I recently got some superb advice here on making a fun brewery adventure, and I had a few more questions for the more experienced DMs out there. To reiterate, I am DMing a group of lvl 3 characters for only 1-2 sessions so I can learn the ropes, and I would like to include some fun traps they need to look out for. I'd love to also make sure that everyone gets a chance to contribute, and not just have the rogue (our most experienced player) do all the detection and disarming.

What sort of things would be fun to set up so that players would all need to watch their step, but could also contribute a bit?

Party has a bard, ranger, druid, and rogue.

Anybody else play? Nebulous scratches a very particular itch that I didn't know I had. It's sort of like The Expanse meets The Hunt For Red October. The learning curve is fairly long - it doesn't take much to get the basics, but mastering EWAR, missiles, etc takes some work.

Hey everybody!

I joined the Tildes Minecraft server last week and had an absolute blast building my house. I've barely played any Minecraft before (only early-game wandering around and mining) and it was super fun to wander the town and see everyone's builds and to build my own house based on stuff I looked up online. Also the bit where part of my house started burning down and everybody online came to help put it out (I did not know how to put it out myself guys so y'all were lifesavers there) was unironically super fun.

However, my house is more or less finished for now, and since I'm not very experienced with Minecraft I have no idea what to do next. There are already tons of cool farms in the town (legitimately super impressed) but I don't know enough about the game to feel comfortable trying to fill any gaps there, and I certainly don't feel comfortable trying to gather resources in more difficult areas like the Nether or The End given my extremely low skill level (others can attest I was repeatedly killed by the same skeleton over and over on more than one occasion lol). So now I'm wondering... what do I do next?

In a singleplayer game I'd just look up what my options are online, but since this is a multiplayer server it feels more like something I should ask the community about. What can I contribute to the server as a total noob? What are things that I can do that won't interfere with other people's projects or get ruined by me not having the experience with Minecraft to implement it properly? Is there anything that people are really itching to have done that is within my skillset?

In addition to this, any more general advice about how to play the game, particularly in a multiplayer setting like this, is super appreciated. Everyone I've chatted with on the server has been super nice and I'm really loving the environment y'all have created.

Also unrelatedly can someone please tell me how the public transit works. I do not know how to ride it lol.

I also was wondering whether there's any dedicated space to discussing and planning things on this server yet, like a Discord server or something. Obviously tildes itself exists, but I figure someplace for more transient discussions and planning would also be handy and I wondered if someone had already made one.

I'll go first: turn-based combat.

While not as common as they once were, there are still a lot of games, AAA and indie alike, that get massively popular and are known for their supposedly excellent turn-based combat. Games that are probably what a lot of people who don't care for turn-based combat make an exception for, for one reason or another. Say they really enjoy how Undertale is "the RPG where you don't need to kill anything", or how Persona 5 is "so stylish". Also, there's the classic JRPGs of old, such as the older Final Fantasy games, or these more military grid based kind of games like Fire Emblem.

I just don't "get" any of it. I've never beaten a game featuring turn-based combat from start to finish. Yes, that includes Pokemon games. I don't know what it is specifically. I've beaten games of basically every other genre, but when I start any turn-based game because of some friend recommendation or good reviews, I try it, am genuinely invested for a couple hours, then my interest in the game just dies all of a sudden. I don't think it's any one issue really, probably a lot of different things.

Anyone else never really got into these kinds of games? Or do you have some other game genre that everyone else swears by that you just don't care for?

I don’t know why, but I just can’t get good at Chess. I’ve played for a couple of years and my elo fluctuates drastically. I’ve been as high as 900 and as low as 750 playing rapid in the last two weeks on chess.com. I would just like to break 1000 for now, or heck, even just get into the mid 900’s.

Does anyone have any resources or tips for how to get better at this game? I’ve watched videos online, I’ve been doing the lessons and whatnot that are offered through chess.com as well. I’m just so incredibly frustrated and I’m tired of losing all the time.

