I though Roguetrader was only one I don't have from these, but I don't have Neverwinter Nights either. The oldest games I have twice as I have physical copies of the originals.

Still the bundle is bit cheaper than the normal price of the two games in total. I just have too many games to play that I own already...

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Quoting: rklThe time limitation on Next Fest demos is indeed highly frustrating, especially since there's usually no indication on the demo page that it's time-limited or exactly when it'll be pulled (usually it's when Next Fest ends, but that's not always the case). What's equally annoying is that when the Next Fest-featured full game is launched, a demo doesn't re-appear for it. Maybe this change might make devs think about keeping Next Fest demos up for longer, but I wouldn't bet on it...

I have a feeling that in general it has gotten better. I remember lot more demos being removed as transition from event in physical place was transformed into virtual one was going on. This time around there were few, maybe one or two when fest ended and then more during next weeks. Basically if you spot something interesting after the fest, it's likely that the demo is still around. I found several interesting games after the fest.

There are still reasons that demos are removed, like building anticipation for the release. But you have to ask directly from the developer in order to figure that out.

Also with the changes, it's easier to play demos during whole year. I don't remember if the demo portal was there before, but there is one now. Some demos included in the fest are available quite a while before the fest start.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismAlso, will there be ratings and reviews on Demos that __dont__ carry over to the released game to help measure public response? Or does that not make sense.

I would think if the ratings carry over, that would discourage publishing technical previews (and other demos that don't yet entirely present the finished product). I guess the downside from that is that developers get less early feedback. Though ratings in general might push the technical previews down.

Quoting: ElectricPrismAlso, I would like to optionally remove Demos from my account and couldn't find the button the other day -- maybe I am on Steam Client Beta and the button has gone *poof*

Uninstalling demos removes them from the account. Doesn't work with prologues though, but the changes should reduce the need for them.

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Quoting: Talon1024Sort of. Maybe I'm just fearmongering, but don't forget that other game industry companies have been making lots of shitty, greedy decisions lately.
--- snip ---
Good independent game studios like Mimimi are going to shut down in the near future.
As for other indie games.. There's quite a few of them, and many of them are good, but the reason the game industry crashed in the 80s is because the market was oversaturated with half-baked games. With so much competition in the market, it's already very difficult for an indie developer to find a significant audience and earn enough money to live.

Also, I haven't heard of any other indie studios hiring the recent layoffs. I do remember some former Ubisoft employees forming their own studio and developing the game Stray.

I guess you provided answer to the potential positive side of the future. AA studios can provide the more polished experience, it probably just takes time for new studios to form. Even more time is needed for actual games to come out.

Mimimi shows just the potential dangers. Their problem probably was the games didn't belong to bit more popular genre. They did improve the formula to quite good level, but that wasn't enough to save them.

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Funnily enough, early Quake design included a hammer. Apparently it was some kind of Thor inspired thing.

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Quoting: Boldos

Quoting: Anza

Quoting: BoldosBut what drove me away was the fact that majority of the game was a perfect example of a so called Potemkin village game mechanics:

Games are pretty much Potempkin villages. They lie and cheat, especially when you're not looking. Best ones can give illusion that the world continues to exist even when you're not around.

Well, in general, yes, you are of course correct; all game engines are by definition Potemkin villages. And yes, game engines - in general - do cheat all the time... Mainly to save the CPU+GPU power for other intensive tasks.

But you are talking about different level of Potemkin villages than what I meant, when comparing NMS to X4 Foundations universes.

Sorry, I didn't tackle your answer entirely. NMS has been built around procedural generation in order to even be able to have the huge galaxy size. The size itself makes dynamic living galaxy something that starts to be technically infeasible. One player is able to discover only tiny part of the whole galaxy. Even travelling from one end of the galaxy to the other will take practically forever if you just jump from star system to star system.

NMS could be do better on the local level though, but let's keep on grander scale for now.

