What are you playing currently?

!g*mers

Previous Iterations:

2025

2024

2023

Other rDrama vidya content

Last week's game: Disgaea = (10*4+9*3+8*3+7*1+6*4+5*1+4*0+3*0+2*0+1*6)/(4+3+3+1+4+1+0+0+0+6) = 5.86

All Previous Games:

Game to Discuss?

This week's game is Bloons TD. Though technically a series of games, they have changed very little across the years - there's all kinds of stuff in the latest, but it's an expansion in depth, not breadth. The game is exceedingly simple, being a tower defense - put down towers which destroy the balloons that move across the screen. It's never been more than an idle timewaster, even if it no longer adheres to that especially well, but it's probably the only tower defense game worth playing. Discuss below, and vote in the pinned comment.

Future Games To Discuss

March 9: Animal Crossing: New Horizons

March 16: Warframe

March 23: Ryse Son of Rome

March 30: Outer Wilds

!g*mers

The Steam Next Fest is running until March 3rd, so make sure to download and play the games that interest you while you can. Here are the games I've played so far:

TinyCraft Town, played for under 15 minutes

The art style is all over the place (obviously not OG assets), the game is a slog, the demo is too short (finished it in about 10 minutes), and the game is super jank (item drops fell through the ground). I think the core concept is fun, a side scroller idle/survival game, but what is here is so barebones and lacking that I simply can't recommend this game unless it gets major improvements.

electrobillion, played for about 20 minutes

Shockingly () fun. I wasn't expecting much, but the charming art style, simple gameplay loop, and realistic electricity system combine into a short but satisfying loop. My only complaint is that money is way too slow to accumulate, some parts I was unable to do anything without more money and was just sitting there. If the dev is able to fix the money issue and add more content, I think this could be a really fun game. I especially like the land value system that makes you hate people building houses near your infrastructure (realistic!).

Brickadia, played for about 30 minutes

Dammit, I really wanted to like this one. I have been waiting for a good Lego like building game since I first played Minecraft, Roblox, and the demo for Blockland, and this game has gotten closer than all of those in some ways. Unfortunately the controls are god awful, legitimately some of the worst I have played. The player moves way too stiffly, and everything has this heavy handed inertia that makes movement frustrating. It's a shame, as the game looks great, has tons of charm, and I like how the game works on a technical level. If they are somehow able to improve the controls significantly, I think this game would be great.

Lands of Rumour, played for about 10 minutes

The concept is by far the most unique I have encountered in this Next Fest. It's a 4x game like Civ but as a band of Robin Hood esque thieves, which is a really cool twist on the formula. Sadly the game doesn't play great. The UI is pretty bad (worse than Civ 7) in that it doesn't communicate anything to the player, and the game doesn't really have an intuitive way to play. I think if the UI was fixed and the game systems got some extra work, this game could be good, but not great.

Solarpunk, played for about an hour

So far my favorite game of the Next Fest. It's yet another survival crafting game, but the controls and game feel are some of the best. The game had a craftable guide, but I didn't need to ever use it. The game was so intuitive ever step of the way that I never felt like I didn't know what to do next or how to do it. The game has a bunch of nice QoL features that are appreciated as well. Such as movement being paused when refilling the watering can, how a dead crop still returns it's original seed, or that the game provides clear audio cues when hitting vs missing a resource with a tool. I also appreciate how the game teases all the stuff not in the demo, smartly done and makes me excited for the full game. If you like survival crafting games, play this.

Monaco 2, played for about 10 minutes

Shocked this game is actually a thing, I heard the OG was getting a sequel almost 3 years ago, and thought the project was dead as I had seen literally nothing beyond the announcement. So far it feels pretty different from the first game, and I am not sure if that's a good thing or not. I felt the first game was good, but dated and short. This game feels less like a sequel and more like a totally new series with some slight nods to the OG. The controls felt nice, and the technical side of things seemed solid. However the character designs and writing seemed kinda trash (Marvel esque) and the game seems to have removed the best part from Monaco 1 (the ability to blend in and manipulate people and the world). I have only done the starter level, so maybe there are more mechanics in the 2nd, but so far the game seems to be pretty dumbed down. Not going to give this a thumbs down until I finish the demo, but it isn't looking good so far.

