The Queue: Busy bee

I’m not sure what it is about spring that makes everything go from a dull roar to intensely hectic, but I’m hanging on by my fingertips.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us the questions and we give the answers. No time for wit today, I’m on a time crunch.

Complexity-Limit won the Race to World First to Denathrius — though they were later absorbed by Team Liquid. Limit also claimed the top spot for N’Zoth and a couple other historic kills. The Race to World First as we know it really started in Uldir with then-Method. While the idea of the race and bragging rights for being first weren’t new, it used to be more of a factoid and resume bullet point. Method were the first to officially stream attempts and make the whole thing into an event.

As to Blizzard’s part, I don’t think there’s really anything they could (or honestly should) do to intervene. In fact, the way the patching system is set up, it is implicitly unfair to compare regions, and it would also be unfair to change their entire patching system just to cater to literally like 100 people for two weeks every four months or so, and solely for (somewhat spurious) bragging rights. There isn’t even a trophy or plaque to display at HQ.

I understand the angle that it would be nice to let the underdogs have a shot at a win, but the institutional support alone makes that a non-starter. Team Liquid in particular has a whole flotilla of support staff — Chef Heidi was there not because she was hired for a one-off, but because she was already on Liquid’s staff to cook for their LCS team (who was coincidentally in Korea for the whole race). It reminds me of the time in the early 90s when Billy Beane and Sabermetrics were suddenly a thing, and by contrast you had these old timers who got off the diamond and started hydrating with Miller Lite. The two groups are playing different games on the same ball field.

I have 249 games in my account, though that’s somewhat misleading, since I have a merged family account with my husband, and it doesn’t include the games in his account. Merged, we have around 500, but part of that is because he will find a game he likes and purchase all the editions and sequels — I’d estimate at least 20 of those are either some edition of Civ or Age of Empires. To be fair, I definitely have a half dozen or so Elder Scrollses.

Anyway, this comes back around to something that indie devs and other curators have been talking about for a while. There are people who are just out here farming furnished keys off indie devs, churning content for multiple curator lists via either C&P or straight up botting, and then they sell off the keys to make a tidy profit. I’d venture that if someone has thousands of games in their account, this is probably what they’re up to. Of course, reviewers and curators on Steam have always been a caveat emptor, but it’s always a good idea to remind ourselves of that.

Ten (so far). Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?!, Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, Seven Doors, The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, Wanderstop, Tell Me Everything, Riley & Rochelle, The Roottrees Are Dead, Book Bound, and Eye of the Void: Unleashed.

Three of them — Wanderstop, Book Bound, and The Roottrees are Dead — are recent releases that are lightly discounted, but I wanted to wait until the sale to purchase them, because sometimes you get extra event-related swag for purchasing stuff during sales.

I’ve played through Roottrees and The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow so far. Both are relatively short deduction/puzzle games, though with wildly divergent vibes. Roottrees presents as a genealogy puzzle unearthed with evidence from texts like newspapers, books, and correspondence. It also has a mechanic where, if you’re stuck, you can ask a rubber duck for a hint that gets gradually more explicit, starting with “have you checked everything on the advertising fliers” to “maybe try searching this specific person in this periodical.” Hob’s Barrow reminds me a lot of the older King’s Quest games, where you have to recognize a random twig in the background and give that twig to the giant to get him to move off the bridge so you can go get the rubber duck. The pixelized art style adds to the overall unease of the whole situation, which unfolds and becomes gradually more and more unhinged in a very slow burn.

I also started in on Book Bound, which honestly I’m finding to be a little ho-hum. So far it’s a bog standard bookshop management sim with a cozy angle — to be clear, this is exactly what was promised on the tin. I’m just finding that for me, that cozy and safe vibe can often veer into being boring and tedious.

In my estimation, if it was a seed, it’s free. It only starts costing money if you buy seedlings (unless it’s from a locally based nursery or garden sale, because that helps the community so it’s free). Seedlings are also free if your seeds fail to germinate, or if they do germinate and then get wrecked by cutworms or slugs or blight or late frost. Also, if you grow something and forget you need a support system and need to go get one because the thing you’re growing is thriving, the supports are free (even if it’s T posts and cattle panels). Oh, and if you get a houseplant while you’re at the store for more garden supplies, the houseplant is free as long as it’s under $20 (or comes in a nice pot).

Gardener math.

Gregory.