19
votes
Humble Choice - September 2023
September's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games:
| Steam Page | Opencritic | Steam Recent/All | Operating Systems | Steam Deck | ProtonDB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Chaotic Great Edition | 78 | 72/76 | Win | Verified | Platinum |
| Deceive Inc. | 72 | 80/86 | Win | Verified | Gold |
| The Forgotten City | 84 | 93/96 | Win | Verified | Platinum |
| Aces & Adventures | TBC | 97/91 | Win | Playable | Platinum |
| Patch Quest | 81 | 100/95 | Win | Verified | Gold |
| Foretales | 75 | 88 | Win | Playable | Platinum |
| Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus | 76 | 73 | Win Mac | Verified | TBC |
| Autonauts vs Piratebots | TBC | 84 | Win | Playable | Platinum |
Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?
Oh man, this is another one of those months that I regret subscribing but will probably still pay to keep my grandfathered rate. And it's not that any of these look bad at all. Far from it. It's just that these are all genres that I either don't like or simply don't have the energy to invest into at this point in my life. There are definitely other times when I would have enjoyed Autonauts vs Piratebots (I liked Autonauts!) or The Forgotten City. In a weird twist the one game that I feel most interested in right now is Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus, an FMV game.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands looks like something I might have wanted to play in spite of it being something entirely outside of my comfort zone for gameplay, but I really dislike Gearbox and right now I particularly dislike their parent company for killing off Volition.
I know this came out a whole lot more negative than I really wanted it to. I'm not upset about this selection, especially given how many games that I have gotten from this subscription that appeal to me but I haven't even had the time to start with. By all means I should probably drop it, but the FOMO is real.
I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure there is effectively no more "grandfathered rate" as everyone pays the same $12 now. Someone feel free to correct this timeline because I don't see it listed anywhere but there was Humble Monthly and that was $12 then they increased it to $15 then the changed it to Choice and made it tiered from $12 to to like $25 but you could be grandfathered into the high tier for $12 and now it's Choice V2 which is basically the same as the original Monthly.
The only thing you lose by cancelling or skipping now is the Humble Store discount that increases the more months you subscribe in a row up to 20%.
I can't tell; they don't even tell you the rates if you're not logged in, and they won't tell you the rates if you're already subscribed either.
That 20% off discount has been great for me, though.
Yeah, that 20% is what keeps me subbing for a lot of games that sit in my library to get given away. I have definitely saved a lot with the 20%, it's just frustrating you can't even pause for a month at a time to keep it, especially when I've been a monthly supporter since the beginning.
The stay-subscribed-for-20%-off hook is ridiculous (it takes a full YEAR to get it back if you skip) but also great. My husband and friends get many of their new games through me because of the discount.
I get a lot of mileage out of it. A single $60 game offsets a full month of Choice!
This past Sunday, I booted up The Forgotten City.
Between laundry and other assorted weekend chores, I played the game for a six hour stretch. This is significant because I am not someone who normally does that:
Suffice it to say, the game thoroughly gripped me. I simply couldn’t put it down. It’s compelling and well-executed and genuinely interesting.
Because of its time loop structure, it gets compared to Outer Wilds. I can say that Wilds is probably the “better” game, but I can also say that I’m genuinely enjoying my time in the City more.
I’m not done with it yet, but I’m close. I think I’m going to do a few more loops before I fully close things out though.
If anyone’s even remotely interested in the game, I’d say definitely give it a chance. I don’t want to overhype it for anyone, but I think it’s worth the $12 cost of this bundle on its own (the rest of the games are just bonuses!).
Also, as others have mentioned: the less you know about the game going into it, the better. Resist looking up stuff on it.
Hmmm... Forgotten City is good, if only for one playthrough to solve the mystery of everything. I don't care much about Borderlands these days and the rest of these I've never heard of. Can't say I'm excited for this month but I'll get it for the City alone.
I had heard that The Forgotten City was good, so I'm probably going to get it even if I don't intend to play it for a while.
Do get around to it eventually. The Forgotten City is one of the few games that I rank as a masterpiece. It's a short, but very tight and well-produced experience.
Have you played outer wilds? If you haven't it's a similar type of game, and if you thought forgotten city was a masterpiece you'd probably think the same for this game.
