they don't have to be anything special. could be generic in every way as long as they're actually fun
indie or major studio, doesn't matter as long as you enjoyed playing them.
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May not be fair to mention because it's not out yet and therefore we don't know if it's good/fun or not, but Kingmakers is the first game I've seen in a long time I'm actually looking forward to.
Every high school boy who's ever lived has dreamed about the premise of that game: I don't know how no one's ever really made something like it before (at least that I remember/have heard of).
This is absolutely retarded and I'm so glad that it exists.
okay, nothing new or exciting here, though the graphics look nice...
<cackles manically> Okay, this is amazing...
it just gets better from there...
In a somewhat similar vein, Manor Lords is the first game that an advertisement has gotten me excited for in a long time.
Cozy game of the year for sure. Can't wait to see where it goes in early access.
Oh wow. Putting that on my wishlist. Hope my rig can play it.
Cool, is it a musou type game I guess?
Satisfactory has hit 1.0
Corekeeper also hit 1.0
Zero Sievert is at 0.52
Against the Storm finally emerged from early access. Very good mashup of city builder and rogue-lite, which is not a genre blending I would every think to seek out nor expect to work.
I'll second this. I put well over 70 hours in during EA, where it already felt complete, and they've just kept adding more since. While I think they've added a little too much (diluting the pool and making certain combinations harder to accomplish), its a game that is surprisingly fun.
It also does what most roguelik/tes fail at these days, which is constantly create that magic moment when a build just works and you just instantly melt the rest of the round. You have to actually build towards it and set it up, but when you finally get the building that pushes your Harpies to 25 Resolve and you suddenly shoot up 4 reputation points in a minute, just nothing compares to that feeling.
Probably the most stressful yet relaxing game I have ever played. Finally unlocked the Silver seal the other night with only a few seconds left in Last Stand. Incredible game.
I'm a little sad. I progressed so far before they added the Seals that when they did add them I already had all of them unlocked, so I missed what looks like a truly maddening rush.
The lesson here is to wait for games to be released before purchasing them.
Early Access is such a sham and it saddens me to see how commonplace it has become. It creates the wrong incentive structure within the industry. I want high quality finished products, not glorified alphas being sold to consumers at full price.
In this case, it had enough content for me to consider it complete during the EA and I made sure of such before purchasing, especially as it was at a lower price during EA and they openly said such. Its sad for me to have missed, but the only reason I missed anything is because the devs went above and beyond in terms of adding more and more to the game for free after its release.
If they had stopped development at the point I bought it, I would have gotten 80~ good hours out of it and felt like it was a feature complete game. That's something most "finished" products don't even come close to, especially not for the 15$ they were selling it for during EA.
If more companies committed to such standards during EA, then EA would be making the industry better.
Felvidek: Hungarian JRPG that’s basically Monty Python meets Berserk.
Dread Delusion: King’s Field like with a great oldschool psx aesthetic.
Mullet MadJack: kind of like a first person Hotline: Miami set in an 80’s-Anime inspired dystopian future.
Dredge: a Lovecraftian horror fishing game.
Cultic Interlude: more of a demo really, but it’s a preview of the upcoming sequel to Cultic, a stellar Boomer Shooter that I always recommend the hell out of.
Dredge was delightful. I didnt know it was possible to make a cozy lovecraftian horror game.
I have been enjoying Forever Skies, which reminds me a lot of Subnautica.
I see it's in early access. Is it good now, or is it something to watch for later?
Steamworld Heist 2 came out last month, and its one of the few games in a long time I've literally shotgunned with my every waking moment. The class system is surprisingly fluid in terms of character building in a way that I think other class based games could learn from, with the ability to "buy" your learned abilities/passives from other classes with resource you gain more of as you level through each class anyway.
Give your support class a bunch of immunities/high health and a fucking grenade launcher. Give the slow lumbering melee class all the movement abilities from the flanker and then just run around deleting things. Give the SMG class all the +aim from a sniper and just remove their weakness.
V Rising is a fun one, if you want to oppress townsfolk and hunt bosses. Satisfactory just hit 1.0, and is in an excellent state. Nova Drift, if you hate your eyeballs and want to play Asteroids on steroids.
It's last year instead of this year, but I liked Victoria 3 a lot. I haven't played since they completely revamped the military system though, so I can't speak to that portion of the game.
Playing it frequently with every update, here is what has changed since then. They simultaneously made the military system both more straightforward and more annoying. It gave you more control over your army groups and what unit composition they had, which would make it easier at a glance and with less inputs to do something like make a colonial army that has cheaper/outdated equipment, or have an elite army group that gets the best gear. However, they made it unnecessarily obtuse to actually establish barracks and grow your military, as everything now has to be done through the fleet/army group. So instead of controlling your barracks or military harbors at the state level, you have to juggle them in the UI, and oh by the way there is no option to tell which one is which and if you want to downsize it will just pick one (so no longer can you make an army all made up of the most loyal pops by only building barracks in their areas). Paradox has said they are unhappy with how the military system is and it will be subject to a complete rework next year, including also making navies more impactful to fit the time period (such as ships being individual units that have to be built, in order to encourage arms races, as one example they provided of an idea).
But on the economic front, the game has gotten so much better than I imagined it would. There is now private vs. public building ownership, foreign investments being able to be done in markets so that if you really need a resource you can have your own people invest in it or build it as the state. They added "Owner Buildings" in the form of Manor Houses (Aristocrats) and Financial Sectors (Capitalist) that can own the buildings and manage them from afar so you no longer have to pull your hair out at the lack of qualified candidates to be Capitalist at your random ass sulfur mine in Indonesia. You can Nationalize foreign owned buildings but this could potentially lead to a war depending on how it is handled (or even Nationalize domestic owned buildings at the cost of radicalizing the owners), and on and on.
