atomicpoet

atomicpoet, 5 hours ago to random

Today, 48 games were released on Steam. These were the ones I found interesting:

The Other Side: Tower of Souls Remaster

• a remake of the 2014 hidden object point-and-click adventure game about sibling rivalry and the realm of the dead
• price: C$8.99, but currently at -15% discount selling at C$7.64

Unnamed Experiment

• a point-and-click psychological horror puzzle game with hand-drawn graphics
• free demo download
• price: C$4.99, but currently at -12% discount selling at C$4.39

Find the Orange Narwhal

• a point-and-click adventure game about dealing with a hangover and trying to recover a lost orange narwhal
• Mac and Linux ports available
• price: FREE!

AdventureBarStory

• a bar management sim that doubles as a JRPG with cute 2D 16-bit pixel art graphics
• gamepad supported
• free demo download
• soundtrack available as DLC
• price: C$25.99, but currently at -20% discount selling at C$20.79

V Rising

• an open world game where you play a vampire hunting for blood and avoiding the sun
• gamepad supported
• online PvP and co-op available
• lots of DLC
• price: C$44.99, but currently at -10% discount selling at C$40.49

Gift

• a puzzle platformer about a man attempting to escape a sinking luxury ship
• gamepad supported
• Mac port available
• price: C$32.50, but currently at -10% discount selling at C$29.25

PAC-MAN Mega Tunnel Battle: Chomp Champs

• a PAC-MAN-themed battle royale
• gamepad supported
• PvP available
• lots of DLC
• price: C$26.99

Rainbow Cotton

• an on-rails shooter that’s a re-make of the Dreamcast classic
• gamepad supported
• shared/split screen co-op available
• price: C$19.99, but currently at -10% discount selling at C$17.99

atomicpoet, 5 hours ago to random

Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines is a great 90s PC game. It is genuinely a great RTS. Perhaps it’s one of the greatest Spanish-made games of all time. Commando was a big success, selling 1 million copies, and many people remember it fondly.

But it’s also not user-friendly, and it takes a really long time to understand. I’ve had this game for 10 years. Multiple times, I abandoned the game because the learning curve was just too much. Only recently, because I was highly motivated to finally “crack” this game, have I finally understood how it works.

The biggest problem is there’s no hovertext around buttons. There’s nothing that tells you what anything does. It therefore takes a lot of trial and error to figure things out.

Yes, there’s a tutorial but it isn’t very interactive. But even without the tutorial, it’s easy to forget things. Hovertext would be so easy to implement just as a nice reminder, and it would improve quality of life drastically.

That said, once you get past those humps, there’s fun to be had with Commandos. What separates it from other RTS games of the era is that, instead of base-building, you command a small group that goes on stealth missions behind enemy territory.

And you have to be quite careful with how you neutralize the enemy because the moment they see you, they will do everything in their power to kill you. The moment you lose one man, the game is over.

The stealth invites a lot of creativity. You could blow up a building to create a distraction while your other men disable the perimeter. Or you can crawl your towards the machine gunner, knife him in the back, then blow up a gas canister to kill the rest of the enemy in one go.

Graphically, this is quite 90s in its aesthetic. Sometimes I forget that isometric perspectives were the height of 3D graphics, especially on PC. I like the textures and the environments. However, sometimes your men are hard to see.

I wish this game had a soundtrack. However, the silence builds up the suspense. The ambient sounds make me feel like I’m walking a tightrope.

At one time the developer, Pyro Studios, was a premiere developer of RTS games. They made an expansion pack and two sequels. Praetorians and Imperial Glory were two other RTS games they made. Unfortunately, Planet 51 didn’t succeed, and Pyro Studios was forced to lay off many employees. Last I checked, they make mobile games.

Nowadays, this is an inexpensive game. Steam sells it for C$5.69, while GOG.com includes the original game and the Beyond the Call of Duty expansion pack together for C$8.19. That’s pretty good value!

If you can get through the steep learning curve, Commandos can be fun.

Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines screenshot (RTX 3080 Ti)
Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines screenshot (RTX 3080 Ti)
Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines screenshot (RTX 3080 Ti)

atomicpoet, 10 hours ago to random

Lesson learned. Never drink Red Bull before going to the gym. 👎

atomicpoet, 12 hours ago to random

VC investment isn’t the worst thing.

They may do rotten things but at least a VC wants to build a company. You know what’s worse than VCs?

Corporate raiders who utilize leveraged buyouts to buy companies, load those companies with debt, then strip them of assets.

atomicpoet, 12 hours ago to random

It’s occurred to me that an entire generation has grown up where cheap debt and stimulus money was the norm—not the exception.

atomicpoet, 14 hours ago to random

You can’t blame VCs entirely for enshittification. They are just a symptom.

The problem goes beyond “capitalism bad”.

The problem is that there’s more debt in the world than money. So long as there’s more debt, there will be demand for more money. Companies will take on bigger and bigger risk to satisfy debt.

At some point money can’t satisfy debt. This inevitably triggers a big crunch when the conflict between debt and assets cannot be resolved.