Personally, I bounced hard off outer wilds, which is fine. It spawned a good debate with colleagues about where outer wilds had failings and ways we can improve upon it (if we were to do a time loop story).
It's a good suggestion for people who dig the time loop thing, and definitely something people should check out to see if it grabs them.
What did you find different about Forgotten City vs Outer Wilds?
I've actually been putting off playing Forgotten City, as while I was initially enamored with OW, I got annoyed after about 10 hours because I felt like I was no longer leasurely exploring at my own pace, but now was obligated to hurry, hurry, hurry if I wanted to get where I needed to be in time. Does Forgotten City resolve that?
I don't want to go into too many specifics, so as to avoid spoilers for both Outer Wilds and The Forgotten City, but you hit the primary points. The Outer Wilds has two design goals that are at odds with each other, the goal to explore complex alien spaces and puzzles, and the goal to do it all within a relatively short timespan*. The Forgotten City is very respectful of the player's time, and the way they go about doing that ends up being a fairly endearing part of the story, in my opinion. I can't really go into details without spoiling.
*) I know that a lot of people find the time limit of Outer Wilds to be plenty enough, and that's fine. But it's also important to recognize that a lot of people find it to be a source of frustration, and that's also fine.
(Aside: My partner wrote her master's thesis on accessibility in games. Ever since I've met her, I've been much more cognizant of design decisions that inadvertently reduce accessibility. I appreciate her so much for that. <3 if she ever sees this comment)
Like @kru, I bounced off of Outer Wilds (note: spoilers in the link) but I’m loving The Forgotten City.
Without spoiling anything, I can say that I don’t feel rushed in The Forgotten City. In fact, each loop is nice because I feel like I can do a lot of different things. I’ll have a sort of mental checklist of “oh, go here, try this, change that, figure out what that is, talk to these people, etc.” The list might have ten different things on it, and I can make the rounds and do many of them in the same loop, all while discovering new stuff in the process. The game world is relatively small and quick to traverse, so you’re free to do what you want to where you want under a very generous time constraint.
Compare that to Outer Wilds, where I felt like each launch I set out to do only one specific thing. Everything was far apart and required a big chunk of time (especially proportional to the time limit). This made each run have its own distinctive “feel” to it which was neat, but it didn’t always feel cohesive. Plus, if I didn’t get that one “thing” done, I had to retread and try it again, which was a little tedious. Meanwhile, a loop in The Forgotten City feels much more relaxed and centered. It’s longer and more diverse, since you can tackle different things with ease. I don’t feel like I’m retreading in the game at all, even after multiple loops.
I appreciate your point of view!
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is the only entry in the Borderlands series that my friends and I just didn't finish. We played through all the other entries (1, 2, 3, pre-sequel), and just couldn't bear to finish Wonderlands.
I played a bit of the original Autonauts, and enjoyed the programming/automation challenge of it, I'll definitely play through at least some of the new one.
I have no experience with the rest, some look interesting, most will probably just get appended to my spreadsheet of keys to give away during charity events
I agree on borderlands. My 3 friends and I really enjoyed the first couple of hours. But it felt so hollow and repetitive. One of use droped out before the half way. And 3 of us finished but rushed through the last 30% or so just to say we finished it. Of the 4 of us 1 hated it, 2 thought it was below average, and one quite enjoyed it.
I love these threads, Venko! Thanks for putting them up each month.
It’s nice to see that every game is Verified/Playable on Deck and runs well on Linux from the ProtonDB reports. I’m not sure if that’s just random happenstance from this selection of games or if Proton is just getting that good, but my money’s on Proton (it really is getting that good).
The part of me that thinks I like thoughtful games is excited for The Forgotten City, but the other, bigger part of me that is stuck in a rut playing mindless grindy stuff while I listen to audiobooks is excited for Tiny Tina. It’s a sad state on my gaming habits that the latter is pretty much all I do now. I bounced off of Disco Elysium last month (despite it impressing the shit out of me in the few hours I spent with it) and have spent more time on the almost tedious Arcade Paradise instead.
I debated buying it, but I've already played (and LOVED) The Forgotten City. The only other game that interests me right now it Tiny Tina, but I'm not interested enough to buy the bundle just for it.