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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU9G025thbM
Build an impenetrable fortress, tile by tile. Place buildings, build roads, and expand your isle to defend against waves of invaders in this roguelike fusion of tower defense and board game. 20220908 Isle of Arrows (Tower Defense Roguelike Puzzle Board Game )
I sit pretty solidly at the center of a Tower Defense Roguelike Puzzle Board Game Venn diagram, so I was pretty keen to give this a whirl.
It is pretty hard. I would say that it is too hard. I would say that it is so hard as to ultimately be kind of unfun.
The issue is that you don't you have any real control over core aspects of the game - path, towers and deck.
Every turn you get a tile, and that tile can be a road piece, a tower, a flag that lets you expand the island so you can build on it, or an other (like multiple pieces that if you surround it with other tiles gives you a one time benefit.) You can pay 2 gold to see to advance the tile to the next turn's tile (which you can see.) You can only build things on the island, unless you have a bridge that lets you build off the island. You can only build adjacent to your existing stuff. You can't replace anything you've built unless you have dynamite. Bridges and dynamite are pretty rare.
So extending your path is very important, obviously. But you are seriously at the mercy of random draws. Most of the bridge tiles are one or two squares. So you often end up with a very squiggly path. Your ability to do clever things like loop your road back around to pass by your towers on two sides is very constrained. And when you need a road, you often have to wait or pay through 3, 4, 5 tiles to get one (and then hope it's the right shape). And the efficacy of some of your towers is dependent on the shape of your road. The boulder tower, for example, is really only effective with a long straightaway. But you often don't have that when you draw a boulder tower, and you often don't draw a boulder tower when you have one.
The towers are underwhelming. They don't level up with use, and you can't pay to upgrade them (which while not required, is a pretty standard feature of modern tower defense.) Also the help text accompanying the towers is anemic. You basically have to try a tower out a few times to really understand how it works. For example you might get a dart tower. It fires three darts in rapid succession at an enemy, and then has a very long reload. You don't know any of that until you use it. And you don't have any ability to set targeting for your towers - furthest, most health, near death, etc. Targeting is random, which repeatedly leads to frustrating moments where two enemies are about to take your life, one in front with a sliver of health and one behind with more health, and your archery tower just plinks away at the one with more health until you lose two life instead of one. And all damage is just that - a chunk of damage. At least through 7 hours, there are no damage over time effects and the ice tower applies a slow but does no damage. There are no elemental weaknesses, for example, to spice things up.
The further you get in a campaign, the more cards you unlock. But the effect of that is that your deck is diluted with lots of monuments, warehouses, gardens and fishing villages that don't do much, and you are constantly desperate for the road piece you need or another tower.
And the flag pieces that expand the island don't expand it far enough given that (a) you have to play them next to an existing structure (and not out on the edge of the island where they would be most useful) and (b) you end up with a bunch of flags crowding spaces where you need roads and towers. Dynamite is scarce, so overcrowding with chaff, non-damage producing structures is a real issue.
And there's no mechanism for editing your deck (at least not in the 7 hours I played) such that you can strategically winnow down which cards you want to draw. And progression is stingy AF. In the first hour I played, I reached wave 32 of 40 in the first campaign, which the game tells me is 6% of that campaign.
In the next six hours I played, I was not able to progress past that point, even as I got to know the towers better. I am not God's gift or anything, but I am reasonably competent at these genres and would have expected a touch more progress for hours 2-7 (which included hitting the Steam community page to see if there were tips I was missing.)
There's a fun game in here if they loosened the reins a bit. Maybe do 2-3 of giving you a look at two tiles a turn (one always a road), make dynamite much more common or even free, give you more island expansion per flag (or let you play flags at the edge of the island) and maybe let towers have a mild upgrade path with use.
As it stands, though, a game like Rogue Tower is better in almost every way and much more fun.
Rogue Tower gives you some control over your card choices (both in the between game screen where you spend XP to unlock them and in the game itself by choosing cards that unlock the availability of other cards.) Rogue tower gives you +1 path every turn. You are always extending the trail. When you choose a tower card in a game, you then decide where to build those towers subject to available cash. And towers upgrade as they fire over time (and can be upgraded manually with cash.) You are still subject to luck sometimes. It's much hard to with a 2 path or 3 path run if the paths don't loop back next to each other, for example. And runs where the path splits before turn 8-10 can be an uphill battle. But with so much more control, you have at least a fighting chance most runs.
i would say that The Boss seems to genuinely believe in the idea of "The State", even if not necessarily the american state, and i'm like i'm going to stop you right there fam
I've now completed the first act of Encased and this is the most Fallout a game has felt since... well, probably since I played Fallout 2 as a teenager.
