With week twenty behind us we are starting to move towards the half way point of the year, the summer solstice, and the inevitable Steam Summer Sale.

Week twenty promised us two new releases but the titles were completely unknown to me, so I wasn’t sure how big their impact would be.  But before we get to that, we’ll start as we always do with the state of the scoreboard at the end of the previous week.

The Standings for Week 19

Potshot, as predicted, had landed in first place on the strength of the Doom: The Dark Ages and its initial review scores.  But as more reviews come in, the score can change.  So I was not surprised to see a couple of updates, the first of which was a drop.

• Doom: The Dark Ages
  • [Picked by Hare Brained Schemes (p0tsh0t)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 86.5 to 84.8

That was a large enough move to get a score update announcement as well

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Hare Brained Schemes (p0tsh0t)
  • Score has gone DOWN from 63.3 to 61.7

That drop put Potshot less than a point ahead of Bhagpuss, lurking in second place.

But then another update came through.  Doom recovered a bit.

• Doom: The Dark Ages
  • [Picked by Hare Brained Schemes (p0tsh0t)]
  • Score has gone UP from 84.8 to 86.0

Again, a big enough of a swing in score to get an additional update from the bot.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Hare Brained Schemes (p0tsh0t)
  • Score has gone UP from 61.7 to 63.0

That put Potshot a bit further out in the lead.  That was the last swing in the scoring for Doom to be worthy of a update from the bot.  The scores for both Potshot and Bhagpuss changed a bit, as you’ll see at the end of the week scoreboard, but not enough to upset the balance.

That was all on Monday.  Then on Tuesday we had the first of the two releases for the week.

• Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker has released!
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Now has a score of 91

91 is a pretty decent score, and big enough to move Shawn out of seventh position right away.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
    • Score has gone UP from 22.5 to 44.5
    • Moved from 7th place to 3rd place
  • Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)
    • Moved from 3rd place to 4th place
  • Slightly Scuffed Studios (Kluwes)
    • Moved from 4th place to 5th place
  • Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
    • Moved from 5th place to 6th place
  • TAGN HQ (Wilhelm)
    • Moved from 6th place to 7th place

The jump to third place knocked a bunch of us one rung down the ladder, with myself ending up down in seventh.

But we were not done yet with Sea of Stars.  More moves were coming, including an increase in the score.  Stonks!

• Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Score has gone UP from 91.0 to 92.5

A big bump there… for this game at least… with an accompanying score update.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
  • Score has gone UP from 44.5 to 47.5

That was reversed within two hours.

• Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 92.5 to 90

But not enough to pull Shawn out of third spot… yet.

Then, another four hours down the line another hit came in.

• Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 90.0 to 88.9

That was enough to upset the rankings, dropping Shawn down to fourth spot.

• Publisher Score Updates
• Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)
  • Moved from 4th place to 3rd place
• Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
  • Score has gone DOWN from 42.5 to 41.4
  • Moved from 3rd place to 4th place

Still better than seventh, but that is how things go.  As things have gone on part of the volatility seems to be related to how various sites rank games.  A site that does 1-100 translates easily into the model, but sites that do 1 to 5 stars with no half stars, you either get 5 stars and 100… and very few titles do… or you get 4 stars and an 80, which is often a drag on the overall score.

So it goes.  After all that, it was still just Tuesday night, the bot announced the second release of the week as the clock went past midnight Eastern time.

• Monster Train 2 has released!
  • [Picked by Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)]
  • Now has a score of 87.9

A solid entry for Cyanbane.  But even as that popped up, there was also another update for Sea of Stars., which was headed back up.

• Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Score has gone UP from 88.0 to 89

That led to a combined reshuffle of the standings.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
    • Score has gone UP from 40.5 to 41.5
  • Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)
    • Score has gone UP from 8.9 to 26.8
    • Moved from 10th place to 6th place
  • Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
    • Moved from 6th place to 7th place
  • TAGN HQ (Wilhelm)
    • Moved from 7th place to 8th place
  • Rusty Shackleford (Shilgrod)
    • Moved from 8th place to 9th place
  • Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)
    • Moved from 9th place to 10th place

And so the week shook out.  There were no bids however, so everybody’s lineup remained the same, leaving the scoreboard looking like this.

The standings for Week 20

The ranking is almost what you would expect absent any scores, with those with more releases at the top of the list.  Granted, Cyanbane and I kind of ruin the effect, both of us with three releases yet behind people with two releases… but it sort of works out.

Potshot held onto first place, though both he and Bhagpuss saw a small drop in overall score.

On the projections, while I remain solidly in tenth Cyanbane, who was predicted for ninth place last week improved their fortunes enough to rise to sixth.  It all depends on what really ships.

Meanwhile, the league bot, which toss out notable missed opportunities, saw fit to throw out a low score finally, something we’re all glad we didn’t pick.

• Captain Blood
  • Score has gone DOWN from 47.7 to 46.2

That would make Captain Blood with -15.2 in your lineup.  As scores over 90 get double points, scores under 60 are on a sliding scale of reduced points so a really bad pick doesn’t completely destroy you.  It is all covered in the league FAQ.

This came up even as I was wondering if, in the world of game reviews where it often feels like the possible range of scores is between 7 and 10, there were some titles that fell below that line.  I guess we have that answer!  The Open Critic score page has some summaries, mostly going on about it being a throwback to a past era.

Captain Blood and its Scores

I was interested enough to dig into it a bit.  While it has positive reactions over on Steam, though not very many reviews overall, Meta Critic backs up the Open Critic score, giving it a 48 based on its review sample set.

The game is available on nearly every console platform as well as on PC, which exposed it to a wide range of reviews, 26 for Open Critic and 10 for Meta Critic.

Going further down that path, I dug into the Fantasy Critic games page to dig out the low scores.  Captain Blood is the lowest scoring title so far this season.

Week 20 Low Scores List

It is possible to pick a negative scored title, even if nobody in our league has managed to do so yet.  I will probably check back in on low scores again in the future.  It might make a good topic point for an end of year league round up.

Coming up in week twenty-one we have two releases slated for Friday.

Upcoming for Week 21

The big deal will be Elden Ring: Nightreign.   I suspect that we’ll see some score updates as reviews coming in over the course of the week.

But I also have a vested interest in F1 25, as that is the title I dropped to pick up something else… I forget what at this point.  It wasn’t for Half-Lif 3, but probably something else as unlikely.

So we shall see what the new week brings.

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