For those interested! I bought Banished and played about an hour and a half of it.
If you like the old Caesar/Pharaoh city building games, you'll like this game. Basically, there is no "money" and instead only resources. The balance is keeping your population healthy, fed and happy while also gathering resources to build buildings, make tools or clothes and such. There is also education and more advanced systems like trading for more seed types for farms and orchards, or new livestock.
The game can be pretty tough and I'd recommend saving often and in different slots while you're still learning the ropes. I had to abandon my first village as everyone starved to death. That said, it is fairly relaxing to play!
It's worth the $20 I think. I haven't gotten too deep though and I wonder how it will be as the town gets bigger. I also wonder if there will be more content added to game as time goes on. I'll post further impressions when I put more time in!
Edit: I can see exhausting the content in here fairly quick... it was made by one guy though. I hope stuff gets added post launch.
Edit 2: A mod kit is being developed for post-launch! I could see it getting Workshop support and adding a lot to the game.
Also, Banished is my 600th game! Whoops, I was actually meaning to get South Park as the 600th.
Keml0@MegaPureiboi gifted me this game I'd never heard of before, a thing called Banished, out of no where with an ominous "enjoy"
Well, 3.5 hours and 4 or 5 failed village attempts later I can tell you I did indeed enjoy myself. I couldn't stop giggling after the winter of the 7th year when the village ran out of wood and suddenly froze to death. Went from almost 50 people down to 6 overnight
Man. If FFXIV wasn't sub-based I'd probably pick it up at this price. But with my backlog I don't play a single game NEARLY enough to justify monthly paying.
In other news, got to play Might and Magic X and oh my god I'm absolutely getting this the second it hits a sale. I didn't know I missed crawlers so much, but I did. Oh god I did.
Man. If FFXIV wasn't sub-based I'd probably pick it up at this price. But with my backlog I don't play a single game NEARLY enough to justify monthly paying.
In other news, got to play Might and Magic X and oh my god I'm absolutely getting this the second it hits a sale. I didn't know I missed crawlers so much, but I did. Oh god I did.
M&MX is amazingly good for such a flawed game.
If Ubi had actually thrown money at it, we would have an utterly amazing game instead of a simply great fun one.
@Pixelated Pixie, it should also be noted that after your done playing pretty princess dress-up with your character in FFXIV, further down the line you can hire people to sell things on the market for you in your absence.
Man. If FFXIV wasn't sub-based I'd probably pick it up at this price. But with my backlog I don't play a single game NEARLY enough to justify monthly paying.
In other news, got to play Might and Magic X and oh my god I'm absolutely getting this the second it hits a sale. I didn't know I missed crawlers so much, but I did. Oh god I did.
M&MX is amazingly good for such a flawed game.
If Ubi had actually thrown money at it, we would have an utterly amazing game instead of a simply great fun one.
Yeah, it seems to have a bunch of bugs and more than a few sloppy coding problems (such as the flags for the battle music to end never triggering, getting you a continuous blaring of fight music superimposed that ends up forcing you to reset the game to not go insane), but it's forgiven purely because it gave me such joy to play.
You know, it's amusing. People say that dungeon crawlers are a genre mostly based on nostalgia, that has little to offer to someone who never played them as a kid. And yet my first first-person dungeoncrawler ever was Etrian Odyssey 2 barely a few years ago and I fell absolutely in love with the genre.
So, co-op games with wife? Controller preferred, split screen same screen preferred. Thoughts? We beat ray man origins, and are on trine 2. We suck at trine 2. But i enjoy it and I think she is.
Reviews are coming in and it seems Strider is going to be everything I dreamed of. But part of me wishes it had Grin's humor they threw into Bionic Commando. Alas, they are gone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDsEheXH9dQ
My ninja.
3DS Friendcode 5413-1311-3767
0
Idx86Long days and pleasant nights.Registered Userregular
Hi Steam Thread, I apologize for neglecting you. Terraria on my iPad has consumed me at the molecular level. I'm sure you understand. When Starbound becomes less expensive, I think I will return to the dust form from whence I came.
I wanted to thank @iolo for the gift of steamworld dig. I think that's the name.
I'm only unsure because I archived the email and I haven't been home long enough to do anything but power nap for the last two days.
Also working two jobs sucks but I want a fat nest egg to buy a fancy steam box when they come out.
+10
Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
Ok guys, so I'm a Steam newbie. I'm also a cynical old man who has a hard time investing heavily in any digital platform because of reasons.
So this humble bundle got me to jump in. I haven't played any of the games before but I have been wanting to. I have been meaning to download Giana Sisters on my WiiU but haven't gotten around to it, so this was perfect. Plus four bucks for all of these games was a no brainer.
