Good news - Managed to acquire it some months ago, and haven't played it yet - and now, it's on the way to Linux :)

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Already own all the Linux titles in this bundle (and half the Windows ones). As such I think I'll miss this one =P

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Quoting: ghiumaI am obsessed with 7 Days to die, too bad my DS4 malfunctions after a while, it only happens with this game ..

You *might* not already know this - but 7 Days To Die has released Alpha 19.1 Experimental and it has some good new stuff in it:

- 10 Toolbar Slots (up from 8)
- More HD Zombies
- The Dynamic Music works on Linux now
- and other stuff

I've started a fresh game on that, myself.

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On the one side, this Month gives you *all* the titles if you're on the Classic (or Premium) plan - I'm on Classic. Also, apart from basic Evoland, I don't own anything else here (Hurray!) - Usually I already own a few games in every bundle that is offered.

On the other side, I'd need to use Proton to play the majority of the games here, some titles are very multi-player centric (I prefer single player), and there isn't much which really draws me in.

Do I pause-a-month or do I claim it, hmmm?

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I'm a veteran player of the game (i.e. approx 1500 hours) and I've liked *trying* the new balance of Alpha 19 (experimental) compared to previous versions. Alpha 19 has been very different looking and feeling to Alpha 18 (and earlier). I've been playing A19 lots, since experimental release was available 7 weeks ago.

I'm not especially keen on the balance overall, but it is interesting to play with the changes that have been made. Jumping from A18 to A19, here are the *balance* changes I have noticed most:

- The melee weapon hit boxes are a little bit better, and the weapons bash the zombies better than they used to.

- There is a noticeable difference in the amount of stamina needed when swinging weapons or tools. The Devs are practically forcing you to invest points in Sexual T-Rex (Stamina Regen) perk now (where I managed fine, and was barely using it in A18).

- There is a huge difference in the food and water depletion in A19 compared to A18. It drains very quickly and needs to be constantly maintained. Depending on your game settings, this can make the game very tough (* see below).

- Noticing that doing anything active in game, e.g. running around, chopping trees, fighting zombies, wearing inadequate clothes for the weather conditions, and self-healing from combat damage - All these things seem to affect food/water depletion rate. [Although it makes sense, I don't especially like it to be as harsh as it is, because I have to deliberately slow-down the way I play, to keep my food consumption in check.]

- The loot progression is now very severely linked to game-stage (i.e. player experience). I have found while I'm playing that I can often craft a tool quicker than I'll find one in loot. Likewise, I'm generally buying pistols or guns at the trader before I find them in loot. This is a Developer progression slow-down mechanism. Even if you put points into Lucky Looter perk, and use the Loot-finding candy, you'll still only find basic (stone age) equipment in loot until your game-stage goes up. [I prefer my games to have more randomness in finding loot, or at least tie difficult-to-find loot to difficult-to-survive locations.]

- I don't like the newly-introduced 'Perk' Candies in the game, especially the Looting Candy. In Alpha 18, you'd go around looting boxes and safes, when you feel like doing it (i.e. During your exploration of a new POI.) With these Looting Candies, and playing efficiently, you hold back from looting until you have cleared a POI, then you eat the candy, then you go *all the way back through the POI* grabbing the loot while the candy is active. Sure, you *don't* have to do this - But if you want to optimise your play, then you now need to do it that way.

- The Zombies now swim like Olympic Medallists, if you try to use lakes as a means to escape from them. (In A18, it was possible to swim out to a middle of a lake during a horde and tread water, with the zombies unable to reach you.) I don't mind the zombies being able to swim, but I do mind the ridiculous and unrealistic speed they have been given.

- Various A.I. Exploits (e.g. The wedge-tip bridge) have been closed up, with the new A19, meaning that some designs of Zombie-Cheesing Horde Base no longer work. However, there are still other exploits that can be used for cheesing the horde (e.g. the half-block exploit). [Personally, I don't use any exploits to 'cheese' (cheat) the horde.]

- I'm a little unhappy that the Stun Baton no longer accepts the Flaming Shaft Mod (i.e. Set zombies on fire). The Stun Baton is an often-derided weapon in the game, and I feel the Devs have taken one of the 'weak' melee weapons in the game and made it even worse by disallowing this Mod combination.

- You can probably guess I could go on and on, with my findings, but let's call it a day there.

======

Now, to quickly mention how I have set up my latest 7 Days To Die game - If you want a HARD challenge, try this:

Choose Default Settings - apart from these ones:

Zombie Day Speed: Jogging
Difficulty Level: Warrior
Loot Abundance: 50% (this makes the game WAY harder)
Zombie Horde Size: 32 concurrent
Air Drop Map Marker: Not shown
World Map: Play on a randomly-generated map

Try to play with the game settings above, without starving, without dying at all (i.e. Permadeath), and without using an exploit to build your bases. Playing with 50% Loot Abundance is very crippling indeed, particularly the food side. I have just managed to get a motorcycle on Day 17. My melee weapon is tier 2 wooden club, my guns (tier 1 AK and tier 1 pistol) were both bought from the Trader. I've unlocked the second trader. Playing like this makes the game into a really difficult Survival Challenge, rather than messing around inside a sandbox world.

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Very interested in Vintage Story. I've watched a couple of game play videos and it seems a very well designed survival, crafting sandbox game. I have a few questions about it:

What is the install size? (It isn't clear how big the files are on itch.io if you don't own the game.)

Currently it is available on itch.io - If I were to buy it "now" would I be eligible for a Steam key when the game is further into its development? (That happened with Dicey Dungeons, and I got a steam key later on, from their itch page.)

