Brewed Awakening? Bravo, sir. You've outdone yourself.

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I've only played 40 minutes, but I'm enjoying it so far. I actually like the voice work, which I think adds nice atmosphere and allows me to project my own tone on the written word. I'm not a fan of voicework unless it's used cinematically. Nothing worse than having words on the screen and you're trying to read them way faster than the voice artist is dictating them!

Juries out on the negotiation part. It feels like a battle, but with different cards. I haven't figured out the mechanics yet, but it looks like you can attack the outer ring, which seems to be like hitpoints, and the ultimate goal, but you can also attack the inner ring with certain cards, which undermine your opponent's ability to affect you. Quite complex, and a little bit overwhelming so far.

The regular fights are straight up Slay the Spire mechanic though, albeit with new ideas thrown in.

I like the panic mechanic which lets you defeat enemies without killing them, which might open up new choices, and influence later story arcs.

So... mainly positive so far!

Quoting: GuestThat's not much fun to listen to but the artwork is superb and the game runs great, smooth, no glitches - thanks to Lutris, I guess.

Not sure what you mean by Lutris. It's a native title?

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Went to buy Griftlands earlier today, and noticed this was out too. Oof. Wallet takes a pounding, but I got them both. Between these two and the May Humble Bundle, my May is toast! There aren't enough hours in the day...

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I know what I'll be doing this weekend then! I love Klei. Been looking forward to playing this.

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Quoting: dorronMetro Exodus is running at very low FPS for me. Anyone having the same problem?

On your hardware, it should be smooth as butter. Maybe try a different compositor option in Mint's settings? But I never had to change it from the default when I was on Mint. Perhaps it's a driver thing - your card supports Ray Tracing, so perhaps trying turning that off?

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Good god. It's like Robotron on acid. Might have to give this a shot!

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Quoting: x_wing

Quoting: scaineI follow a lot of indies on Twitter who genuinely despise Steam. Not just for taking a 30% cut, but for taking that cut and giving almost nothing back. They argue that the lure of the biggest audience for gaming is useless when Steam's algorithms are geared to only highlight AAA or "popular" content.

Valve implemented the discovery queue and curators recommendation. And during the sales, you have to explore the discovery queue in order to get a trading card. At least in my case, I was able to discover many nice games with the DQ.

Yeah, honestly, me too. I think the point is far wider than one or two experiences though. I certainly find many, many hidden gems by following the many, many "hidden gem" curators on Steam. I also get offered a lot of free keys as a contributor to this site, but none, preceisly zero of these gems/keys ever appear on the hundreds of times a week (is that an exaggeration... maybe, but not by much) that I visit the Steam front page.

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Quoting: orochi_kyo

Quoting: scaineI follow a lot of indies on Twitter who genuinely despise Steam. Not just for taking a 30% cut, but for taking that cut and giving almost nothing back. They argue that the lure of the biggest audience for gaming is useless when Steam's algorithms are geared to only highlight AAA or "popular" content.

The same argument and frustration is often voiced around Play and Apple's store - they take their 30% cut but unless you magically put out the next minecraft, factorio or limbo, you're gonna languish with pitiful sales until you go out of business.

So, good luck to the lawsuit. It's doomed though, for sure. I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that you have to have some fairly hard evidence that Valve actually abused their market position to suppress competition. And the clauses in question have already passed muster in other law suits... so I'm not sure the point to all this is.

LOL, I can't even think why this was brought to the table, the 3 stores/services have something in common, they'll leave almost every game these "poor" devs dare to submit to be there.
SO of course these guys want more attention to their game. Of course, they would like to be in the front all the time. Of course, they hate Steam because Valheim and other quality games appear in the front Store.
Damn Steam showing me Fall Guys, Valheim, or any Total War game in the front store instead of the spinning toy game or those hentai VN's with furry characters, or that horror game where the player gets stuck at doors.
That doom algorythm that show me quality indy games instead of the buggy and trashy ones. OMG please Steam put whatever trash this poor devs submitted so I can complain again Steam is not doing quality checks.

Oof. Okay, you're the third, or fourth/fifth, whatever, to make the "they were shit all along" argument. So... fuck no. They were making thousands.... THOUSANDS... pre-algo-change. Then hundreds post-algo-change. Explain it.

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Quoting: PTLyon

Quoting: scaineThe same argument and frustration is often voiced around Play and Apple's store - they take their 30% cut but unless you magically put out the next minecraft, factorio or limbo, you're gonna languish with pitiful sales until you go out of business.

I'm sorry but that is the case for all creative industries. Most musicians do not make it and will never be able to make a living out of their music career. Same goes for actors. Video games on PC are a very open market, the barriers to entry are getting lower and lower, you even have free game engines nowadays, so anyone can jump in and try his luck. That necessarily means more and more people will not make it, there isn't enough market for everyone. Even if Steam drops their cut (and I think they should), allowing devs to get extra 10% or so won't solve people going out of business due to poor sales.

Yeah, totally true. My only point, which I'm fast-beginning to regret making, is that if a bunch of (for the sake of argument,50) musicians were on Spotify and making lets say £10,000 a month that's great. Rosy. But then Spotify notifies them that they're making a change to how recommendations are made to listeners. They say the change will be made at the end of the month. The following month, those 50 artists are now gobsmacked to discover that £10K a month has become £1K a month.

Ach, no big deal. Probably just increased competition, right? It's an expanding marketplace. Or maybe those artists were just a bit shit all along? Somehow?

That's the argument being made here. I don't buy it.

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Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: scaineThe point is how they get popular. If the algorithm was fairer for new titles, then indies would have a better chance at leveraging Steam and becoming the next big thing. But since it doesn't, they never hit the front-page and the same tired (but popular) games are constantly regurgitated on the carousel and in the discovery queues.

My carousel:

Total War: Rome - Ark - Rimworld - Under Leaves - Last Epoch - Poly Bridge - Rain on Your Parade - Space Haven - 7 Days to Die - Universim - Project Hospital

Quite a mixture I'd say...

Discovery New Releases:
Battle in the City - ADD - Lair Hockey - Neon Nights (Boooobs!) - Creatura - ....

An endless stretch of indie titles. And in all honesty: neither do I pay attention the carousel (never) nor do I care about the queues. Must have been the first time that I clicked through the first couple of entries.
Interestingly are all those successful indie titles not only successful but also f*cking good. Hundreds of them: Dead Cells, Everspace, Limbo, Factorio, Mindustry, Opus Magnum, Stardew Valley, Terraria, Among Us...
One could say: That's the reason. And not because they got a popular spot on the carousel.

Ah! That's the reason ! That's why these devs, who got thousand plus sales before the algorithm change, suddenly experience less than a hundred sales afterwards? Good to know. Quality of games. Quality... that... suddenly, within weeks... deteriorated exponentially...?

Okay.

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