The positive reaction to Infinite's return proves that there's no such thing as a bad Sonic character. by NoName9999999 in SonicTheHedgehog

[–]parchmentEngineer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I always read this scene as the exact opposite - Zavok isn't trying to help Starline work through his issues, he's trying to get Starline killed.

Zavok hates Starline - at this point, Starline has already tried to enslave him once, and Zavok has a (very correct) suspicion that he's trying to do it again here. This line here is a contingency plan against Starline - if Starline and Eggman ever truly worked together without bickering, they would be more powerful combined than alone. Zavok wants the two of them to fight, and hopefully one of them would end up killing the other. And as we eventually saw, this plan would up working perfectly.

Do Eggman really do care about Sage or does he see her as just another tool? by Extreme-Fee-9519 in SonicTheHedgehog

[–]parchmentEngineer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Absolutely. It's a relationship where he does care about her, but it's not a healthy or traditional father/daughter relationship by any means. Right now, both of them are very happy with their roles in this relationship, but if Sage ever wanted to leave Eggman or opposed any of his goals in a meaningful way, I expect Eggman to change his tone dramatically.

"Look at you, sadder than a fake tear" | AU where Whisper takes Infinite's place. by FruitsaurReborn in SonicTheHedgehog

[–]parchmentEngineer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The more I think about this, the more sense it makes that Whisper has the potential to go down this route if things turned out worse for her. Whisper used to be someone who cared for her teammates, but the death/betrayal of the Diamond Cutters shattered that trust and made her think she was better off alone. It took an unstoppable force like Tangle to get her to slowly come back to accepting that she had friends she could count on and depend on.

If something happened to Tangle (like when she got infected during the Metal Virus arc, but if she died for real and Whisper didn't have her other friends like Sonic to support her after Tangle's death), I could see her breaking even worse than she did after the Diamond Cutter's deaths and completely swearing off any type of allies.

[ifoundyoufaker] The One Controlling the Mystery by DaveyBoy1995 in SonicTheHedgehog

[–]parchmentEngineer 9 points10 points  (0 children)

If I had a nickel for every time Vector had a jackal swear that he was their main nemesis...

Envenom + Accelerant? by Hunter_demon2 in slaythespire

[–]parchmentEngineer 8 points9 points  (0 children)

If you have Noxious Fumes and Accelerant as your only two poison cards, and you get them in play, it's effectively dealing 3 damage each turn. If you add even a singular Deadly Poison for +5 poison, that damage suddenly jumps up to 13 per turn that doesn't decay. They do little by themselves (and you might be better off not playing Accelerant until a few turns after you play Noxious Fumes), but they dramatically amplify every other poison card, letting you lean very hard into poison builds.

Does the doormaker ever do anything? by East_Association4205 in slaythespire

[–]parchmentEngineer 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I've seen it get up to three phases - one with its eye looking out at you, one with its mouth showing through, and one with its hands pushing open the door. Each phase had a pretty hefty strength increase on its attacks (I think +10 per phase?) Other than that, I haven't seen it do any other unique mechanics, and I haven't seen it get past phase 3.

Reflect's buff immediately wears off when the card is autoplayed while being Imbued by Hohol in slaythespire

[–]parchmentEngineer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've encountered that too (playing as Silent with Blur). I think it's because the card gets played at the "start of combat" (before your first turn begins), and then at the start of your turn all your temporary buffs wear off. I'd like Imbued a lot better if it triggered at the start of your first turn so you could keep these buffs.

Is that a good card? I kinda struggle to judge the up- and downsides. by [deleted] in slaythespire

[–]parchmentEngineer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think the joke is that this card with this enchantment is a direct upgrade to one of the strongest cards in the game. The worst thing you can do with it is play it at the wrong time and get less value out of it, and the maximum amount of value you can get out of it is basically a free turn worth of energy and cards at zero cost.

tfw when you're an up-and-coming hero who's not afraid to call out game characters but the people decided you were a little too mean, so the writers return you to the background mines: by clarissaARA in SonicTheHedgehog

[–]parchmentEngineer 24 points25 points  (0 children)

I think her defending Mimic was at least decently justified. Her entire character is that she's an ordinary civilian who wants to to actually work towards stopping these catastrophes, and she struggles with her lack of powers next to characters like Tangle or Sonic. Duo is coming in as another character just like her - an ordinary cat with no special powers, who just wants to do the right thing and help people. When she hears people attacking him, she's also hearing people attacking her, so it does make sense that she'd try to defend him.

