For Honor is having a free week(end on August 3rd) and have also released a new hero, the Ocelotl.

The Ocelotl comes equipped with a Macuahuitl club and Tepoztopilli spear, using these to have infinite chained attacks, and a few bash attacks. He is a hybrid, described as a ganker and disabled. His feats makes it so at tier 1 when he dies, he can move in spirit form and respawn wherever after 10 seconds, but with very little health. The longer you wait to respawn, the more health you have. The tier 2 is a complement to this, so the enemy that killed you is marked, and tier 3 increases attack speed and damage done, after you kill someone. Tier 4 is a spear attack, which drags an enemy towards you and inflict bleed.

I have tried the new hero out and overall, finds him relatively balanced. While his feats adds a new form of stress, his actual moveset is okay. It isn't stupidly OP, nor is it weak. It's pretty smackdabb in the middle, imo. Also, his feats are an inderect buff to heavy heroes, as boosting a zone is important, so the Ocelotl doesn't respawn in you back zones. This makes it so heavies can more easily build up renown (they gain extra renown from boosting), while also adding surprise attacks. All in all, I like playing against the Ocelotl (as I main Warlord, and like boosting) and I also like playing a Ocelotl.

Welcome back to the third weekly game jam thread.

Whats a game jam you may ask. Well imagine if you locked a group of game developers in a box for box for some quantity of time ranging from a few days to a few weeks and told them to compete with each other by building something around a theme and then judging whatever each other came up with, that's a game jam.

Longtime viewers AKA the 5 people to who looked at the 2 previous threads will have no doubt noticed I missed last week. During an unusually normie weekend I was busy awkwardly standing in a corner at not 1 but 2 different parties and was super tired when I got back I did not want to write this up. I hope you can forgive me. To ensure that this does not happen again I am moving this thread to Sundays which should give me more time flexibility and something to look forward to instead of sitting around dreading the upcoming work week.

Also as a bit of compensation for your troubles today I am linking 2 top quality longer games that you can really sink your teeth into this week. I am 100% cool with someone discussing games from any week in future threads so don’t sweat the time commitment and don’t feel you have to finish the whole game before returning to discuss it. Quality video games shouldn’t have an expiration date.

With that said lets get into the this weeks games

Infinimall: Dream Job!

Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android
Authors: Pandora
Genres: Visual Novel

Coming to you with love from the the folks in the the proverbial vaporwave-dreamworld-liminal-mall-urbex complex, Infinimall: Dream Job! Is a dating sim visual novel set inside a surreal mall and originally written for the NaNoRenNo 2023 Jam. Featuring the Doomer Girl like bisexual disaster Mia(I wonder if its the same Mia as Heart Beat) as she navigates a dead end job and tries to get her dead end life back on track.

According to my calculations the game has about 100 book pages worth of dialogue over all its branches which should be a breeze for the text-only titans that walk the halls of this site.

Hypnagogia

Platforms Windows
Authors: sodaraptor
Genres: Adventure

Our second game is also taking us to the dreamworld but this time its inspired by late 90s PSX aesthetics, in particular, the cult classic game LSD: Dream Emulator which is fitting given it comes from LSD Jam 2020. It centers on a gameplay loop of exploring diverse dream worlds inspired by dreams from the developers own dream diary. I think the game is best thought as a sort of drug trip or spiritual experience in the same way as something like Superliminal. Go in with an open mind and I think most people can get something from the experience. This goes double for the games sequel Hypnagogia 無限の夢 Boundless Dreams which is available without DRM on itch.io or with DRM on Steam if you are into that sort of thing.

However long it takes after you awaken from your strange dream let me know what you are thinking. Its okay I won’t die if you don’t like the same games I do though I will be sad. Its lonely walking the path of niche games but you can’t make friends if you never share.

