Are there any good casual/low-stress mobile games that aren’t filled with microtransactions? For example: easy puzzle games, match-3 games, low-difficulty adventure games, or clicker-style games....
Andor’s Trail, it’s barely recogniseable as a “phone” game, other than that it does indeed run on phones. I don’t remember if it had ads or anything, been taking it from phone to phone for over 10 years now. I don’t think it had ads or anything. It’s open source, but has a pretty consistent feel despite having like 50+ contributors so far.
It’s an adventure RPG. The low level experience might be best with a bit of grinding, but… casual grinding… lol. I kind of just wander around collecting “meat” until I feel strong enough to leave the areas near town and set out on the rest of the adventure. But there has been alot more work around town since the last time I started a new character. So it might feel more natural now.
Exiled Kingdoms, its an older isometric 2D adventure RPG. Kinda feels like it would have been made 30 years ago for pc, but it was made relatively recently for phones. I don’t think there was any micro transactions. It may have had an initial purchase price, not sure. That’s usually what I look for in a phone game. The traditional model of buying a game and then just playing a game. No gross mobile game stuff.
Grim Quest and Grim Tides. Two games by the same person. I haven’t played Grim tides yet, but it’s also free. Grim Quest is not a particularly large game, but I’ve still managed to play it over many years. I did a full run of each difficulty one by one. There is a bit to learn before it feels easy and casual, but it does get there. To be fair, I try to play it without dying. If I let myself die, it would be alot more casual even from the start. Dying is not heavily penalized on default settings, but you can alternately choose to play hardcore. Otherwise dying usually just means you gained less money for that run, and didn’t make the game any harder. The game only gets harder when you successfully clear a dungeon. You can also just exit the unfinished dungeon without dying and keep most of what you have acquired so far on that run, minus a small fee for quitting the dungeon.
There are preset difficulty options, but you can also craft your own custom difficulty. There are things you could spend money on, I think it may have started out with ads. But I consider games with ads that you can pay to get rid of as basically a free demo, and getting rid of ads is the purchase price if you like the game. So they don’t deter me if they don’t basically break the game to add ads to it, or affect the flow of the game whether the ads are there or not.
Galaxy Genome, it’s a space exploration game. Sort of a project to make a comprehensive 2D version of Elite: Dangerous. Or at least it started as that, I don’t know if it has achieved and surpassed that by now. It was pretty far along last I played. And that was a while ago now. I kind of play games on and off for years, so that is mostly gonna be a running theme of all the games I post here. Games that you find yourself wanting to pick back up again, over and over.
Cardinal Quest 2, it is possible to spend money, but honestly spending money would be worse than earning the stuff yourself. I still probably gave them some money, since I think the game was free. You don’t have to have played Cardinal Quest 1, it’s pretty story light. Kind of like playing Diablo 2 if you never played Diablo 1. Kinda the same game as the first with much better execution after learning some lessons. The game itself is pretty easy, but there are optional challenges you can take on that can be as their name implies. Lots of replayability as there are many character classes and 4 different stories. Over time you’ll likely want to beat each story with each class. Mostly cuz it keeps track, lol.
Hmm, I was gonna say moonshades, last time I played it there wasn’t much for things you could buy. But when I look now, there is. So I can’t say for sure how unnecessary any of it would feel now, but it wasn’t necessary back when I played last. It’s kind of like the old early 3D party dungeon/maze crawlers where you use the arrow keys to walk one “block” at a time. There is only 2 party members in this. So you still sort of get the group synergy stuff, but each character is a bigger share of the team power. You could do a tank/healer thing or magic damage/melee damage, or not have either one focus on anything in particular.
I hope it’s still not necessary to buy anything, it was a good game. But the store is pretty comprehensive now, so that has me worried.
Sparklite, I don’t know what it looks like purchases-wise, it was free with gamepass and had no in-app purchases when acquired that way. It’s probably one of the newest games I’ll post about. New enough that it was possible to get it with gamepass, lol. The game sort of has a modern retro zelda feel. I don’t think it’s a particularly long game, but it’s certainly enjoyable and pretty casual. I think if it has transactions, reading other reviews it might be like a “purchase the rest of the game” style thing. So basically a free demo that you can then choose if you like the game enough to pay.
