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1

Other Games / Hades

« on: December 18, 2020, 11:17:59 pm »

I'm surprised that nobody's started a topic for Hades yet. It's absolutely my GOTY for 2020. I've been playing since Early Access but it started great and only got greater as it went to release. The action is fun and different every game as you pick a different weapon and get various upgrades that can take the way you fight in entirely different directions. The action takes all the fun watching a character develop in a 30-hour grind of a game like Torchlight or Diablo--and compresses ALL THAT FUN into just 30 minutes, an incredible arc of watching Zagreus get awesome. I don't think I ever can play another ARPG with slow grinding knowing that Hades is there to be played. And when your build is firing--you FEEL LIKE A GOD, dashing around, stabbing ghosts, throwing lightning, it's amazing.

Then there's the other great thing about the game, which is the story and the framing. Hades is a roguelike, but there's a progressing story that unfolds. There's not a lot of branching to it--you can sometimes choose what subplot happens first, but you can't close anything off. But the characters are a lot of fun, with great personalities brought out through incredible art and voice acting. The interpretations of the familiar Olympians are fun, the interpretations of the less-known Chthonic gods are fun, and the ultimate story of why Zagreus is trying to escape from the underworld is a neat original story that all makes sense in retrospect.

TLDR: Hades is great, you should try it.

2

Variants and Fan Cards / Re: Geminion: A Kids' Variant Dominion (print n' play included)

« on: June 28, 2020, 03:01:11 pm »

On the off chance that anyone has printed and played, here are some balance and user-friendliness changes I'm considering, and would be curious to hear feedback:

• Wish is weak. It needs to either draw 4 or give gems (3?) when you play it.
• Helper might be weak, although you can use it to spike a Gem Hoard (Province-analogue) on your second pass through the deck, which is strong.
• I'm increasing the cost of Penny and Gem Cache to 1 or 2. This will make it harder to "accidentally" buy them if someone else uses Cleaner to recycle them.
• In general, buying coins feels unrewarding because the last pass through your deck, they're worthless. One way to mitigate this would be to allow you to spend coins to get VP (either cards, tokens, or items worth Gems that don't deplete the supply). I'm mostly concerned that this would increase the complexity too much.

One thing I've noticed is that the strategy of buying a Gem Mine at every opportunity is quite strong, something like a Workshop/Gardens rush. (The no-shuffle rule makes it stronger than it would otherwise be because you can keep hitting 4 and concentrate all the gem cards into hands that don't buy anything.) I don't intend to nerf this because this is an appealing and easy way for kids to succeed.

3

Variants and Fan Cards / Geminion: A Kids' Variant Dominion (print n' play included)

« on: June 23, 2020, 01:05:27 am »

I've created Geminion: a variant of Dominion to play with my 5-year-old. She seems to like it (enough to request it) so I thought I'd share with the Dominion fans here. My estimate of kid-appropriate ages is from about 5 (should be at least OK at adding small numbers; the game helps with that skill) to maybe 8, or whatever point the math + reading + dexterity skills are good enough to play real Dominion.

There's a real game in here adults can think about, although it's not tremendously deep and you'll probably go through the 4 or so reasonable strategies pretty quickly and decide which one you like.

The instructions and downloadable/printable PDF are here: https://github.com/sitnaltax/kids-dominion

If you have suggestions, or interesting experiences, let me know.

4

Other Games / Re: Slay the Spire

« on: January 08, 2020, 02:17:45 pm »

I'm 95% sure that the hand limit is a UI concession. There are plenty of infinite turns you can get with a hand well under 10 cards. I don't think the gameplay would require significant adjustment if you could hold arbitrarily many cards in your hand, but the UI would take a lot more work for not much fun benefit.

I think StS compares very well to Dominion in its degree of polish and development. Dominion excelled over its imitators by adding exhaustive development to its initial design. Likewise, StS excels over its many imitators by making every card have its place, most decisions meaningful, and no one strategy being overwhelmingly good.