And I'm still enjoying it, but to be clear, that's with damn near every flaw that it can imply as well as any merits. Poorly marked quests, endless amounts of useless loot that's all technically useful, a variety of trap perks and/or perks that aren't available until level 15 that you really should have built your entire character around hitting the requirements for, a "satirical" sense of "humor", the list goes on.
It's a fun game that I'm probably going to keep playing the whole way through, but I had a little bit hoped that it was going to be a good game that I could like, recommend to some of my friends who hopped on with Fallout 3, and I don't think it's that. If you're experience with those classics and you want another one it's a pretty good fit, managing to be both very similar in terms of gameplay and overall world while also feeling different enough that it isn't just a clone of them, but I don't know if it would work if you're not used to a certain amount of old CRPG jank.
That was pretty much my exact experience with the Early Access version. "I like this, but I also like the old busted annoying shit, and I'm not sure this does enough that's UNIQUE enough to merit the attention of the unconverted"
Like Age of Decadence is arguably less accessible and harder and fiddlier than Encased, but I also think it's a lot more INTERESTING, so I've banged the drum for that one a fair bit and not really said a lot about Encased. It's just kinda... Dull to talk about. "Hey, you know that other thing? That, I guess." Bit of a shame, but sometimes you just want Little Caesar's and that's fine
0
smof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited September 2022
Citizen Sleeper is so stressful. Too many timers and things to keep track of. Not sure if I should be trying to do everything, or if I should only be pursuing a couple of plotlines, or what. Also this Feng guy is doing my head in a bit.
smof on
0
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Citizen Sleeper is so stressful. Too many times and things to keep track of. Not sure if I should be trying to do everything, or if I should only be pursuing a couple of plotlines, or what. Also this Feng guy is doing my head in a bit.
You're free to pretty much pursue what you want when you want. The game will tell you unambiguously when there are hard time gates on stuff.
+4
QuetziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User, Moderatormod
I've now completed the first act of Encased and this is the most Fallout a game has felt since... well, probably since I played Fallout 2 as a teenager.
And I'm still enjoying it, but to be clear, that's with damn near every flaw that it can imply as well as any merits. Poorly marked quests, endless amounts of useless loot that's all technically useful, a variety of trap perks and/or perks that aren't available until level 15 that you really should have built your entire character around hitting the requirements for, a "satirical" sense of "humor", the list goes on.
It's a fun game that I'm probably going to keep playing the whole way through, but I had a little bit hoped that it was going to be a good game that I could like, recommend to some of my friends who hopped on with Fallout 3, and I don't think it's that. If you're experience with those classics and you want another one it's a pretty good fit, managing to be both very similar in terms of gameplay and overall world while also feeling different enough that it isn't just a clone of them, but I don't know if it would work if you're not used to a certain amount of old CRPG jank.
That was pretty much my exact experience with the Early Access version. "I like this, but I also like the old busted annoying shit, and I'm not sure this does enough that's UNIQUE enough to merit the attention of the unconverted"
Like Age of Decadence is arguably less accessible and harder and fiddlier than Encased, but I also think it's a lot more INTERESTING, so I've banged the drum for that one a fair bit and not really said a lot about Encased. It's just kinda... Dull to talk about. "Hey, you know that other thing? That, I guess." Bit of a shame, but sometimes you just want Little Caesar's and that's fine
There are like three things that could really turn it around for me, I think, small things but deeply useful:
- The ability to respec. Make it cost a bunch of money, I don't care, but I definitely feel like I would at least change my weapon skills around a bit after having played through the first fifteen hours of the game. There's so much you can't know at character creation, with companions who are going to (potentially) share the weapon types you pick and stat requirements for specific weapons and all of that. Plus some of the trap perk design I mentioned earlier.
- The ability to highlight people you can interact with in the world. You can hit Alt to highlight objects, but people aren't included and can blend into the background really easily. I've spent like half an hour trying to find someone in a location that I knew they were in multiple times.
- Mass looting. I really don't need to go through and click every individual container/dead enemy to acquire a dozen bolts and three dollars.
Quetzi on
0
smof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Ok, thanks. I had a feeling I could lock myself into certain paths if I went far enough along a plotline, helpful to know that's not true.
Ok, thanks. I had a feeling I could lock myself into certain paths if I went far enough along a plotline, helpful to know that's not true.
