I'd love to see that functionality with Itch. I'm more likely to get games from them than GoG at the moment.

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A massive series of optional cryptographic puzzles that can be solved as a community.

Wait, are their players mining Bitcoins for them? :P

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Quoting: x_wing

Quoting: GuestNo. You got it all wrong, as did the previous posters.

Art is NOT about entertainment. Art is about expression, and the transfer of ideas and feelings.

Art is for entertainment too. Comics are Art, and they're made for entertainment. Films are Art, and they are for entertainment. In can clearly find many examples of sculptures and paintings that were made to entertain people and nobody will say they aren't Art.

Quoting: GuestThus, not every film is art... For example porn is not "art". Porn is just there so you can get an easy and fast release of sexual pleasure. There is no artistic expression, no feelings or thoughts transfered. Just raw porn.

A great philosophical theatrical play is Art. A clown making balloons on the street for little kids, not art. One is there to transfer thoughts and feelings, the other is there just to waste some time and entertain the brats while their parents can drink their coffee with their friends in peace. LOL.

I believe that you put a very strict personal classification in order to decide what is art and what is not. Anyway, even with you personal way of view it would be very easy to find a game that has a similar quality of camera, script and characters development as any other film that you would consider a masterpiece. Games are a mixed art, just as a film, opera or a play are.

It's interesting that as this conversation plays out, I decided to pick up Crossing to the Cold Valley [External Link] in the winter sale on itch.io on the strength of having quite enjoyed the same dev's Kingdom Ka (which I wrote an article about.

I think there's no question that it's art, even in the fairly restrictive definition given. It transmits feelings and thoughts, it demonstrates artistic expression, and causes the player to think about not only the events of the story but the narrative itself.

It's also a game. I know some folks like to narrow the definition of game unduly in order to act as gatekeepers, defining the things they don't like or approve of as "not games", but I think if you decleare this not a game then you define adventure games out of existence (and visual novels too, in a sense). So if you're not so foolish as to do that, then Crossing to the Cold Valley is indeed an excellent example of game-as-art. And it's hardly alone.

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Quoting: ThormackGuys, could you recommend some nice free-to-play windows games?

Never used Proton before and don't want to buy win games just for testing.

Neverwinter is pretty fun and works well in Proton, although you may need to change your mouse polling rate.

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Is it still the buggy mess that tries to combine too many things that it was on release?

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Huh. Hidden Folks is 60% off on Steam but only 50% on Itch.io. I wonder why that is.

Similarly, Cross Code is 25% off on Steam but not on sale at all on Itch.

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Quoting: Segata Sanshiro

Quoting: nullzeroI kind of happen to have one of those games lingering on the steam account from a bundle and for the first time, after reading your review Liam, I am actually am tempeted to play it.

Maybe it's one of those "don't judge the book by it's cover" scenarios.

Quoting: nullzeroI kind of happen to have one of those games lingering on the steam account from a bundle and for the first time, after reading your review Liam, I am actually am tempeted to play it.

Maybe it's one of those "don't judge the book by it's cover" scenarios.

They're really a great deal of fun, they're a guilty pleasure of mine. I pick up a couple whenever they're dirt cheap.

That said, I think you can judge them by their cover because you get pretty much what you expect in terms of quality, though the entertainment value is probably a lot higher than you'd expect. I do find quite a lot of comedic value in some of the cut scenes and voice acting and there's a lot of "drinking game material" (take drink each time you have to collect X amount of objects to open some convoluted lock or have to use smelling salts to wake someone up) but they're fun and you get your money's worth in play time.

There's really a whole cottage industry built around these games, with Artifex Mundi pumping out 4 or so per month through various obscure Polish game studios.

If I could ever be bothered or knew how, I'd livestream playing some of these games because they really deserve some sort of cult following. I already have my own fan theories that these games all take place in the same universe and the female protagonist is actually the same person, possibly a time traveler.

The protagonist of The Secret Order 3 literally is a time traveller, so you're probably on to something there.

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Quoting: GrabbyTacoma is an interesting experience, I recommend it if you like exploring environments and being immersed in a story.

And you're a ON3 V3IN fan.

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Quoting: apprentix

Quoting: Nezchan

Quoting: fasterthanlime

It's slick, it's open source and I haven't encountered many issues with it.

As the developer of the client, I couldn't pay for a better review honestly. Thanks for the chuckle!

You know, in the context of a sale like this it would be nice to have stuff you've put into a collection indicate whether it's on sale or not. I've got a "Wishlist" collection and I'd love to be able to just look at it and see, rather than going to each individual page or scrolling through all the stuff on sale.

Try this:

https://itch.io/library/things-on-sale [External Link]

Oh, that's good. From the name I never would have thought that's what it did. Very handy though, thanks. Gonna get Crossing to the Cold Valley too, since I see it's on sale for only a quarter.

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Quoting: fasterthanlime

It's slick, it's open source and I haven't encountered many issues with it.

As the developer of the client, I couldn't pay for a better review honestly. Thanks for the chuckle!

You know, in the context of a sale like this it would be nice to have stuff you've put into a collection indicate whether it's on sale or not. I've got a "Wishlist" collection and I'd love to be able to just look at it and see, rather than going to each individual page or scrolling through all the stuff on sale.

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