Gaming status April 2026

Due to holidays abroad, I haven't played anything for the last 10 days. That has the advantage of getting one out of the tendency to just keep playing what one played the day before, and thinking about what one really wants to play next. And after some consideration, I ended up buying Windrose. That is one of the rare cases where I care more about the theme of the game than about the game mechanics. I'm a sucker for pirate stuff, apparently. So much, I even tried the boring Skull & Bones, but fortunately just the free open beta. Windrose is a pirate crafting survival game, and for some reasons crafting survival games cost half of what shooter or action games cost. So even with just 10% release rebate, I bought Windrose for $27. Even if it is only early access, I didn't feel as if I could save a lot of money by waiting another year or two.

On the other hand, I had looked into Pragmata, another recently released game with good reviews, and didn't want to buy it on release due to the $60 price point. Pragmata seems to be a good enough game, but managed to acquire some hype due to all the things it is *not*: It is *not* a live-service game, it is *not* a sequel, it is *not* at game with microtransactions. I find it curious how the genre of a computer game correlates with its price point and business model. In the shooters genre a buy-to-own game without continued monetization stands out, while in the strategy and tactics games that is still the norm.

In board games, my campaign group and I are still playing Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread. We have already played 8 sessions of 5 to 6 hours each, and estimate that it will take another 4 or so sessions to finish. While at the start of the game there were some extremely generic stories, including the classic rat hunt in the basement, the quality of the stories improved over the course of the game. There still isn't much of an overarching story, and the individual character stories are minor, but the events have gotten more interesting and varied. The designers did a good job of replicating various types of possible pen & paper adventures, e.g. a city adventure or a detective adventure, in the confines of the board game rules.

From my stack of board games bought at the Essen Spiel fair in October last year, only one game remains unplayed. Which is just as well, because I plan to visit another, albeit smaller, board game fair in a week from now. Not sure I am going to buy that many games there, but I'll see.