Games

Today's game is Alan Wake ~~again~~.

This screenshot i took was in the Subway while making my way back to the Collapsed Train Tunnel. This game really has upped the fear factor. Personally i love the first game's controls more, but this game has a way of constantly keeping me on the edge of my seat. I love it.

The game has a ton of clever references to the first game. For example there’s the shoebox where i can store items, which is a really awesome reference to Zane's shoe box in the first game.

I took a bonus screenshot while Alan was running away and my game bugged out. I don't think he realized the rest of the Subway car was gone already:

Road Redemption is a unique game, in that it's a motorcycle racing game, but also a fighting game.

There is some lore, presented with a single screen of text. According to the Steam store page, this takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, ruled by a brutal dictator. Biker gangs rule over segments of the country. You're part of the Jackal gang and basically racing against other biker gangs through their territory, pursuing an assassin for the bounty.

Every once in a while, some other Jackals will show up to help you (see first screenshot with the peace symbol over a Jackal's head), but you're on your own for most of the races.

This is a game of stamina. There are 17 total races across 3 gangs' territories, and your status carries over to each one. Any loss of health, nitro, and if you've unlocked it, your jump boost, all carry over to the next race and require you to replenish them during races.

You either pick up resources on the road, or kill other gang members to collect resources. Or you can also gain a small bit of nitro every time you have a "close call" with an oncoming car. Just steer so you nearly miss oncoming traffic and you'll be rewarded with some nitro. Which is needed to catch up to the racers in the lead; you'll never gain on them otherwise.

There are two main types of races: 1.) a straight race to the finish, either finishing in 3rd place or better, or just survive to the finish line by a certain time limit; or 2.) enemy takedown, which requires you to eliminate a certain number of enemies before the finish line. Sometimes the cops show up alongside the gangs to fight everyone, sometimes the cops are the takedown enemy.

Cars are especially hard to take down. Explosives are pretty much the only way I've found to stop them. During takedown races, they'll also plow through oncoming traffic, denying you that needed nitro boost to gain on them. It can be very difficult if you're stuck behind a car with no nitro left.

The last race in each territory is a takedown enemy race against the gang's leader. They're pretty tough and you need to kill them before you reach the end of the race.

There is one random event that may take place called "Hallucinogenic Chemical Zone," which will have cars and trucks randomly spawn in the sky and fall onto the track, creating hazards to navigate around. None of these vehicles have their parking brake on, so if they land on their wheels, they'll slowly roll across the road, making it harder to determine the best path around them. You never know which direction they'll start rolling until it's almost too late to change direction.

After each race, you spend the money you earned taking out enemies or meeting the objective to upgrade your current stats or replenish health or nitro.

Whether you win or lose each race, you'll automatically continue on to the next race. But your health bar will shrink if you lose the objective.

The races continue until you die. Then you get to spend all the XP you've earned on permanent upgrades, which will make it easier the next time you play. You likely won't beat the game in your first playthrough. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even beat the first territory until I'd upgraded my permanent stats quite a bit. I've replayed the campaign race many times over and I've finally made it all the way to the assassin, but I still haven't beat him. Gotta keep upgrading my character!

Before each game, you get to select your bike and character. Both come with various stats and weapons, so pick what works best for your play style. You can unlock more bikes and characters as you accomplish certain criteria throughout the game.

I like to play with Admiral Uganda (a Captain America knockoff) because he has 35% resource gains from regular kills, 140% resource gains from shield kills, and 115% max nitro. He also doesn't use guns, which is fine with me. I'm terrible at aiming a gun while also steering my bike, so I mostly fight with close-range weapons that only require a button press to use.

There are other joke characters like Santa Claus, who's a pacifist and can't kill anyone except for bosses; Helloween Rider, a Ghost Rider knockoff; PC Master Racer (see screenshot above); or Theranos, a blonde woman with Thanos' golden gauntlet. Plus a ton more to unlock.

My personal play style is to just kick other bikes. It sends them flying off to one side, and if you time it right, you can kick them into obstacles or off bridges and kill them instantly. Much easier than hacking at them with a sword or beating them with a lead pipe, etc.

Most races are on roads cross-country through mountains, snowy terrain, or post-apocalyptic cities. But the most interesting races (in my opinion) take place across building rooftops. You spend the entire race speeding from rooftop to rooftop, and it's easy to knock people off to their doom. Or fall to yours, if you're not careful. These levels are where the jump boost comes in really handy, keeping you airborne longer if you don't time a jump between buildings well.

