ISSUE Nº 01 — THE BACKLOG
Game guides that respect your time.
Deep guides for the why, and quick cheatsheets for the what. When you are mid-game and just need the answer, it is on one fast page you can scan, copy, or print. No nested click-throughs, no mandatory planner.
LIVE Valheim
A survival sandbox where you kill the forsaken bosses biome by biome. Eight tiers, one clean progression spine, and a brutal sea crossing or two.
LIVE Soulmask
An open-world survival and tribe sim where an ancient mask is your progression, your power, and your way to possess and play as the tribesmen you recruit. No boss ladder, a metal-age tech spine instead.
Satisfactory
A first-person factory-automation game where you place miners, belts, and machines to build an ever-growing production line on an alien planet. The pressure is engineering, not survival, and there is no boss ladder.
Factorio
A construction and automation game where you crash-land on an alien planet and build a factory that mines, smelts, and manufactures at ever-larger scale. No bosses, just the science pack tech ladder you climb by feeding colored packs into labs.
Medieval Dynasty
A first-person survival and village-management life sim set in an early-medieval valley. Build a one-house homestead into a thriving settlement across seasons and generations, with no bosses and no raids.
The Riftbreaker
A base-building survival ARPG where you pilot the Mr. Riggs mech, build power grids and production chains, and defend them against tower-defense waves of aliens. The spine is a resource-gated research tree, not a boss ladder.
Hades
An action roguelike where you fight out of the Underworld run by run. Four regions, a boss at each gate, and a boon-stacking build you rebuild from scratch every attempt. Death is the progression, not the failure.
Hades II
The sequel roguelike. Play the witch Melinoe across two directions, descending to fight Chronos and ascending to Olympus. New Magick and Omega attacks, the Arcana Cards meta system, and Selene's Hexes on top of the boon stacking.
XP Hero
A free-to-play mobile action-RPG grinder from Supercent. Kill mobs, farm gold, upgrade stats and weapons, and out-stat each chapter's boss walls.
Dune: Awakening
Funcom's open-world survival MMO on Arrakis: manage heat, water, and sandworms while you climb a material tech tree into Deep Desert PvP and Landsraad politics.
Enshrouded
A survival crafting RPG where you push back a deadly fog biome by biome. Voxel building, a four-color skill tree, and a Flame Altar that gates both your power and the map.
RimWorld
A story generator disguised as a colony sim. An AI storyteller reads your colony and sends the raids, disasters, and wanderers that scale with your wealth.
Oxygen Not Included
A space-colony survival sim where the only enemy is physics. Dig out an asteroid and keep your duplicants breathing, fed, and cool as gas, heat, and germs work against you. No combat, just a chain of systems crises you solve in order.
Dyson Sphere Program
A space-based factory game where you play Icarus, a mecha pilot building an interstellar industrial empire to wrap a star in a Dyson sphere and harvest its energy. The spine is the six matrix cubes; the Dark Fog combat update adds an enemy faction you can dial up or off.
Palworld
Catch creatures, put them to work, and shoot the ones that fight back. Survival crafting with automation, breeding, and seven Tower Bosses as the spine.
Terraria
A 2D sandbox where progression is boss-gated. Mine, craft, and build through pre-Hardmode, flip the world at the Wall of Flesh, then climb the mechanical bosses to the Moon Lord.
Path of Exile 2
A free to play action RPG where you play the campaign acts, then chase loot forever in the Atlas of Worlds. Deep passive tree, gem-driven skills, and a Trial-gated Ascendancy.