#rpg experiences

[laryna6]

Upcoming games I”m looking forward to (that ended up turning into ‘PC games that have autistic-friendly gameplay and nice artstyles):

Bravery Network Online - That aesthetic! Post-scarcity worldbuilding, too. Turn-based battles in a fighting game format.

Cris Tales - Absolutely gorgeous visuals, time travel. Has a demo.

Rogue Lords - Again, that aesthetic! Eeevil, but still a fantastic color palette! 

Black Book - Young Slavic sorceress, draws from folklore, card-based battles, free prologue available now.

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist - Aesthetic! Narrative life sim, card-based challenges, grow up on an alien world. From the character designs, game devs seem to be liberal, so I certainly hope they’re going to be addressing the ethics involved. 

Frontier Quest - Not as gorgeous as some of the others on this list, but it does have a definite visual style that makes me think cut paper? 

Shujinkou - A JRPG that teaches Japanese! I’m probably going to be terrible at it since the fatigue fried my memory, sadly, but I still want to give it a shot. From the trailer, it looks like different aspects of the game have different artstyles, which could even be a nod to the era of gaming when that was a thing driven by system limitations? Some cool stuff could be done with it.

Inkulinati - Medieval manuscript art style

Selling Sunlight - Artstyle ofc - looks like a kinder, gentler Sunless series? Non-combat traveling merchant.

We Are the Caretakers - Afrofuturist with a nice list of inspirations gameplay-wise.

Black Crystals - Hand-drawn rpg.

? - I know nothing about this other than the art is gorgeous, it’s a card game and it’s not currently in English.

[laryna6]

There’s a recent roguelike deckbuilder called ‘Against the Moon’ where you’re like defending the last of humanity against an army of eldritch abominations controlled by the moon and when I look at it all I can think of is that tweet with ‘fly me to the moon/let me kick its fucking ass/let me show it what I learned/in my moon jujitsu class’

[laryna6]

Some free games that aren’t designed to suck your wallet dry + how they are getting their money: 

Night of Full Moon - a dark fairy tale themed roguelike deckbuilder also available for mobile. There’s additional class/mode content unlocked by one-time purchases if you want more (I did), but the free stuff is pretty meaty with four classes and fifteen degrees of difficulty. One of my fav games. I have sunk so many hours into it.

Burn Me Twice - an adventure game about a witch, with investigation and puzzles. Supported by a university.

Helltaker - comedy puzzle game about a ‘harem full of demon girls. There’s a $10 artbook you can buy if you want to support.

Epic Battle Fantasy 3 - part of a series but no real ongoing plot so it’s not a problem the third game is the first available one? Fun JRPG style game, with sequels (that aren’t free) if you want more.

Dark Descent: The Blue Rose - an RPGmaker game. Apparently there are a lot of good free RPGmaker games around, including some notable enough to have large TVTropes pages. I liked a few, but I found they start looking the same after awhile. This is a well-done one if you want to see if they’re your thing.

Grimm’s Hollow - Another freeware RPG, Halloween themed.

Witches x Warlocks - a Halloween raising sim/dating sim where you can be male/female/nonbinary dating male/female/nonbinary creatures of the night. There’s a supporter pack you can buy for some extra cgs + an extra route.

Onirim - A pretty simple but tough card game? There’s some expansion packs you can buy (I haven’t), but getting both of them totals two bucks.

[laryna6]

With Amazing Cultivation Simulator now in English, I really want to see the shenanigans and missions available to high-level cultivators, but as far as I can tell the recent LP videos all have people who don’t know WTF they’re doing, not even as much as the person who did a vid series based on the English mod a few months ago, who got all their leveled people badly near-permanently injured by tackling too high-level stuff like right after getting someone with a golden core, and it’s when you have golden core cultivators that the game is supposed to ‘open up.’ 

