general gaming

[fresh bane]

I never went too far with the game but the artstyle makes me feel good

[gaunt marten]

Minish Cap is charming

[river veldt]

Ezio

no that's the Assassin's Creed guy

uh

what's his name

the hat bird guy

[fresh bane]

Ezero

[slim thorn]

Ezlo is the serious answer

[gaunt marten]

Kazooie

[river veldt]

if Ezlo was put in a shredder would he bleed

why did i ask that

[gaunt marten]

Yeah go to bed

[river veldt]

no before you brand me a psychopath

[fresh bane]

I wasn't kidding
https://zelda.fandom.com/es/wiki/Ezero

[river veldt]

cause he's a hat right ?

[slim thorn]

to skip over a whole lot of metaphysical justification
my answer is no he would not

[river veldt]

he's a hat but he's also a bird so if he was cut would he bleed

oh ok

[gaunt marten]

If he's a hat how come he's a friend?

[river veldt]

hats can be friends

[rancid herald]

he bleeds mercury because he's a shapeshifter from the otherside

[river veldt]

sorry i have no idea why i asked that question

[random steppe]

One Piece flashbacks

[gaunt marten]

No hats are clothes

[rancid herald]

I would wear my friends

[river veldt]

like the Jake Suit in adventure time ?

[slim thorn]

he was turned into a hat by the game's evil sorcerer; that world does not contain a naturally occuring race of suspiciously hat-like organic animals

[rancid herald]

yes

[gaunt marten]

You wear a hat because you want to fend off the sun, cover a bald spot, or deliver a message like "Women like fish, Me fear Me."

[random steppe]

The Gun Dog from one piece is a friend.

Well actually he's an enemy but he is a dog so he is also a friend

[gaunt marten]

I didn't watch one piece. I'm saving it for after I die

[river veldt]

how

[gaunt marten]

I'll let future me figure it out

[random steppe]

I didn't watch One Piece either, I did read it tho, much faster

[slim thorn]

if you haven't started watching One Piece yet, you've already chosen to save at least some of it for after you die

[river veldt]

do you think One Piece will end before i die

[random steppe]

Well I technically did watch the live action one so that was a lie

[gaunt marten]

I think it will end this year

[river veldt]

are you sure ?

[gaunt marten]

If it doesn't, you have my permission to ask me this question again

[river veldt]

what if Mario was in One Piece

[random steppe]

I think it wasn't this year, but the forecast is a couple of years at most

[gaunt marten]

Is he not?

[river veldt]

no

[gaunt marten]

I think Wario is a natural fit for one piece, going by character design

[mossy flume]

I concur

[river veldt]

Wario wants to find the One Piece

[random steppe]

I don't know enough about Wario, but is Mario enough of an anarchist to fit into OP?

[river veldt]

and get rich

[river veldt]

Wario would fit in with pirates i think

idk about Mario

Mario is basically friends with everyone though so

[random steppe]

I exclusively know about the memes about Wario, I have zero idea about his character traits except beign zany

[gaunt marten]

Yeah so he's friends with the enemies of the pirates

Wario is a greedy jerk. That's his personality.

[river veldt]

he's a greedy guy who smells bad

[gaunt marten]

He is also fat and likes farts and garlic

[random steppe]

I mean he'd probably fit in with some of the pirates

OP is actually just about fighting oppressive power structures at heart tho, at least that's the main thing the main characters do in the show.

So in some way Mario would fit in, he does fight the tyrants that took over the Mushroom kingdoms after all.
I don't know about the details of the story, is the reign of Princess Peach just and deserving to govern? Hard to tell having played exactly one game about 25 years ago

I definitely can't assess the geopolitical situation of the Mushroom Kingdom at this time

[slim thorn]

in the Mario games I've played, all the toadstools are quite happy with Peach being in charge, and no one but the koopas wants Bowser to keep showing up and breaking stuff

but there's also no sign of any actual leading or decision-making or other actual politics

even in Odyssey when the Metro Kingdom has a mayor, she's more like a local celebrity than anything else

[random steppe]

It's probably one of those stories that aren't meant to be analysed that way, and that's pretty fair.

[slim thorn]

yep

I expect the RPGs have a bit more going on, but I've long since forgotten everything from that one time I played TTYD

[random steppe]

Kinda like MLP, yet that didn't stop madmen from making the biggest HOI mod in existence, which I respect, fear, and pity in equal measure.

(I'm joking, please don't come after me HOI fans, I also play it I swear)

[slim thorn]

eeeeh, MLP is actually about the stories and character interactions, since it's not a video game, so it has orders of magnitude more lore than the main Marios even if it's not trying to be a Game of Thrones

[random steppe]

Yeah probably to some degrees, that said, the over-analysis of it is often a problem

Well problem maybe is a big word

[fresh bane]

...they're called toadstools?

[random steppe]

Still it's common

[fresh bane]

I thought that was just Peach's other name

[gaunt marten]

She's princess of the toadstools

[slim thorn]

it's worth pointing out that of the main Marios I've played, the most "story" I remember encountering was a completely optional sidequest in Galaxy to hear Rosalina read her backstory to the lumas

https://www.mariowiki.com/Rosalina's_Story

so Gen can skim that in a few minutes

(and it's good for what it is, to be clear)

[random steppe]

You see you made a big mistake

Actually you didn't

You said she was reading it to the lumas, so in my arrogance and naivetè I went to youtube expecing to find the video in which she reads it, so I didn't have to

But I was foiled by the fact that she doesn't actually read it out loud

[slim thorn]

lol

most of the Mario games have little to no voice acting, I assume in part to help with the universal appeal thing

(I played Galaxy in Japanese because why not)

[river veldt]

i played it in Englush

english

[gaunt marten]

Do you know English?

[sour hill]

I also played it in English

[river veldt]

yeah

[gaunt marten]

Oh

[fresh bane]

They do the visual novel/JRPG thing where the character just makes noises when they're supposed to speak

[random steppe]

Yeah it makes perfect sense

[slim thorn]

huh, I'm used to visual novels having either no noise or actual voice acting

but yeah Mario likes vague mumbling voices

[random steppe]

You want the only words spoken to be the occasional italian accented WAHOO, to add to the poetry in motion that is the game.

[dense crypt]

hey, stinky

[gaunt marten]

Ace Attorney

[river veldt]

i think the most voice acting in a mainline Mario game was Jump Up Superstar in Odyssey and i dont even know if that counts

[slim thorn]

true

[gaunt marten]

Ace Attorney is a visual novel that does a scrolling text noise unique to each character

And otherwise little voice acting

[random steppe]

HK does its nonsense language as well, it's a popular low budget solution that in certain games definitely add rather than detract

[slim thorn]

yeah it's great in HK

[random steppe]

It's I assume also very easy to fit in a development cycle

[slim thorn]

somehow the way they do it makes the gibberish memorable

[fresh bane]

it may just be a general japanese videogame thing, I've seen a few games especially PSP ones that have the visual novel-y parts for character dialogues because there's no budget for fully voiced fully animated scenes lol and they always just go for the character sprites and the vague noises

[random steppe]

If you need a new line from a character, you don't have to call back the voice actor, with all that entails

Hope they have a slot to record your shit

They have to go back into a character they might not have voice acted for months or years and barely remember

[slim thorn]

like I bet half of you know who says "patomas geo" and "velmi arched" without looking anything up

[river veldt]

the new Mario and Luigi voice actor was announced

it was uh

[slim thorn]

maybe it became a normal thing after I fell off VNs, or in the video games that have VN-style cutscenes

[river veldt]

Kevin Alghafi ? or something like that

Afghani

Kevin Afghani

[random steppe]

Sly is such a great character

[river veldt]

isn't he a racoon

[slim thorn]

different Sly

though they're both great

[random steppe]

Yeah I was referring from the one fom HK, since it's one of the two characters Ix referenced

[river veldt]

what about the grub dad

[slim thorn]

I think in my vanilla game I never visited Sly's basement because I'd long since cleared out his shop by the time I found the disciples, so I had no idea of his past life until he chopped me into kibble in Godhome

[river veldt]

gibberish /j

[slim thorn]

domah, domah, domadomadoma! is the other one I always remember

he's just so happy to be a boss fight you can't help but enjoy it

[random steppe]

Agreed, the Defender laughs all the way through the fight.

It's always nice to get to him, he's just having a good time.

