We're trying to start a Gamecircle (kind of like a Bookcircle) with friends and accuintances and I'm looking for some good Games to start. It is a daunting task to be honest, as there will be some first time gamers taking part. And for me as a singleplayer for year (mostly factorio and some round and grand strategy games) I dont even know where to start looking.
I'm looking for something like mario kart, which is easy to understand and fun for everybody to play, for the first months. Not cost more than 10$, be aviable through steam or gog or itch.io, preferably cross-platform (steam play works fine too).

On another note, has someboy tried something like this? how did/does it work out? What would be your Advice?

Sorry for the delay in posting this month.

December's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games:

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?

March 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

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?

October's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games:

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 remembered that thread asking about the update to Cyberpunk 2077, and figured after finishing the expansion I'd offer what I've got. I played the game once on release prior to playing now.

The tl;dr - its a hell of a lot better, can totally recommend it, expansion was cool and fun

The long:

First, regarding the update. It's excellent. The game does feel significantly better to play, because a whole lot less is bugging the hell out. You do occasionally come across some silliness, like four of the same car all at an intersection, or the same child populating a cafeteria. But these moments are far, far less frequent, I think I can count on one hand after 50 hours, the number of times stuff like that happened.

Wanted system is functional now. It just works the way you'd expect, and it is pretty easy to escape. More lawless parts of town are appropriately easier to get away with shit in. Driving feels better but still feels weird to me, like everything is slippery/wheels never have good traction.

The skills/perks/inventory stuff is a thousand times better. It has a few weird things here and there but is easier to follow and use. It's nice not having to really mess around with clothes and just look however I want. Combat is a lot more fun now that stuff behaves appropriately. That's really the theme of it, they did fix what needed fixing, and what we're left with much more closely aligns with folks' original expectations.

Quests wrap up and sometimes into one another in ways which are genuinely very impressive, and I encountered all of one that had an issue with it. I pretty much constantly went from quest to quest and found there was enough variety that I didn't really care about wandering much. I still did, and that is all much improved too. Npcs behave a lot better and look nicer, and jobs consistently finish up the way they're supposed to.

I specialized in blades, pistols, and shotguns, and played on Normal, mostly on my steam deck. I mostly raised Reflexes, Technical Ability, and Cool. I got to turn into a Dragonball ninja assassin, occasionally dualing Japanese cyborg women with katanas in the street. I'd get into shit because melee is genuinely pretty fun to mess with.

The visuals are awesome even on the handheld, the preset for the deck is higher than I expected. Performance was consistently good, on the deck as well as my PC. PC can go maximum and is using a 144hz display, it looks really really good with everything pushed.

The expansion:

It fits squarely within the best of what the game offers. The storyline is complex and goes into the rest of the world in an impressive way, it's like it's always been there. The characters are exceptionally well done, as is the voice acting. The whole thing felt like a great season of a good show, it kinda proceeds like that too.

Dogtown is a really cool area. The detail is wild and sense of place really some of the strongest in the game. I felt uneasy at night in the rain, that's always cool for a game to evoke. It feels both like it's own independent spot and like a part of the city, they really nailed it with how it looks and what's available there.

Conclusion:

The complete package I'd say is totally worth it. Compared to release it is a completely different game. Feels like a much more realized vision, that consistently hits some pretty high notes. Panam is still the coolest, but Songbird was a really well done character too. With the game not being a flaming wreck, it's way easier to get into the storytelling, and it is pretty great for this medium. Especially those major characters, they're interestingly complicated and don't always behave how you'd expect. The overall experience is kinda like being a protagonist in a tv show, quests have their own arcs and climaxes and characters appear distinctly changed by the events as they unfold. That was always there, but now I'm comfortable saying you'll actually have that experience playing it.

I'm primarily a PC gamer with a library slowly approaching 1,000 games on Steam. While I have sometimes bought games through the other storefronts like Blizzard, GOG, Uplay, and EA Origins, I never really invested significant time in them to the point where I don't keep track of what is in those libraries. Suffice to say, I thought that I was so entrenched in Steam that I couldn't possibly play in another storefront for any meaningful amount of time.

This has changed for the past year. I hopped on one of those deals that gave me access to Game Pass since Microsoft added all the Bethesda games and partnered with EA Play. And I gotta say, I'm invested now. Invested so much that I bought a Series X despite having zero interest when the new generation of systems was announced. Game Pass on Xbox is an even better deal than Game Pass on PC. The library is larger and for the games that are Play Anywhere, I can continue my save file on my PC when my living room TV is unavailable.

I really think that Microsoft has a winning strategy with Game Pass this generation and it really surprised me how my attitude to the Xbox ecosystem changed this year. While I think both Sony and Nintendo have great exclusives, the value proposition for me of convenience and a rotating slate of quality games will likely keep me invested and subscribed, moreso than Xbox Gold or PS+ have in the past.

I played the older 2017 demo with 2 characters and really liked the gameplay and visuals. Great old-school feel, yet very polished to feel somehow modern and unique, with novel mechanics like the character-specific skills or "paths" when interacting with NPCs.

