Oh yeah I haven’t even mentioned the art, I guess because it truly speaks for itself. You can just look at a screenshot and know they did something amazing
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Also just played that gosh darn demonschool demo, and that’s a gosh darn good game. Can’t wait to play more when it comes out.
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Lately I’ve been hanging out with The House in Fata Morgana, but I had to put it down for a week due to the game jam, and it’s weird trying to think about jumping back in now that I’m so severed from the narrative inertia. So instead I treated myself to another playthrough of SNES Pocky & Rocky. Still the best, never gets old. This could probably be its own thread but it made me wonder what other small games anyone around here likes to pop on and unwind with for a single sitting from time to time. Sweet timeless ones that are comforting just to clear through real quick. That SFC Pokonyan is another one for me too.
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Rolled the roulette wheel of my GoG library tonight and came up with D. I’ve heard bits and pieces about it over the years - Kenji Eno’s position as a PS1-era auteur, the covert master switch, the dreamlike atmosphere - but never played it because I found the whole two hour time limit a little offputting. I did some similar dragging of my feet around the first Fallout for the same reason, but got around to that one much quicker. Mostly because those death animations looked really cool when I was younger.
Anyway, D! Like Fallout, I didn’t need to worry about that time limit because there’s not much in the way of real puzzles, is there? There was a brief moment in the garden on seeing the panels underneath the aquarius and sagittarius statues where I thought I was in for some complicated work but even that was done away with pretty quickly. I even took notes, assuming I’d need to replay it at least once in order to make it all the way through! They did at least come in handy for the rotating room puzzle.
It feels a little bit like an alternate path in adventure game history, paring back the puzzles in order to focus on atmosphere instead of approaching it the other way around, like Shivers and 11th Hour and all the other first-person titles that made me realize I really don’t like thinking through spatial reasoning puzzles.
I did really admire the atmosphere and visuals of it all - there’s still something that feels really unique and compelling about the slow, dreamlike pace. Walking through water, footsteps echoing in empty corridors, your face contorting in slow motion as you see some new ghastly horror. I wish I’d played it in October!
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Definitely Doom 2 would be a game I install and just run straight through when I feel like.
Another game I love to just pick up and play is balatro. It’s on my phone, so no waiting super accessible always fun.
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Would be a good thread, for sure
A couple of things immediately come to mind for me: Astrosmash! for the Intellivision, and Wipeout 3: Special Edition on the psx. W3SE is more for loading up and having a quick timetrial run through one or two courses, rather than clearing the game or anything like that. Or every now and then I’ll make a new memcard save and just re-start on getting all the gold medals over time.
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So I got stuck last night at work, alone, after hours for an hour least night with only my phone.
I bought Song of Bloom for a couple bucks a while back and forgot about it, but discovered it still installed on my phone.
It’s about a half hour long puzzle game with several to art styles and some neat mechanics. I had a good time with it, and finished just as it was time to go home.
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I played through the trilogy again in 2022 and had a good time with it. I would also be interested in hearing your thoughts if it is your first time playing through the games.
I think Asylum might be my favourite? It may depend on the day.
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I found when I last played through city that I didn’t like it as much as when I was younger. But when I last played through Knight I enjoyed myself more than when I first played it.
I’ve played through City since making this comment, and it seems “better” in pretty much every way but I like the vibes of Asylum more. Mostly because I generally prefer Metroid-style dungeon games instead of an open world.
I loved the movement system though, and the grappling hook/gliding reminded me of Just Cause 3.
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I’ve been playing the SquareSoft hidden gem Vagrant Story (2000), and by playing I mean spending two hours reading guides about the gameplay mechanics.
A gaming podcast that I listen to once said that every JRPG is either for normal people or Number Perverts, and this is definitely a Number Pervert type of game.
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The game is real fun and I kind of gets in the way of itself with the skill tree using different point systems. It isn’t difficult to understand but It doesn’t seem necessary at all. I haven’t touched it in a while but I seems like something I’ll 100%. I actually haven’t been able to experience the game’s multiplayer still. Does it have crossplay? I’m on PS5.
