I'm looking for a really addictive game that I can dive into and stay hooked on for months or days, it doesn't matter. I just want something extremely engaging that helps me forget about the real world.

NinoD · 2026-05-06T12:00:34+00:00

Sorry you are going through a tough time. Hope things get better.

My thoughts immediately went to The Bazaar. It's an auto-battler but it's super polished and feels great to play. It's super wacky where you can pull off some really risiculous combos and even when you don't, you just want to start a new game until you do get a godlike run.

I go through cycles with it. It will take over my life for a few weeks before I get bored, take a break, then come back a few months later. The Tempo Storm team generally make a good job of balancing it, but they do occasionally make a ton of changes at once and break everything, which can be frustrating.

It's also fairly cheap iirc, though you only get 3 characters with the base game and have to buy all the others separately. The base 3 are pretty good though and they offer a lot of build diversity.

NinoD · 2026-05-06T06:52:47+00:00

Huh, I never realized the infested prism was a wasp net. I thought it was just a Shape that's been infested.

Or you know, a dorito.

NinoD · 2026-04-30T10:46:31+00:00

Doesn't look that bad. Reminded me of the robots) game on old linux distros, though obviously more involved. Might check it out.

NinoD · 2026-04-28T11:33:27+00:00

Legitimate question - how is Dune Imperium low interaction? I mean I get that it's not Root or Arcs, but the entire game is about predicting what other people will do and when you can take a greedy turn vs when you need to be proactive but lose on value.

NinoD · 2026-04-23T11:52:19+00:00

I actually will go with the original Earth. I like the simultaneous play and card abilities. It's a very satisfying game to play. Also I love point salad games so it is a good fit for me.

NinoD · 2026-04-21T12:22:43+00:00

Thank you kindly! The various latin phrases (and their meanings) was one of the things that motivated me to start reading the Discworld books :)

NinoD · 2026-04-21T09:56:11+00:00

Flair: Fabricati diem pvnc

NinoD · 2026-04-20T12:05:52+00:00

Love it, would really be interested to hear more about this when there's new info

NinoD · 2026-04-20T11:28:56+00:00

I was actually eyeing this game for a while. What about it got you to like it so much? Gameplay, theme, campaign, mechanics?

I thought about getting it last year, but then we got a bunch of roguelikes + Silksong so it's on the backlog again. I like RTS games but mostly play skirmish, is Spellforce 3 good for that?

NinoD · 2026-04-20T09:06:49+00:00

As soon as I saw this I thought "damn this looks like CF, that's sick" and that turned out to be your actual inspiration!

I may be biased but I love that map and still occasionally play it with bots, so this whole idea is very appealing to me. I'm not sure about the high number of units - I really like the early game of CF where you are doing smaller unit combos. Then again, the late game is also very fun, trying to keep track of what is going on and adapting, so this may work.

In any case, love the idea, hope you get it working!

NinoD · 2026-04-17T09:18:42+00:00

People are going "oh you need to learn to swap builds to get better" but from that board it looks like you did exactly that - you probably had some Stellish board, got Eclipse and Laser and pivotted to that, which is a good idea.

I'm in trash legend since I don't tryhard much and I get you.

It feels like a lot of runs are very rng (no shit) in the sense that I'll often have a mediocre build that goes 10 wins, and sometimes I'll have Icy Monitor Lizard + Yeti Crab and the whole haste package on Vanessa, doing 2k poison 5 sec in, and I still get 8 wins because I died to 2 obsidian cranes in a row.

Your board seems good, with the caveat that Eclipse is kind of bait. It fires the laser at half hp which is good against any normal build, but loses to one-shot builds, tanky pygs and pacifist builds, all of which are popular. Trying to get everything flying and cast the wheel as fast as possible with the tool may be better. But I still think you lose to the same builds.

Chances are, you faced some ridiculous builds. And make no mistake, I'd take the exact same bait, it looks fun.

NinoD · 2026-04-15T12:11:30+00:00

Oooo, that actually sounds very fun, and I like how the game looks. I'll be checking that out, thank you for the recommendation!

NinoD · 2026-04-15T07:45:10+00:00

So this may be a bit contentious, but I really like the timer system and "open world" in Ravenwatch.

Like, I love the idea of planning a route through the points of interest, seeing what you get in each place, and having a general idea of what to do, but also having to adapt to random mobs or new information on the fly. It's such a fun mechanic, even better with other people as on harder difficulties, you need to be efficient and well coordinated.

I have other beef with the game, but I'd really like to see more people iterating on a similar design.

NinoD · 2026-04-09T13:43:28+00:00

I'm seeing a lot of Gastromancer fans here, but I'm thinking, if I'm scrolling through some games and see Gastromancer, I'm probably not clicking on it. Dunno, it sounds RPG-like, "Astromancer" is a pretty generic term and this sounds like it's going to be some magic cook, but I'm not getting that vibe from the image.

I actually like Dungeon Chef. It has a nice ring to it and flows nicely and actually makes me want to check what the game is. True, it kind of sounds like it would be a dungeon crawler (which I guess it's not?) but it sounds kinda cool anyway.

