Regarding Steam in general… am I misunderstanding something, or is Steam really pausing all game downloads while I’m playing a Steam game? Seems whenever I exit a Civ5 session when some games had been downloading as I started the session, the download shows up paused and then restarts. How can I prevent that?
No, you’re right. Dunno.
Once you start a game, you can alt-tab out to the Steam window and then manually tell your downloads to pause and then resume.
Alt-Tab out, tell it to resume the download, then Alt-Tab back in.
It is an annoying “feature” of steam which I detest.
Good idea, I’ll try that.
There’s a hidden flag in Steam that’s set on a per-game basis that tells it whether to pause downloading while that game is playing, and unfortunately there’s no way to universally override it. But yeah, if you tab out, pause, then resume, it will keep going.
Another forum member already gifted it to me, so I’m set. Thanks for the suggestion, though, I hadn’t actually considered ebay. :)
Yeah, have to agree. I’ve seen that before but thought I was doing something wrong on my end. It should really only do that if you try to play online. Single player? Who cares?
It’s basically a Katamari Damacy clone. It’s not got that ineffable Katamari charm, but the things you mention are pretty much true of Katamari also, and I wouldn’t complain about them in that game.
Otagan’s excellent post covers the mechanics. I’ll try to cover the intangibles.
You aren’t dodging the bosses bullets and missiles. You are dancing with them.
Just a quick shout out to a fun little game that’s $2.50 for the duration of the Summer Sale. Hinterland, by Tilted Mill, is a game I bought when it was on sale for the same price during the Winter Sale last year. I hadn’t had time to get around to it until now, but I’ve put around 6 hours into it and am really enjoying it.
It’s totally a light beer and pretzels game which combines a little Dungeon Siege-like RPGing with some town building strategy to create a unique niche game. Essentially you start out choosing one of 15 or so “classes” which determine your starting attack/defense/resources/equipment levels. Then your hero is tasked with adventuring into the countryside to clear the map while also building up his town. The map consists of segments that might contain a monster lair, a bandit hideout, a base from which raiders attack your town, a portal you can use for quick travel or one of many different resource nodes used to improve your town. Clear out and capture a territory and it’s yours to keep, along with any benefits it might bring to your town. Capture all the territories to win the game.
Meanwhile, back in town, “visitors” come to the town and can be settled in town by building them a home or workshop. This costs gold, and more valuable settlers also require that you have captured certain resources or discovered certain objects (as loot) that they will require. Once settled, nearly all the professions can have their buildings upgraded which will result in better production levels. Once you get rolling you will have a number of townspeople producing food and gold, crafting weapons and armor, creating potions and researching spells. It’s very satisfying to come back to town from an adventure and discover a stack of healing potions and some new weapons and armor crafted by your townspeople waiting for you.
You can also “draft” townspeople to join you as fellow adventurers. Obviously combat and magic oriented townsfolk (guards, priests, etc.) make far better companions than the local farmer or innkeeper. You’ll need these extra hands to take down the tougher areas far from town where larger and more powerful monsters reside (with better and more powerful loot of course!). You’ll also need to occasionally defend your town from raiders sent from the bases the monsters and bandits control. For this reason it’s prudent to hire some guards and leave them in town with a built up guardhouse or two.
In the end the mix of actiony RPG and strategic town building is very captivating. An hour easily slips by as you seesaw between adventuring in the wilds and standing in town settling new townsfolk, upgrading their buildings, equiping everyone (lots of misc. items can be found that increase townsfolk production levels when you equip them on the correct townsperson) and genreally managing your town. Every so often the King sends you a request, usually for food, gold or to capture a territory, and completing these grants you large bonuses to your Fame score and sometimes a nice item as well. When you finally complete the game your score is determined by many factors, including the class you chose at the start, the time it took you to complete the game and the amount of fame you have at the end. Games can be short, medium or long (each map larger than the last) and several levels of difficulty and score changing options are available. Maps are randomly generated, so between that and the character class differences there is good replayibility to the game.
At $2.50, even if you only spend a few hours playing a couple of short games you’ll get your money’s worth. It’s not epic in any sense of the word, but it’s light enough and different enough that I can see myself replaying it a few times and perhaps coming back to it again in the future when I need a quick fix of something different. I’ll easily put 10 hours into the game, which breaks down to all of $0.25 an hour. It’s too bad Tilted Mill closed up shop, as this would be a good game to get a sequal with a little more depth and a few extra options. If any of the above sounds interesting to you, I highly suggest grabbing this little gem before it goes back to being $10.
…because, as he stated when he mentioned buying it, that he teaches game design and likes to use odd indie games to challenge his classes and stimulate discussion.
6 minutes till new deals!
Can anyone do a quick purchase of ME2 (regular) before the sale ends? I’ll pay you back today.
YES Terraria -75%! My patience has paid off :D
What is Terraria? A platformer?
2d Minecraft.
Interested in dead space 2, but it’s just a bit above the limit of my impulse purchase border. Additionally I’m annoyed that it is 14.99€ in the EU…
So, it’s some kind of open-world game where you can build stuff and light stuff on fire and try to hide out at night? I’m confused.
That’s what I was waiting for too. Done and done.