I just picked it up on a steam sale. Excited to try it out again. Played it a little a long time ago but didn’t know what to do. Apparently it’s gotten a lot better and I love space stuff
Yup, been a fan for years, and it just keeps getting better. I really want to get a steam frame when it comes out so I can experience it in all its glory.
I returned to it when the corvette update dropped. Might come back when there’s another huge update. I usually lose interest after two weeks of playing it, because things start to get repetitive.
I should give it a try again… Release was not perfect but I hear so many good stories about the game. Then again, I just started my first playthrough from the Wild Hunt which(er) takes enough time…
factorio space age: it’s the best for a reason, but there are a few things that irk me. There is a “pick any of 3 paths to go first but you have to do all 3” kind of choice. And unlike RPGs you don’t really get all that much from each choice, so there isn’t much to optimize in that way, it doesn’t result in different builds. Space age 2.0.X still has a few issues, the UI for the actual space part is pretty bad and while that’s not a space age feature, the way they do logic programming is easy for simple things but takes up too much space and is too difficult to set up for slightly smarter setups, so there is no reward for doing those.
mindustry (purple planet): It does way better spacial puzzles than factorio. In factorio you have “too much” space or it’s too free form. You can pretty much build the way you want. Mindustry has more basic resources you have to mine in specific places, enemies are coming from a distinct direction and you have a lot less space to lay out your factory, so you have to make more choices. I liked that.
hollow knight: I did see a playthrough years ago and was mad that I spoilered myself. Played it, and had forgotten enough that pretty much everything was new again. Great game, 10/10.
hollow knight silksong: also played it, has it’s moments, ultimately I didn’t like it. Writing, mechanics, when stuff is available to find… there are some weird choices and imo regressions from hollow knight. Great soundtrack and it does deserve the goty award it got.
Highly recommend it. Although slight warning, you go to 4 new planets with different mechanics, and one is a “hate it or love it” situation. I loved it, but clearly a significant number of people didn’t.
I had a lot of fun with Soulstice, Assault Spy, Hi-Fi Rush, and Hellsinker.
NieR:Automata, The Surge, Death Stranding, and Scarlet Nexus were disappointing.
Every time I stepped ever so slightly outside my comfort zone I ended up regretting it. I will still flirt with action RPGs, but no more open world or soulslikes. If relatively linear action is not the core, I’m out.
Next year, I intend to invest more in indie action games. Currently eyeing Genokids, Spirit X Strike, and No Straight Roads 2. Also indie shmups: currently, Devil Blade Reboot, Birdcage, and Gunvein are on my wishlist.
For fighting games, I intend to get into Granblue next year. Possibly also Melty Blood and Blazblue.
Looking forward to fleshing out my library with more of my favorite genres.
If you’re majorly sick, I recommend playing a visual novel. They usually do not require much movement or thinking on your part; most only need you to click your mouse or tap spacebar to advance. You can look up a VN that suits your needs here: Link If you want a VN that has a particular genre or theme I can give more specialized suggestions.
Aside from that, you can play some simple automation or puzzle games. territorial.io works well for this. shapez 2 is also a good option.
Chaos;Head is a visual novel I’m tempted to recommend specifically for this type of situation. The plot revolves around a protagonist with the power to make his delusions into reality. Lots of mind-fuckery. It’d probably be a trip to experience while sick.
It is. It’s actually the first entry in the Science Adventure series. Steins;Gate comes after, though it also works as a standalone story. Robotics;Notes has a lot more references to Chaos;Head.
I played a decent number of games this year, and a lot of games that have huge fan bases. God of War 2018, Bloodborne (my first ever soulslike), Baldur’s Gate 3, Disco Elysium, and more. But the one that keeps gnawing at me is Subnautica
I remember when it was in early access I watched Markiplier play it, and it piqued my interest enough that it was the first time I ever bought anything in early access. Which is very unusual for me (I think the only other time I’ve done that was Hades, which was also great). I played through as much of the game as there was at the time, or at least as I could find. Which was still mostly in the safe shallows, no deep areas. Still out in a dozen hours or so and was satisfied given the price so I moved on.
In 2024 i recommended it to my wife, who loves marine biology and base building games. She, in turn loved the game and I watched her play through it. I got to see all of the deep areas. After watching her play it and the DLC I got the itch to go back to it, so I started a new file in late 2024.
By mid-January 2025 I was about halfway through that file. My wife visiting her friend in another city, so I had the house to myself, I think I took some PTO too. Single-digit temperatures Farenheit outside. My wife had taken our only car, so I was loaded up with plenty of weed, drinks, food, and snacks. So I had a few days to focus and finish that first file. I had such a great time I did something else I almost never do: I immediately started a new file to play it again. While I had so much fun, I also learned so much and had so many ideas of what I could have done better. Better places to build based, exploring in a different order, knowing all the great spots to farm resources and get blueprints and everything.
So I played through again. The soundtrack is phenomenal synthwave that perfectly suits the game, but by the time I had built my cyclops and was ready to plunge down into the depths I was also ready for a new soundtrack. I put on one of my favorite albums, which is also one of the most appropriate: Oceanic, by Isis.
I strongly recommend this to anyone who likes Isis or Subnautica. Just absolutely sublime. It’s like peanut butter and chocolate.
