Happy holidays all 'round

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Oh, I remember that. Haven't played, but it always used to get mentioned alongside stuff like Ib (which I have played) or Barkley Shut Up and Jam. Nice to see it's got a new lease on life.

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Tried the demo.

Handling the broom is pretty tough at first, and it doesn't help the game starts at night so I can't see the road hardly at all. Tutorial messages vanish pretty quickly, so I had to guess at some things, and sometimes it's really hard to tell where characters talking to you actually are.

Daytime improves matters a little.

The menus are ROUGH though. For in-game stuff it's not *too* bad, but for settings they need a lot of work. Can't find anything for controller/mouse sensitivity, which I honestly could stand to turn down a little.

Other than that the general experience wasn't bad. Characters seemed okay, although they weren't really the focus. Riding around seemed fun enough, and beeping your horn at sheep is satisfying. Worth keeping an eye on for sure.

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That motorbroom is giving me Sable vibes. And playing a disaster lesbian sounds great fun. On to the wishlist it goes!

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This might just be the sort of game to get me playing a factory builder

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Quoting: JarmerYES I've been waiting for you to post about this game!!!!!!!!! This has been highest on my wishlist for a while now since trying it out a while back and then deciding to wait for 1.0. I absolutely LOVE this game.

I would like to focus on this one bit you mentioned though:

Thankfully there's multiple game modes, so you can make it a bit more adventure-like and less punishing

This is so important! Using these settings you can make the game into a regular ol rpg. You can save in any settlement and reload your character if you die from any number of hilarious deaths (lol). You can also make the game into just exploration with almost no combat if you want, just to run around and see what's up. And of course there's the standard "rogue" mode of permadeath, but that's not the only way!

Arguably, permadeath is the worst way if you're trying to experience the actual story. Unless your idea of fun is trying 30 times to get past Golgotha, at least.

I generally leave it for dailies or challenge runs (like going straight down from Joppa and never returning to the surface).

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Ah, now this makes sense. The actual devs of Dauntless are long gone. They got bought out last year by blockchain company Forte, who then did a mass layoff (~100 staff) over the summer. Phoenix Labs, the original devs, were put under an NDA not to tell anyone about the purchase, which sounds very cool and legit.

It should be noted that they haven't added blockchain or NFT stuff to the game (yet!), but it does go a long way to explaining the reported extreme shift towards monetization and gutting core features.

I believe them when they say they didn't mean to break Steam Deck compatibility. They likely just don't have anybody left who knows how to maintain it.

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Whew, the recent reviews are a trip.

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I've heard Breathedge is pretty good, I'm just hesitant to sign up for yet another service, newsletter and all. Fanatical might be an okay company and all, but I've got kind of a block to get over there.

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Probably going to hold off until tomorrow before I get anything, the client's sluggish as hell right now.

But I'm thinking Arcanum, which is at a temptingly low price of less than CDN $2, and maybe Psychroma, which looks intriguing.

I see Northard, which I was interested in a while ago, is super cheap but I'm also seeing a lot of recent bad reviews, concentrating on bugs and the devs focusing on multiplayer and making paid tribes instead. Lots of people saying that's wrecking the balance. I'm interested in a single player experience, so it's not looking good.

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