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LETCO – Export Labour Company

Address: Hanoi, Vietnam

Contact: 024 3793 0333

Website: LETCO

LETCO – Export Labour Company

Address: Hanoi, Vietnam

Contact: 024 3793 0333

Website: LETCO

Note: I have avoided spoilers as much as possible, if I have left some in, please let me know!

Having toyed with the idea of a new MMORPG to play, rather than just be tied to Zenimax’s Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) and other various reasons, I finally, after chatting with Wuufu from the Hachyderm.io Mastodon server, went into the PlayStation store and reviewed my options. Being presented with five options was confusing enough, was Standard the right one, should I opt for the Seraph Starter Edition? I knew that starting off with Heroic and Mythical was not the way forward for someone testing the water, then the demo version caught my eye. Perfect, I thought, I’m still likely to buy the game, but on the off chance it doesn’t feel right, then this is a good option.

So I waited for the sizeable download to complete, this was late in the evening, so I resisted the urge to jump straight in and the next morning, started my first character – Thaemina, the Sea Witch, as close to my Bosmer Arcanist as I could manage, but this time I was hoping to head out to sea.

And I was off, failing dismally at combat through the opening tutorial as this is very different to ESO, I haven’t yet figured out if I can make some of the text larger, as for the displayed button combos for attacks would be much easier to read before I start pressing and hoping for the best (after a week I think I had the two base attack buttons down). I am still working on the ESO tactic of it gets too much, run away, take some potions, then head back!

Eventually Thaemina woke in present day, and then the real task of learning the interface began, oh boy! So many options (read as too many options) for harvesting, processing, crafting – yikes! This is going to take a while for me to get my head around the different menus, what goes on what method of quick access, how to access the wheel menus correctly. I worked out that there were various rewards, rather than presented on screen at log in, or directly when you level up, they are off in a menu, but some of these can come in handy. This did result in my usual RPG problem showing its face (mini game), inventory management, I just can’t seem to keep it under control, and then led to my discovery of the storage system, and another issue, remembering what is stored where and how to get to it if I am half a continent away?

After attempting to follow the main quest line for a while, I started playing with the conversation option, something I recognised, memories of playing Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls III Oblivion came flooding back, this I can handle, well as long as I can remember which order I put everyone in... Still figuring out what is required for each attempt, again I need to tinker with text size where possible.

A week in and I had progressed from the Western Guard Camp to Velia, decided that once I figured out how to buy a house, it would probably be here, with good access to the sea, and then moved onto Heidel. Much too fancy for a Sea Witch, but some interesting characters (and one who is on my hit list, I do hope they turn into a boss fight as I am looking forward to taking them down). Popped back to Velia to buy a house, got lost on how to even begin with furnishing, but there is plenty of time for that. Decided to try for some side quests, failed dismally when it came to some lost cats, just can’t seem to trigger the quest! Went for a ride along the north coast of Balenos, had cause to use the “escape” option, oh my word do I need this in ESO for when I go exploring and end up clambering down steep cliffs and then end up stuck and the game thinks your falling so unable to fast travel.

My thoughts after a week are:

• Yes it is gorgeous;
• The story line gets a bit weird sometimes but is okay, reading between the lines and using imagination helps; and
• It sometimes a bit jumpy/buggy, but then so is ESO and also anything built by Bethesda (not a fan girl per say, but I have serious hours and characters in ESO and Skyrim).

Merge Black Desert and ESO together, and I think you would have the perfect MMORPG.

Was I going to buy the full version once the demo period had ended? Yes, but this is where things get complicated, as the PlayStation Store decided I already had the version of the game, so I was unable to spend real money to continue playing. Cautiously chatted with PlayStation’s AI support chat, and to be fair it didn’t do too badly, and after a short while it decided that I need to chat to a human. This happened later in the day, case logged and then off to wait.

It took a couple of days, but received an initial answer back, their suggestion raised a question over whether I would still be able to access the character I had already created once the “fix” was carried out. This caused them to look at it again, and identify that this may not work and I still might not be able to purchase the game. A second option was given, which I will be trying out. But more searching online since has identified that Pearl Abyss is aware of an issue (11 March 2026), and is investigating this with PlayStation. This may mean that I am not alone and that a resolution wont be too far in the future.

For the time being it is back to Terraria as I was already on an ESO break, and read up more on how to get Thaemina ready for sailing and trading.

#Gaming #BlackDesert

I'm gonna complain for a minute. Spoilers for Shadow of the Tomb Raider's “Eye of the Serpent” mission.

So, I'm currently playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider on the highest difficulty level: Deadly Obsession. I'm doing this because I'm experimenting with friction in games. I'm still thinking about how I'm gonna tackle this topic, either with a blog post or a video, but I have thoughts about friction in games.

Modern (action) games are in it more for the spectacle than for actual challenge and for this reason, I've been playing the entire new Tomb Raider trilogy on their highest difficulty. Interestingly enough, the first one was still fairly straightforward, the second got a bit more challenging but this third one is giving me exactly the challenge I wanted. All three games have made it so you can only save at the campfires, completely removing checkpointing and manual saves. You die, and you get sent back to your last campfire save. This reminds me of the save crystals in the older Tomb Raiders games, specifically on PSX where you couldn't save manually. Shadow adds to this difficulty by taking away Lara's innate “detective vision” ability, where she can look through walls and spot enemies and this like. This makes enemy encounters a lot more tense, and I love that. They're challenges to overcome, and it's making me feel a lot more connected to the game. There's an item that gives you that sight back for a moment, but it's a consumable so I feel like that's a fair tradeoff.

