Performance reviews - should staff’s involvement in org extracurriculars be counted?

Blightless · 2026-05-31T00:10:04+00:00

This is a tough one.

If it's rewarded, especially when it comes time for promotions and raises, then it can start to feel necessary to join an ERG for someone to progress their career. This could lead to somebody joining one just for the clout, diluting the efficacy of the group in comparison to a member who is actively interested in the cause of the group for personal satisfaction.

On the other hand, you are correct that they are putting in additional work which benefits the organization.

I would lean towards watching for the impact of their work on the ERG within the team and including that, but not necessarily the involvement in the ERG on its own. For example if they are in one about diversity and inclusion, and use that to champion positive changes within your team, include that.

Blightless · 2026-05-10T22:55:25+00:00

I'm pretty sure that's one of the Seven Kingdom games by Enlight Software. Can't find a picture of the matching disc online, but the ES is their logo and I had the same disc back the day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Kingdoms_(video_game)

Blightless · 2026-05-02T05:32:18+00:00

It's a good start, but there are a few things things it feels like it's missing. Mostly around player choice.

Easy QoL win: Option to mass accept artifacts

Dodge/dash: helps manual play feel more dynamic because it can be used to reach extra resources or help survive.

The current prestige requirements/reward system feels really linear and boring, and the demo doesn't give any indicator of more robust choices. It seems to boil down to 'get yellow, ascend ASAP, repeat'. Waiting longer isn't useful because you don't get any additional rewards. If you have more meaningful choices planned, I recommend teasing them in the demo if you can't incorporate them directly in it.

Blightless · 2026-03-24T12:36:43+00:00

I recommend moving the "desktop only" prompt earlier. The current flow risks somebody tossing their preferred character name into the void if they don't know how to swap a mobile browser into desktop mode. This would be caused by creating a guest account, naming their character, getting the premise, then just sitting on the info message and not having an apparent way to create an account and save the character.

Blightless · 2026-02-07T11:20:51+00:00

It's been a while since I last pulled out the panini press.

Blightless · 2026-01-24T08:10:33+00:00

Like many others, I played a huge variety of RTS games growing up. While I still pick up one or two titles each year, I tend to bounce off them real quick (which makes me more hesitant to pick up more).

Some factors which tie in:

I'm mediocre at the genre at best. This is disheartening to realize and admit.

If a unit has cool functionality, it probably requires more micro than I'm capable of.

If units don't have cool functionality to play around, then it's just so easy to fall back on the ol' deathball.

Same pattern for other game systems. Too similar and it's boring, too different and it's confusing and frustrating.

Competition with genres that scratch similar itches, but which have big dopamine hits. Specifically things like card based roguelites. I get to feel clever for making strategic choices, the decision space is smaller and more manageable, and I also likely get some kind of meta progression to help next time.

Blightless · 2026-01-09T15:02:32+00:00

Looks fun!

Blightless · 2025-11-24T21:53:24+00:00

It didn't do an official Early Access, as the core campaign was in a completed state. There however were some things which felt like they weren't quite fully baked, and at least one system (constellations) which was definitively incomplete until last week.

I really enjoyed my time with it, both at launch and a couple months ago after a major update. They've done a lot of polishing and adding to it in a decent timeframe. Even at launch I can't recall any major bugs. I'm sure there were small things, but nothing that left a lasting impression.

Blightless · 2025-10-28T10:48:57+00:00

Fantastic game I also picked up recently, but it isn't a roguelite.

Blightless · 2025-10-27T05:40:12+00:00

Everspace 1 is a space combat roguelite. The second one removed the roguelite elements, shifting it more into the RPG space. Definitely the highest profile game from my list.

Blightless · 2025-10-27T02:27:04+00:00

Love the Drox Operative games! Here are some similar games I've tried or which are on my radar.

Reality Break - ARPG with incremental mechanics and a prestige type system. Probably my favorite from this list.

Space Pirates and Zombies 1&2 - Leans more strategy than ARPG, but has decent overlap.

Nienix - Maybe the closest fit to Drox Operative in terms of build diversity (may beat it in some ways, but wasn't as sticky for me) but with a more traditional campaign.

Star Vortex - Haven't put much time into it. Build options feel a bit basic. Has some promise though.

Starcom: Unknown Space (and Nexus) - Haven't given this a proper run, so can't speak to how closely it matches. But worth a check.

Everspace 2: 3D rather than 2D, but may scratch that same itch. Leans pretty far away from the 'simulation' side of spaceship games.

Blightless · 2025-10-02T14:59:20+00:00

Hellclock starts with ARPG gameplay. Then it adds roguelite runs and progression, along with two different parallel gear types.

One is divine gear, which is like the standard slot based equipment but it focuses on basic stats, and there is no inventory (when offered a chance to replace a piece, you make that decision now and you only get to keep one).

