StrixLiterata

Often games have minigames or side mechanics which have little to do with the main gameplay loop. Sometimes, these can be a joy in themselves and elevate the whole game. The one I have encountered are: The musuem in A House of Many doors, which can house any noteworthy trade items you come across in your journey, and depending on them can become famous for it's beauty, scientific significance, or occult reputation. In similar games, like Sunless Sea or Sunless Sky, I found myself stashing items I didn't immediately need in case they were useful for a trade contract or a quest later; in A House of Many Doors, finding something new had me going "this would look great in my collection". In my opinion most open world game swould benefit from this feature, if it makes sense within the world. The ability to record and rewatch battles in Total War games, Warhammer 1 & 2 especcially. When you're actually fighting them, you got to take a eagle's eye view of the field and keep shifting your attention, but in a replay, I just love being able to watch the big monters animate and crush, infantry crash and push, artillery firing... I wish all strategy games had this feature to let the player sit on their back and properly enjoy their victory.

Total Warhammer 1 & 2, and Divinity Original Sin 2

I've since passed that wall, but this game just makes me so mad. Every battle takes about an hour and I have to constantly micro everything and still there will always be that battlebarge that goes ahead of everyone and gets itself obliterated! I just wish I could actually use the strategic layer to make battles easier for mysef instead of it only bringing resource scarcity and time limits

I've started playing Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2. I had tons of fun at the start, but I've hit a wall once I started to fight the ffffUCKING ELDAR

I just played a bit of Sea of Thieves. Kinda awkward, I've got to say, but it's intresting how it forces each memeber of the crew to do multiple jobs at a time during battles

board games session seaside or mountains?

Cruelty Squad I've put 31 hours into this Immersive Sim FPS before I was phisically able to think about anything else, and they were the best hours 13 euros could buy. Much is made about this game being difficult, but as long as you explore carefully and get the drop on enemies yuo're going to be fine; tense is what this game is, because what few health pick-ups are in any level are scattered, often secreted away, and never unguarded, and enemies can take big chunks of your health if they get the drop on you. Plus every level is filled with secrets in the form of alternate routes, augmentations, weapons and lore, or even other secret levels. I sincerely hope SoftConsumer Products makes more games, because this is a diamond with an eye-injuring but skillful cut.

Does it have anything to do with Ice Pick Lodge's The Void?

appropriate for the username and reminds me of retro game gìcharacters, but the visual noise detracts from the appeal. 8/10

I'm not finished watching your video, but I have this to say, as an Italian college student with ADHD, I have this to say: If I wasn't graded, I would never have found out I have ADHD, but I still found out very late in my life because my parents did not pay attention to the fact that my grades had been steadily declining since elementary school (unfortunately I was a "gifted kid", which meant that until college I didn't need to develop a work ethic). In my opinion, the problem with your education system is that everything is graded, which leaves no room for error, and that often caretakers and teachers don't use grades as a starting point for noticing and solving problems.

Sunless Skies. I still like the combat and visuals, but I'm falling to the "keepit for later" syndrome, which is especially bad beause my current objective is amassing money

