ZZalapski

@Quarth In the US, physical copies would seem to be available through Target, Best Buy, and GameStop.

There's also Chicken Police, which has a feline femme fatale.

So far on the Switch, there are management sims for running a:

• bakery
• cat café
• farm
• prison
• hospital
• graveyard
• bed and breakfast, as a friggin' bear

How long before we can tout performance in these games on our LinkedIn profiles?

What a terrible loss.

F*ck cancer.

Just finished it earlier this week. Total runtime for me was about 13 hours, which means most people can probably finish it in 10 hours. Second half is easier to deduce than the first, by virtue of a smaller pool of possibilities. The story never slows down, though.
The amount of details Lucas Pope packed into this game — details that can facilitate your deduction — is marvelous, as is how he can evoke feelings for characters without any assistance from the intentionally-degraded visuals. Once you have a broad sense of the whole story, you feel bad for the tragedy that ensued because of the one true scoundrel on the ship.
If I ever meet Lucas, I would thank him for this game. I'd also ask him if he used this as the basis for one of the deaths (mild spoiler):

https://tabletopwanderers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Exploding-Kittens_shuffle_01_web.jpg

It won't be Return of the Obra Dinn, because I finished that two days ago. Looking forward to the discussion!

"At one point, our Unitron had dinosaur legs and massive axes for arms. Not long after, treads made it look much more like a tank with a rapier for one Arm and a massive sledgehammer for the other."

Pics or it didn't happen.

@Maulbert Beat me to that joke.

I hear they've started designing a Pokémon based on the Sagrada Familia, but I don't think it'll be done in time for the game's release.

@DogDetective She hasn't appeared in any promo material so far, which is somewhat concerning.

Even more extreme than Very Very Valet?

Add Daisy, you cowards.

@CharlieGirl Well, you got me there.

@CharlieGirl Aren't succubi, by definition, only interested in men?

@gcunit Can you suggest a physical release too?

I saw a PikaCar in NoA's parking lot when I visited a friend in Seattle in the aughts. Somehow resisted the urge to jack it.
I've long maintained that the PT Cruiser is an ugly deathtrap that is a blight on the automotive landscape (you'd think so too if you got out of one before it caught fire), but I can make an exception in this case.

@BruceBrenneise Thanks for your work on such a great game!

The Gremlin Nob is my nemesis, because it ups its strength whenever you use a skill (like defending), so you have to assess whether you can take it out in the next turn if you let it whack you this turn.
For the bosses, the Time Eater is my least favorite, because it can abort your turns prematurely if you forget about the 12-card tally reset, and it wipes out your applied nerfs with Haste after you kill it the first time.
As far as strategy vs. luck, I'm reminded of the saying that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. But I'm also reminded of the saying that it's better to be lucky than good. That said, you should have a general approach in mind, but sometimes it's just not gonna be your day.
There's no such debate with one extra energy vs. two extra cards per turn. Extra energy for me, every time.
(Biscuits were fine, but I would've appreciated knowing about the pizza earlier, ha ha.)

In short, I had a great time playing this game even if I didn't finish it, and thanks to Kate for suggesting it. Best wishes for a full recovery with no long COVID!

This is a hard game, but in a good way, in that it compelled me to try different things to get better on the next play-through. I logged 50 hours in the previous month before it even occurred to me to look up strategy tips from other players.
There's something to be said in favor of all four characters: the Ironclad's straight-up frontal assault, the Silent's death-by-a-thousand-shivs and poisons, the Defect's passive attacks with the orbs, and the complexity and timing of using the Watcher's various stances. I prefer the variety of the Defect's approach, but the Watcher's attacks felt the most gratifying to pull off whether it be via the Divinity stance (+3 energy, 3x attack damage), the Judgment card (instance death to enemies with 30 or less HP regardless of Block, so FU to the Spheric Guardian), or the Omega card (50 damage to all enemies at the end of the turn).
(cont'd)

I'd be really impressed if they can get James Avery to reprise the voice of Shredder, considering he passed away in 2013.

Command & Conquer Red Alert: We have to time travel to save/conquer the world!
Parkasaurus: We have to disrupt dinosaur interfamilial dynamics for capitalism!

Nicalis recently emailed me asking if I wanted to upgrade my order for the Repentance cartridge to the deluxe edition for $10 (would've been $20 otherwise), so they may be announcing a ship date soon.
Also wanted to express my appreciation for the thoughtful exchange here on a serious topic. Far too few of those on the internet.

Cowboy Bebop (an anime about, you know, bounty hunters in space) first aired in 1998 to critical acclaim, well before development started for MP3. Granted, there's not a total overlap between video game fans and anime fans, but it seems astounding that no one who mattered at Nintendo would've been aware of the concept of bounty hunters.

Death to Zipper T. Bunny.

@RubyCarbuncle As with many other things, you get better at it the more you do it. I was playing it every day for the better part of a year because I was going for the in-game achievement of collecting 999 tickets from the daily missions (max 4 per day), and I improved substantially over that time. I'm still far from a master, but I've won a handful of times, which isn't nothing.
The battle royale mode isn't the toughest part, though. That would be the marathon mode, for 999 lines cleared. When I finally beat it (65 minutes, without pausing), I felt like clawing out my eyeballs.

Would be nice if there was a physical version with both single- and multiplayer capabilities.

The surfing Cramorant is my favorite. Then again, I seem to be partial to surfing Pokémon in general.

"X doesn't make your former girlfriend come over and tell you all the reasons you suck"
Pfft, I didn't need a controller button for that.

How would the comments for the game of the week be kept separate from comments about next week's game? Separate posts/threads?
It's too bad that this can't be done in real time over Discord or something, but I get that it'd be challenging with the time zone differences.

"Dark Deity lacks the romance options of Fire Emblem"
I want my gaming equivalent of making two action figures kiss each other, dammit!

Just off the top of my head, the Switch has Golf Story, What the Golf, Mario Golf, and now this. Yet I can't think of a decent title for hockey or (American) football. What gives?

This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard, today.

Eh, still prefer my anime to be in physical form, like my games.

Created an account to express my surprise that Kate didn't write this article, given the topic and subtitle.