I Played This Indie Game and You Should Too!

Games
803

Prime of Flames may well deserve and get promoted to its own dedicated thread.

Confession! This is a double post from the “Indie Games Worth Knowing About” thread. I forget the rules on which one of these I should post in. I am thinking, if I have played it, this is the right one . . . . so, well, making good!

It combines the three act model and node-to-node progression of Slay the Spire with some thoroughly crunchy and satisfying turn-based tactics, very Fire Emblem like in slickness and sophistication, albeit with its own distinct and creative systems instead of the weapon triangle.

The node to node progression within each act is however brought to life through encounters, mini-stories, events and choices, with gorgeous visuals and a thumping musical beat in the background that feel - to me - like they deliver a consistent and entrancing ambience.

You begin with a small party of 4, which you can build up to 8 or so, including ‘core’ hero units and animal units, and summons. Later, you can ‘merge’ those hero units with animals, making them riders. Your core units gain levels, which gives them new abilities, adding to tactical options in combat. Also, like in Slay, you can pick up relics that buff various things, there is a lot going on.

Yet wait! It is also like Darkest Dungeon, in that your roguelite runs harvest you resources you can use to develop a home village, giving you new options and various boons for future runs.

And and and, you can play as different clans, like in Monster Train, and the clan hero types and core mechanics are very, very different and novel.

So, in sum, I am invoking Slay the Spire, Fire Emblem, Darkest Dungeon and Monster Train. @Misguided HAS to buy this, but others should too :-P

P.S. It is a purely visual treat, but one more invocation! Your party of heroes (and animals) walks along the bottom of the screen, similar to what you see in The Banner Saga. This provides a lovely connection to what would otherwise be a disembodied ‘party’. Nice touch.

804

I completed two Journeys before realizing there’s a button at the bottom right to purchase beasts. Early on I had clicked it once and thought it was a reference guide for beasts. So, that was two Journeys where I couldn’t figure out what special item I needed to train cavalry. Journey Three and now I have a boar rider.

The translation is rough but generally precise on the rules. I’m tickled by “No one thought she could become a master druid, but the boars who were her friends didn’t think so.” I wish more info were surfaced in top-level UI, such as counter attacks remaining. And I agree, the music is uncommonly good.

805

For the record, I don’t think there are any rules. As near as I can remember, I’ve tried to mod them into a single thread at least twice, and both times was told I’d broken something. So I’ve long since given up trying to figure out which general purpose indie game thread is for games you’ve played, and which is for games you haven’t played, but want others to play for you.

At least, I think that’s how it breaks down? :)

Whatever the case, carry on. I’m bummed these games aren’t getting their own threads, but at least they’re getting talked about. That’s the important thing!

806

You guys just blew my mind, I never noticed there were two of these threads.

807

It’s kind of cute how vexing these are for Tom.

Cross-posting is totally fine! I think of “Worth Knowing About (Probably)” as the equivalent of a thread for indie game previews and “I Played This Indie Game and You Should Too!” as the thread for indie reviews. (Are the names not pretty clear in that regard? One of them is hedgy and tentative and the other is definitive and imperative! Well, obviously they’re still not perfectly clear.)

Individual threads are also good. I’m trying to do that more often. I just think a lot of people won’t read a new thread if they don’t recognize the title, but they might read these omnibus threads and discover something new they didn’t know about.

808

Qt3 Notoriety Chart

  1. game isn’t mentioned anywhere, except perhaps wallet threat level
  2. game mentioned in passing in threads about other games, upcoming games, etc
  3. game discussed in indie roundups or threads for a specific genre
  4. game has its own thread!
  5. game has way too many damn threads (e.g. morrowind)
809

Awesome cheat sheet!

@tomchick @Nightgaunt @divedivedive I confess I have been witness to the attempts to merge the threads, and the resulting pushback, and the bewilderment! I joined in the bewilderment, complemented by bemusement! Heck, happy to roll with it.

Adding more love for Prime of Flames, now that I am several ‘runs’ into it.

I rate the turn-based tactical battles, which are the core gameplay, as equal in enjoyment to pretty much any I have experienced in games offering similar, lets say Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, Urtuk, Fell Seal, Advance Wars (and a-likes)

Each battle is typically a 5-10 minute affair, making the game very bite-size game session friendly. The battles have a pretty extensive range of variable ‘win’ conditions too. There are some ‘eliminate all enemy’ battles, but also escapes, protection, escort and survival battles. The protection and escort battles are done well, with you taking control of the unit to be escorted, so no frustration with dumb AI pathfinding to wrestle with.

A minor caveat . . whilst the home village which you can apply upgrades to for various permanent run-buffs initially looked Darkest Dungeon like, it is far simpler. Each building has a fixed upgrade tree, requiring a single type of currency (wood). You do get to choose which tree(s) to develop first, but it is far simpler and not as involving as the Darkest Dungeon town. Maybe not entirely a bad thing. My own take was that in Darkest Dungeon, the ‘town’ was your main character, rather than the actual heroes, and that would be poor fit here. I would say it compares more to the town development in Across the Obelisk (which is a fantastic deck builder, go buy it!)

Funky thing . . . there is a Steam thread asking about the English translation. I am yet to find anything I do not understand in-game, yet reports differ. The game does use concepts like “active attacking” distinct from reaction-attacks and auto-attacks for ability triggers. Whilst not so rare, these may not quite be common enough to be very familiar to some gamers, which might make comprehension a bit more difficult.