A continuation of last week's thread. So, got any recommendations for good multiplayer games, and what do you like about them if so? Looking to get a multiplayer game going here?

A few of the open options from last week:
There's a survival Minecraft server
There's a game nights Discord server
There's a Guild Wars 2 guild for North American server players, contact me for an invite with your account name.
There's a Splatoon 3 pool
(Note that these are run by Tildes users rather than being officially Tildes.)

There have been a lot of complaints from DMs over the years about Critical Role and the "Matt Mercer Effect" causing new players to have unrealistic expectations of tabletop RPGs. Baldur's Gate 3 has the opportunity to introduce many new players to the d20 system/5e DnD specifically. Though it's a bit different in that the game is obviously scripted and you can't do literally anything, the game provides a ton of options and fleshed out paths, including full support of niche spells like speak with animals/speak with dead. Do you think this might have a similar influence on expectations from some new players moving forward or do you think since BG3 is a video game it will have less of an impact than CR and other tabletop shows have?

It’s happened a few times for me but my most recent example was Tear of the Kingdom. I had played Breathe of the Wild and enjoyed the early game immensely but I had found that the more inventory I had the less fun I was having. Having a literal arsenal of very powerful weapons all ready to go did feel earned by the late game but it took away from the fun of beating an enemy with its own stick aspect. So for TotK I played as far into the game as possible without expanding my inventory and found the game so much more enjoyable (fusing is a big part of that I acknowledge).
I’m aware of Ironman runs I’m looking for something a bit more complex. Nuzlocke rules revitalized the Pokémon series for me a while back and I’m always on the look out for more self imposed rules in games.
Has anyone else accidentally walked into a different version of a game that they found more interesting.

I've recently gotten into the board gaming hobby and picked up a few solo games for when I want to play but don't have anyone to play with. I was wondering what everyone's favorite solo board games were, fully solo, solo modes, or 3rd party solo rules.

So far my favorites have been the two lcgs I picked up, Marvel Champions and Lord of the Rings the card game. They both have similar gameplay but are different enough to keep things interesting. I really enjoy the deckbuilding aspect too, though I'm new to it so theres lots of trial and error involved.

I've also played a bit of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, a pandemic spinoff, which seems like it could be fun once I get into it more.

Does anyone have recommendations for a good Stellaris tutorial that is in the intermediate realm? I understand the basics and UI, but with so many changes, I feel like I need some encouragement with properly managing an economy, review into fighting mechanics, etc. I searched YouTube before posting and just found several tutorials that talk about the basic components and the UI - which I understand. Looking into more strategy and intermediate-level mechanics.

I've been participating in my first DnD sessions with a friend, and I'm greatly enjoying it. I've asked permission to DM a single session to get my feet wet, and one place I've always loved (since Planescape Torment) is Sigil. I'd love to have my party wind up there as they sleep, then have them try to learn how to get back home.

I thought it might be fun to have a heist of sorts where they need to get into a brewery to steal some items. I'd like to have some creatures working there that they could fight (if thievery goes wrong), but also some bigger creatures they might be able to avoid in the narrow hallways.

What might be some good options? I've looked at goblins with an ogre moving barrels around, or perhaps some Kua-Toa creatures.

Happy Baldur's Gate 3 Day! Just wanted to open up this thread to see what everyone will be rolling as. I haven't played any of early access, so maybe be careful on the spoilers.

I'll be playing as a stereotypical criminal human rogue, mostly because I like sneaking around and dual wielding, who is aligned maybe lawful evil (planning, scheming to get what he wants) but I want to eventually bring back to good because he realizes how much his previous life has hurt other people.

I'm interested to see what you all will be playing, and what you're most excited about!

I started learning how to play Go a month or two ago, and I've been absolutely loving it! It's amazing to me how such a simple set of rules can give way to so much strategy and depth. Between the various ways to play online like OGS, GoQuest, and BadukPop I've had no trouble finding matches, but finding active discussion about the game online can be hard sometimes because of the relatively small playerbase (at least in the west).

Because of the reddit blackouts I've been avoiding spending much time on r/baduk (although it is still up), so I'm curious to see if there's many other players of the game on Tildes!

Some topics to hopefully spur a little more potential discussion:

What do you think would need to happen for Go to grow in popularity again? Chess has been seeing a huge resurgence in recent years, what would it take for Go to go through a similar renaissance?

If you've never tried Go, or you tried it and didn't want to continue, why not? For me, Go was something that had always kind of been on my periphery, but I never really realized how deep of a game it was until I took some time to learn how it worked. Are people intimidated by it? Just not aware that it exists?

If there's any longtime players of the game out there, what resources would you recommend to someone getting started, or at an intermediate level? I've been reading some of the books available in the SmartGo One app, as well as doing Tsumego, but I'm always on the search for more ways to learn and improve!

I've been playing through Remnant 2 and having a great time with it. I think they've hit on a great mix of combat and challenge. Plus I was pleasantly surprised to find that the writing, especially for the lore, was quite engaging (the intro doesn't set a high bar tbh). Still in progress for the game, so no spoilers please, but what do you think?

I’m slowly getting into warhammer 40k but feel pretty disconnected from the broader 40K universe.

Are there any active communities where people discuss 40K? Discussion about new models, balancing, rule changes, painting show cases, etc.

Right now I’m just painting alone listening to PoorHammer on YouTube 😅.

I know that a lot of people can only get into gaming as adults, and I have no idea how they do it. I grew up playing all sorts of games, so I'll try/enjoy anything from Harvest Moon to Baldur's Gate 3. But something that's been frustrating for a while is whenever I can't "get" something. An individual game is tolerable; I couldn't get into Stardew Valley the way I could Rune Factory, but oh well.

But shooters and (grand) strategy games feel incomprehensible to me. I enjoy Deep Rock despite being not any good at it, but it's my sole exception and probably because of the focus on PvE. Anything focused on PvP in general feels really unapproachable since I'll probably spend forever staring at a respawn or loss screen (I was just lucky growing up with SSB). I enjoy throwing myself at Dark Souls bosses way too early until I've finally gotten good, but in a team-based game I'd hate to force others into dealing with that. Strategy games are also kind of mind-boggling, but I also have trouble getting in the "conqueror" mindset that they seem to all require.

My friends really like those two kinds of games, so I'd really like to at minimum not zone out whenever they start talking to each other about them. Best case scenario, I could even try some of them myself.

I've been doing some high-ish quality wooden jigsaw puzzles, and I'm a bit worried about them getting damaged, so I'm using a puzzle mat. And...I hate it, so much. It's crazy hard to move completed sections around if you need to rearrange, which is often an issue since i always solve without looking at the image. This is the primary irritation, but it's significant, and there's also some secondary irritations like the board is just kinda annoying to deal with and it's itchy lol.

So, to people who do jigsaw puzzles, how do you protect your pieces? Do you use a puzzle mat? Something else? Just do it on a hard surface and all is fine?

(also meta-note: this is my first topic post here so I hope I've done this correctly, tell me if I haven't!)

I think the population of the site has likely grown to the point where we could get some multiplayer gaming going. While I don't currently have anything in mind, I figure there will come a time when I do so I thought I'd try to get things rolling.

So, what multiplayer games would you like to try but lack the people for? What is your general availability for playing? Is there anything else people need to be aware of? Interest permitting, a recurring thread may be appropriate, though the exact interval would depend on the level of interest.

Hey there! I posted this on r/magictcg a while back, but I've seen and received many new ideas for cards and I'd love to see if you have any new ones.

