Games That Don’t Have a Thread Catch-All

whispa wrote:

So this looks awesome! Love the art style!

Yeah, I've been looking forward to that since the reveal trailer. The new footage just makes me more excited. It looks great.

3D Zelda with precision platforming? Sounds good to me.

I played a few hours of Valheim (now Overwhelmingly Positively reviewed with 3000+) last night with my brother. Really enjoyed it. In some ways its yet-another-survival-building game. Punch trees, gather twigs and rocks and berries, but it quickly differentiates itself in a few ways.

* Skill-usage based leveling, so the more you swing your axe, the better you are at swinging your axe
* Unique food based health system. You have a min of 25 health. Each different type of food you eat adds to your max health while it's still in your system. So you're encouraged to eat well without a hunger bar
* Procedurally generated but still has a strongly guided story/progression that encourages exploration.
* Combat that's actually fun. I'd say it most closely compares to Conan

Thats just what I could see in a few hours. I love the art style. It does so much with light and atmosphere and color choices without using detailed textures. Emissive objects like fires and demonic eyes peering at you pierce the fog and darkness. The challenge progression is interesting. It actually starts fairly gentle. You have deer that run from you, boar that will actively defend themselves, lizards that will attack from the water but they're weak, and some strange hermit-like critters who are aggressive but cowardly at the same time.

That challenge escalates significantly when you take out the game's first boss (a thing you actively summon, so you can choose when to do this). After that, night time becomes a lot more dangerous. It can be a little frustrating but also exciting. This is as a duo mind you. I have no solo experience with the game.

For $20 you get a game that feels good. I saw no bugs and from what I can tell there's at least several dozens of hours of gameplay here already. I'd make some UI changes if they asked me, that might be the clunkiest part, but I've enjoyed fighting, gathering, building, and exploring. I'd recommend it!

Made a thread for Valheim

Djinn wrote:

3D Zelda with precision platforming? Sounds good to me.

Streamed that on Friday. It's definitely a $20 game in some of its feel, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Game crashed on me, though, on PC, so it could be in need of a patch.

I think the Hollow Knight comparison works most in terms of aesthetic. It's definitely a 3D platformer, though, with a bit of "Dark Souls" in certain design choices, but not heavily so. Enemies only respawn when you leave and then return to an area, for example. The combat isn't nearly as smooth feeling so far.

It's pretty neat and cute.

I'm not sure if there's a better thread for this, but there were two games from the 2021 Steam Game Festival demos that I wanted to call attention to.

Dwerve

Dwerve is a dungeon crawler RPG. Movement, exploration, story, and puzzles all play out in the style of something like a 2D Zelda, but the hook is that all of the combat plays out as a tower defense game. You use a limited supply of gems to build towers in the environment while dodging enemies and adding supplemental damage with your boomerang.

Unlike traditional TD games, where enemies are just trying to get from one end of the screen to the other, enemies in Dwerve are after you. They will attack towers while trying to get to you, so tower placement has strategic considerations not present in most TD games. You'll have to place ranged towers on the periphery to flank enemies, use melee towers to block off spawn locations, or use yourself as bait to better position enemies for your towers to take care of them. When towers are destroyed or dismantled, the gems used to build them pop out and must be manually collected before you can use them to build more towers.

Encounters were short and quick with most consisting of just a few waves of enemies. There were no easy early waves to set thing up, so I died several times trying to figure out how to deal with a few of the final encounters in the demo. I'm very much looking forward to playing the full game later this year.

Loop Hero

Loop Hero is an odd one to describe. It's a weird mix between deckbuilder and idle game. You are a warrior that runs around a dungeon loop. You don't have direct control over your character, but you can pause at any time to change equipment and place cards. Defeating enemies along the loop gives you new gear and cards.

Cards are pieces of terrain that you place along the outside of the dungeon for stat bonuses or elements you can add directly to the loop. Place a spider's nest down to spawn spiders, a vampire mansion to fight some vampires, or a road lantern to scare away enemies from a part of the loop that has become too congested. You can retreat from a loop at any time to cash in your supplies and use them to build up your home base, or you can stick it out until you loop enough times to spawn the boss.

