to me on Twitch, a game I’ve been eyeing for a while, I didn’t have any excuses left. I had no idea what the game was about because I rarely look too deep into any game.

So I sat down with it yesterday, and quickly I started to get uneasy about it. We’re supposed to spy on the people in our building, and we’re a landlord. Just being put in the shoes of being a landlord is bad enough, adding to that with having to spy on the people, and write reports. I get it it’s dystopian, but I wasn’t sold on the narrative when I started playing.

I was very close to giving up, and calling it quits, when I realized there’s more to the narrative. And I continued playing. I’ve done 3 different runs, and the 3rd one I decided to stop. I was getting stressed by it, partially from the mechanics, and the time management. We’re able to be awake 24/7, conversations stop time, but writing your reports don’t. So occasionally you have to really stress in order to get the profile or report done at the right time.

Minor spoilers ahead.

Discovering that you can complete each “mission” in different ways is interesting though, and does allow for some replay-ability. And just realizing that we’re not only a bad person we’re just living under the circumstances that were handed to us and trying our best.

I’m still curious about some other characters, and figuring them out etc, but for now I’m going to put this game down and say I’m done with it, and I’m fine with what I experienced.

It’s possible that my current state of mindfog makes it harder to play the game, so maybe coming back to it some other time would be better. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll make a review in review series down the line.

Partnered link where you can buy this game: Beholder is currently available on Humble Bundle on sale the next 4 days and 20hrs for only €2.99!

If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments for this past summer and that will be my goal going forward too.

Day 12, the Sculpture (Finale)

11th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Luxemburg’s Journal

We found Von’s Jade sculpture! That means they were here! I asked the trader about it, if he knew anything else. And he told me about how some of the people who pass through here had visited Cannon’s colony. They apparently had had a horrendous time, and weren’t going back anytime soon. Guess that means their hospitality isn’t the best.

Von’s sculpture is such a gorgeous piece called 3FS, it bears an illustration of an ellipse surrounded by rectangles. The whole image is depicted by the careful arrangement of thousands of priests. If I had enough money I would’ve bought it back, and brought as a peace offering.

Now it’s time to get to their camp, it’s not very far from here, we should reach it before the end of the day.

Cannon’s journal

Ralph has fully healed, and we’re all doing fairly well here. The animals are becoming so abundant, I’ve decided to abandon the idea of taming the warg as well, but I needed meat to tame the polar bear we saved. It didn’t seem interested in staying with us after it healed, so I let it outside, but it’s such a gorgeous animal I want to see if I can change it’s mind.

Some of the other animals are staying though, the emu, and the elephant named Samson. This is overall good.

[…]

Something I didn’t expect happened today. Luxenburg, Croiro and Speedy showed up at the camp. They weren’t hostile against us, and I was surprised that they had found us at all. Since me and Von had decided to keep communications with the old colony, it was actually quite nice to see them again. And I handed over a few doses of luciferium (as many as they wanted to carry), and they gave us some Hospital beds, and began helping around the colony and finish building a new break room.

I think this is a great start of a new colony together, if they want to stay here, I don’t know. Maybe they can help us settle in at least, and then we can decide.

This is a RimWorld character journal, mainly following a pawn by the name of Cannon and their journey as they keep a diary on the rim. This is using a modded game as a source, so some things may differentiate from the core game.

If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments for this past summer and that will be my goal going forward too.

Day 11, It’s raining animals

10th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Luxemburg’s Journal

Today was the first time we got attacked by anything during our 7 day caravan. It was a measly three Scaria infected squirrels. I’m glad I didn’t try to go on this quest alone, because while three squirrels may not sound like a lot, if you’re caught alone it can be quite harmful, especially if one of your wounds get infected. We ended up with a small break after the ambush, patched Speedy up, collected some extra berries and herbal medicine.

…

At the next village we still didn’t find any luci. But we got some solid info, it was recommended that we cross through the forest along the path instead of going around the ancient asphalt road, unless we really want to visit the other villages in our hunt for luci.

As we’re running out of days I think it’s best to get to Orange Rock by following the suggested path, and hopefully it’ll bring us closer to figuring out where Cannon set up camp. I am hoping that Cannon didn’t sell all the luci immediately, but saved some of it for emergencies or got a change of heart when they realized that they’d done.

…

We made it through the forest by 20h, and the village is just north of the Rhino Chestnut Swamp, so I’m beginning to get my bearings on this side.

We’ve again been recommended to go to the next village, another of the Black Horse Maca faction’s, because according to where they saw the drop pod land its highly likely they passed by there if they were looking to sell anything.

