whatchu playing now

I'm always least interested in the fighting parts. Just let me build a weird cult! But getting somewhat obsessed by Hades has encouraged me to give fight-heavy games more of a chance.

Just let me build a weird cult!

oh! this may actually be useful: have you played Cultist Simulator? don't be put off by the "simulator" part (which to me often indicates that it's a really half-assed game based on a gimmick), it was actually quite good. i think i stopped playing only because elden ring came out.

in Cult of the Lamb, the "cult" stuff is very simplified and gamified and cutiefied. it makes sense - people like to see bright graphics and cartoony versions of death and despair, especially when you're going to be in that world for several hours at a time. so in Cult of the Lamb, even when you gather up your cult people in your shrine and deliver a sermon (which they love) and do a blood sacrifice, it's still kind of funny and cute, and the decisions you make on Doctrine just boil down to gameplay/strategy decisions (will killing your own people give you a bonus over here, or a less negative penalty over there?). again, it's all for the better for an action roguelite! it's making me want to play it right now.

Cultist Simulator, on the other hand, has a waaaaaay different feel and is a lot more like being in a cult. you start out with nothing, no friends, no job, nothing (reminds me of my life!!!!) but a couple tarot-like cards you can lay down on your table. the table in front of you is essentially your whole world, in this game (is this game my life!??!!). i just googled three different ways to try to remember the term for games/rules that you learn by playing, rather than by reading/being told/tutorials. i cannot find it. google has gotten worse. in Cultist Simulator, you learn by playing, and figuring out how it works is a lot of the game. This is the opposite of Cult of the Lamb, which, at hour 5, still feels like I'm nearing the end of a very long hand-held (but fun!) tutorial sequence, with the next quest in a big checkbox on the side of the screen. it's nice to have some purpose! Cultist Simulator has very little of that. you will lay down a card, and it makes something happen. sometimes. there are a lot of countdown timers in Simulator. there are also a lot of tasks that amount to crafting quests -- you need to convert an acolyte to something, but first you need 2 of this and 3 of that, and you only have 1 of this and 1 of that. now i'm making Simulator sound bad. it's not! it's good! it got a little too stressful for me, i think, with the countdown timers, but it definitely feels much, much more like "let me build a weird cult!"

cultist of the lamb simulator: good

I did play Cultist Simulator, and ended up sinking a fair few hours into it - there was a lot to like there but I found the time-based mechanic pretty unsatisfying. And then later I learnt that the guy got kicked out of Fallen London/Failbetter games because he was an abuser (or at least a creep, I don't remember the exact details). So prob not going back to it.

xp you can name your acolytes in cult of the lamb, and they gradually get older. you have to make meals for them, you farm for them, you assign them to farm, knock down trees, gather stone. they will vomit and throw-up. you will pickup their excrement (or suffer penalties) and use them as fertilizer. they get older. they die, and if you don't make a hole for the body, it negatively affects the cult. it's probably better to kill them in a lighthearted human sacrifice ritual first. my first acolyte was named Birdie, after my beloved dog that is getting older. i assigned her a dog form (out of about 5 options to start), which opened up the option to "pet" Birdie (in the game), unlike the other forms you can give your acolytes. I thought that was great. Then Birdie (in the game) got older and was about to die. she moved slower than the other cultists and wore white. but my next tutorial quest was to sacrifice a member of the cult, and i was just following instructions. it added up to the most emotionally gripping part of the game, for sure.

so that's also a way to build a weird cult! i guess it's possible to build all sorts of weird cults

I found the time-based mechanic pretty unsatisfying.

yeah, i definitely think i would have played much longer without it. countdown timers, for me, are very stressful.

they will vomit and throw-up. you will pickup their excrement (or suffer penalties) and use them as fertilizer. they get older. they die, and if you don't make a hole for the body, it negatively affects the cult. it's probably better to kill them in a lighthearted human sacrifice ritual first.

lol, this sounds great. I do worry about becoming too emotionally attached, though - probably better not to name any acolytes after beloved pets, eep.

