May 2023 Random Game Thoughts Thread

[ZedClampet]

May Sale Dates:

Steam: Puzzle Fest: May 1, Sports Fest: May 15 to May 22
Steam: Tacticon Strategy showcase and sale May 11-15
Epic: Mega Sale: May 18 to June 15
GoG: Can't find anything

Coming to Game Pass in May

Redfall, 2 May
Ravenlok, 4 May
Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2, 11 May
Railway Empire 2, 25 May
Farworld Pioneers, 30 May

Top Game Launches for May (From PC Gamer):

• May 2, 2023 — Age of Wonders 4 - Fantasy 4X with tactical battles
• May 2, 2023 — Redfall - Co-op open-world vampire shooter
• May 5, 2023 — Ravenlok - An action adventure fairytale
• May 4, 2023 — Bare Butt Boxing (Early Access) - Physics-based butt punching
• May 8, 2023 — Cook Serve Forever - Frantic cooking adventure
• May 8, 2023 — Darkest Dungeon 2 - Grueling eldritch roguelike sequel
• May 9, 2023 — Torchlight: Infinite - Action RPG leaving early access
• May 16, 2023 — Humanity - Surreal puzzle game as crowd-managing spectral shiba
• May 17, 2023 — Greedventory - Grisly pixel art RPG with mouse-centric action
• May 18, 2023 — I Am Future (Early Access) - Rooftop post-apoc base-builder
• May 22, 2023 — Inkbound (Early Access) - Co-op tactics roguelike in storybook worlds
• May 23, 2023 — Amnesia: The Bunker - Hallmark horror series in WW1 hallways
• May 23, 2023 — After Us - Surreal post-human puzzler
• May 23, 2023 — Miasma Chronicles - post-apocalyptic tactics RPG
• May 23, 2023 — Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun - Space marine boomer shooter
• May 25, 2023 — Dynopunk - Tech repair sim in cyberpunk dino-city
• May 25, 2023 — Lord of the Rings: Gollum - Sneaky jewelry collection sim
• May 30, 2023 — System Shock - Remake of the classic immersive sim
• May 31, 2023 — Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection - DS dungeon crawler ports
• May ??, 2023 — Decarnation - phantasmagorical 2D horror
• May ??, 2023 — Star Trek: Resurgence - Star Trek treks into adventure game land

Notable DLC Releasing in May:

Wildermyth - Armors and Skins on Steam

This DLC contains four new two-tier armors per class (for a total of 24 new armors), four new starting outfits per class, and 42 new transformation skins to customize your heroes. Armors bring new sets of stats and mechanics, expanding the range of builds for each class.

store.steampowered.com

Stellaris: Galactic Paragons on Steam

Add Galactic Paragons to your empires and experience a new level of character and story as great leaders follow your lead to the stars. With exclusive additions to the all-new Council mechanic, leaders who you can shape to amplify the vision for your empire, new civics and more.

store.steampowered.com

Crusader Kings III: Tours & Tournaments on Steam

Life is a journey of chivalric adventure, so why don’t you embrace yours, ruler? Create your very own epic story with the major expansion, Crusader Kings III: Tours & Tournaments.

store.steampowered.com

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - Return of Rome on Steam

Return of Rome brings the original Age of Empires as a sub-game within Age of Empires II: DE. Relive the triumph and trials of antiquity with the original sixteen civilizations — plus one brand-new civilization, the Lac Viet in this self-contained experience.

store.steampowered.com

V Rising - Sinister Evolution Pack on Steam

Embrace the new world of technology and become the dark alchemist you were meant to be. Light your breathtaking halls with the glow of bio-luminous bubbling lanterns. Fill your halls with beautiful bronze, cured wood, and gleaming glass lined with the remnants of experimental monstrosities.

store.steampowered.com

Save 25% on Barn Finders: Bid Wars DLC on Steam

The latest Barn Finders DLC will take you to a completely different world. The exotic island you will arrive at your rebuilt pickup will offer you brand new auction mechanics, new ways to store items and give you the opportunity to craft items.

store.steampowered.com

Victoria 3: Voice of the People on Steam

Relive the dramatic political events of the 19th century! Drawing from the historical struggles between reformists, reactionaries and revolutionaries, Voice of the People puts you in the middle of political crises as charismatic characters from history vigorously push their agendas.

store.steampowered.com

Cities: Skylines - Hotels & Retreats on Steam

Spruce up your City with the finest hôtellerie with “Hotels & Retreats”! Start with a small hotel chain and unlock more luxurious and specialized hotels as you make your way to a successful hotel business.

store.steampowered.com

Solasta: Crown of the Magister - Palace of Ice on Steam

Although the heroes of Caer Cyflen managed to prevent the Soraks' attempt at reopening the Rift to unleash their foul god upon Solasta, the threat is far from over. Kingdom of Gallivan has suddenly declared war on their neighbours, and the Snow Alliance is calling for your help!