Death Trash and Projections are still availeable

I'll start: Demos I Liked: GRIME This game solves a problem that plagues every other action game: that players initially shun the parry because it's too hard to pull off. GRIME's answer is making you start without weapons, able to defeat enemies only by parrying, linking upgrades to kills-by-parry, and making the first two upgrades you can get passive abilities that increase armor after failing a parry and restore stamina if you pull it off, simultaneusly giving you a safety net and a greater incentive to use it regularly. PROJECTIONS This is what happens when you take a fighting game's mechanics and completely change the context. The result is a game that asks you to fight as elegantly as possible without the fear of losing, but doesn't really push you to improve unless you care about how you look or the score. I found it an enjoyable time and liked the procedurally generated vaporwave enviroements, but I find the lack of context normally provided by the phisicality of an animal or a machine in the enemies' likeness hurts the player's ability to time dodges without rote memorization. Industria I was pleasantly reminded of Half Life 2 and Dishonored, althought the art lacks Viktor Antonov's unique flair and the gameplay is closer to Half Life 1 without the platforming Terra Nil Relaxing but stimulating city builder. The gameplay is made pleasantly more complex by having three distinct phases of Reclamation, in which the wasteland is turned into fertile land; Terraforming, in which the structures put down in the previous phase are modified or destroyed to shape different biomes; and Recicling in which all structures are destroyed to accumulate raw material that must be carried to a specific spot via waterway; with each needing good planning in the previous one to pull off successfully. Alan's Automatons A very good-looking programming puzzle game; or, to paraphrase genre popularizer Zach Barth's own book, Zach-like. the node-coding interface is a tad clunky, and the dialogus in the demo didn't make for good characterization like in Opus Magnum, but it's got spectacle and it's a good game to play if you want to learn Assembler coding Signal State Another Zach-like with good aesthetics. This one I like better in theory, and the interface is easier to use, but all the wires can get confusing (though this can contribute to the challenge). The dialogues, like in Alan's Automatons, feel like filler, although they manage to convey a hint of personality. Death Trash I was expecting a lot from this game and I wasn't disappointed: the rpg elements are up to par with the Bethesda Fallouts, and the combat is much more varied, balanced and satisfying than theirs. I unfortunately cannot make a first-hand comparison to the Black-Isle Fallouts, but I felt the wasteland was suitably hostile and the story has an edge I rarely saw elsewhere. Great work so far, and a masterclass in solo developement. I hope to achieve something like this in my own future. TOEM A bit too much for kids, but a solid adventure game, whose photograpfhy framing almost completely removes moon logic from puzzles while adding a healthy does of guesswork. A shame most things you do are fetch quest rather than jury-rigged solutions to strange problems, but I think it's a good trade overall. <<Drifting: Weight of Feathers>> The emphasis on the sexy protagonist might make you think of the infamous Haydee, but this game is closer to Tomb Raider or Bayonetta: the main attraction is the action, and the fanservice is just bonus, as well as significantly more restrained than the trailer would suggest. Speaking of the action, it has steep learning curve, but it's solid and not too hard once you have adjusted, with the sole exception of climbing vertical walls, which for some reason glitches into a horizontal wallrun if you look directly upwards, but can be fixed by grappling. Demos i disliked: Sable This was one of my most anticipated game of the whole event: it looks gorgeous and promises free and rewarding exploration. But it fails to deliver those promises. Although I don't mean to imply a lack of originality, the end result is "Breath fo the Wild, but worse and without the combat"; maybe the riding, climbing, and gliding by themselves could make for a satisfying gameplay, but the climbing glitches out on uneven surfaces, and the riding has neither the wide, free sapce it needs to make it liberating, nor the crative obstacle placement to make it stimulating. Unfortunately, this is the latest of a series of game sthat thought they could coast on travel alone, without any danger or challenge, and wound up boring. The Fermi Paradox I came looking for a strategy game in the style of King of Dragon Pass, but on a galactic scale. I left disappointed by a lack of individual characterization for each species and ways to meaningfully "build up", as even having species advance through the technological ages only resets their resource conter and changes their portrait. The Lost and the Wicked Too concerned with being edgy, not enough with refining gameplay. You can't act like the gameworld being the protagonist's subconcious is a deep and troubling reveal whe you constantly broadcast it from the start, and yu can't make enemies just warp outside te level because you can't be asked to program decent pathfinding.

I fondly remember Rise and Fall, and I still think it holds up. The way it works is that each hero has a stamina and a health bar; you can start controlling them directly once the stamina bar is full, and that control ends once either health or stamina are depleted. The hero can be leveled up with Glory, which is a quired by exploring, winning fights, and by building statues that generate it slowly but continuously. It also helps that heroes, besides being extremely deadly, can give order to nearby units, and that units of the same type can be put together in formations like in a total war game; all of which ensures you don't lose control over the wider battle when you personally pilot your hero. Also, the top of walls is traversable and you can build ladders to scale them, meaning that your hero can help in sieges.

You might like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., here's why:

The likelyhood of being killed by an internet troll is low, but never zero...

understood

It's impossible to avoid personal attacks when arguing with FullBusinessSuit, because the idea which he proposes is that all who oppose his political and moral views do so because they're stupid or because they're hypocrites; if you have the patience, read what he wrote in his "why is it always childless atheists who REEE the hardest about climate change?" posts, and you'll see what I mean. I would debate different opinions on how to resolve the issues we face or even what those problems are, but when the opinion being discussed is then it's personal.

HPL's writng is a textbook example of outsider art: he didn't have any fundamentals, but still managed to write something significant and sometimes insightful because his outlook on life was so divorced from everyone else's. I'd be lying if I described his writing as accessible or easily enjoyable, but I'd still recommend it to most horror fans (with a warning for the racism) because of his originality. That also means there is a lot of room to improve on what he did, which many writers, movie directors, and even videogame directors have done with success.