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[Aoi]

Oh come on. Internet dumped and I lost a fairly lengthy writeup on Chrono Ark. (Tentatively positive, with the caveat it's rough around the edges.)

Welp. Shorter version: It's a bit like what you get if you tossed Slay the Spire-esque play with a more traditional jRPG system.

Basically, you have a roster of 2-4 characters, and each character has their own set of possible cards (and passives, stats, equipment slots, etc.) and their cards go into a global pool which is drawn every turn. Cards have their own mana cost, and you're encouraged to use cards from different characters each turn as most cards will cost +1 per card from that character used that turn. Healing is pretty generous as, in addition to a lot of possible healing, there's some mechanic that 'reserves' your HP, healing you if you end the battle before the damage settles in. You can set a character's card to be permanently available (one per turn, across your entire party) at the cost of +1cost. All in all, it has some interesting mechanics worth faffing about with.

Coupled with a lot of downsides-- it feels really slow to me, despite not being actually that slow. The font selection kind of screams 'low budget localization', and is suffers from a number of other localization issues ('switfness' is an easy one... not being able to understand WTF the 4th boss' gimmick mechanic means when it takes over an hour to get there is bad). The English version by default launches into Korean. The bosses largely boil down to knowing how to manipulate their mechanics-- and prepping for them accordingly. Except there are multiple possibilities for each boss, and you don't know which it is until you begin the encounter. There's a turn counter to keep things from dragging out... and it's kind of BS. In section 2, you start getting summoners. Which can take over a turn to summon, and the battle stays live until the summoned mobs die-- I had one combat where everybody died in turn 3 and they showed up in turn 5... in a 5-turn battle. And in section 3, there's a 3-phase tank mob that can regenerate, at full strength, to its previous phase.

[Aoi]

I am Overburdened is a silly little coffee break roguelike. Fun, but with the depth of a kiddie pool and, frankly, with the replayability to match (unless you like unlocks for the sake of unlocks), but it's currently 2$.

It's reminiscent of Desktop Dungeons, in that each level is more of a puzzle than a murderfest; you want to make it to the next floor in the most efficient manner, balancing hp vs gold.

The 'hook' is that you've got 20 equipment slots, in more or less reasonable places, and you can only put one item in each. They form the bulk of your stats, though there are a fair amount them that spawn randomly.

It's actually pretty easy; anybody with experience in the genre should be able to finish normal mode readily (Did it on my third try; one to figure out stats, the second to the boss where I died) whereupon you'll end up in Nightmare mode, which is an RNG test to see if you'll be OP by the end of the first ten floors, whereupon you can steamroll, or if you'll get slaughtered. Seriously-- I had one game start where I had to walk through 4 mobs before the path forked. Barring extreme luck, you'll take 2 damage per mob at the start, which means it was nigh impossible.

So... fun for a time, but shallow.

Bumbo's brother take coin.

You have a dungeon with multiple rooms, with enemies in them, a shop and eventually a boss.

Please tell me the joke is you can't afford the items at the shop because you do not have a coin.

It might be my persistent sleep deprivation for the last five nights, but I found that far too amusing.

[Iduno]

Basically, you have a roster of 2-4 characters, and each character has their own set of possible cards (and passives, stats, equipment slots, etc.) and their cards go into a global pool which is drawn every turn. Cards have their own mana cost, and you're encouraged to use cards from different characters each turn as most cards will cost +1 per card from that character used that turn.

I can't tell if this is stupid or genius. Making classes only matter for choices you get, and everyone can do everything in the end is...interesting.

It sucks that the game is bad, though.

[Aoi]

Basically, you have a roster of 2-4 characters, and each character has their own set of possible cards (and passives, stats, equipment slots, etc.) and their cards go into a global pool which is drawn every turn. Cards have their own mana cost, and you're encouraged to use cards from different characters each turn as most cards will cost +1 per card from that character used that turn.

I can't tell if this is stupid or genius. Making classes only matter for choices you get, and everyone can do everything in the end is...interesting.

It sucks that the game is bad, though.

I was trying to find a way to keep the description succinct (and it didn't help my original writeup got wiped), so it seems I cut it a bit short:

There's an non-com fifth member of the team that you play as, and their personal skills are all related to card draws; you're commanding the others to use their skills. Every turn you can choose to toss one card in the discard and draw a fresh card, and variations of this mechanic are crucial to a lot of specific boss mechanics.

Each combat character has their own hp bar, stats, a unique passive, and each time you level, you get to add one (or two, for the first level up) of their personal cards to your draw pile, and those cards are unique to them.

