Knocked off first area with one character. There's all the usual sliders and stuff to adjust. Looks like full game will have 5 areas at least plus final boss if I was guessing.

Second area leans into some more varied enemy combos. A couple of enemies already with some jib moves/queues, but early days.

Really do enjoy the lack of buttons though. It really is left stick, right trigger. Y and x to check current load outs etc.

Framerate can chug for me a little bit when the enemies are really swarming, but it's still very playable and goddamn I mean it's only when the screen is literally filled.

I've soft finished Have a Nice Death, if that's the correct terminology.  It pulls a bit of a Ghouls n Ghosts, to use an outdated reference, so another successful run is needed for a proper ending (although not the proper proper ending).  ANYWAY, it's a really good game and it's currently hitting more like an [8.5] than an [8].  I'm not a massive roguehead (I've done my fair share of moaning about them on here over the years) but I can see why the genre is goatly for some, it's great when you find one to click with.

So the second area of death must die is much tougher. Some clear balance issues and BS currently.

But still making progress, and just made my best run for a while just now.

Everyone with any integrity like Hades.

stonechalice wrote:

So there's a tech test for Hades 2 doing the rounds. Looks like more of the same. Great for those that liked it I suppose.

I’m finding the tech test surprisingly fresh - still Hades, but some really smart changes means that it doesn’t feel like a case of Been Here Done That.

I can't play OTXO any more, uninstalling it. I've spent hours on it and my best run is three screens into the 4th area. It's not really getting much easier as I supposedly get better either - an average run for me ends midway through the third zone, and I cant face another 30mins of wasted play. Part of me loves it but structurally it's a bit fucked - it doesn't feel like any of the ublocks take the edge of the difficulty.

Also sulking that I'm crap at it because the gameplay is legit.

Just sussed it. It's bloody easy to get lost in this game. Loving it.

IN THE METROIDVANIA THREAD LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE

The very excellent Caves of Qud has a free demo available until the 13th. And there's a new beta available -

Hello friends!

We are excited to announce that the Spring Molting update is live now in beta. We'll be testing for a few weeks and then releasing the update on the main branch June 6th
. Full patch notes can be found at the end of this post, but here is a summary:

- ALL NEW INTERFACE Our transformational UI redesign is complete! Fully mouseable, fully gamepaddable, and much prettier, but all carefully designed to maintain the essence of what makes Qud Qud. More polish is coming, but everything functional is in.
- Support for Steam Cloud saves. Play between PCs or between Steam Deck and PC, at your leisure
- a refresh of the starting town of Joppa, with the same lived-in texture as the rest of the world
- hundreds of new sound and visual effects
- several new narrative touches, big bug fixes, & performance improvements

To access the beta, select Caves of Qud in your Steam library> Preferences> Betas> Beta Branch. No password required. For bugs and feedback, please post here.

The new UI has full keyboard, mouse, and controller support.
The new UI plays natively on handhelds like Steam Deck.

I'd be very interested in knowing how it plays on the Steam Deck, if someone who has one fancies giving it a go.

Tried it and it runs fine on steam deck, the game isn’t for me though

the “playing area” was tiny - not sure if that is by design or cramped for the sd.
Seems really deep but not to my taste.
Weird the evolution of gaming, back in the spectrum / c64 days games were either good or bad; now the selection is so wide that it really depends on your taste per sub strand of a genre

I will try and give it another go, lot going on

It is absolutely very deep and very wide, some insane shit to figure out and discover. Think of Noita's breadth and level of craziness if you've played that. It's been a while since I've played but this sort of build was working really well for me -



Basically a really strong axe wielding type that can beguile creatures so they'll follow you, super fun and can become kind of broken if you find the right denizens to do it to...  They'll level up with you as you progress and if you use domination on them you can upgrade them with their own crazy mutations.

The game is supposedly going to hit 1.0 this year so I'm probably going to hold off until then before diving in again to do a serious playthrough, but what I've played of it previously has been amazing. Great writing, pretty simple to play but a ton of depth and strategy to discover, and the graphical design has a near perfect balance between readability and suggestion of form, and not being too detailed such that it overrides what your imagination can conjure up.

There are some weird combos to access stuff like dead bodies. They disappear after a kill but if you use LT and A together it gives you a menu of the stuff that's in the tile.

Not enough time in the day for me to get into this, how am I supposed to find all the eggs in Animal Well while working this out too?