so whatcha playin'?

[maurvir]

I tried looking for another game similar to the Room series but I'm afraid that I have been spoiled by the best.

I tried Meridian 157: Prologue, which is the free introductory chapter to this series (there are 3 more chapters at $1.99 each). It has SOME similarities with the Room series, but its puzzles were VERY mundane.

I also tried The House of Da Vinci Lite which again is the free introductory chapter to the full games which are $4.99 each (there is likewise an introductory The House of Da Vinci II Lite which I haven't tried yet). This is a bit more promising in that its puzzles approach those in the Room series in sophistication. You are a student of Leonardo da Vinci while he was living in Florence. You have been given messages from Master da Vinci implying some conspiracy against him, and so you must solve the puzzles to reveal the secret(s?) he has hidden. I am a bit bothered by the in-game devices because they have distinctly mystical powers to work as opposed to scientific reasons, but you can't have everything.

I haven't quite decided that I will continute beyond the lite intro chapters.

I have played through Meridian 157, and it does get better. The puzzles aren't as complex as The Room, but it makes up for it with a cool story. I didn't feel bad about shelling out for the other chapters.

[DEyncourt]

Well, I bought The House of da Vinci and it matches The Room series in terms of puzzle sophistication. It still bothers me that Leonardo da Vinci would hide TWO UNpowered handheld devices that allows the user to not only see the interior of some devices but enables that user to move parts within. In fact whatever the conclusion--I am in chapter 5 of 8--is likely to be a disappointment in comparison.

The puzzles are very much linear in that while you can wander a bit within a given "room", you must solve each puzzle in turn, so much more like The Room 4: Old Sins than its other parts. Your list of available tools is very limited, but that is OK because once you have used each tool it becomes locked into the device you just opened. You have no choice but leave it behind.

So far there was one particular puzzle which was more annoying than inventive:

Spoiler

you must set up manikins to match their set positions in the past (aided by one of those devices) in order to continue. The control to allow you to do this are unclear: a slider which adjusts something. I was almost at the point of giving up when it happened to work. I must wonder if this particular puzzle had a built-in timer that allowed the player to continue after some set time.

I guess I'm probably committed to buying part II.

[DEyncourt]

Well, maybe not.

The House of da Vinci (HdV) has another puzzle (which comes in two parts) which is impossible to explain. Maybe the gamemaker can explain them, but I only "solved" them by accident.

AND there are at least two puzzles which are one-way, meaning that if you do not make all the correct moves then the puzzles become unsolvable. There is a reason why HdV has an option to restart a chapter. I "only" had to restart twice in the final chapter, but maybe I got VERY lucky by not having to restart within elsewhere. Perhaps a better option would be to reset only the current puzzle because HdV's story became VERY linear in the final chapter. One of the opening puzzles in the final chapter I solved very quickly the first time but it took MANY minutes to solve those two other times.

So be forewarned. At five bucks it isn't expensive (there are no in-game purchases at all), but you can get stuck at least two points I can name (and probably there are others which I happened to miss).

So I am not certain I will get HdV2.

[DEyncourt]

And the ending of HdV was...unsatisfying, which is another reason for not getting HdV2.

[Yori]

Pokémon Legends: Arceus

[Metacell]

As far as puzzle games go, I gave DARQ a try. It's trippy, like a semi-B/W sepia-toned (although more of a grey-violet) Tim Burton film. You have to use multi-dimensional use of your surrounding to solve puzzles. I bet some of you would like it.

[DEyncourt]

I cannot find any game named 'darq'.

Ah, I found this Wikipedia article for DARQ. It isn't a smartphone game.

[DEyncourt]

I peeked into HdV2 by getting HdV2Lite (which is free and contains only the opening chapter). Instead the player finds himself locked in a miserable prison cell of another town in northern Italy into which he is sent a message telling him that the guards temporarily have been sent away along with a key to his cell. There is only the appearance of freedom of movement as there is only one pathway forward leading the player to a monologue from one of the Medicis. The player does not encounter many puzzles, and certainly not enough to indicate if the makers had gotten rid of those unexplainable puzzles or one-way puzzles (requiring a chapter reset) found in HdV.

