I think my thoughts on Steam have been made quite clear here already: I do not use it, and do not plan to.

My gaming world really opened up more with the Humble Indie Bundles than anything else - and while I do have more games purchased over the past few months than I can currently play, something which was unthinkable a few years ago, I really do not know if Steam's arrival can take any of the credit for it.

Obviously since I am not using Steam I will not receive any direct benefits from Valve's work, but there are claims by some that Steam alone is the champion of the Linux gaming industry, and that even those who do not use it will feel the effects. Well, for me the industry was growing long before Valve showed up, and almost all of the games I am playing and have purchased recently seemingly arrived on our platform independent of Valve's efforts.

So for me the past year has been great in terms of games, but not due to Valve.

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Quoting: Quote from CheesenessMy spider senses tell me something new and big is on the way.

If Frozenbyte does endeavour to do another IP I would actually like it to be a first-person game, since they have experimented with top-down and platforming already, and I could see them doing interesting things with it.

Quoting: Quote from CheesenessI found myself being less creative, to be honest. On my first runthroughs, I didn't bother with magnetism much at all, opting to reallocate points to skills that I was more familiar with the use of instead of really exploring it. This lead to me being thoroughly confused by a seemingly impossible to reach chest in the ice level.

Well, I never really used the magnetism either, but I know for a fact that I would have used even less of the skills in the game if they were hard set, especially in the expansion. Without trading points to try many of the more expensive esoteric skills I probably would have never gotten around to trying them at all. It would have added more incentive to collect more of the experience points though.

Quoting: Quote from CheesenessMy understanding was that there were plans to allow DRM free and Steam players to play together, though I'm not sure what came of that. It's not really a big deal though. I have both ^_^

Well, perhaps when we both have a bit more time on our hands we could try it - I have never been much of an online gamer due to my internet, but after successfully playing a large Blood II bloodbath on Halloween with a bunch of people from the Transfusion forums I am little more bullish to try it.

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I usually have a strong aversion to Steampunk but this actually does look fun. It is nice to see a game about the 19th century with a social conscious instead of it all being about a stylistic look which most Steampunk followers seem to cling to without actually knowing that what they are celebrating was a time of great suffering and exploitation. Knowing Gaslamp I am fairly confident that all of this will be handled with a nice satirical element. I am not surprised that this came out of a game studio in Victoria though - no one out here in the prairies ever really shared such a view on Empire, while some there still feel they are bound to be loyal subjects of the Queen.

Still, whyfor art thou Cthullu? :P

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Quoting: Quote from killx_denIt was in the Humble Indie Bundle 4 and 5 :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_Indie_Bundle [External Link]

But it isn't available DRM free anymore afaik :/

Ryan says the HIB builds will also receive updates.

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Quoting: Quote from CheesenessGosh, what a delight it was to finally get to glide with Pontius' shield. The franchise had been crying out for it since day one, with its spiritual predecessor, The Lost Vikings, having set precedence for "the fat guy should fly".

Has Frozenbyte ever acknowledged a connection between the two? It seems to be the great assumption with regards to Trine is that it is based on The Lost Vikings, but I have never seen Frozenbyte themselves make the connection.

Quoting: Quote from CheesenessI do feel that it'd be nice if Pontius could hurt enemies by jumping on them with the shield below, but maybe we'll get that in Trine 3 :D

I do wonder what Frozenbyte's next move is going to be. When the expansion was announced there was word of a new IP, but now they seem to be talking up the idea of a new Trine game instead. I personally feel that it would be better for Frozenbyte to try something new; while there are a few more places it could go (as you mentioned, hurting enemies with the shield) the sequel was already getting rather abstract with the powers and the plot and characters only have so much more life in them. But they could always surprise me.

Quoting: Quote from CheesenessI'm unsure about how good a thing the flexible skill point allocation is. On one hand, it's nice to be able to experiment and try different things, but not having the skills lock in at all means that you often find yourself pausing the game to switch skill configurations instead of using what abilities you currently have to solve a problem (which is more interesting from a puzzle/critical thinking perspective).

It is a trade off between flexibility and economy - while it does indeed diminish the need to select powers carefully and figure out how best they are used, it does also allow the player to come up with more creative solutions to problems. For my part, I basically treated the skills as as being hard set after I selected them until I reached the Goblin Menace levels, where all of the new powers with higher skill prices prompted me to do a bit more experience exchanges.

Quoting: Quote from CheesenessII now have an itching to play the game again. We should have a co-op runthrough at some stage! It'd be neat to attempt to stream a GOL playthrough or something.

I assume that the Steam and DRM free versions can not communicate with each other, which would be problematic?

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Quoting: Quote from HadBabitsWish I could say the same for Edmund of Team Meat :\

Just do the world a favour and ignore him.

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Quoting: Quote from JopWhy would you want the source code of a game :/

Not been on Linux long have you Jop?

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Played a bit of it this morning just to get a taste of the game; the basic premise is that you need to shoot at targets from an enclosed area in order to complete level objectives and earn cash, hence the origin of the title as it is basically placing you in a themed firing range. There are only three areas currently, namely the Graveyard, Castle, and Cave, each with four distinct parts featuring different level objectives and earning opportunities. The developers do pledge to offer further support to the title however, and state that they wish to add additional levels and features to the game.

It also ran well enough, although there was an odd bug wherein if I switched to the pistol from from the default weapon, what appeared to be tennis balls, the firing animation on the pistol would show and repeat until I actually fired a shot. I also could not download the game from Desurium, as it claimed that there were no releases. I was however able to download the standalone download; being a Unity3D game it was just a simple matter of extracting the Linux directory and launching the binary, as we have all come to expect from the engine. There is another concern I have with the game, but I for the present will not reveal that here as I need to look into it further before commenting on it.

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Indeed, it does bother me when we get only one game in a series. I appreciate Fargo and company putting in the effort to bring us the full cannon.

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I did not have all of the effects turned on when I was playing due to the performance penalty; whether or not the driver itself can support all of the effects the game offers I do not know, but I was fairly pleased with what I did get considering the hardware being used.

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