|
0 rows returned posted:The Carrion demo just got released, its extremely good. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1181730/CARRION_Sneak_Peek/ rather than having to bother go find it yourselves
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2019 13:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 20:01 |
|
|
I am enjoying this game, but holy poo poo is the optimization all over the place. One session I was able to run at high quality at a relatively high resolution, the next? Step down to medium, lower resolution. As of this last session, it tanked down to low, even after a reboot. I don't know what's going on in its guts, but it's a mess. EDIT: 2D isometric Fallout-but-Lovecraft should not be slowing down my entire goddamn rig, oh my god.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2019 16:50
|
|
|
That's weird, I haven't had any experiences like that with Stygian. Of course it does have a conspicuous layer of indie jank to it, so I could see it running poorly on certain systems. Anyway I got a review key for this thing that came out last week. It's no S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but it's working on doing its own thing, and it could be real good once it gets there.  SPOOKY GAMES 6: Hellseeker 1. Apsulov: End of Gods 2. Conarium 3. TAMASHII 4. Apparition 5. Secrets of the Maw (DLC) 6. Bad Dream: Coma 7. They Breathe 8. The Final Station 9. Love, Sam 10. Pacify 11. Return of the Obra Dinn 12. Silver Chains 13. Bad Dream: Fever 14. DISTRAINT 2 15. Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror 16. Tormentum - Dark Sorrow 17. The Light Keeps Us Safe 18. Kalaban 19. Verde Station 20. Evil 21. Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones 22. Watch This! 23. The Darkside Detective 24. REDO! 25. Lost in Vivo 26. Chernobylite    The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series left quite a void in its wake, a yearning for a very specific kind of game that no other game has filled. It’s not hard to see why, considering how those cult classics were a bizarre mix of open-world scavenging, desperate gunplay, and moments of intense horror. Not many games have even made much of the Chernobyl setting, but it seems this game here is looking to do all of the above. I’ll give Chernobylite credit for starting off strong, with its interesting story beats and impressive graphics. But this being Early Access, the seams are going to show real fast on this ambitious project. You play Igor, a man inexorably tied to the fateful disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. His wife, Tatyana, disappeared during the event, and Igor is convinced she’s still out there somewhere for him to find. To that end, he joins a small covert ops group that sneaks into the remains of the plant (now under heavy military guard) to find a piece of chernobylite, some kind of special element created by the disaster. Their plan goes awry and Igor manages to escape, though the zone is notably changed in the wake of his actions. Regrouping at a secure location, Igor and his allies begin gathering resources and intel to make a final return trip to the plant, and perhaps bring his decades-long quest to an end. The game opens with you playing through that first mission to the plant, and it proves to be a very effective introduction to the game. One of Chernobylite’s hyped features is how it’s built from scans of the actual area, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the approach to the power plant. Many video games fail to capture the proper scale of buildings in their worlds, but this one lays the sprawling complex out for you to marvel at. This first mission also goes very hard on the lore of the game, introducing you to some fascinating sci-fi elements and also throwing in some particularly well-done flashbacks to the meltdown. As much as I like the first mission, it doesn’t really establish the right tone for the game. Once you’re back in your base, the game splits between management and short missions, a structure that I did not see coming at all. Your base can be cleaned out and filled with all kinds of crafting and decorative features, from workbenches and hydraulic presses to herb gardens and televisions. The materials for these efforts can be found on missions, scavenged from the ground with the aid of your handheld scanner, which helpfully highlights anything worth taking in your immediate vicinity. You won’t want to neglect scavenging, either, because you’ll need food rations to keep you and your allies alive and healthy, as well as materials for healing and crafting essential tools. Chernobylite can start to feel like Fallout in places, with the somber atmosphere of the zone lost in bouts of hoovering up junk from the floor. When you’re actually out on missions, enemies tend to be clustered around the main objectives, leaving you mostly free and clear to loot the rest of the place. The challenge there is just finding your way to the more valuable goods, as buildings can be twisting mazes of blocked-off passages. When you do come up against enemies, they’re mostly going to be government soldiers, whose necks are ripe for snapping if you can sneak up behind them. Later on in the story you’ll encounter more supernatural foes, though it’s important to note this game is far lighter on the horror elements than its inspirations would suggest. Don’t expect any of the horrific encounters of the X labs or blowouts here, just shadow monsters and some awkward attempts at jumpscares. There’s honestly not a whole lot to Chernobylite at the moment, as all your missions will take place on the same two or three maps. Combat is simple and a bit awkward, with stiff weapon handling and some weirdness when trying to reload. All of these flaws are simply part of the Early Access state, with more maps and polish and an actual ending to the game promised for the future. What’s here now is absolutely playable, and with how good it looks and sounds, it’s not a bad idea to give it a try, start scavenging up junk, and take down some denizens of the zone. Not many games have this strong a start in Early Access, and if they can bring the content up to the level of the presentation, this could easily breathe new life into the Chernobyl setting.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2019 17:34