Space Station 14. The absolute best multiplayer experiences I’ve had since the heyday of Planetside 2 (not that the two games are even remotely similar, just thinking broadly about multiplayer enjoyment).
But it’s been a good year for other games too. Silent Hill 2 was excellent. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was excellent. Monster Hunter Wilds had some damn good looking monsters (but was not excellent).
Space Station 14 sounds interesting. What kind of multiplayer is it? I.e. is it one where the typical experience is to play with randoms via matchmaking, or is it a game best enjoyed with friends?
I have discord server full of nerds who I played games with during COVID (and its aftermath), and this might be a good excuse to see if I can reawaken that server for games
Kinda sorta like if Rimworld was set on a space station, but players control a single pawn, and servers are in the 50, 80, 150+ player count depending on server and time of day. The vibe is pretty similar to Among Us, just vastly, vastly more deep and complex than Among Us.
You join a server, create a character, pick a job ranging from janitor, bartender, musician, botanist, cargo, medical, security, research, and so on, then you join and try to keep the space station running smoothly by focusing on your job and working with other departments.
Or, you can, if you want, get a chance at being an antagonist with various goals ranging from stealing stuff to killing specific people, becoming a zombie and spreading the infection, or even blowing up the whole station with a nuke.
It’s incredibly deep, and it being a highly social game with some degree of roleplay focus, it’s crazy and fun and nothing else out there is quite like it, aside from space station 13 which came before it.
To answer your other questions - no matchmaking at all, you join a specific server and whatever job you end up with is determined by which jobs you have unlocked (by playtime in specific roles), which jobs you’ve set for yourself that you’d like to work, and which other players have also chosen those same jobs. Playing with friends can be challenging if servers are full.
And you absolutely must NOT communicate outside of the game unless the server specifically allows it. That includes Discord, that’s considered “metacomms”, so go in knowing you’ll have to use text chat for everything - it’s how everyone teaches and learns anyways, so it’ll come naturally
That sounds like a space version of Eco, with the roles stuff. In Eco, it’s impossible for one person to acquire all skills, so people on a server have to specialise.
I started out as a miner, to honour my late best friend who was a dwarf at heart and would definitely have been a miner if he’d been playing with us. Then I branched out into masonry to make use of the absurd amounts of stone I’d been mining. If I wanted something made of wood, I had to go flutter my eyelashes at my friend who had started out as a logger and branched into carpentry. I enjoyed having a domain that was my own, and a clear way to be useful to the server. Other players had some level of mining and masonry skill by the midgame, but for anything serious, they had to wait until I was online.
It sounds like Space Station 14 is far more hectic than this, but in an interesting way. I wonder if it will scratch the same itch that Eco did wrt being useful in a clear role
Honestly sounds and looks quite different at first glance, but if you enjoyed working a particular job and getting better at it over time, that’s for sure an itch that SS13/14 scratches well!
take botany for instance. can be as simple as planting seeds in hydroponic trays and harvesting fruit and veggies for the kitchen and for the chemistry department.
But one can go so much deeper than that - tired of onion plants only yielding two onions when harvested? well, cocoa trees drop six pods when harvesting, so you can rub a cotton swab on the cocoa tree and then rub it on the onion plant to deposit a random genetic trait from the cocoa tree, and if you’re lucky or if you repeat enough times the right way, you can end up with an onion plant that drops six each harvest! or, maybe just end up with onions that contain theobromine.
There’s also mutation of plants, which can add various traits (like offgassing tritium, or making the plant scream in pain when harvested, or making the produce so slippery that people slip and fall if they walk over it), and of course those traits can also get swabbed over to other plants.
there’s even an illegal “gatfruit” that produces a high powered revolver when eaten, tho those aren’t easy to come by
I should play more Space Station 14. I use to play quite a bit of 13, and it was quite fun to deep fry everything. I hope more things are added to 14! Otherwise I’ll just have to continue my escapades of “I only know how to make banana bread, botany boss, thanks!”
14 is in a really good state right now, I think! Wizden, being the upstream/vanilla can seem a little sparse compared to, say, the Starlight fork which adds a lot, or the dozens of other forks out there.
I’ve spent probably most of my time as botanist, with cargo/salvage a close second and musician a close third.
Definitely play more, especially if it’s been some time since you last tried it, the development of it is quite active and ongoing. Hell, wizden’s test server has been trying out a complete rework of the medical system, so they’re definitely not afraid to throw some huge changes out there and see how well the community responds to it.
When I played I was a chef! Often I just ghosted though in order to learn more. Follow people around, see what they do. Helped my autistic brain so I felt better about fucking shit up.
Loved my chef knife. Stupid mice eating my banana bread!
Spectating is fun! I haven’t done much of it but recently I followed a musician avali for their whole shift, and it ended up being really interesting. They found a spear and were told to get a permit for it, which they did, but then someone stole the permit and they got arrested for carrying a weapon without a permit despite being issued one, despite the sec officer being told about the theft, and the thief standing right in front of the sec officer at the time.
then they later got arrested for the same thing by the same officer.
they eventually tried to sue the security department, and the trial was about to start, but was interrupted by the jury room getting bombed, and when they tried to hold the trial in the hallways of course chaos broke out and they had to evac, and didn’t bother trying the trial at centcomm.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne