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13 votes
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Review: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the best Star Wars game since Knights of the Old Republic
6 votes -
Stellaris: Galactic Paragons expansion will give council leaders tons more personality on May 9th
7 votes -
Magic publishers sent Pinkerton agents to a YouTuber’s house to retrieve leaked cards
22 votes -
What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
8 votes -
World Chess Championship game 8: More drama, Ding Liren misses big chance
3 votes -
XKCD 2765: Escape Speed
14 votes -
What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
10 votes -
The Gostok (interactive fiction)
5 votes -
Steam Eastern Games Fest
5 votes -
Kenyan player expelled after pretending to be a woman to win lucrative prize
7 votes -
World Chess Championship 2023 thread - Ian Nepomniachtchi vs Ding Liren
Anyone else following the world chess championship? Background info (feel free to skip if you're already familiar with this): After reigning champion and world #1 Magnus Carlsen declined to defend...
Anyone else following the world chess championship?
Background info (feel free to skip if you're already familiar with this):
After reigning champion and world #1 Magnus Carlsen declined to defend his title, the winner of the Candidates tournament 2022, Russia's Ian Nepomniachtchi (world #2), faces the second place finisher in the Candidates, China's Ding Liren (world #3). The championship match takes place over 14 games from April 9-April 30 in Astana, Kazakhstan. As of today, April 13, the score is even at 2-2 after 4 games.
Ian Nepomniachtchi (aka "Nepo") won the Candidates tournament in 2020-21, which was split in two due to covid. He proceeded to challenge Magnus Carlsen for the title in late 2021. Both players performed with computer-like precision for the first five games. Game six became the turning point, when Nepo made a serious blunder which allowed Carlsen to eventually convert the game to a win in what would turn out to be the longest game in world championship history, lasting more than 7 hours and 136 moves. After this grueling loss, Nepo's play seemingly collapsed, allowing Carlsen to take a comfortable win with games to spare.
However, Nepomniachtchi would bounce back to win his second Candidates tournament in a row in 2022. When it became clear that Carlsen would not defend his title, the runner-up of that tournament, Ding Liren, became the second player to compete for the title.
Ding has been a top 5 player for years, with 2018-2019 being his best period yet, when he reached world #2 with well over 2800 Elo, and was undefeated for 100 games of classical chess. This is his first appearance in a world championship final, and also a first for China as a nation.
Russia, of course, has a long history of world champions, dominating the chess world for most of the 20th century. Nepomniachtchi, who is a critic of the invasion of Ukraine, competes under a neutral FIDE flag in this match.
This is only the third time the reigning champion has not defended his title since the first world championship in 1886. Bobby Fischer famously disagreed with the match regulations proposed by FIDE, chess' international governing body, and refused to defend his title in 1975. He subsequently retired from competitive chess and didn't re-emerge until the 1990s. The other instance was Alekhine in 1948 -- he had died two years earlier. (There was also a time in the 1990s when the reigning champion, Garry Kasparov, broke with FIDE and organized his own world championship, but I won't get into that complicated story here.) This is the first time a world champion has continued to play competitive chess while refusing to defend their title.
Nepomniachtchi comes into the match ranked as the world #2 (2795 Elo) while Ding is #3 (2788). The abdicated king of chess, Magnus Carlsen, remains #1 (2853).
How to watch
If you want to watch live, the time zone is a bit unfavorable to European and American viewers, as the games start at 3PM Astana time (11 AM Central European summer time, 2 AM Pacific). You can follow the games without commentary here: lichess chess24 chess.com. There's several streams with grandmaster commentary available. FIDE has an official broadcast, but my favorite is chess.com's coverage, which features commentary by GMs Anish Giri, Daniel Naroditsky and David Howell.
For live computer analysis that's stronger than what you can (likely) get from running a local instance of Stockfish on your own computer, check out Sesse (which is just Stockfish running on a decently beefy server setup).