[slim thorn]

Waterways is my least favorite HK area but only if you pretend his room doesn't count

[random steppe]

I tend to agree, I never thought about my least favourite area but I can't think of one I like less than that one

[slim thorn]

the only other one that jumps to mind is Fog Canyon being a troll by showing up so early but not letting you get a map or conveniently central bench for so long

but actually running around it is as fun as anywhere else

[random steppe]

Yeah true, and it's not especially great to navigate, basically 2 types of enemies that aren't fun to fight and a bunch of traps

But it has the zone with the Dreamer which is pretty cool.
And the sound design is fun, with the underwater sounds

[slim thorn]

Deepnest is probably the only area I actively want to run away from when I'm done, but even that's a compliment at how creepy and claustrophic it is

[random steppe]

Deepnest is great, I hate every second of it

[slim thorn]

yep, just like the final areas of Ender Lilies (though that's an entirely different brand of creepy)

[random steppe]

Fuck that one, I took forever to get past those flying assholes

[slim thorn]

verboten feesh

[random steppe]

For some reason Ender Lilies didn't embed that deeply into my memory,
I remember that zone, flashes of a number of zones, but it's definitely less clear than HK after the first time I played it

[slim thorn]

there's a lot of competition for core memories these days

and as much as I love both games I do think HK has the edge on EL

[fresh bane]

''We are in Dracula's castle''
''huh? So you're telling me we're in Europe?''
''No, we're inside the solar eclipse''

Thanks cryptic anime guy, that cleared everything up

[random steppe]

I mean I did like it a lot, I like, finished in like, 5 days

Getting all the achievments which wasn't that difficult to be fair

But it's a sign that I gave enough of a shit to do the extra stuff

[slim thorn]

iirc I got all but one achievement, because "get max level" didn't sound like a fun thing to do lol

[random steppe]

I don't remember it being a difficult griend to get there
Looking at the data, it seems like I got that 1 hour after getting the previous one

[slim thorn]

oh definitely not difficult, I just had no desire to grind levels solely for an achievement once everything else was done

[random steppe]

Maybe I farmed a lot before because I was mad at the flying assholes in the last level

So I was almost there

[slim thorn]

I feel like I was ~10 levels off even after 100%ing so it would've been a while

[random steppe]

I do like the games that don't have super difficult things to get all the achievments

I mean I don't usually achievment hunt that hard anyway, it's something I do only rarely, but it's nice when it's there, you can just do it, and be free

[slim thorn]

be free lol

but yes I appreciate it when there are no achievements that nobody would enjoy grinding out

(unless it's one of those games with a strong sense of humor like Stanley Parable where the achievement is only meant to exist, not necessarily be acheived)

[fresh bane]

That reminds me of an item in Hi Fi (yes again with this game sorry) where the item is basically taking away one of your basic game mechanic functions and the description says 'I just wanted to make sure you actually read these so this item is basically useless'

[slim thorn]

oh yeah I remember you posting that

[gaunt marten]

Save the baby achievement

The Art Ending is the ending that occurs when you play The Baby Game for 4 hours as the Narrator recommends without letting either the baby or the puppy die even once.

[fresh bane]

I appreciate achievements that serve as actual achivements or are meta/self referential and funny

I find the usual ''defeat X boss!'' cheevos to be boring

[slim thorn]

I'm fine with progress tracking achievements because they provide some amusing statistics to look up afterward

[fresh bane]

Bomb Rush has some pretty tough cheevos and it actually feels rewarding getting them, I actually fully completed all of them

I guess so, but I always feel like they're not accurate because it always happens that I look at the achivements and if a game has an achievement that's like ''finish mission 2'' or something usually there's a surprisingly low amount of players who have it

and I wonder if people even play the games they buy

[slim thorn]

well

[minor plover]

in general I find achievements boring, except as a discovery mechanism. They should let me know cool things that are in the game, not just be like "you did this one tedious thing 100 times!"

[slim thorn]

I also observe this, and hear it consistently from everyone who ever talks about this type of achievement, so I'm not sure there is any explanation left besides "people mostly don't finish the games they start"

[fresh bane]

You opened the map 100 times!!!

[slim thorn]

I'm certainly not immune to starting games I don't finish, even if (according to these statistics) I'm "better" than average about it

[random steppe]

I usually give a game a couple of hours minimum, if I never go back to it, it's usually a sign that it wasn't a good fit for me.
Now hopefully I didn't buy it for 60 bucks.

[minor plover]

I don't mind one that's like "you beat the game". But lots of them are like, you played a section of the game a bunch of times.

[slim thorn]

Gen and Flitter are probably aware I never finished Rain World, Monster Sanctuary or Steamworld Dig 2

[random steppe]

I don't finish a lot of games

[gaunt marten]

You need to go back and play Steamworld Dig 2

It's one of the best games in the genre

[slim thorn]

sorry, it just bored me

[random steppe]

There is also the problem that maybe I actually like a game, life gets in the way, and some games you can't just go back in after a week.

[gaunt marten]

Yeah it does have a boring start

[fresh bane]

I'm sure at the end of the day it really is just a boring answer like people just don't follow through with some games and never finish them but I still find it so weird, I don't wanna be a broken record and stuff but like... 60% of players for the third mission? is it really just that many people that don't finish their games...?

I wonder how this tracking even works, does it count refunded games or something?

Is it every copy purchased or do you have to actually play it?

[slim thorn]

I'm not sure I got that far in DMC1

[gaunt marten]

It counts every person who launches the game at least once

[slim thorn]

my understanding is that a "player" for Steam achievement purposes is anyone who launched the game at least once

so it won't count you if you just got the game in a bundle and never intended to play it

I dunno how refunds are handled

[gaunt marten]

It also counts if you use a steam card software to "Launch" the game

Refunds still count you as a player

You retain achievement progress after a refund

[slim thorn]

...I just realized I never got around to finishing Magicka

[random steppe]

Who the hell finishes Magicka?

[gaunt marten]

That's okay because the best part of Magicka is the start

[random steppe]

You go in, kill your friend 12 times, and never youch it again

This is the way

[gaunt marten]

Well you have to do the crash to desktop spell before you leave the game

[fresh bane]

I wonder if maybe some of these are refunded copies that get counted anyways, Blasphemous similarly has a looot of progress related achievements that are a vast low number of players, Ten Piedad which is the second boss of the game only has 50% of players who get the cheevo for killing it
It's probably dumb that I focus so much on this but yeah

[gaunt marten]

Yes all refunded copies get counted

[random steppe]

Alternatively if you are playing solo, you blow yourself up 5 times by accident, and never touch it again
And then go remember it fondly as one of the best experiences of your life

[fresh bane]

Well that makes it make more sense then

[gaunt marten]

Ten Piedad may be the second boss but Blasphemous is really hard

[fresh bane]

I could understand someone play the game and then goes ''nah not for me'' and refunds

[gaunt marten]

(for me he was fifth and I almost gave up three times)

[fresh bane]

Yeah the platforming challenges was that point for me...

[slim thorn]

I'm glad I got to Ten Piedad first because I do find him easier than the other two leftside bosses, and on my original playthrough I still needed several tries to git gud at his fight

[fresh bane]

they made me physically angry

[slim thorn]

oh no one does the Miriam challenges

[gaunt marten]

I did them for the spell but I hated it and the spell sucked

[random steppe]

I would be surprised if refunds are a statistically large percentage of achivment holders

[slim thorn]

even the randomizer has an option to exclude her quest reward

[random steppe]

Like, maybe at best it'd shift the numbers by 1%

And that's generous

[gaunt marten]

Most people by far buy games, launch them once and never again

[slim thorn]

the spell has its uses in rando but yeah there's far better options for regular combat

[fresh bane]

I guess I can understand because I actually didn't finish Sonic Frontiers at all but that's because I had already seen all of it before actually buying it, if I wasn't super interested in a game or didn't like it I would at least refund it but if refunded copies still get counted it doesn't really matter at that point I guess

[fresh bane]

I basically just did them for bragging rights and because I physically cannot skip content on a game

I had to finish them

[slim thorn]

"physically"

[fresh bane]

I already had the big lazor spell by that point so I didn't really need anything else, I think that's the strongest one

[slim thorn]

honestly I think most people do simply not finish a lot of the games they play (even under very weak meanings of "finish"), and this is why a lot of AAA games are designed around the assumption that few players will see the whole game, and many won't even see half the game

"open worlds" in particular often feel to me like they're optimized to impress you with scale and then hope you have your fill and leave before you notice how much of the content is boring repetition

[fresh bane]

It's such a wild thought to me, I completely understand it I just still am in disbelief it's a thing so many people do the only games where that happens to me are biiiig big open world games like TOTK where at one point I just didn't even want to play anymore because of how much there was and how big the game was

[slim thorn]

to be fair I think TotK actually earns its size for the most part, but even it has content that clearly no one is meant to 100% lol

[fresh bane]

And I'm probably not the greatest to criticize that because of the type of player I am like when I did a 7+ hour session to get all lightroots

I don't even know why I just hyperfixated on getting all of them right now

Only afterwards I realized it's probably something that was designed to do ocassionally as you hop from the surface to the chasms and I'm the weird one

[slim thorn]

I did space mine out yeah

I think I had over half of them done already before I did my endgame cleanup

[fresh bane]

To be fair to me though, I had literally never gone to the underground in like, I don't even know how many dozen hours into the game

So I had like one or two out of, how many, 100?

[slim thorn]

we both missed the depths tutorial, but I tripped and fell into it early lol

actually I think at the time my thought process was "huh, they're rendering that pretty far down, I wonder how deep they put the kill plane"

"...wait what"

[fresh bane]

bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamm

[slim thorn]

then I had an hour or two of exploration with that foreboding feeling you normally get from HK Deepnest or EL Abyss like we were talking about earlier

[mossy flume]

https://v.redd.it/e6c3d0tf36vb1

[fresh bane]

I don't know what any of those things mean but I get it

I think the entire thing should have been way smaller and not the same size of the surface map at all but I did like the light mechanic with the flowers or just using fire as a light source and sometimes spotting the faint red eyes of enemies in the dark

My computer really really didn't like going into the depths though, I still don't quite know what it was, I don't know if that area uses up more resources somehow but everytime I went down there the game would stutter and my pc would make more noise I was worried it would blow up

[slim thorn]

interesting, I don't recall my Switch reacting at all to area transitions like that

[fresh bane]

Emulators are usually a lot more unstable in that sense so I wasn't really surprised, the PC noises surprised me

I don't even know what was making the noise so I can't pinpoint what the source of the 'problem' was but luckily nothing happened

I did hear that the Switch is fighting for its life trying to run TOTK at a stable framerate but I don't know how bad those cases were and even then they didn't happen to everyone which makes it harder to know

[slim thorn]

I'll assume it was people who wore out their Switches much more than I did

[river veldt]

i didn't notice any framerate dips

except for Korok Forest

(again)

[fresh bane]

Is that even a thing? I mean I guess console can physically degrade but...

how much would you even have to play to do that

[river veldt]

well when i say that i mean when just wandering. sometimes when fighting enemies and explosions happened or somethin then it would chug. but when going to the depths it was fine

[rotund forge]

I'm hopefully getting Mario Wonder tomorrow. Then I'll use my money more wisely in the future...like buying Mario RPG and TTYD

[river veldt]

yeah my next game i get will probably be Mario Rpg

[fresh bane]

I thought Mario Wonder was already out

[rotund forge]

the 20th is tomorrow for me

[fresh bane]

That's probably not gonna help out Sonic Superstars Mario Wonder actually looks like it'll be really good

[river veldt]

tomorrow !!!!!!!!!!!