Now, here's the thing. Shadow has been a bit rough around the edges with the placement of these campfires. I noticed it right at the start of the game, where you're thrown into a linear obstacle course with insta-death traps that went on for just a tad too long. I got worried there for a minute, but later segments weren't as grueling so I forgot about it.

But that's when the Eye of the Serpent came along.

This is another linear path, not only extremely long but also constantly broken up pace-wise. The trip towards the campfire wasn't that bad but it's what comes after that really grinded my gears. It took me maybe 15 attempts over 3 days to finally get on the other end of it.

Let me explain what happens. Just so I can get it out of my system.

You start at the campfire with your newly acquired shotgun and blast open a flimsy door. You then get one of those squeeze-through-narrow-opening animations that devs use to hide loading times. You know the ones, PS4 era games were horny for them. Then, there's a long crouching sequence. Slow, plodding, tension raising, that ends in a jump scare. Boo! you fall through the floor and fight a horde of animalistic natives. On this difficulty they can get you with just a few hits so there's no margin for error. Then, another crawling sequence followed by solving a waterwheel puzzle. Dive underwater to clear some debris, then spin the wheel and swim through. More walking, prevent getting skewered or shanked by a native, then a nasty jump and swing over spike pits. Better not die here, or get caught off-guard by Shadow's occasional unwillingness to get the jumping right, or you're roasting marshmallows.

Then we rappel down a hole and get a lengthy cutscene that gives us a birds-eye view of a lengthy environment puzzle. We move two more waterwheels but this time we need to move water-gargoyle-y poles to the correct position. Takes a while, but ok. After getting the first wheel turning you get another ambush, which thankfully can be skipped by jumping into the water and swimming to the second objective. Then we move more water gargoyle poles but this time we get occasionally interrupted by combat. I died here a couple of times because this one can't be skipped and they just kept coming out of the woodwork.

Then, a lengthy cutscene starts. Unskippable. Lara finds the place she's looking for, but her precious macguffin isn't where it should've been. A tremor goes through the hidden city, the natives get even more enraged and you start one of those spectacle running sequences. This one isn't too bad, but you need to be on your shit at all times, and occasionally wonder why this time you did get hit by their claws and arrows while the other 8 times you were here, you didn't. You must be getting sloppy but fucked if you could tell in what way! Ok, then, swimming. Thank god there isn't any Piranha stealth here.

yes piranha stealth did I stutter?!

This is an occasional mechanic where Lara has to hide in the tall weeds underwater while patrolling Piranha's do their rounds. If they see you, they swarm and kill you. Tough shit. Let's not dive into the fact that Piranha's only eat sick and easy prey but ok. No Piranha Stealth here. We move on. Swim swim swim, climb climb climb until we reach an overhang we can't climb on, since Lara can't hang that way yet. Luckily, just ahead, just after we do another squeeze through narrow opening thingies, we find a deserted campsite where a soldier got killed by a rockslide. We take his climbing gear so we can get past that overhang. Now if you thought “hey, campsite must mean campfire, we get a checkpoint here!” I'm here to dash your dreams against the rocks because NOPE. No campfire. This would've been the perfect spot but NAH.

Fine. So we climb up, now passing the previously inaccessible point and towards a terrifying jump that I always feel like it'll go wrong, but never did. Lara is hanging upside down and makes a leap of faith towards the ground and she lands just on the edge of the cliff for me, every single time. (which the video JUST NOW gave me the idea to rappel down first before jumping...:ALSDKFJS:LDFKJ:LSDKJF OK FINE THAT ONE IS ON ME.)

We climb up some more towards the biggest, most assholeish jump i've encountered in this game so far. It's a leap of faith where Lara has to throw her rappel axe into the cliff ahead so she can climb up. Problem is that the timing on this jump is mean as hell. It's so easy to throw the axe too early, making her overshoot and fall to her death. I had to look up a video after dying here the fifth time to make sure I didn't forget a mechanic. Turns out I had to throw the rappel axe later than my instincts told me. Even people on easy complain about this jump it seems, and they'd have the benefit of generous saving and checkpointing. Finally after that harrowing ordeal (which I'm positive has claimed a year off of my remaining actual life), I climb up and find another body of water to swan dive into. I'm so close to the end, I can feel it, I see the light at the end of the tunnel, so close...

SURPRISE! PIRANHA STEALTH!

I got mercilessly shredded to pieces the first time I got here after dying for like the 12th time. If I had been playing this when it came out in 2018, I would've been buying a new controller and/or monitor at this point.

The second time I got to this point (after dying s'more on segments that I thought I had handled at this point) I found an alternate route that took me past the patrolling piranha's without any hassle and then finally, FINALLY, the end of the water segment unceremoniously spits me out into the village that serves as a hub. Empty handed. No progress made in Lara's quest. I've posted a video under this post so you can see what that entire segment entails. Now imagine you die constantly and every time you do you end up having to redo all the challenges and pick up all the side content again and again, if you're a completionist. My god.

