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[Aquillion]

For those who haven't heard about it, Amazing Cultivation Simulator is a Dwarf Fortress-like / Rimworld-like based on Chinese Cultivation novels (that is to say, Xianxia novels) - a genre where people try to cultivate their inner power using martial arts bullshit, pills and medicine, and daoist enlightenment in order to become immortal demigods.  For those unfamiliar with the genre, imagine a DF-alike where you run a Naruto village or something along those lines.

You run a sect that starts as just a few outer disciplines; ultimately your goal is to raise a bunch of immortal demigods.  The game has a huge amount of depth to it - you can send your cultivators off on adventures, or your sect can be attacked by massive multi-part screen-sized megabeasts that require a bunch of cultivators in formation to deal with.  (Formations are magical arrangements with various effects and powers, which you can customize to suit your needs.)  You can turn any object into a magical treasure, and your disciplines can learn a ton of magical techniques as part of the various paths they follow or by reading secret manuals.  The game also has a complete Feng Shui system, so in addition to a room's quality you have to consider the elemental auras of any objects you place in it and the requirements of whatever purpose you intend to put it to.  Basically if you want DF with a deep magic system, this game is worth looking at.

The official English release comes out shortly, but the translation is already available for people who own the game on Steam and want to test it by following the instructions here; it seems basically complete.

[Mephansteras]

Huh, interesting!

[Aoi]

I love how much of practical feng shui gets mysticized into oblivion... like the south-facing front door thing. (If you track it back, it mostly has to do with the amount of sunlight certain rooms and the front yard will get.)

And the sword-surfing. I... just... no.

[Frumple]

Sword surfing is like absolutely iconic for the cultivation novel genre, heh. Flying swords both as transport and other things is an incredibly pervasive thing for what this game is cribbing notes from.

... anyway, as much punch magic nonsense as I've read of the last handful of years, I'm absolutely interested in this game, ha. Probably going to wait for a sale, and I'm not huge on the rimworld-ish aesthetic, but it's in my steam wishlist now

[Aoi]

Sword surfing is like absolutely iconic for the cultivation novel genre, heh. Flying swords both as transport and other things is an incredibly pervasive thing for what this game is cribbing notes from.

Yeah, but it's always struck me as ludicrous. Even more so than some of the genre. And I'm always reminded of this:

"It was made from this special metal from the heart of a dying star. And when I spun it really, really fast it gave me the ability to fly."
"You rode a hammer?"
"No, I didn’t ride the hammer"
"The hammer rode you on your back?"
"No, I would spin it really fast and it would pull me off the…"
"Oh my god, the hammer pulled you off!?"

[Frumple]

I'unno, to me it was always basically the exact sort of absurdity the genre tries to (heh) cultivate. It's just part of the natural evolution of "lets do increasingly ridiculous magic martial arts". You throw geographic features, you punch people horny, you hop on a sword and fly around on it. It's just how these worlds are supposed to work, heh. When you reach the point melee weapons are turning into UAVs, also being stabby hoverboards is just par for the course

Pretty sure I've read at least one where someone or another flew around on smaller, paired sword/daggers. Sworderskates, more or less.

[Zangi]

Cultivation is kinda stupid.  But then I thought Naruto's ninjas, including the run, was cool.

Since I sometimes am an observer of translated comics that include cultivation in one form or another.  This has my interest.

[Sirian]

Oooh this is relevant to my interests. I read a bunch of translated novels from this genre. If you want an entry point, I can recommend "I Shall Seal The Heavens" as a staple. I know that many would recommend "Coiling Dragon", "Stellar Transformations", "Swallowed Star" and "The Desolate Era" from the author "I eat tomatoes" but I personally didn't like his writing style.

Anyways, for me this genre was a breath of fresh air, having read a lot of fantasy as a teenager. The interesting points for me were :

-Morally ambiguous main characters.
-Long lived characters (centuries, millenia and more) and reaching for immortality in general.
-Scales of power that go from regular human to godlike, and everything in between. The pursuit of power is a central point in these novels and that appealed to me more than the typical "let's save the world from evil".

[Edit : I see that they'll release the english version on nov 25 so I guess I'll wait a bit]

[Cathar]

I love how much of practical feng shui gets mysticized into oblivion... like the south-facing front door thing. (If you track it back, it mostly has to do with the amount of sunlight certain rooms and the front yard will get.)

And the sword-surfing. I... just... no.

A lot of the spring and autumn era philosophy and thoughts are getting ridiculously mysticized, it's not a new phenomena. Partly due to the interpretative nature of chinese language, partly due to human stupidity and partly due to tradition, and partly due to the joking tone of some of the texts. Most of chinese fantasy based martial arts are due to that.
A master tells his disciple the secret to be immune to tigers and rhinos, which boils down to "stay in the city lol" - people take that seriously and go around telling people they can harden their skin and be immune to blades.

And yeah, Xianxia is ... a genra of its own.

[EuchreJack]

Probably a buy once they release the English translation.  Bonus points if its as bad as 70s kung fu translations!

