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[King Zultan]

Maybe for the new thread we should get someone that isn't attached to CDDA development so it won't get locked.

It could also be for both DDA and Bright Nights.

[Robsoie]

I made a tentative thread, not being involved myself in any of those games development it will hopefully help it to stay open so people can still discuss the Cata games on bay12
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177449.0

[nenjin]

Playing Ghostrunner. Just released. I'd liken it to Mirror's Edge but after playing it I think the comparison is only skin deep. It's a fast paced first person action platformer. You play a cybernetic ninja, in a cyberpunk dystopian "city", there's a katana, synthwave, slow time...you get the drift. It feels very polished (except some of the wall running, which is like 30% of the game), is very stylish and plays devilishly fast. If you enjoyed Hotline Miami, dying and respawning instantly 40 times in 10 minutes, this might be up your alley. But some caveats. It feels sometimes more like a puzzle game than an action game, what with the extensive platforming sections, identifying where you are supposed to go and how (this part reminds me painfully of Mirror's Edge), and combat encounters have a sort of "do it the right way" feel because of how they're set up.

I haven't put a lot of time into and I'm definitely feeling like I have old man reflexes playing it, but it doesn't yet feel like they let you cut loose. More like "Do this platforming section. Now deal with this room full of 5 guys and performing platforming feats while you try not to die. Now do another platforming section." There's a lot of grappling, too. It's the kinda game where you've always got to be moving even if there's no enemies just to maintain your momentum. You spend half your time on a wall or in the air grappling around.

It feels great when things come together, that nice, clean, slick kill. But there is a lot of trial and error as well, especially in combat where the enemies will just pick you off with one well-placed shot if you lined up too straight on them, or dodged a moment too early before they've actually shot. Or if the guy behind them shoots you through the cloud of blood his buddy is making. Which is why at times it feels more like a puzzle game than an action combat game. The platforming sections feel very, very arranged, there's not a lot of "natural" environments to do stuff in. (For example, I say the game is set in a city but really it's a series of large rooms with cyberpunky looking city stuff decorating the walls, and a bottomless void on all sides. They call it "Dharma Tower" to explain why everything is vertical in it, and while the textures are nice, they're dressing up what is essentially an empty room design for platforming.) There's lots of very specific platforming set pieces mixed in with the combat, as I've mentioned.

All in all, for $23 I think I've got my money's worth. It definitely nails the aesthetic across the board: textures, sound, visuals, weight and voice acting. Just wish the combat and the platforming felt more organic. At one point the game had a room of 5 guys all with energy shields, and you had to wall run/grapple like a mad man along the outside edge of the room to kill the shield generators before you could take them out. Stop moving: get shot. Get caught on a corner: get shot. Miss a wall running transition: fall into a pit. Miss a grapple or get the angle wrong: fall into a pit. The 3rd of 4th level took me almost an hour and I died about 100 times. Maybe I just suck. But if you're getting it thinking it's a mostly combat based game, be ready for a ton of platforming while the game delivers its narrative bits, and for combat to feel more like a puzzle to be picked apart then a satisfying experience where you obliterate. One hit = you're dead, so there is very little room for error.

[AzyWng]

So Golden Light is a game where many, many things are made of meat, and this means in a pinch you can eat weapons to restore your HP. There's also a lot of other things too.

It's still in Early Access, but I think it's great.

Also, Griftlands is a pretty good deck-building roguelike made by Klei Entertainment. Besides turn-based deckbuilding battles it's got a social element (your choices can result in making friends or enemies, which can help or hinder your goals).

EDIT: I probably should have mentioned that Griftlands is also in Early Access - which means bugs and the game not being complete, naturally.

[Aoi]

Also, Griftlands is a pretty good deck-building roguelike made by Klei Entertainment. Besides turn-based deckbuilding battles it's got a social element (your choices can result in making friends or enemies, which can help or hinder your goals).

I thought Griftlands was pretty nifty, until a few hours later when I realized that it's actually kind of shallow... you're better off going all-in on one of the two combat modes and charging on ahead with that, and going on a murderous rampage killing everybody you meet isn't really a problem. (Actually, it kind of made things easier, since they give some interesting combat options.) Also, there are appear to be some encounters that unavoidably use one of the two combat modes, but not the other way around, further supporting the outlook that there's a "better" option between the two. (Could be mistake on this one, but I think I hit most of the major events.)

