Summer Games Fest

[Rob_Haines]

I've been watching some of the E3-replacement games shows with my wife this year, mostly as it's become something of a tradition. Given how rough a year it's been for the game industry, it's been fascinating to see how much time's been given to interesting indie titles, and I thought I'd share a few of the games that looked promising so far to me:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2202650/Crescent_County/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2240620/UNBEATABLE/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2963240/Generation_Exile/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1101370/Wind_Runners/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2582320/Mixtape/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2132890/Possessors/

Has anything caught your eye?

[Jubal]

Oo nice! You have a much broader taste for games than me: the fact that I find most games that need action/pacing/precision rather tiring to get playable really restricts what I play (I can learn actiony games, and I will do if it's, like, Hades and I love the plot, but I don't pick up indie platformers or racing games or rhythm-y games because I can't just flip them open and chill out). I also generally don't go for horror games which is another huge cut in what I play - some sorts of horror, e.g. environmental, are fine, but atmospheric, psychological, jump-scare, and gore horror in particular are just... not things I totally can't deal with but things I don't want in my gaming. My brain's perfectly OK at making its own nightmares as it is!

From your list I think Generation Exile is the one I'd be most likely to get? I should play more city-builders, I quite enjoy them though some get too micromanagement-heavy for me.

Recent games I've stumbled across: I see that Skald: Against the Black Priory has been released, I played the demo for that a while ago so might get the main game sometimes. I've followed it for a while and indeed the dev posted here a couple of times.

I was flicking through the Latin American fest/showcase on Steam and some things caught my eye. Curilemu might be too horror-y for me but the mystery and exploration side of it feels interesting and I'm quite intrigued by the idea of exploring Patagonian folklore.

Arco meanwhile was the standout immediate-wishlist for me, and looks very up my street indeed. RPG which isn't too heavy, interesting tactical elements, unusual setting, choices and character motivations? All very much check, it definitely looks like something I'd like to play. And it has llamas in it, I can't say no to a game with western revenge plots and tiny pixel llamas.

[Spritelady]

I think Jubal and I have quite a large overlap in what we enjoy playing and for what reasons - I likewise tend to steer increasingly towards either 'cosy' games or RPGs, as I find the former relaxing and the latter engaging. I enjoyed platformers a lot when I was younger (back in the days where most of my gaming was done by hiding out in my school's computer lab and heading to Miniclip!), but haven't really played any in recent years. Perhaps I should look into it again.

Generation Exile and Mixtape both look interesting to me, and I may need to add them to my wishlist accordingly!

[Rob_Haines]

Yeah, I'm generally on the side of cosier narrative games, or at least more imaginative indies. FromSoft games are my one major deviation into the AAA space, but I have absolutely zero interest in FPSes and big budget games where violence is your only interaction with the world.

Much like you, Jubal, I don't handle horror well at all. My brain's way too good at extrapolating fictional horror into the real world 

[Jubal]

I never know what counts as AAA, but the biggest budget games I play are all single player RPGs - Witcher, Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate, etc etc - which I suppose tend to have violence as a major but by no means sole interaction mechanism?

[Rob_Haines]

That's kinda my philosophy on it; I can understand violence as part of the classic videogame progression through meaningful story. (I often wish it wasn't so embedded, that you can't have a big name narrative game without being padded with hours of kobold-punching, but that's a personal digression.) But I'm not much for games which are solely thinly-veiled excuses for shooting guys in the head.

I played a few demos during the past week, and particularly enjoyed Preserve - which was a pleasant little puzzle game about building suitable little biomes for animals to live in - and Tiny Glade - a cute little Townscaper-style sandbox where you get to build little castles in a glade, with gorgeous lighting and some clever tools.

[Jubal]

Edited the above to fix links - remember you don't need to put quote marks in URLs in this forum's BBCode

Tiny glade does look very cute!

And yeah - though one of my frustrations is that games that really try and give you low-violence options in fantastical/historical stories often lean far more heavily into sneaking, and I just cannot do most sneak mechanics, I without fail find them extremely frustrating in just about every game they appear in.

[Rob_Haines]

Thanks for fixing my links; I'm very out of practice at BBCode xD

[Jubal]

No problem and not any fault of yours. Indeed it may well not just be practice - I think implementations for things like URLs differ in subtle ways between different BBCode versions!