New review rule: Unreviews

[solo_knight]

I have a million games. Well, not a million, but I easily have a couple of hundred games in my itch.io bundles, even if you discount the video games, assets and books that I also don't have time to engage with.

I have enjoyed some of these games tremendously, even if (or because) they’re odd, but from now on, I will stop making an effort for ‘games’ where you need to bring everything to the table - the characters, the events, the setting, when to take actions, what actions you take, what happens…

This is a question of mental load. Maybe one day I’m willing to spend an hour or two making up a story about two lovers with the parameters of this ‘game’, but that day is not today. What I’m looking for in a game is more than story prompts. In order to play, I need a mechanism, and even then, just an oracle table may not be enough to facilitate play.

I’m looking for fun distractions, forcing myself to try and engage with games that are hard work begins to feel like a job, and that’s not what I’m here for.

So, enter the Unreview. I’ll use largely the same format as I’m using for the Playthrough/Review entries, and I’ll see whether I want to change it a bit (if it becomes too repetitive).

Comments

[crashmargulies]

I really appreciate your focus on reducing mental load! I've been interested in solo RPG stuff but for Brian fog reason I would also want it to be easier and not harder than coming to a blank page with just my thoughts!

[solo_knight]

The first couple of times I tried to make these things work, but it is, indeed, more mental work than writing my own stuff, because now I need to write about characters I have zero interest in.

Keeping mental load in mind throughout everything has been a life-changer, literally. It's amazing how much brain power you can free up when you're not using it to decipher expiration dates or remembering which charger belongs to which gadget. (I've written more about viewing life through this lens on my main journal here

Since the whole purpose of this journal is to help me conquer the mountain of unplayed, un-looked-at, and unexplored games, getting stuck on any particular one defies the object. At the one-game-a-day rate it's going to take forever anyway, and I may never get to the bottom of everything I own, but I can at least make an effort. If I keep staring at games that are hard work and no fun, I'm not motivated to keep digging in the pile, and I have enough games that putting them aside 'for later' would, again, add mental load that I don't need.

Overall, I've had some fun with some of the short games, I've found a character creation method that I will adopt henceforth (and may even try in writing if a character won't speak to me), but I haven't found a way to do longer campaigns yet, and that's something I want to do, just some basic adventuring and orc-bothering.