It’s making me want to play the game myself even though I’m terrible at simish things/anything at all real-time bc if everyone is terrible at it no pressure, but budget.

You can have rabbit yao guai characters in the game, and a bunch of other types, aargh. 

[laryna6]

Killing Nazis is a hallowed tradition among video gamers, and the world needs a recs thread for games that give the disabled an equal chance to kill Nazis (because the Nazis are out to murder them).

So, gimme Nazi-killing games that are turn-based/have good accessibility options?

Some examples:

Persona 2: Innocent Sin (JRPG)

Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics (tactical rpg)

Pathway, an Indiana Jones-style adventure tactical roguelike rpg

Freedom Force and Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich - real time, but with pause

[laryna6]

I do turn-based games because accessibility: my reaction speed and hand-eye coordination difficulties add annoying Fake Difficulty to anything real-timey and make platforming just. Ungodly annoying. I was co-playing Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door, and there was a segment where you had to go back and forth through this short platforming segment to get to the next plot bit and it look for freaking ever each time.

However, I prefer games that aren’t the stereotypical ‘line up and hit each other with sticks’ with everyone taking a turn and then the other side gets to go. In Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, my first intro to turn-based RPGs, you can make double the default number of moves/turn if you’re skilled, and shut down the enemy so badly their turn can end the first time they do something. That kind of set the standard.

Grandia has you manipulate turn order to prevent enemies from attacking/using their moves - the ‘cancel’ mechanic, which Atelier Iris 2 has a version of if you’re desperate for more Grandia. 

Some of Night of Full Moon’s classes have ways to either make your turn absurdly long (especially Ranger), get turns one after another, or make the enemy miss their turn. I love the content Diaries added. I just had a run where I spent a third of it absolutely getting my ass kicked because good cards weren’t showing up and I didn’t want to weigh down my deck with trash while I was waiting for a useful synergy to show up, but then I made some good calls and saw that I had made smart moves because things completely turned around, going from barely hanging on/considering quitting the run to kicking ass to the hard mode final boss never getting a turn. 

As a child I was unable to do things that supposedly were so easy people could only imagine me failing at them if I was messing it up on purpose thanks to undiagnosed autism, so getting to feel competent, or even good at things is... a really good feeling for me. I was getting to the point where I was really on top of my life and then the fatigue hit and my ability to actually do things sank like the Titanic. It’s a bit addictive to get to feel that way again. I keep wanting to open the game for one more run wanting a hit of that self-esteem.

[laryna6]

The Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality now contains 1427 games (+ OSTs + novels +) including the hit platformer Celeste and this one, so it’s like almost doubled in size and people will probably just keep adding to it, so if you play computer/TTRP games at all and have any disposable income it would be kind of nuts not to pick it up.

[laryna6]

So I’ve true ending’d Slay the Spire with all four characters, so now I’m calling it quits and I mean it. 

Which apparently meant back to playing Dicey Dungeons instead of writing, but then I’ll cut myself some slack - I had a late night last night so today I wouldn’t have been in the best shape for writing. 

Roguelikes are bad for me but oh so addictive. Of course, if things that are bad for me aren’t addictive I stop doing them, so.

I did inherit my maternal grandparents’ hoarding genes, but with books and physical games I can get new ones if I sell them, so I don’t hold on to them too badly, and computer games don’t take up space. 

I’m so glad I managed to get Nemi into ZKC: I really missed RPing with her. I don’t mind so much that it’s a tiny fandom with like a half dozen good fanfics when I can write out scenarios with her. RPing really helps me nail down the characters - last chapter and this upcoming one both feature Reality Ensues revelations that we had while RPing the characters and going ‘wait, that means...’ 

Found family, characters with psychological issues as a consequence of their lives, people being competent/intelligent, crack humor that turns out later to actually be tragic... ZKC/The Unlimited does hit a lot of the same buttons as Noblesse.

I have some more IRL stuff that needs doing, but I’ll try to write tomorrow.