A Month on Chimera Linux

I speak purely and completely subjectively. No effort whatsoever at balance or perspective here.

I started to lose interest when Quake 3 came out. It had no local gameplay to speak of; if you wanted to play against anything but impossibly-quick local bots, then you needed to go online. But I was nearing 30YO by then, only a part-time hobbyist gamer, and online play was futile: I was and am so much weaker than any online gamer, I can't compete.

Spawn... splutch. Respawn, turn, move forward -- splutch. Respawn, start to turn, splutch.

Repeat for 5min, quit game.

Try a day later, repeat experience, uninstall game.

I have a PS2, and I did buy a few games for it. _The Driver_ was very impressive. It's just GTA, but down real streets I know well. DDR is fun.

But there is so much that is just more of the same, with a sky-high skill level as the base entry requirement. It's rather depressing. I used to enjoy this.

When the entire field has driven me away, no, I am not tempted to explore the niches and the edge cases.

It is a bit like being forced to do sport at school. As an severely shortsighted, overweight, very asthmatic child in an era before effective asthma drugs, sports were an exercise in ritual public humiliation for me. As a direct result, I don't just not like sport, I detest it with a burning passion. I don't even like to walk past a bar where there is a football match on: the chanting, cheering and jeering repels me.

In my 30s, effective asthma drugs came along, and I discovered that running and cycling can be fun... but never competitively, never with or against anyone else. I have been burned too deeply and the scars still hurt.

I used to like quick, easy, shoot-em-up games I could learn in 2min and just have fun blasting away. I don't want to spend weeks exploring, I don't want to build or model or construct or toil. I don't want vast immersive landscapes; I want a quick 1/2 hr diversion.

But the games industry doesn't seem to want the casual lightweights any more. Fine; then I don't want what it offers.

I thought so too, at first. The last game I spent any time on was Borderlands 3, and before that, Destinty. Story-oriented FPS was my bag, baby. Then I watched a few videos called [Let's Play Factorio,](https://diode.zone/w/p/36k4bJzMFNJUro9sFcG3dX?playlistPositi...) posted to diode.zone by sexy_peach@feddit.de; i started watching around episode 20 or so. . It's absolutely a resource-management game, but I love it. I think because there's a little pressure, but not much, and there's a goal (build up enough industry to support building a spaceship to escape the planet you crash-landed on). But the interesting thing for me is that there are many paths you can take to achieve your goal. It's not difficult to manage, per se, and there are many automation tools, and much attention to reducing inventory management fussiness.

Anyway, that's all to say I'm an FPS person, but this game has me hooked. The demo is free to play; I don't know how far you can get with the free version, because I bought it as soon as I was done with the tutorial. But the only thing you have to lose is your time.

> It's absolutely a resource-management game, but I love it.

:-)

That's good! I absolutely loved these responses, BTW. I grinned all the way through reading them.

> I think because there's a little pressure, but not much, and there's a goal (build up enough industry to support building a spaceship to escape the planet you crash-landed on)

Fair enough! To quote an old song, "This is not my idea of a good time", but if it's yours, I am 100% all for it.

About 25Y ago, I got a magazine preview of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and I gave it to my then-partner as part of her birthday present.

She played it right through to completion, first time.

It took her entire birthday weekend, and she was cursing me at several points throughout, but she enjoyed herself a lot -- and hey, cheap weekend. :-D

It took her from Friday night, installing the game, to Sunday night, landing a manned spacecraft on a planet of another star... then she slept about 10 hours and went to work.

So very much not my idea of fun, although around then, we sometimes deathmatched until dawn, too. But I am definitely not here to tell anyone else what they should or shouldn't do!

> As I said below, I absolutely loved these responses, BTW. I grinned all the way through reading them.

That's great to hear!

> I've not even heard of any of those "cosy low skill" games, but I will take a look

Yep, there's a bunch of them in the indie space coming up recently. "Stray", "Unpacking" and "Spiritfarer" also come to mind.

Also some RPGs are completely playable with just one hand on a mouse - Divinity: Original Sin (it has turn-based tactical combat), Disco Elysium (no combat at all, but a _lot_ of great writing). A bunch of card-based games can be played with just a mouse as well (Inscryption, Slay the Spire, Thronebreaker)