So I downloaded a program to use my PS3 controller on my PC, and I downloaded them all.
First game I tried last night was Guacamelee. The game is crazy...but fun so far.
How are the rest of the games? Dust looks interesting, Giana Sisters looks fun. I don't know anything about the rest of them though, what is the quality like?
I know a lot of people have spoken regarding its difficulty, however I haven't quite run into that problem myself. I've put in maybe 3 hours or so on a single village, and it seems to be doing fine, with a population of around 45 or so. There does seem to be a good bit of nuance to the gameplay, especially as every building is unlocked from the get-go. Some people might feel like they're missing a tech tree, or different 'levels' providing different buildings, but I find this approach refreshing. Not only does it give you a lot of variety for how to develop your town, it can also serve as an inspiration for how to fix problems down the road.
Actually what I find most interesting about the game is its difficulty seems to rise in proportion with your population. The more folks you have, the more food and firewood and housing you need, the more tools and clothes. And it's imperative that when these people become productive (when they become an adult) that you've anticipated the infrastructure you'll need to place them into a useful capacity immediately that contributes to the overall health of the village. And on top of that, you need to ensure that you're expanding fast enough to replace your aging population, but slowly enough to not overwhelm your existing capacity or surroundings.
There's lots of interesting resourcing problems to pick apart and try to solve different ways, modified by the random map that is generated for you. Balancing different types of food production, proper use of space, sustainable use of forests, and making the most efficient use of the stone/iron resources freely available on the map before you get to a point where you have production buildings (quarries and mines) for them.
It definitely feels like the kind of game where, as you're getting into tough times with your current village and starting into what seems like a death spiral, you're already excited about taking your lessons learned forward to the next one. From a gameplay standpoint there's no campaign, simply a set of base options that determines your starting situation (different climates, valleys vs mountains, size of map, size of starting population). The tutorials provided are short, and simply serve to introduce the game's toolset. There is a built in help system though that you can page through and seems organized well.
In short, I really like the game, I think perhaps because it's such a non-traditional city builder. I found with things like Sim City, I'd always get overwhelmed past a certain point, and the focus on profitability independent of city health never really resonated. In Banished when the times are good, it's because the stockpiles are full and your population is thriving. But that next fire, or disease is just around the corner waiting to throw a wrench into the works.
Ok guys, so I'm a Steam newbie. I'm also a cynical old man who has a hard time investing heavily in any digital platform because of reasons.
So this humble bundle got me to jump in. I haven't played any of the games before but I have been wanting to. I have been meaning to download Giana Sisters on my WiiU but haven't gotten around to it, so this was perfect. Plus four bucks for all of these games was a no brainer.
So I downloaded a program to use my PS3 controller on my PC, and I downloaded them all.
First game I tried last night was Guacamelee. The game is crazy...but fun so far.
How are the rest of the games? Dust looks interesting, Giana Sisters looks fun. I don't know anything about the rest of them though, what is the quality like?
Dust is pretty and really fun. I keep meaning to finish that.
Monaco is basically co-op stealth pacman. It's kinda dull solo but with friends it's fantastic fun.
Only just started Antichamber but to describe it past 'it's a puzzle game' would probably be spoilers.
0
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Ok guys, so I'm a Steam newbie. I'm also a cynical old man who has a hard time investing heavily in any digital platform because of reasons.
Welcome to the Steam Thread. Steam is so good. So gooooood.
If your reasons are the same as the reasons I think they are than I was in the same boat as you once - basically, a general hesitancy with regards to digital distribution due to its lack of physical ownership and the security that comes with it that is a cornerstone of traditional game ownership, and a fear that someday those digital games you spend physical money on will disappear in a puff of smoke, leaving you with nothing.
The way I eventually grew past these fears was that, although physical game security is great, digital game security is pretty great as well. If you take your laptop with you somewhere away from home, your games are still available. If someone steals your computer, your games are still available. If your house burns down, your games are still available. No matter where you go, your games are there, just waiting for you to download and install them.
Digital convenience means no lugging games around, no keeping track of which games are where, no worries about scratched DVDs or having to track down Disc 1 because it needs to be in the drive to play the game.
There are some downsides - requiring an internet connection to play your games is really not a huge deal... except for the times when it is. Luckily offline mode has made leaps and bounds and is at the point where it actually works now, but still. Also, the move to digital distribution has killed physical incidentals (don't even get me started on the death of videogame manuals), and unless you decide to sell your entire account, there is no secondary market... once you beat a game, or simply get tired of it, or don't like it, you can't sell it on craigslist or give it to your friend or trade it in at gamestop. It's there, attached to your account, forever. Sometimes Steam will shit the bed for a dumb reason, or for no reason at all, and their customer support if you ever have account related problems is a nightmare ("May you be forced to suffer through Valve's automated email support system" is legitimately an old gypsy curse dating back hundreds of years from the highland mountainous steppes of northern Bulgaria).