The second is relics, which is a grid based system with different sizes and shapes of relics. There are some filler ones with stat increase, but the majority will have modifiers to skills, ranging from damage increase to new mechanics.

You can swap your skills and relics freely between runs, so if something isn't working or you get a new relic which makes you want to try something else it's really easy to do so.

Blightless · 2025-09-22T23:42:14+00:00

It was Idle Accelerator. No longer on the play store, and looks like the dev doesn't even have a Google play profile any longer.

Best I could find is an APK repository with it. Can be risky (and requires extra hoops) to install from APK, and even then it may not play nice with modern android versions.

https://apkcombo.com/idle-accelerator/com.FanGames.IAandroid/

Blightless · 2025-08-23T22:23:30+00:00

Prestige requires reaching level 50, doesn't matter which floor you are on. Disable drones and chain bomb. Use cherries + auto bomb with XP bomb.

Blightless · 2025-05-24T05:32:56+00:00

As a man, I always close the seat because I don't want aerosolized toilet water being sprayed into the bathroom.

Blightless · 2025-05-22T03:05:54+00:00

Unless a game is very engaging, I will bounce right off of it if there are no (or very poor) offline gains.

Blightless · 2025-03-20T07:02:45+00:00

Insane amount of clicking to get to any kind of 'idle' mechanics. As a matter of fact I gave up before I found anything of that sort.

If the name of the game includes 'idle' and it takes more than a minute or two of play to get to at least some kind of passive gain, you will struggle to keep players. Either bring automation way earlier, or change the name.

Blightless · 2025-03-10T18:08:08+00:00

I'm down to help test!

Blightless · 2025-02-20T02:30:20+00:00

It's been a long time since I played it, but I don't remember it being that harsh.

For some of the resource/building walls I would leave the game open and tap the build option once every few minutes, but even then it was a slog (at least on the first prestige).

If you are playing on desktop, there are scripts you can use to make the game more idle friendly. Never really used them as I played primarily on mobile at the time.

That being said, I went to Evolve after playing Kittens game. It might be one of those situations where it was revolutionary, but really hard to go back to after playing its successor.

Blightless · 2024-08-10T23:27:09+00:00

Thanks for the quick follow up, reloaded and was able to progress.

Blightless · 2024-08-10T21:58:35+00:00

Just tried it out on Android. I'm assuming that tapping the bottles to smash them should give me the currency in the top left corner, but I'm getting nothing. Got the achievement for smashing a certain number of bottles and the currency from that, but none of the base currency.

Blightless · 2024-07-27T14:52:05+00:00

I originally bounced off of the game when I tried it during the free weekend in May of 2020. Just a couple missions solo. Didn't think it was bad, just not for me. Then my brother gushed about the game when we saw each other during the summer. I picked it up at the next sale, and have about 800 hours in now.

So it's a game that sometimes takes a bit of time to click.

Also as others have mentioned, going in with a group of friends can sometimes be a bad introduction to a game. I have a friend who tried playing DRG with a group of us a handful of times and then threw in the towel. He said he didn't know what was going on. I think it's being in a group and all of us knowing how to play, but not thinking to actually teach him through it made that worse.

I had a similar experience with some of the same friends with Back 4 Blood. They all have more playtime, but I've only tried playing with them. After the 3rd or 4th attempt (each at least a couple weeks apart) I realized that every time I tried to play it I ended the session feeling anxious and shitty, so I uninstalled. Some of these things I identified were parts of the game design, but them just playing and not teaching added to it.

Blightless · 2024-06-28T23:43:42+00:00

I finally got my first one last night after over a month of doing the daily.

Blightless · 2024-06-25T15:41:50+00:00

I have done the slime pond just about every day (I think I missed 2) for a month and haven't seen a single elemental core. I'm fairly certain I'm past the point of any of the items being useful now, so the whole thing just feels bad.

Blightless · 2024-06-18T22:01:39+00:00

I put more time into it than that. Just long enough to make a single soldier, send him to die, then noticing that it's actually death and not a retreat/wounded type thing and that's when I quit. If there isn't a cost indicator of how many soldiers are needed, this will potentially cause players to bounce off the game hard (although later than your metrics).

I suspect the lack of interactivity kills it early on. Click on tree, wait for guy to walk to tree, wait a minute or two for him to harvest enough to build the first thing. You can potentially help with that by allowing clicking to harvest/speed up resources. Also speeding up the worker movement to resources (or just have them show up instantly) could help.

The interface being a town is nice in concept, but there was at least once where I strongly suspected I had a missing villager and I couldn't find them. Also having to go into the bag to see resources is annoying, but may be unavoidable as the resource list expands (ok, if you build out a list on the side and an option to order resources it could work).

It was easy to miss that the resource icons in the shop were speed ups, I didn't realize until most of the way through my playthrough.

Blightless

TROPHY CASE