...Know When to Fold 'Em

I'm only halfway through my first official week of summer break and I've already lost track of what day it is (I forgot to post yesterday...my bad for all the AI bots who missed out).  Anyway...I thought I would highlight one of the difficult decisions that we sometimes have to make in gaming--should I stop playing?  For some people, this choice can be tough and we often force ourselves to knuckle through something that we're not enjoying.  It has been one of my personal goals to stop doing that and I've had a bit of minor success this week(ish).

Last week I wrote up my feelings/impressions around Graveyard Keeper.  I was feeling a bit mixed about it but would estimate that I'm probably about 75-80% through the main storyline.  Generally when I'm that far along and struggling with enjoyment I will just grind it out.  This time around though, I decided that I was done.  The gameplay was feeling far too grind-y, like I wasn't making much progress, and I was constantly having to look things up (annoying).  Does that mean it's a bad game?  Not necessarily (although apparently there were a lot of issues when it originally came out--like the fact that the game wasn't ever officially "finished" and things like gamebreaking bugs...but I didn't encounter many issues and just found it a bit cumbersome)--I think there are things to enjoy, but for me personally, I lost patience and interest.  Forcing myself to play felt like clocking in to work...and that's not a great feeling.

Why is it so hard to quit when we aren't enjoying something?  I think part of it is about time and money.  I invested 45.2 hours into the story so felt a bit obligated to see it out to the end.  There's also typically the money factor--if you paid for a game you want to get your moneys worth out of it.  (*Here's where I will remind you that I did not pay for this game and received it free as part of a giveaway)  Those two factors make it tough to simply put something down (...and maybe secretly know that it's going to land firmly into your pile/mountain of shame).

Then I made the curious decision to stumble directly into that pile of shame and try to pick up another (beloved by many) title that I had struggled with in the past.  Shovel Knight is a game that I originally bought a long time ago.  I apparently played it for about 1 hour before uninstalling.  I couldn't really remember what the issue was (and thought that maybe it was just that I forgot about it) and that I should give it another chance.  Well, I did that and discovered that, in the words of the great Taylor Swift, "I'm the problem, it's me."  I am so horrible at Shovel Knight that it is demoralizing--I am constantly dying in sad and pathetic ways.  This time I gave up after about 2 hours.  That's progress!

So here's my advice--if you're not enjoying something, just let it slowly slide back into your library.  Don't force yourself to struggle through something.  You can always go back to it later--and, I suppose there's some kind of chance that you might enjoy it at a different point in your life.  In my case, that didn't really shake out, but I tried.

I've been trying to spend more time outside in the glorious summer weather.  Now's the time to be touching the grass, my gaming folks.  Happy summer to all (and hopefully next week I'll remember what day it is).

Corpse Abuse...for Profits!

I picked up a couple of free games as part of random giveaways and have been spending quite a bit of time with Graveyard Keeper.  It's not a new game and definitely is a product of the post-Stardew Valley craze that saw a glut of pixelated games in that vein.  It's no Stardew and I've been feeling a bit divided with my level of enjoyment.  I haven't completed it yet (and probably will), so this isn't my full review, but just some thoughts.

Likes:

+ Easy to pick up.  There's a bit of tutorial but it's pretty basic--you gather materials, you build various crafting objects, you craft items, and you try to complete tasks to further the main storyline.

My growing graveyard.

+ Like the name suggests, a big part of your tasks is to maintain/improve the local graveyard.  A communist-leaning talking donkey periodically delivers new corpses for burial.  Each body has a sort of (unexplained...) quality level and you can decide if you want to alter that level by performing some....unlicensed surgery.  With a bit of training (via a sort of talent point-like system) you can remove various parts such as bones, blood, or skin.  These parts are used in various other applications but will change the quality of the body/grave when buried.  The quality of a grave is determined by the quality of the body and the decorations you place on the grave.  Part of the storyline hinges on improving the quality of the graveyard to a certain level.  You can opt to invest talent points in burial skills (such as embalming) and in crafting fancier grave decorations.  Oh, and you can also carve off some chunks of flesh to sell as "meat" to the proprietor of the local tavern.  There's a meat shortage and he'll buy any "meat" as long as it has the royal stamp (something that you can purchase/obtain from both legitimate or shady sources).

+ If you want to be busy, there's about a million different things going on at a time.  This is both good and bad.  The main storyline branches out into having to complete tasks for a number of different characters.  Plus, you have to keep dealing with graveyard matters--those bodies keep rolling in (at least for awhile--then that punk donkey starts demanding pay in the form of carrots or else he won't deliver any more bodies).

+ Zombie workers!  You can unlock technology that allows you to turn bodies into zombies.  Once you've also unlocked and constructed the requisite work location and porter stations you can set up a nice network or zombies who will gather basic materials for you.  No one in town seems to notice this ominous behavior.

Dislikes:

- My biggest gripe has been the number of totally unexplained parts of the game.  For example, each body has a quality level based on a number of red or white skulls displayed.  The best corpses have none or few red skulls (this can be altered through embalming/application of fluids or removing specific parts) and they're the ones you want to keep in your graveyard.  Other than reading descriptions of talents this aspect of the game is not explained.  There's also an alchemy crafting system that is highly reliant on experimentation--basically you have to combine random stuff until you stumble upon the correct combo.  When you do stumble onto a workable combo it's not saved anywhere.  It would be nice to have a journal/logbook where this info gets saved.

- There's tons to do, but that can feel a bit overwhelming.  I have found that it's best to try to focus on one task at a time (like improving the church/graveyard or specific character tasks).

I'm about 30+ hours in and feeling pretty mixed about my experience.  I'm still entertained enough that I'll probably finish it (especially with summer break looming in my near future), but I've had moments of putting it down and playing something else.  We'll see.

If you're a teacher--wishing you a great summer break!  I get done on Wednesday and it has been a trying school year so I'm very much looking forward to less stress and more relaxation.  If you're not done yet, keep holding on--you're getting closer (I know there are some places that don't get out until the end of June).  Happy summer and happy gaming!