As I write this I am utterly deflated and I had to get this off of my chest. I honestly love Shadow of the Tomb Raider and how it handles its highest difficulty, save for segments like these that just feel like they didn't have a big priority on the list of things to be tested on this difficulty before shipping. Which is a crying shame, because I think the game shines on this difficulty, otherwise.

I'm going to bed. Probably gonna dream about the unskippable dialog and the freaking stealth piranha's. ugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyAWG98j7A8&t=1008s

After collecting all the feedbacks from the Rocket.chat trial run, that can be found in this blog post, we decided to slightly change our approach looking for a new home for our safe and cozy community, away from Discord, making the community directly invested in the choice.

What emerged is that it''s increasingly clear that a lot of the Discord alternatives whilst very promising are just not quite ready yet and need more time to bake in various different ways. Put simply, all of them have trade offs and drawbacks unique to each. Discourse was a big hit with the community and it was with the staff too.

So we decided to shift our focus to Discourse, but why?

Why Discourse

It has to be said that whilst Discourse isn't and wasn't intended to be a Discord replacement, it worked for us in a way we perhaps totally missed – the fact that The Tavern is spread across the world and we don't all get to keep up with the flow of a live chat simply due to timezone restrictions.

Text and voice chat

That said, there is still a need or want to be able to have live chat in some instances. The plugin for this with Discourse was ok (not great, just ok) and filled a gap but was a little bit of a bolt on. There are however other options we can work on for this though, such as getting other services integrated with Discourse (i.e. XMPP, IRC or Mumble) to let us have more functionalities in the live chatting side of things, that will probably supersede the usage of Discourse chat plugin, making it useless and to be deactivated.

Is Discourse private (as in available to fews)?

No, it is not. As mentioned previously we self-host all our services in a secure production-ready manner and Discourse was no exception, so it's completely usable. In fact, everyone is welcome, may you be a lurker or the most active poster/chatter.

You can sign up directly at our Discourse instance or request a TGT SSO account if you are interested in our other services (like Writefreely, Peertube, etc.). Should you choose to go for the TGT SSO account please contact a Staff member because it requires a manual action from our side.

Is Discourse private (as in managed by us?)

Yes, it is. Our Discourse instance resides in a VPN in EU, as well as the Object Storage connected. Everything is hosted by Hetzner and by any means under the GDPR regulation. The only piece of infrastructure we're not managing directly is the Content Delivery Network (CDN) which is hosted by Bunny.net (find more about their stance about GDPR here). The contract the Staff agreed upon about data protection and data processing is available here.

What we will do next

Even though the community voted to continue on Discourse, we will still keep an eye on testing and checking out Discord alternatives as they develop more and get better and better with time (hopefully) and share with you if anything groundbreaking comes up or develops.

#Discord #Discourse

For transparency, here’s The Gamers' Tavern’s monthly report for February 2026.

Costs

One time

Beneficiary	Service paid	Cost (€)
-	-	0 €

Total: 0,00 € Notes: -

Monthly

Service Provider	Service	Cost (€)
OVH Cloud	Eco baremetal server SYS-2-SAT-32 “Ben”	30,49 €
Hetzner	VPS CX22 “Gerry”	4,62 €
Hetzner	VPS CX32 “Nayeli”	8,30 €
Hetzner	VPS CX22 “Cindy”	4,62 €
Hetzner	Object Storage	6,09 €

Total: 54,12€ Notes:

• OVH Cloud: Writefreely, Owncast and Peertube, IRC, The Lounge, Mobilizon
• Hetzner: Pixelfed Glitch, Mastodon Glitch, Status page, Object Storage, Bridging services, Elastic search

Applied exchange rate 1 USD ≈ 0,95 EUR

Annual

Service Provider	Service	Cost (€)
OVH Cloud	Domain registration	39,02 €

Total: 39,02€ Notes: Domain registration will be paid in August '26

---

Donations

One time

Source	Gross amount (€)	Net amount (€)
Ko-Fi	4,00 €	4,00 €
LiberaPay	0,00 €	0,00 €

Total: 4,00 € Notes: -

Recurring

Source	Gross amount (€)	Net amount (€)
Ko-Fi	61,00 €	61,00 €
LiberaPay	0,00 €	0,00 €

Total: 61,00 € Notes: -

---

Balance

Costs (€)	Donations (€)	Total (€)
54,12 €	65,00 €	+10,88 €

#2026 #February #MonthlyReport

For transparency, here’s The Gamers' Tavern’s monthly report for January 2026.

