Book of Demons, a card based fighting dungeon exploration game is free to claim at GOG.com over the next couple of days. I have this one already and I think its worth checking it out.

Steam is having a Deckbuilder sale all week-most have a good sale on them right now

I buy and play a ton of sub-$20 indie games these days, and a couple that have stuck out of the churn recently:

Balatro
see its own thread

Mortal Glory 2
Mortal Glory 2 on Steam
You manage a small gladiator company, with a maximum party size of 4. Combat phases are x-com light, played out on a small relatively bare arena map with a few obstacles & take about 5-10 minutes per fight, with about 30 fights (or random events/store nodes) per run, selected FTL branching map style.



Slice & Dice
Slice & Dice on Steam
Tactical dice-rolling roguelike. Take control of 5 heroes, each with their own unique dice. Fight your way through 20 levels of monsters and try to take on the final boss.

Millenia now available for sale on Steam, elsewhere. A lot of my regular YouTubers have been playing it, I think its worth a lot of the hype.

I need to watch some videos. Interested but hesitant.

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Similar, though I'm more mildly interested & pretty fn hesitant.

Criticism seems pretty consitent: a lack of meaningful differentiation between nations/civs, and the absence of flavor that comes with that, plus lackluster combat and diplo facets.

I'd have to have a major change of heart to pull the trigger until several patches most likely.

I suppose that there isn't a lot of differentiation/feel for each civ other than the cities and towns being from your chosen culture/nation. You get to choose when you start a bonus for your kingdom which no other kingdom starts with. Then when you enter the second age, you get access to National Spirits, like Mound Builders, Raiders, God-King Dynasty which again sets your kingdom apart from the others.



Combat is lacking, especially with the animations they use for combat.

Evil Genius 2 is 95% off or $2 right now on Steam

I watched DasTactic stream it. I wasn't impressed and really, neither was DasTactic. And, he's usually upbeat about the game he's showing. Combat seemed very meh.

I have been playing Football Coach: College Dynasty, and I think as I play it and click around and advance a stage, "Is this game perfect?"

Is it?

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I have played it, and I have a significantly different opinion. The developer is a great guy who regular communicates and updates, etc. Just good people.

Still quite a ways to go in EA, so it's not to the finish line yet or close to it, but if it were a released game I would consider the current balance unacceptable. Recruiting AI is quite bad, the school updates are OP (less so after a recent patch nerfed the biggest offender Facilities a bit, but still an issue). Scheduling is still bad, conference prestige never changes, and so on. There's a lot of good things about FCCD. It has a decent chance to get there, but as ever there's a lot of voices in the user suggestions wanting to weigh it down with what I would consider far too much complexity, or various spurious ideas that don't affect the core of the game. A lot will depend on what the dev chooses to say yes and no to.

Look and feel is perfect

I can’t tell you about the deep dive into code that is being mentioned or ways to game it

But for a regular player I’d say the look and feel is literally perfect for the genre


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Free weekend on Steam-Texas Chainsaw Massacre-yes its a game

I forgot I bought this. There was reason that I didn't get into it, but I can't remember what it was.

I'd say this does a better job of articulating the feelings in my house than I was willing to invest the time into doing.

The game was ultimately too easy to keep either of us around more than a handful of seasons. Things like the scheduling, the conference prestige issue, and so on, those just added up to back-on-the-shelf TFN.

I like the bones in places, but it feels like a very long way to go before it warrants more than a very occasional dabble to see if its getting any closer.

Hamerting, a dwarven vertical mining colony RPG which has been on my wishlist forever is now free to claim at GoG.com over the weekend.

Recruiting is far too easy. Being able see exactly how many points each school has spent and is spending on a player makes it easy to calculate how much attention I need to give.a player to land him. I honestly don't know how you balance recruiting without it feeling overly frustrating.

One thing nearly every college game gets wrong is the big schools don't have nearly enough pull with recruits. If Alabama is involved with a player the only competition they're realistically getting is from similar prestige schools or, sometimes, the hometown school.

It's also way too easy to build up prestige and then it doesn't drop off fast enough. Generally all schools have a prestige level that they're going to rubber band back too after prestige gains or losses. Very few schools over the past 40 years have actually changed their baseline prestige level in college football. Every game gets this wrong.

It's worth keeping in mind the whole realism vs. fun aspect here.