Magic DosBox, not a game. But in combination with www.old-games.com , it’s a pretty good selection of all the old games made for Dos back in the wild west of indie games back before they were even called that. There are, of course, also old commercial games that have transitioned to freeware now too. Should be able to find lots of awesome games there. Moraff adventure games are particularly interesting. Bit of a steep learning curve, but great to come back to now and then. The site has reviews of every game and sorts them into categories. It can be a little overwhelming just due to the sheer number of available games, but take it slow, and work your way through. It’s worth the time investment to find gems.
Terarria can be played as casual or low stress. You choose when to advance the difficulty, and how elaborately you contruct your preparations for the next step. But for a largely stress-free casual playstyle, focus on being a summoner. Also, there isn’t much penalty for dying. So if you can wrap your mind around not being bothered by dying, then any playstyle can feel casual really. It’s certainly a tough mindset to achieve for some of us though, lol.
If you are comfortable with games that are not technically classified as freeware yet, but functionally, they probably should be… then emulation of older consoles is a great way to go too. While they are certainly not “legal”, I don’t think anyone playing them has ever gotten in trouble. Only the people that try to make money off of it find that the console companies are motivated enough to shut them down. Otherwise, it doesn’t feel super risky to just play stuff. Just stick with games that are impossible to pay for if you want to be completely safe. There was a ton of good games on 16 and 32 bit consoles that you literally couldn’t pay for now if you tried. And even as new as gamecube is getting pretty hard to possibly pay money for.
Newer stuff, I only feel ok emulating what I actually own. But as time goes on, newer and newer stuff becomes the new old stuff. A pretty wide variety of console emulators for android are in a good place now.
I do recommend a controller though if you go this route. Ideally one of the ones that also holds your phone for you. Either by making it into a switch/steamdeck kind of shape, or the ones that hold the phone above an xbox style controller. Both are good.
Yeah, kingsway is awesome. Played so much of that, got every ending and every class. Last time I played it in VR through virtual desktop so I could have two fast and accurate “mouse pointers”, it was basically cheating. But luckily I had already done everything by then.
I would be totally ok with even the bigger developers just having tip jars on their websites. It took me so long to get money to the relevant peoples after a few years as a teen of pirating stuff and then eventually reforming and feeling bad after. But I also wouldn’t mind if games were cheaper as a whole, but you could tip the ones you enjoyed. Gives incentive for games to be worth it when you have finished them, rather than before you start them.
Though, you don’t have to force everyone to come in every day, just don’t let people take that stuff home, so if they need that stuff, then they come in that day. Videogame devs are actually more likely to be nerds that get full value out of on-line social contact and have even less reason to benefit from seeing colleagues in-person.
The company should also have secure remote tunneling, so the powerful pc’s can be used by even a 10 year old tablet at home if need be. They can save some room and power by not needing those powerful computers set up at a desk with monitors. Have a couple out for the people that want or need to come in, and the rest can be in a server mount configuration.
This is every game for the people that skip dialog and cutscenes.
Now do a recap of a TV show, except skip all the parts where they aren’t shooting a gun or stuff isn’t exploding. I don’t get that TV show, nothing had any context and there was no motivation or lessons to learn, stuff just randomly exploded from being shot at.
I may be a bit of an old man now, but something about the Southpark games just really speaks to me. I haven’t been keeping up on the show anymore. But I really enjoyed stick of truth and fractured but whole. I may have missed some individual references, but there was more than enough stuff that I was familiar with. And while the mechanics aren’t a masterpiece, they hold up well enough to not get in the way through the whole game.
It is of course mostly about inside jokes and references, but there is plenty new content too.
The trailer isn’t quite enough for me to be sure what game style they are aping on this time, but I’m looking forward to it. Sort of sounds like they might be going arpg this time, but the card elements threw me a bit. I guess I’ll see when more details are known.
Ah, that’s fair. It did seem like they were very specifically not showing any standard gameplay. Figured it was intended to be more of a teaser than a trailer… but your thing makes more sense.
