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[Robsoie]

Recently there were talks about Hero's Hour here, a very nice Heroes of Might&Magic clone but that had some horrible bugs (a gigantic memory leak by example)

A few days ago the dev landed version 1.7, a "game changing update"

So! Today I bring with me a new update. Kind of like the uncle that brings a new girlfriend and you just know it won't last. But I bellow: "This is a Game Changer!" Because this is the game changing update. Zero bugs, no jank, and no more imbalanced strategies. "I've changed," I say with pride - the v 1.7 update looks at me with enchanted eyes, and the rest of the family nods with overbearingness.

Spoiler: changelog for 1.7 (click to show/hide)

WHAT's COMING TO v 1.7?

    8 new heroes
        modding capability for neutral heroes
        +2 heroes as sample mods
    New hand crafted skill trees for faction heroes
        designed by the community
    5 new skills
        Devour
        Mercurial
        Bodyguards
        Dizzy Tune
        Blight Ritual
    7 new units
        4 more blighted units so that there's now 6 in total
        Arachnian, Spooder and Pond Champion (related to new heroes)
    NEW ART FOR v 1.4 skills
    NEW ART FOR ALL HEROES
    4 new spells
        Salt Shower, Salt Blast, Salt Spray and Salt Armor
             all offer counter strategies to spell-based strategies
        and also Dizzy Tune and Devour active abilities
    New town structure, Champion Statue
    New music
        Tide town theme
        Earthen town theme
        New campaign music track
        Reworked campaign music track
    New sound effects
    6 new overworld dwellings
    More in-depth description of all skills, including numbers where they're relevant
    Game no longer eats RAM
    Optimisations
    Stability improvements
    Bug fixes
    Rebalancing
    Bad/boring unit names have been updated

the free version has also been updated to 1.7.1 and can be downloaded there :
https://thingonitsown.itch.io/heros-hour

Managed to win the tutorial mission without a crash with this version, so i guess that's a good update

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Rolan7]

I need to talk about the UFO: AfterX trilogy for a minute.
Its story is a lot to get into (kinda all over the place actually?) but in the order I played:

Spoiler: Spoilers for Aftermath, Aftershock, and Afterlight, but avoiding being too explicit.  Mostly I just rambled too much (click to show/hide)

1) Reticulans arrive and seed Earth with toxic biomass, killing almost everyone in days.  Bunker-dwelling survivors pull an XCOM and manage to adapt alien technology to stop the biomass and even launch a ship to board the alien mothership, where they're offered with an odd choice.

3) It's 50 years after the deal was struck.  The Reticulans not only honored the deal by housing the human survivors on floating Laputa satellites, they've even facilitated a Mars colonization project.  They consider humans to be allies, as long as the Earth biomass project is undisturbed.

Shortly after beginning the exploration and early terraforming of Mars, a signal is received from Earth.  Human-biomass cultists, offering friendship.  Survivors on Earth?  Is that part of the project??

And then a few brief weeks later, AKA a handful of battlescape missions, some Laputans contact Mars and vaguely explain that everything is fine now, that the cult has been defeated.  HUH??  My point is that it's weirdly fast.  You barely get to meet the cult before they're gone, and you've got this Earth-faction powerful enough to help you in any way you want.  Apparently the project is over.  In weeks!

Over a year or two probably, the Mars project (with terran aid) manages to terraform Mars despite like... 4 other factions getting involved.  I'll just say that there are the Reticulan "allies", and then there are *other* Reticulans who show up, not to mention anything buried underground.  The game is good about letting you choose your allies, and it's a bit grey any way you slice it.

2) It's 50 years after SOMETHING happened to Earth, with the "last" humans living on spaceborne platforms called Laputa.  Long story short, few people remember what happened (and they're strangely vague about it).  A group of youths realize their Laputa is falling apart, and rebel - escaping to one full of brain-dead Reticulans.  Taking control, they contact an Earth that has human (and transhuman) survivors!

