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Macichne Leainig posted:That game is so good. It's my favorite of all the VS clones tbqh, maybe even edging out VS proper Yeah Boneraiser Minions is the best game in the genre IMO just full of great ideas and character.
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Jun 25, 2023 18:58
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Azran posted:Yeah Boneraiser Minions is the best game in the genre IMO just full of great ideas and character. that's definitely a way to phrase it
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Jun 25, 2023 19:05
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Jossar posted:Well, I guess reviewing one demo from Made in Brazil couldn't hurt... Just played this yesterday and really enjoyed it. The art style is cute and the mechanics are interesting -- in particular boomeranging your health down and back up to get a reroll or eek out more damage is very satisfying, and the corruption / overcorruption bar is a cool twist on the standard formula. Not to mention I dig the art style!
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Jun 25, 2023 19:14
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Alright, one last round since the Fest ends tomorrow. Revival: Recolonization is a 4X that asks the question: What if you were a near-future scientist locked in a preservation capsule to wait out the robot apocalypse, but it took so long that by the time you got out that people had gone back to caveman-level technology and thought you were a wizard? And what if you were also, kind of, a wizard? Instead of starting with a specific civilization you start out with one of these scientist/technomancers with certain bonuses and you scout around a bit to try and find a tribe that's compatible/interesting enough to work with. You do your standard Civilization city management and then go around looting goody huts protected by barbarians, except they're ruined cities guarded by the now autonomous robot servitors of the All-Mind AI, which went insane over the course of the last 1000 years. You can auto-battle, but the game also gives you the choice to zoom in and fight it out tactics-style. Your technomancer can also, even at the beginning to a limited extent, terraform the land around them - which is useful because having your favored terrain helps you and hurts enemies. Finally, I didn't get far enough into playing to see what happens, but there's a doomsday clock that when filled causes All-Mind to wreak some kind of global catastrophe as you and the other players have drawn its attention. Which I understand to be very bad, but not "ends the game"-level bad. There's some kind of unit customization available as well, but I didn't see it. Joker Rating: [secret] - I want to preface this by saying that this game has some rough edges, and not to get your hopes up on it finally being the modern Alpha Centauri: after all, how many times have we heard that before? But this is a lot more interesting and feature-complete than I was expecting some random 4X from NextFest to be. Wishlisted, enters into "proper" Early Access on June 28th.  Dragonspire is an anime-inspired action roguelike that I can't help shake the feeling was somehow heavily inspired by Genshin Impact. It's the character designs and elemental theming, alright? Alternates between punching lots of small dudes and bosses who do big, complex, arena-wide attack patterns. Pets are involved somewhere. Joker Rating: Polychrome - I feel like the demo is a little sparse/unreflective of how the full game is going to be, especially with regards to boss-balancing, but it certainly seems like it's going to be fun, especially if you can bring a couple of buddies along. Could very easily be one of those games that wastes its potential though. Wishlisted.  Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles is, well the dev calls it a 3D sandbox set in an organic open world, but that means I can't quite determine whether it's trying to push the minimalist sandbox label as far as it can go or is just a very limited city builder/management sim. A lot of the practical gameplay involves securing chains of resources through the building of towers on these rocky islands, with you occasionally going out in a balloon to scout out new islands and build outposts that link to your main bulwark city. Joker Rating: Polychrome - I am torn on this one, it's very much of an edge case, which I am nominally declaring "good" because you can make some very pretty cities. I would say wait and see for now, unless you know that this specifically is going to be your jam, but I waitlisted because I want to see where it goes.  Mind Over Magic is vaguely "Terraria as a wizard school", which I honestly think sums it up pretty well. Joker Rating: Polychrome - It seemed good, if obviously not as deep as Terraria? I don't really known enough, especially about the relatively recent crop of wizard school games that have come out recently, to really judge this one any more than that but it seems worth bringing to peoples' attention.  