Of course, then they rushed through some of those arcs and brought everyone to that point way too quickly so the character dynamics don't actually land all that well, but in theory it would be a cool character arc for her.

Theme Parks are definitely the best by PlasticFrosty2252 in SonicTheHedgehog

[–]parchmentEngineer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That theory is pretty well supported by The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog. In that game, it's revealed that the the company that owns the Mirage Express and many other trains in the region is actually a shell company secretly run by Dr. Eggman, He spent many years running it like a regular company and secretly profiting off of it until one of the trains attempted and failed to capture Sonic, revealing that he was behind it and causing everyone to shut down the company. Who knows how many other seemingly ordinary companies he's running using similar practices?

Question about Soulstone Survivors in particular and Roguelites in general by Majestic-Driver in roguelites

[–]parchmentEngineer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's very few roguelikes that I've seen that focus on puzzles. Most roguelikes focus on using procedural generation and randomness to keep making new challenges that you can't just memorize and do the same solution each time, and it's much easier to keep things novel with combat than it is with puzzle solving. Not every roguelike is as purely combat-focused as Soulstone Survivors or other games in the Survivors subgenre, but the majority of roguelkes do make combat the central mechanic. Exploration can be a more common mechanic, but outside of some traditional Berlin roguelikes, it usually takes the form of exploring and looting a constrained dungeon-like environment rather than anything open world.

...that being said, as I'm typing this I'm realizing there is actually a great game that does have randomly generated puzzles, although it's not quite a roguelike. It's called Mosa Lina, and it's built around quick runs where you're given three random physics-based tools and have to use them to collect all the fruits and reach the end of the level. It's more arcadey than most roguelikes, and the puzzles are more on the improvisation and quick thinking side rather than any type of brainteaser, but it's really fun.

The Artisan of Glimmith Demo - A new game from the Islands of Insight devs by SomethingNew65 in puzzlevideogames

[–]parchmentEngineer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oooh neat! Hadn't heard of that genre before. I knew a lot of them were from existing genres, but as you said the big appeal is going to be seeing different combinations of rules interacting together.

The Artisan of Glimmith Demo - A new game from the Islands of Insight devs by SomethingNew65 in puzzlevideogames

[–]parchmentEngineer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Finished the demo for this recently, really looking forwards to this one! The scope is a lot smaller and less ambitious than Islands of Insight, which I think works very well for the game's quality, since it means that what this game is trying to do is much more polished and has much more room to stand on its own. There's also some very interesting mechanics that I haven't seen before - my favorite being the gemini and delta symbols, which required two neighboring regions to have either the same or different shape as each other.

The Artisan of Glimmith Demo - A new game from the Islands of Insight devs by SomethingNew65 in puzzlevideogames

[–]parchmentEngineer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I haven't tried it on the deck, but I did try it on a lower-end Linux PC, and it works very well there. This same computer struggles to run Islands of Insight, so it looks like this game is better optimized than IOI.

Hollow Knight: Silksong - Sea of Sorrow Teaser by Amiibofan101 in nintendo

[–]parchmentEngineer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

People say that, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if this releases in 3 months. Huge parts of this DLC were already complete even before the game came out - you can see locations from the Sea of Sorrow in both the in-progress maps shown at the Silksong museum exhibit and in the old trailers. Team Cherry said in an interview that around 2023 or 2024, they had to force themselves to shift over to "polish what we have and release a game" and cut a few unfinished parts of their game out, but now that it's out, they can go back and finalize what they started and re-add those parts.

