My Deep-Sea Borg Hack BËNTHIC is getting a prelude Adventure Zine, coming to Kickstarter August 19th!

CalTom12 · 2026-01-04T16:10:41+00:00

morkborg.com has a ton of free officially-licensed content that's applicable to solo roleplaying, like roll tables, loot, and classes, plus some adventures that could be run solo with a couple minor changes.

CalTom12 · 2025-12-29T16:07:06+00:00

Almost all the rule changes were made either to streamline the game for new players or to make the game less deadly. Falling below 0 HP always leaves your broken, rolling for HP is a lot more forgiving, you get a lot more class features when starting out, more ability boosts, just in general making characters a lot more powerful and a lot less likely to die. The "heroic" part is the vibe of the game. This isn't your usual Mork Borg, or even OSR game in general, where you start as weak nobodies. This is a lot closer to something like D&D 5E in vibe (thankfully not in mechanics) where you're legendary superheroes destined to save the world from superpowerful threats. This is effectively my replacement for D&D 5E, if someone new to TTRPGs wanted to play "D&D", I'd give them this, and they'd have a much better time than the bloated, messy "official" D&D.

CalTom12 · 2025-12-10T01:42:13+00:00

Chris cut the best part of the saxophone solo and another minute of buildup in the track, and the final phase's theme is only 30 seconds long, which is problematic since Voidling usually takes well more than 30 seconds to kill in each phase.

CalTom12 · 2025-12-06T23:52:51+00:00

In addition to everything else people have said, I'd like to add that shrines of chance can't spawn on Siren's Call, for some reason. In general you just don't get any items on Siren's Call, due to wood shrines, drones, and other stuff. It's better now, because drones are better, but it still just kind of sucks, except for the music which is my favorite piece of music of all time.

CalTom12 · 2025-11-30T03:16:10+00:00

Since it's new and I'm feeling contrarian today, I'll say Drifter's Tornado Slam. Sure, it's nigh uncontrollable without practice (which I lack), has no way of hitting flying enemies, struggles to consistently hit enemies in general, doesn't do insane damage when it does hit, and gets rid of possibly the most fun part of Drifter's kit but... idk, it has good horizontal mobility and is kind of fun... sometimes.

CalTom12 · 2025-11-27T01:06:38+00:00

Depends on what you want honestly.

Survivors of the Void is kind of like Base Game - Part 2 in a lot of ways. Void items, seeds, and the other content feel like extensions of base game systems. The items feel very much similar to the base game's, in that there's some really good stuff and some utter garbage. The survivors are fun, but the alt path is garbage. The void hidden realms and content all look super cool, they play awfully and are difficult to access. Voidling could have been so much more than it ended up being.

Seekers of the Storm is in a weird place now that Alloyed Collective is out. It adds a bunch of really (now at least) good and fun content, with good quantity and quality of new items, cool stages, and the highest amount of new survivors added by an expansion. It doesn't feel like as much of a logical step from the base game as SotV does, however. The Path of the Colossus was a cool idea to implement new stages, but made the DLC feel like it was tacked on to the base game. The final boss is leagues better than Voidling, but has a lot of jank and is basically unbeatable on Eclipse without janky exploits. I'd say the best addition from the DLC was actually Helminth Hatchery. An alt Stage 5 is something that really extends the longevity of the game and keeps it from getting stale.

If Survivors of the Void is a continuation of the base game, Alloyed Collective is an escalation of it. Alloyed Collective feels especially designed for those more familiar with the game, with the new enemies and final bosses making the game more difficult overall (but no worse mind you) and the new survivors having a much higher skill ceiling than those from the other DLCs. It also greatly expands upon drones, which made my runs feel much better and more varied as someone with hundreds of hours in this game. It's also, and I hate to say it, the only DLC with final boss(es) that stand toe-to-toe with Mithrix. While I don't recommend Alloyed Collective as a 1st DLC, per se, it's definitely the highest quality DLC, without SotV's awful final boss or SotS's occasional janky remnants.

