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
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- Nokia 3310 game jam… Sure! Why not?!
- 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
- 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?
- 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?
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
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.
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.
Verdict:
Hate Mail: