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Buy 740 games for $5+ and help Black Lives Matter

Started by Mister Six, June 06, 2020, 11:01:42 PM

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ASFTSN

Stars Die is a really nicely crafted little walking sim/interactive fiction thing set in a sort of bio-apocalypse at the end of the world. You'll finish the whole thing in about 30 minutes but there's some lovely Ps1 style visuals in it and a bleak atmosphere with several different endings.


Cloud

Only recently finished Night in the Woods.  I'll echo what a Steam review said "It made me feel things 10/10"
Will have to re-play and see some of the other interactions sometime.

Mister Six

#122
Really got into Signs of the Soujourner, mentioned upthread. It's one of those "easy to learn, hard to master" games in which you have to collect and play cards against various people. This has a few nice twists on the formula though.

The first is that you're not trying to defeat people, but find an accord with them - the symbols on the cards represent the conversation you're having with them. It's about matching their tone (symbols) with your own, and trying not to back either of you into a corner where you can't respond appropriately. Fail a conversation and the game continues - but maybe a storyline has been closed off, or you won't get a valuable object for a quest or to sell at your store, as your character is venturing out into the big wide world for goods to keep their mother's store going in a backwoods town.



Which brings me to the second great part - your character is torn between following the trade caravan that brings in surefire quality goods to sell, and going off on their own adventure to find out more about their mother, who may have had her own secrets. So there's a constant tension between personal fulfilment and helping your home town/family business, and this is fully integrated into the gameplay itself.



As is the third good twist: after each conversation you're invited to take a card from your contact's deck. The further afield you go, the more different the symbols on those cards. That means the more the outside world changes you, the less able you are to connect with your childhood best friend, who runs the store while you're away and is going through his own trials and tribulations.

Also there's a dog!



(The dog has special dog cards that work with any deck, because he's a dog and loves you unconditionally no matter what you say.)

It's a fantastic, innovative little game. I'm sure it will reward multiple plays and routes, but I'm a dummy and went and bought Horizon: Zero Dawn and MGS5 so I probably won't find out for ages.

Zetetic

Quote from: ASFTSN on August 07, 2020, 09:28:47 AM
Stars Die is a really nicely crafted little walking sim/interactive fiction thing set in a sort of bio-apocalypse at the end of the world.
Thank you for highlighting this.

Sin Agog

Great Sojourner write-up, Mister!

Quote from: ASFTSN on August 07, 2020, 09:25:05 AM
Anyone had a second delve into the original itch.io bundle and found anything they overlooked first time round?

I really like Vektor 2089, feels like a WipEout game but done in Micro Machines top down style:



Vision Soft Reset is a really deep Metroidvania with Braid-style time travelling/psionic mechanics.  This review will sell it better than my sweaty, salt-deficient self can right now: https://medium.com/super-jump/vision-soft-reset-review-dc5dce292e85



ASFTSN

Quote from: Sin Agog on August 07, 2020, 10:14:49 PM
Vision Soft Reset

That looks great, if intimidating (anything timey wimey is a bit hard for me to grasp).

Quote from: Zetetic on August 07, 2020, 09:54:43 PM
Thank you for highlighting this.

No worries, did you give it a go or have a hand in making it?

Zetetic

Just gave it go! I think the dialogue falls a little short, when pushed[nb]The project lead's viewpoint is not well-expressed, I feel.[/nb], but it's mostly kept sparse and simple enough that everything else works really well.

Zetetic

Quote from: Mister Six on August 07, 2020, 03:47:20 PM
Really got into Signs of the Soujourner, mentioned upthread.
Thanks (to Mister Six and others) for highlighting this as well.

Pretty sure it's about to make me miserable as fuck for screwing up a bunch of trip-timings though.

ASFTSN

Quote from: Zetetic on August 08, 2020, 04:49:31 PM
Just gave it go! I think the dialogue falls a little short, when pushed[nb]The project lead's viewpoint is not well-expressed, I feel.[/nb], but it's mostly kept sparse and simple enough that everything else works really well.

I've played it through twice to see different endings and will do so again, especially as there's apparently a hidden fifth one. Both of those endings were
Spoiler alert
bleak as fuck cosmic horror
[close]
.

MojoJojo

Just found Silicon Zeroes, which is a very pleasing build a computer type puzzle game.

I'm thinking that it might be fun to have a Top 1000 games style thread for this bundle, where people chip in with reviews of the cool stuff they've found. There are some good reviews in this thread already.

bomb_dog

GNOG is worth trying, especially for those with younger kids. Big-faced robots and contraptions that have lots of little buttons and levers to press and pull to solve the overall puzzle or situation on each level. Daughter's been playing this on and off for the last six months, and can solve most of it herself now.

peanutbutter

Been meaning to try out GNOG with the VR headset, whole thing felt like it could've been originally a VR only experience when  I tried it back in the summer.

oustropique

Currently messing around in the PICO-8 fantasy console included here to make music. Gone from accidentally making sound effects to half-accidentally making minute long chiptunes that aren't bad in about a week. Less keen on learning Lua or bothering with spritesheets, but you can export stuff from it to use elsewhere, so that's fine.

Oh, and I suppose you can play games on it too, like Celeste 2, released earlier this week. https://mattmakesgames.itch.io/celeste-classic-2