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I can't put my finger on what it is, but Scars Above just doesn't feel good to play to me personally. Bounced off this game almost instantly.
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Mar 4, 2023 18:31
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 Octopath Traveler 2 Let's start with what Octwopath isn't: a reinvention, or an attempt to make people who hated the first game fall in love with the series. If you didn't like the characters being isolated in their chapters, if you didn't like the dungeons being very short liminal spaces connecting story beats to boss fights, and if you didn't love the aesthetic of the original... none of that has changed here. Octopath Traveler 2 knows what it wants to be, and that's not going to be for everyone. I actually really liked the original despite what critics have said about it, as its very digestable chapter structure made it very easy to pick up and put down for budgeted time. Each character chapter in OT2, much like the first, will run you about 45-50 minutes of walking around town performing path actions, seeing cutscenes, going through a short dungeon and fighting a boss. That formula has not changed in the slightest-- again, they aren't trying to please everyone with this sequel. What has changed, structurally, are a couple of things... one is the addition of Crossed Path chapters, where two characters share a story together, an attempt to offer at least a crumb of repentance to those that demand party interaction. In addition to that addition, party banter, the Talesy skits where two characters share their thoughts on something that just/recently happened or just an observation about each others' personalities, is no longer confined to taverns but can be accessed immediately when they're available, wherever you are. These things do not make up for the party loving off in every cutscene of a character chapter-- BUT, my hot take on this is... there's just a lot of times where party interaction wouldn't really make sense in the context of the character's stories... like, IDK, maybe they should've come up with a narrative device like "the spirits of your friends join you in battle", but when Throne is tailing someone, or Temenos is solving a mystery with his Watson-like assistant Crick, I don't think I want to see these other characters crowding the scene and all offering their takes. The way Octo tells its stories is very efficient and I like that. The classes have had alterations since the original, some of which have sort of redistributed some of the power around so more classes are powerful and not just a couple of highly OP classes. The Hunter can freely summon one of several captured monsters to attack, each with their own weapon type (if you understand the battle system in the game, you'd know why this is pretty drat useful). The Dancer still buffs allies but also has an attack that can lower an enemy's shield number regardless of weaknesses/resistances. The Scholar is the only true multi-magic dealer, while the Cleric is limited to light/white magic, but starts off immediately with multi-heal. Multiple classes can hire help to bring into battle, some of which also offer passive buffs in both combat and exploration (such as haggling for better discounts in shops). Oc2 adds a limit break power which is different for each class; one changes a single-target skill to a multi-target, another does the opposite with more power, one instantly fills the BP meter, and the Hunter's gives them a completely different set of skills. An issue some people had with the original was the wild tone variation, and that is another aspect that has not changed here. On the one side, you've got Agnea, who is practically a 90s Disney Princess, wanting to be a star and putting a smile on people's faces everywhere she goes. On the other side, you've got Throne, an assassin raised in servitude who is tired of the bloodshed and wishes to break her slave collar and be free. Inbetween these extremes are characters that range about equidistantly on the spectrum, so at the very least, I can say that it's balanced enough that you can take a gradiating path back and forth in how you choose to play the characters in order, and avoid significant whiplash. The merchant is an "aw shucks" type that wants to lift people out of poverty after experiencing it himself, the warrior wants to reclaim the war-torn kingdom he was exiled from and claim vengence for the fallen, the hunter has to gather guardian animals to stop a calamity from happening but mostly cares about cooking monsters and eating them, the apothecary is recovering her memories and tasked with curing a terrible disease, and the cleric is pretty much Sherlock solving murder mysteries. It's a wide range of story types and since character chapters are mostly around the same level recommendations, you can go about them in any order you want... and so instead of going from "I love to dance!" to "THE SMELL OF BLOOD ROTS MY LUNGS", you can go from "I love to dance!" to "aw shucks I need to help these poor folks out" to "must recruit this legendary creature, but also, om nom nom" to "a religious conspiracy? why it's elementary my dear Crick" to "i will solve the mystery of who i am..." to "i will train and gain allies to take my kingdom back" to "i will avenge my fallen family" to "i will unshackle myself from a lifetime of bloodshed and betrayal". All of the characters are pretty likeable, with