Generally, the best options are ports of PC games. Things like Slay the Spire, Balatro, Mini Metro, Terraria, BaBa is You, or Stardew Valley. Not as cheap, but worth the price tag.

A couple of my favorite free options:

Unciv - Its an attempt at recreating Civ. It’s got a lot of issues, such as lacking a lot of the more in-depth mechanics and having terrible world-gen, but its also free.

Vampire Survivors - a fairly simple but content-rich arcade game, reminiscent of old flash games.

Super Auto Pets - an autobattler like autochess but stripped down to its fundamentals making it easy to get in to, and easy to play in short bursts

It has been a little while since I last played it, but I found that scale-wise, it felt small (I’m guessing this is what you mean) with major locations too close together, but content-wise, it felt sparse, empty and ultimately pretty boring, which was the much bigger issue in my enjoyment.

Basically, how much of the world is interesting/fun.

For example, Fallout 3 doesn’t do a great job of this, as much of the world is baren with no story or gameplay. Half of the world feels like it could be cut out without much loss. The Yakuza games on the other hand, have smaller worlds but they feel massive and fun because there’s always something to do moments away.

The work-around is to make travel fun, so the “empty-space” is just more gameplay. The Just Cause games are the perfect example of this. All the movement mechanics are quick and satisfying, from the grapple and parachute, to the driving, to the OP wingsuit.

From a low pressure sales perspective the community should be phrasing it as questions that make the Windows user think about.

Even aside from this, I think the bigger issue is that Linux evangelists need to be open to new/ignorant users, and casual users. So much of the Linux community is made up of die-hards who expect other users to be just as invested in it as they are. For example, I’ve tried Linux twice, and both times ran into issues with support for hardware (audio issues the first time, lack of support for my mouse the second). In both cases, I have a significant number of people making absurd suggestions, and expecting me to devote significant amounts of work or money to make my PC functional when I already had a functional OS. Comments to the point of, “just buy new hardware,” “just program the drivers yourself,” or “just hire someone to write the software for you.” were a significant part of the response. Unless Linux is my job or my hobby, these are not realisitc suggestions, and they make Linux look like a nerdy hobby rather than a Windows competitor.

Jokes on everyone else. My collection of hundreds of Field Tested P250 Sand Dunes skyrocketed in value.

Edit: After fees and taxes, I more than doubled my initial investment.

Yep. The post was removed, but I can still see the comment on my profile from two weeks ago:

The whole website seems to be just AI nonsense, and AI nonsense running at 2fps at that.

Edit: Also, the formatting on mobile is horrid

My game last night was more like a couple minutes of lag. Luckily, Dota has an in-built system to detect it, so the game wasn’t recorded and those of us who didn’t leave spent the remainder of the game messing around.

Gmod is also particularly popular in Eastern Europe and Russia, which seems to be a particularly toxic region. I’ve seen more than a few distasteful posts in Russian, such as when “burnt Ukranian corpses” spent multiple days as the most popular workshop item, with comments in Russian celebrating and making various racist and nationalist remarks.

Also not suprised War Thunder is up there too. Again, popular in Russia, and like HoI, its the type of game to attract Nazis and Wehraboos.

The whole website seems to be just AI nonsense, and AI nonsense running at 2fps at that.

Edit: Also, the formatting on mobile is horrid

From my understanding, it also locks your inventory, which in a game like CS, is a very big deal.

Part of the problem is that historically, AMD was just flat out bad. Its no so much as thinking of Nvidia as a luxury brand as not even realizing AMD or Intel are valid options. Even if things get better, it will take time for public sentiment to shift, given that people aren’t replacing their computers often.

For example, I got a Vega 56 for cheap near the end of the generation. I had constant issues with it’s drivers, and my whole friend group was obviously exposed to them when we played games together. Seeing that, reasonably, they decided they wanted to stay away. Given that my friend group is relatively technical, they’re opening up to AMD again as people say the issues have improved, but if I had a less cheap and less technical friend group, that experience would have completely burnt that bridge.

So far as I know, there aren’t a lot of 8-player local multiplayer games. The only obvious answer is the Jackbox games, using your phones as controllers.

