This is a trippy isometric RPG, takes maybe an hour to finish, and plays like a total fever dream. It was weird and mostly didn’t make sense and I loved it. I think it’s all told out of order too.
I found this developer sometime last year and just really enjoy their general philosophy on making games.
If you don’t know what a videogame is or what they’re supposed to do with one that’s cool, nobody else does either. Chew up garbage media and use the mulch to make cool hives to store the tiny, stupid things you care about
Space Tyrant is a 4x space conquest game, but it plays like a fast paced solo board game or adventure. Fun balance between strategy and random space goofiness.
Does Cogmind count? Because even when I see people discussing games like it, which are already pretty niche, it never comes up. That’s tragic, because oh my god, just read some of these articles. This developer is obsessive and even if you don’t get too deep into Cogmind it’s an incredible toy to just screw around with and just see what happens.
So. Regarding xenoblade. I loved 2 and 2’s expansion. But I couldn’t get into 1 and 3 I found there were too many characters and management of their gear and resources so I dropped it. It was just overly complex and I honestly don’t think I understood it very well or what I was doing.
Well, usually people find 2 to be the hardest to get into so that’s interesting!
I find 3 to be the easiest to understand, and it actually has proper tutorials which can be accessed at any time, unlike XB2 (core bursts in battle are like, never explained!).
My daughter (12) recently finished XB3 and loved it, but is having trouble with the battles and systems in 2 - especially the forced field skills. Xenoblade 3 never locks anything away behind skills, aside from the ladders, ropes and slopes which just require a simple chat to the relevant hero once to access them you’re able to use them going forward.
I do get that XB3 can be overwhelming. 7 party members at once is a bit of a jump up from only 3. Not for everyone!
Yah. I was just overwhelmed with the amount to manage for them all and I didn’t feel connected to any of them. I think I put maybe 10 hours into it and that was it. I just didn’t understand the job thing or whatever it was called. Like you could rank up in the job types or something of the other characters as secondary skills. There was just way too much going on I had no idea what was good or not good I felt like I was just randomly picking something and had no idea if it was doing anything worth while or not and there 2as just so much to pick from. It was such a time sink just in the menus to manage them.
Honestly, the game I like the most that deserves the praise the most is so obsessively discussed by it’s own developer that I think they should speak for themselves: www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/index.html
It’s really, truly underrated. No one talks about it, even when traditional Roguelikes come up, despite the absurd amount of effort poured into it.
Specifically the article about designing “information warfare” into the game way back in 2014 (it’s still being developed) is a great example of how much is going on in this little ASCII game: www.gridsagegames.com/…/information-warfare/
I guess what I could add is that surprisingly enough Cogmind actually has a story, a pretty dang extensive one, and the fact that it’s sort of just hiding away in places you might never see blew my mind.
Also, that despite having as much depth as Dwarf Fortress (just more focused depth), the interface and controls aren’t completely inscrutable. because thank god, it actually has mouse support.
I’ve played the hell out of this game, and long been a fan of the developer’s articles on game development. He’s pretty active on the Reddit roguelike development sub (one of which hasn’t really sprung up on Lemmy yet, as far as I can tell).
…Ok, not gonna lie, the basic premise of Xenoblade 3 comes across to me like to warring societies of Souls Hollows, and while that’s almost certainly wrong it sounds rad as hell. Armies fighting because they literally need the life of their enemies to live, never stopping to consider that by not allowing themselves to die they doom the world itself, eventually no one’s left. Or something along those lines. In any case it feels like it’s setting itself up to actually say something significant about the world.
One thing I didn’t mention - everyone in the world is born at age 10, trained to fight, and either die on the battlefield or when they hit their 10th year (20 years old) in a process called “homecoming”. The main goal of the protagonists is to live beyond their artificially short lifespan, and one of the two protagonists (an Agnian girl, Mio) has only three months left.
There’s a lot more to it than just that, but spoilers. This is just the general gist as shown in the reveal trailer.
I very strongly second this recommendation, especially for those who know they like space horror in general. Or for people who like FMV. Or AI stories - you play as an AI in this.
The one caveat is: this game relies on point-and-click type interaction, and it does a TERRIBLE job of indicating which items in any scene are interactable/important. There will inevitably be some time spent clicking around to see f x y or z is something you can interact with. This is super annoying.
BUT the rest of the game is amazing so it’s very worth putting up with UI issue, imo.
shipped a local multiplayer naval game Overall Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive (523 reviews) : I had a lot of fun playing this game with my sist er and cousin.
seems like my previous comment didn’t get posted
Pathologic 2 is a game that makes you feel like the entire world is against you. From the moment you start the game you’re presented with a scenario in which you’ve already failed to stop the deadly plague infecting the city, and you get a chance to do it all over.
You are Artemy Burakh, a surgeon coming back home to his home in the Russian Steppe at the request of his late father. From the moment you arrive in town, things are off. You are quickly branded as a criminal and must hide away or risk being attacked by citizens. Slowly but surely, you keep encountering strange things in the town: an impossible spire stretching into the heavens, a building where an infection has seemingly taken over the walls, a band of children who have broken away to form their own gamg, and the plague itself speaks to you - warning you about the devastation to come.
The game is brutally tough. It has difficulty settings if you struggle too much - but the intended difficulty is meant to crush your will to continue. While fighting off the plague you must manage your own hunger, thirst, and health. Which becomes increasingly harder to do as the plague grows in strength. In addition - at the end of every day the game randomly rolls who in the town gets infected with the plague and for those already infected they could possibly die. Everyone, including you, and I mean everyone in the town has the potential to die. You are tasked with keeping them alive.
On top of that the game is an excellent journey into the psychology of those you meet, and comments on the blend between the supernatural culture of the steppe and the growing industrialization of the city. There’s so much stuff there in the game (mind you there is some jank), and its the kind of game I think about all of the time. Also the soundtrack is beautiful and haunting, with the perfect emotion for each scene.
The Rock Band series is my GOAT and probably the best party game of all time. The series on its own is fantastic–who doesn’t want to jam out? But add a few other people and it’s in a whole different league. I was living in the dorms when it came out. A lot of days we’d start it up and leave our door open and let people cycle in and out between classes or whatever else was going on through the days. We don’t know you? You don’t know us? Nobody gives a shit–we need someone on drums.
We eventually had several hundred songs through the games and DLC–just about any type of music someone might want to play. The equipment isn’t made anymore to my knowledge and I don’t think there’s any way to get it other than second hand, but when it was at ots height the series was the high water mark of social gaming. It also served as a stepping stone to actual musical pursuits–I eventually picked up an electronic drum kit and started playing (very poorly) for real.
I used to love rock band and guitar hero. But those good memories were tainted by half my store being cluttered with them as trade-ins. Caused me so much aggro I never wanted to see one again!
I believe it. We must have gone through something like six or seven guitars, two drum kits, three cymbal sets, and who knows how many of those flimsy bass pedals. Didn’t clutter any stores with trade ins though. Ran those things to the ground–only place that would take them was the dump.
Neodori Forever - 46 reviews (Positive) is also part of the Summer Sale!
I just picked this up and it’s a fun and vibrant, pixel graphics, arcade style drifting game. There’s a ‘story’ mode followed by an endless mode to keep you busy and the soundtrack made its way onto my playlist. I don’t have a Steam Deck, but it seems like it’d be a good fit.
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