PREVIOUS WEEK

I have fond memories of trying to solve HTML/text-based riddles on sites like WeffRiddles when I was growing up in the mid-late 2000s. The premise of the site is usually pretty simple: the landing page represents "level 1", and you had to find the correct URL to get to level 2, 3, and so on. The "puzzle/riddle" aspect usually involves inspecting the underlying HTML and looking through clues given in the source code, then using those clues to piece together the URL for the next stage.

It was always fun hanging out on forums and sharing clues about how to solve the level that everyone was stuck on. Also, being a kid back then, frankly I felt like a Hackerman™️ whenever I'd have to inspect the page source, paste it into Windows Notepad, then set font size to 1pt because I thought there was an ASCII art pattern hidden in the HTML. Good times.

Sometimes I get the urge to play these things again, but besides WeffRiddles which I know by name, I don't really know what this type of game is called. The closest "modern" example I can think of is /dev/esc, which is more like an online escape room than a long-form riddle site.

Does this ring a bell for you? Any other fun ones that you remember playing? And what the hell do I type into Google to find more of these?

Curious to see if there are any other sports sim fans around here. If you're not familiar with the genre, the two most popular and longest running are APBA Baseball/Football/Hockey and Strat-O-Matic Baseball/Football/Hockey. Personally, I'm a big fan of Second Season Football and I'm playing with Back to Minnesota's 1965 season so I can bring Jim Brown and Cleveland back to glory!

If you've never heard of this before, think of these games as "story generators" where you can play two teams against each other and see how close the dice rolls and stats get to real life. I play as a sort of chill night where I listen to a baseball game or a podcast with a cup of coffee. Throwing dice around and watching Jim Brown plow through some poor defense is really enjoyable :)

You can also play head to head with another player! I highly recommend a smaller game like Pocket Pennant Run if you're interested in diving into games like this. A similar game would be Stone Cold Hockey for hockey fans and Fast Drive Football for football nerds like myself.

The biggest communities online are definitely the Delphi Forums for Tabletop Sports as well as the Digital to Dice Podcast Facebook page.

Digital versions of the APBA and Strat games exist, and there is a huge fanbase for the Action! PC Games, and a hugely popular game is Out of the Park Baseball which has simulator-like features but is mostly a baseball management game.

I’m a big fan of simple incremental/idle games to burn a few minutes on the bus, but most of the games for mobile are pretty low quality.

My all time favorite is easily Idle Apocalypse, but there are bound to be other good ones as well.

Hey y’all. Recently picked up a Cyberpower prebuilt. Looking to install a Linux distro on it for gaming. Currently have Ubuntu on my laptop, so I’m not a total noob, but my experience is still low. Not a big fan of having to use the terminal. Any distros y’all would recommend? Am leaning toward Pop_OS or SteamOS.

Hi friends,

I’ve been enjoying listening to audiobooks a lot lately but find I generally have to be doing something (e.g. going for a walk, doing dishes etc) while I listen to them since it would be strange to just sit in a chair and stare and if I closed my eyes I might fall asleep.

I have found a couple of mindless games I can play on my phone while listening that don’t distract me from the story such as temple run, desert golf and amazing brick, but I’d be interested if anyone else had any suggestions?

I’d also be open to more substantial games as well so long as they didn’t have a lot of dialogue or require a lot of brain power (I’ve found trying to solve chess puzzles while listening to the audiobook just distracts me too much from the book for example).

Thanks in advance!

It seems like every game these days is just some idle clicker or some other lazy game that tries to peddle in app purchases.

Is there anything that actually is worth playing still, for someone that usually plays PC games?

Hey y’all, welcome back to the second weekly game jam thread.

Whats a game jam you may ask. Well imagine if you locked a group of game developers in a box for box for some quantity of time ranging from a few days to a few weeks and told them to compete with each other by building something around a theme and then judging whatever each other came up with, that's a game jam.

Now you may ask why would anyone play these things besides the other game game jam entrants. I don’t know about everyone else but despite being one of the younger users on this site I can’t help but feel like I have to work very hard to find any sort of magic in my life and I keep telling myself if I just keep playing more games and scraping and scrounging at the fringes of the industry I can find the magic again and be happy for a little bit.

