I’m just glad when some bring good things to occasionally seep out of these obviously inevitable changes.

Brief (but current) play clip: https://youtu.be/SqzZv8fAlfc

Yeah, I was posting with a screenshot, but I guess that gets replaced with whatever it pulls from the link, and as cute as that cover is bigger, makes sense it’s more prone to catching such knee-jerk reactions than seeing the actual game.

They probably used AI coding it, too, but as a programmer I can be glad a lone dev used their tools to create something they want/enjoy, in a niche no one touches, and at a price that’ll never make them any real money. This is a benefit of AI. The alternative is simply this game not existing. Thought people over here might be more amenable to such a micro-niche indie project. Ah well, so it goes.

My, my, one day and -7? Sorry to share a cool little niche game I’ve got over thirty hours playing, instead of a screenshot of Dead Space or link to some random article that’s probably showing up everywhere.

How downright valueless of me.

https://steamdb.info/sales/history/

Sounds like something that shouldn’t even take long to implement with steam input.

Shouldn’t, but the thing is, you move all around the screen in that game. You can’t make a mouse region for the aiming to get a direction unless the character stays at center or there’s always a clear line through center to the reticle. When the character just moves all around like that, there’s just no way to connect something to the direction from the character. You have to mouse aim on absolute position or use 8-way aiming on keys as your only character-relative option (what are we here, cavemen?).

The real problem is just that one of your critical gameplay actions is stopping shooting. Easily handled if you have a shoot button, like mouse, but controller only shoots on RS tilt, which means moving RS into the deadzone becomes a critical defensive action. You could work around that but you can’t use Steam Input and controller-mode, so not even the option of having Steam use a big dead zone.

What you can do (I actually just got this to work!), is use Steam Input to mask the controller before starting the game, and then cursor key around through menus to the settings and toggle the “Enable Controller” button all on keyboard (hard to get it to mouse with a controller around). Once you get that saved and staying disabled, you can use a controller-free Steam Input config without the game switching to controller on its own.

So, I spoke too soon before. You actually should be able to play on a deck, because the trackpad will sub in nicely for mousing. Much better than the RS I have on a regular controller, but now I can at least play half-controller, half-mouse. Awkward, but better than either separately for me.

I’ve picked up Astralbringer (crazy mouse shmup, not actually on sale but that dev prices low and doesn’t really do Steam sales), Shikhondo: Blue Pieta (horizontal scrolling shmup), Revo (fast kinda janky gallery shmup), and Beyond Solar (scrolling shmup).

I’m looking into Star Vortex and Star Solar (both space ARPGs), but one has a lengthy demo, so I’ll spend some time with that for context on those. Space ARPG action standards feel like they are depressingly low, which can be frustrating where there are good space fighters out there with richer action, like Radio Free Europa and Galak-Z, just not things with wider scope for gear and play instead of simple runs. I wish I could mush them together.

So kinda tame sale, and I’ve obviously been feeling pretty shmuppy lately (and I’ve got a loooot of those already to play :), but I’ve also got Denshattack release to look forward to on the 15th, depending on price.

No Summer Sale complaints here. Saw several games I often price check around sales take nice drops this time, so deals are out there.

Because people hate devs being rewarded for their work.

Not quite best, but it’s the same price it basically always discounts to.

I’ve got Astralbringer (crazy mouse shmup, not actually on sale but that dev prices low and doesn’t really do Steam sales), Shikhondo: Blue Pieta (horizontal scrolling shmup), Revo (fast kinda janky gallery shmup), and Beyond Solar (scrolling shmup). I’m looking into Star Vortex and Star Solar (both space ARPGs). (Edit: Went with Star Vortex :).

So kinda tame sale, and I’ve obviously been feeling pretty shmuppy lately (and I’ve got a loooot of those already to play :), but I’ve also got Denshattack release to look forward to on the 15th, depending on price.

No Summer Sale complaints here. Saw several games I often price check around sales take nice drops this time, so deals are out there.

FYI, Cuboid Keeper plays poorly on controller, and can’t run with Steam Input at all. If you play on KBM, it’s ok, but otherwise it’s just brokenly designed and not getting fixed because the dev doesn’t care anymore.

