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| Alright, here's mine, in reverse order. by pinback 07/03/2021, 2:38pm PDT | ||||
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| 5. GalCiv 4 -- I didn't like 3, and I have such fond memories of 1 and 2 that I wish it was better. 4, even in its current early-alpha broken-ass state is the most fun I've had with GalCiv in over a decade. So far its design principle seems to be take the bad/boring stuff out from 3 and add more fun stuff. Good idea, BRAD.
4. Golftopia -- Futuristic SimGolf, makes course design a breeze, very pretty, and while it gives you plenty of wacky gadgets (bumpers, loops, etc.) to put on your course, for me it's most satisfying to leave those alone and just make the coolest-lookin' golf course you can. The players are generally happy, and the only "enemy" is the encroaching weeds which present as sort of a simplified tower-defense mini game while you're building your course. My favorite "Tycoon"-style building game going. 3. Slipways -- I'd echo everything MM said, while adding that what's amazing to me is that this is the developer's remake of his own PICO-8 game, but he didn't just remake it, he multiplied it by a zillion and it's all great. It's all great! I'm too depressed to play it anymore since MM passed me like I was standing still, but I'll always cherish those couple weeks I had with the game before he downloaded it. 2. Phantom Brigade -- It kinda sounds dumb, an X-COMmy turn-based tactics game but where you know what the enemy is going to do on every turn. It SOUNDS dumb, but it isn't, and it's beautiful, and it has giant robots blowing each other up, and the see-into-the future mechanic and turn-planning is presented like a video editor and is extremely cool and satisfying. Early access, plenty of changes to come, but it's the sweetest turn-based tactics game I'm currently familiar with. 1. Dyson Sphere Program -- Make this, so you can make that, so you can make that, so you can make that... With no enemies to speak of, no way to lose, and virtually infinite resources, it occurs to me that this could be played like an idle game, and given some of the hour-counts I'm seeing on Steam, I suspect some players are playing it that way. But that's no fun. I bounced off Factorio and didn't play Satisfactory, the two games it's most frequently compared with in its almost fifty thousand "Overwhelmingly Positive" Steam reviews, but I do nothing else than play this during any free segments of my day, as I struggle to work my way up the research tree by making this to make that to make that to make that... I've put in nearly 15 hours this week, which doesn't sound like much, but it's the most time I've spent playing a game in a one-week period in... well, since Rocket League came out and I was in an alcoholic haze all day during my darkest times. These are not my darkest times, so it's wonderful to find something that I really look forward to doing every day. I dream about it. During lunch with my family, I'm nodding and trying to laugh along with the crew, but really I'm thinking how to get more hydrogen from my oil refineries to my research labs. I'd imagine Factorio devotees understand this refrain, but not satisfied to hang out on a flat map, this is in 3D, you can build vertically, and oh yeah, you're gonna end up mining the whole goddamn galaxy. Seamlessly travelling between my home base and another local planet, it felt like I was playing Elite Dangerous, except I knew there was a lot of fun stuff to do on the planet once I got there. (Ouch, Braben.) And I've still got interstellar travel to look forward to. Fifteen hours in, and I can tell I am just barely pulling myself (poorly, I'm sure) out of the early game. It seems incomprehensibly huge. The "goal" of the game is to build a Dyson Sphere. My Dyson Sphere currently has the same number of components built as yours does, assuming you haven't played the game yet. It is a long haul, but every part has been a blast. Couple more things: It's being developed by a small Chinese development group. These people, I've concluded, are geniuses. The game is "Early Access" but for a game with such an ambitious scope, there are no apparent bugs, and everything runs smooth as glass throughout the whole galaxy, at all times. It's amazing. There is only one flaw, which is the English translation, which is only apparent during the little tutorial messages. Even there, though, it comes out shining, because every word is spelled correctly even though they're sometimes the wrong words or in the wrong order. The highest compliment I could give is that I've refunded games (shut up, ICJ) when I saw that there was no care taken for the text in the game, misspellings, grammatical errors, etc., and though this game will occasionally pelt you with a special brand of Engrish, it has not detracted from the experience at all, and if you tried to take the game away from me, I would attack you with knives and forks. DSP is my GOTY, without question, and by a very, very wide margin. |
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What are your 2021 GOTY candidates so far? by 07/01/2021, 12:50pm PDT  This is my issue. by 07/01/2021, 12:54pm PDT I've been playing Clone Drone since 2016. EA's kewl. NT by 07/01/2021, 1:46pm PDT Re: I've been playing Clone Drone since 2016. EA's kewl. by 07/01/2021, 6:20pm PDT 1.0 in 2021, I mean. NT by 07/01/2021, 6:20pm PDT I'm saying if you played it this year it can be in your personal GOTY. NT by 07/02/2021, 7:17am PDT Alright, here's mine, in reverse order. by 07/03/2021, 2:38pm PDT I am posting so we don't forget Lady Pac. That's all. NT by 07/16/2021, 7:05pm PDT Re: Alright, here's mine, in reverse order. by 08/20/2021, 2:15pm PDT Re: Alright, here's mine, in reverse order. by 08/20/2021, 7:27pm PDT |