Anyone feel that, as brilliant as StS is, it's not quite as clean and well designed as Dominion?

The hand size limit seems a little annoying, though there is no played pile, so it's maybe needed to prevent infinite turns?

The stacking of Echo Form (The first card you play each turn is played twice) is simply wrong as worded.  A second echo form makes you play your second card twice, instead of your first card three times.

5

Other Games / Re: Cookie Clicker?

« on: December 09, 2019, 12:39:03 am »

I tried playing this again. Wasn't really my thing and I quit after about a day.

It felt like there wasn't any individuality in my choices. No matter what decision I made, after enough time my game would look like anyone else's.

But... the numbers would go up!

6

Other Games / Re: Slay the Spire

« on: November 08, 2019, 07:07:53 pm »

Won my second attempt at the spire, with Ironclad. Dealt about 260 damage in a single 1 cost attack in the final fight, using Body Slam + Vulnerable + the card that makes your block permanent. Now I'm no expert but I feel like this is probably not something I should get used to doing.

The Ironclad has some excellent defensive cards: Shrug it Off, Impervious, True Grit, and more--that are good in many decks, and Body Slam is common. (And it upgrades to 0 energy, which is great). So whether or not you run into Barricade, you can build the core of defense-as-offense into your deck if it works with what you get early. Barricade, as you've seen, is a win condition against elites and bosses if you have the defense to back it up, and is kind of dead against hallway fights. Where you'll run into trouble is, especially in later ascensions, fights where you need to deal damage fast or suffer big damage. You'll either need a way to tank EVEN MORE damage or a way for emergency offense when you need it.

7

General Discussion / Re: RPG Party Puzzles

« on: July 15, 2019, 01:26:26 am »

Vampire: Eclipse, Tactick, Taproot, Psysmic

The vampire has effective 1600 HP with healing. Our base damage is 1050, and we have the following opportunities for more:
Eclipse is effective 100 HP/round thanks to the healing debuff
Tactick is 200 as long as it's the first or second round
Psysmic is 50/round.

This makes the ordering pretty clear:
Eclipse needs to go ASAP to maximize the DoT (Vampire: 850, Heroes: 300)
Tactick needs to go second (Vampire: 750, Heroes: 100)
Taproot can go any time but the last round, so, third (Vampire: 550, Heroes: 50)
Psysmic is last, applying the debuff just in time for Tactick's recursive strike to do an extra 50 damage and finish off the Vampire.

8

General Discussion / Re: RPG Party Puzzles

« on: July 15, 2019, 01:15:11 am »

Dragon: Chara, Shiva, Ilume, Tocks

Our "base" damage is 400 + 300 + 200 = 900. We need to deal 1600 damage. The only way to deal the missing 700 this is to use Ilume's double on the Tocks' 400 and let Chara's DoT tick twice for 300.
We need to survive 3 attacks. Shiva's freeze prevents one; one is healed by Ilume; the third will knock us down to 50 HP each. Tocks' damage reduction is a red herring; it can't possibly buy us another attack, because two 300-HP attacks will kill us as surely as two 400-HP attacks.

So: Chara goes first because her DoT has to tick after turns 2 and 3 (Dragon: 1300, Heroes: 150)
Shiva goes next to allow the DoT to tick (Dragon: 950, Heroes: 150)
Ilume heals the heroes and buffs Tocks (Dragon: 800, Heroes: 50)
Tocks swings for 800 and finishes off the dragon

9

Dominion General Discussion / Re: The dead can rise again

« on: July 04, 2019, 06:09:23 pm »

It's cryptocurrency trading!

Which means that, against all reason and probability, Goko Dominion has bequeathed its name to something even worse.

10

Other Games / Re: Baba Is You

« on: April 29, 2019, 10:14:38 pm »

So, I picked this up. Played through all the tutorial puzzles, and was like "wow this game is awesome, though the puzzles don't seem like they can get THAT hard".

