What we've been playing - Good manors and finger patterns
A few of the things that have us hooked this week.
26th April 2024
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week: good manors and finger patterns.
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.
Manor Lords
I've been playing Manor Lords this week, ahead of its public Early Access release, and I really like it - I've written my fuller Manor Lord impressions elsewhere on the site.
But there's one thing that bothers me about the game, which I'm not sure is the game's fault so much as the genre' - or perhaps humanity's - and that's expansionism. The aim of the game, as in so many of these games, is to grow and expand, and in doing so, amass enough capability such that you can take over more land nearby, occupied or not. It's a direction that has shaped human history for as long as it's been recorded and probably, long before.
Yet, it always comes at the cost of the environment around you. You're forever outrunning the depleting natural resources: hacking down forests and animals you'll struggle to replace, and pulling up rocks and ore from the ground that don't grow back. Success brings growth, but growth brings more people who require more resources, which requires expansion. And so the loop loops until you've consumed everything around you. But what's it all in aid of - progress?
Games do what they can to alleviate this, of course. Manor Lords regenerates resources and features upgrades that make some resources limitless. In other words, it does what it can to downplay and cover one of the fundamental truths of our existence. Part of the charm of a game like this is, after all, going back to an existence much more connected with the land around us, and directly living off of it, and therefore feeling the peaceful rhythms of it. It's just an unavoidable shame that progress in these games - and in life - seems to come at the detriment of the other.
-Bertie
Botany Manor, Xbox Game Pass
A few months ago I was invited to try a gong bath, an experience which essentially sees you laying on a yoga mat for an hour while someone sends soundwaves crashing over you, enveloping your ears in a rhythmic alternative to white noise. (You remain fully clothed throughout.) It's meant to be a relaxing experience but it set my teeth on edge - literally: they started vibrating - and then the person on the yoga mat next to me fell asleep and started snoring loudly. Would not recommend.
Botany Manor, thankfully, provides a more chill soundscape. It's set in and around a Victorian stately home - one that would now be an attractive purchase for the National Trust - that's open to explore and slowly unlock as you solve very gentle puzzles. Each puzzle is based around the growing of a rare flower, with clues to follow and various steps to take in order to make each species bloom. At the end of each section, you gain access to yet more of Botany Manor's expansive grounds. And you also have an attractive plant.
It's a slow-paced game and I'm enjoying taking it at a suitably stately speed. I'm solving a puzzle each evening, spending half an hour every night wrapped in its birdsong and breeze. Its puzzles are straightforward enough to never be taxing, which I appreciate, and while I've already begun to forget some of its earlier brainteasers, Botany Manor itself - its relaxing spaces and sunny gardens - will live long in my memory, no yoga mats required.
-Tom
World of Warcraft, PC
I reinstalled World of Warcraft recently to prepare for a War Within expansion event. I thought I'd need to get my long-dormant characters in shape for the event, so in a bit of a panic, frankly, I pulled them out of their grave and stared incomprehensibly at the screen as I tried to figure out - once more - what to do. But I couldn't remember which buttons to press.
Simultaneously to this - well, not literally, because that'd be a feat - I've been playing violin. I said yes to playing music in a local theatre production because I need scary deadlines sometimes to mobilise myself. It means I've been gorging on violin recently and it's right at the front of my mind. And that's why, when I reinstalled WoW, I suddenly noticed a startling overlap between the two activities where I hadn't seen one before.
Hear me out. People in the WoW community and WoW development team talk a lot about "rotations", by which they mean the order of hotbar abilities your character uses. Over time, you come to memorise these so you don't need to think about them when you're in the middle of battle. Your fingers know the patterns, which frees your mind to think about other more context-sensitive things. Is that so very different from memorising fingering for violin?
Partially, I think this is why I felt so lost when I reinstalled and went back to the game: I was staring at the equivalent of a piece of music I no longer knew how to play. With a bit of practice, though, its specific patterns came back - or were relearnt - and I felt confident enough to start actually playing again.
-Bertie