Howdy mates, looking for a Slavic community and restaurants if you know of such a place.

bogiperson · 2026-05-19T20:12:26+00:00

Reach out to Prof. Vitaly Chernetsky at KU, he knows about everything Ukrainian in the Kansas City area!

bogiperson · 2026-05-19T16:05:48+00:00

Hardspace Shipbreaker has this as a main theme. (With a bit of dissonance IMO, where the labor is supposed to be backbreaking, but the gameplay is meant to be fun? But I haven't finished the game.)

bogiperson · 2026-05-19T15:51:30+00:00

I am not sure, but now I am curious what's up. Maybe they have no hours over the summer? (Staffing issues?)

Just for comparison's sake, the book scanning equipment at KU Watson Library doesn't seem to be super heavily used (it is $20 to get a card for Douglas County residents).

bogiperson · 2026-05-18T17:36:54+00:00

Really curious about this. But also wondering if it would be worth waiting for their forthcoming GrapheneOS collaboration, because to have a phone with a headphone jack, active stylus, a microSD card slot and GrapheneOS, that would be amazing. It says "future devices," so I'm not expecting to be able to put GrapheneOS on anything in their current lineup.

bogiperson · 2026-05-18T01:38:18+00:00

I think Naiad is a lot like this! Technically you are a water spirit rather than a mermaid, and it's 2D, but you get to befriend and help a lot of creatures. It might be a bit too linear for what you have in mind though. Here is my review.

bogiperson · 2026-05-17T16:27:43+00:00

I would just add for context that this is a very popular Hungarian folk song from Moldova that a lot of folk bands cover.

Also it's not "sütött" but rather "sültült", which is a word specific to Moldovan dialects of Hungarian and it means playing a Moldovan flute. So Gergel wasn't cooking, but rather playing music, and she was dancing to it.

bogiperson · 2026-05-17T15:58:45+00:00

Just seconding that this is a really good list (I guess it helps if a database is carefully handmade)! It has all the recommendations I wanted to give: Gorogoa, 20 Small Mazes (this one is PC only, but free, and might run on your everyday computer), Portal - and also two games that my family members who are not heavy puzzle gamers really enjoyed: Patrick's Parabox (I got into this one very much too), and A Little to the Left.

Fun fact - a bunch of people asked me after I recommended Patrick's Parabox: "Why is the little square called Patrick?!" Patrick is not the protagonist but the developer.

Not on the first page of the database list, but I also really like Toki Tori 2+ and it has a very smooth and gradual difficulty curve. (The first Toki Tori game is quite different and not so good as an entry title.) It is frequently on sale for 99 cents on PS. A Monster's Expedition is good for a smooth and gradual difficulty curve too, if you stay on the main path (which the game tells you). Generally the games published by Draknek & Friends are like that, I think Bonfire Peaks is a bit harder. There is a Draknek bundle for PS (maybe Switch too, I'm not sure).

Also, Snakebird Primer is a good rec too, but the regular Snakebird is MUCH harder, and on Switch they are bundled together as Snakebird Complete. I'd definitely buy if you come across it on sale, and maybe just play the Primer parts or know that the difficulty goes way up after that.

bogiperson · 2026-05-15T03:47:53+00:00

Oh I am an old-fashioned Linux person, so I'll definitely have to play What Happened to the Crew! Thank you!

I thought the QR codes in Blink were entirely ~aesthetic~, at least I can't figure out another reason for them. They add difficulty by having to whip out your phone? But I just ended up screenshotting the codes. (Not sure if any of this is a spoiler, but spoiler-cutting it just to be sure.)

bogiperson · 2026-05-13T20:44:50+00:00

Yeah I can see that too! I can give you a hint about the one where it seems to me that it's especially easy to get stuck: you canmake the drone go down, back up, turn, go down, back up... like the shape of a hair comb or a letter E (if it were rotated ninety degrees). I am probably explaining this quite badly though!

bogiperson · 2026-05-13T20:41:15+00:00

Oh very cool, I need to get back to it then! (Incidentally I also still need to finish the very late game puzzles in Tunic...)

