Revenger

Revenger by Alastair Reynolds was not marketed as young adult fiction but I guess it's the young protagonist and the straightforward space opera story that led it to get classified as such, the book even winning the 2017 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book. A praise quote on the back cover from SFX claims the novel to be the most enjoyable of Reynolds's books. I'm not sure if that's quite true -- especially now with almost another full decade of books from the author in the mix -- but Revenger is definitely from the top end.

A Mighty Woman With a Torch - The Vibes of Wolfenstein

I think it was maybe earlier this year when I happened to stumble upon the Wikipedia article about The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, a sonnet that is cast onto a bronze plaque mounted inside the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. So that's the significance of Wolfenstein II's subtitle, I then learned: the New Colossus is the Statue of Liberty! I had been so unaware.

Mein Leben - The Infamous 'Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus' Achievement

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus had been sitting in my Steam library imperfect for good many years. One reason for that was missing the DLC. Bethesda's pricing policy had made the Deluxe Edition cheaper than the Season Pass -- it felt stupid to pay for the base game "again" for the DLC. But eventually I did do just that. The other reason -- and why I had 49/50 on the non-DLC achievements -- was 'Mein Leben'. I was saving it for last because I predicted it would be the hardest one to unlock. And damn if I was right.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III (Revisited)

For a few years, I had been wondering why the number of games I had achievements in wasn't matching between my Steam library and the achievement showcase on my profile: the showcase had 2 games more than I could find. Late last year the mystery finally started to unravel. I had figured that by playing Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III during a free weekend back in 2017, it had been added to my permanent achievements record, even though I had had access to the game only temporarily. And that indeed proved to be the case when I bought the game from a sale and it came with partial completion -- kind of mean for Steam to be like that.

Drakensang

There always seems to be another Dark Eye video game adaptation I hadn't heard of before, although in Drakensang's case it's because I had mixed it up with Drakengard, thinking they're the same game. And as I don't play Japanese games, I had ignored it until I happened to watch some video featuring less-known roleplaying games and I realized my error. Drakensang seems to have carried 'The Dark Eye' as its subtitle (the other way around in German: 'Das Schwarze Auge: Drakensang') but now the game is being sold without it.

Conan the Invincible, Defender, and Unconquered

Over his short life, Robert Ervin Howard (1906 – 1936) wrote pulp fiction in a wide variety of genres but is most well-known for creating the character Conan the Barbarian in the sword and sorcery subgenre whose father Howard is regarded as.

Industria

I recall vaguely watching Industria (or INDUSTRIA, as it is stylized in caps) being played. What I remember clearly, though, is that one of the game's few developers from Bleakmill was in chat and said that they had ran out of money and the finished product (funded by the Epic grant apparently) is a third of what they had wanted. I thought that was the end of Industria's story. But then a sequel was announced. I put the first game on my wishlist, Epic shortly after offering it for free.