What games are you playing and why?

I just picked up Crypt of the Necrodancer - it 33% off until March 9, and it was already pretty cheap, now it's $11.38 CDN.

I would suggest looking up videos on YouTube or something, because you really need to hear the game to appreciate its appeal, but it's a very charming Rogue-like dungeon crawler with cartoon-y visuals that are a bit reminiscent of Dredmor. It definitely has that 'one-more-turn' appeal.

 

I picked up two new top-down turn based dungeon crawlers that are worth trying, plus one that I didn't care for:
1. Mighty Dungeons -- this is on sale on Steam for 15% off, or $5.09 US. It's a fun little game with three built in campaigns, and a coming steam workshop to upload your own quests/dungeons for others to play. The combat is quick and fun, and the gameplay is pretty typical of the genre with a few exceptions. It has a few different game modes, including permadeath, and a few different character classes (I've been playing as a wizard). I'm not a fan of the fact that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of variation on loot, but it's still a fun game. (And when I mentioned that to the dev, he explained that later on you can get elite items/artifacts, so maybe I just haven't seen enough to comment on the loot).

2. DarkQuest -- I actually like this one a bit better than Mighty Dungeons -- In DarkQuest, you start with a generic Barbarian (?) type hero, and will find some companions in the dungeons as you explore -- so far I've found a fragile wizard and a dwarvish rogue(?) (They aren't actually labeled as far as I can tell, but their archetypes are obvious once you start training them). Each character can move a fixed number of spaces per turn, and act, but that action must be part of the same order or your combat round for that character will end (in other words, if your wizard is going to cast a spell, you give THAT order along with the target, then the wizard will move into range of the target (if it isn't already) and cast that spell. You CANNOT move and then give a second command to act. It's a little bit frustrating and limiting (because you may not know the range of your spell at first), but you get used to it. Also, you have a limited number of turns to complete each quest, and if you aren't out of the dungeon by then, the quest is failed. It's a little bit different from Mighty Dungeons, and maybe has a bit more depth to it, but both are fun games.

3. The Depths of Tolagal -- This is the roguelike in the bunch, and unfortunately, my least favorite of the games. Each turn, you act 3 times, and each action can be either moving one space, or attacking or using a ring (which can heal you). I really don't like the move vs. heal mechanics, because of the way that enemies use the shadows to attack then hide. It forces you to guess too much as to how far away monster is, where you can position yourself so that the UNSEEN enemy can be seen, and you still have movement to attack it, etc. Plus when you level, you are given the choice of 1 out of 3 randomized 'improvements' to your character. I put that in quotes because some of those improvements are really not improvements at all, and will likely get you killed, you don't know even if ANY of the choices will be helpful, because you never know which ones will be available on a given playthrough. I know in a roguelike, that there will be random things that can kill you, but I'd hope that leveling up would not be one of them.

 

Hmm ... playing a bit of Catacomb Kids lately. It's something I'd backed on Kickstarter sometime in the past, and it's currently in the alpha stage, albeit it is playable outside of the content being kind of limited (you stop getting “new” content a few floors in, though I'm not sure how many exactly since I've yet to get far enough to be sure) and only two out of planned six or more classes being available.

This game ... I guess it would be most accurate to say that it is something between a rogue-like and a platformer. It's as difficult as one would expect from a rogue-like (your health generally lasts you a few hits at most; usually it's one or two hits and you are dead) as without any bonuses you are pretty much just as strong as a single run-of-the-mill enemy, it has quite a nifty level-up system, and there are potions that have to be identified before you use them (I'd found all the trait combinations for all the potions that are currently in the game, so identifying the potions is not a problem for me) lest you drink something and then burst into flames or throw a potion of might at the enemy.

As it is, I can say I've learned quite some tricks to use when playing it (rotten slime bottles are nice, it's like potions of poison-flavoured instant glue; also, fire spells + water with fish = water without fish; also, assassination is superior to honest combat; and so on, and so on ...), but I still have more to learn, and in spite of it being difficult ... and me sucking at it, it's actually fairly enjoyable, in the standard “this time I died in a slightly less horribly stupid way, yay me” rogue-like fashion.

 

BTW, both the Highlands expansion and the Shape Shifter character has been released on Steam for Talisman DE. So I suppose I'll be playing quite a bit of that this weekend.

 

There's been a game on my wishlist that I finally bought and I'm hooked on it now: Ironcast. It's described as a cross between Puzzle Quest and FTL. I think that FTL is pushing the comparison a bit too far, but it is a very fun game.

It's a steam-punk-themed puzzle-quest-like game, where you match up different colored items to power, repair, cool, and arm a walking mech. You select a mission from the ones available that are rated by difficulty. Each has different rewards available for completion, including scrap metal (used to craft upgrades), experience, and so on. I think the best way to understand the game is to simply watch a Let's Play (that's basically what convinced me to make the purchase):

 

Ironcast was surprisingly interesting to me- I was put off by the reports of the short playtime though.

If I can see 90% of the content of a game in ten hours, I tend to lose interest. Was that true, in your experience?

Edit: Oh, and what I'm playing. I'm playing Rebuild 3 (which is in EA, though essentially done) and Kaiju-a-GoGo.

Rebuild 3 is a 4x-ish post-zombie apoc rebuilding game. You control a few survivors at the start, and rebuild a city while fighting off zombie attacks. It has a tech tree, RPG skills, lots of items to equip on your survivors, other factions... While not hard unless you play Hard/Impossible, I'm having fun.

