My almost 5 year old, Ripley, has shown some interest in video games. Her hands aren't quite large enough to get around to use all of the buttons on the PS4 controller, so I'm looking for simple games she could start playing.
So far we tried Sonic Team Racing where by the third attempt she more or less understood how to go forward and turn without running into the wall.
I've got a PS4, Switch, PC.
PS Plus had Harry Potter Lego as one of the free games this month, those are pretty straight forward right?
Yup. And the Harry Potter one specifically is more about simple puzzles than combat. There's still a bit of that and a few boss fights, but she wouldn't have to worry much about enemies most of the time.
FFXIV: Agran Trask
+3
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Into the Breach is illuminating some temper issues I wasn't previously aware of.
Just got 2 perfect islands for the first time. First match of the 3rd island is one of the "block 3 vek from emerging" ones. I only blocked 2/3 because I forgot none emerge on the final turn. The closest I've ever got to genuinely throwing a device.
+20
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Can confirm that Graveyard Keeper is a very solid stardewvania. I can imagine that the way it obscures the conditions for the next set of unlocks is a dealbreaker for a lot of folks, but so far I haven't found myself in a place where I didn't have at least one solid objective to work toward. Playing without looking anything up reminds me of one of those Flash god games where you have to combine sets of simple objects and concepts to fill out a branching tree of more complex objects and concepts.
I hope I can be better friends with Comrade Donkey, he doesn't seem to like me very much under our current carrot-based business relationship.
Good call, @Magic Pink, I'll probably pick up the expansions during the holiday sale.
I am getting the graphical glitch in Gotham Knights where everyone's hoodie drawstrings are sticking straight out in front of them and it's very funny
i have only had it happen with jason and i think only during cutscenes? it's even funnier to know that it's all by chance who's gonna have hoodie boners and when
For some reason now the only thing I can think about is Square Enix's Tom Sawyer RPG, and the double wraparound ouroborous of "Whose fault is this?"
their what now
I never saw an answer to this so I googled it
I can't even post the box art because despite the other characters looking like typical anime kids, it has Jim as a big lips blackface caricature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square's_Tom_Sawyer
The game was never localized outside Japan, and was noted by IGN as an example of racism in video games.[8] In 2010, UGO ranked it as the #4 most racist video game in history.[9][10]
The portrayal of black people as blackfaced caricatures with huge lips has been noted about the game.[11] In GameSpy's retrospective overview of the Famicom, Benjamin Turner and Christian Nutt's Square column concludes that "one of the most amusing Square games that didn't come [to the U.S.] was Square's Tom Sawyer, an RPG starring the happy-go-lucky boy wonder that featured a...racially insensitive...character." Artist Takashi Tokita explained in 2018 that when the game was made, there was not a “standards and practices” department to ensure that games did not contain materials that would be offensive in other cultures.[6]
See also Mr. Popo from dragon ball as another example of the sambo caricature in japanese pop culture in the 80s
They have learned since then at least
0
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Completed my first successful run in Into the Breach. The final mission was surprisingly easy. If they wanted to make it hard they should have put a train in it.
+20
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Trains are the worst.
+7
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
edited November 2022
It's been a long month! I've joined several organizations and religions, I am an accomplished mage and spy, and a very handsome highwayman is teaching me to sneak better. on the right, leaning against the wall with that smile
Don't look!
edit: oh and at least two separate groups want me dead and are sending assassins after me for reasons unknown, so it's not all beer and something that goes well with beer.
What works for Snap is that in structuring it a bit more like you're playing repeated poker hands rather than having a longer, larger game, it's easier to get a satisfying experience out of a smaller number of cards
What works for Snap is that in structuring it a bit more like you're playing repeated poker hands rather than having a longer, larger game, it's easier to get a satisfying experience out of a smaller number of cards
Can you elaborate on that?
I assumed it was a gatcha cash grab, but with Pooro talking about it...
