I had a decent time with it and probably would’ve played a 2nd run had the game not failed me because every faction (including the rebelling one) was too happy to pass the final law or whatever. They probably fixed that by now, but it was pretty souring.

What you’ve done looks nice overall.

Feels like your river is being pretty wasted though.

My expectation was combat would be more of a setup/payoff play style with situational skills and players suffering resource attrition over long fights and maps when compared to PoE’s use one skill to clear the entire screen as fast as possible so you aren’t one shot by a random rare that is harder than the map boss.

A lot of what they’ve said helped inform that understanding, but it’s really hard to meaningfully combine skills when mobs are basically trying to shoot/rush you as soon as you can see them.

Ok, if you are against hard feelings, cross off anything that is directly competitive, that would be any game where players directly and willfully interact with each other in a way where one gains while another loses as part of the core gameplay. To varying degrees things like blood rage, root, monopoly/solarquest, everdell, 7 wonders, clank, carcassonne, ticket to ride, dominion, etc.

If your group must have competition, you’ll need to stick to independent competitive games, this is anything where players are primarily taking actions in their own space and are progressing largely independent from each other. Example recommendations include things like Quacks of Quedlinburg, Shifting Stones, most roll and writes (welcome to series, cartographer with a minor exception), cascadia, verdant, etc

If you can do without competing with each other, cooperative games are definitely the way to go to minimize hard feelings (it’d only come up then if someone thought another player did something suboptimal causing a loss). The variety here is actually pretty large: simple trick taking games like The Crew series Information sharing games, like Mysterium “Combat” games of all complexities (generally ascending: Lord of the rings storybook, marvel united, D&D board games, Heroquest, Stuffed fables, Atlantis Rising, legends of andor, horrified, Arkham horror, marvel champions, mansions of madness 2nd edition, spirit island, Gloomhaven) Mystery/puzzle games (Adventure Games series, Exit The Game series, Animals of Baker Street)

I’d also like to call out 2 other games specifically: Stella, while it is a 1 winner competitive game where your score depends largely on other players, the push your luck and prisoner’s dilemma aspect of how you earn points I think largely removes the feel bad aspect of competition. Kitchen Rush: pure cooperative, but it’s also a real-time game where everyone is taking simultaneous actions to run a restaurant in 4 real time minutes stretches.

Just wanted to add, for the fully cooperative Heroquest experience, they came out with an app for the new edition (but it’s compatible with the original base game) that fully takes over the Zargon/DM role.

There’s actually a specifically cooperative expansion for Carcassonne, called Mists Over Carcassonne. It adds an element of managing a ghost population while trying to cooperatively reach a target score based on certain scenarios.

So for 1, here’s a pretty explicit quote where he does speak out against the harassment “I call on everyone to reject harassment in all its forms.” @cynicalbrit (first comment).

Definitely unfortunate that while he was attempting to champion the cause for a discussion on ethics (which he had been involved with for years when that all happened), the mantle got co-opted by a bunch of terrible people. But at best I can only blame him for thinking he could right the ship at that point, and that’s not a large enough mistake for me to define him by.

He definitely didn’t “yell into camera”, both because he was just projecting his voice (I’m constantly confused when people can’t distinguish loud from yell) and most videos didn’t actually feature a camera shot. He was known for a lot more than his criticisms for devs for things like 30 FPS locks: he was an excellent color commentator for SC2, he prolifically provided coverage for indie games and was a huge consumer advocate.

As he relates to the topic at hand, he was a giant reliable source of gaming recommendations of his day and it’s disingenuous to suggest there haven’t historically been highly influential, reliable and quality creators to assist people in discovering games.

WAY better than anything we saw a decade or two ago.

I take offense to this on behalf of TotalBiscuit, otherwise carry on.

Sure, but for those that have to have it a long queue is better for them than no queue.

They could easily put a toggle on so people can choose to enable cross play, off by default. If console folks want to subject themselves to people using mice, that’s their own fault, and nobody who didn’t want to would need to play with them.

There might be other reasons for the delay that are more contractual in nature to get sorted out.

