u/Emmyy_Beans

People have been complaining about matchmaking a lot and I can see why. It’s basically impossible to find people for anything outside of the standard official campaigns everyone is playing.

I’m really trying to knock out my last few achievements, but going for the weird specific ones in public lobbies is just impossible or griefs the game for other people. If I'm ignoring the objective to do some stupid achievement or try to convince people to play melee only randoms naturally get annoyed and vote kick me. I get it, they just want to play a normal game. Ideally I'd love to find a group where everyone is also working on their completionist stuff so we can just take turns helping each other out. Playing with bots just feels lonely for me, and I also want to run some custom campaigns so I don't lose my mind playing Dead Center for the 500th time. But whenever I host a workshop map like Back to School or Yama, almost nobody ever joins the lobby or they leave.

I actually found a few really chill peeps for Arc on gameram recently so I'm definitely going to try looking for L4D2 players on there as well, but I was wondering if there are any specific discord servers or communities you guys use for this kind of stuff, like for custom maps especially. Also if you have any recommendations for lesser-known custom maps that are actually good, drop them below. I want to find some solid ones for when I finally get some people together.

I've been thinking about this lately because my friends don't play the same games as me, so I have nobody to tell to when I finally pull off something cool in a game.

For me it’s mostly roguelikes. The games just don't feel like they are meant to be beaten every single time you play, which is exactly what makes getting a win feel so unbelievably good. I managed to beat Caves of Qud twice recently after throwing so many hours at it. I definitely used completely broken characters to do it though. One was an Esper just abusing precognition (It's kind of like a limited quicksave power) and the other was a mutant with like 20 arms holding axes, you just dismember anyone, most enemies are way less dangerous without limbs, and they bleed out. I also managed to beat Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup using a Minotaur Berserker and then a Gargoyle Warrior (Don’t judge hahaha a win is a win even if its ez mode).

I am also super proud of my Last Epoch characters that have beat the hardest boss. I refused to look up anything and just used my own homebrew builds. I managed to take my weird setups all the way to the end and beat uber aberroth. Some of them took a lot more grinding than I would like but it was way more rewarding than just using someone else's build for me.

I wanna hear about your nerdiest achievements literally nobody cares about.

I'm working on my first proper side project right now (it's an app in the Shopify automation niche) and I'm trying to figure out the best way to actually get it in front of people. I'm not in a massive rush and really want to do things the right way rather than just spamming links everywhere, so right now I'm just planning my approach. I’m almost done with a MVP version that works pretty well from my testing, so I think I need to start thinking about this marketing stuff.

My main thought right now is to try out LinkedIn outreach since that's where a lot of e-commerce founders and agency folks hang out. The thing I'm confused about is my personal profile. Right now, it's fully updated with my day job, and I'm worried it might look weird or put people off if I'm reaching out about a side project from that account, since it doesn't even have any mention of the project. Plus, I don't necessarily want to broadcast my side hustle to everyone at my current company just yet (I don’t think they would like me doing stuff on the side tbh).

Does anyone know if it's possible to just set up a second LinkedIn profile specifically for this? I have a feeling it might go against their terms of service, but I'm curious if anyone has actually tried that or if it just gets your account banned. A friend of mine who runs a B2B startup told me to just copy what he does. He uses Expandi to automate all his initial connection requests and messages, and then he only steps in manually to chat once someone actually replies. It sounds like a pretty good system, and I'm definitely tempted to set up something like that. But at the same time, since I'm literally just starting out and don't even have my first few users yet, I'm wondering if automation is overkill or if it even makes sense at this stage. I definitely don’t want to pay for any tools yet.

How did you guys handle outreach when you were first starting out? I know posting on reddit is a pretty good way to get some traction but idk apart from that.

I really think the whole trend of decorating and decluttering games is giving us the absolute coziest games right now. There is nothing I would rather be playing on a rainy day, a big mug of tea and some cozy decorating. It is funny because cleaning my own room is the absolute last thing I ever want to do but I will happily sit there and organize virtual books on a shelf for hours.