There's a significant number of people who don't want FCCD to be realistic in terms of how hard it would be to make a small school a national champion. I think this is really quite highly related to the discussion recently had about sims in general here; How could a computer sports sim replicate real-life urgency? - Front Office Football Central

So at a certain level it's not about getting it right or wrong, but how much realistic difficulty/mechanics are 'fun' for the most players. That's also not just about the challenge IMO but the complexity issue I referred to. If you actually modeled everything involved in running a college football program, I'd estimate conservatively that upwards of 80% of that would really frustrate a typical person trying to play.

I still can't get past the very mobile interface of FCCD. It drives me nuts how everything takes up so much space. Give me TCY any day of the week. Sure, logos and prettier graphic elements would be nice, but not at the expense of a very bad layout.

I think this is a good example of how subjective some things are, especially UI. In most ways, I don't think 'good UI' is even something that exists objectively. Flasch isn't wrong for liking the look and feel, and sovereignstar isnt' wrong for not liking it ... it's just a case of what your expectations/preferences are. No game can hit the spot for everyone.

Free weekend of hearts of iron IV, and ARK: Survival Ascended on Steam-also looks like a lot of turn-based games are on sale, and could be some good deals/bundles on the various pathfinder games

If you still don't have the original darkest dungeon, it is currently 90% off or $2.50 thru the weekend on steam

I love it too. I haven't been playing for about 6 months, but look forward to picking it back up and seeing all the improvements.

It's a great game. Fun and fast with customization.

for lovers of Monster Train, the developers of that game have a new one now out of Early Access: Inkbound:


Save 10% on Inkbound on Steam

in honor of the masters this week, PGA Tour 2k23 is free to play thru the weekend.


EDIT: Fallout76 is free for a week

Infection Free Zone released today in Early Access on Steam

10% off at the moment, so like $22 or something.

If anyone takes the plunge on News Tower, I'd like to hear some thoughts.

Very unique game and a hell of a lot of fun for a short period of time, but not more than $10-15 of value in it right now. The base game is scripted for a few hours of play, they bolted on an unlimited mode but it gets repetitive very quickly.

If they deliver everything in the roadmap for $20 you are getting a very good game, but it didn't stick with me after I'd played through the scripted stories once and reached the end of the time period.

Golf with your Friends is free to play thru the weekend on Steam. There also seems to be a lot of good deals on the various Fallout games right now most places in honor of the new TV show I guess.

In case you somehow missed it, Manor Lords is out on Early Access today. I think every streamer/game site is playing/selling/talking about it.

Unfortunately, I'll have to upgrade my GPU to play Manor Lords but boy howdy does it look good.

Just been playing around with it. I do feel like I'm going to get hooked, but I have to get over the hump of the early challenges.

How good does your GPU have to be? I'm due for an upgrade but it didn't look too graphic intensive unless I'm mistaken.

Is the full game free with Game Pass?

Yes, I have ultimate and it's available for install.

The minimum specs are a GeForce 1050. Recommended specs are a 1060. Likely you'll clear this if you've built/bought a computer in the past few years. My computer, unfortunately, is about 10 years old and running a 960.

So after playing with this one a bit, it definitely has the bones of a great game but I’m very skeptical given the dev comments that it’s ever going to get there

It’s certainly a beautiful game with a ton of care and attention put into it and a really well thought out theme. The way plots are built board by board is a really nice touch and some of the way things have been implemented feel realistic and are innovative for a game this size (e.g. you have one ox and villagers can’t just magic a massive log of timber halfway across the map, so you can’t build 17 houses, a church and 3 industries at once)

With that being said, it is definitely slow. Which is nice given the overall feel of the game, but when a month takes so long in game and you are basically hard capped to possibly getting one family per month (an entire family can only be assigned to one job) it might not be for everyone. At the start you are basically limited to “doing” 4 things (5 families but one has to be assigned to construction and the oxen or everything falls apart) and some jobs you can’t even chop and change as you lose the market stall that family runs.

For me worse than the pace though is it’s really quite shallow. The idea of the marketplace is nicely done but realistically things end up at a clothing stall or a food stall. There are a few crops but realistically they all end up at bread or beer. Clay goes to tiles etc… you get a bonus for having different food types or clothing stalls but it’s miles from the nuanced and interesting industry chains that a game like Banished or Farthest Frontier has. Haven’t got to the militia/bandit phase yet but from reading those two have, it’s also very rudimentary and arguably far from what was hyped.

