silverchase

silverchase, 15 dni temu

It has that quintessential Flash energy!

silverchase, 15 dni temu

The original N is from 2004, you’re right. N++ is the modern incarnation and follow up to N+.

silverchase, 19 dni temu

As usual, I haven’t even played anything yet. I’ve just been thoroughly browsing for games to put on my list, and it’s a long one this time. At the top of my list of games I want to try are:

• Bubsy 4D
• Ultimate Sheep Raccoon
• Mesmalie
• Time Snatcher Handy
• Myths are 100% True
• FUNKYHEART
• MONUMENTUM

Roughly ordered by my interest levels:

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/341b8643-17de-4033-8667-40b7c8d850b7.jpeg

silverchase, 18 dni temu

This is the 3D-printable replacement bumper mechanism I used in my controller. And by “I”, I mean my friend, who did the printing and installation for me. The click is a bit stiffer and sounds deeper than the original, but it works fine again.

silverchase, 22 dni temu

Books

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/a2ab3ddf-5253-4040-af42-ba6c1e2cfc75.png

silverchase, 22 dni temu

My best friend is Zircon Zip

silverchase, 22 dni temu

For a game that’s themed as space battles and isn’t an action game, check out Cobalt Core. It’s a deckbuilding adventure about a space crew trying to escape from a time loop. The characters and story moments are fun and combat is like a turn-based puzzle of trying to position the ship to line up with enemy weak spots or to dodge missile barrages.

silverchase, miesiąc temu

The hype has clearly faded from like 2016 when the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift were hot new tech. There are still games with great production value around and they’ll give you emotional and visceral experiences you’ll never feel in flat games.

Is it worth getting into currently?

For PC-based VR, you can get a used Vive for a few hundred dollars, and you’ll need a PC with modest gaming power. I’ve run Half-Life Alyx acceptably fine on an RX 580, a medium graphics card from 2017, which is often listed as the minimum required.

In VR games, everything feels more intense. Scary parts, sad parts, action-packed parts. Characters making direct eye contact with you feels really gripping. Being able to see and hear the game world all around you is a level of immersion you’ve probably not felt before.

Whether the entry price is worth accessing this niche of highly immersive games is up to you.

silverchase, miesiąc temu

The secret behind many great party games is that they facilitate improv and it’s really the players making the fun for each other

silverchase, miesiąc temu

I played, liked, and 100%ed Grapple Dog.

silverchase, miesiąc temu

I liked the Next Fest demo from a few months ago. No other game will let you hug a pile of poo!

silverchase, miesiąc temu

I’ve been following Jam2go since his Deluxe Horoscope days. His quest to recreate retro graphic effects is so fun.

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

From the guys who were in the room when Left 4 Dead was being made

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

The vast, infinite spaces are nuts

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

From that big racial justice bundle from Itch, Lenna’s Inception. It’s the game Bytten Studio made before Cassette Beasts. A bunch of things from this game definitely ended up in Cassette Beasts as well.

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

Good. The slow death of the gif continues.

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

I listed some decent Android games I know of in a past thread.

The real secret is to look for board game adaptations and stuff you’d normally find on Steam.

I also have expanded my list for when I have the Play credit and desire for more mobile games:

• Golf Peaks, Pup Champs, and Railbound — more puzzle games by Afterburn, the same developers as inbento
• Digital board game adaptations by Dire Wolf Digital, like Root, Everdell, Clank!, and the Fox in the Forest
• Coromon and Cassette Beasts for your creature-collecting needs

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

In Sonic 2006, the entire game plot happens, but the solution to the core conflict is to do some time travel shit and cancel the entire timeline

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

Yaaa hoo! Yaaa hoo! Aaaaaaahhhh!

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

It’s quite insane that the entire game is solvable completely inbounds this way.

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

Index

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

Sitting is required. Sometimes you need to lean to look around. Scenes are only shown in the 180° in front of you, so you never need to spin around.

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

I recently started playing BallisticNG, having never played the Wipeout games. I’m finding it hypnotic and the controls feel great. I’m still on baby speeds by the game’s standards.

Out of curiosity, I looked up videos of the PS1 Wipeout games for reference and they looked slow in comparison!

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

Bug Fables has that TTYD taste to it

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

The header picture makes me imagine a Halo Kart

silverchase, 3 miesiące temu

The game says it uses the modern SRS rotation system. But pieces spawn in odd orientations, like the letters they’re named after. Wall kicks are inconsistent. The configuration files literally include a “–99, –99” coordinate—developer shorthand for “don’t use this”—as an actual kick entry. It shipped like that.

