Jim, I'll be honest. I'll likely just spend $25 to get the game again rather than f$&% with the e-licence through Viatech. It's a win-win for you and I and it's worth the $25 IMO.

I've taken a look now-Interesting enough to take a look at after it comes out from Early Access though it looks fairly developed already-the stress and usage of lighting are different kinds of mechanics than I usually see in these kind of games.

Sorcerer King Beta 4 out today.. this game is really shaping up nicely.

Sunless Sea is out of early access today with a positive review from RPS and a 10/10 from Eurogamer.

oh this might be something I should check out. I wonder if it...wait, early access game? nevermind.

early access or not, that dang video is tempting me a whole lot...

FM

(honestly, me too)

Guys, grab it! Easily the most fun I have had on a game of this type. So many original things in this game that make it unique and you really need to plan and prepare for every outing as it is brutally unforgiving.

The many different ways your characters can morph (intentionally and unintentionally is almost mind boggling for a game of this genre. It is already an extremely polished game and still early access.

I bought it today, planned to check it out "briefly" before going for a run at lunch. Well, guess who never made it out for their lunch time run?

Damn you people I have enough games! It is very tempting.

Sigh, I'm at the dojo right now but I feel I'm gonna cave the moment I get home...

had an epic blowout in my Prison Architect prison tonight. Somehow a fire broke out right outside my visitation room. Not sure if it was a prisoner or just a freak accident. But it was nasty. I think it killed 25 people, including many visitors and even a poor fireman. Days later and there is still a line of hearses waiting to take the bodies away. And as that was going on, two cell blocks started rioting because...fire? It was interesting. Currently my prison value is somewhat negative, due to a million dollar penalty for deaths and I'll get fired if anyone else dies in 24 hours.

In related news, I'm thinking about installing sprinklers.

Ha.

OK, Darkest Dungeon purchased, downloaded and installed. Headphones on and getting ready to fire it up :)

FM

I've been playing Darkest Dungeon as well. Sadly, loyal Dismas was the first hero I had to bury. One thing I'd like to see, though, is a log for each character of what stress relievers they've done and what happened. I feel like I could be more efficient there but I hate wading through the whole history.

Picked this up. Much deeper game than I was expecting along with a ridiculous amount of story content.

Anyone playing Sunless Sea? I've got it but I haven't had a chance to get into it yet.

I got it, it might be okay, not my cup of tea though. Seems to be very well done though.

I didn't buy Darkest Dungeon until I read the Kotaku review. Played about 2 1/2 hours. I absolutely love this game already. It's like a 2D X-Com and that is outstanding

RE: Darkest Dungeon. So, there's really only one healer type of hero, right? Is everyone taking along one of the healers (The Vestal) for every Embark?

That's what I've noticed. Though the Occultist and Leper can heal themselves.

I found this to be very very useful info for Darkest Dungeon.

Steam Community :: Guide :: Getting Started in Darkest Dungeon

Also in DD is it just me but the ratio of deeds:crests seems way out of wack - I'm piling up huge numbers of crests but can hardly get any deeds and so can't upgrade anything.

I think it depends on which areas you are adventuring in. There are icons next to the name of each area on that screen where you decide where to go. The icons indicate what type of items you're likely to find. The Ruins and Weald are light on deeds.

Darkest Dungeon question.

When you finish a quest/dungeon and you are at the Victory level up screen, do you still get new clerks if you don't click on the masks? If so I guess starting out it would be better not to take the chance on building up bad quirks until you have plenty of money to remove them.

This is an excellent questions.

I've also found it's better to fire an adventurer with too many adverse quirks for their class.

Remember, there's always more meat coming on the wagon.

Does this game need its own thread? I think it does.

Good idea Grover, I created one.

Broforce Alien Infestation Update is out and it looks fantastic.

For $6.99 I've gotten some enjoyment out of Mini Metro. It is early access, but the simplicity of the game makes it feel like a finished product.

So I picked up Sunless Sea (no longer early access) a few days ago because I wanted something to do episodically that wasn't a huge time sink all at one time. It is a fantastic game. The highlight is the writing, which is fantastic, but the whole game is just very well done. It feels a lot like FTL without the frenetic race to your eventual destruction; this is a much, much deeper game than FTL ever dreams of being. It's a 'roguelike,' but it's not as if you're dying every time out there. I've put in 6 hours and I'm still on my first captain. If you like to read, you have any interest in the works of Lovecraft, Gaiman or Meiville, or you like the idea of a dark, steampunk Victorian London, this is totally your game.

If you can't deal with slow, this is definitely, definitely not your game.

I've already, in six meager hours, had tons of fun things happen to me that I've been pleased to share with my roommates. Running out of fuel just a few leagues from home, burning our foodstuffs to barely coast into port. Losing a crewman in a bar fight miles from home and having to limp the entire way home at half speed because I didn't have enough crew to run the ship at full steam. An incredible battle with a giant crab that turned into an epic battle with multiple pirate pinnaces that saw me lose several crewmen, but escape alive and with a great haul from the wreckage of the pirates.