Nope, the game won't really surprise you or anything and almost nothing is mutually exclusive - timegates will be clearly labeled, number-of-attempts gates as well, and when you have a chance(s) for a plotline to become an Ending it will be pretty clearly telegraphed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3HgZHBFvGk
A relaxing puzzle game about fixing train connections and travelling the world! 20220906 Railbound (Wholesome Trains Strategy Puzzle Difficult)
I grabbed Railbound on Android (because I find that to be the optimal platform for me to play puzzle games of this sort), and I'm really enjoying it. I'm a sucker for geometric puzzles like this one, so that works for me (and as I play it, I feel like I played a game with this same exact concept/mechanic but stripped-down graphics years and years ago, though I can't remember what that game was called). The aesthetics are absolutely charming and delightful - the art is cute, the way the train cars chugga-chugga along the rails is cute, etc.
I'm only in the third chapter right now (not sure how many there are total), but so far I'm finding the levels engaging. They go from "you can solve this in your sleep" to "you need to re-examine how you've been solving levels and maybe use a game mechanic in a slightly non-obvious way", but it's been pretty light-going on the latter, and it's typically confined to the optional bonus levels that get unlocked as you solve the "main" levels, which is probably for the best.
There's a hint system, but it's off by default - you have to go into the accessibility menu to turn it on. I haven't used it too often, but it seems like it'll give you a hint on where to place some tracks, and then disappear until the next time you test a level solution the ends in a failure; then you can tap the hint button again to get a few more hinted track locations. That's seems like a good middle-ground to me - I know that I've definitely played games of this sort where I'd get frustrated with a puzzle, hammer the hint button until it solved the puzzle for me, and then feel frustrated with myself for not trying to solve it after only one hint. Asking the player to at the very least hit the "Go!" button in between hints seems like a good way to slow down that impulsive behavior while also not really getting in the way for folks who want to use the hints more.
Anyway, seems like a good game for folks who like this sort of game. The only thing I don't like is that it makes my phone heat up way too much during extended play.
Gamepass added Amazing Cultivation simulator, which is Chinese Rimworld gone crazy. I haven't played it but I understand it turns a lot of things to 11. Feng Shui your rooms to become powerful enough to slay the gods.
It's such an obscure thing to show up.
Gamepass added Amazing Cultivation simulator, which is Chinese Rimworld gone crazy. I haven't played it but I understand it turns a lot of things to 11. Feng Shui your rooms to become powerful enough to slay the gods.
It's such an obscure thing to show up.
I've played it quite a bit and it is VERY cool but just dense as hell. There's layers on layers on layers. Search up a good tutorial video if you're gonna try it; feng shui matters a LOT
I watched a lot of this guy's playthroughs to get a feel of what the heck I was doing:
Experience the Bible in a new, interactive way. Read, Watch, and Play through the Scriptures in this action-adventure faith-based game!
Journey through the chapters of the Old Testament with role-playing scenarios of some of the most iconic characters in the Bible.
Read the Scriptures in quick, bite-sized summaries
Watch animated episodes of biblical stories
Play as some of the characters in quest-driven gameplay developed in Unity
Access many hours of animation in monthly releases
Watch the stories of the Old Testament
Enjoyable for all ages, young and old
Play in 3D action-adventure RPG, assuming the roles of characters like Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, and many more!
Quest-based gameplay to experience the stories of the Old Testament
Fun action packed Gameplay level
Turnip Boy no, you don't need to be in that life anymore!
Turnip Boy is ready to commit more felonies in this comedic action-adventure game with roguelite elements. This time the career criminal is teaming up with the fearsome Pickled Gang to plan and execute the weirdest heist of all time! Shake down hostages, steal precious valuables, and explore the deep, dark depths and history of the Botanical Bank.
To pull off the perfect heist, you’ll need to purchase an array of dangerous and wacky tools from the dark web, including a diamond pickaxe, C4, and a radio jammer. However, bank robbing isn’t easy, so be prepared for intense shootouts with security guards, the police, elite swat teams and more.
Isle of Arrows goes for the mechanical tightness of constrained choices. Making the most of bad decisions and planning ahead to anticipate future problems and playing to future outs. Uses an interest system to the currency which I dislike in games despite recognizing the compelling conflict between survival and greed. Gotta figure out the games gulf of tolerance between over and under investment.
It suffers from maybe being a little too tight? Too many awful choices and constrained options. You don’t feel strong placing down neat towers and a lotta enemies seem to rush past everything you do unopposed. Instead of a feeling of addressing escalating difficulty it feels like treading water as random bits of flotsam provide poor respite.