the exception of maybe Osvald (although their personality/attitude is understandable given their story). I particularly like Temenos, who despite being a church inquisitor, operates on skepticism and has no qualms about engaging in morally grey or flat out criminal behavior because he's kind of a freak, while Crick is constantly flustered by his actions. I don't -love- the voice acting, but it doesn't stand out as particularly bad. It is just typical dub acting, with the bonus of occasionally hearing Richard Epcar playing bit roles. The music, however, is fantastic. I don't know why the composer of Octopath doesn't get more work, as OT1 & 2 are their two largest roles... maybe this just comes down to Square already having so many talented composers on hand. But the battle music gets the blood pumping, the soaring orchestra delivers on all the right emotions and tones, and you get a mix of genres traveling around the world, from the spaghetti music of Orerush to the jazzy big city music of New Delsta. Much like OT1 and Live-a-Live, the boss music is a huge "HERE WE FUCKIN GO" moment, and the compositions transition to that music in many different ways so it's always fun hearing the music build to that moment. I am two chapters in with various characters and I am excited to see where most of the character stories end. Even the Dancer's storyline, which runs the closest to inconsequential on the graph, has me interested in what this other star performer is plotting. If you liked Octopath 1, you should really like Octopath 2. If you didn't like Octopath 1, I'm not going to try to convince you to play 2 because it's going to probably frustrate you in whatever way the first game did. For me personally, I do expect that this game will remain in my top 10 by year's end. They really don't need to cook the vignette effect so strongly though!! e: oh yeah, i didn't remark on it but the path actions are mostly the same, as is the style of combat. as the dancer you can basically just get free poo poo from people based on your character level, while the 'mystery solver' characters can inquire, the assassin steals as you would expect. I mentioned it before but several characters can recruit someone to follow them and be summoned in battle (the dancer, merchant, and cleric for example), combine that with the hunter's on-demand monster summon attacks and you've basically got an entire back-row. you could definitely break this game over your knee in many ways. the game's definitely fine with you being overpowered The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Mar 4, 2023 |
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Mar 4, 2023 20:23
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https://twitter.com/tggtmdx/status/1631785448925286406
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Mar 4, 2023 20:44
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it's trying too hard to be funny but not trying hard enough in any other area.
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Mar 4, 2023 20:53
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moller posted:Get Ace Combat 7 while it’s on sale, unless the steam punk theme is important to you. Can you build your own planes in ace combat?
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Mar 4, 2023 20:54
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 So World War 3 came out to zero fanfare. Like, I didn't even see a big release post on its steam updates. What is WW3? Well, outside of the inevitable and fast-approaching global holocaust that will bring about a blessed end to our species, it's a sort of Battlefield-like gone free-to-play that was picking up some heat way back when people were being disappointed by BFV. Ah, the bygone days of 2018! Of course, people are currently being disappointed by BF2042 so I guess not much has changed outside of the fact that World War 3, developed by the Polish studio behind the smash hit NecroVision games, has left early access, apparently. Anyways, I randomly decided to check its store page, saw it was out, and played a few rounds. It is OK. It's also kind of a weird hodgepodge. It's got the large scale squad and vehicular warfare of a Battlefield (there's also a pointless TDM mode), but it's not really class-based. Instead, it's got all the character and weapon customization of a modern COD game, complete with UAVs, airstrikes and vehicle call-ins that you can purchase based on your overall score, so it's not as punishing as that series' killstreaks. Add to the mix the fact that it plays closer to a tactical shooter than those last two franchises. TTK is very low, it's got some kind of locational armor system, weapons have high recoil and you have to account for bullet velocity. All told, I don't think all of these elements cohere very well; you're left with a shooter that heavily encourages camping since you're pretty much dead if you don't get your shots off first. Playing it, I was also struck by how much of a difference factional uniforms make to these types of games, something pre-BF2042 titles stuck to. Since ever player is individually customized, it doesn't feel like two sides fighting a war (ironic considering the name), forcing you to rely entirely on floating red nametags and your radar to know who to shoot. Still, it's free, the gunplay and movement seems polished, the vehicle physics do not, and it'll probably be dead in a year so there's no harm in giving World War 3 a go while you still can!
