Although a little late it is time for the yearly review of my blog and to some extent my gaming in general. Last year my blog review was full of disappointment. This year however it is the complete opposite, I am really pleased with with how the last year has panned out and I am excited to see what will happen over the next 12 months.
There have been 18 blog posts since my year 5 review. 11 of these posts have been about about new games, most of which I have completed. The remaining 7 posts have been about games I have already blogged about in the past. Most notably EVE Online. Last year I admitted that I had not completed a single game since the previous review. This year I have completed 11 games, some of them with friends. I think the most noteworthy game is Valheim, but completing Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII and Fallout 4 are pretty decent achievements, taking a lot of time and effort. The first game I completed since my last review was FRONT MISSION 1st: Remake in September. I can not express the relief this gave me. Knowing that I was capable of completing a game made me feel like me again, it made me feel like a gamer. My list of completed games has grown from 13 to 24. To think that in 1 year I completed almost as many games as I had in 5 years is incredible to me and perhaps a little frightening.
Friends are good! Of the 11 games I have completed Jamie and Shadey are one way or another responsible for 6. Spending more than 200 hours playing through Valheim with them has been particularly good, but playing through Portal 2 and A Way Out with Jamie and then later Left 4 Dead with both of them was fun. Jamie also let me use her copy of Stray and they both gave me Slay the Spire and Hades. All of which are excellent games. To be honest I am not used to this kind of attention. To go from having 1 true friend who is several thousands of miles away to having 3 friends, 2 of which live in the same city as me, is a pretty big deal. This has improved confidence considerably but I feel that I still have some way to go.
It is possible for me to play an MMO and play a variety of other games. I suspect however that this is unique to playing EVE Online. Playing World of Warcraft I found that if I didn’t play, if I didn’t invest time, I would fall behind and not be able to keep up. With EVE Online however it is different. A lot of it comes down to your character(s) improving over time. Skill training occurs even when you’re not playing the game, but more than that most ships and activities in EVE Online remain relevant. Growing and improving is never ending, which is true for everyone, but after a relatively short investment of time it is possible to never fall behind and always be able to keep up with other players in a particular way. If I stopped playing but started to play again 6 months later, everything that I could do is still relevant and useful. There are no specific goals other than the ones that you set for yourself which means it does not much matter what other people are doing or where they are in their EVE Online career.
I want to do much of the same. I would like to continue to invest in spending time with my friends which in turn will continue to improve my gaming experience. More importantly this gives me an opportunity to grow as a person by building my confidence and perhaps, in time and with effort, become part of a wider friend group. If not I must at the very least remember to make efforts to try and give as much as I take from my relationships. For most this probably comes quite naturally, for me it’s really scary. My friend Jason may remember my closing statement of the Playing Alone post I made almost 5 years ago.
‘My heart tells me that I should dream, that I should see the world for what it could be, that I should dare to seek friends, dare to love and be loved. But my head tells me to stop, don’t get hurt, don’t get disappointed, nobody could like you anyway. Which is why I sit here alone, playing a game alone, with thousands of people.’
This hasn’t changed. For the most part I still feel this way. But I hope I can be brave and continue to listen to my heart a little more.
If anyone would like to provide feedback and/or suggestions for my year 6 review, please feel free to do so. You can leave a comment or contact me by any means.
After more than 200 hours of play time my friends Jamie, Shadey and I have completed Valheim and have created an amazing base. That adds up to more than 600 hours play time between us. Developed by Iron Gate Studio, Valheim was released in 2021 as a third person open-world survival game with a viking theme and in many ways reminds me of Minecraft. We generated our world with a random map seed and began exploring the biomes, starting with the meadows. As we gathered resources recipes would unlock to let us craft weapons, armour, food, crafting stations and building blocks to help prepare us for the next (more difficult) biome. By progressing through the biomes we would encounter new challenges, dungeons and bosses which would unlock special powers for us. This is what Shadey and I focused on where as Jamie focused on the creative side of the game.
Shadey and I would spend most of our time progressing through biomes collecting the new materials available to us so that we can create better and stronger weapons, armour and food for the impending battle with the biome boss. We would also bring back a large quantity of building materials for Jamie, who we named as Builder Bean, so that she can continue her efforts creating our base. That’s not to say Bean never joined us. Whether it be cutting down trees or helping carry metal scraps, Bean did help with gathering materials, especially at the beginning of our adventure and always helped when we confronted one of the 7 bosses. As builder, Bean built herself a throne room under the house as pictured below.
