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[Mephisto]

Winter Steam Sale is... go? I did today's entry in the advent calendar but it's been about 40 minutes since the start and I seem to be seeing the standard selection of sales.

Shit, thought I was in the deals thread. Whatever. This will remain as a testament to my folly.

[nenjin]

Wayward Souls.

Is in Early Access on Steam, and a family member bought it for me for Xmas.

It's...good!

It's a roguelike 2d fighter. Think "Secret of Mana", because this game sure as hell is. Consider it "Secret of Mana" meets "The Binding of Isaac."

You get like 6 characters with their own move sets and special abilities, and have to fight your way up a tower, beating various procedurally generated levels, beating bosses, random challenges, etc...

As you play you collect Gold that you can spend between games on each character class's upgrades. In game, there's also these shrines which give you one of two options to upgrade your basic abilities do crazy stuff. Doesn't last between games. There's also hats to collect, and pets to liberate during gameplay, which provide small bonuses to you while you play.

Many games go for that nostalgia factor with the graphics, the music, the stories.....so does this one. But it actually manages to strike the right chord with me. The sprite art and music really nail that era of games perfectly, and the story manages to not be insultingly derivative either. That said, some of the references may be a little too on point. The boss death animation is almost a frame for frame copy of the way Secret of Mana bosses die. There's Castlevania treasure-in-candles, Thwomp Traps and just a lot of other stuff that feels very inspired by stuff from the golden age of RPGs. But it's all done very tastefully and feels like a proper homage rather than blatantly copying.

Gameplay feels a little on the looser side than tight. I struggled starting out with M+KB, which is weird because I've put hundreds and hundreds of hours in to the Binding of Isaac. But as soon as I went over to a controller, the game got a lot easier.

So yeah. I feel like this game deserves more attention than it's getting, but I admit I haven't played many of this most recent wave of 2d roguelike beatem ups. So maybe it isn't all that special. But it got my attention and kept me playing pretty quickly, because again, it hits all the right nostalgia notes and is a decent roguelike on top of it.

If I have one minor criticism to level at the game, it's that I _hate_ the fullsize character art. It looks like awful "Westerner-who-wishes-they-could-draw-anime-like-the-Japanese" stuff. The sprites and all that are good, even great. But their full size character art has these horrible giant anime eyes and cartoony faces with expressions that....honestly remind me of gross amateur hentai.

But that's a minor quibble on an otherwise interesting and well executed game.

[Frumple]

Oh hey, thought that sounded familiar. It's also on android, where the controls are about as good as you can expect a tablet/mobile ARPG to be.

... which is to say playing the game is pretty sodding unpleasant, sadly. Good to hear the PC version handles better.

[nenjin]

I won't say this game has "Souls-like" levels of skill and gameplay, but it does get much tougher as the game goes on and, as upgrades start getting fewer and far between, you really have to up your game to keep progressing. Already halfway through the first character's missions and I feel like it's already quite hard. It's a somewhat unforgiving game, and treads the line between a big 'ol health pool, and enemy attacks really hurting. Combine that with infrequent healing and yeah...it's got a nice edge to gameplay. It sucks that there isn't a dodge native to call characters though. At first it didn't feel like it needed it but midgame I'm starting to feel the limitations of my d-pad movement.

There's also just a lot of nice variety in enemies and exploration type thingies, like little random set pieces of challenges sprinkled in every play through. Lots of palette swapping for levels to keep them feeling fresh. All in all it's quite a nice package.

[NullForceOmega]

Been playing a very strange side-scrolling physics based puzzle/brawler called Unearthing Colossal.  It's got an amazing aesthetic, and the physics is usually on point, but after the extremely short tutorial section it lets you loose onto the world and is so damned opaque that I very seriously cannot figure out what to do.

In either direction of the starting portal are puzzle doors, those weren't too hard to figure out, but beyond each of those doors is a boss.  One of the bosses, a giant worm that flips back and forth, was not difficult to kill, but that leaves me locked in its arena with no apparent way out.  I think that I am supposed to jump on top of the worm (while it is still alive) and let it throw me out of the arena (there is another portal just past the door that won't open), but I have not been able to get that to work.  The other boss is a stalk with an eye and four arms that throw rocks at me and kills me before I can really do anything.