What works for Snap is that in structuring it a bit more like you're playing repeated poker hands rather than having a longer, larger game, it's easier to get a satisfying experience out of a smaller number of cards
Can you elaborate on that?
I assumed it was a gatcha cash grab, but with Pooro talking about it...
Basically all the monetization is cosmetic. The progression system is based on upgrading a card's cosmetics (or their variants) so people wo spend money can progress slightly faster by virtue of having more variant cards to upgrade, but those are still gated by two currencies (one of which is card specific and *not* directly purchasable using cash money).
Each game is 6 (possibly 7) turns and the timer is like 30 seconds so absolute max game length is like 4 minutes. Only real downside is that after rank 20 you can get thrown to the wolves as the player pool includes people who are much further down the progression path and as such have more options for deck building. Cards further down the line aren't necessarily stronger, but it's easier to play around someone who is limited in what they can put in their deck.
There is no gatcha pull element, no buying packs of cards, no op meta that isn't attainable through regular play.
What works for Snap is that in structuring it a bit more like you're playing repeated poker hands rather than having a longer, larger game, it's easier to get a satisfying experience out of a smaller number of cards
Can you elaborate on that?
I assumed it was a gatcha cash grab, but with Pooro talking about it...
There are a goodly number of folks over in G&T, and former se++ folks on Twitter, who have been putting a lot of hours into Snap. According to Steam I'm at 27.6 hours played so far. I ended up deciding to buy the battle pass or season pass or whatever it is after a while, but it didn't feel like something I had to do. I was having plenty of fun just playing it without spending any money.
Progression does slow over time, but the games are so quick and (usually) fun that I'm happy to just play for a while and not worry about when my next card unlock might happen. It's really nice to be able to pop on and play a few games in 10-15 minutes and then pop back off if I need to do something else or the featured location of the day is making for terrible match-ups for the decks I'd prefer to play with. It's a much faster experience than hopping online to play some Magic on Arena, for example.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the monetization is just cosmetic.
Basically, the acquisition of cards happens by upgrading a card's cosmetics, like Fig-D says. Two currencies for that, credits and boosters. You get boosters for one random card in your deck whenever you play a game. While it might take some games for you to get enough to upgrade one of your cards, general random distribution means that you'll get enough for that to happen at a moderately stable clip, even if you'll sometimes go through peaks and valleys with it. Credits, on the other hand, are a gatekeep that you can't just play the game for. Credits only come through quests and their rewards, meaning there is a daily cap on how many you can have, unless you pay money for them.
When you upgrade a card (and I'm gonna keep saying upgrade a card, but it IS just a cosmetic upgrade, I know a lot of people hear "upgrade a card" and think "now you've increased its strength to 4, and you're gonna kick the ass of those losers who still have it on 3"), you get Collection Level based on how upgraded the card is. Every X Collection Level, you get a card you haven't unlocked. Now one of the problems here is there's no way to target cards that you want. If you're playing an Onslaught Ongoing deck like Pooro is, you don't get to say "let me get some fun Ongoing cards for it". You might just get a bunch of Move and Discard cards for a while that you can't do anything with.
Cards are also split into three groups. You have to get everything from Pool 1 before you start getting cards in Pool 2, for example. While you're collecting cards in Pool 1, the game is going to try to only match you against players who are also in Pool 1. So in Pool 1 they have a lot of the basic tools to let you build the simplest version of some deck archetypes, and then in pool 2 or 3 they give extra deck customization options, meta calls, and goofy toys.
For the average player, it'll take about 3 months of doing your dailies every day to unlock every card currently in the game. And while normally "unlocking every card" is an absurd goal in a card game because most of them are bad, because there's no targeting of card unlocks in Snap that has to be your goal, because the Pool 3 cards you want might just all randomly be the last ones you get. So there is pressure to spend currency to turn into Credits through that way.
Now, that said, as I said before, they have managed to structure the game in such a way that a lot of people are getting the necessary satisfaction from the free experience. Games are very quick, which is why I specifically reference the idea of playing hands of poker rather than playing something like MTG. You're looking at it more like a session where you're just trying to come out ahead after you play all your hands, rather than looking for a more satisfying back and forth in an MTGlike. It's structured in such a way that the elements of bluffing and prediction can keep weak decks in the game if you make clever reads.
Would I personally recommend it? Probably not. But I know a decent clip of people who are enjoying it, and I think I'm very smart and intelligent and like to hear myself talk, so I'm willing to explain the game in overly wordy ways.
Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
DS2 is trash. All my homies hate DS2.
I downloaded and have gotten several hours out of Marvel Snap to the point that I have several decks of cards built around various themes, like "cards that destroy other cards" and "cards the move other cards" and "a bunch of low cost cards with buffs"
Some of them definitely feel more successful with me than others, and lots of games feel a bit fucked in someone's favor based on random buffs and debuffs that change the layout of the play space, and I have officially run out of easy credits to get so my progression has kind of stalled out
But I'm at like level 200 or something at this point, I've got enough useful cards to build several themed decks, and I've gotten a lot of fun out of it! Even the cosmetic system is kind of neat because each "upgrade" is essentially taking a regular trading card and turning it into a fucked up digital Hearthstone card with animation and moving borders and stuff. Only problem is that some of the upgrades are barely noticeable ("animation" mostly just means a tiny bit of their hair or cape blows in the wind) and it is also your progression gate for unlocking new cards
Then again, the cards are unlocked randomly, there's no booster packs, and there are tons of starter cards that I still have in my decks, so frankly it's way better about its monetization than I ever expected! Not that that's a high bar to clear, but y'know
the game could spit in my face and it would still probably be friendlier than your average marvel mobile game. it's a fucking cesspool out there with that brand
I've put probably more hours than I realise into marvel snap recently (on phone so I don't know if there's an actual count anywhere), and I think my favorite thing is the shortness matches, so that when I lose to an opponent pulling out a good combo or whatever on the last turn, I genuinely think "oh, nice play", and can get onto the next round, I never have enough time to get emotionally invested in this particular set of cards.
And the actual mechanics of the game are fun, I can definitely see how I could start to actually structure decks where the cards go together (I keep on seeing people do ingenious stuff with destroying cards, for example), rather than just "Hulk Is Big Card Play At End" which is about as far as it goes right now.
As far as gacha goes, the currency is surprisingly generous, I always have more than enough credits to keep on upgrading cards, though I suspect that'll change at some point.
Most high-point match I've had so far:
+1
Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
the game could spit in my face and it would still probably be friendlier than your average marvel mobile game. it's a fucking cesspool out there with that brand
Oh fuck yeah that shit is poison, that's why my expectations were six feet under
But it did sail right over them! I felt I should note that
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
DS2 is trash. All my homies hate DS2.
The progression is such that you will hit a point where you have boosters but no credits, if you play a lot of hours it'll probably happen in a few days
So you gotta be okay with waiting for daily quests and such to repop in order to get new cards, and it's just a good thing that the basic gameplay loop is fun and it still feels good to just pop in for a few games here and there, knock out some quests, and upgrade a card or two
There are one thousand percent people who just want to progress as fast as they're playing though, and that's gonna take money
Even buying credits is limited per day though, so you can't just dump like $100+ and skip all the progression. And even though you can buy credits, you still need to play to earn the boosters for the cards you want.
