Caturday: Lord of All He Surveys

Alternate title: "Catrear."

It is Saturday! I hope you've had a great week. The weather's changing down here and my head is a precision barometer, but despite the headaches I've gotten a lot done. And that's in addition to stumbling into an adorable fascination in the form of a game called Long Live the Queen:

The mechanic is really fascinating: it's a turn-based story game, and you use "classes" to dump points into stats that help you make choices as the story unfolds. You can affect how fast you learn by controlling your mood--that takes the form of visiting different parts of the castle on the weekend that give you FEELS; different moods give you bonuses to different subjects, allowing you to master them more quickly. As you learn skills, you can also unlock outfits that give you bonuses during the story's skill checks...so hopefully you remember to wear the right one when you think the next part of the story's coming. 

I'm sure there are people obsessively mapping the story tree but I'm bumbling through it with no regard for proper form. And dying a lot. Which is not a surprise because there are a BUNCH of ways to die. So far I've lived to be Queen three times and died at least sixteen. Poisoned, shot with arrows, challenged to a physical duel (lost), challenged to a magical duel (also lost), reduced to peasantry and forced to flee, lost a civil war and been forced to marry the victor... and I haven't unlocked them all! (One of the deaths is by having your head split open... I want to see that one! All the deaths are illustrated with cute pink chibis that make them look kind of adorable.)

Here's the link if you want to check it out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/251990/Long_Live_The_Queen/

Anyway, I've been loving it, and as a reward for getting my daily writing in, it's been a nice incentive. I don't know how this is "like Stardew Valley"--which was a farming/relationship sim--and "like Driftlands"--which was a city building/conquer the world game--yet it's cheerfully scratching the same itch. And with far less load on my computer's integrated graphics processor.

What games are you playing lately that you love?