Hey! Glad to hear that :-) Our enthusiasm remains unchanged, it’s just that we are seven people and with developing the engine/testing and doing all the uncool parts of game development (publishing, porting and paperwork) development takes time. Book of Demons was planned as a smaller project aiming at recapturing the experience of playing arpg games (or hack and slash as the genre used to be called) back when the genre was young and fresh. The project grew as players demanded new features and especially endgame grind and hardcore modes (which we didn’t plan for initially).
Right now we are almost there with most features in place. Among the main features left to add are quest mastering, new Archdemon quest, a lot of new and improved sounds and character VOs, and of course new cards.
But it looks like we are hijacking this thread, I have found a dedicated Book of Demons thread here and I will watch it in case anyone has questions about the game :-)
They started on iOS (I think because that’s where the modern version of King of Dragon Pass has found its largest audience) but a Steam version is in the works, to my understanding. Right now there’s just one episode of a planned six (Six Ages, you see), so I’m not sure if the plan is to port each one as they go or just release all six and then port, though.
The Android ecosystem is so fragmented a lot of developers just don’t feel like it’s worth the effort anymore. I’d complain but frankly I don’t have any desire to play games on my phone.
Of is one of the best examples of a possessive predicate generator I’ve ever played, while meaningless is just a re-imagining of the game of Life as an open-world sandbox.
I haven’t played a ton of 2018 releases. There are some pretty solid ones but none that would have taken prior game of the year from me.
1) Into the Breach: I played this a ton when it came out but haven’t touched it recently. It’s great how different the factions play and how all the information is known. Each level is a combination of a bite sized puzzle / tactical challenge.
2) Northgard: Since my pure RTS days are very limited now I like how this strayed from a pure RTS. The campaign was nicely done in how it emphasized a particular aspect of the game. Skirmishes were engaging too - and I typically have trouble staying interested in RTS skirmishes without some goals pulling me along.
3) Railway Empire: Some aspects of the game might be off, like the research, but the basic track building and route planning is a lot of fun. Very pretty too.
4) Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire: If this were balanced better it would probably be higher on the list. I liked the story and cast of characters. The basic combat system is decent enough. I hated the ship battles, but luckily I could limit my interaction with them.
5) Out of the Park Baseball 19: Another solid entry for reliving my baseball childhood, but it never holds my interest for too long.
6) Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Rise and Fall: It’s just more stuff layered upon a game already layered with a lot of things, but it’s Civ and I’l a sucker.
7) Surviving Mars: I actually thought my only play through was decent, but I never wanted to go back. Fairly repetitive and didn’t really offer new challenges as my settlement grew. It sounds like the updates my make it worth revisiting.
So for me there weren’t any stinkers, but some are a bit meh.
Re: Six Ages, I don’t think calling it an “episode” is totally accurate; that gives the impression that this isn’t a complete game, but other than being set in Glorantha I don’t think the other “ages” will have much if anything to do with each other. My impression is that they are each set in a different age.
The Android port of KoDP was done by a different dev house than A#, so if one happens with Six Ages I’d expect the same (also for it to take a while). I don’t know if they made any money on it.
Yeah, sorry, it’s more accurate to say there are another five Six Ages games planned. This one alone is apparently multiple novels worth of writing (from an explanation about why it is probably impractical to translate it to other languages).
Speaking of which, I’ve been playing this in the last few days, and I just noticed in my last campaign game that you can actually go backwards in the research to before the start date and buy at least some of the research. Yet for many the research cost seemed much higher than contemporary research. It was all a bit weird.
Dark Souls Remastered: game of the year 7 years running.
Street Fighter Anniversary Collection: I now have a portable system that plays Mark of the Wolves and Third Strike. It’s the future.
Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2: best hair since Millia Rage.
Shadow of the Colossus: Agro!
Ikaruga: Portable tate mode!
Looking forward to Yakuza 2, Metal Wolf Chaos and The World Ends With You.
The games on this list that I’ve played were all cases of “could’ve been great if it wasn’t for the WAITING”.
The load times in Battletech. Possibly the very worst optimized modern game I’ve ever played. I’ve never seen load times a fraction this length ever since I switched to a solid state drive. It’s like I’m back on a hard disc again. You can boot up your computer, start up any of the most advanced graphic engine AAA titles, and load a saved game from that in half the time it would take you to load a single mission in Battletech.
The rolling & encounters in Space Tyrant. It’s not at all an exaggeration saying that you spend a full 50% of your time in this game waiting for the die rolls for the invasions and encounters (both rolling and reading the same text you’ve read before).
For the King. This one is the most painful. It’s SO close to being a great Heroes of Might & Magic version of FTL. The thing that absolutely kills it though is the movement and UI. Moving your party members separately, and having to wait for movement rolls each turn sucks so much life out of this game (not to mention how much of a pain constant ambushes are). A huge chunk of this game is annoyingly having to wait because one of your party members fell one space short of joining a big fight, so you have to go through an entire round of waiting until they get into position (at which point they’re ambushed or blocked…again). This game would be ten times better if they just had your party move together as one, or at the very least went the Heroes of Might & Magic and let all your heroes move in the same turn.
Then there’s the UI. It’s one of the worst I’ve seen in an RPG in 30 years. The D&D goldbox games had smoother inventory management. It’s one of those everything takes twice as many clicks as it should deals, and since every hero is separate, you’re constantly picking up equipment that should go on other party members but there’s no easy way to compare and you can’t even transfer stuff if you’re not in the same space.
It hurts because these are all so close to being great games, and it would be minor fixes to drastically improve them.
I almost never play new games when they come out, so my limited best games of the year list would include Sky Knights, the lite Top Gun MOBA you never knew you needed. For a quick and dirty $7 game I’ve been having a blast with it, rocking along to the blatant soundtrack ripoff.
I just played through the demo and it was pretty fun. The reviews mostly look good but a couple call out that most of the skill comes in the player management and pregame setup, and in-game there isn’t a lot you can do with three actions per turn. What do you think of that analysis?
Some games are decided before you play them as the match ups simply don’t favour you (and vice versa) but I have engineered several upset wins through taking risks and trying moves that statistically don’t look great. Initially I found the 3 move turns a bit short, but given time I started to understand how to take better advantage of the mechanics. Quite often you’ll want to just get the ball to your midfielder with the best control and let him sit on it in space, before getting the ball forward to a dangerous striker on move one of your next turn instead of move two of the current one. That can make a big difference to your ability to create chances.
Excluding Switch ports of older games, I haven’t played many new games this year. I bought a PS4 Pro to play God of War (along with Bloodborne which was amazing) and I enjoyed it, though not enough to hang onto the console. I’m hoping to get a new computer soon so I can jump into Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Vampyr. Right now, my favorites would probably be Yoku’s Island Express and Ion Maiden, which is probably cheating since it’s in early access and the full release will probably be delayed into next year. So far, 2018’s got nothing on 2017!