[mossy flume]

It’s been out for pirates for a week now.

[rotund forge]

big sadge

[fresh bane]

So nice of Nintendo to give them an early access copy

[river veldt]

i have somehow gone unspoilt

[mossy flume]

You’ll like it

[rotund forge]

I've only seen one.single.spoiler.thumbnail. That's a record for this kinda thing! It told me that there are a certain type of levels in the game.

[river veldt]

ive heard it's a lot like Mario World which makes me really excited

[rotund forge]

I'm gonna have to grab cash instead of using my card. I just used it to buy a laptop today so I don't want to charge anymore to it right now

[mossy flume]

I think it should unlock in a little over 2 hours now

Nintendo usually unlocks their releases at 9 PM pacific

Usually.

[sour hill]

They are leaving us to wonder

[mossy flume]

(Midnight on east coast of the US)

[rotund forge]

Yeah, that's how Sparks of Hope and Splatoon 3 were. Those are the ones I got day 1

[mossy flume]

Also Zelda and Pokémon and others

[rotund forge]

no....I'm the pun captain here

[mossy flume]

On a couple occasions they pushed it a few hours later than that, like 7AM eastern time, but I think that’s mostly a third party publisher thing

Anyway, don’t forget to drop acid before playing Wonder for the optimal experience.

(This is a joke. Don’t do drugs, kids.)

[fresh bane]

But if you do, be smart about it

[rotund forge]

No. drugs are bad

Except when given by a man in a labcoat /j

[fresh bane]

I get all my drugs from the trusty man in a labcoat at the alley

[mossy flume]

Yeah, like him!

Clearly trustworthy

[river veldt]

i always hated how he has liver spots

[rotund forge]

I'd trust E.Gadd with my life AND my afterlife

[fresh bane]

I honestly think the ugliest part of that design is the weird tips on the shoes

[rotund forge]

He's a Keebler Elf, THey're a part of his heritage. No shame in that.

[grand cargo]

Another Rolling Sky edit themed around ponies

[fresh bane]

Alright so after the metroidvania convo earlier I decided I might as well at least try out both Aria of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia to get a feel for em and surprisingly I managed to get to the first boss of each pretty quickly and after around 20-30 min with each holy hell did this one grab my attention and interest way faster

So I'm probably gonna be playing this and see how I like it

also helps that I at least get a map with this game so I know where the hell I'm even going

[hidden elbow]

okay

this game is already scaring the crap out of me

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2475490/Mouthwashing/

Steam

Mouthwashing

Pony Express long-haul space freighter "Tulpar"Crew: FivePlanned Shipment Duration: 382 DaysElapsed Transit Time: 147 DaysI hope this hurts.— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — A narrative driven first-person horror game following the dying crew of a shipwrecked space freighter.Who could have known what good ol...

Release Date

Q1 2024

▶ Play video

[hidden cypress]

This game looks sick

[quiet swift]

So, random question to the channel. On steam, under Library->Home, you can set up the "play next" collection. What's it showing first?

[gaunt marten]

It shows a game first

Not sure what criteria it uses

[bleak lintel]

How much Baldur's Gate have you been playing, that could be a factor in what it selects.

[quiet swift]

about 100+ hours, but I did play and finish tunic after that

[gaunt marten]

Yeah it uses the same criteria as what it does for store recommendations when it says "Most popular among players like you"

[quiet swift]

I did just cut it down to one but the expanded view is a bit different

[wind stump]

Yakuza

[gaunt marten]

If you don't like any of the suggestions you can right click to remove it and get another one in its place

[quiet swift]

As the resident expert, is that the best starting point? Never played any. Mostly got these super cheap or in bundles I think?

[gaunt marten]

Yakuza 0 is a great starting point

[wind stump]

Yus, it is.
It's a self-contained prequel that serves as a damn fine starting point.

[gaunt marten]

All of these games are good recommendations except Dungeon of the Endless which lacks charm and polish

(the sequel has both, I hear)

[quiet swift]

But yeah, my question was mostly to see other folks'

[quiet swift]

Where's all the Touhou?

Who are you and what have you done with HC

[wind stump]

[gaunt marten]

Oh I got your question wrong

I'll show mine later when my Internet connection comes back

[gaunt marten]

If there's Touhou HC will play it. This is about recommendations for games you won't play

[quiet swift]

It's reccomendations of stuff in your library you haven't played yet

Not something you don't have yet

[gaunt marten]

Yes

And since HC plays every Touhou game he has, they don't get recommended

[gaunt marten]

My internet is not coming back. My recommendations are Graveyard Keeper, Sunless Sea, Elden Ring, Kingdom: Classic, Synthetik, Moon Hunters, Lisa, Regions of Ruin, Super Auto Pets, Vermintide 2, Dome Keeper, Ring of Pain,This War if Mine, Shadowrun: Dragonfall, Muse Dash, Deep Sky Derelicts, Titan Quest, Tyranny, The Banner Saga, Tooth and Tail, Hacknet, Doom Eternal, Age of Wonders 3, The Witness, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, The Talos Principle, Hyperdimension Neptunia 1, Pony Island, XCOM Chimera Squad, and Orwell

In this order

Some of these games I didn't even know I had

[sonic dune]

!remindme in 5 years to ask if the waifu polycule (denzy, PK, GT) still wants me to be their maid

[haughty umbra]

Reminder set for 5 years and 2 days from now.

[sonic dune]

Why and extra two days?

[gaunt marten]

Why #1032716748887179434 ?

[sonic dune]

Does she know something we don't?

Oh god damnit sorry

[gaunt marten]

It's adding one day for each leap year

[sonic dune]

I searched "remindme" so I'd get the syntax right

So you can thank Cap'm

Who used a bot outside of the bot channel

[gaunt marten]

Yeah but it was for a good reason

[full sedge]

it’s done now, it’s fine 👍

[slim thorn]

.remindme in 5 years does this also do the leap day thing

[thorny cedar]

Okay! I'll DM you a reminder <t:1855661429:R>.

[slim thorn]

thought so, I remember writing a unit test for this exact case

[gaunt marten]

It doesn't because you import discord;

[static bluff]

For a five year reminder, it wouldn't hurt to use the new bot instead of the deprecated bot

[gaunt marten]

!remindme in 5 years use Izzybot instead

[gaunt marten]

Played Dome Keeper for a couple of hours while my Internet connection was down

It's so fucking well polished

Way better than Wallworld

[static bluff]

Whoa, that's one heck of a highly rated game

This looks cool!

[gaunt marten]

It's fantastic

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1637320/Dome_Keeper/

Steam

Dome Keeper

Defend your dome from wave after wave of monsters in this innovative roguelike survival miner, Dome Keeper. Use the time between each attack to dig beneath the surface in search of valuable resources and artifacts – use them carefully to choose powerful upgrades and bonuses. Set on beautifully crafted pixel art alien planets, Dome Keeper offers ...

Price

$17.99

Recommendations

7778

▶ Play video

I've been keeping an eye on it since launch and it recently got discounted enough I could justify buying it

[teal cliff]

y'ever think about how Persona 3 had a female protagonist as an option and then the remaster removed her from the game

[slim thorn]

[wind stump]

I think because FEMC is more of an alternate route than an alternate skin ATLUS decided it would be too much work to port her content over

Since she was an addition in Persona 3 Portable, which is different from Persona 3 base and Persona 3 FES, because yes

[teal cliff]

generally a remaster is supposed to be the definitive edition of a game and removing a bunch of content is not really how you go about making that

[wind stump]

maybe if the game sells well they'll add her as a free update or something

same with Answer

[teal cliff]

Maybe, but I doubt it. Most people who want to play as her likely wouldn't buy the game, and I don't think most Persona fans care that she's not there.

[slim thorn]

one can hope, but we've already got three versions of the game, none of which are a superset of the others, so I wouldn't count on it

[teal cliff]

if Atlus cared even slightly about female protagonists, 4 and 5 would have had one. The removal of femc from the remaster of 3 just kinda solidifies the point.

[slim thorn]

but I'd rather not repeat all this; nobody likes it but complaining about it won't change it

[teal cliff]

Companies mishandling their games deserve criticism for it.

[slim thorn]

well, sure, to a point

but spending another 500 messages on it in this particular Discord channel where everyone who cares is already very aware of the issue? the only effect would be people not reading the channel

and now for something completely different

@fresh bane I think I might buy Hi-Fi Rush soon. Would you be interested in watching my stream it? (and/or is there enough discussable content that we should make a thread?)