I felt it was important to cultivate vegetables and other ingredients used to craft most food and mead recipes. This is an important element for the overall progress of the game. New foods and meads would give us more health, stamina, resistances and later eitr which would help us combat ever more challenging monsters and environments. While some might find the task of cultivating ingredients a bit boring, I actually enjoyed it and was named Cultivator Copper. Because of this Bean built a throne for me overseeing our farm.
Shadey had already played Valheim up until the plains biome and had defeated Yagluth who resides there. This made Shadey a natural leader for the group, at least at first, and had the most motivation to progress and enjoy newer content that he hadn’t experienced yet in mistlands and then ashlands which was released in May. It’s not like Shadey did nothing else, he was part of the team and certainly did his fair share of gathering and crafting. But his desire to explore, progress and defeat stronger enemies earned him the name Slayer Shadey. Bean built Shadey’s throne inside a temple decorated with trophies of slain foes.
It’s difficult to describe how exciting it is to find new items and the recipes they unlock. At first to see the new weapons and armour available but then over time what Bean was able to build. After each session Shadey and I would take the time to see what had been built in our base while we had been exploring. While it was cool exploring Valheim, for me the highlight has always been the creation of our base which involved expansions and several rebuilds. To give an idea of how cool our base is, I created the YouTube video below. The quality isn’t as good as I would have liked and I found it was too much of a struggle to record in first person view.
The creators of Valheim have promised one more biome which will be the Deep North. The release date for this has been penciled in for December 2024/January 2025, but there’s no telling how accurate that might be. As it stands I believe that we have completed Valheim and will add it to my list of completed games. At some stage however it is highly likely that my friends and I will return to Valheim for the final biome. If we do I will more than likely provide an update on our adventure, but for now we will move on and play some other games.
It has finally happened. In EVE Online last week I received a contract from the leader of the corporation (corp) I am part of for the sale of a Nidhoggur carrier costing me 4.6 billion ISK (Interstellar Kredits). He built the carrier which makes it feel even more special. That this carrier was built especially for me and is not second hand feels good. For the rest of the week I set about obtaining the various ship modules, fighters and fuel needed for the Nidhoggur. I had help transporting the modules and fuel I wanted from Jita (the main trade hub) but I built around 30 or so Dragonfly fighters using minerals I had obtained by reprocessing the loot I acquired from ratting (destroying NPC pirates) with my Ishtar.
Most capital ships have a jump drive which essentially allows them to ‘jump’ into a nearby system without using traditional stargates which interconnect the solar systems. In order to use the jump drive however I need to be in a fleet with a different character that has lit a cynosural field for the Nidhoggur to jump to. I thought that this can be achieved using any ship but it turned out that I had old information. Since 2019 players need to use either a force recon ship, such as the Arazu, or a black ops ship. Luckily I have a character that was just minutes away from being able to fly an Arazu. With this I was able to light and jump to my first cynosural field pictured below.
What followed was a steep learning curve. Even with all the research and conversations I had to prepare I learned a lot during my test flights. I learned for example that I couldn’t use my jump drive to jump to a POS (player-owned starbase) and that it was not possible to dock in certain types of stations. When I eventually felt ready to clear a combat site I found managing the fighter squadrons was a lot different to anything else I had done in EVE Online. It isn’t difficult but it does require near constant attention to keep the fighters alive. Losing a fighter isn’t the end of the world, but they are costly and I actually lost 2 fighters when completing my first 3 combat sites. Since then however I haven’t lost any so I guess I am used to it now. Between keeping an eye on local, intel and the fighter squadrons it isn’t easy to take a moment to observe the majesty of the carrier in action. But I have managed to take a few screenshots.
While this has been some of the most fun I have had playing EVE Online, there are down sides to carrier ratting. The first and most obvious down side is that all capital ships, including carriers, are very expensive. I estimate that my Nidhoggur cost me about 6.75 billion ISK in total when including the modules, fighters and fuel. This puts a bulls eye on me and makes me a very tempting target. Generally speaking the more expensive the ship the more likely someone will go out of their way to destroy it. There are always groups of players (or perhaps 1 player with multiple accounts) scouring New Eden looking for a capital ship kill. It’s so tempting that even my allies may be spying and feeding their friends information. What’s potentially worse is that if for whatever reason my carrier is destroyed it’s not just me that will suffer. It will have a negative impact on my corp, alliance and the coalition. People will know that it is possible to get capital ship kills in our space, making us look like an easy target which will result in them stepping up their aggression.
