Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I wish I had a more Christmasy image, but the number of games that gnaw at me to play them has greatly increased!

There was quite a bit of present-exchange action going on at home, not the least bit of which was games! One of my brothers bought me a card game called Yetisburg. The premise of the game is that it is the Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War, except that the Union and Confederate troops also had access to Yetis. Players command an army of generals, cavalry, infantry, artillery, and yetis, all of which are arranged into a grid formation. Attack damage and direction is determined by drawing tiles which causes the game to feel a bit too random for my taste, but it’s still fun.

My other brother bought me a handful of Steam Indie game packs (Flight, Future, Mix, and Fantasy) as well as a few other indie games (Polynomial, Super Meat Boy, and Winterbottom). I figure that if even just a couple of the games are good then it will be worth it. And hey, even if all 23 of them are crap (which I highly doubt), then it’s still the thought that counts, right?

I returned the favor with Humble Bundles 1 & 2 and a pair of pajama bottoms.

Humble Bundle 1 was added to my purchase of Humble Bundle 2, so now that’s something like another thirty indie games for me to play in 2011. That’s a ton of gaming already set and I’m stoked. My goal is to go over each game briefly, with a paragraph or two and a couple or three representative screenshots. Of course, the ones that I end up liking I will write more on.

In addition to all of these indie games, I am also compiling two lists to aid in the creation of blog entries. The first list is a list of games that I have played either the full or demo versions of, at least as far back as 1997. I’ve been skimming through my old PC Gamer magazines looking at reviews and advertisements to see what games I recognize. I’ve gone from from 1997 to the end of 1998, and already the list is about 100 games. Yikes. The purpose of this list is to give me the opportunity to have a Back in Time Gaming section, where I go back and look at games that I’ve played and see how they hold up.

The second list is a list of games that I’ve heard are good but have never actually played. This list has games like Fallout, Heroes of Might and Magic, and Freespace 2 (which I am going to buy as soon as I get back to my real computer). This is my Investigate/Buy list. It’s only perhaps 10 games long at the moment, but will grow as well. The purpose of this list is similar to the first, except that these entries will be about my first impressions with supposedly classic games.

All of this is going to be in preparation for New Year’s Resolution 2011: I will update my blog at least 100 times during the year OR update my blog 10 times a month (even better). For ammunition I’ll have a nice juicy list of games that I used to play, games that I’ve heard were good and can now buy for cheap, and a big hulking stack of indie games. On top of all of this are the hot titles that are sure to come out throughout the year (Portal 2, anyone)?

That is my story and I’m sticking to it.

Cheers,
-S