Don't think I've bought anything from the Steam sale this time around either. Just easy to wait and get a lot of things free or with big discounts at various sites.

Just the sheer volume on Steam in general including the summer sale is prohibitive for me now. Unless I see a game getting hype here or randomly elsewhere and wishlist it, there’s very little chance I’m wading through 40 pages of games most with good reviews trying to find something I’ll actually enjoy.

Let's see, Steam sale here, between me & the kid, ended up being

Disco Elysium
Oxygen Not Included
The Forest
DLCs for Don't Starve

All deep discounted older game pickups, which is pretty much the perfect use of the event for us I think

I got
Cuphead

and

Inscryption

also some minor things like the Sorcery! bundle from steve jackson games plus a few other cheapees

I did pick up King Arthur and have been enjoying the game.

I get it - it's difficult. But, I'm usually looking for a certain style of game and that narrows down the options. Such as, roguelike card builder.

Been playing Clanfolk demo - in the vein of Rimworld/Banished/et. al. Haven't quite decided yet to pull the trigger, but fans of the genre(s) will no doubt want to check it out.

I think the developer answer on Steam about "how is this any different than Rimworld" was pretty good.

Gave me a better idea of what this is or isn't trying to do at least.

In case anyone has trouble finding what you're referring to:

Aight I think I'm going to bite on Clanfolk. Why not?

Yeah, after playing the fuck out of Banished for ages, this seems like a logical next step for me.

Liking it so far. It feels a little cookie cutter and linear early, which some reviews did note, but I’m imagining things change up as you get further in.

I'm putting it on my wish list, but I just got back into Kerbal Space Program heavy. I just massively mod it up, and it might be a good while before I venture back out of it.

i couldn't really figure that one out. Where and how do you mod that

I just finished Outlast:WHistleblower. Got both collectible achievments which was a pain to do.

Here's a picture of my new husband "The Groom" stabbing me to death. Hugs and kisses darling!

CKAN for Kerbal Space Program. It is a mod manager that installs everything, and there is a program called module manager that keeps things up to date. Kerbal reddit has a bunch of players that share reccomended mods list.

Who isn't pumped for Powerwash Simulator?!

{talk about a killing for a $25 game selling as fast as this one is}

And of course you know, Pumpy already has it and is spraying away grime for hours now! (3 to be exact) :)

It's on Xbox PC Game Pass so I've played a couple of hours this afternoon and I'm not sure why. It really is just moving your mouse pointer back and forward over dirty things to make them clean.

I think I'll play again now.

So, putting this here because of the implied Venn diagram involved...

I'm still enjoying Monster Train, and that plus StS has pushed me to being a fan of the "roguelike deckbuilder" genre, I suppose.

I also really like football and the concept of football team/roster building.

So now, as I play, a fraction of my mind is obsessed with: roguelike deckbuilder game but based on developing a football team/roster capable of winning through an entire season

That's all for now. I'm not a developer/programmer, so this likely just sits as an idle idea, but... man, I like this idle idea.

Sounds kinda like that Rival Stars iphone game FOFC was into a while back...

This makes me think of Gridiron Solitaire but it looks like the game is no longer for sale.
Gridiron Solitaire on Steam

Must be a regional thing. It's still available to me in NY.

Good to know. There is no price or buy option for me in Australia.

Arkham Horror:Mother's Embrace is 8$ at GoG.com

For fans of Railway Empires/Train games, Humble Bundle has a collection of the base game and DLC's:


https://www.humblebundle.com/games/r...m_medium=email

Free Weekends of several games this weekend:


Hell Let Loose
Insurgency
Rubber Bandits
Left 4 Dead 2

Has anybody been able to really get into this game? I own it (or I owned it. I might have returned it). I love those kinds of games, but there was something about it I wasn't crazy about.
Edit: Never mind. I was thinking of Railway Corporation.

Epic gave the base game away for free. I had a few hours of fun with it but didn't really feel like learning to make good use of the mechanics.

But that's more on me because these days I rarely spend a lot of time on a game that isn't a RPG or has strong RPG elements.

With that said that is kind of a tempting bundle to me.

L4D sucks. Play Vermintide 2 instead

You know you want it... :)

L4D is great, especially L4D2. Super fun. Vermintide 2 is, also, fun! Great game.

