For lane battlers where you mix sub-decks my favorite is Riftforce, especially once you add the expansion to increase the number of available factions. The factions are drafted and each player ends up with 4 factions. Cards from a given faction share the same power but have different strengths. This gives a good variety of abilities but since there are only 8 in a given game they are still easy to keep track of and plan for.

Tyrants of the Underdark, is a bit different but I like it a lot: a river-market style deckbuilder where the market deck is a mix of two themed decks. The current edition comes with 6 factions.

If you are open to coop/solo then Marvel Champions is somewhere halfway into this direction. Each hero comes with a small preset deck and you then customize this by picking cards from exactly one of the four aspects (factions) available in the game.

Picked up Yoku’s Island Express during the sale. A unique 2D platformer/exploration game that seamlessly incorporates pinball mechanics. The world feels big with a lot of variety. The pinball stuff is fun and works better than I though it would. Great production. Very happy with the value so far.

Another new one to me is Downwell. This is a neat little game and it’s good at what it does but can’t help feeling that that it could have been a lot more if it got the Isaac treatment with more items that combined in fun ways. It was very inexpensive so I am happy with this one too and will keep it in the rotation, especially for short play sessions.

I thought that they would come to their senses after the CrowdStrike fiasco.

To help narrow it down I’d try streaming a low-end game that runs very well locally and doesn’t tax the system. If this doesn’t stream well either that would suggest that it’s something specific to the streaming setup, perhaps a networking issue.

The most important thing is to just recording the data. The exact formatting doesn’t matter too much as long as it’s consistent. That way you can always massage it to whatever you come up with later.

(the first batman game)

Sorry to nitpick but there were several Batman games before that. The first one that I know of was the Batman (1986), an isometric exploration game on 8-bit micros. It’s a very good game for its time and the engine later evolved into Head Over Heels (1987) which uses a different theme.

Laser Squad (1988) was among my favourites growing up, they are the precursor to UFO/XCOM (the original from 1993).

I will add Rebelstar (1986) on the ZX Spectrum, the granddaddy of them all. Technically there was Rebelstar Raiders beforehand but that version didn’t have a computer opponent. I feel that Rebelstar is where the design elements that defined the later games came together.

Great list! I will add Wildfrost and LONESTAR on the roguelite, “there’s gotta be a way to survive this turn, if only I could figure it out” side.

That’s crazy, I almost always have my screen locked into portrait, I would have never found that feature!