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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2549 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 31, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Video game thread!

I'm having fun playing Baldur's Gate 3 with a few mods. WASD movement, camera tweaks (so you can actually see the beautiful environments), the somewhat chud-like Realms Restored 2.0 to de-woke the game world, and I'm switching between the amusing Philomena Cunk as my AI generated narrator voice and the cooler and more serious Christopher Lee. :D

I'm about 7-8 hours deep in the game on normal difficulty; currently making a conscious effort to reduce my savescumming to a minimum. My character is a custom Dark Urge Sorcerer. Which is fun. He apparently just brutally murdered a bard girl from the grove, who showed up in camp, while he was sleep walking. Hmm. I didn't seem to have an option to avoid this outcome. Then "my butler" showed up and gave me a reward of sorts. It will be interesting to see where this Dark Urge story goes, even though I'm not really prepared to be an evil butcher.

I've just respecced Shadowheart to a less crappy build and so far I'm running the party with her, the ever ruthless cunny Lae'Zel, and Gale.

I made sure to uncover Kagha's conspiracy to deliver the Grove to the shadow druids, before I even considered going towards the goblin camp etc. I've confronted her and killed her. Some people don't like that, others really do. because I played most of Act 1 a couple years back and got locked out of the quest back then.

I've been ripping battlefield 6. It's awesome

By far the best FPS engine I've ever played

Some really really bad balance and game design issues, but I'm confident they'll iron most of them out

I strongly recommend using the RPG to shoot down helis before they nerf it, it's ridiculously fun. I get one or two per game and it's addictive, it's more fun than shooting the people.

Since it's Halloween, I'm going to shill scriptwelder's excellent point-and-click horror games. The Deep Sleep Trilogy is about a lucid dreamer who finds himself trapped in his own nightmares. It makes excellent use of atmospheric tension, with no gore and very sparse jump scares. As one commenter put it, "holy cow... i never thought 2 white pixels could be that frightening".

The Don't Escape Trilogy, by contrast, is a reversal of typical escape room games. Each title gives you a reason for wanting to lock yourself up (you are a werewolf who is about to go on a rampage, zombies are attacking and you need to dig in, etc.) and grades you at the end based on how well you did. These games are less story-heavy than Deep Sleep, but have better gameplay. On top of collecting items and solving puzzles, you also need to manage your time and make various tradeoffs (e.g., do you use the gas to fuel up the car, or fill up the generator?)

But the crown jewel is Don't Escape: 4 Days in a Wasteland, an epic tale of survival which joins both series together into one overarching canon. The moon has been destroyed, and planet Earth is dying. Each night, you are faced with a different obstacle, and it is up to you to prepare your base and keep the danger at bay. To increase replayability, the nature of the threat you face on a given day varies, as does the appropriate way of tackling it. For example, on the first night, you can face either a cloud of toxic gas, a swarm of locusts, or a pack of giant spiders. If you cover your windows with iron bars (which are available in all three scenarios), that will be great for stopping the spiders, OK at slowing the locusts, and do nothing against the gas. Along the way, you meet a colorful cast of other survivors, and discover that the end of the world is much closer than it appears. But one of your new buddies has a plan...

There's a sequel called Deep Sleep: Labyrinth of the Forsaken, but I'm waiting five years for the price to drop before trying it. The demo looked good, though.

And if you still want more point-and-click pixel art horror, The Last Door - Collector's Edition and The Last Door: Season 2 - Collector's Edition are also worth checking out.

A fun horror game recommendation from someone who hates horror movies and also most horror games: Signalis. More atmospherically and thematically creepy than jump scare-y, with great pixel-ish art reflecting a neat sci-fi Eastern German communist aesthetic, it's got some fun gameplay and some neat psychological light-touch story. It turns out I vastly prefer atmospheric-type games to the outright gross-out or jump-scare or pee-your-pants anxiety scare games. I do kind of wonder if there are many others that count. The point-and-click sounds interesting, though I usually find them far less engaging than more RPG or adventure-type games.

Any recommendation for good Co-op games I should play together with my wife? We just got Core Keeper and Heroes of Hammerwatch 2 since they were on sale, and so far they're fun but not quite up to the standards that I prefer.

For context, we like strategy games, goofy games, and games with lots of progression and/or unlocks. We usually play on Steam, but have a Nintendo Switch. Also notably she sometimes gets nauseous from fast-paced camera movements, so something like first person shooters or over the shoulder 3D platformers where you're flicking the camera around are not likely to work, though something slower like Skyrim is fine. Top down perspective is preferred.

Our number one game together is Gloomhaven, in which we have 300 hours, having played through the entire campaign and then a few years later starting up a new campaign because we wanted to play more. The sequel Frosthaven is in Early Access and we're waiting for a full release before definitely getting that.

Other notable successes include Divinity Original Sin (1 and 2), Don't Starve Together, Overcooked, Plate Up, Archvale. Anything involving collecting/stealing and selling loot is a bonus.

I'd recommend giving Heroes of Might and Magci 3 a try. It ticks the co-op and strategy boxes, and if you like it, there's a decent modern sequel shaping up.

Stardew Valley is a really great co op game. Lots of collecting. Endless dungeon running. It will probably feel a little easy.

Return to Moria is a survival crafting game that seems like it would be way more fun in co-op. It is heavily focused on mining and looting for gear upgrades. Movement speed is pretty slow compared to other survival games.

