the difference in fitness on display between the NYPD and Team B in the obstacle course is staggering. NYPD just waddling about as if they were elementary schoolers on a playground (and then DNFed less than a quarter into the overall track lmao) while watching Team B’s performance made my core hurt.
also the Emirati commentator went hard for Team B’s run lol
personal nitpick with Rimworld since ive only run with small colonies of about 6 - 10, but I wish base game was more… flexible when it came to moving on the world map, even for temporary locations, wasn’t so heavily focused on the home colony to the point where I have to tab back and forth between the majority of my characters exploring a map and one or two guys managing home base. sometimes I wonder what’s the point of generating a world map when I wouldn’t be able to explore more than a quarter at best because the game requires u stay in one location
Kenshi: after hundreds of hours put into the game and going thru multiple cycles of starting a new game, struggling to make money, fighting, losing, fighting again, building and automating a base, etc, and all the emergent storytelling that comes out of that – I feel like it was only the combat-related systems that were fully fleshed out and ultimately, the only way to interact with the world in a meaningful way is through combat. Though the visuals and worldbuilding do great of offering the promise of a lot, the dialogue system is not developed enough to allow for any dialogue mods that integrate well with and impact the world or player characters. Animations systems are similarly limited, with the system allowing for minute customization and replacement of combat animations, and very little room for any animations not combat-related.
believe they’re talking about Yellowstone, directed by Taylor Sheridan. His whole directorial output since Yellowstone, including two prequels, Landman, maybe Tulsa King as well, center around private property struggles and “expanding the frontier”.
Out of all the manhwa (mostly action) I’ve been casually reading, I’ve been most impressed by “Martial Wild West/Wild West Murim”. It’s an isekai where the Han dynasty was the first entity to colonize the United States, but apart from like the first chapter, there’s barely any narrative focus on the reincarnation aspect of the MC, much more focus on what a Han-dynasty-colonized-western-US looks like and how it’s structured, its connection to the mainland, and of course, martial arts. Has an interesting arc some chapters in about how indigenous Americans interact with the Han settlers. And the art is outstanding imo, a departure from the more anime-esque aesthetic other action manhwas I’ve read use. Reminded me quite a bit of Kenshi, though maybe I’m leaning too much into that comparison given that they both share desert environments and martial arts.
Otherwise a fan of:
How to Use a Returner/Regressor Instruction Manual
The Skeleton Soldier Failed to Defend the Dungeon/Skeleton Soldier Couldn’t Protect the Dungeon
I Became the Tyrant of a Defense Game
Manhuas:
Nan Hao & Sheng Feng
Eternal Club/I Built a Lifespan Club (plot goes absurd once the MC starts to go international with his operations imo)
Tamen de Gushi/Their Story (RIP to this cute lesbian love story)
Legend of Star General
Release That Witch (think someone once described this as ‘fantasy Dengism’?)
Iron Ladies/Metal Goddess Soldier (in which I think this was written from a Chinese nationalist perspective and the antagonists are like, pretty blatantly a NATO/American empire analogy, and they get their shit violently wrecked)
Andy Kim’s campaign page features several blurbs where he touts his work as a “civilian advisor to American generals in Afghanistan under both Democrats and Republicans” and he loves to bootlick the troops, so “fucked” is an apt descriptor. Also linked being anti-DPRK to him being pro-Israel, but that’s par for the course tbh.
smth im kinda curious about when it comes to early rifle grenades fired from the barrel is that, do shooters use the front sight to aim and measure distance? The SMART prototype’s front sight seems to be noticeably taller than the rear sight would be flipped up, I think.
me spending four hours writing this entire list down in LibreOffice and copy-pasting it into here like: 
yeah, my gaming tastes over the years has pretty much been narrowed down to single-player party-based games of whatever type, and turn-based RPGs tend to be the most common manifestation of that, so i’ve really scoured the depths of the gaming mines looking for interesting gems. When this post came up, the spirit of posting welled up inside me compelling me to 
, so here i am. will prob go back to lurking for the most part tho lol.
(also how do i do spoilers within spoilers, to make the post more navigable?)
Wildermyth was pretty good in terms of artstyle and combat, for sure. Kinda neutral on character interaction scenes, because the combo of personalities my party consisted of seemed to result in dialogue between characters that seemed… disjointed? Seemed like different personalities were talking past one another, and it kinda seemed to be reflected in the larger plot scenes as well. I did really appreciate the game providing positive incentives for nurturing adversarial relationships between party members, no other game with party member relationship mechanics i’ve played so far seems to take relationship mechanics to that extent.