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I’d definitely agree that the game gets in its own way in a number of different ways, and I’m not sure the separate skill point systems added much of note to the experience. I do think, though, that with some iteration, it could have been a more interesting system (I’d be curious what a skill tree might look like with separate stat skill points, but without the generic ones, for example)
I can’t speak to the multiplayer unfortunately, as I played on PS5 and have yet to ever pay for access to online play on console
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I haven’t wanted to play a contemporary Nintendo-made game since Tears of the Kingdom, or That Good Kirby before that, but having wrapped Metaphor and Dragon Quest III – and my gaming being limited to real simple dopamine generators (very excited for Citizen Sleeper 2 when/if depression eases up) – I was craving what that one thread we have calls a small numbers RPG. This craving lined up with GameStpsss – here’s where I take a 40-second pause to remember if it’s “Spot” or “Stop,” and then I give up – selling the Mario RPG remake for $20. So I got that. I can now add it to my physical Switch collection, which also incudes an unopend copy of Deadly Premonition 2 and Deadly Premonition 2. GamePots, btw, has the desperate, sweaty, vaguely illegal feeling of a franchised pawn shop that somehow got filled with funkos
Anyway, especially as a study of SquareSoft RPGs from the 1990s – which is apt for me right now, as I played through or re-played through Final Fantasies I-VII last year and am currently halfway through VIII – this is hitting the spot. I love getting 2 experience points in a battle and just boppin from town to dark place to town to dark place, talking to frogs, getting a few new equipments from each town. I was also craving something pretty, as Metaphor looked disappointingly crusty for all 100 of its hours (wonderful art direction that’s shockingly let down by PS3-assed image processing on consoles), and I must say this remake’s decision to fully realize the Silicon Graphics workstation look that they were originally aiming for in 1995 is very, very appealing to my specific headspace in February of 2025. I play this thing on a little OLED screen and think, “dang, I cannot believe this perfect tiny plasticine puppet garden is a video game.”
There’s also something to be said for the pre-genericization of Mah-rio, particularly in the fairy tail aspects of it all (i.e. the supporting cast, an emotional rain cloud orphan boy who believes he’s a frog and a stoic marionette given life by an unknowable cosmic entity, who are fighting a talking sword). Mario works well when you sprinkle some fairy story on there, and it’s a shame Miyamoto’s wife doesn’t let that happen anymore. It also makes me aware of a niche type of character or story that I’m grasping to call the mid-'90s, postmodern digital fairy tale aesthetic; I don’t know what it is exactly yet, or where to trace the DNA, but Geno and Klonoa are the same type of guy. Maybe the kid from Moon, too. Is there anything to that? Just me?
Only thing I don’t like is how the higher fidelity version of the original art really emphasizes Mario as a baby-like grown man. He’s too squished down in a stretched aspect ratio kind of way, and I don’t enjoy that. I know he is ultimately an off-putting infant man, but I don’t like to be reminded of it in this way.
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i finished Citizen Sleeper 2 and i must say i am a big fan. more of the same but everything is so good it doesn’t really need much more than that. i highly recommend anyone that is interested to go play it as soon as you can. hopefully we’ll get additional chapters like the first game because i’d love to dive back in and see new things
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In my honest opinion, you can mostly stumble through the first time without really understanding anything, I’d say save the min/maxing for the second+ playthrough(s)
If anything, it seemed kind of pointless to really grind for the best gear since no enemy can really put up that much of a fight if you’re doin it right. But then again, I forgot that it’s meant to be played more like a time trial/high score kind of game, so that’s the real purpose of it (and in that case, might as well cheese it).
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I finished Day 1 of Pathologic 2. Things are already not going well. I think I’m really in for it.
I ended up dropping BIT.TRIP Runner2 after the 2nd world. It’s fun enough, but the lack of musical variety is a huge detriment to the game. The music is pretty much the same in every level, because all the jumps and collecting good have effects that are pay off the song. These effects are the same in every level, so everything sounds super-samey. The beats and tempo are pretty much the same always too. Getting the cross power ups affects the music the same way in every level too. That is not what I’m looking for in a rhythm-adjacent game.
Due to some interesting work-related things this week, I’ve broken out the Playdate again, and I’m playing a few games. This device is just so charming! I’m really looking forward to hearing more about Season 2.
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I think I will invest sometime into citizen sleeper now reading over this thread. It’s been on the radar for a while now, and disco Elysium is one of my favorite games ever.
Now for the real question. Do I need to play citizen sleeper 1 to play citizen sleeper 2. I’m going to assume, no?
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No, you do not – they are separate stories and the main character is different in each of them.
There are references to the first from the second, but no knowledge is essential by any means
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