I had a good time figuring out the, uh... loop, but it seems like a concept that could get stale quickly based on what's included in the demo. It looks like the full game will have multiple classes, stages, and a bunch of other cards to keep things fresh. The demo for Loop Hero is still up for anyone curious.

Came here to see if this is where Loop Hero belonged. Its good! Definitely not going to be something that hooks for weeks and weeks, but innovative, polished, stylish, and fun.

Wouldnt mind a 4x speed mode that included combat, after a while the sort of 'idle' part of the game gets to feel too long.

There’s been some mention in the Roguelikes thread. It’s a solid game. Note that spawning the boss is based on laying terrain bonus cards, not number of loops. Tracker for that is in the upper left of the UI.

I finished Breathedge. There was some questionable humor, but overall I had some good laughs. The building of your "base" is almost superfluous except for some specific items. It is kind of more of a vanity project than a necessity. On the whole, I think I enjoy Raft better. That kind of experience is better with friends.

I've been really enjoying Airborne Kingdom. It's a combo city builder and 4X game where you build and pilot a flying city around a map to gather resources and followers. It's an explicitly non-violent game that seems to have consciously tried to avoid the colonialist problems of the 4X genre. Your goal when you encounter other (land-based) kingdoms is to make peace with them and convince them to join you in an alliance for the good of everyone.

It's a bit on the easy side as far as these games go. I'm a little past half-way through and haven't really felt like I was challenged by either the 4X or city building aspects, but I've nonetheless really enjoyed it. It's been a very calming and peaceful experience, and it's very pretty.

Nevin73 wrote:

I finished Breathedge. There was some questionable humor, but overall I had some good laughs. The building of your "base" is almost superfluous except for some specific items. It is kind of more of a vanity project than a necessity. On the whole, I think I enjoy Raft better. That kind of experience is better with friends.

Thanks for taking the plunge on this. I've been interested but the humour in their updates did not jive with me. I was hoping it would turn out to be similar to Subnautica. Considering there's a new Subnautica, that I already own, coming out next month, I'll just play that instead.

ccesarano wrote:

Streamed that on Friday. It's definitely a $20 game in some of its feel, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Game crashed on me, though, on PC, so it could be in need of a patch.

Yeah, I'm waiting for some patches to make the game more stable. I'll look into it again in six months or so. My backlog will thank me.

Djinn wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

Streamed that on Friday. It's definitely a $20 game in some of its feel, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Game crashed on me, though, on PC, so it could be in need of a patch.

Yeah, I'm waiting for some patches to make the game more stable. I'll look into it again in six months or so. My backlog will thank me.

Ah, I should have made a post on here about that. The further I got, the more it began to crash. I managed to beat it, but a friend of mine played it on PS4 and evidently the crashes were constant and non-stop. So yeah, definitely wait for some stability patches.

Regarding the game itself, I have some mixed feelings. Overall I enjoyed it, and once I got a sense of the boss patterns they weren't so bad, but I feel like the game's controls do not have the necessary precision for what they're going for. It feels like it at first. The game is somewhat slippery and floaty without being horrendously so. However, the camera is not necessarily the best for the more intense platforming sections, and we discovered in my stream that not all objects will have a shadow beneath the player to indicate where you're going to land (particularly, the blocks that shatter upon touch).

Similarly, it feels like the game's "pattern" suddenly changes partway through. You do two dungeons that feel Zelda-esque, one more semi-dungeon-like location, and then it's basically a sort of fetch quest to get what you need for the next three bosses (including a segment reminiscent of the twilight bug chases in Twilight Princess, which begs the question of why anyone would imitate that particular gameplay element).

It's not bad, but I'm uncertain I'd ever replay the game.

On that note, I started Shattered: Tale of the Forgotten King, and man, two smaller-budget action games that look great in trailers but don't feel that polished or precise in execution, and in the case of Shattered, forces you to go back to a hub zone to level up without proper quick-travel capabilities. I think I'd be able to complete it, but after a mixed bag like Blue Fire, I felt the need to dive into something more... polished.

