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[Jopax]

Mostly because I cba to make a thread for it but this is a thing: http://www.dualgeargame.com/

Basically third person team based tactics with mechs a la Front Mission/Armored Core. Still in Alpha but the few gameplay vids look pretty damn neat, if a bit clunky and slow. Still, mecha game, for PC!!

[nenjin]

Beat Ruiner a couple weeks ago.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/464060/RUINER/

It's a Devolver Digital published game, so of course it has "that style."

Ruiner is essentially an isometric version of Hotline Miami, with corridors for levels instead of larger, room-based levels. It focuses on fast, frantic combat. It's less technical than HLM in that, there's skills and moves and upgrades. So it's not "pure gameplay" like HLM. It wasn't especially difficult or long IMO, only took me about 10 hours to finish. It's been likened to Hyper Light Drifter as well due to the dash mechanic, which is central to gameplay and survival.

That said, there's a lot to like about the game. Visually it punches you in the face. It's a dank, 80s inspired cyberpunk neon dystopia. There's a dash of anime in the character portraits, and has that obvious love of Japanese culture like Blade Runner did. The story is interesting but fairly standard, and there's no voice acting. It's kind of casual game on all fronts even though the combat feels hardcore.

So the game's strongest point is its presentation, but the combat is fun and polished enough that you don't feel ripped off, even if the story is light and overall gameplay loop feels a little limited and cloying.

Oh and of course the beats are heavy and dank as hell. Not nearly as catchy as HLM 1 and 2's soundtracks but it fits the game very well.

[Egan_BW]

Honestly the game itself barely matters to me because RUINER is a perfect name for a mook-slaughtering action game.

[JimboM12]

got elex a while ago for the ps4 (hdd space on my good ol' pc is getting full)

made by the same devs as risen and the gothic series, this game is very much those games meets fallout. they're fun but extremely hardcore. you start as the weakest thing on the map; even 'feeble' wolves will annihilate you.
weapons and armor are something earned and are milestones to mark your progress. enemies start out with alot of health and do assblasting amounts of damage. you need to exploit every advantage you can to survive.
but man, once you reach enough skill/attribute points to wield a decent weapon it all clicks into place. you can hold your own but if you're not careful you'll still get your shit slapped. and once you can wield an endgame ready weapon and have max faction armor you're basically a demigod amongst peasants. and what's best about these games is usually by that point you can start rubbing that in a few peoples faces, some games more than others.

some tips for all the games:
do not rush to join a faction, gain some levels and build up some money first
hold on to your skill/attribute points until you find a good weapon or skill you want to learn and start working your attributes towards them
keep everything except obvious loot items like gold chalices (if they're important gold chalices, they'll have a unique description)
work the environment to your advantage always: do not be afraid to run back to a town to get some guards to help you kill stuff

for the gothics: learn how to skin/take animal trophies as early as possible, you'll be killing animals everywhere and if you take the time to loot them with these skills, you can make mad gold

i love these games, they scratch that same masochistic itch that the dark souls games do but with extra early game "fuck you".

[Egan_BW]

I really don't understand some RPGs obsession with making you the weakest human ever to start with.

[JimboM12]

I really don't understand some RPGs obsession with making you the weakest human ever to start with.

its so you compare yourself at the beginning to near the end and go "heh, i feel badass".

its probably one of those acquired tastes things.

[nenjin]

I think it's some devs' enduring love of playing Lvl. 1 D&D characters. I understand it, I dig it to. To a point.

[Egan_BW]

But level 1 D&D characters are already pretty badass. At least as powerful as your average human warrior.

[nenjin]

When several classes can hit 0 HP in one round fighting a basic goblin, I would not call that "pretty badass." I've usually played Rogues and Wizards and at Lvl 1., you're one bad round of combat away from dead. (Or at least unconscious.)

[Frumple]

I'unno, while true there also tends to be a fair bit you can do. Mostly base it off incursion, m'self, but a level 1 D&D character can do some pretty impressive stuff relative to a real life human. Also get flattened by a cat, but they can do it while having fancy tricks, if generally not even remotely powerful. Is the magic of death world housepets, I guess.

That said, weak to strong is just... standard. Freakishly standard, as in I'm pretty sure that's literally the trope name (or at least the tag on novelupdates :V). There's high falutin' literature dongles about why it slots into storytelling archetypes and blah blah blah, but it's mostly just a done thing. Contrast or somethin' makes the power high of later bits more noticeable, plus some of that hero saga thing what has a term for I can't remember. Folks are just used to it, used to working with it, and so on.

... that said, game wise it's probably half because they want progress but don't want mid/late game amount and quality of content in the beginning, too. Imagine if you had the normal RPG scaling, but your start was end-game and the finish was sweet zeus. Friggin' post macguffin punch wizard territory* at that point, with sky fingers exploding mountains and the protag beating people with literally a river and crap. Then think about having to make models and animate and code and etc., and realize your funding is not actually the entire US GDP.

Anyway, bunches of reasons it happens so much. Some good, some habitual, some economic. Not just RPGs that do it, it's varyingly standard in a lot of genres and storyboarding styles.

* Martial arts fantasy stuff, less colloquially. Think crouching tiger hidden dragon direction, except intermittent laser eyes and blowing up the occasional planet or whatever. Dunno how much gets officially localized but there's freakish amounts of amateur translation efforts for written stuff and even more freakish amounts of junk to translate so *shrugs*

[Aoi]

I think part of the reason why L1 D&D characters are still pretty impressive is that they've trained to do the few things they can; it's like the Youtube videos of the guy who can do a double backflip off a wall... and then trips over the curb, because he decided to pick up the Acrobatics feat despite a measly base 2dex. (Which I imagine is more like accidentally scooping your eye out when trying to eat a spoonful of cereal at breakfast...)

Also, I actually really like reading that stuff, until the point where it's painfully obvious where the writer can't even seem to fathom a situation where the beloved hero may possibly be at risk. It's kind of fun seeing how they write themselves in and out of random situations.

[MoonyTheHuman]

Super Tux Kart!

Yes, a Mario Kart clone. Whats nice is the following:
1. Free
2. Open Source
3. High Quality

Seems like a good exchange to me, and its fun too!
https://supertuxkart.net/

[Folly]

My experience in Elex so far...

Got through tutorial and was unleashed at the first town.
Ran around said town stealing everything that wasn't nailed down. Ended up with several nice weapons that I could not use due to stat requirements, and absolutely no armor.
Went outside and figured out how to fight, which was not easy due to no armor and only a rusty pipe as a weapon. Discovered the hard way killing gives practically no xp, and would take years to level up that way.
Snuck around nearby enemy encampments, found more weapons I could not use, and still absolutely no armor.
Back into town, started doing quests for xp. Gained a couple levels, still not enough stats to use any of my new weapons. I do have enough stats to learn some new skills, but can only find one trainer in town and he doesn't teach anything interesting.
Ran out of quests to do except for one, which tells me to gather mature roots around a lake near town. I spent about 2 hours finding the lake because there was no clear direction, and then four hours running around the lake, unable to find more than 6 of the 8 roots that I need.

Pretty much all of the positive reviews that I've read agree that the early game is underwhelming, but it gets much better later on. Right now, I'm having a hard time believing that it will be worth the effort.

[JimboM12]

My experience in Elex so far...
Pretty much all of the positive reviews that I've read agree that the early game is underwhelming, but it gets much better later on. Right now, I'm having a hard time believing that it will be worth the effort.

no pb game has ever had a decent early game.
some basic armors can be bought from merchants but for real armor you gotta join a faction.
the minimap can guide you to the general area of quests (yellow blips) but usually you gotta find the stuffs when you get there

the weapon balancing compared to earlier games is kinda weird; you used to have a solid progression of stats/weapon scaling as you level but now it felt a little weird with the new crafting mechanics being able to upgrade those basic weapons to t2 and 3 and shit. feels like they did only one pass to even out the stat curve for faction weapons so you can run into some more powerful weapons needing less stats than a competing factions equivalent weapon.

right now you're getting your shit kicked in by random animals (which can continue to happen to the endgame: pb does not know how to scale monsters well) but most found rare weapons are ment for mid/endgame (i assume you're talking about a certain poison weapon found in a certain store just left out for the taking? yeah thats a mid/endgame weapon)

a good rule of thumb: once you can glass cannon cuz you minmaxed to handle a rare weapon early, the game opens up. protips: save your handgrenades to stunlock crowds and certain heavy enemies and get a companion asap (duras is pretty easy to get and helps greatly)

i think the biggest weakness of the game is the lack of any direction to help you learn anything about the game. the main quests? yeah those ain't directions, more like hurdles. if you don't get shipshape quick, one of those early main quests will kick your face in and steal your tinder girlfriend.

[askovdk]

Autonauts is having a Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1491793990/autonauts/description

It a nice project that I've supported on itch, and I plan to pledge (even if I doubt it will reach the goal).

The core 'game' play is programming small robots, - at the basic level just by showing them what to do, but more advanced procedures can be edited.
I.e. it's a bit like Factorio for people that takes pleasure in observing automated processes they made. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are many good youtubes, - I just pick a random that looks ok:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+autonauts&qpvt=youtube+autonauts&view=detail&mid=57B9D3EC44F69817272757B9D3EC44F698172727&FORM=VRDGAR