store.steampowered.com

Additional May Launches Perhaps of Interest: (This is only for Steam. I couldn't figure out how to do this with Epic because most of their games don't list launch dates)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1512050/World_Turtles/

Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore on Steam

Discover the secrets of Irumesa in a F2P 'Open Development' MMORPG. Join over 20,000 adventurers and re-experience the days of yore with over 20 classes, 100s of monsters, 18 professions, and near-daily updates!

store.steampowered.com

Showgunners on Steam

As a contestant on a high stakes reality game show of the future, you must survive a dangerous urban environment packed with traps, confounding puzzles, and heavily armed psychopaths. Turn-based combat in hand crafted levels, built for entertainment.

store.steampowered.com

Silica on Steam

Silica blends FPS and RTS in epic, photorealistic battles. Choose to fight on the ground or command from above as humans or aliens. Dive into thrilling multiplayer combat or master strategic command. Are you ready to survive and conquer?

store.steampowered.com

Pan'orama on Steam

Relax and unleash your creativity in this new city building puzzle game. Create amazing landscapes and discover wide range of structures with special abilities. Enter the world of beauty and tranquility with the panoramas of your own creation and don't forget to pet your new animal friends!

store.steampowered.com

Occupy Mars: The Game on Steam

Survive and colonize Mars in a highly technical, open-world sandbox game. Build and upgrade your base, discover new regions, conduct mining operations, retrieve water, generate oxygen, grow crops, and fix broken parts.

store.steampowered.com

Mechabellum on Steam

Mechabellum is a rewarding tactical wargame where you gain victory by adapting your strategy and outthinking your opponents. Command mechanized army in a battle against humans or AI, customize your units and strategically place them on the battlefield to watch them destroy your enemies.

store.steampowered.com

TT Isle Of Man: Ride on the Edge 3 on Steam

An iconic course for motorbike fans. 200km of open roads to practise on. Challenging physics. A simulation for the best riders.

store.steampowered.com

Save 25% on Drift: Space Survival on Steam

You were deep in uncharted space on a research mission. Disaster struck. Together with your friends, explore a mysterious asteroid field and mine whatever resources possible to build what you need to survive.

store.steampowered.com

Tin Hearts on Steam

Behind every brilliant invention, hides a magical story. Guide a troop of tin soldiers through a magical toy-filled world, in this immersive narrative puzzle adventure game from members of the team that brought you Fable.

store.steampowered.com

SubwaySim Hamburg on Steam

Explore the picturesque U3 line of Hamburg's elevated railroad in the new SubwaySim Hamburg!

store.steampowered.com

Firmament on Steam

Firmament is a new puzzle-adventure game by the legendary game studio behind the best-selling games Myst and Riven. Featuring deep storytelling and world-building, discover the story of this seemingly abandoned world as you explore and unlock the mysteries of 3 unique Realms… and beyond!

store.steampowered.com

Save 34% on LEGO® 2K Drive on Steam

Welcome to Bricklandia, home of a massive open-world LEGO® driving adventure. Race anywhere, play with anyone, build your dream rides, and defeat a cast of wild racing rivals for the coveted Sky Trophy!

store.steampowered.com

Castle of Secrets on Steam

The Castle of Secrets — a game with a deep and mysterious storyline, beautiful 3D graphics, unique gameplay and mechanics, will immerse you in a fairy tale of reality and mystery. How will this fairy tale end? It's your call.

store.steampowered.com

Save 60% on Blooming Business: Casino on Steam

Blooming Business: Casino is a relaxing management game with a narrative twist. Build and run your own fantasy casino in a bustling world full of animals and drama. Complete quests and manage your clientele. Keep everyone happy, from the clients, employees to the VIP’s.

store.steampowered.com

Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong on Steam

Play as 3 vampires, wield their powers wisely, and strike the right balance between your human and animal side in a heart-pounding story in which your choices will decide the fate of Boston.

store.steampowered.com

Summer Trip Cruise on Steam

Hey you, we need a captain! Use your mouse to drive the cruise ship with the on-screen rudder, avoid obstacles, take pictures and enjoy the ride. Take it easy... or take the challenge!

store.steampowered.com

Espresso Tycoon on Steam

Espresso Tycoon - a coffee shop simulator. Create your brand, decorate the coffee shop, manage your employees, and take care of your customers. Use the 3D coffee editor to create coffee recipes, order supplies, and collect rating points. Build the whole coffee business and complete all the missions!

store.steampowered.com

 

[Zloth]

Storm should be showing up for Midnight Suns real soon now, but they haven't announced anything.