The only cards you can outright buy are the 1 new card in each season's pass. Each season (which I believe are a month or 2) there is a $10 season pass. That pass gets you instant access to 1 new card, and then you can also earn cosmetic variants of a couple cards, and a bunch of other cosmetics and currencies, including boosters for random cards and specific cards. (the current season, which ends tomorrow night, contains Miles Morales as a new card, along with new symbiote variants of Spider-Woman and Carnage) That new card will be available to everyone at least one season later, I believe the devs have said 2 months, so it will be free to everyone at some point so you aren't locked out of it forever. The free version of the battle pass also gives stuff too, at least the current one gives you $5 worth of gold and a bunch of boosters and variants (alternate art cards, mechanically the exact same as the normal ones) along with access to the Season Caches, which are available after you finish the 50 levels of the pass, each level you gain after 50 gets you a free cache which can contain gold, credits, boosters, or variants.
So, the pay models is like "Hey do you wanna skip a few days of grinding?" instead of "Hey, do you just wanna buy a deck and stomp everyone?" It's so much better than basically every digital CCG out there. I fucking love the game, it's super fast, and fun, the randomness ensures that games feel different pretty much every time, and I don't feel like I'm getting fucked by people who dumped $texas on the game like I often felt in Magic (in Standard at least) and Hearthstone. The only thing it really needs right now is a limited/draft mode, that's my favorite way to play card games.
Crippl3 on
+1
PaperLuigi44My amazement is at maximum capacity.Registered Userregular
If there are any Gamers™ that deserve to be let through the Pearly Gates it's the dataminers for F2P games giving you advanced knowledge than what the Devs want you to know so you can save accordingly.
@Magic Pink Thanks for the Wylde Flowers recommendation in the thread! My wife and I just finished it this evening and we had a great time the whole way through.
And the actual mechanics of the game are fun, I can definitely see how I could start to actually structure decks where the cards go together (I keep on seeing people do ingenious stuff with destroying cards, for example), rather than just "Hulk Is Big Card Play At End" which is about as far as it goes right now.
To be fair, I've lost a number of games now where I've over analyzed the situation, assured myself they are setting up some dramatic combo to fit their decks theme, set my own amazing play to assure my win by locking a location down with an untouchable lead, only to get my face smashed in cause "Hulk Is Big Card Play At End".
I had a match yesterday where turn 2 revealed Weirdworld, where for the rest of your game you draw from your opponent's deck and vice versa. I'm playing a discard deck, so luckily I had 1 discard card and Apocalypse, so it's ok, fine.
Turn 3 revealed Ego, which is a location that takes over the game and basically randomly plays both players for the rest of the game.
Ego does not know how to play a discard based deck well. I did not win.
Posts
So far we tried Sonic Team Racing where by the third attempt she more or less understood how to go forward and turn without running into the wall.
I've got a PS4, Switch, PC.
PS Plus had Harry Potter Lego as one of the free games this month, those are pretty straight forward right?
Just got 2 perfect islands for the first time. First match of the 3rd island is one of the "block 3 vek from emerging" ones. I only blocked 2/3 because I forgot none emerge on the final turn. The closest I've ever got to genuinely throwing a device.
I hope I can be better friends with Comrade Donkey, he doesn't seem to like me very much under our current carrot-based business relationship.
Good call, @Magic Pink, I'll probably pick up the expansions during the holiday sale.
i have only had it happen with jason and i think only during cutscenes? it's even funnier to know that it's all by chance who's gonna have hoodie boners and when
I never saw an answer to this so I googled it
I can't even post the box art because despite the other characters looking like typical anime kids, it has Jim as a big lips blackface caricature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square's_Tom_Sawyer Don't like that!
They have learned since then at least
Don't look!
edit: oh and at least two separate groups want me dead and are sending assassins after me for reasons unknown, so it's not all beer and something that goes well with beer.
Marvel Snap is...
Good
What works for Snap is that in structuring it a bit more like you're playing repeated poker hands rather than having a longer, larger game, it's easier to get a satisfying experience out of a smaller number of cards
Can you elaborate on that?
I assumed it was a gatcha cash grab, but with Pooro talking about it...
