Coelacanth

@Coelacanth@feddit.nu

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What demos have you been playing in the Steam Next Fest?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s taking significantly more effort than usual to sift through the slop, but beneath all the Claude Code vomit there is more or less the usual amount of gems. They’re just even more buried in the sand than usual.

  But interest noted. I might get around to that, I still have some more demos to play though while there is time.

  Also, as an ex Dota player I appreciate your username! Drow was never my hero, though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What demos have you been playing in the Steam Next Fest?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I was planning on making a standalone post with slightly more commentary, and I still might (let me know if there is interest in that), but I could give some short cliff notes here I suppose.

  • Curse of Resthaven - Pentiment meets Euro-style board game, with a time loop setup and Lovecraftian setting. Fully voiced, beautiful hand-drawn art, feature complete, very promising and unique merge of narrative investigation and roguelike trading/city building game.

  • Rain of Lead - Victorian Dieselpunk lesbian love story (or is it?) told as a 2D Katana ZERO-esque slasher/shooter where everything dies in one hit - both the enemies and you. Crisp, razor-sharp controls and super fast cocacine-fuelled combat with satisfying effects and gore that make succesfully clearing a room an absolute dopamine factory.

  • Every Man for Himself and God Against All or, for a shorter name: TimeLeft - You’re a prisoner on death row, playing Blackjack with the warden with seconds of your life as the stake. As the death clock is mercilessly ticking down, you have to try to solve hidden puzzles and explore the prison, each run maybe learning a little more about how to outplay (or cheat?) the warden.

  • Walk-Off 199X - A charming baseball-themed roguelike deckbuilder created entirely from free (fully credited!) Creative Commons and Public Domain assets, instead of GenAI vomit. UI design is great, spinning a wheel to take a pitch is an inspired bit of design, the systems and mechanics work well and are dripping with flavour. The 90s VHS aesthetic is perfect, too.

  • Mind Vessel - Build your own little Rube Goldberg machines in this roguelike creature collector/autobattler. A very flexible body part system allows for great customization for your creatures, and the way combat works (first your left creature goes, then your right, then you multiply their scores) combined with all the effects you can reorder and reorganize within each creature lets you set up fun chain reactions and sequences of combos that really run your score up.

  • Dictatorship Simulator - Armed with a smartphone and a cigarette case you’re undermining democracy one Bullying, Heckling and Blackmail Dossier at a time, looking to eventually become a dictator. The combat has a unique spin where you only damage your enemy indirectly. By attacking nodes such as “Contentment” or “Their Following”, you can eventually start wearing down your opponent through indirect damge. Cards are very flavourful in both name and art and I like the overall presentation. A “No GenAI” sticker on the store page also helps sway me, as does the promise of part of the profits being donated to the Godot and Blender foundations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  People are still in the “gold rush” phase of thinking their AI slop game will make it big and give them their money back, and more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Magic: The Gathering Machine Go BRRR As It Makes $600 Million In Three Months⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I hate it too. This world sucks sometimes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, the personalised Next Fest pages should start today (Wednesday). I pray it will work and actually start filtering out the slopvalanche.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My game Goreticulture is in Steam NextFest!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I appreciate it so much. Wading through the sea of slop this NextFest has been depressing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 821 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, that does sound annoying with the controls. Better sort that out for sure, especially before getting to mission 3, as that is a really great one. I have no idea how it plays on KBM but I feel like controller is much nicer for these types of games.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 819 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Sam is honestly a great character. I’m still so sad we never got a final sendoff game for him with Michael Ironside back after he beat cancer. I really feel like there could have been a cool game there, ending with the death of Sam. Not that I would trust modern Ubi to make it, mind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 819 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Me, it was me who recommended it! I’m so glad you’re enjoying it! Obviously some elements of it will feel slightly dated, but honestly for a 2005 (!) game I think it has aged incredibly well. It even looks quite good considering it’s age (especially if you can crank the rendering resolution a bit).

  CT really is the pinnacle of the series - on top of having perfected the gameplay and level design after the first two games they also also found a really nice tone in the writing, with some fun dialogue between both Sam and the crew as well as during various interrogations (or just Sam dry comments). And they hadn’t yet gone off the rails with more “story heavy” attempts like Double Agent and Conviction.

  Plus the soundtrack absolutely bangs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Capcom aims to enhance its propriety RE Engine with AI to accelerate efficiency in QA, debugging, and data processing⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Source is great as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Capcom aims to enhance its propriety RE Engine with AI to accelerate efficiency in QA, debugging, and data processing⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s Remedy’s engine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Capcom aims to enhance its propriety RE Engine with AI to accelerate efficiency in QA, debugging, and data processing⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Northlight is pretty good, but I guess it’s maybe not as optimised.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 810 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  But the Pokemon I’ve never been a fan of. It just kind of feels like more Gen 1 Pokemon.

