The Fallout series is really good but it dances on the edge of "too bleak, stopped caring" for me.

(also I still haven't fully forgiven it for basically pulling a Happy Ending Override for at least 1/2/NV and possibly the whole series)

Taking down more videos again blog.xcvgsystems.com/march-2026-v...

I want to like The Outer Worlds 2 but to be honest it's kinda been a slog so far. It's just not drawing me into the world or selling me on the characters, and those are at the top of the list of things that get me engaged with a game.

Okay, I'm sure she has a great story and it's not what I expect, but my first thought was "we have Karlach at home"

not perfect but I finally stopped procrastinating on the "2025" concepts

from left to right: Sakura, Gina, Lily, Delora

somehow when I wasn't looking both a KCD knockoff for chuds and a KCD knockoff for lesbians were announced out of seemingly nowhere

(should be pretty obvious which one I'm more interested in, 1348 Ex Voto, it looks a bit jank but it has Jennifer English in it)

Some thoughts on BG3 just after I finished it (adapted from a reddit post so a bit messy): blog.xcvgsystems.com/i-finally-fi...

I'm thinking one more post on it, more from a game design perspective, before I move on.

(I know I keep heaping praise on it, I'll stop soon, I promise. I have a blog post cooking that's... well, not critical exactly, but more analytical)

Finally finished Baldur's Gate 3. I know the ending was divisive, and has been reworked, but what I got was one of the best end runs and endings in any game I've ever played. I think the last one that hit me that hard was Halo 3.

What a masterpiece of a game.

probably going to take down a few more of my YouTube videos- I will announce before this happens just like last time

140 dice is somehow both more and less than I expected

so I might have accidentally roped myself into running a tabletop game in the near (ish) future

been watching a ton of d&d dungeon master content for some reason, I've played once and will probably never dm a game

"Baldur's Gate 3 was announced at Stadia Connect" is the "Halo was announced at Macworld" of our time

Once again, it is time for the end of year update

www.xcvgsystems.com/2025/12/end-...

tl;dr More games than expected, creative rut and possible burnout, a few projects laid to rest and lots of possibilities for 2026

Happy Christmas ♥️

I followed a tutorial blindly and it actually seems to work (?!)

Just in time for Christmas, one of the holiday games of all time

(or: there was an attempt to use Twine and this was the result)

xcvgsystems.com/static/xmas2...

Release R6.3 · XCVG/commoncore This is the fourth release of CommonCore R6 (formerly Firene), targeting Unity 2022 LTS This release contains a few bugfixes and minor features. A full CHANGELOG is included.

Almost a year after CommonCore R6.2, here is R6.3 with not much added github.com/XCVG/commonc...

Next will probably be R7.0.0 targeting Unity 6.3 LTS (skipping Unity 6.0 entirely)

I did actually start a Christmas project this year, but I kept procrastinating on it and even now that I've started it's just not coming together well. Even odds this one ever sees the light of day.

I know I've raved about this game a lot already, but I singlehandedly credit Baldur's Gate 3 in getting me excited about new releases again. I'd basically given up after riding several hype trains to disappointment, and then it showed me that great games are still being made.

It was really interesting to see Solasta 2 emphasize the voice cast so heavily in the trailers. We're in an RPG renaissance, but are we also about to see voice actors given a lot more prominence?

There's Divinity, of course, which had a great reveal. Exodus should be something I'm interested in, but I'm not at all interested in playing as the guy in the trailer. We are getting a KOTOR successor, though. And Warlock, okay, my actual expectations are low, but damn that trailer goes hard.

Don't know whether I want to dive into the "what counts as indie" discourse so I'll just talk about how I'm looking forward to some of the games that were shown off at The Game Awards.

I know it comes with the patient gamer territory but I'm still salty about picking up a BG3 spoiler hours before it would have been revealed to me in the game

Someone at Full Indie told me that we're about equidistant from Seattle, so if you turn the wrong way and really don't pay any attention, you won't realize your mistake until you hit a border. I have no idea if that's true but it sounds pithy.

I just went through a cycle of "wtf is Ken Sim doing in Washington" followed by "oh it must be the other Vancouver" followed by "wtf is Ken Sim doing in Washington"

(the answer is FIFA, I looked it up)

I think at some point the Vancouver, BC and Vancouver, WA game dev lists got intermingled and sometimes my feed gets confusing as hell.

okay I gotta say that enamel pin goes hard (and, as one of my friends put it, is "a very canadian joke")

A super fan of Dungeons & Dragons' Githyanki made a Baldur's Gate 3-infused Doom map where you can just hang out and talk to them Githmap is a cool little proof of concept, a Doom map that feels more like the beginning of an RPG.

It was called GITHMAP www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/a-...

The itch page is on archive.org if you dig around, but the download appears to be long gone. No idea if it was taken down over copyright concerns or for other reasons.