It’s great stuff. Spoiler: there are no unicorns. I don’t get it either. But hours and hours of good times.
Bounced on one deck galaxy and refunded it.
Back to Wildfrost, I am up to 9 evil bells now, so working toward the “proper” ending. It’s definitely up there for this style of game!
1 Like
Star Wars Hunters is taking a fair amount of my time. Pretty fun. Only two characters left to unlock (aside from the one that is pay-only, they can keep that one). Current rank is Aurodium I. My main person is the E-Web stormtrooper Sentinel, but I enjoy the Wookiee Grozz and Skora the psycho Rodian healer too.
Also playing Mario Party 3 with my younger daughter. My older daughter has actually been playing my own game lately, The Parenting Simulator, which has been a bit of a trippy (but fun) experience. She clearly enjoys it, since she finished one run and started right back with another that’s also almost finished.
1 Like
I feel like there are all kinds of hilarious jokes you could make about adding a necromancer class to that game, but I thought about it just a little too much, and now I’m wondering about whether you could help someone work through the worst grief of their lives, and the audacity it would take to try. Given how often games miss the mark and the damage they can do when they aim at the very personal, I’d never attempt it, but it would be so glorious if someone tried and succeeded. But perhaps the mere existence of Parenting Simulator does much of that work with little of the risk.
Sorry, I meant this comment to be more in the vein of imagining a cheat mode where failure is impossible, or the challenges of parenting zombie children, and that seemed like fun game design silliness.
3 Likes
Is Star Wars hunters a new one? Zynga - so I should know what to expect?
1 Like
Fairly new, like 2-3 months old I think. I started playing a couple weeks ago. The good news it isn’t play to win. Characters level but most changes are really small. Only one of the 12 or 13 hunters requires pay. The others unlock over time. Admittedly, I never played Overwatch so I don’t know how this compares. Evokes some fun TF2 memories at times though. Not having any way to communicate with other teammates makes games something of a crapshoot though.
@rinelk The kid can’t actually die in the game. Some people asked for that, I will say. But it is a sort of idealized realism. I wanted to focus on less than glamorous stuff like toilet training and balancing time between activities and how impossible that gets. But the kid can’t die, you can’t lose custody or get drunk and slap them around, anything like that. It’s a lighthearted game by design. Just something for people to chill with.
1 Like
The Battle for Polytopia, because it’s in the Apple Arcade and free.
Surprisingly compelling, hits a lightweight 4X button remarkably well despite the visual silliness and I’m only sad there’s no async. Played it for hours on a delayed flight today.
In fact, if anyone does know of a lightweight 4X with async, let me know.
2 Likes
There’s no asynchronous? We used to play asynchronous all the time on the non-Apple Arcade version.
Pass and play only, alas.
The base game is free for the non-Arcade version if you want asynchronous.
1 Like
Okay, so, first, thank you to whoever it was who recommended Aliens: Dark Descent here. I am playing on easy, because I wasn’t sure how committed I was to the game, and I’m still only in the tutorial mission. But I’ve already died many, many times—enough that reloading the game because of a game-breaking bug on more than one occasion doesn’t bother me at all. This is a game in which shit happens. Often. In great quantities.
Part of what that tutorial level seems designed to teach players, which I think is genius, is that your habits from XCOM aren’t suited to this game. There’s enough to do in a mission that you do what you can, and get out before you get everybody killed. You can come back; delay is bad, but not as bad as losing a squad and also failing to accomplish your goals. It evokes the emotions of the movie terrifically. On foot, your marines are able to hold their own against a few aliens (which feels like a terrific upgrade from the opening moments, when you’re an administrator with a pistol watching a bunch of unarmed crew get facehugged). But they’re easily overwhelmed when things get really bad, and rushing to the tank with a bunch of aliens on your tail, while its turret mows down the closest, feels incredible. So you end up with a chain of escalation which feels sort of like if counterspelling the counterspell of your counterspell were slow enough to let the tension really build. Layered over all that is the growing awareness of how serious the threat is, and (I presume) corporate fuckery, while your capabilities also grow in a very XCOM-like way.
One major objection: ambient barks. There’s not that many, but the number would be fine if they didn’t use them so often. I’m already tired of them, and, as I said, haven’t finished the tutorial zone.
7 Likes
As a huge Alien fan, Dark Descent is my favorite Alien game (even more than Isolation).
I completed it on normal reloading like 1000000000000 times but enjoying every painful second of it.
I even started a hard playthrough but I was about to break the controller on the wall.
The more you play, the more faithful spontaneous ‘movie like’ scenes unfold under your eyes.
Some emergent moments are straight out of Aliens. You’re also always in the edge of your seat….the game always push you because time is so important (the more you stay on a map, the more aliens get out).
Don’t underestimate upgrades….they seem trivial but they make a ton of difference later on, try to always have 10 marines ready for deployment (no stress no injuries).
As for barks, initially the game was criticized because there were too many. If I recall well there should a toggle for the barks frequency (you can even silence them).
Damn I need to play it again….
3 Likes
I have never heard of this but it sounds excellent for me, as another lifelong Aliens fan (who still has fond memories even of the uneven Aliens vs. Predator Extinction. What is it on?
1 Like
Hadn’t either but just purchased it on xbox for $40; I believe it’s on Steam too.
Speaking of xbox, new season of Diablo 4 just dropped; haven’t played it yet. Been playing CoD with guys from work and having a hoot, despite the stupid outfits EA has dropped everywhere.
3 Likes
I’m playing on PS5. Looks like PS4 also works, as do both Xbox series S/X and One, and Steam. So, not Switch.
1 Like
I liked Balatro a lot.
I LOVE Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers.
(big rebalance landing soon if you’re finding it too difficult initially as well)
3 Likes
I’m playing Legend of Keepers on iOS and while it didn’t click with me at first, it is growing on me.
The premise is that you are the “bad guys” managing a dungeon and repelling the heroes. A typical battle is laid out in a series of rooms where you can place traps, place your own monsters, cast spells, etc. Your monsters have 2-3 abilities to select from and most do damage of a given element or morale damage. This game is not really like Darkest Dungeon but sometimes combat gives me the same vibe.
Between dungeon runs you engage in a series of events that can have you training your monsters, improving morale, earning currency, etc. Monsters and traps can be leveled up and improved as well.
I have not yet worked out the best way to approach combats or how best to synergise my teams, but the more I play the more possibilities I see. There is also enough progression between games to keep me interested and coming back for more.
As far as roguelikes go, this one hasn’t grabbed me quite as quickly as some others but I am starting to see the potential. It feels a bit different than the card-based games so that is a plus, if only to break up the monotony.
Also, as a quick note, this game isn’t like Monster Train even though superficially it might sound like it.
4 Likes
Didn’t click with me on PC, think I understand it a bit better now and quite enjoying it. Got it on iOS and having fun
1 Like
Now that I get the mechanics I’ve unfortunately gone down the “one more run” rabbit hole.
1 Like