I’ll probably still try it, unless it looks or sounds worse by then. I don’t pre-order stuff, so I’ll see the reviews before I buy.
Yeah, I have caught a few episodes here and there. Unfortunately adulting gets in the way of alot of that sort of stuff nowadays. I have alot less free time, and there is just so much stuff to try to pack into it. Can only do like 1% of the stuff I want to do.
Edit: Looks like the GOG version is available for OS X, so I’m hoping that’ll work. I guess I was just a little tipsy when looking at the GOG page since it’s the holidays and missed it. Also, I didn’t think about Steam gift cards/PayPal. That’s another way of getting games on Steam without giving payment info. Thanks...
It’s a pretty common mindset in the neurodiverse community. It’s partially based on black and white thinking, and partially based on a type of anxiety that causes a sense of pre-dread before doing almost anything, once you break through and actually start it, that type of anxiety goes away. To be replaced by whatever other types of anxiety the individual has, lol.
And of course with most of these it’s more accurate to say it’s a result of the trauma of growing up with these cognitive differences in a world where they aren’t standard.
It might be a bit frustrating trying to navigate his defenses, hopefully you end up getting it all worked out.
Hehe yeah sorry. It wasn’t just the credit card thing. The whole story there was like 10 different hints. I know alot of normal people and alot of neurodivergent people, and there are alot of parallels there, too many to be coincidence.
But I don’t get why so many people push back on it. Not only is it fine to be neurodivergent, but it’s not like you can change it by pretending you aren’t. This isn’t the olden days anymore, we know a ton of stuff now that can really help even getting diagnosed in your later years. Still always best to get the diagnosis before school, since the standard school experience causes alot of unnecessary grief. But the next best time is always “as soon as possible”. Many things can be un-done with surprisingly little effort when done the right way.
I know the old mentality is to not get a label so people won’t treat you different, but that is not at all how anything works anymore. Getting diagnosed is basically everyone’s favourite day of their life nowadays. It’s the turning point where their life finally started to make sense for them. And they “caught back up” to where they were always supposed to be.
Yeah, I actually really liked the crew back in it’s day. It sucks that most people didn’t play past level 1 because a racing game that follows the same gearing style as an MMO RPG means your car has to be bad at everything at level 1. So it of course feels terrible to drive. But that lasts about 5 races. I do wonder if they should have just changed it anyway even though it made sense.
People would do like 3 races and it felt terrible the whole time and then they would quit and say the game is broken and feels terrible. And they would be right for the small part they played. It was indeed intended to feel terrible to be a level 1 racer in a level 1 car. So there was somewhere to go up from.
Would have worked alot better if racing RPGs were still more common by then, but they had mostly died out 10 years before that. 10 years is a whole new crop of gamers, ones that have never played the types of games the current games are based on cuz it’s what the devs loved when they were younger.
As much as people are maybe more familiar with Cyberpunk being fixed later. No man’s sky is one of the kings of being fixed later. This is not a case of advice being given, but an acknowledgement of the way things have gone.
Is it really 10 hours for other people? My game file usually says around 50-60 when I’m done. I think they said 10 hours is if you blitz the main story and do no side content… do people play any rpg that way? If so, I at the very least recommend a full playthrough this time. There is alot of great side content in this, and most other, rpgs.
I taught my nieces to always go in blind first, and only resort to looking stuff up if you are so stuck that you fear you would otherwise quit the game. We’ll see if they are able to continue with it as they get older and have more sources of videogame advice in their life.
Going in blind always makes games more fun. And helps you build the skills to figure it out yourself, rather than just follow what someone else did. Doing it yourself is way more rewarding, and a useful transferable skill.
I’m sure once us crazy fans get the chance to really dig into it, we’ll find lots of little things they did. The original game had alot of hidden easter eggs, no way did a new team spend that much time on it without adding a few of their own.
And some of the updates and refreshes of side content mechanics might make some of them a bit more accessible to a wider crowd than they were in the original, effectively adding content to the players that weren’t able to succeed originally. There was some pretty tough stuff in the original for people willing to endlessly practice.
