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Mr E posted:I've been enjoying Shadow Man now that I'm back to it after Live a Live but have no hope for a sequel/reboot or whatever because that game company makes NFT games. I was super big into the first Shadow Man and couldn't help but get a little excited for the teaser. Thank you for setting my expectations straight!
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May 6, 2023 03:11
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Rookersh posted:"yeah game was super cool actually, way better than I expected. Questing felt good, combat was bad but who cares. BUT I'M NOT GOING TO PLAY IT BECAUSE THE MOUNTS ARE CASH SHOP ONLY, gently caress THOSE GUYS. ABSOLUTE GREEDY BASTARDS." I mean replace mounts with the lack of the crafting bag and not having your inventory fill up five minutes into any activity, yeah I'm not gonna keep playing it without ESO Plus until you can organise a raid 
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May 6, 2023 03:24
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One more demo tonight:  Demonschool (2023) - A big shiny indie RPG from Necrosoft Games (Hyper Gunsport and last year's big itch.io bundle) that wants to be indie Persona and it certainly has the style and splash. Although, I have a couple of thoughts. First yes, it looks gorgeous, I like the character portraits, full of personality. The music is really good. Pacing is very zippy and the transitions are slick. BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT Things are maybe a little too zippy. NPCs largely consist of single lines of tiny dialog and take the persona naming convention to a ridiculous degree (Bag Haver Girl, listen that's funny, but we can't have every character be Tree-Obsessed Student saying "I love trees!", there has to be some bit of genuineness). The combat also takes some getting used to. It feels more like a board game, or something like last year's Tyrant's Blessing, where you have a planning stage where you know how certain enemies are going to attack before you proceed, so you plan out your moves accordingly, getting out of the way of spells, healing people, etc. Your characters only have 3 hit points, and the average enemy has 1-2 HP at most. The objective in battle (at least in the demo) is to defeat a certain number of demons, and then escape the board as more keep spawning in, in order to seal them off. There's a scoring system of sorts which may determine loot rewards? But since the demo doesn't get into much nitty gritty, I'm not sure how complex it will get. Considering the stats themselves are super simplified, I don't think combat is going to add a whole lot of systems. So what we have is a very simplified kind of vaguely spooky/supernatural school RPG that is likely going to be more narrative focused than building characters. Though the game says it will release later this year (and the news update for the demo said "incoming"), the demo makes it feel further off. I'm gonna guess this is an earlier build, since one of the locations' descriptions (Abandoned Classroom) on the world map is "Abandoned Classroom description". Incoming makes me think summer? Maybe September-October at the latest? But I wonder if it will launch in full or in Early Access. It seems like there will be at least one more demo before release as there is a Boss Demo that is greyed out in the main menu with the promise it's coming later. The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 07:03 on May 6, 2023 |
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May 6, 2023 06:48
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The 7th Guest posted:okay one more demo because it rules
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May 6, 2023 07:48
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Burning Rain posted:this looks interesting, but what is the game actually called? https://store.steampowered.com/app/1885110/Cryptmaster/
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May 6, 2023 08:14
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Woops sorry for not mentioning the name!
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May 6, 2023 08:30
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thanks!
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May 6, 2023 09:53
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The 7th Guest posted:One more demo tonight: This looks interesting to me, cant wait to see more. Thanks
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May 6, 2023 12:42
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A byproduct of paid cosmetics in MMOs is I never look at someone and go "wow they must be good at the game", I go "oh, they spend probably spent $40 for that I guess." Some MMOs replace with with titles, but it takes knowledge to even recognize which titles are impressive. There's little doubt comparing yourself against others is a big motivator for many MMO players, enough to get them to get better at the game and achieve stuff. Later they can sit about in public areas showing off their dragon-killing hat that took 40 hours of work to get. It is at least a little devalued if a new player can get a shiner hat for $5.
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May 6, 2023 14:18
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an actual Steam question; will wonders never cease. there anywhere in the client that lists nothing but patch/release/update news, and that sort?
