Oop

Yeah Annapurna have had an amazing track record as an indie publisher. Only game of theirs that really disappointed me is 12 Minutes.

Wanderstop. The creator of The Stanley Parable and The Beginners Guide, the writer of Gone Home and Tacoma, the composter of Minecraft, and published by Annapurna. There’s no way it won’t be amazing.

No reason really, there’s just no point to set a super high limit if your save file is a 5kb text file.

Also valve does review the game and might not like an absurdly high limit, but I don’t know if they actually care or not.

Yeah devs get to set the limit. (Source: am a dev w/ a game on steam)

They have more than enough money to keep everyone employed. Firing just to keep profits high is unnecessarily cruel.

I’m not an expert so take this with a grain of salt, but my understanding is that Valve is a big company with a lot of eyes on them. If they distribute proprietary software, they could get in hot water. Proton GE however is basically just a guy, so the risk of Microsoft actually caring, let alone taking action, is much smaller.

Antichamber is great. Feels like a completely different universe with its own set of rules you need to discover. Also really interesting to see a puzzle game with an almost metroidvania-like progression, with the gates being your own knowledge of the mechanics.

Nah I just found nitronic rush back in the day, and found out they were working on a follow up.

Distance - an arcade racer that plays like a good 3D sonic game, has a cryptic story, and has elements of horror. Completely bonkers combination but it works super well.

Thumper - another very fast paced game, but also a rhythm game. The devs label it as “rhythm violence” and it fits. The music is percussive and ambient, mostly consisting of the sounds of you slamming through turns and hitting the a button with ferocious intensity. Levels can take well over 30 minutes.

The Beginner’s Guide - might be more well known but imo this is a must play for anyone who does anything creative. It’s a two hour walking sim, but I feel like it’s a story best told as a game.

Can’t wait for the next one, I hear it’s gonna be called Half-Life 3.

My main issue is that Tim Sweeny has repeatedly shown that he really doesn’t know that he’s taking about when it comes to Linux and how it works. Like if you’re gonna diss something at least have valid reasons. Windows is a better gaming platform right now, but that’s only because companies like epic refuse to pay any service to it. Hopefully that changes soon.

Dude it’s a triple-a video game, of course it’s gonna let you down.

Thumper is the best rhythm game I’ve ever played, and it was made by two ex-harmonix employees who were disappointed by the direction of rock band and similar titles. It throws away all the wish fulfillment and commercial stuff and the result is amazing.

There’s not much they can do. If it’s all reverse engineered and requires as copy of the original rom for assets, the legal precedent is pretty much set. It’s why the Mario 64 PC port is still up.

Also worth noting that fnv was developed under heavy crunch and it’s a miracle the game is as good as it is. It’s the exception, not the rule.

I’m thinking this too… like what’s even the point of using denuvo if it’s not applied day one? The whole point is to delay piracy so they sell more copies during launch week (in theory), so waiting until after day one completely ruins that since you can just pirate the easily cracked launch version.

When you’re making tim sweeny look like a good person you know you’ve fucked up big time.

Yep, I wanted them to be easy to spot so they have lots of smooth curves in contrast to the environment, where I try to limit myself to sharp angles.

Thanks!

Thank you! It’s hard with story-driven games, I think there’s a reason why there aren’t trailers for books lol.

Thanks for the wishlist! I’ve taken from a lot of stuff for this game. Naissancee (and indirectly Blame!) are the main ones in terms of aethetic. The strange liminal vibes of stuff like Inside and The Beginner’s Guide is also something I want to capture.

I don’t have a steam deck, but I’m developing on Linux so a native Linux port is a guarantee, and I’m aiming for full controller support. So it should work pretty well.

Yeah the beginning can be slow and a bit directionless, but it’s definitely worth sticking with it imo.

I actually had the opposite experience with Limbo/Inside. With Limbo I felt the puzzles seemed unfair - I died a lot to things I couldn’t see. I quit the game not too far in and haven’t picked it up again.

But I played Inside and absolutely loved it, it’s one of my favorite games now. So idk maybe I should give Limbo a shot again.

Personally, a lot of the “content” in totk feels like busywork for me. With botw I didn’t know that to expect so I was willing to explore. But now, I know there’s only so many things I can find - a shrine or a korok seed. Totk just adds more of those tiny rewards (like bubblefrogs) and it just doesn’t feel worth it. At best, you sometimes get an armor piece but I barely even used any of those. There was one interesting side quest I found on the great plateau and I kept wondering what I would find, and it was just a heart container.

If any of the exploration lead to something other than a marginal reward, I think I’d enjoy my time a lot more. Maybe it’s just because I played outer wilds between the games, and find story to be a much more interesting thing to find than an item.

How far did you get?

Yeah I used my $600 PC and a ~$300 Windows mixed reality headset. Far from ideal tbf but still a mind-blowing experience.

My impression from participating was that it was more for fun rather than trying to make a statement. It was cool to see multiple full servers.

Titanfall 2 scratched that itch for me. I love that type of movement in games.

I use nextcloud notes all the time, has pretty much every feature you’d want from a note taking app except encryption.