New Games That Don’t Suck Thread

[Terror Sandwich]

I wish the guy would go back and finish his robot platformer.
BLAZING DYNAMO | Demo
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Apparently the dev is an adhd sperg that can't focus on anything, he has other prototypes I've seen posted on his twitter. There is one that seems to be a 3rd person shooter platformer like Rachet & Clank.
But he just keeps dropping the games once it gets to the boring part of developing levels and visuals.
The only reason he was able to finish Pseudoregalia was because he made it for a Metroidvania GameJam, and it was so close to completion once the jam was over that it was enough motivation to actually finish it.
Just considering that it took him close to a year to add in a map in Pseudoregalia show how slow he is when it comes to developing more laborious things.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

Centennial Case is a really interesting mystery visual novel from Square Enix. And it has full motion graphics which actually don't look like they were done on the cheap.

Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is another good VN from square.
The first and last couple hours are absolutely excellent, but the middle drags because of some really strange story choices.

I played like 30 minutes of it and it was a huge bore with how easy it was, does it ever get difficult?

It’s never very difficult, but I thought it was very satisfying to play anyway thanks to the presentation. Also, you would’ve barely unlocked any of the interesting stuff in the first 30 minutes.

Outside of maybe Order of Ecclesia, most Symphony of the Night style games are really easy to break, that’s part of the charm for me.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

Bloomtown is a Persona-like set in 1950s America as written by Eastern Europeans.

Great sprite work and a decent story. Very rough around the edges, but I enjoyed it.

 

[qoop]

Metal Slug Tactics was pretty good once they fixed the UI



It’s got the exact opposite ethos of most turn based strategies. You have to keep moving, turtling is suicide

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Adding:
Snezhinka:Sentinel Girls2 - Anime girls shoot em up combined with Papers Please, pretty fun and memorable.
Echo Point Nova - Fast paced FPS.

Centennial Case is a really interesting mystery visual novel from Square Enix. And it has full motion graphics which actually don't look like they were done on the cheap.

I didn't like it very much. Wasn't very interesting and the final reveal wasn't very good.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

Snezhinka:Sentinel Girls2 - Anime girls shoot em up combined with Papers Please, pretty fun and memorable.

I was certain that was Chinese shovelware. It’s got that weird 2.5d sprite work that they all have.

I’m shocked to hear that it is actually good.

 

[BradeRunna]

If it's an actual NEW game from Nintendo that's $60 I'm all good with it, I don't even mind Tears of the Kingdom being $70. But re-releasing a 15 year old game and selling it at full price is too much. I don't care about the resolution too much but if you're releasing an old game and slapping HD on the cover and charging full price it better be VERY HD. Even their older switch games you'd think would be discounted by now but no. NEVER. If you're lucky you might find Captain Toad's Gay Adventure or Mario Party 329 discounted for $1. Stingy jap bastards.

Also, I think Nintendo made one of their characters trans in one of the newer Mario games. Not sure which game or character but I remember seeing everyone make fun of it here when it came out.

Most of the games on the Switch are new. There are a few rereleases/remasters or remakes. I own some of them. I don't think any of them were over $50. I think I paid $40 for some of them.

As far as trans characters in a Mario game I had to Google that. All I got was something about character named Vivian from a Paper Mario game released in 2004. It's not a human character it's design clearly says female. Any kind of explanation attached to the character is clearly some shit people made up. The people who designed the character intended it to be seen as a female. Like I said, it's not even human,

I played like 30 minutes of it and it was a huge bore with how easy it was, does it ever get difficult?

Tbf it might be the goon turned troon.

It's mainly that metroidvania (and roguelites) is easy mode game development. As long as you don't fuck with the formula too hard and have passable art and combat it will feel fun and have good game length.


You need to be delusional to think Nintendo isn't just as guilty at this - Dodgy translations, censorship, characters turned into gender neutral blobs, Pokémon GO trannies, body type A/B...

