Games That Don’t Have a Thread Catch-All

Ghost of a Tale. Been playing it for two days since I got an Origin Basic free month.

This game is SO GOOD! It's a stealth/exploration game that is dripping with style and has tons of quests and secrets to find. And the best part? COSTUMES!

It’s a bit frustrating at first while you learn the mechanics and the world is very confusing until you learn the layout. It's like Dark Souls in that you don’t know where to go at any given time. You need to explore and learn about all of the areas you visit. You can find maps too though, and you can also find secret shortcuts as you explore and advance.

I’m really enjoying it so far.

Kind Words
I was extremely tired and had a string of bad days last week. I sat in front of the PC and was just too tired to play anything. Then I remembered about this little game and decided to try it for some reason. It's fairy simple... I wrote down my thoughts about the past few days on a letter and sent it (there's a deer mailman in the game...).
I had to leave the room because my son woke up, I spent some time with him and then went for a shower. I came back into the PC room about an hour later, remembering I didn't switch off the game. I had 7 or 8 letters waiting for me. All were kind words, replying to the letter I sent. Those were letters from strangers (the game doesn't allow to share your identity and you can only reply to a letter with a sticker) but that put a smile on my face. I was sure this won't matter at all but it actually felt kind of nice.
A really nice and unique idea for a game. Check it out!

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is out in 9 days. It was originally billed as a viking-based hack'n'slash RPG. The genre hasn't changed but it looks like, over the last year, the aesthetic has been completely revamped. I stopped following it after the developer ceased releasing updates but over the past while, the Steam reviews have skewed very positive. Looks like a mix of Diablo 3 and Grim Dawn.

Anyone have any experience with it?

I've been waiting a while for it to come out of EA. The early word of mouth was positive followed by a ton of negativity. My understanding is the devs went back to the drawing board, fixed stuff and have a much better game now.

If anyone is looking for some very fun couch coop games I recommend both "Heave Ho" and Unrailed.

Unrailed will probably evoke thoughts of Overcooked even though its a very different game. Like Overcooked everyone is working as quickly as possible doing their job to try to keep the train from derailing.

Heave Ho is more of a physics based game but is total silliness and is incredible fun.

Whats great is that both support Remote Play Online on Steam so if only one person has it, they can stream it to other players who don't own it.

Vector wrote:

Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is out in 9 days.

I didn't know this. I was a kickstarter backer, loaded it up ages ago, thought "meh" and uninstalled it.

Reinstalled it tonight and WOW that's fun. Mix of Diablo and Path of Exile, really fast, fun combat, great story too. Wow.

You guys. You. Guys.

This might be my new favoritest racing game ever.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/9...

It's so crazy and fun and violent and perfect.

Looks kind of like Death Rally.

Vector wrote:

Looks kind of like Death Rally.

Imagine if Death Rally and Carmageddon had a baby with procedurally generated everything. It's wonderful.

Veloxi wrote:
Vector wrote:

Looks kind of like Death Rally.

Imagine if Death Rally and Carmageddon had a baby with procedurally generated everything. It's wonderful.

Is having a baby by its nature procedural generation? Just my random nerdy thought for the day.

An article in a Belgian newspaper got Brukel on my radar. The title comes from the street where the grandmother of the designer lived during World War II, and is an attempt to keep her memories of the German invasion and the nazi terror - from the viewpoint of an ordinary citizen - alive. He travelled back from Miami, where he teaches game design, to interview his now 92 year old grandma and incorporate it into the game.

It won several indie awards already. Haven't played it yet, but boy will I ever

Had a quick look but couldn't find anything for Hunt: Showdown (though there may be something I'm missing).

After only a brief session yesterday, it's very much left 4 dead pve mixed with left 4 dead multiplayer, with a little evolve, dead by daylight and battle royal thrown in. All set in southern states historical setting.

While it sounds like a lot going on, it's very focused on what it's doing, though every game so far has been different. Sound design is very much integral to gameplay, with birds, glass, sticks, chains, breathing and gunfire all potentiality giving your position away. That combined with not actually knowing how many players remain and if they're in teams or not, makes for an intense experience.

Caveat being is that there isn't too much to it at the moment, though I imagine crytek are going to add to the game.

My thread for Conglomerate 451 got zero (0) replies and has already fallen off the first page, and I think it's an interesting game that deserves to at least get noticed considering it was made entirely by a team of 2-3 people.

Middcore wrote:

Q: What the heck is Conglomerate 451?