With no voiceovers, no videos and no animation outside of the ship sailing the waters and the myriad other ships and creatures you'll find, the game relies almost entirely on the writing to carry the day. The writing is fantastic, but honestly the gameplay does just as great a job of immersing you as the writing does. As the captain of a small ship, you have to pull together enough money to keep voyaging out there - fuel and supplies aren't cheap - but how are you going to do that? Piracy is one way, though it is dangerous work, especially in your small initial ship. Merchant work is also an option - what you can purchase in London will oftentimes sell for quite a bit in the outer reaches of the Unterzee - but you have to start out small, and who knows what the markets will look like out there? Then again, there is that most precious of commodities: information. At each port of call, you will have the option to create a report to bring back to the Admiralty in London...and the Admiralty pays well. I find myself eagerly anticipating bar room conversations at each port, trying to find some new scrap of information or political intrigue that I can trade in back at London to further my cause. Not only that, the stories aren't always the same. You may stop by Venderbright on your way out on a voyage away from Fallen London and earn some currency for buying someone a drink, but then on the way home you visit the same bar and instead you come away with a crazy implication that will sell for hundreds back home! There are choices everywhere, and there are no 'right' answers.

Exactly what I want to hear about Sunless Sea.

Question about Steam in general, maybe I'm not understanding how the save games are stored.

I played the first season of Walking Dead a while ago, beat the game, and I noticed that "syncing" icon every so often. Since then, I've gotten a new hard drive and bought season 2 during one of the sales. I wanted to start season 2 today, but it said a save file for season 1 could not be found. So then I figured I needed to install season 1 to retrieve my save file.

I installed season 1, and went to load a game to see if the save files are there... There's only one save file, from somewhere in episode 1. So uhh, shouldn't the saves have been syncing up in the cloud? It has an early save and that's it? Has anyone had this happen? I just wanted to start season 2 with the choice I made in season 1 influencing the story...

Finally lost my first captain. Decided to stay ashore digging for treasure in the haunted ruins of a town a little longer than I should have, our terror level reached maximum and the crew mutinied when we put back out to sea. My officers and I holed up in the cabin and withstood the mutiny, but we had to kill more than half our crew. The skeleton crew remaining couldn't maintain a healthy speed on the way home, and we were FAR from home. We stopped in at a friendly port where we had quelled an uprising earlier, enjoyed a feast in our honor to help reduce the terror and to fill our larder...but just a scant few leagues away from London the reduced speed due to our minimal crew did us in as a zee-beastie got the better of us.

Now I'm running around as my heir - in the first game I found a lover back in London on shore leave and we ended up having a child. As such, my heir has additional bonuses he gets to keep from his father in my continued game.

Cannot recommend this game highly enough.

Edit: My first captain survived 14 hours of gameplay. I was a little cautious at first, but I definitely pushed the envelope a little as I went. So while this is a "roguelike" game, like I mentioned before it's not nearly as unforgiving as others I have played in the genre.

That sounds like an awesome wrinkle in the game. This game is really tempting me to break my "I don't buy anything full price" rule.

Sounds like it's a ton more interesting than my first quick glance...will definitely give this another shot.

I'm having an absolute blast with it. You really do have to be up for a slow paced game where you're doing a lot of the legwork with immersion (that is to say, you read a TON), but man I'm really digging the game.

I'll have to give it another try - it was way too slow and directionless on my first playthrough to get any enjoyment out of it, but sounds like I need to give it some more time

I can see directionless being a pretty big gripe with the game, especially the way games these days tend to spoon-feed everything. But in my opinion it really helps with the immersion. You're the captain of a ship. That's it. The rest is up to you to figure out. The mechanics of the game are such that you will have rectangular icons associated with every choice - some of the icons represent physical things that you get in your inventory, while some of them represent less tangible things like a 'Tale of Terror' - and when you hover over the icon, it will tell you what the thing is that you are hovering over. Sometimes it has a bit of an explanation '...the Diplomat would be very interested in this...' ; sometimes it's just the name of the thing. Certain things have very obvious uses, while others have a myriad of uses and it's up to you to determine when and where you're going to use them. Just about EVERYTHING in the game is currency of a sort - you are a (pirate/smuggler/merchant/information broker/etc) ship's captain and it's up to you to decide to what use you are putting it to.

Frozen Cortex came out a few days back. Being a Blood Bowl fan, I love the concept, plus Frozen Synapse was well done. Currently it is 20% off. There is season play, betting, team building, etc. Reviews thus far have been good, I will check out and report.

So uh.. I have a copy of Frozen Cortex to give away - Every purchase gives two copies, so that's kinda nice.

First one to post the phrase that pays can have it. What is the phrase that pays? It is the answer to an age old question, which reads as follows -

Since the beginning, there have been wars fought over tangible chunks of finite resources, over impossible dreams, incredible ideas, and irreconcilable differences. Empires spanning hundreds or even thousands of years have risen and fallen in the ever changing landscape of time. There have been countless great people who have single-handedly altered the course of human history, making today's world what it is. There are still more to come who will fashion the future. In your opinion, what is the fastest color?

Been playing Galactic Inheritors during my sabbatical. It wants to be GalCiv; it isn't (yet), but there are some neat ideas contained within.

red?

Black:confused:

violet

Blue!

Cerulean?

For those interested - the Addams Family table has been released for Pinball Arcade.

Red.

Red Wunz go fasta

Been very impressed so far. I would like to see stats tracked, but the gameplay is nice and the AI is pretty decent, it will punish you if you don't anticipate well.

Seems like it will be a lot of fun to play H2H when more folks get online, but single player is still pretty solid, great concept.