Then there's the extra rare rooftop race through a hallucinogenic chemical zone! Don't get hit by falling cars while soaring across rooftops!

I've mostly described the campaign mode for this game, but there is also a 4-player split-screen mode where you can play together or against each other, or you can play online with other gamers.

There's a DLC you can buy on Steam called "name a character" that lets you put a custom name into the game itself. You'll notice that every time you take someone out, it shows their name across the bottom of the screen, then scratches it out in red. Supposedly, these are all names added by other players over time. So the next time you play, keep an eye out for cobysev...

I normally don't like games that force me to replay them over and over, grinding just to level my stats enough to continue the plot (I'm looking at you, Hades). But the gameplay is so enjoyable in this one, I can't help but play it over and over. I don't even care if I don't finish; the racing and fighting is so much fun! Every time I play this game, I end up doing nothing else for the rest of the day.

Google drive to the rar file: Google drive

Hey all, as you may know from my previous posts I make indie games and I decided to take a little break from my main project and spend 3 days to make a scary (but also kind of humorous) horror game for my girlfriend. It's called the Terrors of Adulthood and the theme is all the bs the we have to deal with as adults. I presented it to hereon Halloween and she kinda liked it (she's not really a gamer). So I decided it to post it here because this is my first venture into the horror genre and I'm not going to lie, it's kind of exciting. I might go all in on a horror game in the future. I kind of like small atmospheric stuff that slowly immerse you in their horrors. I would love some feedback from actual gamers Also I want to say the ending is from an inside joke that we have - I'm not making any statements about relationships, feminism, modern society or anything like that. Here are the controls: WASD, ARROWS - Movement E - interact with objects (up to the player to find out which objects are intractable) Space - Jump F - skip intro when replaying

I didn't have time to make menus or restart screens as I was in a hurry to finish the experience by Halloween. So ALT+F4 to quit the game. :D

P.S. I'm not sure if these types of post are allowed. If they are not - mods feel free to remove it. :)

Today's game is Alan Wake II. I beat it today. I'm going to try and put how i feel about it into words but the game was as close to perfect (for me personally) that i feel a game could get. Most likely it will come out as a jumbled mess because i haven't had any time to properly format any sort of essay form to this, but i wanted to get my thoughts on it out there.

I'm going to put any possible spoilers in lemmy's built in spoiler box so people who don't want to be spoiled can at least somewhat understand my points (it will just be lacking the explanations).

Before if i was forced to pick between Alan Wake I or II, it would have been hard but i would ultimately go with Alan Wake I because of Nostalgia. But Remedy's writing and attention to details in this one have knocked it out of the park. There were some points where it legitimately left me holding my breath.

I'm so glad i avoided spoilers for this game, because it's one of those games that after beating it i'm left with a pit where it used to be. I unlocked the Final Draft (Basically the game's New Game Plus) which from what i understand adds to the story, i already am making plans to jump straight into that because Alan Wake II has left me wanting more.

As is tradition for what i've been doing with Alan Wake II, i took a couple more portraits too:

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/24542153

After about a year of on-and-off development of my first project, I plan to release it on 18 Nov 2024. It's a turn based strategy set in a bedroom, where you play with toy army men against your opponent (human or computer).

You can check out the game, play the demo and wishlist here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2776110/Bedroom_Battlegrounds/

And check my tiktok profile for more gameplay shorts: https://www.tiktok.com/@wchcgamedev

Happy to hear what you think!

Shame it didn't do well, I thought it was great.

October is over, and that means I'm back to playing all variety of games, not just horror or Halloween-themed games. But I did miss one day in my daily October marathon, and I said I'd try to make up for it.

So... consider this game to be a happy medium. The Invincible isn't exactly horror - more sci-fi mystery/thriller than anything - but it is kind of a personal fear of mine: being stranded alone on an alien planet with amnesia, limited oxygen, and no certain escape. I definitely shared in the anxiety and fear that the protagonist suffered at times on her journey.

The Invincible is a blend between a walking simulator and a visual novel. You spend most of the game walking from one point to the next and performing some basic tasks along the way, while also communicating back and forth with your ship's commander. It's not a particularly strenuous form of gameplay.