What's crazy here - which I didn't fully realize at first - is that things happen *extremely* quickly here for an XCOM-style game.  No watching the globe spin for 3-4 days until a contact appears.  The Laputans with their advanced technology work *fast*, as do the cultists, making allies and "researching" technology almost hour-by-hour.  These kids grew up with Reticulan biotechnology and have libraries of data, and their terran allies are desperate for help against roiling biomass (and other threats).

tldr; The 2:Aftershock campaign is *crazy* accelerated, and they kinda played that for a brick joke in 3:Afterlight which is on a "terraforming an entire planet" schedule.  "Hello we are the Terrans, praise biomass-ARGH!  ...Disregard previous message, we're the Terrans, we have spacecraft (and crazy warp-rifles) and stand ready to assist you."

It's a little funny too that at least one member of the Mars colonization team fought the original invasion, and bears a grudge against Reticulans.  Or at least, she's an expert in their anatomy... technically she could *heal* them better!  Why would her damage bonus ever matter... 

Edit: Aftershock's speed is also probably due to "mining" the abundant detritus of Earth civilization, plus tons of crashed Reticulan technology.  Like I mentioned in passing, something odd happened to the Reticulans too close to Earth when they completed their project...  Something the Reticulans fail to mention in the third game, as they "generously" aid the Mars colonization project.

[Mkok]

I need to talk about the UFO: AfterX trilogy for a minute.
Its story is a lot to get into (kinda all over the place actually?) but in the order I played:

1) Reticulans arrive and seed Earth with toxic biomass, killing almost everyone in days.  Bunker-dwelling survivors pull an XCOM and manage to adapt alien technology to stop the biomass and even launch a ship to board the alien mothership, where they're offered with an odd choice.

This really makes sense only after playing Aftershock, but from what I gather there are a few hints in Aftermath pointing to the story of Aftershock, so I guess the devs did have this story in mind from the very beginning...

3) It's 50 years after the deal was struck.  The Reticulans not only honored the deal by housing the human survivors on floating Laputa satellites, they've even facilitated a Mars colonization project.  They consider humans to be allies, as long as the Earth biomass project is undisturbed.

Shortly after beginning the exploration and early terraforming of Mars, a signal is received from Earth.  Human-biomass cultists, offering friendship.  Survivors on Earth?  Is that part of the project??

And then a few brief weeks later, AKA a handful of battlescape missions, some Laputans contact Mars and vaguely explain that everything is fine now, that the cult has been defeated.  HUH??  My point is that it's weirdly fast.  You barely get to meet the cult before they're gone, and you've got this Earth-faction powerful enough to help you in any way you want.  Apparently the project is over.  In weeks!

Over a year or two probably, the Mars project (with terran aid) manages to terraform Mars despite like... 4 other factions getting involved.  I'll just say that there are the Reticulan "allies", and then there are *other* Reticulans who show up, not to mention anything buried underground.  The game is good about letting you choose your allies, and it's a bit grey any way you slice it.

The real order you are supposed to play is Aftermath (optional, only managed to win this one with the peace offer), Aftershock and then Afterlight. Though Afterlight is more of a spin-off, so there are parts of story that twist to make it fit. Most of the story explanation is in Aftershock, Afterlight mostly only references these. For example I believe there is no explanation who myrmecols are in Afterlight, just a remark that they invaded mars at some point in the past and martians were the winners of the "breeding wars"  and they also relocated the original inhabitants the beastmen, which doesnt really make much sense if you dont know who the myrmecols are from Aftershock... 

2) It's 50 years after SOMETHING happened to Earth, with the "last" humans living on spaceborne platforms called Laputa.  Long story short, few people remember what happened (and they're strangely vague about it).  A group of youths realize their Laputa is falling apart, and rebel - escaping to one full of brain-dead Reticulans.  Taking control, they contact an Earth that has human (and transhuman) survivors!

What's crazy here - which I didn't fully realize at first - is that things happen *extremely* quickly here for an XCOM-style game.  No watching the globe spin for 3-4 days until a contact appears.  The Laputans with their advanced technology work *fast*, as do the cultists, making allies and "researching" technology almost hour-by-hour.  These kids grew up with Reticulan biotechnology and have libraries of data, and their terran allies are desperate for help against roiling biomass (and other threats).

I guess the speed is a bit fast, but I imagine the alternative would be to make the game even more prolonged then it already is, as in all three games there comes a time when I get so bored with repetitive missions I just stop doing them, or choose only the easiest ones I must do (so many destroy object missions in afterlight...). 

