osmosisch

I don't think it fits the type of books that have been picked so far, but that could be an argument in its favour. I found it to be OK reading but nothing amazing. Gaiman's better at short stories than longer work in my opinion. Troll Bridge is one of my favourite short stories of all time: http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/neil_gaimans_free_short_stories.html

It's a US thing according to MIT: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/when-the-job-search-becomes-a-blame-game-0127.html

You get the white soapstone from Solaire. If he didn't give you one when you talked to him in Undead Burg you need to kill him. http://darksouls.wikidot.com/white-sign-soapstone

I'm a bit sad about the offline games question because I want an option that lets me like both first options equally. I bet SpeedyDesiato would have let me choose that.

Pretty much each of my friends works 4 days and we all are very happy with it. They spend their extra day on creative stuff mostly, for me it's my day alone with the children. A personal day is a wonderful thing to have.

I think the avatar counts.

The only writer I know of that gives me a similar weird vibe is Jeff Vandermeer.

I assume you're putting points into the accuracy generic talent already? The main issue with rogues tends to be missing them a couple of turns in a row. Cursed definitely can have trouble with them (one solution is to go shields early on until you get your offensive stats off the ground), but they should be pretty easy on bulwark given all their defensive tools plus the fact that dex is one of their main stats anyway.

ToMe is one of a rare family of roguelikes pioneered by ADoM that has an overworld with many shallow dungeons rather than a single deep one. I prefer these, but some prefer the Crawl/Spelunky approach of branchess off a single deep dungeon.

The unlockable system doesn't have much to do with game length since they mostly are about making specific choices or killing specific bosess, most of which happen before level 20. As dibs said, it's a roguelike so game length scales mostly with your decision making speed and routine. I've been playing for a couple of years very intermittently and only recently gotten the bug again, and I'd say I can get to the East in about 4 hours of playtime. I usually play on adventurer mode because I think the lives system is a wonderful way to make the game's occasional completely unfair minibosses more bearable. In this way it hits an almost perfect balance for me between the high-stakes gameplay of roguelikes in general and at least some respect for my time in that it lets me recover from several fuckups per characters.

I found this to be a fascinating book. The detective/crime stuff is really only a backdrop to what's so interesting though, and actually detracted from it a bit to me. But the central conceit of the two parallel cities really caught my fancy. I'd recommend it. It doesn't share much with Mieville's other work except his bent for lyrical language.

Your links don't work

Oh yeah, thanks for catching that subbes. Sorry I forgot to mention it. See here. I get most of my gaming news from these forums and SA, plus the RPS and Polygon RSS feeds.

Almost certainly.

Somethingawful is definitely worth considering but be warned that your kickstarter should be good - they're pretty critical. If they like your project however you'll likely get a substantial amount of backing.

The main thing about affordable housing projects to me is that it approaches the problem from the wrong end, ie. the quality of the house rather than the inequality of income.

We did the space bit first because come on, space.

Everyone should. It's my favourite current roguelike by a country mile.

I and my wife got stuck in Shay's routine until we figured out we could . We're bad with timed things. We definitely were getting as bored as he, haha.

Yeah, no kidding! Being super busy at work atm doesn't help but still I am having a lot more trouble with this than I expected.

The only thing you have to lose is some time and maybe some shine from your ego. The potential gains would seem to be much greater (experience, fun, learning, connecting with like-minded people).

Gosh this game is just gorgeous. Prettiest game since Brothers. The writing is just amazing. The spoon's dialogue made me laugh a ton. Playing through this with my wife has been immensely enjoyable so far.

I prefer the real choice of how to explore the house, how to leave the items and lights, which order to look at things, and how methodical to be over the illusion of choice of linear progression. Brothers is great, but that takes nothing away from Gone Home which I found to be a much more coherent and well-crafted experience, not reliant on an (admittedly very cool) gimmick. e: man, I hope Steve gets the Brothers designer on Tone Control - that would be amazing.

Squash is the only exercise that stuck for me. So much fun. It can be hard finding a partner who wants to go as often though.

My wife did not like playing it (she gives up easily and she's not used to controllers) but this is one of the first games ever that she wanted to watch me play all the way through without playing herself.