Replying to @⁨CaptainMan251@lemmy.world⁩

The Last Caretaker

You play as the last functioning robot in a post-human flooded Earth with the goal to restart humanity by growing and sending them into orbit with a rocket.

You explore the entire world on a small barge going between massive abandoned platforms with the last remaining infrastructure that you need to utilize the send the rockets to orbit. You spend a lot of time recycling the leftover scrap into better equipment to protect and power you and your ship.

It subverts a lot of my least favorite tropes of factory and survival games and just has a great sense of discovery. My favorite game design choice is that almost all of your enemy interaction is offensive instead of defensive so you have the opportunity to prepare before going into a big fight and can easily retreat.

It admittedly has a long way to go in terms of performance and stability. One thing that was counterintuitive is that turning on all the raytracing options significantly improved performance for me. But the gameplay loop is like nothing else out there. There is also no multiplayer yet, although the developer has said it’s not off the table in the long run. They’ve also openly stated that there will never be paid DLC. All future content is included with the purchase of the game.

It has a demo and is definitely worth checking out.

Replying to @⁨CaptainMan251@lemmy.world⁩

The Banner Saga series. I have had the first one in my library for perhaps a decade, tried to start it a few times and never got into it.

Until a week ago, that is, when I got past the slow start and oh my does it pick up from there! Currently nearing end of the second one and I’ve been devouring these games, outright unhealthily to be honest, but I’m going to let it take me, I think the third one ends the saga, so this has a natural end and I’ll let myself go wild until that.

It’s pretty amazing how much one can do with so little, kind of. When the story is good and writing too, and the art style works, it doesn’t need all that much in terms of technical fidelity to be amazing.

Edit: If anyone has suggestions for other games like this, I’d be more than happy to hear them. I hear king of dragonpass and its lineage is almost a perfect fit, and I remember trying one of the newer ones a decade or so ago and having a blast but never finished. Are there others?

Replying to @⁨orgrinrt@lemmy.world⁩

Do you like the tactial RPG gameplay, or the story and elements around maintaining and building up your clan?

For example Final Fantasy Tactics has you building up a team as you progress through a story with tactial rpg combat, but not as much about management decisons about keeping your party alive.

There are also games like This war is mine, which has no tactical RPG elements, but is about making hard decisions trying to keep a group of people alive during war.

Replying to @⁨Jolteon@lemmy.zip⁩

Yeah, it is absolutely not in the best shape in terms of power creep right now. But I still find some level of enjoyment. Also played since book 1, as a F2P this whole time.

Powercreep and tryhards are why I avoid basically all PVP besides doing 5 rounds of arena for the free summon ticket and an orb.

Though, I find the powercreep is normally somewhat palpable in the story mode and paralogues now with the F2P OC for book 10: so far best Alfonse.

Replying to @⁨CaptainMan251@lemmy.world⁩

Elite dangerous. It is so vast and there’s so much going on that it doesn’t feel like a game, it’s a second reality. I’ve been playing for months and I still have a bunch of brand new things to try out and master, which are going to be super fun.

I’ve got a big expedition coming up soon too, if I play enough I’ll see another 0.01% of the wonders the galaxy has to offer.

It fulfils my childhood dreams of exploring space, and there’s just so much it’s hard to stop

Replying to @⁨CaptainMan251@lemmy.world⁩

Slay the Spire 2. I’m attempting to beat all ascensions in a row without dying, and my best streak is A8 defect. I am 400 hours in the game.

The problem is I suck at defect. It is a character I find really difficult to play and according to my stats it has killed my runs %45 of the time, which is a lot when you consider there is 5 characters.

Replying to @⁨teawrecks@sopuli.xyz⁩

I think I’m too stupid for that game. It’s fun, but I can’t get anywhere with it, my colony of like 8 people is just stagnating in a place of barely alive and I can’t figure out how to get more resources because it won’t let me explore new regions more than once and I can’t figure out how to go into a region once, gather resources and get back to my camp without dying of starvation or have everyone in the exploring party suffer a total mental breakdown and go on a murdering spree. I think the concept is awesome and I’m clearly missing so much, it’s just way over my head. Maybe I need to start over from fresh and see if I have better luck.

Replying to @⁨lonefighter@sh.itjust.works⁩

It does have a steep learning curve, and I do think it is more enjoyable the more you get familiar with the systems. Yeah, sending caravans out can be very risky early on for many reasons.

For a first run, maybe choose a slightly easier difficulty (Community Builder), use the Phoebe Chillax storyteller, and pick a location on the planet that has a year-round growing season. And when choosing your starting colonists, I recommend someone with shooting, someone with construction, and maybe someone with cooking or plants. This way you can be relatively self-sufficient without needing to caravan.

Once you can caravan, I recommend trading/gifting to other factions to build goodwill. This will keep them from attacking you, and once you have a comms station, you can call them in to help with defense in a pinch. Note that some factions are always hostile, though.

When you do get raided, make sure your colonists are always firing from behind cover. When possible, try to gang up on isolated enemies and melee them down to increase the chance they are incapacitated (not killed), so you can capture them. Prisoners can either be slowly converted and recruited, or released for goodwill with their faction (or used for other fucked up stuff).

Good luck!

Replying to @⁨CaptainMan251@lemmy.world⁩

Satisfactory. I’m a Factorio native, ~1k hours. It’s been really fun to see the drastically different approaches to things, in terms of designing a factory game. Factorio will always be my true love, but every time I play Satisfactory I find myself just oogling the beauty of the game. The sense of scale is overwhelming, the 3d aspect gets rid of a lot of restrictions that I’m accustomed to and makes building a factory feel more like art than I ever thought it could be.

Satisfactory is also a much younger game than Factorio, so I’m excited to see how it matures. I really love the early access update experience.