You’re being dishonest: as if there were vampire-themed digital board games!
I remember a werewolf one on iOS. We had had a game going with the Jumping the Shark crew, and I remember most of us died of old age because there were so many inputs required all the time a single turn would take a week.
That at least had full controller support at EA launch! V Rising doesn’t seem to have any unfortunately, nor is any currently planned. Which itself is odd for a modern ARPG.
One of my more anticipated games; I made a thread for Sandwalkers.
Sandwalkers is an upcoming caravan management game by the makers of Legend of Keepers.
You do roguelike runs with caravans of procedurally generated adventurers on procedural maps.
Both graphics and combat basics look similar to Legend of Keepers. Caravan member have distinctive jobs that supposedly “greatly influence the gameplay” options you have. Your travels and decisions do influence future runs and there is a bigger overarching goal of repairing the broken climate.
The pixel art in this is very nice and the backgrounds are gorgeous.
Legend of Keepers was so close to being good for me. I like pixel/drawn art so the excessive style was no drawback for me.
The base design of Keepers was a real downer though, with combat being defined by very intentional attrition and one shot abilities on your team rendering a lot of the monster building moot. I’m hoping the more… protective approach towards caravan members solves that very feelbad issue.
World Seed reminds me of hex-based games I played as a kid, like Barbarian Prince or SSI stuff.
This plays much like a board game, from what I can tell. Some caveats: it’s an mmo for some reason, complete with server issues (?!). It’s also using a shareware model with a $9 unlock.
Tried to try it, but can’t get to the main menu. There’s a big pop-up that warns you it’s a demo, and you have to in-app-purchase the full game for $9 if you want to get past the beginning.
Then it makes you log in, but there appears to be something going on with the servers, because it seems like you can’t. So I can’t play it. Ah, well. Good thing there was a demo!
Team Ladybug, the devs behind the Touhou Luna Nights and Deedlit in Wonderland metroidvanias, has just stealth dropped a new release - a sidescrolling shooter with the exceptional pixel art that has become their trademark. It happened to drop while I’m in the middle of a shmup kick thanks to the addicting second loop of Zeroranger, so I went ahead and picked it up. Seems to have a progression and customization system for your ship’s loadout, as well as a mechanic for absorbing bullets. I’m hoping there’s a Radiant Silvergun/Zeroranger style melee option available at some point.
If you like impossible mind-bending kaleidoscopic level design, sexy fractals and abstract puzzles then do I have the game for you!
Recursive Ruin is a really fantastic little first-person puzzler mixed with about equal parts walking sim. It has a gorgeous clean-cut sci-fi aesthetic that reminded me a lot of Echo*, but is far more technically impressive. Just look at this (taken the first level, about as ‘simple’ as it gets):
I enjoyed it immensely. I have a couple of minor reservations regarding the writing - perhaps a bit too abstract/ponderous/not sure if it was tapping into some mythology I’m not familiar with - but it really does an oppressive atmosphere well when it wants to. Shit gets weird, though I’d stop short of calling it ‘horror’ - there are no jump scares or anything of that nature. Playing late at night with my headphones on, however, some of the unsettling locations you visit (mainly in the non-puzzle walking sim sections) really did instil a feeling of existential dread.
Perhaps a little short if you’re good at 3D spatial reasoning (like me!) but I thoroughly recommend it regardless.
is what sold it - I don’t really know how I’d rate my spatial reasoning skills, but a game being short is a huge plus point for me. Most games should be a lot shorter than they are! (Or why not have an option, next to the difficulty setting - let the player ask for a movie-length version of the game, and give them an experience edited down to the best bits.)