I'm pretty sure this will be fixed in the next release:
https://codeberg.org/Bazsalanszky/Eternity/commit/767e75b7989768d0349fc8f5ea6384505a7ea795
A couple months ago, I shamelessly posted a darksynth recommendation guide someone on reddit made and a lot of people here on Lemmy seemed to like it. Well, the creator of that guide just posted a new version so I'm shamelessly sharing it here again.
You can see the full-sized, zoomable version here. Once again, this was created by khroshan over on reddit, not by me.
Let me get this out of the way first: this is a mindless pulp cyberpunk novel. It isn't high art. But it also isn't as bad as I would expect a book titled "Jack: Into the Beanstalk" to be. This isn't a bland re-telling of Jack And The Beanstalk with some human augmentations slapped on top. It's primarily a cyberpunk world first and any references to the fairy tale feel more like easter eggs than core story elements. So in that way, I was pleasantly surprised. With that said, this post is more about me trying to keep this community alive than a strong recommendation. It's a fun mindless story, not a "must read".
Both Astro Boy and Battle Angel Alita have the concept of a rich city in the clouds above the poor working class living on the ground. Even the Deus Ex reboot had Hengsha as a city on top of another city. So when this book has a rich city being held up above the poor city, I see that more as a cyberpunk trope than a "castle in the clouds" from the fairy tale. But maybe I'm being too generous. Anyway, the story is about a girl (named Jack) who has cybernetic limbs. She has a neurological implant in her spine which helps control these limbs. At the beginning of the story, she's doing odd jobs for a gang in the hopes of paying off the debt she incurred when purchasing the limbs. The implant in her spine gets damaged and suddenly she can see a glowing green line reaching from the ground to the rich city above. That green line is The Beanstalk. Her goal is to figure out why only she can see it and what exactly it is. No magic beans, no giants in the sky, nothing else that I would consider a reference to the fairy tale.
In the process of trying to figure out what The Beanstalk is, she joins up with a group of freedom fighters. And this is really my main complaint with the story. This may be a nuance of the cyberpunk genre that only I care about, but I don't think cyberpunk stories should have rebellions. I'm good with a group of mercenaries teaming up to take down a megacorp, but I don't want a group of rebels attempting to make systemic change. I think an aspect of the cyberpunk genre is in trying to find your place in the world, not trying to change it. But that really is just a nitpick regarding my own enjoyment of the story; and if that's the worst I can come up with, it's not bad. The characters all have distinct personalities, the world is fleshed-out, the story is good; it's a fun romp.
There are two books in the series so far and both are less than 300 pages. Both end on a cliffhanger though. I jumped right into book 2 to see the resolution of the first book's cliffhanger and now I'm left with another cliffhanger waiting for book 3. Also, I'm not a huge fan of where the story went in book 2. It's introducing too much "magic" for my taste. The book pretends it's based on quantum computing but as far as the world-building is concerned, it's magic. There's a lot of "oh, I guess she can do that now" in the second book. And while you might argue it's stupid for me to complain about magic in a re-telling of a fairy tale, it really has not felt like a fantasy or fairy tale at any other point in the story so it's pretty jarring to me.
So as I said before, overall, a fun pulp cyberpunk novel but mostly me showing this community is still active.
Totally agree. Something about the mouths in the cutscenes look too "uncanny valley" to me. But the gameplay looks like it could be pretty good.
The dev for Raccoon also had a Lemmy community to announce updates and things (he also deleted that community). Before he deleted it, he said that post about markdown support was the last straw and he was done with it. He announced he was going to delete everything related to Raccoon and it was all gone within like 12 hours of him saying that. He said any of the forks of his app can continue development, but since he deleted the entire repo with very little warning I don't know if any of those forks were current with the latest commit before the parent repo disappeared.
Rodent is exactly what I was looking for, thanks!
I'm going to keep adding more items as I think of them in case others might be interested in this type of game.
There's a free game on steam called Nightmare Kart which started out as a Bloodborne Mario Kart but the developer was getting too much attention so he removed all the explicit Bloodborne references that might get him sued and released the game as a vaguely Bloodborne-ish kart racing game. It features PS1 style graphics.
Also, for anyone into arcade (MAME) games, there's a horror-themed beat 'em up called Night Slashers which is pretty fun.
Apparently this game is getting a remake on steam, called Night Slashers: Remake. I actually had no idea this game was being made until I googled for the arcade game's cover art just now.
I totally agree that good horror needs to gradually ramp up the tension. But that's why I'm not looking for horror games, I'm just looking for some fun spooky games i can jump into real quick without really dedicating a lot of time to it.
I've never even heard of this! Looks like it's a turn-based RPG though. Those are typically pretty rough on the NES. Do you like the game?
Just to throw another item into the list, there's a VirtualBoy game called Jack Bros which should perfectly fit my criteria:
Unfortunately, the game is really boring (in my opinion). You just wander around a maze collecting keys so that you can... move onto the next maze to collect more keys. You have a basic attack but the range is so short that it isn't exactly fun. I had really high hopes when I learned of its existence too...
I'm not so much concerned with the gore or being too scary, it's the slowness of the SH games that I don't have the patience for right now. I'm not looking for a game I need to spend hours immersing myself into, I'm hoping to find some fun games I can jump into for 20 minutes at a time.
Ghost n Goblins is a good call, although I'm terrible at that game. I'll definitely need to checkout Rusty, I've played all the Castlevania games so Rusty sounds perfect.
MedEvil definitely fits my criteria, although I find that game too clunky. There's a new(ish) game called Pumpkin Jack which was heavily inspired by MedEvil but uses more modern game mechanics. It's a fun one.
Luigi's Mansion leans a bit too far into the cutesy/silly territory for me, but it's definitely a good choice.
I didn't realize Dead By Daylight had a bunch of characters from various horror franchises, that's really cool! I think I'm probably more likely to play Left4Dead if I wanted an action-y spooky multiplayer game but I'll definitely give Dead By Daylight more attention.
I've never heard of Pascal's Wager and the reviews on steam don't look great, but I'll look into it.
Thanks for the list with so many varied options!
You're right, Maniac Mansion definitely has the vibe I'm looking for but there's no way I've got the patience for a point-and-click game.
Well that looks perfect, thanks!
As I get older, I find I have no interest in playing the cutesy/silly games that are everywhere on retro consoles (obviously, they were targeted towards kids). But I also don't have the patience for survival horror games like the resident evil or silent hill series. I'm just looking for a fun spooky game that I can jump into and start playing.
So what are your favorite action-oriented games featuring skeletons and bats and horror movie monsters that aren't actually trying to scare you? Any platform, any year. I'm looking for games whose entire theme is spooky, not just a single haunted house or graveyard level.
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Yeah, "cyberpunk music" definitely has different meanings for different people since music is so subjective. To some people it's the slow jazz of Vangelis in Blade Runner and to others it's more electronic. I don't think there's a wrong answer but I personally prefer the more electronic stuff.