[Rift]

I've played this quite a bit in the last month or so, and would call it fairly fun and interesting. One of the biggest problems is the lack of well.. basically any way to figure out how things work besides experimentation. Technically there's a tutorial for like the first few simple things to get your sect 'up and running', and you get this golden-core(mid-game) protector to keep you safe for a bit at start (hes not, incidentally invincible or anything, just far stronger then anything that would attack your sect.... except perhaps the single strong beast that spawns in one of the lower corners on your randomly generator sect-map... Do not piss it off until your stronger then it, which likely means being in a cultivation tier above until you know what your doing).
Anyway, early-game is easy to figure out.. but then once you hit mid-game things get more complicated with little explanation.. The google doc from the fan wiki is literally the only help you'll get, and they made it before the English translation so its terms are different for things). I donno how i would of figured anything out without it.
Some stuff is still pretty opaque to me, even 50hours in, but i think i'm finally getting the hang on some stuff.
It's definitely the type of game where you will likely restart a few times before you get the hang of it.
There is a great deal of depth here, and its nice to play with magic-ish that isn't  set in western fantasy.
I have read a bunch of xianxia though, so i am likely biased and find some stuff easier to understand.
Anyway, 50hrs in i'm more or less still late mid-game technically.. i do have a primordial soul(nascent soul) cultivator, with another soon to be, so things seem to be going well... I'll probly die if anything crazy that requires formations attacks me though.

[Sirian]

So, I caved in and I've been playing for a couple days, I have to say it's pretty good and you don't have to wait for the english release, the beta is already really polished and the worst thing I've seen is a missing space or maybe the use of the word "Law" where I'm more used to "Scripture" in translated Xianxia... nothing big.

And, according to their lastest steam announcement, if you buy it before the 24th, you'll get the panda DLC for free on the 25th.

Oh and maybe someone here can tell me : does it matter what element your tools are? And if it does, is it better to use a fire element pickaxe, since fire begets earth, or would the wood pickaxe be more effective, since wood overcomes earth? Similarly, should I build my well out of metal or wood? I could both imagine the metal boosting the water quality or the water boosting the wooden well quality, or maybe it doesnt matter.

Finally, something cool that I've discovered : you can use spirit stones (the currency) as a building/crafting/flooring material if you don't have much stone on hand. It's a tier 6 material and I think it looks nice, but the drawback is that it doesn't have an element so you won't get any feng shui from it. You can get spirit stones fairly easily when the travelling merchants come to visit you.

[Rift]

I'm not sure if the element of your tool matters at all tbh, as far as i noticed its too negligible to notice/care about. Artifact element definitely matters though, you should pick a element for your artifact that is fed by the element that your cultivators law is.
If you improve the feng-shui of your well by making sure the area around it the element that feeds it (or if its in a room, also the quality of the room), i think it performs better. I'm not sure you'll notice the difference on specifically a well... maybe if you have like really bad feng shui people will get injured on your well sometimes, pretty sure feng shui effects accident chances quite a bit, it should also increase/decrease chance of better quality stuff in most workshops, but i think water is one of the base-materials and thus, has the same quality regardless.   Oh, and peoples opinion go up when they are near attractive things and high feng shui things (and down from the inverse).
Uhh to be clear if your well was built in a area of high-earth, you should build it metal which feeds on it. once you get the observatory you can see specifically the fengshui of a object or location (which isn't JUST element, some stuff like what side of the room doors on matters a lot... or how crowded/empty a room is, or how nice the stuff in the room is)
Yeah spirit stones, useful, never have enough. For the record, in addition to buying/selling to the merchant that comes a few times a year, you can also trade directly with sects on the map once you 'talk' to them once, (which is just giving them a gift on the map scree, if you give them a shitty gift you don't get negative opinion or anything so dont worry). Finally if you buy a auction permit ONCE, you can visit the auction house that happens fairly often, as many times as you want. Tons of ways to use spirit stones.
Oh, and spirit stones are used in a lot of recipes, lots of structures use them, alchemy uses them for some stuff, like spirit crystals.

[delphonso]

The name *chef kiss*

I'll definitely check it out. I'm honestly so satisfied to see more Chinese games trying to reach a wider audience, especially as it should pressure higher quality in the game market here.

[EuchreJack]

So, I caved in and I've been playing for a couple days, I have to say it's pretty good and you don't have to wait for the english release, the beta is already really polished and the worst thing I've seen is a missing space or maybe the use of the word "Law" where I'm more used to "Scripture" in translated Xianxia... nothing big.

And, according to their lastest steam announcement, if you buy it before the 24th, you'll get the panda DLC for free on the 25th.

Yeah, I did too.  Help them playtest their english version before release and get free Pandas!

EDIT: Sigh, and yet another developer can't even get their save system to work right.  They kinda need to fix that if I'm going to play it.
EDIT: I found a fix!  Change language to Chinese, close and reopen, change language back to English, close and reopen.  It works!

Also, how to I unlock the simple, ordinary furnace?  I think I've built everything, yet it remains hidden.
EDIT: Nevermind, just need to wait I guess.  Or maybe build a building, I dunno.