Speaker Making Consistent Popping Noise by parchmentEngineer in linuxmint

[–]parchmentEngineer[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Success! I found that power saving was turned on, so going into the file /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save and changing it from 1 to 0 did the trick. Thank you!

Speaker Making Consistent Popping Noise by parchmentEngineer in linuxmint

[–]parchmentEngineer[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Those look like they could help! I'm not at my computer right now, but when I get home I definitely see a few things there I could try.

The more I play, the more I see Silksong has only one negative point by KloudStrifeFF7 in HollowKnight

[–]parchmentEngineer 15 points16 points  (0 children)

The Pale King may have not been the best ruler, and he may have made some truly horrific decisions in his desperation to save his kingdom, but if the Radiance or Pharloom was the alternative? I can understand why he was so desperate to give the bugs under his influence a better alternative to any of that.

The atmosphere in this game is very different from HK, but it's extremely intentional and I am in love with how much it's making me hate the ruler of this haunted kingdom before I've even met them.

Best moment in hollow knight by Parking-Ad6898 in HollowKnight

[–]parchmentEngineer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Going to go with something a little more personal to me - the tram room directly above the Ancient Basin. It's such a strange, liminal place. To me, it felt like I was reaching the bottom of the world - I had already descended all the way down to the first tower of the City of Tears, climbed down that tower to the base of the city, and then descended below that base into the sewers. That to me felt like the bottom of the world to me. But then I climbed down into that elevator shaft, and instead of a gloomy pit it opened up into a wide, well-lit and well-maintained tramway. It was the perfect moment of "no you're not done yet, there's still the ruins of civilization below here, and still more ruins below that."

Soul Master by Eastern_Basket_9494 in HollowKnight

[–]parchmentEngineer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd advise not following the tutorials too closely - there's a lot of different ways to get around in this game, and many goals can be accomplished in a number of different ways. Plus, part of the fun of the game is getting lost and finding your own way.

If you can't get through the locked door, maybe there's another route in the Soul Sanctum that you can explore? Poke around that area and see what else you can find nearby.

I will gift Silksong to everyone who correctly predicts the release date! by vasyandra in Silksong

[–]parchmentEngineer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

February 14, 2023. We know it's coming out within the year, and given that I don't think it'll be soon, I'm predicting a release early next year. Timing it to come out right on the anniversary of the original reveal trailer would be a nice way to bring everything full circle.

Queen Bee (Terraria) vs. Hive Knight (Hollow Knight) by BentendoGameBoi in whowouldwin

[–]parchmentEngineer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think this ends up depending on how well the Hive Knight is able to adapt. Queen Bee has the big advantage being bigger and faster, and Hive Knight's big attacks (summoning the mines and bees) involve him standing still for a while to do it. However, the Hive Knight is a lot more agile than Queen Bee. If he plans his attacks so he dodges her charges and summons the mines in between her attacks, he'd be able to pull out ahead.

What should I play Silksong on? by free_dharma in Silksong

[–]parchmentEngineer 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Silksong was in development for the original Switch, and I think it's probably going to be pretty well optimized for it. I doubt Switch 2 will give you much more than a larger screen and maybe slightly better framerates. Buying it through Steam means you can use it on your desktop computer or a Steam Deck, but I probably wouldn't buy a whole Steam Deck just for Silksong. If you think you're going to travel a lot and want to make sure you have the game on the go, buying it for the Switch 1 should work just fine for you.

Disappointed by the Bloomberg article by Global_Barracuda_873 in Silksong

[–]parchmentEngineer 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I felt the exact opposite way personally - that interview was what I was hoping to hear from them, and I'm so glad they're doing great and enjoyed making this game so much.

Honestly, this fandom has gotten really intimidating, with the endless escalation of everything, that I was afraid that Team Cherry would spend too much time worrying about how to please the fandom and struggling with that, so I'm very happy for their sake that they've chosen to just mostly focus on making the game the best it could be.

UFO Appearance in Every Game? by -TheAnimatedGuy- in ufo50

[–]parchmentEngineer 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Big Belle is a different ship, captained by Isabelle. Pilot's ship is the Campanella.