So what happens? Companies do more desperate things to wring every bit of monetization, hoping to satisfy both stockholders and debtholders. They have to do this fast because stockholders demand ROI while debtholders seek to collect on their loans.

Inevitably, this means that short term profit-seeking drives away long term potential.

Now why is enshittification so particularly bad at this moment? Interest rates are high. This means debt has become more expensive – it’s the most expensive it’s been in 23 years.

atomicpoet, 15 hours ago to random

The truth is, there’s usually only two avenues for financing new technology:

1. equity
2. debt

VCs deal in the world of equity. They exist for the awkward “teenage” phase of development – between seed rounds and IPO. They assume a lot of risk because they (typically) hope for the possibility of 10x ROI, and they almost always have an exit strategy. Most VC-backed companies fail.

Theoretically, you could avoid the world of equity through debt financing. Thing is, debt financiers are more risk averse than VCs. For good reason too – the only thing they have to gain is their money back with some interest. If the company fails, they get nothing.

Thus, if you want to get rid of VCs, you need people who are willing to tolerate the same risk.

atomicpoet, 16 hours ago to random

I have real world experience with VC, much more than people realize. While I have not had the best experience with them, I am not foolish enough to believe they are entirely avoidable.

De-federating VC-backed Fediverse servers isn’t easy. Even if it were, how many people have actually done it? Will anyone de-federate every server that federates with a VC-backed server too?

And if we’re that serious about avoiding VCs, why are we even using ActivityPub? That, too, was created with some VC-backing.

Even outside the Fediverse, has anyone – at least anyone using the Internet – avoided everything that has ever touched VC money? I have my doubts.

VCs are a lot like oil companies. They’re evil and do terrible things, but – if you live in the modern world – avoiding oil is impossible. We should seek to replace oil with more sustainable energy. However, I’m certainly not going to judge people or small businesses for using oil since it’s near impossible to avoid.

That’s how I feel about VC money. I don’t think it’s sustainable. I wish there were more tech companies that operated as co-ops. I’m certainly, though, not going to judge people for accessing VC capital – especially since so few people are willing to put in the risk to validate alternative forms of financing.

Sadly, the conversation no one wants to talk about is how to finance the Fediverse sustainably. On the contrary, I see a whole lot of people demanding “free” without any awareness of costs. An alternative financing eco-system should exist, but who’s going to build it? There’s not even a crowd-funding platform that’s native to the Fediverse!

People talk about VCs enshittifying things. Sure, it does. But what also enshittifies things is desperation for money and financing. Frankly, even without VC-backing, people are already experiencing enshittification of the Fediverse. That’s only going to continue for as long as people avoid financial sustainability.

RE: https://atomicpoet.org/objects/04e12d7e-a305-4d31-a0e5-1a7d05d37ded

atomicpoet, 16 hours ago to random

Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure isn’t just a great action RPG, it’s a rebuke to what Westerners assume about Japanese gaming.

There’s this myth amongst Westerrners that Japanese never made PC games until recently.

This myth persists even though some of the greatest Japanese-made franchises started as PC games. But even some Westerners who are aware of the MSX, PC-98, and Sharp X68000 still believe that Japanese developers abandoned PCs once Windows dominated the Japanese market.

It simply isn’t true. If anything, some of the greatest Japanese games were made for PC first. One such company with a PC-first focus is Nihon Falcom. If you’re a JRPG die-hard, you probably know them.

Nihon Falcom is, in my opinion, the greatest JRPG developer of all time. They’re famous for so many classics: Dragon Slayer, Ys, The Legend of Heroes – just to name a few. These JRPGs started life on Japanese PC platforms, not Windows – before Windows was localized into Japanese.

But even after Windows’ localization, Nihon Falcom continued PC game development. Initially released in 2004, only in Japan, Gurumin was designed for Windows. It stayed as a Japanese exclusive release for almost a decade. Finally, in 2015, it got English localization and a world-wide release.

Now the interesting thing about Gurumin is that it’s not a hardcore JRPG for dyed-in-the-wool enthusiasts. Rather, this is an incredibly accessible, family-friendly adventure about a little girl named Parin moving to a mining town. There are no kids in this town, so she makes friends with the local monsters – who the adults in the town can’t see. One day, her monster friends are attacked by the evil phantoms. So what does Parin naturally do? She goes on a quest to rescue her friends.

Because of this game’s PC-centric Japanese design, Gurumin has certain quirks. For one thing, it does not give a damn about certain Western conventions about PC gaming. For example, instead of WASD or arrow keys for movement, you move the mouse while pressing left mouse button. Believe it or not, using the mouse this way almost feels like using an analog joystick – it works pretty well!

And this is just one quirk regarding the controls too. If you look at the top of your screen, you’ll see musical notes. That’s because Gurumin has a rhythm game component to it. If you hit right mouse button – which is attack – at the precise beat of the game music rhythm, you will achieve a critical hit.

