Lurker > KCF0107

And your December Games of the Month are...

Pseudoregalia (PC)
Freedom Planet (PC/Switch/PS4/Wii U)
Demon Turf (PC/Switch/XS/X/PS5/XB1/PS4)
Monster Train (PC/Switch/XB1/iOS)

Congrats to Kenri, myself, Abacus, and Crispy for having their games selected!

Everything is closed. I will draw soon-ish

Last call for noms, changes, and supports

Just over 9 days remain

Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (PC)

A visually-striking remake that oddly didn't do much in the way of quality of life improvements. Enemy hit boxes, jumping, and this weird state of invulnerability after getting hit that also doesn't allow you move are some of the more egregious oversights when they remade this. I do appreciate being able to turn remake/original graphics at any time. It actually made some bosses/segments easier to go back to the old style.

Is that the biggest blowout so far?

Oh, I somehow missed you saying so

Monthly Progress
TOEM - KCF, Kenri, VI
Strange - Kenri
Phoenix - KCF

Nominations
Fake - Cthulu Saves Christmas
KCF - Freedom Planet, Huntdown, Stacking
Sean - Wolfenstein II

Supports
Kenri - Freedom

Drawing on Saturday

Flipping Death (PS4)

The followup to Stick it to The Man was good but also disappointing. It could get really frustrating at times with platforming and generally getting from Point A to Point B.

Signing Your UFAs Rules

1. I will PM everyone their UFAs and the slash line (length/total/signing bonus) of their desired deal. I will also include and isolate any players who are either holding out or hate your team to where they will only sign with you if you place the franchise tag on them.

2. You will PM me back with the following format (using two players from my team as an example)

Re-signing:
DE Wally Springs - 5 / $14.10 mil / $1.75 mil
or
DE Wally Springs 3 year default

Franchise Tag:
Nobody

Not re-signing:
QB Tim Tebow

The deadline for signing your UFAs will be Sunday, December 3rd at 10 PM ET

Unrestricted Free Agents (AKA Signing Your Remaining Free Agents)

Any player of yours whose contract expired and was not part of the previous event will be included here. This is an extremely straightforward event. You either sign or you do not sign players, Those you do stay on your team, those you don't enter the free agent pool.

When you receive the PM with your slash lines, remember that those are not the deals you have to sign them to. With a few exceptions that I will lay out, you can sign anyone (pending the age/max length rule) to deals 1-7 years in length. If you wish to give a player a custom offer, I might be available to do live signings on Discord or the spreadsheet but don't depend on that being the case. Otherwise, we can bounce PMs/DMs off of each other for a while (remember that there is a deadline though and delay in response could be a day or longer). If you wish to offer someone a deal of a different length but do not want to bother with the financials, you can merely say you want to give X player the default deal for Y years.

There are only two wrinkles for this event. One is that a few players might hold out for better deals. I can confirm that no user has a holdout. What would happen is that I will isolate them in the PM and tell you their base deal. If you elected not to sign them, they would stay on your team without playing a down for you until you trade them, release them, or give into their contract demands. Keep in mind that any guaranteed money still left on their contract (annual bonus) is transferred over to the new contract.

The second wrinkle is that some players hate your team to where they will only sign via the franchise tag, which is a one year deal that pays them the average of the Top 5 salaries at their position or 120% of what they made last season, whichever is higher. I will isolate those players and also tell you how much money that comes out to as of this moment. The franchise tag has rarely been used, so while I am not expecting anyone will use it, you never know.

For those who don't remember, the age/max length rule is that you can't sign a player to a longer contract if it will take them past their age-34 season. You can however sign a player through their age-34 season if it was already included in their default contract. For example, if a 33-year-old player asks for a 3 year contract, you can sign him to that deal because it was part of the default deal. You cannot sign them to a 4+ year contract though.

Also remember that sign-and-trades are not allowed. Players signed to 1 year contracts are ineligible to be traded (RFAs signed via tenders are exempt from this rule). Players signed to multi-year contracts are ineligible to be traded until Week 9 of the regular season.

RFA Phase 3 results

Bears have signed Broncos MLB Kurt Paulding to a 4 year deal. The Broncos elected not to match the contract and receive the Bears' 4th round pick.

