Tested two games today. Rail Route and Farlanders.

Rail Route is bit difficult train routing game. Bit similar to Mini Metro and Train Valley 2, just somewhat more complicated. Train Valley has bit similar train routing and both require adjusting the routes on the fly. Aesthetics are closer to Mini Metro though.

Playing tutorial and paying attention helps a bit. There's endless and timetable modes and timetable mode will get quite hectic before you end up in gridlock

Could work better with some user interface polish and more gradual difficulty curve. The difficulty makes it bit harder to pick up than Mini Metro.

Farlanders felt bit like Red Planet Farming (which is free by the way). Both are turn based management simulations in Mars and in both space is premium.

Farlanders has bit odd terraforming mechanic. I checked the store page and terraforming makes bit more sense as it's described as a puzzle. Rules are explained in one page that describes the terraforming outcomes. As offered terraforming options are random, it might take several turns until you get what you actually need most urgently.

Seems like it's worth a try. It's by no means Surviving Mars as it feels like its done by lot smaller indie team.

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Not all of the demos are time limited though, too bad it's hard to know which ones are. I checked through demos that I still have installed and it's time limit is quite common.

However I tried one the demos that has expired and running it outside Steam worked fine. So just downloading the demos before they expire might be just enough. No need to make backups unless you're afraid that Steam will uninstall the demo automatically.

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That demo list is always helpful. I installed just seven by browsing the event page and looking for Linux demos that I haven't yet played. Could install few more once I have tried the ones that I found already.

I already tried Unpacked and it certainly was something different. It's basically about unpacking stuff and finding good place for everything. After all boxes are emptied, game checks if things are in correct enough place. It can be bit picky, so might have to try out few places. Especially the kitchen in the demo was bit confusing as there didn't seem to perfectly logical place for everything. I might be bit spoiled though as I have good place where the plates go for example and game didn't have that.

I guess it could be great game for somebody who hasn't played games that much. There's no pressure and game mechanics come mostly from real life (assuming you actually unpack the boxes when you move...). From the demo it's impossible to say though if the final game has enough new mechanics to keep the game interesting.

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Quoting: WorMzy

Quoting: slapinWhen NPCs?

The merchant's an NPC. You can't woo/marry them though, trust me, I've tried.

Merchant is easy to miss though, especially if you don't look for information about Valheim and just play the game. I don't think there's any hints about merchant in the game until you get close enough. Seems to be more like reward for exploring than mandatory thing you absolutely need to find like the bosses.

There has been hints though that there might new things to find in the upcoming updates, might not be NPC:s though. People at Iron Gate like to keep some details secret.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: AnzaCome think of it, releasing full game as a demo does have at least one additional benefit. As demos are usually hacked together usually in a hurry, they might not give good indication if full game will work properly on your computer (or if the final game is as fun as the demo). In this you can be pretty sure it will work.

There's always refunds, but with demo like this you don't have to go through that hassle.

I still remember the Battlefield 1942 demo would run perfectly smooth on people's systems at the time. Then when the full game released, it ran like crap on just random hardware. Like some lower end systems would run it fine, and higher end systems were sluggish, some driver conflict or feature or something. Took them a while to get it patched right, but was such a weird performance difference between the demo and full release...

I imagined this is another reason that demos kind of died off...

I would suppose that when demo comes out, there's still plenty of time to finish the game. Then the deadline suddenly comes and and game goes out in state that's still missing testing and polish. On top of that there might have been effort to make the game look as good as the prerendered trailer...

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Game that is all about breaking locks does have a luxury of making things bit more complicated. For example in Dying Light you have to be careful in order not to break your lockpick and be quick enough that zombies don't come to distract you. So the difficulty comes more from pressure than from actually complicated lock picking minigame.

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Come think of it, releasing full game as a demo does have at least one additional benefit. As demos are usually hacked together usually in a hurry, they might not give good indication if full game will work properly on your computer (or if the final game is as fun as the demo). In this you can be pretty sure it will work.

There's always refunds, but with demo like this you don't have to go through that hassle.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPGreat news. I always found the UI fairly prohibitive when trying to get into Vicky 2 (and that is after being familiar with EU4 and HoI4) - here's to hoping they'll make it all a bit more accessible without removing depth.

And no mess at launch like Imperator, please.
kthxbye

They're learning. Stellaris was already good enough, so Civilization veteran like my actually finished one run of the game. Though I know that even Civilization can be daunting for some.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyThere are people who have more than 25,000 games. If they've been gaming for 25 years, that means they've been buying 1,000 games a year. Like, buying on average three games every day. How do you even imagine you could possibly potentially play 1,000 games a year? It's actually worse than that because I don't think Steam has existed for 25 years.
Meanwhile, assuming $20 per game that's $500,000. Probably more because I don't see how you can rack up that kind of numbers while carefully waiting for sales, you know?

So, rich morons?

I counted that if you subscribe to Humble Choice and get all the games each month, that's 144 games each year. There are also plenty of other bundles.

Bundles in general are good if you want to get as many games as you can. Of course there's a risk that bundles have game that you own already so you need to hook up with game collector like you that you can trust and trade some licenses. Earlier it was possible to trade gifts which would have made it easier.

As for sales, there's already five big sales on Steam each year and there's plenty of games on sale every time. Some of the games are dirt cheap. In order to get to the target number, you would still have to spend quite lot if you aim for 25000 games.

You can though recoup some costs by selling all kinds of items in the Steam marketplace. You can randomly get trading cards that you can again sell. Cheaper games that have trading cards make it somewhat more worthwhile.

Still, 25000 is quite insane, especially if you get that far more or less by accident.

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I played the demo when it was available and it really isn't easy. You really have to get good in order to progress. Save scumming wasn't option either as you have to first find the save point and in the demo there weren't more than one per level. Once it's found, you can save at any point though.

I didn't manage to finish the demo as there was timed platforming section that was just little bit too hard for me. Platforming in general is the most frustrating part of the game.

It does have certain charm though, I just might not have enough patience for it, unless they have made it easier.

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