On games

For the last few years, my go-to game for wintertime has been Factorio. It scratches a very deep itch for me, and I am very careful not to start playing until the decks are completely clear of work or other responsibilities. This happens most often in the winter when yardwork is on hold. Since complex mechanics seem to be a thing for me, I decided to give Dwarf Fortress another try, this time via Steam. So far…it’s ok. I’m slowly - very slowly - getting a sense of how deep it goes in terms of complexity, but it hasn’t quite gotten ahold of my nerd-nerve like Factorio’s optimization problems did. Plus, you know, there are rail networks to automate.

I’ve managed to keep my first Dwarf Fortress alive for a year of in-game time, which I know is barely scratching the surface. The population has grown a bit, and I can sort of see the farming, hunting, crafting, and defense management cycles forming. To be fair, I’m starting on a nerfed world with low-aggression monsters and whatnot. I’m nowhere close to kicking it to the curb, but I may restart it again on normal settings across the board and see how it runs without the training wheels. But I also just applied the 2.x update to Factorio and am eyeballing the Space Age expansion. The weather this weekend is looking grody, and we may be sort of locked in for a day or two. Pity.

Anyway, PTO is over, so the daily routines are more or less back in place. Paradoxically, with the holidays behind us, things feel a little more relaxed. I got a lot done and am in good shape to resume classwork towards the end of the month as we enter the homestretch. Some business travel is coming up, but I’ve got plenty of reading, so we’re good to go.