Games I have downloaded but haven't played:

Ruffy and the Riverside, the whole 3d to 2d thing seems like it's heavily inspired by Mario Odyssey (specifically the only good part of that game besides the costumes) so I am interested, hope it plays well.

Lost Skies, someone on Reddit recommended this for puzzle game fans. This seems like what Worlds Adrift should've been (same dev team), so I am already sold assuming the game sticks the landing (no guarantee).

Fellowship, recommended by another Redditor who also suggested Monaco 2, so I am already expecting Marvel tier writing. Seems to be one of the more popular demos, which is promising.

Iron Village, not really into trains, but I do like city builders. This one looks pretty charming, but don't really have much to say.

Hang up Street, I have no idea what this even is. The title shows up as Chinese in my Steam library, and only the game description is in English. I am either in for some kino jank, or a virus.

Pochemeow, some sort of digital board game? Not entirely sure, the description just says "Economic strategy about trade war" but it looks neat.

Uber Urban, another city builder. Bad ones are a dime a dozen, but no great modern ones exist. Here's hoping this is the first.

Settler's Domain, a settlement builder. Looks great, but no idea how it plays.

Crusader Knights: Templars, someone else taking a crack at the Total War series. As long as the AI doesn't suck, this might unseat the king.

Let's Build Wonders: Galaxy Demo, a city builder MMO? The last game to try this was SimCity 2013, and it flopped. Here is hoping this game succeeds, because the concept is amazing.

Gentoo Rescue,

Wanderstop, Stanley Parable was 10/10, The Beginner's Guide was 1/10, praying this one is more like the former. I really hope this isn't one of the games where the twist ruins the game like Beginner's Guide. The game looks like it could be played straight and be pretty fun, but knowing this dev he's going to frick it up.

!g*mers

57? Darn, Asians age so well.

Sorry white women.

Context: this occurred when my first warframe account caught a chat wordfilter instaban on Warframe, specifically a 14 yr ban. Considering the length of the ban and that it was a automated function, I was curious to see how they would respond.

The hamdesk employee Anne who was assigned the appeal rejected it and dunked on the appeal rightfully hard; even taking the time to identify my in-game pet's name, "Fatty Dingdongz", as a form of hate speech.

Seasoned hogranchers will intuitively know that's a sign that Anne's a fatty.

Rejecting my absolutely r-slurred, hail-mary appeal on a 14 year autoban for using cringe naughty words didn't hurt me.

But being persecuted for who I was friends with did.

FRICK YOU ANNE

Rip Fatty 2020-2021

This is unquestionably an effortpost: getting girlbossed this hard by third-world hogs is tiresome and sharing this piece of history from a dark time in my r-slurred past is the definition of effort. I lost a friend .

!g*mers

https://old.reddit.com/r/MHWilds/comments/1j0d009/game_is_amazing_but/

Remember last year when Nintendo64 recompiling was a big deal?

IM NOOTICING

!g*mers

holy shit why is this game so slow. Why did Arkane, who made Dishnored with it's snappy, quick and responsive movement, decided that it's a good idea to make the same game but where everything is so sluggish and slow? Why is my movement so slow? Why does it take me half a minute to switch a weapon? What's the purpose of the COOM gun if the enemies thaw before I manage to switch my weapons to get a good hit in? Who thought that this is actually too energetic and high-octane, and then decided to add an outer space section where this problem is amplified tenfold? And then on top of that you add enemies which teleport around and morph into different shapes making them hard to evade and harder to hit. And then you place said enemies in dark, shadowed rooms where it becomes really hard to read them, and force you to constantly use a flashlight in an environment with no light diffusion and where every surface is extremely reflective, making it so that the area illuminated is small and any surface lit up becomes ugly, pure white mess. And here I'm sure somebody will go about how this is a horror element and it actually is meant for atmosphere and how the enemies being poorly visible is intended for it to be scary, but this argument is completely negated by the fact that I nigh immediately get an instrument which indicates if there are any enemies in my field of vision. At no point does the presence of vantablack shadows filling half the room make it scary, it only makes it annoying to fight the monsters that I already know are there. Having said that the Psychoscope has a significant drawback- it limits my FOV even further and makes the readability of the situation even worse by adding these shitty filters on my vision. Why couldn't we have an instrument like the Bioshock camera, from where this mechanic is obviously lifted? It caused no obstruction and was almost immediate to use, with the only downside being you having to stay unarmed for the few seconds it takes to shoot a photo, which is very reasonable in my opinion. And on an unrelated note, these stupid arcs of lightning from broken machinery will seem to not strike a particular area, let you pass 5 times, and then instakill you on the sixth. Why? Why can't we have a clear and obvious area of effect of this electricity? Why must I guess and then reload my game every time this happens? As a matter of fact, why doesn't GOOP stop it permanently? That would solve this problem as well, and it's not like anyone actually uses the precious spare parts to fix the arcing machinery when you can just use GOOP as a temporary fix. I also can't just spray a bunch of GOOP to extend the time for it to break- if I'm reading an email near a sparking wire I have to run back, reapply GOOP and then come forward to continue reading every 5 seconds.