And now they have announced in November they are releasing 1.8, which will allow Corporations to invest in and build buildings related to their specialty, a rework of Political Movements to be more intuitive and able to be worked with, reworking Discrimination so that you can have different laws for different cultures, religions, and races instead of a blanket law. And they are making it so that you actually have to care about food availability and the lack of food causing famines, as well as adding "Harvest Incidents" that increase or decrease agricultural output to represent harvest conditions changing year over year.
The economics are more fun than 2, the wars are not.
<18th century british judge costume> I'll allow it.
lol
Abiotic Factor is about the best survival game I've ever come across. Extremely fun and it's been getting frequent updates.
Sins of A Solar Empire II came out recently (on Steam), a great follow up to the fantastic 4X original. Already put about 50 hours into it with some friends smashing up some Comps. Very smooth 4x once you get the UI down, allows you to manage your entire empire barely moving the screen. Quality optimized game as well. A huge 5v5 with a modded supply cap had over 1000 units on screen in one huge space brawl with virtually no slowdown. Some minor issues with the game like the very un-aggressive AI and some UI problems (for me at least) seeing which tech in the research tree has been researched. 3 major factions, each with 2 sub-factions, provides good variability and differing play styles. Easy to mod too.
$50 with some dlc coming later. Well worth imo.
CONSCRIPT also came out recently, though I haven't played it just watched a few early looks. WW1 trench based survival horror game. Seems intriguing and I am a sucker for any WWI setting. Will have some time to give this a go later in the year.
Only $20.
...I've been eyeing the original solar Empire on gog for a while now (there's a star trek mod out there that looked interesting) maybe I'll take a look =)
I had a hell of a lot of fun with Blood West.
A lot of people are describing it as a immersive sim but there are no vents and no doors or safes opened with the combo 0451, so it cant be an imsim.
I'd describe it as an open world, 1st person sneaker/shooter.
Uboat hit its 1.0 release this year, which is a realistic focused submarine sim where you are the skipper of a Uboat (shocking I know) during WW2. You can start with older model boats right at the start of the war in 1939, and go all the way up to the end in 1945 (where you either surrender to the Allies or attempt to reach Argentina). Although as a realistic game, the odds very much turn against you and get far more dangerous after about 1942, and by 1945 your screen may as well say "Current Objective: Survive" for how dangerous it is to actually try for convoy raids.
Hasn't officially released yet, but the demo was excellent, for a game called Hollywood Animal, from Weappy Studios who made the also very good This is the Police. You are the operator of a studio at the birth of Hollywood in the 1920's, and it runs until at least the 1960's (based on some of the screenshots, the demo ended in 1931). You pick the movies that will be made, you choose the crews, actors, and writers, you choose the shooting pace, etc. And while it does have a trigger warning of sorts at the beginning, the game does not shy away from actually showing Hollywood as it was and is. And I mean that in....all the ways you think (in the demo, as part of the tutorial, when an actor on your first movie gets uppity and demands a huge raise, you blackmail him with the fact that you have evidence he slept with a 14 year old). Either way, was extremely entertaining.
And I will cheat slightly and use one that came out late last year, called Last Train Home. You are the commander of the Czechoslovakian Legion as they make their legendary run across Russia on a stolen train to escape the Russian Civil War. It is a strategy game in the actual battles, but it is very much a survival game in the overall point as you have to scavenge for ammo, weapons, food, metal and wood to work on the train, and coal to keep it running. Also, the game is absolutely not shy as showing the Red Army as being absolute monsters who butcher civilians and are terrible for the Russian people, so you can tell the developers were at least based enough to admit Communist are evil.
I remember seeing stuff stuff about Last Train Home a while back. I'll have to check it out. UBoat sounds interesting too
I've been a bit hooked on space games. The Crust is pretty fun, not sure how much content it has yet. Same for Star Truckers. Both early access so take from that as you will
hey, 7 Days to Die has been in alpha for 7/8 years now, and that's completely playable as far as I'm concerned, so no worries if the game in question is early access. if it's fun and you can play it, who cares if it's finished or not?
Crime Boss: Rockay City
Astlibra: Revision
Cocoon was good, but not amazing or anything. I preferred Inside. Both are short, though.
Crow Country is good if you ever liked the original Resident Evil games. It's also a bit shorter than I expected.
Will edit if I remember others.
Bakaru is a spiritual sequel of Mystical Ninja Goemon.
Conscript is a top down click based horror game set in the WWI trenches
Tactical Breach Wizards is being reviewed really well. It's an XCom with wizards.
Castlevania Revamped is a Metroidvania game about the first Castlevania
Rise of the Ronin by Team Ninja (Nioh developers) is on my wishlist.
didn't they do the ninja gaiden remake about a decade ago as well?
Yes, and they also made arguably the worst Metroid title. (Other M)
fuck, why'd you have to remind me of that trainwreck?
...Love how it got shit for "not" being pro-feminist enough, though...if these people actually played games, they would have realized it was practically going down on their shitty ideology...
and the controlllls dear god, the controls...
Halls of Torment leaves early access on Sept24th, but it's practically "done" at this point, that release is just a capstone 1.0.0 patch. It's a Vampire Survivors roguelike, fun little ditty with 30 minute games.
if you enjoy bullet heaven/vampire survivors-like Deep Rock Galactic Survivors is pretty good. The added mining aspect makes it much more tactical and deciding whether to take the time to harvest resources to make your next run better vs your current run is a good gameplay addition.
Not new, but if you like overly complex survival base building, Stationeers is a lot of fun.
The average youtube quick start guide is an hour or more long https://youtu.be/R8qOcfir5bs?si=oeMHXzRTGFKXRwlo