There are dialogue choices, but for the most part, the game plays out the same regardless of your choices. Although certain choices can open up deeper philosophical discussions into the theme of the plot. Also, investigating the areas around you might help you learn more about the planet itself, which provides a richer story experience than just trying to get to the end of the game as quick as possible.

Also, as the game progresses, your story path is documented in comic form, which you can pause and read at any time.

This game is actually based on a Polish novel of the same name, published in 1963 by Stanisław Lem. Although I would recommend not reading the summary of that book, as its main plot gives away most of the mystery in this game's story.

The Invincible opens up with Yasna waking up on a rocky desert planet, with no memory of where she is or how she got there. Her radio is broken, her locator beacon is missing, and she's all alone. The only thing going for her is that she seems uninjured, and her space suit and oxygen tank are still intact.

She checks her notes and discovers she's there with her team of researchers. Using her logs and hand-drawn maps, she triangulates her approximate position, then sets out to find their main camp.

Along the way, bits of her memory start coming back to her. She remembers her research ship's commander, Novik, who is known for making rash decisions. Previously, his insistence on making an unscheduled stop for a valuable mineral cost him a broken leg and severe pain.

Now, the team was finally on their way home when Novik awoke them early from cryogenic sleep. He made the decision to stop at yet another planet, Regis III, because he has intel that it's potentially valuable to the Alliance, and he wants to find out what is so valuable that it would draw them there.

The book followed characters from the Alliance aboard their massive ship, The Invincible. This game, however, follows a small research team of the Interplanetary Commonwealth, an opposing faction. So it's important to Novik that they do their research quick, then get off-planet before the Alliance arrives in their deadly ship.

Yasna reaches her team's base camp, only to find one of the members in a stupor, babbling unintelligibly. His vitals are all normal, but he's unresponsive and helpless. Yasna takes his radio and is finally able to speak with Novik, who is aboard their spaceship orbiting the planet.

Novik has been unable to reach the team for a while now. He's grateful to speak with Yasna and instructs her to find the rest of the team. She catches up on their research notes and sets out to round up the team.

The team was investigating a strange metallic structure sticking out of the ground. It proved impossible to unearth, and scans with their metal detectors showed it stretching underground like tangled metal roots. One of the research team, Dr. Gorsky, ventured off in search of the end of this metal root structure, so Yasna pursues his trail.

She bumps into a damaged probe and, with the help of Novik, is able to boot it up. Using the probe, Novik is able to remotely control it and assist Yasna more directly on the ground. You get the opportunity to pick its name, if you like.

Pursuing her team, Yasna explores complex metallic structures, finds herself lost in underground caverns, and even has run-ins with the Alliance!

Finding all of her team members and getting off-planet proves to be a challenge, with setback after setback. It's up to you whether she'll find the courage to proceed, or succumb to hopelessness and depression.

This was a fantastic story that explored deeper philosophical topics on life and biology, evolution and invasion, and of course, the will to survive. It's an easy-going game, where the most dramatic twists and turns come more from the dialogue than the action. If you want a simple sci-fi game that lets you ponder life's greater mysteries instead of shooting aliens, this may be for you.

Plus, you get to drive around in a little rover! How cute is this thing?

This game is hectic

Taking a screenshot was a challenge on its own. =P
Also the first boss here on Gunbird 2 took me a few too many tries, and I'm fairly sure I picked the easier difficulty. (chuckles) I'm in danger

I continued Alan Wake II today. I've been avoiding spoilers for this game so i have no clue if i'm near the end or not, but i'm loving the entire thing and i already don't want it to end. I'm hoping to get a second part of going back to play as Alan but with where i got too in the story i have a feeling i'm close to the end sadly. I also took a ton of screenshots (Though i do that everyday, i just have a lot that i feel are "share-worthy").

Overall i'm enjoying Saga's half of the story just as much as Alan's. While Alan's section allowed for stealth, Saga's embraces combat with boss fights and such.

This screenshot doubled as a experiment, i wanted to see if since it's a dark photo if a bit more grain could help it look realistic. I did a similar thing when the hallway filled with blood, but i think i put too much grain in it:

I also played around with the portrait mode some more and took a photo of Tor and a enemy. I really like this game's photo mode because it feels like it encompasses it's whole theme of art. So it's very appropriate that it allows for that:

I also took this screenshot of the road which i loved because i feel like it showcases how pretty this game is. Some of these photos i (personally) feel like could pass for real life at a glance. I think for sure tricks like the motion blur help:

Bonus pic of a deer head i took because it caught my attention:

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/46352654

I love the game civ6, that's why the problems with it make me troubled and I want to suggest improvements. I've played through multiple playthroughs and here are some issues that stand out to me.