All in all though, Steam has definitely been a net positive for PC gaming. Everything from offering lower budget and independent games a market that they can thrive in due to the lack of having to pay an enormous publishing fee, the huge sales they run, their steamworks api (no more having to use a different account name and login for every single multiplayer game you play), having an integrated friends list that makes finding multiplayer games super easy, the integrated screenshots function that lets you show people interesting screens from the games you play, and the reviews feature that lets you recommend good games to other steam users or warn them about a game that sucks among other features make it worthwhile. And there are tons of games, from the most cinematic AAA $60 manshoot from a team of 1,000 employees to the $5 indie puzzle game made by two people in a garage, that are exclusive to Steam.
If you want to bulk up your friends list a bit (to find other people for multiplayer, to find groups to chat in, or even just to populate leaderboards) you should grab a steam sig from here (which will also function as a clickable link to your profile) or just add a link in your forum signature to your steam profile page (steamcommunity.com/id/your profile name - for example, mine is http://steamcommunity.com/id/AllTheGoodNamesAreTaken/ because I'm so stunningly clever).
Also, while you're still able to, take a good look at your teeny tiny games library. Ingrain that image into your mind, because if you get hooked the way we've all gotten hooked between the weekly sales, weekend sales, the ridiculous seasonal sales, and ultra cheap bundles by this time next year your library will probably be enormous.
SmokeStacks on
+20
Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
Yes, those are my reasons for not getting into digital too much.
But one thing that really interests me about Steam is indie gaming. Most major games I want to play I'll still grab physical, but I am really interested in playing those neat smaller games you can't get anywhere else.
If anyone has any other indie suggestions, I'm all ears.
Yes, those are my reasons for not getting into digital too much.
But one thing that really interests me about Steam is indie gaming. Most major games I want to play I'll still grab physical, but I am really interested in playing those neat smaller games you can't get anywhere else.
If anyone has any other indie suggestions, I'm all ears.
Beyond the Humble Bundle, there are a ton of other bundle sites that often have Steam games:
Not all of the games in the bundles these sites offer are Steam-enabled, but sometimes the games later get Steam codes. Most of the non-Steam games get Desura codes, which seems like a good Steam-like service for indie games that almost no one uses. I have Desura installed, but rarely actually play the Desura-only games, which is sad because some of them look really cool.
Primordia.
Gemini Rue.
Resonance.
Long Live the Queen.
Analogue: A Hate Story
Hate Plus
Shadowrun Returns
Kerbal Space Program
Cthulhu Saves The World
Endless Space (kind of)
Dungeons of Dredmor
NEO Scavenger (apparently?)
Orcs Must Die 1+2
Jamestown
...that's off the top of my head, and probably covers something for everyone.
ETA: And SPACE HULK, but it's not exactly indie priced
Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
edited February 2014
Thanks guys! I will check out all of these suggestions.
And yes, I will also be grabbing Cthulhu and Breath of Death VII. I kind of want to get Penny Arcade RPGs, are the first two worth it and necessary to play the second two?
Yes, those are my reasons for not getting into digital too much.
But one thing that really interests me about Steam is indie gaming. Most major games I want to play I'll still grab physical, but I am really interested in playing those neat smaller games you can't get anywhere else.
If anyone has any other indie suggestions, I'm all ears.
If you like Ecco the Dolphin and Metroid, try Aquaria. Hell, even if you hate both of those, still try Aquaria. Because Aquaria is cool.
It is up there in my "all time fave games" for being the type of polished exploration fantasy that can honestly only happen underwater. However, that first actual boss is annoying, and I will 100% suggest a guide just for how to kill that one boss. (the one right after you get the shooty form).
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
This is the same company that charges Warhammer players $33 for five unpainted, unassembled plastic characters the size of lego minifigs.
Funny story. The devs for Space Hulk didn't really pay much of a licence fee (though I'm sure GW gets a cut of sales). They got the gig more or less because one of their devs got chatting to someone high up in GW about how much he loved Space Hulk at a bar after a game con.
I mean, there's a lot of practices to hate on when it comes to Games Workshop but their handling of digital games usually isn't one of them.
0
Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
Bastion is one of my favorite games of last gen. I actually may double dip for that again...it's that good.
Also it's not really an indy but The Secret World is certainly an unappreciated gem in terms of world building. If you like Lovecraft kinda horror there's pretty much no reason to not grab it.