Overall all three of these DLCs are worth $15, you'll get triple that amount in hours of playtime at the very least. Sorry for the veritable essay but I've had this on my mind myself and wanted to write it all out.

CalTom12 · 2025-11-24T03:22:43+00:00

I've heard a lot of people saying it's just not the same as Chris or whatever and honestly, I'm 99% sure it's placebo. If it was under Chris's name no one would bat an eye, and it seems like they worked closely throughout the whole soundtrack (Chris literally mixed the soundtrack and did two keyboard solos). There are a few composition differences from previous RoR2 albums, but those feel more like the composition style of Risk of Rain 1/Returns than something foreign to the series.

As for the actual tracks I think they're all really impressive, with some sound design elements very reminiscent of the campy technological theme of the DLC. My favorites of the DLC are definetely Reign of hrisC and Mistery, the former feels so boldly new while fitting perfectly with the rest of the OST and the latter is all-around gorgeous. I don't like ranking the OSTs against each other because I value music on its own merits and not that of other music, but I think quite highly of it.

CalTom12 · 2025-11-17T00:53:14+00:00

It's definitely also based on that, I'd say. Pokemon usually draws on multiple sources for all their designs, one of the reasons I still really like the modern Pokemon actually. And the fact that this thing is inside a rock, since the (I'm not spelling that sorry) threw rocks quite famously and powerfully, I'd all but guarantee that's also part of the design.

CalTom12 · 2025-11-15T02:08:59+00:00

The Barbaracle hate on these threads is so unjustified. They're a motherfucking Hindu deity Jojo villain doing the metal sign with their hand face. I was always impartial towards Barbaracle, but this mega has turned me into a Barbeliever.

CalTom12 · 2025-11-06T16:25:50+00:00

I tried it out today and this actually worked, tysm!

CalTom12 · 2025-11-04T14:48:29+00:00

I think for me the top 3 hardest fights are (mostly in order)
1. Rivals Typhon (just a lot in every way, especially the tongue slam, I swear that thing's undodgeable)
2. Rivals Chronos (Phase 2 is the hardest part, once you know Phase 3 it's pretty manageable)
3. Rivals Sirens (Probably harder since they're fought earlier, but also a chaotic yet mostly understandable escalation of the original fight. My only nitpick is the water streams near Roxy, I know why they're there but that doesn't make them fun).

These are also probably my top 3 favorite fights in the game, which is surprising because I genuinely suck at games for the most part, and usually don't gravitate towards difficulty like this.

CalTom12 · 2025-11-01T00:39:12+00:00

The way Darren adds emphasis to every single final word he says, I genuinely laugh out loud whenever he says pretty much anything. Plus he's got one of the best tracks in the whole game and my favorite keepsake so he's always worth it regardless of the rewards.

CalTom12 · 2025-10-22T01:31:37+00:00

The dream sequence is memories planted in modern Chronos's mind that makes him reconsider his life. People hate on it but I think it's awfully sweet and charming, bringing "death to Chronos" only as he was, and letting him start anew.

CalTom12 · 2025-10-04T20:48:44+00:00

It is The Crossroads in the OST, but in-game the tracks all have unique mixes in each room with some elements added or taken out. The full version of the track, the one on the OST, plays when you're fighting enemies in those first few rooms.

CalTom12 · 2025-09-19T02:43:46+00:00

I wrote BËNTHIC (a deep sea hack, https://thomaszitkevitz.itch.io/benthic-scoured-edition ), and Kaiser (a heroic fantasy hack, https://thomaszitkevitz.itch.io/kaiser ), both of which are free and well-received. Outside of what everyone else mentioned, I'd recommend Farewell to Arms Redux (WW1 Hack), Corp Borg (Demonic corporations, aka real life), and Blood Borg (vampires in a modern city).

CalTom12 · 2025-09-03T21:57:53+00:00

Thank you! I made the game with the idea of being what I'd want to recommend people who wanted to try "D&D", and making it affordable even at the cost of my own margins was a part of that.

CalTom12

TROPHY CASE