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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2066 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 15, 2023

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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So I've really been enjoying Against the Storm the last week. It was kind of a splurge when I got an email from GOG that it was out of Early Access, and it looked right up my alley.

It's basically a colony building game in the style of Settlers. You build your town workshop by workshop, home by home, and manually assign workers to various task. You are expected to beat the levels, not play them forever. I saw some people didn't like this? That seems really bizarre to me. Like, it's not that kind of game? Play one that is.

It has some fun mechanics that set it apart though. Has numerous fantasy races that each excel or have boosted resolve at different tasks. They also all have different needs to keep them happy. If they get unhappy enough they will leave your settlement. At lower difficulty settings this seems unlikely unless you really suck at the game. On "normal" it can be a real risk as the level progresses. Haven't tried the hard difficulty setting yet.

Because for various reasons, as you get further and further through a level, the "threat" from the forest grows, lowing your population's resolve. Random events pop up that you need to respond to, and sometimes as part of the choices you are presented with before consequences happen the least bad option is one that spikes this even further.

It has a fun meta progression. Instead of a simple campaign of hand crafted levels, each introducing a new mechanics, it has a rogue like design. At least that's what I see people say. I don't see it personally. I hear rogue like and that makes it seem like you are intended to fail until they give you enough honorable mention trophies to buy upgrades that let you win. I haven't lost once in this game, and it lets you pick the difficulty on a level by level basis. It's up to you to set your risk/reward threshold.

The individual levels are fun enough so far for me. The building you have access to are random, and so you'll rarely have a perfect supply chain. But if you establish trade routes and spend liberally at visiting traders, you can patch the holes you may have in it. At least enough to get past the finish line of the level. It's very much a dynamic and interesting puzzle, that engages me a lot more than going through the motions with the same 10 buildings every session.

Anyways, I guess that kind of turned into a mini review. Anyone else been into it lately?

I considered it, being a fanboy of the publishers, but declined. Neither the gameplay pitch nor the visuals do anything for me.

I might know what you mean about the visuals. There is a certain style of soft, bright, cartoonish, often utopian woodland fantasy art that started off as annoying to me, and grew into an all consuming hatred.

The art and theme of Against the Storm is not that, thankfully. It has a distinctly Lovecraftian vibe to it, had Lovecraft been born in dark ages Germany and feared the deep wood, instead of late 19th/early 20th century New England and feared the mongrelization of America.

I enjoyed it well enough but found myself blocked on progression due to no artifacts and that raising the difficulty made it quite unfun and frustrating.

I played it a little while back, enjoyed it for a little while.

Was the difficulty a setting, or just based on how far you are from the central place? I think difficulty was based on how far you went from the central tower thingy. If I remember correctly once your ramp up the difficulty, the game changes from "always winning" to "always losing". To the point where unless I got lucky roles on some starting races/abilities/map areas I felt better off just quitting the level and not wasting my time.

I'm a very sore loser when it comes to single player games, so I stopped playing after I stopped constantly winning. Definitely a reversal of the normal difficulty curve for rogue-lites.

I still played for about 20 hours, so I don't regret my purchase. Just wasn't the right game for me I guess.

Was the difficulty a setting, or just based on how far you are from the central place?

Both I think? There is definitely a difficulty setting you can choose before you start a level, either Settler, Pioneer or Veteran. I haven't unlocked the last one yet? Settler is definitely baby mode where villagers eat less food and hostility is super slow. Pioneer seems like "normal" mode. Veteran activated blightrot and corruption, and I'm probably about ready to jump up to that since Pioneer has gotten easy.

But I've only done the first seal, so we'll see how difficult things get when I really start stretching my legs.

I haven't unlocked the last one yet?

Certainly not- there are actually 20 more difficulty levels on top of Viceroy, each of which cumulatively adds a different complication to the settlements.

That sounds really fun. I'll buy it if/when it ever costs $1-2. Have you tried Frostpunk? It's a city-building game where you're literally trying to survive against the storm of a global freeze. I highly recommend it.

I liked frostpunk but since all of the events are the same every playthrough it's kind of a one and done experience. In some ways it felt like more of a puzzle game than a city builder since once you found out how to handle something you could use the same set of steps the next time. Still it was a fun game and the writing and atmosphere were fantastic. I think they're working on a sequel.

Yeah the gameplay was, strangely for a city sim, really just a vessel for the writing, and it was more than sufficient for that. I love the interplay between gameplay and story where if you play well enough you can save more refugees from the cold. Have yet to find another game half as good at that.

I wound up with Frostpunk at some point. I forget how or why. Didn't click with me. No idea why.

Frostpunk is kind of the opposite of a post apocalyptic city builder. It's about surviving the upcoming apocalypse, not rebuilding after. The city building isn't really very deep or even the focus of the game.

It was given away by Epic Games.

" I hear rogue like and that makes it seem like you are intended to fail until they give you enough honorable mention trophies to buy upgrades that let you win. "

For the record, that's not what roguelike means. Or at least, not what it used to mean. For a long long long time before modern "rogue-lites" came along and got super popular.

Oh I know. I played Nethack once upon a time. But all the same, I see something tagged "Rogue like" or "Rogue lite" on Steam and I assume my comment above about it.

Well man I have to say - change starts with us! The first step is associating that shit with roguelites and keeping roguelikes distinctly cprgs balanced for iron man mode, preferably with random generation and ascii graphics.

Oh, ok.

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