I mean, I do tend to play around and have fun with video games. I don’t have a checklist and just run to the next thing on the list. I don’t use walkthroughs, so any puzzles or unclear mechanics are gonna stump me for a bit as I work them out. And any time there is combat based levelling, I’ll usually grind out a few extra levels, I’m always way too strong for the part of the game I’m at, but I still find it fun.
It was kind of the normal way to play games back when MarioRPG came out. The internet wasn’t super useful yet. And while walkthroughs and stuff did already exist, it wasn’t considered normal to use them to play a game yourself, just to look up one part if you got too stuck.
While Take-Two is riding high on their announcement that a GTA 6 trailer is coming, its CEO has some…interesting ideas on how much video games could cost, part of a contingent of executives that believe games are underpriced, given their cost, length or some combination of the two.
Yeah, CrossCode is absolutely amazing. I didn’t hear about it until recently. I’m so glad I didn’t completely miss out on it. It’s like my number 1 favourite game now and I almost missed it.
I like to make sure I bring it up anytime people ask about good games they may not have heard of.
Following the meta isn’t the only path that leads to victory, especially as the meta becomes too entrenched. You need people that don’t follow it to come up with the new meta-buster that eventually becomes the new meta… but the vast majority of the players just do the same one thing over and over until their website tells them the meta has shifted, then they all do that same thing.
While of course making fun of anyone that doesn’t play that way.
Yeah, it was amazing. I still haven’t bought the expansion since I only play the game in VR and there was so much reason not to buy it for VR. They have fixed some of it, but even if the original game isn’t really ruined at all, it’s just tough to play now knowing the expansion is out there. So it kinda tainted the whole game even if technically nothing changed for me.
I still have no idea why they decided not to do VR for the on-foot stuff. I don’t know if it was just a cost cutting measure, or if there was some problem they couldn’t sort out. If it was for motion sickness reasons, like not being able to support teleport to move or something, they should probably know motion sickness susceptible people already couldn’t really play the rest of the game. There were some parts that worked ok, their VR demo was ok for most people, but alot of the actual game wasn’t. And even with all the motion sickness reduction options on, driving the SRV didn’t go well for any people I know with motion sickness issues. If it was motion controls they couldn’t support, we have plenty of games with face aim, sure it’s not ideal, but it’s still an upgrade from flat games.
I suppose PC VR can be said to have not really taken off, but there are over 50 million VR headset sales in general so far, that’s pretty good. VR in general is taking off just fine. And PC VR is mostly only suffering from the technical barrier of wireless streaming. Which is clearing up bit by bit, but could be solved with a wireless dongle instead of needing the user to properly configure their router. But newer routers are more and more being able to support VR streaming with their default settings.
While PCVR was mostly abandoned by the big gaming companies, there is still a ton of support from community modders. In the flat2VR community they are up to about 60% of all games working in VR now, about 30% with full motion controls too. So having a VR headset is still getting more and more popular, and being able to use it for PCVR is still getting more and more possible and popular, at some point it’ll come back to the focus of the actual gaming studios too. But for now they don’t have to cuz modders will just do it for free for them if they don’t.
It certainly sucked when VR switched to prioritizing stand alone over PCVR, but I think long-term it will get us to PCVR being mainstream sooner than we would have got there without a focus on the easy stuff first.
VR headsets and the research behind them have made it possible to accurately track the position of the device with very little processing cost from a single camera. Additional cameras are simply for occlusion and field of view at this point. A coupled depth sensor handles any needed resolution of positional conflicts between real world objects and digital objects.
That tech wasn’t there for 3DS, even with 2 cameras it wasn’t stable or accurate, and it was pretty low res and low angle, and it couldn’t tell if the digital content should be occluded by real world objects at it’s perceived depth. Plus there are actual AR games now already established, and the framework and proof of concept to easily on-board new ones. Also, by the time the Switch 2 is released, the mainstream AR headsets and content will be even more established. Currently the best AR content is either on expensive headsets or in limited form on iPhones. But in less than a month the Quest 3 is out, an accessible mixed reality headset. It will have been out for a while by the time the switch 2 would come out.