Whenever I see clips of Cult of the Lamb I keep thinking of Pocket God.

i might head back into the lamb cult now. i remember reading complaints that the game wasn't long enough, and i thought "this is the game for me"

out of all the different opinions or personal tastes that one can have about videogames, the one i sympathize with the very least is "this game should be longer!"

i should just make up that i have an advanced degree in game design, slick back my hair as tight as possible so it pulls the eyebrows up a bit toward the crown of my head, then walk in there like glengarry ross, pound their desks and shake the displays:

_always leave them wanting more_

OTM - also why I'm impressed with sequels that are longer but not also too long - Portal 2 is my reference there, more of the same stuff plus new stuff but never "oh god this bit again"

Some games I don't want to end, some games are really well balanced, some games drag. I recently hit a point in the Spider-man game where I'm like, jeez, get on with it. It's hard not to recognize filler as filler when a game tasks you with doing the same thing the same way, again and again.

played the first few hours of Soul Hackers 2, it's fine but clearly had a lower budget and feels a bit like babies first SMT game for Persona people. no press turn! also makes no sense that it is not on Switch, it's more like a PS3 or Vita JRPG than anything else - I mean I just finished Xenoblade 3 and that was wayyyyyyy more complex in every dept than this.

any suggestions for a flight sim for beginners, playable on macos or ps4? i realise this question has at least two paradoxes built into it

IMMORTALITY is a fucking magic trick, man. how did they make this

looking forward to playing that tonight. 10/10 in Edge. it's on gamepass!

I'm excited that Inscryption is out for PS4/5, going to try it with my partner.

OlliOlliWorld - fun skateboarding game with great art, looks like adventure time. kind of weird doing tricks with the stick instead of buttons but i'm getting the hang of it. good range of difficulty - getting through the levels is pretty easy but hitting all the challenges can be pretty difficult and there are online challenges that are even harder.

xpost I forgot all about that game, looked cool, but also looked ideal for the Switch.

Downloaded Live A Live due to internet hype, had never even heard of it before. So far I did the western quest, not much in the way of mechanics but I'm guessing things will get more interesting as you complete different eras.

IMMORTALITY is a fucking magic trick, man. how did they make this

I love love loved Her Story and then just never got around to playing Telling Lies, was that less good? I think it's included in the PS+ Extra tier now actually, so I should just play it and see, before I get into Immortality (which is also free if you've got a Netflix sub, apparently? Maybe only on ios, not sure, the whole netflix games thing is super-opaque).

Oh, not on the netflix list yet but "very soon" apparently.

telling lies is less interesting story-wise but more impressive production-wise

I love love loved Her Story and then just never got around to playing Telling Lies, was that less good?

i also just never got around to telling lies, but after playing immortality and loving it (and loving her story when i played it), i just installed telling lies and i'm diving straight in. tbh i think i just missed the boat on it

and yes the netflix games thing is basically, yeah either ios or android. i feel like touch controls might be good for immortality... but it deserves to be played on something bigger than a 5" screen for real. at first i heard netflix games meant it was imagining it'd be like bandersnatch but as i started playing it i was like "yeah there's no way that like, a roku tv could run this game"

disney dreamlight valley GOTY, can't believe it took like 20+ years for someone to be like "what if we made animal crossing fun?"

If you've been curious about getting Vampire Survivors, now may be the time to buy because its price is going up next week: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1794680/view/3370402903772168453

I'm hard pressed to think of a better value/price balance than Vampire Survivors

some have spoken of a golden quality / price ratio, the one which all others come from

Not including the free browser version of VS, I've spent 125 hours playing a $3 game. At that ratio, something like HFW would have to provide 2700 hours of mindless fun.

i will play mario+rabbids for 4000 more hours in order to make the equation balance

Enjoying the mood of "Control," which I had no idea was a shooting game (sort of). I think I've accidentally gotten bogged down in a bunch of DLC, so I should probably make my way back to the main game. Is it weird that I'm maybe 75% of the way in and I'm still getting lost all the time, despite fast travel points and detailed maps?