Very much looking forward to Warhammer: Darktide, made by the same folks, which promises to the be the 40K version of Vermintide.

dola

Speaking of Warhammer, while for the most part I like most Warhammer (and 40K) games in theory more than I do in actual practice, I did recently finally install Total War: Warhammer 2 and have been really enjoying it!

I picked it up a couple of days ago.
Silly little game. Football themed card game, although I also had some fun with the career mode without playing the games. It's light though, really light. Far from the best game I ever played, but I've already spent more time "playing" this than some true miss buys.

I've already had it 5 times longer open than Legend Bowl, a silly arcade football game, which looks promising, but I just haven't gotten pulled in by it just yet.

Not bad for a one man effort. (Bill Harris, the guy who created it, runs the Dubious Quality blog: Dubious Quality)

Anyone in on Wartales yet? It's 20% off ($27.99), wondering if it's worth jumping in now or still has some EA stuff to work out.

I bought it and bounced off it a couple weeks ago. It certainly wasn't bad, I hust didn't find it very compelling...but it wasn't because of bugs or lack of content fwiw.

Came in to ask the same thing. I can't tell if it's significantly different than Battle Brothers or whatever other games like this that I own but haven't played yet. Prolly shouldn't drop the money on another game that's like the games I have in my stable. :banghead:

It’s fine. I’ve spent a lot of time the last few weeks playing as due to a logistical error my PC controller didn’t get shipped when we moved. I’d say it’s more story driven and a bit more linear than battle brothers, which has advantages and disadvantages. Personally I think it’s a bit more enjoyable and challenging, but it’s definitely similar.

I’ve tried to get jerk twice with no luck. Maybe I was playing it wrong or not grasping some concepts, but it didn’t click with me. That being said, I could largely say the same about Battle Brothers.

Yeah Battle Brothers is the obvious comp, and while I liked it in concept I struggled with it (at least partially because it was so damn hard! haha). I'm hoping it's more like XCom, but heck I'll probably get it at some point so why not jump in at $28 instead of waiting a year for like a possible $10 difference I guess.

Banished is $6 at Gog.com for about the next 40 hours

If you're into story games with QTEs similar to the Quantic Dream games, As Dusk Falls has an art style that takes some getting used to but the story and characters are incredible. One of my favorite games so far this year.

Darkest Dungeon is on sale for just under $4 this weekend and a lot of the DLCs on sale too. Looks like DD 2 will be out on Steam in Feb.

Apparently I do because I just bought it.

Not sure if I'll ever get around to playing any of the expansions but I do have an itch* right now to play some building games.

*This itch is extremely contagious. If you feel the need to play building games for more than 3 hours then please call your doctor.

I'm sorry the cure is to play for 6 hours...

I'll just notify my boss that I won't be in tomorrow.

I'm sure he/she will understand :)

Last Oasis free to play this weekend.


Also the Yogscast having their second or third Tiny Teams festival through the weekend where they celebrate and have live streams of games with a small group of developers, including themselves. Some nice discounts for most of them on Steam too.

Apparently the supply chain issues with the Steam Deck have been resolved. My purchase window updated to sometime between now and the end of September.

Good news there Atocep

Humble Bundle has a Resident Evil bundle up for sale:


https://www.humblebundle.com/games/r...sevilaug22_ann

Low Magic Age is on a flash sale for $3 for about the next 18 hours at Fanatical. It uses Wizard of the Coast Open Box rules. It's an open world game with random dungeons, quests/jobs from towns and cities, trade, and more. Combat is very tactical and challenging.



Low Magic Age | Fanatical

Gog.com has the game Stasis-a puzzly adventure game where you wake up from stasis on a seemingly abandoned spacecraft for free for about the next 70 hours

Some good news for people who liked/want to try Guild Wars 2 on Steam. Last I heard they had decided not to do it at the current time, but received an email that that game is now available there. From my long history of MMO's GW2 is the best free fantasy themed MMO out there. So certainly worth checking out if you like MMO's


Guild Wars 2 on Steam

I played GW2 when it first came out. It was fine. I played to level cap, then lost interest when it got to the end-game grind. Much like SWTOR. It was fun leveling, but after that...