|
|
|
I've been having fun reading through a bunch of this old thread (not to mention the yearly month of game writeups  ). I mostly enjoy a light to moderate level of spooks in my own games, playing through Alan Wake right now (which I'd skipped back in the day) and that seems to hit just about right. Plenty of atmosphere, but mostly leaning towards unsettling more than out-and-out horrifying. Good stuff for the leadup to  day.e: by far the scariest thing is how bad I am at the game 
Captain Hygiene fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Oct 26, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2019 17:58
|
|
|
A whole lot of youtubers suddenly playing Faith/Faith Chapter II and Airdorf hinting they've got "something big planned" soon makes me wonder if we're going to get a shadow drop of Faith Chapter III this week
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 05:14
|
|
|
Maybe he'll finally get the Vatican's approval this time
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 10:28
|
|
|
woodenchicken posted:Is it "numb" ? It was the background monologues that got to me to be honest, Lily and James story really brought me down
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 14:38
|
|
|
Sid Vicious posted:It was the background monologues that got to me to be honest, Lily and James story really brought me down gently caress Voldemort, am I right
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 16:50
|
|
|
Tired Moritz posted:gently caress Voldemort, am I right Holy poo poo 
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 19:51
|
|
|
Are there any decent spooky mystery games out there similar to The Return of the Obra Dinn or The Painscreek Killings in the sense that you're encouraged to actually write down notes and clues outside the game to organize your findings? The Obra Dinn is a little different cause the in-game journal does it all. I'm finding Painscreek a little rough around the edges and the gameplay so far is just Get Key -> Obtain Clue for Next Key but the lore and atmosphere are on point, and I love having to refer back to my own notes and pictures I've taken to tie clues together. I just wanna live out my spooky detective dream.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 20:34
|
|
|
R.L. Stine posted:Are there any decent spooky mystery games out there similar to The Return of the Obra Dinn or The Painscreek Killings in the sense that you're encouraged to actually write down notes and clues outside the game to organize your findings? The Obra Dinn is a little different cause the in-game journal does it all. I'm finding Painscreek a little rough around the edges and the gameplay so far is just Get Key -> Obtain Clue for Next Key but the lore and atmosphere are on point, and I love having to refer back to my own notes and pictures I've taken to tie clues together. I just wanna live out my spooky detective dream. Dark Fall II - Lights Out is also similar but I never finished it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 21:19
|
|
|
Darkness Within was a Lovecraft detective thing, but it's got a reading mechanic and thought crafting.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 21:22
|
|
|
Itch.io has a Halloween bundle sale, Silence Under your Bed is part of it: https://itch.io/b/382/halloween-itchio-selects-bundle I think I mentioned Silence Under your Bed last year. Awesome writer and one of the cool folks from these forums, Kevin Snow, is the creator. I haven't played them yet, but it looks like Itch.io has the Puppet Combo games on sale now too (Power Drill Massacre, Babysitter Bloodbath)
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2019 21:36
|
|
|
I picked this one up from Fanatical recently for like a dollar, foolishly expecting anything of substance from a game billed as "erotic horror". SPOOKY GAMES 6: Hellseeker 1. Apsulov: End of Gods 2. Conarium 3. TAMASHII 4. Apparition 5. Secrets of the Maw (DLC) 6. Bad Dream: Coma 7. They Breathe 8. The Final Station 9. Love, Sam 10. Pacify 11. Return of the Obra Dinn 12. Silver Chains 13. Bad Dream: Fever 14. DISTRAINT 2 15. Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror 16. Tormentum - Dark Sorrow 17. The Light Keeps Us Safe 18. Kalaban 19. Verde Station 20. Evil 21. Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones 22. Watch This! 23. The Darkside Detective 24. REDO! 25. Lost in Vivo 26. Chernobylite 27. Lust for Darkness    One of the worst things a horror game can do is become a parody of itself. This tends to happen when a game takes on a subject out of the developer’s depth and fails to treat it with the appropriate gravity. Simply describing Lust for Darkness to someone will probably put them directly into that mindset, because erotic horror is not a target that is easily hit. And to say that this game misses that mark is, if anything, a massive understatement. The real tragedy here is that the parts of the game that aren’t trying to sex the place up are decent at times, but end up dragged down by the absolutely juvenile eroticism. Jonathan Moon receives a letter from his wife, who went missing nearly a year ago. She implores him to come to the remote Yelverton Mansion to aid her, a request he can hardly ignore. Upon arrival he finds a cult preparing for the biggest night of their lives, the opening of a portal to Lusst’ghaa, the pleasure dimension. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Lusst’ghaa is less the Brazzers version of pleasure and more the Hellraiser kind. In the midst of these erotic misadventures, Jonathan works to uncover the fate of his wife and her connection to the bizarre cult. But what he learns along the way may be too much for him to handle. Let’s get the obvious out of the way up front. Lust itself can be a terrifying concept, exploring uncontrolled urges, overwhelming pleasure, and twisted fantasies. What it means in this game is that half the cabinets in the game contain exotic dildoes. You’ll find statues depicting unnatural congress, a steam-powered vibrator, and Giger-esque penis monuments as you explore both the mansion and Lusst’ghaa, sights that are surely going to inspire anything except terror. There’s an orgy scene early in the game that’s one of the tamest depictions of sex I’ve ever seen, leaving me puzzling at what it’s supposed to accomplish at all. Your protagonist suffers obnoxious sanity effects while he watches the cultists slow-grind like geriatrics, apparently oblivious to the countless depraved sex acts he could pull up on his phone in seconds. It doesn’t work, is what I’m saying. Lust for Darkness tries to depict an entire plane of existence twisted by perverse pleasures, and a cult willing to sacrifice everything to join with the beings there, and fails at depicting either as anything frightful. The cult gets some interesting texture, if only in the members that get cold feet and argue the wisdom of opening unsecured dimensional portals. Lusst’ghaa on the other hand is just another version of hell with a purple color scheme and dicks everywhere. None of it means anything, none of it explores the dark sides of lust, and all of it is almost immediately laughable at first glance. The monsters that chase you at points don’t even have sexual elements, which might be a blessing considering the general lack of maturity these themes are treated with here. Speaking of which, there’s another ugly elephant in the room that can’t go unmentioned. Like so many games that toy with sex as a plot point, Lust for Darkness can’t help but include rape in the equation, in what I consider to be a particularly thoughtless way. So what DOES work about this game? The environments are pretty okay, I suppose. Amidst the litany of dildoes you can find lore items that unlock side stories which flesh out (heh) the backstory of the game. There are some good environmental puzzles, and coupled with the overall design of Lusst’ghaa, it makes me think this team could have made a decent game about exploring un-sexy alien dimensions. I do wonder about the scares, though, because this game is utterly bereft of them except for the infrequent chases, which is something that I tend to be nervous about in even the worst games. Still, there are hints of a good game here, just buried under an absolute mountain of juvenile themes and imagery. Lust for Darkness isn’t a good horror game, a good adventure game, or really a good game in general. I hesitate to place the blame for all of this solely at the feet of the sexual themes, but they’re easily the weakest element from just about any angle. Sex toys and vagina doors don’t horrify anyone over the age of 14, and basic chase scenes and jumpscares aren’t going to make up the difference. There’s some creativity present in the alien landscapes and, again, non-sexual elements of the story, but there’s no reason to snicker through all the try-hard scenes to see them. I wish I could look forward to these developers striking out in a different direction but they’re working on a direct sequel, and unless they’ve found ways to wring actual horror from these themes I don’t have high hopes.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 04:44
|
|
|
Too Shy Guy posted:Lusst’ghaa on the other hand is just another version of hell with a purple color scheme and dicks everywhere. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 05:40
|
|
|
If you're brainstorming the name of the hell dimension that serves as the fulcrum of your scarysex game and the best you can do is "Lusst'ghaa," that should be a clue that maybe erotic horror isn't your strong suit.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 13:10
|
|
|
/\Yeah Lust for Darkness looked really bad. Hot drat I need to grab that Carrion demo, that game is super my jam. I actually am enjoying Conarium quite a bit, the puzzle Im on is maybe a bit too complicated but its decent otherwise.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 13:39
|
|
|
Prepare yourself for a terrifying journey into the forbidden land known only as... Horneytown.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 13:56
|
|
|
Lusst'ghaa comes across like a (bad) "The Castle Aaaarrrrrggggh" joke with a porny twist. I doubt that's what they intended.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 14:00
|
|
|
Just imagine the poor person that had to model all those dildos in the game.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 14:07
|
|
|
This is my erotic hell dimension, Secksd'ldeauxbuut. They should've looked at Hellraiser more for inspiration, a film about a dimension of pleasures of the flesh, with zero actual sexuality because hey at some point it's not about sex it's about sensation, and what stronger sensation than pain?
