It’s at artflow.ai – you type in a description of the portrait you want, and out comes a portrait of someone who never was. The featured is what displayed when I asked for “She Hulk”… I have Lum to blame for this. He started tweeting amazing looking portraits created with this tool and I just had to see what I could make with it… Some more AI portraits I have to admit, I really want to hear what old Jimi Hendrix is playing. ...

Please don’t right click and save the picture.

I don’t have anything long-form to talk about, but there’s been a bunch of smaller things. So let’s talk about those. Crypto I’ve been in crypto for a month. I have even made some money – not much, but some. Theoretically, I could take the money I have put in and convert it back to dollars, and after all the fees have been paid, have enough profit that I could buy myself a lunch, someplace cheap. ...

It’s hard to get your main characters killed, but not impossible. I did it :-) Gladius trades plot for deep strategical game play, and I’m there for it. Given Gladius is from LucasArts, known for deeply cinematic games, I expected there to be a little more plot in the twin stories of two Vikings, or an Imperial gladiator, who build their gladiator schools from scratch until they are large enough to challenge the emperor’s best fighters. ...

Welcome to the start of my playthrough of LucasArts’ “Gladius”, a tactical arena fighting game for the PlayStation 2. Wow. What to say about this game? I first heard about this game only a couple of weeks ago – I guess I’d entirely missed it when it came out in 2003. I ordered a copy from eBay. It arrived yesterday; popped it into the PCSX2 emulator and it came right up. ...

A lot of indie developers of turn-based, tactical RPGs were strutting their stuff on Twitter yesterday. So wait a second – Pawnbarian is a card based tactical strategy puzzle RPG? And the hero moves like chess pieces? That you can upgrade? And there’s a demo? Me? I’d already be downloading the demo. And did. But for those of you who need a little more convincing… The Goblin Caves, Floor 1 In the demo, you are Pawnbarian, a warrior from the northern Chesslands come to die in glorious battle. The full game has four different character classes with different abilities. Pawnbarian’s special ability revolves around pawn promotion – pieces are promoted when their move starts in the top rank, a pawn moves into it, or there are three pawns in the hand. ...

Ludomotion’s sequel to 2017’s “Unexplored” roguelike dungeon crawler brings 3D procedural generation to the overworld in a clever little legacy roguelike with some interesting quirks. After Townscaper blew me away with its quaint procedural town-building meditative piece, I followed its author on Twitter. Stålberg’s standing with the procedural generation community leads to all sorts of different niches, including that belonging to Ludomotion’s “Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy”. The demo was briefly available on Steam a little while back, and I immediately fell in love. The demo expired, but I went looking and found that the game is currently in early access on the Epic store. I don’t really need another gaming portal in my life or on my hard drive, but I wanted to play the game, and so I did what I had to do and spent some time with it. ...

I had the Ethereum. I had Bitcoins and Doge Coin and even Bounce for awhile, but I had the Ethereum to play a few cryptogames. This is what I found. It’s my feeling the largest barrier to cryptogaming is having to shell out a substantial amount of money before you even know if you like the game. The games I’ve seen are fairly simple and not really innovative, aside from using the blockchain in some way. ...

Everyone says that this game has no story and all the characters are the same and once you’ve played the first few levels, you’ve seen all the game can offer. But, everyone is wrong. I’ve played for 50 hours and not seen all there is to see. I’ve gotten most of the trophies (I played on the PS5), but not all of them. The end A man spent his life caring for his sickly brother. When his brother passed on, the man went to the Academy to find new meaning to his life. As he approached the Academy, he saw a dog waiting for him. When he looked into the dog’s eyes, he saw his brother looking back at him. Together, they entered the labyrinth. ...

I’d love to travel as much as this game has travelled. Poland (not Portugal), Germany, all over the Eastern USA… Can’t wait to play it! Star Scrappers Orbital I’ll have more to write about it once we get it into a game night…!