I just finished Wytchwood on suggestion from @catahoula_leopard and it was incredible!!! It scratched all of my itches: it was so cozy, the objectives we interesting/creative, there weren't unnecessary NPC interaction, it made it easy to learn but also gave you room to roam, I could go on and on. The game is a 10 out of 10 for me. Even the ending was intensely satisfying. I've heard rumors that the developers might release additional content and I'll be scooping it up as soon as it is available.

Up next I'll be running through Night in the Woods on a suggestion from @psi. I've just dipped my toe and it already seems awesome!

If anyone has suggestions for similar games I'm all ears!

I've been on the hunt for a decent idle game, at present I've landed on (the) Gnorp Apologue. I wanted something I could tinker with while watching some longer youtube videos and it's definitely scratched the itch.

Besides that, I've been trying to find an FPS game that runs well on desktop mode of a SteamDeck. My go to is normally Squad, but my attempts to make it run at a decent framerate hasn't worked out yet.

Recently finished the new God of War Ragnarok free dlc, what an incredible way to implement a roguelike mode! Back to Baldur's Gate 3 for me, but I feel like I'm saving it for my plane ride to Asia soon.

I also randomly got a Sloth in Super Auto Pets the other day (1/10000 chance!)

I'm late to the party but I just got Subnautica and I'm loving it so much! It is also the only first-person game I can play without getting dizzy. Maybe because it's in the water so all the movements are smoothened out? Anyway, really love how gorgeous it is, and it's not overly stressful/scary/difficult for an unskilled anxious player like me.

Against the Storm

I used to love city building games. As a kid, I spent probably hundreds of hours playing Sim City for the SNES. As an adult, I get incredibly anxious about the idea of even starting a sandbox-style game that I can play forever with no end.

I don't want to play a single game. I like to constantly try new things. Also, I've got shit to do! I can't do today what I did in… I guess 1993, when I was 10-years-old, with Sim City. This game seems to be built to address that specific anxiety I have by dividing a city builder into digestible chunks. It has given me permission to play a city builder by implicitly promising me that a given session will have a beginning and an end and that it will be manageable.

Besides all that, it's expertly crafted. All the pieces fit together so well! I find myself just on the edge of stress, where I'm trying to make sure I get all the resources lined up so I can do what I need to do… but it's not quite stressful. It's just enough pressure to make things interesting.

Shadows of Doubt

I want to like this game so much. Games have two ways of presenting investigation: the character is investigating vs. the player is investigating. The former is extremely common, and the latter is extremely rare. This is an example of the latter. You're not pixel hunting for a pre-ordained object that will unlock the mystery for the character. (Alan Wake 2's "mind place" is more an example of this, where you ostensibly connect-the-dots between pieces of evidence, but those connections are already set in stone and "discovering" them amounts to dragging images to the correct spots on the board.) In Shadows of Doubt, you're finding randomized clues to unlock the mystery for you, the player.

Problem is, I've made two attempts to complete the tutorial mission, and both have ended in bugs. If they can get this figured out, it could be great. For now, it's an exercise in frustration.

The Gunk

This is a really charming and (so far) relaxing game. The characters are well written, and it's been a chill time cleaning up gunk! It's not breaking ground, but I'm still having fun.

Alan Wake 2

Hasn't grabbed me quite the way Control did, but I want to keep playing. They weave FMV into the game in a way that's really cool and compelling. I'm most interested in how it connects to Control and what it does to flesh out the world of that game. So far, it's slightly disappointing for the shallowness of the investigation mentioned above. Incredible to look at though!

The Finals - Great multiplayer game, lots of fun tearing around in a literal sense
Lethal Company - awesome and silly time with friends, kinda reminds me of goofin around in among us

I'm finally getting into my second cyberpunk playthrough. I played the original release back in 2020 on an Xbox One S, and it was rough in many of the ways folks described. I still put a little over 100 hours into it without ever finishing the main story (stopped at the point of no return and told myself I'd come back when it was done cooking).

Playing 2.1 with phantom liberty installed now, and it's definitely much improved. Nearly every change feels good. I haven't figured out transmog yet, and the new perks are a lot to wrap your head around, but I'm loving it. Genuinely close to what we wanted at launch.

