There’s an Aztec city building game called Tlatoani. It’s in early access, but has enough meat on the bone that it’s one of my goto games.

Out of curiosity I checked Steam DB for active player numbers. I have discovered at any given point I am 10% to 25% of the given player base BY MYSELF. I am 1 of 4 people playing this game right now in the world. With the prevalence of the internet I always assume whatever weird bullshit you’re into there’s at least a thousand people talking about it; making memes outsiders could never comprehend. It’s actually novel to fly under the radar for once.

What do you do that doesn’t have a community associated with it?

  • Tuukka R@piefed.eeEnglish
    39·
    16 days ago

    Well… I’m using an instance that has 10 active users according to https://piefed.fediverse.observer/list :)

    I wanted to move from Lemmy to PieFed, because its development is faster than that of Lemmy’s and because its maintainers have values I have nothing against and because I want to help a cool project grow.

    And then I had a bunch of criteria that I wanted my instance to fulfill, and piefed.ee was the only PieFed instance that fulfilled all of my wishes. So, now I’m apparently one out of ten :)

  • pruwyben@discuss.tchncs.de
    87·
    16 days ago

    Earlier this year I tried out a Steam demo of a game called “That Time I Found a Box” and got hooked on it. It’s a very unique card game where you create and enhance the cards as you play. I played it for days and eventually beat the demo - the devs told me I was the first person to beat it.

    The full version just came out on Steam - I’d recommend taking a look. It’s a bit janky and not for everybody, but it does something unique that really clicked for me.

  • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
    8·
    15 days ago

    I make games that are a mix of physical and digital mediums. I found some other people doing similar stuff but nothing exactly the same. A lot of escape room creators use similar technologies though so I find myself talking to those people a lot.

  • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
    6·
    16 days ago

    I might just join you in that game, it looks cool.

    I’ve been playing starbound again and feels like the game has been abandoned for the last 10 years, but steam db says there’s still about ~800 players so that’s not so bad.

  • Fyrnyx@kbin.melroy.org
    20·
    16 days ago

    I’m still on Second Life, which is a virtual world social platform. It has ~45,000 given active people on it, which is a piss squirt compared to other online platforms like MMOs and MMORPGs. But, nobody I know are into it save for about 5 people at least.

    And I still somehow am bothering with Gaia Online which has even less users, from 1,500 ~ 4,400 on a good day and only know 2 friends on there.

    • spittingimage@lemmy.world
      2·
      15 days ago

      Every so often I go through a phase:

      1. “Second Life was fun. Why did I stop using it?”

      2. Recreate account, log in.

      3. Watch FPS drop to a fraction with a lot of zeroes at the start of it as all the adverts struggle to load.

      4. “Oh, yeah. That was why.”

    • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      15 days ago

      I was just thinking about second life the other day when someone brought up meta and its push for the ‘metaverse.’ I still remember the old pranks of making it rain dildos in someone’s area, or enclosing their head in a box.

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
      1·
      15 days ago

      Oh man, Second Life! I remember being absolutely wowed by it even though I never made an account. Its heyday was very much before I’d be able or brave enough to use real money in a virtual social game like that. (That wasn’t WoW lol)

      I always fondly remember the lovable antics of the legendary troll: Esteban Winsmore!

      Gaia Online reminds me a lot of Ragnarok, visually. That’s cool it’s still around! I remember hopping around F2P MMOs like crazy just trying to find something me and my long distance partner could interact together and vibe with. There were a lot of oddball ones that are shockingly still around!

  • Matriks404@lemmy.world
    4·
    16 days ago

    I like learning writing systems, but I only know 4 of them, and two of them just for playing original Pokemon games in Japanese.

    • AlolanYoda@mander.xyz
      2·
      15 days ago

      I love writing systems of all kinds, but besides Greek and Cyrillic (and my native Latin) I never really managed to dedicate enough time to memorize them long-term. All my Korean is gone and can only get like 30% of the Arabic alphabet now… It’s something I’d love to invest more tike into, actually.

