Despite my love for our northern homeland, Finland is not the most pleasant place in the world during the winter time. Never mind the cold, snow, sleet or ice, it’s the impenetrable darkness that gets to you. The darkness grows so unforgiving that for a month or two even the pale glow of your monitor is enough to give you comfort. That time is at hand, winter is coming and we need to stock up on entertainment. This is a small glance in to my survival kit for this year’s time of darkness.

Fallout: New Vegas
The narrow field of view brought my first play through on xbox to an abrupt stop. I owe it to my love for the series to try anew – this time around with a fully modded PC-version of course. The dry desert scenery and the unrelenting sun should serve well in immersing myself out of the real life misery that’s going on outside my window.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
I clocked in over 10 hours of XCOM during one weekend, that’s incredibly rare for me. This title has the makings of a longtime favorite despite/because of the ruthless nature of classic difficulty and iron man mode (one auto save slot only). It’s oh so heartbreaking when your most lethal scarred bad ass colonel kicks the bucket, especially if you named him after Jayne from Firefly.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity
Sins has been on my to-play list since 2007, I finally bought the game from last summers Steam sale. Nothing is more soothing in a sleet storm than a warm thought of the outer rims of my empire stretching ever further into the uncharted vastness of space. 4X at its (recent) best.

Game of Thrones: The RPG
I’m expecting a rugged, half-assed gaming experience but a class A story in one of my favorite settings ever. Fingers crossed I won’t be disappointed.

Small World
No proper darkness will yield without a barrage of board games, candle light and a tall glass of India Pale Ale. Bizarre thought, but every once in a while escaping the digital world actually feels pretty good! This year I’ll fight the digital withdrawal symptoms with Small World and its add-ons, accompanied with Dixit, LOTR: LCG, Call of Ctulhu, MTG and many more.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I’m a late adopter when it comes to series. After finally seeing Firefly I immediately placed an order for the Buffy box set. Seven seasons of Joss Whedon quality should speed up the coming of spring.

I also thought it would be cool to subscribe to Nature but now I’m getting flooded with hardcore science stuff which is not what you would call easy reading. On the sci-fi front however I’m determined to find time for at least Ready Player One and Hyperion.

When this pile of class A and much more of class B entertainment has been processed and transformed into warm and fluffy memories, I’m hoping that what I see through my window are dandelions pushing through the frail veil of spring snow.