A couple of people, or at the very least PlushCow mentioned En Garde! - the swashbuckling action game. It's very lively and fun - full of action packed swordfights and kicking soldiers into weapon stands. Joker Rating: [secret] - I think the game is a little too much in love with itself to let the player's own actions shine through, but if nothing else that's what endless mode is for. Otherwise, it delivers exactly what it promises. Wishlisted. Here end the good games, I've got two more which are sufficiently interesting for people who like to torture themselves:  Space Cats Tactics is a turn based RPG where you have a main combat layer where you fight against other ships and a ship-layer where you assign crewmates to boost the effectiveness of certain stations. The designer says he was inspired by FTL and XCOM, and it sort of does feel like turn-based FTL. Apart from that there are a couple of other standard RPG things like random encounters, gathering loot from asteroids, dialogue options to allow for some variation in terms of play, etc. You know, more than just a literal combat-system RPG, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Joker Rating: Foil* - Me giving the game this rating is like the one I did for Cyberwar: Neon City, but even more extreme. The game is way too garish and bright, the voice acting is terrible, when the main character isn't being controlled by the player he's kind of a jerk, and there are way, way too many awful cat puns. The dev works as a UI Engineer for WoW as his day job and it's pretty readily apparent that at least some of Blizzard's design sensibilities leaked into this game. But the soundtrack is pretty good, and the core gameplay is great. I can't stand the peripherals, but someone more determined (or willing to mute most of the game) might find something interesting underneath it all.  SlavicPunk: Oldtimer is an isometric shooter game released by Michał Gołkowski, who I've never heard of, but has apparently written 30 novels and is releasing this game as the video game side of a media blitz combined with an RPG system in the same setting (SibirPunk, which I think is named after a novel trilogy that the author/dev did). I'm sort of vaguely fascinated by this guy's determination that he and his small team are going to make this the next big thing in Polish science fiction. Joker Rating: Holographic - Grim, gritty future in the nameless, half neon-lit city - you play a private investigator who's too old for this poo poo, fighting his inner demons as he takes on one last job, etc. You know the drill. It's the world's most generic cyberpunk game, diffficult isometric shooter flavor. You can hack people mid-combat though, that's interesting. If people hadn't said they liked Seven: The Days Long Gone when I posted my review on that a while ago, I'd have probably given this game a miss entirely, but apparently there's an audience for games with this sort of vibe. Another for the "releases this week" crowd. Jossar fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Jun 25, 2023 |
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Jun 25, 2023 19:14
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Jossar posted:
It's Oxygen Not Included but as a wizard school, made by the same company and has many similar mechanics.
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Jun 25, 2023 19:28
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More demos:  I've never seen a game nail the feeling of an N64 FPS like Zortch has. It's unbelievable how close they get to that feel, complete with enemy deaths being very slow non-ragdoll 'fall over' animations, and the muddy (intentionally) texture work and emphasis on limited colors. Now, some might ask "WHY try to be like an N64 FPS?" and I don't have an answer that will satisfy you. I will just say that I had fun playing this exceptionally-nostalgic throwback. The first level's design is open with lots of routes, almost to the point of being confusing, and I actually found several secrets! Apparently velociraptors are on the enemy menu. Hell yeah. The full game only costs 5 bucks so I will probably buy it.   Wanderful... I don't really understand it. You start on a map surrounded by trees, and you click on your lantern to create a signpost that you place down to remove some trees near you so you can explore the map a couple of tiles further. You find pieces of ember which fill your lantern back up a tiny bit as well as give you a choice of two tiles, that may have some sort of functionality but for the most part just remove more trees. When your lantern runs out the game ends. The game doesn't really feel as cozy as the Steam page puts it, it feels more like I'm constantly drowning and searching for air pockets. Not wishlisted.   Wow. Stunning is all I have to say about Phoenix Springs. An instant wishlist. This is a point & click mystery about finding your brother, and it has an awesome dream-like atmosphere thanks to its boiling linework and texture overlay, combined with stark and effectual lighting and color use. You don't have inventory items in this game, but instead topics. You will learn information, then use that information on items in the world, or in conversation with people, to make new connections and learn more. As you gain important pieces of info you are shuttled forward from location to location, continuing the feel of a lucid dream. I'm really liking what this game is offering. The developer is apparently influenced by Mushishi (which I didn't really get from the demo but, cool anyway) and Ursula LeGuin.   TAGLINE is a mixed bag. It's an FPS platformer where you take the color out of graffiti tags and that gives one of your hands a power, from creating platforms on walls, to jump pads, to guns. There are challenges to complete, not unlike a Tony Hawk Underground type game but without, you know, the skateboarding. I think it's not quite there, but maybe with some polish it could become something interesting. I ended up falling into chasms a lot, and not enjoying fighting enemies. Not wishlisted.   