Beyond that, I did find this Steam curator, who seems to specialize in 8-player games. From thier list, I recognize Gang Beasts, and Pico Park: Classic Edition. Party Golf, Screen Cheat, and Cobalt also all looked interesting, but I’ve never seen anyone play them.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think Boomerang Fu or Overcooked support 8 players?

The economy is terrible with both hardware and software becoming more expensive, theres a good selection of free and long-lifetime games (be it live-service or just very long and replayable), and a lot of the newer paid games have become worse.

I’d be significantly more suprised if this wasn’t the case.

Mastercard? Yes, but then they’d have to admit that they were in the wrong, so it seems unlikely.

Tl;dr: Mastercard says they didn’t “force” Valve to remove nsfw games. They just told them that if they didn’t remove the games that were complained about by Collective Shout, they’ll block them.

The comment, for convenience:

In my opinion Luanti is a living proof that top-down extensibility aka “we make monolithic engine in C++ and then provide some APIs for scripting via bindings for some scripting language on the side” doesn’t work well. You can’t change main menu, you can’t fix player controller (and the default one sucks), you can’t write your own renderer, etc. Because developers didn’t imagine someone would want that (actually they probably did, but they simply don’t have capacity to provide this). Good extensibility/modability should be automatic, on binary level. Like what you get by developing in bytecode/JIT-compiled languages like Java/C# or in old Unreal Engines where everything was done in bytecode-(de)compilable special language called Unreal Script.

Assuming you’d have to re-buy Minecraft, I’d.say at least give Luanti a try. At the very least, Its free, so you can switch if you don’t like it.

That said, personally, I had too many issues with it. Specifically, I had performance issues, found that the graphics that looked worse (subjectively) and were much harder to modify, and kept running into roadblocks that were annoying to fix, like having to figure out how to grant myself permissions for a bunch of different actions.

While Luanti is much more accessible for modding, isn’t it more limitted? Maybe the documentation was just out of date or that, but I was trying to look into custom shaders as well as optimization mods (since I was getting suttering on block updates) a year ago or so, but from what I saw at the time, there wasn’t any way to modify these.

Edit: Was trying to find any information to confirm this, or see if its changed. I did find a couple recemt refrences to custom shaders (although they seemed very limitted). That said, there was no official documentation, nor refrences to it on any official page, so I have no idea how functional or supported it is. I found nothing at all about other methods of modifying rendering.

From what I understand, they’ve moved on from that structure. I believe that was one of the things talked about after the release of HL:A, with one of the employees saying that it was part of the reason the game actually got finished. That said, its been a while and even assuming I’m not misremembering information rarely leaves Valve, so I could be wrong.

Edit: I’m wrong. See sp3ctr4l’s comment below.

As much as I like Valve’s work, I don’t think thats a good fit for them. Their staff seem to enjoy working on difficult technical tasks, and lose interest very fast when it comes to mundane maintenance, thus their numerous underutilized and unmaintained features throughout Steam and their games. A payment processor seems like exactly the sort of thing that would get forgotten about a month or two after it gets finished.

Same thing applies, but the article suggests that its probably PayPal in this case.

Not suprising, and given the nature of most of the games removed, debatably reasonably, but it still highlights the need to reduced reliance on the few big American payment processors like PayPal when they can effectively regulate what can and cannot be sold online.

It is a fun game - I bought it and have put a dozen hours or so into it, but it also really doesn’t capture the brilliance of Slay the Spire or the other more influential roguelike deckbuilders. In particular, a lot of it feels either clunky or repetitive. It is a good game, but just good rather than amazing.

Using your clones example, the Slay the Spire “clones” that give roguelike deckbuilders a bad name aren’t Inscryption or Monster Train or Balatro. Its things like Across the Obelisk and Wildfrost, that are good, but fail to capture what makes others great, and the numerous low-effort copies you’ve likely never heard of that viewed it as an easy way to make a good game without understanding it. Its not that Roguelike Deckbuilders are bad, obviously, its that lazy, or thoughtless use of the mechanics that is. A game isn’t one mechanic, and trying to treat it as such just results in a messy or bad game.

