Gaming

I know this game has gotten a lot of attention but Sea of Stars was my favorite game of the year, the story and art was charming and well done, and the gameplay was great and about the perfect length IMO. Its only been out 4 months and I'm already itching to do a replay

Against the Storm

It's a pretty fun ~~rougelike~~ rougelite city builder in a world where it always rains and every few decades a malevolent eldritch storm destroys most of the civilization.

Dyson Sphere Program just got a pretty substantial update adding combat mechanics. If you like other production/logistics games like factorio/mindustry/satisfactory I highly recommend it. The amount of control they give you over sorting/distribution/etc combined with the ability to create blueprints can make for some rapid scalability to your manufacturing operation, and the same mechanics can be leveraged to now wage a competent and scalable offence against the new enemy.

Spirit of the North

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213700/Spirit_of_the_North/

An indie adventure/exploration/puzzle game. There is no combat in this game. You explore, solve puzzles, and take in the vibes of a story told without any dialogue at all. It's all in the visuals, music, and mood. This is Abzu with foxes.

The gameplay is fairly simple, but also pretty forgiving - there are very few places where you need fast reactions or precise timing, and if you fall off a platform you only have to redo the last few jumps, not the entire level. It's the kind of puzzle game where you have plenty of time to think things through and even more time to just enjoy the journey. Definitely a game for the casual gamer who wants to look at pretty landscapes, listen to beautiful music, and bark at things.

If you stick exclusively to following the story, it's maybe 2-3 hours long, and getting 100% completion on all achievements, collectibles, and alternate skins took me 16 hours. So it's not a huge game - which means the best time to buy it is when it's heavily discounted, like right now.

I love this game so much. I like a lot of games, but it's rare that I absolutely adore one. In fact, I might just go and play it again tomorrow.

A few hidden gems I've played:

Dungeons of the Endless: https://store.steampowered.com/app/249050/Dungeon_of_the_ENDLESS/

Solasta Crown of the Magister: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister/

Tower of Time: https://store.steampowered.com/app/617480/Tower_of_Time/

Detroit: Become Human: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222140/Detroit_Become_Human/

The Dark Pictures Anthology - Man of Medan: https://store.steampowered.com/app/939850/The_Dark_Pictures_Anthology_Man_of_Medan/

I hope you like them all as much as I did.

I tend to play co-op with a friend and enjoyed playing V-Rising on a private server. We built up our vampire lair and roamed the lands collecting resources and expanding the lair. The bosses are challenging, and the map is varied. It is also fun to play with friends as the game accommodates this very well.

Eco. It's incredibly fun.

The premise is that the planet starts about (with default settings) thirty days away from beibg destroyed by a meteor. You and the other couple dozen or hundred people on the server have the obvious goal of stopping that meteor. But nobody actually makes you do it and since you all start with stone tools and wheelbarrows, none of you even have the means to do it in the beginning.

The idea is that you band together with other like-minded players and form a settlement and each of you specializes into a different set of professions (for example, I am a shipwright and logger mainly but also have a small pottery workshop going). In time, you find new ressources or ways to utilise already discovered ressources to eventually build cars, boats, larger settlements and stuff. While that is happening, you can (and probably want to) set some rules for what is allowed and forbidden in your settlements radius (you widen that radius by increasing culture, mostly via decorative items). The rules you set (and players actually have to vote for and come to agreements with) almost always follow a simple "If x then y (else z)" programming logic and can be incredibly creative. Once voted for, those rules are law and can't be broken by the subset of people affected by that rule. Seriously, one town on my current server basically gutted themselves accidentally by miswording a law. They intended a specific player to be forbidden of doing anything in their town but the wording was "If {name} is resident then prevent ". But since, yes, that player on the server was a resident of something (another town or their own homestead, doesn't matter), so condition true, every citizen in town was banned from doing anything meaningful, since it wasn't worded as "prevent {name} from doing xyz".

🤓 The Talos Principle 2 is taking up my tiny slices of gaming time. Tons of puzzles to solve, a really engaging story to unfold and the music is just beautiful. If you played the first edition (from 2009) it's totally like that and more. I'm, only halg-way through it but yeah, it's great and I can't wait to see what comes next.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/835960/The_Talos_Principle_2/

I finished Laika : Aged through blood. An indie metroidvania / 2d bike shooter / bullet time.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1796220/Laika_Aged_Through_Blood/

It's the story of a mother in a post-apocalyptic environment having to care for her daughter and village while doing the war outside.

Everything, art, music, is a masterpiece. The music is just extremely good.

Outside of special zones, there are 20 you have to find, and it cycles between them. All 20 are voiced, with words or humming.

The story is good, and is extremely anti-war.

The gameplay feels amazing. It can be hard at first, but I quickly learned how to control the bike and and to do backflips and frontflips at the right time to reload guns and the pary.

The main character laika is one-shot, but the game isn't very punishing. The respawn points aren't too far away from each other, and they are optional. When you die, you loose a pouch with the currency, and can get it back.

There are some little issues with the game tho. The ending seems to be a bit rushed. The ending boss isn't that difficult, and there were some cuts it seems.

