The Steam Discovery Queue Is Just Depressing

 

Every so often when I have a couple of minutes to kill or if I'm procrastinating something I'll fire up Steam and take a look at the discovery queue.  At first, the discovery queue seems like a good idea because it apparently looks at games you play and then suggests you things based on that but at this point I'm sure that's bullshit because the Steam discovery queue is equal parts depressing and anger inducing and I don't know why I keep clicking through it

I'll start by saying that it's not a totally useless feature, I do occasionally come across a title in that list of games that I'll either buy right away or at least put on the wish list for later because it looks interesting but titles that do that are few and far between.

One thing that discovery queue has done for me is given me a fair bit of contempt for the indie game scene as a whole. I thought that indie games were cool because they were free of things like investors breathing down their necks to make a certain amount of cash and therefore could be a bit more creative and experimental except that's not what is going on at all.  Zelda-Clone, Soulslike, pixel graphic boomer shooter, low poly 3d horror walking simulator, Slay the Spire rip-off or the worst offender, action roguelite.  Just a constant barrage of samey, uninspired dross made by tossers that lack a single creative bone in their body trying to cash-in on whatever is the indie trend at the time.  I used to love roguelike games, but then 2011 came around, The Binding of Isaac came out and was really good but then the store flooded and is still flooded with rougelikes and now nothing will get me to hit that next button faster than seeing that tag.  Take some notes from Dennaton Games or Lucas Pope and try and make something at least a smidge original, will ya?

But it gets worse than that

The reason I think that the claim that discovery queue suggests stuff based on what you play is because every so often I'll get suggested a game that looks something akin to a low effort platformer than you might have found on Newgrounds around my middle school age.  Keep in mind that games on Newgrounds back then.  I got suggested one piece of shit looking game called Bok which looks EXACTLY like some piece of shit game some idiot would have made when trying to learn FlashMX.  The difference now is that it's some piece of shit trying to learn Unity or Godot or some such crap and they want money for it

 

Yeah it's only 2 quid but I'd rather stand in Siberian winter and have someone pull my ear lobes than give you money for that sack of shit.  Purplexingly it fed me that one because of Cuphead and......Bendy?  Whatever algoritihm they got for game suggestions is pretty drunk

But Bok isn't even the worst offender.  I did a couple of queues back to back and found this one guy who had made the same game 3 or 4 times, re-skinned them and jigged the levels around a bit and was selling each game for like 5 bucks each.  If I ever find them again I'll put them on twitter but the lack of quality for those games was absolutely shameless.

While I'm at it, let me also touch on the "Adult Only" games that occasionally pop up in the feed as well.  Why is it that almost every adult game on Steam is the ugliest looking piece of shit I've ever seen.  I've played A LOT of hentai games in my time and if there's one thing a Japanese ero-ge developer will put a lot of time into it's the art, because that is what is pulling in most of it's userbase.  Adult games on steam though all seem to use the exact same ugly looking 3D models with godawful animations and some of the worst "erotic" voice acting I've ever heard.  If there is anyone out there getting off to steam adult only games that aren't a translation of some Japanese thing, let me know because I'm convinced these people do not exist.

It makes me wonder if Steam has anything akin to quality control since the store is just HEAVING with garbage.  A sad state of affairs but luckily there are accounts on places like Twitter and YouTube that will filter through the bullshit better than any discovery queue ever could so tell that queue to go fuck itself and go there instead

Slay The Spire First Impressions

While I was drinking in a video game bar near my house, a friend of mine fired up this game on a laptop he brought on down and we had a merry old time playing this over a few drinks.  Granted I was a bit drunk when I tried it so if any details I mention now are off a little, forgive me, but I only did one run so it's not like I went that deep into it anyway.

Slay the Spire is a sort of Roguelike deck building game and if there is a story involved then I sure as fuck wasn't paying attention to it.  Basically there's a big spire and you gotta go fuck up all the demons inside it.  When you fire up the game you get a choice of either a warrior guy or a sort of thief type guy and for the one run I did with my buddy we played as the warrior.  From there you are given a map of levels and each level will have a battle or some kind of event that could either help or hinder you.  You fight your way through each map until you either are killed or you make it to the end which sounds easy but if you didn't know what I meant by "Roguelike" before, that means that death means you have to start all over again, no saves.

Anyway the big pull of the game is the whole deck building things.  At the start you're given a bunch of basic shit like attacks, blocks and a skill or two and as you progress you get more and more cards for your deck.  However just putting cards willy nilly is a sure fire way to get killed pretty quickly as you have to juggle things such as cost, synergy and deck size.  For example, if you clear a fight and are presented two cards that don't really fit well with your deck it might be better to pass so that you aren't drawing shit from a bloated deck later on.  Cards aren't gone once you use them either (unless it says "exhaust" on it), you just get 5 randomly each turn so keeping your deck well focused is pretty key.  You can also level up cards so they have greater effect and there are also non card relics (or artifacts or something like that, I forget the exact term) which you can equip for various buffs and effects.

