StrixLiterata

I played 11 Demos, and I've decided to write about my impressions on each, divided between those I liked, felta ambivalently towards, and disliked. If you also played some demos or have something else to say on the games I tried, I'd like to see your comments. Demos I liked Road 96 I always liked the idea of a roadtrip, I even tried playing Elite: Dangerous like one. This game seems to deliver on that fantasy: even though at it's heart it is a series of branching choices, not unlike an rpg-book, in practice each scene has several choices within itself and is paced cinematically to compose an engaging vignette in itself. Play this to compose and live your own roadtrip movie about escaping a banana republic just before the estabilishment violently squashes a progressive candidate who's about to win the elections. Roadwarden Where the previous game evolves the classic rpg-book as a cinematic experience, this one uses the format of videogames to enrich it with greater freedom thanks to tracking of statistics and the ability to choose a dialogue options and a class at the start, making it, essentially, a text-based full blown RPG. If you've played the Sorcery! series, like me, you'll feel right at home. Cantata What if you took a tactical turn based rpg and scaled it up until it resembled an RTS? Then put in a sci-fi story and production lines like in Factorio? You'd get Cantata, which solves my biggest gripe about RTSs, that is how taxing it is to micromanage all one's units and building in real time, by making the game turn-based and limiting thaìe amount of actions one can take per turn with a Fallout-esque action point system. While this makes it a slog to make a big army cross large distances, this also means that winning is about rationing the action economy rather than your click/minute rating. Inkulinati Speaking of strategy games, this one is rather more fast paced. Besides the peculiar look and a campaign tha meìade me think about Rock of Ages, this game is all about getting results quicker than your opponent: be precise at the minigame to kill the opposing units quicker, put your units on the ink spots to be able to make more next turn, and make sure not to let your spawn point be consumed by the fire thaat will spread across the field after 5 turns. I'd say even someone who hates turn based game for their slowness might enjoy this one. Squadron 51 Whle I'm sure the developers woud like me to marvel at the authentic '50s sci-fi movie aesthetic, what I actually like about this game are the health bar and multiple live which make it actually feasible to play, and the Ace Combat style chatter betweeen the other members of the Squadron which gives greater context and some trace of story and pacing to each mission (shame it's all in portuguese, but it has subtitles). I do have to say though, I don't care for the section where you have to navigate around obstacles like it's a bullet hell shmup, but thankfully yhey're not too hard or frequent Demos that left me in doubt Giants uprising Why do games about being a giant monster seem to be so hard to make fun? In theory smashing villages as a giant should be cathartic fun, and facing one of your kin in one on one battle should be epic. In practice fighting the cannon towers that defend the villages is samey and, thanks to cunky animations, hard for the wrong reasons, and the one other giant you fight in the demo is too fast and unpredictable: impossible to hit at a distance because he dodges all over the place the second you start aiming, and too quick to block and attack to damage in melee because it's animation don't have any wind-up or wind-down. Honestly, I'm only giving this game the benefit of the doubt because maybe I gìjust need to get good and there could be more to be done with this premise in the finished product. Crowns and Pawns Kingdom of Deceit I have little to say: I don't care for the aestheitc and this is a pretty basic andventure game Aethernaut What if Portal, but with less clear visuals, and we try to make a "your chocies matter" game but we also mock the player for wanting their choices to matter? This could very well be a great puzzle game, but it tired me almost instantly Endlight It's pretty clear the devs want me to be awed and overwhelmd byt the caleidoscopes of throbbing and gyrating abstract architecture I'm smashing through, and I am. There's just one problem: I can't see the hoops I'm supposed to collect over all the visual noise. Demos I disliked White Shadows So on the nose it's practically a pair of glasses, so dark I can't see where I'm going and got stuck after a minute. This Limbo clone is late to the party and poorly made. Death Cathedral There's a great deal of subtlety that goes in fighting games and souls-likes that this game doesn't understand: like that each attack should be able to be selected individually rather than havig one big combo of every possible move, or that attacks shoul be clearly telegraphed and that it should be easy to undertand when they connect in order to make parrying and dodging actually manageable, or that the first enemies the player encounter should be slow and predictable in order to get the player used to the mechanics. This game is cryptic and full of hassles for the sake of being hard, and doesn't even have a story to drag you along. Being a roguelike it should be vaired, but in practice is just a linear series of fights and inventory management.