Other cheap games that are all £20 or below off the top of my head (spoilered because it's kinda long):
Awesomenauts: League of Legends compacted down into a 2d PVP shooter with crazy characters and a saturday morning cartoon show theme song. Fantastic if you want something light and PVP focused.
Killing Floor: Best, zombie horde mode, ever. Which is saying something with all the competition it has.
Atom Zombie Smasher: Very odd, it's kind of a tower defense where the job is less to kill all the zombies and more to hold them off to get civilians out.
FORCED: Up to four players enter an arena based combat mixed with brutal puzzles. This is great solo and with friends plus also gets balls hard if that's the sort of thing you want.
Bleed: 2d shooter where a pink haired girl armed with infinite ammo and bullet time has to beat up various levels and bosses. Also hard
Euro Truck Simulator 2: Kinda self explanatory
Papers, Please: Makes paperwork engaging while telling very human stories about struggling to feed your family.
Binding of Isaac: rogue-like top down shooter with disturbing artwork
Super Meat Boy: Solidly hard platformer
Call of Jaurez: Gunslinger: The shooter that is better than it had any right to be. Four or five hours of great narative, neat stylised art design and shooting moments garunteed to leave you grinning like a lunatic and feeling like a cowboy bad ass.
Renegade Ops: Up to four players top down shooter based on cheesy action movies. Everything explodes. CONSTANTLY.
Sequence: Puzzle Quest but where the Puzzle is replaced with dance game mechanics to fuel the RPG combat. Witty dialogue too.
Kickbeat: Dance game which replaces the notes with kicking people in the face. It's a very mixed game soundtrack wise and some people struggle to 'get' the shift in notation from arrows to dudes that need punching but it's fun if you get into it.
Runespell: Overture: epic fantasy RPG poker. I uh... I feel that's all the endorsement it needs to get checked out.
Dungeon Defenders: Up to four players, basically borderlands gone tower defense.
Sanctum 1/2: Another 4 player co-op tower defense shooter series. The first one is much more focused on the towers where the second one is more about the shooting mechanics. Both are pretty awesome.
Typing of the Dead: Overkill: House of the Dead: Overkill but with typing to kill the zombies and a dictionary that has very few serious phrases. Commonly you'll be typing 'Chico Time' and 'Thanks Obama' to fend off the hordes.
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare: First person melee combat done right with a frantic atmosphere and some of the best worst voice acting ever. It's expansion, Deadliest Warrior, adds some new stuff but ultimately doesn't compare to the original
Long Live the Queen: You play a princess and train her for her coronation next year. Picking various lessons such as art, horse riding and how to detect poison in the goal of surviving the political intrigue and outright threats to your life.
Magical Diary: Harry Potter, the anime, the visual novel. Super charming and surprisingly deep in terms of how various choices can effect your story paths.
Really if you just chuck thirty pounds at Steam during a sale odds are you can pick up five or six really good titles that you'll enjoy.
@Brainiac 8, welcome! I'll definitely second Smokestacks' suggestion to link your Steam profile in a post or in your sig. Lots of friendly folks around here and having friends on your list makes leaderboard chasing more fun and opens up MP and coop opportunities, even if those aren't your regular cup of tea.
Dunno if anyone wants any coupons but I have some to spare in case you do. Shoot me a message if you want one.
75% off Trapped Dead (1x)
75% off Knightshift (1x)
75% off Shadow Warrior (2x) 75% off Rise of the Triad (2x)
90% off Sniper Ghost Warrior Gold Edition
I also have 5 10% off coupons for Toki Tori 2 and 11 25% off coupons for Broken Age. My inventory is such a mess.
Bastion is one of my favorite games of last gen. I actually may double dip for that again...it's that good.
I loved the gameplay, though I think a lot of people criticized it for one reason or another. I'm not sure why, because it is excellent, and they are just wrong.
So my attempts to reduce my backlog have resulted in...my backlog getting larger *frowny face*
After various comments earlier on here, thought I would check out Infinity Wars. Always in the market for an interesting CCG, especially one that isn't P2W.
It's certainly an interesting take on the genre (I'm rather liking the animated cards, although its not quite up to the levels of 3D lushness I was expecting from the game description).
Mind you, early access warnings abound on this one. I have found it extremely buggy. Spent all of last night running through the initial Warpath campaign (with a few set backs until I worked out that the trick with the flame dude deck you get as a starter - I mustn't call them 'flamers', tempting though it is! - is to basically go for a zerg rush as soon as possible). Got right to the end, logged off for a bit, came back to find that all my progress was wiped and I was back to square 1 again.
Frustrating yes, and for all the talk of indepth tactics I've not seen a huge variation yet (again, bugginess be blamed for that), but I will echo other comments by confirming that this does appear to be one to watch.
And yes, unlike a lot of CCGs I've tried over the recent months, you actually can get by with no in-game spend at all.