[gaunt marten]

https://i.redd.it/nmvvuldw59vb1.jpg

[fresh bane]

Well I can't quite promise I'd watch you stream it everytime but if I happen to not be doing much I could hang around, still even if I don't you could just ping me if you have a specific question about anything

I don't exactly know what would require a thread but it does have loads of content storywise and gameplaywise I'm on the postgame right now and I still haven't fully finished it 15 hours into it, I took my sweet time with it but the main stuff is 9 hours ish every level in the game is around 40-50 min so they're pretty long really

For me threads are more a thing to do when enough people are discussing this one thing which is why I never felt like making something like a Uma Musume thread because it was basically just the both of us talking about it ocassionally so I'd leave that up to you I personally don't mind just talking about it here whenever I'm still ocassionally posting some stuff I've gotten on the post game stuff

[thorny loom]

Doge

https://www.pcgamer.com/dogmeat-is-coming-to-magic-the-gathering-in-fallout-themed-commander-decks-launching-next-year/

[teal cliff]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1159290/The_Bloodline/ game fun

Steam

The Bloodline

The Bloodline is a Open World Fantasy Action RPG where you take the role of a descendant of the Harbinger bloodline - a lineage gifted the power of foresight by an ancient god to protect Eudros from the Unforgiven. A legend that seemed faded in time… but your visions show The Unforgiven marching, the Harbinger defeated, and the land devastated.A...

Price

$19.99

Recommendations

772

▶ Play video

[thorny loom]

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/sid-meiers-ultimate-collection-one-more-turn?

Civ 6 with expansions. Civ 5 4 and beyond earth complete and a few other games for $15

[sage iris]

I didn't know steam can do this

the speeds are super fast this way

[wind stump]

nyoom

[static bluff]

It came with that last big steam update that changed the ui around and stuff

[fresh bane]

is that a fucking frankenstein's monster

oh my fucking god it throws fire

[slim thorn]

I intended to just update my mods, but then I accidentally played Pseudoreglia for another three hours

yeah multiple Castlevanias have a Frankenstein Monster

[gaunt marten]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/344740/view/3734105911830145810?l=english

[slim thorn]

pretty much all the classic horror movie baddies are fair game and on brand

[gaunt marten]

Cryptark is free to grab for 48 hours. It's a game I'd recommend paying for

[wind stump]

thanks Flitter

[fresh bane]

what's this about?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/247080/Crypt_of_the_NecroDancer/
oh shoot, since I just checked the store and the other day we mentioned Cadence of Hyrule

Steam

Crypt of the NecroDancer

DELIVER BEATDOWNS TO THE BEAT!Crypt of the NecroDancer is an award winning hardcore roguelike rhythm game. Move on the beat to navigate an ever changing dungeon while battling dancing skeletons, zombies, dragons, and more. Groove to the epic Danny Baranowsky soundtrack, or select songs from your own MP3 collection!FEATURES:Descend into the crypt...

Price

$2.99

Recommendations

20594

Metacritic

87

▶ Play video

Crypt of the Necrodancer 80% off

That's basically free /s

[wind stump]

I would pick up Amplified and the other DLC as well if it's as cheap

[slim thorn]

starts installing Hi-Fi Rush

[fresh bane]

Hmmm the amplified DLC doesn't have a discount on its own but the ultimate bundle is 22% off so not as much

base game is like.... 2 bucks

basically free

[fresh bane]

Oh from the reviews it sounds like it's basically 2d sidescroller armored core

[gaunt marten]

No

It's a 2D side scroller but it's more of a heist game than an armored core

It's pretty unique in design and I like it. The only thing it needed was an easy mode and with this update that got added

[fresh bane]

I don't know what a heist game is but I just meant it has this whole build your mech thing going on on top of the shooting and blowing stuff up

it's free.99 so I might as well try it

[gaunt marten]

You choose the correct equipment for each level, you navigate the level carefully and fight only what you must

Destroy the target and leave

The second trailer on steam explains the strategic element of it

[random steppe]

Oh that's a game I wanted to get evrentually so that's great

[gaunt marten]

It's a blast as long as you're fine with being short on resources constantly

Otherwise maybe try the new easy mode (knowing you'll lose some of the feeling of success against overwhelming odds)

The sequel they're releasing is a 3D FPS and so I am not really interested

[fresh bane]

The one game that kind of is similar to that one which I'm very much looking forward to isssss uuh

hold on

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2559370/The_Scramble_Vice/

Steam

The Scramble Vice

In the year 2048, with the advancement of technology comes a spike in criminal acts using robots. The biggest perpetrators of crime are terrorists that are turning increasingly destructive by the day. Safety levels within the capital are at an all-time low.

Release Date

2024

▶ Play video

this one

Again, it's... kind of, not exactly

But I'm really looking forward to this releasing because it looks super fun

[gaunt marten]

Wow this game is so fucking Japanese

[fresh bane]

I know I love it

Unapologetically japanese arcade vibes

[random steppe]

This is Patlabor as fuck

Well much less grounded

It's like Patlabor and Metal Slug had a baby

[gaunt marten]

When I read this in the discord embed I was like "What sort of developer would write such an out-of-touch pitch?
In the year 2048, with the advancement of technology comes a spike in criminal acts using robots. The biggest perpetrators of crime are terrorists that are turning increasingly destructive by the day. Safety levels within the capital are at an all-time low.

Then everything became clear when I watched and listened to the trailer

[dense crypt]

This is just Armed Police Batrider

But with mechs instead of hoverbikes

[fresh bane]

The fucking music is so damn good too

It's so perfect

[tender ferry]

how long should i play mario before spider-man

[gaunt marten]

Two weeks

[slim thorn]

ok, let's try this rhythm spectacle whatever game with the robot cat

[gaunt marten]

Have fun

[slim thorn]

and streaming in the quiet VCs

ping @fresh bane

[fresh bane]

I'm playing Castlevania but I'm reading here

I don't think you are streaming it though

[slim thorn]

do you have the quiet VC role?

[fresh bane]

also speaking of streaming swap the music for the game's original soundtrack or streamer mode or whatever it's called

[gaunt marten]

It's an anti-raid role that hides two of the four voice channels

[fresh bane]

the original game soundtrack is so much better

I don't think I have I don't really use vc

[slim thorn]

welp, that's why I always say "in the quiet VCs" first

also Streamer Mode defaults to OFF so no worries there

[gaunt marten]

It always baffles me to have someone joining and saying hi then expecting me to carry a conversation even though I'm streaming a game and am not there to talk

[slim thorn]

same

[gaunt marten]

Set it to on

[fresh bane]

Streamer mode is the original soundtrack mode

The game has licensed music by default for some reason even though the ost slaps

[slim thorn]

much less it being so common that we felt the need to soft-gate VC

[gaunt marten]

American pop music addiction

[fresh bane]

[slim thorn]

oh, the original soundtrack is the non-default one

weird

[fresh bane]

the ost has the absolute perfect rock vibe I cannot imagine the game without it

it fits so damn well

[slim thorn]

can you hear me fine?

[fresh bane]

I'm muted entirely just because i have the castlevania tunes blasting I'm watching though

[slim thorn]

gotcha

[fresh bane]

You probably notice it right away but absolutely everything in the game moves to the beat of the music, Chai's animations including the run animation are entirely synced to the beat

[slim thorn]

yeah that's one of the things I was commenting on

[gaunt marten]

So if I mod the game to have a different beat

[slim thorn]

you probably saw me stopping to stare at random objects headbanging

[random steppe]

I played it with the licensed music and it was pretty great, but the ost is also pretty good

i found that it's highly dependent on the level which one I like the most

[slim thorn]

I am so bad at this but at least I understand it lol

I say and then get 80% timing on the first post-tutorial fight

oooh I love the extra beat visualization option, this I might be able to work with when it gets more complicated

[fresh bane]

Yep it has different visualization options and || once you get 808 she also serves as a visualizer of the beat by glowing with every beat ||

It does a pretty good job at explaining pretty much everything which is why I'm not explaining most stuff myself

The only problem I had was with my own inputs because the mouse doesn't work quite well and the clicks would be unresponsive, once I swapped to key bindings for attacks (literally after I finished the game lol) I started to get much better, I thought I just didn't understand how the game worked but it was just an input problem

[slim thorn]

yeah the tutorial experience so far is very nice for me

I'm sure someone with actual rhythm would call this spoonfeeding and hand-hold-y but

[fresh bane]

Eh, I mean the tutorialization is pretty in your face with multiple explanations and necessary tutorial sections but it's really only in this first level and after that it doesn't get much in your way, it's really not bad at all

[random steppe]

There aren't many rhytm / character action hybrid games out there so I don't know if many people would find this overbearing

Like, it's not like they are explaining to you how to press R to reload in a Call of Duty

[fresh bane]

Yeah but there's some sweaty hardcore epic gamers that don't like it when the game takes a second to properly explain its mechanics because ''fukin gaem actually explained stuff to me and didn't let me find out every mechanic on my own what is this a game for babies lol''

[slim thorn]

I also have the option of just not talking to the Smidges

but I will anyway

[fresh bane]

you should never not talk to him

why would you ignore him

he's a friend

[slim thorn]

I do love that jumps and dodges are just as synced to the beat as attacks

[fresh bane]

They aren't but if you do sync them you can cancel into them faster, but you can still just dodge without being on beat

attacks especially heavy attacks will try to delay so they hit on beat though

[slim thorn]

right, sorry, I mean there are incentives to syncing dodes and extremely similar audiovisual feedback when jumps/dodges are synced, even if they don't "snap" to beats like attacks

[fresh bane]

So while you can totally just mash without any sense of rhythm the key is to be on beat so you can maximize your damage and speed

I don't know if it's optimal to just chain dodges to progress through a level but it's what I did because it's fun to do

[slim thorn]

we are optimizing for fun after all

[fresh bane]

You can cancel a dodge up to 4-ish times before he resets I think which kinda sucks but it's pretty quickly

[river veldt]

Arin Hanson core

[slim thorn]

by the way, did you recognize 808's tag?