A. Conglomerate 451 is an RPG by Italian indie studio RuneHeads, just officially released this week.

Q: Is it more of a JRPG (kids with blue hair using swords and magic) or more of a Western RPG (angry-looking adults using swords and magic)?

A: Neither. Conglomerate 451 is a turn-based, first-person, dungeon-crawling RPG in a cyberpunk (but not capital-C Cyberpunk) world. Actually the cyberpunk aesthetic means people with blue hair would be in bounds but as it happens nobody seems to have any hair at all.

Conglomerate 451 places you in command of a team of cloned agents who undertake missions to affect the balance of power between the various Standard Cyberpunk EvilCorps which control the Standard Cyberpunk Rainy Neon Dystopia City in which the game is set. Mission teams consist of three agents, plus an AI with a personality vaguely reminiscent of Destiny 2's Failsafe on barbiturates who provides helpful(?) advice and makes references to other video games during mid-battle commentary. Between missions there's a management layer where you research technology upgrades and enhance your clones' skills and equipment (or 3D bio-print new hapless meatbags to replace those lost).

Q: Can you, like, tell me some other games that I may like that this game is like so that I can figure out if I might like this game?

A: The first person, party-based, grid-map gameplay is reminiscent of Legend of Grimrock and and various old-school dungeon-crawlers LoG took inspiration from, but Conglomerate is turn-based whereas LoG combat was real-time. The company management layer is kind of X-COM-ish. The general premise is a lot like Shadowrun but without orcs.

Q: Is there anything else interesting I should know about Conglomerate 451?

A: Yes. As far as I can tell, the entire game was developed by a studio that consists of a total of three people.

Q: Where can I acquire Conglomerate 451?

A: The game just released from early access on Steam and can be purchased at a special launch week 15% off price of $16.99. Exchange your valueless intangible currency for a license to be entertained by a purely ephemeral good for an indefinite period of time and reflect on the cyberpunk dystopia we already live in every day.

Q: Can you conclude this post with a dump of video links?

A: Twist my arm.

Launch trailer:

First half-hour-or-so of gameplay:

Streamed longplay:

So I've been playing 428 Shibuya Scramble. You could call it a visual novel, you could call it a text adventure, or you could call it a choose-your-own adventure. It's got all of those elements, but the main focus is on bouncing between five different character timelines and making choices every so often. There aren't actually many choices to be made per character, but there are a lot of potential bad endings as a choice in one route can impact how events play out in another.

Don't get me wrong, this is definitely a game with a linear, canonical story it's telling. It's just that manner of jumping across timelines is the extent of its "gameplay".

However, it's actually managed in a surprising way. I had some flashbacks to Virtue's Last Reward and its spaghetti plate of timelines, and how I just eventually kind of felt like getting done with that game since you could trace routes and timelines way, way back to the start. Shibuya Scramble, on the other hand, has several chapters separated by an hour within the day. So one chapter will take place from noon to 1pm, and then the next chapter from 1pm to 2pm. In this manner navigating the timelines is more manageable. You cannot move onto the next hour until all five characters reach the end of that hour and see a "To Be Continued" marker.

I didn't come here to praise the game, however. I came here to gripe.

I'm currently in the 2pm to 3pm time block. I completed two timelines, reaching a "To Be Continued" for both of them. I then began working on the other characters that should be separate from the two intertwining timelines I completed. However, it turns out an early choice in one of those timelines impacts a late event in a third timeline. So I jumped back, made a different choice, and confirmed that the story would move on as expected. While the choice impacted another timeline, it had no impact on that character's story. Or so I thought.

I now have to do those two timelines over again, it turns out.

There's not a lot of text-skipping options as far as I can tell, or other ways to speed things up, so it's basically just going to be a lot of re-reading text and making the same choices with nothing new. Or so I suspect. In a prior chapter I discovered that you can hit a To Be Continued, but it doesn't mean you made the right decisions in that route.

It's my biggest gripe in a game that's otherwise a nice and more relaxing way to spend some gaming time.

I've been playing Corruption 2029 which is basically a 1.5 version of Mutant Year Zero without any of the charm. It runs better with some creative abilities and more challenging encounters but no characterization and limited character customization. I got it for $13 CAD and that feels right. The biggest problem is I've reached the second set of missions and have already had maps reused several times. The enemies changed once I reached the second set of missions but the map layout and starting point is exactly the same.

I really enjoy it and if the MYZ loop hit you just right, this is an distilled version of that.

IMAGE(https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/893850/header.jpg?t=1583447305)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/8...

So...The Longing. It's pretty amazing. Kinda breathtaking in effect.

But it's gonna go down as one of the hardest sells in quite some time.