What Egosoft is doing with X series is cool, but I think they have had dream of persistence quite early on in the series. Probably won't be able to remember where player dropped a wrench in some random planet two hours ago (which NMS is also unable to do), but that don't think it has never been their aim. If you are trying to do absolutely everything, you probably end up in same situation than Star Citizen.

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Quoting: tfkI've never played it. Is it good?

Quoting: suchHighly depends. If you feel like just exploring planets and gathering stuff to maybe build/improve stuff is fun to you - then yes. If you're expecting a game with crunchy mechanics - no.

My take is that at launch NMS was terrible at the former, and now it's quite good at it. It'll never be good as a "proper" game, though, because that's clearly not the goal. It's more of a chill experience with some gamey bits that provide some sense of direction and progression, but that don't tie you to them if you don't care for them. Maybe grab it on sale and try it out then?

I can agree that NMS focuses bit more being wide than deep. It's just so wide that discovering new mechanics can be fun. Even when the mechanics are bit grindy if you interact too much with them.

There is actually a plot with few twists. And long side quest that functions as a tutorial and some of the unlocks are behind that. On top of that there's some lore than you can find.

Expedition might be good place to start as they act as semi standalone quests. As new player you start from scratch, but rewards along the way provide you enough stuff so you can complete the expedition. Longer time players can bring in some resources from their main save.

Upcoming expedition has combat focus. Combat is fine. It's not the most satisfying combat system ever and fun factor depends bit on what you're fighting with. And preview of the expedition hints that there will be at least some new enemies.

Quoting: BoldosBut what drove me away was the fact that majority of the game was a perfect example of a so called Potemkin village game mechanics:

Games are pretty much Potempkin villages. They lie and cheat, especially when you're not looking. Best ones can give illusion that the world continues to exist even when you're not around.

Sounds like NMS hasn't been just good enough in hiding the seams. I think space stations are not bad anymore and they can be populated while player is going through the entry animation. Planets can still be sometimes bit jarring. Animals might just appear out of thin air. Haven't noticed that yet with the new update, though have been played only twenty minutes after game froze.

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Quoting: CatKiller

QuoteSpilled! is a short yet cozy game that you can finish in 1 hour, but you can use the level select to go back to any area if you just want to relax!

That's probably going to bite them. You're going to get people feeling short-changed by that amount of gameplay and refunding, and it's going to be quite difficult to price the game appropriately for that amount of gameplay. If you make it too expensive, you'll get more people refunding, or just not buying it for an hour of gameplay, but if you make it too cheap then it gets the "cheap game" stigma and you might not make any money from sales.

If they can push it up to something like 4-5 hours of gameplay that would settle into the right kind of cozy game experience, and should be comfortably in the £5-10 price range which ought to do well.

I guess the problem is that it seems developers first game. Small scope is good thing to have in order to get something out. I don't remember how much of a thing refunding short games were. Might have been that it's not that big of an issue. I think refunds had reputation and if you abuse the system too much, you might not be able to get refunds for a while.

I think the cheap game stigma might be related to perceived effort. Using popular asset pack content as it can make it feel like like no effort was spent on the assets. With asset flips that can even be actually be the case. AI generated content could have same problem with some additional complexities on top of that.

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I played the demo and the it's nowhere near Balatro. Blackjack as game has basically two choices every turn and DDG doesn't build enough on top of the card game to make it nearly complex enough. There are few things that you can get that vary the gameplay, but they didn't do enough interesting things.

Luckily there's demo, so you can try it out yourself

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Quoting: NezchanI played the demo during the last Next Fest, and I don't think they had the hint system implemented there. I really could have used it for at least one of the puzzles. It's generally not bad, although the pixel style can be a problem when you're really close up to some objects. The Vulkan issue BloodScourge mentions might address that though.

There's actually hint system. Look question mark when you open the inventory. It doesn't give solution right away, first one is usually quite vague. The last one doesn't always give exact solution either, so I had to consult other sources too.

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