I had just gone thru the initial speech with the scrawny gentleman in the back to initiate his questline when little miss violent came along with her cousin trying to start something.
VERY rude.
(CW: Realistically rendered dead animal)
I'm testing wilder, more overgrown country road variations. These feel at home in the wilds, like afterthoughts of civilizations in decline or long gone.
I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
Feb 2, 2023 - Day 33 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 40
Game: Agents of Mayhem
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Aug 16, 2017
Library Date: May 26, 2020
Unplayed: 982 days (2y8m7d)
Playtime: 41m
From the developers who brought you Saints Row, Saints Row 2, Saints Row The Third, the over-the-top Saints Row IV: Re-Elected, Saints Row: Gat out of Hell, and Saints Row (a reboot of Saints Row that shares a name and little else) comes a repetitive "open-world" action-adventure game vaguely connected to Saints Row (but not the reboot) that is to action-adventure games what Hush Puppies are to high fashion.
You play as a squad of three characters, that you can switch between mid-fight. Like Trine, but somehow less fun.
The game is set in a largely deserted, but very pretty, representation of a futuristic version of Seoul. The gameplay is smooth, the mechanics proficient, the characterisation and voiceovers are well done.
I played through two missions; all the pieces of something entertaining are there, yet somehow fail to mesh into something I want to keep playing.
I can't put my finger on what's missing, just that it is. A little less polish, and this would be "meh", but for me Agents of Mayhem just scrapes across the line to:
Apr 23, 2023 - Day 113 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 124
Game: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Oct 1, 2014
Library Date: Mar 13, 2018
Unplayed: 1867d (5y1m10d)
Playtime: 74m
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a third-person open-world action-adventure (some light RPG elements) that is, surprisingly, set in Middle-earth, between The Hobbit and LotR.
However, the most surprising thing about this game for me, other than the ~20 minutes of introduction video, was how it does not feel like a game that's almost 9 years old.
You play as a Gondor Ranger that's been murdered and trapped between life and death, and... look, I'm not sure what the end-game is meant to be, but I was having a hell of a time just sneaking around and kill Uruk-hai.
Combat is fun (if a little counter-intuitive, being that space is "run" and left-shift is "sneak".)
Sneaking up behind an unaware Uruk and shanking them with the dagger is satisfying, as is straight-up swordplay.
You can also "stealth" into wraith mode, and put an arrow into into a distant orc, and watch them drop with a satisfying whistle-and-thunk.
This game feels like motivation to keep playing through library, to discover gems like this that I'd missed completely.
Apr 24, 2023 - Day 114 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 128
Game: Sunset Overdrive
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Nov 17, 2018
Library Date: Apr 24, 2023
Unplayed: 0d (0d)
Playtime: 45m
Sunset Overdrive was on my wishlist for several years, & it's on sale on Steam right now for $7.11.
However, it's in a bundle in which I own the other title, dropping the price to $6.26, which seemed too easy.
Still, past me hasn't always made the best decisions with my waitlist, and my eldest has it in his shared Steam library, so I installed it from there & played it.
I spent the six bucks.
Sunset Overdrive feels like an open world mashup of Borderlands, Dying Light, & Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, by way of iZombie.
The core premise of monsters created by drinking an energy drink at a launch party feels like it was lifted wholesale from iZombie; however, Sunset Overdrive originally released on Xbox in 2014, with iZombie being developed in 2014 & released in 2015, which is interesting timing, to say the least.
The bright, hyperkinetic gameplay involving grinding rails & acrobatics while shooting monsters is refreshing, & leans into aggressive offensive gameplay, rather than playing defense like a cover shooter.
It doesn't take itself seriously, breaking the fourth wall, & if you've got a spare 7 bucks, it's worth the buy.
Apr 27, 2023 - Day 117 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 132
Game: Phoning Home
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 8, 2017
Library Date: Mar 13, 2018
Unplayed: 1871d (5y1m14d)
Playtime: 95m
Phoning Home is a third-person open-world robot survival sim. It is also free on Steam (which is why there's a link at the end).
Phoning Home was developed by ION LANDS, who went on to create Cloudpunk, (one of my all-time favourite games).
I've mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of sandbox survival games. Valheim left me cold, and V Rising genuinely left me regretting spending the money on it.
Phoning Home, on the other hand, is a narrative driven survival game, which takes the exploration and construction and gives it purpose.
I only intended to play this for 15 minutes before work, and was an hour late starting work, so deep did it suck me in and make me want to keep playing, and further the story of the cute little WALL-E inspired robot, ION.
To the point that the new Warframe expansion The Duviri Paradox dropped today (it's free too!), and if I'm to have any hope of giving it a fair go, I'll need to play that first, because otherwise I suspect I'll be up all night playing Phoning Home.
Sable is a third-person open-world adventure & exploration game. Unlike... any open world game I've played, as far as I can recall, it has no combat.
Sable is the coming of age story of the eponymous main character, and leaving her clan to embark on her "gliding".
Apparently inspired by Breath of the Wild, Sable's quest takes her climbing and solving puzzles across her home world of Midden; seemingly a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Sable rides her hoverbike from destination to destination, picking up quests.
Her goal is to collect a series of masks, which (if I understand correctly), will ultimately lead her to a ceremony to choose a final mask, which seemingly represents her permanent role within her society.
Sable has a quite lovely cel-shaded graphic style with a dynamic colour scheme that changes based on a day & night cycle, and has an almost ethereal soundscape.
Glyphscape originated as a #minigame nested in a #cyberpunk hacking simulator game in 2019. The parent game has been shelved indefinitely as the scope of an ascii-based game was much more appropriate for my skill set as a programmer (or rather my lack of skills in other areas of #gamedev).
I will be posting #devlog updates here, both to document new features, and to explain bits of code that I believe will be helpful for other developers.
Access to the game is limited to internal testers at the moment, but there are plans an Alpha release in the near future.