This has left me (and probably most capital ship pilots) highly paranoid and cagey. Ordinarily I would have liked to of documented more about the intricacies of this achievement. I would have shared which ship modules I use, which solar system(s), which combat sites and other details explaining why I made those choices. I would have even liked to of shared a short YouTube video of me clearing a combat site, something I would look back on with pride in the years to come. But by sharing these things I would be advertising myself as a target and would be informing people where I am and allow them to plan a strategy on how they could get me. For all that I like about EVE Online, it really is a savage place filled with cloak and dagger.
Almost a month ago I wrote about joining a player corp in EVE Online. Since then I have been exploiting where they’re based in nullsec. I have to say that I have so far been very lucky in finding a group of people who are willing to share their knowledge and appear to take a relaxed attitude when it comes to what they expect in return. That may change however whenever we find ourselves at war with a different alliance / coalition of players. Unlike other parts of EVE Online, nullsec, also known as sov (sovereignty) space belongs to a group of players who are part of an alliance (a collection of corporations) which a lot of the time, but not always, join a coalition. The more sov your alliance or coalition control the more resources and influence you have in the game. So when war breaks out I imagine it is expected that every player tries to defend and attack objectives in order to survive and continue to be able to exploit sov systems for their natural resources. This is something I haven’t experienced yet.
What I have been experiencing however is the exploitation of resources in nullsec. Planetary Industry (PI) in nullsec is far more profitable than in high security (highsec) space. Each planet has far more resources, plus the import and export tax is considerably less. Because there are a huge amounts of resources PI requires less attention once everything has been set up, making this a really good passive way to generate income without it becoming too laborious. In the screenshot below I am extracting non-cs crystals and heavy metals from the planet which in turn produce chiral structures and toxic metals in 6 basic factories. These then produce consumer electronics in 3 advanced factories which I then export using the new Skyhook structure and Squall hauler as featured in the above image. I then import the consumer electronics along with mechanical parts to a different planet with factories that can produce robotics, which I then later export and sell.
There are also a lot of relic and data sites in nullsec. While I haven’t paid any attention to the data sites, I have now and then hacked relic sites for their salvage loot. This is something I wrote about in a wormhole exploration post I made back in 2020. The difference here is that it is much easier and safer than exploring wormholes. While exploring wormholes you have no idea how many people are in the same system as you. There could be a fleet of ships and you would have no idea until you spot them on your directional scanner or until they decloak next to you. In nullsec you know exactly who is with you in the system and 98% of the time they’re part of your alliance and are therefore friendly. Assuming of course you’re in a ‘blue space’ system (a system which belongs to your alliance).
With the added safety of ‘blue space’ in nullsec, mining is much safer than anywhere else in the game and is highly profitable. Players with expensive industrial command ships will freely participate in mining operations which will increase mining yields and efficiency for every player, by a lot. There is also moon mining which does exist in high security space but only in a limit number of systems which offer only a limited amount of common ore. Some moons in highsec will give rare ores which will turn into billions of ISK (interstellar kredits) on the market. I have briefly participated in some of these fleets but because I began my EVE Online career mining almost 24/7 I find it less appealing than some other activities right now. I have however mined mercoxit (see below image) for the first time. Mercoxit is a unique ore which requires special skills and equipment to mine and according to the Cerlestes Ore Table is found only in nullsec.
Finally and perhaps ultimately the most profitable exploiting I have done is ratting. Ratting is simply destroying NPC (non-playable character) pirates which are nicknamed rats. Each rat has a bounty which generally speaking is higher than anything in highsec. Plus there are many combat sites in each sov system creating an endless supply of rats. This in turn will allow players to create hundreds even thousands of wrecks to salvage which will sometimes contain high value faction modules. It also means there are no shortage of escalations which are usually very profitable but sometimes lead outside of blue space and are more often than not quite difficult to do if you’re not prepared. Occasionally some combat sites and escalations even contain capital ships, such as the Moros below with a whopping 60m ISK bounty. Unfortunately I am not equipped to deal with a rat of this size.