Full agree on Fell Seal, the only good things about it were playing around with the classes, character customization, and monster taming. Still worth a few hours if ur able to tune out all the plot
MARDEK is an absolute Flash classic for certain, but also one that seemed kinda obscure/hard to find on Flash game sites if I remember correctly? Pretty dope.
I also think Epic Battle Fantasy 3 and Epic Battle Fantasy 4 hold up fairly well in the present as well, with EBF 3 being free and EBF 4 also on sale rn. People can also try out EBF 1 and 2 in the Epic Battle Fantasy Collection, but those are rougher in comparison .
This is the post that finally got me to quit lurking and make an account, cuz boy, do I have some good turn-based slop to offer everyone that I have not seen listed here yet and the sale is still going on:
Sale
-“Our Adventurer Guild” ($11.99, -20%): The most well-executed fantasy XCOM-like that I’ve played thus far, both in the combat layer and the hub layer. Plot and side characters are corny, character artwork wouldn’t look out of place in Flash-era AdventureQuest, but if you don’t mind that, party compositions have a lot of viable variety, character classes have a variety of mechanics and depth, and one can make some pretty wacky builds. Lots of aspects of difficulty can be customized according to a slider, and if that’s not enough, you can configure a custom .ini to adjust some of the other hub layer mechanics. Developer is very active in responding to suggestions and feedback, which is why the difficulty sliders were implemented. Has a demo people can download and try out.
-“Stolen Realm” ($9.99, -50%): A low-poly version of the Divinity: Original Sin series, with its emphasis on interactivity between elements. Single-player but can be played online or couch co-op, comes with a structered “Story” mode or a quick “Roguelike” mode that’s all advancing from one combat round to the next. Players and enemies ragdoll into the ether when defeated, and with no restrictions on equipment or skill choice, players can come up with ridiculous gimmick builds. For the most part performs great, but when you get into the late to end-game and are stacking and unleashing multiple effects on the field, performance can become a little intense.
-“Horizon’s Gate” ($9.99, -50%): Pixel-art RPG with an emphasis on naval exploration, though majority of combat is done in dungeons on land. Gameplay loop heavily incentivizes exploration of the world and looking through item descriptions, with the caveat that you’re essentially compelled to engage in naval trading to gain income to manage your food supplies, but a dedicated mod community on Steam Workshop alleviates that and provides plenty of dungeons. Has a lot of different, mechanically-varied fantasy races that do not seem to be derived from traditional RPG properties, with humans taking a backseat both mechanics-wise and lore-wise. Combat system is also focused on interactivity with elements in the vein of D:OS. You can also buy this game and other Rad Codex RPGs on itch.io, though they are not currently on sale. All the Rad Codex games are good quality, but each entry has different narrative framing and gameplay emphasis, but the same combat core. Big fan of this one and “Alvora Tactics”, which is a straight party-based dungeon crawler where you explore the corpse of a Big Snake. The sequel, “Kingsvein” is also currently on sale for $14.99, -25%.
-“Wasteland 3” ($7.99, -80% for base game. $13.32, -79% for base + DLCs): Post-apocalytic RPG from a studio founded by one of the founders of Interplay, which created OG Baldurs Gate and Fallout. CEO appears as a mob boss, and you can shoot him. Help out a robot commune, fuck up a Reaganite cult, support a workers’ uprising in a steel mill. Much to see in the frozen hell of Colorado and many kinds of guns to shoot with.
-“Jagged Alliance 3” ($22.49, -50%): In which you send mercenaries out to a Francophone Global South nation to questionably make the chaotic situation there better and more likely make it worse. You do have the option to help out a communist national liberation movement in the north which is dope.
Tho helping them out all the way results in the leader retiring from the movement and entrusting it to your mercenaries of dubious political background, so ???. They also really trusted in this mercenary group hired before you to train them, but this mercenary group is headed by an overtly greedy buffoon, so it comes across as this movement being very naive in judging character, imo.
The ability to customize contemporary firearms is standout, and mods on the Steam Workshop that add more guns further increase this capability. Different types of guns have different abilities they work best with, making a pistol build quite useful compared to IRL.
-“Monsters’ Den: Godfall” ($4.49, -70%): The most recent iteration of a party-based dungeon crawler that started out as a Flash game. Good for spending a few hours at a time, not the biggest fan of Diablo-like loot systems in general. Whole collection is available on Steam and can be gotten for like, less than $10 if feeling nostalgic.
