cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/41873102

Wizards have joined the party!

The platformer Unless became free on April 12th. They felt it was not successful enough with the 5 USD price tag. They made it free, hoping that many more players would get to experience the game.

It's an excellent platformer, especially for a free title.

If you like platformers, I wholeheartedly recommend playing it!

My review:

Unless is an exceptional free platformer.

+ Great, colorful, varied, discernible pixel graphics
+ Great platforming, control, environment and gameplay variance, progression
+ Very good tech; snappy loading, resets, navigation, platforming
+ Good story characters (just two; they add character and meaning)
+ A lot of optional and bonus content, speedrun mode, challenges, leaderboards
+ A lot of settings to customize control, difficulty, game behavior, accessibility
* ~70/100 min playthrough (all levels/all levels+bonus levels+10 As)
* Non-voiced text story dialogues
* Limited character mechanics; there's only jumping, with height control; all variance comes through the environment, which I consider a good, well-implemented design

If you like platformers or jump-and-run games, play Unless!

Hi Everyone,

Starting as a teen playing browsergames (PBBG), I found the biggest issue, both then and now as an adult, is with three pillars:

1. The oldest players beat you with the wallet, not with the skills. I can tell you a lot of these situations I've experienced directly.
2. Stay at the top level of the guild, you need to pay like a monthly subscription, or you will be fired.
3. You need to set up an alarm to fleet the troops every day or alert with a huge sound for EACH attack you receive. It's like a job.

Recently I've spoken with my friends, he and I shared a lot of these games during the years, and we are searching for something new, and we have found only the usual games that survive the years. After some weeks of the game, we have found the same issue above. So I've decided to start a new game.

What is SeedLord?

The idea behind SeedLord is very simple: it’s an economic game where you can’t attack other baronies. By its very nature, it must be a “NO-PAY-TO-WIN” game, and the main goal is to win through skill, not through a snowball effect or the size of your wallet. I therefore decided to implement a "reset" limit: more specifically, after 120 days, the current world will end and a new one will begin, to ensure that players don’t win simply because they signed up first, rather than for other reasons.

The core of the game is trade and diplomacy, and how these are managed:

1. You start with a single seed, which grants a multiplier for harvesting a specific resource (for example, more wood per hour) after that you must specialize in a specific "role" such as the Wizard (explained in detail below).
2. Now you must produce resources, focusing on trade or diplomacy during the day.
3. As the game progresses, harvesting zones will be created. Some are event zones. There, you can collect specific resources needed to construct certain buildings and rare resources, you must control them to win the game. The zone will also provide you with Sigils based on specific criteria.
4. The goal of the game is: collect the gold and Sigils needed to "win the world" before the others. Each world has specific settings. If you and your guild win, you’ll earn a permanent title in the Hall of Fame.
5. Dominate the world, you can participate in multiple worlds at the same time.

Choose your specializations!

At the start, you can choose a specialization, which isn’t a limitation but a multiplier for your economy. Each specialization relies on the others.

Farmer: This is the first specialization that produces a LOT of food and other plants based on their rarity. If you manage it well, it will guarantee you a boost in gold right from the start. Everyone needs one.

Herbalist: You can create many potions and other items based on the plants needed in the shared area.

Wizard: You have intelligence-based abilities: for example you can decode messages intercepted by spies or predict where event zones will appear.

Blacksmith: You have the power to create a specific building that others cannot build, you can control "scalability" for other players.

Lumberjack: You can build a larger warehouse to store items and other specific buildings that require "wood".

Rancher: You can raise animals like horses (to boost movement) and other animals to sell.

General: You have a military boost, so the zone is easier to defend, BUT you have to buy EVERYTHING, your internal production is very limited.

Why no PvP?

A quick behind-the-scenes look: I hate it when you spend 3–4 months building something that will be destroyed in 10 minutes. Let me be clear about this: if you lose because of a "skill in the game" that’s PERFECTLY FINE.

But if you lost everything because of, for example:

• "double-crossing" guild leaders.
• bug abusers.
• troops boosted by real money. And so many others of you have likely had the same experience.

So, I’ve thought long and hard about this mechanic, and the only solution is: the combat will be brutal, but only in shared zones, event zones, diplomacy, and the market. No buildings will be destroyed.

The monetization rule

This is very crucial for me. Before writing ANY line of code, I put it at the top of every file, and the line is:

"Real money purchases cosmetics and comfort features only. It cannot buy resources, troops, production speed, or any advantage that interacts with other players competitively."

It’s not a brilliant idea, but it’s simply unreasonable, and for me, it’s a non-negotiable. To uphold the community guidelines, I’ve created a rigorous community review process before any feature is made public.

Here’s how it works:

1. Has the idea been conceived and is it feasible? Good.
2. Will it pass the test of the phrase above? Fantastic!
3. Post the details on the public page and wait X days for the community to validate it. Did the community rate it as fair?

If you fail ANY of these checks, the idea will be rejected, FULL STOP, NO EXCEPTION.

What is the current status?

I’m in the pre-alpha phase; I don’t have a release date yet, and I’d like to gather honest feedback and criticism about the project. I want to develop the game together with the community, not just for it. This feedback is very useful for every stage of the project, even after launch.

I’ve created a public page where you can learn more and join the project as "founding lords". This is the fastest way for me to gather initial feedback on the project and discuss its key aspects with the community. It’s completely free, and you can sign up in a minute.

