Hey folks!
First of all, welcome to our off-topic forums.
I’d love to kickstart us with a thread: What games are you playing?
Right now I’ve been playing on and off Victoria 3 and Train Sim World. Been enjoying it a lot!
I’m preparing for Vic 3’s next update and DLC.
I myself am looking forward to the DLC for Rimworld. Beyond that, been playing Dune Spice Wars and Hunt Showdown with da’ crew.
If anyone is ever looking for a hidden gem, check out Shadows of Forbidden Gods. The world plays out like a regular 4X game while you play the role of some eldritch deity controlling its agents to take over the world.
I’ve been playing Conquest of Elysium 5, Zero Sievert, Kenshi, and Dwarf Fortress lately. With some FF7 mixed in every so often. I’ve been enjoying them all immensely, particularly CoE 5.
What is your favorite thing about those? I’m also looking forward to the Rimworlds DLC. it’s a game that I clearly enjoy. I should be keeping better track of its release date!
I have not played Conquest of Elysium nor Zero. Kenshi I played very early in its development and it was really fun! I am a big fan of Dwarf Fortress. Check out CDDA if you haven’t!
What do you like of COE? I haven’t played it.
CoE5 is a 4X with a touch of roguelike. I really enjoy the variety in the factions, units, and game conditions. The overall aesthetics of the game are quite enjoyable for me, too. The game has some mechanics that set it apart from other 4X games I’ve played, namely the different Planes (Z levels essentially) that every game takes place across. I don’t want to spoil too much but if you’ve gotten bored of your usual 4X strategy, it’s absolutely worth checking out CoE5 and giving it some time.
Zero Sievert is a 2D singleplayer take on the extraction shooter genre. It’s quite unforgiving and I honestly haven’t made a lot of progress yet so I don’t have as much to say except I think it’s worth the price tag so far.
I have tried CDDA before but I was only toying with some weird scenarios and collapsing under the weight of the sheer number of hotkeys and menus I was confronted with. I will give it a try again soon I think, particularly if you have any specific ideas for a scenario/build I should try running.
Kenshi is great! Especially with mods. It’s one of those games I wish I’d started playing sooner. Dwarf Fortress was frustrating me the last time I played it, I feel like my dwarves are never doing the tasks I want them to do first. Still a great game and I hope my current fort is an eventual success.
What is your favorite thing about those? I’m also looking forward to the Rimworlds DLC. it’s a game that I clearly enjoy. I should be keeping better track of its release date!
Dune Spice Wars is a nice strategy game that happens on Arrakis, hard to find those. My friends and I like the Dune universe quite a bit.
Hunt Showdown takes the formula of an extraction shooter like Tarkov and makes it more palatable. Western firearms, zombies and melee weapons all combine to make it an enjoyable experience even when you lose.
There’s a line that I always tell people and I believe just about everyone can agree with it:
Even digging a trench is more fun with friends.
Don’t recall where I heard it the first time, but it’s a good one. Most of the fun I end up deriving from games nowadays is from the fact that I tackle them with friends. Instead of getting salty at a hurdle, we just laugh our asses off at it.
Recently got back into Stellaris because a friend of mine wanted to start a playthrough and that’s been mighty fun too, at least in the weird blue-moon, planets must align moment when our schedules line up.
I love Rimworld, but I’m not very good at it, I have all the DLC just on principle because it’s a great game and I want to support it.
I bought Nightingale, and it’s fun, but definitely needs to get outta Early Access before there is more meat and potatos to it. Right now it’s just running around mining and scavaging over and over to build more complex things and more complex toolbenches. Meh.
I enjoy survival crafters but they need to have some driving force for me, not just “Do whatever” because eventually I just don’t wanna do anything else.
I bought Weird West and beat it in a single sitting, it was fun, but short, but hey it was 10 bucks so I guess who’s complaining.
I also am playing Way of the Ronin and Dragon’s Dogma 2. Though I will say I will probably put in a pin in DD2 because it’s getting repetitive to me.
Way of the Ronin is a fun open world samurai game, but I find myself often times getting confused as to who I’m helping. There are Anti-Shogunate (Fuck the police) and Shogunate (Love the police) missions and they are sorta hard to tell which is which. Might be a writing issue because when I look at the documentation it says the color of them should specify, but sometimes I’ll do “Personal” missions for a contact and gain one or the other and I’m like WTF?
I have a feeling outside a few choices (Kill him/Spare him) it’s sorta linear with the way those stories all mash together.
One of my favorite games to tinker with and I get excited about updates is Ostranauts. Ostranauts on Steam (steampowered.com)
Basically you go out and strip old derelict ships, sell them for cash or repair them and make them yours. The only thing that absolutely sucks about the game is the conversation system, I feel like it’s pure shit, but the premise of exploration is fun.
