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[n9103]

There's a demo of it I think. Older version as is usual for EA titles.
I remember having fun with the HoMM2-like gameplay with completely different combat. That latter part definitely took some getting used to, but having a lot of experience with the early HoMM games definitely helped.
I enjoy the most of the art, as it's definitely reminiscent of HoMM1/2. The overall style could use some work to make the terrain art distinctly different from the interactibles (soft borders on the terrain, harder ones on the items?).
Overall, if you're into HoMM style overworlds, mixed with chaotic combat, then it should be one to definitely keep an eye on/buy. If you're not into both, then try the demo first.

Edit: Mistaken game being discussed. Also, after seeing they're doing a paid DLC before finishing the core game makes me retract my endorsement.

[Robsoie]

I noticed some people mentionning long wait for the AI turn, much longer than in the HoMM games.
Hopefully they'll fix that problem.

[Il Palazzo]

There's a demo of it I think.

Doesn't seem to be the case. Your memory must be all topsy-turvy, like. My money is on you have it confused with Songs of Styx.

[n9103]

I was actually thinking Hero's Hour  My Bad. See Edit above.

[a1s]

Also, after seeing they're doing a paid DLC before finishing the core game makes me retract my endorsement.

Hero's Hour is fully complete. And they have a really nice demo with lots of gameplay.

[E. Albright]

I picked up Beyond the Chiron Gate in the itch.io abortion rights bundle. It's a text-based roguelite space exploration game. You're exploring an interstellar gate network and trying to figure out where they came from over the course of 20 expeditions (after which time the network will have degraded beyond usability). It's kinda neat - it sorta feels like a cross between Crying Suns and that one online text-based AI-in-charge-of-a-colonyship-full-of-sleepers game. No combat - your crew will mostly be getting killed by accidents, radiation, and illness. It feels like medium-hard scifi except for the McGuffin gate. I'm not sure I'm gonna be interested in doing more than a couple playthroughs (which take maybe an hour or two), but it was enjoyable enough for what it was.   I don't think I'd be happy paying $10 for it, but if somebody already has it from a bundle like this, I can certainly recommend fishing it out of the pile and giving it a try.

[a1s]

+1
And there's an Android version, meaning you can play on your commute.

[Aoi]

that one online text-based AI-in-charge-of-a-colonyship-full-of-sleepers game

Seedship?

If you like that kind of a thing, you might want to give Away Team (I know I've seen it in a few Itch.io megabundles, not sure if it was in this latest one as well) a shot; it's another cold colony ship text-based game where you control a team of people who are awake tasked with finding a place for the ship land. Each character has their own traits, which affect some kind of RNG rolls that happen-- though I'm not sure how on earth I once had a guy in a wheel chair survive jumping from one section of a crumbling station to another, while the marine failed it.

Note that I'm not actually sure if it even has a "and we found a new homeworld for humanity" kind of an ending. The best (and furthest) endings I ever got were either

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

uploading everybody into The Matrix in some middle-of-nowhere satellite designed for indefinitely last on its own for all eternity, and accepting being placed under the management of a vastly more powerful alien race.

[a1s]

If you like that kind of a thing, you might want to give Away Team (I know I've seen it in a few Itch.io megabundles, not sure if it was in this latest one as well)

Is it The Away Team? or Away Team? That second one is free and the first one is in a different abortion bundle (or, if you hate human rights, it's also on sale for 4 bucks)

[Robsoie]

Wasn't there a Star Trek game named Away Team too ?

[a1s]

Yes but it was released 8 years before Itch.io was a thing. It's an RTT/Puzzle game in the vein of Commandos, not a text based crew simulator though.

[Aoi]

If you like that kind of a thing, you might want to give Away Team (I know I've seen it in a few Itch.io megabundles, not sure if it was in this latest one as well)

Is it The Away Team? or Away Team? That second one is free and the first one is in a different abortion bundle (or, if you hate human rights, it's also on sale for 4 bucks)

Wasn't there a Star Trek game named Away Team too ?

Who'd've guessed; Away Teams come in six-packs...

The one I was referring to is the one labelled The Away Team... though if you look at the logo, it says Away Team, without the 'the', despite the URL and some developer-produced materials having it. On the other hand, the logo also has the subtitle of Lost Exodus, which makes it clearer, I suppose.

The link again, to remove ambiguity: https://underflow-studios.itch.io/the-away-team

[Robsoie]

The negative critics on the Star Trek Away Team from the wikipedia link of a1s

However, others were less positive. There was criticism of the linear storyline, with IGN comparing the game to the X-COM franchise saying that Away Team didn't allow for any customisation and the pre-made characters had no impact on the storyline. Because of this, the review also criticised the role-playing experience of the game, saying that "Even a game like Panzer General provides more role-playing than Away Team."
Computer Games Strategy Plus also compared the game to X-COM, with elements of Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines added. It said that the lack of artificial intelligence meant that the need to pause the game repeatedly to give commands resulted in order to allow the characters to fight back against attacks.
GameSpot called that lack of artificial intelligence a "giant step back from the real-time combat in X-COM: Apocalypse".
The Washington Post found that the characterisation was lacking compared to Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force.

Made me wish there was an openxcom mod, as thinking about it the Star Trek setting would fit very well : many documented hostile or friendly species with their own quirks and "powers", equipment and items that would fit lot of researches, different type of craft for interception or transport, replacing the world map with space sectors, etc... 

[Chiefwaffles]

Putting it here since it's not really worth resurrecting the game's thread for it, but I've been trying (keyword on TRYING) to play Factorio. Specifically, Factorio with the Space Exploration mod (& required submods -- which I believe are mostly responsible for the changes I'm about to mention).

But I really just can't. Space Exploration should be an insanely cool mod. And I'm sure it is. Different planets, making spaceships, space elevators, space stations, asteroid mining, all that stuff. But what gets me is the huge changes to every part of the game before you get to that stuff. The extreme majority of recipes have been heavily modified. So many things are changed.
And it's just. Nearly all bad changes! Complexity for complexity's sake and unbelievable amounts of busywork. Vanilla Factorio is very tightly designed and balanced and this mod just ruins it for motivations I have yet to discern. There's a pointless heavily expanded burner tier where every single thing you build has to be individually fed fuel to operate. You need to make burner assembly machines. Burner labs. Tons of research has been split up into having to effectively unlock each building that the old technology used to unlock; it feels like you have to research each tech and building and item individually. So many recipes have pointless extra steps added. Did something require stone before? Now it requires stone bricks! Why? Because complexity is fun! Want to make an inserter? Fuck you, now you have to make a burner inserter first! Same goes for making drills and assembly machines, you need to make their pointless burner versions first to make the actually-useful ones! And you get to deal with the extra pointless complexity in each useless added step of the way.

It's almost infuriating and it sucks that it's making the rest of the (as far as I can tell, having not played it) interesting mod effectively inaccessible. "Change for change's sake" is the motto of the mods as far as I can tell.

[Aoi]

Putting it here since it's not really worth resurrecting the game's thread for it, but I've been trying (keyword on TRYING) to play Factorio. Specifically, Factorio with the Space Exploration mod (& required submods -- which I believe are mostly responsible for the changes I'm about to mention).

I just can't get into SE. I've done IR2 (expanded early game with a steam-powered phase between burner and electricity, slightly more complex mid/late-game), AngelBob's (greatly expanded mid/late game,  plus entirely new avenues of production that let you bypass crude oil entirely), and even a third of Py (T2 Py is more complex than an entire vanilla setup... I gave up when I loaded a mature Py base and realized my system doesn't have the specs to support it), and SE just kind of makes me glaze over.