whatchu playing now

lol Karl, you are a treasure to this board

Wilds has an I for indie game

Worlds has an O for Obsidian

not helpful guys. not helpful

xp :) thanks circa1916

as I get to the late game in Horizon Zero Dawn, I shall be exploring the Frozen Wilds, which are neither outer nor worlds

blew most of my weekend playing HZD and I want to do other things in life, but I also want to shoot more robots and collect more junk

i played Red Strings Club last night. there were things i liked about it (the setting mostly, the drink mixing + implant pottery mechanics are interesting tho a little finicky). what i don't like about it is that there's obviously a correct way to conduct the interviews/progress through the story - a way that gives you the most information and furthers the narrative correctly, but it's very easy to make a mistake. i think the game thinks it's clever that it's forcing you to make multiple playthroughs to get it right but my preference is that whatever choices you make the story is complete (even if that story changes based on those choices) rather than forcing you to play through the same content multiple times trying to brute force the correct combination, or google up a walkthrough so you aren't just wasting your time. my sense is that isn't going on tho and that there's really only one preferred path.

Been playing 'The Longing', a melancholy and slow game which takes 400 days to complete (or does it?). Very lovely, though I want to get to one particular ending and I'm not sure how, so I might have to settle for a more standard ending when I finally get there.

http://www.cubed3.com/media/2020/January/THELONGINGb.jpg

unexpectedly, i am now a lizard wizard at the beginning of a divinity original sin 2 4-player co-op game

i played DOS (1 and 2), mostly by myself, and only maybe 5-10 hours each. in long rpgs like that, i get a little lonely. i'm learning about all these stories and stuff but there's no one to discuss it with in real time. but having played just a bit of the co-op campaign, it is soooooo much better to have other people figuring things out at the same time

Trackmania's still fun.

i got mario kart so we'd have a game that family members could play against each other (we have overcooked but no one ever plays it). but my kids won't play against me because i destroy them every time. so instead i've been mostly losing against strangers online

i downloaded the free jump rope challenge game and that distracted my kids for a morning

i love overcooked but it is literally the most stressful game in the world

true

try playing it on handheld while watching Uncut Gems at the same time. you will shit your pants

like, Last Of Us not even in the same league of high-boil intensity. the shouting in my house still reverberating afaik

i think i played it once for five minutes when we first bought it and then never touched it again. i should try and get my 10-year-old to play it with me, my wife has no interest and it's too challenging for the five-year-old

i love overcooked but it is literally the most stressful game in the world

haha so otm, and why we stopped. Although revisited last week and we did okay. It's the levels that cut you off from the stove that get yer.

It's a shame because the fetching/chopping/prep/cooking/washing and general whole mechanic of the cooking part of the game I really like. But why torture us?

Random tip that helped me a lot: "The floor is your friend. You can throw food, pots, plates on the floor with no consequence. This is a fast way to collect ingredients or create room when your work space is limited."

Ah, just like my kitchen irl

the five-year-old saw an ad for the new paper mario game about a week ago and has been nagging non-stop since then to get the game. i've never played a paper mario game but i suspect it's going to be too hard for her, especially to try and play alone. she plays super mario odyssey and other mario games on her own.

anyways i meant to ask if it's going to be too hard for her

Apparently there's a point at which they allow you to opt out of harder gameplay elements.

paper mario games are usually piss easy

they are puzzley though so i guess 5 might be too young to not get stuck

Had a crappy week and wanted to buy Paper Mario, but I’ve never played one before and not really sure what to expect. Are they basically like point and click adventures with lite-RPG mechanics on top? That doesn’t sound that interesting to me, but I loved watching the preview video of it, so I’m pretty tempted.

It’s that or Luigi’s Mansion I guess, although I heard that’s also only kind of ok?

Or I could just keep playing DkCountry, which just turned up on the SNES emulator.

i've enjoyed some of the other paper marios i've played. RPG lite is a good description. they're generally not challenging games but often inventive + colorful + fun. the reviews for the latest one seem a bit middling tho so i'm not in a rush to buy it. DKC otoh is a stone cold classic that you should 100% play.

yeah adventure game with a light-RPG layer sounds about right. a lot of the appeal is in the funny irreverent writing, in kind of a similar way to earthbound or whatever

Paper Mario's likely to be text heavy in a way other marios aren't, and it's not likely to be pitched at very young readers either, so that's worth bearing in mind depending on where she's up to with that side of things. It's not quite the same, but my son was five when I started playing Ni No Kuni. He was fascinated by it and wanted to join in, but playing it together meant me having to read out most of the text for him and that made it super slow to chug through, we ended up burning out pretty quickly.