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Mar 4, 2023 20:58
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Nancy posted:DC was great in that it made DKS run well, but I'm still annoyed they removed the multi-stage aspect of the flying fortress levels. Yeah I tried to get into it not that long ago and it is very crusty on a modern machine. I managed to get it tolerably functional, played for 10~ hours, then realized the game's also just not very good. Maybe it would've picked up (I had just hit the part where you get your own fortress) but it wouldn't have fixed the floaty combat or the completely random balancing.
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Mar 4, 2023 21:05
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The 7th Guest posted:cowcaster's hosed then i think cowcaster died in mexico Cowcaster posted:hi i’m in mexico did anyone notice Cowcaster posted:when i die will anyone know at all
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Mar 5, 2023 01:26
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Well that got dark fast
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Mar 5, 2023 01:50
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Pretty sure that's her last post too, profile history's got nothing after that time.
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Mar 5, 2023 01:56
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Babe, new Doom 4 trailer just dropped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoOf-dsm5qM
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Mar 5, 2023 02:16
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I hope they're ok
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Mar 5, 2023 02:26
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Yeah that's a bit of a worry, I'll ping the admins and see if they can shed any light at all.
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Mar 5, 2023 02:56
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Oldstench posted:Session is the superior skating sim, but be aware that it is the DCS to Tony Hawk's Ace Combat if that makes sense. Your analog sticks correspond to your feet and that's how you do tricks. It can be frustrating just to learn to ollie at first. Much like real skating. It's also still a bit janky from time to time. I love it. Downloading it now, and just wanted to say that DCS/AC comparison is my very favorite analogy of the week.
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Mar 5, 2023 03:07
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i'm still here i just realized during my week long binge vacation in mexico not posting i don't want to post anymore didn't realize that was my last post lol that would've been poignant
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Mar 5, 2023 03:37
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Well thanks for confirming. Enjoy your freedom from posting, unlike us who are still trapped here.
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Mar 5, 2023 03:54
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Cowcaster posted:i'm still here i just realized during my week long binge vacation in mexico not posting i don't want to post anymore That was one hell of a ride! Hopefully mexico was nice
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Mar 5, 2023 04:01
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Cowcaster posted:i'm still here i just realized during my week long binge vacation in mexico not posting i don't want to post anymore
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Mar 5, 2023 04:21
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Cowcaster posted:i'm still here i just realized during my week long binge vacation in mexico not posting i don't want to post anymore lmao
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Mar 5, 2023 04:25
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Cowcaster posted:i'm still here i just realized during my week long binge vacation in mexico not posting i don't want to post anymore That's a relief, and also hilarious!  Mordja posted:Babe, new Doom 4 trailer just dropped. It looks very dark, but based on their last two Doom games I am excited!