I didn't expect a game about literally just taking stuff out of boxes to hit so hard emotionally but Unpacking really did. The way you learn about the main character's life and her changing relationships just by seeing what items she keeps and where she has to put them is so clever. By the time I reached the final level and realized how her story concluded I was legitimately crying. The story moved me so much and felt incredibly personal, I think the fact that you don’t really see the protagonist makes your mind fill in the blanks, by the end I felt like I knew her.

Since then games like Unpacking have started popping up all over the place and most of them are surprisingly good. I actually can't wait for some of the new ones in this style to release. I am especially hyped for Design & Conjure. You get to help out different magical creatures and restore your village by cleaning up and decorating cozy witchy spaces. I am really curious to see how it is going to play since it is fully 3D which could make the organizing mechanics feel totally different but hopefully just as satisfying. Another upcoming one I am waiting on is Momento where you decorate rooms across different phases of someone's life and the items you interact with actually change the narrative. Seems like a really fun take on the idea.

Another one that was really fun to play was Urban Jungle, you arrange different potted plants around in really cute little apartments and houses. I've always wanted to have a bunch of plants in my place so this game kind of let me live out that cozy fantasy. Thrifty Business also just came out. I haven't had a chance to try it yet but getting to unpack boxes of used items to set up a 90s inspired thrift store sounds amazing. If anyone here has played it let me know what its like.

It is so nice when a good wholesome game comes out and inspires a whole new genre. I hope the trend continues and we get way more of these games.

I run a small local bakery and we do some event catering on the side. Because we deal with a lot of food safety certifications, local health department filings, and pretty complex supply chain accounting, the sheer amount of weekly reporting and government portal uploads we have to do is eating up so much time it's becoming unbearable. 

Everyone is asking me “Isn’t that something you could just automate with AI?”, and my LinkedIn is full of people talking about saving time by automating parts of their work, so I started looking into it. I was reading about AI agents and openclaw, and it sounds like it would be so useful but I'm terrified of the security side of it. I'm not even talking about general data compliance or privacy regulations. My actual fear is that I use my main work computer for everything, and it's basically the hub of the business. My shift manager and head baker use it too, and it has all our vendor contracts, payroll info, and bank logins saved right there. It might sound chaotic but everyone does their own separate thing on the computer and it works for us, we just make sure to keep everything organized.

I really want to figure out a way to save time on the tedious bits that AI could handle but, the idea of unleashing it on that machine makes me incredibly nervous. It would need access to a bunch of files and a browser I think. I’m afraid of it doing something unexpected and screwing up our setup. Is it actually easy to wall these things off? Like, can you set up an automation where it literally only has access to a specific folder, google sheet, and one browser tab or something, without risking the rest of the computer? I'm not super technical, so I'm trying to figure out if there's an easy way to keep it from messing with things I don't want it to touch. Everyone mostly talks about what it can do, I am looking for more information on how to prevent it from doing something you don’t want.

Looking back I think a big part of my gaming habits used to stem from people around me acting like gaming was just a silly childish hobby. I felt this weird need to prove a point. I wanted to play games that felt mature and serious to validate the medium as actual art. I basically went out of my way to find games that would leave me emotionally devastated or deeply uncomfortable just because I felt like if a game could make me feel something like that, it made them worth playing or something, like they werent a waste of time. I was obsessed with games like SOMA for the existential dread feelings it gave me, and I was super invested in all the creepy, unsettling psychological undertones in Undertale and Deltarune. I was really deep into that specific headspace for a long time, I think it helped me deal with some stuff. What ended up converting me was Stardew Valley, all my friends were talking about it when the co-op update came out. It honestly wasn't the kind of game that interested me at all back then because it didn't seem “serious” enough, but this time around my friends convinced me to play with them.

