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Humble Choice - February 2025
February 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following games (1 EA, 7 Steam).
| Steam Page | Opencritic | Steam Recent/All | Operating Systems | Steam Deck | ProtonDB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Immortals of Aveum (note: EA key) | 72 | 57 / 71 | Win | ❌ Unsupported | 🟨 Gold |
| Trepang2 | 78 | 85 / 89 | Win | 🟨 Playable | 🟨 Gold |
| Total War: PHARAOH DYNASTIES | -- | 68 / 83 | Win, Mac | ❓ Unknown | ⬜ Silver |
| Fabledom | 79 | 79 / 87 | Win | 🟨 Playable | 🟨 Gold |
| Griftlands | 87 | 76 / 93 | Win, Mac, Linux | ✅ Verified | ✅ Native |
| Tales & Tactics | -- | -- / 81 | Win | 🟨 Playable | 🟨 Gold |
| Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master | 73 | -- / 73 | Win | 🟨 Playable | 🎖️ Platinum |
| My Little Universe | -- | 84 / 90 | Win, Mac | 🟨 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?
I have had a choice sub for long enough to have the 20% discount. Now I finally want to buy a game (Civilization VII) And it doesn't apply the discount.
I will cancel it now and only get it whenever I want something from a bundle, because the way it is now, I definitely spent way more than I should have on games
Woof. Not particularly excited for an EA key (and what that means for future bundles) but I'm familiar with the Naheulbeuk games enough to be interested in a dungeon builder, Fabledom looks cute and interesting, I've heard good things about Trepang2 so that'll likely get played early and My Little Universe says it has couch co-op so that might get some play.
I haven't had the free time to sink into a Total War in years and Tales/Griftland both are Rogue likes so that's an uphill battle to get played... That 57 on Aveum plus the EA requirement is making that a tough sell.
Oddly enough, I think Fabledom is the top of the pile right now unless anyone has kind words for the rest of the stack.
I never played it co-op, but I found "My Little Universe" extremely tedious after a little while.
You know those ads for mobile games where the "gameplay" shown in the ad has nothing to do with the game they're actually selling? There's like a lumberjack or something, and he goes around collecting 50 logs and throws them in a pile that unlocks a harvester or something, then he moves up a miniscule amount and has to collect 1,000 logs. It's as though someone decided to make a game out of one of those, but that was the only real idea they had. The environments are cute and kinda interesting, but the moment-to-moment gameplay is grindy as hell and loses novelty super quickly.
Thanks for your review!
My Little Universe was the only game I was looking forward to due to the co-op aspect. Gonna skip this month's bundle.
To be honest, when I read the EA thing I immediately started thinking about canceling my subscription. Almost certainly an overreaction, but I've probably played ~3 new games for all of 2024, so the subscription is certainly not feeling like a good thing to keep around, especially because I'm still far away from a stable income right now.
I feel silly thinking "I'd be happy with GOG but EA? What's next, uPlay?!" but... Still, it's how I felt.
I wouldn’t be too worried. They’ve done some non-Steam keys before. March 2022 had an EA key for Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, for example.
Is it though?
I really don’t follow EA. I’m not a big fan of what they do. But my impression of them is that they aren’t quite as bad as they used to be.
But the reality might be that the rest of the industry got a lot worse.
Not my favorite month personally, but I’m a sucker and will get it just to keep my 20% discount at the store.
My husband had Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master wishlisted; one of my friends is a big Total War fan; and the other people on my library share are the kind of people who would like Griftlands, so I’m thinking of this as a “giveaway” month since nothing really interests me.
I'm interested to hear about Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master from non-francophone point of view.
How's the setting ? Is it dubbed or subbed ?
Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk was a cultural touchstone for a whole generation of French-speaking geeks and nerds of the 00s. It was originally a web-based audio drama - think OG Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, except on the web instead of radio, and limited at first to 10 minutes in duration (iPod was barely a thing at the time, and downloading a file that's hundred of MB large was a time-consuming endeavor; napkin calculation something like 4 hours?). While the fantasy genre was getting more mainstream appeal thanks to the Lord of the Rings movies and later on the Harry Potter ones, IMO it was the fact that it was a humorous series that made it easy to listen to, particularly for a kid/teenager like me at the time. I think I can still recall by heart the content of the first episode.
Looking back it was also a prime example of the small web: you have a high quality stuff coming from a random dude from Britanny that put that on the web just because he found that fun to do.
Important to note that Total War: Pharoah Dynasties is the campaign for the base game and the base game is a 50%/64% recent/all time. The game is generally considered a failure by long time Total War fans.
This month is a skip for me.
The bundle comes with both dynasties and the base game.
Personally i think the total war community often over reacts and complains about every new release, i think the dynamic weather is a pretty cool addition to the battle maps and as somebody who casually plays total war games it was enough for me to keep the game enjoyable. The map is a lot less exciting though.
Yeah I was mainly pointing out that the game is actually rated lower than what was shown. Like most total war games, there were neat pieces but the game as a whole didn't really come together for me.
I'm late to this discussion, but I'm excited for this month.
I really enjoyed the The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk game, so the Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master is getting installed now. I loved the juxtaposition of quite silly and saucy storytelling with decent-to-good gameplay and combat.
Tales and Tactics was already on my wishlist! It's a roguelike that looks pretty good, but the main reason it's there is because it's by the same people who build the "Downfall" mod for Slay the Spire, which is a really well thought out mod, easily one of the best mods I have played for a game.
My Little Universe looks like a fun couch co-op so that's also going to get tried out pretty soon. I'm also installing Fabledom with no information at all because it looks so cute.
Immortals of Aveum I've already given away, and the rest went on my "considering" list - I'll run them by the kids and see if anyone's interested and otherwise, they'll be fodder for the next Tildes giveaway.
Edit: it is often interesting how different people can be. So many people here are calling this a skip month, but for me, it's one of the most exciting ones in recent memory. I immediately installed (but haven't yet gotten into) four games, then read @Acorn_CK's comment and also installed Griftlands. Usually I only grab a couple of keys and the rest just go in key storage.
Griftlands is a very fun deck builder if you get into it. It's really enjoyable that they have 2 types of encounters that both play like combat - speech encounters, and actual violence. And both are totally viable to focus on in a given run.