I play a lot of top-down and twin-sticks, so there might be something for you here: https://infosec.pub/post/48529166/22456105

Here’s some mostly small game suggestions I wrote up for a hidden gems thread elsewhere :)

Yes I Know I Play a Lot of Roguelites:

• Cavity Busters ($4.49, -70%) – Top-down roguelite with a lot of engaging action play and a weird “toothpunk” theme
• RAM Random Access Mayhem ($8.99, -40%) – Top-down roguelite where you don’t have a character but jump between controlling enemies, each of which plays differently and has its own tricks.
• Space Bandit ($1.79, -10%) – Simpler and lightning fast top-down shooter with active enemies.
• Curse of the Dead Gods ($3.99, -80%) – Very good top-down roguelite with heavy melee and parry influence. More limited run variety, but good action and challenge.
• Cryptark ($3.74, -75%) – Top-down shooter roguelite where you infiltrate and disable the dungeons you fight in. No cross-run progression, but a grueling spending-management campaign mode and a more standard use-what-you-find mode.
• Fury Unleashed ($1.99, -90%) – Great 2d-platformer-twinstick with good, fast action.
• Trinity Fusion ($4.99, -75%) – 2d platformer roguelite with some heavier action, cute mechanics, and an unlockable parry, but rather overwrought bosses.
• Maraka ($1.61, -82%) – Janky but cute throwing-things-around game with deceptively rich active player abilities. Slow enemies but not a horde survivor.
• Red Tether ($6.49, -50%) – Bizarre little roguelite where you fight using bungie cables.
• Odinfall ($7.79, -40%) – Top-down shooter roguelite, with very Nuclear Throne feel, but with upgrade attachments for weapons, and an overmap you can choose routes through. Early access, and slow devs, but still fun and plays well.
• Metal Mutation ($1.69, -90%) – Janky top-down melee-oriented roguelite with strong parry and somewhat unusual upgrading.
• Replikator ($2.09, -65%) – Top-down shooter with fairly intense but forgiving action.
• Airlock Arena ($5.99, -50%) – Cute local multiplayer ship-raiding roguelite hijinks.

More Shooting Things but Not Scrolling Shmups:

• Assault Android Cactus ($3.99, -80%) – Absolutely top-tier arcade twin-stick, with a lot of variety across levels and characters.
• Galak-Z ($2.99, -85%) – Neat space shooter with a randomized endless mode. Often does not bother to go on sale lately, and this is a great price, so doubly notable.
• Devastator ($0.97, -86%) – Arcade twin-stick that manages to mix more pure twin-stick play with carefully engaging rules/scenarios for a unique recipe targeting more expert players.
• Nidus ($2.60, -70%) – Mind-bending dual-stick where you control two asymmetric characters against weird floral enemies.
• Devader ($1.83, -77%) – Weird little arcade twin-stick with some neat and unusual action tidbits (bullets can be consumed for firepower) and creepy bosses.
• Combat Complex ($3.99, -50%) – Early access top-down shooter loot ARPG that doesn’t have much on the ARPG side, but plays like an arcade twin-stick with neat enemy-on-enemy elements.
• Beat Invaders ($2.49, -75%) – Space Invaders reimagined as freighter defense with some roguelite upgrades for variety. Has some simple but fun elements that enhance the action.
• Yar’s Revenge ($1.99, -80%) – Rail shmup with strong two-stick play (instead of the painful single stick a lot of rail shooters have seemed stuck on) and hit-chaining design for extra interest.
• Bot Vice ($3.99, -60%) – Gallery shmup with fixed but tough levels and unusual action options.
• Relic Hunters Legend ($4.79, -76%) – Top-down shooter ARPG. Poor, childish story, but some nice action, ability combinations, and space for team play.
• Ardein.Fall ($1.24, -75%) – Janky space shooter defense roguelite with cute run development and unusual structure where run generation only changes daily.

Now Some Scrolling Shmups:

• Sisters Royale: Five Sisters Under Fire ($4.19, -70%) – Vertical. AKA Castle Shikigami 4.
• SophStar ($4.99, -50%) – Vertical.
• Project X: Light Years ($8.99, -50%) – Horizontal.
• Shikhondo: Youkai Rampage ($7.49, -50%) – Vertical.
• Natsuki Chronicles ($2.99, -85%) – Horizontal.
• Rolling Gunner ($5.99, -70%) – Horizontal.
• Grand Cross: ReNovation ($5.99, -60%) – Vertical.
• Revolver360 Re:actor ($1.99, -80%) – Horizontal.
• Super Galaxy Squadron EX Turbo ($2.49, -75%) – Vertical.
• Zeit^2 ($1.99, -80%) – Horizontal. Time-puzzle action.

A Little Less Shooting:

• Tipston Salvage ($4.24, -75%) – PC didn’t get a good Storage Inc, but this adorable, multiplayer object filing and retrieval game fills in pretty well.
• Final Knight ($8.39, -40%) – Single-player party (yes, party) beatemup roguelite with a rich space for player action. Early access.
• Trials: Evolution ($4.99, -75%) – Looks like goofy biking but actually fascinatingly advanced 2d platforming, with a host of user-created levels (that you need to download separately in a pack, because Ubisoft shut the servers down).
• SpiderHeck ($5.99, -60%) – Fun versus platform fighter.