I had my Japanese copy of Sliver Queen in my wallet for years because my friend found it for $2 in a bargain bin, and I thought I could just buy another - not knowing it was Reserve List. Whoops. So I decided to build an Illegal Slivers EDH deck where every card is somehow not quite legitimate, with a few restrictions - no power 9, no OG duals, and if I can help it try to make as much variety between restrictions as possible, all while trying to keep it as a legitimate deck that aims to use Queen as the wincon. But I'm only about a quarter of the way there. Here's what's up:

• Cards from other games with the same or similar names are used; Swamp from Wyvern, Island from Dominion, Ancient Tomb from Pokemon, Xiahou Dun the One-eyed from Wixoss, Karoo from One Piece, Duel Masters copy of Muscle Sliver...

• I'm using relevant illegal MtG prints - World Championship decks, Mystery Booster playtests, an art copy of the Unearth Sliver I keep forgetting the name of, silver borders / acorns, etc. Also Clickslither (from Legions!) instead of Quick Sliver (from Legions!).

• I was looking for a Wheel of Fortune tarot card before I found that lööps sticker and decided to go with that.

• My favorite is that someone originally stole the shipment of Crystalline Sliver promos before they were going to give them out... So if you had a copy of it at one point, it was literally-illegal stolen goods. Eventually they retrieved them and distributed them.

I've got other ideas, and I'm trying to break each rule. Looking for:

• The best single thing from the ban list

• Lutri as companion, or one card used twice

• One ante card

• Planechase and Conspiracy

• The card Unquenchable Fury, to be confused with Unquenchable Fury

• A 30th Anniversary card

• Some oversize cards as regular-size proxies

• An AI generated Sliver as a proxy

• Some configuration of Unfinity Stickers to make a new Sliver card of my own

• A World's Smallest for something like a Night's Whisper

• An Armageddon trading card for Armageddon, a Hearthstone from WoW TCG, a Force of Will from L5R TCG, a whole bevy of cards from LotR card game... I still also need Sliv-Mizzet.

And once this is all done... Find 100 different card sleeves to wrap these in. I'd also love - LOVE - to get the Queen graded and still use it as my Commander.

So, Tildes - how else can I make this deck even worse? Thanks!

Roguelikes have a special place in my heart. When you know that your character is mortal, the stakes feel so much more real, and your progress feel so much more earned. You can’t second-guess the level design, because random, and sometimes things are simply not unfair, like when you get transformed into a cute mushroom, while your otherwise generic foe get transformed into a god. I consider unfairness, uncertaincy and chaos to be core gameplay components.

Here’s some roguelikes I liked, in no particular order:

Inscryption
Sort of like Slay the Spire with retro aestetics combined with the gritty feel of the SAW franchise. The most atmospheric and foreboding deckbuilder I've ever played. It is sort of a meta-game where you play a retro computer game in which you play a tabletop roleplaying game with a deranged dungeonmaster.

Noita
Looks like a rather generic pixelart side-view dungeoncrawl, but beneath the humble surface lurks Finnish folklore, a revolutionary physics engine and an insanely versatile magic system, likely the best in any game. The game is vast, both in sense of game world but also the numbers of monsters, spells, perks and secrets. I consider this the best roguelike, full stop.

Don't Starve
Craft to survive in an unforgiving wilderness, battling wildlife, hunger cold and insanity. Having to constantly collect resources makes this game a bit on the grindy side, but the hand-drawn artwork and a rich world to explore and unlock makes this stay fresh.

Jupiter Hell
This, the successor to DRL (Doom Roguelike), is the only classic roguelike I could ever get into. The top-notch visuals makes me literally forget that I'm playing a grid-based turn-based rogue-clone. Still, the game is rather lacking in variation, and there's no lore or story choices. While I think this is by design, the DOOM roots and whatnot, I'm missing the sense of exploration and wonder found in other roguelikes. But even with that, the game is cool and ever so dark, and there's quite a lot of depth despite the simple controls.

FTL
Simplistic and neat pixelart space exploration game. The meat of the game is space combat in real time with pause, between which you plan your route on a node-based overworld and make various choices. The game, while cozy, is quite intense. You're trying to escape a vastly superior fleet while fighting off incoming attacks and trying to not run out of fuel while hopefully improving your ship to survive as the stakes rises. Every choice you make feels like a life or death decision. The fights offers a lot of different tactics. There's various ships to unlock by completing various missions. The one downside is that you have seen all the different encounters way before you have everything unlocked, but the mod FTL Multiverse adds a lot of new content.