I played a number of demos from this weekend's Steam Nextfest. I'll make a post about them soon

I think Caldoria is a good example of why every utopia is a distopia for someone

Often games have minigames or side mechanics which have little to do with the main gameplay loop. Sometimes, these can be a joy in themselves and elevate the whole game. The one I have encountered are: The musuem in A House of Many doors, which can house any noteworthy trade items you come across in your journey, and depending on them can become famous for it's beauty, scientific significance, or occult reputation. In similar games, like Sunless Sea or Sunless Sky, I found myself stashing items I didn't immediately need in case they were useful for a trade contract or a quest later; in A House of Many Doors, finding something new had me going "this would look great in my collection". In my opinion most open world game swould benefit from this feature, if it makes sense within the world. The ability to record and rewatch battles in Total War games, Warhammer 1 & 2 especcially. When you're actually fighting them, you got to take a eagle's eye view of the field and keep shifting your attention, but in a replay, I just love being able to watch the big monters animate and crush, infantry crash and push, artillery firing... I wish all strategy games had this feature to let the player sit on their back and properly enjoy their victory.

Total Warhammer 1 & 2, and Divinity Original Sin 2

I've since passed that wall, but this game just makes me so mad. Every battle takes about an hour and I have to constantly micro everything and still there will always be that battlebarge that goes ahead of everyone and gets itself obliterated! I just wish I could actually use the strategic layer to make battles easier for mysef instead of it only bringing resource scarcity and time limits

I've started playing Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2. I had tons of fun at the start, but I've hit a wall once I started to fight the ffffUCKING ELDAR

I just played a bit of Sea of Thieves. Kinda awkward, I've got to say, but it's intresting how it forces each memeber of the crew to do multiple jobs at a time during battles

board games session seaside or mountains?

Cruelty Squad I've put 31 hours into this Immersive Sim FPS before I was phisically able to think about anything else, and they were the best hours 13 euros could buy. Much is made about this game being difficult, but as long as you explore carefully and get the drop on enemies yuo're going to be fine; tense is what this game is, because what few health pick-ups are in any level are scattered, often secreted away, and never unguarded, and enemies can take big chunks of your health if they get the drop on you. Plus every level is filled with secrets in the form of alternate routes, augmentations, weapons and lore, or even other secret levels. I sincerely hope SoftConsumer Products makes more games, because this is a diamond with an eye-injuring but skillful cut.

Does it have anything to do with Ice Pick Lodge's The Void?

appropriate for the username and reminds me of retro game gìcharacters, but the visual noise detracts from the appeal. 8/10

I'm not finished watching your video, but I have this to say, as an Italian college student with ADHD, I have this to say: If I wasn't graded, I would never have found out I have ADHD, but I still found out very late in my life because my parents did not pay attention to the fact that my grades had been steadily declining since elementary school (unfortunately I was a "gifted kid", which meant that until college I didn't need to develop a work ethic). In my opinion, the problem with your education system is that everything is graded, which leaves no room for error, and that often caretakers and teachers don't use grades as a starting point for noticing and solving problems.

Sunless Skies. I still like the combat and visuals, but I'm falling to the "keepit for later" syndrome, which is especially bad beause my current objective is amassing money