A cautious thumbs-up from me!
It's all saltwater these days:
Ocean, tears and heartbreak soup
Half alive in a whitecap foam
Half in love with a white half moon
0
DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
@Drake, how does Depths of Peril stack up against the rest of Soldak's catalog?
It's worthy. The draw of the game is competing with other factions within the world and the diplomacy and backstabbing that goes with it. The game plays like your typical action RPG in most respects, but your goal isn't necessarily the defeat of all the evil. Your ultimate goal is control of the town. In this quest you'll recruit heroes to your cause. You will adventure with these heroes and compete with other groups to complete quests in the world. Completing these quests not only gives you the usual loot and experience but also influence. You can trade, and negotiate a full range of diplomatic options with the other groups, including declaring war and forming alliances. It's very much like the diplomacy you see in 4X games. You also have a hall were you keep relics, post awesome monster guards and keep the magical stone that is the source of your guilds power. If this hall gets raided and the stone is destroyed then that group is eliminated. Mix this in with Soldak's dynamic world and questing and that's Depths of Peril. Also once you take control of the village you can keep playing the game and delve into all the dungeons, defeat the big bad, gather all the lore and so on. There's lots to do.
It's a great ARPG. If you are tired of the static experiences that other ARPGs offer, Soldak games has been pushing the genre forward while everyone else is trying to recapture Diablo 2. Din's Curse, Depths of Peril and the newly released (new to Steam anyway) Drox Operative all offer game worlds that feel alive, that can surprise you and push back.
Posts
If you like the old Caesar/Pharaoh city building games, you'll like this game. Basically, there is no "money" and instead only resources. The balance is keeping your population healthy, fed and happy while also gathering resources to build buildings, make tools or clothes and such. There is also education and more advanced systems like trading for more seed types for farms and orchards, or new livestock.
The game can be pretty tough and I'd recommend saving often and in different slots while you're still learning the ropes. I had to abandon my first village as everyone starved to death. That said, it is fairly relaxing to play!
It's worth the $20 I think. I haven't gotten too deep though and I wonder how it will be as the town gets bigger. I also wonder if there will be more content added to game as time goes on. I'll post further impressions when I put more time in!
Edit: I can see exhausting the content in here fairly quick... it was made by one guy though. I hope stuff gets added post launch.
Edit 2: A mod kit is being developed for post-launch! I could see it getting Workshop support and adding a lot to the game.
Also, Banished is my 600th game! Whoops, I was actually meaning to get South Park as the 600th.
Steam: abunchofdaftpunk | PSN: noautomobilesgo | Lastfm: sjchszeppelin | Backloggery: colincummings | 3DS FC: 1392-6019-0219 |
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
Broken Age
Aqua Kitty
Rise of the Triad
Toki Tori 2
Hit me up if you want one
Well, 3.5 hours and 4 or 5 failed village attempts later I can tell you I did indeed enjoy myself. I couldn't stop giggling after the winter of the 7th year when the village ran out of wood and suddenly froze to death. Went from almost 50 people down to 6 overnight
In other news, got to play Might and Magic X and oh my god I'm absolutely getting this the second it hits a sale. I didn't know I missed crawlers so much, but I did. Oh god I did.
If Ubi had actually thrown money at it, we would have an utterly amazing game instead of a simply great fun one.
Bravely Default / 3DS Friend Code = 3394-3571-1609
They also require dress-up.
Yeah, it seems to have a bunch of bugs and more than a few sloppy coding problems (such as the flags for the battle music to end never triggering, getting you a continuous blaring of fight music superimposed that ends up forcing you to reset the game to not go insane), but it's forgiven purely because it gave me such joy to play.
You know, it's amusing. People say that dungeon crawlers are a genre mostly based on nostalgia, that has little to offer to someone who never played them as a kid. And yet my first first-person dungeoncrawler ever was Etrian Odyssey 2 barely a few years ago and I fell absolutely in love with the genre.
It doesn't have split screen, but Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light has excellent co-op.
My ninja.
Speaking of dust, here's Dust: https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=ce2HYxPcz5E5T5Pm
2008, 2012, 2014 D&D "Rare With No Sauce" League Fantasy Football Champion!
I'm only unsure because I archived the email and I haven't been home long enough to do anything but power nap for the last two days.
Also working two jobs sucks but I want a fat nest egg to buy a fancy steam box when they come out.
So this humble bundle got me to jump in. I haven't played any of the games before but I have been wanting to. I have been meaning to download Giana Sisters on my WiiU but haven't gotten around to it, so this was perfect. Plus four bucks for all of these games was a no brainer.
So I downloaded a program to use my PS3 controller on my PC, and I downloaded them all.
