1. Immortal Life – a Chinese farming sim. I saw some screenshots and liked it. I’m not playing it yet because of annoying reasons (computer died, still setting up new laptop, etc etc) but I’ll get round to it soon. It’s been a while since I saw a farming game that made me think both “that looks nice” and “I want to play it.” Usually it’s only the first one, so I hope Immortal Life doesn’t disappoint.

2. Picot Ether – another simulation game from Inutoneko, the indie developer I like. I’m not playing it because it’s about medicine, and I’m not in the mood to play games about medicine right now. Serious answer. Also I just played one of their games recently so I want to let some time pass first. But I’m sure I’ll like it once I get started.

3. Cuisineer – I’ve had this game for at least two years. Something always stops me from playing. I think my mind has been poisoned by Sorcery Saga, which looked so cute but felt so empty and pointless. I don’t want to be disappointed like that again. Also everything looks very small and zoomed out, though it might just be my tired eyes talking.

4. Dragon Quest XI – I tried it before in the past, but I just wasn’t in the mood for a Dragon Quest back then. DQVII soured my mood for the longest time, but when I heard it got a remake recently, it made me remember DQXI. I’m debating whether to play that or to play DQVIII. All DQs feel the same so it doesn’t really matter, I guess.

5. Ys VIII – I already tried Ys VIII and quite liked it, but I need a really long holiday to get properly stuck in so I can give it the attention it deserves. When will that day come? I’m so stressed… even when I have a day off, I’m always thinking of the things I should be doing instead. Then I end up playing something where I don’t have to think.

6. Trails of Cold Steel – What? Another Trails game? I’ve had mixed experiences with that series: I disliked Trails in the Sky FC and somewhat liked Trails from Zero, and I haven’t been able to get into any others since. Overall I’d say the series is not for me because it’s just too damn wordy. But I like other Falcom games like Tokyo Xanadu eX+, and I heard someone describe that as “Trails of Cold Steel meets Ys,” and that piqued my interest a little bit. More than a little bit, in fact. Dare I give Trails one last chance?

7. Monark – I played the Switch demo some time ago and was waiting for it to get cheap. It goes as low as $20.99 according to Dekudeals, but gets even cheaper on PC sometimes, so I might just get it there. I would have gotten it earlier but, at the same time I played the Monark demo, I also played the Oninaki demo, then when I later bought the full Oninaki game, I could not get into it at all. I can’t even remember what I liked about it. So that’s holding me back a little bit: it’s not like I don’t have twenty bucks to spare, but I don’t want to throw it into a bad experience.

Pretty similar to what is going on with Cuisineer above. It takes so much for me to start a new game these days that I actually suffer mental damage when it sucks: -50 morale for a mediocre game, -25 for a bad game. No, you read that right. Mediocre is worse than bad, for reasons I’m sure I’ve explained on this blog sometime before.

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There you have it. Stuff I could be playing but amn’t because… I explained because. For the rest of the year I’ll try to reach for one of these when I feel like playing something, but no promises. Worse than no promises, I already reduced the chance that I’ll play them by 50% just by talking about them, but there are some I really do want to try like Immortal Life, so hopefully I’ll get round to that soon. Now back to work, those retirement funds aren’t gonna save themselves.