Bears have signed Giants DE Carl Nassib to a 4 year deal. The Giants elected not to match the contract and receive the Bears' 2nd round pick.

Bears have signed Rams CB Quincy Wilson to a 5 year deal. The Rams elected not to match the contract and receive the Bears' 1st and 3rd round picks.

Bengals have signed Bucs DT Kenny Clark to a 4 year deal. The Bucs matched the contract.

Bills have signed Commanders DT Christian Covington to a 7 year deal. The Commanders elected not to match the contract and receive the Bills' 1st and 3rd round picks.

Bills have signed Pumpkins CB Ryan Peterson to a 5 year deal. The Pumpkins elected not to match the contract and receive the Bills' 4th round pick.

Bills have signed Steelers CB Fabian Moreau to a 4 year deal. The Steelers elected not to match the contract and receive the Bills' 2nd round pick.

Cowboys have signed Packers OT Dan Nichols to a 3 year deal. The Packers elected not to match the contract and receive the Cowboys' 4th round pick.

Eagles have signed Bengals FS Shalom Luani to a 4 year deal. The Bengals elected not to match the contract and receive the Eagles' 4th round pick.

Eagles have signed Express DT Vernon Butler to a 4 year deal. The Express elected not to match the contract and receive the Eagles' 1st and 3rd round picks.

Pumpkins have signed Colts HB Jamaal Williams to a 5 year deal. The Colts matched the contract :(

Seahawks have signed Bengals OLB B.J. Goodson to a 3 year deal. The Bengals matched the contract.

Drawing in almost a week

I'm going to nominate

Minit
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse

I still have plenty of time in the month, so I may actually be able to beat Wonderful 101, but I highly doubt it would be before the drawing.

KCF has beaten F.I.S.T.

77% in 11 hours

I definitely thought better of it later in the game when I got the whip as it became my first weapon of choice in combat. Enemies were a bit too spongy though for as little reward as they gave. It was "funny" how in the early going I struggled more with random mobs of enemies than I did with bosses.

F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch (XS/X)

With how meaty areas are with their length, obstacles, and puzzles, I think structuring this as a metroidvania was a bit of a mistake. This could have been a very good linear, stage-based game.

I have pretty much just played F.I.S.T. since my last message. I'm up to 60-something% in around 9-10 hours, and it feels like I'm at the final location. I would have done more with collectibles since they have tangible benefits, but they have two different fast travel systems for some reason, and the areas are just too large (many of which have obstacles/platforming challenges I would have to do over again) to want to spend potentially multiple hours just to see what things I may not have collected before.

Standard Microsoft-branded XS/X controllers do not have a built-in battery.
Standard Sony-branded PS5 controllers have a built-in battery.

I assume that is the reason.

Machina

I have notified those who have actions to take for Phase 3. The deadline for the final phase will be 11 PM ET on Saturday, November 18th. If I receive everything before the deadline, we could move to the next offseason event sooner.

No

The deadline to submit offers for Phase 2 of RFA are over.

In case one of the PMs includes, this player, I will publicly reveal that I gave HB Jamaal Williams a 5 / $60 mil / $13.0 mil contract offer

I just haven't dedicated a whole lot of time to this as I'm only up to around 35% in F.I.S.T. The map seems useful for collectibles that I've missed and will probably not go back to collect, but the one time I really needed it for understanding where I needed to go next, it was useless lol. I took the subway and ball transporter to a few places before I successfully made one last effort before consulting a guide.

Minit Fun Racer (PC)

A neat usage of the Minit formula on another genre

Baltimore

Cleveland
Houston
LA Chargers
WASHINGTON
Jacksonville
Detroit
Miami
Dallas
San Francisco
Seattle
Buffalo
Minnesota
Kansas City

American History

Level 6:
Vikings - 3.5

Bonus: 1

11/16
Bengals at Ravens

11/19
Steelers at Browns
Bears at Lions
Chargers at Packers
Raiders at Dolphins
Giants at Commanders
Cowboys at Panthers
Titans at Jaguars
Cardinals at Texans
Buccaneers at 49ers
Jets at Bills
Seahawks at Rams
Vikings at Broncos

11/20
Eagles at Chiefs

And just like that, we are down to our final three after late-game nail-bitters didn't favor the Bengals or Bills.