While I did have great fun with the game, and the core deck building element is extremely solid, I have two big problems with Slay the Spire.  One is the fact it's early access, but only because I fucking hate early access with every inch of my being.  Granted, the developers are being very good with it and clearly are putting the effort in but I still can't bring myself to buy a game with that label on it.  If you stumble across this post AFTER the full release then disregard this point, obviously.  The other problem I have is the art style and general look of the game.  Now I'm no artist, I struggle to do stick figures in MS Paint but Slay the Spire just doesn't look like a game you'd spend money on.  It looks like the kind of game you would have found on Newgrounds back in the day, like the whole thing has been made in Flash or some shit.

However don't let that deter you from picking it up if you don't mind the early access because it's a pretty incredible game.  I didn't finish the one run I tried, I died somewhere fairly late in game so I'll be watching the updates carefully for the full release so I can have my revenge.

One Finger Death Punch

Well here was a pleasant surprise I got from the Steam store for exactly no money thanks to the power of selling Steam cards and DotA items!

On paper, the game sounds boring as fuck.  It's a fighting game with 2 buttons and you're not allowed to move or do anything but punch dudes.  Now if you were turned off by that description, I'd ask you to wait and stay a while because One Finger Death Punch is actually a really interesting game.

At it's core, it is exactly how I described it but when you actually start playing it the game manages to suck you in with really faced paced combat that has a little bit more depth that just clicking dudes one after the other.  Each level tasks you with murdering a certain number of guys and as the game goes on there are different types of guys that require certain combinations of clicks to dispatch.  On top of that you have to factor in things like weapon drops, your characters abilities and the ever increasing  game speed that comes with each victory and you end up with a unique but simple experience.

The game then goes to mix things up even further by adding different types of game modes to each level.  The standard mode is called a mob round which is the aforementioned punch the required number of dudes.  After that you get things such as sword and nunchaku rounds which are a bit faster, time trails, smash a certain number of level props and my personal favourite, the retro film round which makes everything black and white.  There's a few more than that but they escape me right now.

As you play through the games absolutely staggering number of levels you unlock a variety of skills that can be used for things such as extending the life of the dropped weapons or giving you a defensive manoeuvre or even healing.  These abilities become active on killing a certain number of dudes so the abilities add that little extra level of strategy to each stage, trying to get yourself in the best position to maximise the effectiveness of your abilities.

Apart from the games levels, you also have a survival mode that comes in 3 flavours that tasks you with killing and endless number of dudes until your life meter runs out.  Just so that doesn't feel like a total waste of time the game features some online leaderboards so you can compare just how much of a Kung Fu master you are with the rest of the world.

However the absolute best thing about this game for someone like me is the nostalgia value.  When I was a kid I was a big fan of these little stick figure animations on a site called Newgrounds that were known as Xiao Xiao.  One Finger Death Punch manages to bring all the awesomeness that was Xiao Xiao into a really fun and fast playable experience.  Some people may be turned off by the idea that the graphics are so simplistic they used stick figures, but for people my age who grew up with silly things like Stick Death and Xiao Xiao, One Finger Death Punch brings those happy memories flooding right back.

So I suggest that everyone goes and buys One Finger Death Punch.  It's super cheap and it's a great little game that is surprisingly addictive for something so simple in concept.  You can tell all the effort went into delivering something fast and enjoyable rather than something visually appealing or pandering to anything artsy which is something quite common with the indie scene.  Support this game, Silver Dollar have created a really fun game here and it needs some love.

The weekly freebie is no longer a thing!

Sorry, but I have to give up on this whole one free game per week thing, but let me explain why.  A long time ago I mentioned I have a huge, undying backlog of games that I'm slowly trying to chip away at, and due to being so busy playing those games, I end up not making any time to play anything free, so I think I'm going to have to stop this weekly feature thing.  It's OK, it had a crap name anyway.

That said, I will still feature free games that I do wind up playing when I actually play them and I'm not going to leave everyone empty handed, I'm going to spend some time talking about where one can acquire free stuff.

Steam is a good place to start, with a number of online titles that one can download and enjoy for free, but most of these games come with micro transactions so they are not 100% free, but free enough.  Good Old Games is another good place to go since they provide a number of titles for absolutely nothing and you can get some good mileage out of what they are just giving away.

If flash games are your thing then Newgrounds is probably your best bet.  I've not played flash games properly since high school so I'm not 100% sure it's the best place, but they have a lot.

Finally, I know 4chan gets a bad rep but the people over at the /v/ board (the video game one) put together a wiki of Recommended games for pretty much every system ever.  It's well organised and a good place to go if your struggling to find something to play and they have a pretty impressive freeware section, so it's worth checking out.

So yeah, a weekly free game feature is no longer a thing on this blog, but I have given you some good starting points so get digging round those sites and maybe you'll discover the next big thing.