What I'm Up To These Days

 

Sleepdrifter's Newsletter #23📜 Shadowdark, Ultima, Caves Of Qud, 1984 & House Working

Welcome to Sleepdrifter’s newsletter, now coming to you every other Friday.
Deep forests, giant mountains & weird dungeons.
I speak about TTRPGs, video games, music and what I like.

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🧙🏼‍♂️What I’m Up To : Shadowdark, Ultima, Caves Of Qud, 1984 & House Working

Hey, it’s been a while!
And despite so much time without a newsletter, I still don’t have much to say, or rather don’t have the time to write about a big subject.
We are still heavily working on our house and we have received people at home almost every day since the beginning of the year. Quite exhausting, but with a lot of fun moments!

Last weekend was our yearly Lord Of The Rings Extended Edition marathon, with lots of vegan/veggie food, a warm fireplace and a lot of dumb humor.
I truly love these movies. All shots are amazing, and we still discovered new frames, new details that we haven’t seen before.

Today’ starting session made after I wrote the newsletter.

One year ago, my SO backed the French version of Shadowdark as my birthday gift.
I finally received it last week, and I was so happy! She bought me the whole pack with the core book, all 3 Cursed Scrolls zines, the GM screen and the beautiful black and white dice.
I had no time to try it out, despite having friends at home with whom it would be a blast to play. But I managed to slowly read the core rules.

It’s really nice to finally have an OSR rulebook in French. I’m now used to those kinds of rules, like OD&D and Rogueland, but there are some things I need to translate to myself. And while GMing, it can be quite exhausting. Here, every book and zine is translated.
I really can’t wait to try it!

I rolled a half-orc warrior character to further try a solo session, and I’ll probably write a newsletter about Shadowdark when I’m ready. There’s some really cool stuff in those books!

Ultima IV Quest Of The Avatar starting screen.

Speaking of gifts, I received an Ayaneo Pocket Air Mini for Christmas and I love it.
It’s a small Android handheld console that comes with nothing despite its OS. Then you have to set the whole thing up to get emulators and games.
Now that I put a lot of games in it (almost… 20 000 😅) I can play what I want, wherever I want.

There’s a series of games that always caught my eyes but I never pushed myself to try them: Ultima.
Those CRPG games, whose history goes all the way back to 1981, were the inspiration for many other RPG games on PC and console.
I can’t recommend enough Majuular’s Youtube channels who make huge retrospectives for each game in the series if you want to know more about it.

Now, with my tiny handheld console, I can finally play Ultima IV - Quest Of The Avatar, in its Master System version. That’s quite a unique kind of game: you have to read 2 books before playing it, then you’ll need pen and paper to note everything you’ll be told in the game, as there is no quest log whatsoever.
It’s really fun to play despite its age, and it feels like a proto open-world.
Fun fact, the goal of the story is to become more virtuous, like the best human being possible. That’s quite a unique take.

Caves Of Qud general map

Last week, on Switch, one of my favorite games of all time was released: Caves Of Qud.
It’s a roguelike with inspiration from The Elder Scrolls series and a huge Dune / Jodorowsky’s vibe.
One true unique gem of a game.
You can play like any other RPG game, following the main story, doing side quests and so on. Or you can play like a true roguelike: with permadeath and cry when you die.

The character creation is truly deep, as you can have a lot of limbs, and fun characteristics. You can be like a spider, with lots of legs, you can have a stingy tail, fire lasers, a weird mind-control power etc etc.
Also, anything can get a sentient mind. So one day or the other, you can stumble upon a talking door.

As said before, the vibe reminds me of Dune, as water is a true essential part of the game. You need to drink, or even pour water onto yourself if you are an amphibian. And the entire currency of the game IS water.
Also, it’s like you are on Earth, but many, many (many) years ago. You can find weird tube artifacts that are in fact chairs, weird trinkets that are in fact grenades.

This game is huge, and unique each time you play it. It’s probably the most complete game along with Dwarf Fortress, and it comes from the same publisher.

Special mention to the amazing soundtrack, one of my fav’ ever. It reminds me of the weird but awesome Master Musicians Of Bukkake (yes, that is the name. Also one of my fav’ bands).

If you like RPGs, Roguelike or weird games, this one is for you.

George Orwell’s 1984 original cover

This year, I‘ll try to read more.
That’s why I downloaded an epub reader on my phone and looked at some free classics to grab.
One of the most-read was George Orwell’s 1984.
I dove into it, and it’s still a blast to read, despite being released in 1949.

If you are into dystopian stuff, politics, totalitarianism and mass control, you’ll love it.
If you are into modern politics, worried about how totalitarianism and fascism are gaining so much power in 2025/2026, worried about mass control through media, social media and brainwashing, this book is for you.
And if your country or state banned or censored this book, that is not a good sign, and this book is for you.

That’s it for the week!
Let me know if you enjoyed this article, if you played/read/watch any of the stuff I mentioned here 😀

See you!

Cheers !
Sleepdrifter

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