I said the other night that I'd talk a bit about Thunderstone "tomorrow" and then promptly didn't! Allow me to rectify that forthwith.

Thunderstone (or, more accurately, Thunderstone Advance) is a tabletop game for 1-5 players. There have been numerous releases over the years, most of which can be combined together to create an overall "custom" experience; it is a deckbuilding game, so most sets consist almost exclusively of cards, and in each individual playthrough you only use a certain selection of cards from the available pool, making for a great deal of variety.

The set I have is loosely based on Monte Cook's Numenera RPG setting, but no prior knowledge of the setting, stories or characters are required to enjoy the game. Many of the other Thunderstone sets have their own themed setup, but the common mechanics and card layouts mean they can be freely combined as you see fit.

Thematically, Thunderstone is a game about defeating monsters in a dungeon, with the ultimate aim being to defeat a powerful foe called a "Thunderstone Bearer". You accomplish this by engaging in one of two different activities on each of your turns: visiting the village, or delving into the dungeon.

Each turn, you draw a hand of six cards from your deck. The available cards consist of heroes, weapons (which must be equipped on heroes to be useful), items, spells and villagers. Most cards have a "gold" rating on them, and when you visit the village this is the main thing you'll want to be paying attention to.

At the start of the game, you choose a selection of all the aforementioned cards to lay out on the village board. Each card has a price, and on a village turn you can use up to the amount of gold you have on the cards in your hand to purchase something. This is then put on your discard pile and added to your deck that way; when you reach the bottom of the discard pile and reshuffle your deck, the new card will then be in the mix.

Delving into the dungeon also involves making strategic use of your hand of cards. In order to defeat a monster, you must accumulate enough attack power using your hand and the abilities on the cards therein, while taking into account the "darkness level" of the dungeon area you are hoping to defeat a foe from. Banish the darkness with enough torches or light-emitting items and there is no attack penalty; if any darkness remains, the penalty gets more severe according to how deeply in the dungeon your foe is ensconced.

Defeating a monster rewards you with experience point tokens, which can either be spent for one-off boons or used to level up hero cards, and victory points, which are how you win once the Thunderstone bearer has either been defeated or escaped the dungeon.

The interesting thing about the different cards comes in the form of their various abilities, some of which favour the village, others the dungeon. Certain cards have others as prerequisites, while others allow you to draw extra cards on that turn. Eventually, as in most deckbuilding games, what you're aiming for is a suitably "trimmed" deck where you are unlikely to draw the fairly feeble starter cards and instead have a flexible collection of cards; a "destroy" mechanic allows you to permanently remove cards from your hand, sometimes against your will!

The monsters are all grouped into various categories and levels, and each has a distinct "theme" to how you fight them. Some generally inflict some sort of penalty on you before you start fighting (such as having to discard or even destroy a card you might have been relying on); others require that you do certain types of damage to defeat them; others still might only be defeatable under very specific circumstances, such as dealing exactly 8 points of damage.

The game systems are simple and easy to understand, with most of the depth coming from the combinations of cards and how you apply them to various situations. It's quick to play, even with a lot of players, and a nice blend of mechanics and theme that will satisfy both those who like beating up monsters and those who like stroking their chin thoughtfully about possible strategies to outplay everyone else at the table.

For the most part, the game isn't directly competitive, but there are various ways in which you can affect the other players. Some heroes are specifically designed to make monsters harder to defeat for other players, for example, while simply purchasing the last of a particular item or defeating a monster another player had their eye on can potentially throw their whole strategy off.

It's a lot of fun and I'd like to play it a bit more often. Now it's hit the table for the first time in a while and we all enjoyed it, hopefully we'll have another chance soon.

A quiet day on MoeGamer today, and apologies for that; normally I'd post a Waifu Wednesday on Wednesday, but I was still absolutely exhausted after last night, so when I got home I just had a nap for a few hours, and then invested the rest of my evening into 428: Shibuya Scramble.