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May 6, 2023 17:15
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Ciaphas posted:an actual Steam question; will wonders never cease. there anywhere in the client that lists nothing but patch/release/update news, and that sort?  Store - News by default shows everything relevant to the games that you own/wishlisted. Button in the corner let's you adjust your news feed if you don't want to see content from certain games or certain types of content.  EDIT: There's also a smaller version of that in Library - Home that personally I look at more often.  It seems to choose what to show you more smartly based on the game you have currently installed. Jack Trades fucked around with this message at 17:21 on May 6, 2023 |
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May 6, 2023 17:19
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I played roughly 40 hours of Roots of Pacha, a very competent farming/Lifesim game with a tribal setting that tries some new things. It features farming, fishing, foraging, animal taming and social stuff but no combat. Instead of money you gain Tribe contribution for putting stuff in the sharing box. Progress is mainly done by developing new ideas by talking to other clan members and giving them the resources necessary to develop said idea. Material progress is done by exploring more and more of a huge cave that has more advanced materials the further in you get. My summary overall would be: Positives: - Good character art, especially the portraits. The style and pixel art is also good overall. - Progress is initially very fun - Your house/farm is part of the village and not separate/lonely. - Animal taming and breeding system is interesting, you can eventually max out stats for the animals so they are faster/produce more/ etc. The animals also help out by giving resources such as fur and feathers or milk/eggs - Unlocking buildings/tools/etc. via ideas is a novel concept. - The tribe also progresses over time and builds new things in the town which is neat.. - There's a decent amount of festivals, some even with competitions you can participate in Negatives: -...until you realize these are all just visual things that have no impact on gameplay at all - Walk speed is far too slow. Animal riding is necessary, this is a grievance I have with Stardew Valley as well. - There is an accessory system for wearing up to 3 rings with buffs, however almost none of these have any real impact other than fish rarity and friendship buffs. - Farming is incredibly limited for 90% of the game. There also is zero help/automation other than eventually not having to restock your animal barns anymore. You unlock an irrigation system at some point but you need to manually turn it on every day. Before that you maybe can take care of roughly 20 tiles of farmland max or you will completely run out of stamina for watering. The worst sadly is once again, the social side. Any characters that aren't part of Romances have maybe one event happening total. While there is often dialogue about said character events after they happen, these are mostly jokes too. There are never more than 10 lines said in any event, with your own character completely silent like in Stardew. Other than that you always get simple canned responses. I noticed this when going to festivals, at least half of the characters will always say something akin to "Hoo boy I sure love festivals" and that's it. There also no group talks or anything. I don't know why all these life sims drop the ball so hard with the social stuff personally. I can only get that fix from Rune Factory.
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May 6, 2023 17:28
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Jack Trades posted:
that What's New thing looks pretty keen but horizontal scrolling is abject degeneracy, any way to make it vertical?
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May 6, 2023 17:31
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Ciaphas posted:that What's New thing looks pretty keen but horizontal scrolling is abject degeneracy, any way to make it vertical? Not that I know of.
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May 6, 2023 17:33
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dang oh well, thanks
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May 6, 2023 18:15
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Case of the Golden Idol ought to have a trading card of the making GBS threads gnome
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May 7, 2023 02:20
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Just finished up Prodeus: played it on gamepass and had a pretty good time! PROs: *Good ol' classic shooting fun, just get in there and blast away the demons. *Very enjoyable to reduce enemies into bloody mashed potatoes with powerful and satisfying guns like Rambo in that scene with the 50 cal turret. *Fun to search around for secrets, lots of variety. Also bonus speedrun challenge levels. *Levels are quite fancy and complex but are almost always easily navigable with the way it sets up enemy/item placement. *Very cool and impressive architecture, setpieces and arena fights. CONs: *It's pretty much an old-school Doom/Quake clone with a fresh coat of paint: nothing really new to see here. *Checkpoint system which doesn't revert time like usual checkpoints do, making it feel almost pointless to try and win fights because you can just keep respawning and whittle them down through braindead brute force with infinite retries. Unfortunately there is no middle ground: you can only restart the entire level if you want to do it proper. It takes the game until the very last level to give you a proper fight which you can't abuse respawns. *Game ends on a bit of a weak note in terms of story: felt like there was gonna be more but it just stops. *Can be a bit annoying and crowded to juggle all of the numerous weapons you get. *Combat can get a bit too cramped and confusing to parse at times, and there are some really annoying enemies to deal with. *You have to reload the guns manually: no passive auto-reload when you keep them in your pocket, so can be annoying to have to reload every single thing after a big fight. *Secrets in early levels locked behind needing upgrades from late-game (double jump and air dash). The biggest annoyance for me was the checkpoint system, but other than that, pretty fun despite being just a retread. Wouldn't say it's necessarily a must-play, but I'd say it's a safe recommendation for shooter fans. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 02:40 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 02:37
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Rogue legacy 2 whips so much rear end but I absolutely suck at this game. I can’t even beat the first boss and I’ve been playing for days lol.
