Interesting! I know of multiple theme park builder games with roller coasters and what-not, but I can't really think of any other water park builders off the top of my head. (I wouldn't be surprised if some exist, but I don't know about them if they do.)

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I've got a few mods for Noita I've been meaning to update for…huh, a few years now. Maybe I should get around to doing that while I wait for mods to get updated for the RimWorld release tomorro…

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Well, nice to see the Merchant is still doing well for himself. No mention of the engine specifically, but presumably this is where they switched from Unity to Godot after the debacle last year. And I hope those "new ways to play" include native co-op multiplayer this time instead of needing mods.

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I'm sure it's just the render, but I can't unsee that little USB-C port floating attached to the back of the thing instead of being inside it.

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So for those of us who don't know, what would upping this actually help with, and how would one know if one was running into problems with it in the first place?

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Well, that's a collection of words I never expected to read as a headline.

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Quoting: buckysrevengeJust imagine playing this on your Steam Deck while walking around

And in VR!

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Quoting: CatKillerFull automatic refunds for every copy when a company kills the game is much simpler, and removes most of the financial incentive for that undesirable behaviour (you've still given them an interest-free loan, after all).

I immediately see some loopholes that would have to be addressed; what does it mean to "kill" a game? Yes, taking down all the servers of a game where players can't host servers would be killing it, no question there. What about leaving exactly one server (that can handle, say, 12 players max) online? Not technically killing it, even though the other (say) 49,988 people who bought the game can't play it if the server is full.

Not that I'm against game preservation — I'm all for it, and best of luck to Ross — I just think it's complicated. I guess I'm more in the open-sourcing camp.

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Quoting: Pyretic

Quoting: PhiladelphusI'm still looking for a game that has exactly what I want in a Pokémon-like on PC

Out of curiosity, what IS your ideal Pokemon game?

Heh, I've thought about this a lot, so apologies if I get verbose here…

The thing that first drew to me Pokémon, as a ~9 year-old watching his friend play the first-generation games (I've never actually had a Nintendo system of my own), was the concept of being a Fantasy Biologist. (In essence, I connected with the original idea of the games being about "digital bug-collecting" for urban kids.) I enjoy the complexity of the battling system too, but a lot of that complexity comes through the complexity of the 'mons themselves, with so many different types and moves (and later abilities). So for a setting, I'd like to see something like either the first humans migrating into the Americas over the Bering land bridge, or an astrobiologist landing on a planet, some setting with new and exciting lifeforms to discover, that thrill of exploration and encountering the unknown.

Another thing I'd like in my ideal game is multiplayer (hence my comment above), and specifically I'd love it to have a feel something like playing Stardew Valley with friends: something you can take at your own pace, play together, play apart, relax with some low-intensity crop-watering or gear up and take on the mines. Pokémon except instead of NPC rivals it's your own friends out there competing in friendly battles, getting up to hijinx, just doing crazy things for the fun of it, that sort of thing.

To go along with the theme of exploration, it'd be neat if the world map wasn't static, but procedurally generated to some extent so that every new game comes with surprises and the fun of finding out what's behind the next hill. This might not be quite RimWorld/Dwarf Fortress/Minecraft levels of generating the entire world (though that might be fun in its own way); perhaps something like general guidelines to a region, then filled in XCOM 2-style with smaller and smaller hand-made random elements. (Like if routes in Pokémon always connected the same places and had the same general shape, but could have randomly-varying internal layouts.)

Circling back to the creatures themselves, I'd like them to be to complex and with a better simulation of a real ecosystem. Not just random encounters, but you could find them going about their lives in the world, maybe getting into some emergent situations, perhaps something like Rain World's detailed creature AIs. Actually simulating a real ecology might be too taxing, but there are probably a lot of things that could be done to make the world feel more alive (a day/night cycle and seasons with seasonal behavior would be cool!). And while I'm dreaming, all of it being easily moddable would be great, so people could add their own creatures, biomes, map pieces, moves, etc., etc.

So, yeah, it's a pretty specific picture I have; various monster-catching games have come close in different ways, but I'm still waiting for something to really get into. Hopefully the fact that we're starting to see more of them on PC means I'll get something I want sooner or later.

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Hmm, 7am in Hawaii…on a Wednesday…it does sound interesting though. Maybe I'll see about tuning in.

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