What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

So I recently purchased the Microsoft Surface Duo phone. For those unfamiliar it's a phone with two separate screens and a hinge between them (Like a nintendo DS). I never had a DS as a kid, so I've downloaded an emulator and I've started playing pokemon platinum. The touch screen controls are a bit annoying, but other than that the phone works remarkable well for DS games. I really like the pokemon game. It's fun and simple and it's great that I can pull out my phone and play anywhere

I plan on getting a bluetooth controller for it so I can have physical buttons so that I can play games where timing is important (mario is almost impossible with touch screen controls!)

I bought Roguebook. It was released very recently. It's somewhat similar to Slay the Spire (like the genres of Rogue-likes and Rogue-lites being named for the game Rogue, I'm assuming there'll soon be widespread use of "Spire-likes" too).

The meta-progression is actually quite fun thus far. I've only played a couple runs, so I haven't gotten deep into the prestige system, but you add challenges to increase difficulty for more meta-rewards, new bosses etc.

There are a number of lesser-used mechanics that you really don't see much in other digital card games, which is fun, but demands quite a bit of thinking in new ways.

There's also a mechanic of having to explore the game map to find various challenges and trinkets. That part of the game is really unique and fun. It adds another level of strategy to the game.

If there wasn't day 1 DLC on release (which I have no intention of buying for months; the game feels complete and balanced without it), I would expect the user ratings to be 95%+, maybe even higher than Monster Train was on release.

I'd also say this game is even better. If you're into single player digital card games, Roguebook will be well worth your money.

On my last night with my son, we played the card game Spuds n Goblins. It was a lot of fun. Neither of us had played before, but we were able to quickly understand how to play and almost immediately started laughing and enjoying ourselves. Games don't last very long, 20-30 minutes. What I liked the most about it is that strategy can take you most of the way, but randomness can equalize the playing field to some degree. That meant that I always had a chance to win instead of losing all the time to my son's strategic brilliance.

I tried a bunch of stuff this week.

I continued my slow march towards having Gary the Borg Maintenance Drone take over the world in Star Trek: Legends. But the game has started claiming it needs to "download critical updates" that will require me to connect my game playing to an online account. Since I just downloaded the latest update from Apple Arcade, I'm pretty sure they're a) lying to get me to agree to something I'm not interested in doing, and b) violating Apple's terms of service for being on Apple Arcade. I'm going to file a feedback request with Apple to see what they say. But in any event, I'm done playing the game. It wasn't that fun as written and my attempts to make it more fun failed.

I finished up Leo's Fortune. It was decent. I eventually figured out what the hieroglyphics meant and that made understanding the controls easier. I think they could have done a little more up-front work to make them more understandable. In any event, it was challenging without being impossible. Once I understood the controls it was less frustrating (though not perfect by any means).

I tried out Frenzic: Overtime. In it you play a robot working in a factory that produces power cores for other robots. You need to make a certain number of them with certain attributes within a time limit. I played about 10 levels and it was about as fun as the real summer job I had in high school working on an assembly line in an electronics factory. Which is to say, not really fun at all. It was like a lame job.

I started playing Game Dev Story+. It's an 8-bit-Nintendo-like game where you run a game company and have to hire developers, writers, etc. and produce games. It took a bit to get into, but once I did, it was actually kind of fun. My game company has produced about 8 games so far, and it's a constant feast or famine situation. Balancing the development process, training employees, advertising, etc. is challenging, and definitely reminds me of when I ran my own software company. But it's a little more forgiving than real life, thankfully. 🙂 Despite also being like a job I really worked, this one is more fun than Frenzic by a lot.

Randomly browsing the Steam store, I came across the Cook, Serve, Delicious series, which had some sales going. After reading some reviews, I was influenced to skip 1 and 2 and head straight to CSD3. So the core game mechanic/loop in this is frenetically managing multiple things at once as timers tick down. I would say it's like the Overcooked series, but I won't because it's only superficially similar. Overcooked has you moving in a 2.5D space to do the food prep and cooking; CSD3 has no such character movement. It boils the cooking mechanics down to the race-against-timers part. You place things on heat, add ingredients, etc. purely by keystroke or mouse click.

I have less than an hour of play in this, but it seems fun so far. It is definitely chaotic and stressful, managing up to 7 orders at once, and trying to avoid things getting burnt, spoiling, or customers getting disgruntled from waiting too long. The art style and music are hardly triple-A studio quality, but they provide a cute, casual, fun vibe. There is supposedly a co-op mode as well, which I have yet to try, but I can imagine it being fun.

There's a progression system where you earn virtual currency which you can spend on upgrades and unlocks. I have so little play time that I can't really describe what might be available to unlock. It seems like upgrades to your kitchen, and also recipes. Online reviews told me that there are upwards of 200 different dishes in the game. Being able to choose the recipes you know is kind of cool, because you get that RPG vibe of tailoring a character how you like. The game seems to sweep right across the spectrum of international cuisine, from American to Southeast Asian to European, and more. I haven't seen the full list in the game yet. Still levelling up.

CSD3 seems worthy of recommendation to people looking for a fun, casual game.