This is the pinnacle of Cogmind, truly an endgame. I love Cogmind, I don't even remember how I found it, maybe it was a random Steam offer, maybe I noticed a trailer on the Internet, maybe I was just curious about #cogmind in the Discord. I bought the game in October 2017, imagine it, a whole year passed in a blink of an eye while robots were fighting each other in my head. The game was difficult on the start, it was nothing like other roguelikes such as TomE and DCSS where I came from. Hours passed and experience started to show itself, I could reliably get to Research without getting my ass burned, crushed or exploded, I was happy. Later I was able to get my first win, w3, I dropped a bomb on Complex with my buddy alien, it was amazing and satisfying. This was a win with flight units. Time passed and my mind had a manifest, motto, slogan, call it whatever you want: Combat your way through. Certainly, avoiding combat where you can is a great strategy advised to new players. But it wasn't enough. Taking a huge way off just because there was a sentry in the middle? Running into the opposite direction because there was a patrol squad? Nonsense. I do whatever I want and I WILL go wherever I want. Nothing will stop me. Puny swarmers? Get your powder dose, pests. Dummy grunt squad? I will eviscerate every last part of your robot body. Programmers extermination squad? You will die without even knowing it, miserable tin can. Sometimes it can get out of control, making Complex mad and sending waves of assaults to stop you. They never did. Everything has its ups and downs. I approached mine. The main baddy of the Complex was taken down. I have liberated the Complex only to become its menace later. This was an infinite loop. I couldn't stop playing Cogmind, I needed that feeling of destruction. I had to stop... Several updates were delivered. My skills rusted as if I never had it. Doing the same things I did a year ago were met with punishments. Did the game become harder? Maybe. Did my feel of the game become worse? Certainly. Remember what I said about ups and downs? I approached mine. Just like the empire of Britain was dominating the world and falling apart from its own ambitions I fell into decadence and despair trying to get what's lost. I never got it back. I had to change my mindset. Old solutions weren't enough for modern problems. I had to adapt. I decided to lower the difficulty to easiest. It was great. The feeling of liberty and ease filled my chest, I could do almost anything without any restriction or whatever. The game became a sandbox to me. I was looking into fun builds, trying to make them work, getting laughs and tears from it. It is amazing. It's like the second breath when you run a marathon. I've become worse at this game. However, I'm not ready to let it go yet.

Wizard Mode, the beginning.
8FPS, a science corps soldier.