Join here: go.seedlord.com

For any questions or more details about the project, please write your question below. I'm very happy to answer you!

PS: This message has already been approved by the moderator.

Hopefully it's also Monday for the mods

ITT I learn that oligarch gabe nawel is the elon musk of gamers

If you're a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious, then you've come to the r...

Sorry, wrong community.

Do you like horror? Do you like waifus? Then I cannot recommend the indie game MiSide enough. The music, the visuals, the twists, everything is great! The story is quite plain, but the way AIHASTO presents it is great! I can't say much without spoiling the game, so just give it a try!

I'm playing this game since last week and I haven't beat it yet despite enabling god mode and reaching maximum damage resistance (80%). I have around 30 runs, reaching Tartarus, Asphodel, and Elysium.

It's unlikely we'll see come to the Switch 2, though.

(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

Morgue file for those who can read it

While winning in DCSS is fun, what I find even more enjoyable is to win in a sub-optimal (but fun) way. This run is a great example of what I mean:

• I have sacrificed my hand, my courage and my armor to get my deity's powers earlier. No shield, no armor, and I suffer a debuff every serious battle.
• I am a shapeshifter, in a form that can't use weapons and any armor. Except for my form's innate resistances, I have only a bit that I could get from my amulet and one ring (as you can only wear ring per hand).
• I am a spellcaster with 7 innate Intelligence. Yes, I sacrificed some of my brain matter too. Brain mattern't.

And I am a god-slaying tempest that no one can defeat. Even under heavy debuffs from my cowardice, I kill everything in one-three shots. With 74 evasion, nothing can hope to hit me. And I move to my next victim in a moment. How come?

Storm talisman. Make Shapeshifting a focus of your whole run and you can kill even the Pandemonium lords in three hits. Or die a miserable death to a spell you couldn't dodge.

This run had a good progression of talismans: first, Rimehorn that turns the early game into a peaceful walk; then, Serpent that's... kind of similar to Rimehorn honestly. Really strong, plenty defense, enjoy your strong midgame (though, to be fair, I did struggle with it a bit in Vaults). Now that Serpent can wear two helmets, it has some endgame potential too.

I admired this potential for a bit longer than I expected to... my two potential upgrades were Granite talisman that I'm not fond of and Riddle talisman. I tried to make the latter work but, no matter what, it gave me less defense than Serpent so I stuck with being a snake. To give myself some advantage for my slithering endgame I started training summoning magic. At first, it wasn't very impressive but once I got Mana Viper and Forest online, my XP investment started to pay off.

Then, right after getting the third rune and preparing myself for the final showdown at the Realm of Zot, I found it - Storm talisman! And you know the rest.

Can't wait to learn which of the Hell branches will kill this character!

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/44122961

After decades of living in a linux-FOSS world, I noticed these games at a 2nd-hand street market:

• Starcraft (few different versions/themes)
• Age of Empires (few different versions/themes)
• Civilization

They were a dollar each, so why not. I grabbed. Got home, installed win7 on a machine someone dumped on a curb, but could not install any of the games b/c I live offline. Fucking hell.

When I last played Starcraft well over a decade ago, I lived online and probably thought nothing of it. But it seems clear this shitty requirement is an anti-sharing policy because these games do not inherently need Internet. You can play against the machine or on a LAN. It’s not just the elitist exclusive WAN requirement that pisses me off.. there’s a privacy issue too. And what happens when I enter the product key of a used CD? They probably have a tolerance on how many times that can happen, perhaps dependant on whether the hardware changes. Fuck the nannying.

Also consider that Blizzard and Microsoft servers are not going to run forever. They can pull the plug at any time and then no one can install their game. Should be illegal to make installation needlessly dependant on a service. Forced obsolescence.

Some of these games also require a CD to be inserted, which means you must have a fucking noisey CD drive attached at all times. Back when these games were made it was no big deal because all laptops and desktops had CD drives. Not anymore. I’m mostly annoyed by having to insert the disc, wait for it to spin, then I have to hear the loud spin as I play which also wastes power. So I installed Alcohol 120 to image the Warcraft 3 disc (which I still had from yrs past). It has 3 different versions of the crack for the particular shitty scheme used on WC3. None of the images work.

Obviously if I want to play these games I will need warez versions. How good are those dodgy distros these days? I can imagine some are just the original content but you still enter a product key (which I have anyway). But if they still need a WAN that won’t cut it for me. Do the warez versions overcome all these issues? Are they still in circulation?

Alternatively, I should ask, have there been any versions of these games repackaged and re-released for the retro gamers which don’t impose the shitty protections and server dependencies?

If not, I must say unlicensed cracked versions would be the most ethical ones:

• designed obsolescence thwarted
• privacy kept
• more inclusive (offline ppl and those without CD drives)
• better UX (no fiddling with discs and hearing the spin)

It sounds like Game Pass pricing will drop soon.

I've learned not to relay on "critics" score after several debacles and I think it's best to play the game and form your own opinion...

However...

Having played the demo, seeing the score it's getting and reading some reviews online (such as Game Watcher's), I can't help but get really hyped!

The demo has one of the best gameplays I've experienced in a while and the boss battle at the end was insanely cool.

What are your thoughts? Have you played the demo yet?