  But that’s the best part!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anti-choice activist Seth Gruber calls for women who get abortions to face the death penalty⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Is he on coke or is he just a psychopath. Or both? He’s fucking unnerving as hell to watch and listen to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Meta] What happened to the weekly "What are you playing?" posts?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Looks like @chloyster@beehaw.org sadly isn’t active anymore, and they were the ones usually posting them. I’ve seen one or two be posted since may, but they haven’t been pinned so they don’t get as much traction. Maybe it would be a good thing to contact the remaining active mods about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, I tried to watch some of L.A. By Night and didn’t really love her there, to be honest. Didn’t make me dislike her as a person or anything though, or as a voice actor. I think she’s talented. Just made me stop watching the show.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft patent describes in-game advertising triggered by boss fights, loading screens, and cutscenes⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Indie games are booming lately, if you think you’re witnessing the fall of gaming you’re simply looking in the wrong place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Anbernic RG DS Plus Is The Best DS Handheld Yet⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword is incredible too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Temp Check on Blood of the Dawnwalker?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This one isn’t necessarily unexpected though - it was made by a bunch of ex-CDPR people. From the clips I’ve seen, it’s pretty much The Witcher 3: 2. Seeing as that game is many people’s all time favourite, the success of Dawnwalker doesn’t surprise me at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam API leaks Achievements, Spoilers for Persona 6, Kingdom Hearts 4, Fable 4, and other games⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t worry, they just need another 3-4 spinoffs and tie-in mobile games and the story will make perfect sense!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stealth Games Are Flawed (And Hard To Fix)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  He touches briefly in the video on the fact that horror games do get around some of the challenges of stealth games, seeing as there is still tension in hiding from a monster.

  But honestly, it’s all just a question of immersion, even that. Horror games get much less scary without stakes, and few games implement them well. That’s another good subject for a video essay. The alien in Alien: Isolation becomes much less scary once you realise it’s just a walking reload button. So what if it catches you? You can just try again. Same issue as with most stealth games, only with an added jump scare.

  That’s why I think games like Until Dawn have solved the issue of horror game stakes the best. In a regular horror game, the main character can never die before the game is over. That means failure just leads to reloading. In an ensemble game, your poor performance can get people killed and bad things happen, but the story trudges on. That keeps the tension high.

  Another way is with some sort of permadeath. Darkwood on hard mode with limited lives is fucking scary. Some sort of stakes is needed for the fear to set in, unless your game produces horror from a different angle (existential, cosmic, psychological, visual body horror etc).

  Anyway, I guess I got a bit sidetracked here 😅 I do agree that as far as AI behaviour goes, the alien in Alien: Isolation is an excellent guard!

• Stealth Games Are Flawed (And Hard To Fix)www.youtube.com ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩ | ⁨7⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Top-down Zelda meets Bloodborne": action RPG Withering Realms is out now in early access, should you fancy riding the shoulders of a horrible doll⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They are one of the inspirations for this game. And probably singled out for the title along with Bloodborne to drive clicks. But disregard the clickbait - Withering Rooms was spectacular and from what I’ve heard from beta testers so is this sequel.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Top-down Zelda meets Bloodborne": action RPG Withering Realms is out now in early access, should you fancy riding the shoulders of a horrible doll⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Withering Rooms is one of the best games I’ve played this year. Can’t recommend it enough. Really impressive effort for a solo dev.

• "Top-down Zelda meets Bloodborne": action RPG Withering Realms is out now in early access, should you fancy riding the shoulders of a horrible dollwww.rockpapershotgun.com ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩ | ⁨6⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 779 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  MiniLED works, too, at least with enough dimming zones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 779 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think an SDR monitor is going to give you the same true blacks as an HDR monitor will. But even despite that most games - even today’s HDR-supporting titles - suck at producing good blacks. I quite often find myself installing some HDR fix shaders via ReShade simply to fix the black floor.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s bizarre too because every other voice was excellent, as is the usual case for R*.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I actually agree with you. I was browsing the comments and during the first few minutes I was thinking “ah, they’re exaggerating”, but it really did get worse and worse. Really puts me off as well.

• I Followed the World's Oldest Treasure Map into the Egyptian Desertwww.youtube.com ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨videos@lemmy.world⁩ | ⁨0⁩ ⁨comments⁩