Both Aftershock and Afterlight are interesting in that in both humanity is actually the technologically most advanced (at least once you "rediscover" your stuff) compared to the other aliens. Id say only the expedition or martians compare.

It's a little funny too that at least one member of the Mars colonization team fought the original invasion, and bears a grudge against Reticulans.  Or at least, she's an expert in their anatomy... technically she could *heal* them better!  Why would her damage bonus ever matter... 

You know, what if, in a super rare chance, the lucky reticulan did not go down in the first shot like they all do, the bonus just might be what finishes him off 

... something odd happened to the Reticulans too close to Earth when they completed their project...  Something the Reticulans fail to mention in the third game, as they "generously" aid the Mars colonization project.

Again, this is kind of mentioned in the passing at some point (IIRC), but they really mostly reference Aftershock...

[Akura]

Blade & Sorcery U10 is out.

Good:
Dungeon runs are pretty fun.
Everything looks prettier.
They got rid of that ridiculous pirouette move the AI did.

Bad:
Runs a lot slower it seems. Not just frame rate, everything just feels a bit slower. My graphics settings might have been reset though, since my controls were too.
Mods are broken, of course.
I need to redo my keybinds; crouch(I think is new?) is R-pad slide-down while kicking is R-pad press-down. So now to kick I have to crouch first. Likewise, jump got changed to R-pad slide-up when I had it press-up. So now I jump every time my hand goes near the menu key(which is the magic menu).
The ridiculous pirouette was replaced by an even more ridiculous flying lunge that's nearly impossible to block because it's more animation than physics. They use it too damn much too. And of course, they do it with weapons that shouldn't lunge, like axes.

[Iduno]

Inscryption is a very weird deckbuilder/puzzle game. Fairly standard setup of lanes you can summon creatures into, your opponent does the same, last summoner alive wins. I don't want to describe it too much, because the game is better if you're going in blind. Solving puzzles between battles can get you some nice upgrades, but aren't usually necessary.

Very atmospheric and enjoyable so far.

Edit: There is a demo available as well. It's all early-game stuff, but the card game doesn't really change, so you'll figure out if you like it or not.

[vjek]

Clanfolk is available as a demo for free on Steam right now.
IMO, It's very DF-like, in that there are priorities of tasks, jobs, stockpiles, designations, and similar.  Designate water, designate gather berries, designate gather stone, branches.
You need to build tools for certain professions to do their jobs (like a pick is required for a miner in DF)
It's a top down game, and they claim you can dig into mountains and build there, or above ground. (like rimworld)
I haven't played enough to check into z-levels yet, so can't confirm/deny that, so far.
Your minions get better at something through use, and have enjoyment bonuses and dislikes for certain types of tasks.
There are seasons, temperature, hunting, cooking, crafting, adults and children, moods, preferences, and fires that spread. 

[Folly]

I recently picked up Beast Breaker, a game about using pool-ball mechanics to shatter geometric monsters using a variety of customizable weapons.

Characters are cute anthropomorphs. Story is interesting enough. Weapons have varied mechanics which each take time and practice to learn and master. Definitely enough content here to justify the purchase price, and then some.

[Kagus]

So there's a new WH40k game on the radar... This time taking a detour from the more traditional strategy titles, and going for a 2D action-platformer.

Shootas, Blood & Teef is a Warhammer-licensed game that finally places us in the bootz of the orks. Honestly, orks have always seemed like a far more appropriate representation of the player demographic than the more popular protagonist choices in the universe...

...unfortunately, at a glance it... Looks a bit simplistic. Its claim to fame is that it's from the same people as Guns, Gore & Cannoli, and the developers appear to have smashed expectations by... Doing exactly the same thing as before.


I dunno, it's obviously a bit too early to really tell anything, but I'm not gonna get my hopes up for a good waaagh...

[nenjin]

So there's a new WH40k game on the radar... This time taking a detour from the more traditional strategy titles, and going for a 2D action-platformer.

Shootas, Blood & Teef is a Warhammer-licensed game that finally places us in the bootz of the orks. Honestly, orks have always seemed like a far more appropriate representation of the player demographic than the more popular protagonist choices in the universe...

