Indie Games

I've recently discovered playlikeafeminist.com. (I blogged about it here.) I'd love to have a game circle/club, where a group of people play a game for a few weeks or a month, and then talk about it.

...Also I have approximately 5000 games that I have acquired in various itch.io bundles (plus, um, several bundles that aren't on that list) that I... mostly don't play. I downloaded a swarm of solo TTRPGs, played a handful of them, and otherwise mostly just scroll through the collections, thinking about what might be interesting to play.

So I thought it'd be nice to grab the gaming circle guidelines (short version: "It's like a book club, only for video games"), pick a handful of potential starting games, and see who else is interested.

Poll is in a separate post, here, because I tried three times to get it to work here and apparently botched it all three times.
(Is there a DW tutorial on polls somewhere? We used to have that kind of thing.)

I've heard good things about all of those games; they're all games I'd like to try. I've played some of the Rusty Lake series but not that one; my daughter's played Calico; other than that, I have only the vaguest idea what the games are about - I just know they came with good recommendations.

Also open to other suggestions; I just wanted to start with a list of potentials. If we pick one of these, I'll review the list of questions at the PLAF games, and see if I can come up with a set for the game we choose.

My idea is, we pick a game, play it on our own schedule, and have a discussion thread or Discord chat once a month about it - maybe on the 15th, so it doesn't stack up with all the other end-of-month stuff, or if we're doing Discord (so it's real-time), maybe "2nd Saturday after a Friday" (so it's not on the 8th), and we can discuss time zones and all that.

Maybe the end of the month, there'd be a post about "let's decide what game to play after this one." Or maybe that gets folded into the game discussion itself - this is what we liked, what we didn't, and next I wanna try something with...

Suggested rules, partially snagged from the PLAF guide:
* One game at a time. Probably per month, although we might change that.
* Stick to games under $20 and preferably under $10, so that people who don't have the bundles can afford to participate.
* No multiplayer games. Nothing that requires you to find another person to play with. Not even something like Among Us where the "finding" can be done automatically.
* Does not have to stick to video games, but solo TTRPG or card games should be the exception, not standard.
* You don't have to finish the game.
* It's okay to ask for help, look for playthroughs/tips, install mods or cheats, etc.
* Not everyone will enjoy every game. It's okay to dislike a game, even if you're the only person who does. It's okay for everyone to dislike a game, and we can talk about why.
* It's supposed to be fun. Whether the fun is "playing the game" or "talking about it with a friendly group" or both, is up to you, but this is supposed to be an exercise in leisure and community. (And most of the games should be fun, even if they're not everyone's first choice of type of game to play.)

...We can discuss platform and/or hardware requirements, if that's needed or wanted.