I probably will get HdV2, just not yet.

[Metacell]

I cannot find any game named 'darq'.

Ah, I found this Wikipedia article for DARQ. It isn't a smartphone game.

Yeah, I'm one of those people who grew up with arcade games, owned many TV-consoles, and probably amassed a total library of thousands of computer games, but never even considered the gameboy or other handheld consoles, and can't imagine wanting to stare at any of those little screens for any prolonged activity.

[ukimalefu]

Downloaded Final Fantasy Record Keeper, just to try an RPG, and Final Fantasy is one of the most popular RPG series, right? and I remember trying FF7 long ago, the pS1 version, and I remember I liked it, but I never passed that boss at the top of that tower. If you know, you know.

Anyway, this FFRK is insanely complicated. I did the tutorial and a training mission and I never knew what was going on or why or how.

I deleted it. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just not for me.

[Robert]

Just finished Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Damn, the ending story of Shriek is so sad. ::sniff::

[DEyncourt]

I got and solved HdV2. It is USUALLY more straightforward AND MOST of the in-game clues are more helpful than in HdV1.

I should note that should you get stuck on a puzzle and cannot figure out how to reset it to its beginning setup, you can just force-quit the game (at least on an iPhone). On the one puzzle which gave me problems (entirely due to the game's clues failing to clearly describe the ending conditions. This was their only failure) I had spent over an hour trying to get to what I THOUGHT were the ending conditions, then giving up by quitting HdV2 then went to sleep. In the morning I resumed and that puzzle was reset to its starting position.

I should also note that HdV2 is HUGE: 2.5 GBs. I am running out of space on my 256 GB iPhone 11 so once I finished it I deleted it.

--

I am enjoying Six Match. It has some similarities to Bejeweled in that you are removing lines of 3 or more tokens on the screen BUT the game logic is different. Instead you are represented within the game by a die (singular for dice) on top of which you can set the number of moves remaining. You must find a combo of 3 or more of the same tokens in a line upon a field which is 6 tokens across and eight tall. When you complete a line, the tokens explode adding to your score, and the field of tokens drops down. Higher within the field you can further score by matching other lines of 3 or more tokens.

The basic game comes with ads, perhaps most annoyingly they will play their music and game sounds even if you have sound turned off within Six Match. $1.99 to remove those ads was a bargain.

[DEyncourt]

"Nerdle is Wordle but with mathematical equations".

New puzzles get posted at 4 pm PST.

You must input a valid equation.

A number or math symbol (+-*/=) used in the today's answer but in the wrong location will be marked with a purple tile

One in the correct location will be marked with a green tile.

One not used in today's equation will be marked with a black tile. Note that if your answer has two "1"s in it but there is only one "1" in today's equation, then one will be marked with a green or purple tile and the other with a black tile.

While addition and multiplication are commulatative, for Nerdle "2+3" is not the same as "3+2".

[DEyncourt]

Worldle is Wordle for geography nerds.

Instead of letters/symbols, it gives you an outline of the country, provides the distance between the geographic centers of your guess and the correct country (in km but you can change this to miles), a rough direction and some percentage score which I do not understand.

[Warin]

I have been hard core binging Star Trek Online on my PS5. My Xbox thinks that I have abandoned it! That will lat until Friday, when horizon Forbidden West comes out. The Xbox will still feel abandoned, but it looks like it is going to be an amazing game.

[DEyncourt]

Unfortunately the New York Times purchase of Wordle means that the game comes loaded with ad trackers now.

[DEyncourt]

OK, I have never played Star Wars: The Old Republic, but you may want to watch this "trailer" for the game. As BoingBoing.net contributor puts it: it "include more storytelling in a few minutes than some hours long movie trilogies".

[ukimalefu]

Downloaded a golf game for the iPhone called ‘Golf Dreams’. Did the tutorial and played 2 holes. I like it.

