silverchase

silverchase, 5 dni 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, 9 dni 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, 8 dni 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, 10 dni temu

Damn that’s a shame

silverchase, 9 dni 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, 19 dni 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, 21 dni temu

I spent a good long time browsing through the piles of thumbnails to make myself a tall list. It’s a mix of games I’m excited for, games that look interesting to me, and weird games. Since I spent so much time today browsing for games, I haven’t actually played much today on day 1.

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/29bd28bb-4ed8-422d-8f29-71ce6d3085a0.jpeg

Some thoughts on my list

• Bits & Bops has already had a demo for months now, but for Next Fest, there’s a new minigame to play. Also, I backed this game on Kickstarter, so I’m obviously interested in seeing this game be good. And I think it is.
• SourceWorld is a Half-Life 2 mod participating in Next Fest! It’s an FPS dungeon crawler! The Source engine isn’t dying anytime soon.
• Oddcore has a really flashy trailer. I actually first heard of it from seeing it get front page attention on Newgrounds. It could be the first game set in “liminal spaces” that isn’t utterly boring or crap.
• Funi Raccoon Game is on this list because the trailer is stupid and I want to see more of it. I have high hopes.
• Why, yes, those are three games featuring a black cat as playable character.

silverchase, 21 dni temu

Dang, I didn’t even notice Star Birds was in Next Fest.

silverchase, 21 dni temu

My report from day 1

Orbyss — 3D puzzles with spheresA glowing ball rolls around. The level is made of cubes floating in the void, surrounding a large pulsing energy ball.Thoughts before playing: Pretty, abstract 3D puzzle game. But what’s the killer feature? Like the portal gun from Portal or the camera from Viewfinder? This is what it would be like to play the PlayStation 2 boot sequence as a puzzle game, with floating cubes and coloured sparks whizzing around in an abstract void. You get to control some balls, rolling them around the level to press buttons and zoom through pipes. This demo shows some early levels, featuring some fairly stimulating puzzles, but it failed to really grab me. The slow pacing and pure abstractness of the game’s setting aren’t getting me excited to play more. I just never got to that “aha” point where I realized what made the game special. In comparison, another puzzle game demo I played in a past Next Fest, The Art of Reflection, didn’t waste any time showing off its key feature of jumping through mirrors. I’m going to pass on this game, but I know someone is going to like it.

Panta Rhei — Atmospheric top-down adventure with time manipulationAt a cracked monument surrounded by fogThe game produced an error when launching it, which I fixed by forcing Steam to run it with Proton Experimental. 2D animated cutscenes? Hell yeah, I love that kind of effort. The in-game 3D art also does a good job capturing that illustrative feel of the cutscenes. Atmospheric top-down adventure with cool art and light RPG elements? I liked Bastion and Tunic, so maybe this could be up my alley, too. The game’s premise and worldbuilding interest me. You play as a young guardian of time and use your time powers to fight the monsters ravaging the world. But gameplay-wise, this demo is rough. I found the melee combat to be unsatisfyingly sluggish. There’s a bug where falling off the world makes you permanently faster when you respawn, and I was definitely running way too fast by the end of the demo. The game is tagged as a roguelike (aka “choose some randomly drawn upgrades”) on its store page, but there wasn’t much time in the demo to really appreciate any of those upgrades in action. I’ll pass. It’s really unfortunate that this demo disappointed me, since this game still might grab me if it gets in better shape.

:::spoiler Wander Stars — Turn-based combat anime

Fast Extra Super Punch deals 5 damage

The key selling points for Wander Stars are its loud inspiration by anime and its word-slinging combat mechanic, the latter of which got me to try this demo. I thought it was an interesting take on turn-based combat to line up words that customize an attack, and that old anime style presentation is indeed charming.

Wander Stars is also very heavy on the visual novel-style dialogue and cinematics, which is probably necessary to evoke that anime feel. It felt more like a visual novel in disguise than the more mechanically involved turn-based RPG that I was hoping for. I’m just lacking the patience to read so much between active gameplay, though the gameplay near the end of the demo does show potential for depth in the turn-based combat.

I’ll pass. :::

silverchase, 21 dni temu

That’s a really cool art style! Maybe it could be of interest to !shmups

silverchase, 21 dni temu

It was surprising to see that it’s rated mixed on the store page. It looks like a lot of the complaining is about how it’s not like Patapon?

silverchase, 20 dni 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, 19 dni 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, 18 dni 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, 17 dni 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 :::

silverchase, 23 dni temu

I’m glad someone knocked some sense into these guys and convinced them to add a little bit to the name to make it searchable. Just “Mouse” would have just doomed them lol

silverchase, miesiąc temu

That’s how I felt seeing the trailer on Steam.

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

I played this during Next Fest. Best spreadsheet game.

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

Cassette Beasts is a creature collector with a substantial single-player campaign and a permadeath difficulty option.

You could also have permadeath as a house rule, which would let you play singleplayer games with traditional campaigns. For example, you could play Elden Ring or Borderlands 2 and commit to deleting the character upon death.

A weird suggestion: Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is a co-op puzzle game about defusing a bomb. The player who’s streaming will have the bomb but stream only audio, not video, and everyone else will have to use the defusal manual to guide them to safely disarm the bomb. You’ll have to advance level by level.

