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[Stench Guzman]

Has anyone tried Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion?  It's a Zelda clone.

[Frumple]

Haven't tried it, but there's definitely a fair amount of gameplay footage floating around youtube. It looks pretty okay!

[Iduno]

Has anyone tried Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion?  It's a Zelda clone.

I saw something about it, and then forgot about it before I really looked into it. Any more information?

[Folly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_YXjp5z7d4

I bookmarked this video when Turnip Boy first entered my radar with the intention of learning more about it, then I got distracted and never actually watched it.

[Mobbstar]

ᗢ is a fun and relaxing little exploration game where you wander across an archipelago as a cat. snip

Best game I played all month. I didn't realise until way later on that cat can climb tree. It took a while to get cat out of tree, too.

Spoiler question

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What on earth is the big black hole about? I couldn't find anything to do there other than leave and embark.

[Robsoie]

Noticed that a few days ago the Augustus mod made a new big stable release for Caesar 3, version 3.01 :
https://github.com/Keriew/augustus
Tons of new additions, monuments, buildings and gameplay changes with updated translation in multiple language.

(for people that only want the modern engine in order to play Caesar3 unmodded, check the great Julius engine https://github.com/bvschaik/julius )
(Augustus is a fork of Julius)

[Robsoie]

I had mentionned the Zelda-like open world game "Pine" in a previous post.

Finally completed the 3rd vault and i'm working to settle my people somewhere. So i guess i'm on some of the last parts of the storyline.
Some impression after the time i spent in its world :

The Bad

- loading time are long, wouldn't be that much of a problem if it was only the original loading time (when you start the game) , but if you die, there will be another long loading time.
When you're in early game in which you die in basically 2 hits because you hit for so few damage and you have paper-thin protection, it's extremely annoying.
(also annoying that at the new start game/loading saved game you can't ALT+TAB to do something else , because it seems to pause the loading in the background too, so can't even browse the net while it's loading.)

- performance, sadly it's just not good (v-sync seems to be a complete killer on my system), as it's sad that to get a smooth play i had to lower the options so much, considering how more smooth some more visually intensive other open world game like those just cause can be.

- clunky movement, this problem shows in combat (how much times the attack go through my targets, it seems to be even worse if i "lock" a target, in fact i hit things a lot more if i don't lock a target for some reason) and is even worse in the platform sequences (the camera deciding to change suddenly and obscuring the view of where i try to land is just bad)
I even got a few time a jump that landed me between 2 rocks, making the character stuck in its falling animation forever.

- interface bug , there are a lot of times i got this problem :
When i use the Interact key (to talk or to activate something like a button/lever), there is a chance that it will not actually trigger anything that should happen
And once this problem occurs, from then there will not be any possibility to use the Interact key anywhere (the little icon is not present anymore and no Interact key pressing will do anything)
Additionally when this happens when you go to the options (save, load, quit) you will notice there's no text displayed anymore (though fortunately the buttons work).
The only solution is to quit to the main menu and load your saved game, it fixes it all.
It's not happening often, but it is not rare either.

- trigger bug , at several occasions i got a quest-related event not happenning when i reach a location in which said event should happen (like a cutscene)
Again, a go to main menu -> load your saved game and go again at location always worked to fix that.

- storyline forcing tribe relations change : this basically made me feel that most of everything i did to influence the politics up to the 2nd vault was an useless waste of time.
Because regardless, everyone will turn hostile again after the 2nd vault. At least this annoyance cease in the last parts of the storyline as the relations will change according to your actions again, not according to story scripts (well i hope).

- the "dungeon puzzles" , as the game is very Zelda-like it's not a surprise those big dungeons are filled with puzzles that block your path.
That blocking was my problem because some of those dungeon puzzle blocked your path so much that you couldn't just go back exit said dungeon (well they're called vaults) to go have fun elsewhere, you were forced to find the puzzle solution or just stay there forever.


The Good

- the world, it's very well designed, the many biomes that build a very varied atmosphere, the landscapes that are interesting to move around (as in not random generated without making much sense), the exploration that is actually fun as there's a lot of immersive vista around.
The world feels absolutely great , it's rare that i get a character in an open world setup just sit down and watch a scenery.

- the setting, while i'm usually not fond of cartoony/anime type of characters, i must admit that in Pine it works completely, in fact it surprised me that i developped some particular hatred for some of the tribes (damn those fox things, those bomb lobbing bastards) and wanted to help some other, i think it's a sign of a world building very well done.
The ancient story, the secrets , etc... it all shows that the game world has some depth, it's not just some empty fastfood-environment put quickly together, there's a consistency.

- the game mechanics, this tribe influencing and game of conquest and peace is just genius and introduce a lot of fun and motivation to the player to become involved into the game.

- the storyline, while some quests and outcome are too telegraphed unfortunately, there are some very good quest chain that makes you involved in the character actions. Overall i enjoyed the storyline so far.

- the "dungeon puzzles" , while i put a part of them in "The Bad" , another part of them is good , i enjoyed those powering up the various engines areas in the "futuristic" Moria-like vault.
 
