u/edward6d

The votes are in! The community's choice for a short title to play together and discuss in July 2026 is... Actually, there was a tie. Even after accounting for tiebreakers, there still was a tie! (we use ranked choice voting). So in the end, we have two short titles featured this month. And one of them is...

Sable (2021)

Developer: Shedworks

Genre: Platform, Puzzle, RPG, Adventure

Platform: PC, XB1/X/S, PS4/5

Why should you care: Sable is a desert exploration game with an art style that could easily be mistaken with a comic book - flat colors, thick outlines, the whole shebang. You play a young woman on her Gliding, basically a coming-of-age ritual where she rides a hoverbike across the dunes, does odd jobs for various clans, and eventually needs to make a decision about who she wants to become.

There's no combat, so if that's a must for you, Sable is probably a skip. What people often praise about the title is its atmosphere and the sense of just being somewhere - climbing weird rock formations, finding little settlements tucked into canyons... In a nutshell, exploring just for the sake of exploring and cool vibes.

What is GotM?

Game of the Month is an initiative similar to a book reading club, where every month the Patient Gamers community votes for a long game (>12 hours main story per HLTB) and a short game (<12 h) to play, discuss together and share our experiences about.

If you want to learn more & participate, that's great, you can join the /r/patientgamers Discord server to do that! (link in the subreddit's sidebar) However, if you only want to discuss this month's choice in this thread, that's cool too.

July 2026's GotM theme: Desert - this theme is covering games primarily set in the desert. The desert setting needs to be the bulk of the game, or at least central to the game. Being one of many themed levels/areas doesn't count!

The votes are in! The community's choice for a short title to play together and discuss in July 2026 is... Actually, there was a tie. Even after accounting for tiebreakers, there still was a tie! (we use ranked choice voting). So in the end, we have two short titles featured this month. And one of them is...

Journey (2012)

Developer: ThatGameCompany

Genre: Platform, Adventure

Platform: PC, PS3/4, iOS

Why should you care: Journey is one of those games that often gets brought up whenever the topic "games as art" comes up and should be no stranger to regulars of /r/patientgamers.

A hooded figure crosses a desert toward a distant mountain, and that's basically the whole premise. No dialogue, no text, no HUD to speak of.

And if you want to experience the game blind, as some people suggest it's best, you should stop reading here. Mild spoilers about game mechanics follow.

>!What makes the game stand out is the way online multiplayer is implemented: you get randomly paired with another player, no voice chat, no names, and the two of you figure out how to communicate and get through the world using nothing but a sing-songy button and body language. People who played it tend to describe it less as "beating a game" and more as having had an experience with a stranger they'll never talk to again. And if you come into it completely blind, you might even not realize that you were playing alongside another human and not an AI character.!<

It's short, a couple hours at most, and people often recommend to finish it in one sitting. >!Since this is not a new game and not that many people are playing, you might want to schedule playing at the same time as others to ensure you will have a companion - some people in the GOTM thread on Patient Gamers Discord have already started setting these up. Some magic and spontaneity might be gone this way, but at least you won't have to experience playing through Journey alone - like it happened to me when I played it a few years ago (I went completely blind, so I had no idea that multiplayer is even a thing).!<

What is GotM?

Game of the Month is an initiative similar to a book reading club, where every month the Patient Gamers community votes for a long game (>12 hours main story per HLTB) and a short game (<12 h) to play, discuss together and share our experiences about.

If you want to learn more & participate, that's great, you can join the /r/patientgamers Discord server to do that! (link in the subreddit's sidebar) However, if you only want to discuss this month's choice in this thread, that's cool too.

July 2026's GotM theme: Desert - this theme is covering games primarily set in the desert. The desert setting needs to be the bulk of the game, or at least central to the game. Being one of many themed levels/areas doesn't count!

The votes are in! The community's choice for a long title to play together and discuss in July 2026 is...

Mad Max (2015)

Developer: Avalanche Studios

Genre: Racing (but with combat and crafting), Open world

Platform: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, XbOne

Why should you care: Mad Max came out the same year as Fury Road, probably hoping to capitalize on the hype train that the franchise was building. For those unfamiliar with the setting: you're driving around a post-apocalyptic wasteland in a car you build up piece by piece, running raiders off the road, scavenging scrap, clearing out camps. There also seems to be a fair bit of car customization going on - engine swaps, armor, mounted weapons being just some of that.

This genre is not really my cup of tea, so I'll leave further recommendations (or the opposite) for those who actually played the game. One interesting tidbit I noticed is that the same studio is responsible for the Just Cause series, which might be a plus or a minus for you - depending on how you feel about that series open world formula.

What is GotM?

Game of the Month is an initiative similar to a book reading club, where every month the Patient Gamers community votes for a long game (>12 hours main story per HLTB) and a short game (<12 h) to play, discuss together and share our experiences about.

