If you’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment from Slay the Spire, be sure to try out Monster Train.

Yeah, that’s the one I meant.

I did assume it was Bible skinned shovelware.

But being made by classic era Konami and getting a Steam re-release had me confused.

That’s good to hear. I guess I’ll keep an eye out for it on my next retro game deep shopping trip.

I dunno, since if recently got a Steam re-release, it seems like someone must still be buying Noah’s Adventure, even today.

That’s a good idea. I’ll keep it in mind. Thank you.

Could be, but my nephew played thousands of hours of CoD.

This is my admission that I don’t think I’m a good enough parent to counteract thousands of hours spent with a MIC funded game.

I actually trust my kids would probably do better anyway, but they know I would be disappointed if they bought their own copies of CoD, and they seem to respect that.

I don’t want my kids participating in the daily network effect of CoD, either. I don’t want them encouraging their friends to try CoD by having and regularly playing a copy.

That said, if I ever catch my kids playing CoD at a random LAN party - without me - they probably realize they’ll get a lecture - that they had better invite me next time. (I’m pretty sure I can out-parent the MIC for hour or two a month.)

So like what games do you ban?

My kids are only allowed to play the Steam re-release of Noah’s Ark for NES..

Nah. I’m just fucking with you.

My kids are specificially not allowed to play the Call of Duty series, and anything with game art that I could mistake for it. (Some modern warfare style games accept funding from the US military, and I can’t be arsed to keep track of which ones.)

For some idea where I draw the line, I do play Halo with my older kids.

Those look like military industrial complex budget numbers.

I try not to let my kids play games that normalize war, ever since my nephew enlisted out of a sense of duty - after playing a lot of CoD.

Enlisting basically ruined his life. His choice to enlist interrupted his successful small business venture and left him with PTSD.

That is very cool.

That is very cool.

Dang. Nice. Having a Palm PDA with Simon’s Puzzles in 2024 2025 is epic. I would take that thing to parties…and, at the kind of parties I attend, it would make me royalty.

What I’m hearing is that Sonic and Mario are going to sometimes render with a full set of five fingers (since AI often randomly adds extra fingers)…

Because I have my entire extensive library on steam, I’m kind of stuck with them. And while they are not abusing that presently, I’m fairly confident they will someday.

Yeah. I am confident that long term access to classic games is a torch only sufficiently carried by software pirates.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore things like the Atari 50th Anniversary collection, and what Evercade is doing with esoteric arcade titles. (And I delight in throwing money at them.)

But only a small fraction of the greatest games get that kind of loving licensed treatment.

For the rest of gaming history, software pirates are essential.

Good point. Most people suck.

I do miss the goofballs from my old WoW server though. They were pretty great.

Oof.

“The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult,”

Makes me suspect they were woefully behind the rest of the field in development practices. My team, and many others, gained productivity when all the wasteful manager ego stroking in-person meetings stopped.

Alternately, it tells us they rely on a weird dev kit with a lot of esoteric hardware. Though I would still call that out as being super out of date. Nothing is particularly hard to emulate today, for teams that prioritize having rebuildable test environmenta.

Just wild.

Bummer about the layoffs. Probably won’t fix their agility problem, though.

“Smart as paint, ye are lads! Smart as paint!” - Long John Silver

“He’s got one leg, Jim! Count 'em: … … One …”

I’m still playing endless Luanti while waiting for Guild Wars 2 to get SteamDeck verified.

Edit: Downvoter can’t handle that Luanti is an MMO, now. I can’t help that I’m the world’s most accomplished self-hoster. (This is sarcasm, humorously implying that I’m hosting the world’s biggest Luanti instance, such that it qualifies as “massively multiplayer”. Which one might almost believe if they read my post history… I’m pretty active in both the Luanti and self-hosting communities.)

The other dwarf game I played was The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria.

Ha. I suppose that counts!

“Dwarf” getting added as a category was a publicity stunt write in campaign by Deep Rock Galactic players, if I recall correctly.

There’s not a ton of games with the tag, but both DRG and Dwarf Fortress tend to get a lot of play hours by their players, I think.

I kind of get that. I stopped buying PlayStations when the PS3 was so hard to get, for so long.

I’ve loved every PlayStation I’ve owned.