+1
Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
the trailer for that bible game has a dude kicking a fool in the face and for a moment I was like IS THAT MOSES LAYING IT DOWN THAT'S RAD
but it looks like he's holding a jawbone so it's prob samson, lame
I basically watched someone play all of the metal hellsinger and that shit looks rad, but I've got the rhythm of a mayo sandwich, so I'll have to appreciate from afar.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
i would say that The Boss seems to genuinely believe in the idea of "The State", even if not necessarily the american state, and i'm like i'm going to stop you right there fam
Doesn't she say that the thing she saw from space that so inspired her was a world with no artificial borders or divisions?
Looking forward to the time-attack puzzle section where you're Solomon and you're shown different items that you have to cut into pieces as quickly as you can, but then sometimes it's a baby instead! Careful! Don't cut the baby in half! Or do, whatever, you're not their mom.
Encased also that "Early Access Problem" where the part of the game that was in the Early Access is much more fleshed out and polished that the rest of the game.
The RTX 4090 is the flagship model from the upcoming series, supposedly equipped with AD102 GPU and 16384 CUDA cores. This card is to feature 24GB of GDDR6X memory and TDP at 450W. There are already reports that custom models will have a lot of headroom for power limit increase, hence all the RTX 4090 models that have leaked thus far at 3.5-4-slot high.
Meanwhile, another Australian store appears to have RTX 4090 AORUS Master (again from Gigabyte). It is not stated if 3,900 AUD price includes tax though, but this is equal to 2,615 USD, so in territory of peak RTX 30 series pricing during ‘complicated times’.
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I'm kinda blown away that Judgment and Lost Judgment have just...materialized on Steam with almost no fanfare. Aside from that ESRB ratings leak a few days ago, was there any hint anywhere that this was happening at all?
The other thing that strikes me is that, on Steam, there's basically no indication that this is a Yakuza game. None of the branding, no mentions in the game description. If I was John Gamer and I was just poking around the Steam library for this yakuzer thing I've heard my friends talk about, I don't think these would even come up in a casual search.
+5
Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
I'm kinda blown away that Judgment and Lost Judgment have just...materialized on Steam with almost no fanfare. Aside from that ESRB ratings leak a few days ago, was there any hint anywhere that this was happening at all?
The other thing that strikes me is that, on Steam, there's basically no indication that this is a Yakuza game. None of the branding, no mentions in the game description. If I was John Gamer and I was just poking around the Steam library for this yakuzer thing I've heard my friends talk about, I don't think these would even come up in a casual search.
actually are yakuza/judgement taking place in the same continuity? do any of the characters from one show up in the other?
The RTX 4090 is the flagship model from the upcoming series, supposedly equipped with AD102 GPU and 16384 CUDA cores. This card is to feature 24GB of GDDR6X memory and TDP at 450W. There are already reports that custom models will have a lot of headroom for power limit increase, hence all the RTX 4090 models that have leaked thus far at 3.5-4-slot high.
Meanwhile, another Australian store appears to have RTX 4090 AORUS Master (again from Gigabyte). It is not stated if 3,900 AUD price includes tax though, but this is equal to 2,615 USD, so in territory of peak RTX 30 series pricing during ‘complicated times’.
450W TDP
cool
the memes about needing a 1kW PSU stray closer to reality every day
I'm kinda blown away that Judgment and Lost Judgment have just...materialized on Steam with almost no fanfare. Aside from that ESRB ratings leak a few days ago, was there any hint anywhere that this was happening at all?
The other thing that strikes me is that, on Steam, there's basically no indication that this is a Yakuza game. None of the branding, no mentions in the game description. If I was John Gamer and I was just poking around the Steam library for this yakuzer thing I've heard my friends talk about, I don't think these would even come up in a casual search.
actually are yakuza/judgement taking place in the same continuity? do any of the characters from one show up in the other?
Experience the Bible in a new, interactive way. Read, Watch, and Play through the Scriptures in this action-adventure faith-based game!
Journey through the chapters of the Old Testament with role-playing scenarios of some of the most iconic characters in the Bible.
Read the Scriptures in quick, bite-sized summaries
Watch animated episodes of biblical stories
Play as some of the characters in quest-driven gameplay developed in Unity
Access many hours of animation in monthly releases
Watch the stories of the Old Testament
Enjoyable for all ages, young and old
Play in 3D action-adventure RPG, assuming the roles of characters like Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, and many more!