Costs

One time

Beneficiary	Service paid	Cost (€)
-	-	0 €

Total: 0,00 € Notes: -

Monthly

Service Provider	Service	Cost (€)
OVH Cloud	Eco baremetal server SYS-2-SAT-32 “Ben”	30,49 €
Hetzner	VPS CX22 “Gerry”	4,62 €
Hetzner	VPS CX32 “Nayeli”	8,30 €
Hetzner	VPS CX22 “Cindy”	4,62 €
Hetzner	Object Storage	6,09 €

Total: 54,12€ Notes:

• OVH Cloud: Writefreely, Owncast and Peertube, IRC, The Lounge, Mobilizon
• Hetzner: Pixelfed Glitch, Mastodon Glitch, Status page, Object Storage, Bridging services, Elastic search

Applied exchange rate 1 USD ≈ 0,95 EUR

Annual

Service Provider	Service	Cost (€)
OVH Cloud	Domain registration	39,02 €

Total: 39,02€ Notes: Domain registration will be paid in August '26

---

Donations

One time

Source	Gross amount (€)	Net amount (€)
Ko-Fi	15,00 €	15,00 €
LiberaPay	0,00 €	0,00 €

Total: 15,00 € Notes: -

Recurring

Source	Gross amount (€)	Net amount (€)
Ko-Fi	50,00 €	50,00 €
LiberaPay	0,00 €	0,00 €

Total: 50,00 € Notes: -

---

Balance

Costs (€)	Donations (€)	Total (€)
54,12 €	65,00 €	+10,88 €

#2026 #January #MonthlyReport

Another test! That is all.

Yawn Good >insert timezone< friends. It's early-ish in the morning for me as I sit down to write this blog, the sounds of the Guilty Gear X soundtrack blasting through my headset, casually sipping coffee in between. It's a a good day. I need to listen to that soundtrack more...there's some real bangers throughout the entire series of games. Does it make sense to call something your favorite fighting game franchise solely based on the music?

yes. I've just ruled that it does.

Speaking of favorites, I once got so hung up on the question of “what's your favorite game” that I made an entire presentation outlining my favorite games based on genre. It was, like, almost 40 slides long. I made it in 2018, so I think it's time to revisit that... Are you interested? Toot @ me https://gamerstavern.online/@sunie

I find this preamble ramble quite useful to get to actually writing the post I've set out to do. I'll try to keep it brief but it helps to rev up the proverbial engine. Make sense?

Alright! So! At the start of the month I've set a challenge for myself, and that was to beat four games in February. I am stoked to tell you I have succeeded, and I'm here to tell you about what I've played and give y'all some mini-reviews.

En Garde!

---

★★★☆☆ En Garde! has been on my backlog for a while now. You play as Adalia de Volador, a daring swashbuckler that stands up against a tyrannical count-duke that terrorizes her town with ridiculous laws and taxes. It's a humorous game for sure, and the bright and colorful graphics were a joy to look at.

The game couples flashy swordplay mechanics with environmental interaction, making every encounter a sweet little sandbox of mayhem and comedy. Enemy on top of a flight of stairs? Kick him! Surrounded? Pick up a roast chicken off of the table and cover one's head while kicking the table towards the rest. A loaded cannon aimed at unsuspecting guards? You already know what to do.

I've definitely enjoyed my time with the game, but it wasn't without its frustrations. Due to the game's short length of about four hours, it wastes no time throwing pretty much every mechanic at you from the start, so by the time you've reached the fourth and final level there aren't much surprises left. The enemies are also quite relentless and constantly had me on the back foot, running away from them and towards a single use stage gimmick to take one or two out at a time. See, you can only directly cross blades with one enemy. If you get surrounded, you can't “Arkham” or “Assassin's Creed” your way by countering every blow that comes at you. You're forced to roll away and split up the enemies to thin out their numbers. I felt less like a cool and competent swordfighter and more like Kevin from Home Alone, luring enemies into my traps and generally feeling overwhelmed. This could very well be a me thing! I like a challenge, but this one didn't click with me.

Now, the saving grace here is that this game was originally a student project that got blown up into something bigger. I have a weakness for these kinds of projects, and there is so much heart in this that I can't be mad at the things I disliked. On the other side of that coin, I'm disinterested into going back into the challenge levels or 100%ing the game for the same reasons.

---

Dispatch

---

★★★★★

The second game was Dispatch and boy oh boy this one has my name written all over it. I've always loved interactive fiction games. Games like Dragon's Lair, Space Ace and later games like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us are just 100% my shit.

The game is set in a world of superheroes and supervillains. We follow Robert, whose Iron Man-esque suit got destroyed during an encounter with his nemesis. But just as his career as Mecha Man seems over and done with, he gets a job offer from SDN, the Superhero Dispatch Network. There, he is faced with dispatching a ragtag group of low tier ex-villains that want to redeem themselves and become heroes.

Now, your choices matter in this game so it wouldn't do for me to divulge more of the story. In the typical style of Telltale's The Walking Dead (AdHoc Studios is made up of ex TT-devs), the flow of the story is dictated by your actions and even though some events are set in stone, the context that you create brings a personal touch to the proceedings.

There's more than just watching Dispatch and occasionally making a choice though. There's a few Quicktime Events if Robert ends up fighting (which can be disabled if you don't like them) but the meat of the gameplay is the actual Dispatching. You send out the members of your team to all sorts of tasks, from rescuing cats out of trees to stopping an international supervillain. How WELL they do is based on their stats, which you get to increase when they rank up. Reading the task and sussing out what kind of skills are needed is how you do well in these moments, and there's even a (quite original) hacking minigame to break up the action.

The tone of Dispatch definitely leans more towards “Invincible” rather than most of Marvel's output. There's mature dialog, risque situations and the game doesn't shy away from nudity. The squeamish (or the folks that are scared of videos getting demonetized) can opt to censor that stuff, though leaving it on creates a very solid and mature identity overall that doesn't go too over the top.