For example, one support character's passive gives you -1 card draw, but in return, you get to pick one of 2-4 cards to be added from your draw pile to your hand (so you get the same number of cards per turn, just one of them you pick), and a lot of her personal cards get a major buff if you choose them. Some effects include it playing for free, getting to pick another card, forming a barrier, etc. Another character gets a defensive boost and counters any attack with her topmost attack card in your hand when she's hit. And, one weird character that I can't quite figure out how to properly use, is literally invincible, but it's a game-over if they're the last survivor and their cards are deadweight unless you keep feeding them food... which is in fairly short supply.

There are also neutral skills that can be learned from books in-run, and you can actually transfer those between characters freely (so long as they have the requisite 5-skill minimum).

Another feature I forgot to mention-- you're also prohibited from infinitely chaining skills since there's a counter on mobs that show how long you have before they act (it's kind of like Time Eater's limit, except it doesn't end your turn). Kind of annoying, coming from StS, but I think it actually feels better this way.

(As far as it being bad... Steam likes it; it's clocking 90% positive after 200 reviews. I just think there's enough roughness to elements that it can't get wholehearted support and is instead, like most of what I feel like commenting on, a tentative positive. Though that's because anything strongly negative I mostly just bin and don't feel inclined to say anything about, unless it's a flaming dumpster fire.)

Update (01/06/2020): So having spent some more time with this, and having finished the available stages a few times, I have to amend myself that the major problem seems to be that some of the mechanics are just godawfully phrased, and when it can take upwards of an hour and a half* to reach a boss, you're not very generous when it comes to losing due to a poor description.

And sometimes the descriptions are downright inaccurate:
"Instantly shoots the enemy twice when he deals damage on a single enemy with his skill from the hand twice in a row" (quote and emphasis directly from the game)... Based on that, it sounds like he's all about deck manipulation to draw/use as many of his cards in one turn. Not. At. All. He's actually a chaser; have somebody else attack, and him follow up to trigger his special.

And for fun, a more complex multi-line mess of a description (less relevant bits cut): "Dark Heal" "Deal the maximum damage of (X) equal to the enemy's lost health." "Heal for the maximum amount of (X) and increase Pain resistance if the recipient is an ally." "Target : Pain Resist Decreased ... Pain resist -12%"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You can use it on your own party on on enemies, with it healing or dealing damage. The attack does up to X damage based on percentage of enemy life missing. So it basically sucks against HP sponges. And that bit about Pain Resist increasing or decreasing... It increases it when used on your own party. Or at least, the buff says it's increased. Who knows what it's actually doing.

*I never managed to finish it in less than ~90min (I think my best was 1:26), even though there's a few guys on Steam who're like 'What? It takes you over 40min a run? Well, it's cool if you like playing slow.'

[Iduno]

In RBI Baseball on the NES, you choose which base to throw to with the arrow keys. The game sometimes gets confused and isn't sure if you want to throw from the outfield to second base, or just turn around and chuck the ball into the crowd. You could also, while playing against a National League team, bean all of their pitchers until they're injured.

[Iduno]

How is it we've never put together a shmup/danmaku thread?

Yeah, threads about types of games might get more people involved, even if they are about one type of game for a week or more. Otherwise we're just clicking on threads about games I've never heard about or played, and if I happen to see something interesting, I may get interested in the game.

[Robsoie]

I was so sure i had seen such a thread in the past that i had to look for it, it was in 2010 :
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59674.0

I think the last shoot'em up i played were the freebie Warning Forever and ESP De Ra on a Mame derivative lot of years ago

[Aoi]

I actual prefer this 'general' thread, as it's less pidgeonholing and makes for a nice unified place to find random interesting stuff. I've found stuff in genres I'm otherwise not interested in here.

[Chiefwaffles]

Finished Headlander! A metroidvania by Double Fine that released in 2016. Which is somehow 4 years ago. Wow. Basically, the shtick is that you are a flying head (or rather a head in a flying helmet) in a dystopic  orbital station based off of 70s sci-fi. You hijack robotic bodies and the like and use them to do stuff you can't as a head.

It was actually pretty fun even if fairly short. The game feels solidly put together and while I was at first skeptical of the 70s sci-fi theming the game's atmosphere is a goddamn masterpiece. Walking through the "pleasure port" as the malevolent AI tells the forced-obedient citizens that they are eternal and everlasting? Amazing.
Story is better than I expected as well. But it actually feels... too good for the game? They manage to set up -- in my opinion -- a fairly intriguing plot and world for the game but just don't explore it well enough. Feels like the setting they made has a lot more potential than just the ~6-7 hours of gameplay in Headlander.

I naively hope that another game in the setting is released, though I doubt it'd happen. At least it feels like it'd be prime material for Microsoft's game pass and now that MS owns Double Fine, that could be more of a better consideration.

[nenjin]

Friends and I had a little LAN get together this weekend.

As always, the perennial struggle was to find a game that 5 people can play together that isn't just MAN SHOOTER ONLINE.

So someone found Baldur's Gate EE and Icewind Dale EE, and that they supported Coop.