I’m not sure this tells us much, since the first buyers are usually the ones who don’t care what it costs.

The big question is how long can it maintain the higher price, once the enthusiasts all have theirs.

I’m no pirate, but if I was, I would pirate Mass Effect 3.

It’s definitely one of the titles that makes me feel like EA is handing out eye patches.

Am I misunderstanding that it’s single player?

Why in the world can’t I just give them some cash and get to play it offline without spyware?!

I know who will let me play Mass Effect 3 offline without spyware.

And they be good hearted folk, once ye get to know 'em. Aye!

It’s surprisingly capable hardware.

I know, right?! It keeps surprising me, in a nice way.

That makes sense.

I gotta say, the SteamDeck has been a weird journey. I’m playing a lot more high graphics titles now that I can just quickly check for a ‘SteamDeck Verified’ badge.

On the one hand, mine is a first generation portable, so there’s a lot of games it is never going to run.

On the other, it keeps surprising me what gets ported to it.

Nice. An effective union is probably the only thing that will bring me back to shopping for AAA titles again, so this seems like a win for everyone.

FFVII on SteamDeck maybe? I would probably play that.

I love Rogue Legacy as a casual game. In the early game, it’s decidedly not cozy, due to missing mechanics and how common unwinnable rooms are.

Rogue Legacy 2 fixes these issues, and adds a ton of difficulty sliders, and can be tuned to be fantasticly cozy,

Yeah. I would probably start with Dave the Diver, in their case.

It’s so good. Decently chill. Great vibe throughout. The Boss fights each have a simple gimmick to win, and they don’t try to be clever about it. (Nothing pisses me off like “we changed the pattern of interaction five to turn a narrow victory win into a loss”. Game designers need to cut that out.) Thankfully Dave the Diver has the classic two patterns per battle, and aims for predictable fun. And the Boss fights are rare, anyway.

Yeah. The Breach is fantastic. Ready to pick up and set down. Utterly fantastic tactical gameplay. Cool tech, interesting progression options.

All that said, it’s not my go-to cozy game, because it’s atmosphere is too well done.

They only thing about “The Breach” is that it’s so dang well done that I can’t take a turn not seriously. It regularly makes me make movie heroism level of decisions. Do I make the safe play, or try to save everyone? Am I willing to sacrifice my pilot for this win?

The vibe is fantastic, but decidedly not cozy.

Who decides what’s “legitimate”?

Ooh! I know this one! It’s the people with all the money, isn’t it? It’s usually the people with the most money who decide these things.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, for Sega Genesis certainly fit this criteria.

Yeah. If Satisfactory every gets SteamDeck verified, I may never play anything else again.

Yeah. Tomb Raider is wayup there.

I remember being relieved when I survived the encounter with the bear, knowing that it was definitely going to be the scariest creature I would encounter. Lol.

Only downside is Microsoft’s greedy ass owns it

I feel compelled to mention Luanti here, just in case it’s not on your radar. Also VoxLibre.

It’s uh, well it’s done.

And it’s fully open source so it continues to grow.

And it’s lighter and faster and has cleaner network code than MineCraft.

And it doesn’t have M$ enshitifying it.

Disclaimer: I love this game and want to see the community grow and grow forever. It’s so good and I want to keep playing it until I die.

Edit: I forgot to mention it’s completely free and runs great on Windows, Linux, SteamDeck and Android.

Ooh. Good pick.

I satisfy my nostalgia for previous versions of Minecraft with Luanti.

/thread

Nothing left to see here folks. Question answered correctly. Let’s all move along.

Yeah. I can understand being nervous that Putin won’t approve spending money on national defense investments.

Why would Microsoft fire an employee for holding a vigil, it’s not like they …

…called “No Azure for Apartheid”

Oh. Thanks for drawing attention to this, Microsoft! I appreciate that they’re so willing to invoke the Streisand Effect.

And I hope those employees land somewhere where they build something that costs Microsoft a lot of profit.

Yep.

I’m a die hard Linux nerd, but I would still Rather have a console.

But what I really want is a console that just runs Linux so I can keep it updated and fix minor issues without all the bullshit.

Just gotta pause faster!

The screenshots sell it well. That’s some funny stuff. I’ll check out the demo.