Conclusion

Its an average game that could have been a good game but is marred by some technical problems that prevent it to live up to how great it could be (there's lot of potential for Pine to be a great game, good atmosphere, good open world, good mechanisms) if those problems weren't existing.
I wish your character had more personnality though, if a game does not leave you the choice to make your own character , at least make the guy not some emotionless robot. Even the animal people of those many tribes react to things better.

[Aoi]

Remember that old Flash game Motherload, where you'd just kind of dig endlessly deep, explode, upgrade, repeat? (It also just came to my attention they also did GEO, which is basically the predecessor to the following: )

Galactic Mining Corp takes the same basic formula, makes it mouse-based (mixed feelings about that) and layers upon layers of grind... which I'm fine with in this case, since this kind of a game is mostly about zonking out while mining and pushing for that next upgrade so you can go just a bit better next time. The current price point kind of gives me pause though, probably because it's the kind of thing I expect to see in a fairly inexpensive bundle.

[Iduno]

I found a game that's still in development that looks interesting. You have a bag of dice, draw up to 5 each round, and can use up to 3 each round (unless they're hollow which don't count against that, or heavy which I think count as 2 dice). You have attack dice, block dice (block doesn't disappear at the end of the round, but maxes out equal to your max hp, same with enemies), heal dice, and modifier dice. Modifier dice add their value to other dice, so they're pretty nice. You can also find mirror dice, which replicate another die, including bonuses (a 2 that gets +2 modifier can be replicated, and get another +2 from the same modifier die). Your starting heal die is crystal, so it can only be used once each fight.

The sides on the dice are usually 1 and 2 at the start, and can be upgraded twice giving you better results when that die comes up. You get a reward after each fight.

So far, there's nothing to do but see how long you can survive, but I'm curious what they'll do with it.

https://alarts.itch.io/die-in-the-dungeon Looks like you can run it in the browser through that link if you want to try it.

[Uristides]

I had mentionned the Zelda-like open world game "Pine" in a previous post.

[...]

Nice to see this mentioned here. I only played a bit on release because performance was abysmal, but at the time I just dismissed it as a combination of my trusty GT 740 not keeping up with it + me playing it through proton on Linux + 'twas an indie game that'd just been released, can't expect much. But I absolutely adored what I'd seen of the world at the time(controls were clunky indeed, but again, can't expect much when running at 720p with 20ish FPS), a bit of a shame to hear the post-release support didn't manage to turn it into the grand experience it could have been.

[Robsoie]

Noticed that a few days ago the Augustus mod made a new big stable release for Caesar 3, version 3.01 :
https://github.com/Keriew/augustus
Tons of new additions, monuments, buildings and gameplay changes with updated translation in multiple language.

(for people that only want the modern engine in order to play Caesar3 unmodded, check the great Julius engine https://github.com/bvschaik/julius )
(Augustus is a fork of Julius)

I noticed there's a coding genius that is trying to make a fork of the excellent Julius/Augustus engine and port Pharaoh to it, project Ozymandias :
https://github.com/Banderi/Ozymandias

here's a work in progress video of his work :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3tQPoa_XwU

[Jopax]

Bunch of shit I gotta talk about, been meaning to for a bit but it kinda keeps up piling and I'm too tired most of the time to finish a massive post in a single sitting :V

First off something I came upon related to Total War: 3 Kingdoms (I know there's a thread, cba to find it atm), seems that CA is dropping it completely, for whatever reason, no more DLC, not sure if they'll keep patching shit, probably not. They will put out a new one tho, and it won't carry over any shit from the first one, so that's a fun and obvious cashgrab. Never cared much for 3K but it's a rather shitty move that casts a nasty shadow on their other titles which I like quite a bit.

In other, less shitty things I've played and found worth talking about.

War Pips, a tug of war game where you send your little pixel dudes to kill other pixel dudes and their base. Has a sort of roguelite singleplayer where you conquer progressively harder islands, one fight at a time. Each fight makes the ones after it tougher but it also provides resources for upgrades as well as unit cards. This creates a nice risk/reward decision tree because every unit card is a single use per battle type of deal, so do you go for that extra fight to get some more snipers and APC's for future fights but risk making it all that much harder or do you try and swing it without those units? It does get a bit old after a few runs, but it's still being worked on and it isn't too expensive.
Plus the music kicks nine kinds of fucking ass, think the composer grew up playing tons of Red Alert games and was told to make whatever he liked, really raises the whole experience up a few levels.
I swear there was at least another 2 games I wanted to talk about but they escape me at the moment (tho it is kinda 3 AM right now :V), I'll get back to you when I remember what they were

[Robsoie]

Toyed with Frostpunk from the EGS freebie offer, running it thanks to Legendary to avoid installing the epic launcher.

It's incredibly ressource hungry in comparison to how it look (you're only playing with the city in view at some distance, there's no visual exploration of either it or the surrounding frozen lands, as it's only 2D icons when you send you scout parties) , nearly thought it was yet another one of those unity games in which devs just put assets in it without a regard on how unoptimisated they are.