The first article on this delightfully unusual game will be up on Friday, providing a bit of an introduction and some historical, cultural context as to where it came from. In subsequent weeks I'll look in more detail at various aspects of the game, because there's a hell of a lot to talk about! If you enjoy the idea of a visual novel being as much of a narrative "puzzle" as it is a pure interactive narrative, then it's definitely a game you should check out. The whole twisted, tangled five-way story gets increasingly complicated to unravel as the game progresses, and it's very satisfying when you manage to usher everyone safely on to the next hour.

I'll talk more about this when I write about it on MoeGamer, but I'm really delighted with how much influence it takes from anime-style games in its presentation, despite consisting almost exclusively of still photographs with a bit of full-motion video here and there. Probably the most notable aspect of this is the presence of several deliberately exaggerated characters, many of whom make use of heavily stylised facial expressions and body language; despite being real actors they're not "realistic", and that's part of their appeal.

What this means for the game in broader terms is that it's an absolute delight to just post a bunch of screenshots without providing any context, so I will close off today by doing just that.

See? A delight. More to come.

Urgh. Thought I'd be home earlier than this, but… well.

Rewind a bit. I was out at a local friend's place this evening for one of what used to be our regular board gaming meetups. These have since become extremely irregular since two of our number had at least one child, and it was just three of us this evening. We played Thunderstone, which, if it was a little earlier, I would talk a bit about, because it's a cool game. Maybe tomorrow.

However, after the game concluded, there was a certain amount of drinking from the parties present who were not me. And when said present parties drink, they become not boisterous and rambunctious, but rather up for a good old-fashioned political, philosophical debate. The sort of thing that, generally speaking, is total anathema to me in conversational terms; I spend time and effort actively avoiding that sort of discourse online due to the amount of unpleasantness that generally surrounds it, so I certainly really don't relish the prospect of having it in a real-life situation where I can't escape it.

Well, I tell a lie; I did kind of escape it; I'd had the foresight to take my Switch with me, so I just played some Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Definitive Edition while they debated whether or not one of them was rich enough to "do something" about global warming, whether they were worried about the world maybe possibly ending at some point in the next 50 years and some other bits and bobs that I completely tuned out for.

I know some of this stuff is "important", but I just can't bring myself to care any more, I'm afraid. I've been so bombarded with overtly political messages online for the last few years that I now just put up a "shield" any time such discussions come up, and I don't want to engage. The prospect of engaging with such discussions actively causes me anxiety. I don't begrudge my friends the opportunity for a good debate — they're both the kind of people who have always enjoyed debates like this, the weirdoes — but it's not an activity in which I feel like I can participate in, especially when the matters under discussion just don't matter to me.

I spend enough time and effort worrying about trying to keep myself if not happy then at least vaguely sane. That is a delicate balancing act at the best of times, so I really don't have the energy for anything more. I care about myself and the things close to and important to me. My wife. My cat. My family. My friends. Video games. Music. Writing. Creativity. And that's about it.

And that's enough for me, to be honest.

The weather's starting to warm up again a little bit. Not that we've been hit with cold weather to anything like the same degree as parts of the US, but it's still been chilly for this part of the world.

On my drive home tonight, the temperature was about 10 degrees C, which is a perfectly comfortable temperature so far as I'm concerned. I take the piss out of British weather and its tendency towards being "eehhhhh" rather than anything particularly dramatic, but honestly? I prefer it when it's grey, dull and unremarkable — not too hot, not too cold, not too wet. I don't even mind it being wet if I'm inside and can enjoy the soothing sound of raindrops without getting drenched.

It's still pretty damn cold in the mornings, though, and that's making getting up somewhat challenging. I've temporarily suspended my early morning Fitness Boxing sessions just because it's so fricking freezing in the morning that it's really unpleasant and uncomfortable to get up at that hour. Okay, I warm up pretty quickly once the workouts are underway, but I feel I'd be better and more motivated once there's a little more warmth first thing in the morning. Or at least not any icy chill, even if we put the heating on!