I really loved Luigi's Mansion - but I never finished the final boss battle, which was a little hard. It's linear (which isn't bad) and richly detailed, and its environments are lush and fun to visit. It's got some light puzzling, and some surprisingly finicky boss battles, but it's never frustrating. There are (I think?) fourteen themed floors in a haunted hotel, and you work through each of them trying to find elevator buttons to unlock subsequent floors. Its absolutely chock full of secrets (hidden trap doors, walls you can break away by doing X or Y, ghosts you discover with the rumble function on the controller) and concealed sub-areas that are not essential to finishing the main story. I enjoyed 100%ing the early floors, and raced through the last few floors just to get to the end. Both were really fun.

I get that it will feel easy, on-the-the-rails, and stodgy to ~ gamer types ~ but it was a grand lark for me. In the best possible way, it played like a SNES game the had been updated to the newest hardware.

very high compliment

I’m probably ten hours into Death Stranding on PC and I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m not tired of making deliveries and I can see myself spending time leaving helpful items around and completing online orders.

I will be the most legendary delivery man.

^ gets it

sounds like my sort of game, pretty sure 80% of the games I play are basically job-sims

Okay I checked it out it really does look like my kind of game. But I just looked at the price !?!?!?!?!?!

and now I can't stop thinking about it too

just download the deliveroo app and they will pay YOU instead

Oh, also, I just discovered Opus Magnum and introduced my dad to it. We’ve each been playing and getting a lot out of it. For people who want a puzzle game that scratches their itch for programming and building little machines, it’s a great pick up. Once you’ve completed a level, you can continue to edit your solution to optimize for cost, space, or time efficiency—and you can save each solution separately. You can see how your solution compares to the population on all those metrics as well.

It has been really nice to be able to share a game with my dad. You can save gifs of your machines working straight to your pc and send them to others, so we’ve been coming up with solutions and sharing them back and forth.

love all of zachitronics games, highly recommended (though a few of them are for PROGRAMMERS ONLY)

uh, NOVA DRIFT RULES

on sale for $10 right now, in early access, i played it on a mac with a PS4 gamepad (it might actually be better/easier with keyboard and mouse).

it's basically a roguelite bullet hell game. it was a little confusing, the first time through. it is definitely a game where you want to have a "build" in mind. the first couple times, if you're as clueless/impulsive as me, you'll end up with a weird build and things won't work quite right. but if you have even a basic idea in mind - "i want to be kind of like a spaceship shotgun" - then you can tailor your ship build and modded system upgrades accordingly and things become muuuuuuuuch more fun.

it's hard to explain, but the upgrade system is extremely flexible but logical. in my last game i was kind of a drone based carrier build, relatively slow but with a buffed up shield and a set of 6 drones that i could order to wander around and attack or stay near my ship for protection, along with a weapon that sent pulses in 360 degrees around me. effectively, i became kind of a backline strategic presence, letting my drones do most of the work while clearing out the riff-raft with my pulses. but next time around, i might go with a long-range laser weapon (basically equivalent of a sniper) instead.

it's neat. there's still a lot of stuff missing, but it will rule when it's "done"

wishlist'd for when it's done

i did a very poor job of explaining the actual gameplay. "bullet hell" may not be technically accurate, sorry (or maybe it is?). it's one screen, with waves of enemies. many, many waves of enemies. you are basically, at this point of the game, and probably as the tetrist-like main mode of the game, seeing how long you can survive.

Just watched some vids and I thing bullet hell seems apt. Asteroids version. Meets roguelike. Looks cool but I’m at the point where I wanna be like “hey, indie devs, enough with this roguelike shit already.”

intriguing list from bennett foddy. anyone played any of these?

Here’s a list of all these games, their platforms, and their creators: https://t.co/OIVSgASKAs https://t.co/ZjpqrEjkbk

— Adrian Hon (@adrianhon) August 12, 2020

I started Two Point Hospital last night because I need a break from Fall Guys.

McPixel was sooooo dumb but very amusing to me at the time

Then again, no one should ever listen to Bennett Foddy, so...

this is v true

Dr.Robotkin's Mean Bean Machine still slaps.

Helix rules obv