Yes having fun with this (Wartales). I do like how you can switch characters in the movement order.
Connectank
ConnecTank - DRAGON QUEST ROCKET SLIME. But seems to be slower. 4 player coop, needs some more time to eval. Slow start so far, but I want to believe.
Sophie’s Safecracking Simulator
Sophies Safecracking Simulator - Shockingly detailed safe cracking thing. Worth 2.50 and then some.
I tried Terra Nil but it was too puzzley. Sable is gorgeous but I wasn’t in the right mindset and quit during the opening.
Carrier Command 2 - I should like this a lot more than I did, but I think I need to give it another shot.
Sea of Craft - Felt too wonky for me. I was hoping for something like a less janky from the depths, but it didn’t feel right.
Yeah, same here. I had a similar reaction to that isometric Mars colonisation game that had a demo recently.
Was it Mars Power Industries ? I made it half way through that game before it became too hard for me.
geggis
5010
These made me laugh out loud.
And thanks for the impressions @krayzkrok and @lord_pall. But… Rocket Slime you say?
Terra Nil sounds great because I too struggle with the whole “let’s trash the place to build our metropolis”! I also like a bit of puzzling too.
Tried three demos so far, downloading Severed Steel now.
Out of Line: Puzzle platformer, these are often my jam, but this one I gave up on pretty fast, the mechanics are obtuse, and I actually got stuck and could not figure out what the tutorial was asking me to do.
Sable: Very pretty. Pro tip: turn on 60fps in the menu, it was on 30 for some reason, and that made it flow better. Don’t know if it was the mindset I was in, but did not feel like doing the fetch quests to progress the story.
Terra Nil: Just played like 30min, but I liked it so far - it managed to surprise me with the new mechanics it introduced, and yet they made perfect sense for the theme. I think I’ll boot this one up again.
Edit: Oof, Severed Steel is stylish and cool but the kind of game I think I’d like to see someone else do crazy stuff in, I’m not made for this.
I played the Trigon: Space Story demo.
It felt a lot like someone played FTL and thought “What if we remade FTL, but on a spaceship… In space.”
There may be more to crew management and ship construction it in the full game, but the demo felt very derivative.
It’s amazing how FTL spawned its own little subgenre.
Too bad about the name, though. I hear Trigon, my mind goes…
Have you seen Fermi Paradox? It’s like playing Reigns, except instead of a king you are effectively god, making decisions that impact how the universe develops. It’s…odd.
Sounds like I need to try Terra Nil
CraigM
5017
Funny, because this is all I get
I’ve not but it looks great, thank you!
I gave The Sequence 2 demo a spin. It labels itself as a zach-like - that made me pull the trigger. It’s probably most similar to Opus Magnum, out of the Zachtronics game I’ve played - you push a thing towards one or more goals. There is a decent puzzle game here I feel, but damn it’s sooo slow in giving me more tools/challenges. It’s level 25 before it introduces a new mechanic, and a ton of levels are basically identical. Also, everything is strictly sequential, so I didn’t get that sweet “clockwork” feeling I got when playing Opus Magnus or Spacechem.
Edit: doh, it’s called sequential and I didn’t like that it’s sequential. That dawned om me just now.
This was my first thought, then I turned the difficulty down. Way down. And I started to feel like that badass crazy dudegirl the game intended me to be. Once I get better I may creep the difficulty back up slightly.
That made me laugh. I saw the mini animated preview and got that impression without even clicking on the game’s page, but it might warrant a look.
It bored me enough to get me to remove it from my wish list.
Yeah, I think that’s where I am as well.
Holy crap guys, Fermi Paradox had the exact opposite effect on me. I wasn’t expecting much after you’d described it as boring, but it grabbed me hard. I loved it, and played the full 90 minute demo. In that time I led humanity to the Singularity Age (my first task was to destroy all blockchain currency, so satisfying!), evolved a race of sentient raptors who became subsumed by the influence of predatory locusts and called themselves the Locust Tribes, and a bunch of horse-like aliens who escaped their dying world only to travel to Sol, decide they didn’t like the look of those hairless apes, and established an aquatic colony in another system where they achieved ecological enlightenment.
I found the whole thing to be like a compelling soap opera, catching up with this race and that race, influencing their social evolution (and these appear to have real consequences), and occasionally zooming out to the galactic scale and trying to influence the development of new worlds. What would make it highly replayable is if your decisions have long-term consequences, and from what I’ve played that does seem to be the case. I tried to push my sentient raptors towards a more aggressive livestyle, and indeed they ended up wiping out all animal life on their planet, creating resource crises that led to their near extinction. Oops. I also very much enjoyed the atmosphere that the game creates, and the music is epic (sentient raptors really know their ethnoambient beats).
So yeah, that was a surprise. Sorry @Rock8man, another recommendation! I can see it not being for everyone though, for sure.
Holy crap, installing this right now :O
I played a bunch more of the indie demos up for a short time on Xbox as well. Started with Faraday Protocol, which seems fairly Portal-like, in that you’re moving through a series of rooms designed to test your ability to navigate and escape them. Kind of fun, but didn’t really move me.
Then tried Lake, which I oddly enjoyed quite a bit. I say oddly because, for the demo at least, it’s basically a mailman simulator. It’s set in a small Oregon town and I was constantly expecting some sort of Lynchian twist, but it never came. I’m sure there’s more to the full game, but I did kind of enjoy just delivering mail and meeting the townsfolk. If that’s all there is, I wouldn’t really object.
Then I tried Riftbreaker, which I believe will be coming to Game Pass later in the year. I like the idea, building a base and keeping it protected while you’re mining or exploring and what not. But I couldn’t seem to keep the whole darn thing powered, so I gave up a short way in. I’m sure I missed some critical bit of exposition.
Then I tried Sail Forth, which I wanted to enjoy more than I did. I respect it for making you actually care about the direction and speed of the wind, and how you should manage your sails to keep moving (unlike some sailing games I won’t mention cough Black Flag cough) but I didn’t really get much out of it, just sailing around, shooting enemies with a cannon while they shoot you. Looks like much larger and tougher ships like brigantines are eventually available, but I never had the resources to buy one. I’ll put this one in the “we’ll see” pile.
Last, I tried Sable, which I again wanted to like more than I did. It looks like an interesting world, but I kept getting stuck trying to climb some temple thingie. You have a stamina meter for strength and can only climb so far, and if you run out of stamina you just drop. You don’t die, there doesn’t seem to be fall damage, but you have to start all over and I just wasn’t in the mood. We’ll see how this one shapes up too.