Into the Breach
Simple tactical turnbased on 8x8 fields, by the folks behind FTL. The main gimmick is that you can see how the enemies are going to attack in their turn, and try to counter it. This works surprisingly well and offers a lot of depth.

Depth of Extinction
Underwater turnbased tactical. The game feels like watching a cheap action movie from the eighties. Sometimes the missions can feel a bit samey, and the underwater setting could be more in forefront but this doesn't stop the game from being quite a lot of fun. I'm hardly an expert here, but I've heard people who prides themselves of their expertice at turn-based tactical gaming giving this one a lot of praise.

Retromancer
Arena-shooter with a very stylish retro aestetics which doesn't confuse you in the fast-paced chaos. This, combined with a RPG fantasy theme really make this stand out from the other twin-stick offerings. This is a game I consider a spiritual successor to the original twin stick shooter, Robotron 2084. Of course, you need to play the Hunter, the other characters doesn't have the Robotron-trademark mashine gun fire. There's a dash function which is quite handy when you're about to be cornered. There is not really any character building, although by scoring enough points you can unlock various pickups. I guess it is designed for local multiplayer (there's four characters to choose from) but I haven't tried this. Plays excellent with controller.

The Wrath's Den
This is basically Dungeonkeeper, but simplified into a turnbased pixelart game with keyboard controls. You use space to switch between minions, arrow keys to move them, X to do various actions. Besides the random room choices, everything follow simple strict mechanics, which sometimes requires a bit of observation to grasp. The one major downside is that you cannot save your game. Much suck! But other than that, this humble little game is quite easy to fall in love with.

I love keeping up with industry announcements and new trailers, but a lot of game news websites are too full of fluff. Is there a good videogame news aggregator or a journalism site that you like? I used to like IGN and Kotaku but I find their content more useless than not.

What have you all been playing this week?

My Saturday night games got cancelled by an impromptu family gathering, so I didn't play anything other than a couple of Unlock games with my daughter. We played the first two of Escape Adventures called The Formula and Squeek & Sausage. Definitely preferred S&S out of these two and a couple of the puzzles fitted the comic book styling very well.

Share your gaming sessions!

For Honor is having a free week(end on August 3rd) and have also released a new hero, the Ocelotl.

The Ocelotl comes equipped with a Macuahuitl club and Tepoztopilli spear, using these to have infinite chained attacks, and a few bash attacks. He is a hybrid, described as a ganker and disabled. His feats makes it so at tier 1 when he dies, he can move in spirit form and respawn wherever after 10 seconds, but with very little health. The longer you wait to respawn, the more health you have. The tier 2 is a complement to this, so the enemy that killed you is marked, and tier 3 increases attack speed and damage done, after you kill someone. Tier 4 is a spear attack, which drags an enemy towards you and inflict bleed.

I have tried the new hero out and overall, finds him relatively balanced. While his feats adds a new form of stress, his actual moveset is okay. It isn't stupidly OP, nor is it weak. It's pretty smackdabb in the middle, imo. Also, his feats are an inderect buff to heavy heroes, as boosting a zone is important, so the Ocelotl doesn't respawn in you back zones. This makes it so heavies can more easily build up renown (they gain extra renown from boosting), while also adding surprise attacks. All in all, I like playing against the Ocelotl (as I main Warlord, and like boosting) and I also like playing a Ocelotl.

I've been playing a ton of the Star Wars deckbuilder lately and love how the game flows. Want a short game? Play to 3 planets. Longer so you can get a better theme going? Play to 5. I like that it bucks the points to win trend by putting people head to head in combat and that you can attack a lot of things, even the market. Plus it feels thematic.

