I care far more about gameplay than graphics (Dwarf Fortress) so pixel art doesn’t bother me. That said, the interface and visual representation still needs to work (okay, sure, original Dwarf Fortress is the exception that proves the rule…)
That (Dwarf Fortress) was one game that didn’t really “work” for me because the tiles (even in the relaunched 2D sprite version) were so small and hard to see I couldn’t really tell what was going on in the game. The graphics actively got in the way of playability. I bought a copy and tried it for an hour or two but just got so frustrated & confused and gave up 
That was despite growing up with games like ZZT and the Apple II Lode Runner.
I didn’t refund my copy because I wanted to support the brothers, but I still keep wishing for a “remastered” version with bigger, clearer graphics, something more akin to Oxygen Not Included or at least Rimworld.
But, whatever. For every basic 2D game that excludes a player for accessibility reasons, there’s probably a hundred unoptimized 3D shooters that exclude players just because they target computers from the future. I’d still rather the industry have simpler graphics rather than the overcomplex ones.
I can definitely understand anybody being put off by DF!
The new version is zoomable… I don’t remember how close in you can get, though. Might have to break it out this weekend…
If you are decent at using mods, I do believe there are extensive graphic mods. Even to make the game isometric 3D.
If graphics are all you get caught up on, the gameplay I do find it superior compared to RimWorld for many reasons but the easiest reason for me is no paid DLC. All free content updates including an adventure mode to turn your living world into a classic RPG with quests and heros and villains.
Huh, interesting! I may try at some point… I do want to give DF a fairer chance when time allows.
It’s a bit complicated because I’m on a Mac, so the modding tool has to run through either Crossover (WINE virtualization) or Parallels (x86 emulation). Neither is great for memory editing tools, and it seems like DFHack used to work but maybe doesn’t right now…? Unclear. Will have to try it at some point.
Or are there other mods that can directly replace the 2D engine with something else…?
I feel similarly about RDR2 but I didn’t refund it. Still have it installed, and I can imagine (and hope for) a time when I get into it despite bouncing off it twice. The likelihood is that I probably never will.
It’s funny, I have resisted buying Rimworld because of the graphics, but I picked Necesse up a couple months ago on sale. I think I saw someone recommend it in a reddit thread. I think I would quickly tire of the graphics, but what initially turned me off is the seemingly endless details and game mechanics. That was part of what turned me off of Grounded, actually, and I fear if I ever do give Rimworld a shot, that will be the reason I don’t connect with it.
It’s been a long time since I played, and I played it before the DLC was added, but I found the best part of the game was the writing. Especially if you boost the Inland Empire skill. I found the inner monologue my character had with that skill was hilarious, particularly when it started arguing with the more seemingly pragmatic mental skills.
I bounced off Disco Elysium twice, and never got very far into it. I tried it again a third time years after buying the game. Something clicked that time, and now I consider it one of my favorite RPGs.
The first time I picked it up I tried to play intentionally as a fuck-up sad sack, because it seemed like there was an expectation to play a screw-up for laughs, and I was also turned off from playing the game. The 2nd time I tried continuing that same playthrough, and just got lost reading endless amounts of world building trivia in a bookstore.
The 3rd time years later I decided to approach it differently. I tried to see the main character more as a mentally broken recovering addict who used to be a genius detective, now trying to be a better person. I found something a lot more genuine than I initially expected, although change doesn’t come easily. At the core of Disco Elysium there is a story of finding meaning and hope in a cynical and ridiculous world. It reminded me of a quote from Babylon 5: “There can always be new beginnings. Even for people like us.”
I wish I could help you, but I’m pretty bad when it comes to modding and worse with Mac stuff.
I can definitely understand being turned off by Disco Elysium because Harry’s such a sack of shit at the start, but you can make the game be entirely about Harry fixing his shit and becoming a better person, which is a hell of a journey.
In fact, it might be the closest thing to an actual role playing game I’ve ever seen. Lots of RPGs feature branching stories, but DE is the only one I can think of where the majority of those branches aren’t, “Do you support the elves or the dwarves,” but instead are, “Do you feel remorse for being a shithead, or do you double down on it?” Which is to say, it’s not a branching plot so much as branching character development.
Definitely one of the most memorable games I’ve ever played. “Loathsome potat” has become a regular part of my vocabulary.
And let’s not forget in Disco Elysium that you can convince one of the anarcho-punk musicians to become a (neo)liberal.