With its lock-on system, shootable doors that have tiers based on weaponry, pipes you scurry through, and tricky platforming, Luna Abyss draws clear inspiration from Metroid Prime, but the differences are pretty major. For one, it's an extremely linear story game where you are always moving forward. Two, it's got bullet hell elements, with enemies shooting giant orbs in various patterns at you. Also no scanner. You gotta have a scanner! I think I like this but I'll see how it reviews, it feels like a Scars Above-tier shooter. The setting is definitely interesting, I'll give it that. Not-so-interesting demos: The Legend of Skye is a Lucasarts-wannabe adventure that opens with 5 minutes of unskippable dialog with some not very funny anachronistic jokes. There is no way to close out of the game so I had to force-exit it. I could've forgiven MEAT II's lack of death animations for enemies (really bizarre) if the enemies weren't bullet sponges and the pistol ended up feeling like it had a higher DPS than the shotgun. How does that happen in a retro shooter? Tonight I'll see if I can get through all of these as I believe they are time-limited: Leximan, Lil' Guardsman, One Lonely Outpost, Moonstone Island, Paleo Pines, Shadow Gambit, Girl Genius, The Last Alchemist, Saltsea Chronicles, Beastieball, Cuisineer, Deer Crusade, Pizza Possum, In Stars and Time, Born of Bread, Alterium Shift, Between Horizons, En Garde, and Sk8r G8r 3D. I can't be certain, but I think that the Dungeon Golf, Fortune's Run, Videoverse, Toziuha Night, Bad Boro, Loddlenaut demos will be sticking around a bit longer. The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jun 25, 2023 |
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Jun 25, 2023 20:33
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Viewfinder is such a fascinating premise that's a lot of fun to play around with but oh god why did they make someone talking whenever you do anything. The last thing I want in a puzzle game is someone quipping whenever I move a battery, it completely rips you out of the experience every time. It stops partway through the demo, thankfully, but that just makes it weirder it's even there at all.
Pigbuster fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Jun 25, 2023 |
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Jun 25, 2023 20:56
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Pigbuster posted:Viewfinder is such a fascinating premise that's a lot of fun to play around with but oh god why did they make someone talking whenever you do anything. The last thing I want in a puzzle game is someone quipping whenever I move a battery, it completely rips you out of the experience every time. It stops partway through the demo, thankfully, but that just makes it weirder it's even there at all. you can't simply have a puzzle game anymore, no matter what you do, a story will creep in
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Jun 25, 2023 21:27
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I played a lot of city-/colony-builder demos for Nextfest so here are some quick and lovely reviews: Norland: Story Generating Strategy - A mix of noble-controlled city builder (Lords and Villeins but without specific building construction or family specialization) with rimworld graphics and Crusader Kings army options and plot (you can send nobles away to other towns or have them visit you, and there are espionage/sabotage/affair options, etc). You control construction, but not individual people unless they are recruited into an active army unit. Seems promising, but is tuned pretty rough right now with the amount of things that can go wrong to cost you a noble, which are absolutely required for your city to function properly. My kind of game though, so it's on the wishlist. Steamworld Build - Someone else already covered this, a relatively straightforward Anno-like on the surface with some neat mining aspects that go on below your city to help provide additional resources (kind of feels Dungeon Keepery, in terms of the type of digging and construction?). Not my fav type of game, but pretty solid. The microtransaction train is a bit of an annoyance. Laysara: Summit Kingdom - What if Anno-esque city builder, but on mountain? This is actually a neat idea, you're building on the sloped side of a mountain and have to bridge chasms or build huge lifts up to higher areas. Certain industries only perform at certain altitudes, so the logistics become an issue as you have to schlep things around. Also, there are avalanches that can wipe your town off the mountainside, apparently. Pretty promising imo. Features yaks. New Cycle - Kind of a more-advanced Banished, maybe? Lots of resources to manage, along with citizen morale and things like food and water rationing options. There's a tech tree for new buildings, and ages which open up further resources/techs. It's topped off with a beta AI quest system that aims to allow you to actually speak full convos with random traders and whatnot, but I did not get too deep into that aspect. Very brown/green grimdark graphics, but polished for a demo. Feels like resource overload might be an issue though. Trackline Express - Love the graphics but the gameplay is meh and a lot of it is extremely unintuitive the first time you try to do things. Then you die to barbarians who ravage your train at night. With a bit more tutorialization this could be a fun little game, not sure what kind of depth it has. I don't have a game similar to this, but you're tied to the area around a train which you keep moving forward by finding coal, and using wood and coins to construct items/buildings to help find coal and/or fight back enemies during the night cycle. Forge Industry - Real rough graphics but an initially-neat take on working to automate the production of various goods in your little blacksmithing community by placing buy orders and setting up routes for your workers to haul things around. It also crashes, a lot, so I did not get too deep into it, and the UI leaves a lot to be desired. I like the premise though. Probably most similar to that one game where you sent robots back and forth with goods that I can't remember the name of. Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles - Scroll up for a good review of it, it's very pretty and has a nice vibe and is unique in how it approaches colony-building (node-based?!), but is maybe a bit too freeform. The demo features attempts at introducing you to a political system, as well, that doesn't really have a chance to go anywhere. I chilled with it for a while but eventually ran out of motivation to do anything. Also House Flipper 2 seems real, real good. e: also shoutout to 7th Guest and everyone else posting actually good takes on the games they played, your ability to concisely convey relevant information without fluff is extremely appreciated Pleads fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jun 25, 2023 |
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Jun 25, 2023 21:36
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FYI if you're playing house flipper make sure you limit your FPS because the game can and will redline your GPU for some loving reason
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Jun 25, 2023 23:34
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Grapplejack posted:FYI if you're playing house flipper make sure you limit your FPS because the game can and will redline your GPU for some loving reason always love starting a game and seeing the FPS meter in the corner go over 2000, good job game
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Jun 25, 2023 23:54
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Tryin' to figure out if I need to go send a warning or not. Had a friend's Steam account uncharacteristically log in for half a second then go straight back to offline yesterday, and now today it's in some limbo state where he's technically still on my friends list but he doesn't show up on the actual Friends List panel, just the web profile friends list or by searching through Steam community directly, and either way it doesn't display his name, just a number string. Trying to bring up his profile errors out. Basically what I'm asking is, is that consistent with someone getting their Steam account nabbed by one of those "vote for my team" scams? Because I have a couple of ways to try and get his attention off Steam, but I guess I'm a little paranoid he just flatout blocked me intentionally, so I want to be a little more sure before I go ringing his phone, y'know? Edit: I guess tellingly, even if I pull him up on Steam community while logged out his profile is still toast. Edit 2: Checking steamstat.us, Steam is having some issues tonight so 
John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Jun 26, 2023 |
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Jun 25, 2023 23:55
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RandomBlue posted:always love starting a game and seeing the FPS meter in the corner go over 2000, good job game It's a waste. The human eye can only perceive 1999 FPS
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Jun 26, 2023 00:00
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John Murdoch posted:Tryin' to figure out if I need to go send a warning or not. Had a friend's Steam account uncharacteristically log in for half a second then go straight back to offline yesterday, and now today it's in some limbo state where he's technically still on my friends list but he doesn't show up on the actual Friends List panel, just the web profile friends list or by searching through Steam community directly, and either way it doesn't display his name, just a number string. Trying to bring up his profile errors out. yeah, things are fuckin up bad for me
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Jun 26, 2023 00:03
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Grapplejack posted:FYI if you're playing house flipper make sure you limit your FPS because the game can and will redline your GPU for some loving reason It’s not a Unity game if it isn’t making your hardware scream to display seven polygons
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Jun 26, 2023 00:18
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It's called a "retro throwback" and it's classy
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Jun 26, 2023 00:20
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Barreft posted:yeah, things are fuckin up bad for me Seems like it's maybe unfucked now. The actually multiple phantom profiles on my friends list have all cleared up, including my buddy's, so I guess it was a particularly strange bit of Steam meltdown fuckery and nothing to be concerned about.
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Jun 26, 2023 00:24
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John Murdoch posted:Tryin' to figure out if I need to go send a warning or not. Had a friend's Steam account uncharacteristically log in for half a second then go straight back to offline yesterday, and now today it's in some limbo state where he's technically still on my friends list but he doesn't show up on the actual Friends List panel, just the web profile friends list or by searching through Steam community directly, and either way it doesn't display his name, just a number string. Trying to bring up his profile errors out.
