I did, because it is on the free* offerings for PS+. Also because I heard the same people raving about it.

Didn’t do much for me. Metroidvanias are not really my jam to begin with, and I really prefer more structure in my games than what it had. It is a big issue I have with some other open-ended games people love, like Elden Ring or Breath of the Wild. Anytime people throw me in an open-ended game and go “Okay, go do stuff!” I just feel lost.

I put a bit of time into it hoping there would be some big revelation that made me see why people loved it, but seemed to be more platforming/metroidvania stuff. I think I got up to the area with a couple dogs chasing me.

*Free as in “I already paid for it”.

I am the resident Elden Ring hater, so June is probably naturally a lighter month for me.

I never played SMTV on the Switch, so might be interested in the re-release of that. Crow Country looks really cool. Warframe also has a (big?) content update in June, so that may occupy a lot of my time.

Songs of Silence has gorgeous art, but I didn’t really connect with the demo when I played it.

I found the second game to have more game, but also it felt sorta…low budget?

Ni no Kuni 1 felt very much like “what if ghibli made a JRPG”. The second one loses a bit of that, and the production values seem a bit lower around the edge. Lot less voice-acting, seems to go more broad than deep as it were. I didn’t hate it, I think the combat was an improvement and the castle building stuff was fun, but I honestly probably liked my time with the first game more overall.

Mindustry is one of the very few factory games I have never tried (really put the automation tag on something and I will probably buy it). It always seemed like it leaned much more into the tower defense side over the factory side.

As someone who usually plays factory games with stuff like biters turned off, do you think there is much there still?

Hey another Tenno! That’s where I left off last time I played Warframe as well. The grind to get a Necramech pushed me off the game a couple times. The New War was pretty fun though, as I am one of those weird people that plays Warframe for the story/lore.

They made that particular grind a fair bit easier, and apparently in the June update they are going to make it even easier. So if that was what was holding you back, may be worth waiting for the update.

Played Recently:

Animal Well. It’s fine, I am not really a metroidvania guy though. Foundry. Also fine. It’s a factory game in the vein of Satisfactory, though with a procedurally generated world instead of a static one. Has potential, needs a lot more time before it really stands out from the competition.

Genres:

RPGs and factory/automation/base-building games for the most part.

Live Service Games:

I periodically have phases where I get pretty into Warframe, and now is one of those times. It’s a pretty good “podcast game” to do other stuff during, I generally really like a lot of the art design and lore of that universe. As far as a live-service game it has a relatively decent business model, basically everything is available in-game, though they will happily take all the money you have if you so choose.

I used to play Dead by Daylight because I love horror, but I am so fantastically bad at that game that I ended up dropping it.

It’s not subtle but there exists a not insignificant group of fascists who take it totally at face value.

I am guessing the same group of people who watched Starship Troopers and thought the Terran Federation were awesome. (I would say the book too but let’s be honest, they never read it)

I can totally understand doing a non-DF run, they are a cool challenge in the early game and their special buildings can really help with ramping up late game but they can be a bit annoying to deal with. The DF Lab in particular is a huge help if you are going for one of the big science achievements, because I think it is 2x as fast as a base lab. I wouldn’t play with DF again myself until they flesh out the space combat more, dealing with the space hive right now is kind of cumbersome because it hasn’t really been fully implemented yet.

I may have honestly played every factory game on steam at this point. Shapez was great, I am looking forward to shapez 2. DSP / Factorio / Satisfactory is the holy trinity of factory games to me at this point, but I think everyone knows those.

Captain of Industry is a great one with more real-world production chains and some light colony-management as well. It’s pretty challenging and you can get locked into a death spiral pretty easily. There are difficulty settings that can be adjusted on the fly that help with that though. I like more of a sci-fi setting usually, but this is a pretty cool adaptation of real industry.