I definitely recommend experiencing this game any way you can, either by playing it yourself or by tooting at me to stream it so you can just watch it like a Saturday morning cartoon. I wouldn't mind playing this again.

---

Beyond Shadowgate

---

★★★★☆

I absolutely adore the original Shadowgate, specifically the NES version. The music, atmosphere and writing make for a unique package. Death lurks around every corner but it's so hilariously abrupt at times (and not very punishing) that you almost WANT to find all the ways you can end your life.

...gosh the things people say that only work in the context of video games, huh?

Anyway, Beyond Shadowgate is based on the original draft of the sequel, that got thrown out in favor of whatever ended up hitting the Turbografx-CD. It's helmed by the original developers, and it shows. This game retains the tone, aesthetic and unrelenting murderous attitude of the NES original, and I love it for it.

You are Del the Fenling, who gets roped into saving the kingdom from the evil influences that have been hanging over it since the events that transpired 35 years ago (OG Shadowgate). The gameplay consists of using a classic point & click verb-based interface to navigate. Use key on door, examine statue, hit jester, that sort of thing. It was lovely to just hang back in my chair, clicking on everything that looked interesting. Felt nostalgic.

Two things that kinda rubbed me the wrong way, one of which is 100% on me. First, I admit to grabbing a walkthrough here and there, because as it turns out I am woefully out of shape when it comes to these kinds of games. I have unlearned the skills of pixel hunting, hint parsing and straight up “trying everything until it works” that I used to have back when adventure games were basically all I played. It's very retro in that aspect, and I have been spoiled by modern games. It's not a knock against the game, rather my own learned laziness.

Second, and this is a bit of a spoiler, there are segments of the game that teleport Del to the worlds of Deja Vu and Uninvited, as a nostalgia play to ICOMs other works on the NES. This bugged me to no end. I've never played these and it took me out of a world that I enjoy. The Steam page calls these segments side quests, but I object. If they are mandatory parts of the main progression of the game there's nothing 'side' about them. I am gritting my teeth to not go off on a tangent on how Kickstarter incentives and rewards can muddle the final product. Maybe for another blog. There are so many actual Shadowgate games, couldn't they have just... ugh.

Aside from these things, Beyond Shadowgate is fantastic, a real treat and a real bastard. I recommend it to anyone yearning for an old-school adventure game.

---

Now, originally, the last game on the dock was Anno: Mutationem, but I ended up dropping it. This blog post is getting long in the tooth so I'll keep it brief:

The beauty of this game is skin deep. Underneath the lovely graphics and atmosphere lies a buggy game, with serviceable yet boring combat and nonsensical plot riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. I got about halfway until I couldn't bring myself to continue anymore. So instead, I pivoted to:

Fear the Spotlight

---

★★★★★

Horror games have been a staple for me ever since the first Alone in the Dark. Fear the Spotlight can easily slot itself between the greats of the PSX era.

The game contains two chapters, each following one of the two main characters, Vivian and Amy. The girls break into the school late at night to play around with the Ouija board, to summon spirits that were linked to a horrible fire that destroyed the school and its reputation years prior. Of course this summoning goes horribly wrong and the two get entangled into that horrific past, all while being haunted by ghosts and a monster with a big spotlight for a head.

The game reminded me of the aesthetics of Silent Hill 1 on PSX, and it didn't take long for me to get sucked in. The low fidelity graphics have a way to set your mind on edge. Was that something moving in the darkness, or was it just one of those wobbly polygons? The low visibility, much like Silent Hill's fog, really keeps you in suspense. Aside from that, the game focuses on stealth, completely ignoring combat. It's a recipe for constant unease. The game knows how to ride that rollercoaster of suspense and not rely on cheap tactics like jump scares and blatant gore to get your heart rate up.

The story is well written and executed, slowly unraveling the events that lead up to the horrific fire that cost a ton of students their lives. The game isn't particularly long, but uses its time well to build everything up to their tragic conclusions, while keeping up the tense and gripping atmosphere emblematic of a good horror game.

It's a perfect example of how limitations set upon the developers leverage the final result. I can't recommend this game enough, especially if it's on sale.

---

And that's it! wow! This blog post was an absolute beast to write. If you ended up reading it all, kudos to you. I don't blame you if you found it a bit too much of a wall of text. It's no longer morning as I wrap this up. If you want to chat with me some more about this post, please toot https://gamerstavern.online/@sunie. Also, I started streaming on Peertube! the first archive is up here

Thanks for reading! See you soonie!

Hey everyone,

after using Rocket.chat for a few days we summarised the feedback from the community and our administrative feedback for ease of reading and to let us retrieve them later during the next test run(s).

The feedbacks from the community

The community reported back that with adding more and more channels it felt way less organized due to the web and app behaviour. Even though Rocket.chat comes with native mobile apps, the community found them lacking in terms of QoL functionalities and carrying more bugs than the web interface

Overall, the community deemed Rocket.chat to be way too deep into the enterprise and soulless corporate side of things, more than being a community tool, while also preferring the previous test (Discourse) instead of the current test. Generally speaking, the community felt that the best solution wasn't probably a single app or service but rather a combination of at least two services, one for community building and one for quick communication (textual, voice, video, this last not being a dealbreaker)

The feedbacks from the staff

What we found positive from the behind-the-curtains side of things is that Rocket.chat is self hostable, not too difficult to maintain and easy to setup and quite lightweight infrastructurally.