It seems that this thread has sparked a lot of interest from the gamers of Tildes, but the forum just isn't a great place to actually get things going. To remedy this, I've created the Tildes Game Nights discord server where people who like the format of Discord can get together and play games :). I hope to foster the same sort of civility we have here, so the rules are pretty much identical to Tildes' (with a bunch of the rules being taken directly from the code of conduct). I already have some channels set up for the games that got a lot of votes in the linked thread, but I can add more if there's popular demand.

Here is the invite link :)

This is a calling for all my fellow TESV modders; hello! How are you? What mods are you running? Know of any hidden gems? When will I be satisfied with my modlist and actually play the game? Any and all modding conversations are welcome here, because I don’t want to fill ~games with identical topics lmao.

A different conversation caused me to remember how much fun it was while playing Shadow of Mordor, to shoot nests of Morgai Flies dropping them onto the residents of ork fortresses.

Disclaimer, Shadow of Mordor is far from being the best video game I have ever played, but that action in particular was very fun to do and funny to watch.

Curious to hear what the people of tildes think.

As we close in on 3 years of use with these newer consoles, what are every one’s thoughts? Has “next gen” been what you thought it’d really be or are you kinda just feeling whelmed?

I have a PS5 and I use it every now and then for pretty much the first party games. PC is my main platform but as I think back, I’ve been pretty happy with my PS5 and the games to come so far. I also really enjoy the UI (although custom backgrounds would be great).

I don’t know how the Xbox side is so I’d love to hear your thoughts to!

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Pretty much the title. We all play all sorts of games, and they generally are all good games. However, every once in a while you start a game that just hits the right notes and you hate putting your controller or device down, and you can't stop thinking about things you want to do when you get back in front of that game. I figure we could post up our current addicting games so others can search them out as well :)

My current addiction is Frostpunk. Got it on a whim from the Steam Summer sale, and my Lord am I addicted. It's a really good (to me) post civilization survival game where you try to establish and rebuild life with a new world around you. Surprisingly challenging and the scenarios are very fun. I bought it 2 weeks ago and have 63 hours into it.

Sorry Boardtiddleums, little late with the weekly thread!

Saturday I got in a couple of games of Bus!, securing a comfortable victory in the first and an even more comfortable defeat in the second. Every time I play Bus! I love it it that little bit more: central map with interesting decisions, worker placement where you choose how fast you burn through your workers, ability to lose a victory point to screw everyone else over...what's not to like?

After that we played Stockpile, which is always fun. We were a bit rusty on the rules so didn't play with any expansion material.

Finished up with a game of Cat in the Box, which a fantastic little spin on trick taking games. The deluxe edition that you can currently get is so overproduced, but in the nicest possible way.

So what have you all been busy playing this week?

I played the original PS3 version of the Last of Us, but I have never tried Factions. Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of good things about it, but at this point, I’m going to wait to try out the new multiplayer when it releases.

I’ve seen a few details floating around online: it’ll be set in San Francisco, have a new cast of characters, and have it’s own story.

I want to know, what kind of mechanics and story elements do you want to see make it into the multiplayer? If you played Factions, are there any stand out features that you want to see return? Do you care if it’s live service? Do you want it to have “seasons” that build on the story over time?

I thought it'd be fun to have our own recommendation list before the final results are announced.

Here's the link to the theme announcement video (the theme is "Role Reversed") and link to the itch.io page where you can find all the entries. The default sort is 'random' but you can also change to other Sort if you just want to quickly check out some more notable examples. Also select 'Play in browser' in 'Platform' if you're worried about having to download files.

If you participated in the jam, let us know too!

Edit: since the mountain of entries is enormous, I'm thinking a way to narrow the scope and reduce choice paralysis is this: try out 3 entries that caught your interest for whatever reason, and tell us which one among them you like most (you can recommend all of them, or try out more if you're up for it). Feel free to be as loose or selective in your recommendation as you want.