-“Sonny Legacy Collection” ($8.99, -10%): Not part of the Steam Turn-Based Festival sale, but special mention due to one of the Flash-era turn-based RPG greats being available on Steam. Does not, contrary to the description, seem to be a modernization of the game, just a straight port of Sonny 1 and 2 from the Flash-era version, with all the same bugs and exploits.
-“Crown Wars: The Black Prince” ($27.99, -30%): Overall mid, medieval XCOM-like set during the Hundred Years’ War. Am a fan of the concept, particularly the flashy finishers and playing around with low-fantasy classes, and combat is fun. Game seems to be poorly optimized, with a number of anecdotal player reviews alleging high GPU temp spikes, English voice acting does not appear to have much if any direction, and developers do not seem to respond to or check feedback, whether through forms, Discord, or Steam. Sail the high seas for it if you want to try it out, wasn’t able to find a fully updated version at the time I played, but it should prob be easier to do so now that it looks like the developers are done with updates to the game. -“Himeko Sutori” ($4.74, -75%): An army-based game in the style of Ogre Battle, for all you Ogre Battle-heads out there. Haven’t played this yet, since I’m more interested in the sequel project, “Septaroad Voyager”, which is a party-based RPG based on the Gambit system in Final Fantasy XII (also resurfaced somewhat in Pillars of Eternity II), so don’t really have too much to say. The developer’s defining characteristic as comes across in interviews is that he worked at the CIA before being disillusioned, leaving the agency, and turning to game dev instead, which like, lmao.
-“Caravaneer 2” ($4.79, -20%): Flash-era post-apocalytic game with a heavy emphasis on trading and resource management, lots of inspiration from OG Fallout, kinda a grade above the other Flash games of the time. Developer seems to be a Ukrainian anarchist or anarchist-sympathetic, given that Noam Chomsky and Nestor Makhno are hireable characters (he also recently released a free game that is explicitly pro-Ukraine, so oof, lol).
-“Knights of the Chalice 2” ($38.24, -15%): Kinda torn on whether to recommend this. For one, the developer is a certified libertarian crank, as his website has a section called “Libertarianism” which leads to his book he wrote on taxation, and the table of contents for his book is full anti-communist sections. Also reflected in the absurdly high pricing for a game that was Kickstarter-funded, and the paltry discounts he offers (this is probably the lowest price I’ve seen it). Some questionable choices in the game as well! Tutorial has one female party member that joins up whose dialogue is just… infantile and kinda gross. Tutorial and main campaign is stacked with unfair fight after unfair fight, ambushes at every corner, reinforcements appearing out of nowhere. Kudos to the dev in this one instance, enemies will pull out every mechanic at their disposal to kill you. Even when adjusting all the difficulty options to easiest, this game is very much an endurance test. Lots of homebrew DND classes added in, but difficulty of game can vary dramatically depending on which classes are picked. Sail the seas for this one.
Not on sale
-“Creator of Another World/異世界の創造者” ($18.99): Roguelike party-based RPG in which the isekai concept makes the leap from print media back to video game form, truly innovative. Labels itself casual in difficulty, so its a comfortable power fantasy to settle into, but also has classic JRPG gameplay elements like post-game dungeons and plot and extremely long dungeons. Has a demo to try out.
-“Together in Battle” ($19.99): Has its origin in the Flash-era “Telepath RPG” series, and worldbuilding continues to make use of that setting. An arena battler still in early access where you manage a team of gladiators, but seems to have a level of competent writing so far in comparison to other indie games on this list in terms of plot writing and character interaction. I think it has the potential to be another successful XCOM-like when it hits full release in terms of hub-level management, but even in early access I very much enjoy the gameplay loop.
Special shoutouts to “Divinity: Original Sin 2”, the predecessor to Baldur’s Gate 3 that had a combat and skill system that inspired quite a few of the other games listed above, and “Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire”, which barely counts by dint of including a turn-based mode, we love a game where you can choose to rep an anti-colonial struggle and oust two different factions of colonizers. Also I vastly preferred Pillars of Eternity to its contemporaries in Pathfinder, it just does not require an encyclopedic-level knowledge of the Pathfinder class system to get started, and I prefer RPG systems that stray further away from tabletop mechanics.
does anyone happen to know why Kazakhstan is so strong at this and the like? Prob tangential, but I’m reminded of how Kazakhstan consistently produces Olympic medallists in combat sports like boxing and wrestling.