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 14:16
|
|
|
AngryRobotsInc posted:Lusst'ghaa comes across like a (bad) "The Castle Aaaarrrrrggggh" joke with a porny twist. I doubt that's what they intended. Suspiciously reminiscent of my tolktien fanfic with the rear end'ghûlz cursed riders
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 14:17
|
|
|
like someone said "lust" and then had an orgasm right after
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 15:30
|
|
|
Too Shy Guy posted:Your protagonist suffers obnoxious sanity effects while he watches the cultists slow-grind like geriatrics, apparently oblivious to the countless depraved sex acts he could pull up on his phone in seconds. Screen suddenly goes blurry as your monocle falls out, your bowtie spins up and launches off your shirt, alerting enemies.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 16:08
|
|
|
I think the first inkling I had that Lust for Darkness was bad was when the Agony developers donated Steam keys to their Kickstarter.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 16:10
|
|
|
Glagha posted:Prepare yourself for a terrifying journey into the forbidden land known only as... Horneytown.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 16:40
|
|
|
I think the Lust for Darkness devs got enough feedback on how stupid Lusst'ghaa sounds during Early Access that they added a conversation right at the beginning of the game where the cultists explain it. It's the entirely predictable "early humans found Lusst'ghaa and adopted the word 'lust' from it" which doesn't make it sound any less stupid, or make any more sense if you think about it for like a minute. SPOOKY GAMES 6: Hellseeker 1. Apsulov: End of Gods 2. Conarium 3. TAMASHII 4. Apparition 5. Secrets of the Maw (DLC) 6. Bad Dream: Coma 7. They Breathe 8. The Final Station 9. Love, Sam 10. Pacify 11. Return of the Obra Dinn 12. Silver Chains 13. Bad Dream: Fever 14. DISTRAINT 2 15. Pamali: Indonesian Folklore Horror 16. Tormentum - Dark Sorrow 17. The Light Keeps Us Safe 18. Kalaban 19. Verde Station 20. Evil 21. Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones 22. Watch This! 23. The Darkside Detective 24. REDO! 25. Lost in Vivo 26. Chernobylite 27. Lust for Darkness 28. Scanner Sombre    If a game builds up your expectations but then fails to meet them, how much of a deal-breaker is that for you? I can often look past such failings if there’s more to the game to appreciate, but huge disappointments are far harder to bounce back from. Scanner Sombre probably didn’t mean to place my expectations where it did, because it has a very clear idea of what it is and the story it wants to tell. But it does purport to be a horror game, and despite the absolutely incredible potential it has to horrify, it does very, very little of that. I can still appreciate what it sets out to do, but man, do I ever wish it did more than that. You are a spelunker, rousing at your camp at what seems to be the very bottom of a massive cave system. Everything is pitch black and you seem to have no means of casting light, but luckily you have a tech solution at hand. Using a VR headset and a hand scanner, you can view your surroundings as a heat map of scanned points, navigating by impromptu dot matrix. With tools in hand you resume your explorations, revealing secrets of the cave that mortals have been ignorant to for centuries. You’ll also pick up enhancements to your scanner, which will help you climb your way through more complex sections of the cavern. Essentially, you can see absolutely nothing in the game until you “paint” it with your scanner. It’s up to you to reveal the many walls, paths, ledges, bridges, and other features you’ll need to get yourself out of this place. As you might imagine this gives the game a very unique look and feel, since you’re only navigating based off of snapshots of your surroundings. The scanner upgrades also go a long way towards extending the novelty of this gimmick, giving you control over the scanner’s focus, granting new ways to map the area, and more. You’ll also find some interesting interactions between the scanner and certain materials that do a lot for the game’s atmosphere. Horror fans in the audience will note that Scanner Sombre follows in the vein of the many sightless horror games that came around over the last few years. These games often engineer terrifying scenarios where enemies can vanish or appear right in front of you due to your sight mechanics, or mess with your perceptions in other ways. Scanner Sombre is obviously poised to exploit these fears in new ways, and to my great disappointment it chooses not to. The early parts of the game were incredibly tense for me because I knew, I just knew that something awful was going to materialize right in the middle of a scan, or start leaving a trail of dots right to me. It never happened, and I am telling you this now so you will not enter into this game expecting any sort of visceral scares. There