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[Robsoie]

Looking at screenshots it looked like some facebook type of game so my interest was near 0 but still decided to check some player review.
After reading a few (i must say that lots of reviews are negative) it is apparently not really a simulator but a mix of puzzle and card game, along with a story that is very inspired by harvest moon type of game (some relative dies, you inherit his stuff then a bunch of one dimensional characters will sometime talk to you and you marry one or somethign like that). Maybe some potential so i gave a try.

And while i'm at the part of the story that is still teaching you the basics, the gameplay seems actually very ... basic and requires using a card on your field each turn, but that simplicity is probably because so far the field is very small and there's mostly only 1 card to fit each turn (a season is a few turns) so maybe it will feel less limited after a while.

But clicking around the screen, it seems it's much more in depth and complex than what i am seeing at the beginning, as there are many screens to check and decisions to take around with managing stocks, tools and various other stuff. That would be good as gameplay feels very limited for now .
Will have to see how it will go when i'll have more time.

edit : toyed a bit more, expanded the field from the technology panel, and made my first wine without really understanding much and got more than 70% of quality despite what the tutorial guy wanted was unreachable "it needs at least 5 body" when toying with the sliders...
Made lot of money selling the bottles i manufactured then went for another year, that along some characters popping up and discussing with my own without any kind of dialogue choice, and without really much to do other than clicking for next turn, then placing the tile on the overexpanded field and waiting for more... with the goal to upgrade  my buildings but i gave up before reaching that point.

While i hoped for some managing fun, it really didn't managed to hook me in any ways unfortunately, this kind of very simplified "simulator" is really not my thing.

[Rince Wind]

There is a free addon for the wine making simulator, that has to be "purchased" extra.

[AlStar]

I played through the story mode (which is basically just an extended tutorial). I don't know that I love it, but it's definitely got some interesting ideas going on. I almost went broke at one point because I couldn't afford to bottle my latest wine. Thankfully, I got lucky and a supermarket put in a huge order that netted me the several thousands I needed to get everything bottled, and that wine managed to hit a bunch of the special orders, giving me even more money.

[Iduno]

Yeah, I'm enjoying the game so far. Although I hired an agronomist, and like the grumpy onanist better.

Edit: although you start with a red wine, and 90% of the early-game orders are for a white wine. "Hey, I loved the literally 1 type of wine you can make. Make me something completely different that you'll be able to afford to plant in like 2 decades."

[Aoi]

Yeah, I'm enjoying the game so far. Although I hired an agronomist, and like the grumpy onanist better.

I'm not sure how to feel about myself that I had minimal interest in this game until you said that. Now I'm fascinated.

[AlStar]

Edit: although you start with a red wine, and 90% of the early-game orders are for a white wine. "Hey, I loved the literally 1 type of wine you can make. Make me something completely different that you'll be able to afford to plant in like 2 decades."

That's pretty fun - as was the special order for 70+ quality right after I made my first (35 quality) white... like, I appreciate that you apparently think I have talent, but I'm brewing up antifreeze here.

Thankfully, unlocking cask aging really helped with that - I don't think it's possible to make a good chardonnay without it, as you simply don't have the tools needing to bring out the flavors they want otherwise.

[Robsoie]

new freebies this week that seems to be interesting :
Spirit of the North is a rather nice visually looking adventure game with you being a fox running around.
The Captain is some mix between point&click and FTL adventure game through space in "retro" graphics.

Next week  are announced :
Ark Survival Evolved (they had it a freebie for a week a few years ago already)
Gloomhaven (adaptation of the famous tabletop/boardgame)

Rather hyped for Gloomhaven myself.

[Iduno]

Yep, Ark (dinosaur fighting game) and Gloomhaven (card-based rpg board game with co-op) this week.

Curious if they ever figured out how to implement several of the cards in Gloomhaven, it was about half finished last I checked. I think they got 90% of the classes, but several important class powers just didn't exist, and may not ever get added.  It looked pretty good, but you do need some agreement between players on how to play, especially because you're not supposed to say what powers you have/are using, but can say in general terms what you plan to do (and if you're going fast or slow).

[AlStar]

I have the actual, physical game, which I've only gotten the chance to play a couple times. How good is the computer game version of it?

If it's any good, it might be worth putting a Bay12 group to play together.

[Persus13]

I found it enjoyable in Early Access, but I don't have the original board game.

I have a couple of friends who really enjoy playing the digital version because they don't need to do all the set up and take down they need to do with their physical copy.

[Robsoie]

The only odd thing is that all mercenaries you employ in the guild look like more or less ugly monsters (out of the Scoundrel that looks human). I was expecting a more classic D&D roster from what i had read of Gloomhaven.