[ukimalefu]

It seems like that golf game comes with only one free course, and it's only 9 holes I think. Want more? you gotta pay.

Oh well. I guess I can try to improve my score until I get bored.

[ukimalefu]

Never mind my previous post, I can play other courses, the in app purchases seem to be for removing ads

But with those graphics they don’t look very different, you get “mountains “ instead of “beach”

I still like it, seems easy, but I still can’t figure out how hard I’m hitting the ball

[ukimalefu]

Full of Stars

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/full-of-s ... 1078612182

A sci-fi RPG. The “arcade part” is flying your ship through asteroid fields. You steer your ship by tapping on the sides of the screen, sounds easy, but I’ve died 3 times. You also gather resources while flying. Besides that you make decisions about your crew and your ship. The story is not bad. The game is engaging enough that you want to keep going.

The free game seems to let you do everything, but sure, buying resources with real money would make things easier.

[DEyncourt]

Adding this here because of my previous post on Wordle.

The NY Times changed "today's" Wordle to another, less politically-charged word.

It should be noted that the original word list that the NY Times version of Wordle is using was created over a year ago by the creator.

[Metacell]

Been playing The Outer Worlds, aka Fallout in space. It's a lot of fun...it really only shares the Fallout worlds humor and Americana satire. Stylistically, it's heavily based on EC Space Fantasy/Weird Science comics. Very colorful, gorgeous to look at. Unless you have an X-Box One or PS4, you need a pretty beefy PC to play it smoothly--one of the few games I had to turn down the res to 1080p, not a huge sacrifice. Highly recommended.

[adndgamer]

In the last week I've been playing:

Endless Space 2 (like Civ, but i think it takes even longer to finish a game)
Bloons 6 (mindless short games)
StarCraft 2 (Arcade maps)

[Metacell]

On one of these threads I asked if there had been any decent Dungeons & Dragons games made since Neverwinter Nights 2...and it turns out that (aside from the current playable Beta of Baldur's Gate 3), no all the games since have been more or less turds.

Well, that's sort-of unofficially changed, thanks to Pathfinder: Kingmaker (and it's recent sequel Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, which I'll probably buy and play later).

For those unaware (and I admit, I gave up on D&D after 3rd edition...no longer willing to shell out $$hundreds$$ on new rule sets) the 4th edition was produced to much controversy, notably ending much license-free use of the D20 core use rules by 3rd party publishers for their own game rules and modules. And a lot of people didn't like it. But the old 3rd edition open game licensing still applied so Paizo Publishing essentially created D&D version 3.75 with their Pathfinder RPG, which became more popular than official D&D for several years.

Anyway, the Pathfinder: Kingmaker video game plays essentially the same as the old Baldur's Gate games with modern and lavish 3D-ish isometric graphics allowing a party of six characters and a very similar interface, with essentially the same ruleset as Neverwinter Nights with a host of additional character class options. The game feels pretty much the most slavishly devoted to replicating the widest range of pen-and-paper rules I have seen, such as implementing movement rules for varying terrain and requiring you to hunt, cook, and take guard watch when you camp.

Although, I've just gotten started (and I get the impression it's one of those VAST games), it's pretty darn impressive and not hard to get started...it all starts coming back if you've played any of these games before. Available for Windows and MacOS...A WORD OF WARNING: when purchased through steam, you have to let the first run of the game launch for 20-30 minutes, while seemingly dead and frozen in the dock without even an app running marker. After the first launch it starts up immediately thereafter. Worth it.

[ukimalefu]

Call of Duty Deluxe Edition

The copy I "got" says "Mac". but it's an unofficial windows port. I can't change game settings, but other than that, it works on my Mac with macOS mojave, that's all I care about. And I believe what I got includes all the sequels I never got to play (the WWII original games, not modern warfare or anything after that)

[Yori]

Lego Star Wars - The Skywalker Saga is on sale on the Switch so I picked it up. Absolutely loving it so far.