First game I tried last night was Guacamelee. The game is crazy...but fun so far.
How are the rest of the games? Dust looks interesting, Giana Sisters looks fun. I don't know anything about the rest of them though, what is the quality like?
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/BRAINIAC8/
Add me!
I know a lot of people have spoken regarding its difficulty, however I haven't quite run into that problem myself. I've put in maybe 3 hours or so on a single village, and it seems to be doing fine, with a population of around 45 or so. There does seem to be a good bit of nuance to the gameplay, especially as every building is unlocked from the get-go. Some people might feel like they're missing a tech tree, or different 'levels' providing different buildings, but I find this approach refreshing. Not only does it give you a lot of variety for how to develop your town, it can also serve as an inspiration for how to fix problems down the road.
Actually what I find most interesting about the game is its difficulty seems to rise in proportion with your population. The more folks you have, the more food and firewood and housing you need, the more tools and clothes. And it's imperative that when these people become productive (when they become an adult) that you've anticipated the infrastructure you'll need to place them into a useful capacity immediately that contributes to the overall health of the village. And on top of that, you need to ensure that you're expanding fast enough to replace your aging population, but slowly enough to not overwhelm your existing capacity or surroundings.
There's lots of interesting resourcing problems to pick apart and try to solve different ways, modified by the random map that is generated for you. Balancing different types of food production, proper use of space, sustainable use of forests, and making the most efficient use of the stone/iron resources freely available on the map before you get to a point where you have production buildings (quarries and mines) for them.
It definitely feels like the kind of game where, as you're getting into tough times with your current village and starting into what seems like a death spiral, you're already excited about taking your lessons learned forward to the next one. From a gameplay standpoint there's no campaign, simply a set of base options that determines your starting situation (different climates, valleys vs mountains, size of map, size of starting population). The tutorials provided are short, and simply serve to introduce the game's toolset. There is a built in help system though that you can page through and seems organized well.
In short, I really like the game, I think perhaps because it's such a non-traditional city builder. I found with things like Sim City, I'd always get overwhelmed past a certain point, and the focus on profitability independent of city health never really resonated. In Banished when the times are good, it's because the stockpiles are full and your population is thriving. But that next fire, or disease is just around the corner waiting to throw a wrench into the works.
SteamID: edgruberman GOG Galaxy: EdGruberman
Dust is pretty and really fun. I keep meaning to finish that.
Monaco is basically co-op stealth pacman. It's kinda dull solo but with friends it's fantastic fun.
Only just started Antichamber but to describe it past 'it's a puzzle game' would probably be spoilers.
I just got 5 coupons, ALL for Broken Age.. haha
Welcome to the Steam Thread. Steam is so good. So gooooood.
If your reasons are the same as the reasons I think they are than I was in the same boat as you once - basically, a general hesitancy with regards to digital distribution due to its lack of physical ownership and the security that comes with it that is a cornerstone of traditional game ownership, and a fear that someday those digital games you spend physical money on will disappear in a puff of smoke, leaving you with nothing.
The way I eventually grew past these fears was that, although physical game security is great, digital game security is pretty great as well. If you take your laptop with you somewhere away from home, your games are still available. If someone steals your computer, your games are still available. If your house burns down, your games are still available. No matter where you go, your games are there, just waiting for you to download and install them.
Digital convenience means no lugging games around, no keeping track of which games are where, no worries about scratched DVDs or having to track down Disc 1 because it needs to be in the drive to play the game.
There are some downsides - requiring an internet connection to play your games is really not a huge deal... except for the times when it is. Luckily offline mode has made leaps and bounds and is at the point where it actually works now, but still. Also, the move to digital distribution has killed physical incidentals (don't even get me started on the death of videogame manuals), and unless you decide to sell your entire account, there is no secondary market... once you beat a game, or simply get tired of it, or don't like it, you can't sell it on craigslist or give it to your friend or trade it in at gamestop. It's there, attached to your account, forever. Sometimes Steam will shit the bed for a dumb reason, or for no reason at all, and their customer support if you ever have account related problems is a nightmare ("May you be forced to suffer through Valve's automated email support system" is legitimately an old gypsy curse dating back hundreds of years from the highland mountainous steppes of northern Bulgaria).
All in all though, Steam has definitely been a net positive for PC gaming. Everything from offering lower budget and independent games a market that they can thrive in due to the lack of having to pay an enormous publishing fee, the huge sales they run, their steamworks api (no more having to use a different account name and login for every single multiplayer game you play), having an integrated friends list that makes finding multiplayer games super easy, the integrated screenshots function that lets you show people interesting screens from the games you play, and the reviews feature that lets you recommend good games to other steam users or warn them about a game that sucks among other features make it worthwhile. And there are tons of games, from the most cinematic AAA $60 manshoot from a team of 1,000 employees to the $5 indie puzzle game made by two people in a garage, that are exclusive to Steam.