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Sorry, but I didn't like the driving mechanics at all. Played for 5 minutes, couldn't stay on the track with any decent speed. I've played Redout under Proton, and that plays much better than this. Uninstalled the free demo.

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Played the free Prelude on Steam and like it, and wishlisted it. It was a good idea to make the prelude - Lot's of people can't really judge a game until they've had a little taste of it. Seems like they're doing well with initial purchases, probably thanks to that taster.

I like that the play is simple to get into, and the game design is slick (despite the simplicity). Certainly the game has a premium, well-built feel to it.

I'm quite a cost-conscious purchaser, and while I feel the game is worth what the developers are asking for it, I'm reticent to make the purchase without a nice discount. Hoping that it won't be long before some sort of discount is applied (and hoping the devs don't decide to do the opposite and put the price up!)

Being in the Wishlist, I'll be watching, heh.

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Liking the look of this one. Added to my Wishlist.

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7 Days to Die :

I've been playing this game for years now. It has had big changes with each major release, and the new content has helped to keep the game fresh and interesting for veterans like me. Recently, the new Alpha 19 Experimental was made available in the Beta tree (and Alpha 18 is the stable version). There were lots of content changes with Alpha 19: The regular map has new buildings and new graphics improvements make the world quite different (so it is fresh to play again). I was really pleased that the other 3 regular maps (PREGEN 01, 02, 03) are all brand new layouts. Assuming you have played all those maps (or just want to create a random one) then that also keeps the game alive for repeated play-throughs.

With Alpha 19, there have been numerous balance changes and skill progression (perk trees) is different too. The food and water depletion is much harsher on A19 than A18. Some of the skills that you could manage without on A18 are worth having on A19 (e.g. I find I need to spec. into Stamina Regen else I am constantly out of energy when using tools.) On A19, the rate of progression has been slowed down, by restricting the level of the loot you find until your character is more experienced. Although this idea does work for making the game more of a survival struggle, because you are no longer able to find high level gear which would make your life easier, I find it is a little unrealistic to make loot level suddenly jump once an arbitrary game-stage is reached.

As I'm a veteran player, over the last year or so, when I've been playing, I have been pushing up the various difficulty settings in the game options. This helps to keep the game challenging and you can tune the game to your liking. I have played in many different ways, and here are a few examples:

- Zombie difficulty is set by Difficulty Level (1 Scavenger, 2 Adventurer (default), 3 Nomad, 4 Warrior, 5 Survivalist, 6 Insane) and I find the default is too low, and normally choose Warrior (but there are still higher levels beyond that if I wanted).

- Blood Moon Horde Night Frequency - This is when a massive horde of zombies appears at night and seeks out the player. The default is once every 7 days. I have played with the frequency set to 1 Day, i.e. Horde Every Night (on Nomad and Warrior difficulties). (It can be set to once every 3 days, once every random days, etc).

- Loot Abundance - This is a setting I've never touched before, normally it is at 100%. In my latest playthrough I set it to 50% and it makes the regular game much harsher, particularly the first few days. You really need to know what you are doing to play in the mode, else starvation or being killed by zombies (because you have inferior equipment so it is harder to fight) is inevitable.

- Numerous other settings can be tweaked beyond the most impactful ones I've mentioned above.

In my latest game, I have been playing with these changed settings - Difficulty: Warrior, Loot Abundance: 50%, Air drop map position: Off, Horde Max Size: 32, Zombie Day Speed: Jogging, Map: PREGEN01 - and the rest of the settings on defaults. Having Warrior and 50% Loot settings makes the game really difficult. You find hardly any loot, the zombies are tough to fight - It severely impairs your progress - It modifies the default game into more of a survival challenge. I found that I have been needing to focus on crafting equipment (e.g. tools) because finding a decent item is so rare. Playing in this mode, makes the game more like a traditional rogue-like, where you are at the mercy of RNG and you need to adjust your play depending on what you find.

RUST :

Nearly a year ago, FacePunch announced that they were stopping development of the Linux client. Up to that point, RUST had been one of my favourite Linux native titles. I have played 1000s of hours of RUST (on Linux). Following that announcement, I didn't give up hope because of Proton, and I continued playing the Windows client on Linux with Proton for a few more months. However, FacePunch ruined Linux play with Proton (on Custom Servers) by making Easy-Anti-Cheat necessary for your server to be included on the Game Server List. Their reasoning was - If a gamer joins "your" custom server they should know that EAC is enabled, and so the joining player is confident that they are safe from game cheaters (using hacks).

It was still possible to run a Custom Server with EAC turned off, but with the server not being in the Game Server List, no regular players would find the Server and play on it. So you'd end up with an empty "dead" server. After playing on dead servers for a couple of months, I finally decided enough was enough, and gave up on the game.

This wasn't entirely bad for me, because RUST as a game is a massive time-sink, it just doesn't play in a way that sensible people can progress. In the game, you get ahead by staying on the server accumulating resources and beefing up your base(s). The more time you stay online, i.e. Going and playing every day, the more you grow your little empire and the harder for someone else to beat you. As such if you are a casual player (e.g. I want to play for a couple of hours a week) then you'll get nowhere and your base will be destroyed.

Despite my comments above, and having not touched the game in 10 months, recently I've booted up to my Windows partition and played a little RUST on Windows. I absolutely won't go back to playing it avidly, like I used to when it was available on Linux. Still it is nice to have the option to jump to Windows in cases where I just can't use software on Linux. Literally a case like this is the only use for Windows that I have - To fire up a single piece of software, use it for a while, and then reboot.

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