The World Ends With You (DS): Asymmetric action RPG where your left hand and right hand are playing different games in parallel, which is deeply connected to the game’s themes of individual experience and semiotics. The switch remake unfortunately ditches the core gameplay to make it more widely accessible but the original game is worth getting into.
I can’t believe I typed out a whole recommendation about tunic and outer Wilds, and then scrolled down and saw your exact same recommendations. Lol. I guess excellent games are universal
I had a moment in Tunic where I realized what the references in the manual to the [HOLY CROSS] were talking about, but I don’t think my revelation was the typical.
I’d actually figured out the [HOLY CROSS] really early on, solved a bunch of puzzles using it, got some manual pages I probably wasn’t supposed to have yet, but didn’t know that the thing I was using was the [HOLY CROSS] because I lacked the context of a certain page that spells it out and based on some comments and videos elsewhere is the point where a lot of people first figure out how to use it.
It probably didn’t hurt that I was fresh off The Witness and my brain was subconsciously looking for tricks of perspective and environmental puzzles, which Tunic is absolutely full of.
Majesty (Majesty 2 is okay, but lacks the charm of the original, but YMMV) - you run a kingdom full of heroes. The catch? You don't command the heroes. They have their own AI and goals and you have to offer incentives and place the necessary buildings appropriately to both enable and encourage them to do their jobs of saving the kingdom.
Ronin - a stealth/platformer. Combat is turn-based. No, combat is not mechanically separate from the stealth OR the platforming. Relatively short but very fascinating.
Pawnbarian - Roguelike, but movement and combat is done by chess rules.
Exanima. Combat is based entirely around physics/momentum and positioning. It's hard to get the hang of, but is immensely satisfying once you get your "He's starting to believe" Matrix moment and successfully block a few attacks in a row.
Crusader Kings 3. You know those map-painting Grand Strategy games, where the goal is to conquer other territories? One of those, but you're running a noble dynasty whose fortunes rise and fall, even passing between the overlordship of different countries and kingdoms. A lot of personality. I guess it's not as innovative as it once was, since it's spawned imitators at this point. Hm.
Ring of Pain. It's... hard to describe.
Phasmophobia. Multiplayer only. You hunt ghosts. Not like, 'combat' hunt ghosts, like 'You need to find evidence of ghosts' hunt ghosts. But the ghosts definitely hunt you back - in a much more malicious way.
Death Stranding. Walking simulator. No, not like 'You don't do anything but hold down the walk button', like 'You need to keep your balance while carrying things' walking simulator. Immensely weird.
Star Trek: Bridge Crew. Multiplayer only (at least practically speaking). Each person plays a separate member of the titular bridge crew, and cooperation to achieve even simple tasks is key.
Gods Will Be Watching. A series of puzzle scenarios about calculated risk, failure, and learning the rules anew each time.
I strongly object to the characterization of Death Stranding as a walking simulator. Walking place to place is core to the experience for maybe one quarter of the game. Once you get to the largest area and continue unlocking new tools and features, you spend very little time walking. It also dismisses combat, which I felt was considerably more prevalent than I expected.
I feel like I spent a good portion of my time walking and finding ways across rough terrain even after all the fancy gear was unlocked. The motorcycle could get you maybe half the way, usually.
I mean, at least until the zip-lines. Those ruined the game. Honestly, the rebuildable roads were a bad inclusion as well. Sitting on top of a hill, looking down at the streams and terrain around you, figuring out the best route with your tools, was peak satisfaction in that game.
Yeah, that’s fair. The first time you go to any new site there is walking involved along with everything else, but I still think calling it a walking simulator is reductive, since it just one tool in an ever-expanding toolbox.
Maybe it’s better to call it a scifi delivery simulator (including factions of delivery addicts you have to fight because they keep trying to take your things).
Majesty (Majesty 2 is okay, but lacks the charm of the original, but YMMV) - you run a kingdom full of heroes. The catch? You don’t command the heroes. They have their own AI and goals and you have to offer incentives and place the necessary buildings appropriately to both enable and encourage them to do their jobs of saving the kingdom.
