Thanks for the encouragement to just jump in and do stuff, gaming and otherwise.

I’ve found myself having a hard time finding dedicated time to play games (i.e. without worrying about something else “over my shoulder”) and I’ve also found myself seemingly unable to “learn” new genres of games despite my wanting to get into them (so I often end up playing genres I’m already familiar with). I suspect these are related, and I also suspect that just jumping in and doing stuff more spontaneously will probably help improve things.

Seconding basically all the (mainline) Metroid games.

I’m usually playing older games of some sort. There’s retro games, like those from the 32-bit era and before, but I also play…old-ish games, ones that were released within the last decade or two. Just last year I began playing Tokyo Xanadu eX+, which was released in 2017 (albeit as the definitive version of a 2015 game).

I think a number of the indie games I play are generally newer. Though, given my tastes, many of them tend to be games designed to evoke some sort of similarity to those older styles of games. So I guess it’s an interesting question whether they count as “retro” or not.

That said, given that I pretty much only use store-bought laptops (and not of the “gaming” variety), my hardware means that I’m much better off playing older games anyway. “Newer old” games can probably still run, depending on the game, but some may be choppy and I can probably wait on those.

I knew of the stellar reputation the old Thief games have, so I bought them a while back, but have yet to play them. And I have yet to play basically any of the modern games shown. However, this video make a surprising lot of sense.

For instance, I’ve had experiences in games where I can tell that the game is visually pretty but I’m just not paying attention to it – and ironically missing out on some neat visual features – because it’s just not important to the gameplay. This may be more appropriate when I’m revisiting game areas I’ve already been to, but it can be a problem when I’m missing the awe of my surroundings because I’m too focused on making my way through the obvious walkable area and clearing out generic mooks.

Maps in games are an interesting thing. I play a lot of so-called “metroidvania” games and their ilk (heck, most of my gaming is 2D), and I don’t really like it if I’m frequently consulting my map to find my way from place to place. The best level designs in such games, in my opinion, are the cases where I end up learning to navigate the world without (or with minimal) consultation of my map. I think this generally means having sufficiently varied level design that there are memorable visual cues for where I am. A “maze of twisty passages, all alike” can be appropriate in some situations, but I find that it’s often more “organic” – especially when it comes to things like the interiors of buildings – to have recognizable details differentiating things like different hallways that would otherwise look similar. While the game might still effectively be a bunch of corridors to run through, anything from more varied theming (even just different paint colors and lighting on walls in similar parts of the same area) to architectural details that directly affect gameplay (a broken stairwell that must be jumped across vs. an intact stairwell that can just be walked up). People in real life design buildings to be easily navigable (usually) and leave environmental markers in natural spaces because this makes navigation smoother in real life.

And yes, there’s so much to be said about the value of integrating story into gameplay. In general, I feel that there’s something to be said about how videogames shouldn’t (in general) aim to be “cinematic”. A film is a medium of passive experience, but a game is a medium of active experience. Cutscenes aren’t bad per se, and even cinematic cutscenes aren’t bad per se, but care should be taken in their use. Sometimes, a fight scene rendered in-engine – even if this means 2D pixel art sprites beating each other up – can be much more immersive than a high-quality video with panning shots of the characters as they’re throwing punches and wrestling. The latter takes the player’s consciousness out of the game world, reminding them that they are merely the audience, while the former can be presented seamlessly without changing the player’s perspective (as surely the player has already gotten used to mentally processing the game world in a way that feels comfortable to them).

Thanks for sharing this video! I boosted it over on Mastodon too.

One way is to just follow hashtags and see whoposts to them. Since hashtags are basically the de facto way to find relevant content on Mastodon, not just a marketing tool like on Twitter. And then once you see who posts interesting stuff, you can then add them to your follows.

There’s also some sites that list users by topics of interesting such as http://fedi.directory and https://communitywiki.org/trunk .

Another way is to check out instances that talk about things you’re interested in. There are several websites that list them but here is a shorter list: https://fedi.garden Check out their feeds and see who posts things you’re interested in.

Furthermore, you can follow a.gup.pe accounts, called “groups”, which work similarly to hashtags. Each a.gup.pe account is basically a repeater that boosts (i.e. “retweets”) every post that pings it, so that anyone following it gets that post. For example, I follow @[email protected], and every time someone pings that (it’s like including a hashtag), it’ll boost that post and I’ll see it too.

I’ve heard that the official app was initially thrown together at some point around the time Mastodon first blew up due to Twitter…uh, blowing up, in a different sense. Basically, “it would really help onboarding if people had an obvious choice of official app to use”. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. Never verified this myself.

Tusky is definitely decent though.

Yeah, 100% OJ is…interesting.

Though I’d say if you’re beating 25% wins or so you’re already doing above par. (Par may be slightly above that since CPU players tend to be stupid, though they may have improved the AI since I last played.)

I recently noticed that 100% Orange Juice is actually getting a competitive scene, it seems.

It’s a 4-player virtual board game where there’s strategy involved in deck construction (one funny thing is that anyone can draw your cards so you have to choose carefully based on your choice of character and their special abilities), movement choices, understanding probabilities and other tactical decisions, and balancing risk/reward under uncertainty.

I used to be huge into the game but I haven’t been following it for the past couple years or so.

You’re welcome!

I suggest trying the various Ys games. Ys I & II use classic top-down view but with a distinctive “bump combat” system that, in the modern “Chronicles +” release, is really perfected to make a very smooth and surprisingly fast-paced experience. Older versions of Ys I and II also work similarly, albeit with less polish.

Some of the other older Ys games may also fit the bill, but they’ve been replaced in the official Ys canon by their remakes, of which I’d suggest a trilogy of games that run on the same engine – Ys VI: the Ark of Napishtim, Ys: the Oath in Felghana (the remake of Ys III), and Ys Origin (a prequel to the whole series). These are technically in 3D but they play in sorta pseudo-2D to some extent because you have a fixed angle isometric perspective most of the time.

By the way, all the Ys games are currently on sale in the GOG Summer Sale.

Also, you didn’t mention Super Mario RPG, so I kinda need to mention it. :P Also, in a similar vein, if you don’t mind the separation between action battle arenas and non-action overworld/dungeon navigation, try Tales of Phantasia, as well as the Summon Night: Swordcraft Story games.