Thread tax -
* ASTLIBRA Revision - 2D RPG. Really fun on hard mode. Good plot beats without being too formulaic.
* Far Away - Chink VN, really good.
* The Hungry Lamb - Another chink VN that's really good.
* Chrono Ark - Anime Roguelite deck builder. Not my cup of tea but the time I played was really fun.
* OPUS: Echo of Starsong - VN with space exploration. You will cry.
* Stella of The End - Post apocalypse VN dad simulator.
Probably too many VNs.

The newest Pokemon game I own is Alpha Sapphire on the 3DS. I don't even like the Pokemon games much. I generally stick to the mainline stuff when it comes to Nintendo. Like I said Mario Donkey Kong Kirdy Metroid and Zelda.

 

[mooted]

its from 2018 but I really like a game called the messenger

The Messenger on Steam

As a demon army besieges his village, a young ninja ventures through a cursed world, to deliver a scroll paramount to his clan’s survival. What begins as a classic action platformer soon unravels into an expansive time-traveling adventure full of thrills, surprises, and humor.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Buttigieg2020]

its from 2018 but I really like a game called the messenger

https://store.steampowered.com/app/764790/

Yeah, the 8 bit to 16 bit thing was pretty cool apparently. I know the studio also made a Chrono Trigger style game which was ok.

 

[Romeo]

Witchfire is a dark fantasy first person shooter made by the same developers who made Painkiller, Bulletstorm, and weirdly enough, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

​

Platforms: Steam and EPIC Games Store
Reviews: 93% on Steam
Developers: The Astronauts (Adrian Chmielarz, Michał Kosieradzki, and Andrzej Poznanski) - former co-founders of People Can Fly
Kiwi Farms Thread: https://kiwifarms.st/threads/witchfire.200485/

You play as a witch hunter in service to the Roman Catholic Church and your goal is to kill enemies spawned by a powerful witch. It borrows elements from Destiny (gunplay), Escape From Tarkov (extraction shooter), Dark Souls (souls and difficult enemies).

For me, the game is really fun, and there is a lot of replay value. The weapons are really fun and enjoyable, where if you kill enough enemies, you can level up the weapon to give it a special new ability per weapon. One example is the 'Cricket' machine pistol, where if you dash after killing an enemy, it would automatically reload the gun. The spells are also very powerful, such as spawning a stake and that if you kill enough enemies, the stake charges up, where it ignites a massive explosion that heavily damages and burns the enemies. One of the most satisfying FPS-es out there.

 

[qoop]

Unicorn Overlord is a sort of tactics ogre/FF12 rts tactical programming by vanillaware. Excellent art. Story is ok. Fun comes from creating crazy team comps and letting their movesets execute according to your programming.

 

[TwinPeaksEnjoyer]

Tormented Souls was short and fun classic survivor horror with fixed camera with multiple endings.

 

[Shining Wit]

Something I played recently that I really enjoyed was Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane

It's very clear the developers are big Ace Attorney fans (maybe a little too much, tons of the characters have similar animations. The goddamn Knight Captain does Gumshoe's look to the side every five minutes), but they went beyond just making a fangame. The emphasis on solving Wizard Crimes makes it stand out enough, while still creating an enjoyable cast that scratches that AA itch

Hopefully by the time the sequel comes out they can iron out some of the poorer game design, cheap looking fonts and give the game mechanics more play (Awakened Eye is criminally underused)

 

[ovenmath]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1637730/Crystal_Project/

Crystal Project is a really cool exploration / job style final fantasy game. It has metroidvania exploration mechanics with tons of rewards for exploration. The game is quite difficult, which forces you to explore class synergies in order to take down certain bosses. The gameplay loop of explore > fight > tweak builds is extremely rewarding.

The game is light on story, though what is there isn’t bad.

Tldr great jrpg metroidvania which requires exploration of both environment as well as class and combat mechanics

 

[Buttigieg2020]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1637730/Crystal_Project/

Crystal Project is a really cool exploration / job style final fantasy game. It has metroidvania exploration mechanics with tons of rewards for exploration.

I knew it was FFV inspired, but I did not know it was a metroidvania.
Is it actually, or is it just open world with some gating?

 

[ovenmath]

I knew it was FFV inspired, but I did not know it was a metroidvania.
Is it actually, or is it just open world with some gating?


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The overall number of “traversal buffs” is lower than your average metroidvania, but the impact of said buffs is much higher. Huge portions of the map are gated behind those traversal buffs. It’s also not just one time gates, the overall movement and navigation patterns change in those areas (akin to areas requiring double jumps to navigate in general instead of just single jumps)

 

[Lurkerish Kandor]

Preface: I really don't like survival horror as a genre. The only one I like as a horror game is Darkwood, and the others I like, I only enjoy as action/speedrun games like a couple of the ResiEvils. I think most of them are incredibly tedious, unengaging, not scary/very predictable, and they outstay their welcome by a mile.

That being said, I'm still going to recommend


This game absolutely still has everything I dislike about Survival Horror: the combat is too easy and boring and entirely avoidable, which actually gets you a specific ending (death by firing squad for cowardice/desertion), 99% of the game is just finding the next ""key"" to unlock a ""door"", and all the other complaints you're not going to care about if you're a survival horror fan.

If you are a survival horror fan, I think what makes this game stand out the most is the sound design: there is nothing supernatural in the game at all, but they found ways to make mundane, natural and man-made sounds eerie and tense.
I genuinely said "oh dear God, what the fuck is this now?" several times, because air raid or infantry charge sirens are more disturbing in CONSCRIPT than monster noises in most horror games I've played.

World War 1 is also not a setting I see explored often outside of semi-MMO LARP games like Verdun, and despite me not liking the genre, I certainly think it was a super fucking good choice to do a completely non-supernatural survival horror game in fortified WW1 trenches. I already knew WW1 was incredibly fucked up on many many levels, but this is one of those videogames that does the medium justice by making you experience at least a facsimile of it.

The one thing I will criticize outside of my usuals is that to get the best ending is quite a chore. While I paid attention to the first cutscene, where the game explicitly makes it obvious there's a special personal objective for 100%, I wasn't aware I had completely missed out on the chance until halfway through the first run when I decided to spoil myself with a walk-through to see what is required for the Best Ending. You can't look up a solution to the big meta-puzzle if you missed any part of it though, because the game randomize the solution each run, and the combination code for the necessary item for Best Ending has like 4 or 6 'digits', so I'm not going to brute force that.

Good game, even if I don't particularly enjoy it.

Edit: I should also mention I didn't beat the game. Got to Chapter 3 or 4 (going south following a road) and every single "room" became massive maze-like messes made worse by the low rez art I would normally love. Due to standard slow-ass survival horror movement speed and fuck-all stamina, my patience ran out and I kinda couldn't tolerate it anymore.

 

[IDontLikeLiberals]

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I was certain that was Chinese shovelware. It’s got that weird 2.5d sprite work that they all have.

I’m shocked to hear that it is actually good.

It's the kind of game that's pretty much 99% soul.

Edit: I should also mention I didn't beat the game. Got to Chapter 3 or 4 (going south following a road) and every single "room" became massive maze-like messes made worse by the low rez art I would normally love. Due to standard slow-ass survival horror movement speed and fuck-all stamina, my patience ran out and I kinda couldn't tolerate it anymore.

That's been pretty much my experience with it. It starts strong but after reaching the forest and seeing I have half the game left and how fucking slow it was getting, I went fuck it and just saw the endings online. It's just too fucking slow and repetitive, getting thrust to new areas and understand what to do with them grinds on the patience since you are just experimenting and hoping to god you didn't forget to take/bring a key item.

A better horror game is Crow Country, which does the retro ps1 game visuals quite well. Kinda wish it would have had more than one ending

 

[Buttigieg2020]

Dicey Dungeons



Under the globalhomo art style is a roguelike with a really solid and fun premise. Your actions all require dice rolls, so every action is at least partially random. You have to pick specific actions you think will give you the most reliable move set given this.
Great swing/jazz soundtrack.