I realized today that when I lost Twitter, I also lost a lot of the cool indie game devs I was following there (and the updates on their games). And that totally sucks, because I really love to play indie games. Apparently Twitter was my main source for discovering them (sheesh).
Below is a pretty big list of games (with links to them!) that I'm looking forward to. There are SO MANY games on my Steam wishlist that are still being worked on and upcoming (some of these are on itch also, and some have alphas, betas, and demos, I've noted which).
Some of these games are definitely coming later this year, and fingers crossed for maybe full releases of the rest in 2024?
Old pixel art time - this one's from the previous millenium: 1994. Tilesets, inventory items, monsters and a very cheesy title screen for a dungeon crawler that never saw the light of day. Dpaint, 32(ish) colours. #amiga#pixelart#dpaint#dungeoncrawler
A late-game dungeon design in progress. These paper designs are just rough drafts and always end up revised to some degree once I start building them, but there's no way I could just freehand a level in Unity without planning it out like this first.
This will be one of probably four levels for the final dungeon.
Angband
Full of surprises! I get to this spot & see the ambush coming. I think I've already killed over fifty of them & they're still coming in waves. Fortunately, I'm in a good position. If I'd walked into that room, it would have been certain death! I've gone up 4 levels since the fighting started.
A very interesting article about Beneath Apple Manor (1978) who predates Rogue by 2 years & was the 1st commercial Rogue Like. BAM already had advanced gameplay.
I love to play this one.
I'm starting a new game party. We'll see how far I can go this time*. I haven't managed to finish it yet. It's a very good one!
I think I had to restart the game 7 or 8 times with the same character (Dwarf Mage ArchMage) before I could get this far (permanent death). LVL 13. An ambush here, for example, in the second image. Hard time!
A very good game, very addictive, but very hard. Roguelike obliges.
I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
Going Under is a roguelite dungeon crawler set in a late-stage capitalist hellscape and I am absolutely here for it.
I got almost 4 hours sleep on Thursday night, and woke up feeling pretty ragged.
When I got home from work I was down to one cylinder, and went grocery shopping, then came home ready to crash.
I figured I could knock 15 minutes of a game out and then write the review today.
Almost an hour and a half later I dragged myself to bed.
Dungeon crawlers are traditionally darkly-lit demon-infested horror-crawls, not brightly-lit, cartoonish, horror-crawls. The horror in Going Under comes from the biting satire of late-stage tech-startup capitalism in a VC-funded world, with nods to anyone who's worked in a knowledge worker / IT-related role.
The game starts with your first day as an -unpaid- intern (because of course it does), watching an introductory video about your new workplace, a recently acquired subsidiary ("Fizzer") of a multi-national conglomerate ("Cubicle").
You've been assigned to Fizzer by the company's AI (of course), and just as the video gets to the explanation of why no Cubicle employee should never enter the dungeons underneath the Fizzer office, your Project Manager boss assigns you to enter the dungeons underneath the Fizzer office to kill the "monsters" that are invading.
The dungeons themselves, and the monsters, are previously acquired start-ups, with names like "Joblin" (a gig worker app), and "Winkydink" (a dating app).
Between the roguelite elements and the quests to build up rep with your "mentors", Going Under really nails that "just one more run" feel.
Desktop Dungeons Enhanced Edition is an updated version of Desktop Dungeons (Nov 7, 2013). I'm not exactly sure what makes it "Enhanced", but it was given away free earlier in the year, and if you owned this, you got the sequel "Desktop Dungeons: Rewind" for free, which seemed like a deal that was too good to be true.
Desktop Dungeons is a top-down bitmap pixel-art roguelike dungeon crawler puzzle game.
It's also a great example of a game where the gameplay overcomes my dislike of pixel-art games.
In one sense, it's a pretty standard dungeon crawler. Explore the dungeon, attack mobs.
However, each square you uncover goes towards refilling your health and mana. You need to explore the fog of war to find mobs, but if you clear the fog of war and then try and kill the mobs, you're gonna have a bad time.
It took me a few goes to get through the first level, but by the time I did, I was hooked.
Between dungeons there's some resource management and basic city-building going on, but the game is designed to be played in short chunks.
Desktop Dungeons: Rewind is Desktop Dungeons Enhanced Edition in 3D.
Literally.
Gone are the pixel-art bitmaps, replaced by glorious detailed 3D artwork.
The gameplay is (at least at this point) identical.
Like, last night I played through the first map multiple times before I understood it and beat it.
Tonight, exactly the same map, with the same mobs, and the same drops, but all in 3D.
So: Desktop Dungeons: Rewind is an isometric 3D roguelike dungeon crawler puzzle game.
Where last night it was a great example of a game where the gameplay overcomes my dislike of pixel-art games, now the fun gameplay is also pretty.
Still a pretty standard dungeon crawler. Explore the dungeon, attack mobs.
However, each square you uncover goes towards refilling your health and mana. You need to explore the fog of war to find mobs, but if you clear the fog of war and then try and kill the mobs, you're gonna have a bad time.
I cleared the first level with exactly the same strategy I used last night, still hooked. The only reason I didn't keep playing was that it ran into my actual work shift.
Between dungeons there's some resource management and basic city-building going on, but the game is designed to be played in short chunks. No change, just prettier city-building, in 3D!
In a shocking and surprising turn of events, Desktop Dungeons: Rewind is:
November 23, 2023 - Day 326 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 346
Game: Soundfall
Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 12, 2022
Installation Date: Nov 11, 2023
Unplayed: 12d
Playtime: 16m
Soundfall is part rhythm-based top-down dungeon-crawler, part looter-shooter.
So far, one level in, this musical odyssey feels like a dungeon-crawler in name only. So far the dungeons are brightly-coloured floating islands, adorned with equalizer level bars rising and falling in time with the ear-wormish pop soundtrack.
Existing in a third space between Hi-Fi Rush and Metal Hellsinger, this is an interesting take on a rhythm game, and the only reason I'm writing a review instead of continuing to play is that it's been a tough day, and I can barely keep my eyes open.
The only issue I have with the game is that in spite of having previously needed to calibrate my video and audio latency for other rhythm games, the calibration tool in Soundfall insists my calibration requirements for both are 0ms.
I think it's this that left me feeling like I was constantly slightly off-beat, just enough that it didn't feel quite right.
Even so, Soundfall is already fun, and I'll happily say it's:
LambdaHack (github.com)
Haskell game engine library for roguelike dungeon crawlers; please offer feedback, e.g., after trying out the sample game with the web frontend at...