Some Always-Cheap Mentionables that Tend to Skip Sales and are Unsurprisingly Not Discounted this Time Either (aka Oh Look There were More Shooting Things After All):

• Radio Free Europa ($4.99) – Space shooter roguelite with some nice action and a lot of weapons and enemies.
• Huenison ($0.99) – Bizarre amalgamation of puzzle and shump.
• Nova Swarm ($3.99) – Gallery shmup with random enemies and a lot of fun personality. This has a 30 key giveaway thread open for a few days in their news. Please only enter if you’d play, since this is just a solo dev trying to get their game noticed and get some more players on the leaderboards. And the game’s only $4 you cheapskate thinking about clicking that giveaway. Yes, you. You’re making the game cry.

That’s such poppycock I don’t even know if you’re subtly trolling. Anyone could put a clown on a profile for anything, and they come far more from bad actors than anything remotely legitimate. Steam forums are full of bad actors. Actually supporting that kind of petty toxicity by insinuating clowns mean something is gross.

Thankfully, profile awards can be hidden, and I’d expect they often are, so it’s hard to really say how many are given out. I certainly hid profile awards when the system was new, because it’s weird Steam just helps people deface your profile. Even having awards hidden hasn’t stopped the occasional spiteful clown award getting added.

It’s also easy to think nothing is happening because Valve takes their sweet time getting around to reports, and while they will eventually tell you “something was done” if something was done, they won’t give you any way to find out what was done or what report they’re even referring to. You just get that generic “something was done” message.

I used to get added by randoms everytime and they always had the clown award because that’s the easiest way for people to mark someone as a scammer

Profile clown awards say nothing more than some jerk spend points on being a jerk. Not at all a good reason to think people were flagged scammers, especially since you can just hide any profile awards with a checkbox.

But no, while clown awards are still there, you can’t give them anymore. Maybe “funny” will be the new clown, or maybe people will spend fewer points just to be jerks.

and a very complex, DLC-driven, gacha-based method of unlocking other costumes for its roster

I don’t know about the volleyball games, but the fighting games are simply “buy outfit DLC” without any complexity or gacha mechanics, aside from the small pool of built-in costumes which come via standard things like “clear arcade with character”.

Not at all. I was pretty dismissive of DOA for much of the series, but while exploitation may be the main gimmick, the counter oriented fighting system is quite worthwhile and unusual.

DOA is actually a quite good fighting game series, in the style of Virtua Fighter, but with heavy emphasis on counterplay, using a system where strikes beat throws, counters beat strikes, and throws beat counters. Usually a big series feature is tag play, but the most recent one (6) oddly dropped tagging and went solo-only. 5 had a great tag team survival mode where it’d load the next opponent in the background while you fought their partner, so you could have a fairly seamless fight through the entire sequence. Another frequent feature is gimmicky arenas, with area changes and things that can trigger from hitting someone into the right place.

It’s also made by devs who prominently exploit their characters to downright absurd degrees, releasing and rereleasing waves of often obviously cheaply made fetish-wear DLC hoping people will collect outfits and whatnot. They always start a version of the game out talking about how this time it’s a serious fighting game and not just fetish trash, and then inevitably they start pushing the flood of outfits and swimsuits they have piled up, which gets annoying even if you don’t want it, because they’ll dress the AI stupidly in your fights whether you want it or not, instead of doing something sensible like letting you turn off or substitute outfits you don’t want to see. Yet, for all that, it really is a good fighting game under the hood, even if they did just ditch it wholesale for a while and make volleyball fetish resort games instead.

They also took a big vocal stand against selling DLC characters in fighting games when someone else started doing that, talking about how it was wrong to have to pay to train against opponents and they swore never to do such a vile thing. Of course, they were selling their own DLC characters before that edition of the game was even over. Shamelessness is definitely a series staple.

The last couple editions have changed to a F2P model, where you can play some characters for free (I think a few are fixed while others rotate periodically), and either buy only the ones you want to keep unlocked, or find the “real game” DLC and buy that (plus any missing “extra” characters). So, it’s at least a very easy series to try out nowadays.

But he said he didn’t know anything about that! Surely the guy who’s been famous for decades for lying all the time about everything wouldn’t lie about that, would he?

You see the frustration of rational voters. We can’t just vote harder when a candidate is telling existential threats to hold my beer, but have to watch the distant #1 choice be “couch” while the only option we’re offered for “maybe don’t destroy everything” comes in at #3.

You might be able to attract new players that don’t have any baggage, but older ones with games on Steam, you’ll need to climb the Everest to convince them.

That’s why they do the giveaways. Because kids playing Fortnite have Epic libraries now, and will be invested in Epic more than Steam later, when they start spending their disposable income buying games.