This is very much one of the directions gaming is going. It doesn’t have to replace all gaming, and never will. But it will be a pretty big part of gaming. Especially once there is enough public trust behind it for people to play augmented reality games outdoors. Us nerds already do so, we know we won’t walk out into traffic even if the headset malfunctions. But the hypothetical “everyman” is apparently worried that they might? That’s just not how anything would work… but whatever. It’s safer than playing a phone game and wearing headphones, since letting the real world in and paying attention to both is the whole point, sight and sound.
Hey everyone! I’ve been diving into RPGs lately and wanted to share my thoughts and seek recommendations from fellow gamers. I’ve found myself resonating with Scott the Woz’s viewpoint on random encounters and grinding, but I do make an exception when the combat system is truly exceptional, like in the case of...
I didn’t hear about it when it released, only got it on sale earlier this year. Apparently all this time the perfect game for me had already been out there just existing slightly outside the range of my awareness.
It is a high quality pixel art narrative RPG with a single character class that can branch any way they like, in a pseudo-MMO(single player game where the game is lore-wise an MMO that you are one character in, rest of the characters in the game are “other players” but are of course just narrative to us the real world player, but to our in-game player they are their real life friends and you know them separate from their characters). The pseudo-MMO has 5 classes, but your character is the jack of all trades class. So your various party members will be better than you at their one specialty, but if you are extremely selective, you can nearly match them at the same level if you pick only stuff for that one path. The trade off is that this class is supposed to be much harder to play.
But anyway, enough about that, the actual story of the game is awesome and I don’t want to spoil anything specific. Your character starts out unable to talk due to a malfunction of the “game”, but slowly gains more words, it’s not a gameplay mechanic, just a narrative mechanic, but it’s crazy endearing. Kind of like a “little mermaid” type scenario. She still has full control of her facial expressions and body language, and speaking of, there must be thousands of facial expressions. They did not skip out on any work in the pixel art department.
The exploration parts of the game are kind of zelda style platforming puzzles with more of an agility focus. Combat is real-time but somewhat easy, with more of a focus on stringing fights together and trying to survive as many back to back in quick succession as possible. The longer you stay in combat and string fights together, the less overall monsters you have to kill to get all the loot from a zone. Though the max monsters you need to kill at the worst is pretty low. Like 50-100 per zone. And even then it’s optional, but better.
They also have dungeons, these are also pretty similar to old school zelda, but quicker and tighter. Speaking of, character movement/control is very agile for a pixel art game. I’m not generally great at it in other games, but I love it in this game.
Ok, well I should probably stop now. I could probably go on for hours, it’s an amazing game that I’m sad I didn’t hear about til recently, but at least I did eventually hear of it. Now I feel I have to make sure other people don’t miss out on it like I almost did.
Edit: bah one more thing, character development is pretty robust. I built my entire character around thorns damage and blocking. It’s entirely possible to go through the game this way, in fact it makes some fights kind of silly. But it’s also entirely possible to never have any thorns and even to never block a single hit. But the thorns mechanic alone is pretty deep. There are several components that affect how much damage you will reflect when blocking a hit, how much the hit would have been, how much you lowered it by blocking it, how much baseline “pin body”(thorns) you have and how much defense the monster has. So a boss hitting you for 100 that you reduce down to 50 is gonna hit them back pretty hard, but so is a monster hitting you for what would have been a string of 10 hits of 3 damage, but you reduced them all to 0. Since there is a baseline, those 10 hits trigger pretty close to your minimum amount, but it’s probably alot more than 3, and certainly more than the 0 they actually did to you. There is also perfect guarding, completely unnecessary, but since my character is all about blocking, I decided to practice perfect guarding, and I got pretty good at it. Also when I perfect block a melee hit, it stuns them for 2 seconds. And perfect blocks inherently double thorns damage, like as if it was a crit.
All the mechanics seem as deep and well planned out as that too. And there are alot of mechanics. The 4 main disciplines are tank, ranged damage, melee damage and caster. Though caster is mostly just using more skills instead of auto attacks while still being either melee or ranged. Just get way more mana regen. And of course the idea is to blend and not just specialize in one, but you can also specialize. Ranged damage is done by way of shooting “spheres”, it’s also a pretty important aspect of alot of puzzle solving, but you don’t need any points in ranged damage to solve puzzles with it. I have no points in any type of damage other than thorns. My character has more than double defense versus attack. Hehe.