Graphically, Gurumin resembles something that could have come out on GameCube or PS2. It seems so console-like in the graphical department that when I show this game off to someone unfamiliar, they are shocked to discover that this was once a PC exclusive. But I think it’s graphics, look the way they do is because – again – this was a Japanese-made game that came out in 2004.

Because this is a PC game, it looks far sharper than anything made for console during that era. Gurumin has no problems displaying at modern resolutions with a widescreen aspect ratio. And believe it or not, no mods are needed!

The soundtrack is whimsical and fun, befitting for the fantasy scenario. It’s also a core component of the game. Paying attention to the music helps you with the rhythm combat component of the game, helping you achieve success.

Gurumin is a great entryway into the world of JRPGs. It’s a standalone game, not part of a series. And the world-building is remarkable.

I also think young girls (and young girls at heart) will love Gurumin. Parin is a character they can relate to, and all her friends are lovable. It also helps that Parin is a courageous hero who simply wants to defend her new home.

Believe it or not, Gurumin was the first game I ever bought on GOG.com. I’ve owned it since 2015. And this was the game that really sold me on the service. I’ve installed this game on so many of my computers. My daughter has now grown up with Parin and her friends.

Right now, GOG.com has Gurumin at a -76% off discount of its regular price of C$13.59. It’s on sale right now for C$3.29. And, of course, it’s DRM-free.

Gurumin might not be famous, especially here in the West. To me, though, it is a JRPG classic for PC. It continues to create fond memories for my family.

atomicpoet, 18 hours ago to random

Good summary of the Helldivers 2 fiasco and how big of a complete screw-up Sony almost made – and might still make if they continue to misunderstand PC gamers and what’s important to us.

PC gamers aren’t fans of walled gardens. We don’t like it when companies come in, do a rug pull, and try to re-dictate terms.

That might work on PlayStation where Sony is God. But on PC, Sony is just one other company selling a game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX0_7SvXAf0

atomicpoet, 1 day ago to random

Today, 38 games were released on Steam. These were the ones I found interesting:

Path of Achra

• a 2D dark fantasy rogue-like RPG with a big sandbox and lots of character customization
• playable on Steam Deck
• free demo available
• price: C$12.99, but currently has a 20% discount selling at C$10.39

CANDYLAND: Sweet Survival

• a survival horror about a boy tasked with destroying everything in a candy factory
• price: C$16.99

Heading Out

• a stylish visual novel with rogue-like characteristics about driving thrrough the USA
• gamepad supported
• soundtrack available as DLC
• price: C$25.49, but currently has a 10% discount selling at C$22.94

The WereCleaner

• a stealth-comedy game about a janitor who is also a werewolf
• gamepad supported
• price: FREE!

No.9

• a 2D abstract logic puzzle game with minimalist graphics and a pleasing grey aesthetic
• Linux and Mac ports available
• price: C$1.29, but currently has a 10% discount selling at C$1.16

atomicpoet, 1 day ago to random

If I see a game published by Devolver Digital, chances are I will buy it if it’s on sale. Which is why I purchased Umiro last month.

It’s a good, quality puzzle game but it’s also clear it was designed for mobile interfaces. To be sure, I don’t mind mobile games that are ported to PC.

However, I think the developers missed an opportunity to allow this game to be played in portrait mode. In landscape, it just feels there’s wasted real estate – especially since the cutscenes feel like they were meant to be used with a smartphone in portrait. I’d also have a lot more real estate to solve the puzzles.

Steam Deck, which I play this on, has a 7” touchscreen. If this game allowed for portrait, I could take full advantage of the touchscreen. Yet, as it is now, the game feels cramped.

On a larger screen, yeah, it’s less cramped – yet you still have to contend with all that wasted space, and it feels awkward.

But again, Umiro is enjoyable. I like it. The puzzles are head scratchers, the music is wistful, and I like the characters. The PC port, though, could have been better. If you’re going to play this, play it on your phone.

Umiro screenshot (Steam Deck)
Umiro screenshot (Steam Deck)
Umiro screenshot (Steam Deck)

atomicpoet, 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago) to random

Listen, if you’re a white person, and you think you’ve had Szechuan food, you probably haven’t.

Most of the Szechuan restaurants in the USA lack a basic component: spiciness.

I say this because a friend from out of town just went to a Szechuan restaurant in Vancouver, thought it was going to be business as usual, and now he’s doubled over because the spice is too much for him.

He tells me, it’s so bad, that he feels the spice eking out of his pores. 🤣

atomicpoet, 1 day ago to random

The odd thing is, as I get older, the things I like and have sentimental value don’t have an all-encompassing touchstone.

Let me give you an example. Almost everyone has heard Nirvana, played Super Mario Bros., and watched The Matrix.

But at some point I diverged from the mainstream. My Nirvana is The Rapture. My Super Mario Bros. is Septerra Core. My Matrix is Turbo Kid.

It is so rare to encounter another human who has heard of these things. And the thing is, I didn’t set out to be niche. It just happened.

I suspect I’m not alone in this phenomena. It’s entirely possible that most of us carry memories of art that mean so much to us but not to many others. And I suspect this is occurring with increasing frequency.