But overall these little issues aren't that bad, and the game is still amazing for an indie.

risk of rain 2, game is sooo good just pickes up the dlc survivors of the void and it adds so much new stuff, def recommend if you like third person shooters and rougelites, it's quite hard tooo which makes wining all that more satisfying as well as endless mode as an option

I haven't seen anything new and exciting on sale. Some stuff I already have is on sale, though. BG3 is great. Pillars of Eternity is also great.

I've been playing Guild Wars 2 a lot. It's on sale. New expansion came out recently. It's the only MMO that doesn't piss me off. Feels like an actual video game.

I’ve been playing Roboquest the last few days and have to say it’s the most fun I’ve had playing a shooter in a long time. https://store.steampowered.com/app/692890/Roboquest/

Can anyone recommend a hunting or fishing game? I've been into watching outdoors videos and activities, but never been on any of those activities and pretty much can only do it virtually right now lol.

The wife and I have really enjoyed playing Ravenswatch.

It's an early-access rougelite that plays a bit like a Diablo/League (sans toxicity because it's co-op, not competitive)

Farm efficiently and level your hero within the time limit and fight a boss at the end.

It's a great time and 20% off on the sale

I just want to say that the steam sale art is gorgeous as always.

Lately I've been playing Spark the Electric Jester 3, Freedom Planet 2, Sonic Superstars, Vampire Survivors, and Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. I think all of these are on sale!

I'm a platformer gal, especially fast-paced Sonicy ones, so Spark the Electric Jester, Freedom Planet, and of course Sonic Superstars are right up my alley. Sonic Superstars really isn't a $60 game but I'd say it's $36 sale price is all right. Freedom Planet 2 absolutely nails fluid 2D level design with insane levels of polish. And Spark 3 may be one of the finest 3D platformers ever made, with a tight control system and a incredibly high skill ceiling.

Vampire Survivors, however, is not a platformer. It's a bite-sized RPG where your control of your character is exclusively directional and what upgrades to their skillset they get. It is incredibly addictive and while each session can last a maximum(ish) of 30 minutes I find myself wanting just one more try all the time. If you're not sure about it, the mobile version is free with ads, but it's really best played on PC.

And I don't think I have words for FFVIIR. Say what you want about Square Enix (such as "fuck those guys"), they make a solid JRPG, and this enhanced remake of the first… like, quarter of the first disc of Final Fantasy VII? is excellently done and takes enough liberties with the storyline to feel fresh without feeling so different that it's unrecognizable. (and the fact that they took liberties is actually a story point in and of itself but I'll just leave it at that)

Against The Storm.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1336490/Against_the_Storm/

It just came out of early access, but it's been in a better state than many released games for a long time. It's a fascinating roguelite city builder. You build up small settlements to a certain goal before moving on to the next one, earning you meta resources to give yourself more options on future settlements.

The best part is there are so many variables that go into the location and your goals that no two settlements feel alike, and 20+ difficulty levels so you can find just the right spot for you. The devs are very good at listening to the community and constantly updating the game.

It's also on sale for $20 right now! I can't recommend it enough. They've somehow found the perfect combination of chill without being boring.

Picked up Dave the Diver because everyone keeps saying it's amazing. Sure enough, it's addictive and definitely worth the $13. It hits the Stardew Valley type of gameplay loop and has been perfect on Steam Deck. I've got about 6 hours into it in 2 days.

I may still grab Marble It Up because I loved Marble Blast Ultra on the 360 back in the day.

Brok The Investigator

In this game you play as an alligator who is an investigator (they rolled with that pun) who throughout the game does various puzzles and gets into fights. It's not egregiously long and has multiple endings that change depending on your actions, all of which allow you to unlock the true ending, I guess. I have only gotten a single ending, so I don't know what all the endings are.

It has an easy, normal, and hard difficulty which change the fight difficulty. It says relaxed (easy) difficulty is for those who are just there for the story and puzzles, so I'd assume it might either make the fights ridiculously easy or skip them. No clue since I jumped in straight away on hardcore.

I personally found most of the characters besides one certain robot to be enjoyable. The characters are also fully voiced (English only as of now), but there are 10 other languages for the text. Everything said will pop up in a dialogue box you have to click through, so you can't miss any dialogue unless you purposefully skip through all of them. Even if you do, afterwards you can open the pause menu and find a transcript of all the dialogue, too.

The game also has a demo for the first chapter, so you can play that and see if it's a game you would actually buy. Currently it's $13.99 for the base game or $19.05 for the game alongside the official soundtrack and an artbook. If nothing else, I at least recommend looking up the soundtrack piece Brok and Graff, which is my personal favorite song in the whole entire game.

American/Euro Truck simulator are always on sale, and are rad

I've been playing Bomb Rush Cyberfunk and Automation/Beam.ng mostly but I've been severely addicted to the free demo for Half Sword. It's the most brutal, jankiest medieval combat simulator I've ever played and it's as frustrating as it is fun. I can't stop playing it.

Should I get RoboCop: Rogue City or Star Trek: Resurgence now while they’re on sale or wait to see if they go lower?

It’ll probably be 3-6 months before I get around to playing either