are chilling moments in the game, and one particularly unsettling sequence once you see the result of your actions. But the most dangerous thing to you is the platforming, while scares are limited to certain visuals and implications. It feels a bit like a waste of the atmosphere at times, especially as you get on towards the end where circumstances will lead you to feeling even safer. The story at least is a clever little bit of narrative that leaves you some questions to ponder, though it’s going to go off in directions you may not expect. And really that’s a good way to sum up Scanner Sombre, clever but in ways you may not expect. All throughout the game you’re bound to find bits that don’t quite mesh with the others. The story you get is told through very terse, very infrequent text narration which doesn’t do a lot to move the player. The musical selections, while good songs on their own, seem to clash wildly with the atmosphere of the sequences they play during. It’s the proverbial land of contrasts, and to add once more caveat to the package, it’s short. Very short, like just-a-shade-over-an-hour short. Scanner Sombre is hard for me to recommend because of its missed potential and design oddities, but ultimately I’ll still say you should try it. The scanner gimmick is indeed a really good one, and that creepy atmosphere will hold up for at least a chunk of the experience. Don’t bring many expectations on this trip as I did, and you might just escape with a little satisfaction for your trouble.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 17:00
|
|
|
I watched a full playthrough of Scanner Sombre and personally, I would cautiously recommend it. The game is really interesting and amazing to look at in motion. The plot isn't exactly anything special, but for a game of its length it tells its story successfully and resolves it in a way that ends up feeling pretty satisfying. Maybe you might not want to pay five dollars for it, but if you can get it even a dollar cheaper, I think it is worth it just for the atmosphere and the visual spectacle. It's kind of strange to say this about a game that is made of nothing but colorful dots, but there were some sections that genuinely made me go "ooh, this kind of pretty" to myself.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 17:15
|
|
|
Cardiovorax posted:Maybe you might not want to pay five dollars for it, but if you can get it even a dollar cheaper, FYI its currently $1.20 on Steam.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 18:57
|
|
|
Can anyone remind me why I have A House of Many Doors on my wishlist, because I am pretty sure it's the fault of someone around here.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 18:59
|
|
|
Dienes posted:FYI its currently $1.20 on Steam. Aaand purchased.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 19:02
|
|
|
Morpheus posted:Aaand purchased. Same, and it also has VR support, the art style probably looks cool as hell in VR.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 19:16
|
|
|
ZearothK posted:Can anyone remind me why I have A House of Many Doors on my wishlist, because I am pretty sure it's the fault of someone around here. It’s like Sunless Sea but with less tiresome managing
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 19:39
|
|
|
Too Shy Guy posted:I think the Lust for Darkness devs got enough feedback on how stupid Lusst'ghaa sounds during Early Access that they added a conversation right at the beginning of the game where the cultists explain it. It's the entirely predictable "early humans found Lusst'ghaa and adopted the word 'lust' from it" which doesn't make it sound any less stupid, or make any more sense if you think about it for like a minute. Ah yes, this ancient word somehow retained its form only really through the Germanic family tree. That somehow makes sense.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 19:46
|
|
|
99 lust'bazooms
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 19:49
|
|
|
We've done it. Our dark ritual has borne fruit. We have finally opened a portal to... The Bone Zone
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 20:04
|
|
|
Glagha posted:We've done it. Our dark ritual has borne fruit. We have finally opened a portal to... The Bone Zone Less messy than the previous attempt, taking the skin boat to Tuna Town.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 20:14
|
|
|
In the UK, you don't even need a portal, you can just pop in to Poundland whenever they're open.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 20:42
|
|
|
Skyscraper posted:In the UK, you don't even need a portal, you can just pop in to Poundland whenever they're open.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 21:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 20:01 |
|
|
SelenicMartian posted:Don't you need a license to lust? License to Lust was my favorite 80's rock album.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2019 21:59
|
|