I understand the Taiwan argument, I don’t understand Ukraine, how does everyone joining NATO help Russia/China in any capacity? By that logic, they should attack Switzerland or the Cayman Islands and piss off most of the billionaires in the world who hide their assets there…

The purpose behind attacking Ukraine was to prevent them from joining NATO, and that kind of relied on a quick resolution to the war before other countries have a chance to join. The goal was to get in and get out with a treaty that formally recognizes Russia’s control over Crimea and promises to not join NATO.

Tactical Breach Wizards and Into the Breach

I’ve played Into the Breach, but not Tactical Breach Wizards, adding it to the list. :)

Platformers: Celeste, Horace, Dustforce and Little Nightmares

Loved Little Nightmares, haven’t played the others. Thanks!

Guacamelee

I’ve definitely heard of it, but never got around to it. Thanks for the reminder.

Wadjet Eye Games

Huh, I haven’t played any of those, I’ll add a couple and probably end up playing all of them. Thanks!

Story aka Walking Simulators

Firewatch and Jazzpunk are on the list, I have The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, but the others aren’t.

These are some fantastic recommendations, thanks!!

Yup, started with 0 and working my way through.

Some genres I especially like:

• puzzles - Return of the Obra Dinn, Manifold Garden, etc
• platformers - absolutely loved INSIDE and LIMBO, currently enjoying A Hat in Time, loved Psychonauts (Psychonauts 2 is on the list, but it’s not really “indie” anymore), little nightmares
• metroidvanias - Blue Fire, Hollow Knight, etc
• point and click - Darkside Detective, Deponia, etc
• fighting/souls-like - Furi, Titan Souls
• story - What Remains of Edith Finch
• other - Recettear, Grand Mountain Adventure, Human Resource Machine

Basically, if it has really good gameplay or story, I’ll probably like it.

It’s probably more interesting to point out what I tend to not like:

• roguelikes
• city builders - I like high quality builders like Cities: Skylines, but indies tend to not have the budget
• rhythm
• stealth
• shooters - very samey; I’d rather play AAA, such as Doom

But then again, there’s an exception to each of these (e.g. I loved Slay the Spire and Black Mesa). So honestly, I’d probably enjoy anything that really stands out as being unique or interesting.

Yakuza 3 Remastered

I’m about halfway through it, so I probably won’t finish this week, but I’m really enjoying it. I’m hoping to finish it before the new Zelda game releases, which is what I plan to dive into next.

I also plan to play a few indies as well, so please reply with any you think are worth checking out. I have a list, but I’m always up for recs.

It doesn’t, I just figured that if I’m going to go through the effort of switching the client launchers, I’ll look for something that also works w/ servers. My kids are the ones who play Minecraft, not me, and I’ve largely avoided bothering with mods, but if something handles it well, I’ll use it.

Right now, to add a mod, I have to copy the mod to a few computers (could probably automate w/ Syncthing or similar), and then filter by whatever server mods are needed. And if I upgrade Minecraft, I need to upgrade the server as well, which is a bit of a pain.

Is there something like this, but only for indies?

To be fair, it’s probably the only game I’m going to buy at launch this year.

Huh, I didn’t realize it was so commonly liked. We currently use MultiMC, which was the go-to launcher some years ago, but maybe I’ll give PrismLauncher a try.

Does it do anything about launching servers? I currently launch Minecraft w/ systemd on boot, and I’m thinking of moving it to my NAS instead of my desktop (that way it’s always on), so I’m interested in any way of better managing it since I need to keep the mods consistent between the server and our computers.

Sounds just like Dwarf Fortress, which had been ASCII for decades before the Steam version added graphics (you could get icon packs before that point though). And honestly, I love DF and played quite a bit in the ASCII-only mode (I used to SSH into my server and run in actual ASCII mode), because the gameplay was worth it. Now that DF has a proper GUI, I’ll just use that, and I don’t mind that it looks like a game from the 90s.

That might be relevant if OP was talking about using Proton VPN, but they’re talking about Proton, the compatibility layer shipped with Steam for Linux.

There are a ton of documented cases where bans falsely identify Linux users as cheaters, and later many (most?) of those bans get overturned. It seems to come in waves (likely an anti-cheat update), and it’s annoying every time.

My solution is to just not play games with anti-cheat, because there’s no way I’m going back to Windows, and there’s also no way I’m going to play the ban/appeal game. My time is worth more than that.

Idk, I really suck at imagining things like in DF, but I really enjoy the gameplay. I don’t need a good representation of what I’m interacting with, but I do need something.

Exactly. And you can go pretty far with this as well. I really enjoyed Manifold Garden, which has pretty simple graphics, but definitely had a clear art direction and a very interesting 3D world to explore. There are probably more polygons on the face of a MC in a AAA game than in that entire game, yet I felt absolutely immersed while playing it.

Give me more unique experiences, not more GPU clock cycles…

Yup, I honestly avoid the hyper-realistic games anyway. The closest I have gotten recently is the Yakuza series, and even that is very clearly a game, even in their high-quality renders. Gameplay is far more important than graphics quality. I don’t even care at all about RTX, just give me a fun game with an interesting story, and give the art team a lot of leeway on how to represent that.

I almost never buy games day 1 because they’re full of bugs (though they do look pretty), but do you know what game I’m excited to buy day 1? Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. It’s basically the opposite of the big-budget, hyper-realistic games, and I’m all for it. I expect great gameplay and minimal bugs, and I’m willing to pay a premium for that.

I wish the big studios went back to putting fun first, instead of trying to compete on who can run my PC temps the highest.

Where “Reasons” = “Profit,” probably.

Eh, I’ve played plenty of Switch games at ~30 FPS and it’s fine. 40 is much better, and I honestly don’t see a point in 60 on a TV. That said, I don’t tolerate much below 60 on my PC though, and I generally avoid playing more intensive games on my Steam Deck (I prefer to play indies that give 60 FPS). Framerate matters more for me the closer I am to the screen.

Upscaling isn’t that bad. If you target 720p, the Deck should be able to keep up in most games. And if you mostly play casually, it’ll probably work well enough. But it all comes down to the games you play and the performance you expect. 30-40 FPS should be achievable on most games running @ 720p on medium settings.

Or you could build a PC. If you’re intending to play on a TV, this can be under $1k. That’s a little more than a PS5, but you’ll probably make that up in lower game prices before needing an upgrade, at which point an upgrade should be comparable to buying a new console (assuming you’re trying to match consoles, not go for high-end).

Yup, if you want PS5-level performance, you need to build a PC. If you just want to play games, a Steam Deck will do fine.

Yup, the way I see it, you have a few options:

1. work in game dev, have crazy deadlines, mediocre pay, and likely lose your job in a year or two; you’ll grow to hate game dev due to all the stress
2. work in another industry and do game dev on your own time; if the side hustle is successful, go do that full-time and set your own pace; you’ll get paid more, have more time off, and you can work on whatever game project you want
3. try to make solo game dev work (it probably won’t), and then go back to 1 or 2

So on this list, 1 and 3 really don’t look that appealing, so why do them? Just do 2 until something takes off, in which case the risk of 3 is already largely solved.

But don’t worry, they’ll get there before someone else beats them to nuclear winter.

I really miss the Kinect, but I think they expected way too much from it. It was a lot of fun for games like Just Dance and various sports games for casual play, and I probably would’ve bought a new XBox if they continued to support it.

Always online can go die though, screw that. If I get a console, it’s because it’s more convenient than a PC. Give me a unique playing experience in a living room setting and I’ll pick one up.