Steam descriptions says, "An unusual mix of adventure and idle game. In utter loneliness deep below the surface, it's your task to wait for the awakening of your king... for 400 days."

That's 400 days in real time. There's a big countdown timer at the top of the screen and once you start a new game, the clock will continue to count down the days, hours, minutes, seconds. Even after you've exited the program.

So you point & click your little dude around the map, exploring the underground cave network of adjoining rooms. Some have lite puzzle elements but that's not the game's focus. You can pick up items to help pass the time with. Coal chucks the randomly drop from the ceiling to be used for drawing. Occasional books to read...real-world variety that are complete (i.e. Moby Dick).

Sometimes your progress is time gated. I entered a room with a stairway leading up. It had a huge gap in it but there was a stalactite on the ceiling over it. My guy said something like, "That looks like it'll probably drop in a couple weeks." (Two weeks in real time?!?) Another time I got to a huge set of stone doors that I activated. I could hear the stone slowly grinding open. Ol' yellow eyes says, "That'll likely take a couple hours to open."

Those are the only time-related roadblocks I saw in the first couple hours, so I don't think it's prevalent. But it's an interesting element nonetheless.

The true game-breaker for most will be the main character's walking speed. It's utterly glacial. It's by design. And you'll either love it or hate it. The authorial intent is plain as day. But that doesn't mean many or even most will be willing to put up with it. Crossing a single screen-sized room takes about 30 seconds. The game is very vertical and going up 3 or 4 switchbacks can take 60. So what gives? What's the point?

Pacing.

The Longing is a meditative game. You're one little guy. By himself. Underground. Alone for 400 days waiting for your god to wake back up. You're not forced into the situation. You're not unexpectedly lost and looking for a way out. Your job is to...wait.

As you slowly plod from one room to the next exploring new areas, your guy talks to himself. Reflecting on the nature of being. The impact of loneliness. Sense of purpose. The slow pace of traversal puts you into your character's shoes. You feel the weight of 400 days in isolation. It's a melancholy experience. And the game triumphs in transporting you to that moment. But at the same time it asks a lot of the player to get there. It urges one to give themselves up to the glacial pacing. I can honesty, with zero judgement, see how many will view it as a bridge too far.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/MXy5egE.jpg)

It's like Mondrian's Composition No. 10 . Do you see art there? Many see it. Some don't.

But ultimately it's a harder sell than Rembrandt, who's finely detailed craftsmanship is easier to appreciate at first glance.

Quick note on presentation. The Longing is a damn fine looking game. The art is all hand drawn and it reminds me of 70s-era French animation. Soundtrack is synth-somber and suits the mood well. Foley effects are sparse but on point (the slap, slap, slap of bare footsteps on marble, etc.).

I think the title of the game is pretty genius. Because the whole experience reaches in and touches that lonely, longing part of us all. That existential, "We really are alone in the world." tenderness inside that we spend so much time unconsciously covering up with extracurricular activities and relationships.

The Longing may be more of an experience than an actual game. Well I guess that's just semantics as there is gameplay, but I think the experience part is the bigger selling point. It's certainly a mood piece. A successful one at that. Not gonna be for everyone, but it doesn't need to be. It's gonna resonate for many. And those few are gonna discover a valuable experience that just doesn't come along very often.

Highly recommended.

That sounds fascinating, thanks for writing about it. I’m tempted to give it a try.

Aaron D. wrote:

The Longing is a meditative game. You're one little guy. By himself. Underground. Alone for 400 days waiting for your god to wake back up. You're not forced into the situation. You're not unexpectedly lost and looking for a way out. Your job is to...wait.

As you began describing the game my mind went immediately to some of the studies on Revelations my Church has been doing. Reading this paragraph, the very idea of this game speaks to me in so many ways. Both in the grand "Day of Christ's Return" manner and what we're doing with this life in the meantime, and where I have been over the past year, struggling to figure out where it is my path shall lead, feeling like I'm treading water, yearning to see God ahead rather than strictly hindsight.

I don't know if I could play a game like this. You've sold me on it conceptually. It's no doubt a true work of games as art. But I feel like it could destroy me.

That, and let's face it, there are very specific things I want out of gaming mechanically.

Still, thanks for sharing it. I might have to look it up in further depth later, see if there are any interviews with the creator about it. I might buy it on Steam just to support the developer.

Picked up Terminator: Resistance on Ps4 during the sale. Honestly it's pretty great!

It's like someone combined all the stuff they liked from Fallout 4 and all the mechanics they dug from Wolfenstein into a budget licensed game. There's no one from the films included (after 3 hours of playtime) and it's just the right level of intensity for a breezy little playthrough. If you're a fan of the IP and want to live in the apocalypse of 1997 for a bit, then I'd recommend picking this up! It won't set your world on fire, but it seems to be a fine time.

ccesarano wrote:

I might buy it on Steam just to support the developer.

I did this and am thoroughly intrigued by the game. I've set a few calendar reminders and left my lil guy reading Moby Dick. Let's hope I find some more books soon.

I just started getting into Holdfast: Nations at War. It's awesome! It's a Napoleon-era first/third person shooter and it works really well with various theme-specific classes. Have you always wanted to be a fifer in a combat game but never got the option. Now you can!

It is broken up between Army and Naval maps. Some of the Naval maps are ship-to-ship combat that really kind of works. The fortress defense (on both types of maps) are a lot of fun as well.

Has anyone spent time with Wildermyth? I picked it up last week and spent a few hours with it - enough to know I want to wait for release to really dive in. I'm enjoying the D&D-esque story mixed with tactical combat.

THE LONGING is super interesting. Im really curious about how it intends to unfold over time. I can see a tool that I cannot get to for around 2 weeks and a special room that stops the passage of time. I wonder if there might also be rooms that speed up time or if there are any scheduled events in this world. So far I've seen no evidence that there are things that happen over time other than path unblocking.

I havent decided whether or not to explore the upper reaches of the world given the warning you get. We're probably given agency for a reason, maybe there's an end game condition that is sped up by going there.

polypusher wrote:

I wonder if there might also be rooms that speed up time or if there are any scheduled events in this world. So far I've seen no evidence that there are things that happen over time other than path unblocking.

Spoiler: Strict confirmation spoiler

1. Speed time: Yes
1. Time events (while away): Yes

Spoiler: More details spoiler

1. As you build up your home base with items times goes by faster. But only when you're located/occupying your room space*. If you close out of the program while at home, the clock will run faster while you're away. Read your Thoughts book for hints on upgrading your room. Reading in your armchair also makes time go by faster.

* There's been several requests on Steam forum for the dev to implement an Ironman mode that disables this feature, so 400 days = 400 real-world days...no if's, and's or but's. Sounds like the dev is receptive to this idea and putting it on the To Do list. Otherwise, if you're into strict 1:1 time passage, just stay out of your room when you exit the game.

2. I've been collecting moss to help build a bed. If I exit the game and come back a few hours later, moss has regrown in the area I initially collected from. Same goes for mushrooms.

polypusher wrote:

THE LONGING is super interesting. Im really curious about how it intends to unfold over time. I can see a tool that I cannot get to for around 2 weeks and a special room that stops the passage of time. I wonder if there might also be rooms that speed up time or if there are any scheduled events in this world. So far I've seen no evidence that there are things that happen over time other than path unblocking.

I havent decided whether or not to explore the upper reaches of the world given the warning you get. We're probably given agency for a reason, maybe there's an end game condition that is sped up by going there.

So I bought this yesterday and started it. Only played for about a half hour or so. I would love to discuss this in its own thread so as to have a cohesive and uncluttered string. There a lot to like about the game, so far. I find myself intrigued with the setting and the nuances of what may or may not be found through exploration. The music is amazingly enriching and a boon to the experience. There is some emotion, perhaps a complex one, that playing this evokes in me... something like a combination of nostalgia and creepiness, like a subtle terror, and a strange despondency. It honestly reminds me of the feeling I get with certain dreams I've had across my life.

Start a thread, maybe, Brokenclavicle?

Robear wrote:

Start a thread, maybe, Brokenclavicle?

Might as well hehehe. Lemme check to see if anyone's beat me to the punch... none as yet... Now to come up with some pun... loading... loading... alright, not a pun but close enough!

Here's the thread!

I saw there was some earlier discussion about it in this thread, but I fired up Moonlighter after watching a friend stream a couple hours of it. Haven't played a game in the shopkeep/dungeon crawl genre before, but so far I'm liking the loop. There's a lot of UI to figure out, and navigating the many menus can be a little tedious, but I like that death has little penalty in the grand scheme of things, and that you can have a lot of short- and long-term goals to be working on. I'm not sure how long the game will hold my interest or if it will become too grindy after a while. But I'm liking it so far.

I loved Moonlighter! I did complete it.

karmajay wrote:

I loved Moonlighter! I did complete it.

Same! The end loop is repetitive, however. At a certain point the shop aspect is something that can be completely ignored and you just push through to finish off the last boss(es).