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Jun 26, 2023 00:26
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As someone who's always broke and looking to make a little money for the big sale, is it worth selling cards? I have no idea what the drat things are for and if I can even make 5 bucks that would be a significant chunk off of the types of games I'm wont to buy. Do they actually do anything? I guess just as importantly, do people actually buy them? I also have a bunch of tf2 cosmetic cases that I can't use because I don't give a poo poo enough to figure out how to use them. I think it involves buying keys but I got better things to waste my money on, like games I play through once or never.
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Jun 26, 2023 00:27
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kazil posted:It's a waste. The human eye can only perceive 1999 FPS some devs lock their games to 1000 FPS which is criminal
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Jun 26, 2023 00:27
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Milo and POTUS posted:As someone who's always broke and looking to make a little money for the big sale, is it worth selling cards? I have no idea what the drat things are for and if I can even make 5 bucks that would be a significant chunk off of the types of games I'm wont to buy. Do they actually do anything? I guess just as importantly, do people actually buy them? I also have a bunch of tf2 cosmetic cases that I can't use because I don't give a poo poo enough to figure out how to use them. I think it involves buying keys but I got better things to waste my money on, like games I play through once or never. People absolutely buy them, they only sell for pennies usually but if you have enough saved up you can get enough to get at least a couple bucks or more.
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Jun 26, 2023 00:29
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Is there a site/app to make it easier to dig through your cards and figure out if any are worth anything? I've never paid attention to cards but I've been on Steam since the beginning so I have a butt ton.
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Jun 26, 2023 00:33
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Every couple of years I sell off my cards and that's honestly enough to buy one or two cheap indies during the big sales. I guess it's Steam's version of a cashback. It was an one-off, but I actually got a Foil worth more than the game I bought (Blackwell Epiphany), dunno how rare that is.
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Jun 26, 2023 00:34
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Milo and POTUS posted:As someone who's always broke and looking to make a little money for the big sale, is it worth selling cards? I have no idea what the drat things are for and if I can even make 5 bucks that would be a significant chunk off of the types of games I'm wont to buy. Do they actually do anything? I guess just as importantly, do people actually buy them? I also have a bunch of tf2 cosmetic cases that I can't use because I don't give a poo poo enough to figure out how to use them. I think it involves buying keys but I got better things to waste my money on, like games I play through once or never. Use Augmented Steam, you get a quick sell button that lists them at the cheapest starting price listed on the buyer list. Foils in particular go for a pretty penny depending on the game. I don't think I've ever seen a trading card not sell.
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Jun 26, 2023 00:35
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Here's what may be what happened to Steam. Steam did a change where the URL for confirmations has changed, so WinAuth is down. There's other posts about it since it broke SDA and ASF. ASF fixed the issue for ASF pronto, and if you use ASF there's a command you can use until SDA is fixed. Since WinAuth is no longer in development, WinAuth will not be fixed. Someone forked WinAuth to fix the URL, so if you trust that, you can switch to the forked version. More info with links here: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/x9keU/sda-confirmations-and-asf-auto-bot-trades-not-working-since-yesterday
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Jun 26, 2023 00:35
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Steam cards have funded some amount of my Total Warhammer DLC purchases, it's free real estate.
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Jun 26, 2023 00:55
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Running Augmented Steam to auto-sell card inventories literally pays more than minimum wage until you run out of cards
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Jun 26, 2023 01:10
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there is a userscript named Steam Economy Enhancer among other things it adds a "sell all trading cards" button so you don't have to gently caress with a million fiddly 3-cent items
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Jun 26, 2023 01:12
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If you're like me and used to play CS:GO but haven't looked at it in forever, those items appreciated. Got $130 sitting in my steam wallet from dumping that garbage.
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Jun 26, 2023 01:18
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Milo and POTUS posted:As someone who's always broke and looking to make a little money for the big sale, is it worth selling cards? I have no idea what the drat things are for and if I can even make 5 bucks that would be a significant chunk off of the types of games I'm wont to buy. Do they actually do anything? I guess just as importantly, do people actually buy them? I also have a bunch of tf2 cosmetic cases that I can't use because I don't give a poo poo enough to figure out how to use them. I think it involves buying keys but I got better things to waste my money on, like games I play through once or never. To answer the "what are they for" question: Yes they are pretty much useless. What happens is that each game with card drops has a "badge". If you collect the full set of cards (which always requires trading, since you get less card drops than it takes to complete a set even with 0 dupes), you can trade them in for that game's badge, which you can display on your steam profile or whatever if you want to. Then if you buy a second full set of cards, you can level it up to get the level 2 badge, and then level 3, and so on. There are also rarer foil cards, which you can use to get a second, shinier version of the badge.  Completing badges also gives "profile xp" which levels up your steam account to no real benefit.
