hehe this was actually really fun to read
and it seems as though I have a new game to play, Voidigo
Let me preface this by saying that — like the title says — I'm not in the most sober of states while writing this, but the thoughts running through my head are plenty and I can't keep them all to myself, can I? So excuse any grammatical errors I might unknowingly make while writing this
Games are fun, REALLY fun, I mean most of you reading this must've played at least *A* game before in your life and it was definitely fun, wasn't it? Recently I've been starting to play more indie games, and more specifically, 𝓻𝓸𝓰𝓾𝓮𝓵𝓲𝓴𝓮𝓼 (and roguelites as well, but it doesn't sound as catchy). Now I've been a big fun of roguelikes for as long as I can remember, pretty sure my first PROPER roguelike was Enter the Gungeon, fun game, I need to play it again sometimes, but as time went on I had an itch, an insatiable itch which I couldn't get rid of, yet I knew exactly what I needed. More roguelikes
Next in line which I can remember is Risk of Rain 2, this was when I first PROPERLY started to get into the genre, Gungeon is fun sure don't get me wrong but you can't tell me that scaling higher and higher with more crazy weapons and enemies and mods until your pc explodes isn't more fun. That aside though, it was this game that made me realize that I really, REALLY enjoy these types of games
And, for better or for worse, I'm a tiktok user, and what does that entail? Well since the chinese overlords have full access to basically my whole entire being and existance ~(yes I'm overexaggerating of course, I don't wanna come off as someone who actually thinks that)~, that made me start to get videos about roguelikes, and next in line which I can remember is a small indie roguelike which I'm unsure many people have heard of
Voidigo, voidigo oh dear voidigo, this game holds a special place in my hear as I know that as far as roguelikes go, this one is RELATIVELY obscure, of course not to the point of irrevelancy but still unknown enough to the point where you can't really mention it outside of specific circles. But with its charming style and mechanics and INCREDIBLY nice and smooth mechanics, I cannot recommend this game enough to others, I could likely write two more paragraphs explaining how I'm so angry its so unknown, but I think I'll just leave it at that
Last but not least for the "yeah this is a roguelike" category, we have, of course, the king of all roguelikes, something which anyone knows of as long as theyy're familiar with videogames.
The Binding of Isaac. (...with all dlc's)
If raving about the previous game could take me 3 paragraphs at most, this could EASILY get up to 6 paragraphs at LEAST, but for the sake of my sanity and urge to sleep I'll keep this short ('keep this short' she says, while having the intro be already a whole paragraph if not two long)
This game is special, not only because well, its isaac for pete's sake but also because it truly allowed me to open the floodgates to many more, such as hades, StS, Picayune dreams, tiny rogues, inscryption and so on and so forth and etc and etc yap yap yap, what I'm getting at here is that Isaac is genuinely a game like no other, from the artstyle to the gameplay to the pure and sheer exipirience and fun and grind and playtime one can get out of it, I remember getting it on sale, with all dlc's, thinking that I'm wasting my money. Yet here we are around ~400 hours later, countless mods and ports tried... and yet I'm still nowhere near dead god lol, though I feel like that's part of the fun, most of the time I don't play this game for some stupid arbitrary goal, I play it because it's fun, I play it because hearing the persona 4 specialist song go off makes my brain release ungodly amounts of dopamine.
Now with that yapfest out of the way, let's talk about the last, and my currently most obsessed over roguelike game — Picayune Dreams.
"But Memer" - I (don't) hear you asking - "Didn't you already mention that game in the 'etc and etc' section earlier?" Why yes I did! But it's so god-damn good I have to talk about it
Of course, this game doesn't really hold a candle to games like TBoI or dead cells or any other established roguelike, but the way it's made, the entire idea of the game is just, so, so nice.
For those unaware (which is likely most people reading this), P(icayune) D(reams) is a game which combines the aspects of Vampire Survivors with touhou style bullet hell. Now you may be thinking, how the hell does this work? Is it a good idea? A good concept? Well yes and... yes actually!