...unfortunately, at a glance it... Looks a bit simplistic. Its claim to fame is that it's from the same people as Guns, Gore & Cannoli, and the developers appear to have smashed expectations by... Doing exactly the same thing as before.


I dunno, it's obviously a bit too early to really tell anything, but I'm not gonna get my hopes up for a good waaagh...

It's like if a Flashgitz video got made into a video game.

The art style is kind of an instant turn off to me.

Also, what kind of Ork game doesn't include a bunch of Orky dialog? You'd think that'd be in the trailers.

[Iduno]

So there's a new WH40k game on the radar... This time taking a detour from the more traditional strategy titles, and going for a 2D action-platformer.

Shootas, Blood & Teef is a Warhammer-licensed game that finally places us in the bootz of the orks. Honestly, orks have always seemed like a far more appropriate representation of the player demographic than the more popular protagonist choices in the universe...

...unfortunately, at a glance it... Looks a bit simplistic. Its claim to fame is that it's from the same people as Guns, Gore & Cannoli, and the developers appear to have smashed expectations by... Doing exactly the same thing as before.


I dunno, it's obviously a bit too early to really tell anything, but I'm not gonna get my hopes up for a good waaagh...

I think the first 2 Warcraft games were the best Warhammers ever made. Got the orks pretty much right and everything.

[Robsoie]

Last year humble bundle had a giveway of gog version of "Seven Enhanced Edition". I grabbed it and for some reason completely forgot about that game.

Recently finally installed it and managed to have some fun.

Seven is basically a mix of
- Thief (you're playing a master thief that best weapon is stealth and you should really fight only on your own term to avoid getting swarmed as you're not a blademaster)
- Tenchu (climb on higher grounds and things to stab-drop on an enemy, or stab them from behind or just stab them)
- Hitman (the disguise system is very similar and enemies can see through it if you come too close and for too long, or if you crouch in their view)
- Mario (well i mean the world is as very big horizontally AND vertically so expect tons of things to climb and jump on to find more paths)
All mixed into an impressively gigantic world full of details (there's no boring part in that world as there's always something to do, fight, stunt, explore) , tons of optional side quests and things to do and explore freely on your own.

While the intro and tutorial mission hints at some big Blade Runner-like metropolis environment, you're quickly sent to a giant island that has a very different atmosphere and a mix of very different environment. You're set into some open world freeroam, not exactly at first as the giant island is cut in zones and you need to purchase a visa to move from zone to zone, but once you have those visas, the world is fully open.

It's in the RPG genre but for a change your character does not progress in experience and level, but in equipment, special skills and etc... that you find, craft, enhance etc... in various ways, unlocking various things (like the fast travel using the rail system, you must find and hack (hacking the various devices in Seven is a simple minigame) each fast travel "overseer" point to control them).

I'm so in awe of what i saw of the game so far and explored that i find it sad there are some important shortcomings .

- super horrible collision detection, how many times my various combos did not hit and go through the enemy like if he's a ghost, the opposite never happen, any enemy strike will hit you if you don't dodge. Sometime i can hit an enemy several time in a combo, but sometime all the strikes of the combo are going through the enemy model without being registered. I wonder if it's another case of framerate-depend collision detection like it was sadly in Hellpoint.
Combat is overally not as enjoyable as they should have been. At least the stabbing and running away works but that inconsistent fighting collision detection is destroying a lot of the interest.

- camera is rather far to give you a large view (can be zoomed in/out too) of the whole surrounding so you can plan your move and various acrobatics, but in the same time it makes characters , enemies, other npc look very small and sometime a bit painfull to identify, that's a problem because on top of that there's this "cartoony line" shader that put those darker lines around all the models and is more annoying than actually nice.

- the controls are a bit clunky on my mouse/keyboard, maybe because the game was made for a controller, but to compensate the character is very reactive and the various climbing/jumping does not require pixel precision from what i experienced, the character is nicely able by himself to fetch a platform edge regardless how tiny it is to save your nearly failed jump, that's a big plus.

