I was trying for the second time to enjoy animal well. I kind of see how it’s a great game, but playing it feels like torture to me. I’m constantly second-guessing myself whenever I’m stuck, I don’t know if I haven’t figured out the puzzle, suck at platforming, or missing a tool.

Thinking about playing Hades again next week.

Very very slowly playing the Stanley Parable. It’s pretty nice, I often feel mocked by the narrator.

Started the Stanley parable, haven’t gotten far yet, but it’s rather interesting.

It’s been so long that I’d forgotten the name of the game, turns out I got it confused with a game with extremely similar mechanics, only realised today when I found the sequel to the game I played. The game that I’ve played and loved is called Lapse. It’s free on Google Play store.

Let me know if you do. Haven’t ever done any game dev, but I’m mostly a programmer, so maybe I can help with it.

Yes, probably because it’s a port. I mostly find games through pc/console…

Come to think of it, ever played reigns? It’s a roguelike series, the games have similar game mechanics but different settings. They can be played easily with one hand because you make decisions by swiping cards left or right, and at least the one game that i played had pretty interesting story.

I know what you mean about being too tired to start a game, we had that problem at the beginning of the hobby too! We’ve since learned that even though most filler games can sound a bit boring on paper, they can be quite fun and the good ones end up getting played pretty often.

Our favourites:

• Kites: A real-time game about flipping little sand timers while playing cards. It somehow manages to be tense and relaxing at the same time, and it’s always kind of funny when someone accidentally knocks a bunch of them over.
• The Mind: The game is so simple the rules can be fully explained in a minute. You try to play numbered cards in ascending order without knowing what’s in other people’s hands. The faces people make to cheat the no communication rule can be hilarious. Especially good to bring on trips, can even be played on trains or planes. Also good to play with someone new due to the simple rules.
• MicroMacro Crime City: Hard to explain this one without an example, so look it up if it sounds interesting to you. It’s about solving crimes by looking at a 2D+time dimension map… It gives the intense satisfaction of detective stories while not putting much of a mental load on you. Does require very good lighting, otherwise can be straining on the eyes.
• Tranquility / The Ascent: Two games in the same series, mechanics are different but they have similar vibes of, well, tranquility. These games are beautiful, gameplay feels a bit like solitaire but with a bit less thinking/memorization, and they both have well-designed two player modes.
• Sky Team: Dice-placing game about landing a plane. The theme was not appealing to me, so it took recommendations from many sources for us to finally try it out. It’s in that sweet spot where the game feels engaging and tense, after a win you feel accomplished. I’m not sure how they managed that with putting dice on a small cardboard panel. Another plus is that it has an expansion where you get to call penguins to ask them to get out of your way.

I should mention these are all co-op games, because I hate losing, and I don’t like others losing. We do own a few competitive games, but they are pretty much all luck-based / super pretty / funny, so that we don’t care who wins.

Dead Cells is technically on Android, and a great game, but you’d need a controller to really enjoy it.

I absolutely recommend Slay the Spire. It’s a deck-building game ported from pc/console, a very good game, and the port is decent. I have over 300 hours in it, still play it often. It’s a hard game, especially at higher difficulty levels it really requires you to make good decisions everywhere. Choosing your path, building the deck and playing the cards all feel engaging. The vast variety of synergies and anti-synergies also ensures that each play feel different and interesting. There’s also a board game, also very good, although that probably also falls into your blind spot a little, more people playing often add to the complexity.

I’ve recently got Dicey Dungeons, also on android, light game, not a lot of replay value, but the campaign is pretty fun and interesting so far, so I think the price to play time ratio is still pretty decent.

I imagine it would be difficult to capture what makes the the original so special and also make improvements. But yes an open source alternative would be wonderful.

Any idea if someone already started a promising project? I did a quick search on Github and found quite a few HS simulators, most of them archived. Didn’t find anything that’s HS inspired. I doubt I’ll find time for it between my other hobbies, but I do have a couple weeks of holiday leftover from last year, so who knows.

As for what we moved to. I play roguelikes/-lites these days when I’m in transit, and I’ve always been a souls fan, so I’ve no lack of games to play at home. My partner went through a few trashy mobile games as I recall, then we started to play board games together. It’s pretty costly but very fun, and more relaxing. I suppose the tactile aspect and the higher amount of interaction appealed to us.

This is probably not helpful if you’re looking for ideas of what game to play next, sorry about that. I do really miss the White Stars and have not known anything that’s quite like it. Espeically when my corp was around RS8. That was for some reason especially fun.

I started the game in its first year, played for probably five years, got to solid mid Rs9 level, even somewhat enjoyed doing shipments, then one day I suddenly realised that the game was taking up so much time, and unlike before, I wasn’t even looking forward to RS10. So I quit. Kept the game for a while to chat to corp mates and eventually didn’t migrate to DN when it dropped.

My partner got into the game not long after me, he kept playing for a couple more years on and off, got to RS10, managed a few successful runs, then decided RS9 was more fun lol. But after dark nebula he really dropped off. he learned to do the new Red Stars, did a few white stars, and… don’t think he touched it in the last few months.

I did make a few good friend in the game who are still in touch, but I haven’t really thought about HS in so long. This bring up some nostalgia for sure.

Animal well and wingspan. I think there are others too, despite trying hard to keep stuff in my wishlist instead of backlog.

Mostly my backlog comes from starting a game and then getting distracted by something else.

Good luck! 🤞

I have never been good at platforming, almost gave up on getting into the main city. Luckily my partner has the skills and patience to do those pure difficult platforming challenges for me, so I managed to complete the game. Same thing with Blasphemous actually. Gorgeous game, platforming way too difficult for me.

Even he couldn’t do white palace, and I doubt I’m good enough to beat the true final boss, so I never got the good ending.

I was honestly hoping that they had added something later in game that makes it no longer instant death… So that isn’t happening then?

At least I have the sequel to look forward to

Blasphemous, a 2D Metroidvania game with a very distinctive art style.

So far loving the world design and level design, it reminds me strongly of Dark Souls, without feeling like a clone in any way. I do unfortunately suck at platforming, and this game is so far not forgiving about it…

That game is awesome! I loved the tutorial book system so much.

Somewhere between 60-100, and it’s only this small because my main gaming platforms are PS4 and Nintendo switch.

The Reckoner by Brandon Sanderson. Not a lot of people like the series, but I always loved it, and it seemed that so many scenes were written with a visual medium in mind already, and exaggerated in a way that would work well in an animation, not in a Live-Action production.