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Jun 26, 2023 01:27
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Levelling your Steam profile gives you more slots on your friends list as well as profile customization slots. It's not nothing, but if you're not into that sort of thing it is pointless.
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Jun 26, 2023 01:30
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Milo and POTUS posted:As someone who's always broke and looking to make a little money for the big sale, is it worth selling cards? I have no idea what the drat things are for and if I can even make 5 bucks that would be a significant chunk off of the types of games I'm wont to buy. Do they actually do anything? I guess just as importantly, do people actually buy them? I also have a bunch of tf2 cosmetic cases that I can't use because I don't give a poo poo enough to figure out how to use them. I think it involves buying keys but I got better things to waste my money on, like games I play through once or never. Yes, if you have like 20+ pages of cards you'll probably get $5-10 if you can sell them all. For a quick return just price it 1 cent below whatever the current low is. This does assume you have 1000+ games in your library and at least some "high" value cards (10 cents or so)
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Jun 26, 2023 01:40
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Just checked b/c of this thread and I have 30 pages of badges.
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Jun 26, 2023 02:12
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So what's the quickest way to sell all of my trading cards?
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Jun 26, 2023 02:38
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ultrafilter posted:So what's the quickest way to sell all of my trading cards? RPATDO_LAMD posted:there is a userscript named Steam Economy Enhancer
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Jun 26, 2023 02:39
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Steam points never give anything back do they? Makes sense from their perspective but that woulda been cool. I'll give the cards a shot
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Jun 26, 2023 05:01
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 You can spend the steam points on profile customization stuff and like emotes for chat.
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Jun 26, 2023 05:37
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Also use Idle Master Extended to quickly get all the card drops for games you haven’t played yet. Two warnings though: *** Don’t use this for games you might want to refund - your registered game time will go over two hours. *** Set your status to “away” or “offline” before starting. It minimizes drop time by quickly cycling between games so you will absolutely spam your friends’ notifications otherwise.
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Jun 26, 2023 06:09
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More demos:  Lil Guardsman is.. fine. The demo is from the first day of the game so unfortunately it doesn't really tax your brain all that much. You can do an intentionally lovely job if you want, I guess? But given that Papers Please was a deduction game and is the direct influence for this game, I need to feel like I'm doing more deducing here. They led me too much in the first shift. Which, you know, I get it. But that's not great for a demo, and why most games take their slice out of mid-game. Not wishlisted but I'll look at reviews.   Leximan is promising but isn't ambitious enough or fLEXIble enough in my opinion. One example is the game tells you to hit the enter key at any time to allow you to cast spells to find secrets. The demo has multiple locked doors, and casting UNLOCK does nothing to them. Even a "you haven't studied this spell" message would be better than no response at all. It makes the feature feel half-baked. Another issue I have is the boss battle, which adds a "dodge bullets" minigame between each spell you cast, and if you get hit at all, you have to redo the minigame. Is this really needed? It's not what I'm playing the game for. Not wishlisted for now.   It's tricky to review demos of life sims, a genre heavily depending on trickling content and features to the player over time. One Lonely Outpost has an interesting hook in that you are establishing a remote outpost on a barren planet by your lonesome, and maybe there are also others out there? I didn't play long enough to find out, and that was even after a half hour. You farm, you mine rocks, you build a thing to smelt ore into ingots, you know the drill. For games like this it might have been better to place a slice of the demo later on in gameplay, like at least when some people have shown up and you've got more to do than just farm. Like in the screenshots where things are more terraformed. Also dude moves soooo sloowww, could he have maybe landed on a planet where walking is faster?? No sprint button either. Not wishlisted.   