There is still so much more to try in nullsec. Most notably is that I can look forward to using capital ships. As I write this another player is building me a Nidhoggur carrier which after some tests and a little more research I will use to rat. This would probably warrant another blog post dedicated to my experience using a capital ship and carrier ratting. I have also had thoughts about obtaining a dreadnought or two which will help deal with rat capital ships and be a step in the right direction for whatever war will eventually come our way. There are also discussions for expensive BLOPS (black ops) ships being needed for offensive hit and run covert strikes in enemy territory which I find interesting.
Recently I decided to join a player corp (corporation) in EVE Online. After my post earlier this month I started to play again, at first it was just to recoup my recent losses and then to liquidate and consolidate assets. During this time I noticed there was some excitement around the latest Equinox expansion. This expansion promises to be the beginning of huge changes to null security space and features new upwell structures, resources and ships.
Having almost exclusively played in high security space, most of these features I would never see, let alone exploit. This is on top of many other features that are more or less exclusive to null security space, such as the ability to use capital ships. Flying capital ships in EVE Online is something I have always wanted to do and I even wrote about it more than 3 years ago when all I could do was risk a test flight.
I did join a player corp in October last year for 11 days which was as far as I am concerned a colossal disaster. Nobody seemed to know what they were doing. I don’t want to go into any details but I am amazed I lasted even 11 days with those clowns. Sadly this experience served to reinforce my view that joining a player corp and playing EVE Online in null security space was not for me. However after a lot of research and with new found confidence I decided to join a player corp called Silent Armada which is part of the alliance Game Theory which in turn is part of Phoenix Coalition and as of right now is not at war with anyone.
Compared to my last experience, these past 10 days have been amazing. Each time I play I learn something new about the game, everyone is friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. Some of my corp mates have extensive knowledge about PVP (Player vs Player), capital ships, advanced industry and how to generally thrive in null security space. The leader of the corp has even given me 4 fully fitted and somewhat expensive ships and expects nothing in return. I have joined 2 fleet operations so far including this ice mining fleet screenshotted below.
I am not used to kindness and generosity, especially in EVE Online. I hope that it will continue and that I am able to repay them in kind. Usually alliances push for minimum requirements, full API access to your accounts and demand that you commit time to doing what they want at least several times a month. So far however that hasn’t been the case and the leadership has been exceptionally accessible and helpful.
For a short while on most days I log in to EVE Online to complete daily challenges and/or receive daily rewards from the login campaign. Usually that is the end of it because right now I don’t particularly want to play EVE Online but I believe someday I will and will appreciate the 10-15 minutes I spend each day obtaining the rewards on offer. Last Saturday however, as part of completing one of the daily challenges, I found a wormhole which connects the region of EVE I operate from to just 3 jumps away from Jita. This is a relatively rare and interesting opportunity to visit Jita (the main trade hub for EVE Online) and sell salvage and other miscellanies loot that I collected either when completing missions or combat sites. Ordinarily to do this I would need to make a more than 60 jump round trip rather than the 5 or 6 this wormhole gave me.
I loaded up my cargo ship (hauler), an Iteron Mark V with the salvage and loot which had some value and set off to jump through the wormhole and make my way to Jita. One jump away from Jita however I was targeted and destroyed by a player in Perimeter, a high security system with a 1.0 (the highest) security rating. Our corporations were not at war and I had done nothing to make myself a suspect (something which allows others to attack without penalty). The players ship, a Tornado, was therefore destroyed by CONCORD (sort of like the police of EVE Online). Now here’s the rub. I estimate that this players losses cost around 22-25 million ISK (Interstellar Kredits), the main currency of EVE Online. My losses on the other hand were around 250 – 260 million ISK, much of which was completely destroyed. However the player was able to collect what was left from the wreckage (maybe around half) which clearly far outweigh their losses. The player knew destroying me will very likely cover their losses because at some point a second player (or perhaps the same player with a second account) would have scanned my cargo hold without my knowledge by using a passive targeting module. It’s piracy 101 and on this occasion it worked out well for them. For some reason the kill isn’t on zKillboard yet, but here is a screenshot of the kill report.
