Yeah I have that too! 20 minutes to dawn leans much harder into the bullethell genre and less about the skinnerbox progression aspect of vampire survivors. It’s much more challenging with fewer ways to make successive runs easier. I should get back into that one since a lot of updates were probably made. Back then it felt like the starting pistol and character as stronger than all the unlocked weapons and characters.

I have been absolutely hooked on this game. I loved Vampire survivors and Holocure and this was a great blend of those games with a diablo aesthetic.

The part that makes it so good is the sharply tuned enemy design to feed you levels steadily with interesting enemy movement patterns to dodge. Well done! Has such a good balance of challenge and progression.

There should be no illusions about resisting an attack. That’s not really possible in the modern transparent battlefield. All fixed defenses are struck in the opening salvo, AA defenses, radar networks, airfields. China would take immediate air superiority. Amphibious assaults are ridiculously dangerous, nigh impossible, but every shot fired in defense receives immediate retaliation from the air. This is different from the war in Ukraine where there’s contested airspace instead of one-sided superiority. Mines will slow the landing but without the ability to resist it, its just a matter of time. Deterrence needs to be economic and political, a military deterrent is not going to work on the doorstep of a world power with anything short of nuclear armament.

A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would look nothing like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China could attack Taiwan with fires from the mainland, there isn’t a deep depth of terrain within which to hide. It would be more about resisting an occupying force than trying to meet them on the battlefield.

The deterrence here isn’t in stopping an invasion, but from making the fallout so costly that it wouldn’t be worth it. Just rigging the TSMC plants with explosives and blowing them up when an invasion starts would accomplish deterrence more effectively than having soldiers shoot at each other. The unified economic sanctions of Russia after the invasion of Ukraine has been extremely costly and acts as a major message of deterrence against China trying to take Taiwan and risking reduction to the foreign trade that’s so vital to their stability (which is why they’re to develop their domestic market to reduce economic dependence).

Taiwan should stay independent, but it doesn’t make sense to have a lot of people bleed for it.

To a degree yes. Moisture in general will limit browning. Fresh ground beef is usually dry enough. Frozen and defrosted ground beefwill have ice/water. Patting it dry with a paper towel takes care of this.

Ground turkey in particular is super wet all the way through so paper towels won’t really be able to get it all. To brown ground turkey, you put a big patty on the grill and don’t break it up, then wait for several minutes. This allows the surface to evaporate the water and then begin browning. If you break it open it will release the water inside the big ball of meat and it’ll take forever to evaporate enough for browning to start. You break it open later on after you’ve browned top and bottom.