A Stressful Wednesday – Daily Dispatch for 12/19/18

Opening/Random Thoughts

Hey folks, happy Wednesday! How are y’all! Sorry I didn’t do one of these dispatches for a couple of days, but with the holidays approaching and such, it’s just a super busy and stressful time right now. I will honestly be so, SO happy once Christmas is done next year. It’s not REALLY pressure, but it IS, you know? My wife loves the season SO MUCH, but I just find it more anxiety-ridden than anything else. It’s all about the gifts, really. I always worry the gifts we got aren’t good enough.

I know that’s not rational, but it’s there and I have to deal with it, which is tiring and stressful. Also, my car is in the shop today, also stressful. Nothing’s wrong with it, I’m just getting regular, preventative maintenance on it, but I always worry they could FIND something, you know? How about you guys, how are the holidays treating you so far?

Today’s Video(s)

Ancient Frontier: Steel Shadows is an expandalone to last year’s Ancient Frontier, a game I thought was decent for its gameplay but horrifically hilarious for its writing. Well, it’s pretty much the same here. Ancient Frontier: Steel Shadows is a competent game with lots of meat on its bones. A story-based campaign with side missions and random events, with detailed tactical combat, research and more. Only trouble is, it’s boring. It’s SO BORING. I hate to talk bad about a game, but it’s SO DULL. I don’t get it either. It’s gameplay is solid, but playing it is just sooooo boring. Like, I don’t give a darn about what happens at all. All it is, in the end, is numbers of resources, ships, upgrades and so on. Pure numbers. Shame, really, as it’s not BAD…it’s just not exciting.

On this week’s podcast, we looked back at 2018 and talked about our biggest surprises, disappointments and more. A lot of games came up, mostly positively — thankfully — but we also had shade to throw as well. Overall it was a really fun show.

Today’s News

• Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion’s new DLC, Minor Factions, is now available, and looks really great!
• Sunless Skies has a massive new dev blog about their massive new UI update and more, along with huge patch notes to go with it. I can’t wait for this one next month.
• Empyrion – Galactic Survival has now reached alpha 9.0, which adds logistics, AI factions, leveled NPCs and a host more things.
• Advanced Mechanized Spacecraft is the new name of Blockship Wars, check it out!
• Interstellar Space: Genesis is coming to Steam real soon! Pre-order it to get your Steam key!
• Astrobase Command has a dev diary talking about a lot of little and big things they’re working on.
• Battlestar Galactica Deadlock has a new dev diary about blueprints!
• Hyperspace Delivery Service has a new dev blog detailing how their early access phase is coming along.
• Prosperous Universe has a new dev blog talking about their recent public launch and what’s next.
• The Spatials: Galactology got a new dev blog talking new missions, friends and more.
• Dreadnought did a developer FAQ which talks about recent changes to the game.
• EVE Online has a new event going on called Operation Permafrost which looks pretty neat.
• Spacebourne has a fairly big new patch that adds pirate contracts and raids!
• X4: Foundations has put its next big patch into beta, and has now gone through several beta iterations.
• Executive Assault 2 has a massive new patch removing troop transports and implementing gateways. There’s also a hotfix for that big patch.
• Avorion has a really big beta patch with a looooot of gameplay improvements.
• Star Traders: Frontiers got a pretty hefty update with more faces and better AI.
• StarShip Constructor has gotten its first patch in a while, and this one includes cloud storage.
• Star Valor got a patch which adds perks and more.
• Ancient Frontier: Steel Shadows got a small patch with a bunch of little fixes.
• AI War 2 has a new patch with lots of fixes and tweaks.
• Objects in Space got a couple of little patches with about half-a-dozen fixes in total.
• Galimulator got a patch which adds a “let it snow” mode, among other things.
• Space Battle VR got a fairly solid patch that fixes some serious issues.
• Space Impossible added a new patch that fixes issues that cropped up with its latest big alpha.
• The Away Team has released a pretty hefty patch which adds challenges, cheats and more!
• Landinar: Into the Void has a fairly big patch which fixes and adds a lot of things.
• Reentry got a fairly small update which looks at TLI and ballast.
• ΔV: Rings of Saturn got a patch which adds a market to the game!
• Star Trek Online has a new teensy little patch for y’all.

Today’s Deal(s)

• Green Man Gaming have launched their big winter sale, and it’s insaaaane. Go check it out!
• Itch.io has also launched their winter sale, and over 800 games are on sale, including the amazing Rodina. Check it out!

What I’ve Been Playing

• Steep – I realized it’d been a while since I played this, so I did a few races, and OMG I need to play more of it. I nearly forgot how much FUN this game is. Such a rush! So great!
• Ghost Recon Wildlands – After shredding some hills, I wanted to shoot some dudes, so I loaded this up and had my first game-related crash in weeks. This thing is a bear, but when it’s WORKING it’s really fun.

This’ll likely be the last one of these for a couple of weeks. I’m off starting on Friday, and news will likely be a bit slow, so I’m gonna spend the holidays playing the games I love. Thanks so much for reading this, and have a wonderful holiday season!