"College dropout Mae Borowski returns home to the crumbling former mining town of Possum Springs seeking to resume her aimless former life and reconnect with the friends she left behind. But things aren't the same. Home seems different now and her friends have grown and changed. Leaves are falling and the wind is growing colder. Strange things are happening as the light fades.

And there's something in the woods."

Night in the Woods is launching January 10th after a successful Kickstarter project. As a run up to the game the project developers released the side game Lost Constellation and Longest Night. Both are set in the Night in the Woods universe and are available to download under the pay as you like model.

https://finji.itch.io/lost-constellation
https://finji.itch.io/longest-night

You can head to the woods for the night on January 10th on PC, Mac and Linux on Steam and the PS4.

Today’s Freshmen in High School will be learning aboutThe Berenstein Bears as an book title that happened before they were born.

Yet, the relevance of The Berenstein Bears is felt through our lives to this day. It is impossible to avoid the places we as a nation have gone. Scars and open wounds stain our stars and stripes.

We must understand that what we were told about this book title is a lie.

How many more people need to die until we realize a revaluation of The Berenstein Bears?

Don't let people try to tell it is Berenstain we all remember Berenstein.

The Angry Video Game Nerd video was created as a voice for the victims of Berenstain, to ask the questions they were robbed of the ability to ask about their fate.

When Joel Hodgson created the Kickstarter project to bring back Mystery Science Theater 3000 I was in a blissful nerdvana. Before that I didn't think the show would even come back and then it was funded. Recently they just wrapped up filming the new season of the show and are talking about releasing the new episodes early next year. We are so close to a new movie sign I can almost taste the satellite of love.

Shout Factory is the company that has released the old classic MST3K seasons on DVD a bit at a time and recently they have been dropping free episodes on YouTube. If you haven't seen Mystery Science Theater or want to revist it you should hit play on Earth VS. The Spider above. It's one of my more favorite show format episodes in that it starts with a 50's era PSA video titled "In Speech: Using Your Voice" which is a Professor teaching you how to be an effective speaker. The reason why these 50's era PSAs are so fun to watch and riff is because they are a really fun window into a time in society that is long since past. Earth VS. The Spider is also one of those perfect MST3K movies in that it is a fairly good film but campy and badgood enough to be interesting.

Queer Quest: All in a Gay's Work is a new Indie adventure game on Kickstarter fresh out of the Portland Indie Game scene. Designer Mo Cohen is the force behind this really fun take on the adventure game genre while giving it a unique focus.

"Queer Quest is a queer-as-fuck point-and-clit adventure game. Inspired by classic gems like Monkey Island, Kings Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry, but set in a queer community in the pacific northwest. You play as Lupe, a long haired butch with a heart of gold. She lives with her babely girlfriend, Alexis, that is until one day when Alexis gets kidnapped! You gotta help Lupe by deciphering clues, talking to lovable weirdos, and navigating self care."

I know Mo and some of her team from the Portland Indie Game scene and it's awesome to see them involved in really fun projects. My only gripe here is in how some people are responding to the game. I might not be the most avid fan of adventure games myself but some are taking point with the entire premise of the game or that it shouldn't exist at all. I love that this project explores things that really don't come up much in adventures games or the gaming community. If games are to be considered art I would think making a place to explore all the avenues of the human experience should be on the table.

Queer Quest is on Kickstarter now and if you want to know more hit the link below.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2069548077/queer-quest-all-in-a-gays-work

Some people are on a quest to rid themselves of all physical media and go to a completely digital life. I get the thought but I still like owning certain things. I still enjoy leafing through a strategy guide or putting a retro game cart in a system to play because something about that it is just fun. Even when I was a kid part of the fun of reading Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers 3 strategy guide was just reading again and again. Which, honestly, is part of the fun of having a strategy guide for even a modern game. Can you look up something game related faster by doing an Internet search? Sure. But is it also incredible to open up a huge tome of Skyrim art and information? Absolutely.

Prima just dropped the details of it's upcoming Skyrim Special Edition Collector's Strategy Guide and if you're a Skyrim fan this might be something you need to look in to. Yeah sure this can fit as a PDF on our phones, but having this on a shelf or available to look through is part of the fun of owning this sort of thing. Plus when the Apocalypse happens the Skyrim book can be used to start a fire to cook food which seems entirely on point thematically. Good luck doing that with your smartphone.

I contacted Prima asking for a review copy and if they send one you better believe i'll write about it. So you know, here's hoping the Dragonborn can hear my Fus. Or is that duh? Sorry, I have a hard time with other languages.

https://www.primagames.com/games/elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/official-strategy/return-skyrim-hd-special-edition-walkthrough-strategy-guide

"Within ten years the computer games of today will probably seem very basic and primitive. The games of the future will be faster and more exciting with superbly realistic screen displays."

I always love reading old ads or articles of how people viewed the future of gaming. This article pretty much nails most of what gaming has become. The ad even sort of plays at room scale VR, which isn't something i'd really have thought would have been a thing even after watching Lawnmower Man so many times I wore out the VHS tape.