Which brings me to the next point, I’m not sure I have any faith it gets significantly deeper. Game wasn’t even supposed to be Early Access, dev has said the first few months will be bugfixes/patches and he’s not comfortable putting a roadmap out there. If you look at the tech tree it’s maybe only half complete and the rest are supposedly EA. Hope I’m wrong, but I think there’s a significant chance we look back in 18 months and this one doesn’t live up to the hype cycle.

I get your criticism. It does seem like this developer, even with the huge financial influx he was just given, is going to keep trying to do this by himself and the game is probably never going to get to a complete state. I will say as it is, it is a pretty decent time waster. It is slow paced game made so you take time to plan out your little town and develop it into a thriving community. It is limited, but enjoyable and even somewhat relaxing. It will need more depth for something more than a fun little afternoon play, but it is a fun game to fool around with.

I built my first town up to a decent sized, self-sufficient community that is turning a profit. I quit last night at the point of needing to expand into my next region, which I plan to be a farming area. My only knock, which I am sure is not the knock of other players, is I now have to invest my attention to another town while I know I will most likely miss something stupid going wrong in town one and screw up the play. I am very one track minded. I can't divide my attention well. It is the reason I don't play many RTS games, because there is no way I can keep up with units spread across a giant map doing stuff at the same time. I think this game may be slow enough that I will be able keep things going, but I guess we will see.

Update: My town ended being not so self-sufficient. When I restarted I immediately noticed I was down to two months of food. Had to fool around to get that sorted, then I decided to stay working on the town till I could hit max-size value (Large town I think?). Meanwhile, the AI A-hole keeps eating zones. I wasn't in a position to challenge him militarily, so I also began armoring up my troops and building up my retinue. I claimed two other zones, and he claimed all the others. Eventually, he decide to come after one of my zones. The fight was on, and it was one I barely won.

I have to decide now if I: 1) Build on my second zone. I'm not sure how trading between owned zones work so I need to figure that out. or 2) Restart with my current experience and try to build the town faster and do a better job preventing the AI growth. IDK if I can really. He pops 4 units with 36 men that seem to be pretty well armed. I do think I will try to not do just spear units early, but start with one spear and then switch to either Polearm or footman. Trying to find a way to afford mail early is important as well.

Anyway, I am seeing a lot of replay value in this even early. I haven't even touched farming yet. I just barely scratch the surface with sheep-yarn-cloaks.

Manor Lords for $23.30 from CDKeys-to-Steam vs $30 from Steam.

bubble2

Frostpunk2 is out today, Which reminds me i need to finish Frostpunk 1 sometime...

I have discovered recently Songs of Syx and I'm really addicted. It has the perfect blend of Rimworld, Dward fortress (with a bit better graphics and not as complex) with more classic city builders and mass scale battles and world domination, in fact it is for me what I wanted Rimworld to be.

It has a free demo, I tried it and purchased the early access 1 hour later.

I love Rimworld for the stories it generates and the focus on the citizens but I was never into body parts harvesting etc. I was into it mainly because the city builder/survival but Songs of Syx is much more about that plus it has much bigger scope with cities with thousands of citizens and mass battles.

The developer is crazily active, releasing several beta patches daily if you opt in for the beta in steam.

I highly suggest this guy in youtube for tutorials, it explains all the basis perfectly. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...cSNK1RsuH39Pcq

Interesting, I bought it in Kickstarter and then it’s just seemed too overwhelming and rough around the edges to ever play, might have to give it a second look.

Looks like most sites have good sales on Star Wars games with their May the 4th be with you sales.

For those LitRPG fans out there like me, Humble Bundle has a new bundle of LitRPG audiobooks available now. You can get up to 15 audiobooks. I recognize several of them, but I haven't read them yet:


https://www.humblebundle.com/books/l...m_medium=email

Does anyone play Escape From Tarkov? It always seemed too hardcore for me, but the recent controversy concerning their "non-DLC" they were trying to sell for hundreds of dollars brought a single-player mod to my attention. Giving that studio $30 doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside, but it always looked like a fun game to me (minus the toxic community).

I played it for a very small bit of time. For me the biggest barrier was the 10-20min load times (not kidding). I hope they've fixed that.

Games can very easily last only a minute or two before you get sniped in the dark, by some unknown & unseen adversary, which would be absolutely fine, if you hadn't just spent 15 minutes waiting for it to load.

Has anyone here played Jagged Alliance 3? If so, thoughts?