Hey Reader
Fair bit to cover this week—but first: Friday Forage is a thing I’m starting in April. It'll be a weekly post to the website every Friday, rounding up stuff that caught my eye across survival games, dev drama, and all the other nonsense. This section will link to that post in future emails and discuss any follow-up. I think it'll be a great way to tie together stuff in Discord with things I post elsewhere.
The most noteworthy thing I did last week was post this rant/screed about Derelicts and the status of the partnership. (The post is on Patreon; it's free to access; you need a free Patreon account.)
To folks who contacted me about missing links in the newsletter, how does the new link color + underline work for ya?
🧠 This Week's Thought
Tried to pull together a Reddit post summarizing the last few months of the survival subreddit.
Why the fuck isn’t there a pinned “What Should I Play?” thread?? (I did PM a mod to ask, but never got a reply.)
Instead, it’s just endless:
“Loved Valheim and DayZ, what next?!?!”
"WAT GAME IS LYK PALWORLD?"
Or posts that belong to an entirely different genre community. Every once in a while, someone asks for games with consequences or actual mechanics. (If that was you, I probably slid into your DMs.)
Once Friday Forage starts up, I'll use it to sort through some of shit. Might even spawn an article or three.
🔨 This Week's Work
- Rebuilt Steam Curator sections. “Demos” is out. “Graveyard” and “Under the Radar” are in...but I'm still debating if they will be changed. You can only do 100 games per 'List', making trimming hard. The Curator has 447 followers, 101,661 views influenced, and 288 games listed. But, minus Deadside, which I JUST deeply played, every curator entry is up to date.
- Sneaky info dump: Some tweaks to AI combat in The Infected are being worked on.
- Cleaned up my pipeline again: Inoreader, Steam activity, Discord parsing—back in the loop.
- Working out the kinks with the Friday Forage idea.
- Becca has been working to learn and model an inventory system that works with her goals - modding, C++ - and my interests, namely weight, container limits, and Tetris ability.
🕹️ What I Played / Watched / Read / Listened To
🎮 Gold River Project – So. Backer build(s). I have thoughts. They’re not glowing. The base and recommended requirements are insanely high. (Min: i7, 32GB RAM, 3070 16GB RAM. || Rec: i9, 64GB RAM, 4090 GB RAM) Had I known they were pitching things this high to start, I would have avoided it. I ran it with AMD 7/32 GB RAM/3070 GPU and had tremendous issues despite trying various downscaling methods. The next time it's live, I'll try fucking with settings again and see if I can make it tolerable enough to poke around. It reminded me of the issues that Skye: The Misty Isle faced with performance. Shortly before the project was shuttered.
🎮 I tried a few demos during Next Fest and felt meh about them. Night is Coming seems like it won't be my speed - maybe a demo to try further out in development. The Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days Demo really felt like This War of Mine had mated with State of Decay 2. But when I checked through some of their Discord plans/chat, it seems like mechanics and changes are coming that could make it more interesting. So, again, something to check into a bit later. ARCTIS was cute, but a bit shallow in terms of depth.
🎮 I jumped into the Deadside free weekend with Dee. It just plays like a watered-down version of Rust or DayZ: with less to do, less to build, and less depth. The PvE AI are fucking weird. Their range, for both aggro and shooting, is legit miles away. It's crazy. I wonder what % of the playerbase has played something more intricate/with more content in that same 'lane' - something like DayZ, SCUM, or Rust - and how that would impact their thoughts of Deadside.
📺 Rewatching Grace and Frankie (Various Seasons) – Love, love, love.
📚 New Authors – Lisa Jewell (Kinda twisty turny), Tessa Bailey (Beach read type stuff), Emily Henry (Beach read type stuff)
🎧 Music’s been a mix – Playlist’s a mess. Nothing stuck. Swapping between focus and other stuff. I saw that ODESZA is coming out with new songs based on the music from Severance, a show on Apple TV. I wonder if I should watch it to prepare.
💬 Discord Blip of the Week
Uh... Yes! The... the spiiiider. Even the smallest bite from... "arachnus deathicus"... will instantly paralyze...
💀 The Great Debate
🌐 From Around the Web
- "A new report by market research firm Newzoo estimates that only 8 percent of PC gaming hours in 2024 were spent on games that came out in that same year." Kotaku
Now I have to look at my library, hmm.
- Viral Genius Snack Hack?! Backpacker
I can 100% see Becca doing this, if only because she eats Hummus and I don't.
If you want real-time link dumps, they go in the #around-the-web channel in Discord.
🏕️ Wrapping Up
That’s it for now! Friday Forage starts this week. I’ll point to it in the next email.
You’ll get my usual mess of opinions, picks, and red flags—and you don’t even have to be in the Discord (though you could be).
—Jordan
(Note- I updated the links in the footer of this email!)