When Plants VS Zombies came out in 2009 I was hooked. It's fun take on the tower defense genre but if I had one gripe it would be the game was pretty easy and as such you could use the same strategy over and over to win. Plants VS Zombies 2 was launched as a free to play game and it was a fun game to start but it didn't quite live up to the original.

Recently it seems like each company is releasing their own digital collectable card game to get a piece of the huge Hearthstone and Magic online money making machine. EA recently dropped Plants VS Zombies Heroes on smartphones and since I enjoy the franchise well enough I decided to download it. If you have spent any time playing Hearthstone or Magic the game feels very familiar. Plants VS Zombies Heroes is a free to play game where you can grind in game currency to open packs or spend real money to open premium packs. Not quite sure what's in a premium pack vs a normal pack you can earn in game but I imagine the cards you open are better. The game also features Zombie and Plant heroes that grant you different abilities that change how you play the game.

In the end Plants VS Zombies Heroes is a fun smartphone game and brings a quirky simplicity to the digital card space but doesn't bring anything new or terribly interesting to the table. If you are looking for a new free app to try, I recommend you check it out but if you are looking for something a bit more deep then you should be playing Hearthstone, Elder Scrolls Online, Faeria or plain ol' Magic.

FTL is an spaceship simulation turn based roguelike that features an incredible score by composer Ben Prunty. If you liked the FTL score Ben has just released an all new Halloween themed EP called ElectroCrypt you can checkout by heading over to his Bandcamp page.

I recommend checking out the title track "Welcome to the Crypt," "Welcome to the Gravediggers Hut" and "Ghima's Revenge."

That is... if you can stand the... horror....

"Happy Halloween! This EP is a collection of what I'm calling 'Halloween electro-funk'. Let's make that a genre. The music was inspired by Danny Elfman, the old Super NES game Zombies Ate My Neighbors, and the gleeful indulgence of OCRemix, a community of game music rearrangement artists that I love.

This was all originally written for the indie PC game FranknJohn, which is currently in early access on Steam, but I decided to release the music early in its own collection as a celebration of my favorite holiday. The track titles and cover art have been chosen to evoke a campy, spooky, horror-themed story. "

https://benprunty.bandcamp.com/album/electrocrypt

Even though i'm more than a couple days late to writing about the second day of Steam Developer Days I wanted to get out my thoughts while they are still nearly fresh in my mind. Spoiler alert, day two was incredible but the drive home from Seattle to Portland that night was precarious as I had to navigate the freak storm that occurred as some remnants of Typhoon Songda hit the west coast. I feel bad for my steering wheel as my clenched fingers strangled it for many tense driving moments but the wheel and I made it home safely.

One of the most interesting parts of the second devs days was Mike Ambinder's talk on The Psychology Of Games. When the talks are released from Steam Developer Days I plan on featuring the talk in a post for people to watch and talk more about it. There were many standout parts to Mike's talk but the thing I thought about was how Developer choice can effect player preference. Mike also talked about cognitive dissonance and how they used that to change toxic behavior in DoTA 2. His talk also featured the hilarious picture of him and Gabe embedded above and I want to thank Mike letting me use the image in this blog post.

Another interesting talk was by Ronimo Games(the creators of Awesomenauts) about games as a service. Traditionally a game was released as a physical product and after the initial wave of sales you were done with it. You'd maybe drop a patch or two and sometimes an expansion but for the most part, after launch, developers and companies were done with the game. Ronimo takes a different approach to this with Awesomenauts as they are always releasing content in the form of game patches, heroes, skins and expansions. They've been utilizing the games as a service model since 2012 and it seems to have served them and the fans of the game well. Fans get more of what they love and Ronimo can keep the studio lights on. I found a few things out in this talk in that when players buy Awesomenauts skins one reason they often do that is to support the developers. Players see it more as a patronage of the company and want to support them as a studio. Ronimo also was straight up honest that they held back some content at launch so they could focus on post release promises and be able to fund fixing bugs. Usually companies are not transparent about this but Ronimo was pretty straight forward about the costs of running a studio and being able to keep post release commitments by having the work done in advance.

If I had one suggestion for next years Steam Developer Days it is that I would focus on more advanced topics. It's good to cover things from a beginner level but I wasn't finding each talk to be as meaty or topical as i'd of liked. The talks I highlighted in my two posts were superb but not every talk was as deep as i'd have wanted. That said, I loved that Steam Developer Days was only two days as i've had a rough time when conferences overstay their welcome. All that said, I really enjoyed this years Steam Developer Days and can't wait to head back when Valve does it again in 2018.

If you want to read up on my thoughts on the first day of the conference hit the link below

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/3127/steam-developer-days-day-1-vr-is-all-around-you

Skyrim Special Edition comes to Xbox One, PS4 and PC on October 28th and Bethesda has released this trailer showing off just how good the game will look. As a fun bonus if you already have Skyrim on Steam on PC it will be available to you at the ultra low cost of zero dollars. It's nice that Bethesda is making this available to owners of new consoles because if you haven't played it now is a great time. Not does it come with an incredible graphical upgrade but Skyrim will also come with all DLC included.

If you are interested in joining the Skyrim Special Edition launch hype train join the Cheerful Ghost launch event discussion below

http://cheerfulghost.com/GregoPeck/events/133/skyrim-special-edition