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Games: Commodore 64 Ultimate, New Steam Games, and More
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Balthazar Rouberol ☛ My corner of the TTRPG universe
I've been playing TTRPGs for years, and have grown more and more tired of playing Dungeons and Dragons for a while now. It was a slow trickle of things. One perception check too many, having to explain once again that your CON score does not matter and only your bonus does, the thousandth fireball, or simply having a player wait for their turn to simply miss and accomplish nothing. And then the OGL controversy happened. That really did put me off. Strong-arming your own creator community into paying up will never be something I condone. Period. After that whole shebang, I decided to not buy a single new book from WotC when my campaign was over.
2023 was interesting though, because that controversy led to a renewed blooming of the 3rd party ecosystem, and seemingly every TTRPG designer started a Kickstarter for a new game. 2 years later, many of these games are here, people are playing them, streaming them, and discussing them. And as my campaign is closing down, I'm really excited about many of these games.
I've also decided to stop GM-ing year-long campaigns, and focus on 2-6 session adventures, to be able to experience many of these games, and tell more varied stories.
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André Machado ☛ Magic: The Gathering as a Social Bridge: Strategy, Story, and Human Connection
Magic: The Gathering has been with me since childhood—long before algorithms curated interests, before social feeds replaced living room tables. What drew me in was not just the rules or competition, but the way the game created a shared mental space. Much like chess, Magic is a contest of incomplete information, resource tempo, foresight, and pattern recognition. But unlike chess, it layers narrative, art, lore, and emotional texture over the skeleton of strategy. The result is a game that invites people of wildly different backgrounds to meet halfway: through cardboard, conversation, and imagination.
When I compare Magic to chess, I'm not ranking one above the other. Instead, I see them as two archetypes of human play. Chess is the distilled logic of structured combat. Magic is that same strategic essence poured into a living mythos that evolves with each set, table, group, and deck. Both demand discipline; one evokes lineage and austerity, the other embraces adaptability, aesthetics, and expression.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Commodore 64 Ultimate eclipses 10,000 units sold milestone — rebooted firm gives huge thank you to fans
Commodore 64 Ultimate sales eclipse the 10,000 units sold milestone.
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Boiling Steam ☛ New Steam Games Playable on the Steam Deck, with Dying Light: The Beast and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor - 2025-09-20 Edition
Between 2025-09-13 and 2025-09-20 we selected 19 newly released games that are rated as Verified or Playable on the Steam Deck, and meeting specific criteria in terms of user ratings. This is a huge week not just in terms of numbers, but in quality as well. There’s no less than 3 new worthy entries in the vampire survivor genre, with Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor looking very good. And let’s not forget a sequel to the well known Zombie franchise, with Dying Light: The Beast.
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Boiling Steam ☛ The Biggest Games of the Tokyo Games Show 2025