If you want to bulk up your friends list a bit (to find other people for multiplayer, to find groups to chat in, or even just to populate leaderboards) you should grab a steam sig from here (which will also function as a clickable link to your profile) or just add a link in your forum signature to your steam profile page (steamcommunity.com/id/your profile name - for example, mine is http://steamcommunity.com/id/AllTheGoodNamesAreTaken/ because I'm so stunningly clever).
Also, while you're still able to, take a good look at your teeny tiny games library. Ingrain that image into your mind, because if you get hooked the way we've all gotten hooked between the weekly sales, weekend sales, the ridiculous seasonal sales, and ultra cheap bundles by this time next year your library will probably be enormous.
Yes, those are my reasons for not getting into digital too much.
But one thing that really interests me about Steam is indie gaming. Most major games I want to play I'll still grab physical, but I am really interested in playing those neat smaller games you can't get anywhere else.
If anyone has any other indie suggestions, I'm all ears.
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
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Magicka
FTL
Honestly if you're new to steam there's an enormous number of small games to grab.
I think Tychocelchu has a big list somewhere and @Drake has a pretty comprehensive knowledge of Indy gems.
Beyond the Humble Bundle, there are a ton of other bundle sites that often have Steam games:
Indie Royale
Bundle Stars
Groupees
Indie Gala
Not all of the games in the bundles these sites offer are Steam-enabled, but sometimes the games later get Steam codes. Most of the non-Steam games get Desura codes, which seems like a good Steam-like service for indie games that almost no one uses. I have Desura installed, but rarely actually play the Desura-only games, which is sad because some of them look really cool.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
And FTL.
Primordia.
Gemini Rue.
Resonance.
Long Live the Queen.
Analogue: A Hate Story
Hate Plus
Shadowrun Returns
Kerbal Space Program
Cthulhu Saves The World
Endless Space (kind of)
Dungeons of Dredmor
NEO Scavenger (apparently?)
Orcs Must Die 1+2
Jamestown
...that's off the top of my head, and probably covers something for everyone.
ETA: And SPACE HULK, but it's not exactly indie priced
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And yes, I will also be grabbing Cthulhu and Breath of Death VII. I kind of want to get Penny Arcade RPGs, are the first two worth it and necessary to play the second two?
I mostly want to support our awesome PAers.
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
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Oh, Spelunky is so much fun.
If you like Ecco the Dolphin and Metroid, try Aquaria. Hell, even if you hate both of those, still try Aquaria. Because Aquaria is cool.
It is up there in my "all time fave games" for being the type of polished exploration fantasy that can honestly only happen underwater. However, that first actual boss is annoying, and I will 100% suggest a guide just for how to kill that one boss. (the one right after you get the shooty form).
FTL
Mark of the Ninja
Braid
Bastion
La Mulana
Recettear
Risk of Rain
Valdis Story
These are just part of the canon, of course. Absolute must-plays. From here the rabbit hole only goes deeper.
Gotta pay for that Games Workshop license.
This is the same company that charges Warhammer players $33 for five unpainted, unassembled plastic characters the size of lego minifigs.
Captive market mate, captive market.
I can't believe I forgot Mark of the Ninja.
I couldn't believe I forgot Bastion either, but then realised I just assume everyone owns it now.
Because if you don't, you should.
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Funny story. The devs for Space Hulk didn't really pay much of a licence fee (though I'm sure GW gets a cut of sales). They got the gig more or less because one of their devs got chatting to someone high up in GW about how much he loved Space Hulk at a bar after a game con.
I mean, there's a lot of practices to hate on when it comes to Games Workshop but their handling of digital games usually isn't one of them.
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
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Other cheap games that are all £20 or below off the top of my head (spoilered because it's kinda long):
Killing Floor: Best, zombie horde mode, ever. Which is saying something with all the competition it has.
Atom Zombie Smasher: Very odd, it's kind of a tower defense where the job is less to kill all the zombies and more to hold them off to get civilians out.
FORCED: Up to four players enter an arena based combat mixed with brutal puzzles. This is great solo and with friends plus also gets balls hard if that's the sort of thing you want.
Bleed: 2d shooter where a pink haired girl armed with infinite ammo and bullet time has to beat up various levels and bosses. Also hard
Euro Truck Simulator 2: Kinda self explanatory
Papers, Please: Makes paperwork engaging while telling very human stories about struggling to feed your family.