I love people getting deep into the mechanics of a game to optimize their play, the kind of stuff that casual observers don’t notice.

silverchase, 3 miesiące temu

There’s already a term for progress gated by knowledge: mystery. All of these games are about discovering facts that lead you further along.

silverchase, 3 miesiące temu

I love my Steam Controller. I got a second before they went out of production! The two big pads are so versatile.

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

Looks like you enjoy retro-style 3D platformers. Get Corn Kidz 64!

Like Pseudoregalia, it’s another N64-style 3D platformer released in 2023 with a goat protagonist trapped in a dream. This is an oddly narrow coincidence.

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

I was super impressed with the demo from Steam Next Fest last year. It’s definitely high on my list for Steam sale purchases.

One neat feature the game has, which was unnecessary but that I appreciate, is the pixel perfection settings. The game uses “soft” pixel precision by default for smooth scrolling and sharper text, but you can enable strict pixel precision, which snaps everything to the pixel grid.

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

I played around with the pixel settings in the Next Fest demo. It’s honestly more of a curiosity than something that really matters, but I’m glad someone on the game thought of this. The most notable change with pixel-perfect mode is the text font becomes lower resolution to be strictly snapped to the grid. Other than that, you’ll find that the backgrounds scroll choppily. I’d imagine it would feel good that way on a smaller screen.

It’s that eternal struggle you may have seen if you play modern games with pixel art. How strictly should the game follow the grid? I think Pipistrello’s default “soft” mode is my sweet spot. Rotated and resized pixels are yucky, but I’m okay with smoother scrolling and sharper text. Celeste is that way as well.

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

Damn that’s a shame

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

I don’t think any game has made me feel so much for characters I don’t even get to see. There’s some real humanity in Hypnospace.

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

I want to shout out Left 4 Dead’s game instructor for smoothly teaching new players the game even while they’re playing with others. Get more ammo here. Use adrenaline to do stuff faster. Give Nick your pills. Rescue is coming - defend yourself! Then, once you’ve played enough, the help messages gradually become less frequent.

I’ll also shout it out for being my favourite implementation of HUD markers in any game. The icon pulses into view close to your crosshair, then flies over to the thing it’s pointing at. If it goes off-screen, the marker returns next to your crosshair, with an arrow indicating which direction to look in to see it again. A lot of other games have marker icons just suddenly appear at the spot and they crawl along the edge of the screen if the item is off-screen. The way L4D does it really draws my eyes.

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

Day 2 of Next Fest is over! Here’s what I tried.

Good Luck — An absurdly dangerous walk to work* Just walk to work * Slowly walk through streets full of deadly things, like exploding garbage bins, loose signpoles, and falling signs * No checkpoints! No dodging! This is a rage game. * There’s online co-op, apparently. Have Fun with friends! * This demo is silly fun, but I don’t need to play more of this Pass

Öoo — Puzzle platformer with bombs* This guy also made Elec Head, another charming puzzle platformer * Puzzle platforming with exploration * Cute pixel art * Wordless teaching. Actually, the only words in the game are the credits! * Puzzles all revolve around clever use of bombs: launch yourself like a rocket jump, blow up one bomb to push another Wishlisted

PANIK — Chess-like grid puzzles* Has that Flash game feel, but in a good way. Quirky idea, simple design. It’s built to quickly get you in and playing. * The puzzles are like connecting circuits. The figures can only move if they’re connected to a crown-wearing figure. * An interesting take on grid-based puzzles. Like a fusion of Sokoban, chess puzzles, and “Chinese” checkers. * PANIK’s cute demo trick: just have a quick line of super-simple levels to show off mechanics in the rest of the game! * I’d actually love to play this on my phone instead Wishlisted

SourceWorld — Dungeon crawling FPS in the Half-Life universe* Deus Ex-like cutscenes for a story set after the Combine invasion! You join a company that raids the multiverse * Doom screen melt transition, holy crap * The familiarity and comfort of Source engine physics, movement, and weapons * Game crashed a bunch for me, so I’ll have to stop early Soft wishlist (I’ll keep an eye on this)

::: spoiler !mrak — Super stylish immersive sim

• BTW, “mrak” is Russian for "darkness"
• Super rough, gritty introduction to a setting drowning in crusty old tech
• Unfortunately crashes early in the game

Soft wishlist

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

Day 3

Bloodthief — First-person parkour/speedrunning* Crusty brown gothic look, like Quake * Gameplay really grabbed me. Sometimes, I was leaning forward and holding my breath! * More and deeper movement mechanics, compared to other first-person parkour games, like SEUM or Neon White. Building up and preserving speed is a big deal * Challenging levels, with actual enemies to fight and a quickly-rising difficulty level. Levels are usually 1-5 minutes long — lengthy compared to Neon White’s 10-30 seconds * I managed to wall jump off of a deadly spike wall, and I’m still not sure if that was intended Soft wishlist. I definitely enjoyed this demo, but I currently don’t have an appetite for this type of game.

