It looks great! I love when the websites give you the link of their RSS in your face. I know that many sites is simply add “/rss” or “/feed” at the end of their URL but it seems to me that it have become a trend that the websites hide their feed url.
Just gonna say that their RSS feed is kind of wack at least on my readers, I can’t read the articles through my apps, only the headlines and the first couple article lines.
No man’s sky for the first time. It’s fun for a bit I think. Dunno if it’s “I’m gonna play this forever” fun - seems a bit repetitive. But it was on sale and it’s amusing enough. I tried it out because I thought starfield was so boring, and felt like playing a space game.
Ibplayed for like 60 hours the past 2 weeks. I still like it, i never found it too repetitive, because there are so many things. Like i still see completely new things every now and then.
The tutorial is quite long. After you have a ship, you can abandon the questline and just do whatever you want.
Requires reading the wiki a lot, but it lets you do whatever you want.
Gunship battles with aliens on the surface? ✅ Dogfights with pirates in orbit? ✅ Arbitrage and space merchant trading? ✅ Planet exploration and flora/fauna identification? ✅ Base building? ✅
Starfield is indeed boring but NMS isn’t much better IMHO. It is better, but I agree that it gets old quick.
Depending on your tolerance for jank, you might want to check out “X4: Foundatons” for a great space empire game. Start in a one-person scout fighter and work your way up to whole fleets, build stations, pirate, trade, explore, etc etc.
No, I don’t think that the levels become harder. They also gift so many free boosters to the players that it is way easier than 10 years ago when I first played the game.
I also feel like that after failing a level too often, that the game is cheating for you so that you don’t lose interest.
The game is “cheating” all the time. All the successful games with thousands of repetitive levels, go whale fishing and have engagement promoting strategies.
The general strategy is:
Introduce core mechanics “organically” over the first few levels, then keep a periodic “loading screen tip” reminder
Add a harder level every several easier ones
Introduce “boosters” with a few free ones
Dis-associate booster cost from real money cost by having an “in-game currency” (not actual currency) with some non-intuitive conversion ratios
Add a second kind of free-ish in-game currency to keep players used to making in-game purchases
If a player runs out of boosters, give them some free ones after a while
Improve user engagement with regular reminders and periodic offers
Promote FOMO with limited-time offers
Add mechanics with obvious MiniMax-ing strategies, that are however impossible for a person with a normal life to MiniMax, while offering a way to use in-game currencies to correct for that
Keep adding cosmetic changes
Introduce slightly new mechanics once in a while every a lot of levels, combine mechanics together if you’ve run out of ideas
For each level, have a predefined setup that makes it extremely easy to solve, along with normal generators that make them hard to solve
Use the easy setups to showcase new mechanics and boosters
Use the hard setups to make people want to spend boosters, and buy them, and use real money to purchase in-game currency to do that
Ideally, have a level generator with tunable difficulty that can be adapted for every user
Offer whales big spenders exclusive VIP levels, that require a lot of spending to win
Add one or more “leaderboards” for big spenders to showcase how much they spend good they are
Remove real world time clues for big spenders, don’t let them realize for how many hours they’ve been throwing their money away
If a big spender drops their spending or engagement level, shower them with offers, assign a personal manager, offer invitations to real world events… whatever it takes (up to a certain % of their expected monthly spending)
Periodically expand the game with hundreds and thousands of “new” levels… which follow the same rules
Bonus points if you add “seasons” and a “season pass”.
Extra bonus if you place and cross-promote a number of games with the same strategy but different cosmetic themes.
Casino mode: have thousands of “games” all in one, with different cosmetics, complex winning modes, and very simple mechanics (press button to spin, press button to auto-spin 1000 times, etc)… but in most jurisdictions you need to calculate and disclose the exact odds of winning in each mode for every level generator.
I’ve always thought it was weird that there hasn’t been a Hunger Games video game. Not to play out the teen movie storyline, but as the Battle Royale part.
Imagine creating a character using typical RPG elements (strength, endurance, speed, crafting, survival, etc.) with a limited number of points, the same number of points as everyone else. Then you’re placed inside different large arenas that have environmental hazards for a Battle Royale survival that could last up to 30 minutes per game if you’re good enough to make it to the end.
You have to survive against random encounters just like the gamemasters use in the books, dangerous animals, and you can get sponsorship drops like the COD kill streak rewards (healing items, tools, weapons). You could even make it through by not killing anyone if you’re good enough at surviving the environment, but you’d better hope you don’t end up in a fight.