.....5 hours later we gave up playing it. Despite it working....people could only stay connected to the game server for less than 30 minutes, and regularly the host client would crash.

Damn shame. Would have been a lot of fun to AD&D the weekend away, but the damn thing simply wasn't stable no matter what we tried or who hosted.

[Zangi]

You could try the divinity:original sin, there are mods that give you 6 player slots.  Probably the same for the 2nd game too.

[Folly]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So Gods of the Fallen Land is pretty neat. Actiony city builder/tower defense that seems pretty brutally hard, but largely in a good way. You got your hero unit, base villagers you entice with free housing, run through other buildings to turn into other stuff, walls and some defensive stuff, an okay spread of buildings, so on and so forth. You turn your dudes into your army 'cause towers alone aren't going to cut it even if you entice artillery ghosts from the gods and build your own golem deathbots and they're all going to die okay, they're going to die all of them.

Because then you have dozens and dozens and dozens of skeletons and then more and more stuff trying to murder you and throwing projectiles at you and stomping up into your grill with building-sized golems and shit gets pretty hectic also after a few days of getting into the swing of things other shit starts happening and the day time stops being a time of relative rest and... just, look. It's nice and mean, both.

Game's doing a lot of things right, check it out. Also your starting item builds defensive towers, use them like immediately. Towers alone won't really work but they'll help a hell of a lot. Probably hunt down shrines -- not sure about the other ones but the food one can give you the aforementioned artillery ghosts and they can make the early game wwaaaaaaaaaaay easier because they throw around lightning and cluster fireballs and basically just kick all sorts of ass versus the initial skeletons and friends waves. Then the later stuff comes in and they die so don't get too attached (to them, or anything else).

... anyway it's on steam, itch.io, maybe other places. Currently going for about five bucks. I just burnt through the refund period in one go so I'ma go to bed now. Might be the best purchase I made this sale, tho'

E: Oh, and if you do try it and run into technical difficulties, check out the steam discussion whatsit. There's some known issues that can crop up with some hardware, and some solutions. I had trouble myself, but fixed it up fairly painlessly (just had to force the program to actually use the graphics card, more or less).

Sweet hell the boss fights in Gods of the Fallen Land are goddamn amazing. Seriously, if you got like five bucks drop it on that game because there is a five dollar payoff in those alone, nevermind the rest of it. I'm having like a tiny gaming orgasm or something coming out of those fights

*flails about* have now seen the other (?, there may be more than two) ending for God of the Fallen Land. Once again, game basically goddamn nails the theme it's going for, a sort of creeping corruption siege that slowly worsens until the very end where you're only barely hanging on as you hit the victory condition. Like, I'm not sure how much replay value it's going to have, but it's easily one of the best designed games I think I've ever played in regards to theme, general aesthetic, pacing and so forth. I don't know how intentional it all is but regardless it's stupidly fucking good in myriad ways, especially for its price.

After reading some positive feedback, I decided to give Gods of the Fallen Land a try, and have to say I'm disappointed.

Firstly, it's a roguelike with all of 2 unlockables, so very little replay value.
Extremely simple AI and limited unit variety means there is practically no tactical gameplay. You build melee, rangers, healers, and towers in fairly even proportions and simply hurl them all at the enemy and hope for the best, with no real opportunity to specialize or get creative in your methodology.
The highly touted boss fights are simply larger versions of the basic enemies who serve as damage sponges. That's all. The only exception is the final boss, which is only mildly challenging if you don't know to save your big cooldowns for when things get really ugly. And losing a roguelike after a 3 hour session just because you were not expecting the fight to work slightly differently than everything that came before it is not at all satisfying.
Beyond the stale gameplay, the GUI is also disappointing. My expectations for an indie game are pretty low, but there are some basic things like sorting the building menu into categories, making combat orders easily accessible, and making clearly identifiable icons for consumable items, which should be relatively easy to implement and obvious in their needfulness.

[Frumple]

The... boss fights aren't just larger damage sponges. There are (sorta', none of them are actually "just" damage sponges save maybe the golem) a few bigger enemies with heftier tank to 'em, but they're not the bosses. Unless I've already forgotten, there's two proper bosses (the lich fairly easy to get to and not that rough difficulty wise, the magitek angel a bit more involved) and then a pretty nasty (for me, anyway) end-game victory scenario (the shadow/tar/whatever it is siege).

Specialization wise, there's not a huge amount -- the game's indeed fairly small as these things go -- but there is some in the way of relic upgrading and choosing how you go up the tech tree. Base difficulty indeed isn't that complicated, though. I enjoyed it more on the aesthetic front than most things, I think. Gameplay wasn't even remotely "stale" to me, though. I spent most of the time running around pretty frantically and I still got beat fairly hard as the starting character (second felt easier in a lot of ways, but it also ramped up difficulty a good bit faster). Was fun on that front, more or less.