If you want to learn more & participate, that's great, you can join the /r/patientgamers Discord server to do that! (link in the subreddit's sidebar) However, if you only want to discuss this month's choice in this thread, that's cool too.

July 2026's GotM theme: Desert - this theme is covering games primarily set in the desert. The desert setting needs to be the bulk of the game, or at least central to the game. Being one of many themed levels/areas doesn't count!

The votes are in! The community's choice for a short title to play together and discuss in June 2026 is...

Portal 2 (2011)

Developer: Valve

Genre: Puzzle, FPS

Platform: PC, Mac, Linux, PS3, Xbox 360, NSwitch

Why should you care: Portal 2 is one of the rare puzzle games that manages to be consistently clever, funny, and mechanically fresh from beginning to end. While a lot longer and more story-focused than its predecessor, using the portal gun to bend space and solve increasingly complex puzzles never stops being satisfying. It has excellent pacing - the game gradually layers new mechanics and ideas on top of each other, making sure you stay challenged but not being too overwhelming.

For co-op fans, it's worth mentioning that Portal 2 has a separate co-op campaign that introduces entirely new puzzle concepts.

It's definitely one of Valve's most polished games - and their last big single player title for quite a while.

What is GotM?

Game of the Month is an initiative similar to a book reading club, where every month the Patient Gamers community votes for a long game (>12 hours main story per HLTB) and a short game (<12 h) to play, discuss together and share our experiences about.

If you want to learn more & participate, that's great, you can join the /r/patientgamers Discord server to do that! (link in the subreddit's sidebar) However, if you only want to discuss this month's choice in this thread, that's cool too.

June 2026's GotM theme: Release Year 2010 / 2011. To avoid confusion, we'll settle on US initial release dates. Remaster/Remake dates are not considered (though you are free to play those versions if they exist).

The votes are in! The community's choice for a long title to play together and discuss in June 2026 is...

Starcraft II (2010)

Developer: Blizzard

Genre: RTS

Platform: PC, Mac

Why should you care: The first StarCraft was undoubtedly a huge milestone in the history of the RTS genre - it's enough to mention that it was one of the titles that helped e-sports become a thing. So when Blizzard took 12 years to release the sequel, they certainly had enormous boots to fill.

Did they succeed? That's also for you to judge! But objectively, StarCraft 2 was a huge success and a big player in the e-sports scene for many years. The single player campaigns were also beloved by many, telling epic stories across dozens of polished and highly varied missions.

Whether you're interested in the competitive side of things or just want to play some of the best and most renowned RTS campaigns ever made, StarCraft 2 still holds up remarkably well even today. And although I'm not certain about the exact details, I think Blizzard has made parts of the game F2P - the multiplayer part for sure, but I've heard the human campaign might be free too? Please confirm in the comments if you have reliable information.

What is GotM?

Game of the Month is an initiative similar to a book reading club, where every month the Patient Gamers community votes for a long game (>12 hours main story per HLTB) and a short game (<12 h) to play, discuss together and share our experiences about.

If you want to learn more & participate, that's great, you can join the /r/patientgamers Discord server to do that! (link in the subreddit's sidebar) However, if you only want to discuss this month's choice in this thread, that's cool too.

June 2026's GotM theme: Release Year 2010 / 2011. To avoid confusion, we'll settle on US initial release dates. Remaster/Remake dates are not considered (though you are free to play those versions if they exist).

A friend who recently started recording Let's Plays asked me for help with improving her audio quality. She was already:

• using a decent mic
• recording microphone and game audio to separate tracks in OBS to resulting MKV
• adjusting the volume levels of the two tracks in the video editor so speech was clearly understandable over the game audio (whether her commentary or speech from in-game characters in cutscenes)

But when we were talking, she mentioned that despite these operations, her voice sounded quiet and muddy and I wondered what could be done about that. In the end, after some tinkering and blind tests, I ended up with these two ffmpeg commands:

Game audio

ffmpeg -y -i INPUT_MKV -map 0:1 -af
  acompressor=threshold=-14dB:ratio=2:attack=30:release=250
  loudnorm=I=-24:LRA=15:TP=-2
  volume=-3dB
  -c:a flac OUTPUT_GAME_FLAC

• acompressor and loudnorm` are my attempt to make the game audio track volume more predictable throughout the recording
• loudnorm low LUFS value together with the negative volume=-3dB make sure the game audio doesn't drown out the commentary speech (the cutscene speech still needs to be tuned up louder during video editing)