Checking on google it is was just me (as i don't have a "strong gaming pc" ) , i quickly noticed it wasn't, even the devs acknowledged that their game is not really good on the optimisation part

My game works too slow and I have a killer PC, what should I do?!
While we have done a lot to optimize the game and the process is nowhere near completion (we gained a lot of optimization experience while developing the console version of Frostpunk), we know that some of you encounter issues with framerate despite launching the game on machines that should handle it without any sign of trouble. These inconveniences usually happen on powerful gaming rigs that have been overclocked - please revert the CPU clock values to stock ones, it should help, even if it seems counterintuitive.

In graphic options there's several usually hungry effect (there are tons of shadow, particles, smoke in the city) that can't be turned off, only set to low by example, with everything set to low the game still look very good so don't hesitate if you need better framerate, even if it could really be better considering the game visuals.
Lowering the resolution is helpful for performance too, but it showcase another very bad thing about the game : the font and texts that are small  by default (i would hate trying to play that game on a small monitor) will be made completely unreadable if you lower the game resolution, this has no solution sadly :/

Now for the good :
Frostpunk is a very good variation on the city builder genre, very well built dickensian atmosphere in this frozen apocalypse with lots of very impacting choices to do during the course of your city survival. The storyline elements and many events also add to the game so it does not end into only "find the exploitable mechanics" to win.

After losing in a few days on my first learning game session, on a further run i managed to get my city running for more than 20 days, the requirement to unlock the extra scenarios and i had lots of fun as some choices (especially the one that appears mid-game) will lead your city to run a very different course

In conclusion, too bad it's not  optimised and so some people will not be able to enjoy it truly on their systems, because Frostpunk is a very good and original city builder that is completely worth a try.

[Demonic Spoon]

ᗢ is a fun and relaxing little exploration game where you wander across an archipelago as a cat. snip

Best game I played all month. I didn't realise until way later on that cat can climb tree. It took a while to get cat out of tree, too.

Spoiler question

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What on earth is the big black hole about? I couldn't find anything to do there other than leave and embark.

Glad you liked it! I apologize for the late reply, as I completely missed your post the last few times I checked the thread. 

For those not in the know, the cat can climb up trees with up arrow, and climb down trees with a single short tap of the down arrow. Don't hold in the down arrow, or it just pans the view. You can also climb the masts of ships and at least one other thing.

To answer your question

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The black hole is actually where you find your friend! I will update this with a more detailed explanation once I rediscover how to actually get there, but working from memory, there are two chains of mushroom islands you have to go along to unlock "something" which unlocks the doors to the chamber where you friend is.


Right so, you go to the western cave marked G on my little map thingy, find the outlined crack in a wall and go inside and wander around until you find the unlock ring for the smithy, then wander around some more until you finally find the smithy, then go through there to the secret underground sea area! You can climb up the big mushrooms here to get a better view.

Climb up the mushroom on the north side of the island to spot another island not far away! Continue north this way a few times until you get to another big island. You will notice a building barred by 2 gates on this island, and to the north a giant whirlpool/black hole thing. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to unlock the two gates. The whirlpool swirls you around until you respawn, and doesn't do anything else, as best I could tell from various experimenting. The unlock rings for the gates are at the end of two mushroom island chains, one West of the Big Gates Island, the other East. Keep swimming west or east from the extremest parts of the Big Gates Island (BGI) and you should find the starts of the chains.

The West Island Chain is simple. West-southwest of the BGI you will find the first island, with a giant mushroom outline from which you can spot the next and final island where the first unlock ring is located. One gate unlocked!

The eastern chain is a bit more tricky. Just a short hop from the BGI to the first island directly east. From the first big shroom you can spot the second island to the ne. From there you can spot the third island to the n. From the third island, no more islands? If you blindly swim northwest form the western edge of the third island, you get to the fourth island. Tricky! Northwest again to the fifth island. And the second unlock ring, right next to the whirlpool! Nice!

Go back along the chain, and inside the now unlocked building, there is a friend! Nice! You have now unlocked another ending if you go sleep on the ship on the "marketplace" island.

In other game stuff, Too Deep is a challenging little Dwarf Fortress inspired platformer. Not too long, but that just means it doesn't overstay its welcome since it is a bit frustrating.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Urist the dwarf's greed may get the best of him as he struggles to collect gold and escape from the Hellspawn he unleashed deep beneath the mountain.

Protips:
-Keep hold down/s pressed in even after you jump from a sliding down a slope to maintain momentum. If you release it you lose the momentum meaning you can't cross magma gaps.
-Down+Jump to go through thin ledges, in case you ran past the optional tutorial message for that like me and got stuck on the next level
-Double Jump seems to not work if you are too far along in your arc jump, so try to double jump earlier rather than later.
-You can dash after every pogo jump, but doublejump does not refresh.

[Folly]

Starbase is coming to Steam Early Access June 17th delayed to July 29th.
Fly spaceships. Mine spacerocks. Shoot spacerobots. Build a spaceship. Program your spaceship. Build a spacestation to park your spaceships at. It's an MMO, so get some friends to do those things with you, and to fight other people who are trying to do the same things better than you.

Getting Started Trailer
Endoskeleton
Programming
Space Weapons
Guns!
More