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> Sees Gears of War
> Wasn't that developed and/or published by Epic Games? They would never bend the knee and release on Steam.
> Looks at Steam store page
> Developed by "The Coalition", published by Xbox Game Studios
> ....

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@neolith, I regret not having added some emoticons, but the spirit in which I said that was a bit subtle for the kind of flavouring they can give. I was intending a certain sarcastic levity, a mild hyperbole meant to convey my withering contempt. If I actually banned such a thing, it would not be for stupidity. Rather, it would be because I don't buy into the paradox of tolerance. The one group one need not tolerate is the intolerant, because they would break the whole tolerance system. There's a certain irony in your objecting to banning a mod that's not to my taste, which mod in turn is conveying the desire to ban things that are not to someone's taste. And let's not forget that if I were someone running a mod manager I would not be the government--I would have no responsibility to host a mod I don't like. If people want an obnoxious mod they can host it at obnoxiousmods.com, it's not my problem.

(Incidentally, what makes it stupid rather than merely intolerant is that apparently, the game by default sets the pronoun based on the body type you choose. So you don't even have to pay attention to its ability to set pronouns--you just ignore it if you're already doing the default. So the idea is that you go to the trouble of acquiring and activating this mod, just so you can be secure in the knowledge that you can no longer possibly do what you would never normally even notice you could do. The insecurity level this implies to me is staggering)

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i think xbox killed the demmand for this, but one thing they might try is take advantage of trackpads, Steamdeck have trackpads but no games made to take advantage of then, instead they are used to improve the experience on existing games.
if they had tons of money and made some great games focusing trackpads, they could have something that only then and steam deck users can fully enjoy, giving people an reason to try their device, it will just need to be better in terms of cost or power than one device instead of a bunch.

but its very unlikely they can pull this off.

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Those ghost penguins are my #1 favourite thing in a game ever. Bring it

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I already got stuck at the very first puzzle because i couldn't figure out how to put the mug back together… The game could go a long way in explaining its mechanics better ngl.

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I guess playable without timed input relates to QTEs, and including a way to turn them off? That's my biggest annoyance with games now that I have a wrist injury

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Yeah there was one user claiming it was offline supported and then I bought it and turned out it wasn't lol. Easy refund, but hopefully they actually add it. It's misleading having the single player option but not actually supported offline.

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Looking forward to this .
Too bad it will only be next year
For anyone wondering how to pass the time till then , besides the 1000s of subs on the workshop there are two mods - Barotraumatic and Dynamic Europa ( with their respective sub mods) add a literal metric tonne of content.

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Hopefully at some point multiplayer gets re-added for Ultimate Carnage. That would be really cool. It supported multiplayer via games 4 windows live back then.

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I hope they do a better job of optimizing. Take notes from Threat Interactive on YT. I am stoked tho! To see those little, out of the cone of the flashlight, ghosts with updated graphics.

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Man did I love the original when it came out. Pretty stocked to see this is a thing. Take my money.

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Had time to play few. Downloaded also few recommendations, but haven't gotten to them yet.

I'm trying to play demos in order I installed them in order to avoid getting distracted. Usually I have plenty of leftover demos that I have never played and probably never will.

Replicat
In short it's memory game rogue-lite. There's lot that's borrowed from Balatro. There's gameplay loop of meeting target score, boss fights with modifiers, modifying cards with essences.

Difference to traditional memory game is that by default there's several same pairs, so it's bit more likely to find matches. But of course you can slowly modify the deck to your liking.

Good fun, though there's another that's quite similar: Matchstone.

Matchstone
Most of the things that apply to Replicat apply to Matchstone too. Main difference is that Matchstone has gray quite simplistic theme. Also joker analogue is quite simplistic as there's no choice what you can get. Getting new tiles with new functions is pretty cheap though and you can increase the tile category value.

Tiles have maybe can have more wild features than I saw in Replicat, but all in all Matchstone feels bit more boring. Maybe it's the gray plain feel, but it could also be generally making things look and sound satisfying.

Still, could be fun for somebody.

Insider Trading
It's kind of Balatro meets stock market. The stock market part is bit weird and could maybe explained better with the tutorials. I was first confused about the different animal icons and though they were different stocks. It all makes sense, but it takes maybe one failed run to see all the mechanics clearly. It does work like shorting in real stock market that you buy when stocks and sell when they're high, it just took a moment to figure out how to apply that in the game.

Could spend lot more paragraphs explaining the mechanics. Good variation of the theme that changes things around enough that they things feel different. Maybe missing some of the fun factor, but it's not totally obvious what would fix it. Still worth trying out if you have some patience figuring things out on your own too.

Become the Moon
Become the Moon describes itself as deck building auto battler, which kind of explains it. Basically gameplay loop is that you play cards that can be minions, spells or battle spells. Spells usually give some kind of bonus to minions, but there are other kind of spells too. Battle spells are spells that play during battle.

Once you end your turn, battle spells trigger and minions fight to the death. Ones that survive attack opponents mastermind (don't remember what term the game used). If mastermind is still alive after that, both master minds fight to the death. If player wins, there's few rounds of rewards and everything repeats. That's the high level view of it.