I’m a sucker for anything space related and being the captain of your ship etc.
Seems like CoE5 is fine on Linux so I have scheduled to check it out in my free time later today. Will post about it!
Honestly, CDDA is the kind of game where you gotta be fine dying and you gotta be fine just… learning from those mistakes. I tend to do random character builds with it. What I like to do is press ‘random’ on Wikipedia and the first page that pops up, I do a concept related to it. I once had a mad scientist because I had the page of some random scientist. I like playing random a lot – do it a lot in CK3 too.
Might need to jump back into it soon honestly. Haven’t played it now for a few years!
I’m a huge war simmer, and I think I’ve heard of Dune Spice Wars through the communities.
You say if I like Tarkov but I didn’t like how tedious it was, I should check out Hunt Showdown?
And I remember trying out Stellaris at launch but I just couldn’t get into it too much. It was a disappointing launch but it’s traditional of Paradox – and despite it’s shortcomings I love that publisher’s games. Conversely, it’s a shame they abandoned Imperator: Rome!
Can’t remember how good or bad I am at Rimworlds anymore. Will give it another spin when the DLC comes.
I’ve talked about Ostranauts before, and it’s a game I really love. I am also a huge fan of Stationeers! It’s quite complex and you end doing a lot of engineering concepts with it, but it satisfies the same tinkerer’s itch!
I’m pretty bad at Ostranauts though. I might need to get a guide for it.
I love CDDA, haven’t played in too much of a long time now.
My usual strategy for the early game is to wait out the day in some safe building, usually a house with a proper bed if possible and then use night time to venture out and loot goblin my way around - you can see slightly better than them in the dark, and they probably can’t see you. Probably.
Also a 4X game I haven’t played in a long while is Aurora 4X, a civilization manager with a very in-depth ship building and combat aspect. Reccomended if you have the same type of mental illness I do that makes you have fun with games that look like an Excel spreadsheet.
Okay, I took a look at CoE5. The amount of units seems quite fun! They mentioned a game called Dominion too?
I might get CoE5 soon, looked fun for a nerd like me!
I love CDDA too; I too abuse the scavenge at night strategy! I learned it after a lot of pain.
I tried Aurora 4X a few times. It’s basically my type of game. However, I could not super get into it. I did like the RP ability in it.
Yeah, Dominion is like the more complex, harder-to-get-into cousin of CoE. It looks good but I’m basically dipping my toes in the 4X strategy genre right now, CoE5 is only the third one I’ve played so far. So I’ll take a look at Dominion myself once I’m more experienced. CoE5 is definitely worth the price, I’ve enjoyed almost every second of the 100+ hours I’ve spent playing so far.
I just downloaded the newest version of CDDA on my work computer for downtime, I’ll try it out. I never really figured out how to play much, I’ll have to watch some tutorials.
Enjoyed seeing the Zero Sievert and Ostranauts mentions - was hooked on those for a couple weeks, need to come back to Ostranauts, really interesting game but I found the pace a bit glacial due to how the interface and inventory management was a bit tedious.
The main game I’ve been playing lately is Haven and Hearth - a long lived sandbox survival MMO with a heavy lean towards permadeath, crafting, and pvp. Super slow burn, but the way they balanced everything and make all the parts of the game weave together provides a really potent environment for political drama to brew. Hard to describe, but when asked what other games Haven players play they often say “There is no other game.”
I’ll try it, looks sorta ghetto, but meh, I’ll try it.
Yeah it’s definitely not an easy sell graphics-wise - it’s very much oriented towards mechanics rather than aesthetics. It’s a bit of a rough initial experience for new players and it’s better to use a custom client, if you’re interested hmu on discord (digilog) and I can give you some pointers and links - there’s lots of interesting and essential 3rd party stuff (community map, wiki, custom clients with key QoL enhancements, forum, etc)
From your lean towards vicious combat mechanics that I’ve been picking up on though, you’d probably find it interesting.
How did you find it? CDDA is pretty lovely and might give us a lot of inspiration when it comes to tinkering.
Did you end giving a try to the Rimworlds DLC? I’ve been eyeing it but haven’t bought it yet.
I’ve had a resurgence of my interest in Simracing, since I can sometimes spare 30 minutes here and there. Just jump into tracks I know in iRacing and destress. It’s been lovely.
So far it’s more of Rimworld. It’s a new layer to invest in as far as the game goes, where these anomalies bring a different type of depth to things. This is also a new way to end runs however, so I’d be careful with that. I’m a big fan of all sorts of horror-inspired entities.
Sadly, at the moment there’s no way to control the flesh mass, but I’m certain modders will give us that liberty. Some of the events are total gamechangers though, stuff that makes toxic fallout look like a baby.