The System Shock remake thread got me thinking about it. I've played the crap out of the Dishonored series, and Prey, along with some Deathloop, and I really enjoy all of them. It's crazy how much fun it can be to just really get into it, I drop the lights and everything, sit 8 inches from my 4k monitor (ghetto VR basically), and just 'enter' the game. This is especially fun when a little THC is involved!

Any games I may have overlooked? I do prefer the First Person type games, the visuals are part of the immersion for me personally.

Three devs just made one of the best selling games this year. A throwback to when games were more about actual gameplay than story or graphics. I think it's pretty cool.

What do you think so far? What are your favorite classes/loadouts? Any sneaky/funny shenanigans you feel like sharing?

Did you know the PP19 quick mag is horribly bugged and so the gun has the lowest recoil in the game? It isn't the best weapon, but it is pretty much a laser.

First, forgive me for I am a first time DOSbox user. My O/S is Windows 10 home 64-bit

I went to old games and grabbed Doom & Doom II. I use to play these quite a bit and remember them fondly. I did the easy setup which added DOSbox 0.74 and the game. It loads up and runs just like I remember with the keyboard, just no mouse.

I did searching online, but the only solutions seem to be making sure autolock=true in the config file, and using cntl-F10 to capture the mouse. Toggling cntl-F10 does seem to grab the mouse in that the cursor disappears, but the mouse still will not function in either full screen or windowed mode.

I seem to be missing something obvious, but for the life of me I just don't see it. I'm reasonably computer savvy, but feeling stupid at the moment.

Any advice would be appreciated. TIA

Edit: Forked over the 5 bucks and went with the Steam version. Works perfectly.
Thank you everyone for your advice.

Welcome back to the third weekly game jam thread.

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 weeks 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.

Longtime viewers AKA the 5 people to who looked at the 2 previous threads will have no doubt noticed I missed last week. During an unusually normie weekend I was busy awkwardly standing in a corner at not 1 but 2 different parties and was super tired when I got back I did not want to write this up. I hope you can forgive me. To ensure that this does not happen again I am moving this thread to Sundays which should give me more time flexibility and something to look forward to instead of sitting around dreading the upcoming work week.

Also as a bit of compensation for your troubles today I am linking 2 top quality longer games that you can really sink your teeth into this week. I am 100% cool with someone discussing games from any week in future threads so don’t sweat the time commitment and don’t feel you have to finish the whole game before returning to discuss it. Quality video games shouldn’t have an expiration date.

With that said lets get into the this weeks games

Infinimall: Dream Job!

Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android
Authors: Pandora
Genres: Visual Novel

Coming to you with love from the the folks in the the proverbial vaporwave-dreamworld-liminal-mall-urbex complex, Infinimall: Dream Job! Is a dating sim visual novel set inside a surreal mall and originally written for the NaNoRenNo 2023 Jam. Featuring the Doomer Girl like bisexual disaster Mia(I wonder if its the same Mia as Heart Beat) as she navigates a dead end job and tries to get her dead end life back on track.

According to my calculations the game has about 100 book pages worth of dialogue over all its branches which should be a breeze for the text-only titans that walk the halls of this site.

Hypnagogia

Platforms Windows
Authors: sodaraptor
Genres: Adventure

Our second game is also taking us to the dreamworld but this time its inspired by late 90s PSX aesthetics, in particular, the cult classic game LSD: Dream Emulator which is fitting given it comes from LSD Jam 2020. It centers on a gameplay loop of exploring diverse dream worlds inspired by dreams from the developers own dream diary. I think the game is best thought as a sort of drug trip or spiritual experience in the same way as something like Superliminal. Go in with an open mind and I think most people can get something from the experience. This goes double for the games sequel Hypnagogia 無限の夢 Boundless Dreams which is available without DRM on itch.io or with DRM on Steam if you are into that sort of thing.

However long it takes after you awaken from your strange dream let me know what you are thinking. Its okay I won’t die if you don’t like the same games I do though I will be sad. Its lonely walking the path of niche games but you can’t make friends if you never share.

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