The only downside to grey, drab weather is that it tends to bring with it a bit of a grey, drab mood. Not necessarily depression or anything, just a general feeling of apathy, perhaps slight discontent. At least with the snow the other day that was something vaguely out of the ordinary — though as noted, it unfortunately wasn't enough to get any of us out of work… though on the flipside it also wasn't bad enough to mean any of us got stuck at work, either. Every cloud and all that.

The first "MoeGamer Music" article is now live on MoeGamer courtesy of my shiny new stereo, and it was a lot of fun (if quite time-consuming!) to write. Watch out for more of these in the near future. Don't forget to check out the latest episode of The MoeGamer Podcast, too, for in-depth, intelligent discussion about all things gaming. This week, we say "Death to Metroidvania!"

On that note, I better get to bed. Hope you had a pleasant evening. Good night1

Good evening! I hope you've had a good weekend. Most of mine consisted of recording and editing podcasts, but I enjoy that so that's all good. It's a shame we weren't able to sort out a new cat or two, but we'll just have to keep trying there.

This evening, my podcast co-host Chris and I had a thoroughly enjoyable time playing Diablo III on Switch. The more I play this console version, the more it just feels right on a console with an analogue controller. One of the things that always bugged me about Diablo on PC was how clunky and cumbersome it was to move out of the way of something like an area-effect marker or an incoming projectile, but when you're playing with a controller, that completely ceases to be an issue. Boss fights that were hard for all the wrong reasons when played with a mouse become much more enjoyable on console. Delightful.

Diablo III's core gameplay loop remains satisfying and fun. Kill things, make bar get bigger until other numbers get bigger and bar resets, pick up shinies, equip shinies, watch other numbers get bigger. At its core, it's getting into "Skinner box" territory, but the difference between Diablo and a shitty mobile game that showers you with experience points just for tapping on your florist five times a day is that Diablo expects a certain amount of skill and knowledge, and isn't just an "idle" or a "tapper" game. (Insert some pithy comment about Diablo Immortal here.)

Diablo is enjoyable because — particularly in its third incarnation — it combines the things people like about munchkin-centric RPGs (in which your primary concern above all else is making bigger numbers) with some honest to goodness arcade-style action: power-ups, combo bonuses, the whole "more fun with friends" angle. Although on the surface, Diablo appears to take itself very seriously, and indeed plays host to some quite detailed lore, the "Adventure" mode which makes up the meat of the game for most players these days understands that some people don't care about all that nonsense and just want to punch the intestines out of a variety of hideous monsters.

There are a few things I wish could be tweaked slightly about the experience — most notably, I wish the music was more interesting, as Russell Brower's rather ambient soundtrack doesn't do much to stand out. This is fine in the narrative-centric story mode, but in the distinctly more arcadey Adventure mode it would be awesome to have some music with a bit more "oomph" to it — something Castlevania-esque would be sweet. But oh well. You can't have everything.

I also particularly like the "seasonal play" concept, where, if you choose to engage with it, the game is relevant for a specific period of time, and there are clear objectives for you to pursue and be rewarded with cool stuff. Blizzard's use of Achievements has always been very good, particularly in its RPGs, and Diablo III makes great use of these and similar types of awards to motivate you and encourage you to try various different ways to play.

In our session today (and slightly beyond), I went from level 21 to level 50 and had a thoroughly good time. The delightful ridiculousness of the Paragon levels awaits. I shall enjoy grinding away for a bit while this season continues.

See, I told you I'd be back later! Even with Patreon being down for half of the day.

Anyway. Yes. In the previous post, I noted that I had acquired a new stereo. I wanted to talk about that a bit today.

