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packetmantis posted:Deathstate! This was on my wishlist forever due to this thread and I finally picked it up. Super fun!
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Nov 1, 2021 15:26
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The other way to stop omens, though I suppose it's much less fun, is just to stop opening chests. Chests always have an 11% chance of omens. If you take a look at your inventory, and have enough cool poo poo that you could easily beat the quest regardless, why risk an omen? You get some extra exp for leaving loot behind, too.
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Nov 1, 2021 16:22
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ziggurat 2 is pretty drat fun. it feels a lot less jank and bare than the first one.
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Nov 1, 2021 17:49
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Sloppy posted:This was on my wishlist forever due to this thread and I finally picked it up. Super fun!
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Nov 1, 2021 18:47
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grate deceiver posted:For omens, there's various item that can deal with them, if you keep an eye out you could potentially find something good in a shop. there's an item that lets you sell at shops, you could get rid of an omen this way as well. You can't sell omens with that item but you can get an offer to sell or trade one in the Bazaar special stage if you're lucky. But yeah, while some omens aren't that bad, the wrong one can screw you up. There's definitely a point in some games where you have a good enough kit that you should probably think twice about opening every chest you see. Another thing worth mentioning is that if you have a full inventory, any items you'd receive get dropped on the ground instead, omens included. If you manage to fill it up with common consumables (bones, minions, apples) you can pretty much stay omen proof and then clear out some space for any items that drop that you actually want. Just make sure you clear a little room out before entering shops because you can't use items like bones or minions outside of a stage.
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Nov 1, 2021 18:47
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grate deceiver posted:When you mouseover on anything, you should get a scrolling tool bar at the bottom of the screen that should list all effects it has. Auras used to do this but they don't now, I believe it's a bug. Here's a rundown though -- first 3 are the most common and it's pretty easy to know what they do, but they have a few interactions that aren't immediately obvious. The other 3 are less common and mostly come from item effects or rare stage mods. Burning - You lose 1 life when you click on a burning cell. Burning cells kill most living objects. You can see if a hidden cell is burning, and a hidden burning cell will never contain a monster -- you can use this information to your advantage when solving stages. Electric - Doubles the effect of whatever's in the cell. Loot has double value, strangers activate twice when clicked on, monsters deal double damage. The Spark mastery that lets you create electric cells is really good for farming tokens etc because of this. Frozen - Can't be interacted with, may or may not contain a monster. Whether or not they contain a monster will be reflected in the value of adjacent cells, but frozen monsters aren't included in the remaining monster count you see in the top-left of the screen. That means if you freeze a cell and the monster count goes down, that cell contains a monster. Ethereal (light blue aura) - These cells generate mana equal to their value every turn. If you use a targeted magical item on another cell, its effects are duplicated in all ethereal cells. Cursed (dark grey aura) - Whenever you take damage (not the same thing as "losing life") these cells will destroy any objects on them to mitigate one damage each. Chests on these always contain omens. Sanctified - Every sanctified cell with an object on it restores 1 extra life whenever you restore life. If that object is a monster, it dies. Chests on these never contain omens.
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Nov 1, 2021 19:02
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Foul Fowl posted:ziggurat 2 is pretty drat fun. it feels a lot less jank and bare than the first one. How impactful do the guns feel in it? The first one didn't click with me because the wands etc. all felt really weak and wimpy; not necessarily in the DPS-sense, more in the "Doom's super shotgun just feels good and powerful"-way.
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Nov 1, 2021 19:12
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Dropbear posted:How impactful do the guns feel in it? The first one didn't click with me because the wands etc. all felt really weak and wimpy; not necessarily in the DPS-sense, more in the "Doom's super shotgun just feels good and powerful"-way. I'd say it varies, the basic wands don't feel super satisfying to shoot but the damage/effects are usually what's making it feel satisfying. The other spells and wands can be fun to use but nothing quite like a super shotgun just yet unfortunately.
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Nov 1, 2021 19:22
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Yeah, I think the weapons are decently satisfying. Better than Ziggurat 1, imo. It definitely helps that they added damage numbers this time, so it's pretty easy to tell how much damage weapons are actually doing.