Now gotten up to about the fourth or fifth area and have been stuck on single puzzles for 30+ minutes at times. Bloody hell, this game gets crazy difficult and I kind of love it because the puzzles feel so satisfying when you finish them. The solutions are often pretty simple in many ways as well but require you to really understand the game mechanics and rules. Like "Broken Playground" was a really creative puzzle to solve.

I'm currently stuck on one of the bonus puzzles in I think the 2nd section. Small Pond or something it was called. I'm sure there's a creative answer here but damn, I just can't make that Win block into a rule. I'm pretty sure if I could turn all of Baba, Flag and Key into the same thing (any of the three, they're interchangeable) I could solve the puzzle, but that doesn't seem possible without breaking the "is You" part of the rules...

I think the level you are referring to is Tiny Isle. If so:

Hint 1: You don't need to turn all three of the nouns into the same thing.
Hint 2: You don't need to move the WIN block.
Hint 3 (probably gives it away): Whatever is WIN will also have another property.

11

Other Games / Re: Baba Is You

« on: March 31, 2019, 01:08:55 am »

I just picked it up and confirm that it's really cool. I don't usually like block-pushing games but Baba is You is something else entirely.

12

Other Games / Re: Slay the Spire

« on: March 21, 2019, 07:25:21 pm »

Finally beat Act 4 on all characters at Ascension 20.

Congrats!

I was tired enough of high ascension that I decided that doing act 4 on A15 would be sufficient. Ascension 17-19 makes the game too punishing for my tastes. (I did get to A20 with all 3 on act 3).

13

General Discussion / Re: roguelike games

« on: March 08, 2019, 01:07:11 am »

Slay the Spire got better and better as they pushed it through to release from EA. GOTY 2018, highly recommended.
Dead Cells is worth playing, though I have my reservations. It's described as a Metroidvania, which it's not, but I can sort of see where they're coming from in that you're exploring a 2D environment in a very mobile way. The devs still haven't figured out how to get the difficulty to an appropriate place, which is frustrating. The "base" game is now very easy, with a giant ramp in difficulty as soon as you activate 1 (of 5) of the increased difficulty "boss cells".
Into the Breach might or might not be a roguelike (otherwise, it's a puzzle game?), but it takes a lot of inspiration from roguelikes at any rate, and it's very good.
Sundered can be skipped. It's Rogue Legacy that takes itself seriously.
I couldn't get the hang of Caves of Qud but a lot of people love it.

14

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: February 05, 2019, 01:31:56 am »

We were waving our arms out the window of a fast-moving passenger train, acting in an irresponsible fashion until the engineer whose back had been turned and who we thought would find us highly amusing quickly swiveled his head around, and his face which was a paper-white mask of evil sang us this song.

Deep cuts from old TMBG! I approve.

15

Other Games / Re: Celeste

« on: September 22, 2018, 11:11:13 am »

I bought this today can I join cool kids club

Welcome! It's quite a journey, but a surprisingly compelling one.

16

Other Games / Re: Celeste

« on: September 22, 2018, 11:10:42 am »

About 14k deaths later, I beat the final C-side. I had so many issues with the final jump of 8C for some reason. I'm pretty sure I died there 10 times before getting the timing right.

(belated) Congratulations!

Dying at that last moment must have been maddening. It's frustrating how 8C puts that at the very end despite not using that standing superjump move anywhere else in the game. Somehow, despite not being great at the move, I lucked into getting it right the first time I got to that section of 8C.

17

Other Games / Re: Codenames etiquette

« on: July 04, 2018, 11:25:44 pm »

In the Codenames games I've played, the opposing spymasters often have a sense of shared suffering, since the position is pretty stressful. Therefore, we've been pretty good about getting permission from the opposing spymaster before giving optional-rule or gray-area clues (word meanings, short phrases, etc.).

18

Other Games / Re: Dicey Dungeons

« on: June 14, 2018, 10:15:09 pm »

Thanks! There's a lot of potential here and messing around is fun. I'll definitely keep watching and play when it's reasonably baked.

19

Other Games / Re: Loot Box Clicker (a new idle game, by me)

« on: June 06, 2018, 07:58:28 pm »

Are updates coming soon?