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May 7, 2023 02:47
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the initial hump is steep but there’s so much metaprogression that you’re bound to start making headway at an accelerating pace
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May 7, 2023 02:48
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LudaNarraCon demos: Paper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open (2023) - It's nice to see games with a paper aesthetic that aren't just trying to be Paper Mario. This is a lite-horror narrative game set in Malaysia about a kid who can see spirits and has a ghost friend. Gameplay is mostly just walking around and talking to people, a couple of little 'stealth' minigames, and a QTE sequence. Nothing too amazing. One thing I thought was interesting is that the characters speak in a combination of broken English and Cantonese, although the dialog ends up having the feel of watching a fansub with tons of translator notes... it's intentional on the part of the developers, but I don't know if the translator notes are actually necessary when I can figure things out by context, ends up distracting.  Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island (2023) - An intriguing relaxing adventure referred as a "friend-em-up" where you meet a bunch of gods on an island who have forgotten who they are, and have to find items of theirs as well as help them out with tasks in order to increase their friend levels and restore their memories. By observing things you uncover new conversation topics to discuss with people -- and I've always enjoyed point and click adventure games where discussion topics are like a form of inventory item. That said, while there's only a small amount of trading (in the form of trading fruit for, at least in one character's case, keys to fast travel doors), it does feel kind of like a more fleshed out take on Time on Frog Island. Just, not based on a game-long trading quest. More the run-around-an-island helping people aspect. The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 03:58 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 03:52
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I played a few demos myself: Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out Not officially a Con demo but it still came out in the same period. The sequel to King of Dragon Pass prequel, Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind, set long after your clan from that game succeed in civilising. Apparently your save game will transfer over. Do you like King of Dragon Pass? If so this game is more King of Dragon Pass except the gods are dead/dying and everything is getting more and more hosed up. It constantly tells you that world is going to end and there is nothing you can do to stop it. For Glorantha lore heads this is set during The Great Darkness. Verdict: Already wishlisted.  The Pale Beyond Intimations of Sunless Seas except there's no freedom of travel and each crew member is a distinct individual with their own name, illustration and character arc. Lots of resource management ramping up as you play further. Verdict: Already wishlisted  Death Trick: Double Blind From a two woman dev team, one in America and the other in Shanghai, comes this resource management intensive Ace Attorney like set in a circus. The gimmick here is that there are two investigators one from within the circus the other from without, each only gets a certain amount of actions per time period before the game switches to the other. Add to this a time limit, an exp system and a fairly restrictive action point system and it'll be interesting to see if they pull off telling a compelling story with all these mechanics. The writing is a bit fanish but serviceable and the English reads smoothly. The circus setting is one of my least favorite mystery locations though. Verdict: I love ambition and Ace Attorney style games. Added to my wishlist.  Harmony: The Fall of Reverie The latest game from Don't Nod creators of Vampyr, Life is Strange 1 and 2, and Remember Me. The story is well, it's basically The Longest Journey, you know the drill, two worlds one mythic and the other mundane, the mundane has been affected by coportate over reach which has caused everything to get out of whack, you are the chose one who will restore balance. Gameplay wise it's a very high production value Visual Novel where you go from story node to story node, it has a very brisk pace unlike many VNs though. The big gimmick is that your allegiance flags are a resource of their own and you can plan ahead and manipulate them to achieve the result you want. However, I suspect that there are two bands of consequences, the resource use one which is highly tied to the mythic realm and the actual impact of your decisions made in the mundane realm. (The writing is a bit on the modern fantasy side for my tastes but YMMV) Verdict: Don't Nod make interesting games and I've always wanted a big meaty VN made by a western studio with resources. Added to my wishlist.  