Binding of Isaac: rogue-like top down shooter with disturbing artwork
Super Meat Boy: Solidly hard platformer
Call of Jaurez: Gunslinger: The shooter that is better than it had any right to be. Four or five hours of great narative, neat stylised art design and shooting moments garunteed to leave you grinning like a lunatic and feeling like a cowboy bad ass.
Renegade Ops: Up to four players top down shooter based on cheesy action movies. Everything explodes. CONSTANTLY.
Sequence: Puzzle Quest but where the Puzzle is replaced with dance game mechanics to fuel the RPG combat. Witty dialogue too.
Kickbeat: Dance game which replaces the notes with kicking people in the face. It's a very mixed game soundtrack wise and some people struggle to 'get' the shift in notation from arrows to dudes that need punching but it's fun if you get into it.
Runespell: Overture: epic fantasy RPG poker. I uh... I feel that's all the endorsement it needs to get checked out.
Dungeon Defenders: Up to four players, basically borderlands gone tower defense.
Sanctum 1/2: Another 4 player co-op tower defense shooter series. The first one is much more focused on the towers where the second one is more about the shooting mechanics. Both are pretty awesome.
Typing of the Dead: Overkill: House of the Dead: Overkill but with typing to kill the zombies and a dictionary that has very few serious phrases. Commonly you'll be typing 'Chico Time' and 'Thanks Obama' to fend off the hordes.
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare: First person melee combat done right with a frantic atmosphere and some of the best worst voice acting ever. It's expansion, Deadliest Warrior, adds some new stuff but ultimately doesn't compare to the original
Long Live the Queen: You play a princess and train her for her coronation next year. Picking various lessons such as art, horse riding and how to detect poison in the goal of surviving the political intrigue and outright threats to your life.
Magical Diary: Harry Potter, the anime, the visual novel. Super charming and surprisingly deep in terms of how various choices can effect your story paths.
Really if you just chuck thirty pounds at Steam during a sale odds are you can pick up five or six really good titles that you'll enjoy.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
75% off Trapped Dead (1x)
75% off Knightshift (1x)
75% off Shadow Warrior (2x)
75% off Rise of the Triad (2x)
90% off Sniper Ghost Warrior Gold Edition
I also have 5 10% off coupons for Toki Tori 2 and 11 25% off coupons for Broken Age. My inventory is such a mess.
AniList
Steam ID: Good Life
I loved the gameplay, though I think a lot of people criticized it for one reason or another. I'm not sure why, because it is excellent, and they are just wrong.
After various comments earlier on here, thought I would check out Infinity Wars. Always in the market for an interesting CCG, especially one that isn't P2W.
It's certainly an interesting take on the genre (I'm rather liking the animated cards, although its not quite up to the levels of 3D lushness I was expecting from the game description).
Mind you, early access warnings abound on this one. I have found it extremely buggy. Spent all of last night running through the initial Warpath campaign (with a few set backs until I worked out that the trick with the flame dude deck you get as a starter - I mustn't call them 'flamers', tempting though it is! - is to basically go for a zerg rush as soon as possible). Got right to the end, logged off for a bit, came back to find that all my progress was wiped and I was back to square 1 again.
Frustrating yes, and for all the talk of indepth tactics I've not seen a huge variation yet (again, bugginess be blamed for that), but I will echo other comments by confirming that this does appear to be one to watch.
And yes, unlike a lot of CCGs I've tried over the recent months, you actually can get by with no in-game spend at all.
A cautious thumbs-up from me!
Ocean, tears and heartbreak soup
Half alive in a whitecap foam
Half in love with a white half moon
It's worthy. The draw of the game is competing with other factions within the world and the diplomacy and backstabbing that goes with it. The game plays like your typical action RPG in most respects, but your goal isn't necessarily the defeat of all the evil. Your ultimate goal is control of the town. In this quest you'll recruit heroes to your cause. You will adventure with these heroes and compete with other groups to complete quests in the world. Completing these quests not only gives you the usual loot and experience but also influence. You can trade, and negotiate a full range of diplomatic options with the other groups, including declaring war and forming alliances. It's very much like the diplomacy you see in 4X games. You also have a hall were you keep relics, post awesome monster guards and keep the magical stone that is the source of your guilds power. If this hall gets raided and the stone is destroyed then that group is eliminated. Mix this in with Soldak's dynamic world and questing and that's Depths of Peril. Also once you take control of the village you can keep playing the game and delve into all the dungeons, defeat the big bad, gather all the lore and so on. There's lots to do.
It's a great ARPG. If you are tired of the static experiences that other ARPGs offer, Soldak games has been pushing the genre forward while everyone else is trying to recapture Diablo 2. Din's Curse, Depths of Peril and the newly released (new to Steam anyway) Drox Operative all offer game worlds that feel alive, that can surprise you and push back.