What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

BALATRO is simple, stupid, addictive, and maybe brilliant. Video poker with a roguelike element. Each hand, you have to get a higher score in order to progress. In between hands, you can upgrade your deck of cards. There's different "builds," like trying to optimize your deck to get full houses, and then finding cards to synergize with that and blow your score up every time.

I started Evil Within 2 on the Steam deck. It's good so far, pretty much what I expected.

But this post is more about what video games YOU are playing, and it's the just released demo of Office Nightmare, made by me. store.steampowered.com/app/2982840/Office_Nightmare/

Finished Drug Dealer Simulator story mission. Now, I'm just achievement hunting. Making good money with my labs and the Maui Wowie situation is doing well, but slower because it takes the plants so long to grow. I think it's hilarious that adding Viagra to some of the drugs makes them hella addictive.

Going through my previous purchases, I realized I had Midnight Heist. I got the game because Fooster played it with his friend on YouTube. So, I picked it up and love it.

Thanks to Payday 2, I absolutely love heist games. This one is a mash up of a heist game, like Thief Simulator, and Phantasmophobia. You're thieves breaking into businesses, hacking hideouts, etc. and stealing everything that isn't nailed down. Main goal is to hack computers to get data, which triggers your ability to escape. Simple, right?

Well, no. There's a supernatural entity that stalks the location. If it finds you, you're deader than Hell. There are several possible entities to hunt you, each with their strengths and weaknesses. One of the entities is Ogryn sized and trundles about quite loudly and slowly. Then there's the L4D Witch like entity that's blind as a bat but has excellent hearing and is ass kickingly fast.

At the beginning, you will die A LOT. Once you become acclimated to the mechanics and where the good hiding spots are (walk in lockers and bathroom stalls) it becomes a risk v. reward situation. The hacking mechanic is minigame based. They aren't too difficult (one of the games is punching in the numbers 1 to 10 in order), they are just there to waste time between entity appearances. It's still nerve wracking because you don't know when the entity will appear until you hear its footsteps.

It's still being updated and I can't wait when they add more locations.

For $10, it's a satisfying experience. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2204350/Midnight_Heist/

Evil Within 2 continues to be good. It has very strong Control vibes. Control was the best game I played in whatever year it showed up on Gamepass. I will probably replay it at some point. These two games are very similar in how they look and play.

I'm also playing Wall World, which is a roguelite that has you controlling a giant spider-like mining robot along a sheer cliff wall. You find mine entrances, and go in to collect resources by breaking blocks. Periodically you have to return to the robot to fend off waves of attacking aliens. Rinse, repeat. My description of it makes it sound bad, but it is decent mindless fun. It's held my interest longer than most things like it would.