There are some pretty cool mechanics at play here, but they are completely unexplained, and I've only gotten one of them to work in a way I understand.  There are three obelisks/altars in the starting area which allow you to spend harvested souls.  One of them (marked with a sword graphic) lets you use souls up to three times to enhance picked up items to make them more durable and useful as weapons (some items change appearance), and some of the items are pretty useful, you can rip the wooden palisade directly to the right of the gate when you exit out of the ground and then turn it into an extremely effective shield through this process.  You can also turn the candlestick in the 'sanctum' into a sword, pretty cool.  The second altar (marked with a demonic skull) lets me use souls once or twice but I have no idea what it is doing.  The last altar is marked with a giant and I have been unable to get it to do anything at all, even when I have enough souls for it to display a green bar.

I can't really call the game "good", because it is completely inscrutable, you will take damage (when you start smoking heavily you are close to death) but you often will not know what is actually damaging you.  Sometimes the physics goes nuts and you end up dead for no perceptible reason.  Progress is reset when you die (and death will be frequent) though you can sometimes regain souls you were carrying (if they are in an accessible location).  I don't have problems with games that intend you to learn by trial and error, but there comes a point when the player feedback is so lacking that figuring out what you are doing becomes a chore, and this game really rides the edge of that line hard.

[Egan_BW]

http://meditations.games/index.php

A launcher which gives you one small game and accompanying quote/description every day of the year. Each game made by a different contributor.
Also it's completely free, of course.

Worth a look if you're into small or experimental stuff, I think. I've only played the game for today, but I like the idea of having something new to try every day of 2019.

[Cthulhu]

https://lastyearthegame.com/the-game/

Asymmetrical multiplayer, 5 survivors versus 1 killer. Rather than a Dead By Daylight clone, this seems to play a bit more like L4D, except the only zombie is one souped-up special infected. You can swap between killer types as the situation requires.

The discord angle is pretty bizarre, not having steam feels like a way to dodge reviews.  The fact that this game has been vaporware for years is also a little concerning, but I've got all the other slasher games so why not.

I've been playing Bastard Bonds, which is pretty cool.  Its steam page makes it look like a porn game, and the developer's others games make it clear the fixation on bears (big hairy dudes, not ursines) is not a one-off thing (the other games actually are porn), but Bastard Bonds isn't porn.  There's nude sprite monsters but not much sexual content or graphic nudity.  I still don't think I'd play it at an airport or something.

You play as a convicted criminal (you can pick from a huge list of crimes, along with whether you're innocent or guilty) who's been marooned on a prison island full of other convicts.  The goal is to travel across the island to the eastern port, where you hope to find a ship that can take you to the orcish homeland where nobody gives a shit about human laws.  The world map consists of interlinked location maps, over 200 of them, and each one plays out episodically, mostly killing monsters and slowly expanding your band of merry bears.  It plays a lot like fire emblem, a very simple combat system that's still engaging thanks to the "risk" mechanic.  Each character gets one action per turn and anyone (including monsters) can choose to "push" the action, which lets them act again in that turn but increases risk.  The higher the risk, the greater chance to fumble, which instantly ends your turn and doubles damage taken until your next action.  It's weird at first, but when you get the hang of it it makes the combat more fun, taking advantage of fumbles and trying to push your characters as far as you can.

The other cool feature is the stronghold, once you've cleared a defensible map you can make it your hideout, hire people to take care of inventory, merchants, etc. and go back to talk to your dudes and manage their inventories.  Over time you can handle bigger strongholds and recruit more dudes.  The biggest strongholds can hold like 40 or more dudes but take a shitload of manpower to claim.

Tons of sprite customization, you can do almost anything with the default customization features, and monsters also have a lot of visual variations so it doesn't feel samey fighting groups.  The storytelling is also fun.  There's some degree of interpersonal character development, you can build friendships with your companions, etc. but don't expect big branching dialog trees or romance subplots.  Aside from that there's not really a linear narrative, it's more like Dark Souls (ugh, dark souls comparison, ugh) with ambient storytelling, figuring out the history of the island by exploring its locations and occasionally finding a book or two.

Overall I'd definitely recommend it to people who like exploration and tactical RPGs, and don't mind the pixel nudity and general bear aesthetic.  You don't have to be a bear, but the majority of your companions will be.

Edit re: last year:  Wew lad.  It's getting skewered, for all the things I knew would be bad.  Hard left swipe on this one.

Oh, I also forgot to mention in Bastard Bonds, enemies have a small chance to hesitate when near death, and if you can speak to them you can recruit them or extort them for items that are hard to get anywhere else.  You can recruit almost anything in the game if you've got the right skills to communicate with it.  I have a cyclops on my team, with insane HP and damage and huge carrying capacity.  Now if only I could get him to put some clothes on.