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Mar 5, 2023 04:36
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Cowcaster posted:i'm still here i just realized during my week long binge vacation in mexico not posting i don't want to post anymore well now you know your absence would be noticed and i hope that's some kind of consolation in what ever mindset you're in now
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Mar 5, 2023 04:43
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i'm downloading a bunch of demos that i think are not time limited so i dont have to worry about playing through a bunch of them all in a few cram sessions. so far i've downloaded: Absinthia, Backpack Hero, Belle Boomerang, Beyond Sunset, Bits & Bops, Butcher, Chants of Senaar, Chester's Revenge, Chorvs, COGEN, Conscript, Corsair's Madness, Crystal Story: Dawn of Dusk, Cult of the Lamb, Dancin' Divas, Dandy Dungeon, Dead Horizon, Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum, Decline's Drops, Demons of Asteborg, Discolored 2, DoubleShake, Ekorella, Elementallis, Enchain and these don't show up on the Steam Deck version of the store page so I'll have to just download them to the laptop at some point: 8-Bit Adventures 2, 77p eggwife, Burrowburrow, Beep's Escape, Card Shark, Cuboid Keeper, Devil Engine, Dormiveglia, Everblade that's just A through E obviously. i still have another 21 letters to go lol. it's insane how many demos there are on Steam, so many that the alphabetical sorting shortcircuits and goes back to 0 in the middle of a letter multiple times The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Mar 5, 2023 |
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Mar 5, 2023 05:47
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Just watched a video about Rain World and now I wanna play it. I know this is subjective... but how difficult is the game?
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Mar 5, 2023 05:55
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The 7th Guest posted:i'm downloading a bunch of demos that i think are not time limited so i dont have to worry about playing through a bunch of them all in a few cram sessions. I've barely heard of most of those. It's like what was said earlier in the thread: there are so many people pouring their hearts out on things that nobody will every play. ...also I thought Dandy Dungeon was Dandy Ace for a second, rookie mistake.
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Mar 5, 2023 05:56
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Strong Sauce posted:Just watched a video about Rain World and now I wanna play it. I know this is subjective... but how difficult is the game? Difficulty is near objective for Rain World everyone says it's difficult. Absolutely nobody starts out good at the game.
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Mar 5, 2023 05:59
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Jossar posted:I've barely heard of most of those. It's like what was said earlier in the thread: there are so many people pouring their hearts out on things that nobody will every play. dandy dungeon is by onion games, most famous for Moon Remix RPG Adventure (the PS1 adventure game that inspired Undertale, and my GOTY of 2020), but known more now for 'aesthetic' games like Black Bird if any of the demos are cool I'll do a writeup about them
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Mar 5, 2023 06:01
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This is a forum that religiously plays Fromsoft games and pretty much every impression of Rain World in this thread agreed it was was "a little much"
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Mar 5, 2023 06:02
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Strong Sauce posted:Just watched a video about Rain World and now I wanna play it. I know this is subjective... but how difficult is the game? For the most part it's not too hard. Many enemies one hit you, but as you become familiar with enemy critter movement and more comfortable with your own you can reliably dodge past (or kill) most enemies. There isn't much penalty for dying. The real trouble is just how obtuse it is. It's mostly a simple game but there are a handful of important mechanics that aren't well explained. As an example, I had to look up how to open doors. I honestly don't think the game is terribly difficult to complete. In no way is it harder than any given Fromsoft title. Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Mar 5, 2023 |
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Mar 5, 2023 06:36
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Cowcaster posted:i'm still here i just realized during my week long binge vacation in mexico not posting i don't want to post anymore be free
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Mar 5, 2023 06:38
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Cowcaster posted:i'm still here i just realized during my week long binge vacation in mexico not posting i don't want to post anymore Your posts were good and will be missed, but if the forums brought you no happiness then be free of them
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Mar 5, 2023 06:43
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Cowcaster posted:i'm still here i just realized during my week long binge vacation in mexico not posting i don't want to post anymore
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Mar 5, 2023 07:01
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well at least it's nice that we still have only one poster who made a highly ominous last post followed by weeks of silenceFirstAidKite posted:I'm having a problem getting a steam game to work so I'm hoping that by complaining in here then maybe it'll start working.
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Mar 5, 2023 07:06
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An important aspect to Rain World's difficulty is that the random creature generation/behavior means that a room that seemed to be a complete deathtrap could be a total breeze your next time through. Patience and persistence really win the day. Its difficulty serves to make success all the more rewarding - I'll never forget climbing The Leg.
