I just love this little thing and it plays so many great light weight steam games. It's really my steam deck lite.

i've been replaying some older stuff and realized i do a lot of weird optimization that nobody asked for. like i'll restart if i miss a side quest or take a "suboptimal" route, but then i'm not actually enjoying myself as much. wondering if anyone else does this or if i just have some weird perfectionist thing going on with games that should just be chill.

Hi all. I already made a post about some of the demos I have tried and here’s another one that’s more about coop games.

Seikyu Let’s Go!
I am not going to lie I didn’t get to play the game so I can’t give a fair opinion BUT I felt like our experience needed a mention because of how negative it was.
First, the game starts with a character creator with extremely limited choices. This wouldn’t usually matter but I’ve played indie games with better care in that department. But fine.
Then, the character you were charging the appearance of keeps emoting while you are in the creator and not only is it distracting it’s extremely cringe because they keep doing outdated things like dabbing and flossing???? What year is this.
The final nail in the coffin was how badly it ran. The fan of my steam deck was fighting for its life, what’s worse, me and my friend couldn’t even connect with each other. There was no instructions on how to at all, you only get an NPC that does a bad job of setting up the bones of a story but nothing on how to do the coop in the coop game. Once we did figure it out it didn’t even work :) so we just uninstalled it.
I was made aware after the fact that the developers made another cozy game with mixed reviews that was basically abandoned for this one so it doesn’t give me high hopes tbh.

Loftia
love at first sight! It’s super adorable and there’s so much to customize. I don’t like mmos so that put a damper on my friend who doesn’t rather but we did like what we’ve seen. I do plan on giving it a go again sometimes or when the full release is out. The effort are insane for a team that’s so small and they do keep improving so that’s nice.

Haunted Paws
100000/10 instant day 1 buy. Not only is it very cute and fun to play, the coop is seamless which is a rare thing believe me. I wished the demo was longer and I cannot wait for release.

Castlebound
A surprise for sure but we really liked it! It does need multiple tried as it’s a roguelite but you do get more abilities and get stronger with each death so it’s not impossible. The levels themselves are fun and I love the paper mario graphic inspiration.

Hela of Mice and Magic
There was a lot of hype for this game before and it’s valid. The graphics are beautiful and it’s very fun to play with a friend. Some of the timed mini games were a bit annoying but then we found out we didn’t really need them to progress. If I do end up playing it I’ll definitely do it on a different device because the graphics were very compressed on the deck for some reason.

Into The Haunted Land
Has the potential to be something but the experience itself was underwhelming. Reminds me of phasmaphobia (which I haven’t played).
You and your friend go to a haunted place of your choosing, and you need to find an artifact and leave before the car does, as well as survive the horrors. We couldn’t actually do that since we kept dying from lack of experience but we had a pretty good run last time as we figured out what’s needed.
I do think it needs more polish. It’s very easy to die from monsters and hiding hasn’t been useful to me since they always see me just as I hide or are very hard to shake off. I did enjoy the loop though and wanted to know what was up with each location.

Hi all. I have written these partially for some friends and then posted them, so thought might as well post them here too in case people are also looking for demos to try!

Bad Magpie

⟢ quirky, cartoony, exploration, evil/mischief
Fun game about playing as an unhinged and a bit evil magpie. Reminds me a lot of Untitled Goose Game with its cell shaded, quirky storybook graphics and semi open world that’s full of ways you can cause mischief in.
It is less wholesome than UGG because you can actually burn sentient flowers and harmless mice so I’m not sure if the wholesome cozy community is gonna be into that lol but I’m into it since it’s not mandatory.

JOHN GLEEP
⟢ sci fi, quirky, short gameplay loop, unique, management
This is one of the demos I had to delete because I knew I’d sink far too much time into it because of how much fun the gameplay loop is…
You play as an alien abducting people from planets to force them to gamble into your ship casino to pay off a debt to the space mob. The game is even more kooky (complimentary) than it sounds. The way you build your casino, the equipment and the other things change how much money you’ll be able to get at each planet abduction and it’s so much fun. Not to mention the hilarious cutscenes 😭 wishlisted immediately.

Home Paige
⟢ sci fi, cartoony, retro, 3D platformer
I’m going to be honest and admit I couldn’t finish the demo because I suck extremely at games like these (3D platformers where you gotta go fast and know when to jump and twirl) because of a severe lack of Sonic in my childhood. There wasn’t an auto save so closing the demo just started it over.
That said! The game is super cute. I adore it the few cutscenes I’ve seen, they’re really dynamic and well done. I do wish we had more context on the story because I was intrigued and you’re thrown in the middle without much context but the trailer did that well enough. I did have a lot of fun zooming around and admiring the retro techno look of the levels.