It’s not a dedicated game and idk if servers even run these anymore, but the original popular “battle royal” was minecraft hunger games servers and they did kinda run like that - no stats obviously, but throwing you empty into a bounded world where you’d have to survive and craft and kill monsters and each other. I think some of them might’ve even had like your sponsor drops where you’d get potions or enchanted stuff
Epic’s game store is trash, and they fuck cleanly off with trying to fragment the PC gaming market. If they want to compete with Steam, build a better product.
You don’t have to use the platform. Competition is good, and steam taking 30% is massive. I’m a huge fan of steam but the fears of what happens post-gabe should have us all wanting other companies to put pressure on them. Hopefully it’ll drive them to promise continued pro-consumer practices such as proton (let’s gloss over DRM)
I agree competition is good, artificial segmentation is removing choice which is anti-consumer. Steam takes 30% but provides many services and features that Epic doesn’t, which is how Epic doesn’t need to charge as much, so many other services they just lack. I think more providers of options are good, as long as they’re not paying devs to lock games into their ecosystem. Valve had the option to lock down their VR headset to only work with Steam games, but didn’t, because they generally make some pretty good decisions in favor of their customers.
I agree though about what happens to steam when the current decision makers step down, it could get really gross really quick.
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. Everybody loved the first game, but nobody played the second game, including me for a good few years. But once I decided to try it I realized how much I had been missing out. It’s really good. Making it open world really works. There is fast travel but I never once used it because just running around is so fun. If you liked the first game, please try Catalyst!
Praey for the Gods - Obviously inspired by the classic, Shadow of the Colossus
The Upturned - A horror-comedy game with a great sense of humor
Your Spider - A great indie horror game with puzzles like Silent Hill. Plus it has an adorable spider. This is one of my favorite indie horror games.
Exanima - Looks at first like a normal dungeon crawler, but its physics-based combat controls and enemy AI make this a very unique and interesting game, even if it’s been in early access for ages.
Withering Rooms - Great, creepy atmosphere and an interesting story.
One I haven’t seen mentioned here yet was Metroid Fusion on GBA. My brother and I would play it at night, then have trouble falling asleep, convinced that every sound of the house settling at night was the SA-X coming to get us
We never beat it then, and only years later did I rediscover it and beat it. They definitely nail the feeling of helplessness, but it’s so rewarding as the tides turn towards the end of the game
The 7th Guest was the fist one I really cared about. I grew up watching horror movies from the age of 5, but never really played a horror game until I got The 7th Guest in a CD-ROM drive bundle for Christmas of '93. It’s not so much a horror survival game as it is a horror puzzle game, but a great game nonetheless. I’ll never forget the opening: “Old man Stauf built a house and filled it with his toys. Six Guests were invited one night, their screams the only noise…”
Hell yeah, The 7th Guest! I was a little kid when we got this game and the family used to play together trying to solve the puzzles, good times. Gave me nightmares lol.
I remember this game too! The live action cut scenes were really creepy as a kid. I distinctly remember the hands trying to press through the painting and the ghost luring you deeper into the maze. My dad and I got stuck at the one Othello style puzzle with the amoebas. We went out and bought a guide to get past it, only to learn that the author of the guide couldn’t solve it either.
Fun fact - that ‘puzzle’ has its difficulty set by your processor’s speed. The game uses a set amount of time to determine the best move for the computer, and plays the best it’s got after that time. On slower processors of the time, it would only be able to calculate so many options before needing to come to a decision, but because it didn’t account for better hardware, the computer can make the best move every single time, causing it to be unwinnable even if the human player also plays perfectly.
All I could think about, was this was the future!! The graphics (lol), oh man!! It was on a CD! That went in your computer
The game was kind of boring though, IMO anyways. Never really got into those 7th Guest, Myst games that deeply, as they could never hold my attention long enough.
I got farther than you, but felt all of those things didn't really improve or feel as fun. The weapon breaking is annoying. I feel like it's too quick.
Edit: I eventually gave up after the 'first' boss (I know you can do them any order, but water blight is generally considered the easier one to do first).
Ahh nuts, you’re right. It was harder to find the right one than I expected and didn’t even realize it was an April Fools joke. Thanks for the correction!
bin.pol.social
Ważne