Astronaut: The Best Did someone say resource management? Well here's another game where resource management comes to the fore. Nominally, the game is about training astronauts to achieve outer-space missions. Functionally, the game is insane. There's gods, there's reality tv, there's spirits, there's dystopian politics... It's a lot to take in and the game (or at least the demo) throws you right in the deep end. A very individual feeling to the game's (John K inspired?) aesthetic and while that's laudable, the effect is janky as hell. Verdict: Weird vibes/not for me. Not wishlisted.  Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical The pitch is ex-Bioware narrative head leads a Tell Tale style narrative musical, with mid song choices. It's okay. There are three different base personalities/approaches to situations. The limited animation style only kind of works, the songs didn't work for me and kind of have to become different songs with each choice and if you mix and match the seams show. Felt like it was over compensating for its white guy creative lead. (There's like four demos in the festival that are about a woman in a band that really emphasise representation and a narrative fusion with music) Verdict: As messy as this one is there could be something there. Added to my wishlist.  Times & Galaxy The demo throws you in without much introduction but you're a new robot reporter on a space station newspaper. The gameplay loop is you walk around a scene talking to people for quotes and information. Then construct an article about the event in a fairly bare bones interface before getting a ranking on the story. Other than that there's a kind of social character interaction hub. The writing's not very good and it's very hard to know if a question is going to end an interview which means you frequently miss out on material for the news story. It doesn't feel great to see a bunch glaring gaps in the news story interface and no indication of how your could have done better. Most of the gameplay is walking, the spaces feel too big, too empty, while still having too many people in them and the conversations both too brief and too long. Didn't work for me at all. Verdict: Not added to my wishlist.
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May 7, 2023 09:16
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Case of the Golden Idol DLC missions are so good, I have cleared the first two (what a pain that second one was) and I already know it's gonna leave a huge craving for more when I finish.
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May 7, 2023 10:09
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TeaJay posted:Case of the Golden Idol DLC missions are so good, I have cleared the first two (what a pain that second one was) and I already know it's gonna leave a huge craving for more when I finish. I know what you mean with that second one. I solved it and I still don't really know how.
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May 7, 2023 10:28
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Autisanal Cheese posted:I know what you mean with that second one. I solved it and I still don't really know how.
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May 7, 2023 10:38
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For me it took a bit for one element for me because I guess I read the map wrong, but otherwise it was really satisfying fitting all the pieces together mentally of how it went down even beyond the answers needed for technical completion.
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May 7, 2023 10:39
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I misunderstood the allegiance of one person, which had me stumped for most of part 2
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May 7, 2023 10:47
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the navigation didn't really matter at all. the cipher was very important, though!
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May 7, 2023 10:54
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The navigation is used to determine the city where it takes place, which you need to get the ruling dynasty's name. e: Honestly, while they were fairly tricky, I still don't think anything in the DLC reached the depths of dickishness the final two cases of the base game provided.
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May 7, 2023 10:57
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you don't need that to get the raja's name. the two people taking the test are his relatives. their last name is the name of the country, which tells you the name of the city. the raja's first name is in cloudsley's notes.
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May 7, 2023 11:04
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fez_machine posted:Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical This one intrigued me, but I feel like for the whole conceit to work the songs needed to be a little catchier and a lot less wordy. Just kind of singing through conventional dialogue prompts didn't really add a whole lot for me. I hope it turns out to be good, though.