If you want shorter after-the-fact recaps, there are several Youtube channels catering to differing levels of chess skill, including:
- Powerplaychess (GM Daniel King)
- FIDE (GM Daniil Dubov)
- Gothamchess (IM Levy Rozman)
- Agadmator
- Chessnetwork
And probably at least a half-dozen more.
Who's your favorite to win it all? Does the fact that the clearly best player in the world refused to compete make the whole thing uninteresting to you? Will Nepo crumble again like he did against Carlsen, or will Ding's inexperience with world championship matches be his undoing?
6 votes -
WW1 horror Amnesia: The Bunker delayed again, but only by a week – now due to release for PC on 23rd May
5 votes -
What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
6 votes -
We asked the Olympics why their official esports are so weird
19 votes -
Blinks are useful in VR, but triggering blinks is tricky
11 votes -
Microsoft crackdown disables emulators downloaded to Xbox consoles
7 votes -
Amnesia: The Bunker feels like a new beginning for the series
1 vote -
The games I wish I never replayed
9 votes -
freeciv21 (a civilization like strategy game and a fork of freeciv migrated to C++) releases first stable release 3.0
10 votes -
What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
7 votes -
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (A open source survival RPG) is now on steam with the money from the sales going to fund one of the developers
7 votes -
Turning ChatGPT into a DM?
14 votes -
Re-creating Street Fighter’s long-lost pneumatic controls
7 votes -
E3 has been canceled
23 votes -
Dungeons & Dragons DLC is coming to Minecraft – players will be able to explore the Forgotten Realms as classic D&D character classes and battle monsters
5 votes -
Where should WoW Classic go next – an open letter
4 votes -
What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
9 votes -
Warhammer 40k: 10th edition | Cinematic trailer
3 votes -
Why game archivists are dreading this month’s 3DS/Wii U eShop shutdown
10 votes -
Why I haven't played Hades
9 votes -
How two people spent twenty years creating gaming’s most complex simulation system
5 votes -
Spatial Ops | Room-scale gameplay demo
3 votes -
What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
13 votes -
Big Ambitions | Early Access cinematic trailer
3 votes -
Amnesia: The Bunker | Story trailer
5 votes -
The top 100 games played on the Steam Deck
7 votes -
Tildes Pop-Up Game Event: Demo Disc Days
Pop-Up Event: Demo Disc Days Today we are going to take a trip back to the 90s, when the best way to try out new games was to use a now-antiquated piece of magical circular plastic that you might...
Pop-Up Event: Demo Disc Days
Today we are going to take a trip back to the 90s, when the best way to try out new games was to use a now-antiquated piece of magical circular plastic that you might have gotten along with your subscription to something like PC Gamer, PlayStation Underground, or the Official Sega Dreamcast Magazine.
The demo disc offered gamers a small taste of a variety of different games, letting you try out the beginning levels of lots of different titles in hopes that you'd find ones you like and buy the full games.
One of the most iconic demo discs actually came with the PlayStation console itself, and featured its games laid out in a grid. This is the format we'll be exploring in this pop-up: it's our taste of the 90s, but with the games of today or yesterday or ten years ago.
Community Task: Together, we will create our own modern demo disc by filling in cells in the grid below. To fill in a cell, you must "demo" a game, which consists of:
- playing the beginning of a game,
- that you have never played before,
- for at least 30 minutes.
Choose an unfilled category below, find a game to demo that fits it, and report back here with your thoughts once you've done so! Once you successfully demo a game, it gets put into that slot.
At the end of the pop-up, we will have what may very well be the first demo disc of the 2020s featuring a spread of 42 games across multiple styles and genres!