While I am disappointed I lost this amount of assets, I did learn a few lessons. I now know that even if my pilot has some relatively good skills and even if I invest in relatively good defense modules, a tech 1 hauler such as the Iteron Mark V can be 1 shot and destroyed by 1 player well within the 6 or so seconds a pirate has in high security space before CONCORD shows up. Another lesson is that on reflection I didn’t actually need to use a weak and slow cargo ship, I could have used a battleship which has a significantly smaller cargo hold but on this occasion was probably enough and if it wasn’t I could have done it in 2 trips with added relative safety. Finally I should have trusted my instinct. On the way I noticed the wreck of another cargo ship but decided to risk it anyway. I should have stopped and either turned back or docked up to re evaluate what I was doing.
I should add that this method of piracy is completely legit and it is a sound way of playing the game. I hold no ill will towards the player for choosing to play the game in this way. If anything they add content by reaffirming that nothing is off limits in EVE and if you undock your ship you could potentially lose it. It’s a reminder of the first lesson an EVE Online player should learn. If you can’t afford to lose your ship and/or the cargo or if losing it will truly upset you, don’t undock with it. Having said that, personally, I don’t think I could do what this player does. It’s not that they’re doing anything wrong, but for me the thought that I might upset someone who for some reason hasn’t learnt the first lesson of EVE kind of turns my stomach. I think I would be the worst pirate ever and would more than likely say sorry to my victims and give them back everything I took from them. Which isn’t the point at all.
EDIT: After speaking with other members of the EVE Online community over the weekend, and after further deliberations. It turns out that I am wrong about the losses this pirate incurred. It’s actually closer to 85-90 million ISK lost. Which means this person only gained a very small amount of profit and maybe took a small loss when you take into account taxes. It was a bit of gamble that the right loot wasn’t destroyed as well. Not a very smart pirate.
Each week before playing a different game, my friends Jamie, Shadey and I have been playing Left 4 Dead one or two levels at a time. Developed and published by Valve with their Source engine back in 2008 with a sequel the following year, the game is starting to show its age and become a bit of classic. Despite some initial misgivings, I found it a nice change of pace from the other games I am playing right now and as ever I enjoyed simply playing a game with friends. While I suppose you could play through the game single player, it’s designed to be a co-op first person shooter, supporting up to 4 people to play as one of the protagonists available.
As I was playing I remembered that there is a StarCraft 2 custom map published by Blizzard Entertainment back in 2011 called Left 2 Die which is a sort of RTS (Real Time Strategy) spin off of Left 4 Dead. The objective being to fight off waves of undead with special enemies which have similar names and abilities to the zombies in Left 4 Dead. It even has the similar title card below. The whole thing was to show off their latest custom map editor which, to be honest, is a great way to get into game development. It is after all how games like League of Legends and Dota 2 were born. Which in turn started the MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game genre.
I am also reminded of when I played through Aliens: Fireteam Elite back in 2021. Don’t get me wrong, for the most part they’re completely different games. But they are both designed to be played cooperatively. It’s a shame that back then I wasn’t able to play through it with a friend or two, it could have been so much more fun.
After around a total of 17 hours play time, we completed Left 4 Dead on ‘normal’ difficulty last weekend. This means that the criteria has been met for it to go on my list of completed games. Technically speaking, we completed the the first Left 4 Dead game as well as Left 4 Dead 2, but I will feel better combining the two games. Especially as I should admit that there was an element of being carried, especially at the beginning. Towards the end however I would like to think I was holding my own, barely.
Yesterday I completed Hades, a roguelike game developed by Supergiant Games and was released in 2020. The objective is to escape the underworld with Zagreus (the son of Hades) by moving from room to room and defeating the enemies within which include several bosses and 4 zones with different characteristics. Along the way you collect rewards which will either make Zagreus stronger for your escape attempt or give you resources which you can spend to make Zagreus permanently stronger, unlock special rooms, weapons or cosmetics.
The game features a lot of Greek mythology for which I admit I know very little. There is dialog with most of the Gods which reside at Mount Olympus and in the Underworld plus many others such as the hero Achilles. I found this to be not exactly a unique but an interesting flavour to the game which I haven’t experienced before. Better still the dialog between Zagreus and the various characters in the game contains a lot of humour. It takes the somewhat deep and interesting subject of Greek mythology and puts a funny spin on it which I really like. The story and dialog is also continuous and not repetitive, even when you fail and Zagreus dies the story and the dialog continues which somehow makes your failure feel like not a bad thing and actively pats you on the back, encouraging you to try again. Much like how real life should be.