Also why are controls so weird sometimes. Interaction with everything is F, yet to confirm selections you have to press Enter. Scrolling the mouse opens the quick-select menu instead of swapping the items on your hotbar like literally every other game. Pressing escape to exit an in-game menu like the aforementioned quick-select doesn't work and instead throws you into the options menu instead. So many of these little annoyances that cannot be unbound or assigned to other keys.

I really want to enjoy this game, I like everything else about it- the atmosphere is great, the story is engaging, the setting is interesting, the visuals are pleasant for the most part- but mobility makes me feel like I'm swimming in jam and readability makes me feel like I'm wearing sunshades at night.

Anyone else felt the same way when playing? Does it pass?

why they letting super oppenheimer run a hotel https://t.co/cnk6nm2g1i

— nao (ꏿ ᆺ ꏿ) (@MtnDewVoltage_) February 27, 2025

Context: If you forgot the pokelore because the Japanese never explain anything in plain text here you go.

In the past Kalos (france) had a war with Paldea (spain). The war raged for years. AZ who is a person of high intellect accidentally had his pokemon Floatette die in the war. He used his vast resources to basically create an ancient tech powered by the legendary pokemon of that game. It was a revival machine. When he used it, it backfired energy on him. It worked, Floatette is immortal... but so was he.

AZ was so pissed he reconfigured the machine into basically a nuclear laser cannon. He fired at the current fight that was going on. Everyone died, pokemon too. The resulting energy blast not only killed everyone but created the mega stones. Probably by fusing pokemon energy with evolution stones or something. Like turning coal into diamonds. He wanders Kalos until he redeems himself in X and Y by helping to stop the machine from being used again.

Now in the future he runs a hotel chain and probably all of pokeparis. In Paldea the hole is fricking massive. He's basically an anti war radical centrist oppenhitler.

https://9gag.com/gag/a4P6V8Z#comment

!g*mers

Despite the high price, Valve will allegedly sell the headset at a loss, prioritizing user experience over profitability.

Probably will be first hardcore gaming VR since meta headset is a bit like early days of iPhone when it had its own unique market.

And probably we will get Half Life Alex 2

Finlaly smoeone psoted aobut it, got tiered of all tohse gayming journoids and Redditors telling how successful setam deck is, but they did managed to bite MS in taking part in the stupid idea

I didn't expect such a low number - about a 4 million.

Bceause r-slur obvious won't expect him self to be an rteard

Honestly vrey sruprising and not what I expected at all

Steam deck is over prcied at 700 eruo it has an 720p screen and it's weaker than ps5 and you probably can buy ps5 and siwtch at that price so it was always going to be niche product wtih no exclusives so no real reason to own it

there's anti-homeless benches in PLZA pic.twitter.com/rqLxyle8Gl

— New Year, New Chu (@chumunga64) February 27, 2025

pic.twitter.com/KuhQqTG4DR

— TheFrenchestFry (@ChristiTatertot) February 27, 2025

I get it, mobile games cost about the same but make like 10x more money if you are a big brand like pokemon, but it's depressing because pokemom has had so many cool collaboration with other studio.

In the early switch era the spinoffs we got were fantastic (Mystery Dungeon, Pokken, and Snap), and the studio who worked on them were unironicly better and more competent then modern gamefreak nowadays with their new games.

However over thr last 4-5ish years they realized how lucrative the mobile game market is and stopped caring about full fledged side games, even the main games have significantly less content because they treat them as live service with the "raid" systems, which sucks because you have no single player content left.

I was stupidly hoping for a new Mystery Dungeon or Pokken tbh

!pokemon