Its a crutch because its expected to hold the game up, rather than the game supporting its own weight. In your bullet hell example, dodging isn’t a crutch, it’s the foundational mechanic. A better example would be a slot machine system (something that is near-inherently engaging) being added to a bullet hell game, not because it fits but because its fun independently and helps distract from the fact that they haven’t put any effort into the core gameplay. The mechanic isn’t a crutch, its inclusion as a tacked-on addition is.

The mechanic itself isn’t the issue, but how it is implemented.

It depends on how (and where) its implemented is his point. It needs to be woven into the comvat system as it is in FromSoft, Batman, Ultrakill, or Cuphead, not tacked on because its easy or popular. Each of those uses parrying in a different way to enhance its combat. On the other hand, if you take these mechanics without the greater context or understanding of why it works, then it’ll tends to stand out as bad, or remain unused. Doom Eternal is an example that immediately comes to mind. The whole game is about fast paced combat, with a plethora of new mobility mechanics, that is, until you encounter one of the enemies you need to parry. Then, the game comes to a grinding halt while you wait for the enemy to take action, so you are able to react, completely opposite the rage-fueled persona and the mobility focus of every other mechanic. Compare that to Ultrakill, where parrying isn’t just a reactive way to mitigate damage, its a situational attack that allows you to keep moving and keep up your carnage.

Game mechanics work best when they’re cohesive. Parrying, due to its simplicity can be tacked on easily, breaking this cohesiveness if not given the same weight as the rest of the mechanics.

It wasn’t a shadow drop, but it was relatively light on PR. They had one big trailer six months before launch some gameplay videos, and of course the store page available.

Not requesting anything since my backlog is already long enough, but still wantted to say thanks for the giveaway!

Honestly, I like the weekly missions. Back in GO, when there was more discussion about the lack of willingness of players to learn/play new maps, this is one of the solutions I proposed. Its a good, non-invasive way to incentivize playing new and different maps.

I mean, in this case it was a complete technical overhaul. Graphically and technically, its much more flexable and more modern.

It is an Overwatch 2 situation in that it had most of its content removed compared to CS:GO though.

This seems like too much complexity, given how small (relatively) Valve is. Then again, Valve is always hard to predict. Basically all their projects are wild moon-shots in one way or another, half their stuff doesn’t make it to market, and they have a long history of fake leaks.

Mechanical complexity as in the amount of stuff to learn to “actually play” Minecraft, aside from the controls. For example, which resources are which, what crafts into what, and how to find and gather everything. Its easy enough to punch wood, but trying to figure out (and then remember) how to craft tools or farm food while also trying to remember how to position your fingers on the keyboard is a much bigger ask.

Its going to be a lot harder to play Deep Rock Galactic or Portal 2 together if she sticks with her current perfered movement method: click and drag with the mouse.

Is the US really that central to PC component manufacturing, or is this (mostly) just a US thing? Like, don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of these companies are US-based, but isn’t basically all the manufacturing and most of the distribution handled elsewhere?

The article doesn’t add anything, so here’s the direct link: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-play-on-the-go-bundle

From what I’ve heard, its mostly people expecting the game to be more dynamic - more akin to Skyrim’s varied gameplay systems or Fallout: NV’s story and quests. They’re going in expecting something with heavy RPG focus and getting something more action focused.

“Aged poorly” was a bad choice of words. My point was more that the industry has moved on from them, and while some of the conventions are the same, its largely stuff that predates them. If you go back to retro RPGs when you’re used to Skyrim, Dark Souls, Final Fantasy, ect. you’ll be unfamiliar with much of how the game plays. Not much was carried over from these games specifically. I’d argue that the influential RPG, that would be the genre’s equivalent to Doom, would be D&D. While not a video game, thats the model everything referenced, and still references, moreso than even Doom. It’s what codified core mechanics like HP, classes, character stats, and more, in the same way Doom codified modern first-person mechanics, ammo management, and exploding barrels.

While they’re important, I think they’ve also aged poorly in many ways something like Doom has not. I’d compare their importance more to something like Pong or Galiga. Good games, that pushed the limits of the medium for their time, and are foundational, but more acted as a steping stone rather than something other games were widely inpired by or modeled after.

I can’t think of anything that really competes overall. It could be argued games like Pong, Pac-Man, Quake, Half-Life, WoW, ect. all were pivotal points in gaming, but I don’t think anything has had as direct and widespread influence as Doom.