So hey, my currently planned personal gaming project for 2024 is to line up some simultaneous game playthroughs with various people, partly so I have people to talk to a game about/compare notes with but mainly because it is generally good fun. I bring it up as I remember you asking about a potential Torment: Tides of Numenera play together... a mere three or so year ago

If you still want to try something like that at some point in the next twelve months I would make sure to put some time aside for it (I even have a better PC now on the off chance my old one might have struggled with it). If the moment has past, you lost interest or even tried a bit of it and decided it's not for you (or you'd want to take a wait and see approach) no problem, it's just something I happened to remember and figured no harm in asking.

Regardless have a happy new year!

EDIT: Neat! I'm tied up for a bit now and you got a big summer game lined up, so perhaps in the spring or fall I'll get back to you about this.

BTW FF 15 is definitely an odd game with a... let's say unique way of telling a story, but I still really enjoyed my time with it so I hope it goes as well for you.

EDIT #2: Curious what you eventually end up thinking of ITTA, I remember it solely because of a neat gif from its Steam store page but TBF it was a really neat gif

I dug Inmost, admittedly it is carried by some wonderful sprite work but I found it an interesting thing to explore. It gets a bit narrative-heavy by the time it reaches its conclusion but I legit enjoyed my time with it and am glad to see someone else giving it a twirl.

EDIT: Filament was possibly my pleasant surprise game of last year (well it came out before then, I got to it last year), hope you enjoy it as well and don't go too crazy looking for patterns and such hiding in plain sight >_>

EDIT #2: FWIW I'm pretty sure the other two people I know who tried Filament ended up resorting to a guide at a certain point as well, I think many ended up digging the mechanic but the game does end up asking a lot from a player.

And yeah, Hollow Knight seems pretty swell so far even if it does make me use up an equipment slot just to see where on the map I'm at :P

EDIT #3: Someone else I knew spoke well of MO:Astray as well, so looking forward to getting around to it at some point.

BTW I'm not like doing some optional starting weapon challenge in Hollow Knight, I legit can't find where the upgrade bug is and refuse to google it. Apparently it isn't exactly hidden so god knows how I keep missing it.

Someone I knew thought Lightning Returns was the best of the XIII series, I take it you disagree on that front

N++ is swell but I recommend setting an endpoint for yourself (I know they updated the stage select at some point, believe I picked "complete intro and N++ sections" and considering everything else a bonus mode to check out but feel no obligation towards. I think if one wanted to go for true completion it'd require beating thousands of stages and I mean... that's crazy talk IMO. Don't be confused I dug the heck out of it, but I don't think I like any game enough to want 4k stages worth of it.

EDIT: I've watched you stalled out in N++ right near the end of the N++ section for a bit now and sorta went "yeah... I can see that." Not sure if you mean final 15 stages in terms of screens or... episodes (I forget exactly how it is broken down) but I distinctly recall the amount of time and effort required shooting up as I approached the end of that section. Good luck if you stick with it!