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May 7, 2023 11:42
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:you don't need that to get the raja's name. the two people taking the test are his relatives. their last name is the name of the country, which tells you the name of the city. the raja's first name is in cloudsley's notes. I mean, I had a hard time getting the right country, because I assumed we were on the east coast due to the eagle and the direction of south. It was only when the "test" part of the thinking said 2 or fewer wrong I realized that I had the wrong last name, and brute forced the 2 remaining options. I still don't know how we are supposed to get to the right capital from the clues and the map. Still looks like a duck to me ymgve fucked around with this message at 12:37 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 12:34
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anilEhilated posted:Was it the cipher key? That had me stumped for a bit. It was incredibly confusing and even after solving it successfully I'm still not sure what transpired considering there are at least two simultaneous conspiracies going on at the same time. I aced the geographic puzzle and the cipher which I was very proud of, but had to really ponder about who had allegiance with whom and who actually knew what was going to happen. I suspect I will know more about the big picture after the third mission, but overall the 2nd one was one of the hardest and more satisfying missions of the whole game. About the duck: you are meant to deduct that drawing a line from the ends of the crescent points to south and since that's where the duck is, the city we are on is directly north of the duck. TeaJay fucked around with this message at 12:48 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 12:44
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TeaJay posted:It was incredibly confusing and even after solving it successfully I'm still not sure what transpired considering there are at least two simultaneous conspiracies going on at the same time. I interpreted the moon as pointing towards the left side of the screen, therefore we were east of the bird statue
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May 7, 2023 13:49
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ymgve posted:I interpreted the moon as pointing towards the left side of the screen, therefore we were east of the bird statue South isn’t the direction of the moon line, it’s where that line intersects the horizon, and that intersection point is below the duck so the duck is south.
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May 7, 2023 15:12
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I accidentally found a murder in Shadows of Doubt. I saw a lady running up the stairs in a building where I had a job to throw food in someone's face, so I followed her and searched her when she stopped to catch her breath. I also learned that you can study someone's hands when they're doing that and get their fingerprints. It's considered a hostile action, but only until you're done looking at their fingers. Anyway, she was carrying a sword along with her wallet and work ID. I followed her to an apartment, where she unlocked the door and freaked out someone who lived there. I didn't go in the apartment because I didn't want to get attacked by either the resident or the big lady with a sword. She came out a couple minutes later and calmly walked to her office job at Credible Systems (definitely not a front business, no sir). I followed her, then went back to the apartment and found the body. Her fingerprints were nearby. I went to City Hall, got the case form, filled out everything but "Arrest the murderer" and turned it in right away. 1800 bucks for basically being suspicious of a lady running up the stairs. I also cancelled the "throw food in someone's face" job because I'm pretty sure my target for that was a nonbinary young adult (they were the only person on the floor I was given that matched the few other clues I had - shoe size and an average build), and the payout from solving the murder was about three times what I would have made by getting involved in the nerd food fight. Shadows of Doubt is pretty rad so far. I don't love the voxel graphics, but I'm getting used to it. Fifty Farts fucked around with this message at 15:17 on May 7, 2023 |
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May 7, 2023 15:12
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fez_machine posted:I played a few demos myself: Apparently my brain has internet poisoning because I immediately read this in Willem Dafoe's voice
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May 7, 2023 16:08
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Yeah the voxel's aren't doing much for me. If anything them and the lighting actually makes it harder to visually identify folk. Then flashing the torch on them just whites them out. I think my first real case was bugged. Dead body outside by the doors to a building. Just the body. No other clues. No idea what room it was meant to be in.
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May 7, 2023 16:42
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Croccers posted:Yeah the voxel's aren't doing much for me. If anything them and the lighting actually makes it harder to visually identify folk. Then flashing the torch on them just whites them out. That sounds like my normal experience. There’s no guarantee bodies will be in a room. Taking their fingerprints, asking people about the person, searching them, surveillance cameras, looking for prints in the building (including mailboxes) etc are all ways to find actionable leads. It’s not impossible to get a case with no real starting point, but in general you might have to do a bit of legwork to find the lead.
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May 7, 2023 17:56
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fez_machine posted:Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out Nice, I got worried they didn't sell enough copies of Six Ages and weren't making more. Since your save carries forward maybe I'll finally go back and finish it. I found Six Ages had too many years in a row where the story didn't advance at all for my liking. King of Dragon Pass had more discrete goals to work towards in between story beats.
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May 7, 2023 20:14
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Sokani posted:Nice, I got worried they didn't sell enough copies of Six Ages and weren't making more. Since your save carries forward maybe I'll finally go back and finish it. I found Six Ages had too many years in a row where the story didn't advance at all for my liking. King of Dragon Pass had more discrete goals to work towards in between story beats. that's wild as I felt the pacing was perfect and did like 3 runs
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May 7, 2023 20:22
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