I can only hope that starfield gets similar treatment. That was the last game I was playing, and I stopped it similar to how I did with cyberpunk, just before entering the last few missions. I felt like starfield was mechanically everything I wanted, but needs a lot more in the personality department. That huge world is perfect for people to come in and construct more unique locations, cultures, quests, faction conflicts, everything. I don't mind the old dialogue system or npc design, but it needs to be charming for the Bethesda thing to work. I've been fantasizing about what I would do if I worked at BGS to build the world out. It'd be years of work to get to the density I think is appropriate, but hopefully it'll happen. Otherwise, what a waste of an excellently designed game.

I’ve played through quite a bit of Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition. Probably 40+ hours of it.

I don’t have much to say about it that hasn’t been said elsewhere. There are many well designed and implemented features, but in that respect it really makes the bad things stick out. There are some things that I found really really irritating. There are quests that can only be done in certain weather and those happen randomly, so it means you have to use the change time feature to skip one day at a time until the game decides to give you what you need. The time system gives you some fantastic visuals, but overall it’s annoying because it locks away people and materials you need to have access for quests. Maps are needlessly large, which means it can take a very long time to run through it. There is fast travel to landmarks but it is very easy to miss them because the scale of the world and if you fall off a platform or run into an enemy more powerful than you it means being sent back and trying to trudge through again. It’s nice there is an auto-run feature but pressing the up button to activate it is awkward and it turns off if it doesn’t like the way you move the stick to change heading, as well as every time you reach a climbable wall.

That being said, having watched my husband play the other games in the series, I find this to be the most coherent in terms of story. It does have its own share of contrivances but it’s nowhere near as contrived as the others (particularly in regards to X which never bothered to answer its big central question and has been stuck in Wii U jail where it belongs - even though I like it better because giant robots).

Against the Storm has fixed the issue I always found with city builders by ending before I get bored and abandon a town in favor of a fresh start. Just the right length for a single session at around an hour each but with a good enough roguelite loop that I usually want to start the next settlement right away and at least see what buildings I'll have to work with next time. Do I have a farm building or bigger gathering camps? Is there a way of making flour for higher tier foods or will I need to trade for it?

The theme reminds me of the board game Root to some extent with different species working to tame the forest including beavers and lizardmen. Each has different specializations and needs, so it's been fun going into a new town and for example realizing I don't have any beavers this time so I'll need more woodcutters to make up for the bonus the beavers usually provide in that role.

On top of that, the storm setting helps to add an edge to it by making it feel like the town's in peril even as the settlers continue working through the wind and rain, spirits downtrodden. There's also the queen whose impatience is the true ticking timer for failure, but that's distant and impersonal in comparison.

I'm still early into it and haven't even gotten to some of the more advanced mechanics, but it's been a lot of fun already and the kind of thing I didn't know I was looking for in the genre.

I tried out Omen Exitio: Plague, a gift from @kfwyre over in the game giveaway. It's an RPG mixed with a choose-your-own-adventure book, and it's quite enjoyable. The look and feel of the game is simple, but good, the story is enticing, and I enjoy the direct experience-points-to-skill-points method of levelling up. Thanks K!

I started playing through Black & White 2 again for about the dozenth time in my life

Man, I loved this game back in the day. Still holds up pretty well, but it's kind of depressing to know nobody ever really made a spiritual successor to it, at least as far as I know. An updated game with better graphics, game mechanics, and more civilization options would just scratch all the god game itches my brain has.

I'm.playing Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic. First time on PC (played on tablet/phone before). Doing Scoundrel/Consular build as I know from before and from KotOR 2 how insanely powerful Consular can be. Still on Taris... I play on Steam Deck (OG) and it can do over 6 hours on battery! Controls are not that good, but definitely not bad!

What can I say about the game? D&D, but Star Wars, basically. You can choose character, skills, feats, become jedi, can choose if you want to go light or dark side... Plays turn-based but realtime - if you know Baldur's gate (1 or 2, haven't played 3 yet), that's basically it. If you like Star Wars, you MUST play this game. And KotOR 2 too!

