4966

This looks pleasant! Little miniature hand-drawn top-down scenes, but you can also switch to a camera mode and take pics from down inside the scenes.

4967

I have been slamming the hell out of House of the Dying Sun for the past few days. What an amazing sense of relentlessness it gives. Most of us know the cutting down it went through from the original Enemy Starfighter idea, but I think it still ended up as something well worth the $7 it fairly regularly goes on sale for. The name is just terrible, though. It should have been called something like Emperor’s Vengeance or Fall of the Traitor Lords or something like that.

It also has one of the best soundtracks in gaming history.

https://www.olivierzuccaro.com/projects/house-of-the-dying-sun/

4968

A post was split to a new topic: KARDS: it’s like Heathstone, but with World War II

4969

I may be done with Dying Sun for now. We’ll see tomorrow. I’ve beaten every mission up through Harbinger difficulty, and I’ve done a couple of flagship bounties and the first mission on Dragon difficulty, which unlocks after beating the game once. Not sure I have the stamina to slog through the rest of the bounties, let alone Dragon (which may actually be beyond my capabilities) right now, but I’ll surely come back to it at some point. What a fun little game.

4970

Glad you used this in the Frame Game thread, because I missed that there was a new Nifflas game out! Always cause for celebration! Purchasing now!

4971

All praise @Chappers, because I had had no idea either :O

4972

Steam recommended this to me this morning, and for once came up with something that looks to be right up my alley. I need to investigate it some more but it feels like an almost certain purchase.

4973





4974

The creator of In Other Waters announced his next game today. Pretty slick trailer. Interesting looking game–a bit like Tharsis bolted on to an RPG?

4975

I really wanted to like In Other Waters but found the movement and mechanical UI aspects insanely annoying.

Citizen Sleeper seems interesting and a big step forward with what looks like much more straightforward control scheme.
Neatly distinct scenario as well.

4976

I enjoyed the remote sensing aspect of the game a lot, but the UI could have done with less redundant clicking. I was doing pretty well until I hit an area of toxicity which constantly drained my health, turning it from a game of turn-based exploration into having to make decisions based on guesswork that could lead to your death. It introduced tension and frustration into a game that never needed it.

4977

There was a weird split to me between that blind sensing of your environment, which was great, and the in your face narration. This is the main thing that put me off, as I thought the game would have strongly benefited from being a mystery instead of exposing me to a rejected script for an episode of Days of our Lives.

4978

I suggest playing the Steam demo first. I played it months ago (not sure if the many updates since have been added to the demo I played), but the game felt pretty obtuse and I decided against purchasing it.

4979

I’ve been playing the demo and from what I’ve seen it hasn’t been. They say an interactive tutorial was added last month, but it’s not there. Maybe it will make the game play more engaging than what I’ve experienced so far.

[edit] With the help of Youtube and the in-game help screens, I finally grasped the core play well enough to finish and beat the demo. Supposedly the full game is even deeper, so I plan to give it a shot.

4980

Cruelty Squad has left early access:

I’ve played a couple of hours of the early access. It’s a pretty neat immersive sim, if the abrasive aesthetics aren’t too much for you.

4981

That’s a good way of putting it! I saw this a while back and I consider myself pretty open-minded and accepting of ‘abrasive aesthetics’ but Cruelty Squad looks… a lot.

Yeah, this is fair. I liked the ‘tactile’ manual nature and aesthetic of the UI but at the same time there was a lot of unnecessary clicking that didn’t feel good. The toxic area was rough but I don’t recall dying there thankfully. Many leaps of faith were made! Catch me dev! I packed a lot of emergency materials before going into the bloom and seeing the pockets of oxygen was a relief.

Honestly though, I felt more time pressure from having to read everything on a timer. That little timer was a constant source of mild anxiety for me. I’m a slow reader and a slow processor so I did a lot of dipping into the journal/log to brush up on things that were said that I missed or didn’t understand fully–or hadn’t imagined/visualised properly! If the log hadn’t been there I think I would have shelved the game, which would have been a shame given how much I enjoyed it overall. I’d have loved an option to pause on dialogue/click to advance. I welcomed it in Below Zero. The amount of additional food and water I must have consumed reading the PDA slowly in the first game must have been crazy!

4982

Garlic is finally out. The teasers of the pixel artist were lovely. I can’t speak for the game itself.

4983

Yeah the pixel art looks so good! Thanks for the reminder of this.

4984

Steam Next event demos:

  • Rogue Lords: Heavy Slay the Spire influences, some annoying overland travel. Promising.
  • Terra Nil: Spruced up version of the free pixel graphics one. Great small game and still recommended.
  • Terraformers: Very solitaire-boardgamey colonizing and terraforming of Mars. Decent.
  • Spire of Sorcery: Some good systems but drowns in combat. Less mage-management and much more fighting than I expected. Somewhat disappointing. Great character icons that work really well though.
  • Fermi paradox: Multi-King of Dragon Pass with a great SF theme. Good but needs a chunk of balancing, polishing and UI work.

Interested but haven’t tried yet:

  • Kainga: City builder with some weirdness
  • Death Trash: exploring a handcrafted post-apoc pixel world. Focus on player freedom
4985

The Terra Nil demo gets a very enthusiastic write-up here. Restore a wasteland to happy biofunctioning. Sounds great.