Cannon’s Journal

While I was out deconstructing ruins for more materials, I found a polar bear. What? Similar to the other animals I’ve come across the past few days it was hurt, and these animals all seem to have crashed in cargo pods, and that often means they were domesticated by someone, so I guess they may want to start around. I hope the arctic wolf and polar bear will get along with Ralph.

Even with all the new animals I was just having a horrible day today, and began aimlessly wandering in the rain. Von calmed me down before nightfall, but I was so dazed I tried to use the telescope even though.

I apparently Von found an elephant? I hope we can feed all these animals…

This is a RimWorld character journal, mainly following a pawn by the name of Cannon and their journey as they keep a diary on the rim. This is using a modded game as a source, so some things may differentiate from the core game.

If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments for this past summer and that will be my goal going forward too.

Day 10, Progress

9th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Cannon’s Journal

We finished the first guest lodgings! Von helped me move some furniture, I put up some wall and roof, and it looks okay. Still need some extra floor, but at least now they can sleep in some beds.

There was a caravan visiting, and they had an arctic wolf available, and I decided to buy it instead of trying to tame a warg all on my own. I also found a hurt emu that I brought home and patched up. I guess I’m an animal collector now.

It’s still raining, and we bought a telescope, will have to wait with using it until it stops raining.

Luxenburg’s Journal

We reached the Village Rego, of the Union of Verea. They greeted us and said they’d heard about us from our neighbouring villages. They are the same faction as our second closest neighbour. They also didn’t have any luci to sell, and we added a small amount to our food rations, just in case.

According to them the drop pod from 10 days ago did not go north of them, but seemed to have landed somewhere south west of where we were right now. And if we continue following the ancient asphalt road we may be able to get more info from the next village over. Maybe the people are looking for had visited there.

The drop pod going south of them, doesn’t mean that Cannon and Von set up a settlement south of here. They could have gone anywhere from where they landed, but let’s hope they set up somewhere close to where they landed.

This is a RimWorld character journal, mainly following a pawn by the name of Cannon and their journey as they keep a diary on the rim. This is using a modded game as a source, so some things may differentiate from the core game.

If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments for this past summer and that will be my goal going forward too.

Day 9, All the Rain

8th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Cannon’s journal

Both me and Von were awake in the early hours of the morning, around 3-5h we found ourselves cleaning up the barracks, and Von did some cooking after slaughtering those rats I killed yesterday. The rats didn’t have Scaria fortunately, but something must’ve driven them to become manhunters nonetheless. This meant more meat for us.

The rain is still pouring down, and I’m almost convinced I’m aging faster. And being wet all the time isn’t fun. It’s definitely sapping my mood.

I’m going to spend the rest of the day today cleaning up a little bit more, and then I want to set up some guest beds for the next time we get visitors. Maybe plan out how to lay out the rest of our housing situation here.

I also want to build a little crafting room, but that will have to wait until I’m done building some of the essentials. Not like I’ll have time crafting until then anyways. So that would mean I have to build the crafting room after the comms console.

[…]

Remember the cat I saved? Jackson? He seems to have settled in and want to stay with us. At least I think so, he came back inside after having left for a few days and is now sleeping with the other animals.

I was also tempted to tame a warg today, unfortunately no luck but at the same time I’m glad I didn’t get attacked by it. Maybe I shouldn’t try again…

Luxemburg’s journal

We reached the river about 7h this morning. It looked like we could either follow it until we hit the path, or cut across a valley to further down the path, so we decided to cut across the valley. And we hit the path around 13h. Should be maybe a day or so to the next village now. Then we can begin triangulation for Cannon and Von. If we’re really lucky maybe they sold off the Jade statue, and if we can find it we’d be able to know for sure they were there.

This is a RimWorld character journal, mainly following a pawn by the name of Cannon and their journey as they keep a diary on the rim. This is using a modded game as a source, so some things may differentiate from the core game.

If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments for this past summer and that will be my goal going forward too.

Kingdom Classic – as a shared experience + New Lands

I picked up Kingdom Classic from Humble Bundle when it was free. Both me and Loa picked up the game, and he started playing it the night before me. We had a shared enjoyed experience of it. Which is something I’ve missed. If we weren’t playing multiplayer together, we’d occasionally find a single player game and play it at the same time. And it’s such a fabulous way to experience a game with someone.

Over the weekend we kept sending messages to each other asking if we’d experience x, or maybe y, yet, and it was such a fabulous thing to have that between us again. We’ve been apart for most of the pandemic, and he’s working so much that we haven’t really played games together.