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Nov 1, 2021 19:33
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goferchan posted:You can't sell omens with that item but you can get an offer to sell or trade one in the Bazaar special stage if you're lucky. Yeah, that's what I was thinking about. There's also the carnivorous plant that you can feed an omen into. The plant takes your items at random, but if you have few/trash items and/or the omen is particularly bad, it might be worth the sacrifice.
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Nov 1, 2021 20:07
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DACK FAYDEN posted:If anyone has tips on getting good at Deathstate I'd take them. I can clear the game easily at base difficulty but I absolutely melt at +2. Double damage just ranches me and I die to trash. It's been a year or two since I was binging on the game, but as I recall you generally want to be slow and thorough in the first zone, do the same in the second if you scored enough early damage upgrades to pull it off, but by the final area you are going to have to give up on that and book it for the exit unless you managed a really busted build. Get comfortable murdering the emissary. Avoid the desert if you possibly can, that place is a deathtrap that takes forever. Eye rules. I never did pull off the no-hit hardest difficulty win, maybe I should dust it off again...
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Nov 1, 2021 20:42
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Dropbear posted:How impactful do the guns feel in it? The first one didn't click with me because the wands etc. all felt really weak and wimpy; not necessarily in the DPS-sense, more in the "Doom's super shotgun just feels good and powerful"-way. they're all right - some of them feel really nice to use and some feel a bit poo poo, but in general way way better than the first one.
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Nov 1, 2021 20:54
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grate deceiver posted:Yeah, that's what I was thinking about. Oh yeah, plants are great for that. They're particularly busted with the Human mastery, you gain morality (and therefore get a soul) each time you feed a plant, and then gain even more morality when you lose an omen. goferchan fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Nov 1, 2021 |
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Nov 1, 2021 21:36
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Captain Foo posted:I’m pretty sure in classical minesweeper you are not guaranteed to have a board that’s solvable without guessing, but i believe modern competitive builds generally enforce solvable generation Don't worry - Demoncrawl has boards that can't be solved correctly even when you don't have to guess. I had this situation just now: code:One of ABC is a mine; two of BCD are mines. Therefore, D is a mine. code:Except A was a mine, giving this situation: code:Sadly I learned this too late to refund the game.
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Nov 2, 2021 11:25
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Jedit posted:
edit: ah ok I see you now. That's quite remarkable that a minesweeper game is buggy like that. Serephina fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 11:48
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Serephina posted:I'm having trouble parsing that; what's the "o..o" below the numbers for? Known mines? Is this the corner of the puzzle, is there anything to be worked around via the sides to come back into this? They're revealed cells; it was a block of 4x3 revealed cells in the centre of the board with no mines adjacent. I forget what the numbers on the o's were. But it doesn't matter what was around the sides; the ABCD situation has complete information and no possible logical solution. It looked like this: 
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Nov 2, 2021 12:14
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Jedit posted:They're revealed cells; it was a block of 4x3 revealed cells in the centre of the board with no mines adjacent. I forget what the numbers on the o's were. But it doesn't matter what was around the sides; the ABCD situation has complete information and no possible logical solution. It looked like this: what were the cells around this 4x3 block? (before you blew up) are the ?s supposed to potentially be mines? Ciaphas fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 12:18
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Ciaphas posted:what were the cells around this 4x3 block? (before you blew up) No, they're revealed cells with values I forget (but aren't important anyway). And the cells around the ones in that image are completely irrelevant; only the cells surrounding the 1 and 2 in the middle matter.
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Nov 2, 2021 12:27
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I wish the "autosolve" from multiplayer was available in singleplayer too because seriously, half of the playtime in Demoncrawl is just clicking on all the cells for obvious solutions.