The kicker is more personal, but I crashed three times in a row when I was 90%+ through the storyline (I assume, based on how things progressed) and it not only ate my save, but I didn't even get unlock credit for what I did.

[Robsoie]

Noticed MaximumZero mentionning Caesar 3 in the "own" thread.
So something that could be very interesting for people still playing the game, there are  2 open source re-implementation of the Caesar 3 game (requires the original Caesar 3) , Julius and Augustus
https://github.com/bvschaik/julius
(releases : https://github.com/bvschaik/julius/releases )

https://github.com/Keriew/augustus
(releases : https://github.com/Keriew/augustus/releases )

Julius is a fully working open-source version of Caesar 3, with the same logic as the original, but with some UI enhancements, that can be played on multiple platforms.

Julius will not run without the original Caesar 3 files. You can buy a digital copy from GOG or Steam, or you can use an original CD-ROM version.

The goal of the project is to have exactly the same game logic as Caesar 3, with the same look and feel. This means that the saved games are 100% compatible with Caesar 3, and any gameplay bugs present in the original Caesar 3 game will also be present in Julius.

Enhancements for Julius include:

    Support for widescreen resolutions
    Windowed mode support for 32-bit desktops
    A lot of small in-game quality of life improvements
    Support for the high-quality MP3 files once provided on the Sierra website

While Julius does not implement any gameplay changes, a fork of Julius named Augustus is implementing many long-wanted gameplay changes, such as roadblocks. Beware: Augustus does not support the original Caesar 3 save files, while Julius does. So use Julius for a more vanilla experience with some visual improvements, or Augustus for a different gameplay experience.

Augustus is able to load Caesar 3 and Julius saves, however saves made with Augustus will not work outside Augustus.

Gameplay enhancements include:

    Roadblocks
    Market special orders
    Global labour pool
    Partial warehouse storage
    Increased game limits
    Zoom controls
    And more!

Because of gameplay changes and additions, save files from Augustus are NOT compatible with Caesar 3 or Julius. Augustus is able to load Caesar 3 save files, but not the other way around. If you want vanilla experience with visual and UI improvements, or want to use save files in base Caesar 3, check Julius.

Augustus, like project Julius requires the original assets (graphics, sounds, etc) from Caesar 3 to run. It optionally supports the high-quality MP3 files once provided on the Sierra website.

main changes since Caesar 3 :
https://github.com/bvschaik/julius/wiki/Improvements-from-Caesar-3

tested the Augustus one (for the additional features) and it works great (at the time i write be sure to get version 1.4.1a not 1.4.1 as 1.4.1a only comes in the 2nd choice in the release page for some reason while 1.4.1 comes first and has a bug)

[n9103]

Very nice. I know someone that will be delighted that these exist! Thanks Robsoie!

[Frumple]

So I picked up Time Break Chronicles in the latest steam sale. Short form, to crib what I put in a review, is it's like Siralim and Slay the Spire had a JRPG baby, that went on to get knocked up by Secret of Evermore's artistic direction and that popped out.

Node/path based decision making, JRPG style turn based fights largely hinging on your ability to mix and match stuff to break the enemy over your knee (though that's easier said than done with some of the bosses), town based metaprogression between individual runs, decently large (25, with 8 skills each, all of them with two levels of upgrades, and four potential relics/pieces of equipment that can vary pretty widely in effect) slate of characters with mostly-unique abilities already in game with more on the way (devteam's apparently aiming for an even hundo by the time they leave EA), aesthetics that are pretty campy, so on, so forth. Overall it has potential, least from the ten-ish hours I've sunk into playing already, which has unlocked/rescued all the available characters and beaten the last available boss once, but hasn't tried a second time in endless 1 because that last available boss is goddamn terrifying and just about party wiped me the first time I fought it.