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

You want us to sell fewer controllers?!

silverchase, 2 miesiące temu

I clicked on this post because of the jazz in jazzstronauts.

There actually is something that could be called jazz, but you’ll have to finish the entire story for that.

How did you get all the images at once, upload beforehand (whether to Lemmy or somewhere else offsite) and that is how you have a link? Repeated editing so Lemmy accepts each new image upload?

I actually published a mini-site on yay.boo containing this post and all of the media. The pictures in this Lemmy post are hotlinked from yay.boo. The video is hotlinked from Imgur because yay.boo did not like it when I did that. In my previous posts, I did directly upload everything to sh.itjust.works, but I wanted to try a different way this time.

For my previous posts, like this one on Gunfire Reborn, I went to the “Create a post” form and used the “upload picture” button on the toolbar of the main body text field.

I have actually been playing multiple cat-themed games in recent months but have been too lazy/busy to bother writing about them.

silverchase, 3 miesiące temu

Will you be waiting at the finish line to cheer for the 365th?

silverchase, 3 miesiące temu

You’re buyer!

silverchase, 3 miesiące temu

I was really impressed with the demo during a Steam Next Fest last year.

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

Really hoping this can be a worthy successor to Transformed

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

I’d say it’s a step more “serious racing” than Kart. Transformed had more complex drifting and boosting mechanics to emphasize good racing skills. There are still powerups, but they’re relatively weak. The closest blue shell equivalent is the swarm, which summons a swarm of giant wasps to sit in front of the race leader, but it’s always dodgeable with good steering. The medium-level pickups require good aim or awareness of who’s near you. The Kart strategy of only caring about the last lap is still possible in Transformed, but trying to get ahead as far as possible is also a doable strategy.

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

Denuvo. Shame.

silverchase, 4 miesiące temu

I’m sure someone at Valve also had fond memories of that toilet.

Amazingly, I played this game when it came out and discovered it has Steam Controller binds out of the box!

At this point, the fact that Portal is in the Half-Life universe is just a fluke. The plots of Portal 2 singleplayer, co-op, and PTI are very “distant” from anything happening with Half-Life. The two series are tonally very mismatched. Their strongest connection is that Aperture bumbled their way into possessing Half-Life plot-critical stuff and then losing the boat that contained it.

silverchase, 5 miesięcy temu

By the way, my main is Qing Yan, the other bird boy.

silverchase, 5 miesięcy temu

The maps aren’t generated inch-by-inch, if that’s what you were hoping for. Each stage has a bucket of unique rooms it stitches together to create the level geometry. The devs did a clever thing and made rooms with multiple doorways, with two chosen at random to be part of the path, so you can traverse through the same room in a slightly different way each run. At this point, I’ve seen all the possible rooms, but the combination of character upgrades, surprise challenges the game springs on you, weapons, and enemies keeps it fresh. There’s a lot of replayability in just character builds alone, since you can find multiple ways to make each character effective, depending on what perks you got first and what risks you take.

The co-op works well. Gunfire Reborn is a lot easier in co-op because friends can revive each other with unlimited tries, whereas in singleplayer, you get only one revive by sacrificing the character-upgrading resource. Recently, they’ve added a Left 4 Dead-style bot co-op mode so you can have that experience instead of the pure solo one. I’ve actually ground myself into a weird corner where I’m way better than everyone else I play with and can carry a whole team, dealing like 80% of the entire team’s damage across the whole run. I’ve not actually tried public matchmaking, just playing solo or with friends.

In terms of DLCs, each comes with two new characters and a handful of weapons. Each DLC character has a different mechanical focus in case you’re getting bored of the characters you already have. The base game is just fine to start with. I have the first two packs, but the latest one, the third, I skipped during the Steam winter sale to buy more games. The character I was playing here, Zi Xiao, comes from the second pack, Artisan and Magician. His counterpart in that pack is Nona, who is pretty much the red panda version of Gaige from Borderlands 2 (no anarchy stacks, though), summoning and commanding a combat robot. The first pack, Spirit Realm, has a monkey who aggressively upgrades his guns and a fox who, with the right build, can just stop using guns and drop fireballs on enemies instead.

Okay, here’s my final pitch. The game is on sale as part of the launch of the new season. It’s not the all-time low, but it’s pretty close.

silverchase, 5 miesięcy temu

The WADF soundtrack sticks with me

silverchase, 5 miesięcy temu

Valve tried trackballs with the Steam Controller but ditched them for trackpads that emulate trackball physics. They found small ones felt bad but big ones were too bulky and heavy. Clearly they like that idea, since every controller-like thing they’ve designed since includes pads.

silverchase, 5 miesięcy temu

If you haven’t done so already, I suggest you start taking notes while playing the game. You’ll need to keep track of what you have to come back to a place for.

silverchase, 6 miesięcy temu

It’s actually spelled “chamberrr”

silverchase, 6 miesięcy temu

I don’t think it has ever gone on sale.

silverchase, 6 miesięcy temu

I recommend you avoid games with continuous movement early on. Moving with joystick feels very bad until you get your VR legs. Also get the Lab, Valve’s free VR minigame collection.