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Nov 2, 2021 13:12
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Jedit posted:Don't worry - Demoncrawl has boards that can't be solved correctly even when you don't have to guess. I had this situation just now: Just to double check there's no way the stage had the Lofty or Fake mod or you had the Dizzy Stars omen, right? I have hundreds of hours and I've never seen a bug like that before. edit: Or if you had Swelling Rune in your inventory and targeted the leftmost "2" cell with a magic item? I think that covers all the reasons a cell value might be incorrect. goferchan fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 13:22
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There's something satisfying about Demoncrawl that has kept me playing and going back to it when it frustrates me so far, but yeah it's wearing out its welcome pretty quick. Omens are like, game-ruiningly frustrating for me. So many of them are effectively just "this run is over" unless you have a way to remove/counter them (which you usually don't). I see no impetus to use half of the items that exist because they do weird things I don't mechanically understand the purpose of or that are only useful in a specific very narrow situation and it sort of feels like unless I luck into a super powerful item early on, I'm just playing vanilla Minesweeper. Also I'm all for RNG swinging runs because it keeps things exciting but the way RNG presents itself in DC sucks, there's no normal distribution and it's totally possible and seemingly even normal to play entire quests without finding any usable amount of gold. e: Despite me not liking many of the items I'll still give the game and devs props for coming up with consumables and items that do out-of-the-ordinary things deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 13:33
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deep dish peat moss posted:There's something satisfying about Demoncrawl that has kept me playing and going back to it when it frustrates me so far, but yeah it's wearing out its welcome pretty quick. Omens are like, game-ruiningly frustrating for me. So many of them are effectively just "this run is over" unless you have a way to remove/counter them (which you usually don't). I see no impetus to use half of the items that exist because they do weird things I don't mechanically understand the purpose of or that are only useful in a specific very narrow situation and it sort of feels like unless I luck into a super powerful item early on, I'm just playing vanilla Minesweeper. Also I'm all for RNG swinging runs because it keeps things exciting but the way RNG presents itself in DC sucks, there's no normal distribution and it's totally possible and seemingly even normal to play entire quests without finding any usable amount of gold. Yeah, this is how I'm starting to feel. I've got my money's worth so I don't regret getting it but I don't think I'm going to keep playing much longer. I've had multiple runs as detective where I got the omen that gives you an omen for every revealed monster. The game just went "gently caress you, you lose, stop playing" and there was literally nothing I could have done to prevent it other than not opening chests (this was early in the game where it seemed pretty reasonable to do so) or play casual.
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Nov 2, 2021 15:42
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goferchan posted:Just to double check there's no way the stage had the Lofty or Fake mod or you had the Dizzy Stars omen, right? I have hundreds of hours and I've never seen a bug like that before. Perfectly reasonable question to ask, but no, I had neither of those.
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Nov 2, 2021 15:58
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Hard agree with all the Demoncrawl criticisms. I'm fairly certain I had that same issue of an impossible number to mine thing occur yesterday. Which is, of course, frustrating. But in my head it's all forgivable. It's just dressed up minesweeper. It's something to occupy my ADHD brain while I'm watching/listening to something else. It's sort of a compliment when the game has to cheat to beat you, right?
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Nov 2, 2021 16:00
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I’ve also never seen an outright impossible number without something that would cause it. Although frankly I do think the game would be strictly improved if they dropped the “the map has 3 wrong numbers” and the “you cannot flag cells” map modifiers. I just quit when the latter shows up, it’s simply not worth spending 4 times as long on a stage and/or taking notes in paint.
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Nov 2, 2021 16:07
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yeah demoncrawl seems neat and got a few hours out of me, but if it's going to throw Fake Numbers at me i'm not going to think my way around that, i'm gonna play something else
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Nov 2, 2021 16:09
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Very glad I refunded Demoncrawl a few months back. If you want a good minesweeper-ish game, stick with Desktop Dungeons.
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Nov 2, 2021 16:12
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Snake Maze posted:I’ve also never seen an outright impossible number without something that would cause it. You cannot flag cells usually isn't that bad for me. Time consuming, but I can usually puzzle it out. The map has 3 wrong numbers though, I basically just assume I'm gonna end up making 3 mistakes.
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Nov 2, 2021 16:12
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I haven't played it in a long time, but I recall all the items/favors/omens being fairly useless. That was my main issue with it. It doesn't take a lot to think of ways items or powers could affect a minesweeper game, but every single one in demoncrawl has a very fringe application.
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Nov 2, 2021 16:13
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Duderclese posted:Hard agree with all the Demoncrawl criticisms. I'm fairly certain I had that same issue of an impossible number to mine thing occur yesterday. Which is, of course, frustrating. Although it's not a roguelike in any way, if you're looking for a good minesweeper-like, I can't recommend Hexcells Infinite strongly enough. The level generation is incredible to the point of seeming like impossible black magic. Unlike minesweeper, you are guaranteed a solution because the generation algorithm generates a solution proof during the process. And if you want difficult puzzles, the new "hard mode" level generation generates extremely challenging puzzles very consistently. While there is the occasional 3-minute puzzle that I breeze through, there are also a number of them that take me 30+ minutes to find the "trick" to a solution. There are also user-built puzzles that are even harder or have additional "twists."
