LinuxGameCast Weekly 393: Don’t Engage The Humans

Steam finally learns how to search! Golf With Your Friends threatens to leave Early Access, GOG updates their refund policy, and we have the first Smach Z delay of 2020! Then LUNA The Shadow Dust faces, the CHAIRQASITION!

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Timestamps:
03:23 Steamlabs search update
05:33 SteamDB hours by OS
07:03 Golf with Friends leaves Early Access
09:43 Tales of MajEyal 1.6.7
11:29 Dead end Job bug fixes
13:44 Shameless self promotion
15:54 GamerOS updates
18:20 GOG refunds
22:00 battleMETAL
24:33 BitKnight open sourced
25:58 Feral is not closing
28:20 SmachZ first delay of 2020
30:29 Overclocking Nvidia
33:45 CHAIRQASITION: LUNA The Shadow Dust
45:27 Hate Mail

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Big search

Filtering by tags is a pretty nice feature I was surprised wasn’t already there
The search improvements are now live and not just a part of the lab experiments.
Yes, VALVe introduced early access to the actual store itself and its features.

Time calculator

The maths seem a bit, off.
254h on Linux and 2.2K overall.
Guess it’s not picking up BeOS.
If you hover over the question mark it says that the per platform times were only exposed in September.

Steam: Game Updates

Release with Friends

We’re not getting an actual release date, just the ever nebulous Q2
They’re supporting crossplay. Which is nice? I guess?
Now what? We need a new whipping boy!
They have added a lot of Polish to the game over the last few months.
New menus, online config, and overall performance, well, minus the Works map.

Not a dinosaur

No mention of dinosaurs in the patch notes, so they’re not lying
This is a lot of balance and gameplay updates. If you’re already balls deep in this game, these likely mean something to you. They mean fuck all to me
I guess this is a good thing though. It means they don’t have any real technical issues, just gameplay stuff they’re addressing as they go
This is one of those stupid deep roguelikes.
The more you get into it, the more you’ll find to bury yourself in.

Dead end updates

The Boo-ing of Isaac gets an update
The intro sequence that everyone normally skips is now viewable under linux
They also added 10 new powerups

News:

Gramer OS

NotArch linux gets an update with the latest and greatest mesa and nvidia drivers
Also ships with the steam compositor plus, mangohud and xbox dongle support
Considering how VALVe isn’t doing anything with SteamOS, I’m glad this exists.

GOG refunds

Give me a Linux client and I might buy something other than 20yr old games from the data files.
20yr olds, dude.
That’s great, but the continued begrudging Linux acknowledgement from GOG doesn’t really make me want to buy anything from them.

Babymetal

Darkplaces based mech combat game inspired by the MechWarrior franchise
They’re also hoping to pivot this to make a framwork for making more mech combat games
It’s pretty bare bones at the moment, not even shipping assets and you need to write your own mech files, but hot damn do I like giant robots fighting and I’m 100% on board
What’s wrong with your face website?

Bit knight

Nokia 3310 game jam… Sure! Why not?!

Late Feral

Phoronix jumps the gun, may be sued for libel and shut down forever. More at 11.
- Whoopsie poopsie. I probably should have done a hair more research before saying something like that

The first delay of 2020 is…

Then Reddit went all detective.
Yeah, they already showed the molds, last year.
Bad mold. And not the lung destroying kind
The race is still on, which one will release first? The Smach or the Atari?

Newegg: Nvidia OC

Thinking of buying a cheap Nvidia GPU from Newegg and want to squeeze some more performance out of it?
- Does not apply to Nvidia GPU’s bought from amazon or any brick and mortar store
Last time I tried this flatpak I couldn’t use the GPU for native applications as long as it was open.
Has that changed?

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: LUNA The Shadow Dust
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/465100/LUNA_The_Shadow_Dust/
Devel: Lantern Studio
Engine: Unity
Price: £16.99 / $19.99 / $22.79

Wazzat: LUNA The Shadow Dust is a fully hand-animated Point&Click puzzle adventure, brought to life through wordless storytelling, beautiful cinematics and a breathtaking original soundtrack.

Mandatory Disclosure: Application Systems (publisher) sent us keys

Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a proper technical shiteshow.
Resolution options: Full / window
Graphics options: FK you!
Laaaaaagy arse-mouse cursor and that’s not something I normally complain about but, damn.
The main thing the player will use to interact in a point-and-click, yeah, might want to nail that one down.
Random graphical herky-jerk.
Bottom of the screen was scrambled until the update on Friday.

Fun?

What the hell is up with the glyph menu start screen?
Text a bit too mainstream for you lot?
Needed something artsy did we?
When you finally uncover you’re little friend and I realized IMA have to start doing things twice.
Yeah, that’s where I peaced the hell right out.
This is a bog-standard point-and-click puzzle game with the hand-drawn pastel art pixels and violins in the soundtrack.
Could be old, could be jaded, but daddy needs some motivation to play a game in 2020.
Rando world & have at don’t cut it anymore.
No sir, didn’t like it.

Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Yeah, there’s definitely some herky jerk happening. Random slowdowns and the like. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s there
The animation itself is super gorgeous and the music is solid and appropriate for this sort of game
The mouse lag is definitely a thing that bogs down some of the more timing based puzzles. Other than that, the space bar is really the only other control
I’m kinda with venn on the menu thing though. Just tell me what the hell I’m clicking

Fun?

These aren’t necessarily hard puzzles, just obtuse at times. And slow
The animation is great, but sometimes I’d like the character to go just a hair faster once I’ve figured it out. Maybe a fast forward button or something
Beyond that, it’s not difficult to tell what the game wants you to do, but sometimes you can miss small details. And some clickable things don’t highlight until it’s a little too late
The nonverbal story telling is very well done, tons of credit to the animators, storyboarders and sound design folks
But it’s definitely a kids’ game. It sort of reminds me of that other game we played with the brothers whose name escapes me
- The Gardens Between

Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

There is definitely some mouse deceleration at work.
I have mouse acceleration completely disabled in X and the quicker I move the mouse, the “heavier” the cursor feels.
There’s not much in the way of options but it doesn’t look like they would do much to the hand drawn aesthetic the game uses.
Though, resolution options wouldn’t go amiss.
Everything is mouse driven so, unless the mouse deceleration is being done deliberately to ensure timing is respected in some of the puzzles, I would have liked an option to use raw input.

Fun?

Why is it always games aimed at children that get this right?
Outside of the spacebar tutorial to switch characters, which is completely unnecessary since you can just click on the character, there is no text on screen.
Even the buttons in the main menu have no text.
That right there is the mark of someone who knew exactly what they were doing.
At least as far as game design and mechanics go.
The technical side is, ironically, the one up for discussion here.
The game conveys everything it needs to with no text on screen whatsoever.
It lets you experiment all you like and, hence my suspicion this is a game aimed at children, it doesn’t punish you for experimenting.
A game which allows me to “get it” and still is able to tell a story with no text, no speech, no nothing, is pretty praiseworthy in my opinion.