To give an idea of what party construction looks like, my current main team consists of:

The MC you can't get rid of (but has three forms they can swap between more or less on the fly, and can borrow skills from other unlocked characters; basically, they're not a burden at all) that starts fights by resetting the turn progression of every enemy on the field (which anyone can do, but the MC can do once per fight for free, with an upgraded ability on their main form), then busts out a party boosting power ballad and spends most of the rest of the fight spewing poison and -poison resist on everything via a boss relic. I'm using them as support, but they can tank or DPS just fine.

The ranger you more or less start with that stacks up tons of poison (that, in addition to just damage, also slows enemies and makes them less dodge-y) on top of doing significant AOE damage and mildly bonkers single target. They also have a doggo that bites things just in general but also whenever she shoots something.

A post-apoc raider that spends 35% of the time uncontrollable, but sets everything on fire with molotovs, busts out a shotgun (hits entire front enemy line and reduces their turn progression), and occasionally opens up with an AK. Mostly, though, they just chainsaw things in the face repeatedly for huge damage after they set everything on fire.

A lizardman genetic experimentation I stuck a boss relic on that redirects most of their defensive stats into raw HP. It doesn't do huge damage, but it has respectable single target with some poison and mild AoE. Mostly it just sits in front and is a huge sack of health to tank hits with. Lately, I've also given them a relic that lets them get blitzed on whisky on top of making their attacks deal extra damage based on lizardcritter's (gigantic) max HP.

A medieval blacksmith that mostly just boosts up the ranger (or raider) a bit and lets them go hog wild. They're slow, but tanky enough and gives fairly significant damage boosts to my primary DPS, on top of dealing a bit of stun if necessary and being able to provide pinch defensive buffs.

And finally a plague doctor I'm trying for my main healer (I was using a priestess that gave one critter a 20% attribute boost and then spammed free healing spells the rest of a fight). They, uh. They infect my entire party (and eventually the enemy's) with what's apparently the black plague, then provides a party wide buff that massively reduces poison damage and causes them all to heal a percent of their max HP per stack of plague. Also got some nasty individual debuffs and a bit of clutch healing/status cleanse/revive going on.

They win fights by stacking fire and poison on everything and then hitting it until it dies. It's going pretty well

E: Oh, and everyone except the ranger who already has a doggo has a boss relic that gives them a pet giant spider that bites for poison damage (i.e. my aoe poison res debuff the MC is throwing around boosts their damage) and bites progressively harder the more they bite. It's probably not pleasant for an arachnophobe, but damn if it isn't effective.

[Robsoie]

I've been toying a lot with the Augustus engine for Caesar 3 today and it's been a lot of good on what is, despite its age, still my favorite city builder.

On the city building mode, i started on the Lindum map to have an easy building time but still have some battles (Lindum map takes place in northern province so there's no building that catch fire, and there is some good action as there are regular more or less big invasions and some wolf packs you'll need to hunt with javelin troops to avoid migrant getting eaten).

Managed to build up that city for more than 30 years, as i built a legion rather fast and had an academy to increase their battle efficiency, i could easily defeat the first few attempts at crushing my small village.

Then building up more and more i got my 6 army fort fully setup with troops (5 legions and 1 javelin troop) that were so strong they crushed all those armies trying to take my city down, supported by my towers ballista and javelin guys from the ramparts that probably helped a very lot

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

here 2 of my legions taking out a bunch of celts attackers then celts cavalry, supported by good ballista and javelins from the ramparts.

Trade made my city insanely filthy rich , selling weapons and wines delivered so much more money than my attempt to make my whales richest citizens spit money toward my treasury while my slaves working citizens were busy making the town run and get all the stuff citizen constantly required.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the most developped part of my city, where the most city taxes money comes from.

Speaking of the slaves citizens i had so many of them working to make my whales rich citizens happy that i  had to make a huge lot of farms too, as my small village inflated more and more, leading me to have more than 7000 citizens at that point, and they need to eat a lot ,  a very lot.
So i had to build more shanty town living quarters for my farmers to sustain all my farms that sustained them in return.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At that point it's very self sustaining by now, the +7000 citizens are happy despite the very lot of invasions there is as for some reason my peace rating is reaching 100 , the fabled Pax Romana.

