LOL. The devs official progress on the game is extremely slow, but there’s a vast modding community that can make it into a very different game. The official map is fairly sparse, most of what I’ve added to my game are map mods.
Yeah, I’ve got a handful of mods, and will add more as needed. Right now I’m a bit at loose ends: leveling up is such a grind, and I don’t really want to spend hours taking wheels off cars and putting them back on or the like. And building sounds fun, but I’m not really sure where to get started (other than collecting all the planks and nails I find).
If I die, I might start a new game with higher XP, and change other settings; but it’s early August, and I’m in no hurry to let this character die.
Building can be a rabbit hole. You might have seen things about people dismantling massive sections of the map and still not having enough to complete their epic base.
Kirby Air Riders has been popular with my 4 year old. Its a fun 2-button (mostly 1-button) kart-style racer game. The ‘karts’ and the racers offer unique fighting game style stats and special moves that you can use once or twice a race. That being said, its a low effort low skill racing game, where you only need to worry about turning and breaking.
There are 4 different game modes,
1 - Air Ride, which is the classic race 1-3 laps on various tracks and use power ups and shortcuts to best your opponents
2 - Top Ride, which is an overhead view variation of the classic race tracks with the same premise, but more bite-sized.
3 - City Trial, up to a dozen players get dropped into an open map and have to rush to collect stat buffs, by breaking boxes or competing in micro events. After the time is up everyone gets their ‘kart’ and the modified stats they get to compete in a finale minigame with the adjusted stats.
4 - Road Trip, a rogue-like style story mode.
It’s everything the first game was, including legacy tracks, with fresh paint and almost double the amount in new content.
I finished the main story of Arkham City and now I’m partway through Arkham Knight.
I remember hearing gripes about the Batmobile sections back when it came out, so I was a bit wary. So far there’s only been one really annoying mission (a timed race I had to repeat over and over again), but on the plus side there are some fun Batmobile missions as well (tank wars, primitive platforming, two “person” puzzles, etc.). I’m also really enjoying the team-up fights. I have to admit I get a bit distracted by Jonathan Banks as the voice of Commissioner Gordon, though!
@hogarth Did you play “Harley Quinn’s Revenge” in Arkham City?
Yes, it was pretty good.
What about Arkham Origins? I think I liked it equal to Arkham City, actually.
I think it gets overlooked because:
- prequel
- Mark Hamill didn’t voice the Joker in this one
No need, though. It’s a great game and even the Joker voice is almost identical.
Picked up a cool little game called Tiny Glade. Like Townscaper but with a lot more choices. You have a small building area and a toolbar. Select a tool, say the fence tool, click on the screen and drag, it makes a wood fence. Add buildings, easily alter that building, place external stairs, doors, windows, foliage, water features. Create a little 3D medieval style diorama.
I’ve taken a peek at that and it looks pretty relaxing. I’m always hesitant with creative games like that though. They always show you such amazing creations that you can come up with, but then I try and it all looks like shit. It’s like handing me a painting kit and saying, “With this, you can create the Mona Lisa too.”
Tiny Glade is amazing! It was actually made by a couple of really smart computer scientists who made these crazy algorithms that automatically beautify and connect whatever you place down, be they walls or stairs or windows or plants. It all just automagically blends seamlessly together. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to make anything ugly 
You have to watch some videos to see it in action, but it’s so impressive – like PhD level graphics morphing work disguised as a cozy game.
I’m not sure it’s part of the package I bought, I better double check!
I’ve been playing the crap out of The Curse of the Golden Idol, a mystery/logic deduction game. Every scenario, which is part of a larger story, gives you victims, people to identify, and other puzzles to solve in order to piece together the story. I finished that and now I’m in the middle of Rise of the Golden Idol.
I like it. It’s hard for me to articulate why. It has strong thematic elements of corruption and betrayal, which work nicely with the well-crafted scenarios. It’s thoughtful and challenging.
It’s no Return of the Obra Dinn, but I like it.
Wow, actually sounds really interesting! Thanks for mentioning this. How is it different from a typical adventure game?
My wife and I have been playing The Planet Crafter, a survival/crafting game where you terraform a barren world. Kind of Subnautica, without an ocean - you’re dropped onto an alien world with an unusually high density of crashed space ships. There’s no life on the world, or water, or air. You place various machines to raise the atmospheric pressure, increase O2, raise the heat, etc. As you progress, the world gradually gets wetter, then greener. We had to relocate our first base when we realized we’d built it on what was rapidly turning into the bottom of a lake.
We’re right at the point of unlocking insects. It’s a lot of fun, and has a surprising amount of polish for a game that was made by just two people.
Quite. You view mostly still images and put together, using clues, as to what has happened.
I’m snfaulkner and I endorse this game.
Is it terrifying like Submautica?
I loved that game but it got too creepy eventually.
No, not at all. There’s no native life on the planet when you land, so there’s no monsters lurking out there. There’s no combat at all. You can die by falling, or (much more likely) not paying attention to your food/air/water meters, but there’s nothing that can attack you.
Inspired by the recently-uploaded “Best of ZZT” TASes on TASVideos, I’ve gotten back into this ASCII adventure/shooting classic. One of the truly great things is that it’s 100% customizable and there are a ton of tools and effects to play with. (Games like Lode Runner, Lords of Conquest, and The Ancient Art of War are fully customizable, but there’s a lot less you can actually do with them.) For a while I’d hit a dead end because for some reason, of the four main games, Town of ZZT, Caves of ZZT, City of ZZT, and Dungeons of ZZT, only Caves could be edited (and I spent many, many, mehh-neeee happy hours molding that one. 
). But I recently found a custom editor, Kevedit, which works on any game. It’s really clumsy to use, but if I want to get those games to a reasonable level (i.e. my level), it’s my only option. Of course, the cheat codes work perfectly fine (and it’s a real credit that the game doesn’t guilt trip or penalize you in any way for using them; nobody needs that crap, least of all me), but it can get tiring to type ?-Z-A-P-enter twenty times. (I’m going to see if that new macro demo I downloaded helps any.) Blowing up those puzzles entirely…as creatively as possible, of course!..is much more efficient, and a lot more satisfying.
And just in case anyone still doesn’t get this, this is what I care about. Control. Not eye-popping graphics, not frame rates, not respecting the lore, not “”“immersion”“”, not only one solution for every problem, not properly utilizing the open world. I am having a damn good time writing allegedly quirky dialogue, absolutely trashing puzzles, and making annoying enemies die in incredibly stupid ways. And I’ve barely gotten warmed up.
I’d say this is totally my jam now, but Touhou LostWord still has that distinction, so call it my…grape jelly, that sounds good. 