I’m gonna have to agree. It used to be about the most slow and bloated thing in existence, but they actually fixed a lot of performance issues last time I checked. It’s still slow, but in the same time period Steam on Windows decided to add a pointless splash screen increasing the load time by 4x, letting Epic take the W by a wide margin in load times, while responsiveness is a draw.
Yes, I know that Steam is more feature complete and consumer friendly which is why I still prefer to buy from Steam when possible.
The interesting thing is that although I’ve almost never spent money on a gacha system and haven’t played much gacha systems recently, my brain subconsciously craved for more but in a safer way.
That’s why I created the JavaScript weighted playlist for myself: A random selection of songs from my music library where some songs play (much) more than others. Getting a super rare song is akin to getting a top tier drop. Additionally, the playback rate is randomized to a normal distribution, giving the tiny chance that a rare song can play with a wild playback rate. And if that wasn’t enough, some Geometry Dash related songs can randomly skip to the next song, simulating watching someone try to beat some demon level.
I’ve created a skinner box for my brain that sometimes causes me to waste hours just clicking on the “next song” button to see what shows up next. My wallet was not harmed in the process (although it might soon be because I want it to work on a portable device, but that money would go to some niche open source hardware thing rather than a greedy gacha publisher).
I spent way too much time with Bob’s+Angel’s with SpaceX, 160h in and I just unlocked the final tier of modules and now I need to scale up the whole base to get enough science to make the millions of science I need to research everything.
I haven’t even started Space Exploration (which is very different than SpaceX = Space Extension), but I won’t have enough time to play that before the Factorio DLC comes out…
I don’t want to toot my own horn too much here, but I’m developing a card game that is much more roguelite than rougelike, with strong meta-progression. It’s all free and open source and playable at superspruce.org.
If you like strong meta-progression, you might also like incremental games, such as Cookie Clicker, Antimatter Dimensions, and Realm Grinder. These games are satisfying due to the pure progression you experience within them.
As a big fan of cities Skylines 1 (>400h), I only decided to get the sequel after I saw creators play it and there was a promotional sale.
The performance issues are bad and I get 40fps at 1080p medium on my system, with a 40k city. But the game really is better than vanilla C:S 1 in a bunch of ways. In particular, the way lanes are handled and the size of the map is better.
It takes time to make something great. I bounce between both games at this point, and just play other games. I now have 28h in the sequel so I say I got my money’s ($36 due to the sale) worth. I’m patient. There are so many games and mods for other games on my backlog, I can just play those until Cities Skylines II has fixed its major issues.
Factorio. This game will probably be on my list every year because it’s so good. I’m currently going for all achievements, but after that I want to try to make a Bob’s+Angel’s megabase, or start the K2 and/or Space Exploration mods. And then the DLC should be coming out this year, with a slew of new stuff to play with and legions of QoL features for all players regardless of if they have the DLC.
Pokémon Legends Arceus. I bought the game but I wanted to finish Scarlet first. Now I’ve finished Scarlet (although I might want to go back to it for the postgame). I’ve already started Arceus, but I’ve barely made it out of the Tutorial.
Cities Skylines II. I already have 28 hours in it, but the planned roadmap for the game this year is quite exciting.
The Legend of Zelda, Link’s Awakening (GB emulator). I wanted to game on my new daily driver, Ubuntu, and didn’t want to reinstall all my Steam games because I’m dual booting Windows, so I decided to go into emulation and try the Zelda franchise. So far I’ve beaten level 1 and am having fun.
Cassette Beasts. Pokemon-like but with more ambition and innovation put into it. On my wishlist.
Palworld. Same as above, but also has elements of Factorio in it.
Dyson Sphere Program. Bought the game on sale. Never played it. Will get to it eventually. (I said that last year as well)
Kerbal Space Program. Same as above.
It’s because all the AI craze these days are ChatGPT clones tacked onto other existing products, where all processing is done on the cloud. Here, having “AI” is the entire point of it, with no regard for if it actually improves anything. It’s a solution in search of a problem.
In contrast, some products use AI as a means to an end. This distinction is important, because the focus is on the end result and AI is just a tool to achieve it. Here, it’s a solution to a problem.
Wow! I’ll stick to pure vanilla until I beat the game at least.