Raft

Raft is a survival game where you are, as the title might suggest, on a raft.

In ocean world, you are harangued by a great white shark and have a hook with which to gather resources.   The shark, while not as deadly as I thought a big fucking shark that is relentlessly chasing you would be, makes up for it with being an always a present danger.   Entering the water means you have to deal with it in some fashion.

The game has you follow a series of map coordinates discovering more of the stories of some of the survivors and collecting bigger/better upgrades for your floating fortress.  The land missions are weak Zelda-esque "gather the parts" or "get the key", and seem like they were thrown in rather than being intentional.  Tacked on parkour and fighting gamification that took away rather than added to the game.  I didn't finish thinking that I wanted to keep playing and build the most epic raft - I ended thinking "I hope this is the last round in this stupid dog fight".

It is a great survival concept and I don't think they should have added buildable tech resources  I would get it if tech were limited in some fashion, like a found ancient artifact, limited charge perhaps late game you could create a bicycle to generate electricity, a solar charger -- it just seems weird to be able to hammer a blender out of barely refined ore and seaweed goo.

Desperados III

Desperados III is a real time strategy game set in the old west.

Controlling one character in the tutorial levels was enjoyable, controlling multiple characters while avoiding patrols and trying to do the missions without just hunkering down and being a murder hobo I found a bit on the stressful side of fun.

I quit before I got all the Steam card drops even and am left reminded once again that despite how nice/funny/cool/fun something looks in a demo, I really don't like real time strategy ... it would have to be themed AF, catered specifically to me. 

Let it be said that I hope they never make a RTS about Dune, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or anything with Natalie Dormer smirking as box art.

 

Trimps

Oh good freaking lord I hate that I played this game so much.

Trimps is the gaming equivalent of managing a spreadsheet, but every cycle through unlocks one new skill or one new challenge or one new bit of automation that kept me playing through one more cycle.

... and because automation is my jam, I have way too many hours setting up and managing this bit of it while my population slowly grew in power.  I think I'm mainly writing this so that I can delete this damn game.