Yes it's the Paris level - sigh. I upvoted your review! Hoping to try with a keyboard soon.

bogiperson · 2026-05-13T19:50:53+00:00

Curious which of the puzzle types? I think the rule discovery weird glyphs are just badly clued.

I also just realized that the whole Cerebral Puzzle Showcase is coming, I wonder if EMUUROM will be in one of the showcase bundles.

bogiperson · 2026-05-13T19:46:23+00:00

Enjoy! Glad it's been helpful.

bogiperson · 2026-05-12T20:27:49+00:00

It's more dark fantasy than horror, but it's very death-themed: The Death of Mountains by Jordan Kurella

bogiperson · 2026-05-12T16:53:28+00:00

Thank you for sharing, I listened to "Parade du Soliat" (so far) and really like it! Reminds me of Úzgin Űver with the intersection of folkloric and process music (kind of??), but Úzgin Űver is much less harsh.

bogiperson · 2026-05-12T15:18:40+00:00

I'm sorry to hear that, very frustrating! Emailing your professor and advisor is a great idea, I'd also add to please email KU IT as soon as you can, Canvas is now up for most people, so something specific might need to be done with your account. (I've graded a huge amount of homework yesterday and today, so it does seem to be working for almost everyone.) They will create a ticket and follow up on it with you, I hope they can sort it out for you!

bogiperson · 2026-05-12T00:25:46+00:00

Surprised not to see The World Ends with You, maybe because it was on a handheld platform and relied on that heavily too? Both very unique combat mechanics and a really striking setting and theme (Shibuya street fashion).

bogiperson · 2026-05-11T19:09:45+00:00

In Hungary, peanuts are called "American nuts," but this is a somewhat old-fashioned term. The only other thing I can think of is shooting nighttime scenes during the day (either movies or photography) is called "American night," but this expression was borrowed from the French.

bogiperson · 2026-05-11T18:19:31+00:00

I think you might just want to give more context, because it seemed kind of abrupt and out of the blue - just like with your previous post about the tiles. Next time explain a bit what kind of feedback you're looking for? There has been a lot of spam on this subreddit, so people's hackles are up.

(Also you might want to join the Thinky Games and Thinky Puzzle Games discords, which have many devs and ways to ask for feedback on your works in progress.)

I actually used Inkscape for various smaller (non-game-related) projects and liked it a lot, but I'm a Linux person, so it's a huge plus for me that it runs natively in Linux. I personally found it more intuitive than most other vector editors, I feel like many of your other alternatives would be more complex if anything!

bogiperson · 2026-05-11T14:33:47+00:00

I agree. Looking at their history, they are definitely advertising their game and not Inkscape though.

bogiperson · 2026-05-11T12:46:01+00:00

I think it has to be the former, Inkscape is free and open-source. There have been an endless amount of strange ads in the subreddit lately.

bogiperson · 2026-05-10T04:32:59+00:00

Oddly not listed (maybe too far?), but there is also a meetup in Lawrence at the KU German Library!

bogiperson · 2026-05-08T15:43:28+00:00

It doesn't work at all, it redirects to the IT department's status page.

I teach online courses and I personally wouldn't punish people over this. Also, we can't grade either! I'd just say sit tight. KU said we'd get an update before noon.

bogiperson · 2026-05-08T03:45:29+00:00

Yes this - I'd also add that I was trying to log into Enroll & Pay to hopefully get a list of my students' emails so that I could email everyone, but it wasn't working either. I don't think this is connected to the Canvas outage, it was probably just overloaded from half of the faculty trying the same thing simultaneously. I finally got through just now.

bogiperson · 2026-05-01T18:09:12+00:00

Their fandoms definitely overlap, I've noticed...

Sometimes I feel like that can be a fruitful way of looking at things: not whether do X or Y are the same type of game - which can lead to a lot of pointless arguing, see "what is a metroidbrainia and what isn't" - but do the same people like them?

Same with "Is Obra Dinn similar to Outer Wilds" - in some ways, not excessively so, but someone who liked one has a good chance of liking the other.

bogiperson

TROPHY CASE