Rinn

As someone from Europe (Poland to be more specific), I'd recommend to not worry about it. Really. Learn to say "hello", "where's the bathroom", and "thank you", the rest you'll handle in English or use improvised sign language if the person you're talking to doesn't speak it (which at least in Poland gets rarer and rarer with every year). Or google translate, automatic translators work decently well for basic things.

Nobody will mind - honestly, if you were to actually learn Polish most of us would react with "that's really impressive but why bother???" You'll get the same reaction in most other countries except for maybe Spain/Germany/France, they'll be more used to people knowing their languages, but at least in Germany they'll still probably try to talk to you in English.

Of course if you want to learn for fun then go ahead, but there's no need to put too much pressure on yourself, I've been all over Europe knowing only English, Polish and how to read cyrillic script and it was more than enough. English gets you 90% of the way there.

I don't know what specific countries you'll be going through, but focusing on French (if going through France), German (in Germany + a bunch of neighbouring countries + a lot of old people who don't speak English in Western Europe will know it), and some slavic language (probably Polish and/or Russian, Polish will get you through Poland and with effort through Czech Republic, Slovakia, and parts of Ukraine, Russian is useful because, as with German in Western Europe, a lot of older people in former Soviet republics will speak it, but bear in mind it has some negative connotations) should cover the basics.

If you have any questions feel free to message me!

I use mine on a sofa (for gaming, even!), but I get around the issue a bit by having a pad under the laptop. It's literally just a hard plastic board with a beanbag attached underneath, I think I got it from IKEA. It isolates the laptop a bit from dust and improves airflow + lets it heat up without burning my knees + the one I have is just large enough that I can also use my wireless mouse on it when I push my laptop to the left.

I dunno about that, recent knitting drama took a while to clear up, and I'm not sure if AI sceptics are as determined a crowd as pissed off knitters.

(Tl;dr on the drama: there was video on SciShow about knitting that many (myself included) felt was not well researched, misrepresented the craft, and had a misogynistic vibe. It took a lot of pressure from the knitting community to get, in order, a bad "apology", a better apology, and the video taken down.)

I've only played EA for less than 10 hours, but it was fun. It's kind of a top-down Terraria. I put it down because I wanted to wait for some features from the next patch, which came out and delivered those features but then also promised some even more exciting features in the next patch and so on. Launch may be a good time to get back in since they didn't announce an exciting post-launch roadmap yet.

It's more of a top-down Terraria than a pixel shooter, with procedurally generated world, village building (with npcs that can do jobs there), gear upgrades and boss fights. That comparison might make it a bit less ridiculous.

Fair warning: lots of roguelikes on this list. Just seems like the devs of these games really like 2d non-demanding visuals. And I don't know how low do you need to go, so check these individually.

Don't even need a sale for Moonring, which is a retro turn-based RPG, completely free. Runs on a potato.

Original Monster Train should work decently well, it's 90% off.

Shogun Showdown is really cool, 50% off. Necesse is a very fun Terraria-like, coming out of EA in like a week and on sale now.

Look into Reus 2, very fun, but it's got some more visual effects so may be a bit too much. Same with Astral Ascent, one of my fave action roguelikes but, well, it's action. Needs a decent framerate. Same with Dead Cells, Cult of the Lamb and Chronicon - great games, 2d, but may require a basic dedicated video card or a beefy integrated one.

Spellcaster University is not a forever game but it'll be fun for a while.

Cook Serve Delicious series is really good. You can start with 1, they are each a bit different.

Cross Code if you want an RPG. Citizen Sleeper or Road Warden if you want an RPG that's borderline a visual novel. Slay the Princess if you straight up want a visual novel.

Library of Ruina and Lobotomy Corporation if you're a masochist who likes a good story.

Then there's eternal classics like Stardew Valley, Balatro, Terraria,FTL, Into the Breach, Slay the Spire or Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.

And on the incredibly niche side of things, I recommend Intergalactic Fishing and Rings of Saturn.

Hopefully something from this list catches your fancy!

Well that's going immediately onto the "things that looked promising but what the fuck, so actually don't read ever" list.

In this case:

• this comic artstyle is very characteristic of AI, down to the line weight, facial expression (these soulless eyes and smile), and how the character is positioned;
• the bus has no door;
• the picture has a yellow-ish tint, which has been plaguing certain AI image generators ever since the AI Ghibli trend. They likely overtrained their slop machines on Studio Ghibli works and various other "cozy" artstyles/pictures.

I've played this briefly when it launched, but was annoyed that for people playing solo the map outside your bases fully resets every time you save and load, I'd prefer if the areas I cleared of the fog would stay cleared. I get that in a multiplayer setting it's better to reset because then everyone has the same opportunities to get loot/xp, but my map-clearing goblin brain was disappointed.

Unless they've changed it, but last I've heard there were no plans for that.

Other than that it was a lot of fun already at EA launch, probably got even better by now.

Honestly, thank fuck for the AI studio Ghibli trend, they overtrained the models on that stuff and caused the easily recognizable piss filter to appear. Makes finding AI slop at a glance easier.

Not necessarily? Icy water would have been rare, but even in the summer water from a stream or a lake is colder than the air, which is enough to make it refreshing. And well water can be very cold.