I'm not sure exactly what triggered me wanting to have a standalone stereo again — likely a combination of Techmoan, nostalgia and frustration with the fact that when I "upgraded" my car a year or so back, I didn't realise that said "upgrade" would actually remove the CD player I'd become so accustomed to having. That and the knowledge that I have a whole bunch of cool soundtrack CDs from various limited edition games that I don't always remember to rip, and which if I do remember to rip, often get lost in the ever-growing morass of my Google Play Music library.

This, along with various discussions that have happened over the course of the last few years about how music has become a lot more "disposable" in this age of streaming and YouTube, made me have a sudden desire to have a setup in my house where I could just… enjoy music. Preferably not as background noise while I was doing something else, either — somewhere that I could enjoy music just for its own sake.

This is something I used to do when I was younger. I had a stereo in my room, and I used to enjoy playing my CDs and cassettes, much as any teenager at the time did. Sure, sometimes I'd blast something motivational or aggressive while I was swearing at my Maths homework, but at other times I'd simply stick some music on to relax to, to enjoy for its own sake — be it popular things, stuff I'd decided to "take a chance" on (some things never change) or classical music my parents thought that I "should" be listening to as an aspiring musician.

Active listening, as I tend to think of it, is not something I've done very much over the last few years, simply because the way our modern digital music libraries are set up doesn't really encourage that. Why would you listen to a whole album from start to finish when you can pick and choose your favourite tracks, set up playlists and instantly skip the songs you don't like so much?

Well… I decided I kind of missed that. And the result was this.

For those of you who haven't seen this room before, this is my "study" upstairs in my house. It's primarily intended as a room to look at and go "ooh, old shit" in, but everything that is set up there is fully functional, including the computers, the Philips G7000, and the NES. The old Pong clone machine isn't hooked up to anything, but I have no doubt that still works, too.

The latest addition is the big, black, ugly, '90s style boombox monstrosity in the middle. This is, I am told, an "LG LOUDR CM4360 230 W Home Audio System with Bluetooth, CD, Radio Boom Box – Black", and I bought it because it had good reviews and wasn't very expensive. It lacks a DAB tuner and a cassette deck, but I can get DAB radio (or Internet streaming equivalents) piped to it via Bluetooth, and I'm not sure any stereos come with cassette decks any more. I don't actually have any audio tapes here with me, but I do know there's a huge bag of them in the wardrobe of my parents' spare room (which used to be my room) — not coincidentally, this is also where I found the NES, to my great surprise, a few months back.

It's a relatively no-frills system in terms of functionality — no clock, sleep timer, alarm, anything like that, but for what I intend to use it for none of that was necessary. I just needed something that played music, and played it well. And ooh, dear me, does it ever play music well.

My Dad taught me from a young age to always be skeptical about the quoted wattage of audio systems, particularly all-in-one units like this, and as such I question whether this is really a 230W system, but it's most definitely pretty powerful, with a really good bass end on it. This additional power — whether or not it is actually what it says it is — is what convinced me to spend a few extra quid over a cheap Argos thing; those tended to be quoted around 10W, just to put the difference in context.

There's a selection of equaliser presets rather than a full-control equaliser, but I don't really know how to use one of those anyway, so I'm fine with that. Most reviews I read recommended just sticking it on the "Bass" setting and everything sounded great, so I tried that earlier and I can confirm the tracks I tested it with did indeed sound great.

One thing I'm going to be doing as a new challenge for myself in the coming weeks is writing a bit more specifically about soundtracks. I have all these CDs from various limited editions just begging to be listened to a bit more, so I'm keen to investigate them more than I already have done, and find some good ways to write about them, appreciate them and understand them more. Plus it's a good excuse to revisit some favourite tracks — and perhaps give a bit more of a chance to ones I typically skip.