Check out MiniReview, I’ve had better luck there finding game of certain types that I’d enjoy.

Someone would setup some third party tracker that identified the auto reject threshold and listed it for everyone, so people could low-ball just above it. Or devs would just set it to auto-reject below the listing prices.

There are a few sections restricted to solo only, but it’s not the default, the matchmaking is pretty quick for a random group and there’s a variety of people always looking to form groups for different tasks. One word of warning, people move fast, until you get parkour down, you might just end up running from the start to end of a level if you join groups, they’ll have completed the objectives and be waiting for you to extract.

Clans exist, and each have their own space station called a dojo that’s customized by them (cost is based on size of the clan, as a solo I was able to build up and level a clan on my own).

Path of Exile.

I’d say I’m a fairly mid-tier player, get better with each season I play, the breadth of mechanics and depth of complexity is mind breaking. I’ve only played like 2000 hours though, I’ll get it all figured out eventually… Right?

ZERO SIEVERT (Steam)

I’m bending rule 4, because the official 1.0 release is announced for less than 1 month from now.

ZERO Sievert is a tense top-down extraction shooter that challenges you to scavenge a procedurally-generated wasteland, loot gear, and explore what’s left of a devastated world. When the odds are stacked against you, you’ll need to do more than just survive.

I’ve played through it a 2nd time recently, it’s a fun solo experience, the difficulty is largely customizable, the different zones feel unique, lots to explore, even just a little morality testing on some quests. Decent enemy variety, the guns generally feel different, and different ammo types do matter. Skill will take you far, and carelessness, even in the easy areas, will be punished.

Yep, UI mouseover is fine with it unplugged, issue returns when replugged.

1. PC, other than M/KB, I have a Razer Tartarus.

2. I was using the scroll wheel, might have missed the cue to use keys, that’d fix it for me.

Played a couple runs. Definitely seems up my alley.

Feedback:

1. Idk why, but when cursoring UI menus, it just ticks from where I cursored to the top like I’m holding an up arrow. Happens in Menus, Stats, Level ups and Shop. Clicking works fine, just really couldn’t read any stat descriptions.

2. When teasing the locked towers/skills, when you obscure the text with the X of locks, it’s hard for me to read and get excited about getting access to that thing. Maybe move the lock indicator somewhere there isn’t text (top right?).

3. This is maybe more fundamental, and idk how it fits with your vision, but scroll wheeling between skills feels clunky, could it maybe be key based (either as well or in addition), think that’d feel snappier to me.

Any new purchasers (I am one) are also probably waiting for the mid-generation update coming later this year.

Turned based on pausable stuff can reduce stress by allowing for thoughtfulness, and even single player games can be done together through strategizing, while also not requiring the 2nd person if they aren’t available. To that end, I’m going to recommend Slay the Spire, Dicey Dungeons or Broken Age. Then probably some kind of tactical game, Darkest Dungeon, Loop Hero or Shadowrun. After that, maybe some kind of management game, Cities: Skylines, SimCity, Stardew Valley, Humankind or Against the Storm. If you want to go deeper, Crusader Kings, Dyson Sphere Program or Wartales.

Real-time games that require using multiple sticks/buttons/aiming+moving at once are inherently more difficult to start without the muscle memory, so I’d look to build that up with games that have simpler controls starting with Vampire Survivors or Brotato. Then I’d probably do some kind of non-shooter first or third person game, thinking of Escape Academy, Firewatch or Superliminal, Amnesia (maybe). Then a combat first/third person game Assassin’s Creed, Battlefield (Campaign), Mass Effect. Then maybe something that’s got combat plus extra stuff, Atomic Heart, Deep Rock Galactic, Dead Space (maybe), Doom, Prey, Wo Long, Remnant. After that is really PvP stuff.

If you just want more readably accessible stuff, A Short Hike, Disneyland Adventures, Peggle, Plants vs Zombies, Bejeweled, The Walking Dead from Telltale (maybe).

I also pulled every game on this list off of Xbox Game Pass, so that might be a good way to try a bunch of different games for cheaper.