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

For me it was just walking into a new zone for the first time and wander around to find quests for it. Just like how they did that.

you guys want to form an "adventure party"? squeeee

Not if you are playing a pig :)

There is a pig race in GW2? I am SOO gonna play a pig

Not a pig race but there is the Charr, a feline race, who (spoiler), happened to be one of the main enemies from the original guild wars. But I still think they are evil. :)


403 Forbidden

that's so wing commander

I might have to do some GW2 one day. Played the first one a ton.

Kramer once saw a Pig Man

I like GW2 more than the first-more options and story.


Speaking of story, the base game on Steam comes without any expansions, unless you buy them. One of the casualties of that from what I'm reading is that you won't have access to your character's Living Story. You get to choose from a couple when you start, then it progresses as you level, often culminating in big boss fights, then moving on to the next "chapter".


It's also a big download so make sure you have space and time to do it

Have to correct myself in part-personal story is still there-you'll get some questions in your character creation that helps guide them. Living Story is different.



If you've never played before, create a character, do the tutorial to get a feel for how the game works. That will throw you (I think) into the first starting zone for your race. There is a way to join your friends from there I think, but I will have to look it up to see how they do it these days.

F1 Manager 2022 early access for pre-orders starts at 10 am this morning. Checking out some early videos, and I am afraid I'm going to be totally lost in this game.

How does it look compared to Motorsport Manager, from the previews you've seen?

I liked the management parts of MM, but some of those car adjustments were a bit much for me, since I don't know anything about it.

It looks pretty much as deep. I can't tell how much help you have to guide you from what I have watched, but you do get down pretty deep into the parts and facilities stuff.

About to take it for a spin.

I know jack diddly squat about racing, but didn't have any problem with the car setup stuff after some practice in MM. It's not NASCAR Sim Racing or anything.

My steam deck is ordered. Should be here next week.

I will admit that I haven't watched any of this year's F1 (well, one race early on). I am trying to pick a team and was thinking of going upper mid tier, with either McMaren or Alpine. Then I noticed that the fourth ranked car performance is actually one of the lowest ranked teans: Alfa Romeo. Does that sound right? Did they come into this season with a hot car?

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

yay!

Wow. The game looks incredible. There is a bunch of stuff going on and it is going to take a while to get a feel for the game. I did take Alfa Romero, because that does look like the best team if you don't want to jump into one of the top three. They have the fourth best car set-up, and Bottas is tied for the fourth best driving stats overall. I did immediately replace one of the engineers, and the chief designer because they were crap. They also in desperate need of better facilities, but that is going to be a slow go. They have one of the lowest starting budgets.

I ran through the first race, and it was tough. Bottas qualified in 5th, but Zhou only hit 16th. Zhou did quickly charge up the field, and fought with Ricciardo the entire race. He ended up edging him for 11th. Bottas ended up fighting with Hamilton the whole race. They changed positions every other lap it seemed. Neither could get away from each other, but they were by themselves in a space well ahead of the cars 7th place and on, but nowhere near the top 4. As you would expect, Hamilton pulled a rabbit foot out of his butt and finished ahead in 5th.
It took a good while to run the race. This will be a slow pace game unless you just sim through. I did see the thing that seems to be the number one criticism of the race day, there wasn't a single DNR. There was only one yellow, but plenty of lock-ups. They are probably going to need to increase part deterioration, and add some random mechanical failures. I have also heard that driver/staff progression may be too fast.

All in all, the game looks great. I think I will have a good bit of fun with it. I wish I could do a dynasty.

If you use the Fire Fantasy 22 mod they include "Perfect Setup". From the manual: "The Perfect Setup feature is included with this mod by default. Having this feature activated makes the game more of a challenge, as it removes the unfair pace advantage the player can have over the AI due to the setup minigame. This feature also prevents crashes, as it removes the need to save setups (too many saved setups can lead to game crashes). It will put your setup to 99-100% once you left the pits. No need for activation, it’s just there." So essentially the game with FF is more about making decisions about how to spend money -- what parts to upgrade; what drivers, mechanics, designers to hire, etc, without worrying about finding the right setup for each track. FF21 does NOT have the Perfect Setup, so gamers can still play the setup minigame if they want.

Unless F1 Manager is terrible I will probably get that game as well.