What really didn't click with us (or clicked negatively) is that most of the settings are paywalled behind a subscription and said subscription has to be paid even for self-hosted instance. The first setup require mandatorily a subscription/registration to the starter plan (free up to 50 users), with no way to skip it. The community plan (which we're currently using after downgrading) allow us to have only 5 plugin/integrations; we installed Giphy and Jitsi during the test run and many others are just proprietary/big tech plugins. We couldn't enable push notifications for our instance because Rocket.chat requires a subscription to use the Rocket.chat official gateway even for self hosted instances OR let you build a custom android/iOS app (whitelabeling) which is a huge tech commitment;

Generally speaking, the overall UX is more similar to Matrix (Element, etc.) than Slack and seems being more enterprise oriented than community oriented, differently from the previous test (Discourse)

Next steps

In the days ahed we will proceed to the next test run, that will be described in the next blog post.

Stay tuned for more updates

#Discord #RocketChat

Hey everyone!

A week and some more has passed since we announced the grand opening of our Discourse instance and we collected all of the precious feedbacks from the community, you can read about them in this post

Having said that, we wanted to let you know that soon we will start setting up Rocket.chat for our next test run.

It will take around two to three days to set up everything ready in a Production-ready way and another two to three days to let us configure the “behind the curtains” stuff, like permissions, categories, etc.

One of our goals in those days will be to allow you all the login through our SSO Page so you won’t need to register again for yet another service.

Regarding Discourse, it will be shut down for the Rocket.chat test, to let us monitor precisely the hardware usage, but won’t be deleted, meaning that all of your posts, settings, etc. will still be there in case should you choose to continue The Gamers’ Tavern’s adventure in this tool as the main community outlet.

Take this with a grain of salt, but we will shut down Discourse this Sunday (February, 22) and with some luck on our side we will let you access Rocket.chat in the first half of the next week (let’s say Wednesday)

As always, we thank all the member of the community for being amazing!

Should you have questions feel free to ask any member of the Staff

#Discord #RocketChat

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ALRIGHT. Here we go. What am I doing here? Where am I.

Ah. Yes. OK Sunie, focus.

I've been having a HELL of a time getting all of my hobbies, pursuits and ambitions in a row. It's something I've always struggled with but it's gotten worse by the year. Mainly because lately I've regained the drive to actually do cool things. I've had some, shall we say, huge mental roadblocks in the past that made pursuing anything a useless thought. But here I am now, thinking about cool shit I could be doing.

I could be:

• writing more blogs (oh, hey, hi.)
• working on my game design ideas
• making videos on PeerTube
• Livestreaming

But the old familiar hammer of “who in the absolute buggery would even care” hits me square in the jaw again. So, here's me, trying to break through :that thought and publishing something off the cuff. Have you noticed the title is actually about the event of finishing 4 games in February and not about the struggles of doing anything creative?

I find my own lack of focus disturbing, too.

But, alright, let's get back to Four in February, someting that semaj@social.lol has introduced me to in one of his blogs. It's basically finishing four games in your backlog during the month of February. So now I'm looking at my Steam library, at a backlog that is 139 games long (I have way more games but these are the ones I've selected to have priority), trying to pick four.

Which is actually why I'm writing this blog post, cause hopefully by typing out this stream of consciousness I might stumble upon the four I want.

I could cheat and say I've already finished my first game of the month:

However, since I started that in January and finished my second playthrough for a different ending just now, I feel that's cheating. I want to start and end it in this month. A fine game by the way, Silent Hill f. A bit different than the previous entries in the series, with a larger focus on combat, but I did enjoy it very much. Hinako's exploration of gender identity, roles and expectations hit home for me. But that's perhaps a blog for another day.

I just got En Garde! recommended to me, so that's going on the list. And as I'm filling in this fancy backlog list over on QuestLog.app I suppose I could put ANNO: Mutationem on there as well. And alright, why not Beyond: Shadowgate? I really loved the NES version of the first game. it was so tense and atmospheric, and a real asshole of a game. And finally, Dispatch. OK! GOOD. DONE AND DUSTED.

Now... which one to start first...

A review thingy by Sunie

❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤

A popular drink in the Netherlands, Rivella, has a peculiar tagline that can be freely translated to “A little bit weird, but still tasty”. Having played Parasite Eve on PSX for the #videogameclub on Mastodon, I can safely say that applies to Squaresoft's 1998 title as well!

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What if your mitochondria (yes yes, the powerhouse of the cell, sit down...) have a will of their own? This is what author Hideaki Sena took as a basis for the original Parasite Eve novel. Mitochondria, being multi-celled organisms, are portrayed as being fed up with serving mankind and seek to evolve beyond humanity. They possess the power to mutate their host and manipulate the mitochondria in others, causing people to (among other things) spontaneously combust. It's portrayed as similar to how parasites can manipulate a host, and having that apply to humans takes actual science to a horrific extreme. The game picks up after the events of the original novel, which is only tangentially referenced in its backstory.

