What Are You Playing Right Now?

DarkLordOtaku

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18 Oct 2024
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I've just completed The Case of the Golden Idol, a detective mystery game, by indie developer Color Gray Games.

You play as something of an observer to the legend of the Golden Idol as it bloodily passes hands across time. The game is broken up into "scenarios" which are essentially frozen moments in time, immediately following a death.

These scenarios are broken into two modes: Exploring and Thinking, which you can freely swap between at any time. During the explore phase, you navigate around the scene searching for nouns and verbs. For example, you might check a local newspaper and learn the name of a local politician is "Edmund," so you'd collect that name in your repository of clues. The game tells you how many clues are present in the scene, so you'll know when you've thoroughly investigated.

The second phase, thinking, is when the game presents you with a Mad Libs style fill in the blank paragraph like:
"_____ ______ was upset that ______ _______ received ________ in the ______. In an act of revenge they _______ the _______ ________ which lead to the untimely demise of _______ ________."

The game iterates on this simple premise remarkably well, sometimes changing thinking prompts to have you consider the location of witnesses during events, or the chronology in which they occurred. While "clues" (nouns and verbs) might be present on one object, the context of them may be present somewhere completely different in the scene.

Thus, the game presents itself like a series of interconnected logic puzzles, not dissimilar to what you might see on a logic based word problem. It's hard to estimate the time this might take someone, as it's entirely dependent upon your own deductive capabilities.

The game is basically 100% environmental story telling, weaving together not only an isolated story in the context of each scenario, but building upon them towards a larger narrative. The game also comes with two DLC packs, which are frankly quite a bit more challenging than the base game.

I'd say this is a strong recommendation for anyone who likes a logic puzzles, or are just a fan of mysteries.

 
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akira__

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I've just begun playing Another Crab's Treasure. I'll provide an update at a later time.

Mr Bean Waiting GIF by MOODMAN
 
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KvallyX

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Gran Turismo 7 and Stellar Blade. In Stellar Blade, I am stuck on the same boss as I was when I took a break from playing because I couldn't beat it. Tachy :(

Stellar_Blade_Alpha_Signal_%28470%29.jpg
 

DarkLordOtaku

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I've just completed Another Crab's Treasure, an indie game by Aggro Crab. Overall, you can platinum the game in about 10~15 hours.

The game is a fun mix of souls-like and 3d platformer. It stands out from the pack as being a very bright game for the genre, with a fun premise and great sense of humor.

You play as a small hermit crab, who sets out to regain his lost shell. Is journey takes him to the deep sea, where he meets a colorful cast of characters. Amusingly, the underwater denizens have begun using trash in all aspects of their lives. As you'd hope, everyone speaks in fish puns, and your "armor" involves finding and wearing different pieces of trash as your shell, each with different abilities.

The game is remarkably vertical for a souls-like, giving you the ability to jump and swim. Thus, the game often feels like a platformer with many jumping puzzles and places to climb and grapple.

There is a skill tree of sorts, powered by the latent power of Umami, which give you a few different styles to play. It's clear the developers deeply love souls-likes, as they've managed to blend just about every different Souls-like mechanic into one game.

While the game does have a few bugs, and there are some enemy abilities which don't feel like they were play tested very well, I still think this is a positive recommendation for fans of souls-likes or platformers.

 
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DarkLordOtaku

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No more Links to the product.

It isn't a Forum for Ads.
???

It's a forum for sharing information about what games you're playing. I'm sharing the links once in the context of the summary of the game I just finished. Most of these titles are by indie or solo devs, so if someone is interested, I just want to make it easier to learn more.
 

Gediminas

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???

It's a forum for sharing information about what games you're playing. I'm sharing the links once in the context of the summary of the game I just finished. Most of these titles are by indie or solo devs, so if someone is interested, I just want to make it easier to learn more.
This is gaming forum, we all know "where bodies are buried" in gaming.

The name of the game is fully enough.
 

DarkLordOtaku

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This is gaming forum, we all know "where bodies are buried" in gaming.

The name of the game is fully enough.
This is... genuinely very silly.

But okay, I'll swap to gameplay screenshots or something, as it doesn't seem you have any issue with that. I want people to have an informative takeaway about these games, so antagonizing others isn't really worth it.
 
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KvallyX

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I ended up passing on that on release due to the critical negativity at launch.

In your opinion, was that overrated? I imagine they've cleaned up some bugs since then, so is the game worth a try today?
Game play is great. Fun powers and magic. Parkour is addicting. Fun open world map. Plenty of enemies, plenty of fast travel ports, forgiving when getting stuck while parkouring, it has the most important ingredients for being a fun game for me. The negatives? The babbling guy that is built into her arm bracelet, shitty user interface and her overuse of the word fuck (and I use the word fuck a lot).