Desynced is a lesser known SF factory builder that adds some programming elements. Basically everything are logistic bots rather than belts, but all the bots can be programmed with a decently robust visual programming language. All the buildings/bots you build are modular too, with components that you slot in. I like shoving some solar panels on all my carrier bots so that they contribute to my power grid while transporting cargo.

DSP is my favourite factory game by far, great to see someone else playing that one. I just polished off my first Dark Fog game, so was poking around at some other up and coming factory games before I started another run.

What did you think of Millenia? Honestly I like it more than most, there are a lot of basic design choices that I think are cool, but it definitely needs more time in balancing. It feels more like an EA game than a 1.0 release honestly. I did a couple playthroughs and will probably come back to it again after it [hopefully] gets some updates.

I liked Forbidden West way more than I expected to.

I loved Zero Dawn, but a lot of what I loved about that game was the discovery of finding out what happened in the events that led up to the game. The sequel obviously didn’t have that, so I was very skeptical about it. I was thankfully quite wrong.

Subnautica is a fantastic game that either helped me discover I had thalassophobia or gave it to me. My playtime probably got inflated by ten hours as I spent so much time sprucing up my base instead of progressing to the end of the story.

It balances the curated story elements so well with the open world survivalbox type gameplay. Not many games hit that balance so well.

I have been playing the Anomaly DLC of Rimworld (which remains my favourite game of all time).

It’s pretty good, it captures the “Cabin in the Woods” / SPC vibe very well. However, I think Rimworld DLCs are the best when they provide frameworks that let modders go crazy. Anomaly seems more like a content dlc that I will sometimes use and sometimes disable. I could definitely see myself disabling Anomaly after I do a couple games with it turned on.

Favourite Genres: JRPGs, Factory/Automation Games, Colony Builders.

I am pretty excited on the factory game front for this year. We have the expansion for Factorio, v 1.0 release of Satisfactory, and there are pretty good odds we get another big Dyson Sphere Program update this year. Of those, Dyson Sphere Program remains my favourite by far.

Stellaris is the one Paradox game I actually keep coming back to, as a fan of SF I appreciate that it just hits on nearly every SF trope out there. I thought about trying Endless Space 2 again with the Awakening rework, but I think I would honestly just rather play stellaris.

I still very rarely finish stellaris games though, as much as I like the early game the late-mid to late game just really drags.

Same, I enjoy the genre a lot still despite the fact that most MMO players seem to spend more time hating them than playing them.

I am a bit tired of the genre being totally dominated by fantasy though. I miss Wildstar and Secret World.

I have had that factorio itch a couple times recently, but holding off for the DLC.

Been occupying myself with Dyson Sphere Program instead.

That is Breathedge.

Oxygen Not Included is the Klei joint, the folks who did Don’t Starve. It’s very much about engineering solutions to problems. Honestly heat is the bigger issue than Oxygen.

I have been summoned I see.

Playing Currently:

Stellaris (I just bought the Astral Planes DLC on sale)

FFVII Rebirth

EDIT: Desynced - I forgot I was playing this one, hah. Scifi factory builder with modular buildings and programmable unit behaviours.

Favourite Genres:

Factory Games

City/Colony Builders

RPGs (MMOs or JRPGs mostly)

Completed Recently:

I just finished my latest Rimworld run, where I did a Neolithic/Tribal to Spacer tech run. Rimworld is my favourite game ever made, I do runs through it very regularly, but wanted to finish up my current game before the latest DLC hits in a month or so.

I have at least a thousand hours in Rimworld and I can’t imagine that pace slowing down a whole lot. The funny thing is I actually hated it the first couple times I tried to get into it, before something just clicked.

I am 90% sure that the Focus skill helps charge them faster, so might be worth squeezing into your switch axe builds.

In axe mode I always did the classic wild swing into flip-swing to get the charge buff, and then the circle circle attack in sword until I could discharge. I am not sure there is a more reliable way; the difficulty in landing that combo was a big reason I didn’t stick to switch axe, I will admit.

I have used it, but my main is insect glaive. What’s the question?