Basically all the monetization is cosmetic. The progression system is based on upgrading a card's cosmetics (or their variants) so people wo spend money can progress slightly faster by virtue of having more variant cards to upgrade, but those are still gated by two currencies (one of which is card specific and *not* directly purchasable using cash money).
Each game is 6 (possibly 7) turns and the timer is like 30 seconds so absolute max game length is like 4 minutes. Only real downside is that after rank 20 you can get thrown to the wolves as the player pool includes people who are much further down the progression path and as such have more options for deck building. Cards further down the line aren't necessarily stronger, but it's easier to play around someone who is limited in what they can put in their deck.
There is no gatcha pull element, no buying packs of cards, no op meta that isn't attainable through regular play.
There are a goodly number of folks over in G&T, and former se++ folks on Twitter, who have been putting a lot of hours into Snap. According to Steam I'm at 27.6 hours played so far. I ended up deciding to buy the battle pass or season pass or whatever it is after a while, but it didn't feel like something I had to do. I was having plenty of fun just playing it without spending any money.
Progression does slow over time, but the games are so quick and (usually) fun that I'm happy to just play for a while and not worry about when my next card unlock might happen. It's really nice to be able to pop on and play a few games in 10-15 minutes and then pop back off if I need to do something else or the featured location of the day is making for terrible match-ups for the decks I'd prefer to play with. It's a much faster experience than hopping online to play some Magic on Arena, for example.
Basically, the acquisition of cards happens by upgrading a card's cosmetics, like Fig-D says. Two currencies for that, credits and boosters. You get boosters for one random card in your deck whenever you play a game. While it might take some games for you to get enough to upgrade one of your cards, general random distribution means that you'll get enough for that to happen at a moderately stable clip, even if you'll sometimes go through peaks and valleys with it. Credits, on the other hand, are a gatekeep that you can't just play the game for. Credits only come through quests and their rewards, meaning there is a daily cap on how many you can have, unless you pay money for them.
When you upgrade a card (and I'm gonna keep saying upgrade a card, but it IS just a cosmetic upgrade, I know a lot of people hear "upgrade a card" and think "now you've increased its strength to 4, and you're gonna kick the ass of those losers who still have it on 3"), you get Collection Level based on how upgraded the card is. Every X Collection Level, you get a card you haven't unlocked. Now one of the problems here is there's no way to target cards that you want. If you're playing an Onslaught Ongoing deck like Pooro is, you don't get to say "let me get some fun Ongoing cards for it". You might just get a bunch of Move and Discard cards for a while that you can't do anything with.
Cards are also split into three groups. You have to get everything from Pool 1 before you start getting cards in Pool 2, for example. While you're collecting cards in Pool 1, the game is going to try to only match you against players who are also in Pool 1. So in Pool 1 they have a lot of the basic tools to let you build the simplest version of some deck archetypes, and then in pool 2 or 3 they give extra deck customization options, meta calls, and goofy toys.
For the average player, it'll take about 3 months of doing your dailies every day to unlock every card currently in the game. And while normally "unlocking every card" is an absurd goal in a card game because most of them are bad, because there's no targeting of card unlocks in Snap that has to be your goal, because the Pool 3 cards you want might just all randomly be the last ones you get. So there is pressure to spend currency to turn into Credits through that way.
Now, that said, as I said before, they have managed to structure the game in such a way that a lot of people are getting the necessary satisfaction from the free experience. Games are very quick, which is why I specifically reference the idea of playing hands of poker rather than playing something like MTG. You're looking at it more like a session where you're just trying to come out ahead after you play all your hands, rather than looking for a more satisfying back and forth in an MTGlike. It's structured in such a way that the elements of bluffing and prediction can keep weak decks in the game if you make clever reads.
Would I personally recommend it? Probably not. But I know a decent clip of people who are enjoying it, and I think I'm very smart and intelligent and like to hear myself talk, so I'm willing to explain the game in overly wordy ways.
