My son has a Switch. I don’t as I’m a fuddy duddy at this point when it comes to gaming. I think AOW Shadow Magic is from 2003. LOL. I still miss Warlords from the 80s.
Into the Breach looks interesting, I just added it to my wishlist. That way if it goes on sale, Gog will let me know.
The Switch is a great place for ports of retro/indie games. It’s apparently very easy for developers to get PC games onto the platform compared to other consoles. While you won’t have the huge selection of GOG in terms of back titles, new indie games come out on Switch most of the time if they do well enough on PC. If you’re dying to play some games you liked when you were younger, then yes, the Switch isn’t going to fill that niche. But there are plenty of new games coming out that in many ways resemble games from the 90s and such, and at much more compelling price points than AAA new games. Though with GOG you do get emails when your wishlist items are on sale, while you have to manually check with the Switch (as far as I know).
Slay the Spire also technically is a “turn-based strategy game” that I would highly recommend, but it’s really a deck-building game (like Dominion or Ascension, not like Magic or Pokemon) mashed into a dungeon crawler.
If you have any affection for SciFi Horror and especially H.P. Lovecraft you should check out “Darkest Dungeon.”
Not a world builder but it is a masterpiece of turn based strategy and is available on GOG. I’d advise you wait to install any of the DLC packages until you get very comfortable with the game.
Good recommendation, don’t know why I didn’t think of it!
Do you mean on booting up? You can turn that off.
Why not Steam? You are really restricting yourself.
You are missing things like X-Com 2 or Civilization-V (or IV or VI). Games that have kept people awake through the night for a looong time.
If you like turn based games and skip these because “Steam” you are missing out.
I found FrostPunk fun at first till I realized it was all about seeking the one and only way to success (ok…with some minor variation but stress on “minor variation”).
Once you realize that it is not fun anymore.
Silent Storm (Nival Interactive, 2004) is a really good alternate-history turn-based game set in WW II. I really should try a complete play-through one of these days, only reason I didn’t finish the game is because the version I installed from disc had a game-breaking bug toward the end.
Okay, I started a new Silent Storm campaign during my lunch break. The game play is still first rate but the voice acting and clichés are atrocious! Sometimes hilariously so.
Some background on the game: you control either a top secret Allied commando squad tasked with reverse engineering a new Nazi superweapon or a top secret Axis squad helping develop said superweapon. You get thrown into the alternate history aspect before you even start playing, when you have to choose the leader of your squad. I don’t remember the Axis choices but your Allied choices consist of three pairs of men & women – one pair for American, one pair for the UK, and one pair for Russia. The American female is a sniper!
Yeah, X-Com 2 is my favorite turn-based strategy/tactics game of all time. It’d be a shame to miss out on it if you’re a fan of the genre.
I use Steam but have just set it to not load on startup. I load it when I need it.
I know the OP said no Steam, but Steam is selling it for $2.50 (on sale) as opposed to the $10 GOG is charging (regular price).
I can’t speak for the OP, but for me, I bought a 2-pack of games from Meijer that were published by Valve many years ago, Oblivion and Bioshock perhaps. Regardless, in order to play these games, I had to install Steam on my computer and have Steam running the entire time they were. Yes, I could theoretically “close” Steam when I wasn’t using it, but what’s the point of having some extra software required for out-of-the-box games? I never run top-of-the-line computers, and these games were straining my hardware to get graphics I didn’t think were all that great (I don’t like modern-looking games in general, but that’s another issue). This bloatware that was REQUIRED to play a game I purchased at a store drove me absolutely nuts, and I vowed to never use Steam again, not realizing the behemoth that it would eventually become.
Every once in a while a game comes out that’s only available on Steam that I think I might like. As much as I might want to play it, I remember I have dozens of games I have bought when they were on sale on other platforms I haven’t really put any time into. I don’t have an infinite amount of time or money, and the games that get released on other platforms I’m interested in take more time to get through than I have available. If I run out of games to play on other platforms, I might go to Steam. But that’s almost certainly never going to happen.
Steam has an offline mode to play games. Once you’ve installed the game, you don’t really ever need to connect to steam after that. Granted, you’ll miss stuff such as cloud saves, but if that doesn’t interest you anyway it doesn’t matter.
But, unlike GOG and some others, you do have to install it through the client.
While I use Steam and have a rig powerful enough not to mind it, I do hate that if you buy an EA game using steam you have to have Steam (although you can use offline mode) ++AND++ the EA Origin overlay (must be on) to run the damn game. Again I tolerate the Steam overlay (for the social aspects, as I have a large number of steam friends) but Origin is absolute, unworkable, crash-ridden crap that was so bad I had to return 2 EA games because I could NOT get it to play nice, and was far from the only person who had the issue.
So if steam is a benign skin cancer, Origin is a horrific organ cancer in metastasis. Sorry, rant /off.
This is absolute garbage, yes. I don’t consider Steam bloatware, but forcing me to open multiple launchers is total nonsense.
I’ve complained about this before around here and I agree. It annoys me to no end.
Usually having one client like Steam or Origin open should not matter much when playing a game. It takes up some memory but unless you are on the ragged edge of low memory it should all work fine. The clients should not take up any CPU/GPU cycles once open (or barely any).
And some you can close like GOG or Steam and still play the game. Not sure about the other gaming clients.
That is weird. I’d expect the Russian woman to be the sniper.
I agree, that is weird. Since there actually were some female Soviet snipers in World War II, it’s practically mandatory for modern games set in that period to include a female Russian sniper to provide some gender balance (female French partisan is the other really common one; sometimes a female British SOE or American OSS agent).