Game musings and news

[Mongrel]

I don't know if I'll ever get tired of weird Thomas game mods.

[Mongrel]

Over the past week you may have heard about a game called ‘Rape Day’ coming soon to Steam. Today we’ve decided not to distribute this game on Steam. Given our previous communication around Who Gets To Be On The Steam Store?, we think this decision warrants further explanation.

Much of our policy around what we distribute is, and must be, reactionary—we simply have to wait and see what comes to us via Steam Direct. We then have to make a judgement call about any risk it puts to Valve, our developer partners, or our customers. After significant fact-finding and discussion, we think ‘Rape Day’ poses unknown costs and risks and therefore won’t be on Steam.

We respect developers’ desire to express themselves, and the purpose of Steam is to help developers find an audience, but this developer has chosen content matter and a way of representing it that makes it very difficult for us to help them do that.

Sometimes it's just gobstopping to see what corporations (or people in general) will equivocate over. Insofar as corporations have inured me to their appalling capacity for evil, it's distressing that they can still surprise me even after so many decades.

Has there been a secret global eugenics program to remove the spines from as many humans as possible? A backbone deficiency syndrome crisis? Should public health agencies declare an epidemic?

And just in case you thought "Maybe it's just an inflammatory or trolling name and the game itself is stupid but fine":

The game, by Desk Plant, "is a visual novel where you control the choices of a sociopath during a zombie apocalypse," according to the developer's website. "You can verbally harass, kill people and rape women as you choose to progress the story."

Game contains violence, sexual assault, non-consensual sex, obscene language, necrophilia, and incest.
About This Game
Control the choices of a menacing serial killer rapist during a zombie apocalypse. Verbally harass, kill, and rape women as you choose to progress the story.

It's a dangerous world with no laws. The zombies enjoy eating the flesh off warm humans and brutally raping them but you are the most dangerous rapist in town.

Rape Day is a choice driven visual novel. It does not include grinding or any other time wasting activities. So skip the foreplay and enjoy your Rape Day; you deserve it.

[Blossom]

Much of our policy around what we distribute is, and must be, reactionary

well, they're not wrong

you'd think a rape-themed game specifically designed to make a mockery of their submission rules would be something they could make a clear stand against, but nope! hahaha!

[mharr]

... we think this decision warrants further explanation.

Why?

[Mongrel]

Much of our policy around what we distribute is, and must be, reactionary

well, they're not wrong

you'd think a rape-themed game specifically designed to make a mockery of their submission rules would be something they could make a clear stand against, but nope! hahaha!

My "favourite" part is now naked they are about it. The first criteria they raise is if poses "any risk it puts to Valve", while "customers" come last.

Yeah, Valve game companies. We know.

[beatbandito]

To give them the benefit-of-the-doubt, there is likely a person that works at Valve with a very normal world view, who can no, for their own life or the lives of anyone they ever have or will love, reason why half the people to complain about Rape Story have copies of Neko Neko Sunrise (the game where you raise a catgirl sexslave from birth) on their favorites list.

[Brantly B.]

Yeah it's an explanation of the games they DO allow more than anything else.

An explanation that has to not amount to "the backlash we receive from those is less than the profit" but if you read it it totally did.

[Thad]

... we think this decision warrants further explanation.

Why?

Because it turns out that a depressingly high percentage of gamers is made up of horrible, horrible people.

[Friday]

Because it turns out that a depressingly high percentage of gamers is made up of people very concerned about the state of ethical consideration given by the community in regards to the journalistic integrity of gaming and why do they keep putting women, poc, and homosexuals into games what even is that it's just pandering to get clicks i mean not that i care i'm not a racist here's a 46 minute video about it

[Mongrel]

Because it turns out that a depressingly high percentage of gamers is made up of people very concerned about the state of ethical consideration given by the community in regards to the journalistic integrity of gaming and why do they keep putting women, poc, and homosexuals into games what even is that it's just pandering to get clicks i mean not that i care i'm not a racist here's a 46 minute video about it with skulls everywhere

[mharr]

Well, one skull that moves around the apartment between takes. I like to think they're chatting to it like Guybrush with Murray.

[Friday]

I'm not a racist or a misogynist but here's a 46 minute video about why putting 2 black women into Apex Legends is wrong

By the way, that's not a hypothetical video

I have actually watched parts of that video and videos exactly like it

[Newbie]

Rain World has been out for a while. It's super good, y'all.

[Lottel]

I watched a stream of Hypnospace Outlaw, where you play a volunteer moderator for a geocities-esque hosting service. You get paid in site-specific coins for cracking down on whatever the dev team tells you to at the time (copyright, harrassment, etc)

I can't recommend it highly enough to you guys. Clicking through an old browser and pretending to surf on a 90s internet while mulling over your decision to shut down a grandma's webpage just seems like a Bronto kind of game.

The music is really good, done by a guy called Hot Dad but Neil Cicierega was involved for a single webpage (called Steve Guy in the game).

If anyone plays it, let me know. It's a pretty good time.

[hngkong]

I can't check it out right now, but does this song show up?