Been playing Remnant 2 with friends! I've actually really been enjoying it. It's a lot more forgiving than I thought it would be. I think the premace is interesting and I like the game mechanics. There's so much stuff thoigh, with the random events that you may or may not get, that we usually have someone wiki surfing to see if we need to do anything else lol.

I picked challenger as my archetype and I use a great sword. The timing is a bit fickle, but I love how much damage it does. I was flipping back and forth between that and the handler, but challenger won out. I like being a brute 🥺👉👈 but in all seriousenss I might consider switching classes since handler is pretty outside the scope of my usually playing style I'm interested in trying it. And also doggy.

I got sucked back into Monster Hunter World/Iceborne a couple of months ago because I was determined to finally beat the endgame big bad (which I finally did!). I was slowly working on building out final armor sets for every weapon I use but there's been a crazy uptick in the playerbase since the announcement of Monster Hunter Wilds so I changed focus to learning new weapons and jumping into SOS hunts to help out new and returning players. The game has always had plenty of people online but it is SO nice to see hubs full of players again

My buddy and I game together on oculus VR. We are just now getting into dungeons of eternity, a dungeon crawler hack n slash. So far it is scratching every itch. After dreaming about it for 40 years we may finally have our dungeons and dragons first person action game!

Still playing Frostpunk. Finished the third scenario. It was going well, then it stopped going well near the end. Hard to do well since 300 people show up at your door pretty quickly. Didn't end how I wanted it to end, but the "best" way of finishing felt like a stretch goal. And apparently I'm not that stretchy. I was able to take in 100, but had to turn away the other 200 people (mostly children). Oh well. It's completed. On to the DLC content!

I put a few more hours into Good Company last night. And that looks like it's going to be really fun. I'm only on the the third scenario so far. It reminds me a lot of Satisfactory or Factorio, where production throughput is key. Of course there's managing funds, research, and I'm assuming personnel will come up too.

A friend is playing Foxhole pretty hard, so I jumped in with him last night. It's not my first time playing, but I still have little experience in it. It seems like a game I should like, with big battles, support and logistics, big teamplay...but I have a hard time getting into it. Which is fine, it's probably just not for me. But I'll probably still jump in to gun a tank or something.

I decided to sink a few hours into Fortnite for the first time, mostly because I want to try my hand at the creator tools next year. It's a pretty solid game and I prefer it over Apex, Warzone and PUBG. Map scale is just right, gunplay and movement are intuitive and lobbies have a nice mix of skill levels so I'm not always terrified of taking a fight. It's also just incredibly engaging as a BR with how much there is to do like mini quests, random oddities and npcs. It's just a shame that I do not like any of the cosmetics and cross promotion that the game is known for. This might just be the old man in me wanting to yell at the youngins but I just don't find any of it particularly interesting and it sometimes just takes me out of enjoying the gameplay.

I also started Jump King. I tend to be counterintuitive and play rage games when I'm under a lot of stress and this one is a very special brand of unfair. The rules and controls are at least consistent but it's the level design that is particularly devious. Any failure can set you back anywhere from a few minutes to a full reset and there has only been a single moment of safety in the few hours I've played so far. Overall, I'd give it 2/10: highly recommended.

Inkbound - https://inkboundgame.com/ (Monster Train people I think) - works well in co-op mode. Bit easy to make overpowered builds, but it's the good mix between actually paying attention and just picking whatever upgrade looks the shiniest.

Hunt: Showdown had its latest event, Tide of Desolation, start last week, along with a hefty patch that added some nice features and made the game more accessible to new and less successful players. The new wildcard weather event, ash bloom, is a fun twist that isn't annoying or gimmicky like thunderstorms or firestorms were. The changes to hunter recruitment are huge, they're massively better value than before and it does a lot to shrink the power gap between a fresh hunter and a max level one. I haven't been playing Hunt for all that long but the game is the best it's been since I have, and I imagine it's just going to get better with the engine upgrade that's slated for next year.

Reading over that again, it sure sounds a lot like an ad. I am not sponsored by Crytek, this is just my favorite shooter and pvp game as of late.

The Spellswapper

This was made by our very own @Tygrak!

I'm at nearly 10 hours in. I'm at Ascension 9. I've only got a few achievements left. I've had a blast with the game, and I think it's something special.