The tutorial is nice, after a couple of actual tutorial missions, the other tutorial missions are in fact mini-puzzles you need to solve with each characters, finding how and when to use their various cards, and which cards to choose for a given situation (there's only 1 solution at each puzzle).
That Cragheart guy with his retaliation abilities seems to be a room killing monster, though it can be costly in health.

edit : started a campaign , took a brute and a scoundrel.
went to the only available scenario at that point "black barrow".
So it consist of 3 rooms and some enemies to kill in each, with the scenario requiring every of them being killed.

1st attempt : cleared the 2 first rooms and both my mercs became exhausted in the last room, burning card is something you really should avoid doing (and resting burn cards)

2nd attempt : managed better once i understood that you should NOT take your time (as waiting some turn will mean you'll use a rest option more often, forcing you to burn cards to refill your hand, cards that would have been usefull to avoid exhaustation) and just before entering the last room with my brute i noticed the "open door" action oddly didn't appeared ?
But i still played my move action to land in front of the door.
The brute decided to walk there as expected, but much less expected he decided to then spin on himself for a dozen of seconds, and then he decided to just walk all the way to the wall next the exit (despite not having enough move point to that), then walk through that wall into the void outside of the map.

Spoiler: hey come back ! (click to show/hide)

At some point the brute stopped , but the game was still playing (i was surprised it didn't crashed), i had to again exhaust both him and the scoundrel cards again to end the mission in failure (but at least getting the money looted to buy some equipment in town) because that idiot was unable to come back to the map anymore.

[Robsoie]

Finally completed that first campaign queston my 4th attempt, the difficulty to me was to move and kill fast enough before running out of cards (due to the resting  burning a card each time to refill empty hands) and not really the enemies that never were in position to really kill any of my mercs. It seems for some character the timing is really tight and does not allow at all for wasted turns.

The Brute had some cards to spare but the Scoundrel was on her 2 last cards (despite i didn't wasted a single turn with her), one more turn and she would have been exhausted and left before completing her personnal objective in that mission (looting at least 6 gold stacks), good i kept a card with a loot ability as it allowed her on the last turn to grab 3 stacks, that rewarded her with a perk point (3 perk points and you can unlock some ability for the character).

Unlocked the next quest in that chain, and my Brute managed to loot the chest on the last turn, giving another side quest location (Sulphur Mine). I was hoping to get some level up but even after all of this i'm still away from level 2.

There seems to be a big level of randomness in battle, sometime you hit (or be hit) with x2 damage, sometime with -1 damage, sometime with +0 damage, i have no idea if that can be controlled or if it's totally random, but that can make a big difference between wasting 2 turns to kill an enemy or kill it in 1 turn.

EDIT : surprised to see Ark running so smoothly and nicely on my potato (at least the default The Island game world) , i guess they really improved its optimisation with the years. Obviously on low settings though but it's really smooth going. 
But as expected it takes a huge place on the HD, more than 100gb (and that without any of the DLC as it would certainly require another HD ) so if you give a try make sure you have enough free space.

[Persus13]

There seems to be a big level of randomness in battle, sometime you hit (or be hit) with x2 damage, sometime with -1 damage, sometime with +0 damage, i have no idea if that can be controlled or if it's totally random, but that can make a big difference between wasting 2 turns to kill an enemy or kill it in 1 turn.

In the board game there's a pool of tokens that you draw one for every attack to determine how the damage modifier enemies and your characters deal. Each player character has one and all the enemies share one iirc. For the digital version the UI should show somewhere what tokens are in the pool the enemies are using (I think its on their cards at the top if you mouse over them?) and your characters have individual token pools as well. When your characters level up you can improve their chances of pulling better damage modifiers or remove x0s and -1s from their pool.

[Robsoie]

Good to know, thanks, will have to level those mercs to get more reliable results.

edit : tried the Sulphur Mine side mission and i really don't like how extremely tight the turn limits (well the exhaustation) are there, i did very well pressing forward and killing fast and was close to complete the scenario but ran out of cards on both characters just before i could kill the last weak enemy of that scenario (that has more rooms than the Black Barrow mission, meaning more walking to do), as unfortunately killing the scenario boss is not even counted, you need to kill every minor mooks to complete it.
Confirming that the main difficulty is not really the enemies (as i was again not in position of having any mercs dying) but that turn limit system

There's a point in which to avoid the exhaustation failure you need to separate your 2 mercs and send them attacking some side room to gain time (as there are very few enemies there), but even with that, that turn limit system is really small.

I guess i'll have to continue grinding more money until both my mercs can afford those +2 movements boots at the merchant, hopefully those should help to push back the turn limit.

[Iduno]

I have the actual, physical game, which I've only gotten the chance to play a couple times. How good is the computer game version of it?

If it's any good, it might be worth putting a Bay12 group to play together.

It's easier to set up, but I'm not sure which classes are complete and/or exist at all. It's also (or was) a different campaign than the original, which might gain some interest.

Edit: I'd be interested in giving it a try. It's not like it won't be worth the (zero) money.