So what about the game, I’ve always been an avid fan of strategy games, of tower defense, and just banging my head against the wall as I learn how the mechanics of a game works. This game truly had it all! It was also incredibly pretty, and relaxing in it’s own way.

While I spend two days “off” this weekend letting myself zone out from everything, especially the election news, I luckily had this game on hand. I had already been eyeing Kingdom Two Crowns for quite a while, but I’d been waiting with buying it because at the moment I’m not buying games unless I know I’m playing it pretty much immediately. My library has become unruly.

I’m going to publish some pieces behind spoilers, after this, but first I’m going to say: If you enjoy strategy and tower defense-esque games, along with some minor resource management I highly recommend this game.

Game mechanic spoilers that I think are enjoyable to experience for yourself the first time. But also me and Loa’s interactions while playing the game.

First day of playing it myself, I shot a message to Loa fairly soon asking: Have you lost your crown yet?

His response was “lololol, yeah”

It was the first thing that happened to me because I wanted to explore the map, and just didn’t know what the mechanics were like

A followup, I also acquired Kingdom: New Lands at some point via Twitch. And I set out to play it recently. Since I had managed to beat the Classic version, I was excited to try out a different way to experience this game. And oh boy did I enjoy it! Exploring in a new way, and discovering “blueprints”, which I honestly thought were map segments in order to help you travel to another region. and then having a more wider variety for how you can experience the game.

I did end up looking up some details, because I wasn’t sure how they worked, and I am kind of at the point in my life that, if I can’t figure something out and it’s just driving me up the walls I’ll look it up, it doesn’t necessarily detract from my experience. And I believe that if you feel like it would detract, you could just NOT look it up. But I do appreciate that it can be difficult to know what is “safe” to look up. Will it spoil something.

I noticed something, that you may appreciate knowing, and that’s that most of the wiki for the game, has all 3 games in the same articles, because they built on the same architecture, and do certain things differently.

End game spoiler for Kingdom: New Lands

I unlocked everything and ended up on Skull Island, which is a lot closer to how Kingdom Classic is, but bigger (I think it’s with 3 portals on each side). And you can’t access some of the really cool features of the other maps, if you want something special you have to bring it.
This for me builds up replayability. And I’ll probably keep this game installed for a long while so I can experience it over and over again.

One nitpick I have is that there doesn’t seem to be a straightforward way to reset your progress entirely, like if several people use the same computer for gaming, and sharing the library. But I’m sure there’s ways around that if I really wanted to.

If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments for this past summer and that will be my goal going forward too.

Day 8, Rats

7th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Cannon’s journal

Last night I was feeling like I was ready to smash things, but luckily Von managed to calm me down before I did any real damage to our barracks.

Today however, Von is down with the food poisoning, that I mentioned yesterday. They blame themselves, but I blame me for not finishing the kitchen before they cooked in it. My food poisoning passed fairly quickly, just a good night’s sleep and I’m feeling better today.

While I was taking care of our sick guests, yes they all got food poisoning too, I heard some weird sounds outside, and scratching at the door. As I took my gun out all my animals immediately knew to join me. I opened the door to meet four manhunting rats trying to attack me, but luckily Ralph and one of the puppies, who we haven’t named yet, managed to block the door and hurt them enough so I could just finish them off. I guess we’re eating rat once Von is over their sickness!

It has occurred to me that we don’t have anyone who knows how to plant food, or which berries are safe to eat. So simple meat meals it is. Good thing I brought my sniper rifle.

Luxemburg’s journal

We’ve been walking all day, and we’ve crossed two of the rivers, I can sense that the next one is close by, but we decided to stop for the night, around 22h, when we found a nice clearing to set up a fire for the night and lay out our bedrolls, eat, and just relax.

We figured we have about 10 days of food, but we’ve all taken our last luciferium, which gives us about 6-7 days before our brains start to break down. I hope we can find some soon, or we’re all dead.

This is a RimWorld character journal, mainly following a pawn by the name of Cannon and their journey as they keep a diary on the rim. This is using a modded game as a source, so some things may differentiate from the core game.

If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments for this past summer and that will be my goal going forward too.

Day 7, Staying connected

6th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Cannon’s journal

I woke up from the strangest dream this morning. In it me and Von decided to cut all contact with the main colony, but keep in radio contact with the caravans that are out and about right now (I don’t know why…). When it happened, there was this mix of joy and sorrow just overwhelming me. I’m already mourning my relationship ending, but the loss of friends just made it so much worse. Even if I was happy about not being in touch with some of them anymore, I was still overwhelmingly sad.