There is a relatively limited selection of gear, but you will likely always find something you want. Kind of similar to a final fantasy game, no unnecessary gear, just a bunch of stuff that “isn’t for you this play through”, but your party members might like what you don’t. They of course have their own money and choose when and what new gear they buy. Though bringing them to a shop that has what they want will prompt it, otherwise they’ll go shopping on their own time when not in your party.
Yes, the title has grind right in it, and yes it’s for that reason. But, the way grinding works is handled pretty well. The longer you stay in a combat area, the faster the enemies keep respawning on kill, until there is almost no delay and you are just murdering hundreds of them per minute. Of course when you first get to a new zone, you won’t be able to handle grinding it like that.
But yeah, grinding mechanic aside, the game is also a pretty good narrative and has a really good sense of humor and is well-made. I recommend looking it up despite grind being right in the name, lol.
Also known as Mother 2. Up to you if you want to try English fan translations of Mother 1 and 3 as well. 2 is the only one with an official English translation. It does a good job as a stand alone game, I played it long before I knew any of that. Back when renting a snes game from a physical store was a thing.
But I have since played part of Mother 1/earthbound 0, and all of Mother 3/earthbound 2. Mother 3 is worth it in my opinion, the fan translation is very good and fits the style of the Mother 2 official translation. I should try Mother 1 again, but after playing Mother 2, it felt like an earlier lower quality version of the same thing. I didn’t get more than an hour in, so it might be worth it further in.
If you haven’t heard of earthbound, well that sucks. Everyone should hear about it. Definitely a must play at least once in any gamers life. It is the very definition of a traditional non-traditional RPG. It uses as well as breaks every convention. It’s exactly what you expect, except totally not what you expected.
Basically, it’s a type of parody of the genre, while also being one of the best games of the genre.
Are there any good casual/low-stress mobile games that aren't filled with microtransactions? angielski
Are there any good casual/low-stress mobile games that aren’t filled with microtransactions? For example: easy puzzle games, match-3 games, low-difficulty adventure games, or clicker-style games....
Warner Bros. returning ownership of some soon-to-be-delisted Adult Swim titles (delistedgames.com) angielski
I hope more follows
Ex-Blizzard Exec Dragged For Suggesting Gamers Start Tipping (kotaku.com) angielski
Game workers forced back to office oppose “reckless decision” from Rockstar (iwgb.org.uk) angielski
Never understood this (lemmy.world) angielski
South Park: Snow Day! Scheduled for March 26th Release for PC & Console (tryhardguides.com) angielski
[SOLVED] Need help getting my dad to play Baldur's Gate 3 angielski
Edit: Looks like the GOG version is available for OS X, so I’m hoping that’ll work. I guess I was just a little tipsy when looking at the GOG page since it’s the holidays and missed it. Also, I didn’t think about Steam gift cards/PayPal. That’s another way of getting games on Steam without giving payment info. Thanks...
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Cyberpunk 2077 Devs Share Advice (files.catbox.moe) angielski
Super Mario RPG - Review Thread angielski
Game Information...
GTA 6’s Publisher Says Video Games Should Theoretically Be Priced At Dollars Per Hour (www.forbes.com) angielski
While Take-Two is riding high on their announcement that a GTA 6 trailer is coming, its CEO has some…interesting ideas on how much video games could cost, part of a contingent of executives that believe games are underpriced, given their cost, length or some combination of the two.
One reason why I play primarily single player games now [OneAndPhony] (startrek.website) angielski
Elite Dangerous studio Frontier Developments announce layoffs and "organisational review" (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Nintendo demoed Switch 2 to developers at Gamescom (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
It’s real. After all those years.
What are some RPGs for someone who doesnt like most RPGs angielski
Hey everyone! I’ve been diving into RPGs lately and wanted to share my thoughts and seek recommendations from fellow gamers. I’ve found myself resonating with Scott the Woz’s viewpoint on random encounters and grinding, but I do make an exception when the combat system is truly exceptional, like in the case of...