I should probably make a dedicated thread . . . .

810

Downloading the demo now, this looks amazing.

811

Yes, you should.

I do wish it were on iOS. I have a five-hour flight on Saturday.

812

Very good chart, I especially enjoy the exclamation mark.

813

Agreed!

814

I don’t like or watch basketball, but for reasons I can’t determine I enjoy video game representations of basketball. I also like card games so, of course, I’m playing FTP CCG Dream Team Basketball on Steam.

At heart it’s one of those card games. There are cards. They have costs, skills and abilities. You build a hand of 12 for less than the $130,000,000 salary cap and then play against other players or against one of a suite of AI teams. You earn coins, you buy more cards.

The cards have a rock-paper-scissors-lizard game going on, with each categorised into an archetype of either Speed, Skill, Strength or Will, with each being strong or weak to one other type.

On top of this, each card has its own ability scores, skills and “passives” that are somewhat modeled on the real player the card is meant to represent.

As you’d expect, DeAndre Jordan is a good defender/rebounder and Joe Harris is an offence-first shooter who does his best work scoring from teammate’s passes.

The real meat of the game comes with the synergies you try to build in deck creation and then how that plan survives contact with the enemy - especially if they bring the rock to your scissors.

There’s obvious stuff like putting Al Horford in the middle because his passive buffs players either side of him, (so he’s less effective if played on the wing), to combos like Jordan Poole and Klay Thompson - Thompson gets bonus shots based on teammate movement and Jordan Poole moves one position to the right every time he activates.

Thompson then also as a “high screen” skill that enables him to switch positions with a teammate, so he can switch back with Poole and generate his own bonuses.

You can also use these movements to get out of player-vs-player mismatches.

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Fans of Sensible Soccer and its player names will immediately notice that Fast Break does not have an official license, so Sensible Legends like Dennis Bargkemp and Devid Backhem are mimicked in this game by Clay Tompson, Stephon Curri and Andrre Igoodala.

Downsides for me right now are that the cards themselves contain a lot of information and if you’re not the sort of basketball fan who knows their Giannis Antetokounmpo from their Thanasis Antetokounmpo you have a lot of clicking and reading to do.

Also, once you get in game and activations start firing you can see minutes of game time go by with shots flying in and around and because there’s no action log it can be hard to work out why you’re suddenly losing 42-18. Or even if that’s bad - it might not be if most of your players haven’t activated yet.

There’s also a lot of Quality of Life work to do in out-of-game card sorting. There is a filtering system that allows you to pick rarity, player type, salary cap value and then combine in free text so you can search for players with buffs when they “Substitute In”, for example, but the only sorting is alphabetical.

The game is free to play and you get some base cards plus 15 cards packs (3 cards in each) for starting the game, plus another 10 packs if you join the developer Discord.

After that you get some coins for winning or losing games, plus there are daily and weekly quests - “Get 15 rebounds with WILL players” - that will earn you more.

Real money pack purchases are available, but I’ve got a decent collection together for $0 just by playing.

815

it’s very intriguing, although basketball is one of the handful of team sports i dislike.
But, butbut, above all,! It’s still EA ;_;

816

I kind of feel the EA disclaimer is irrelevant on a free to play game, see also Marvel Snap.

817

There’s a new PvE special event launched in the game today where you can play against AI teams hand-crafted by the Devs and win prizes for beating them.

The challenges are designed to be thought of more like puzzles, where you lose repeatedly as you work out how to construct the right deck to counter the players in the Dev teams.

I beat the first level 147-135 with a heavy “bonus” scoring team made up of:

Darius Garland
Patty Mills
Jayson Tatum
Tyler Herro
Devonte Graham
_ _
Jose Alvarado
JD Davison
Amir Coffey
Kemba Walker
Caleb Martin
Nikola Jovic
Vit Krejci

The majority of these players are Speed based, which made them a bad match against the AI’s Skill team, so I’m guessing the first round is meant to be easy.

818

I’m having so much fun with this game. You don’t have to guess at things like sight lines or noise, it pretty much gives you all the information you need.

819

This is good, but I’ve ran into a few small things in the first few levels where I’m stumped and have to ask questions.

On the 2nd mission, it says to “bring two nailers” and there is no nailer in the game. I asked and apparently it’s a translation issue and it actually means crowbar.

For the 3rd mission, it says I need to have a drill but I can’t find one anywhere (there was one on the previous mission that I dropped b/c of weight) and apparently you can’t go back to a previous mission?

The mechanics are sound and it takes some thinking to get through the levels.

820

You should be able to buy a drill at the tool merchant in the slums.

821

Yes, I found that after getting stumped. The tool merchant wasn’t available previously (the building was showing on the map, but no indication of what it was).

I’m having a hard time with the commandant’s house. The maid’s patterns aren’t discernable. I watched a youtube video and there seems to be some trick that more advanced people know on how to avoid people. I hide in corners and they spot me, in this video, the guy literally just stands in certain spots and goes unnoticed, even when the maid walks literally inches from them.

822

As long as you keep out of their sight lines, and you don’t make noise in range, they shouldn’t detect you. Turning off lights also helps. Also, if you hold the left mouse on them (or anyone) and then choose the magnify icon, it shows you where their waypoints are. When they are on the move, the waypoint they are currently moving to is highlighted.