Now that I have a better computer, I can show you more games that I like to play to relax. This month, I started a post-apocalyptic game called Endzone.
With Endzone you start off with a limited number of supplies and equipment with the goal being to build a sustainable colony. There are problems along the way. Food shortages, water shortages, dust storms that wreak havoc on your buildings, diseases, lack of tools and proper protective clothing are some of the obstacles you need to constantly be aware of. If they fall short for a long period of time, you end up losing your settlers and the colony will become unsustainable and the game will just end.
My goal is to show video the colony as it grows. I may even do videos like this for other city building games. If you’re interested, I’ve done a ten-minute video of a new colony on YouTube. You can view it HERE.
Guess who’s back to using her YouTube account! For this blog series, I want to show longer snippets of the games I play, and let’s be honest, TikTok isn’t the place for that, so I revived my YouTube account to post them there.
This month the game I want to show you is called Potion Craft. There isn’t much to it, and it can get a bit tedious with the constant repetition, but the music relaxes me and it is a fun way to mindlessly kill some time.
In Potion Craft, you harvest herbs from your garden to use them in potions that you create for the townsfolk. At the beginning of the game (I started a new one to show you) the skill tree with the potions is completely covered, and you reveal them as you grind and create. The video shows what I mean. Collect books to gain experience, and serve the locals potions to suit their needs.
Happy customers increase your popularity, while unhappy drop it. There are customers who want you to create potions for nefarious reasons, and if you do, you gain their money, but you also gain negativity and soon you’re doing nothing but helping bad people. Same goes for helping good people, and there are a few I haven’t been able to figure out which way their influence goes.
You can also barter with customers and suppliers. I haven’t been able to get very far with that part of the game. Check it out at the link below.
I’m changing this series up a bit. Starting today, it has a new name, but the same content.
I love city building and farm games. For me, they’re a nice way to unwind and relax after a stressful day, and a nice reward after I’ve completed a day of writing. Some of the medieval ones have great music too. I was hooked years ago when Maxis had a Sim Farm and it was great (FYI, you can still play that game online HERE), and it introduced me to the wonderful world of micro-managing games.
Stardew Valley is one of those games. It lets you grow crops, raise livestock, fish, cook, mine, forage, socialize with the townsfolk, get married and have children. You can play with four other players online together but I’ve never done that. I like to putter around and just do my thing. Like most games, you have tasks to do for the town and mysteries to solve. Each season is one month long and there are special events that happen for each season.
When I first played this game it was limiting. You could only do so much; go so far, but in the last couple years the creator, Concerned Ape, has created some wonderful content for the game, and if you saw my repost on X then you know how excited I am for the new content that’s coming out. The best part is, it’s all FREE! There is NOTHING in this game that you have to purchase. Straight out of the box (so to speak) all the content is there. No DLC’s or upgrade purchases, and I think this is why it’s such a popular game. Check out this short video of my farm. You can find it HERE.
The same creator is working on a new game called The Haunted Chocolatier, which is said to be more exciting and eventful than Stardew Valley, and yeah, I’m going to buy that when it comes out.
I love paranormal stuff, but there are not a lot of online paranormal games that are fun and not scary, and out of all the games I researched online, this one only came up once.
The Darkside Detective is a point-and-click game with cartoony graphics and awesome music. I play this for the music alone. The script is humorous, and the cases are relatively easy to solve once you understand the mechanics of how to interact with the interface. It has overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam and this is one of those games you can play to unwind after a long day, and don’t worry, if you finish all the cases, don’t worry, they released a sequel called The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark with six new cases!
Have you ever wanted to own and operate a medieval tavern? Of course you have! Well, now you can!
Tavern Master is an early access game that allows you to do just that. You can sell six different beverages, cook soups, main course, and deserts, and rent out rooms. The nicer the room, the more money. The skills tree is pretty simple and you can decorate with wall and floor items. There’s not a lot in the way of décor, but it’s still early access. You can host gatherings and send mercenaries out for specific food items that you’ll need to host these lavish parties.
The creator recently added weather, and it has so much potential. I’d like to see a town build up around the tavern instead of it being on the outskirts of a castle. Time will tell.
Like all these medieval games, I play for relaxation and listen to the music but it doesn’t have a lot of variety in that department. You can see photos of the game HERE.
Graveyard Keeper is a fun, incredibly complex sandbox game that, despite the horrible U.I (user interface) becomes addictive very easily. It has limited tutorials (if you want to call them that), but at its heart, it’s a quest-based game with no set structure and a limited skills tree, but you find yourself spending hours upon hours playing, but the best part, you can create zombies and put them to work! Maybe that’s the beauty of it? I don’t know, but it’s popular enough that it’s spawned three DLC packs.
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to take care of a graveyard? Well, there’s more to it than you think, especially when you have people constantly asking you for favours, and not just the living either.
The down side is your character goes only so fast so it takes FOREVER to go anywhere. I think there’s an amulet you can buy so you can instantly be transported, but I’m having too much fun walking everywhere.
Welcome to a new hobby blog post! I’ve wanted to talk about video games I play for a while but never really got around to doing it until now.
This is the one I’m playing now. It’s called Settlement Survivor. A medieval city-building game, this is just building, no warfare. I like these types of games because the stress of losing battles doesn’t help me relax. It’s very similar to Banished, which is a beautiful game; too bad the developers abandoned it. The creators of Settlement Survivor do credit Banished as being the inspiration. It’s still in early release, but there’s a lot to it.
So, most of you know I’m a gamer. I’m not a die-hard online MMORP player or anything like that. I like easy games that don’t get my heart racing. I play them to relax and unwind after a long day or de-stress when the world gets to be too much. Okay, so there can be a little action and fighting, but I prefer sandbox games. Not to say I haven’t played any of those games. CofD Modern Warfare, Fable, and Path of Exiles are some of my favourites, but I prefer world-building games.
I tried to do a video of it, but it didn’t work out, so I posted some pictures to IG HERE.
One of the main reasons I like this game, other than building and micro-managing the town, is the music. I am drawn to games that have a medieval soundtrack. I find it relaxing, and with my headphones on, I manage to blot out the world around me, and the stress disappears. There is a bit of a learning curve to the game, but it’s easy enough to understand how it works, and the best thing is you can turn on and off the disasters.
As much as I like this game, there are limited decorations and the algorithm that determines health and happiness needs tweaking, and it’s limited on what can make your townsfolk happy. They are working on it, but I think something small like pubs could go a long way, especially when you start playing. The skills tree is pretty simple too. Overall, it’s a good game, but as I said, it is limited on what you can do.
Darke Conteur is a writer at the mercy of her Muse. The author of stories in several genres, she prefers to create within the realms of Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy. A pagan at heart, her personal goal is to find her balance within nature; exploring the dark through her stories and the light through her beliefs. When not writing, she spends her time collecting crystals, knitting, gardening, cooking and listening to very loud music.
Darke Conteur 