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[Great Order]

Found out about Loop Hero the other day. It's a sort of autobattler deck-builder where you're playing a hero going around a loop (Guess where the game got its name from?) where you can add terrain to the loop which spawns enemies, modifies the fights, buffs the hero etc.

It's actually more fun than it sounds, helped by there being a fair few synergies that are only hinted at, and some that you have to discover by yourself. For example, placing a 3x3 square of mountains/rocks creates a mountain peak that increases max health by 120 and spawns harpies every day. Another one that's hinted at is that placing vampire mansions next to villages will turn them into a ransacked village that spawns ghouls, but after three loops it'll convert into Count's Lands, which is basically a buffed village.

Then when you're done with the loop, either because you left it or you got killed, you go back to your campsite where you use gathered resources to build stuff for various buffs and class unlocks, as well as giving you more cards to choose for your deck. The Steam page has a demo that lets you go through the first chapter.

[nenjin]

Gonna rep The Curious Expedition 2.

It's a sequel to the first game, which I did an ill-fated and unfinished LP of.

CE2 has dropped the links to real world figures in favor of something a bit more eclectic. The game has a main story now that you play chapters of in between random expeditions. Your "score" is no longer predicated on how long your expedition takes you. The ticking clock, other than dwindling resources, is this mysterious purple fog that closes in from the edges of the map as the days roll by, and walking through it is a massive hit to sanity.

On top of those changes they've added "Clubs" of three varieties that sponsor all expeditions. Do missions, rank up with them, get new consumable, gear and expedition member unlocks. Your rep with them is across the whole save file, so starting a new character doesn't wipe out your Club rep.

Other than that it's still largely the same, enjoyable game. Half the fun and challenge is navigating these randomly generated islands while managing your sanity and getting as much loot as possible.
You get multiple ways to approach situations, from befriending natives and learning about them to robbing them blind of their cultural treasures and royally pissing them off. Some things are multiple choice, some things come down to skill tests with your expedition members' dice, some are just random events and good or bad luck. The longer characters are in your expedition the more likely it is they'll form bonds with one another, from friendship to love to hate, which can affect how your expedition performs. They can gain or lose various other traits due to stuff that happens during expeditions as well. TBH the map navigation and exploration and resource and sanity management are to me the most enjoyable parts of the game. Later game maps are so rife with hazards and difficult terrain that you gotta look tile by tile to figure out the most optimal way to travel.

Once you finish a map they total up all your loot, you earn rep with the Club that sponsored the Expedition and your leader gets to choose a random perk which, by the time you've massed five or six of them, make the game vastly easier. You also get awarded currency based on your overall score to spend at the Clubs for good stuff.

The other half of the game is the dice based combat which I've become quite a fan of as well. Your expedition leader and all the expedition members have action dice grouped into three colorized categories, red for strength/brute force, blue for wits/intelligence, green for agility/cleverness. Each of these dice are different attacks and moves within each category, based on the class of the character, and each round of combat is a jumble of all your character's dice. Dice of the same color can be used to boost an attack or move, and the whole system proceeds in an orderly, predictable turn-based fashion. The enemy design and combat system has the feel of a card game, with the randomness of dice added in. Quite enjoyable, once you find a good combo. For me, it was shields, healing and all my damage largely focused into one character (which happened to be my expedition leader riding an Onyx that I found in the wilds and tamed.)

All in all it's a solid upgrade to the previous game, graphically and in terms of content. I put 30 hours in before my first win but that involved several restarts at the beginning and numerous attempts at several late game maps where things. Just. Didn't. Come. Together. Late game maps can be especially challenging as they're multi-stage (i.e. map to map with few chances to replenish your stocks), quest objectives that are randomly scattered around, the aforementioned rough terrain and lots and lots of hostile enemies. It's probably a 10 to 15 hour experience for others with I'd say mild replayability. But frankly just the fun of getting through those maps Indiana Jones style keeps bringing me back.

[MCreeper]

Just putting some stuff about some Choice of Games out of my mind.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  Choice of Robots - the only one of this jolly gay publishing to get any reviews.
  Choise of Magics - tries really hard to undermime own premise of "magic has trade-offs". Not a long way in characters start using those "trade-offs" in a strictly positive and controllable manner, culminating in destruction of country-sized cloud of noxious destruction magic residue with more destruction magic. Come on, it's like dropping a nuke on Chernobyl to blast away radiation.  And yeah, you got to solve all problems with one skill, or you may not get enough +1s for something in the end.
  Choice of Rebels – Really great, besides tokenism and author intending to make 4 siquels then coming to his senses and reconsidering. Not very much flaws there.

