Although I'm not especially bothered by this month's Humble Choice, I think I'll be getting this - Both Ultrakill and Backpack Hero are in my wishlist.

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Wasn't long ago that Choice was £8 for a month (i.e. A 44% inflationary increase). Also, the bundles used to be much better value propositions, for instance only paying £1 for the lowest tier and getting 3 titles. This cash grab followed their change of ownership.

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Here are some games I've played repeatedly this year, owing to their good game design.

Tower Dominion - This is a tower defence game, but is quite unlike most other TD games because the battle area is created by random components that you slot into place like a jigsaw. Not only that but there are a multitude of towers to unlock, there are 30 different commanders that mildly adjust gameplay with individual characteristics. Also there are three different zones, which markedly affect play and layout strategy. No other TD game has grabbed my attention like this title. As I beat each difficulty setting per commander, I then started piling on all the optional debuffs, keeping the challenge at arm's reach. (This game was released in 2025.)

Rogue Fable III - This is a Roguelike dungeon crawler, with top-down view over procedurally-generated dungeon, in charming pixel graphics. The closest game I can compare this to is 'Pixel Dungeon' (which I used to play on mobile). Every move you make with your character is followed by the dungeon denizens' responses. There is plenty of replayability, owing to each dungeon run being different. Even if you 'win' the game, you can start fresh, potentially with a different character class and species. If anything, I find the strategic choices in Rogue Fable III, i.e. using your environment to assist you, better than Pixel Dungeon's strategic playing choices.

SuperTaxCity - This game is a bit like 'Luck be a Landlord' where you have a grid, and place your 'units' onto the grid with the purpose of generating money. It has a similar idea to Monopoly, where each building placed generates income. Typically, in a given game round, you'll get three random choices and need to select one to place onto your city grid. The strategy comes from the synergy between the buildings. Generating money also depends on bonuses, that you buy at the start of each new tax year. There are different Towns to complete, and different difficulty levels, so after one difficulty has been beat you can replay on incrementally harder settings.

I very much recommend all the above, and RFIII is currently 80% discounted on Steam:
 
https://store.steampowered.com/app/956450/Rogue_Fable_III/

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I've got this same G305 mouse as my primary desktop mouse. I use it with rechargeable AA battery, and keep a spare AA charged up and in easy reach. Typically, I use this mouse for gaming and for general computing and it takes more than a month for the battery to need replacing.

As I said, I keep a spare rechargeable close by, so when charge runs out, it just gets swapped over and I keep on mousing. One important note to share about AA batteries - Do *NOT* use the non-rechargeable alkaline types, even big brands like Duracell. The reason - Alkaline batteries leak, mess up the battery contacts, and the leakage can damage the electronic circuits.

Another thing to say - Both my Logitech keyboard and Logitech mouse provide remaining battery charge information to the Linux power management software. You can check the charge status whenever you want. You could even script it so that you get an alert when your computer's power management detects low battery.

 
upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_hidpp_battery_1

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That FacePunch Rust Reddit post is pure b*llsh*t. Cherry-picked marketshare usage figures - They took percent of Linux users *after* killing off the Rust Linux client. There were more than 0.01% Linux before that. The 'Developer' person spewing the Reddit figures is probably in the PR Dept, regurgitating Garry Newmann's age-old drivel.

From my own viewing of Rust gameplay videos, it is clear to me that the game suffers loads of cheaters, entirely from the Windows side of the game, because they can't play (on those servers) without Anti-Cheat in place. My impression is that even if the (estimated) 1% marketshare of Linux players was playing Rust, that number of players in the system would still be dwarfed by the total Windows cheaters.

Garry - It's only an attack vector if it seriously dents the marketshare of Windows cheaters (which it clearly doesn't, especially if we go with your 0.01% Linux marketshare).

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Introduced this title to a friend, after I'd been playing the demo. He got it and loves it. His computer is a potato, but this runs fine on it. Oh, and not to mention, I also got it.

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At least it's cheaper than a $999 Mac monitor stand.

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Blimey, 18 GB install. I thought this was going to be 1 GB tops.

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It looks nice, but it is taking ASCII character graphics and plotting them onto the display, rather than sticking to a terminal character layout. I'd like to see the most amazing graphics you could achieve playable in a colour terminal window.

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As a UK citizen with keen interest in freedom and privacy, I feel like mentioning this:

The UK Online Safety Act is described as if it will "save the children from adult content".

- All it has done is to lock down age verification on selected popular adult websites.
- This permits American companies to perform the age validation while collecting personal data (that they can abuse for the usual advertising and manipulation).
- This makes using popular Adult websites even less safe for adults. (Purpose of the act is 'Safety' !)
- Thousands of more dubious adult websites are not protected (by age verification) so kids can easily find and access them.
- No need to hide behind a VPN with an endpoint running in a different country.
- Hackers break into these sites and now they've *also* got Government ID to use in their ID Fraud scams (Safety ?!?)

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