It scratches some of the itch that a game like Vampire Survivors does. Your character slowly gets more powerful and has to take on increasing hordes of enemies.

It's different though, which gives it its own flavor. The game has a lot of different spells, and each round you have to replace one of your spells (hence the title) with a new one. This gives the game an innate and on-going tension. You might not be able to sustain your desired build. You might have to change your tactic partway through. You might get a particularly good spell in one element that forces you to rethink what you're going to take for your others.

Also, the spell diversity is great. I played for hours and I was still seeing new types of spells and affixes. Tygrak has also done a great job of giving visual cues for all the different spells and elements. Everything is color coded, and the aiming reticule has a distinct shape for every different spell that can be cast, which is essential because your spells are cast in random order and you won't be looking at the corner of the screen to see which one is charging -- you'll be able to tell from watching the play area directly because of how smartly Tygrak implement the visual cueing.

It's a very thoughtful touch, and I find that the game is full of little things like that. For example: the game doesn't surface all of its unlocks for you, but if you check in the stats menu, it'll give you a hint for a single unlock you still need. I like the simplicity of that nudge.

It plays best with mouse and keyboard, but it's also doable on controller, though at present that's a subpar option unless you're already familiar with the game. A lot of the game's information is given through mouseovers which don't show up with a controller, so I wouldn't recommend starting with that. Once you have a handle on how it works though, it's perfectly enjoyable as such and I've gotten multiple hours of enjoyment out of it on my Steam Deck.

I still have to beat Ascension 10 and unlock everything, but I can see myself coming back to this after everything is already done. It's an easy and satisfying "one more round" game (each one only takes about 20 minutes), and it's the perfect kind of game for listening to audiobooks.

I've been laid-up with some sort of illness for the past 4 days, so I haven't played much of anything. What I was playing and I'm debating if I want to go back to or not id Dredge; honestly, didn't think I'd like it much when it first came out, but I picked it up about a week or so ago on sale and immediately put a bunch of time into it, now sitting at 9.1 hours.

That said, I'm not sure if I want to go back to it or not at this point, I kind of feel like the spell is broken for me. I very much enjoyed what I played, but I've reached a point where it feels more like I'm just...plugging away? Not sure exactly. I don't find the exploration particularly rewarding, the fishing minigames are fine, but not keeping me coming back and I couldn't really care less about the story, so at this point I feel like the game is becoming somewhat repetitious and I'm just wiling away the hours with nothing really new or interesting to be done. I'll probably pick it up again at just to see if I'm right in my assessment (though I've been known to be wrong before...)

Also finally received a grip for my PS Vita that has proper R2/L2 triggers. This wasn't a HUGE deal, as I could easily remap what I needed to for PSX games, but for it just makes the Vita way more comfortable to hold right now, which is kind of a surprise to me, as I didn't find it particularly uncomfortable prior; but it feels like adding the triggers has been a game changer for the next game I went back to which is Silent Hill.

After getting that grip, I had a hard time putting Silent Hill down in the little short bursts I have to play games and managed to basically blitz through the rest of Old Town (the opening) and have now entered the formally inaccessible streets to head towards the school. I'm sort of surprised at how the game has begun to feel more ominous to me; it really didn't bother me at all in the opening part, but now that the sun has gone out, everything just seems that much more nerve wracking. I'm looking forward to putting a bit more time into it.

PaRappa the Rapper 2. It's fun as hell.

I am admittedly late to the party, but a friend and I have been playing Untitled Goose Game co-op on the couch and I’m here to say: the goose game is a blast. I’ve wanted to play it for years, but never got a chance early on because of the Epic store launch (Linux only here), and lost track of it before the Steam release. I’ve been having a ball terrorizing this small town, and the first real co-op game I’ve played in a decade

Started RoboCop Rogue City over the week.

I'm not very far into it, and I've read some high reviews about it, and word of mouth is pretty high as well.

The good: level design has a LOT of detail, top notch! Peter Weller is a delight and it appears to be pretty deep in lore!

The not so good: Controls are janky. And I know it's keeping true to the character but so far it feels like your moving in slow motion. Yeah it's great for accuracy, but it's a nightmare when you're in closed quarters and the punks are lobbing grenades at you left and right (hard mode). Aside from PW, the voice acting and dialogue system seems like a low budget game. The cutscenes leave a lot to be desired and on PS5 seem rather glitchy. When you juxtapose combat and character models to the high quality levels and environment it's genuinely night-and-day.