Cards do have all kind of different ones that have synergies and/or modify the game rules somehow. On top of that cards can be discarded, deleted or exhausted. So pretty common deckbuilder stuff, maybe with just bit changed naming.

It was fun enough, that I might try the demo again.

Spinny Dungeon
This one is easy to compare to Luck Be A Landlord as it's slot machine rogue lite. And there are similarities, but few differences that go nicely along with the dungeon theme. Like enemies that move between rows towards you. Also instead of paying rent, you just have to stay alive. Which you can't do if you starve (there's hunger meter). Mana helps also and money helps too (not sure what happens if you run out. So you need all kinds of symbols to stay in balance.

For protecting your health bar, there's weapons and for healing some rare symbols and spell. For hunger meter there's food, for mana there's at least scrolls and mushrooms. For money I don't remember anything else than gems, but there must be some default symbols too that I forgot.

Also there's the usual symbol synergies. Some delete the other symbols, some transform other symbols. Some get even improved when they get to transform or delete.

Feels different enough to the inspiration and pretty good fun.

Sunken Engine
I left this one as last as dishonorable mention. First of all I didn't check the mention of AI usage, but there seems to be bit more to it than that, which is a shame as developers might otherwise be onto something.

What irks me a bit that they take bits out of Dredge bit too directly. Red eyes everywhere is straight from Dredge and the AI generated NPC:s ooze so much Dredge style that I would have to do side by side comparison.

It's nautical themed cleaning simulator with some ship repair and shopkeeping thrown into the mix. With some horror elements thrown in.

I guess this one is rare don't touch so it stays sunken.



Forgot to mention Watchword and The Drifter. I played Watchword before the event started and what probably killed it for me is that I started optimizing it to death. The crossword format gives so many options that going through them all takes lot of time. Also it accepts some nonsense words, which means there urge to try some random stuff just in case. Should try out Wordplay, which AFAIK is bit more simplistic.

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Holy crap

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Great to hear its at least unity engine not the UE5 slop that nobody can optimize.
Lets see how it pans out ofc.
Thanks for the news!

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This looks amazing. Very excited. Day "1" (when I notice it and have time to play) purchase for me.

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Thanks for the in-depth review, especially with the focus on desktop Linux instead of the Steam Deck. As an avid Conan Exiles player for many years, I've been very interested in this one. Your review sounds like they made it different enough from Conan to be interesting in its own right. I've been hearing the same from other sources too. Great to hear that performance is as good or better than Conan too.

As far as the MMO aspect, is it truly an MMO or do you also have the option to run a local server, private server, etc. like Conan?

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I'm still waiting for the first POSTAL Redux to show up for Linux on Zoom (or GOG.com but it is not even listed there) before I would consider buying it.

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No feathers on them dinos.

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Unity seems kinda meh to be honest. But I suppose Postal 4 is already kind of Postal 2 on modern Unreal Engine.

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@johnny-linux & @Thibug

I haven't tried GearLever yet. I use AppImagelauncher myself.

The only feature I haven't been able to get to work is the auto update. Not that I care much about that anyway. I prefer to have more manual control over the update process.

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@Doktor-Mandrake

It's a shame they're ditching x11 support, for someone like myself the favourite thing about linux is bringing new life into old hw. Hw prices are going up and its important people can still make sure of older hw!

I'm easy going about the whole X11/Wayland thing but I'm with you on the old hardware. I haven't purchased a brand new computer in over 15 years. Just like my automobiles, I prefer to get my computers from the used market (definitely not as old as I might for a vehicle though). Someone else pays the premium and I get it after they're done with it!

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This game seems so good that I'm very tempted to break my Early Access embargo and pick it up early.

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so you can raise hell on the D Bus

Just your average day in FreeDesktop land. :P

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I think this will still be of interests to enthusiasts, but they probably have lost their chance to get in on the mainstream market. They could maybe drum up some interest if they came up with some unique alternative use cases like an app that utilizes the touchpads and does something you wouldn't expect like control your smart home or something (probably a bad example - that's why I'm not a tech innovator). They need a Nintendo-esque gimmick.

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hahaha so I can keep the dog pissing. Love it.

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I played the demo when it was called The Settlings, wondering if they will manage to fend off copyright claims (iirc the store description explicitly mentioned The Settlers and Lemmings)... I guess we have the answer. The game was fun but it was tedious to fix bad decisions, jist like in The Settlers btw. Still I'll be sure to check it out again when it releases.

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I read Valve's statement as it should not concern the rest of the world?

The key is the whole context, that was for the refurbished models.

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I just recently switched from Windows to Linux (Kubuntu) and my personal experience: I kept running into countless problems with gaming. I was able to solve some, found half-baked workarounds for many others and gave up on the rest when I realised that simply switching to X11 solves all of them at once.

Im sure Wayland has many upsides and will have a bright future, but for now its X11 for me.

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Simple really: for macOS there's no official compatibility layer integrated right into Steam. So if they want to be on macOS, they have to do a build.

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Why bother making a Mac version? You've got to muck around with ARM, Metal, notarising, and the rest, for a far smaller market than the Linux that they've already decided is too small to bother with.

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