Its actually a little scary sharing these games with you guys. I know its unreasonable to get emotionally invested in tiny games I did not even make but it does make me happy that people are taking an interest in this thread. Here is what I have for you this week.

HeartBeat

Platforms: Windows, HTML5
Genres: Rhythm

Do you remember that one part in that one game that you like, during the final boss fight when the heroes theme is reprised and layers are added to the song for each stage of the boss fight and then the vocals kick in and its awesome. Here in game jam land our motto is “All killer no filler”, we like to skip to the good part and this entry from Boss Rush Jam 2023 fits the bill. Its the final boss battle of a rhythm game and features an unusual control scheme that takes a few tries to get the hang of. Let me know if this game jogs any memories of boss fights.

e-scape

Platforms: Windows
Genres: Simulation

If you talk to a gamer that has been around for awhile they will have a story to tell you about a game that they used to play that has since been shutdown. Its always the same story. They see an article out of the blue that the game they used to play just announced a shutdown date. They log in and like a traveler from an antique land, are greeted by a ghost town filled with statues of champions and kings soon to be buried forever at the command of a datacenter sysadmin.

That is e-scape, look on its works, ye mighty, and despair!

This week was both nostalgic and somber for me and that leaked into this weeks selection in a big way. I really do look forward to seeing peoples responses to this thread though and I hope to keep doing these threads for the foreseeable future.

PREVIOUS WEEK NEXT WEEK

Hello ladies and gentlegamers, welcome to a new kind of weekly thread. Unlike more reputable threads around here which get their games from places like Steam and the Nintendo e-shop we are here to explore the some thing much more raw made by deranged indie developers running on too little sleep. That’s right we are here to talk about video games that come from game jams

Whats a game jam you may ask. Well imagine if you locked a group of game developers in a box for box for some quantity of time ranging from a few days to a few week and told them to compete with each other by building something around a theme and then judging whatever each other came up with, that's a game jam. Its voluntary crunch time and people are crazy enough to actually sign up for these things for some reason. There are more games submitted for various game jams than anyone could ever play and that is where I come in.

I select a double feature of two games each week on Saturday. I make no assurances related to quality or sanity. If you have issues with these picks leave a comment I will try and accommodate your feedback next week. Now without further ado, welcome one and all to the Saturday Game Jam thread(Its still Saturday somewhere in the world right?)

Anger Foot

Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux
Genres: Shooter, Action

Do you dream of battling a sewer dwelling cabal of lizard people, are you mad that Gunpoint only let you have the gatecrasher upgrade on the last level, do you like hurting other people?

Anger Foot is a Hotline Miami inspired first people shooter born from the 7day fps game jam. Its got a thumping hardbass soundtrack and nonstop action to keep your blood pumping. Its since moved on to greener pastures and has a stated release on Steam in 2024 so if you like the prototype make sure to wish list the game on Steam.

Interminal

Platforms: Windows, macOS
Genres: Walking Sim

After gunning people down why not stop and smell the roses or perfumes as the case may be. Interminal is a short experimental game also coming the 7day fps game jam about wandering around an infinite airport smelling various perfumes, watching the planes take off, and contemplating life. Its a shame that everyone here lacks the hardware to actually let you smell the perfumes but you guys are an imaginative bunch so I trust you. Let me know what your favorite perfume is in the comments.

That’s all for now. In true Tildes fashion I wanted to start slow and maybe grow later. Again leave feedback in the comments if you feel an improvement can be made

NEXT WEEK

My friends and I have been striving for the perfect score of 13 in Just One, and there's almost always one or two cards which make it seemingly impossible unless you're very lucky.

Just One if you're unfamiliar, is a game where your teammate wants to guess a word -- and you each independently give a one-word clue, "Donkey", "Dreamworks", "Ogre". If two or more players write the same word, all those clues get hidden -- so your clues can't be too obvious.

