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Ah, my favorite genre. I'm surprised not to see Kynseed pop up in the discussion yet. It's solidly EA, and I haven't checked in on its build state in quite a while. But I think there are some good and interesting bones there, including a legacy effect where your character ages and dies; you then play as your character's descendant, things change in the village, etc. There's a pretty big map to explore, plenty of your standard farm/fish/friend activities, and I found the art to be quite pretty and distinctive. They definitely lean into the discovery pillar of play, and I like that. I'll have to go back through my steam library and see what all I've picked up and put down in this genre. At the moment, Dreamlight Valley is eating my gaming hours. I am pleasantly surprised at some (SOME) of the design choices in the game, and completely unsurprised by the Gameloft jank. I'm playing on Switch, so the crashes are frequent and the performance is frankly shameful. It's not ruining the experience or anything, and they're patching it this week, but it is definitely still EA. I do really appreciate that they knew adults would play this game, so it's got much, much less handholding than ACNH. I don't think they thought any adult straight cis men would play it, though - the animations for the male avatar are rather limp-wristed, and the run cycle is definitely more of a mince. The quests aren't as terrible as they could be, there seems to be a heck of a lot to unlock, and I haven't snapped the economy like a twig yet after twenty hours or so. I'm tentatively optimistic. It has voiced lines from the official VA for most of the characters, even if some are just pulled from existing recordings. There are some really nice laid-back arrangements of familiar tunes. The music changes based on which villager you're schlepping around as a buddy. I like hearing Mickey idly whistle the little tune from Steamboat Willie from time to time. I also played the spiritual predecessors of DV, Disney Magical World and Disney Magical World 2 on the 3DS. They were life-sim-style too, and I liked them well enough, though they were significantly more grindy and random-drop-oriented. Also they had combat which was VERY tedious. But more important for me, a closeted Disney Adult, was that those two games did not pay for rights to use licensed music, which was a big loss IMO. I gotta have my nostalgic earworms coming out those tinny little speakers.
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Sep 11, 2022 07:14
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Anyone try the Harvestella demo yet? The twelve-year-old inside me wants to trust in Square Enix, but it looks..iffy.
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Sep 14, 2022 07:26
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HopperUK posted:Anyone who likes the idea of Potion Permit and also is enough of a nerd to like solo tabletop RPG experiences should check out Apothecaria by Anna Blackwell. A game where you slowly improve your apothecary's workshop while gathering mysterious ingredients and treating various ailments. There's also a very cute 'travelling animal merchant' game called Apawthecaria. Was just about to post about this very thing. Rules-light and flexible around how much creative energy and time you want to spend on it. I liked it so much that I went as far as to buy all the expansions as pdfs (since they don't all exist in print form) and have been printing them at home and hand-binding them with thread and needle. It's been a really soothing little project. I also really enjoy her solo mapping games, DELVE (dwarf-fortress-alike and the original instance of this rules engine), RISE (more of a dungeon-keeper idea) and UMBRA (in the vein of Alien and similar). All her stuff is very indie and could benefit from an editor, but the value for the price is great IMO. I was just looking around the other day to see if TG had a solo/journaling RPG thread, but I didn't spot one. It should exist but I'm not the guy to do it.
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Sep 29, 2022 03:17
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HopperUK posted:There is one! Phone posting, cannot get link, but I promise it's there Thank you both!! What wonderful news :3
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Sep 29, 2022 04:34
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The 7th Guest posted:
Yeah I really noticed that, very impressive animation work. There are some transitions still missing, but I'm surprised there are animations at all tbh. The writing is great, too - I'm already intrigued by several of the characters who only had a few lines.
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Oct 8, 2022 21:07
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The writing on Potiomomics is even better than I thought it would be after playing the demo. I'm on day four and I already need a whole nother game about the rival. And for me, some of the music is so aptly composed that I've had to stop playing the game and just pay my full attention to enjoying the tunes.
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Oct 18, 2022 05:41
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I really wish they would add a button in the ingredient shop for "set qty to max" because clicking a hundred times per game day is cramping my
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Oct 20, 2022 03:53
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dervival posted:There's a solid LP of Academagia by Bobbin Threadbare and The Age of Decadence by rudecyrus on the LP archive, if anyone's interested in looking at gameplay content. I remembered that the Academagia LP existed but couldn't be bothered to find it for a reread - thank you!
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Oct 28, 2022 06:44
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Enfys posted:Cozy Grove I wouldn't say this has a TON of hours on a daily basis, since there's a real-life-time lock on most of the progression. It is adorable and fun, though.
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Nov 27, 2022 20:36
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I've jumped back into Kynseed as well, under similar circumstances, and it's still got my interest after an irl week or so. I think some of the grindy stuff needs to be retuned to respect people's time - skilling up with various tools takes waaaaaaaaay too loving long. Catch twenty thousand fish to max the skill? Yeah no. There's no way to automate it or boost the XP per catch that I'm aware of, either. But it's oddly compelling. The days are short, but once you're past the prologue you can literally never sleep again unless you want to save. You can have dogs, cats, chickens, pigs (which you can ride), and sheep. There's a ton to explore, and it's not all just same crap, different color like in Potion Permit. The calendar is short too, seasons are two weeks long which feels just about right to me. Crops grow in two or three days, most of them grow in 3/4 seasons so you're never without something critical for long. I don't know if I'll stick with it through multiple generations, And if my fishing rod skill resets when I hit the next generation, I'm gonna be real, real mad. I agree that the writing is poor, but it's largely ignorable at least. The game is shot through with deeply adolescent, unspeakably stupid dirty jokes that don't make any loving sense, e.g. a character named Roger Readily. 95% of the item descriptions have unfunny puns, sex references or poop jokes. The worst part for me is how clear it is that the author thinks these are the height of cleverness. All that said, I'm very curious about how the (very light) story progresses.
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Dec 13, 2022 09:37
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Megazver posted:cough also try Dragon Quest Builders 2 cough Even as someone who never played more than twenty minutes of a DQ game prior to Builders, I got sucked right in. Great series, I hope they'll make more.
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Mar 25, 2023 17:34
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AARD VARKMAN posted:trying to decide a switch farming game to play. I've done Stardew many times and Pioneers of Olive Town. Not a big rune factory fan and I thought My Time at Portia was ok. Any ideas? Was considering doing POOT again but maybe I should try the Wonderful Life remake I vote Graveyard Keeper. It sucked me in really hard, Stardew-style.
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Jun 28, 2023 05:46
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Jack Trades posted:Graveyard Keeper is fun but I can't find a way to stop it from constantly dropping down to 40 fps. It's borderline unplayable. ?? I have played it on both Switch and PC and have not seen this issue at all...
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Jun 28, 2023 17:10
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Sylphosaurus posted:I really wanted to like Graveyard Keeper but I bounced off hardcore on the writing and general feel of the game. I will say that while I played a ton of it, I hated the writing. Juvenile is probably the most polite way to describe it.
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Jul 12, 2023 18:44
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