Most of the time you’re interacting with the punks, their reactions to you will be on the scale from disdain to ambivalent. And one guy keeps going on about how punk and anarchism is “HARDCORE!” And how he’s “HARDCORE!” And various other things are “HARDCORE!” And you’re not cool because you’re not “HARDCORE!”
Occasionally he’ll just be in the background saying “Hardcore! YEAH!”
But if you keep at it and you have the right skills, you can convince him how (neo)liberalism is the way of moving society forward and once you win him over, he changes his repetitive line to:
“Incremental progress! YEAH!”
I signed up for a month of PC Game Pass (turns out the price increase didn’t affect the PC-only version that much) in order to play The Outer Worlds 2. Couldn’t really get into it 
The writing was kinda juvenile, the graphics look a decade out of date, and the gameplay felt cheap and generic… bad AI, simplistic stealth, uninspired RPG systems… meh. I dunno. I loved the first game years ago, so not sure why this one feels so underwhelming. Maybe I just aged out of its target audience…?
But, I didn’t realize Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was also on Gamepass. Finally gave that a try, and wow, it’s so achingly beautiful — narratively, artistically, graphically, etc. Great animations and acting, really good storytelling, and terrific pacing too. I don’t often play games for the story, but this one had me hooked from the first few minutes. I honestly prefer the feel and story of this way more than BG3, which always kinda played like a young adult novel. This game feels more mature and realistic in tone.
Sadly, the combat is too difficult for me (you have to react to enemy attacks and parry/block them at the right time). I always struggled with that even in games like Arkham, and it just feels totally out of place in a turn-based RPG I felt the same as the PCGamer reviewer did — that it’s a great game held back by poor combat. I’ll try to either turn down the difficulty or just watch someone else’s “Let’s Play” with just the story bits.
From what I understand, they added additional easiness to the game’s Story Mode with both widely expanded parry/dodge windows and also less damage taken. I enjoyed the combat more than I thought I would (I played it on medium) but can see where it’s not for everyone.
Anyway, it’s my GOTY for 2025 so naturally I’d encourage you to try the easiest setting and enjoy the story & characters.
Still on Shapez 2, and I’m really, really loving it. I’m into the painting level and steadily churning toward trains. Here’s what I’m wondering. Once I got to the point where I started to need to mine colors and I started mining shapes further away, I just went demo on everything. Tabula rasa. Blank slate. Everything I’d put together, I’d essentially put on the main platform. I’ve settled on mini-factories off the main platforms, so it all became kind of useless. Am I going to end up trashing the whole thing again once I come to another breakthrough?
Your older factories shouldn’t have to be completely abandoned, but they just become a smaller and smaller part of the overall scale.
It’s kinda like a restaurant franchise. Maybe your second one is a bit better than the first one, but the first one is still making money so you keep it open. Then eventually the second one is doing so much better you decide to focus on that instead. But by the time you get to 100, then 1000, then 10,000 restaurants, the differences between the first two are completely dwarfed by the sheer scale of your overall operation.
So don’t worry too much about it either way. If you keep playing, your operation will just keep growing and growing and growing, and soon you’ll be extracting colors and shapes and combining them in megafactories and minifactories all over the map. The efficiency difference between any two particular locations will be negligible since you’ll have so many locations overall and they all just become part of the great pipeline…
See, that’s the sort of thing that normally scares me away from factory games. I don’t know if I have the sand to manage that much.
The… sand?
The grit. The cajones. The juevos. The intestinal fortitude. That certain - I don’t know what - je ne sais quoi.
Oh, heh. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before.
Anyway, there are no rules about how you must play! I probably approach it a particular way because I’m a programmer, and to me the factories resemble reusable, modular chunks of code, so that’s how I make them. Maybe handcrafted designer boutique factories are more your style. As long as you’re having fun, that’s all that matters!
I scaled my factories up manually for a few hours, then cheated and maxed out all the progression and built a mega factory across the whole map, then stopped when there was nothing left to do. I got maybe 18 hours out of the game and then moved on. I enjoyed every minute, but I wasn’t trying to perfectly micro optimize every single tile. I copied and pasted a lot of mediocre designs and scaled horizontally instead.
Probably you’re just building something much cooler 
And I bet you get much more money’s worth out of your playtime.
I’ve got a few blueprints for mining and painting but I think I made them too big. I’ve been watching a few videos on YouTube and it’s clear I’ve missed a few details - like how many splitters one needs to feed a single belt. I’ve got like twenty and it just mostly sits there idle waiting for a random shape to show up from the beginning of the system. I started to figure out the limitations organically just by virtue of adjustments, but I think I’m about to swing the demo hammer again the next time I play it.