Super Smash Bro’s Ultimate is still the premier Couch Co-Op game for my circle of friends. We also play the JackBox party games and occasionally Mario Party.
I genuinely don’t know what options are even available outside of Nintendo’s fence anymore.
Edit: My reading comprehension is in the garbage today. Baldurs Gate 3 and It Takes Two.
I specifically mentioned both Spyro and Ty because both series have remasters available on Steam. The Spyro: Reignited Trilogy in particular is phenomenal. They did a really good job making the updated graphics look just like my nostalgic memories of the game.
Psychonauts (the original, not the sequel, though the sequel is also good) is a Summer Camp themed 3D platformer. It doesn’t quite meet your “low stakes/chill gameplay” criteria as it does have combat and mildly challenging boss fights and platforming, but it nails the rest. It’s easier than Tunic. Maybe worth checking out.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons strictly meets all the criteria listed, but it’s ultimately a tragic story. If “some kind of impact” includes leaving you in tears, check it out.
Okami is a Zelda style adventure set in feudal Japan with immaculate vibes. You play as the sun goddess Amaterasu in the form of a wolf bringing light and life to a land ravaged by demons. The world is cold and dark at first, but you bring spring and summer on your heels.
Finally, two favorites from my childhood are the Spyro series and the Ty the Tasmanian Tiger series. These are 3D Platformer collectathons and neither of these series are even close to any of the examples you provided, but they are bright and colorful and in my heart they have feelings of Summer Vacation and staying home all day to play video games.
That makes a lot more sense now. Thank you. I know where to look for troubleshooting next time I play.
I was not counting mana cost, no. So it’ll just drop modifiers if it doesn’t have enough mana, and still cast the base spell? That does explain some of the behavior I was seeing. I figured it would fail to cast entirely if I didn’t have enough mana for the full block.
One theory I had, if you can confirm, is that shuffle doesn’t just shuffle spells, it shuffles all spell nodes.
So if I have a 4-slot shuffle wand with: PPMP (P = Projectile Spell, M = Modifier)
I was thinking the cast table could either be:
P1 - 33%
P2 - 33%
MP3 - 33%
Or
P1 - 25%
P2 - 25%
MP3 - 25%
P3 - 25%
Depending on whether the modifier block was a valid place for the shuffle to land.
I was planning to try to build some wand experiments to differentiate which of these scenarios is true. Good to know that mana can be a confounding variable.
Edit: Also, is shuffle fully random or does it draw without replacement like a deck of cards until all stored spells are cast and it can recharge? Just thought of this and realized I hadn’t tested for it.
The issue I’ve been trying to work out is getting modifiers to work consistently. My understanding is that modifiers are supposed to stack and affect the next projectile spell to the right, but they either don’t apply at all or will apply sporadically, and I haven’t figured out what rule I’m missing.
I assume some modifiers just don’t work with some projectiles, but the game doesn’t seem to communicate whether this is the case. I also suspect it has something to do with shuffle, as you warned against, but I haven’t been getting any non-shuffle wands for experimentation, and my starter wand doesn’t have much mana to work with.
It doesn’t help that I can only experiment with builds in the airlock chambers between levels.
The specific issue I remember having last night was that I couldn’t get the pentagon shot modifier to apply to any of my projectile spells no matter what I did.
I did get the flametrail modifier working consistently, so I’m doing something right, but I’m not sure what was different between that and the pentagon spread modifier I was trying.
I’ll back up that Civ 4 has been the best entry in the series so far.
Civ 5 is when they dropped unit stacking, which made combat much slower and more finicky since you couldn’t just build up a massive deathball and tear across the map, and Civ 6 doubled down on that design space by tying city upgrades to individual tiles as well. They’re not bad changes, and they do add more strategic depth to the combat and city-building, but they do make an already slow game substantially slower, since combats that used to be done in a turn or two now require several turns of rotating and repositioning units to get them in and out of the fight.
Civ 4 was the last “pure” civ experience, building off and adding to the previous games without sweeping mechanical changes to shake up the meta.
I’ve started and bounced off Noita a couple of times already. It’s been fun but I do need time to dig in and wrap my head around the mechanics.
I’m stuck on wand building at the moment. I’ve watched a couple video guides explaining how it works, but something still isn’t clicking. None of the wands I’m making have worked the way I expect them to, and I’m not sure what I’m not understanding.
I just finished both Borderlands 3 and God of War (2018) so I’m in gaming limbo again.
Leaning toward Stardew Valley, Noita, or finally buckling down to finish Far Cry 3.
Void Stranger, Chip’s Challenge, and BABA IS YOU are all Sokoban style puzzle games with minimal performance requirements and no need for a mouse.
Siralim Ultimate is a creature collector RPG that will run on a potato and provide endless grinding, if you’re into that.
The Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters of the first six games are all excellent if you’re into JRPGs.
Dungeons of Dredmor if you like rogue-likes, or you could go old-school and pick up NetHack or ADOM.
Bunch of games on my Steam wishlist I’m mildly interested in but not willing to pay more than about $10 for, since they’d just wind up sitting in my backlog until I have time to play them. Waiting for a steep sale.
Some of the highlights:
Edit: Didn’t see the “year ago or older” caveat in the title.
I was a child with extensive free time and limited game options. I spent hours mowing grass to grind shells for the machine.
That wasn’t even the worst part. Combing through every NPC looking for the last few kinstone fusions if you missed one was way more annoying.
Minish Cap was my first Zelda. I remember using my allowance to buy the strategy guide back in the day so I could 100% it. Lots of nostalgia there.
The price.
Bought a used '96 Mazda Protégé off a coworker for $700. Ran it into the ground. Scrapped it for $300 when I could finally afford a better car. Definitely got my money’s worth.
I got to learn what driving without power steering felt like after the compressor locked up and the drive belt shredded. Ended up replacing it with a smaller belt just for the power steering since I couldn’t afford to replace the A/C. Drove with the windows down for a few months. Good times.
Yes. I check the organ donor box when I renew my driver’s license. If I’m in an accident then I don’t need 'em anymore. Let someone else use 'em.
Thanks. That’s good to know. Cloudflare will be the next one I try if Quad9 gives me any problems.
I just started and I’m having fun with it so far! Playing a mage and just unlocked my first specialization. Went with the one that gives meteor.
I think I soft-locked my save while I was having disconnect issues. I can’t leave the area anymore at all. Contemplating starting over. I’m not too far in yet. GW2 and PoE are running fine now, but LE is crashing every time I try to exit the end of time zone without fail.
Quad9 seems perfect for me! I’ll give it a shot.
Thank you!
Lots of little things, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was the constant pop-ups asking me to try out Copilot in Win10, harassing me daily on both on my personal PC and my work laptop.
Windows has been on thin ice since the trash fire that was Win8, and I’d only stuck with it for Nvidia driver support for gaming. I’ve been watching Proton development for years now, and putting it through its paces on my older PCs every few months, so I knew I was ready to make the switch for about a year before I finally pulled the trigger. I justified putting it off with the thought that “I can build my next PC around an AMD graphics card amd make the switch then.”
Then Win11 and all its garbage was announced, AI took off, and Microsoft started pushing their slop on my machine harder than ever. It was too much. I switched to Mint DE on my current machine and haven’t looked back.