Don’t worry, it’s not about some horrible monster that grabs ahold of you and slowly sucks the life out of you till you’re nothing but a hollowed out husk of your former self.
That’s “Master of Crypto” and he haunts cocktail parties.
No, this is a game I just acquired called Cryptmaster and it’s just so unique and fun that I feel the need to talk about it today.
How I acquired it : first, I saw Yahtzee’s review of it.
Well, that seems like it’s right up my twisted little alley, I thought. I mean, it’s a word game with a morbid sense of humor (a la the Cryptkeeper, complete with macabre puns) and RPG elements.
That’s like, three for three boxes ticked. The only way it could be more perfect for me is if it somehow involved gay furry sex.
But being the cautious type, I downloaded the demo first. Played it and loved it.
Then dicked and dithered around for about a week before finally buying it.
And so far it’s been tons o’ fun. The basic idea is that you are one of four legendary heroes who forced an ancient evil down into the depths of the earth and trapped it there many centuries ago.
Well now said ancient evil is back and he’s resurrected said four heroes as his fleshly thralls as he tries to return to the surface and wreak havoc on the living once more.
He is basically the (g)host of the game and he does most of the talking. And he is delightful. Campy, morbid, theatrical, and silly. And evil, but in a non-serious way, at least so far.
He has promised that as we get closer to the surface world, more and more of our memories and experiences and skills from life will come back to us.
So I can only assume we will eventually defeat our charming but malevolent friend.
The actual gameplay consists of the usual exploration and fighting monsters. except that to fight the monsters you type in words corresponding to your various attacks.
And you unlock these attacks by defeating monsters and choosing one letter from their name which will then be applied to whatever words the four of you are working on, Hangman style, until you get the whole word.
It’s wildly original and lots o’ fun. Unfortunately, you can’t unlock an attack prematurely by guessing its word.
I guess that would make things too easy for brainy word nerds like me.
Anyhow, the game is wild and weird and wonderful and another W word!
Meanwhile, I am, of course. still playing Assassin’s Creed : Odyssey and Pathfinder : Kingmaker, and enjoying both.
Odyssey is exactly the sort of open world RPG with tons to do that I enjoy. Plus I can climb and run and jump like a ninja. which I always love in games.
There’s just such a feeling of freedom and power in being able to move around like a particularly well toned monkey.
Which is what you are, more or less.
And Kingmaker is an excellent isometric RPG, just like its sequel, Wrath of the Righteous, was. I would have to say that, unsurprisingly, I think the sequel is better, but surprisingly, the difference is not all that great.
The second game in the series is just more polished and has a higher budget.
Plus, in Kingmaker, I have to do a lot more kingdom management stuff, and for the most part, I find that kind of thing boring.
I like being the Baron and making choices for the kingdom and speaking to those who come petition me for this and that, but the rest, meh.
I am still too proud/controlling to turn kingdom management to “automatic”, though.
More after the break!
Hacksaw through gristle
Clean as a whistle
Straight through the visce-
-ra, well maybe this’ll
Lance that old boil
Let out the oil
And maybe foil
That tempest that roils
Deep in my guts
It sucks to be nuts
No ifs, ands, or butts
And no matter what
But…. I’d rather be sad than numb
I’d rather feel pain than succumb
To the death-beyond-death
Where you can see your breath
And eternally never become
Well that happened
Sorry, I had an attack of poetry.
More so than usual, that is. Usually, my attacks of poetry come out as prose in this very space. The images start flowing and I fight the poet’s lonely war to put what we cannot directly express into words and thus capture them on the page.
There is a noble futility to it because deep down the poet and the writer and even the songwriter know that what they create will never truly match what they feel inside.
But it can express some of it, and that helps, so that has to be enough.
I’m in a strange, dark mood. Ignited, I think, by Joe and his father dropping by again. Not that they did anything wrong, not at all, that just happened to be the pebble that started this particular avalanche.
And while I certainly don’t feel good, I do feel like I am getting something important done. This shifting, brooding, slightly seething feeling represents my reaching deep inside and “burning” emotions from a deeper and more mysterious place than usual, and that can only be a good thing.
I need to go deeper and deeper into myself, well beyond and below the realms of nice bright cheerful reason and logic, and that is not going to be an easy trip.
I’m going to have to leave one hell of a lot of what I have mistakenly believed to be myself behind in order to truly get to that massive Wound at my core and stand some kind of chance of actually resolving the primary trauma that has warped my entire life.
And means making peace with not “knowing” things, but rather “feeling” them.
I’ve always had powerful intuition. I just need to let it take the lead.
Who knows, maybe it knows the way out of this mess I have made of my life.
I Will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.