It's a farming sim, but a year through a war starts up in a faraway land, and half the characters you've been making friends with go off to fight in it. The food you've been making on the farm is heavily taxed, going toward the war effort, and rationing is put in place. A new price administration officer shows up to fix prices and ensure that crops are being produced and delivered for the war effort, rather than frivolous things like wine or tartlets.

At first you understand the price administration officer as a bureaucratic coward and a busybody, the game's villain, but over time, as he regularly visits your farm, you come to understand him as a man who never wanted this. He would rather have been in the war, doing something he sees as noble and honorable. It was his father who got him the job in price administration, and strings were pulled to put him out of the way, far from the front lines. You fall in love, and there's an extended cutscene where you're having sex, but he breaks down crying in the middle of it, and you cry too.

In the third year of the war, he gets called to the front. Too many people have died, and there's no protection for him anymore. The quaint little town has lost more people, not just the able-bodied men, but now the older children as well, the men who are too infirm for the war. The price administration officer promises that he'll write, but you only ever receive a single letter, and it's impossible to know whether he stopped writing, or the letters stopped being delivered, or if he died shortly after reaching the front.

The war ends a year later. Most of the people who left don't come back, and those that do have missing limbs and psychological scars. There is never any further sign of the price administration officer.

At the end of the game, you're graded by how much food you got your farm to produce for this stupid, pointless war whose participants and causes you were always unclear on. This grade is given by the government, and if you do a good job, you get a small, cheaply made medal in honor of your service to the nation.

Stardew valley…but make it even more about the horrors of modern life

10 games to play these spooky season but for those who are too scared to play horror games.

If I was tall I'd dress in white instead of black, wearing gold instead of silver. Rinse and condition my hair with something that makes the shade slightly blonder, in a natural way, instead of dyeing it stark jet black. Instead of moths, moons and stars, I'd wear jewelry with gold pendants of wings, feathers, swords, and eyes. Absurd amounts of eyes. A white leather jacket with a ring of gold and ink-blue eyes embroidered in a circle on my back. Wearing a perfume of ozone, petrichor and metal notes, a scent of a fresh storm, iron and blood, but in a way that's unsettlingly clean.

An unnerving impression of a biblical angel. A force of good that might not think you are good, a messenger of a god that does not love you. A presence so overwhelming, massive and imposing that you're surprised that a person like that can fit inside a room, and can use normal-sized furniture like regular people do.

But that would require me to be more than 5'6"

God knew I’d do too much damage to the Angels’s reputation if he made me tall enough to dress like one.

rip magnus archives crew but I'm built different. if my boss was literally all-knowing and couldn't fire me, I'd be in his office all day asking him questions about everything. I wouldn't use google anymore. I'd be like "what's the rarest kind of tree frog" and he'd be like "shut up please shut up" but he'd tell me the answer every time.

and then I'd go home and immediately call him and be like "hey elias I forgot what time I put the burekas in the oven, how much longer should I leave them in"

and he'd be like "I hate you so much. you put them in 12:42. they should come out at 1:12"

“Hey Elias. Hey. Hey. What’s my 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Smith doing right now?” “ITS 3AM. SHE’S SLEEPING. I WISH YOU NEVER APPLIED TO WORK HERE”

jokes to make after failure that aren’t self-deprecating:

i am nooooot locked the fuck in. im locked the fuck out. call the locksmith