Commentary

ffmpeg -y -i INPUT_MKV -map 0:2 -af
  highpass=f=80,
  equalizer=f=300:t=q:w=1:g=-2,
  equalizer=f=4500:t=q:w=1:g=2,
  deesser=i=0.25:m=0.35:f=0.5:s=o,
  acompressor=threshold=-18dB:ratio=3:attack=10:release=100:makeup=2,
  loudnorm=I=-16:LRA=8:TP=-1.5
  -c:a flac OUTPUT_MIC_FLAC

• highpass is my attempt to reduce mic noise from below speech range. Not sure if that's necessary, but shouldn't hurt, right?
• the equalizer values is how I was trying to make the commentary less "muddy" and more "lively" sounding. Not sure that was the right way to go about it, but hey, on blind tests she liked the version with these equalizer values enabled, as well as deesser which I had my doubts about.
• acompressor and loudnorm` values were chosen to make the commentary louder and legible over the game audio track.

This exercise helped to demystify ffmpeg and its vast documentation for me, as before I only used this phenomenal tool as a media converter and extractor and all these long commands I saw people use sometimes looked like black magic. After this tinkering, all these filters look a lot more approachable.

As it was my first time doing something like this, I have no doubts I probably made mistakes, but it's helpful nonetheless! It feels like the commentary indeed "pops" more now and my friend's happy with how it turned out. If you think they might help you, you're welcome to take these filters and try them out. And if you see something's obviously wrong and could be improved, a comment pointing in the right direction would be very welcome!

PS When reading about this stuff, I also discovered that "ducking" is a thing - a filter that will automatically adjust volume of one track based on the volume of another track. I felt that it was a bit too advanced for this first attempt (as well as could possibly lead to unintended consequences), but I'll keep an eye on it for future experiments.

The votes are in! The community's choice for a sync multiplayer title to play together and discuss in May 2026 is...

Aardwolf MUD (1996)

Developer: Aardwolf staff

Genre: MMORPG, MUD (Multi User Dungeon)

Platform: PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, Web (anything with a browser)

Why should you care: Some of you may be reading the term MUD for the first time here. Multi User Dungeons are some of the earliest MMOs, where the interaction with the game world and the other players is done exclusively via text commands. They are similar to Interactive Fiction games that way. As in all text based games, your imagination will have to provide the visuals - which can be better than the best 3D CGI any dev studio could come up with.

Aardwolf is one of such MUDs, and a long-running one with a sizable community around it. I gave it a short try already, and there were over 170 players online and Advisors in the newbie channel were eager to greet me and help me in my beginner steps. It certainly has a steep learning curve compared to most modern titles, but it rewards the player for it with a massive world, hundreds of quests and a flexible class system. Not to mention a sense of community and non-existant hardware requirements - you could run a MUD client on a potato nowadays.

For those of you that are brave enough to give an experience like that a try - see you in the world of Andolor this month!

What is GotM?

Game of the Month is an initiative similar to a book reading club, where every month the Patient Gamers community votes for a long game (>12 hours main story per HLTB) and a short game (<12 h) to play, discuss together and share our experiences about.

... Or at least this is how it usually goes, but this month due to theme we decided to vote for one async and one sync multiplayer game instead.

If you want to learn more & participate, that's great, you can join the /r/patientgamers Discord server to do that! (link in the subreddit's sidebar) However, if you only want to discuss this month's choice in this thread, that's cool too.

May 2026's GotM theme: Multiplayer. Games where we'll be able to play together! Instead of the usual short/long categories, this month we decided to vote for one asynchronous multiplayer game where we don't have to be online at the same time and a synchronous one.

The votes are in! The community's choice for an async multiplayer title to play together and discuss in May 2026 is...

Trackmania (2020)

Developer: Ubisoft Nadeo

Genre: Racing, Arcade

Platform: PC, PS4/5, Xbox

Why should you care: A remake of the 2006 title, Trackmania is a pure, skill-based racing game built around one simple idea: set the fastest time possible. You will be racing the same course over and over trying to find all the little optimizations and shortcuts in order to squeeze the most of your car.

But the real hook is in the competition. Every track comes with leaderboards, letting you directly compare your times with friends. Hopefully we'll have a great time chasing each other's ghosts around the track!

What is GotM?

Game of the Month is an initiative similar to a book reading club, where every month the Patient Gamers community votes for a long game (>12 hours main story per HLTB) and a short game (<12 h) to play, discuss together and share our experiences about.

... Or at least this is how it usually goes, but this month due to theme we decided to vote for one async and one sync multiplayer game instead.

If you want to learn more & participate, that's great, you can join the /r/patientgamers Discord server to do that! (link in the subreddit's sidebar) However, if you only want to discuss this month's choice in this thread, that's cool too.

May 2026's GotM theme: Multiplayer. Games where we'll be able to play together! Instead of the usual short/long categories, this month we decided to vote for one asynchronous multiplayer game where we don't have to be online at the same time and another synchronous one.