Death Trash and Projections are still availeable

I'll start: Demos I Liked: GRIME This game solves a problem that plagues every other action game: that players initially shun the parry because it's too hard to pull off. GRIME's answer is making you start without weapons, able to defeat enemies only by parrying, linking upgrades to kills-by-parry, and making the first two upgrades you can get passive abilities that increase armor after failing a parry and restore stamina if you pull it off, simultaneusly giving you a safety net and a greater incentive to use it regularly. PROJECTIONS This is what happens when you take a fighting game's mechanics and completely change the context. The result is a game that asks you to fight as elegantly as possible without the fear of losing, but doesn't really push you to improve unless you care about how you look or the score. I found it an enjoyable time and liked the procedurally generated vaporwave enviroements, but I find the lack of context normally provided by the phisicality of an animal or a machine in the enemies' likeness hurts the player's ability to time dodges without rote memorization. Industria I was pleasantly reminded of Half Life 2 and Dishonored, althought the art lacks Viktor Antonov's unique flair and the gameplay is closer to Half Life 1 without the platforming Terra Nil Relaxing but stimulating city builder. The gameplay is made pleasantly more complex by having three distinct phases of Reclamation, in which the wasteland is turned into fertile land; Terraforming, in which the structures put down in the previous phase are modified or destroyed to shape different biomes; and Recicling in which all structures are destroyed to accumulate raw material that must be carried to a specific spot via waterway; with each needing good planning in the previous one to pull off successfully. Alan's Automatons A very good-looking programming puzzle game; or, to paraphrase genre popularizer Zach Barth's own book, Zach-like. the node-coding interface is a tad clunky, and the dialogus in the demo didn't make for good characterization like in Opus Magnum, but it's got spectacle and it's a good game to play if you want to learn Assembler coding Signal State Another Zach-like with good aesthetics. This one I like better in theory, and the interface is easier to use, but all the wires can get confusing (though this can contribute to the challenge). The dialogues, like in Alan's Automatons, feel like filler, although they manage to convey a hint of personality. Death Trash I was expecting a lot from this game and I wasn't disappointed: the rpg elements are up to par with the Bethesda Fallouts, and the combat is much more varied, balanced and satisfying than theirs. I unfortunately cannot make a first-hand comparison to the Black-Isle Fallouts, but I felt the wasteland was suitably hostile and the story has an edge I rarely saw elsewhere. Great work so far, and a masterclass in solo developement. I hope to achieve something like this in my own future. TOEM A bit too much for kids, but a solid adventure game, whose photograpfhy framing almost completely removes moon logic from puzzles while adding a healthy does of guesswork. A shame most things you do are fetch quest rather than jury-rigged solutions to strange problems, but I think it's a good trade overall. <<Drifting: Weight of Feathers>> The emphasis on the sexy protagonist might make you think of the infamous Haydee, but this game is closer to Tomb Raider or Bayonetta: the main attraction is the action, and the fanservice is just bonus, as well as significantly more restrained than the trailer would suggest. Speaking of the action, it has steep learning curve, but it's solid and not too hard once you have adjusted, with the sole exception of climbing vertical walls, which for some reason glitches into a horizontal wallrun if you look directly upwards, but can be fixed by grappling. Demos i disliked: Sable This was one of my most anticipated game of the whole event: it looks gorgeous and promises free and rewarding exploration. But it fails to deliver those promises. Although I don't mean to imply a lack of originality, the end result is "Breath fo the Wild, but worse and without the combat"; maybe the riding, climbing, and gliding by themselves could make for a satisfying gameplay, but the climbing glitches out on uneven surfaces, and the riding has neither the wide, free sapce it needs to make it liberating, nor the crative obstacle placement to make it stimulating. Unfortunately, this is the latest of a series of game sthat thought they could coast on travel alone, without any danger or challenge, and wound up boring. The Fermi Paradox I came looking for a strategy game in the style of King of Dragon Pass, but on a galactic scale. I left disappointed by a lack of individual characterization for each species and ways to meaningfully "build up", as even having species advance through the technological ages only resets their resource conter and changes their portrait. The Lost and the Wicked Too concerned with being edgy, not enough with refining gameplay. You can't act like the gameworld being the protagonist's subconcious is a deep and troubling reveal whe you constantly broadcast it from the start, and yu can't make enemies just warp outside te level because you can't be asked to program decent pathfinding.

I fondly remember Rise and Fall, and I still think it holds up. The way it works is that each hero has a stamina and a health bar; you can start controlling them directly once the stamina bar is full, and that control ends once either health or stamina are depleted. The hero can be leveled up with Glory, which is a quired by exploring, winning fights, and by building statues that generate it slowly but continuously. It also helps that heroes, besides being extremely deadly, can give order to nearby units, and that units of the same type can be put together in formations like in a total war game; all of which ensures you don't lose control over the wider battle when you personally pilot your hero. Also, the top of walls is traversable and you can build ladders to scale them, meaning that your hero can help in sieges.

You might like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., here's why: