Shadows over Loathing

I don't game often, but when I do... boy I really got into Shadows Over Loathing. This is by the people who do the Kingdom of Loathing online game, and previous stand alone game West of Loathing. I did KoL for a little bit (see below), and played WoL, so got this as soon as I saw it.

This is stick figure people in a weird and shadowy place. (Yes, you can spot the Lovecraft, indeed some explicit references.) It's up to you to track down cursed items and eventually solve the plans of the big bad... or, you know, you could be the big bad, hey this is open world, I'm not telling you how to roll.

There is the main quest, some side missions, and lots of side quests (side quests being the shorter missions of just usually 'go here and sort this out'). You get a few companions and can level them all up (which helps!). And there are lots of places to go.

And it is fun as all heck. I sunk many hours into my first place through, and by first I mean, yes I did other playthroughs. This is one of those games where I had to get all the achievements, and that necessitated four different playthroughs in total (although I may have had external aid to make the later playthroughs a bit easier).

One great thing about this is that there isn't really the feeling of needing to grind. There's always some mission to do, some new place to peek into, that you get a steady increase of XP and items to help out. WoL needed some grinding, and KoL... grinding is why I stopped playing. They've learnt, good on them.

That said... after this, having done a LOT of it... maybe I will look in on KoL again... but maybe after a few other games on my backlog...

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