I really enjoyed both Far games. I never felt like any of the puzzles were large enough to get tedious. When I finished Lone Sails I just wished there had been a longer section of driving the ship… it kind of felt like you never got to reallygo before there was some interruption that you had to stop and get out for.
Jazzpunk was one of those games that left me wishing there was more of it.
Manifold Garden is just such a perfectly executed atmosphere, it’s hard to do it justice with description - like walking around inside an Escher drawing.
Red Strings Club!!! Woah!! Been a minute since I thought about that game. Very, VERY, good. Sort of a precursor to Potion Craft in a way, that really didn’t over stay its welcome. The pacing was great, difficulty curve was great, and it had a distinctly finite story that still left you satisfied. I’ve bounced off potion craft a few times because at a point the scale, and subsequent grind, is a bit much for me. Red Strings Club nails the middle ground with good increasing complexity without becoming a chore.
I totally agree on the pacing. The Red Strings Club is a masterclass of storytelling in a video game format.
I think it’s hard to describe as a game to gamers… the actual gameplay is pretty vague, the various minigame activities are almost inconsequential, but taken as a whole it’s a perfect experience.
Classic corridor shooters fill this niche pretty well for me, if that kind of on-rails experience is what you’re looking for. I recently played F.E.A.R. and it’s first expansion Extraction Point (don’t play any later expansions or games in the franchise though) and they’re some of the best, tightest and most satisfying FPSes out there. Metro 2033 is also good for this.
If you want a no-nonsense RPG I want to put in a good word for Skald: Against the Black Priory which is very tight and linear with minimal fluff, focused on telling its story and doing a few things well rather than spreading too thin.
F.E.A.R. has such good enemy AI. It’s an amazing shooter.
Still, I’ve only ever played it once, because I’m a big wuss and scary is not my thing, I just can’t do it again. Alma is fucking creepy and the entire atmosphere gives me nightmares.
But yeah, for anyone who enjoys shooters, F.E.A.R. is a great one.
It saddens me that my country (Italy) has such a low percentage of signatures. Most of us are either ignorant of anything happening outside of our borders, or straight up doomers who don’t believe anything can ever change for the better.
Big congrats to my fellow northern cousins. I was expecting Poland, who has a healthy videogame industry, to gather a good enough number of signatures, but 160% is wild! It’s refreshing seeing so many people joining the petition - It’s not even about videogames: this initiative will have huge repercussions on the lifespan of other, unrelated products and, in general terms, planned obsolescence.
I think it’s been very hard for us to spread awareness into countries where a majority don’t also speak English, as the organizer and much of the coverage is only in English.
If you know of any big Italian gaming YouTubers or streamers that might be receptive to helping or talking about the campaign, could you reach out to them about it with a comment?
Unfortunately, that’s not my area of expertise. I don’t follow streamers or YouTubers (Italian or international), nor do I have a close enough relationship with any of them that I’d be able to talk to them and convince them to mention this petition to their fans.
The one and only time some friends and I attempted to interact with a few local content creators (to publicize our free fan games we poured hundreds of hours into and NEVER attempted to monetize in any way), we either got ignored, insulted, or received vague answers that went nowhere. It soured me towards Italian content creators and vowed to never interact with them again.
One thing you can do: In person organising. It’s something the campaign has been really bad at. Have some flyers printed up and start handing them out. I don’t know the Italian school schedule, but if universities are still in session they might be good targets.
I did it last year, first at Gamescom and then at a local uni and I think it helped spread the word.
Here are the up-to-date numbers, the threshold percentages are now better than shown the image in the post but there’s still a long way to reach the total of 1 million
Honestly, I’m absolutely happy with my Steam Deck, I think it ticks most of your boxes (it even runs Linux, so it’s essentially a portable Linux computer designed for gaming), so I think it’s the better option that you’re looking gor. To your points specifically:
it’s really geared towards family/party gaming
There are plenty of party games on Steam.
it’s Nintendo, so you get the whole usual games (Mario Kart, Zelda, etc.)
This is the only reason to get a switch, if you want a Nintendo console and Nintendo games this is the way. Everyone who gets a switch understand this is the reason they’re getting it. If this is as strong a point to you that it makes you overlook everything else, then get the switch.
like most consoles, it’s plug and play and can be enjoyed in the living room (I kind of gave up trying to set up a proper gaming experience with my Linux PCs, given that I don’t have the hardware for it)
Steam Deck also has a Dock that you can plug to your TV, you’ll need controllers but even so it should be much cheaper in the long run since games are extremely affordable compared to Nintendo.
the battery life is not great to say the least (2.5 hours takes me back of the Game Gear in early 90s!)
Haven’t seen many benchmarks of the switch to be honest, but that does sound bad, the Deck only gets that bad battery life if you’re playing Cyberpunk or something, for more casual games it can get upwards of 6h. Plus you can get power banks that fast large it while playing, which I assume is also possible on the switch although the switch 1 used to have some issues with power banks.
the screen seems to be pretty bad too (at least it’s a step back from the OLED one of the Switch)
All but the cheapest Deck models now use a 90Hz OLED panel
the joycons are still not using a Hall effect sensor, meaning they might still be prone to drifting
While the Deck’s default sticks are not hall effect, they are easily replaceable and Valve sells hall effect replacements on ifixit, so if you ever get drift in your sticks it’s fixable.
most of the games will not be sold as proper cartridges but as download codes
If you’re going down this rote Steam sells download codes for much cheaper
the whole thing (console, additional gamepads, games) is quite pricey
The Deck is about the same price, but like I said you’ll end up saving in games since you start with your whole Steam Library and can get more games much cheaper.
it’s Nintendo, famous for their anti-everything (anti-homebrew, anti-emulation, anti-piracy)
The Deck is by far the most open console you can get, you can even replace the entire OS if you want to, but StramOS is great and you shouldn’t need to.
Perhaps Eco. It’s a bit like Minecraft but much more farming, if you choose the farming profession, and no combat whatsoever. Mainly a multiplayer game through public servers but it’s doable solo as well through settings.
So this is a very on-the-nose one but Farming Simulator 22 definitely fits your description. I’ve played it a lot despite being a city slick. It’s very calming in a way and satisfying once you have a decent production line going. I don’t love how much the story can get in the way with more whimsical farming sims so this (no story whatsoever) was a very welcome change. Oh and there’s a ton of high quality mods on Steam workshop.
If you liked Skyrim, check out Enderal - it’s a total conversion mod, but in Steam as it’s own game. It’s much more linear than Skyrim - the world still feels open, but it’s much more dense, and it’s scaled more like a traditional RPG, so if you wander off the intended path too far, you’ll get your ass beat by mobs that are much higher level than you.
Side quests are meh, with a notable exception of the Rhalata line, which is kind of like a combo of thieves guild and dark brotherhood. Main quest line is fucking wild.
If you skip the vast majority of side quests, you might have an issue with scaling, since you’ll be missing out on all that xp. If you run into that and don’t want to do the quests, just use the command console to cheat some in.
Baldur’s gate 3 would be my suggestion. It has difficulty settings from easy to insane. No quick time events. And the whole world was designed with care.
The combat system is very deep since it is based on DnD.
You can ignore side quests and still see the whole main game but even after 1500 hours in the game i was still finding new questlines and hidden caves to explore.
I loved BG3 but there are serious difficulty spikes. I couldn’t make it to the third act because the second act boss kept wiping the floor with me and I couldn’t adjust my party to make the fight winnable.
If you can get your hands on a misty step scroll, invis potion + longstride/jump spell, speed potion, or dimension door, you can free Aylin in turn 1 (provided you freed her). Granted, that doesn’t make the fight a free win, but she sure can eat a lot of hits. Also, putting sanctuary on a full healer is very useful.
Subnautica comes to mind. It’s a survival game with a heavy focus on exploring and a very structured story. Fluff text and the obligatory random documents and audio logs are mostly optional, though the game does have a mystery to solve so some of those you want to pay attention to. No real spikes in difficulty, it’s honestly an easy game.
And you can turn off some of the survival elements that some people find annoying. For instance, having to spend half your time early on hunting a specific type of fish for freshwater.
spoilerI’ve done entire runs of this game only salvaging water. No bladderfish, no coral + salt, no stillsuit, no water reclaimer. You can easily make it through to the endgame on the water you spawn with plus what you find in wrecks.
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Aktywne