Games and Game-Related old and new

After several months of hunting about, thrifting, tinkering & a couple of outright, terribly self indulging lavish purchases, I now have my own private gaming set-up. I came up with the idea a couple of years ago but it took me a long time to actually instigate.
Picture this:
It’s a very small study that was once just the mud-room entryway prior to long-ago renovations.
The windows are very darkly curtained & the doorway is right in the middle of one wall.
All the walls & ceiling are original old unpainted but finely sanded & oiled timber & the floor is ancient polished hardwood. Very cosy in a packing crate kind of way & could use a few more small coloured light sources to ‘cyberpunk’ the dark areas up a bit more.
It’s been my office space for over a decade so I’m quite used to the ‘dark dungeon’ feel but this is only my second time reconfiguring it.
To one side as you enter, is my office area: essentially a desk with shelves, filing cabinet & plastic boxes, all tetris placed under the desk & up the shelves for maximum efficiency. Crammed but it works fine & surprisingly tidy.
On the other side, along the wall, in an area no bigger than a single bunk bed would fit, is a super comfy leather electric recliner with a skinny timber & wrought iron coffee perch I rebuilt.
A second shelf holds my new PS4 1TB (slim, disk edition) & wall mounted above it is a Samsung 4K TV.
I feel so spoilt but Mrs. Mads & my other family members insisted I’d earned it so I think I’m going to just enjoy it. I did sell one of my treasured motorcycles recently & I’ve had to accept that age & ailment is slowing me down so a quiet space in my home has become almost a neccessity.

I spent the last day transfering my game data across from the other console & then just soaking up the awesomeness of my new personal gamey space.
I will now return to my tightfisted ways, although I will seek out a couple of finishing touches such as a few more light sources, a rug & maybe a snuggle blanket.

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I feel ya! That is one of the reasons for my recent room transformation.
Your cubby sounds wonderful and unique to you.
I wish everyone could have a room like this to suit them and escape to for relaxing.
Mine also serves as an office and game room with a recliner that I am enjoying very much. It is tight but comfy and yes, it does help keep it tidy because there is not much room for leaving extra stuff laying around.
So happy for you! Enjoy!
(Rug and snuggle blanket required) :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Welcome to the club. My health has severely limited my mobility and activities for some years now. Games and the internet are a lifeline. Good to hear you now have a nice place to chill in.

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https://youtu.be/5U0UflefE4Y?si=HiKk-sS9WbNzqN0H

I loved Grounded 1, and it left me wondering so much about a world where shrinking technology exists. But now that Grounded 2 is coming out, it looks like it will satisfy that curiosity some more.

Looks like part 2’s map is much larger as this game takes place at a public park and the devs stated that the starting area alone is as big as the backyard from the first game. :hushed_face:

And it seems that the reason why no humans are at the park is due to it being a crime scene? Atleast the trailer shows police blocking the road to the park. Exciting stuff!

If you guys have never played Grounded, I recommend it if you like games like Ark or Fallout and enjoy the 90’s aesthetic. Its only PvE and the story pacing is good but combat is mainly melee weaponry and does require you to parry attacks with your weapon or shield so youll need some decent reflexes, but there are armors and other mutations you can equip your character with to make the parry window MUCH larger so it feels easier.

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The beginning of that trailer is certainly a mood :joy:

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I never got to play grounded but Honey I shrunk the Kids was on heavy syndication when I was growing up so it screamed appeal at me.

I wasn’t even aware there was a sequel announced, I’m very out of the loop.

I saw a trailer for this at Summerfest 2025 and all it did was remind me I need to try Grounded out

This also screams at me because Ferngully vibes <3

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Ferngully holds a special little place in my heart because the artists acually spent time in a specific rainforest I’m familiar with, to lock down the unique look & atmosphere.
Like most screen entertainment, the background of the worlds created are often barely noticed.

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In that case, Grounded is going to be a treat.

Lots of exploration, lore, scenery, etc and a few neat surprises I wont spoil.

Worth the price if you ask me.

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Ow, my backlog :smiling_face_with_tear:

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I decided to see how the free version of Geforce NOW (I hate the name so if I say the nvidia thing later, I mean this) could handle No Mans Sky.

You’re restricted to an hour a day with the service which is not a bad thing. It said I had 16 gamers in front of me while waiting for my “rig” and within about 20 seconds my steam opened up within a virtual desktop and No Mans Sky was in my steam library with the latest updates and access to my saves in the steam cloud (after some account linking via steamguard app I did prior)

The game launched with most things set to enhanced and standard but frames at 240. This seemed silly since free version is streaming at a lower frame rate but I decided to settle on double the streams frame rate so that any latency between rendering and streaming will be less jarring and still give me head room to fiddle with more settings.

I’m assuming the freemium version is on a 1080 since eveyr tier after that boasts RTX capabilities. I also know that if I need to restart for any setting to apply, the settings will be overwritten by the freemium versions suggested settings. So anything that required a restart was gonna have to stay as is.

I managed to put water physics, reflections, post processing and a few other things up to high settings with 120 frame rate and it looked great and the latency was minimal, I couldn’t really notice but I’m also not use to flying with a keyboard and mouse and had no controller on hand at the PC, so hard to tell. But serviceable.

PSA: It works, if you find yourself suddenly without a way to play games on your steam library, you can access it on most devices and play for free with this (for an hour a day :wink: )

If your situation is temporary, there are day passes to the other tiers that allow more time to be played, or if its a little more sorta permanent, the monthly plans aren’t all too bad price wise but certainly not a long term solution for a dead rig or console.

Either way, if you made it through the rambling or didn’t, this here vidjo will more or less say all I had to say but in a visual format.

Oh I forgot to say The Nvidia Thing… The Nvidia Thing is very good. 9/10. Docked marks for the name.

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