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Nov 2, 2021 19:01
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Arzaac posted:The map has 3 wrong numbers though, I basically just assume I'm gonna end up making 3 mistakes. So Fake usually gives you an incredibly fair warning if you aren't just chording everything. If you look before you click, most Fake spots are incredibly, visibly wrong vs the stuff right next to them, it's only when you get into the zone and just keep "solving" right to left or left to right without thinking it trips you up. And sometimes you get lucky and it's on a corner space and it goes "4" and you don't even have to try, it's impossible to make that mistake accidentally.
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Nov 2, 2021 20:11
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now it is time for me to spring another LONG POST on the thread! Arboria - this game is a roguelike soulslike. it's very traditionally roguelike in one sense where all the action is focused around this one big dungeon, you go down floors, the environments and enemies change along the way, etc. but it employs the 'rogue legacy' school of metaprogression, although less egregiously than rogue legacy does. The amount of directly increasing your stats via currency is limited, its more focused on increasing the array of starter items you can go into the dungeon with. You play as a series (or just one if you're super good at the game) of alien-plant-troll creatures called Jotunz, and as the name suggests you're part of a tribe with a nordic-inspired mythology. Although one of the merchants is a rasta, one is australian, apparently accents are just an individual thing on this planet. You're all spawned from one big sentient father tree, so its kind of like if Avatar was about hosed up jim henson troll people:  player troll on left, long suffering fairy on right The combat is soulslike, so its easy to pick up if you're familiar with the genre. like in the souls games your weapon determines your moveset, but in this game weapons are called 'symbionts' and are basically limb mutations your troll can swap between. that occupies your right hand (and right shoulder buttons), and then the left hand has 'mutations', which are a grab bag of everything that isn't weapons. Initially boring stuff like 'a shield' or 'a gun', you eventually get some which are wacky stuff like telekinesis for throwing enemies around, or summoning massive stone spikes to impale people. I should note pretty early on that there is a huge shitload of stuff in this game. Like i've got a ton of hours in it but i've not made it out of the second major biome yet. They really do a lot with the fact that it's kind of a science fantasy setting, so it's rare that you get a new weapon and it's 'just' a new moveset. almost everything has some kind of gimmick to it, like the halberd hand that actually grows and gets a longer range as you hit stuff with it, then shrinks down when you're idle, or the sword where you can tap the attack button as you're swinging to make it hit harder. even the starter weapon (the axe) has a mechanic where the charged up heavy attack sets it aflame, then the light attack combo gives a stacking attack speed buff. something that's a really nice detail is that instead of weapons just ambiently increasingly in quality (there are rarity levels which give extra lil bonuses, but you get the ability to upgrade item rarity pretty early), each tier of weapon is made of different materials, and so every weapon has a ton of different looks depending on the material its made of. like a macuahuitl made of scrap looks a lot different to one made of bone. another nice bit of attention to detail is that there's an elemental system, and every monster comes in different elementally aligned forms, and they all have very distinct looks rather than just being palette swaps. like the ice ones are all craggy, the dark aligned ones are slender and tentacled, that type of thing. you can use elemental essences you find around to apply elemental alignment to your own weapons and mutations, and for the mutations the effects of the mutation will actually change with the element instead of just gaining typed damage. Like the ice-aligned shockwave fist will leave behind a sphere of cold that slows stuff down, whereas the shock one will arc between targets. I think the weakest point of the game is the I dont want to go on forever forever about this game but i do like it a lot. in style terms it reminds me of old games like Sacrifice and Abe's Oddyssey, or jim henson movies like The Dark Crystal. the trolls are goofy, but there's a narrative going on around them and the planet's exploitation by some variety of high tech aliens at some point in the past. It has a lot of weird touches, like the fairy who follows you around gets fatter and fatter as you collect the tiberium crystals that are the meta currency, then pukes them up in liquid form into a machine between floors. Or when you die, she pulls off your trolls head and carries it back up to the surface, where depending on how well your run went your trolls head gets preserved in a hall of fame of troll heads in jars. I really hate the rasta troll, but this game has an absurd amount of content and is very well put together with a charming aesthetic. It has enough stuff in it where it feels like a Dead Cells or something that's had 3 years of early access, but as far as I can tell it came out of nowhere. If you like souls games and you like roguelikes it is worth sticking out the first biome to get to the meat of the potato