If you're curious, from left to right there, we have the Corpse Party: Blood Drive soundtrack CD "Songs of the Dead"; the Cyberdimension Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online soundtrack; the Dark Rose Valkyrie soundtrack (man, I really should actually play that sometime soon, I'm super-curious about it); the Drakengard 3 soundtrack (likewise); "Diggin' in the Carts", which is a disc of music from 8- and 16-bit Japanese systems; the GalGun 2 soundtrack (which reminds me, the GalGun: Double Peace soundtrack is lurking somewhere, I should find that); the Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed soundtrack; "Elements of The Last Story", which I actually don't think I've ever listened to, but man that was a good game; the Megadimension Neptunia V-II soundtrack; the Megatagmension Blanc + Neptune vs. Zombies soundtrack; the MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death soundtrack; "Nararock Festival", which is the soundtrack to Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash; "Songs of the Verse Maidens", which is the Omega Quintet soundtrack (hidden gem alert, both in game and music terms); then various Senran Kagura soundtrack sets including Shinovi Versus, Deep Crimson, Bon Appetit, Estival Versus and Burst Re:Newal; the impressive four-disc Song of Memories soundtrack set; the Superdimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls soundtrack (a Nep game I should really get around to sometime); the Trillion: God of Destruction soundtrack and, finally the Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkuni soundtrack.

Hey, what can I say, I know what I like.

I'm going to add to this collection over time, perhaps with seeking out some interesting or unusual CDs and building up a small but well-formed collection of favourite game soundtracks. If anyone has any good recommendations (preferably ones that won't break the bank!) I'll happily hear them.

So that's my new stereo. Exciting!

So in attempting to catch up from my "delayed" day I inadvertently forgot to do the "real" post for the day in the evening. Once again, 428: Shibuya Scramble is to blame.

I can say with some confidence that I need to follow habits and patterns as much as possible in order to be productive. As such, I'm going to do my very best to get these posts out at at least a similar time each day, if not the same time every day. Well, actually, not really anything that strict; I'm simply going to ensure that I don't leave them as the last thing I need to do in the whole day, because that way means that I will inevitably forget them, get into bed, perhaps think about them briefly before falling asleep, then wake up in the morning going "oh, shit".

Oh well. I'm here now. And I will be here again later today. Before I go to bed. Probably.

Today was going to be a fun day in which we went to look at new cats as potential companions for Meg, but sadly literally all of the cats at the shelter have been reserved, including the pair of lovely boys we'd had our eye on. This was extremely disappointing and a bit upsetting, but at least we know all of those cats have gone to a (hopefully) happy home. We'll just have to keep a close eye out for further possibilities, and take good care of Meg in the meantime.

The rest of the plan for today consists of podcasting, video games and, assuming it arrives, setting up my new stereo. But I'll talk a bit more about that later today after it's actually come. In the meantime, have a thoroughly pleasant weekend.

Another slightly delayed post! Apologies. At least I remembered to do the monthly wallpaper before the end of the actual month!

Once again, it was a thoroughly compelling video game that distracted me from remembering to post last night — in this case, upcoming Cover Game subject, 428: Shibuya Scramble.

I don't want to give too much away that I'll be writing about in the Cover Game feature starting next week, but suffice to say for now that 428: Shibuya Scramble is one of the most interesting visual novels you'll ever play, from a variety of perspectives: its narrative composition, its mechanics and its presentation.

For the unfamiliar, 428: Shibuya Scramble is a multi-perspective visual novel in which you follow the events surrounding five very different characters over the course of 10 hours in a single day. Each character's storyline has its own distinct personality — and we're talking wildly divergent here, ranging from hard-boiled cop thriller to psychological horror via slapstick comedy — but they all intertwine in various ways over the course of the complete meta-narrative, and in fact taking advantage of the ways in which each of these characters have a direct or indirect impact on each other is key to progressing through the game.

Probably the most striking aspect of the game's presentation is that it's all done using photographs and a small amount of full-motion video. The photographs are heavily stylised, making heavy use of motion blur and depth-of-field effects, and there are also some clear anime influences at work along the way, too.

But we'll go into much more detail about all that starting next week! Suffice to say for now that if you've been pondering whether this is worth picking up, the answer is an emphatic yes.