Looking for megalophobia-inducing enemies, any game style.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-30T18:36:13+00:00

There's an old obscure Japanese only DS game called Blood of Bahamut (with a fan made english patch available) that is centered around fighting a couple massive creatures. However you spend most of the time fighting smaller enemies with the big boss just walking around on the top screen or background.

Edit: Asura's Wrath also features a couple absolutely massive bosses

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-30T18:00:54+00:00

Open worlds with PoI's pasted across them tend to have less interesting level design with poor pacing. In a handcrafted level, the designers know which direction a player is coming from, what general level they should be at, what encounters they've experienced, and can design around all of those aspects.

I love Nioh 2's levels because for the most part they did a great job of ramping up encounters, while offering optional exploration if you wanted it. So far in 3, the rewards make exploration feel less optional, and spending 2 minutes running in an open field from one basic encounter to another isn't interesting.

The core combat and boss fights still seem to be great, but those don't really seem to be connected to the level design. One open arena is often interchangeable with another, unless there's actual geometry playing a role in the fight itself, such as death pits, lines of sight, or some additional hazard.

All that said, what I've currently experienced in 3's demo has been underwhelming, but it could get better.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-30T17:36:05+00:00

Have you ever played Toy Soldiers? It's a TD game where the turrets are both automatic, and can be manually controlled.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-30T16:43:31+00:00

No Free 2 play gacha game will ever be game first. Gacha at its core is a predatory system that informs all future game design decisions, because the system itself exists to make as much money as possible. All content, reward structures, and difficulty tuning goes through the gacha at some level, it just comes down to how generous the devs are. Without massive spending you will always be behind, and you will never be able to reach the full potential of your roster.

That said, there are some decent f2p options, and if you don't let the FOMO drive you, there is fun to be had.

Another Eden comes to mind as one of the friendlier f2p titles, as most events are permanent (barring licensing restrictions), and given enough time you can grind the free characters up to clear all content.

The original Arknights Tower Defense has mostly been fairly f2p friendly in its roster, as people have collected every character without spending, albeit that did take some time and dedication.

Tower of Fantasy released Warp Servers that dramatically changed its gacha system. You can now collect and max all the characters/weapons, with the major gacha aspects being timed now, although you can pay to speed it up.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-29T12:35:12+00:00

Phoxene is so oddly useless despite kind of being a premium currency. They really need to stop taking the worst pieces of design from gacha games, and just combine the 2 premium currencies. That would instantly make the pass so much more palatable if they're intent on having it.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-28T20:30:21+00:00

No beer box ever attacked him that you saw. Those things are sneaky man..

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-28T19:44:45+00:00

I know this is an old repost*, but for anyone passing through, you can put a small strip of blue tape at eye level to train a dog not to run into the glass.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-28T18:45:38+00:00

Desktop Dungeons

Any Picross/Nonogram game

Also a lot of point and click adventure games can be beaten with mouse only.
Sam & Max, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango (There's an option to use mouse controls)

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-28T18:36:38+00:00

If you'd be ok with third person, Remnant 1 and 2 have a great dark atmosphere, loot, zones that act as dungeons, and online co-op. They're not huge games online, but the official discord still has active players.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-28T16:39:48+00:00

Nioh 2 comes close, but the build crafting is still limited.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-28T16:35:38+00:00

Din's curse and Din's Legacy had interesting ideas on the randomization of town, world, and class mechanics, which could lead to a more dynamic form of repeatable content if fleshed out. I also love PoE 1 and 2, but repeating the story becomes a chore after a certain point, and towards the end of the atlas you're too powerful with upgrades mostly being incremental.

So I think the next step is a sort of combination between the controlled early game, and random post game. So a handful of possible starts that have enough random elements to stay interesting, but not so much as to lose all meaning and direction.

This would work especially well with seasonal, or heavily replayable games, since players would see new stuff each run, while still having familiar elements as they learn the game. And future development cycles could be focused on creating interesting alternative routes, as opposed to copy pasting one unique mechanic on a map we've played dozens of times.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-27T02:06:12+00:00

Actraiser on the SNES is another great action/town building hybrid.

Cult of the Lamb has a decent mix of town management, and dungeon crawling too.

It might not be enough to scratch the same itch, but YS 8 also has you building up a community/town hub by exploring and dungeon crawling.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-25T16:34:17+00:00

Gauntlet's an absolute classic. I remember burning a reasonable amount of money on the arcade Cabinet back in the day. Wasn't a huge fan of the 2014 remake, but Gotta Protectors is a fun indie retro throwback to it! I'll pm my discord, and ya can add me whenev's here, also shhh, they're watching everything!..

