We did it. Thirty-one posts in the thirty-one days of July. Which means I should write a novel in August, right?

Well… I’ll focus on finishing my Mel Walker short story first, then see what comes after that. Work has me stretched thinner than usual. I’m constantly tired, constantly behind, and I’m not sure that August is going to be free enough for me to write anything particularly long or serious. What I need to do is find ways to relax and destress when I’m not working, which often means computer games.

So what am I playing these days?

Mostly Project Zomboid. I’m still not tired of that game. Before that, I was completely hooked on Valheim. Now it’s Project Zomboid, which looks like The Sims 2 if The Goths became patient zero and turned the entire city. Actually, I find the game to be deeper than it appears on the surface, and very satisfying, especially when playing with other people.

There are other games I’ll fire up. Cyberpunk 2077 is still rad as hell, in my eyes. I’m really looking forward to the expansion, which looks like it’ll rework the entire game from the bottom to the top.

I’ve dabbled in Shadows of Doubt, which is a procedurally generated voxel city where you play as a private eye, solving different mysteries. It’s cool, in that it’s basically a mystery-solving sandbox. There’s some cyberpunk qualities to it, mixed with 80’s era technology. The aesthetic and overall vibe of the game appeals to me greatly, though I found it frustrating to play at first.

Wednesday evenings, Mike, Nick, John, and I often still play Gunfire Reborn. We were playing some Diablo IV, but strangely enough, I haven’t found Diablo to be very satisfying lately. It definitely wasn’t fun for me to play it in the group setting. It might have been more fun once I finished the story, and I still haven’t done that. I understand that the recent patches nerfed the hell out of the high level game play, which sounds very frustrating. John is still playing it, but he doesn’t seem super happy with the game right now. The next patch is supposed to help.

We’ve all been kind of tired and stressed, so we’ve been playing a bit of Golf with Friends. The physics in that game can be wonky, and it’s not a game to be taken seriously. We fill our Wednesday evenings with quite a bit of swearing when we play that game, but it’s been fun.

I imagine I’ll get hooked on Valheim again when the next expansion comes out. And, I recently fired up City of Heroes and made sure it’s still functional in my garage. That game still makes me smile.

I have a wealth of video games to play, but I’d rather be playing a good tabletop roleplaying game with friends. The pirate game I’ve been playing with Richard is okay, but it’s very infrequent, and it hasn’t really satisfied my deep need to play an immersive, cooperative storytelling game. I should probably try to put one together and run one myself, but again, where is the time? Also, I’m not sure I have enough friends that would show up.

That’s the update on the games. I still have more Day Job work to do, and there’s stories I could be working on, but after I push “Publish” on this post, I’ll probably fire up a game and see if I can find some fun tonight.

What are you guys playing?