I had disabled the temples effects though, so it's way easier than normally (as you don't anger any of the pantheons regularly , meaning they're not making your city planning go down the drain)

[Folly]

Godfall
Coming November 12th, launch title for PS5, also available on PC in Epic Games Store, published by Gearbox.

Described as a looter-slasher, it's a game where you take up giant swords and hammers and smash things, chain combos, unleash flashy abilities, dodge and counter, fell giant bosses, collect lootsplosions, unlock diverse classes, customize said classes, complete a storyline rich with lore, and then begin grinding for godrolled epic drops. Can be played solo or co-op.

Short trailer.
Lengthy pre-launch video showcasing many of the game's systems.


EDIT:
Played this one for a few hours. It's garbage.
There are a few redeeming qualities, but they don't come close to making up for the horrible mess of problems that this game has. Performance is abysmal, combat is ill-conceived, graphics are overbearing with special effects and stylistically ripped straight from other games. Exploration is rigid, progression is meaningless, death-penalties are literally nonexistent, menus are just buggy, co-op is completely nonfunctional, always-online is required when you can only play alone...there's just so many things wrong with this, and I have absolutely no hope that enough of these issues will be resolved to ever make this a worthwhile purchase.
Avoid like the plague.

[Robsoie]

I've been toying a lot with the Augustus engine for Caesar 3 today and it's been a lot of good on what is, despite its age, still my favorite city builder.

Just learned that Augustus 2.0 has been released with lots of improvements :
https://github.com/keriew/augustus/releases/tag/v2.0.0

Definitively the best way to replay good old Caesar3.

edit : 2.0.1 for some good bugfixes now :
https://github.com/Keriew/augustus/releases/tag/v2.0.1

[JWNoctis]

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is out on Steam. Haven't spoiled myself to this one yet, but the previous title in the series was an artful metroidvania/platformer on the same track as Aquaria or Trine 1/2, had excellent music, a sweet little story, and was challenging enough to entertain without too much frustration for someone who's not a platformer junkie - In fact it'd have been about perfect if not for a bit of performance problem at places, which had limited impact by not demanding pixel precision.

Don't worry, from what I've heard, they learned from the last game and really leaned into the imperfections with the new one. Had to get rid of some of the things you liked to make space, but at what cost, progress?

Edit: Hopefully it's not true, but probably check some reviews before paying money for it.

Edit: Hopefully it's not true, but probably check some reviews before paying money for it.

Not true? Is there something bad going around about the game? Because by all indications -- my experience and reviews -- it seems like it has pretty universal glowing praise.

Though also of note is that the game, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, is on Game Pass for PC too. So if you subscribe to that it's effectively free to download and play (of course "free" is subjective since you're paying for the subscription). And I believe there's still the really good first-time deals for game pass at $1/month for first three months or something like that, for those who haven't messed with it yet.

So I finally caved in and got that game on sale...after waiting several months for a DRM-free release and realizing how unlikely that would be for anytime foreseeable.

It's a full-scale, full-blooded metroidvania - i.e. much larger, more varied and feature-packed, a LOT more actionized with actual and fluid melee moves and interesting-to-a-layman-like-me boss fights, and way smoother overall both in framerate and gameplay - though that's after three patches, so I probably didn't see the worst of what might once had been.

And there's still a lovely and remarkably touching story, still some of the best arts for a platformer, three solid hours of beautiful orchestral soundtrack for twenty-some hours of gameplay at a reasonably leisurely pace that almost never felt repetitive, and still challenging enough to entertain without too much frustration.

[Aoi]

Ring of Pain distills a dungeon romp into a series of cards arranged in a ring representing each discrete encounter. The ring is arranged in such a fashion that you can only interact with the two frontmost cards, though you can (usually) rotate it at will... though rotating past a hostile allows for an attack of opportunity. Gameplay loop is pretty much that of StS... try to reach the boss, fail, unlock equipment that can spawn in future runs, repeat.

You've got your fairly standard array of RPG-tastic equipment slots and stats, also represented by cards, as you fight your way through an unceasing array of monsters on each floor. No xp system though, which means it really doesn't matter if you keep fleeing, though you will end up with less currency... but straight equipment drops exist too, so skipping awkward combats is no problem.

