With this post, I am starting a new, monthly column, or at least I am planning to make it monthly. In it, I will list both the computer games and the tabletop games that I am currently playing. It is completely possible that you think this endeavor is highly self-centered and not very interesting for you to read. That is true, as I basically am writing this for myself, as I find that I have sometimes a hard time to remember when, or even whether, I played a particular game. Not all games I play leave a lasting memory, so this is my memory of them.

In computer games, I just finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Great game, very cinematic, but I must admit that I rushed act 3, as I was beginning to get bored. While you can unlock more and more different abilities over the course of the game, you can only equip 6 of those abilities; so you take the 6 most universally useful ones, and if you find yourself in a fight where you wished you had one of the others, you make do without, or fail and equip the other ability on the retry. But often for any particular character you will have developed one particular sequence of abilities that works best, and use that one over and over, like my Lune build with Elemental Tricks and Elemental Genesis. Well, I am happy that I played this until the end, which took me about 50 hours, which included doing most side quests, but not all end game content.

My project of replaying Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has mostly stalled. I did the overwhelming majority of shrines and lightroots, except those that would advance the main story. I could now either do the main story, which I already did in the previous playthrough, or just walk around and gather Korok seeds while exploring, which becomes boring pretty quickly.

Microsoft finally sent me an e-mail, informing me about the PC Game Pass price increase. Pretty sloppy customer service work, I have to say, as they couldn't even be bothered to get the currency right. I was told about the dollar price of the current and future subscription, but not the Euro price, which is different. As I am waiting for Europa Universalis 5 to come out in November, and my PC Game Pass subscription month ends on October 25, I decided to cancel my subscription. I can play games on Steam for several months before wanting to go back to Game Pass. For the remaining few weeks of Game Pass, I will have a look at Endless Legends 2, and maybe at Metaphor: ReFantazio.

In board games, the group with which I am playing campaign games once to twice per month on weekends has given up on Nova Aetas: Renaissance, which was rather complicated, but not much fun. Then we started Tidal Blades 2: Rise of the Unfolders, which is a huge success for us. One Sunday we had so much fun, we ended playing it for over 8 hours. In September we played chapters 1 to 5, out of 18, so considering the holiday period, this will probably still go on until the first quarter of 2026. My other regular group is with my wife, me, and another couple, currently playing Clank! Legacy 2: Acquisitions Incorporated – Darkest Magic about once per month. But real life is probably going to slow down that schedule.

I have now found 3 different board game nights in the region, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I'm not doing all 3 every week, but between 1 and 3. Wednesdays is the most serious, where I usually agree beforehand on Discord on what to play, the other two are often more spontaneous and playing lighter games. This Wednesday I am going to play Dune: Imperium - Uprising, a classic for the Wednesday crowd. My currently preferred lighter games are Steam Power and Moon Colony Bloodbath.

The board game highlight of this month will be the Spiel 2025 board game fair in Essen from October 23 to 26. The main problem with that fair is that it has grown to over 200,000 visitors in a city of 575,000 inhabitants, putting a serious stress on amenities like parking and hotels. Despite looking early, we couldn't get a hotel room near the fair this year at a reasonable price, so we took a hotel room downtown, and use the metro to get to the fair on Thursday and Friday. As I dislike crowds, I am seriously considering whether this might be the last time I go, unless the difficulties of the board game industry make the event shrink again. In April, I was at a much smaller board game fair (Spiel Doch Dortmund), with one exhibition hall instead of 7, and just 17,000 visitors, and that was a lot calmer, and ultimately gave me a better opportunity to see some new game up close. Essen last year was pretty crowded, and that prevented me from seeing some games, just because I didn't want to wait in a queue for hours to see them. If I have the same experience this year, I might give up on it. But this year I wanted to see whether maybe visiting the fair on Thursday evening and Friday morning is less crowded.