Dungeons and dragons, both the paper version and the digital stuff. I remember as a kid playing some random DnD games with no context and being upset that they were weird rpgs that only went up to level 8 or whatever. Without context, that is not common in videoganes. And not knowing how much more open the games could have been than just playing them “murder hobo” style…
I only ended up playing paper DnD at around the start of 5e, while I was tangentially aware of it since I think before third edition, I didn’t know I would actually like it back then. And it’s entirely possible I wouldn’t have. I have a processing delay, so whether or not I end up enjoying board games, or anything else involving players taking turns doing complicated thinking… largely depends on how patient the other players are.
I also wasn’t super creative back then… although maybe playing DnD would have helped. But at the very least, I wish I would have tried learning paper DnD back then even if I didn’t like it, so I had the context when I played the digital games. I would have very much appreciated those if I understood why certain limitations were in place.
I mean, could you imagine a DnD digital game trying to accurately represent the capabilities of level 20 characters… hitting level 20 in DnD basically forces your campaign into “jumping the shark”. Which omnipotent god are we one-shotting this week?
D2:R is such an interesting technical showpiece. I love that the new graphics are like an interpreted realtime overlay. That the regular game is running right behind all that. Such a cool thing to see. It would be awesome even if it wasn’t still fun to play, but it also is.
There is a bunch of different modern versions of Myst. It’s also got a VR version that is very good. Riven and Obduction are also available in VR. Not sure about some of the lesser known Myst games like exile, uru, or revelation.
In my experience, playing them when I was younger didn’t work out great, some of the puzzles were just way too hard for pre-teen me. But they were great to play now.
Yeah, they get alot of shit for how buggy they are, but they are trying to do a thousand things well. They probably have literal millions of bugs along the way, but only manage to solve the 999000 easiest, quickest, or most obvious ones before launch.
There is a reason they are still consistently best sellers.
Just a heads up, Alterlife likely never got off the ground. They mocked up a demo video with store assets 3 years ago, but were never heard from again. I still have it on my wishlist, but my hopes are not up, lol.
That’s awesome. Buncha nerds, hehe. I miss when games were made by a handful of friends, sure sometimes it meant they leaned a little too heavily on a mechanic that only played well in their opinion and stuff like that, the upsides were worth it though.
I really liked the Tokyo Xtreme racer games. They are still probably the best car RPG games. I would love to see what someone could do now in the same vein. Even tokyo xtreme never got quite as crunchy or difficult as I would have liked.
I want to go so far as to be like a tactical survival style game, where you are out there earning a living wage from daily(nightly) car racing, and putting most of it back into your car. Just the repairs and maintenance alone being a bar you have to meet and beat every day on average to stay afloat, and then you can think about upgrades after.
It basically takes an environment like that for it to matter in a racing game that there are upgrades between the worst and the best. If trying to save up for even one good part wouldn’t be possible without at least some middle parts first.
Meanwhile, could have some “roguelite” elements too in driver experience/skill. The car is only half of what’s winning the races afterall. And even if you really blow it at some point and your car is fucked and you need to salvage and pull together what you got and go back to a cheaper car to maintain/repair, you’ll still have all the experience/skill your character personally gained helping it go a little smoother this time.
Yeah, I do alot of that too. I own like 500 games or so. Way too many to ever play them all. Though I have played through at least half, so not -that- bad. Hehe.
While I agree that’s it’s nice to have the option of a physical copy, I own too many games to want a physical copy of all of them. And if they are ever “taken away” I will not hesitate to get them back. I don’t want to own physical copies of my games, but I do feel entitled to continue owning them even after the store I bought them from no longer exists. I will just download any game I have owned that I want to play again but no longer have access to the paid version. Kind of like how emulation works. I only use it to play games I own that I don’t want to play the physical copy of.
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.