When rookie cop Aya Brea takes her date to the opera, she's witness to a new breakout of the rogue Mitochondria depicted in the source material. The diva on stage, upon starting her solo, sets her co-stars and the audience on fire. Aya is entirely unharmed as her nascent cop instincts kick in, training her gun on the entity now naming itself 'Eve'. The mystery only grows further as Aya develops powers of her own as the mutated New York fauna bar her quest to take down Eve and save humanity from going the path of the Neanderthal.

The story is on a real rollercoaster ride from the word 'go' and provides a brisk but engaging narrative over six chapters spanning ten-ish hours. What stood out to me is that the game's supporting cast is surprisingly fleshed out despite the fairly spartan exposition they all get. Daniel, Aya's partner on the force, stands out in particular. Where Aya's narrative provides the mystery (where does Eve come from, why is she connected to Aya, etc.) Daniel humanizes the stakes as he tries to protect his wife and son from Eve's purge. Even the other cast members shine through strong characterizations that aren't bogged down by over-exposition or long-winded dialog and managed to all stick in my mind after the credits had rolled.

It should come as no surprise that a game about mutation and evolution tries to apply those same principles to its gameplay. Parasite Eve marries tried and true JRPG mechanics with a dash of Survival Horror. I can't say the two have mutated into a true evolution of their respective genres, but the experiment was certainly successful enough for some of its ideas to survive. Firstly, the Survival Horror aspect, which I feel comes most in play in its presentation. Not that Squaresoft is any stranger to polygonal characters on prerendered backgrounds, but there's something about its camera angles, atmosphere and the hideously deformed monsters that's giving more Jill Valentine than Tifa Lockhart. The FMV cutscenes that grotesquely portray the flash mutation of common animals are memorable in both art and sound design, full of fleshy squelches as limbs rip and tear into distorted positions. Fans of body horror will find plenty to shudder uncomfortably at here.

The JRPG side of things flaunts its stats-driven nature. Aya improves with every level, allowing the player to sink bonus points into certain stats as well as equipment, which can be further improved by feeding bonuses and traits into your favorite piece of kit. Combat is real-time with pause, where attacks project a sphere of influence akin to what we'd later see in Vagrant Story. Everything inside the sphere takes full damage from Aya's weapons, whereas outside the damage is drastically reduced. Positioning, therefore, is of the utmost importance. The weapon mod system shines, allowing the player to mold their own ultimate equipment based on their own playstyle rather than railroading you into one specific final weapon. The aspects where the two sides meet end up oddly mutated. The limited inventory that adds tension in a survival horror game is downplayed by the ability to increase it by putting extra points into it, as well as allowing a stack of over 1000 bullets that work across nearly all weapons. Most of Aya's stats increase rigidly, each gaining a point with every level without giving the player any say in the matter, to the point where one wonders why they bother displaying those stats at all. A lot of Parasite Eve's systems end up feeling vestigial, a relic of either genre that struggles to fit its new form.

All that said, I do genuinely feel that those criticisms only truly surface when you try to shove the game into one box or the other. As soon as you take Parasite Eve for what it is, rather than what you expect from it, the game comfortably nestles into doing its own thing. So much so that it's honestly a shame that Parasite Eve 2 leaned even more into survival horror and 3rd Birthday did...whatever 3rd Birthday ended up doing. We never did get to see Parasite Eve's Ultimate Form, which is a shame. It makes me wonder if the game's design fell victim to being a hybrid of two of the era's most popular genres, and that neither marketing, nor the games media, nor the fans truly understood what it was trying to do. Of course the game has its core audience that can appreciate it for what it is, something I can call myself a part of now.

Parasite Eve is something special, and it's definitely a fun ride. Shame we never saw it fully mature.

My Story

I’ve sat on this one for a few weeks to be honest, but off the back of seeing our Gamer’s Tavern community come together in such a lovely and heart warming way over the last few weeks (be it looking out for each other in tough times, being super generous and gifting each other steam games from each other’s wish list for secret santa, etc) I felt compelled to reflect and write on my story as to how I ended up here- and crucially, why it couldn’t have come at a better time. I was at what could have been a pretty low point in my life.

Let’s go back a few years, to before I became a part of The Tavern. I’d been working as an A&E nurse (or Emergency Room for you overseas folk) and somewhere between end of 2021 and mid 2022, I left this job after 8 years of being there. I’d experienced a fair amount of tough, hollowing experiences in my time there, but of course the COVID era was…the final nail in the coffin to say the least. To sum it up in just a few words, I can only describe it as just a conveyor belt of bodies. Anyway, my point being- I was coming out of that job in somewhat of a shell shocked state to say the least.

I had two friends that I really counted on during these times. One of which I’d never met before, who I’d met online through the game Payday 2 mid way through my uni degree (age 21). We used to play games almost every day together (although in later years this became less frequent due to work, but none the less, at least once or twice a week we’d have a good long gaming session) and racked up hours and hours playing various coop games together- we were a great duo. We knew each other very well and shared all our highs and lows. The other, I’d known since the age of 16 where we met at an athletics club and became very, very good friends over the years. I guess you could call us “wingmen”. He would go on to be the best man at my wedding.