Combat orders are also like... two button presses, iirc. On the keyboard, anyway. Not as obvious as they probably could be -- it took me a few games before I started using them much -- but they quite easily accessible. Consumable icons were all pretty identifiable to me, too. Only ones that approached same-y were the little healy gem things, and they were still pretty distinct. Building categories could be a thing but I'unno if they're particularly necessary with how many buildings there are. UI's not super great, basically, but I think it's more serviceable than you're giving it credit for. I've certainly ran into much, much worse, so maybe its just my expectations are even lower than yours

[ZeroGravitas]

Hades, by Supergiant, the same guys who did Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre (the last of which you evidently get a copy, plus a giftable copy, if you buy it on Steam... formerly EGS exclusive), is pretty solid, though I'd say it's coming across a bit shallow so far. Note that I haven't actually played the latter two, so comparisons will be to Bastion when applicable. Numbers are approximate.

Without getting into spoilerific territory, you're the son of Hades in a Greco-Roman setting, and you're trying to get back to the world of the living. And, as Kratos has long since taught us, there's exactly one way to do it... in here, you're killing your way out, room by room. Each room has up to three exits, the reward of which is denoted by the icons on them.

 Dying is pretty much required, to advance the gameplay and the narrative. And hey, it makes perfect sense here! Every time you die, you just pop back up at the end of the queue of souls awaiting judgement, shove your way past the line, through your bedroom, and back into the underworld.

The narrative unfolds slowly through play, mostly via dialogues, all the major characters of which are voiced. (Sadly, not as alluring as the voice of the narrator, or even the Ancestor from Darkest Dungeon.)

The combat plays a bit like Bastion. You've got your weapon, 4 so far, with its basic combo, charge attack, and special, a ranged cast, a god power, and a dash. Pretty much everything ties into these moves. It kind of ends up a giant clickfest, which is a bit of a downer.

The upgrade system is clearly where they're focusing.-- there's maybe eight gods, each of which have ten or so powers they can give you, each of which can be upgraded. Upgrades stack, unless they're conflicting (generally, modifiers to your base attack, cast, dash, or god power). And some of them combo really nicely-- my favorite of which is with the best ranged option so far... the shield. You go Captain America with it, it ricochets from target to target; an Ares special upgrade makes each target hit with your special take a a pretty heavy hit after a few seconds, and an Artemis general upgrade makes all your direct attacks fire a homing bullet. There's a nice assortment of abilities, and I'm having a lot of fun playing with combos.

Oh, and the fourth boss is quite something.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You have to go against your pet dog, Cerberus. =(

Spoiler: "A few tips I've figured out." (click to show/hide)

If you don't have a better plan, give your first Ambrosia to Athena: It unlocks her trinket which makes her guaranteed to show up early, and her specialty is reflect. Getting her skill on your basic attack will help out a lot in the first two sections since it renders you practically immune to projectiles from the front. Alternatively, give it to Hypnos for starting money or Cerberus for extra life.
The bow is awkward. It's not bad, but you can't move while actively attacking. And one of the alt bosses fights you in a shrinking room, so... yeah.
The Chaos buffs are permanent (to the run) and kick in AFTER the penalty phase wears off. The +% ones are super powerful since they stack.
Double-god rooms are very valuable, if you can handle it.
Don't underestimate the value of +maxhp, especially when a lot of the health recovery is +%hp.
The door icon that looks like three small gems on a stone circle is top tier in section 2. (And you'll probably want it in section 3-- restores health/lives, or a big damage boost.)
The chariots in section 3 are total BS. Got stunlocked for two and a half lives in a row.
The weapon that costs 8 keys to unlock is pretty good if you want a pure ranged weapon. Just don't get the Rocket upgrade if you like the ground targeting-- it basically turns a slow medium-range ground-targeted AoE into a fast infinite-range contact-targeted AoE. So if you suck at aiming.. congrats, you just turned one of the best weapons in the game into an enormous pile of suck.
Don't forget you can change your accessories after each boss. (So you can get extra hp, gold, start with a specific god, etc.)

Edit: I think I've been calling the Nectar Ambrosia this whole time...

I think Hades will deserve its own thread. It's definitely one of the best action roguelikes in a long time. There's a new god coming out next week so it might be a good time to start it.

[Kagus]

I do hope they tweak some of the gameplay loop though... It can get incredibly tedious going through everything again with very little variation, when the keys to more variation are locked behind vast amounts of repetition and grinding.

I'm also curious how they're going to solve the endgame, especially considering... Well... They've already got voice lines recorded for how it ends *now*.


Cripes, the amount of time and energy (and money!) they must have spent on getting all the voice lines put in... I mean, I can't complain, it's as excellent as one would expect from Supergiant! It's just... damn.