Some of them definitely feel more successful with me than others, and lots of games feel a bit fucked in someone's favor based on random buffs and debuffs that change the layout of the play space, and I have officially run out of easy credits to get so my progression has kind of stalled out
But I'm at like level 200 or something at this point, I've got enough useful cards to build several themed decks, and I've gotten a lot of fun out of it! Even the cosmetic system is kind of neat because each "upgrade" is essentially taking a regular trading card and turning it into a fucked up digital Hearthstone card with animation and moving borders and stuff. Only problem is that some of the upgrades are barely noticeable ("animation" mostly just means a tiny bit of their hair or cape blows in the wind) and it is also your progression gate for unlocking new cards
Then again, the cards are unlocked randomly, there's no booster packs, and there are tons of starter cards that I still have in my decks, so frankly it's way better about its monetization than I ever expected! Not that that's a high bar to clear, but y'know
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
And the actual mechanics of the game are fun, I can definitely see how I could start to actually structure decks where the cards go together (I keep on seeing people do ingenious stuff with destroying cards, for example), rather than just "Hulk Is Big Card Play At End" which is about as far as it goes right now.
As far as gacha goes, the currency is surprisingly generous, I always have more than enough credits to keep on upgrading cards, though I suspect that'll change at some point.
Most high-point match I've had so far:
Oh fuck yeah that shit is poison, that's why my expectations were six feet under
But it did sail right over them! I felt I should note that
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
So you gotta be okay with waiting for daily quests and such to repop in order to get new cards, and it's just a good thing that the basic gameplay loop is fun and it still feels good to just pop in for a few games here and there, knock out some quests, and upgrade a card or two
There are one thousand percent people who just want to progress as fast as they're playing though, and that's gonna take money
The only cards you can outright buy are the 1 new card in each season's pass. Each season (which I believe are a month or 2) there is a $10 season pass. That pass gets you instant access to 1 new card, and then you can also earn cosmetic variants of a couple cards, and a bunch of other cosmetics and currencies, including boosters for random cards and specific cards. (the current season, which ends tomorrow night, contains Miles Morales as a new card, along with new symbiote variants of Spider-Woman and Carnage) That new card will be available to everyone at least one season later, I believe the devs have said 2 months, so it will be free to everyone at some point so you aren't locked out of it forever. The free version of the battle pass also gives stuff too, at least the current one gives you $5 worth of gold and a bunch of boosters and variants (alternate art cards, mechanically the exact same as the normal ones) along with access to the Season Caches, which are available after you finish the 50 levels of the pass, each level you gain after 50 gets you a free cache which can contain gold, credits, boosters, or variants.
So, the pay models is like "Hey do you wanna skip a few days of grinding?" instead of "Hey, do you just wanna buy a deck and stomp everyone?" It's so much better than basically every digital CCG out there. I fucking love the game, it's super fast, and fun, the randomness ensures that games feel different pretty much every time, and I don't feel like I'm getting fucked by people who dumped $texas on the game like I often felt in Magic (in Standard at least) and Hearthstone. The only thing it really needs right now is a limited/draft mode, that's my favorite way to play card games.
I'm still trying to figure out how you got 2 Onslaughts here
To be fair, I've lost a number of games now where I've over analyzed the situation, assured myself they are setting up some dramatic combo to fit their decks theme, set my own amazing play to assure my win by locking a location down with an untouchable lead, only to get my face smashed in cause "Hulk Is Big Card Play At End".
I'm going to guess stole one from their opponent's deck with Mantis, who later either died to Elektra or died at Hala after turn 4.
Or Agent 13 dropped one in their hand.
Speaking of, Agent 13 gave me Agatha Harkness today, and that was a rough match that I somehow won. Or rather.. she won.
Turn 3 revealed Ego, which is a location that takes over the game and basically randomly plays both players for the rest of the game.
Ego does not know how to play a discard based deck well. I did not win.