Quest-based gameplay to experience the stories of the Old Testament
Fun action packed Gameplay level
Okay, but can I summon an army of bears to wreck some annoying kids
Posts
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
literally every man in the boss' life... was a huge dumbass
That was pretty much my exact experience with the Early Access version. "I like this, but I also like the old busted annoying shit, and I'm not sure this does enough that's UNIQUE enough to merit the attention of the unconverted"
Like Age of Decadence is arguably less accessible and harder and fiddlier than Encased, but I also think it's a lot more INTERESTING, so I've banged the drum for that one a fair bit and not really said a lot about Encased. It's just kinda... Dull to talk about. "Hey, you know that other thing? That, I guess." Bit of a shame, but sometimes you just want Little Caesar's and that's fine
You're free to pretty much pursue what you want when you want. The game will tell you unambiguously when there are hard time gates on stuff.
There are like three things that could really turn it around for me, I think, small things but deeply useful:
- The ability to respec. Make it cost a bunch of money, I don't care, but I definitely feel like I would at least change my weapon skills around a bit after having played through the first fifteen hours of the game. There's so much you can't know at character creation, with companions who are going to (potentially) share the weapon types you pick and stat requirements for specific weapons and all of that. Plus some of the trap perk design I mentioned earlier.
- The ability to highlight people you can interact with in the world. You can hit Alt to highlight objects, but people aren't included and can blend into the background really easily. I've spent like half an hour trying to find someone in a location that I knew they were in multiple times.
- Mass looting. I really don't need to go through and click every individual container/dead enemy to acquire a dozen bolts and three dollars.
It is in fact designed as an introduction point for newcomers, as it takes place just weeks after the fall of London.
Nope, the game won't really surprise you or anything and almost nothing is mutually exclusive - timegates will be clearly labeled, number-of-attempts gates as well, and when you have a chance(s) for a plotline to become an Ending it will be pretty clearly telegraphed.
I'm only in the third chapter right now (not sure how many there are total), but so far I'm finding the levels engaging. They go from "you can solve this in your sleep" to "you need to re-examine how you've been solving levels and maybe use a game mechanic in a slightly non-obvious way", but it's been pretty light-going on the latter, and it's typically confined to the optional bonus levels that get unlocked as you solve the "main" levels, which is probably for the best.
There's a hint system, but it's off by default - you have to go into the accessibility menu to turn it on. I haven't used it too often, but it seems like it'll give you a hint on where to place some tracks, and then disappear until the next time you test a level solution the ends in a failure; then you can tap the hint button again to get a few more hinted track locations. That's seems like a good middle-ground to me - I know that I've definitely played games of this sort where I'd get frustrated with a puzzle, hammer the hint button until it solved the puzzle for me, and then feel frustrated with myself for not trying to solve it after only one hint. Asking the player to at the very least hit the "Go!" button in between hints seems like a good way to slow down that impulsive behavior while also not really getting in the way for folks who want to use the hints more.
Anyway, seems like a good game for folks who like this sort of game. The only thing I don't like is that it makes my phone heat up way too much during extended play.
It's such an obscure thing to show up.
I've played it quite a bit and it is VERY cool but just dense as hell. There's layers on layers on layers. Search up a good tutorial video if you're gonna try it; feng shui matters a LOT
I watched a lot of this guy's playthroughs to get a feel of what the heck I was doing:
the second
your
son
Turnip Boy no, you don't need to be in that life anymore!
It suffers from maybe being a little too tight? Too many awful choices and constrained options. You don’t feel strong placing down neat towers and a lotta enemies seem to rush past everything you do unopposed. Instead of a feeling of addressing escalating difficulty it feels like treading water as random bits of flotsam provide poor respite.
but it looks like he's holding a jawbone so it's prob samson, lame
pleasepaypreacher.net
Do we think there's going to be a like a stealth section where you're the Angel of Death murdering all the first born, or...
Doesn't she say that the thing she saw from space that so inspired her was a world with no artificial borders or divisions?
pleasepaypreacher.net
It shouldn't, it's a prequel set in the very early days after London Fell
that's samson
he defeated an army of philistines using the jawbone of an ass
The other thing that strikes me is that, on Steam, there's basically no indication that this is a Yakuza game. None of the branding, no mentions in the game description. If I was John Gamer and I was just poking around the Steam library for this yakuzer thing I've heard my friends talk about, I don't think these would even come up in a casual search.
yea but samson is already a buff dude who's known for laying dudes on their asses
whereas moses rolling it up and throwing hands is much funnier
actually are yakuza/judgement taking place in the same continuity? do any of the characters from one show up in the other?
450W TDP
cool
the memes about needing a 1kW PSU stray closer to reality every day
Basically and not really, respectively
Nerds would never accept Moses just having new power like that without a training montage!
pleasepaypreacher.net
Okay, but can I summon an army of bears to wreck some annoying kids