Vidja Games - They'll Rot Yer Brain!

Just got Knighthood on mobile and it’s addicting.

The next Steam sale is starting on the 21st. What do you have on your wishlists? Also if there’s any good non-Steam sales going on, please share with the class.

My wishlist is World of Goo, Last of Us Part I, a bunch of Planet Zoo expansions, Cozy Grove, a couple Lego games, Wandering Village, Surviving Mars, and Tropico 6. Some of these have gone on sale before but they weren’t cheap enough for me to bother getting.

I just finished playing through Little Inferno which is a cute game but also you can binge it in a day. I also found Scribblenauts Unlimited which Kiddo is playing through, it’s a cute fun game.

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I recently bought a bunch of games so chances are I am good on the Steam sale. Will I still look? Definitely!

Second a rec for Wandering Village (++ soothing music, but the poison mechanic can be a little stressful).

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I picked up Stray Gods recently and finished my first play through. It’s pretty good but also easy to binge in a weekend for just one play through. I’ll start a second play through soon.

TW mention of suicide

My biggest annoyance about it is that at one point there’s what is effectively suicide as a plot point, you can either encourage it or not. But perhaps you/your character doesn’t see it as suicide - the idols (gods) can pass their idol-ness to a new mortal body, granting it immortality and after a few years also all the memories of the past idols. One character wants to escape those memories so they go through new bodies relatively quickly, which means the old body dies. That wasn’t great to be surprised with in my fun video game time. There’s also an Indigenous land acknowledgement at the beginning so it rubbed me the wrong way that they showed sensitivity there and missed having any sort of heads up about suicide. Even just a “heads up, this next section talks about suicide. Please make sure you’re in the right headspace, here’s the phone number for suicide prevention, etc” type message before proceeding would’ve been good.

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My husband asked for Valheim merch for Christmas, but I found this mug on their website, and it’s perfect for our kid (who is also into Valheim). He’s constantly running around in just his undies, god only knows why, and he’s recently complained that his kid-sized mug is not enough cocoa, lol.

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I recently finished a first playthrough of the Demon Souls PS5 remaster and now I’m getting into Elden Ring. I can remember bouncing off Dark Souls 1 again and again years ago.

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Epic Games does a free game each day, today is Plague Tales: Innocence (normally $40) and Mr. Meer said it was a good one. As the name hints at, it is dark and is not for all ages. Much as I like dark stuff, I’ll probably only play this during daylight hours.

Minor game vibe spoiler I overheard when he was playing it, don't click if you're squeamish about rats

I think at one point you get attacked by a swarm of rats? Like they crawl all over you, biting?

Another game they had for free recently that I picked up is Cat Quest, which is a fun cartoony adventuring game with more cat puns than you can shake your tail at. I highly recommend this one as a fun fluff game. Normally $13. Oh, it wanted to crash sometimes when I played it on PC keyboard but is fine now with a controller.

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Very cool! Thank you for sharing. Is this PC?

Yup, PC. I think it’s also on other platforms but I’m 99% a PC gamer.

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MvR really enjoyed playing through A Plague Tale.

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Loving the shit out of this

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I don’t know that anyone else here has shared the same level of interest in Survival games (though crafting, building, farming, etc. - more so). Our group played some Ark, some Conan, lots of Valheim. Lately we’ve been awaiting Nightingale but after a playtest and last week’s stress test where we got some hands on, we’re worried it won’t reach a polished state for quite some time. It’s Early Access, but that can mean quite different things.

Anyway, out of the blue, a friend found SoulMask which has a demo version available through Feb. 18th, and wow, that’s more like it. It’s very much like Conan but a newer, more polished one. Also maybe, (stressing maybe) less of the mature and questionable themes of Conan, though it’s not quite clear how you grow your tribe with NPC barbarians. (In Conan, you basically club them and torture them into submission…) As they say, these games will rot your brains.

But yeah, I’m super excited about SoulMask. 7 hours into the demo. Of course it does have one thing Conan does that you can love or hate… bench inception !! So far… carpenter’s bench, grinder, butcher’s table, loom, tanner’s rack, weapon crafting bench, armor forge, building workshop, pottery bench… also after the initial building tier (thatch), you have to make all your building pieces in the building workshop, then grab them and assemble your building. Not a huge deal, but not nearly as streamlined as Conan 3.0 or Valheim.

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Is this the same genre as Don’t Starve?

I suspect there are similarities. Never played that one. This is “realistic” except you get powers from your mask. While you don’t starve (at least not in the demo) food gives you buffs.

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Cool! Ty

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Kind of a cozy-ish survival game, The Wandering Village just put out a big villager update/ui change that hopefully will make it less likely I accidentally starve half the population to death midgame - they changed some of the mechanics so instead of happening on a tiered system, you can work on the “advanced metrics” from day 1. I’m looking forward to my next playthrough!

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Question - has anyone played the Hogwarts Legacy game? DH got it for me for Christmas and I’ve been trying to play it on the switch but I’m failing spectacularly. Like, the very first time you have to learn a real spell (stupefy against the suits of armor) I am doing exactly what it says to do and it isn’t working and they just kill me. Over and over again. It’s so frustrating that I don’t even want to pick it up and try again.

Does it get better than this?

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I highly recommend the Lego Harry potters instead. Sorry no help with the legacy game :frowning:

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Oh yes, I have played those many times. He suggested this one because he knows I like Harry Potter and that I like those. I’m sad because he asked me to choose between this one and the new Zelda and I chose this and I’m super regretting my choice :frowning:

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MvR and I played this on laptops. No idea how the Switch interface is different. On PC, you “learn” a spell exactly once by basically pressing in a few directions and/or arcing through a curve. Following a line on the screen and pressing a button as the spark passes it. But to cast a spell, you have it assigned and press the button while you aim.

Saw this on Reddit:

you don’t just need to “change” the direction of the arrow, but hold towards it

on the x-box controller (works on a pc as well as x-box), push the left toggle forward to speed up the cursor. That gives you a little more time to get around those tight corners (and correct when you over-rotate).

Hope that helps!

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