Kaiju-a-GoGo is a city stomper I backed last year. Almost out, and I'm anxious for the final features to be implemented. The city layouts (I think there are like 50 cities) are persistent, and different building types have different drops, so there is a fair amount of theory-crafting you can do about optimal routes to flip a city in the fewest number of visits. Oh, and there are 99 trainable abilities for you Kaiju to learn and a basebuilding aspect.

 

It has permadeath, and I haven't gotten very far yet. Then again, I haven't played as much recently. I do intend to return to it though (then again, I've said that about a lot of games lol).

 

Thanks to Halduron's notice of a Steam roguelike sale, I finally picked up Desktop Dungeons like I should have when it was first mentioned in here. I'm rather hooked already!

 

Just picked up Hero Siege, I'm banging my head against the fourth level of Necrodance now that it's finally out, and I'm getting some Metroidvania on with Outland and Apotheon. I'm also replaying Serious Sam: The Second Encounter and trying to clear Ziggurat with more of the characters.

I should really delve into Pillars of Eternity...

 

the drones are implemented. Actually two kinds: logistics drones (which pick up raw/finished materials to and fro) and construction drones which construct/deconstruct. If you love trains, tanks, building machines to do your will, building complicated systems to accomplish your goals I recommend it highly. Play the free demo (while still in development, it has more content than some of the finished games out there, also multitudes of mods out there, so you can even make drastic changes to the Vanilla content), you will not regret it.

 

There are two games that I've been playing lately, and both are ones that I supported on Kickstarter. The first is Armello, which I've described before elsewhere. It's a board game for 1 to 4 players with multiple ways of winning. The company that created it has been adding new features, new weapons and armor, and other things to the game. It's a light board game which is easy enough to learn. The AI isn't particularly great, so multiplayer is the way to go if you want an actual challenge.

The second game just came out: Dragon Fin Soup is a game with 3 different play modes. Story mode is more like a traditional turn-based rpg, but with procedurally-generated elements. If you want to play it with permadeath, you can. There are two other modes which make the game into a rogue-like -- Endless mode is set in a labyrinth, and Survival mode is set in the wilderness. Both include the option to play using a selected or random seed, or a preselected seed, if you want to compare your progress to other players.

The features in the game include pets (you can have 2 active pets at a time, and they level up as well and fight for you), crafting (you can either find recipes, or use trial and error to derive them, but recipes are not permanently stored in a recipe book, meaning that if you want to 'cheat', you'll have to keep notes), and mini-games, such as fishing (I haven't found any mini-games yet, but I'm told that there are others). You start out with one possible starting character, "Red Riding Hood", but there are other characters that you can unlock through play (I've unlocked one other so far).

The game is new, and so has a few problems that the devs are working to fix, but I honestly have not found any yet. Some people have complained about the UI -- it does have problems, and with a few changes it should be ok. Some people have complained that the game is too hard. Granted, I've been playing roguelikes for years, and I don't find it so. Granted, the difficulty curve seems gentle at first, and then ramps up more steeply later on. But if you can accept that, I think that you'll enjoy the game. REally, when I started playing my first game, I thought the game was pretty easy... until I was about level 12 or so, at which point I got into a really bad situation and died. That's when I decided that I really had to read the manual (it's accessable on the opening screen -- the entry is 'read this or die', so that should be a big enough hint lol).

Anyway, the game hasn't been getting great reviews, and although I agree with a few of the complaints, I don't think that the problems outweigh the fun I've been having. AS I said, I haven't yet tried story mode. When I finally get to trying it, I'll post again with my opinion. But I've been having too much fun with Endless and Survival modes to get around to it yet.

 

Postal 2 because it's like a non-crappy version of GTA

 

I started playing Dragon Fin Soup in Story mode, and sure enough, I hit the same difficulty wall at around level 12ish. Since Story Mode isn't permadeath by default, I've been muddling my way through. That said, sometimes you will have to skip certain quests at first, or bring a friend or 3 (2 pets + 1 hireling). Still, I got a bit frustrated at one point and went back to Labyrinth mode. They've been slowly improving the interface, but it's been very slow. Story mode is pretty much the same as the other two, except that you have actual quests to do, and there's a loose overlaying story.

That said, I may be taking a break from the game, since Fallout 4 was released at midnight last night. I've only played for a couple of hours, but so far it's working fine for me (only comment is that I'm not yet used to some of the small changes to VATS, etc. -- that's not a criticism, just a fact. I haven't encountered any real bugs, but I did discover that laser muskets are kinda clunky (they require manual reloading after every shot, just like real muskets lol), and that Dogmeat is equally as aggressive as always (you can give him commands though, so I probably can tone that down -- if not, it's mod-time!).

Although I haven't had any problems, there's talk that there may be serious issues for people with AMD processors, and (according to some) nVidia drivers (granted, I have an nVidia card, and it's not affecting me, so that may be an incorrect diagnosis, or a surprise for me waiting in ambush, for the next time I upgrade my drivers).

 

I play...
Neverwinter Nights (Arelith, Persistent World server)
Wurm Online (with friends, settlement sim mmo)
And CE, of course. I have a large Steam Library that needs assaulting... but tomorrow. Always tomorrow...

 

BTW, if you like Brogue, you may also like this game: Forays into Norrendrin.

 

I'm playing some emus that shall not be named ( WAAAGH! <3 ), mostly because I prefer PvP MMORPGs and the marked doesn't have much to offer.

 

Gotta pimp my other obsession for a sec:



Duelyst is the shit. End of story.

 

Champions of Krynn, because the Gold Box D&D computer games are something I love from my childhood

 

I've recently been playing Dungeon Keeper 2

In regard to said game, does anybody know if it would be possible to reskin it to replace the imps with diggles?