The words vary absurdly in difficulty from words like "Wine" and "Snake" where you can basically break the game by listing wines and snakes -- to words like "Mexico" and "Strawberry" where you can come at them from a few directions. ...But about 10% of the words are things like "Grotto", "Couscous" and "Ramses" where honestly, you could possibly sit down with someone for 30 minutes describing them in excruciating detail, and they might still not come up with those particular words. Could you describe "Couscous" to your 10-year-old nephew who lives on Chick-fil-A and Mcdonalds? Could you disambiguate a "Grotto" from a cave, cavern, bunker or lair? Sometimes it's a vocabulary thing but more often, it's just words with a lot of synonyms.

I call these "land mine" cards and I'm curious if anyone else has noticed this phenomenon. Have any of you gotten a perfect score in Just One? If so did you randomly dodge these land mines or did you overcome them with a really perfect clue?

I'm getting on a 5 hour flight later today. I've got my Android phone (S22 Ultra) and cheap Android tablet (Lenovo P11 G2) with me. What are some of your favourite games you'd recommend to pass the time?

Because I'll be on a plane they'll have to playable without an internet connection. I also don't have any controllers with me, so would prefer games with decent touch controls. I'm open to any genre, but I particularly like RPGs. Thank you in advance!

I like to play games. So I guess I'm a "gamer"? But: I'm not into arena shooters, MMORPMRPORG grinders, anything with endless cutscenes of exposition and absolutely nothing that needs a "pass" to play... so where's my games? I feel like there's nothing for casual-but-not-candy-crush-or-clash-of-clans players like me out there.

I want something that takes me back to the days of Roller Coaster Tycoon, Sim City 2000 or more recently, Stardew that's not going to make my blood boil or nickel-and-dime me to progress. That doesn't mean it needs to be cute or easy, but more... meditative? Or goofy?

Given the crowd here I figured you lot would probably have some good recommendations. So: fire away!

Playing World of Warcraft Classic WOLTK, I realize that dungeon instances are the best part of the game for me. I love the holy trinity, and how everyone has a specific role to play and contribute to the group. But the thing is, WoW is just not that hard. As a level 30 healer, I'm going through the motions and being complimented on my heals, but I could do it with very-low effort and only partially awake. And according to other players, that won't change until I get to raiding, and maybe not even then. PvP is a possibility, but I'd like to explore games that focus on the matches without all else that comes with an MMO.

The problem is, when I think of the kind of equivalent outside the MMORPG sphere, MOBAs are what first come to mind. But LoL, Dota, etc, are not easy games for an older gentleman to pick up. I don't wanna play anything that relies on quick reflexes because I simply have none. And a game like Starcraft, on the competitive level, also relies on high APM as far as I know.

So maybe this game doesn't exist, but I'd love to play something that allows me to be in a group with a defined role that requires some degree of coordination (and a social aspect) but is neither an FPS nor a stressful high-octane game for people in their 20s with a lot of brain energy to burn.

I've been enjoying Legends of Runeterra for the last couple of years. It's a collectible card game with really nice art and voice work. I'm not a very competitive person, but I put up with the deckbuilding and competitive bits because I enjoyed the gameplay.

About a year ago Riot added a new PvE mode where instead of playing against humans, you play against increasingly difficult AI decks. Every few wins you get your choice of 3 random passive abilities, some of which can dramatically increase the power of your deck for the rest of the run--kind of a roguelike twist on the CCG formula. This has completely spoiled me--I enjoy it far more than LoR's base gameplay. Unfortunately, despite the popularity of the new mode, Riot made the inexplicable decision to give it only token support, focusing instead on PvP.

I've mostly run out of content for the new game mode, and I'm wondering if another game has something that will scratch the same itch. I'm looking for PvE games with deep gameplay and good production values that aren't too fast-paced or actiony. Bonus points if the game gets new content occasionally. Extra bonus points if it has a good story. Any of y'all have a favorite?