  Heart of the House - has story leaps most (w)retched. Okay, so there was Dracula-inspired ride to The House, then introduction of all characters, then sleep. In the morning i pretty much instantly got trapped in a magical labirinth that lasted for what looked like half of the game. Seemingly optionally, but in this kind of games door may well open YOU. Eventually main character blasted her way out with POWER OF THE MOON only to tumble out into feast of freakcultists, with owner of the house immidiately triyng to sacrifice her to eldritch entity.
  After you chase away eldritch entity with POWER OF THE MOON, game presents you with a choice of four (or was it three?) characters to "talk" to. Of course i picked the owner, aiming to point magical finger-bangers at him and ask "Hey dude, what da fuck was that?". Alas, author had diffirent idea and they chose to romance each other instead. In the middle of lovey-dovey dialogue main character finally asks The Question, recieves the answer of "Ah yeah, sorry about that, traditions" and then the matter is considered settled. 
  Full day of idle jawing with inhabitants of the house later, they take a second try at sacrificial feast, now with random captive people as sacrifices, which includes main character's daddy. Main character chases away eldritch entity with POWER OF THE MOON and DETERMINATION, freeing the daddy. Owner decides that this whole "sacrifice people annually for land prosperity" business isn't worth the hassle, and whole gang goes to kill the entity with you know what. They ruin the house along with entity, then go to somewhere else to live happily ever after. Except daddy, who is actually a demon and has wandered off somewhere. Which is apparently an excuse for his presence boiling down to author saying “Yeah, yeah, he’s with you, I didn’t forget about him” once in a while.
 
Tally Ho. It's ok. It's somewhat funny. Skill checks are sky-high. 

Wayhaven Chronicles. A vampire cliche storm if i have seen one. Most notably, every single thing that happens "behind the scenes" is shown to you, yet main character is an utterly clueless duncemeister that sees nothing untul it is impossible not to, and even then you get an option to scream "YOU ARE BULLSHITTING ME I WONT BELIEVE YOU" ad nauseam. That main character is "you" makes it all the more irritating.  To add insult to injury, romance options are a gang of supernatural jerkasses that shit-talked you, beaten you up (or did they?  ) then pretended to be your underlings while doing their own thing. At least one of them is courteous about that. I didn't even got trough first book. This review sums up all badness in a better way.

Midsummer night's choice. It's actually funny. But this here is the game where their mandatory tokenism really got in the way of the story. You can't have characters have the genders they would have if the game wasn't written by SJW, AND they all romance main character simultaneusly.

[scriver]

Trials of the Thief-taker was made by a forumite of here, I think it's pretty durn good.

[MCreeper]

Trials of the Thief-taker was made by a forumite of here, I think it's pretty durn good.

Was it you, matey?  It's actually the first one i tried, but totally forgot about. Didn't even made it past chapter 3 (mohocks?).

[scriver]

No, not me. But it's certainly made to my tastes. 19th century slang and all.

[Aoi]

Gonna rep The Curious Expedition 2.

So I'm kind of curious... have you had any expeditions last more than 365 days? Because each 'chapter' of the game is a year, I'm wondering it does anything interesting if a single expedition lasts over a year. My longest one so far was a whopping 250ish308 days. And absurdly profitable.

[nenjin]

No I think my longest was probably 212 days or something. I don't think the days really map all that well to the year. And yeah, compared to CE1, CE2 basically lets you farm your way to vast riches as long as you have a good way to regain sanity (the resting spots and villages.) Only when the fog closes in and cuts off your route to the final objective does it actually become a problem.

308 days is impressive though. Surprised the whole island wasn't a fog bank by that point.

[Aoi]

No I think my longest was probably 212 days or something. I don't think the days really map all that well to the year. And yeah, compared to CE1, CE2 basically lets you farm your way to vast riches as long as you have a good way to regain sanity (the resting spots and villages.) Only when the fog closes in and cuts off your route to the final objective does it actually become a problem.

308 days is impressive though. Surprised the whole island wasn't a fog bank by that point.

