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My friend lilysea just got a Windows machine and I was going to write her an email with some game recs before deciding it would be much more readable as a blog post, which I might as well make public for anyone else who'd be interested.

So! A collection of games for Windows, leaning towards farming sims ands gentle puzzles. Almost all are Windows exclusive or I'd have told her about them already!
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Back! Had a great time! VERY TIRED! So for now here's some stuff from random fliers I want to record before I lose the bits of paper.

From the Diversity Lounge:

Victorian Bi Alliance Played a cool game of cards with these guys, and let another biromantic ace type know she wasn't entirely alone :) They have general online stuff I mean to look into.

Gaymers.com.au Has a Perth branch??

From the Indie Pavillion:

Influent Vaguely interesting looking language learning game

Appointment with Fear Visual novel/kinetic superhero comic thing, looked interesting!

Boy Goes To Space Atmospheric looking minimalist story

Bonza WORD PUZZLE GAME. The only game in the pavillion I actually got excited about :)

Books:

The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf: This was a fun dystopian YA. Ashala is a teenage Aboriginal girl who leads the mutant...sorry, Illegal rebels and starts the book dealing with being captured by the government. The science was all incredibly fluffy (there are sentient dinosaurs) and the worldbuilding reminded me a lot of Obernewtyn and the Crysalids (and probably other books that have come out since I was a teen) but I still really enjoyed it despite having a very low tolerance for YA tropes. The society and characters are well drawn (the government's reasons for oppressing the Illegals aren't nonsensically evil and have a really obvious paralell with Certain Current Australian Policies) and the plot runs along at a cracking pace, I read the whole thing in one sitting and wasn't bored once. It does a good job of balancing the emotional arcs of the characters with the bigger picture. There's apparently more coming but the end of this was pretty satisfying in a "this was the first step towards bigger things" way YA dystopian way. Also yayyyy being set in WA, it was great recognising the plants, it's not clear but I have decided it's set in Post Apocalyptic Fremantle.

Earth Logic: Decided to put off reading this until the whole Elemental Logic series is done. I liked the ending to Fire Logic, why read aboutnthings going wrong until I can see everything get fixed for good?

Anime:

Love Live: cute femslashy highschool comedy/drama about a group of girls who decide to form an idol group to rejuvinate interest in their school. I'm a couple of episodes in and enjoying it well enough but not in love.

Free Endless Summer: Why do I find this anime so charming? Fanservicey teen boy sports is really not my usual genre.

Sailor Moon Crystal: The animation is pretty sub par, the soulless eyes are really putting me off. Otherwise seems much like the original but a bit less dated/cheesy, and hopefully with less filler.

Games:
The Blackwell Legacy: So I couldn't remember why I decided not to play this game before, then hit the "family history of psychosis" bit. But it didn't take long for it to turn out to be Actually Ghosts(*) and overall it was an enjoyable, moody-but-optimistic old school point and click adventure game with a really well drawn female protagonist. (She's so grumpy and awkward I love it)

Blackwell Unbound: Prequel game. Ok so far but it's about the aunt who dies after a sad life at the start of The Blackwell Legacy, which means no matter what happens I'm going to be sad at the end.

So. Much. Triple Town. Omg, the number of hours I have played of this game are ridiculous. It's like a cross between Bejewelled and 2048, except with cute little castles and villagers and every game adds to your overall score, even the ones where you do badly. And then you use your winnings to get further in future games or buy cute little decorations! If it had dragons I might never stop playing.

(*)Despite all the time spent in a mental hostpital there are zero actual mentally ill people. Also there's a lot of mention of suicide, if that's an issue for you.

RealMyst: same basic game as the original Myst, but with the 3D models rendered in real time instead of a slideshow, as well as a few animals and night/day cycle. It's a great classic puzzle game, and I am enjoying the added immersion of walking around, even if the models are showing their age. Be warned: the save feature is very unintuitive, make sure you drag the image of your screen onto the relevant save file, when the game says it is saving automatically is is LYING.

Broken Age: a really pretty point and click adventure game from the creator of Monkey Island. So far I'm finding it funny and endearing and not too tricky, though there's some weird gender subtext. It splits into two stories you can (so far) flip between at will, one about a plucky young brown girl who isn't so sure about the Destiny her village has in mind for her, the other about a dispirited white boy who lives a so far dull life on a spaceship. The boy's mum/computer is voiced by Jennifer Hale aka the protagonist of Mass Effect which is surreal(*). EDIT: I just finished Act 1 and THERE IS NO ACT 2 YET D: Stayed good but I want to know how it ends!

Child of Light demo: very pretty! Haven't explored it much since I haven't been in the mood but I hear good things.

Mass Effect: Yes, again. Gosh I love this game.

(*)I have of course decided that Broken Age is set after Mass Effect 3 and shows us Shepard's eventual fate.

Forgot to mention: ISOBELLE CARMODY BORROWED MY HAT. She bumped into me in the lift as I was coming into the hotel and asked to borrow it for a friend getting over skin cancer (it's got a remarkably broad brim). She apparently later spent an hour looking for me, then left it at the front desk from where it wound it's way back to me. I of course totally forgot to say anything about liking her books, but she KNOWS WHO I AM. Which is kind of cool :)

( Making Indie Games )

( Invisibility )

Before I forget what they all mean! I had a good time, the JAFWA manga library was a great way to rest and I had some delicious sukiyaki from Pepper Steak which probably had nothing to do with my throat going bright blotchy red just afterwards.

Game development:

Let's Make Games local game group
Global Game Jam: Perth
Construct 2 Game engine
Rock Paper Shotgun Reviews, links to interesting little free games
The Lost Garden Blog
Extra Credits Meta
Podcasts: Game design round table, Tone Control

Yuri:
Panelists were from 5Milkshakes cosplay, say they will put their recs list up there at some point. (They printed 25 copies which vanished in minutes :))

Unlike yaoi, yuri tends to actually explore sexuality and gender a bit, often characters tending towards genderqueer or trans though they generally don't use those terms.

Things I wrote down:
Sympho Gear
Nanoha
Strawberry Panic
Sasameki Koto
Saki
Simoun
Koko connect
Kiss of the petals

Being in a room full of happy yuri fangirls (and the odd outnumbered fanboy) was great :)