[Kagus]

Yeah, I've got BB in my library because I liked the sound of the stronghold features, but the leveling system didn't do me any favors and reading about how the rest of the game plays out (including those stronghold features) didn't really get me hooked on playing more. Some of the art style kinda bothered me too, but I seem to remember the environments being quite nice.

The chargen options were great though, especially if you had the patience and vision to actually make the most of the clothing and whatnot. Was quite entertaining making a fellow with no pants and making his backstory be that he was imprisoned for the crime of indecency.

[Akura]

Woke up this morning thinking I should be this game. Literally, one of my first conscious thoughts is, okay, I'm gonna go buy it after eating breakfast. I don't know what prompted this thought. It's been on my radar a few times in the past couple of months, but I never got it because other things came up. I hadn't even really thought of it until now.

Looking at the store page, the game, My Time at Portia, leaves Early Access in three days, and the price will subsequently increase by 50%.

Played the first 15 minutes or so, but the first impression was pretty positive.

[Wiles]

So I've been playing a game called Equilinox lately and I have been very pleasantly surprised by it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/853550/Equilinox/

It is a lovely little simulation game where you cultivate biomes by placing down plants and animals that go well together. You get an income of points (From having animals who are satisfied with their environment I think?) and you use these points to selectively breed new traits into your plants and animals so you can unlock new evolutions. Unlocking a new tree for example usually involves selectively breeding your current tree to be of a certain height and colour. Once a tree has met the pre-requisites you can "evolve" it and a new species of tree will eventually grow and now you'll be able to plonk the new variety of tree down whenever you want.

I found it to be a very relaxing experience, it wasn't too hard to set up a a biome to be self sufficient so I didn't feel like I was constantly micro-managing everything. At the same time I always felt busy enough for things to remain interesting. At points where the game did lull I would just fast forward for a short time to get enough points to work on new evolutions.

It is not an expensive game at around 11.50 CDN. I got about 8 thoroughly enjoyable hours out of it. I feel like I've experienced most of what the game has to offer at this point and I probably won't play again for a while, unless there's new content added (which is possible, there have been small content updates since release).

[Mephisto]

Age of Wonders. Fantasy 4x series. Research things, build stuff, and cast spells. The series started in '99 and is still going strong.

The latest entry in the series? Age of Wonders: Planetfall. Basically Beyond Earth or Pandora: First Contact. The faction they've advertised is basically space humans, with the requisite "feel good" American president quotes and diplomacy bonuses.

It'll probably deserve its own thread when it comes out. But for now, here we are.

[Frumple]

... man, I can't help but be immediately disappointed they went sci-fi instead of spelljammer/explicit fantasy-in-space. There's like bloody no interplanetary magic-y stuff out there, far as I've noticed.

It'll probably be pretty decent, but... still. Still.

[itisnotlogical]

Neverwinter Nights is probably my least favorite D&D videogame, yet I keep coming back to it. Probably fond memories of KOTOR.

[Niveras]

... man, I can't help but be immediately disappointed they went sci-fi instead of spelljammer/explicit fantasy-in-space. There's like bloody no interplanetary magic-y stuff out there, far as I've noticed.

It'll probably be pretty decent, but... still. Still.

I gave it some thought and I have to wonder what it would even look like. Well, apart from spelljammer (which I'm not familiar with), and warhammer, which is mostly fantasy in space except the magic is either warp or psionics.

I figure space "fantasy" makes use of dimensions rather than planets. How would a fantasy culture that runs on magic handle space travel and colonization? I guess they can teleport things around, and in some cases terraforming exists - Age of Wonders even provides the example where you could change tiles into ice, or fertile, or dead, etc. What about completely barren planets? Would they just be ignored due to a lack of magic to manipulate? Demons and eldritch creatures (thinking again of the shadow demons from AoW: Shadow Magic) still tend to have ecosystem and lifestyle, surely they can't exist on a dead planet. Even the undead need an existing living system to live on parasitcally. Or maybe these questions are simply the areas where such a game would have room to answer and grow?

[Mephisto]

How would a fantasy culture that runs on magic handle space travel and colonization? I guess they can teleport things around, and in some cases terraforming exists - Age of Wonders even provides the example where you could change tiles into ice, or fertile, or dead, etc. What about completely barren planets? Would they just be ignored due to a lack of magic to manipulate?

Now you've got the plot for a 4x take on Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

Man. If I weren't absolutely bogged down in about eight other things right now...