Dice Gambit — Tactical RPG with dice* First thing after the intro cutscene: a detailed character creation screen. That’s pretty overwhelming. * I like the art style except for the subdued 3D character models * Throwing the dice and watching them settle is satisfying, as it is in Armello * Gameplay is clearly focused on battle grid combat, since the “dungeon crawling” is just clicking on a map, like Slay the Spire * Do team management and watch the plot in the downtime between jobs * There is an appreciable amount of role-playing in this RPG Wishlisted

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

Day 4 was all black cats

:::spoiler Everdeep Aurora — Exploration-heavy platformer

• Really well-executed limited palette art. It swaps palettes between different areas for mood. Maybe that’s why the playable character is a black cat.
• This demo is really short. I saw a bit of lore and played some hide and seek, then went through the scary door. The cat has a drill but I don’t even get to use it!
• Didn’t get a chance to see any interesting action except for the very last few seconds of the demo
• The camera feels unpolished. It always freely drifts behind you, so quickly changing directions often will make the camera jiggle unpleasantly. It would be nice if the camera would stay still or lock to an axis sometimes. That would especially help with aiming jumps, since the camera always jerks upward a bit every time you jump.
• The controls feel great. Super responsive movement with no sliding and little momentum buildup. Jump height is also quick to respond to letting go of the jump key.

Soft wishlist. This demo just wasn’t long enough to be totally sell me on the full game. ::: :::spoiler Project Arrow — Puzzle platformer with archery

• I found this demo to be good but not great. I’m struggling to identify why it didn’t appeal to me more.
• Maybe the selection of levels wasn’t impressive enough. There were a handful of puzzle ones, but some just felt like repeats with not much new each time. There seemed to be a lot of autoscrollers.
• Platforming movement mechanics were simple and straightforward, which is appropriate for a puzzle platformer, but then there are levels with precision platforming and not much puzzle
• Cool series of boss levels at the end
• Maybe the demo didn’t do enough to hint at the possibilities for the whole bow and arrow mechanic for puzzles, so I’m just not getting hyped enough
• Maybe I just don’t get the presentation of the game? Electronic music and high-tech UI but playing as a cat with a bow in the forest

Pass ::: :::spoiler Swoosh Cat — Precision platformer

• Celeste but with 360° dash
• Cool mechanic: dash into spikes to bounce off of them
• Slow motion while aiming, but the aim indicator isn’t very accurate. Also, unlimited slow motion
• Hard to tell when I have dash or not
• Something feels off about the air control. I often overshoot or undershoot when trying to land on a small platform
• What a long demo! This is a substantial amount of game to give out.

Pass. I had fun, but I’m currently not in the mood for Celeste-style precision platforming. :::

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

Day 5

:::spoiler Look Mum No Computer — Twin-stick shooter adventure

• Trying the demo purely because of the weird trailer
• Very retro PC gaming vibe. SID chip music!
• Rough introduction. Big info dump right at the start before I know what I’m doing
• Music changes as you change the installed skills, which are presented as synthesizer modules
• Struggling with visibility. Hard to quickly tell what’s an enemy and what’s background art. Also hard to tell what’s collidable and what’s clear
• I’m not finding the combat here very intersting

Pass :::

:::spoiler Morsels — Action roguelike (Isaaclike?) with creature collecting

• Gross and cute
• The classics from Rogue: traps, unexplained stuff, retrying a lot until you start to understand
• Demo shows a small but varied range of creatures with different abilities, which always come with a randomly selected bonus
• Quick switch between your roster of three
• At least in this early part of the game, ammo count is really low and even ranged attacks don’t go far
• Great presentation. Pixel art feels kind of like claymation

Pass. I liked the demo a lot, but I’m already playing a lot of roguelikes and my wishlist already has ones I’m more excited for :::

:::spoiler ODDCORE — Surreal boomer shooter

• Maximalism. An exhilarating force-feeding of the senses.
• Liminal spaces but actually awesome and fun. Exterminate the Backrooms! Shoot the jump scare monsters in their faces!
• Excursions into the Oddcore only last 5 minutes unless you buy time extensions
• Interesting idea: you can teleport home (almost) whenever you want to buy upgrades or more time
• Chaotic level progression, like really channel surfing through the multiverse. Sometimes, instead of warping to the next level, you end up in a corrupted level or a bonus level or just some weird, mildly creepy room

Wishlisted :::