The 308 was the finale to Act... 3? that has three parts, each with an independent timer, so it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds... I did trigger like 8 Insanity events and the final objective was adjacent to the fog at that point though.

My shorter, but much more profitable run was because I thought I had a short jog to my final objective, so I stopped to loot a shrine. That cut me off from the short route, and I had to double back for over 100 days, with two villages of salamanders trying to kill me. I'm a combat-based team, so that was fine, but boy did it take a while. Also didn't have the item that regens sanity based on combat, so I was basically gibbering the entire time too.

[Iduno]

I've been playing Dicey Dungeons again. It's a lightweight cartoony dungeon crawler.

You start with 2 dice, and some equipment with some sort of theme. For example, the thief starts with a dagger card (does damage equal to the number on a die, as long as that die is 3 or less, and is reusable), a lockpicks (split one die randomly, splits a one into 2 ones, only one use), and can use one random piece of equipment the enemy has each turn. You can choose where you go on a map for each level, usually with one piece of equipment behind one enemy, a store (you get 1 gold for each enemy defeated) possibly behind one, an anvil which upgrades equipment might exist, and an apple which gives you some health back. You gain xp equal to the level of the enemy you defeated, and you need 2xlevel xp to level up. Each level has enough enemies to get you a level-up. Each run last about half an hour, and there are 6 characters, each with 6 difficulty levels. It ramps up in difficulty pretty quickly. Level-ups give you more health, full healing, and an extra die.

Each character also has a special power when you take about half your health in damage. For the thief, you get to roll 4 extra ones that round, which works nicely if you've found poison equipment (for example: 2 or less, add 1 poison to the enemy, 3 uses).

I really enjoy it, but it's fairly important to find good equipment fast on higher difficulties.


Edit: I just did several runs with the Witch (4th character out of 6, and by far my favorite so far). Your first turn is mostly set-up, doing maybe 1-2 damage. She needs to equip spells from her spellbook into the play area (By spending a die and choosing a location for the spell. One spell starts prepared, you can also choose either another prepared slot or an upgraded spell slot during some level-ups) before using them. You can also replace a spell, including one you've already used this turn, if you have more dice than you need. The which has a spell that doesn't do anything except gain extra dice in future turns, so "more dice than you need" can happen if you're willing to take some time to get set up. It looks like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Iceblaster]

And during the big fight that occured it's there that very sadly the biggest 0 A.D. issue i always had is still there, as mentionned in the new release article :

Despite our best efforts, the game can still lag when there are a lot of units on the map.

I ran into this interesting article by Intel that tries to identify the source of this super annoying and fun-breaking problem with 0 A.D.
https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/identifying-the-frame-rate-bottleneck-in-0-ad.html

I thought it had to do with pathfinding as coming from Dwarf Fortress everything bad about performance was always involvings bugs and pathfinding , but apparently it's javascript in this case :

The numerous transitions associated with thunking in the frame gaps, coupled with the various “js” entries that pop up throughout the results, strongly suggest that the game’s bottleneck is its Javascript usage. The exact nature of the problem remains unidentified – it could be excessive garbage collection or too-frequent interfacing, but most likely it’s the use of the Javascript to run significant portions of the game logic, which would likely be more efficient if written in C++.
Intel has reported our findings to Wildfire Games, but unfortunately, updating the Javascript is a massive undertaking, so as of writing, the bottleneck remains.

Sadly it sounds like there will not be a solution anytime soon as i imagine rewriting tons of inefficient javascript code into efficient c++ is a huge amount of work, a real pity as 0 A.D. is such a very good improved clone of Age of Empires concepts and mechanics (and looks incredibly good), but performance just kills its interest for me as those issues always start to appear when the game start being really fun (i mean when all sides begin to have actual armies)

Makes me sadder and sadder that the Hyrule Total War devs moved over to that instead of using their unfinished mod to actually finish making a mod

[Kagus]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1218210/Coromon/

Modern reimagining of Pokémon with baked-in Nuzlocke restriction settings on higher difficulties?

Modern reimagining of Pokémon with baked-in Nuzlocke restriction settings on higher difficulties.

[scriver]

Whatsa nuzlocke

[nenjin]

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Nuzlocke_Challenge

[scriver]

But that doesn't sound like gotta catch 'em all at all