After playing it for a bit, it completely rewired my brain. I realized that a game didn't actually have to be sad or existentially thought provoking to be meaningful and fun. It was just a great time and we were having fun together, it made me realize that was the whole point, and I didn’t need to justify enjoying that to anyone. My whole perspective shifted after that. Now it is so hard for me to get into a dark, gloomy game. There has to be something really compelling about it for me to even consider it, theres enough doom and gloom in real life. These days I mostly just play cozy games with my friends to unwind and don’t take any of it that seriously. We still play a ton of Stardew co-op with mods and they got me into Minecraft too. My wishlist is also just full of cozy uplifting games and fun co-op games. I'm really looking forward to Big Walk, looks like a really fun mysterious adventure. I also really cant wait for Water Me & You, since I really liked Split Fiction and It Takes Two, and this one has some more cozy aspects like building little villages and the characters are really cute (I already called dibs on the water droplet).

I keep trying to figure out what this shift means. I went from playing the saddest games alone to playing the most wholesome ones with friends, total 180. I don't know if I just grew up through a phase of life and realized I don't need to prove anything to anyone anymore, or if I am actually being immature in a completely new way by actively avoiding games that don’t feel cozy enough, like did I just switch to a different comfort zone?

I was playing Baldur's Gate 3 again and it really hit me home how far we have come. It is obviously amazing to see a massive AAA game give us such a great cast. Seeing characters like Karlach or Astarion written as completely messy, complex people who are also unashamedly queer is just incredible. But it made me think about the indie scene, because indie devs have been leading this charge for years now, guess AAA is now trying to catch up.

If you think about it, we went from basically zero representation, to an awkward phase where any queer character was either a token stereotype or the punchline to a joke. But now we are finally getting games where you can just exist and your orientation or gender are not a big deal.

I played I Was a Teenage Exocolonist a while back and was really impressed how real the relationships and characters felt. You just grow up and figure out who you are alongside characters who are figuring themselves out too without any judgment. Wylde Flowers is also one of my favorites that does proper representation without making a big deal out of it. The town feels so authentically diverse and people are just allowed to be gay or trans without their entire storyline revolving around trauma.

I was also checking out the demo for High Times and it gave me that exact same hopeful feeling. The story focuses a lot on messy relationships and interacting with your exes, but the writing for the cast is really grounded because you can fully customize your character and date whoever you want. It isn't a whole dramatic plot point that you are queer or who you choose to romance, it is just treated like a normal part of life.

I wish I had games like this when I was younger and just figuring things out. It would have saved me a lot of confusion to see people like me represented as just normal, fun characters instead of tragic side plots or token stereotypes.

I have been feeling pretty anxious about the state of the world lately. Everything just feels so uncertain right now and it seems like nobody really knows what to expect from the future. Whenever I get stressed out like this I usually turn to gaming to escape for a bit.

Over the weekend I managed to get into the closed beta for a game called Loftia and it honestly gave me a lot of comfort. It is a cozy multiplayer game set in a solarpunk world. You are basically just living on these floating islands, using green tech to build things, and working with other players to improve the town. It was just so incredibly refreshing to play something where the future is actually a bright and optimistic place to be.

But playing it triggered a realization that made me kind of sad. Almost every single other sci fi game is completely miserable. If a game is set in the future it is basically guaranteed to be a gritty cyberpunk dystopia or a post apocalyptic wasteland where you are just scavenging to survive. It’s honestly exhausting. It feels like developers think a happy future is just impossible at this point. I guess that explains why all my favorite life sims are always set in the present day or some nostalgic version of the past.

Games that paint a genuinely positive picture of the future are so incredibly rare right now. Starbound was the first game I remember playing that actually made me feel hopeful. You aren't fighting off a robot apocalypse or digging through trash, you are just exploring a colorful universe and building peaceful colonies. Slime Rancher gave me that exact same feeling. Both of those games let you imagine a sci fi reality that you would actually want to wake up in. It might sound dumb, but it's somehow comforting for me to picture a timeline where everything works out great in the end and humanity just gets to thrive.

I just really wish we had more games that give us a future to look forward to instead of just another apocalypse to survive after. Am I the only one feeling jaded with oh so many gritty settings that most games want to develop?  I would love to hear if you guys know of any other games that actually make the future seem like a good place.