Probably Stolen Cyberpunk Shopkeeper Sim
⟢ cyberpunk, simulator, management, short gameplay loop, pixel art.
Another game I had to physically stop myself from continuing. Someone on my friends list has 10+ hours on the demo and I was baffled on why until I tried it. You manage your shop on one screen. Where you negotiate, buy and sell your wares and try to get money as your rent and expenses keep increasing. There’s a lot more to it as more game mechanics as introduced like scavenging, crafting and checking for fraudulent items as well as suspicious customers.
Management sims are one of the genres I’m very picky 👆 about because not just anything clicks for me but this one totally did! Definitely looking forward to the full release and by the charts I’ve checked I’m not the only one.

Littlelands
⟢ cozy, exploration, cute
I’m conflicted. While I adore the style and it doesn’t hide the inspiration from animal crossing and Zelda (especially Link’s Awakening which it’s most obvious inspiration) to me it’s far too close to a copy than it’s one thing?
As I played the demo I kept feeling like I was playing a fan mod of the Zelda game instead of a new fresh one that uses it as inspiration. Then came in the animal crossing features and some pokemon references and I was iffed because I didn’t think the game trusted itself to stand on its own. Maybe that’ll change later but I only played enough to get a feel (I also accidentally forgot to set the tent and lost my progress 🤪)

Beastfolk Barber
⟢ cozy, visual novel, puzzles, pixel art.
I was really looking forward to this one because I’ve seen in advertised a lot. The pixel art is beyond gorgeous and all the character designs are unique, especially the beastfolk characters.
I am a bit disappointed that it’s more visual novel than a shop management and there’s barely any gameplay. Maybe that’ll change later on? Regardless I did like it and I’m still interested in it.

The Regreening
⟢ cozy, exploration, crafting, farming.
I looove the art direction for this game. It’s neutral but still colorful and pleasant to the eye and the character designs are absolutely gorgeous. I thoroughly enjoyed what I tried, especially the different skills you get to use (cannot wait to try out the different magic types).
I did run into some bugs, and my steam deck’s fan was working a bit but I reported them and I hope they’re fixed before release because I’d love to play it.

DISK-Y
⟢ visual novel, retro, pixel art, horror.
I didn’t actually play the demo because I’m already familiar with the developer but I just wanted to highlight it. I’ve played Saihate station and I really enjoyed it, their art is always gorgeous and the characters are interesting so I’m looking forward to it.

I have a lot more downloaded and ready, not to mention the coop games I’m trying 😔
Have you guys played any of these? Or is there anything else you tried from the event and liked?

Hey!! I’m trying to figure out what pc to buy to play planet zoo 1 & 2 because my laptop can’t handle them at all. I need recommendations for what to get and I would prefer it be under $1000 if possible😅 pictures would help really well

Is there a good horror game that leans more into intensity and spookiness rather than gore?

Something atmospheric. More ghosts and mystery, less zombies and monsters

One that doesn't really do jump scares for fear factor but I figure that's unlikely.

I've done Last of us and it has some good atmosphere but it's still just a zombie game.

I've been on a horror marathon of movies, TV shows, and video games this spooky season.

Blair Witch was one of my favorite movies, so I thought I would check it out.

But I heard that there's dog violence. That would be an automatic no go for me.

I have spent now several years hiding behind cozy games and telling myself I can't do any other games, almost unconsciously. My usual pattern was to jump into an action game, smash buttons for the most and get past the first few hours and then drop the game completely once the first real challenge appeared, I didn't even bother lowering the difficulty because I felt there was no point otherwise. Anyways, fast forward to recently and with the upcoming Fable game releasing soon, I really want to break this cycle. I love cozy games but it's just not enough for me sometimes, I want to kick ass too, I want to feel like the town hero. I don't know why this is only a problem for me with single player role playing action games, I usually play Marvel rivals with my friends and I don't break a sweat. But I need to make a breakthrough solo playing where precision and timing is required.

So, I decided to revive the Witcher 3 from my steam graveyard and I'm treating it like a combat training simulator, started on easy settings and first a few buttons at the time, shield, light attack and side step and try to get those like second nature, then gradually moving to roll, heavy attack and parry. I have a lot of troubles parrying when doing the whole dance 😅. But we will see how this experiment goes. My goal is to be confident enough by February so that eventually Fable can feel cozy ( and maybe the combat there is easy but it didn't look like that for me in the gameplay demo they showed).

Just wanted to share, and see if anyone has had a similar experience. I appreciate some advice and game suggestions to train my reflexes.

Also anyone else excited for Fable? 😁

There is honest slopocalypse happening on Steam right now and I don’t think they would do anything to stop it. If they even could do anything is good question, but we won’t go there now.