This dream made me realize that I can’t entirely break from the other colony, and as soon as we get a comms console up and running I’ll reach out to them again, give them our coordinates, figure out our relationship a bit further. Considering all the things I need to do around here, this may take a while.

[…]

Before all that I was patching up our guests most of the night, 3 of them are now on sleeping spots on the floor, but resting, and I don’t think they are going home with the rest of their group.

I think we all may have been food poisoned, it has to be because my kitchen isn’t well enough built yet, it was still sharing a room with the butcher’s table. I have finished of the separation to the actual kitchen area today, and am hoping that I can get hold of some materials so I can build some sterile floors, currently there’s no floor at all in there.

Von Napier is up and running again. Fetching some old broken furniture from the nearby ruins, maybe we can use some of it. It also looks like they cleaned up the floor before they went out, which I’m grateful for. There was such a bloody mess everywhere in our barracks when I went to bed last night.

Luxemburg’s Journal

We’re heading into the forest looking for the first river, hopefully just continuing in a straight line until we hit that 3rd river, which won’t be today.

This is a RimWorld character journal, mainly following a pawn by the name of Cannon and their journey as they keep a diary on the rim. This is using a modded game as a source, so some things may differentiate from the core game.

If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments for this past summer and that will be my goal going forward too.

Day 6: Cats, caravans and chaos

5th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Cannon’s journal

I found a wounded cat today. While I was carrying him back I noticed something was going on back at our barracks. A trader was visiting, but they were fighting something or someone. Apparently some raiders from the Stabber Party decided to welcome us to the neighborhood, apparently you can’t catch a break anywhere in this godforsaken world.

The traders managed to fight off 2 of them, while I was carrying the cat back. The trader lost one of their people and one of their muffalos and two boomrats, I’m glad it was raining. Our walls seem intact. I tried my best to patch him up. I’ve decided to name him Jackson.

I looked out through the door and noticed that two more bandit raiders were making their way to our barrack. While I was looking down my sights Ralph went charging straight at one of them. He got shot 4 times, and they kicked at him. He was downed…

I had to retreat back into the barrack, and figure out how to deal with them. The rain really makes it harder to aim. As soon as they got in the door they noticed the luciferium on the floor, and picked it up to run away with. I knew that this was my chance, when the muffalo went down outside it had dropped a psychic insanity lance, and I knew that if I could get to it in time, I may be able to distract them enough to save my supplies.

I don’t know what it is about pirates like these but, they quickly get distracted by booty and ignore people around them even if they are about to get hurt. I’ve seen them run straight over traps, with no regard to their own life. But we didn’t have any traps. I made it around the corner of the house, picked up the insanity lance and moved around the building, I figured I could cut into their path and reach them faster if I went around entirely on the north side of the building rather than going back around the south side, as I could tell they were heading west. The lance lived up to its name, as it hit the first raider they immediately dropped the luci, turned around and attacked their companion, who just kept moving. I was in a good position to shoot them with my sniper rifle, even in the rain, my shooting skills are fairly accurate. I aimed for the one making a beeline for the forest edge first. That forest is too thick to follow anyone through. And I figured it was my best shot. I downed him on my second shot. Now it was time to deal with the confused one. They hadn’t redirected their rage towards me or anyone else yet, so I could slowly take my aim. I hit them in the chest, and they went down.

Now Ralph, was he alright? I picked up the luciferium, to get it out of the rain, and dropped it off inside, ran straight for Ralph who was on the other side of the building. I assessed the damaged and figured that I could carry him inside to patch him up. He wasn’t bleeding too badly, but if I had let him be he would’ve bled out over night, no doubt.

I checked in on Jackson again, he seemed to be doing alright.

Our guests however. Two of them started fighting and wouldn’t stop until one of them went down, unfortunately the one who started the fight went to fight someone else as well. I shouldn’t have taken in guests before I had proper lodging set up for them, but I really wanted the company.

Phew. It’s been a long day. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, I managed to set up a little kitchen corner, so Von Napier can cook us some nice meals tomorrow. I really don’t know how to cook, but at least I can build things.

I hope the rain will let up soon.

Luxemburg’s Journal

We continued all the way north, as far as the staked out path would take us, before we have to go off into the part of the Oomera Forest that rests between Rhino Chestnut Swamp and Tona Wetlands, two swamps we want to avoid crossing if we can. We reached Waroon, a Butistan village, at the end of the path, and got a chance to rest.