Dex, an action RPG set in an cyberpunk world is free to claim for the next 70 hours or so at GoG.com

Yeah, I didn't like F1 Manager as I thought I probably wouldn't. It is dry, and in it's current state just nothing much happens during the races. Minus those issues (which I'm hoping will be tweaked and aren't a result of the official license meaning they don't want bad things to happen) it seems like a beautiful, ultra realistic simulation of F1 but I'm just not sure I'm the target audience.

Compared to MM it feels sterile. No action in the races at all and a glisten that makes it feel out of touch.

Yeah, not getting that at all. Just did a restart playing McLaren. In the Australian race, first I had Lando get hit by another driver in practice. I had to replace his wing and gear box. Then during the race, F-ing Riccardo slams into him knocking him out of the race and severely daming Riccardo's car. Needless to day, I rage quit. :D
There seems to be a lack of major incidents (of course the first one of the season happens to both my drivers), but there is great bit of racing happening in my play-throughs so far. I wonder if the day-1 patch won't adjust it even more. I think most of the criticism I see is from people not feeling like the drivers are obeying their commands fast enough, but from what I am seeing if you let the drivers race they do a good job.

I am trying to decide now if I want to continue this play, or restart with a different team. McLaren's car starts so bad in the beginning (3rd worse car), but I really like Lando.He was able to take that bad car to a top ten finish in both of the early races. Riccardo hasn't finished better than 12th. I think the car is the bigger handicap than the drivers, though. You can hire new drivers, but it is going to take forever to improve the car.

I'm sorry. Probably over posting but I am having fun. Started again with Alpine this time. Had both drivers end in the points on the first race. Then got to see my first Red in the second when Bottas went ping pong into the walls and took out Hamilton as well. The end of the race had Alfonso fighting tooth and nail with Sainz for second place. Alfonso pulled ahead right at the beginning of the last lap, and was able to hold him off. Finally a podium!

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

I too have enjoyed this game so far. I have had incidents in nearly every race and practice session so far even a safety car in one of my first 4 races.

I am racing as Haas. Needless to say my car is not very good and I only just got my first points finish. Typically I am battling with Alfa Romeo or McLaren for 11-14 positions. I will say that on some of the tracks I feel to maximize my teams finishes I have to micromanage the pace, fuel mix, and ERS settings to max on the straights and lesser settings on parts of the tracks that are difficult to pass on. This led to me nearly running the last race at Imola on 2X so I could change the setting for each sector of the track. That may simply be a product of me having really bad cars and having to min/max to get the best finish possible. Hopefully that isn't always the case because it will take forever to get through a season of 22 races on 2x speed during each race.

So far I am really enjoying this game and hope they keep improving it. I would like them to improve the overlay during the race to include more than one data point (tires, interval, tire wear, last pit) etc on the left side of the screen. Ideally it would have tire type, tire wear, and interval all on one screen rather than having to click through to see each.

There have been two pretty big flaws that will require house rules until they get fixed. One is that tire compounds make to little difference. There is absolutely no reason to run softs as they give you next to no speed advantage. Running one stop races and always using hard-medium is a pretty big exploit.
The bigger exploit is in part building. If you make a custom adjustment on parts and move all the bars to the far right, it maxes out the part. I think the bars are supposed to just down as you move them but don't. Neither seem like something that will be that hard to fix.

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

GoG.com with another free game with about 40 hours to go. It's Lovecraft's Untold Stories

Loop Hero is under $5 on Steam

I mean yea softs should be fast but should die so quick they aren't an option if they are aiming for realism. You never see softs outside of qualifying and a random team trying to steal fastest lap at the very end of the race if they can hit the pits and get out without losing a position. I mean I guess I shouldn't say never. You sometimes will see a team completely out of contention from the start go with softs, but I can't think of when I've seen that actually work out well for them. That's probably one area where MM has an advantage in not trying to simulate realism, they could make more tire compounds effective.

Gog.com has another free one for you, Immortal Redneck-with that name you know it has to be a classic. :) It's a FPS set in Ancient Egypt of all places. You are a redneck tourist who wakes up mummified in a pyramid. Doesn't that want to make you play immediately?


Also over on Steam, Conan Exiles is free to play this weekend, and Titanfall 2 is under $5 after a large discount.

Not much on sale on my wishlist. I guess Steam isn't big on Labor Day

Humble just dropped a massive bundle. I'm sure we all already have them, but....

