pheonixdown
@pheonixdown@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Do you cheat in video games? 16 hours ago:
The point of games is to have fun, “cheats” are essentially just difficulty options.
- Comment on Best vertical games on Android? 2 days ago:
Once Upon a Galaxy has been my default game since I first played it.
It’s an asynchronous alternating activation autobattler (like Arcane Rush, or Storybook Brawl/Hearthstone Battlegrounds but you play against ghosts). Games take about 10-15 minutes.
It’s largely public domain fantasy themed, but has been expanding into the “legally distinct” cultural references as they add content, basically every captain/unit/treasure is a reference.
The shop mechanic is simplified, there’s no currency, you just get a set of choices, and can pick 1. You get two shops per round by default, lots of ways to get extra.
Asynchronous play means that you face challenging opponents that naturally evolve with the meta game but you can also take time to make thoughtful decisions.
The draft pool for the shop has a large base pool that you add to by selecting a custom sebset from a second large pool as your captain’s deck. The progression is through unlocking cards for each captain’s secondary pool, and unlocking new captains. You can naturally earn all cards through play, most captains are free, new captains are paywalled for a limited time.
Monetization is through 3 paths: cosmetics, acceleration of card unlocks, access to paywalled captains. I haven’t found it to be particularly exploitative or negative feeling.
My only gripe is minor, that it doesn’t have mid-run save/resume, but that is on their road map.
There is essentially no story, if that matters to you.
If it’s not obvious, I’m really enthusiastic about this game. I’m not affiliated/sponsored in any way. Happy to answer any questions.
- Comment on Help me decide what I should name my game! Currently Country Architect, it turns out that "country" has a double meaning in English that I was not aware of 2 days ago:
It sounds very infrastructure/trade based than politics, so I’d stay away from nation/country terms. Regional Planning would be a generic term for the infrastructure piece, could use Commerce if trade is important. >
- Comment on For those of you who enjoy open-world games, how big of a world is too big? 3 weeks ago:
An Open World is only too big if it requires loading screens at transition points that aren’t natural. An Open World can have an insufficient density of relevant content, where exploring it has too little marginal utility to the player, and therefore it is ultimately not useful to exist.
- Comment on 5 weeks ago:
Conservatives do not understand subtext, satire, or allegory. They don’t assign what they like or don’t based on any meaningful understanding of the message it conveys. They get told what to like and believe by authority and follow it, constantly dismissing or dissonancing any message from what they consume that doesn’t align with their instilled beliefs.
- Comment on Is Star Trek Discovery that bad? 2 months ago:
I’ll be honest, I can’t remember all my particular criticisms, but here’s my impressions that I have left:
It’d be more accurately titled Star Trek: Burnham, because 95% of the time, every problem or mystery is somehow related to Burnham, everyone else is just supporting cast.
Like Picard, each season felt very disconnected from the others, there’s some continuity, but you could almost name the season based on the feel of an episode.
Plots more often than not felt underwhelming, as they were solved by essentially deus ex machina, mcguffins, surprise reveals or abrupt character changes.
It was largely visually ok, actors all did at least a decent job.
I have 0 desire to ever rewatch a single episode.
- Comment on Magic: The Gathering to Honor 60th Anniversary of Star Trek with Special Tribute Set 2 months ago:
They started a new strategy in the last few years, Universes Beyond, which is MTG sets based on other IPs. They’ve done it for dozens of properties, it is basically just printing money for them, people who don’t play at all try to get them because they’re collectables related to the IP, which causes scarcity, which allows them to justify higher prices while still selling out.
The player base has mixed responses on it, obviously higher prices is unwelcome, and some people don’t like the IP being diluted (“This is my SpongeBob/Spiderman/Space Marine deck”), but some people like those properties and enjoy overlapping their interests. It doesn’t help that a lot of the recent “original” set IPs have been kinda meh.
The funniest thing recently is that they made a whole Marvel set, but failed to get the digital rights (probably something to do with Marvel Snap). So they had to reskin and rename the set and cards to release it in their digital clients.
- Comment on Looking for a game like "99 days in the forest" to play with my kid, but not on roblox 3 months ago:
Not as roguelike, but maybe Don’t Starve Together?
- Comment on Blue Prince - Have you played it? How blown is your mind? 5 months ago:
If you only did a handful of runs, you likely didn’t experience many, if any, of the various ways that persistently impact your run. It is also a game that have layers to it, the draft some rooms first layer ends up giving way to the puzzle second layer as you progress. It does a great job of giving you different ways to look at something that’s old that suddenly makes it relevant again.
Honestly, the devoted community is pretty sure the whole game isn’t even solved yet.