I’m passing a lot of my time playing games lately, a mix of new and really-very-old. Let’s run down the list a bit, shall we?

• I’m making progress in my solo Satisfactory save (I now actively produce two of the four products which will earn me Employee Of The Planet) and the co-op game with the kids is also going quite well (next session we’ll be firing up our 12-generator nuclear power plant). A big game engine update (Unreal 5.2) is coming soon with the release of Update 8 to Early Access (it’s been in Experimental for months). This will certainly cause some kind of disruption. All I can do is hope it’s a mild one overall.
• The Skyrim revisit took a grim turn after I realized that the stack of mods I was using wasn’t ideal so I revamped things… which broke the available save files for the character I was running. So, I started over. It’s not all bad news, since I am now able to avoid a couple of quest lines I didn’t actually like being a part of last time. Annoying but not devastating.
• Honkai Star Rail is running an event which could be described as “Legally Distinct (Barely) Pokemon.” (Seriously, given the various famous tropes they’re referencing every chance they get, I feel like someone at Mihoyo is begging for a call from Nintendo’s legal department. You spend a lot of time dealing with a mysterious figure named Giovanni, for pity’s sake!) I like that they’re trying something different but boy howdy is this not-for-me. I’ll be glad when it’s over.
• Mobile games? Gems of War, yep. Fire Emblem Heroes, yes but almost entirely coasting on inertia at this point. Outerplane, yes for now but unless they come up with some fresh content it’s going to lose its luster in a hurry. Tower of God: New World is a fresh idle gacha with decent charms, but the fate of all idle games is to get tiring and grind-y before too long.
• Oddly enough, I’m barely playing any Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I pick it up once every week or two, do a couple of battles or knock out an explore-and-teach cycle, then I’m done for a while. I know I’ll get back into it again at some point, but there’s no rush.
• Palia? All too quickly that started feeling like work, which is the fate of all Stardew-Valley-like games, honestly. Maybe I’ll try it again once it’s out of beta.

And no, I’m not playing BG3 or whatever other new shiny is in the news.

What are you enjoying lately, game-wise?