I'll keep playing for now and I'm sure combat improves with the upgrades (so far the Auto-9 is useless...takes like 5-6 bursts to kill a random henchmen).

I just finished Spider-Man 2. Overall it was really fun.

I've been addicted to Rogue Legacy 2.

Even though I have the ability now to skip over the easier portions, I still go through the whole thing every run. Great second screen game I play while "watching" YouTube. I really like all of the different traits your heirs can have. It makes new runs feel fresh.

I played all the way through Nova Lands. If you like factory games it's a lovely short indie pixel-art type game with some different mechanics — there's a very limited number of small islands that each generate different resources and limited channels to transfer resources between islands. It's much more about using space well than scaling up, and it's short enough I finished it with all achivements in ~25 hours of playtime. It got a bit too grindy for me in the late game, but that's nothing new for the factory game genre and I definitely think it's worth the time if you're a fan of the genre.

Still just Baldur's Gate 3. I mentioned trying to do an Honor Mode run and being torn on how to proceed after dying in this thread. I ultimately decided to just hop out of Honor Mode, but keep most of the Honor Mode rules in place. Which went really well until it didn't.

I put myself in an awkward position where I was basically save-locked into an unwinnable situation. My party was split (I know, I know...never split the party) and undertaking two big fights at the same time...and I very stupidly saved mid-fight because I had something else to do...aaaand now I'm stuck in a loop of death. There are no other saved games to load since I kept the "single save file" option on. Disabling it doesn't magically make other saved games, so I am just completely stuck. There's absolutely no way for me to win the fight. And fleeing might be possible, but it's a tricky spot to get out of.

So I said "eff it" and started a new save. Going to be a little chaotic gnome monk that goes around doing stupid things on easy mode.

I've been playing a lot of RoboQuest, which is just a really fun little action roguelike FPS with some very crisp gameplay (and a great soundtrack).

If you enjoy any of the classic action roguelikes; such as Returnal, The Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain 2, or Crab Game - you'll definitely enjoy this.

I've been replaying Christmas Batman (Arkham Origins) due to its festive setting. I started loving it, wondering why it is always sidelined as the 'not good' one in the series. However, I'm now a fair bit into it and getting frustrated. The balancing seems off compared to the other games. Every combat encounter seems to have at least one guy with a gun which is just a pain, along with the shields, martial artists, guys with knives, etc. It is so long since I've played asylum and city - did they overcomplicate this one with different enemy types? The shock gloves are also ridiculous and I can see why they didn't come back in Knight.

Started playing Sea of thieves.

And I must say I haven't had such a good time in a PVP game since a long time.
It's just always a blast to play. whether I'm playing solo (and running from almost every fight) or with crew and taking even galleons head on.

The thing I like the most of this game is that I can set out to chill, fish, transport cargo or fight everything I see (npc and player alike).
Plus somehow a session doesn't seem to be boring, enough randomness happens to make every session just different enough to keep it from being stale (so far of course)

I am replaying Dark Souls this week (dark souls remaster on PC)!

I've played through all the souls games and have played DS1 2 or 3 times through, but I just had an itch to play it again. This is the first time I've been back to it after playing the other souls games, and good lord am I so much faster now at souls games. I only have Nito and Gwyn left and I've only played 12-15 hours on this file. The game is fun and I'm tentatively going to play through DS2 and DS3 again next, though with so many good games out right now, we'll see if I can make time.

I still really want to play the Alan Wake games, Control, and the second Plague Tale. I also got a few more recommendations from this thread.

I was potentially going to pick up Phantom Liberty. I first just updated Cyberpunk and played a bit to see if I still liked the base game. It's so much clunkier than I remembered. The changes they made are good, but the game engine itself just made the combat feel not that smooth to me.

I despised the ending of the original game (all of them, I really don't like the "incurable disease" trope), but I've heard Phantom Liberty gives you a better game ending, so I may still play it just for (hopefully) some closure.

I finally finished The Last of Us: Part 1 on my Steam Deck.