[random steppe]

It really depends on the game, some games are better off with explaining things, some are better off with hiding mechanics.
There isn't a one size fit all design decision there

[fresh bane]

I don't think I recognize where her collar is from but I always guessed it was some reference to a band

[river veldt]

kickass Metallica reference

[slim thorn]

it's the kanji

響 キョウKYOU・ひびくhibi.ku
echo; sound; resound; ring; vibrate
but with the top corner bits turned into lightning bolts because why not

[gaunt marten]

A lot of games do get it wrong and overtutorialize or undertutorialize.

[random steppe]

True

[gaunt marten]

Ideally, the game will teach you as much as it can passively through the design, like Mario does

[random steppe]

In this specific case, with a game as unique as hi-fi rush it's hard to overtutorialise IMO.

[fresh bane]

Ah I think I had read it once now that I remember but I probably completely forgot, but yeah her name is also 808 so everything is music themed

Not the characters, the characters are food themed

[slim thorn]

I did notice a lot of tea flavors when I watched that video you posted the other day

[hushed onyx]

How is 808 music themed? Seems Hawaii themed to me.

[hushed onyx]

(808 is the area code for Hawaii and commonly used metonymically)

[fresh bane]

Roland TR-808

The most popular influential and most used drum machine?

[slim thorn]

now that I've stopped to compare, the slowdown after an off-beat dodge feels harsh enough I suspect it is optimal to do triple on-beat dodges

[fresh bane]

You can do up to four but it takes a second to do

It's not necessary but it can train your rhythm

[gaunt marten]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1658150/Moonstone_Island/ Seems like a worse Stardew Valley but also you're a witch who collects Pokemon

Steam

Moonstone Island

Moonstone Island is a creature-collecting life-sim set in an open world with 100 islands to explore. Make friends, brew potions, collect Spirits, and test your strength in card-based encounters to complete your Alchemy training!Spend time on islands in the sky!Following your village's tradition, you must move to an island in the sky to complete ...

Price

$19.99

Recommendations

1043

Metacritic

81

▶ Play video

[slim thorn]

I am acceptable

[gaunt marten]

Acceptable might as well be perfect if you're not a rhythm game fan

[rotund forge]

cas

[fresh bane]

You have better timing than when I first played it

[slim thorn]

the "score" is the one thing they haven't explained

[fresh bane]

I kept getting Cs and Ds

[slim thorn]

and my experience with spectacle fighters is I have more fun when I completely ignore scores and don't even try to learn how the scoring system works

[slim thorn]

in part because I'm not even looking at the enemies, just staring intensely at the beat indicators

I'm sure this will fall off hard when it actually starts trying to hurt me

[slim thorn]

I say just before the tutorial about it

[gaunt marten]

You need to stop looking at the beat indicator

[slim thorn]

no

[gaunt marten]

Play it by ear, not by eye. The trick is to close your eyes and think of how the beat should go, THEN open your eyes and try to align the beat in your head with the beat indicator on the screen

[fresh bane]

yeah I would say don't worry about not being explained something until you're done with the first level, the second one is already 'the real game', this first level is pretty much play a big tutorial area as we explain what you need to do before you decide to not play this game again /s

[river veldt]

omg like fnaf 4

[gaunt marten]

Like any rhythm game

[fresh bane]

I wouldn't say close your eyes you still need to see what you're doing and enemy patterns and indicators, but definitely as you play you should start feeling the beat

[gaunt marten]

Closing your eyes just helps you get a hold of the beat faster

[river veldt]

yeah like fnaf 4

[gaunt marten]

Is Five Nights at Freddy the same as Friday Night Funkin'?

[river veldt]

NO

[dense crypt]

Five nights at friday night funkin's

[minor plover]

Friday Night at Final Fantasy Funkin Five

[slim thorn]

[river veldt]

isn't the v neck guitar copyrighted

[gaunt marten]

You can't copyright a physical item

You can trademark it

[river veldt]

ok

isn't the v neck guitar trademarked

[gaunt marten]

Yes

Gibson had registered the flying-V trademark in 1997 in the US, in 2010 in the EU.

Since, there has been many challenge the registration.

EU ruling: Gibson waited too long to file for the Flying V shape as a trademark.```

[river veldt]

cause i remember in fnaf 2 i think it was Toy Bonnie had a v neck guitar but Scott had to change it

damn

[gaunt marten]

https://www.originpatent.com/en/is-this-v-shaped-guitar-trademark-protected/#:~:text=The Flying V body shape,in 2010 in the EU.

[slim thorn]

wow, I was in the zone for that miniboss (SAS)

[fresh bane]

Let's hope you'll be in the zone for the actual boss

[slim thorn]

ah you're right, the 808 tag probably is a Metallica reference

[fresh bane]

Good luck defect

[slim thorn]

I liked "Defects Banished To The Void: 2%"

[static bluff]

Oh man Metallica is around

Awesome*

[visual hill]

808 is what you use as a reference when you can't use MUYA

[quiet swift]

wheeze. So I just found a sniper rifle in cyberpunk 2077. Legendary, says that it has "explosive tips" in the bullets

...It feels like i'm carrying a sniper sized howitzer.

Subtle, thy name ain't it

[gaunt marten]

Borderlands ass gun

[fresh bane]

I didn't know Cyberpunk had sniper rifles

[visual hill]

explosive headshots!!1

it's like MvM in TF2

[fresh bane]

To be fair considering people in Cyberpunk are cyborgs I would expect their heads to explode

[slim thorn]

well that boss fight felt awesome, despite the hundreds of obvious mistakes

[quiet swift]

There is a quickhack that tells them to, well, do just that

[slim thorn]

...Nire I think the scoring system is broken

I did not do that well

[fresh bane]

:sunsetclap: good job

better than my first level score

[slim thorn]

omg 808's tail doing the laser art thing I love it

[fresh bane]

808 is going to be doing a lot of things you'll love

Very important, always play with 808 a bit before going into the next mission, it's vital
....oh and you can talk to whoever is in the hideout too I guess

they always have new dialogues including Chai if you care about that

[slim thorn]

well I'm just gonna call it now: Peppermint is ||related to Roxanne||

[fresh bane]

Mmmmmm their names aren't both food related so I don't know.... unlikely

|| once you see the main antagonist of the game and a certain plot point happens late in the game you're probably gonna think to yourself ''wow, really? nobody noticed?'' ||

meanwhile I'm farming skull spiders

this fucking thing refuses to drop its glyph

I actually recently replayed the mission you're in because of a post-game thing so I wonder how you'll do

[gaunt marten]

Oh you're playing this game first

[fresh bane]

I am, I tried Aria of Sorrow too but I gravitated more to this one

Just feels nicer to play

[gaunt marten]

I knew you'd like it

Aria of Sorrow is great too but takes a bit of time

[fresh bane]

I'm still probably gonna do Aria later I just wanna do this one first

and funnily enough no, the fact that the MC is a pretty anime girl did not factor into my decision to play this first

[slim thorn]

the funny thing is that of the "DS trilogy" of Castlevanias, I played the first two when they were new but never felt like Ecclesia

(tbf I probably had enough after 2 games, but that was a long time ago)

[quiet swift]

[fresh bane]

After looking up stuff from Ecclesia I think I read some people say it definitely doesn't feel like the others

But I haven't played any of the other DS games so I can't comment on that, to me this feels like Aria of Sorrow but... better

there's more to do, feels smoother and nicer, but it still has some Castlevania elements that I'm getting used to, the movement mostly

[fresh bane]

+5 defense
+25 drip
+100 feels

[fickle garnet]

I forgot you could get David's jacket

[fresh bane]

It was a free update thing after Edgerunners

[fickle garnet]

Yeah

[fresh bane]

In Phantom Liberty they also added || gravestones for Rebecca, David and others ||

also you don't really notice it with Edgerunners' super stylized Trigger look but David's ''original'' design (it's pretty much the same) works super well with the artstyle of the game

I love how this silk dress somehow offers more protection and makes me smarter than a leather plate

[slim thorn]

RPGs gonna RPG

[fresh bane]

also wow the seamstress I rescued immediately fell in love with Shanoa

lol I can buy a fancy sequin dress that increases my stats even more
I love this dumb stuff

also it's funny hearing Chai comboing in the background as I shop

[teal sonnet]

spiderman 2

is fucking amazing

[gaunt marten]

Yeah it is

I hear raving reviews

[teal sonnet]

they improved pretty much everything from the first game

[fresh bane]

Is the swinging even more momentum based?

Spiderman PS4 looked momentum based but it wasn't

[teal sonnet]

it is faster

[fresh bane]

good enough

[teal sonnet]

but holy the story so far what I played

it is so good

there is a moment I felt like I was playing life is strange

they nail it

[fresh bane]

I wouldn't use life is strange as an example but I get it

[teal sonnet]

nah it is a good example for a certain part

[white phoenix]

i know exactly what part you're talking about too

[teal sonnet]

yep lol

[fresh bane]

I thought you meant in the sense that the story is good like life is strange

[teal sonnet]

I meant more gameplay-story wise

[fresh bane]

does the game have choices now or is it just more story focused sequences?

