I got Penance from the Joint Operation banner yay!
I didn't have any of the four rate-ups, so pulling on the banner was a no-brainer for me. Now I have another powerful lane holder aside from La Pluma. Nice.
Game freeze when you win/lose battle in Trials of Navigator #3 and try to use either back button or in this case using home>terminal #arknights#global#Yostar#TksYostar
Honeyberry's MV from the #Arknights festival sounds and looks adorable—because it is—but the lyrics are something else. Sweetest Arknights character whether she's your waifu or not.
She's singing about how she is glad Rhodes Island is her new home; that she's glad to have met so many wonderful people; that she knows you feel sad, lonely, and stressed sometimes but it's okay because tomorrow will be a new day and she'll always be here to help tomorrow come. Even when she experienced dark times, she believes the world can be better when everyone listens, snuggles, and is there for each other and that can make things brighter.
It's completely saccharine but what do you expect, she's a sugar glider?
I just watched RCE play the coolest looking #TowerDefense game that I've seen in a while. It's called #ToyShire and is made by some Turkish indie devs who just put a free demo on GOG [edit:] and Steam.
Mechanically, it looks pretty similar to a lot of the genre. You have fixed points where you can place and upgrade big beefy towers between waves. During waves, you can deploy units which are slightly mobile but can be damaged by enemies. Solid enough based on the handful of units and towers they've shown off so far but that's not what sells it, the aesthetics are.
You play as Kevin, a boy playing with little green army men. The visuals and environment completely sell that premise. Kevin pulls towers out of his jacket. The paths on the map are made of toys, plates of cookies, furniture, and dirty laundry strewn about the floor. He comments on stuff as it's happening the way a kid playing with his toys might. A jenga tower getting knocked over by his cat can change the path enemies take. And he can make up rules when he has an idea for something cool (the finale of the demo shows it off well).
You get a bit of a feel for who the kid is when you'll see stuff like the BRIO train set being in more built in one stage than when you last saw it. There's a ton of potential for environmental story telling there.
Going back to the visuals, video game graphics have caught up to the point where this is what I imagine the Toy Story 1 tie in game wanted to look like. They are highly detailed models but are unnaturally shiny and the whole thing is bright and colorful.
I don't know if enough Twitch streamers will pick it up for it to get popular since it doesn't look like a great game for that right out of the box but it's absolutely worth checking out.
I'm glad to hear it's on Steam. I knew that they had a page but wasn't sure if they had a demo because I couldn't see it from my phone.
From what I've read, #Bloons TD6 is still the reigning champion of the genre for a reason. It has a cute art style and there's more depth to it than most of the genre. Though, get the Netflix version if you can. It loses a few features but has all microtransactions removed. I have enjoyed it but got more info Neural Cloud and Arknights so I don't have the time for another game that updates frequently.
I might complain about #Arknights when I get mad at it but it's still a great TD game most of the time, though it's not traditional by any stretch.
I've seen enough people recommend Defense Grid, Steam World TD, and Kingdom Rush that I suspect it's organic popularity instead of ads.
One other TD on PC that I learned about from RCE and seems worth checking out is #Thronefall. It's new (maybe still early access? I'm not sure). You control a medieval fantasy king but the enemies you face vary outside of that niche while still looking consistent aesthetically. Terrain has a much bigger impact than most TDs I've seen. Hills, narrow passage choke points, zig zags, waterways, and line of sight all play a role preventing you from spamming the same strat on different stages or with different conditions. One tip: investing is key to victory. I'm used to TDs where overwhelming force early usually creates a snowball that enemies can't overcome. Thronefall really wants you to barely scrape by on the skin of your teeth to invest in revenue generators early, then you have enough money to crush later waves.
I so love the flexibility of gameplay and team building in #arknights that I'm deliberately delaying E2 ascensions just so I can level up more operators to play around with. Not the most optimal way of progression, but in every gacha I've played I almost always prefer horizontal investments. It also helps that the game is balanced enough to not require high investments even for some challenging content.
I just find it more fun overall when I have more units to use.