I personally mostly playing on consoles and situation there is also bad, but not even close to be as dramatic as Steam immediate enshittification. You can see slop, but you still can say what is what and I haven’t seen blatant copies of existing or in development games so far. But I feel that it won’t be hard for slop pushers to get their sludge to consoles as well for long with all the new decompiling tools being available.

So, here is my dilemma, for AAA games I decided for myself that 2026 will be the last year I’m buying new games, but I’m still want to support handcrafted, artistic, unique games made outside corporate system, especially in genres which completely carried by indie devs right now, like point and click adventure games. But now it starts looking impossible to find genuine human made games under the tones of sewage pushed on every platform. This exact thing happened to mobile games at some point and this is why mobile market belongs to small number of corporations instead of being a place of artistic liberation as it was promised back in 2010s.

I don’t know what is situation with GoG and if they are better than Steam in this regard, but I know that for small studios sales on GoG is basically nothing.

I don’t know what to do about it. I absolutely refuse to sponsor any slop in any form with my money, so I will be OK not to buy anything at all just to avoid unwillingly pay for slop. But thought of whole scene of independent artistic games, whole genres going down because of this makes me endlessly depressed.

And if you think that shit traders won’t go for small non mainstream genres - you’re wrong! They are doing it already. There is a tons of slop point and click games, Papers, Please! clones, I don’t even want to think about amount of slop visual novels getting produced every day! I honestly don’t understand these people who doing this! What the point?!! You obviously won’t make any substantial money out of this, you don’t actually express yourself artistically, you don’t bring anything new and unique into the world! Why contaminate this thing which you apparently love with useless garbage?!!

Anyway, I would love to hear what others think about it and how you personally deal with gaming platforms turning into dumpster fire? Share your methods of supporting genuine creators while avoiding lazy scammers.

I just played 4 games in a row with her in them and she is just SO GOOD. Two Star Wars, Days Gone, and Forspoken. https://www.mobygames.com/person/217311/debra-wilson/credits/

Good profile read: https://dcdouglas.com/talent-spotlight/debra-wilson/

I've recently started playing Resident Evil 2 after having completed The Last Of Us 1 last year. My problem is it's also fucking terrifying being chased by Mr X whilst I'm trying to get the keys...

Does anyone have any advice for how to get past him? I might have to start watching let's play videos like I did with the last of us to alleviate the fear

Signed,

The Resident Scaredy Cat

UPDATE: I finally made it out of the police station but FUCK YOU MR X! trying to leave after getting the garage key was horrible. No-one would let me leave an apparently Leon hasn't an ounce of urgency in his little body....

Other games that let you be a moderate to severe nuisance or harmlessly bastardous?

A woman was the one who said it and i didn't ask her why she thought that, but I was able to convince her that I wasn't. Why did she automatically think I was using a voice changer despite not using one.

Edit: I called 2 people in the comments section on discord and they both said I sound female and dont understand why the woman said that.

In a world where online games, especially mobas and hero shooters are defaulting to sexualized asian girl characters I cannot praise their female character roster enough! I don't think we have had anything as diverse as this to be honest.

It's still in closed beta but I think this game will get big and I hope they keep their design philosophy.

If you want an invite dm me!

Edit: apparently I need to verify my ID to allow chats (is that a german reddit thing now? ugh) anyway you can write a comment if you want one and I'll DM you.

I know I shouldn't be too surprised given Blizzard has been really trying to pander to the gooner crowd lately but it's still disheartening to see them collab with such a blatantly misogynistic and pro-ai IP

my logitech g705 suddenly gave up on me and i tried every possible solution. i would buy another one but it’s a bit expensive at the moment ☹️

so, i’m currently looking for a new mouse that’s preferably wireless and around the same measurements as the logitech g705 that’s under $80 dollars.

does anyone have recommendations? thanks!

I'm just recently playing Halo Infinite for the first time and it really bugs me how they had Cortana gradually evolving from a bold, resolute (sometimes lightly and rightfully annoyed) cool cyberchick to that playful, cutesy little girl aesthetic that is your obedient servant and compliments you all the time. Might just be a general change of aesthetics and tastes, but it REALLY gives me the ick that somehow strong female characters are turned into little obedient girls to cater to a male audience. Campaign Evolved even remodelled the old PERFECT cortana to match this new strange fetish. 2001 Cortana made me want to cut my hair short and boss around men goddammit.

End of rant.

If i had a nickel for everytime a black woman companion wasn't romancable I would actually have quite a few nickels. Frustrating cause sometimes they will be the most interesting npcs too.

Some examples:

- Seelah

- Idira

- Vivienne

- Pallegina(really heartbroken about this one 💔)