[teal sonnet]

a minor spoiler || pretty much more human down to earth part, no choices or anything like that ||

[random steppe]

Life is Strange story was pretty good, but I assume you mean more like the gameplay side of things

[teal sonnet]

|| even the soundtrack reminded of life is strange ||

[slim thorn]

the pigeons of discontent are no more

[fresh bane]

pidgeons: reduced to atoms

[slim thorn]

status: 80% Acceptable

how many levels/"tracks" are there in total?

[fresh bane]

:sunsetclap: very good

there's 12 missions in total

[slim thorn]

cool

[fresh bane]

each one is around 40-50 min

they're pretty long

[slim thorn]

might not fully finish it this weekend, those two chapters took up all my tryhard energy for the evening

but this game definitely lives up to the hype

[fresh bane]

It can get pretty exhausting to try and finish a bunch of levels at once because they're pretty long

and you also barely started so you haven't even seen the coolest or zaniest stuff yet

Meanwhile I'm around 3 ish hours into this game and I'm fighting skeletons

[gaunt marten]

Heroe esqueleto

[slim thorn]

I enjoyed how giant rats are an endgame enemy in Hades, inverting the usual trope because of the location

[fresh bane]

my only complaint of this game so far? lack of healing items

[gaunt marten]

Just don't take damage

[slim thorn]

in boss fights, does it show a health bar for the boss?

[fresh bane]

Yeah sure, but also don't make enemies not drop health or add health items along the area and don't make them so expensive

[slim thorn]

I remember the lack of them becoming very annoying in one of the DS Castlevanias I played where I couldn't tell if I was underleveled or what

[fresh bane]

Get gud and all that but it's annoying how much of the game I've spent at 20% health because I just don't have anything

Making 'hearts' a magic meter rather than health is the most confusing design choice ever

who does that?

[slim thorn]

imagine my confusion the first time I played a video game in Japanese that used tairyoku (stamina) to mean health

(turns out they all do that, language is funny like that)

[fresh bane]

nope

[slim thorn]

sad

[fresh bane]

and enemies don't tell you how much health they have until after you kill one for the first time

[novel pine]

https://fxtwitter.com/Wario64/status/1715024548628709824 !!

[gaunt marten]

It was released May 10 2022 on Epic

[slim thorn]

any relation to Salt and Sanctuary?

[gaunt marten]

It's the sequel

Has proper online co-op

[slim thorn]

ah

[novel pine]

i loved salt and sanctuary but ive never gotten around to playing the sequel cuz of epic exclusivity 🤷, def excited for this

salt and sanctuary is by far the best non-from software soulslike

[gaunt marten]

It's pretty good

[slim thorn]

it's been on my todo list for a while, never managed to look quite as interesting as the other metroidvanias I kept hearing about

[novel pine]

havent played many metroidvanias but salt and sanctuary is definitely my favorite

[gaunt marten]

It's not great as a metroidvania, if you're looking for a game that is very metroidvania

But it's a great game in general

[slim thorn]

(that's the main reason why, yeah)

[fresh bane]

As much as I'm enjoying Order of Ecclesia and plan to finish it I'm starting to think I enjoy the 'Metroid' part more than the -vania

[novel pine]

i think Salt and Sanctuary its a fine metroidvania.. the map is very interconnected like DS1, but again i barely play any metroidvanias

[slim thorn]

I've played too few Castlevanias to have a defensible opinion on Metroids vs vanias, but what do you see as the difference from what you've played so far?

[gaunt marten]

The map is very interconnected, but the mobility options need work

You have some of them, but they're kept limited to maintain the soulslike feel

[fresh bane]

Metroid feels far smoother to play when it comes to movement and platforming, performing things like dashes or slides or jumps feels super good, in Castlevania it's not bad, it's just stiffer or tighter, combat too, they're a lot more deliberate even in this new game where you can do sick combos with your weapons, there's also a higher focus on numbers and leveling up and stats and all that rpg razzle dazzle

Blasphemous definitely feels closer to a Metroid game than a Castlevania to me and those are the metroidvanias I personally like more

[slim thorn]

nice, that's almost exactly my impression of the difference

[novel pine]

hmm true.

i liked them anyhow

[slim thorn]

yeah, none of my favorite Metroidvanias have "RPG-like" character building, which I don't think is an accident

[gaunt marten]

Then you'll like Axiom Verge

It's very metroid

[slim thorn]

Axiom Verge didn't do that much for me

hard to put my finger on why

[gaunt marten]

Well the art is good but also awful

[fresh bane]

Also I don't know if it's a thing in all Castlevanias but this one has a hub area of sorts because the main plot so far is the main antagonist is a piss baby who got mad that I'm cooler than him and he kinda made a bunch of people disappear and I'm freeing them and taking them back to the main town where the shop and npcs are with their little sidequests, Metroid doesn't have that, Blasphemous sort of had it but more in a Dark Souls way where all these different areas and npcs and stuff are scattered around rather than being all in this one place

[gaunt marten]

Yeah that's a Castlevania

Metroids keeps the world barren for the atmosphere benefits

[slim thorn]

most Metroidvanias have NPC sidequests, but that specific hub area structure is not a Castlevania thing, pretty sure that's an Ecclesia thing

[fresh bane]

I might as well at least check it out, I'm thinking of doing Fusion after Ecclesia just because if I'm aching for Metroid styled ones specifically I might as well just go for Metroid

I mean there's Blasphemous 2.... but I'm waiting on that a bit

but yeah, I think I finally realized it's not about disliking the old Castlevanias specifically, it's just the style of Castlevania isn't what I prefer when it comes to Metroidvanias, I still like it, just not as much

Everytime I do platforming or slide or attack I keep thinking ''man this felt so much nicer in Blasphemous...''

I also miss the parries

[gaunt marten]

I remember Castlevania felt a lot more fun to play than Blasphemous

[slim thorn]

and compared to my other favorites, Blasphemous has some of the weaker platforming

(granted it's still pretty good, and better in B2)

[fresh bane]

I don't know many metroidvanias outside metroid or castlevania so unfortunately I don't know how other games do it

[slim thorn]

well, I'd say Ori, Hollow Knight, Guacamelee and Pseudoregalia all have better platforming than Blasphemous

but at this point it's like debating which of the Mane Six is best pony

they're all so good

[fresh bane]

looks up pseudoregalia
oh geez

[gaunt marten]

Pseudoregalia is very new and pretty small in scope

[slim thorn]

^

anyway, your earlier plan to try Fusion and Axiom Verge sounds fine

all of these games are very good, and ultimately the only way to find out your favorite style is to play more of them

after all I'd pretty much lost interest in spectacle fighters until... today

[fresh bane]

Pseudoregalia looks interesting, every single post and article I find of it says ''woah dood best gaem!'' so it must be alright

it's also like 4 bucks

[robust latch]

oh wow they remade The 7th Guest in VR. i rememebr playing that game when it 1st came out in like 1993 i got it for my birthday that year

[fresh bane]

also I never mentioned Axiom Verge

that was Flitter

[slim thorn]

it's important to have accurate expectations since it's such a small and tightly focused game, but that's what my wall of text linked above is for

whoops I totally misread that somehow

well Fusion's fine too

no need to plan more than one game ahead

[gaunt marten]

I'm grabbing Pseudoregalia in the next steam sale

October 26th

[fresh bane]

Luckily if I do buy Pseudoregalia it's so cheap that even if I don't like it or don't play it I don't mind spending the moni on it

Also yeah I haven't even gotten to like... uhh, 50% of Ecclesia yet so

I basically started it last night

and it's like, 8 hours or something

[slim thorn]

and Hi-Fi's probably gonna be most of my weekend

[fresh bane]

If you plan on binging it and only playing that for now then it's probs gonna take a few days

Unless you set aside 7 hours to go through the entire game all at once

[hushed onyx]

But why would I think of that when I've lived in Hawai'i but never used a drum machine?

[peak berry]

Desert
and tank

[thorny loom]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/inkbound/monetization-changes

[random steppe]

Good to know

Monster train was pretty great

It was worse Slay the Spire, but as it turns out, the worse version of one of the best games ever made is still pretty damn good

[fresh bane]

common indie game W

[dire gate]

Unironically possible because it's an indie game

But recent monetizations are going too far, so it's refreshing for sure

[novel pine]

Respect

[fresh bane]

Catching up to some vods and watching a streamer playing through Lies of P, heard him talk about it on a podcast but haven't seen the streams yet and holy shit does this game really do feel like Dark Souls but without the frustrating shit in the way and all of the fun

[quiet swift]

Me: Hmm. Stellaris might run okay on my laptop while in power saving mode on my long haul flight next month. Wonder if there's a bundle to be up to date on expansion/dc stuff.

...Ah.

[visual hill]

it's giving Train Simulator a run for its money 😛

[quiet swift]

Nah, that's 10x more still

But ouch, just the xpac stuff is 3x19.99

[thorny loom]

Yeah wait for astral planes to release. It will probably drop in price then

[quiet swift]

But my flight's in 30ish days!

[river veldt]

i like how Spider-Man 2 is ||going the route of Peter becoming a teacher. that's always seemed like the ideal job for him||

||i like it more than the tech mogul millionaire route at least||

[gaunt marten]

You can't be both?

