The Stack

I keep returning to the question of how to play games for optimal enjoyment. Is it better to play in a single obsessive weekend-consuming burst, or spread it out into smaller sessions? I’ve become convinced that the latter is better for RPGs, which become tiresome when played too long. For puzzle games, I’m not so sure which approach is actually better, but I do know that I always want to play them in obsessive burst mode. I played through the first two DROD games that way. But there are demands on my time just now, and I haven’t had a weekend to devote to The City Beneath.

In fact, I’m going to have to put it aside for a week. I’m going to be out of town, without access to the computer I’ve been playing it on. May the anticipation of returning to it make it sweeter. I’ll try to do some posts during the week all the same, but probably not about DROD.

For what it’s worth, I think I’m more than halfway through the game by now, as I’m well past the second of the city’s three great gates. (The first is at the very beginning. It’s not clear to me yet how much content there is after the third.) The story has returned me to the surface for the second time, and I have just started encountering the mysterious Gel, a previously unseen tar variant.