T w e n t y S i d e d

The problem with Mount and Blade is that I’m not always playing it. At first the interruptions were minor–power outages, the minute or two of sleep I steal during loading screens, the weekly ritual I call “Dinnersday”–but after a few thousand hours it started to dawn on me that a life well-lived requires diverse experiences.And an inflexible cycle of digestion and excretion. Apparently. So I took a few weeks off to devote to a new hobby of mine, “figuring out what people do when they’re not playing Mount and Blade.”

Well, through a careful perusing of Steam’s library, I think I’ve solved the mystery: it turns out they play licensed total conversions of the Mount and Blade engine to new settings. There’s more of them than you’d think, running the gamut from “professionally produced” to “produced, inexplicably.” I actually dig some of them, even the occasional free mod, but the vast majority provide two core minigames: crashing to desktop and praying the game will crash to desktop.

Which is pretty much why I’d been declining to buy Blood and Gold: Caribbean! The exclamation mark is part of the title. Being excited about the Caribbean(!) is, evidently, mandatory. Development must have been exhausting. so far. I mean, it’s a golden-age-of-piracy conversion of Mount and Blade. It’s Mount and Blade with pirates. I love pirates, and I love Mount and Blade, and I know how this goddamn story ends. It’s as overwhelmingly likely that the game will be a buggy pile of janked garbage as it is that I’ll lose a tenth of my life playing it. I’d been steering clear, because I’m an intelligent, disciplined individual who has a few foibles but basically has his life together. Not because the game was twenty dollars and I’m a cheapass.

I hate Steam sales.

Okay, screw it. Obviously I’m gonna buy my very own Greek Tragedy of a videogame. But you know what? If I’m going in, I’m taking you with me. Get ready for a magical voyage from which we shan’t likely return.

Let’s weigh anchor.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Nan o’ War CH1: Blood and Old”

Rutskarn is a writer, author, wordsmith, text producer, article deviser, prose architect, and accredited language-talker. If you enjoy his contributions to this site you could always back his Patreon.

Unfit for XCOMmand: Afterword

by the Commander

It’s warm for an East Asian winter. Maybe that’s the aliens, maybe it’s global warming–maybe it’s just a nice day. I’ve got just a few minutes to sit on the exterior loading canopy with my legs dangling down over the stomach-churning foot-tingling drop to the beach. There’s gauzy clouds over the waves, but the sun beats through them and bathes the honking seabirds in orange-white fire. It’s a good view to drink my warm water to. It’d be even better for drinking anything else.

Our strike on the Black Site completed twenty minutes ago. Bradford will be briefing our remaining few soldiers on it right now. There’s of course the possibility of a redo, and if we have time, I’m sure it will be necessary to put together as complete a team as we can and take another run at it. That’s if we’re not forced into another operation that completely finishes us off. We’re not setting the tune these days, we’re just trying to remember the steps.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Unfit for XCOMmand Finale: After the Black Site”

Rutskarn is a writer, author, wordsmith, text producer, article deviser, prose architect, and accredited language-talker. If you enjoy his contributions to this site you could always back his Patreon.