There's a pretty decent amount of RNG mitigation available (and the devs actually toned down the RNG in the first two floors since a 'good' early item before that update could easily make or break a run); most floors will have multiple exits, leading either to the next floor or an optional challenge floor, the nature of which you can preview. Chest rerolls are fairly cheap (for the first few attempts) and offer two items in the same tier of a similar theme each time, so you're not stuck staring down one horribly worthless item each time either. You can win with a few different viable setups, and T4 gear isn't necessarily better than lower tiers (though they often have fancier mechanics)... my last win on hard mode heavily relied on two T2 items.

So the rough stuff: A good chunk of the challenge comes from one specific annoying as hell mechanic: Exploding monsters. If you kill them while they're in one of the two "front" slots (which considering they're the only two slots you can directly interact with...), they explode and punch you in the face. You mostly have to deal with them by either dancing around the ring since it takes them a turn to 'arm' themselves, with one of a few weapons that can hit non-front target, or pile on gear that interacts with the explosion mechanic in a defensive/beneficial form. The late game of each run is kind of rocky too-- you can get to the final floor as a nigh demigod... and get plastered by number inflation, mechanics that stop working, or "You entered the floor between two blockers with an inflated bomb next to you, and because it's a boss floor, your emergency get-the-hell-out-of-here skills are disabled. Good luck!"

[Robsoie]

On Circadian Dice, a month after getting the hard mode item unlock for the Barbarian, to my own surprise (considering how insanely hard it was for me with every classes that are not Barbarian in hard mode) i got the hard mode item unlock for the Elementalist.
Even got 2 more stars on that Ghost Ship hard scenario than with the Barbarian.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Let's see what it does

While it can be fun to use, it's a bit disapointing though as it seems to rely a lot on luck for the new abilities.

Looks like in hard mode, if you can't have Onk's lockpick and Chestplate, you are going to have an insane hard time in this mode. Lost so many attempts with other characters and item combinations there.

edit : on a different subject.
Since the death of flash support on modern browser, there have been some preservation project.
I had mentionned the project Flashpoint there :
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=154091.msg8171173#msg8171173

I learned of another project, by archive.org :
https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/19/flash-animations-live-forever-at-the-internet-archive/
that preserve "forever" flash animations without using Flash (so unlike Flashpoint) but a flash emulator called Ruffle built in their pages so you can watch some flash animation on archive.org without the need of the flash plugin or downloading the emulator yourself.
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash

a bit like they have a dosbox emulator built in on their dos pages.

[Folly]

Godfall

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Coming November 12th, launch title for PS5, also available on PC in Epic Games Store, published by Gearbox.

Described as a looter-slasher, it's a game where you take up giant swords and hammers and smash things, chain combos, unleash flashy abilities, dodge and counter, fell giant bosses, collect lootsplosions, unlock diverse classes, customize said classes, complete a storyline rich with lore, and then begin grinding for godrolled epic drops. Can be played solo or co-op.

Short trailer.
Lengthy pre-launch video showcasing many of the game's systems.


EDIT:
Played this one for a few hours. It's garbage.
There are a few redeeming qualities, but they don't come close to making up for the horrible mess of problems that this game has. Performance is abysmal, combat is ill-conceived, graphics are overbearing with special effects and stylistically ripped straight from other games. Exploration is rigid, progression is meaningless, death-penalties are literally nonexistent, menus are just buggy, co-op is completely nonfunctional, always-online is required when you can only play alone...there's just so many things wrong with this, and I have absolutely no hope that enough of these issues will be resolved to ever make this a worthwhile purchase.
Avoid like the plague.

I decided to give this one last chance before uninstall. After a massive patch that seemed to re-download the entire game...I was pleasantly surprised.
First of all, the massive performance issues that affected many PC players have been addressed. It's not perfect, but it's definitely playable now. In addition, many smaller quality-of-life issues were fixed. Honestly, this is one of the biggest turnarounds I've ever seen in any game.
I still have a lot of issues with Godfall, but none are gamebreaking. I'm going to do a 180 on my previous stance and say that this game is now enjoyable, despite many problems.