Valheim? Might be too fast

The newer Diablo's have couch coop which suprised me. Even more surprising, it's implemented pretty well

I was going to recommend Valheim because it can be super slow. Building is an intricate and careful process.

I meant for the moment leading to nausea, lots of running and jumping

Is a platformer, but Ultimate Chicken Horse is pretty fun (though far better with more like 3-4 players) where you place blocks and traps and gadgets and then run to the goal simultaneously, so if someone is winning via a certain route or too easily, you plop down a buzzsaw or something in their way.

Had some great fun with Out of Space, where you have to slowly work your way through your spaceship and "clean" the rooms and enemies to death. But you really need to do some coordination, as leaving places unclean for too long will develop little tumors that eventually turn into new alien enemies. And some later ones need to be defeated via certain means: a broom, or a mop, or water, etc. You slowly can install new stuff in your rooms that helps you as you progress through, and sometimes you lose a room back to attrition but it's usually still fine.

Vampire Survivors is an easy classic, and doesn't even require anything more than a movement stick (or WASD), but manages to be plenty fun even so.

If you have separate machines, honestly Assassin's Creed Unity turned out pretty fun if that's your kind of thing, though that's more gameplay than straight co-op.

Untitled Goose Game is an absolute gem and very funny to play with two.

Personally, I kind of like Heave Ho. You are this kind of simple two-armed dude with sticky hands, and you often need to swing along with your partner, coordinated, to jump certain gaps or "climb" around and underneath obstacles to get to the goal. Easy to screw up and funny when doing so (for most).

Hat in Time is a cute N64-like platformer with co-op, without the crazy kind of platforming, though I can't remember how crazy the camera is.

Also, honestly there are some great board games out there - BoardGameArena has quite a few, including for free (though a cheap subscription makes it easier), that you might find interesting. A lot easier when there's no setup and the stuff is all calculated for you/it's impossible to accidentally break the rules, so that can make many board games way more accessible. My parents play it all the time with each other.

A lot of people like Magicka (and sequel), but I never really got into it. Stardew Valley works pretty well on a technical level, but to me loses some of its charm especially w/r/t tasks around town.

Rubber Bandits finally is a fun cartoony one where your 3d/2d type guys try to rob various vaults.

Sorry I guess these aren't so much strategy-like games, but the above are ones that were big hits with my more casual-gaming roommates. If you're into the vibe, Stellaris can be kind of fun as a co-op game.

(And of course recently there is It Takes Two and Split Fiction - plus, if you never tried Portal 2's co-op, that's a MUST)

Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine is a co-op game about top-down view heists.

Does it play well with 2 people?

Also, would you recommend starting with Monaco 1, or 2?

I've only played the first game and did it solo, so I can't make specific endorsements of the 2-player mode.

Good call, I second that recommendation. It's a fantastic game to play with friends.

Well you're replying to a post about BG3 so I assume you're aware of that game.

Wasteland 3 is very good too.

It Takes Two may be too fast paced, but it's a good co-op experience.

Wasteland 3 was good, and so close to great. I still remember when Down In The Valley To Pray and Blood of the Lamb kick in. Unfortunately, I DNFd it because of questionable level scaling with the enemies becoming way too tanky to retain my immersion.

The soundtrack had some great songs!

I don't remember the enemies becoming particularly tanky. Maybe your builds sucked. :P

we like strategy games

Among video games, Crusader Kings 2 and 3, Europa Universalis 5, and Victoria 3 can be played cooperatively.

Our number one game together is Gloomhaven

Among board games, Bios: Origins (play first as a subspecies of humanity, then as a language, then as a religion, and finally as an ideology, from 4 million BCE to the present) and High Frontier (play as a spacefaring country) can be played cooperatively.

There's Overcooked 2 if you enjoyed playing the first one. Maybe try Magicka? The game is a lot of fun in coop due to the chaos that can ensue when two players cast spells that interact badly (or sometimes well) in the moment.

I just finished playing NG+ of Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Golden Deer route). Had a good time, and the extra exposition on the main villains of the story was welcome. I still think they are under baked (only one map, really IS?), but at least it wasn't as perfunctory as in the Black Eagles->Church route. We'll see if I do Blue Lions ever, but if I do it won't be for a long while cause I'm not eager to replay part 1 right away.

Also playing Rise of the Tomb Raider, which I picked up during the last Steam sale. It's enjoyable. The side tombs are fun though often too brief, and there's a dash of Metroidvania "you can't get in here until you get this item" which is a nice reason to revisit parts of the map. Overall I can't complain, especially given I got the game for just a few bucks.

I'm a big fan of Blue Lions myself, though you could probably chalk most of that up to Dimitri being chick-bait. One of these days I should really go back and finish that game, lol.

You should! Obviously I can't speak for how satisfying the Lions route is, but the other ones I did have been fun so I'm willing to bet Lions is too.

I made it halfway through 2005's Cold Fear before realising I wasn't enjoying myself and don't care to see how it ends. And now Spooky Season is over before I can play any more horror games.

In the same spirit I recently tried playing Perception, one of those horror-themed walking simulators. Gave up on it after an hour.

I can recommend Soma. It has been some time, but as far as I remember it skips most tediousness. Though arguably the gameplay is quite minimalist, the atmosphere is effective.

Played it, loved it, even more than Amnesia. Incredible atmosphere and the ending really got under my skin.

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