Happy New Year! General Game Discussion--January 2026

[Zloth]

@Zloth Good luck with Terra Invicta. Supposedly there's a tutorial, but all I got was a world map and a bunch of mysterious buttons. I'm doing things, but whether they are good things or not I couldn't say. And I had a missions toolbar when I started, but that's disappeared, and I have no idea how to get it back.

There are two tutorials, one for the game proper and another for the interface. The interface one pops up every time something new shows up - UNLESS you click the little x in the upper right to close it instead of the 'next' button. It takes that to mean 'close the tutorial and don't bother me again unless I ask.' The other just guides you through missions as near as I can tell.

The mission window shows up when you have a councilor selected and a nation or interest point or some such. You can only assign those missions once per week, too, so a mission that ends early just results in the person taking a little vacation until the mission assignment phase comes back.

There's a LOT in those tutorials. I made popcorn and ate it while reading! Space is impressive, too, including Lagrange points for orbits and many many asteroids/dwarf planets. I had forgotten about Orcus until the game reminded me!

 

[Zloth]

Am currently in the process of begging Valve to stop allowing people to give awards for reviews and forum comments.

DONE! Sort of. They just changed awards completely. ALL the old awards have been wiped. They made 12 new ones. All awards cost 500 and bestow ZERO points to the account that gets them.

The jester is gone. The reason for jester farming is gone.

And all Steam guides now have no awards at all. Arg. It's always something...

 

[Zed Clampet]

DONE! Sort of. They just changed awards completely. ALL the old awards have been wiped. They made 12 new ones. All awards cost 500 and bestow ZERO points to the account that gets them.

The jester is gone. The reason for jester farming is gone.

And all Steam guides now have no awards at all. Arg. It's always something...

I don't understand the last one, but I consider the first two great improvements.

 

[Zed Clampet]

There are two tutorials, one for the game proper and another for the interface. The interface one pops up every time something new shows up - UNLESS you click the little x in the upper right to close it instead of the 'next' button. It takes that to mean 'close the tutorial and don't bother me again unless I ask.' The other just guides you through missions as near as I can tell.

The mission window shows up when you have a councilor selected and a nation or interest point or some such. You can only assign those missions once per week, too, so a mission that ends early just results in the person taking a little vacation until the mission assignment phase comes back.

There's a LOT in those tutorials. I made popcorn and ate it while reading! Space is impressive, too, including Lagrange points for orbits and many many asteroids/dwarf planets. I had forgotten about Orcus until the game reminded me!

Apparently I closed it out immediately. Think I'll just start over.

 

[neogunhero]

The jester is gone. The reason for jester farming is gone.

I'm glad someone gave me a Jester award on my profile, now I can proudly display this rare item whenever someone visits my page

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I've been a bad gamer lately. Buying games, barely playing them, then buying more. They're all great games but I'm in a rut, not able to dedicate a lot of time to one game.

First game I bought was HITMAN World of Assassination. I really liked the original reboots Hitman 1 and 2, so I picked this up for $2.99 for the starter pack. Fun little sandbox game, though I hate that I'm taunted with all the paid content in the main menu. I'm not sure how much time I'd put into this so that's why I stuck with the starter pack for cheap.

Next game I got is Vital Shell. This is a Vampire Survivors-like game with awesome PS1 aesthetics and an absolutely bumping jungle/DnB soundtrack. It plays like VS since you have auto-firing weapons, hordes of enemies to destroy and upgrades between waves. The big differences is that it is wave-based, each wave lasting a certain amount of time, requiring you to survive until the timer is out. In that time, kill as many enemies as possible to score the most points, making you able to upgrade quicker. It's a great little time waster and really cheap too.

Lastly I picked up Age of Mythology: Retold. I played it on Game Pass a year or two ago and really liked it, so I figured it's time to buy it. As a big fan of AEE4, this feels right at home with the modern UI and QOL updates. I never played the original AoM so I don't have nostalgia for it, though being an AOE4 player, it helped me learn a lot about the game very quickly. I absolutely love destroying my enemies with giant mythical gods. Compared to AOE4, this game feels more focused on combat and war which is a nice change of pace, I don't have to micromanage my economy as much.