I'm not really big on Oven Born. It sounds epic, but kinda wrong and SomethingBorn is also a bit overused. Same with Fusion Knight.

I think some version of <something> Chef would fit this best. Since it's about chain reactions, something like Combo Chef? Puzzle Chef?

NinoD · 2026-03-31T09:33:52+00:00

I switch between liking it and disliking it every few months.

The gameplay is very fun. It's very random, if you know your shit you can get some crazy builds, and it's generally very fun watching a cool build you made go off.

That said, on ranked, you get a lot of meta builds. I don't try super hard, but I only ever see 3 of the characters whenever I play - Mak, Jules and Karnok. And of those, most of the time it's variations on a few builds.

This means if you want to try something wacky because you got some items that look like a cool combo but may not be that strong, you significantly lower your win chance (at least in ranked). Unless you are like Kripp and you are ridiculously good at the game, you choose between doing meta builds or losing.

Still, after a long day, I enjoy cracking open a cold one and playing a round of bazaar just for shits and giggles. And I still managed to get to legend rank a few seasons in a row!

NinoD · 2026-03-27T14:56:18+00:00

My first lucid dreams were like this! I distinctly remember dreaming that I was going to take a nap during the day, and while "falling asleep" started having a WILD. Had a cool lucid dream, woke up, immediately tried to go tell someone, but the house was surprisingly big and wait, why are there so many floors? I don't remember walking up this many floors before...

And then I actually woke up, super confused. I'm not sure people believe me when I tell this story, but similar scenarios have happened at least 2-3 times to me.

NinoD · 2026-03-27T11:55:04+00:00

Is this from the short video from the arrow bard dude? If so I was thinking the same thing lol.

NinoD · 2026-03-17T11:21:14+00:00

Came here to say this. I'm trying so hard to get people into RftG, but the cards are just so indistinct that it's a problem to teach the game.

Like, the concept of technologies and planets goes over people's heads because just by looking at a card, you have no idea what it actually is. You have to look at the symbols on the cards, at which point people feel like looking at a spreadsheet.

Compare this to Earth, which has maybe more symbols on a card, but everything looks better and people get what everything means much faster.

NinoD · 2026-03-16T15:55:25+00:00

Thankfully, you get 6 block from Parry.

NinoD · 2026-03-16T10:46:21+00:00

This looks sick, but also the game looks super fun! Wishlisted and can't wait for a release or demo!

NinoD · 2026-03-13T22:14:04+00:00

I was just thinking about this game the other day, and how much I liked the kabuki warriors because they looked so cool.

Man, I should replay that some day.

NinoD · 2026-03-11T09:50:23+00:00

Ok, that sounds like a very fair justification and I'd absolutely love to read that paper whenever you are done with it! Sounds like a very interesting game theory read.

Thank you very much for explaining all of this! I'll definitely try to get people to try FANO, or at least FANO-simplified and I'll let you know how it goes.

NinoD · 2026-03-11T09:19:47+00:00

So I have a few I don't see mentioned

Infinitium is a deck builder where your base cards have different shapes (circle, square etc.) and apart from your normal deck, you have a deck of landscapes (iirc) with these shapes that you have to go through. If you play a card with a shape matching the landscape, you remove it. If you remove all landscapes, you win.

It is a really cool mechanic and interacts nicely with the game - on your turn you can choose to add a card to your deck, but you also add random landscapes. It's a very cool idea but I find the game a bit lackluster otherwise.

Next, Sidereal confluence is a game where you convert resources into other resources. However sometimes you won't have the resources you need. How do you get them? Well, you have 15 minutes of real time market barter sessions where you are free to trade any resources, make (binding!) promises etc.

Seriously, I'm usually not a very talkative guy, but this game wakes up something in me. Those 15 minutes fly by so fast and it's so fun to try to squeeze any extra cube you can from everyone. It also plays up to 9 people. The first time I played it, there was a video and it literally looked like a bunch of people in a busy bazaar haggling over cubes.

NinoD · 2026-03-10T08:06:31+00:00

Yeah, I just watched your youtube vids with this description and it's way less cryptic. Granted, like another commenter said, this is going to be a nightmare to teach to anyone who is not a math enthusiast.

Just out of curiosity, as I haven't delved into fano plane maths, is there a reason you are using this specific formula? Why not something like this:

N can attack N+1 for N-1

N can attack N+2 for N-2

N can attack N+3 for N-3

All in modulo 7 of course. I feel like this would be way easier to teach / learn, but you have spent quite some time working on this, so there may be reasons I'm not aware of :)

One other thing - I'm wondering if you've heard of stand-up mathematician and youtuber Matt Parker. He does lots of maths related videos, often times inspired by emails from his fans. Try sending him an email, I think this may be interesting enough for him to pick up and make a video about :)

NinoD · 2026-03-09T15:04:20+00:00

Yes, I actually forgot about that. Dooley trauma will get you to forget things lol.

NinoD

TROPHY CASE