it’s a little hard to navigate

i finished tunic. It changes from "dark souls zelda 1" into "fez/the witness" near the end. loved it!

immortality: tosses out the linear progression of telling lies -- I'm not sure if it's a feature or a bug that you can see 90% of the scenes by clicking on the main character repeatedly. Music cues seemed more random than thought out this time (vs. telling lies, which did them very well). The game certainly has a big mindfuck moment.

xp Josh yeah, I think it's that way by design tbh. Welcome to the oldest house, *badumspsh*!

You may be right. But I keep getting those (optional?) alerts that I have to fight some baddies in some place, and the clock starts ticking, and each time I have to think, huh, where the hell is the Central Fax Processing Unit or whatever.

Those are almost usually optional, at least. I need to go back and do more for that achievement. ...And the DLC content.

I'm also sort of having trouble navigating all the million upgrade trees/varieties, but so far I've successfully been able to muscle my way through most combat, which has not been terrible.

You'll get enough ability points that you can get everything, but in the early stages, focus on health and especially telekinetic branches, which is basically what the game wants you to do.

The hidden bits in the DLC of Control are kind of worth seeking out not just for the power boost but for the weird locations and the way to find the one I’m thinking of is worth reading online because it’s obscure enough it’d probably not be obvious

Because I'm playing for the first time (I think I'm up to the Finnish Tango mission?) I don't know what's DLC and what's original side quest stuff. My missions to-do right now are a mix of all three, but it doesn't say which is which (aside from the default main mission). I *think* I can tell the DLC from the rest because maybe it's a little more wry, a little less spooky?

Anyway, I like this, though I've glitched it out a few times. One level the enemies just kept spawning indefinitely, afaict, another Jessie never totally rendered. One part trapped her in a corner between weird architecture bits until she was killed. Regardless, fwiw I think I'm much closer to the end than the beginning and I've accumulated nowhere near enough ability appoints and materials to unlock even close to everything.

Finnish Tango is fairly close to the end iirc
I didn't unlock the entire tree / all complete weapons on my playthrough, but you don't really need to do to complete the main story

Yeah, you can do the side bits afterwards

The mission after Finnish Tango is probably the coolest in the game. Come back and let us know how the Ashtray Maze bit goes!

Will do! Because I know I already tried the Ashtray Maze a hundred times and got nowhere, figured I was doing something wrong and then googled just enough to learn that no, it was not me, I just needed to finish more of the game first.

Ashtray Maze was so fun that I don't see how the game can top that. But I did get faked out by the post Polaris endgame (which had its own surprise soundtrack).

Bought the new monkey island. Cute so far.

Finished the main game of "Control." I really enjoyed its weirdness and quirks, though all that stuff kneecaps whatever story or emotion they were going for (and being able to hurl objects from a distance made most combat pretty easy). Related, there is absolutely no way I'm going to read the seemingly hundreds of documents I've collected. But I will do all the extra stuff.

I didn't follow the plot for AWE at all, but it has some of the scariest stuff in the game!

I think I played most of that already, pretty creepy stuff in the dark.

I thought about buying Return to MI on day 1 but I think I'll wait until my next credit card billing month. I already bought the Steam Deck this month and it arrived on MI's release day. (It's great so far despite an initial networking hiccup.)

I just got my Deck too, haven't had the chance to even plug it in yet though.

Steam Deck day 1 impressions:
Networking issues: It got online, but then it wouldn't let me login to my Steam account. Seems to be a common issue judging by the google results I got. I fixed it by powercycling it.
I was surprised by how easy it is to go to the Linux desktop.
Extra SD card slot is right on the side, no secret compartment like with my phone.
The games I played ran without issues except for the one time that a game required keyboard input. What a pain it is to pull up the onscreen keyboard. Clearly Valve wants everything to have controller support.
I could feel an area on the back of the controller get warm. No fan sounds yet.