[Mongrel]

Oh does it ever.

xD

[Thad]

Well this has my attention:


Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark

It's $20 in Early Access, and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. I'll probably give Early Access a miss and wait for the full release -- hell, I never did get around to finishing Ogre Battle, I should really get on that -- but Fell Seal looks very, very promising. There are a lot of turn-based strategy games and tactical RPGs, but as much as I enjoy the XCOMs and the Fire Emblems and so forth, I've really been jonesing for something in the TO/FFT mold for years, and this is a pretty overt homage to FFT.

Course, the proof is in the play. This game looks good, but it's all about the systems. It sure looks like the devs put a lot of care into the presentation (er, those portraits notwithstanding), so I'm optimistic that the core gameplay has that same attention to detail. We'll see. The release is set for some time in 2019.

Apparently the game's just about ready for release ("the latest build on Steam is nearly complete: it has everything save for the ending and our large secret dungeon"); it's on sale for $18, which I think is probably the last sale before they release it and increase the price.

There's a free demo on Itch.io. I tried it out, and...didn't really learn enough to develop much of a feel for it. Think about it: how much do you know about Final Fantasy Tactics after the first couple of battles?

On top of that, it went to a black screen every time I tried to enter the item shop or the Guild Hall. The good news is it autosaves after each battle, so I didn't lose any progress; the bad news is that I couldn't recruit any additional troops, which left me one party member short on the second battle, which made it a lot harder than I expect it would have been with a full roster. After most of my party was injured (which, on default settings, temporarily puts them out of commission; you can adjust that setting from a reduction in AP up to permadeath), I didn't bother trying the third battle.

I'm not going to hold bugs in a six-week-old demo for an Early Access game too much against it, but it's still tough to get a bead on it. Try the demo yourself and maybe you'll have better luck than I did.

On the plus side, it ran under Linux (natively) and recognized my PS4 controller, and it's got an option to display PS4 button icons instead of the default Xbox set.

I don't care much for the character art (though apparently you can add custom PNG character portraits). The background art is great, but it looks like the decision to go with hand-drawn backgrounds means you can't rotate the stages, which seems like a misstep.

The writing doesn't seem to be much to write home about; stock tropes, stock plot, stock characters, not particularly snappy dialogue. Though of course it's hard to judge just from the beginning of the game. I will say one thing: they had the good sense to recognize that Argath was the best villain in FFT, because the story begins with you encountering a rich asshole who thinks he's above the law.

In conclusion: I dunno. Try the demo; if it looks like something you're into, now's a good time to buy; if you're not sure, maybe wait for the reviews to come in.

I'm gonna go ahead and buy it. I've got too damn many games, and I still haven't finished Tactics Ogre (or played the first two Disgaea games, which I bought in a bundle recently), but what the hell, $18 isn't bad, I love the idea of more FFT-style games, and I want to reward these guys for making one and hopefully help show there's a market for more. I don't know how good the game will turn out to be, but I'm willing to put down $18 and see.

[Thad]

Adding: I've spent a few more hours with Fell Seal and I'm going to go ahead and give it a solid recommendation. I still feel like I'm relatively early in the game (haven't unlocked all the classes yet) but it's definitely got that "just one more level" play that FFT does. The skill trees seem better-considered than FFT's and every class appears to have some genuinely useful skills (and FFT is amazing, but let's be real here, there are great big swaths of, for example, the Archer ability set that are completely worthless). I'm not entirely sure how I feel about stuff like putting Haste and Slow on separate classes; I'll see how that shakes out.

On default settings, the difficulty curve is gentler than FFT's, but it feels fair. I've lost a couple of battles and had to reconsider classes and strategy. There are some pretty granular settings for adjusting difficulty, which might be useful on a replay, but I'm satisfied with the defaults for now.

The story...well, it ain't FFT. It's serviceable. The world-building...let's just say I have lots of questions about the system of government depicted in this game.

Anyhow, if you want a good FFT-style game, this scratches the itch. I definitely think I've gotten $18 worth of enjoyment out of it.

[Thad]

Google has announced Stadia, a browser-based game streaming service.

I have pretty mixed feelings about this. I don't love Google, and the most obvious downside to game streaming is that it's a HUGE step in the ongoing road away from ownership.

On the other hand, this could be a big deal for Linux gaming. Stadia's servers will be running Debian, which means any games available on Stadia will need to run on Linux. Doom Eternal has already been confirmed for a Stadia release, which means it's getting a Linux port.

Of course, there are no guarantees that just because a game has a Linux port means that port will see a standalone release. It's entirely possible that id (or whoever) could see supporting a Stadia release as a worthwhile investment while not feeling the same way about a standalone Linux release (think of the relative support costs). But even if that's the case, if they're targeting Linux compatibility then that greatly increases the odds of the Windows version of the game running well in WINE/DXVK/Proton. (I haven't tried Doom '16, but by all accounts it runs great under those.)

Course, it also depends on whether the thing succeeds. Remember when the first Steam Machines came out and a bunch of AAA games were announced for Linux, but then nobody bought the consoles, most of those ports were canceled, and...Linux still wound up becoming a better gaming platform than it had ever been before, but still not terribly well-supported by AAA studios?

At any rate, this will be interesting to watch. I hope it's as much of a shot in the arm for Linux gaming as it could be.

[Mongrel]

Haven't all game streaming services on offer so far failed due to the inherent drawbacks of always-on streaming as a game platform?

I suppose if anyone can overcome the restrictions, it's Google, but a lot of this is simply based on local infrastructure which is out of any developer or platform's hands.