The limited information they had about the drop pod seems to indicate that it is indeed somewhere beyond Rhino Chestnut Swamp, and they figured that it’d be best for us to continue north-northwest until we hit the next staked out path. It’s not even any old asphalt roads there, just dirt paths made by caravans taking those paths over the years. They said that if we continue following that path we’ll eventually meet a bend of an asphalt road, and in that bend there should be another village. If they didn’t see the drop pod go beyond them, we can begin to triangulate where Cannon and Von Napier set up camp.

We’re staying here until tomorrow, then we’re getting a move on, we need to cross two rivers, and by the third we should find the path. I hope no predators find us first. It should take us about two days to reach the 3rd river, then we can rest again before moving further on following the road.

This is a RimWorld character journal, mainly following a pawn by the name of Cannon and their journey as they keep a diary on the rim. This is using a modded game as a source, so some things may differentiate from the core game.

If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments for this past summer and that will be my goal going forward too.

Day 5: Pursuit

4th of Septober, Spring, 5510. Psychic Rain

Luxemburg’s diary

We left around 7h this morning, all packed, brought some items to sell. Once the rage was over, the hunter in me kicked in. We have to be smart and strategic and pick up supplies where we can.

We know the pod went north of us towards Rhino Chestnut Swamp, maybe even beyond. We haven’t tracked much that way, but are hoping that our closest neighbors can help us with some more info about the region. Omeera Forest is big, and we definitely won’t be able to cover it all on our own.

If we’re lucky maybe one of our neighbors will have some luci too. Bless your lucky comet, maybe a meteorite will fall and bring us something good to sell.

[…]

We made it to our closest neighbor, from the Black Horse Maca, by 13h. For a second there I thought they wanted to sell us luci, but no they wanted to buy our luci, our very limited supply. We only have one dose each left… ugh. The last they can do is offer us a better price if they want it so badly.

We managed to unload some of the heavier things we were carrying. Apparently Speedy had the bright idea to bring a large marble statue with us. It fetched us a pretty penny, but not as much as that Masterwork Jade statute Cannon stole from the colony. Okay, technically it was made by Von, they can do whatever they want with it I guess, but couldn’t they have taken only that and not the luci as well?

I wonder if we can stretch our luci rations a bit further. Is it worth the risk?

We also sold a bunch of Human leather dusters, even the merely good ones fetch some decent change. I still don’t understand how we ended up with so much human leather, no one has cut me into any human meat action, it just keeps going to the animals in their kibble. A waste if you ask me, they would make lovely lavish meals. If only I knew how to cook.

We took a small break before heading off to the next neighboring colony, asked around but no one seemed to know where the drop pod had landed. We ‘re following the river north. This is probably one of the worst parts to get through, yet it’s faster than going around, so we have to do it.

[…]

By 17h we had made it through the path skirting along the river to the next trading partner. Picked up some extra travel rations, got rid of some more junk, but found no luci. Unfortunately they didn’t seem to know anything about the drop pods either. So I guess we just got to keep moving. We can probably make it to the 3rd encampment before nightfall.

21h, we made it. And again they wanted to buy our luciferium, not sell any. I decided to unload the Thrumbo horns, get extra food rations again, and pick up some extra medicine, because I’ve never gone the way we’re going, and who knows what’s out there waiting to attack us. We’re a fairly small caravan so we should go unnoticed for the most part, but it’s hard to know when it’s raining like this. We also kept the hospital beds we brought with us, hoping maybe Cannon would trade it for half the luci, at least.

Cannon’s Diary

Still pouring down. How many days of rain is this? I really wish my duster and cowboy hat would protect me better from the rain, but this just seems to soak straight through. It’s hard to see what I’m doing, and work is really slow. We almost have a barracks set up now. I need to salvage some more steel for the door so we can keep the heat in. I saw some more ruins in the distance when we arrived, so I’m going to go scout them out today.

I think the weather and the cold got to Von Napier, they have not been themselves today. Just wandering in the rain, not really doing anything. I tried to calm them down but it seems to have had no effect. Maybe one of the animals can snap them out of it with some cuddles, I know that always helps me.

We also got our first set of visitors, and we don’t even have any guest-beds yet. I didn’t expect anyone to come visit us, especially so soon, maybe it helped that we went trading in the area before we settled down. Time to find us some extra beds.

This is a RimWorld character journal, mainly following a pawn by the name of Cannon and their journey as they keep a diary on the rim. This is using a modded game as a source, so some things may differentiate from the core game.

If you’re enjoying reading these little articles or stories, consider throwing some support my way: via ko-fi or alternatives. I’m currently trying to cover my student loan debt payments for this past summer and that will be my goal going forward too.