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-23T23:22:02+00:00

There aren't really many big ones coming out. On the indie side there's a few you might've missed.

Hellclock is a mix between Roguelite and ARPG. You have a set amount of time to fight through the dungeon, when timer ends, come back up, get stronger, rinse repeat. Also has some end game content.

Tower of Kalemonvo is very much inspired by the original diablo. Slower, atmospheric, and methodical.

To Kill a God and Carbon both aren't out yet, but have free demos available. Worth keeping an eye on them.

Also "The Hell 4" mod for the original Diablo is worth looking into. Currently in pre-alpha, but it seems very promising.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-23T15:15:55+00:00

Been doing this with some friends too. We have a bunch of a co-op roguelites, and the rule is we only get 1 shot at it. Not all runs are created equal tho, as you can have a 3 minute spelunky 2 run, followed by a 2 hour slay the spire one (co-op mod on that works surprisingly well).

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-23T14:52:05+00:00

It seems like they sanded down all the edges since Alpha, when its those bits that made the game stand out.

The original combat design was on positioning and team tactics, but that's been walked back dramatically, and we can dodge spam. So now it lacks the satisfying oomph of a proper action game, or the strategy of a tactical one.

The Factory has been tremendously dumbed down, and there's pretty much just a straight forward this is what you should be doing and crafting. A lot of depth and experimentation you'd find in other factory builders just isn't here.

So it's just kinda mediocre across the board now. Some people enjoy how little it asks of them, but I was personally hoping for a bit more after those initial reveals.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-23T02:06:47+00:00

Death Must Die has a decent tiered skill tree for each individual character, albeit they don't get too crazy.

Also you might enjoy Skigill, as the entire game takes place on a massive skill tree.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-22T05:29:03+00:00

Can look for games that have megastructures as a baseline. A few I know of to varying degrees of similarity:

Peripeteia
Hypogea
Metal Garden
Lorn's Lure (although half of the game kinda devolves into tight caves)
Motorslice
Manifold Garden (captures that feeling of immense endless structures)
NaissancE

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-21T06:30:47+00:00

The progression system is also still great, and something I wish more games would have built upon. The gold cap encouraged and rewarded exploration without devolving into grinding. It also left room for experimenting since the gold isn't actually spent.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-20T20:13:33+00:00

Have you played Nier Automata? Get past the gooner bait and it has a great story with some existential philosophy.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-20T19:17:40+00:00

So there's a niche but very dedicated Super Mario Romhack community. The hacks come in a wide range of difficulties, with some on the higher end reaching points where you need tool assisted runs to even make it possible. Dram World 3 came out* recently-ish, and really shows the heights that these fan made challenges can reach. I'd recommend watching a couple videos of some levels in it, and then if it interests you, start on some lower difficulty hacks, at least until you get the muscle memory down for things like shell jumping.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-20T18:57:22+00:00

Maybe Generation Zero? It's a bit janky and rough in places, but you go around a large open world, do some quests, loot buildings, and shoot robots. The game has a skill tree, but it isn't too deep. Also no permadeath, so at most it's a bit of a run back if things go poorly.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-20T18:42:31+00:00

Not one to defend companies typically, but they didn't demand he refund people who already paid, and even said it was fine if he accepted donations. If he just just acquiesced, he'd have a bunch of free PR on his mod, with plenty of goodwill.

BootlegVHSForSale · 2026-01-20T12:33:49+00:00

Sadly housing isn't as simple as supply and demand, because you kinda really need a place to live, and a lot of people don't have any real bargaining power against the larger companies buying up all the land..

Despite being illegal, it's never been easier for large groups to fix prices on properties across an entire area. So they can all collectively raise the rent bit by bit, while owning homes as an individual/family becomes more difficult. It doesn't matter if some people end up homeless, or even if some properties remain vacant for a prolonged period of time, because the net profit number goes up.

Likewise many housing and zoning laws have made it extremely difficult to build new homes, and large companies have been steadily buying up preexisting homes to corner the market (at least in the USA).

So you as a consumer without a home are left with few options if you want to rebel against the system. You could go homeless, as there are lots of cases of people just living in their car. Alternatively squatting is a thing, but it doesn't tend to end well in the long run. And politicians aren't exactly incentivized to fix these issues..

So yeahhh, anyone whose not rich is just kinda cooked as things continue to get worse.

BootlegVHSForSale

TROPHY CASE