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9to5 [comrade/them] @hexbear.net

What is Hexbear playing during the Holidays

My corporate overlords decided I get some vacation during this time of year, it being the holidays and all that. With some free days on my hands I'm planning to mess around with a couple games.

First up is Millennia a 4X game kinda like Civ. The twist is there are different ages that go off the rails from real history—so you can get a steampunk age or one where aliens invade and stuff like that. I barely touched it when it came out but now, after 7 updates, I figure I will give it a proper try.

Then theres Songs of Conquest, an indie game with amazing pixel art that’s sorta like the old Heroes of Might and Magic games- I might play this with a friend early next year as well.

EDIT: OK im feeling a bit tired so Im just gonna play my current Crusader Kings 3 save till I go 2 bed. Happy Holidays everyone

What are the fine folks on Hexbear playing

73 comments

  • Picked up the Age of Wonders 4 expansion, so tomorrow when I'm back home, that and continuing my current game of Balders gate.

    • OH nice. I really need to put some more time into AoW 4 I played it back during release for like 30h but havent really touched it since then. I did really like what I played during my time though.

  • Fractal Block world is sick as hell

    fractal based world geometry with the main mechanic being growing or shrinking by a factor of 16x

    you start in the tutorial rooms and then shortly after it has you grow a couple times and it turns out the whole tutorial area was a few tiny boxes in this other tutorial room.

    Then you realize the corner of your screen says level 28 now when it used to say level 30, which means the box you're in NOW is ALSO a tiny little room inside another tiny little room on an insignificant speck inside an insignificant speck on the edge of a mote of dust in the middle of nothing, and you can keep going deeper yet! (or you can also get BIGGER and see what's that way (its wild))

    Most areas are recursive and interlinked between eachother in a fascinating way that feels like getting sucked down into infinity (there are also amazing areas like the Menger Sponge fractal you can just explore around and have fun!

    I recommend everyone who sees this post buy it and play it if you have the means, it could run on a potato and is currently on sale for like 4 bucks on steam

    amazing, fascinating game that I can't get enough of conceptually.

    Its rough around the edges combat wise, so I recommend you just play on tranquility mode so you don't have to fight or grind mazes to level up(unless you like that kind of thing like I do in which case watch out this could eat your life lol), you can just explore this amazing and bizarre world

    give it a look

  • Armored Core VI is so fucking good

    This and Sekiro has me convinced Fromsoft needs to stop making Soulslikes and needs to branch out like this instead

    • I too am playing binging ac6 atm, it really captures fast anime mech fighting in video game form perfectly and as always the art direction is flawless.

      Post meg

  • dwarf fortress, at work, on the company's dime 😎 make me come in on a holiday, I'm gonna milk it for all its worth!

    • Picked it back up, putting a few minutes into a new fortress every time my baby goes down for a ☼nap☼ over here

      Playing a cozy old self modded v44.12

      Surprising myself with how much menu diving is muscle memory

  • I won a run of modded FTL earlier today

    Building a new PC with the help of my friend tomorrow after work. Gonna play the Half Sword playtest and probably torrent cyberpunk first lol

  • I found out last night that Visual Pinball X actually runs on Linux now so I stayed up late trying it out. The setup is still pretty confusing but I was able to get some tables running at least!

  • I started that SM64DS ROMhack 'The Koopa Who Stole Christmas' and the first two stages are nice but the 2 after it are really clunky, especially with the inferior DS controls. Might go back to it, but will probably drop it.

    Gunna' finish 100%ing Captain Toad tonight.

  • I picked up the original Half Life and it's been a lot of fun. Black Mesa's graphics look absolutely incredible but it's clear to me that more playtesting went into the original and that makes the game both easier and more fun.

  • I just finished my second playthrough of Prodeus. I still really like it but wish we'd get the rest of the campaigns. The game in it's current state ends on a cliff hanger. There was talk about 2 years ago about possible DLC but radio silence since.

    I picked up Dusk, Cultic, and Sprawl from the Steam sale and played a bit of each. I did grab Amid Evil and Selaco but refunded those since they weren't really jiving with me. I'm waiting on a refund of Incision too since I tried playing on easiest difficulty and still had my ass handed to me. The game is super imbalanced.

    Dusk, everyone probably already knows. It's has super fast strafey quake/doom movement. gunplay is decent too. The levels feel very Quake-like from what little of Quake I've played.

    I'm not sure about Cultic quite yet but what I do like so far is the art style. It's fantastic. Think of those 16 bit pixel art gifs you see on like reddit that manages to create depth with very little colors but make that a 3D game instead. I was actually blown away a bit by the intro cutscene. It's really cool. The game is mostly just boomer shooter like you'd expect. I think it feels a bit like Forgive Me Father 2 from what I recalled. Others have said it's like Blood but I haven't played that.

    Sprawl is scratching a bit of my itch from Turbo Overkill. It's more of a movement shooter but with old school graphics, rather than a straight up boomer shooter. It has a wall running mechanic and a slow mo mechanic which makes for some very stylized combat.

    • Boomer shooters are hit and miss for me but I adored Dusk. From the horror setting to the gameplay it was super enjoyable to me. I didnt really click with the others I have tried so far which to be fair was only Amid Evil so far.

      • I'm sort of chasing the dragon after having a blast with Prodeus and Turbo Overkill. It's very hit and miss with me too. I thought I was gonna like Amid Evil but it really wasn't clicking. Dusk has been fun so far.

  • Oldschool Runescape. Still doing Leagues V in my slow fashion. About to unlock my third area and seventh relic.

  • Then theres Songs of Conquest, an indie game with amazing pixel art that’s sorta like the old Heroes of Might and Magic games- I might play this with a friend early next year as well.

    Huh i played this but while game itself is actually quite good, i think the pixel art is horrible, both shapes and colours are blurry and i can't even understand what i see for quite a lot of times. I seen a lot of bad pixel art (and some good) in last few years but this one is one of the worst ones.

    • I could probably link a dozen games with (in my opinion worse pixel art). I myself like it quite a bit and have 0 problem discerning what Im seeing, but thats the thing with art—highly subjective.

  • im a certified SEGA gamer, going through Persona 3R and the entire Yakuza series.

73 comments