I'd already seen the HBO adaptation, so I knew where the story was headed, but actually playing through it was definitely a very worthwhile experience. Particularly near the end, the game changes things up enough to kind of force you to reasses the amount of violence you're doing (/teaching this child to do) from a different angle.

There's that one bit right near the end where the game essentially forces you to take a certain action that hits way harder than it did in the TV adaptation, which makes for another good example of how games can deliver certain story beats through interactivity in a way unique among other forms of storytelling.

Really enjoyed it overall, and I'm looking forward to seeing Part 2 come to PC as well, hopefully I won't have to wait too long.

Got the Dark Souls 3 DLCs yesterday, so I'm currently playing through that.

Completed Fires of Ariandel (except for the Friede fight, from what I've seen and heard it's pretty difficult, so I'm scared) and have started the Ringed city. Made it to the Demon price fight and got my ass kicked. First phase is manageable without using too many heals, thanks tot he help of Gael and Lapp, second phase not so much. Got it down below half health multiple times though, so If I try a bit more, I might be able to do it.

It's pretty fun so far. I love DS3 and these DLCs feel like a great addition. I'm obviously not going in blind, as I have seen the bosses in various Challenge runs I've seen on YT, but going in blind wasn't one of my concerns, as I am mainly here for the combat and the bosses (and to have an excuse to play more DS3).

Weapon-wise I've also found some cool stuff, like the weapons of those big Viking-Knights in Ariandel or the halberd (that's called a Greatsword for some reason) the Trader at the beginning of Drang Heap sells. My favorite so far is the Millwood Battle Axe, because of its weapon art. It might seem like a normal war cry at first, but when you actually do it, it's way better than that. Instead of the normal "HOOAAHH!!" you do two little hops forward into a "HUUAAHH!". Other than that it is the same though.

Jumping from a litely modded game of Fallout New Vegas for my anarchy run. I really don't need to talk about how much I love NV because I had talk it before. To FFX mostly because I just need something that doesn't take that much brain power to focus on. And something's that I need to escape because how sick I have been feeling. The prerendered cut scenes are still great looking considering the age of the game (or where Square put their efforts for the remaster). And I like the fact that they got a death metal vocalist for the opening song just because he was living in Japan at the time.

I’m deep into the pokemon scarlet and violet Pokédex completion, I have a few mons left to catch on the main Pokédex and I’m currently playing through the DLC over the Christmas break.

I've been playing Unpacking, thanks to a gift from @phoenixrises in the Tildes Game Giveaway: Holiday 2023.

I had no idea the game had a "story", and I'm finding it a lot more emotional to slip into someone else's life to get them settled in a new home. Definitely a lot more depth to the game than I was expecting, so I'm very thankful for the gift. 🙂

LunarLux

10 hour-ish JRPG with some Megaman Battle Network DNA woven in. Shorter than I had expected, but it was a fun and cute experience and there's supposed to be more updates from meeting stretch goals, so I'll look forward to more of it in the future.

Aside from its charming aesthetic, I'll comment on two aspects of its battle system:

• The first is defense because you're given an S-rank for not taking damage. Depending on the type of move, you can either dodge or you're forced to use up a temporary shield to block it. You can generate more shields (that's where all my first skill upgrades went), so it's a somewhat interesting dynamic of balancing offense and defense, especially with 2 other skills that use up your shields for attacks.
• The second is how intimidating the skill system looks and the accompanying decision paralysis for what to use and upgrade, and even moreso when you don't have all your options yet. The Active Skills are basically your moves and you get to decide for yourself which move is powerful/efficient enough for its SP cost and how easy the action command for it is. The Support Skills are basically a deck you build and after choosing an Active Skill, you pick 1 of 3 random Support Skills to use. Early game was mostly experimentation, while mid-late game I was pretty much able to stack flat attack boosts and multipliers onto the multi-hit moves which kinda snapped the difficulty in half.

Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster

On the first game, recruited the 3rd party member and took down a tank boss. I am making this much harder for myself because the characters gain more stat boosts when doing bulk level ups so the entire party is severely underleveled from me not wanting to waste EXP. Aside from that, Kalas has been an unrepentant dick which is nice and different for a JRPG protag and the normal battle theme goes hard.