I think I have played Luck be a Landlord to death now on my iphone.
I need a new game for the bathroom, lines, waiting for my daughter to come out of the school, waiting for my wife to come out of the store, etc.
What do you got for me that you think I don’t already know? 
Have you tried Subpar Pool? It’s been out for a few months, but it’s the most recent game from Martin Jonasson, the designer of holedown / twofold inc / rymdkapsel. Blends pool and golf mechanics in short games with goals to reach to unlock different tables or balls with new characteristics.
I jumped into this thread for another reason–I recently went back to Wildfrost, which released back in April, and I finally got my first win on my 63rd run. Either the game’s really hard, I really suck at it, or both. Still gonna keep playing.
Currently playing the strangely titled 2024SP Microeconomics for Public Administration 20:831:541:90 and 10/10 would not recommend. It’s barely understandable, the instructions are poor, and the graphic aspects make my head hurt.
Wait, a game with that name is barely understandable?
Whats worse is that if you ever do beat the boss, you just end up in jail
Helldivers 2 is out.
running well on PS 5 but some issues with aggressive anti-cheat routines on PC.
best to wait for an official fix.
in the meantime there are workarounds in the internet.
I ran through a few Next Fest demos on my Steam Deck yesterday and figured I’d provide some feedback:
Balatro: Poker-themed roguelike–poker hands earn you points, but the score goal keeps growing, so you’ve got to improve your deck through either buffing existing cards or adding jokers that improve your scoring potential. I was happy with how well it controlled on the Deck but couldn’t shake the feeling I’d probably play it more on mobile.
Ultros: Did you really enjoy Hollow Knight but think the game would be better if it was brightly colored and all the colors were cranked up to 11? If so, Ultros is the game for you. There’s some interesting mechanics to add to a very polished Metroidvania, but the “psychedelic” colors are literally the part of the game that stand out the most.
Wraithbinder: Reminds me a bit of Hyper Light Drifter but tighter and less obtuse. You’re playing through floors that grow in scope rather than a more open world, and the game title comes from the ability you earn on the 2nd floor (at least in the demo) to bind defeated enemies to you as wraiths that help you in battle.
Breachway: Card battler in space. Honestly, while I think the game looks cool, I’ll probably just play more Cobalt Core.
Backpack Battles: A neat little auto-battler that I will never play on my Deck because dragging items into my backpack is a pain in the ass with the controller.
Liked all the games; didn’t love any of them enough to think they’d be auto-buys on release. (My backlog sighs in relief … )
I love Backpack Battles, but I mostly play on Desktop with some music and a beer. Like Super Auto Pets, it is a nice little PvP time waster that you don’t have to take too seriously.
Backpack battles will be nice when it releases the full version!
So after saying I wouldn’t buy any of the Next Fest games I tried right away, I went back to the Balatro demo and got sucked in for a few hours. The game’s way deeper than I first thought, and the full version promises more unlockable challenges, cards, and decks.
Like any good deckbuilding roguelike, you can build your deck in a ton of different ways. Maybe you build a deck that’s strong in a particular suit and play for a ton of flushes. Maybe you grab a set of jokers to maximize the multipliers for every hand. Maybe you buff the cards in the deck itself. Tons of replayability based on that flexibility alone.
The other thing I really like about Balatro is it doesn’t revolve around combat. I play deckbuilding roguelikes constantly and love them, but the novelty of seeing deckbuilding mechanics applied to a game where you’re not trying to kill monsters/aliens/ships/whatever is pretty cool to me. Each “blind” has a growing score goal to ramp up the difficulty, and each “boss blind” has a special effect that makes it harder to beat–maybe your first 10 cards are dealt face down, or you’re forced to discard two cards every time you play a hand.
The dev’s running a giveaway for a Steam code on Twitter, so I won’t buy the game right away (it released at the top of the hour), but I’ll have it by the end of the day and can heartily recommend it to anyone else who might be interested.
I know what I am about to be playing: that sweet Battlefront rerelease coming in March. Star Wars Battlefront 2 is a stellar game that still holds up almost twenty years later. In the list of games my friends and I played, from, you know, back when I still had friends plural, Battlefront 2 is probably top 5, thanks largely to Conquest Mode and the maps where you could do matches with only the hero characters.
I am playing through FFXVI and am certainly torn. The production is awesome, especially the music. I also love when a certain location, character, enemy, etc. gives me good FF vibes. On the other hand, there is almost no RPG to be found. The combat is fun, I guess, but this is so far removed from any FF combat that it feels like a spinoff game rather than a mainline Final Fantasy (remember Dirge of Cerberus?). And finally, at the expense of sounding like a prude, I’m not sure I like my Final Fantasies filled with cursing, gore, and sex. I’m a grumpy old man who doesn’t like change and this one brings it all a little too far. I’ll play it, and I’ll finish it, but I’ll be champimg at the bit for it to end so I cam start up the new FFVII Remake chapter.
I already have over 50 hours in Last Epoch - so I might like the game a little
I’m currently looking for a classic-style RTS with a strong campaign. I don’t mind playing RTSs online with my friends, who are all roughly the same skill, but I’ve been afraid of gaming with the general public forever since it seems that many RTSs boil down to how quickly you can click and multitask. Old school StarCraft was a nightmare on that front. So I need a campaign/story to play through. It’s been a while since I’ve played an RTS; I’m going to be pretty rusty.
Not my thing, but I just saw this Reddit post earlier: https://www.reddit.com/r/StrategyGames/comments/1b2vquh/looking_to_play_some_real_oldschool_rts/ maybe that will work for you.
[Grey Goo] Despite its rating I quite liked it. But that’s because of story/lore reasons. I am a forgiving person if I like the “good stuff”
[Homeworld: Desert of Kharak] RTS Game set in the Homeworld Universe? Sands? Desert? Homeworld Music? Yes Please! The recent bad reviews are from Gearbox’s decision to make MP cross-storefront. More People for MP? Yayy… mandatory Epic launcher? Booo (apparently).
But I give a rat’s arse about the console/storefront warriors. It is a gem of a game, with a nice story, an INCREDIBLE soundtrack, and high production values all around…and I like the Homeworld style of cutscenes…
How far back can I go with my suggestions? Dawn of War 2 (not 3), Homeworld 1+2 Remastered, Homeworld Emergence (formerly known as Homeworld: Cataclysm, also 90% off on gog currently (1 Dollar))
Also if you are truly masochis*ahem a connoisseur of good old RTS gameplay: Warzone 2100 (now open source) The central gimmick of this ugl…rustic looking game is the option to build your units from MANY different parts (want a hover artillery or a half-track AA gun? No? ECM unit with wheels or tracks? MG or Dual-Barreled?
I know this game looks ugly, but I played the stuffing out of this game when it came out back in '99
I’ve been playing all the remastered Homeworld stuff and Supreme Commander.
For the life of me I cannot get the desert one to open. I’ve downloaded from GoG and have done all the troubleshooting listed online and still the game won’t open. It reads as though it is a common problem.
The issue seems to be that installing/using the Epic launcher is required, even for people buying on GOG or Steam who only want to play campaign rather than vs. online. And that the Epic launcher is questionable software as far as security issues. I have no skin in this game, I’m just sharing info.
I feel like I gave up the storefront wars when I sold my soul and data to Steam
This might seem like heresy at this point but I still don’t use Steam…
I’ve always been a bit OCD about my stuff and I’ve forever tried to limit DRM on my machine, even if it is a benign storefront. I long for the bygone days of CDs with codes (before they started to implement some of the DRM rootkits). I don’t play many games on PC these days and what I do play usually comes from GOG