Damn, very sad to hear WotR was a disappointment for you. I also had similarly mixed feelings about Kingmaker, but I was looking forward to WotR as everyone was saying it’s so much better.

Could also be a case of Michał Kiciński truly believing in the mission statement of GOG and wanting to free the organisation of any shareholders to be beholden to so that GOG can operate at near-breakeven if need be instead of having to maximise profits to please shareholders.

This is of course giving him a massive benefit of the doubt, but I guess I still have a sliver of hope for humanity somewhere in my rotten applecore of a heart.

It has some really strong moments and a very powerful ending that means it leaves a very strong lasting impression in a lot of people. Also the music really carries it. I still think it’s a good game, but I was definitely a victim of this too and have found that my esteem of it has fallen a little bit as the “dust has settled” so to speak.

It’s still a great game, and I’d recommend people playing it but I don’t think I’d rank it as highly on my all-time list now as I would have when I sat and watched the credits roll the first time.

That’s sick too! Very nice build!

That’s very pretty! I love unconventional pc case builds like this.

The game was made by communists, and they do make fun of themselves and other communists a lot and try to be even handed with the satire. That being said, if you’ve completed all four political vision quests you do notice how pro-communist the authors are. I always recommend people do the communist path on their first playthrough, because it is the political quest that injects a necessary piece of hope into the game. It feels almost like the “canon” choice considering how well it balances out certain other elements of the story.

Mbin is just kinda weird. I guess there aren’t too many people who are after a Reddit-like that also care too much about microblogging. Or maybe they do but the microblogging part of Mbin is just an inferior experience to Bluesky or Mastodon anyway? Or maybe people just dislike having to call shitposts in meme communities “articles” in “magazines”?

Ooh not bad! I had that one on my wishlist and was considering grabbing it on the Steam sale.

People didn’t call Dave the Diver an indie game. The Game Awards nominated it in that category, and rightly got a lot of shit for it.

Indie is a fraught and vague term in whatever genre of culture it gets applied to. During the early 00s indie music era you had tons of mass produced “indie rock” pushed out by big labels too.

Everyone kind of knows what it’s supposed to mean: small budget, small crew, independent of the major commercial publishers/labels/whatever. But there will always be edge cases in both directions.

I agree with your take. The definition of what an “indie” is is very vague and subjective, but given the budget and resources and circumstances of E33’s development it seems outside the scope of what seems to be the “spirit of the award”.

Blue Prince should have gotten the award to begin with.

Is Seance of Blake Manor the first Blue Prince-like? I’m very hyped about it too but I’m still waiting for more than -25% off. Let me know how you like it, Blue Prince was my GOTY so another game to scratch that itch is enticing.

No idea, but probably? Might have to do some wine fuckery but on the surface it doesn’t look like the sort of thing that should be impossible on Linux.

Got it for free too on Epic and was super surprised by it. Solid game indeed.

My plan to work on my backlog this fall has utterly failed. Instead I’ve not been playing any games at all for the past month and a half, instead just working on a mod for STALKER Anomaly. Consequently I know in my heart of hearts that the right thing to do is not spend any money this sale. However, I am still looking at:

Tails of Iron (-92%)

The Banner Saga (-85%)

Bloodstained: Ritual of Night (-75%)

Virgo Versus The Zodiac (-75%)

Road 96 (-75%)

HYPER DEMON (-75%)

INMOST (-70%)

Trepang2 (-66% - if it was any lower I would just snap it)

I played Mandragora this summer. Liked it quite a bit. It’s not going to change your whole world but it’s a solid Soulslike Metroidvania. Compared to other entries in the genre it’s extremely light on platforming (which for me was a plus), so keep that in mind if you play these kind of games for the precision platforming. The platforming is there as part of the level design and traversal, but don’t expect to be challenged with long sequences of difficult platforming if that’s what you’re after.

Otherwise it’s a lot of fun, the PoE-inspired skill tree is great and lets you do some fun multiclassing by moving over to adjacent skill trees to find combos and synergies. Some of the spellcasting classes can be pretty broken though, so keep that in mind if you don’t want to make the game a cakewalk. Chaos magic in particular was pretty busted, at least when I played.

Exploration is good, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a Metroidvania: new stuff opens up in old areas when you unlock new traversal abilities. Also the game is very pretty to look at.

Point me to the point in the code where this fact has come up. References to specific lines would be ideal.

No, I really don’t. That’s why after forcing myself through doing one task I’m immediately tempted to switch to some activity that does give gratification.

2 is significantly better imo mechanically, and if you throw a handful of mods on top of that I think it just plays really well in general.

Apart from the beginning. I love FO2, but fuck the temple of trials and the first couple of hours.

Allow me to introduce: Fallout-1-in-2