Arcade RPG Strategy Puzzle Racing Platformer Simulation Casual (casual arcade) (casual rpg) 112 Operator Tricky Towers Tanuki Sunset Lunistice shapez Colorful Chippy (colorful rpg) (colorful strategy) Can of Wormholes You Suck at Parking (colorful platformer) Stacklands Story Rich (story rich arcade) (story rich rpg) (story rich strategy) Strange Horticulture (story rich racing) (Reserved) Lakeburg Legacies Retro Gunlocked (retro rpg) (retro strategy) Zombie Night Terror Vecter (retro platformer) (retro simulation) Dark (dark arcade) (dark rpg) Ring of Pain The Room Three (dark racing) (dark platformer) (dark simulation) Great Soundtrack (great soundtrack arcade) (great soundtrack rpg) (great soundtrack strategy) (great soundtrack puzzle) (great soundtrack racing) (great soundtrack platformer) X4: Foundations
Additional Info: The styles and genres have been taken from among the list of Steam's most popular tags (with a slight preference for things that give a more 90s feel). You can use Steam's search tool or Steam's library filtering to find games that fit two tags simultaneously.
If you don't use Steam, that's fine too! A game doesn't have to be "officially" tagged to fit its category. If you feel the game fits, then go for it -- no matter what platform you're playing it on. PC games are fine; console games are fine; emulated games are fine; web games are fine; phone games are fine. Any and all games are welcome on our demo disc!
Also, the game does not have to be a modern game -- just new to you. If the game is playable today and can be demoed, then it works for our demo disc!
Finally, it is fine to demo more than one game for the event. In fact, please do! We’ve got a lot of slots to fill!
Uh, what is this exactly?
It's a temporary event aimed at getting members of the Tildes community to individually participate in something built around a common theme or goal.
Check out the previous Pop-Ups for other examples:
Ludonostalgia! for ~games
Feelin' 22 for ~music
Twenty-Twenty Vision for ~movies13 votes -
After eight years of DLC, Cities: Skylines' final content release arrives – starting with a first drop next Wednesday, 22nd March
5 votes -
People Make Games get their asses beat in Microsoft Excel eSports
9 votes -
Hyper Light Breaker | Gameplay reveal trailer
9 votes -
How hard is it really to create your own video game?
I kind of want to start this discussion because something I’ve always wanted to do is make a video game, even if it’s just a small indie platformer. I’ve even gone so far as to plan out an entire...
I kind of want to start this discussion because something I’ve always wanted to do is make a video game, even if it’s just a small indie platformer. I’ve even gone so far as to plan out an entire game universe timeline with fleshed out characters and factions, but I have no point of reference on where to start. So, how do you start this process and where are some resources to learn?
19 votes -
What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
9 votes -
The history of Super Mario Bros 3 100% world records
8 votes -
Looking for non-actiony, non-competitive Android games with regular new content
I've been enjoying Legends of Runeterra for the last couple of years. It's a collectible card game with really nice art and voice work. I'm not a very competitive person, but I put up with the...
I've been enjoying Legends of Runeterra for the last couple of years. It's a collectible card game with really nice art and voice work. I'm not a very competitive person, but I put up with the deckbuilding and competitive bits because I enjoyed the gameplay.
About a year ago Riot added a new PvE mode where instead of playing against humans, you play against increasingly difficult AI decks. Every few wins you get your choice of 3 random passive abilities, some of which can dramatically increase the power of your deck for the rest of the run--kind of a roguelike twist on the CCG formula. This has completely spoiled me--I enjoy it far more than LoR's base gameplay. Unfortunately, despite the popularity of the new mode, Riot made the inexplicable decision to give it only token support, focusing instead on PvP.
I've mostly run out of content for the new game mode, and I'm wondering if another game has something that will scratch the same itch. I'm looking for PvE games with deep gameplay and good production values that aren't too fast-paced or actiony. Bonus points if the game gets new content occasionally. Extra bonus points if it has a good story. Any of y'all have a favorite?
11 votes -
Naughty Dog's game design is outdated
6 votes -
The forgotten portable NES
4 votes -
Professor Layton and the New World of Steam | Teaser trailer
3 votes -
Starfield | Launch date trailer: September 6, 2023
14 votes -
Explore a universe of numbers and arithmetic in our new interactive math game, Hyperjumps!
3 votes