At the end of January 2020, I wasn’t in the best mood. For a number of reasons mostly tied to work, I felt useless and I was quite closed off. But a friend of mine was kind enough to invite me to their Global Game Jam team! So courageously, I accepted and travelled to the Netherlands for a special weekend! Quick thanks to our host Reaktor who graciously opened their office and provided us with everything we needed and some more.

I say courage because I thought I didn’t have any useful skills. I can’t code, I can’t do game…

I’ll confess, I’m not great at roguelikes. But roguelites? I’m also not really good. Does it matter though? Not really. I’ve sunk hundreds of hours in roguelikes and roguelites like Hades, Dead Cells, FTL, Hoplite, Convoy, FTL, Into the Breach, Plague Inc and Loop Hero (did I mention FTL?)… and I’ve had so much fun!

When I learned about Quinterra, I was instantly interested. I did have some hesitation since I always start with a pinch (actually, a whole bucket) of “Am I smart enough for this? How long will it take for me to learn?” …

Odin’s Valkyries brought many warriors to the tenth world, Valheim. The only way they can prove their true worth is by defeating the most powerful enemies that Odin himself exiled. While their ultimate destiny will be decided by the Allfather, there is still a way to acquire favors from the gods on their journey: Conducting rituals by burning trophies of the enemies they conquer in shrines dedicated to the Pantheon.

I’m going to make a small introduction, then share “concepts” I drew with IG screenshots I created to see the rough sizes of different Shrines. Then I’ll take about the…

In the second part of my “How to Improve Cyberpunk 2077” series, I’ll delve into Life Paths. Please be warned that the article may contain spoilers. You can find the full list of articles in the above link as well.

The Situation

Here is what I said in summary about Life Paths in the original article:

The starting experience is too brief and while there are a lot of dialogue options, see (1)* and once our life in the streets start, our old life is never relevant.

*(1) was Mission Choices not being as existing or as impactful as previously promised by…

As the first part of my “How to Improve Cyberpunk 2077” quest, I’ll talk about Mission choices. Please be warned that the article will contain spoilers.

The Situation

Let me start with my summary on the initial article:

While there are different ways to solve a “zone”, the quests themselves rarely change despite having dialogue options that suggest they would.

The problem here is that while the game provides you with so many talking options, impactful results rarely come out of them.

The possible kinds of change I’m talking about are as follows, from easiest to hardest.

1. Minor Impact: ie your choices…

After spending a considerable time on the controversial Cyberpunk 2077, I decided to write some improvement ideas. But before talking about improvements, I need to talk about the problems, right? So let’s start there.

For those who want to get right into it, here are the articles that delve into particular topics (updated as I write them)

1. Mission Choices
2. Life Paths

If you want to read more about the problems I see, the original article continues from here:

All of these articles may have spoilers. …

It was a lovely, warm night. Most denizens of the Jade Forest were fast asleep. The two moons of Azeroth and the stars above cast their pleasant lights on the tranquil rainforest. Well, almost tranquil. Somewhere on the north-east of the island, south of Sri-La Village, bypassers could hear a blast, followed by a sizzling sound and the smell of burnt flesh.

With a loud thump, a forest huntress fell on the ground. Green hands touched the tiger’s corpse and immediately pushed back. The hands belonged to a silhouette much smaller than the tiger, blowing on the feline’s head in…

“I hate creating a player character,” I wrote to a friend today, “Because I love doing it.” You see, I’m starting a new campaign as a player and I thought I had something simple in mind: A bard with probably a charismatic race. I thought either Neutral-ish with CG tendencies or Neutral-ish that has evil gardens of greed and selfishness. We will be a two-person party so I also wanted to be flexible (the other one is a ranger) without worrying too much about powerplay. Result? I went through so many ideas! I can’t play all of them so I…