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/2k-megahits

about 2 years I would have been more into this, but not now. Thanks for the heads up though

Starting Oct 18, Sims 4 will become a free to play game on all(?) platforms.

I keep getting emails from Steam about Steam Deck and compatibility. Is that something that someone who plays text sims would care about?

I'm not planning anything, but I was curious why FOF8 is deemed compatible and FOF7 is merely playable and if I should care. Perhaps it's my ground-breaking and innovative non-modal windows-across-the-world interface.

An interesting take on a city builder, the Wandering Village leaves Early Access today. A couple of my regular You Tube streamers have been playing it recently.


You are in a post-apocalyptic setting where you have a symbiotic relationship with a large dinosaur like creature. He allows you to build your city on its back in return for keeping him alive (and you)


Save 10% on The Wandering Village on Steam

Golf With Your Friends is free to play on Steam this weekend

Civ 6:Platinum Edition is also free to play on Steam this weekend

Dice Legacy at a good price $8

Got my Steam Deck email. Now I need to decide in the next few days whether I really want/need one.

The problem is that I rarely play video/computer games anymore, which kind of makes it difficult to justify the purchase. But part of that may be the whole concept of sitting in front of a TV/computer. I'm thinking (wishfully?) that I'd play a lot more if I had the portability/versatility of the Steam Deck.

I grew up mostly a console player but some computer games as well (ie. Sierra, Lucas Arts, the early Sid Meier games, etc.). I haven't really played any AAA games since the PS3 era, such as Red Dead Redemption and LA Noire (apart from South Park Stick of Truth).

My preference of games includes sports management sims, point-and-click adventures, city & civ/empire builders, etc. I'm thinking I'd probably also finally get around to RDR2 and some of those other bigger games that I missed out on over the past 10 years or so.

My most played game by far over the past 6+ years has been Stardew Valley, and I also enjoy Fire Pro Wrestling. But I can go several months without playing them (or any other games for that matter), pick them up for a bit and get into it and then go months again before I pick them or any other game back up. Maybe it would be worth the price alone just to have portable versions of these though. I also own a lot of games on Steam that I haven't played, don't we all, that I theoretically might be around to.

Am I fooling myself into thinking that I'll actually play this thing or has anyone else that was previously a lapsed gamer increased their play time after getting a Steam Deck?

Edit: The other question is, do I simply wait for the next gen of hardware? I am just a beta-tester for the eventual Steam Deck 2.0 or do most feel that there are many years before that happens?

Im curious to find out how good the Steam deck is, keep us updated,

I am waiting for more games to be on the platform. I own just a few that are available from my library.

I am a gamer that really doesn't play much anymore also... until I got my Deck. I've played a few different titles pretty heavily so far: a couple of the Lego games, NBA 2K22, Super Mega Baseball 3, and for the past couple months Dinkum. Not that a single game is worth getting an entire handheld for, but if you like Stardew Valley I expect you'll love Dinkum.


I've also messed around with EmuDeck, trying out some games I never got to experience on consoles I didn't have, like Persona 5 and one of the 3DS Zelda games. I didn't really play much of either (Persona 5 because I didn't care for it and Zelda because I got Dinkum shortly after) but it's a cool option that is pretty easy to set up.


Overall I really love the Deck and have zero regrets, despite the hefty purchase cost. It truly is the handheld I've always wanted.



One concern I might have for your scenario revolves around a few items on the list of games you enjoy. I think you'd have to get veeeery comfortable using the trackpad things to navigate around something like a point & click or sports sim, and the screen may be a tad small for all the text on those sims. I tried playing Old World on mine and while it played fine I really struggled to read the small text and ultimately put it aside. I don't think I've tried Civ on it to know how that plays, but I'm sure you could check out a video to get a sense.


As to your final question: I have no idea if I'm beta testing for a 2nd version or not, nor how far off that may be. But even if I am, I won't regret it. The original is a very well made device and doesn't feel like a first version of a product at all to me.

Iratus:Lord of the Dead is 90% off or $3 for a limited time at Fanatical

Midnight Ghost Hunt and PayDay2 free to play this weekend on Steam


Edit: Steam is also having a celebration/sale on Tactical/Strategy games this weekend

Terra Invicta released into early access today. It's the first game from the creators of the Long War mod for XCom. It's kinda like CK3 in an XCom like setting. Incredibly deep, detailed, and ambitious.