- the map is not as usefull as you would think (despite there's lots of icons , filter, etc.. to pinpoint every location of importance, tasks, merchants, etc...) as sometime moving from an area to another can be very hard to find and the map is useless at showing you those connections (recently got lost in the Haunted Ruins/Mire area, was going mad as i couldn't find how to move back to another area until i noticed a broken bridge that you reach with some acrobatics and climbing lead after some more jumps to a building that connect to other zones)

But all in all once you manage to get over the shortcomings (not easy as they still bother me a lot) and get used to some of the gameplay mechanics, Seven is a very impressive stealth rpg with a very detailled environment. Oh and instead of stabbing or axe murdering people, it's also possible to choke them instead for more pacifist way to take out sentries and annoying guards in patrol

[Iduno]

I finally got around to playing Get In The Car Loser, and I can't figure out what my powers do, what items to equip, or if the vehicle has any fuel (which is probably handled automatically, but still). It feels like a JRPG that I'm too dumb for, and I'm not quite finished (?) with the tutorial.

[Robsoie]

Noticed someone has been building a STALKER inspired game named "Zero Sievert" and is kickstarting it.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1886143857/zero-sievert/

There's a trailer video and in the end of the description you can download the current alpha version

[Robsoie]

Finally completed the first real mission (the Vanaar one after the tutorials) of Aven Colony (this week epic store freebie) after a bit more than a hour and so far this city builder is not bad at all, i find it quite good for now (especially as i had very low expectations after reading some review).
It's not the city builder of the year, but so far it's entertaining me.

For the first mission there are a tons of objectives to complete until you get the final one (building a Earth History Center and keep it running for 1 sol cycle) that allow you to complete it.

There are some danger coming (parasites, spores, ice shards) but they're not serious as they're extremely easy to deal with (and the anti-threats are automated once you build the correct buildings), the real threats are keeping your expanding colony well fed and having enough energy and water while satisfying the new objectives popping up regularly and having prepared well enough to go through the various winters all the while remembering that needs increase with the new migrants.
Sadly running a colony here is following a democratic system, so you'll need to keep moral good enough to get elected every few cycles. But i never managed to get less than 70% of satisfaction every time , so keeping moral up seems easy.

Anyways, probably as it's the first mission the game is nothing hard, especially if you're used to city builder games. The next mission throw you into a sandy and rocky environment with some hints that some new FUN! will come during this one.

A simple hint : when making farms, by default there are a bunch of crops you can't cultivate , and some of them are needed for a few objectives.
Just click on the checkbox in the farm menu, it will allow you to use those crops.  I didn't noticed it at first so it puzzled me for a while on how to obtain those requied crops. I wonder why they had made this checkbox unticked by default.

edit : for some reason the mp4 videos that are playing in the main menu are stuttering on my notSoGood PC while the game play normally.
Odd because reading them directly in VLC have no problem, so i guess whatever is the UE4 video player that comes with Aven Colony is probably not as performing as VLC with HD videos on my system.

If someone is running into the same trouble, you can replace
MainMenuLoop1.mp4
MainMenuLoop1_30fps.mp4

(that are located in  ...\AvenColony\AvenColony\Content\Movies\  )
by the one that can be downloaded there :

Code: [Select]

https://www.mediafire.com/file/f2wnnhz70i3blg4/AvenColMenuVideosLQ.zip/fileAnd no more bizarre stutter in the main menu

[Robsoie]

I have been playing for a couple of hours with the epic store freebie "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep" , that was originally a DLC for Borderlands 2 but that is now its own standalone game.

Being a former DLC i was expecting this new game would be a very short and small scale one, but oh wrong i was, it sure is not as huge as a Borderlands 2 but there's tons of stuff to explore, destroy, lots of quests and action with the same gameplay as the Borderland serie (grinding, leveling, looting more weapons etc..).

It's also very fun, as the story is that you're basically playing inside a D&D session led by some crazy "Tiny Tina" and her bizarro friends, with lot of ingredients coming from D&D (the "critical failure" quest ).

I loved the voice acting (at least in my language) of the side quest featuring growing up a treant and helping it to destroy an orc village, the nature spirit that talks to you during that is hilarious as she does not really care about what happens and it really show in her voice and lines

Anyways, very good game worth a try, though i imagine for those that already played Borderlands a lot it's probably just more of the same .