Alexa find me a list of billionaires who still work a day job

List:
Wayne, Bruce (street thug)

[slim thorn]

okay, done putting out fires in #science-and-tech , let's play some more robocat smackdown

ping @fresh bane assuming you still want to be pinged for this

[gaunt marten]

Have fun

I'm watching a guy smack a rock repeatedly https://i.imgur.com/yeGi46N.png

[slim thorn]

omg Chai
"But what if it really is a gift basket?"

[slim thorn]

I am liking the parry mechanics here

plus the whole "literally everything happens on the beat" thing prevents parry timing from being a mystery to me like it is in most games

[light gate]

I've been hearing that Mario Wonder is really really good, and some even compare it to Super Mario World.

Anyone here has tried it?

[river veldt]

yes

[light gate]

Would you agree with that statement of SMW > or = to SMW ?

[river veldt]

yes

[light gate]

Also I just noticed, Super Mario Wonder / Super Mario World

Same acronym, oh god.

[sour hill]

I wonder why they would do that

[light gate]

I guess Red Dead Redemption is not gonna get bought for a while, gonna get Wonder Physical in a few weeks.

[young creek]

Well one is SMW and one is SMBW

[light gate]

Ah, right.

I forget 'Brothers'.

[fresh bane]

what if, peppermint, what if?!?!

[fresh bane]

sorry I woke up like a couple min ago

If you're at Zanzo's level already I assume you already got past Rekka

[wind stump]

What if it was purple?!

[fresh bane]

[slim thorn]

in fact I just finished track 4

of course Korsica's laser wall causes 2 of my first 3 deaths

[fresh bane]

:sunsetclap: very nice

1-2 more tracks and you'll be on your way to the final half of the game

[slim thorn]

best accidental achievement so far

[fresh bane]

oh the cool thing doesn't happen until a couple levels later I thought you'd get it right after this one

this game is longer than I thought

[slim thorn]

"PAIN. KARMA."

[fresh bane]

The little guys have the best dialogue

[slim thorn]

I'm guessing the Korsica stuff is tracks 5 and or 6, most likely I'll pause after those to do other stuff

[fresh bane]

Depends on what you mean by the Korsica stuff

[slim thorn]

as in the structure seems to be ~2 tracks per department head so far

[fresh bane]

Oh well yeah, one more for Korsica so it's 3 tracks of getting all the way to her

[slim thorn]

oooh

ugh, I always forget to use the batteries

[fresh bane]

After that I think it's back to 2 per 'boss' and just one for the final boss, you'll know when you go to the final part because the game makes it pretty clear

I never used the batteries so I wouldn't worry if you don't find yourself needing to use em

Just keep an eye out for collectables and such, lots of easily missable stuff though there's also other parts where you'll clearly need to come back later and you can't get to right now

[slim thorn]

it's less of a "need" and more that now that there's 10+ things I can do in any combat encounter I always forget to consider half of them

yeah I figured that out pretty quick with the fire jets and the cracked walls, and now I have Macaron so I could go back for the walls if I wanted to

[fresh bane]

Not really just collectables but also all the parts for more hp and reverb and chips

[slim thorn]

and yes I've been hunting around for those every level

[fresh bane]

Well you can't because you can't really just go back right now but later

and yes there's a lot to think about in the middle of combat so I never even register the batteries which is why I say don't worry too much about it

[slim thorn]

ofc

[fresh bane]

I honestly don't even use the special attacks that much I use the special character attacks you do when you call out an assist as you're about to hit a final timed swing

[slim thorn]

I do like using the specials actually

already got a second slot so I can switch between a 2 battery and a 4 battery one

I think my main issue now is AoE and parry timing, but I know a few of the regular attack combos I bought are good at AoE so I just need to learn them better

anyway we can analyze it more if you're able to join stream later

[fresh bane]

I don't know if I'm gonna be able to join the stream because by the time I'll be done with stuff today you'll probably already be done for today's session

parry timing is tough at first, I don't know if you've seen it but when you parry an enemy attack you'll see a new blue indicator pop up, that actually lets you call in an assist immediately after a parry and if you time it with the beat you'll get a free assist with no meter cost

I'd recommend getting more chip slots first rather than special attack slots buuuut that's just me, if you enjoy special attacks more it's fine

[slim thorn]

I'm prioritizing chip slots now, two specials seems like the sweet spot to me

[fickle garnet]

I found this in Spider-Man man 2 yesterday

[wind stump]

CRIME REPORTED

(being a furry)

[slim thorn]

uuuuugh, died twice in a row just to that one samurai bot's parry sequence

then of course get an A when I finally survive the fight

[fresh bane]

lol yeah those will get very common so get used to em

it's tough at first

[slim thorn]

there we go, (B)arely (A)dequate

I'm gonna stop there, I can tell I'm about to lose focus and completely bomb the next stage if I push forward

[fresh bane]

Mhm, like I said this game is way longer than I initially thought

Perfectly reasonable to already be kind of 'done' after just one stage let alone 2-3 in a row

[slim thorn]

yeah, I'm quite happy with 3 tracks of mostly A fights on Normal difficulty for one session

pretty sure I won't try to S-rank any of this; that would require much more consistency than I'm capable of even with focus

[fresh bane]

I don't think I've gotten a single final score S rank in this game

B-A is perfectly fine

[slim thorn]

again though, major kudos to the tutorials here

I would not be performing this well without all of that clear guidance and in-game practice sequences in the opening levels

[fresh bane]

I don't think anyone would

this game is wacky

[slim thorn]

in the best way

[bronze abyss]

producitve time spending

[slim thorn]

I think part of the reason this one clicks for me is that there's just more going on in the most basic actions, before getting to the combo stuff (which in most of these games is primarily stylistic, and doesn't interest me much since trying to chain long combos takes too much focus away from the not-dying mechanics)

[wind stump]

TFH tourney?

[bronze abyss]

yea

[slim thorn]

like when I was playing Bayonetta 2, it felt like it was designed from the ground up for players far better than me because the systems I could engage with boiled down to "keep hitting dodge at the right times then mash attack" which only stays fun for so long

[wind stump]

You win anything other than dopamine?

[slim thorn]

but in Hi-Fi I've got the beat timing, the end-of-combo hits, choosing between parrying and dodging, hooking to faraway enemies, and the teammate moves

[bronze abyss]

no,just the satisfaction of bullying a couple and the stress of barely winning against another

[wind stump]

well it's about the bullying not the destination

[fresh bane]

The funny part is Bayonetta 2 often gets criticized for simplifying the combat too much in comparison to Bayo 1 but Bayo overall as a game is very focused on the Witch Time mechanic and having the correct timing on your dodges to maximize your combos

[slim thorn]

it's been soooooo long since I played B1 that I have no feel at all for what the mechanical differences between 1 and 2 were

could you recap for me?

[fresh bane]

DMC is probably still the most in depth of this type of games where you can do some crazy shit, Hi Fi is a bit more basic in comparison but it kinda has to be because of what it is, if it had the same depth as DMC5 it would be actually insane let alone insane to program

[slim thorn]

yeah, I still expect me retrying DMC again (any of them) would work out not that differently from B2

[wind stump]

YOU CANNOT KILL ME
I AM OMEGA
YOU CANNOT KILL ME
I AM SUBHUMAAAAN

... DMC5's OST goes too hard

[fresh bane]

In Bayo 2 there's a lot of changes overall to make it more appealing and easier for newer players, items are more encouraged and won't drop your score, score reduction isn't as harsh, there's Umbran Climax which increases your power and just makes fights completely trivial by letting you steamroll enemies in an area, the game is overall way more reliant on witch time than before with some enemies where it's outright necessary to enter witch time to kill them, the game is also full of more bullshit game design than before which makes a lot of bayo 1 players not like it as much, some enemies can still block or dodge your combos while getting comboed, are very damage spong-y, can attack you from outside the camera, attack way too quickly and without much telegraphing or sound cues to give you time to react, so in some ways it's ''''harder'''' but in a very artificial way

overall Bayo 1 lets players express themselves a lot more and the skill ceiling is higher so a lot of more experienced players will prefer it a lot more

[fresh bane]

No need to single out DMC5, all of DMC has absolutely incredible music
https://youtu.be/UhGqiPfPApY?si=v93gd4iuWMBUznUf

DMC5 went in a more modern direction with music which I still like but I really love the industrial rock/metal of the previous games a lot

[wind stump]

i'm a normie so i only really know DMC5

[river veldt]

vinny plae dmsee too pleAS

[fresh bane]

Sounds like someone needs to go buy the DMC HD collection available on Steam

[wind stump]

I even made a video based on Devil Trigger, lmao (PLUG PLUG PLUG) https://youtu.be/uyRlGNzKsdM

[fresh bane]

I still remember the absolute outrage at Dante's DMC5 theme

It was crazy everybody absolutely hated it

Until they remixed it because the original vocalist turned out to be involved in some major controversy and now it's great

Turns out it just needed good mixing to sound good the original song's mix was god awful
Though some people still don't like the whole screamo style of the song

[wind stump]

Subhuman?

[fresh bane]

Ye

The og was pretty bad

https://youtu.be/OGtwoh7_DF4?si=nD8AW-RK1TACy323

[wind stump]

how did they let this slide?