Moonstone Island is also set at the beginning of the game but it's a stronger start because it gives you the mechanics and tools very quickly. Within 5 minutes you're already past the tutorials and free to set up your tent on Moonstone Island and just do what you want. The game is also a creature collector game that has card battling akin to, well several games of the past couple of years. It's fine. It has a turbo button so I'm fine with it. It's basically Monster Harvest except it seems to be Good rather than Mediocre. Wishlisted.   Toziuha Night: Order of the Alchemists is indie-SOTN. Like the dude just wants to make their own SOTN, and who are we to stop them? I am happy for them, about that. Good, and for the world, good. Is it the best SOTN-like I've ever played? No, but it's competent, and it wants to give it a real go for that IGA experience. You've got equipment, you've got both healing potions and random food items to heal you just like in an Iga game, a back dash with that necessary ghostly trail, a whip, you've got spells to cast, elemental augments... the only thing I didn't notice, is hidden walls, but I may have just been really bad at finding them in the 20 minutes I played. The guy's other Castlevania clones in this series are cheap so I'll probably give the full release a go, even though it is quite a ways off (Q4 2024). Wishlisted.   Sk8r G8r 3D is not as far off (Q3 2023) and that's great, because this is a good game. It's a 3D platformer of the Mario 3D Land style, and would slot nicely next to games like Lunistice or Toree3D. It feels good to move around and jump and air dive, and there's a lot of rail grinding because of its 2D predecessor. The 2D rail-only game was $3, and I wouldn't be surprised if this had a small price as well. Wishlisted.   Cuisineer is a combination of restaurant game and action-roguelite, where you go into dungeons to collect ingredients, then bring them back to your restaurant to cook dishes and serve to customers. It's fine. It's not really for me I think (maybe if it was an Atelier roguelite instead...), I also don't love the three hit combo being your primary attack, I kinda can't stand that poo poo. Why did we settle for three hit combos and pause for so many games? But it has pleasant art and music. Meanwhile, Bad Boro is a punchy Souls-like, at least so it claims. I mean it does have Souls mechanics, but it feels more like a brawler with (intentional) 2000s Newgrounds/Nicktoons art, and you just happen to be very fragile. Which also isn't really that unusual for a brawler, now that I think about it. The big problem is that your attacks are just kind of simple. You punch, and there's no, like, sophisticated combos, or special moves, or w/e. At least not in the 10 minutes I played. Neither are wishlisted.   In Stars & Time is probably going to be pretty good but I felt like I shouldn't spoil myself if I end up buying the full game later.   If you've read webcomics in the last couple of decades, you might be aware of Phil Foglio's Girl Genius. If you've played indie games since the time of Xbox Live Arcade, you might recall Teslagrad, the puzzle platformer by Rain Games. Even if you don't care about Girl Genius or at least have any interest in reading it, I think you'd at least be on board with Rain Games getting to make their own 3D Zelda, because that's basically what this is. I don't super love the combat (another 3-hit combo fest) but the game feels pretty polished and like basically one big dungeon. Wishlisted. Not-so-good demos: Pizza Possum is OK, I love a stealth pacman, it reminds me a tiny bit of The Munchables, but one thing Pizza Possum doesn't have, besides one of the best video game soundtracks to ever come out of the Nintendo Wii, is that satisfying "ah, the world is opening up" feeling. Yeah, you open gates with the keys you acquire for reaching food point milestones, but it's not like you go back to the earlier sections, you just grab a checkpoint for the section you're in and then that's where you're in until you get another key. I also don't love the friction of game overs, I think it'd be better if they just quickly zipped you back over to the checkpoint instead. Is an unlock system for items even necessary? This isn't The Binding of Isaac. It's not even a roguelite!!! Paleo Pines isn't bad per se, but, it's clearly for kids. Which, hey good for them, a life sim with cutesy graphics that's actually for kids and not adults. You have a dino you can ride around on, there's of course farming. I'll play life sims more my speed. WITH BLOOD AND SWEARS no I dunno just something not for 10 year olds. Deer Crusade just wouldn't boot on my Deck. I'm gonna spend some extra time with these demos if I can before they disappear: The Last Alchemist, Born of Bread, Alterium Shift, Beastieball, En Garde, Saltsea Chronicles, and Baladins. The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Jun 26, 2023 |
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Jun 26, 2023 07:20
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TOBOR is pretty cool if you haven't gotten to try it. It's similar to don't feed the monkeys but it has that unhinged sort of scifi world like lobotomy corp which gives it a good vibe. Would recommend
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Jun 26, 2023 07:48
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