I loved that you could build temples and get specialty priests for 5 different gods, but never more than two in one level, because some of the gods were opposed to others, including the one I never used because they were monotheists and I didn’t want to give up all other types of priests.
Also that every hero type had their own priorities and preferences and would do what they preferred barring a significant bounty on something else. Also that Rogues could fuck you over if a hero died and you wanted to use the resurrection spell on them because a rogue near where they died might just rob their grave.
Star Trek: Bridge Crew. Multiplayer only (at least practically speaking). Each person plays a separate member of the titular bridge crew, and cooperation to achieve even simple tasks is key.
Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator did it before that, in 2010. ST: Bridge Crew is more or less “Artemis but with Star Trek branding”. Artemis just released a remake/sequel-sort-of-thing a bit over a month ago (called Artemis Cosmos, though it’s had a…rocky…launch so far) that’s a complete rewrite from the ground up.
And when I say they did it first, I mean to the point that some of the reviews describe Artemis by likening it to being a member of the bridge crew on the Enterprise, because there wasn’t a game like that on the market.
Gods Will Be Watching. A series of puzzle scenarios about calculated risk, failure, and learning the rules anew each time.
The game is definitely not for everyone, but ProsperousUniverse kind of stands alone when it comes to people’s descriptions of niches/genres.
The game is an economy/real-time MMO with no real PvP. “Real-time” not like an RTS but as in “this operation takes many hours or days” and everyone has that same time burden.
It’s a game where planning far outperforms “always online” gameplay, so people end up learning spreadsheet software to optimize everything for themselves.
In addition, the UI is modular like a Bloomberg terminal, so it feels right—you feel like a trader.
Maybe Antichamber? It‘s a first-person puzzle game like Portal, but based on the idea of the „rooms“ changing as you go through them, so each room basically has its own mechanic to figure out
Be careful, subtitles on Chromecast seem to get progressively more and more out of sync until it is about 3 seconds out of sync if they are not embedded in the media.
Sorry for the stupid ask… but where would I change DNS settings for data connection on stock Android (OnePlus OxygenOS)? I just spent 10min looking but can’t find a setting that would allow me to setup DNS config.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Play the game on story mode and enjoy it. That trilogy has the best characters and some of the best quest storylines in the industry in my opinion.
I feel like a cheater, but I tried my best to not cause any griefing. I’m also in my 40s and don’t have the time to git gud when I just wanna play the story.
Dark souls 2 & 3 have mods that make it easier. DS2, I had crazy defense and rolling. Poor invaders would backstab me 5 times and only take me to 50% health. Then 3 basic quick hits would kill them.
DS3, I was around level 200 thanks to a xp multiplier mod and was able to steamroll bosses. Invaders still destroyed me, but that’s fair. Frequently I let them and to my surprise, most invaders if you don’t attack, won’t attack back and will just goof off. I loved it.
I’m going to wait until Elden Ring is a bit more quieter before I play with mods. Again, not interested in griefing. Just want to adventure on my own terms.
That’s kind of the price you have to pay if you use mods. You can either not use mods and experience the full game (if you can beat it), or you can use mods, but shouldn’t go online so you don’t kill other peoples fun.
I think there's something like it someone suggested to me once, but something like an RTS where you code up your units with different behaviors seems to me like something that could be fun for novices and more experienced coders alike if done correctly. You probably wouldn't want to support a full coding language, but taking something like Python or another scripting language that supports objects and providing a small set of legal commands to include in your unit code would be interesting to me. If the base was a campaign that encouraged creative problem solving to use your hand coded unit behavior, and you added a simple way for players to share code with each other, pit their unassisted bots against each other, and maybe even added the ability to write/pin commands to change behavior patterns for an actual real time head to head, I might play the hell out of it.
I also might play for 5 minutes and never touch it again though.
That's probably the one I've seen before. It definitely does look like it has potential.
My biggest issue is actually finding the time to really dive into it among all the other stuff I want to play. I could see absolutely getting into a black hole with it some time I start though.
Thanks for helping me find that to at least put on my wishlist. For now between BG3 and Starfield I don't need another giant time sink, but I'll definitely keep it in mind when I'm looking for something different.
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