I did also play the Early Access of Unsung Story, but I dunno if that should go in the Kickstarter thread or elsewhere.

I also played the third and fourth chapters of Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth's early access, and it continues to be wonderful and I highly recommend folks wishlist it.

So my buddies and I decided to all try our hands at the new Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game release, and it... feels a bit rushed of a rerelease. Putting together a network game in which to invite your friends feels way more roundabout than it did back on the 360 and PS3 ten years ago, but looking online it seems that online wasn't even part of the original game until it was added as DLC with Wallace Wells. Regardless, it feels like they could have done a better job with multiplayer lobbies. As it is, you have to create a network game that's private if you wish to play with friends, then choose your character, and then choose your level before being taken to a screen where you can invite friends to join. This probably doesn't sound like a big deal in the long-run, but I feel as if it would have been clearer if the first character select screen was the multiplayer lobby.

My best guess is it was handled this way so that you can drop into a lobby during "join game" and see what level the other people want to play before committing. It feels weirdly roundabout as it is.

The real issue was running into some awful net code that put our games out of sync with one another, where one of us was seeing completely different things in the game than the others, coins seemingly popping out of nowhere, and then being unable to progress. We ultimately called it a night.

Ah, of course, the night was soured when I had to create a Ubisoft account in order to play my PS4 game. Makes me increasingly hesitant to ever want to give Ubisoft money if I have to sign into their account to play a console game. Isn't it enough that UPlay exists as a disease on PCs?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I've been really enjoying Airborne Kingdom.

I finished this last night. I couldn't find any kind of in-game timer or game clock in EGS, so I don't know how long it took. I enjoyed it through to the end, although I did run into two issues.

First and most frequent, the camera is frequently a pain. Inexplicably, I couldn't find a way to tilt the camera, so as my city grew it became increasingly challenging to change anything in the middle of the city because they were occluded by all the building around them. I had some weight balancing issues that would have been most easily resolved by putting fans into the city center, but I couldn't get a good enough view to do it.

Second, I got lost for a couple hours trying to find the last four (for me) cities. There are three areas on the world map with four cities in each, and you only discover them by wandering around a bit. I'm fine with that, except there's also a large portion of the map that's just empty. I wandered around in there for a long time trying to find cities.

If you play the game, look to the north and north-east of your starting point to find all three regions. Save yourself from frustration.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I've been really enjoying Airborne Kingdom.

I finished this last night. I couldn't find any kind of in-game timer or game clock in EGS, so I don't know how long it took. I enjoyed it through to the end, although I did run into two issues.

In your Library click on the "..." at the very bottom is a "You've Played".

Thanks!

Edit: Looks like it took me about 10 hours to get through Airborne Kingdom. There was more I could do, but I made peace with all the cities, hit the population target, and made a city that was mostly self-sustaining.

So if you're interested in city builders and 4X games but not the thousands of hours they seem to require, take a look at Airborne Kingdom. (Alternatively, if you're the kind of person who thinks those games don't actually get interesting until you've crested the hundred hour mark, maybe save yourself some scratch.)

I've been playing Ghost of a Tale on PC via Game Pass. It's more or less a stealth game. You play as a little Redwall mouse escaping a prison by sneaking past rat guards.

Despite your not having the ability to fight back and deal lasting damage, the whole thing reminds me a lot of Dark Souls. You're exploring this big, interconnected castle that loops back on itself in unexpected ways. You find these cryptic NPCs everywhere, and there's a whole world beyond the game implied by flavor text and references in dialogue.

The game also struggles performance-wise at times (at least on my machine), and the camera is your worst enemy. So that's very much like Dark Souls, too.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I've been playing Ghost of a Tale on PC via Game Pass. It's more or less a stealth game. You play as a little Redwall mouse escaping a prison by sneaking past rat guards.

Despite your not having the ability to fight back and deal lasting damage, the whole thing reminds me a lot of Dark Souls. You're exploring this big, interconnected castle that loops back on itself in unexpected ways. You find these cryptic NPCs everywhere, and there's a whole world beyond the game implied by flavor text and references in dialogue.

The game also struggles performance-wise at times (at least on my machine), and the camera is your worst enemy. So that's very much like Dark Souls, too.

I adored this game! It definitely had a bit of jank at first, but I loved exploring and discovering new areas that informed the story.

I played this just before I played A Plague Tale: Innocence which I also loved.

I finished playing Iron Danger. If you looked at a screenshot, you'd think it was a Baldur's Gate/Pillars of Eternity type of game. Top down, control a party, RPG, that kind of thing. It's actually a pseudo turn-based tactics game. You control two characters at a time, one of whom has magic abilities (fireballs, ice, poison, heals, etc), while the other usually sticks to physical weapons like swords and bows. The gimmick is that when combat starts, time is divided into half-second "heartbeats" and you can rewind or fast-forward these heartbeats in order to try new approaches, react to the outcome of your actions, and puzzle your way through fairly tough combat encounters. Fire and ice can interact with the environment to spread chaos, you can take damage from getting indirectly knocked into the other party member, and a disastrous outcome can be avoided with a well-timed dodge or backstab.

In an odd way, it reminded me of Shadow Tactics. You're constantly trying something, rewinding, tweaking again, rewinding, trying something completely different, etc., until you grind your way through the encounter. I use grind deliberately, because there's a lot of trial and error involved, just like Shadow Tactics. You can choose an upgrade for one or both of your characters at the end of a mission, but this isn't an RPG with stats and levels. It's just a tactical action game game with time rewind.

It's an indie game with pretty high production value - the art style is gorgeous, and the music is a particular standout - but it lacks the mechanical polish or varied encounter design of a higher budget game. The story feels awkwardly bolted on at times, and ends a bit abruptly. I wouldn't quite call it a cliffhanger, but there's obviously more story they want to tell. I hope they're able to do so. I don't get the impression that it made much of a splash.

Robear wrote:

Intergalactic Fishing released a few days ago, I think, and I just ran across it....Very relaxing and enjoyable once you get past the simple graphics. It hearkens back to the old school games where you pictured far more in your head than was actually on the screen, and I think that's refreshing.

Thank you for recommending this game. Your write-up put it on my list, and the current sale of under $10 finally made it an impulse purchase. It is scratching exactly the itch that I've been having. A game where I have a simple mechanic, I can set some personal goals, and make incremental progress even if I have to ignore the game for minutes/hours because something else needs my attention at that moment. Thanks!

That's great Rezzy! I've had some eye issues that make focusing on the bobber kind of difficult after a while, but I really want to dive back into it. It's a great system and very relaxing, as you say.

Ohhh, so glad more folks have found Intergalactic Fishing!

I know, right?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I've been playing Ghost of a Tale on PC via Game Pass. It's more or less a stealth game. You play as a little Redwall mouse escaping a prison by sneaking past rat guards.

Despite your not having the ability to fight back and deal lasting damage, the whole thing reminds me a lot of Dark Souls. You're exploring this big, interconnected castle that loops back on itself in unexpected ways. You find these cryptic NPCs everywhere, and there's a whole world beyond the game implied by flavor text and references in dialogue.

The game also struggles performance-wise at times (at least on my machine), and the camera is your worst enemy. So that's very much like Dark Souls, too.

I finished this last night, and I loved it. I was surprised by how much it pulled me in to not just the gameplay but also the world and lore. I was genuinely moved by the characters at times, and I loved the way the world seemed to extend beyond the edges of the game area but felt like it unfolded gradually over time. At the beginning of the game, you're a mouse in a fantasy jail cell; by the end, you understand where you are, who the people around you are, and their place in the world.

Highly recommended.

Veloxi wrote:

Ohhh, so glad more folks have found Intergalactic Fishing!

Intergalacticplanetaryplanetaryintergalactic

Intergalacticplanetaryplanetaryintergalactic

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Don’t you tell me to smile

You stick around I'll make it worth your while

Robear wrote:

You stick around I'll make it worth your while

Mike D wrote:

Dogs love me ‘cause I’m crazy sniffable

Mike D forever

I miss MCA, really. Always an outrageous and insightful take on things.