      (to be clear, when I say Arabic, it’s actually the farsi variation… only because I know a surprising number of Iranian people)

  • tuckerm@feddit.onlineEnglish
    2·
    16 days ago

    Sumo wrestling. OK, it definitely has more fans than “basically nobody,” although it’s not exactly popular in the west. I have noticed a couple of people talking about it on Mastodon, and there’s a community at !sumo@lemmy.world.

    A while ago I stumbled upon a TV broadcast one night when I couldn’t sleep, and immediately found it interesting. Now I intentionally watch them live when I can, and otherwise catch replays the next day. A very exciting tournament just wrapped up a few days ago. The next one is in November.

  • CatsPajamas@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    16·
    16 days ago

    I like to rescue dogs. I just rescued one last week that I’m taking to get groomed. He’s sleeping in his crate right now. It’s not ideal, as I live in a small house with two cats, three people, and two dogs. But holy shit is it rewarding. Most of the time they just scamper away, although blessedly it’s usually to their home. Every once in a while you get a friend for a while, and someone else gets a friend for life. Dogs are lovely animals, and they exist as they do because of humans. It is our duty to take care of them.

    This little guy needs to be housetrained and neutered but then he’s off to live a life on the open road as my trucker friend’s road companion. Or at least that’s the plan!

    Idk how to attach pictures on this app so you’ll have to imagine a very sweet Yorkshire terrier who only has a few dreads left to snip! When I found him he had a dread that was legit like two feet long. Poor baby.

    • AlolanYoda@mander.xyz
      5·
      15 days ago

      You’re a very good person!

      My mother’s dog was a dog we gave “temporary” shelter to… Five years ago. She’s 10 now and we couldn’t be happier. She came to us from a very difficult home situation (her previous owner had just escaped from a violent marriage, and we think the dog might have been a victim too, but nobody was ever able to prove anything). She’s still a little monster and she’s still very afraid of everything, but there’s no comparing how she was when we adopted her and how she is now.

      I had an ex who lived somewhere where people often went to to abandon their dogs once they grew too old, too big or too aggressive. Her family also took in as many as they could: when we broke up, they had something along the lines of 10 dogs. It was very rewarding, too, as she got a good friend in each and every one of them. But it really hurts my heart to imagine that someone could be so cruel as to just abandon a dog like that, even hurt them.

      • alternategait@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        15 days ago

        I have a friend who does temporary shelter for animals of people leaving abusive situations. It’s a very cool organization she’s part of and I kind of wish there was one around me. That said, I have too many pets as is to foster more.

      • CatsPajamas@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        15 days ago

        Thank you! I’m about to pick him up from the groomer. They warned me they might have to shave him down so he could look pretty silly. Might have to get the little guy a coat or something.

  • lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world
    6·
    14 days ago

    I know there are others out there, but I sometimes feel like I am the only person under 50 who loves opera. I have 2 streaming services that I mostly use for watching opera.

    I honestly feel like many people would like opera if they gave it a chance. Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cross between Lord of the Rings and The Avengers, but without the 30-min CGI fights (no disrespect to those who like fight scenes, but i get bored). My son and I love Mozart’s The Magic Flute; my wife’s favourite is Bizet’s Carmen.

  • kertain@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    15 days ago

    Thanks! I know not what you asked but I just picked up the game. I guess my thing is I love trying out indi games :)

  • YeahIgotskills2@lemmy.world
    122·
    15 days ago

    I’m not into gaming. I think I’m the only adult male I know of comparable age that isn’t. I don’t really know why. I think it’s a mental block. I was big into 16-bit Atari/Amiga games in the early 90s. Then I just hit like 16/17 and got into music and drinking to fit in. The gaming scene at the time (pre-internet) was social kryptonite, and I lived in rural Scotland so I left it all behind.

    Oddly, I returned to general computing in my early 20s as the internet was blowing up and now work in the IT sector.

    But still not a gamer, which ironically is quite isolating.