Without getting into too much detail, the game works on a skill tree basis, eugh, disgusting I know right? Not. Personally I dislike skill trees, may just be my own thing, but I feel as if 80% of the time they're not well designed enough, but what does PD do? Yeah their skill tree system is just nice.
How the skill tree system works in PD is you get a maximum of X points at the start, but once you reach the EXP cap, you can prestige. "Oh, but prestige-ing sucks! It makes me lose all my progress and with BARELY any rewards!", I hear you say my dear voice inside of my head. And you'd be correct, IF NOT, for three crucial things
1. All skills in the tree cost exactly one point
2. You can prestige infinitely
3. It takes at most *ONE* good run to be able to prestige again (assuming you beat the main boss and go for endless)
It's one of the most fun and consuming designs I've seen and I think my whole rant about how nice it is shows it fully
Well, to end off this post, to any who may still be reading, thank you, and I'm sorry you had to listen to what was essentialy one big ad for this game this dumbass is obsessed with ATM. I'm off to bed now, and P.S, picayune dreams has a free demo on steam *wink* *wink*.
~Bartender? Yeah just get this fella whatever they want, my treat, cost don't matter, it's on me ♥
hehe this was actually really fun to read
and it seems as though I have a new game to play, Voidigo
it's funny that you mention roguelikes as i'm taking a break from having played one most of tonight. i've been playing a good bit lately and a good deal of the games i've been going through are roguelikes.
right now i'm playing through Everspace, which is a game about piloting a spacecraft and recovering lost memories while fighting off enemies and leveling up your spacecrafts. it's a good deal of fun, and a beautiful game to boot (flying through space and simply admiring the scenery is a ton of fun, not to mention the combat).
i have also been playing a lot of Hades recently, another fun roguelike where you're trying to break out from the underworld and go see your family on Olympus.
love that you mentioned Risk of Rain, i played through both of those a few months ago after having just heard about them and missing out on them somehow a few years ago. problem fixed! those games are fantastic, as are the soundtracks. i found myself downloading a good deal of the music after going through the games!
another one i have been playing with my wife lately has been 'cult of the lamb' which you might consider checking out, it has also been a lot of fun to play through.
over the last decade or so, with a few notable exceptions, AAA games have begun to circle the drain when it comes to quality, and indie games have finally begun to become more noticed. it has been awesome exploring some of the cool new ones i've been finding over the last few years.
great read, and you mentioned a few games here i haven't checked out yet, so thanks for the recommendations! hope you're having a good one.
Gosh I checked out Everspace and I might just put it on my wishlist, good reccomendation dude <3
Also yeah cult of the lamb is GREAT, honestly there's a ton of rougelikes that I haven't mentioned but are still great, and this is definitely one of them
And about the whole AAA-games thing, yeah I also gotta agree, I dont think I've played ANY of those for a few months atp aside from the occasional valve game, but everything's just gone SO to shit that it's honestly wild. I could rave on about how the for e.g. stuff like the price increases for NS2 games are crazy, although in all fairness I think what's killing AAA releases is nothing other than their quality, I would happily pay 80$ for a game if it was worth that price.
It's awful though that unfortunately - at least for the forseeable future - game quality will remain the same but the price will drive up, I understand that inflation plays a big part in determining a price of a given product but genuinely? I'm no economy expert but I feel like if nintendo or sony (or whichever big name would have the balls to do it) released a 40-45$ game with their standard quality of games it would sell far better purely because of the fact that people would be talking about its low price (free marketing) and having the game also be more monetarily accessible to a larger audience
Wow I got... REALLY off topic there, thanks again for reading and have a great one as well, and thank YOU for sharing your expiriences with me, it was nice seeing someone else's perspective ♥
I'm not really a fan of rogelikes but that was a nice read :)