[fresh bane]

https://www.youtube.com/live/FgTa_GHarqk?si=-xYdWXKeLkps7eSj

Casey Edwards did a video a couple years back where he went into more detail about the process of making Bury the Light

Capcom just kinda hires these people and gives them directions on what they wanted but the other songs are so good I don't know what happened with Subhuman

They patched the song pretty much immediately after the game came out I'm sure

[teal sonnet]

https://www.polygon.com/23925480/spider-man-2-ps5-performance-fidelity-mode-tech-analysis

and it fucking shows

Even at the right beginning of the game

They just flex the power thet have now

we left the era of just faster loading times

[fresh bane]

I love how one of the first things they ''fixed'' was Peter's suit being more red than orange this time

[teal sonnet]

now we have the speed to actually make gameplay and cinematics merge

[teal sonnet]

lmao true

[river veldt]

it's a good game

i really like Peter and Harry's friendship it's very sweet

[fresh bane]

To be fair this specific thing isn't necessarily something that started with Spiderman 2

[teal sonnet]

true

but they sure are using very well

[river veldt]

KRAVEN IS ALSO LIKE, RIDICULOUSLY COOL ?

makes me want to see him in a movie

[fresh bane]

Well he is getting a movie

there's already a trailer for it

[river veldt]

i meant in a good Spider-Man movie

[fresh bane]

I would've liked Kraven in TASM's universe

He shows up in TASM2's game

friends 🤝

they actually work together in that game or something I don't remember

it's not a very good game, I just played it because it had the best swinging at the time

[visual hill]

it's not an amazing amazing spider-man game

[river veldt]

i think they could maybe do a Kraven's Last Hunt kinda thing (probably not his last but y'know what i mean) in MCU Spider-Man 4 or 5 or 6 that could be cool

[fresh bane]

I mean I wish they did a lot more comic story adaptations but apparently people don't like that and think it's boring to just adapt the same comic stories (even though a lot of them have never been adapted and most Spiderman movies take from the same handful of stories and loosely adapt them)

I don't really like MCU Tom Spiderman so I can't really say I ''want'' anything when it comes to Spiderman movies I'm just hoping Spiderman 2 does a Kraven's Last Hunt type thing

[river veldt]

i mean the symbiote is in the MCU now so i could see them doing something like that

[fresh bane]

Well the best idea I've heard for where to take MCU Spiderman next is to essentially do Gwen and then bring back MJ again preferably with the red hair I've heard people want Black Cat in there too but eh, I'm not against it because MCU Spiderman has esentially been One More Day'd and he's completely reset his entire existence and is back to square one so you can take him pretty much anywhere now but I still can't say I'm excited for anything mcu spiderman related

Tom also said he doesn't want to play Spiderman for the rest of his life and he's 27 he's still a young guy but I wouldn't be surprised if he gets into his 30s and is still playing Spiderman and just wants to quit
Unfortunately when it comes to live action you can't keep up the same stream of content like you do with comics because apparently people age and want to do other stuff with their life the nerve

[river veldt]

i could not care less if MJ had red hair or not i didn't know that was a big thing

[fresh bane]

It's not, I just want her with red hair because even though they keep trying to act as if it isn't MJ at the same time they totally try to make her MJ but she's basically an entirely new character

[river veldt]

anyway, new Spider-Man game good

i like how the subtitles both say Spider-Man. take that people who say Miles isn't Spider-Man

[fresh bane]

I still think he should have a different name but it's not like there's much to choose from

I'm pretty sure the comics still subtitle his comics as Miles Morales but Gwen is the Ghost Spider, Ben is Scarlet Spider, Cindy is Silk

Passing on the Spiderman name works best when it's more passing the mantle but I like Miles and Peter operating together and I think it's way more interesting and cool than having Peter die so Miles can replace him

[river veldt]

yeah same

i like the games universe and story a whole lot

[fresh bane]

I'm probably gonna wait for like, 5 years until they eventually port this to PC and hope and pray I can even run it at all before I get to play this game

[white phoenix]

lol same

I've been watching playthroughs and I'm hooked on the story

[river veldt]

yee

im excited

for symbiote shenanigans

symbiote/Venom is one of my favourite things in Spider-Man i think it's really cool

[visual hill]

I'm eager for a PC port but since I buy on sale, I know I won't be touching it soon unless I'm blessed by Gabe

[fresh bane]

I'm gonna be disappointed if this game doesn't let you play as Venom like Ultimate did

[visual hill]

(someone called Gabe gifted me Spider-Man Remastered on its PC launch, I am forever grateful)

[river veldt]

doesn't Venom eat a child in his first mission in the Ultimate game

[river veldt]

that's epic

[white phoenix]

the only thing about this game being on pc is that you would potentially be losing out on some things that the dualsense can do, like the triggers, motion controls, and the haptics

[river veldt]

oh yeah

[white phoenix]

and from what I've seen the game takes full advantage of those things in certain areas

[river veldt]

yeah like for the ||Prowler stashes||

[visual hill]

it works in wired mode on PC 🙂

[white phoenix]

ah yeah, lots of the people I watched playing the game commented on those directly, so it's gotta be very noticable

[visual hill]

there is official support for adaptive triggers/haptics, not just in Sony's Playstation PC ports

(gyro is supported even more wildly, also in wireless)

[river veldt]

i wonder if Spider-Man and Doomguy would be friends

[white phoenix]

well would you look at that, it does

now it's a matter of getting the controller lol

seems like it works on pc with the first game too

[fresh bane]

Venom eats a lot of people, I don't think he eats a child, he eats a random jogger and then fights Logan

[visual hill]

I have a DualSense and no PS5 😛

I like its feature set more than Xbox controllers but I find it less comfortable, unfortunately

[river veldt]

awww this mission in Spider-Man 2 is so sweet

[thorny loom]

Web of shadows is still one of my fav spiderman games

[fresh bane]

I always get surprised when people say that because I cannot take Web of Shadows seriously at all

[fickle garnet]

Web of shadows was my first spider man game i played

[thorny loom]

I mostly liked how that back when it wasnt a pain to put xmen characters into marvel games

also spiderman having the option to tear Wolverine in half was pretty rad

[fresh bane]

My first Spidey game was Spiderman 2000

And there was a bunch of people in that game

Johnny Storm, Capt America, Beast, Daredevil

I remember finding it so cool how all these characters would chime in

also poooooooooog double jump acquired

This boss took me some tries but I actually really liked fighting it I think I'm slowly getting how this game wants me to play it

Oh great, subaquatic horrors beyond my comprehension

[untold laurel]

I've got this weird bug today

[quiet swift]

[river veldt]

huh i didn't know Felicia Hardy is bisexual

[random steppe]

Nature is healing

What was supposed to happen there?

[novel pine]

i got this game for free xD

[untold laurel]

A little bug with planes

[random steppe]

No I mean, if it wasn't bugged

I don't know how this game works

[grand cargo]

"Magic Show" (Startrix-themed Rolling Sky fanmade)
Full level
Easy way only
how does it look?
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/583500762152435732/1165305829826760714/MSPrev2.mp4?ex=65465ea0&is=6533e9a0&hm=b676414981275c50f1e9bfb3351a4d7efa756b98e374d59bc56240de35146b52&
(I can't decide whether I should post on here or #my-creations)

[untold laurel]

Well, plane would drop a container with a gear

[random steppe]

Makes sense

[untold laurel]

Yep

[random steppe]

Looks good, that said I'm not especially versed in rhythm games, good job tho.

[rotund forge]

Super Mario Bros Wonder is sooooooo good!! I've only gotten to World 2 but it's amazing!

[thorny loom]

Yeah it looks like a decent send off for the switch

[visual hill]

today's sad moment: the game crashes (maybe an emulator bug) 3 seconds before finishing a 10-minute stage. This is the second time this occurs on the same stage

I am almost done with the game and this is a stage that is required by progression to finish

too bad, the rest of the game (RalliSport Challenge 2) is pretty fun

[harsh kestrel]

The only person I've really seen going meh at the game has been Mutahar from SomeOrdinaryGamers, and it's like, I normally agree with him on a lot of things because he always keeps it real, and he didn't completely go negative on the game, calling it a safe sequel and whatnot, but I just couldn't agree with him on this one. He has his opinion, but I disagree with him in this case

[visual hill]

I'd describe it as the perfect blend of innovation and fanservice, from what I've seen so far

[astral steeple]

https://vxtwitter.com/FF_XIV_EN/status/1715678348980912456

[gaunt marten]

I don't really like crossovers that clash thematically

[peak berry]

https://www.trixiebooru.org/images/3116057?q=artist%3Ansilverdraws

ultimax 100 mark 3

[astral steeple]

Was afk but my favorite types of crossovers are the random ones that make no sense tbh lol

Like putting characters in situations they would never normally be in

[thorny loom]

https://www.pcgamer.com/another-warhammer-games-license-runs-out-as-warhammer-quest-announces-its-delisting-on-steam/

[slim thorn]

time for more of 808's Tea Party Beat-em-up (cc @fresh bane )

should at least get to Korsica today

[fresh bane]

I'm not on my computer right now but I'll try to read updates

If you do 2-3 levels you should already have gotten to Korsica by that point and you'd be on your way to the endgame

But that's not saying a whole lot since every mission is like an hour

[gaunt marten]

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/Bridge-Constructor-Franchise-Sale

90% off on almost all bridge constructor games

This bundle seems especially interesting

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/13383/Bridge_Constructor_Bundle/

With 15% on top of the individual discounts https://i.imgur.com/UfJYK3U.png

[slim thorn]

woo, died to the L.I.F.T. breaks and then S-ranked it on retry

omg another S

the zone, it is upon me

[fresh bane]

Become the zone

[slim thorn]

admittedly an S for only 87% seems pretty generous

hahaha, that text log I found about the decaf-only coffee machine firmware has finally become plot-relevant