Fast forward back to the later years of 2022 & 2023, both of these friendships came crashing down. My online friend had been displaying small little worrying behaviours and traits over the course of a year whereby he became incredibly misogynistic and hateful towards women- which ended with him sending a full on one way incel rant to me in messages followed by completing cutting me off of any communication with him. That was that, poof. Gone- almost 12 years of close friendship down the drain with no chance to talk or discuss.

Then, after my wife and I got married and we were in the last month or so of pregnancy awaiting the arrival of our daughter, my other best mate (also having started to show a very different side to him since our wedding) did some pretty unforgivable stuff to two of my wife’s female best friends. Stuff that you don’t just talk about and forgive. Totally out of the blue and something I never thought he was capable of. I’d properly vouched for him as one of life’s nice guys who always did right by people. It hurt, to say the least.

And that was that. My two close friendships that I had sustained through my early adulthood, gone- in two very similar manners. I’d never been the kind of person that had loads and loads of friends but none of them would actually been there when it mattered- I had a small circle of friends and we all had each others back, we didn’t have to have regular meetings in order to maintain the friendship- whenever we met up, it would be as though no time had passed at all.

Also during this time, all the lived experiences of my time as a nurse came back to haunt me- like the trailing wake of a speeding boat slamming you from behind when you stop suddenly. Having “lost” two people I thought I knew so very well, vouched for them to other people and spoke so highly of them- I became very untrusting and wary of starting up friendships with other people, the intent of going on to become good friends an idea that I wrote off before even engaging. I felt as though I had too much on my plate to be able to cope with the idea of having genuinely good friendships with other people. I didn’t have the “bandwidth”, if you want to call it that, to try and start from scratch with friendships again. It almost sounds like dating, doesn’t it? It just felt as though if someone were to ask me “so, what do you do? What have you been up to?” everything that would leave my mouth after that moment would just be a verbal diarrhoea combination of: – Any or all the awful deaths and experiences I’d witnessed – Lol I spend so many of my evenings staring at the same spot on the wall in my lounge, I’m so random lol – I don’t really talk to people anymore I’m just putting one foot in front of the other – I have an amazing family and surroundings with absolutely nothing to be sad or ungrateful for but I still just feel overbearingly numb and disconnected from everything lol, what about you?

I’m doing fine, by the way. A lot has happened since those days and I’ve done a lot of work on myself. Just wanted to put that in there early as a bit of reassurance- not trying to use this as some sort of cliffhanger.

I wasn’t on social media. I became aware of the Mastodon project in the days when Elon Musk took over Twitter and in my discontent with the acquisition, I moved across to a Mastodon gaming instance. I then discovered some weirdo called Alex, who hosted a streaming channel on Twitch called “The Gamer’s Tavern” every week. I followed along, and never left. Eventually, having generated a bit of an online friendship with Alex and some other people within that same community, I became a mod alongside Jamie (known as EighthLayer at the time). Through this community, I met some people who I genuinely call friends to this day. Me and Jamie have met in person recently and been to a Linkin Park gig together, which was an odd feeling, but a good one- to meet someone for the first time but also have it feel like you’d known each other for ages and not struggle for conversation, whilst also not finding the silences uncomfortable was a feeling I’d missed, tbh. Myself & Alex & would (and still do) regularly play any mixture of games- being able to enjoy gameplay and chatting to each other about our lives is something I’d truly missed, and was a hole in a part of my life that needed filling. Same goes for Jamie and some of his own friends who have adopted me into their little friendship circle. Not only this, but we also often play as a whole group of us with others from The Tavern, too. I decided to finally go head first into an interest that had always bubbled away in the background unanswered in the form of sim racing & rallying by buying my first ever sim rig. Everyone has been hugely supportive and positive about the whole thing.

It’s nice, really, really nice.

I am of course slowly expanding my friendship circle again, having met a few through parent groups etc. But the connections I’ve made within The Gamers’ Tavern have meant so much more.

Without getting too much deeper into this, I’m trying to say that The Gamers’ Tavern community has been nothing short of amazing. Alex (who created and started the whole thing) has been absolutely awesome from the start- and as much as he will down right refuse to take any credit or have any spotlight on him, he has a big part to play in where we are right now with the Gamers’ Tavern. Recently, he has chosen to take a step back as the main figurehead of The Tavern (which we all fully understand and support), wanting to let The Gamers’ Tavern become community led and focused- which is exactly what has happened. In this past year, the community has grown even more and we’ve gained some even more absolutely wonderful people.

We round off the year seeing the back of The Gamers’ Tavern secret santa, where we all posted our Steam wish lists- under the caveat of there being zero expectation or obligation to participate. Boy oh boy, the generosity we saw has been nothing short of heart warming. Total strangers, internet strangers from all corners of the world have been gifting each other things. It’s not just materialistic either, it’s genuine- every one is interested in each other’s lives and wants to help in any way they can. We all check in with each other. We all share things with each other. It’s a safe space. We look out for each other.

I could go on and on about this, but I just want to finish off with saying this:

Cheers to The Gamers’ Tavern. You’re all awesome. And to those who haven’t visited or aren’t a part of it, you’re also awesome, and always welcome any time.

Here’s to 2026.