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Mar 5, 2023 07:17
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Oxxidation posted:well at least it's nice that we still have only one poster who made a highly ominous last post followed by weeks of silence I can at least confirm Kite isn't dead
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Mar 5, 2023 07:32
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secretly best girl posted:I can at least confirm Kite isn't dead I notice you didn't say they weren't transported into the computer and became a game character, tron style.
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Mar 5, 2023 07:35
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Look I ain't seen that dude IRL since the new year but I still get mostly-ungarbled messages, and I ain't crossing the MCP if I can help it
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Mar 5, 2023 07:37
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Kite went looking for solutions on the wrong website and got turned into Freakazoid.
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Mar 5, 2023 07:48
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kite's just trapped in the hoververse don't know when he'll get out only messages he sends me anymore are this https://i.imgur.com/PnmiGKO.mp4
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Mar 5, 2023 08:59
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Brocktoon posted:Monday was my birthday AND the release of my brother's game Cache Grabbers, so to celebrate I am going to buy copies of it for the first 3 people who quote this post with their steam profile! I completed this game tonight in about four hours with all achievements done. One thing that I thought was awesome was that I've never played anything like it. And I don't mean that in the sense of, "this isn't my style of game and I've never sought anything like it out before." I mean that in all the decades I've been playing games (I'm old), I've never seen one like this before. It's kind of a puzzle game and kind of a walking simulator (lol), but not in the way that either of those classifications are usually meant. This was something new. At least to me. And I've played a lot of games. The other good news... It's fun too! I enjoyed it the whole way through. The concepts were introduced thoughtfully and I found them easy to understand. The pace and vibe were chill and relaxed, which I always enjoy. Each level had a main idea you needed to apply to pass, but left enough wiggle room that you could do some things your own way. It would have been frustrating if sight lines and paths were so tightly constrained that you basically had to stand in exactly the right spots at each stop to make progress. So instead of it being a pure puzzle game with exactly one solution, this feels more like a compass & paper map orienteering simulator. There wasn't much music, but what was there was peaceful and fitting. There are some things that I think could be improved in a follow-up or future sequel. The visuals are serviceable and never an eyesore, but they're squarely in the "programmer art" category and seem like kind of an afterthought. I'm not at all a snob when it comes to utilitarian graphics, but in this case I think this is a missed opportunity. This is a game about hiking and navigation. A lot of the appeal of doing that in real life is being surrounded by interesting places and enjoying beautiful scenery. Not so much here. There was never a time that I felt like lingering in a level to look around or find the most spectacular overlook available or whatever. After I got the secret and beat the area I was in, I moved on. Even just varying the color palette between levels would have been helpful. Ideally though, in a follow-up or sequel, it would be great if a good environmental artist could be brought on as a partner to really embrace the strengths of the walking-sim genre. Seriously, my play time probably would have easily doubled if I could have wandered around and found waterfalls and cool places to take pictures while I was playing with the map and solving puzzles. The other issue I had is that the game runs out of tricks way before it runs out of levels. So, for the back half of the game, you're really doing the same things as the earlier levels, but in slightly different combinations. The maps are just bigger and a little more complex. I would have liked if the difficulty ramped up pretty considerably later on. I never got stuck and pretty much always felt like I knew what I needed to do next. That still worked for me because I enjoyed the map mechanics a lot, but I think some other players might feel frustrated when they know the solution right away but still have a bunch of deliberately paced walking around and plotting to do. So overall, liked it a lot and even felt like I learned something playing. Hope it's a big success and leads to more games of this type. I would love to see a follow up of some sort. Thanks again very much! NObodyNOWHERE fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Mar 5, 2023 |
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Mar 5, 2023 12:46
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| # ? May 27, 2024 16:06 |
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So glad you enjoyed the game! Just wanted to let you know that my brother’s inspiration for Cache Grabbers was Miasmata from 2012, which he really loved, so you may be interested in checking it out. (I think it gets pretty cheap during sales). It’s more survival-based than puzzle/level based, but it features a similar cartography/triangulation mechanic. https://store.steampowered.com/app/223510/Miasmata/
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Mar 5, 2023 15:19
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