I also tried the new June 2018 demo for a few minutes as Tressa. It was fun but jarring with few interactable NPCs and very little in the way of introductory story or cutscenes, fewer than I remembered from the old demo. I wasn't sure if this was because it was still just another demo, so I've decided to hold off and start from scratch in the full game. (The save file carries over from the June demo to the full game.)

I would normally have preordered, except for my extended backlog from the Steam summer sale.

There's a review roundup on Reddit in /r/JRPG: https://old.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/8ybg3i/octopath_traveller_review_megathread/ -- looks like a lot of 8's and 9's with a meta score around 84/100.

Hey Tabletidlers,

Another week and another opportunity to share what you've been playing.

For me I was able to finally play the Zombie Apocalypse map for Age of Steam. This map sees you delivering goods (cubes) around a map of Michigan as usual, but whilst dealing with the map evolving due to a horde of zombies. The zombies move in a deterministic manner, so it's possible to plan ahead, but towns or cities the zombies reach are razed, which converts them to a colourless city and removes any cubes upon them. The zombies also add a cost to building track and add a cost to delivering cubes, unless you take the Military Caboose action, which replaces the normal Locamotive spot. Very enjoyable map and the random starting location for the seed zombies means it'll play very differently, I imagine, each game.

So, don't be shy, share what you've managed to get played this 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

This is a wild, ongoing story that is playing out in a rather bizarrely.

First off, here is Frogware's open letter on the situation from August 25, 2020.

Basically, Frogwares signed an agreement with Nacon (formerly Big Ben Interactive) to license and publish their game in return for funding, but Frogwares still owned the IP. Frogwares claims that Big Ben was consistently late with payments and did not honour milestones for further funding. They took on an EGS exclusivity agreement to help get funding. At some point during the development, Nacom bought another studio and then demanded that Frogwares give their source code to this new company, which Frogwares refused to do.

The released the game in June 2019 but then were told by Nacom that the milestones that were previously agreed to were cancelled, therefore Frogwares would see no profit from the game. Frogware filed a lawsuit and finally got access to some sales data but found it wanting in many regards. They also found that copyright notices on the game were incorrect with the result of misallocating the IP ownership. Their logo was removed from the PS4 and X1 versions of the game and they discovered that Nacon was presenting themselves as the IP owners for the game, and had bought domains for Frogwares' other Sherlock Holmes titles (most of which was published by Focus Home Interactive, with some published by Atlus in North America or self-published by Frogwares).

Frogwares believes they had what they needed to terminate the contract with Nacon, despite some complications with the French legal system due to the COVID pandemic, and so they pulled their games from various storefronts alongside this letter.

In January 2021, that French legal complication played out against them when the Paris Court of Appeals determined that Frogwares acted unlawfully and decided that Nacon would be able to put the game back on the market.

Today, The Sinking City was put back on Steam with Frogwares listed as the developer, but Frogwares says they did not make this version. It seems to be an older version, missing much the DLC and features like achievements and cloud saves.

Frogwares' own version of the game is being sold only on Gamesplanet, Origin, and the Xbox 1 Series, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.

Any fellow Tildes playing this? I picked it up yesterday with the steam release and it interests me enough to probably keep playing. Although I do think I'm going to need a different guild(nothing against the one I'm in just I'm NA and they're EU).

For those who want a quick idea of the game I would say it's a mix of EVE and Runescape. While there are traditional skills you level up based on a mix of these two. You gain "fame" based on certain tasks. But unlike runescape mining copper ore forever won't allow you to max out your mining skill set. You actually need to mine higher quality stuff.

For eve like stuff I would say look at banking and how PVP is handles. Banking is all local so if you want to move a lot of stuff it will probably take a long time(I just started but imagine they'll eventually offer something like contracts(or at least hope they do)). Then PVP has different levels like safe, red(where you can enable PVP and attack others), or black where PVP is always an option with no consequence other than other players.

Like I said I'm a noob but will try to answer any questions I can for those wondering about it. Links below for whatever else you may want to know.

https://albiononline.com/en/news
https://store.steampowered.com/app/761890/Albion_Online/
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/albion-online (not the best rating :( )

Firaxis just announced a new addition to the XCOM series in the form of XCOM: Chimera Squad. It takes place 5 years after the events of XCOM 2 and focuses on a specific squad of named human and alien characters trying to maintain the peace in a one of the new cities.

Game Reveal Trailer

Gameplay Trailer

It's currently $10 on steam, presumably since it looks like it was built on the XCOM 2 engine. The sale lasts until May 1st, so you'll have time to wait until some reviews are out before you buy it.

I absolutely loved XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, so this is a nice surprise for me. Some of my friend who have played some of the older XCOMs are comparing it at least thematically to XCOM: Apocalypse

Edit:
@cwagner provided a link to GMG where its currently $9.50

I thought it might be a good idea to make a thread for people to find other people to game with. Remember to put what console you're playing on, or if you're PC, and what games you're looking to play! Best of luck to all!

I work overnight so I usually play around 1 pm to 4 pm weekdays (I know, weird hours). Anyway my. Xbox gamertag is TreeBone. I have been playing a lot of fortnite lately but I also get into Halo 5, Overwatch, and on steam I've been playing Don't Starve Together. I'm up for anything though! Drop me a line.