TLDR: Civ6's gameplay forces you to play in a very imperialist, chauvinistic, racist, and religious way to win.

Problsms

'Barbarians' (indigenous or native people, obviously stereotyped as always warlike), the tech tree that forces you to discover things in the way the Europeans discovered them, not just making you unlock actually necessary technologies before you unlock new ones, even more so with the civic tree as any policy or government can be developed in isolation, it doesn't need the preceding civ6 ones, also you can't have a democracy from the beginning if you want what's best for your people. You have to conquer other continents displacing or killing the natives, and the way it frames certain governments such as communism is disingenuous when they're really describing authoritarianism, and making that misunderstanding more widespread.

My suggested solutions/improvements

Abolish the civic tree. Let you establish any government or any policy ( you can still have policy slots but it's the same across all governments) at any time without culture cost. Governments could affect things like the happiness and productivity of your people, but not more than that. Rename 'barbarians' to natives or indigenous people and create more peaceful options for interacting with them, don't make them aggressive by default. Encourage cooperation with civilisations on other continents (such as lasting trade agreements that you don't have to renew every 30 turns) rather than encouraging settling everywhere on the map. Allow individual cities to get upgrades that allows producing multiple things at once rather than the only way to do so being creating multiple cities. Allow agnosticism or atheism as a 'religion' option and rename religion to 'philosophy' or 'ideology' or something like that. Having real historical cultures and leaders on a generated world doesn't really make sense so there should be fictional or generated civilisations and leaders as options too.

I don't mind if they keep the victory conditions they've got, scientific, religious (although ideological is a better term), military, although not cultural. If people want to play as murderous colonial maniacs they should be allowed to, they just shouldn't be forced into it and should have more peaceful options to play. The scientific victory should be collaborative, with multiple civilisations working together to advance scientific knowledge and improve human conditions (although the current goal of space travel is overly simplistic). Convincing the world of your ideology isn't a bad measure for success either, and conquering the world military is a kind of success, if not a very moral one. Culture victory is just a thinly veiled way of saying that only European culture is good and the way of proving your culture is best is attracting tourists, which is again overly simplistic.

Happy Halloween! I had planned to play one of my favorite games this month, Alan Wake, but @MyNameIsAtticus@lemmy.world, the other screenshot poster here, already made several posts about that game recently. So in order to generate new content, I'm posting a tangentially-related game, and another absolute favorite of mine, Control.

This game is loosely based on the SCP Foundation, a fictional secretive organization that contains anomalous or supernatural items and entities away from the eyes of the public. They Secure, Contain, and Protect (SCP).

Their wiki linked above is a creative writing project, where anyone can sign up and submit their own creative writings on supposed anomalies that the SCP has encountered in the world. And they have a Creative Commons ShareAlike license (CC-BY-SA) for all work posted to the wiki, so anyone is able to use it for their own creative projects. As such, a lot of SCP-related video games have been popping up lately. If you search on Steam alone, there are about 75 games with SCP in the title, and that's not counting derivative works like Control.

Control starts out simple enough. You play a 28-yr old woman by the name of Jesse Faden. She's been looking for the Federal Bureau of Control for 17 years, ever since they kidnapped her brother, Dylan, in their childhood. The shady secret government organization has eluded her all this time, but Jesse just happens to find them in New York City and enters to an empty lobby.

The place seems deserted, except for an odd janitor with a heavily-Scandinavian accent, named Ahti. He asks Jesse if she's here for the job interview, because he's in need of an assistant. He points Jesse toward the Director's office.

The first thing you might notice is that you're trapped in the building now. When you turn around, you realize that the hallway you came down just dead-ends, as if there was never a hallway there in the first place. Also, some of the offices and meeting rooms in the hallway don't seem to have any doors leading into them, just windows. Welcome to "The Oldest House," the office building which is an ever-shifting anomaly in itself.

You enter the Director's office and find the Director dead on the floor; an apparent suicide. Jesse is compelled to pick up the handgun lying next to him, where she suddenly finds herself pressing it to her own temple. You hear distorted voices who refer to themselves as "The Board," and they test whether you're capable of wielding it.