 

[Sarafan]

The only thing that interests me from May releases is System Shock Remake. I don't have high hopes though. Nightdive has a decent reputation as a developer, but they're confronting a legend here. I'm not impressed by the gameplays. Maybe I'm wrong and the game will be great. Who knows?

I also want to raise the game optimization topic. Digital Foundry released a video recently in which they called Jedi Survivor the worst port of 2023. It's quite an achievement given the state in which PC version of The Last of Us was released. Basically no matter what hardware you have, forget about playing in stable 60 FPS. The saddest thing is that the game stutters while making only a 20-30% utilization of GPU and CPU. There's basically no optimization here! It's a shame that such a big company as EA releases that kind of performance monster...

View: https://youtu.be/uI6eAVvvmg0

 

[Brian Boru]

@ZedClampet Mighty OP, thank you again!

I'll see what Redfall's about, maybe one for the wishlist to get next year.

Bare Butt Boxing (Early Eccass)

 

[Pifanjr]

I'm really curious about how the Gollem game turns out. I just can't really imagine how one would make a game with Gollem as the main character.

 

[Brian Boru]

Always good to win the snowball fight 2-0 in the Arctic, since they're naturally the world champs!

On #4 of 4 of my Royal Envoy series playthru, debating whether or not to revisit those where I missed the 3 stars.

 

[ZedClampet]

The only thing that interests me from May releases is System Shock Remake. I don't have high hopes though. Nightdive has a decent reputation as a developer, but they're confronting a legend here. I'm not impressed by the gameplays. Maybe I'm wrong and the game will be great. Who knows?

The original footage they showed years ago was pretty underwhelming, but I think they restarted from scratch after that. Just because of that, I get a kind of "developer hell" feel from it, but that's probably unfair.

@ZedClampet Mighty OP, thank you again!

I'll see what Redfall's about, maybe one for the wishlist to get next year.

Bare Butt Boxing (Early Eccass)

Going to try out Redfall on Game Pass. As for Bare Butt Boxing, I had decided to leave it out of my expanded list, but then noticed it was on the PCG list anyway.

I'm really curious about how the Gollem game turns out. I just can't really imagine how one would make a game with Gollem as the main character.

Isn't there a Middle Earth dwarf colony game coming out sometime soon? Think I would be more interested in that.

 

[ZedClampet]

Thought @Colif might be interested in Panorama listed under my "other games coming in May" section.

 

[neogunhero]

Definitely want to check out Redfall whenever I change my internet provider. Seems like a perfect Gamepass type of game. I’m a huge fan of Arkane games so even if this doesn’t live fully up to expectations, it should still be a decently fun romp.

 

[Colif]

I wonder what devs of Dorfromatik think of that game - its pretty much the same thing

Pan'orama on Steam

Relax and unleash your creativity in this new city building puzzle game. Create amazing landscapes and discover wide range of structures with special abilities. Enter the world of beauty and tranquility with the panoramas of your own creation and don't forget to pet your new animal friends!

store.steampowered.com

 

[Brian Boru]

I wonder what devs of Dorfromatik think of that game - its pretty much the same thing

Hah, that was my thought too when I looked at it—"I'll get Dorfromantik first, and maybe this later if I like Dorf."

 

[Colif]

it sure can't hide its influences. its different enough to not be a direct copy as you seem to gain tiles back in different ways.

I might look at it in a few days. MIght try demo tomorrow, since its not out for another week.

 

[ZedClampet]

I wonder what devs of Dorfromatik think of that game - its pretty much the same thing

Pan'orama on Steam

Relax and unleash your creativity in this new city building puzzle game. Create amazing landscapes and discover wide range of structures with special abilities. Enter the world of beauty and tranquility with the panoramas of your own creation and don't forget to pet your new animal friends!

store.steampowered.com

It may be too close to Dorf. Dunno. I just consider things like this their own genre. Whenever an automation game gets announced, a bunch of people show up on Steam forums and say things like, "This is just another Satisfactory. What's the purpose?"

Just imagine if we said that about every shooter game?

That said, this may be too exact a game. I don't know. There was a game that launched on Steam that was a little too close to Raft for my tastes. Seemed like a straight rip-off. There's a fine line there that probably needs to be defined.

 

[Colif]

Its not bad, things change as you add more tiles, Buildings grow as you add more around them.

I probably wait for full game before I play too much. One thing I like already is no railways...

 

[Colif]

imgur is being dumb tonight, keeps rejecting images.
I played again, didn't get much past 1100

It doesn't take as long as Dorfromantik as the placement of tiles isn't as exacting. You can't get perfect placements as such. Still helps to try to get good adjacencies

final game has 51 blueprints for buildings, I might wait for it just to have more variety in things to build. Blueprints need to be built out of tiles, they need specific ones to fill the quest. Its pretty cool. I like how map changes as you add more to it.

 

[mainer]

The only thing that interests me from May releases is System Shock Remake. I don't have high hopes though. Nightdive has a decent reputation as a developer, but they're confronting a legend here. I'm not impressed by the gameplays. Maybe I'm wrong and the game will be great. Who knows?

The original footage they showed years ago was pretty underwhelming, but I think they restarted from scratch after that. Just because of that, I get a kind of "developer hell" feel from it, but that's probably unfair.

Same here, the System Shock Remake is the only new game of those listed that I'm really interested in, but I'm also going to wait for a few reviews to show up, as I'm concerned about all the delays Nightdive has gone through. It's been in development a long time, and I do think they've gone through "development hell"

It had a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2016, but they also scrapped the original design after a few years, with the game actually being put on hold for a time around 2021 before completely starting from scratch, and also switching from the Unity engine to the Unreal 4 engine. And most recently, Nightdive was purchased by Atar, and who knows how that will affect the final game. That's a lot of chaos in a game's development cycle, enough to cause me to hesitate in buying it, even thought I'd really love to see it be successful.

The one sure purchase for me on that list is the DLC Palace of Ice for Solasta. I love Solasta, and as the DLC is a continuation of the main campaign, featuring high level encounters it will most likely be quick purchase.

I'd also like to note here, that I really appreciate the format, and time involved, that @ZedClampet uses to create our new monthly threads. Listing all (or at least nearly all) scheduled game releases and DLCs, as well as known sales dates is a real time saver for me. Instead of jumping around or Googling for different articles, everything is listed in one place. Thanks.

 

[Sarafan]

The one sure purchase for me on that list is the DLC Palace of Ice for Solasta. I love Solasta, and as the DLC is a continuation of the main campaign, featuring high level encounters it will most likely be quick purchase.

Solasta is a really good game, but it suffers a bit from the fact that they used the free license for D&D. It limits the potential of character creation and development system. I'm afraid the game will go into shadow when Baldur's Gate 3 is released. Anyway, I missed the info about the upcoming DLC. Direct continuation of main story seems interesting, though I always perceived the plot more as a background for the combat system. We'll see whether the developers will be able to improve the story. On the side note, I haven't played the Lost Valley yet, so I can't really rate its plot.

 

[Johnway]

Well the Chiv2 update was delayed. But i thought that i could play with the new recruits in the playstation plus subscribers. i was foolish to expect any different playing with recent updates the same problems persist, imbalanced teams and player base so it wasn't much fun. I think i have my answer. I'm uninstalling the game.

 

[Pifanjr]

Isn't there a Middle Earth dwarf colony game coming out sometime soon? Think I would be more interested in that.

So there is, The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria™. I hadn't heard of that one before I think. It seems to be your standard survival-crafting coop game, but as Dwarves reclaiming the mines of Moria.

 

[ZedClampet]

The happiness stat in Big Ambition is about to make me quit playing. My character is severely mentally ill. He's just walking around doing his job when suddenly he's non-functional.

He hates working. Eating can only make him sadder, not happier. Video games and television will rarely cheer him up, but you can't rely on them. He liked going on a casino cruise, but only the first time. Naps in the park don't really do it for him anymore.

He started with Big Ambitions, but even huge daily deposits into his bank account mean nothing to him. He has looked into the void and seen his soul, empty and malformed. The nausea is his permanent companion.

 

[Colif]

Getting better... game needs more zoom levels as soon I won't be able to fit entire map on screen and I just know it will get bigger

its relaxing, less stress that Dorf as the pressure to get perfect placements isn't there. Dorf can drive you mad just finding where to put that one tile.
You do get points for matching tiles but the differences between tiles is easier to spot. the actual shade of the tiles changes in Dorf so one piece might look green in one spot but olive green or even black in another location.

 

[ZedClampet]

Getting better... game needs more zoom levels as soon I won't be able to fit entire map on screen and I just know it will get bigger

its relaxing, less stress that Dorf as the pressure to get perfect placements isn't there. Dorf can drive you mad just finding where to put that one tile.
You do get points for matching tiles but the differences between tiles is easier to spot. the actual shade of the tiles changes in Dorf so one piece might look green in one spot but olive green or even black in another location.

Just played it. Had no idea what I was doing because the tutorial bugged out. Couldn't figure out how to rotate pieces. Was fun, though. No idea what my score was. I'd imagine it was poor. Will try again here in a bit.

 

[Colif]

i looked in options to see commands after tutorial as I had forgotten some of them. Its mostly driven by mouse, holding both mouse buttons down and moving mouse around also works. very similar to um... dorf

r & t rotate tiles which can help

 

[ZedClampet]

EA just told me that "Demon" was a bad word and that I couldn't use it in a character name.

 

[Brian Boru]

Demon … I couldn't use it

Try it backwards, meaning's much the same.

You could even try a G in front of it, and see if gardens make character powerful or happy.