on this one. Deathstate - i dont think i need to say as much about this one, ive said a lot about how i love it before but people have been asking about it so i want to put in my recommendation again. It's a bullet hell-ish roguelike, a lot like isaac in terms of progression and unlocks. It's unique as a twin stick shooter in that you don't actually control your own shooting, your character automatically shoots at everything nearby. which sounds like it could be boring, but you really need that freed up mental real estate for all the dodging. there are shitloads of enemies onscreen at any one time, and you only have a limited time to clear each level beofre the spelunky ghost comes to get you. you gotta duck, dodge, dip, dive, and dodge through the eldritch realms and blast all the cthulhus and skellingtons that you can. the story of the game is a touch From Beyond and a touch Beyond the Black Rainbow (maybe even some of The Beyond for all you beyondcore fans), initially you are college students chasing after your crazy professor and his crazy deathstate machine that sends your souls to the eldritch realms, though after a while the cast of characters does open up. My favourite is the living eyeball who shoots laser beams, who you unlock by collecting all the other eyeballs in the game. i don't want to write a million words about all the item types or how many items and enemy types and biomes there are in the game. there are a lot. but what makes this game special to me beyond the great gameplay is the wonderful art, music, and the unique tone it has. it's lovecraftian, but you get the idea from the descriptions of the items and the NPCs you meet that this is an eldritch realm that is also a place where stuff lives. most lovecraftian stuff just has the entities be hostile and unknowable, but these realms really seem like there are some guys just having their lives there, and I like that. i think the loading screen skeleton said it best:  i feel like this was maybe the worst deathstate review ever, but its a 10/10 game and should be up there with isaac, especially because its less annoyingly edgy than isaac. i'm adjusting to new medication and i feel like my brain is full of poo.
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Nov 2, 2021 23:20
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Been really curious about Arboria and that post pushed me over the edge, thank you. And yeah Deathstate came out of nowhere for me but I loved it -- if you can handle a couple rough edges it's a hidden gem in the action roguelike genre. Haven't played it in like a year but some of the music is still burned into my brain
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Nov 2, 2021 23:35
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secretly best girl posted:So Fake usually gives you an incredibly fair warning if you aren't just chording everything. If you look before you click, most Fake spots are incredibly, visibly wrong vs the stuff right next to them, it's only when you get into the zone and just keep "solving" right to left or left to right without thinking it trips you up. Yeah Fake is not as scary as it sounds, it's very possible for the mod to just whiff and put the 3 fake values in obvious spots that don't interfere with your ability to solve the stage. It's also internally considered a very high-difficulty mod so it significantly ups the chance of you getting better drops on the stage.
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Nov 2, 2021 23:39
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The Void Rains Upon Her Heart is a great roguelity shmup. And the music is really nice too. https://store.steampowered.com/app/790060/The_Void_Rains_Upon_Her_Heart/ Loddfafnir fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 23:49
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i'd actually never heard about arboria before. it sounds pretty neat. reviews on steam seem to be pretty decent and i can assume the occasional negative ones might mostly come down to personal taste.
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Nov 2, 2021 23:50
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I glanced at a handful of reviews and then negative ones were mostly "the game isn't fun on ng++++" which well. if you get 90 hours (like the reviewer) out of it before that point..thats fine for me.
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Nov 2, 2021 23:52
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Yeah, I can recommend Arboria as well. The game does get a bit sluggish by NG++, but by that point you'll probably gotten a fair bit out of it already. The unique setting is really neat, too.
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Nov 3, 2021 00:19
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I love bizzare science fantasy settings so I had to pick up Arboria, it's a lot of fun, enjoying it very much. Thanks for the recommendations! e: In some parts it feels like it was inspired by the trolls in Caves of Qud and so I am choosing to believe that's exactly what it is about  it is the x-com: enforcer of Caves of Qud
deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 03:02
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| # ? May 20, 2024 10:29 |
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I was talking to a friend about older roguelikes and was curious what this thread would think about this take: Caves of Qud : Dungeon Crawl :: ADOM : Nethack
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Nov 3, 2021 04:09
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