Official Rules
1. Choose one team to win each week
2. If your team wins, you move on. If your team loses or ties, you are eliminated
3. You cannot select a team more than once in a season
4. lolrams
5. You are free to change your pick as many times as you want, but you are locked in once the team you are currently on kicks off
6. Never forget rule #4

Spreadsheet for current and previous seasons:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J0NVtelpQtD0NiC4LzTbWPPw9nh5WCIgyh3x_tGu0Pc

Remaining (3):
Esuriat - Commanders, Bills, Chiefs, 49ers, Lions, Rams, Seahawks, Dolphins, Browns, Cowboys
mccheyne - Ravens, Bills, Chiefs, 49ers, Dolphins, Rams, Seahawks, Chargers, Saints, Cowboys
Seanchan - Ravens, Bills, Dolphins, Chiefs, Lions, Rams, Seahawks, Eagles, Saints, Cowboys

Good

Bowser

KCF0107 posted...

Level 5:
Falcons/Cardinals over 42.5
Seahawks/Commanders over 45.5

Oh wow, I just assumed that I failed once I saw the Seahawks/Commanders score after three quarters. I'm glad to move to Week 6!

Money

Uh oh

If this is how it ends though, I think that I will be relieved.

Earl

Mario

Monthly Progress
TOEM - KCF, Kenri, VI
Strange -
Phoenix - KCF

Nominations
Fake - Cthulu Saves Christmas
KCF - Freedom Planet, Huntdown, Stacking

Supports
Kenri - Freedom

I'm officially putting myself down for the Bengals before I forget

Dear

Thirsty Suitors (XS/X)

This weird QTE-centric Skateboarding RPG certainly leaves an impression. The first impression was decisively not good, but I'm glad that I gave it a second chance. It does nothing really well except be unapologetic in its quirky style, but I dig absurd, quirky humor, and this was much greater than the sum of its parts.

Yes

Roundguard (PC)

Great Peggle-inspired game even if there were some things I never truly understood

Swipping

I don't even know what training is referring to. I once went past Master Wu or whatever his name is who said he could set up some training dummies, but I just left.

Antonball Deluxe (PC)

A multi-genre mode game with brickbreaker and Mario Bros. modes. I have a fondness for brickbreakers, but this one just didn't click for me. I would even call it a frustrating experience. The Mario Bros. one ended up being a lot more fun, but the platforming takes a bit of work and had plenty of room for improvement.

When I played it, what, two years ago, I soon realized how much better and more accurate the game is once you choose the option to be able to place objects in any room as long as they fit. I remember playing with default settings for the first 3-4 levels and just not knowing what the hell some of these objects were supposed to be and they kept showing up! I would of course still try to be accurate, but nobody unpacks things and puts every single thing in their "correct place" right away.

I'm officially bringing back the birthday polls for 2024 that we did in 2020. I can't think of anything to change about them. For those who are interested but weren't involved back then, we'll use my birthday as an example, which is in January.

- After the drawing for December's games in November, I would decide two games (that satisfy nomination rules) I wish to put in a 1v1 poll (others would let me know via PM here or a DM on Discord)
- The poll would be posted manually within the December topic, as opposed to adding via GameFAQs options when creating the topic
- The game with the most votes when the January drawing during December occurs will be featured in January, taking the place of one of the usual three games.

If there are multiple birthdays within a month, we run however many polls, and those months will feature four games instead of three so that at minimum two games are selected via the drawing. It worked out perfectly last time to have 3-4 multi-birthday months for the purpose of having some four-game months. If that doesn't happen this time, then I will figure something out.

If interested, you can post here or PM/DM the month you were born and I will put that down in a private doc/sheet.

In other news, I'm going to keep the support system, but I'm going to simplify it so nobody has to track anything outside the progress reports I post several times each month. Starting in 2024, you can support one game a month if you so desire.

Death

Chicago
New England
Baltimore
Cincinnati
San Francisco
Minnesota
Pittsburgh
Tampa Bay
Atlanta
Detroit
Dallas
Seattle
Las Vegas
Buffalo