The artwork by Jen Zee is exceptional as featured above. The soundtrack by Darren Korb is also very good. The gameplay has a lot of hack and slash so I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone who is susceptible to an RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury). But I would recommend using a decent mouse and keyboard, something every gamer should have if they can, it really is helpful with games such as this. I don’t know what my average APM (Actions Per Minute) was completing Hades, but I can say it is much higher than I am used to.
I felt a great sense of pride and accomplishment escaping the underworld for the first time and effectively completing the game, so much so that as well as adding Hades to my list of completed games, I also captured the moment I defeated the final boss for the first time and uploaded it to YouTube. I don’t know if my strategy of ‘going in all guns blazing’ was a good one, but I had such a good run that I hoped it would work.
Spoiler alert.
To be honest Hades isn’t the type of game I would normally play, it was given to me by my friends Jamie and Shadey as a birthday present just over 2 weeks ago. This is the second game they have given me, the first being Slay the Spire for Christmas. I feel so incredibly lucky to have such thoughtful and generous friends in my life who have helped me broaden my gaming horizons and perhaps more importantly my confidence. I can’t thank them enough.
It took me 40 attempts and over 25 hours of play time to escape the underworld, but there is a lot of end game content which could probably add another 30 or 40 hours of game play. This includes ‘hell mode’ which makes subsequent attempts harder and/or speed running the game with the different weapons available. For me though I am satisfied to leave Hades on a high and move on to the next game.
Over the last week or so I completed all of the StarCraft Remastered campaigns in full without cheating. I first played StarCraft when the Brood War expansion was released in 1998 and treated myself to the remastered version of the game in 2019 which I wrote about but never really invested too much time in playing.
To be honest I thought this was going to be a quick win for my list of completed games, but it turned out to be much more than that and it took me quite a bit of time to play through all 30 of the original missions (episodes 1, 2 and 3) and 26 brood war missions (episodes 4, 5 and 6). I remembered some of them, but most of the Protoss and Zerg missions I had completely forgotten about. Perhaps never really played through them properly back in the day because it felt completely new to me.
For the most part StarCraft is celebrated as probably the best RTS game ever made and one of the most competitive games of all time, bringing to life an entire industry of what we now know as eSports. But there is another side to StarCraft which is the lore and story behind the Terran, Protoss and Zerg with main characters Jim Raynor, Artanis, Sarah Kerrigan and some of the lesser known ones such as Duran, Tassadar and DuGalle. If any reader enjoyed playing through StarCraft II but doesn’t know the preluding story, I highly recommend you play through StarCraft Remastered.
Over the last 3 or 4 days I have played through Stay, a game which my friend Jamie recommended earlier in the year. As a cat lover I had my eye on Stray back in 2022 when it was first released, but for one reason or another I never got around to playing it. When Jamie said I could use her copy of the game in addition to a glowing recommendation, I couldn’t come up with any more reasons not to play.
Developed by BlueTwelve Studio using Unreal Engine 4, my first thought was that Stay is a graphically pleasing game giving modern triple-a games a run for their money. But Stay is much more than that. The protagonist, a cat, has been expertly developed by fellow cat lovers. Everything from the animations, behaviours and sounds are based off of real cats owned by the developers. There are even 23 cats named in the credits which I thought was really cool.
Set in a sort of post apocalyptic, perhaps even post dystopian futuristic city filled with robots, the game has a pretty decent (albeit short) underlying story to it. I found most of the robots really funny and I liked interacting with them. I also enjoyed the somewhat oriental atmosphere to the city which is filled with neon lights. The cat has a drone companion, B-12 (see what they did there?) which translates what the robots say and starts to remember things which it had forgotten before you met it. I can’t say much more without potentially spoiling the game for any reader who hasn’t played it yet, but I highly recommend that you take your time and explore every aspect of the game.
The only criticism I have is that the game is short. If rushed I think most people could complete the game in 6 hours, but if you take your time you could probably stretch it out to 9 or 10. There isn’t much replay value but I think that’s OK. For me Stay is a game best played when you’re ‘between games’ or as a way to take a break from a game you’re investing a lot of time. The game isn’t particularly challenging but it has a few puzzles to solve. I really enjoyed this play through and have added Stray to my list of completed games, something I am relieved to see growing steadily.