Jesse is transported to the "astral plane," a bright white space with disjointed black and gold marbled cubes to walk on. A giant inverted pyramid looms ever-present in the background.

You fight some faceless humanoid enemies, learning to harness a limited psychic ability to attack them. When you find the gun in the astral plane, you learn how to take down the faceless enemies with it. You have a limited clip of ammo, but it regenerates infinitely, without the need to manually reload or resupply.

When you've completed the training, Jesse is appointed the new Director by The Board. All of a sudden, you're in charge of the Federal Bureau of Control! Portraits can be found already updated with professional photos or paintings of Jesse all around the building.

You also start to find official documentation scattered around the offices concerning various Objects of Power (OoP), including your own service weapon. Just like SCP documentation on their wiki.

Almost immediately, Jesse finds herself exposed to an invasive hissing noise that feels like it's trying to invade her soul (See first screenshot). She's able to withstand it, but it takes over other Control agents and forces them to attack her. Fighting your way to the Central Executive room, you find a marked circle under an inverted pyramid and realize you can use your psychic energy to dispel the "Hiss" from the area and restore the distorted space to its normal state.

Survivors call out from a nearby shelter and Jesse gives them the all-clear. The assistant to the Head of Research, Emily Pope, comes out and immediately recognizes Jesse as the new Director. She's stoked that Jesse's able to withstand the Hiss without specialized equipment and she's excited to perform some experiments to test Jesse's abilities.

Pope quickly becomes your go-to for any information you need about this strange place. She explains that the building has come under attack by a deadly and invasive anomaly that Jesse helped dub the "Hiss," and since Jesse is the only one who seems able to resist and fight back, she's needed to help clear sections of the building and rescue other survivors.

Jesse is also desperate to find her brother, but Pope doesn't have access to that level of information. She suggests Jesse rescue the rest of the former Director's team scattered throughout the building and they should be able to fill her in on what happened to Dylan.

From there, the game is spent running back and forth across the various floors of the building, rescuing people, fighting the Hiss and liberating areas, and learning more about Control and what they do. You can find various sources of media scattered throughout, including documents, tape recordings, and video recordings.

Not to mention, some more OoPs that bind to Jesse and enhance her abilities. You can telekinetically lift and throw objects, rapidly dash through the air to evade enemies or reach far-away platforms, construct a shield out of psychic energy and physical objects, and even fly! Keep progressing through the game to find these OoPs and bind them, then enhance their powers through missions and side quests. Eventually, you'll be practically invincible!

Amongst the video recordings, there's a cheaply made kid's puppet show called the "Threshold Kids" that has episodes randomly distributed all over the building. It goes over various anomalies and supernatural situations, as if it was meant to explain complex topics for young children. It seems simple enough at first, but there's something creepy and off about it, and it gets very dark and existential in later episodes. I love the world-building it brings to the game!

I mentioned Alan Wake was tangentially-related to this game. That's because the development studio of both franchises, Remedy Entertainment, included documentation you can find in Control that explains Alan Wake as an Altered World Event (AWE), with Alan's typewriter being a suspected OoP! And if you play Control's AWE expansion after the main campaign, it sets up Alan Wake II.

I love SCP-related content, and the Federal Bureau of Control is a whole SCP-like organization, with rich and detailed lore dealing with supernatural and otherworldly objects and powers. And then adding lore to tie two separate game franchises together in the same universe? I absolutely love it! This has been one of my all-time favorite games since it released and I'm really excited to play Control 2 whenever it finally comes out.

By the way, the Alan Wake Franchise bundle is 80% off on Steam, so you can play the first game and its spinoff game for only $5, then save a few bucks off Control by buying the Alan Wake/Control Franchise bundle. Or wait for a better deal; Control was only $8 for a couple weeks last month, so keep an eye out for their next sale and get it super cheap.

My one gripe is that Alan Wake II was published by Epic Games, which means it will probably never come to Steam. I'm adamantly against using Epic Games, as they have very anti-competitive practices with the gaming community. So unless someone else gets PC publishing rights, I may never get to play Alan Wake II. (Note: I don't own any current-gen consoles, so playing it on console is out) The rest of the franchise is published by 505 Games or Remedy Entertainment themselves, including the upcoming Control 2, so I can enjoy everything else in the meantime.