Yes, but they'll be UI improvements, not content updates.

I'm not sure if I'm going to update the content, with a prestige system or whatever, or not. I could definitely add "more" but I'm not sure that would make the game any better.

20

Other Games / Re: Loot Box Clicker (a new idle game, by me)

« on: June 05, 2018, 07:33:58 pm »

i deleted all my cookies before i got to chest of completion. i'll never know.

FWIW I store in browser local storage, not cookies. Most browsers seem to clear them both simultaneously, so I guess it burned you, but the game doesn't phone home with the stuff you've collected or anything.

If you care to get it back, you can use import/export (or hit the local storage directly) to cheat yourself a 5000 power helm or whatever else you need to get your stuff back.

21

Feedback / Re: The forum isn't protected by HTTPS

« on: June 05, 2018, 07:29:21 pm »

FWIW I use DreamHost for my hosting and they have a service where, for free and at the press of a button, they'll get, deploy, and auto-renew Let's Encrypt certificates for you. The f.ds host might have a similar service.

22

Other Games / Re: Loot Box Clicker (a new idle game, by me)

« on: May 31, 2018, 07:30:52 pm »

Once you have enough training that opening a chest of completion would open a lot at once, the whole thing crashes.

Does level 15 in Avarice mean that you will automatically open all chests at once every time?

Congratulations on winning!

It seems to choke if you have a lot in your inventory at once. I confess that I stopped testing once I verified that opening the Chest of Completion works.

To slightly mitigate such issues I soft-capped Advanced Avarice to 90% chance, so you won't automatically open every chest instantly.

23

Other Games / Re: Loot Box Clicker (a new idle game, by me)

« on: May 29, 2018, 10:50:06 pm »

Thanks, GendoIkari, for playing and your suggestions!

Having put in a flurry of initial improvements, my next priority is improving the layout of the home screen. I hope that resolves several of your points--the separate inventory screen, the double Hero display, etc.

I created the Advanced Avarice skill to let the player open chests faster. I didn't want to let it go too fast because the delay there helps pace the game. However, maybe I should let that skill scale significantly better for obsolete chests. FWIW, the chests go in a stack (last in, first out) so if you're plowing through 10000 bad chests and buy 5 good ones, you'll open the 5 good ones first.

The item coloration roughly corresponds to rarities popularized by Warcraft and copied many times elsewhere: green = uncommon, blue = rare, purple = epic. As the chests get better there's a little bit of inflation, so a green from one chest is typically as good as a purple from two chests down, and a purple from a gothic chest isn't as unusual as a purple from an enhanced chest.

24

Other Games / Loot Box Clicker (a new idle game, by me)

« on: May 28, 2018, 05:18:28 pm »

Howdy everyone,

I recently published a new idle/incremental game that I've been working on for a few weeks, Loot Box Clicker:

https://www.rule0.com/LBC/

The goal is to let you enjoy those endorphins you get from of opening up a chest with possible TREASURE INSIDE, without any exploitative payment system (or game, for that matter) getting in the way. There are a handful of whimsical touches. In fact pretty much everything is either incrementing numbers or whimsy.

For anyone into this kind of thing, I hope you enjoy it.

25

Other Games / Re: Kuildeous' wacky Geekway adventures

« on: May 28, 2018, 05:13:10 pm »

The Networks

I played a game several months ago which I'm pretty sure was called Prime Time that sounds extremely similar to what you described. I can't tell if it's actually the same game, or if it just has the same theme and there are a lot of very natural things to do with that theme. Was there some mechanic where something (I forget what) gets distributed to each player one at a time, but it starts distributing to some players sooner than others?

There are two possible answers, depending on how much you play prototypes. The Networks was named Prime Time during development, so you might have played that as a prototype. However, during that time, another (not as good) game named Prime Time, with a similar theme, came about:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/166640/prime-time

so you might have played that other game instead. Meanwhile, the designer/publisher renamed his game to The Networks.