September 2025 General Game Discussion Thread

[Zed Clampet]

@Zed Clampet maybe something for you?

Firefighting Simulator: Ignite on Steam

Face unpredictable dangers, fight perilous fires with your crew, and save lives in Firefighting Simulator: Ignite. Step into the boots of a U.S. firefighter and play with up to 3 friends or with the help of your NPC controlled crew members.

store.steampowered.com

Looking forward to try this demo out!

FREE Digimon Story Time Stranger demo announced for PC and consoles

Digimon Story Time Stranger will soon receive a free demo available on PC (Steam) and consoles. Check out the details here.

gg.deals

Guido and I have played a couple of emergency services games, and they always end up being hilarious. This one looks better than the ones we've played, so I'll have to keep an eye on it.

Looks like the Digimon demo comes out tonight. Will be trying that.

*****

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptnGO3VJPlg


On the survival one, which was pretty funny, most survival games have ditched all that stuff now, but Atlas used to have vitamin deficiencies, and it was so annoying that when we started to get low on one vitamin or another, we'd just die to reset it Eventually we got a mod that provided multivitamins..

 

[Frindis]

@Zed Clampet This one is free to play until the 15th this month.

Save 93% on Ship Graveyard Simulator on Steam

Visit the largest ship graveyard in the world. A dozen kilometers of beach filled with wrecks. Hundreds of ships wrecked on the coast. Thousands of tons of steel. Choose the most valuable ship for you and start the adventure. Play as one of the workers during the most dangerous work in the world!

store.steampowered.com

 

[Zed Clampet]

@Zed Clampet This one is free to play until the 15th this month.

Save 93% on Ship Graveyard Simulator on Steam

Visit the largest ship graveyard in the world. A dozen kilometers of beach filled with wrecks. Hundreds of ships wrecked on the coast. Thousands of tons of steel. Choose the most valuable ship for you and start the adventure. Play as one of the workers during the most dangerous work in the world!

store.steampowered.com

I've actually got the 2nd one. They are strangely entertaining. For instance, you just have to take the ship apart, but you don't have to do it in any specific way, so I liked wandering around the ship looking for places to undermine the integrity of the whole ship and start removing those things until eventually the ship collapsed on top of me (you don't take damage.

My only problem with the 2nd one is that you work hard to level your tools, and then on the 4th ship (I think) all that work just vanishes and you have crappy tools again and have to level them again. The developer explanation was that they wanted the later ships to show some sort of difficulty progression. I said, "You can't think of any other way to progressively make these ships harder to scrap? Like something to do with the materials, the size and/or design of the ship?" But they are finished with the main game and only doing maintenance. The massive and fully destructible ships must require a huge amount of work, so there's no way they will retool the difficulty shift at this point.

They are also coming out with two games soon that look cool to me. One where you are a medic during WWII, and one one where you run a demolition company. I guess that's a good way to reuse tech that they developed for the Ship Graveyard games. the demolition one comes out in 2 weeks.

 

[Pifanjr]

On the survival one, which was pretty funny, most survival games have ditched all that stuff now, but Atlas used to have vitamin deficiencies, and it was so annoying that when we started to get low on one vitamin or another, we'd just die to reset it Eventually we got a mod that provided multivitamins..

I think it's a bit of a shame that most survival games nowadays have at most three meters to take care of, with a lot of them only having two or one and they usually give you a way to trivialise the upkeep pretty quickly. It often feels like the game includes the meters because people expect them in a survival game but do nothing to actually integrate them into the game loop.

 

[BeardyHat]

Guido and I have played a couple of emergency services games, and they always end up being hilarious. This one looks better than the ones we've played, so I'll have to keep an eye on it.

Looks like the Digimon demo comes out tonight. Will be trying that.

*****

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptnGO3VJPlg


On the survival one, which was pretty funny, most survival games have ditched all that stuff now, but Atlas used to have vitamin deficiencies, and it was so annoying that when we started to get low on one vitamin or another, we'd just die to reset it Eventually we got a mod that provided multivitamins..

Well I watched 3 of those skits now and I'm saving the rest to make my wife watch them with me this evening.

 

[neogunhero]

Nothing but Skate last night. The new early access version made some changes to progression, giving less currency points for completed missions than before, making grinding progress a bit longer. The only thing you really unlock is cosmetics and quick drop objects to place in the world and it's usually randomized so in a way it's not that bad.

They released a roadmap as well and have lots of cool features coming out up until the end of the year. This update release cadence will work great to keep players attentions. I'm really excited for the public release, can't wait to see all the people hop on for the first time.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I think it's a bit of a shame that most survival games nowadays have at most three meters to take care of, with a lot of them only having two or one and they usually give you a way to trivialise the upkeep pretty quickly. It often feels like the game includes the meters because people expect them in a survival game but do nothing to actually integrate them into the game loop.

So survival games changed with Valheim and have moved much closer to open world RPGs, although there are plenty of small team/solo dev traditional survival games still being made. But as of Valheim, which laid the foundation, the bigger survival games are like mash-ups of survival/adventure/RPGs. What Valheim did was say that you could have a survival game without eating/drinking constantly, and players loved it. But eating wasn't made irrelevant because different foods gave you different bonuses, pretty significant ones.

(just a note: Valheim even made decorating, a survival staple, worth something as you got bonuses for how well you rested in your house.)

That's all I actually know, but I speculate that developers then had to fill the vacuum now that hunting/farming/cooking/eating wasn't taking up nearly as much time anymore. Where you once went into a survival game and didn't know much about the world or what was going on or why you were there, now you go to places like Nightingale and do quests for NPCs.

That's basically what survival players said they wanted. Less reliance on something mundane like eating and drinking, and more story to make their sandbox feel alive and worthwhile. I can't tell you how many discussions I read about ARK Survival Evolved being pointless, and that is probably the second most popular survival game after Minecraft. It finally did get something of a story at 1.0.

Not that we always realize what is happening. Half the players didn't know there was a whole big story going on in Dune Awakening until part 2 of it was released last week I guess when a giant worm chases you all day, you don't pay as much attention to other things.

Survival has kind of become the everything genre (as far as 3D first/third person games go).

 

[Zed Clampet]

I did well in Monster Train 2 except for the Daily Challenge, which I completed but my global rank was pretty low. However, I just now looked up how you score points. I'm not trying to get to #1, as would have been my goal when I was younger. I would settle for the top 50 percent.

I have to repeat this story: I love how if you screw up in Forza Horizon it congratulates you, without any touch of sarcasm, for being in the top 100 percent.

 

[Johnway]

more Path of exile action. Another challenge completed and i'm just grinding anything i can think of. I think my process is a bit scattershot atm, i should focus on one or 2 mapping objectives like completing missions and finishing any incomplete maps.

On more pleasant news, in POE i started to dip my toes in the currency exchange system and it has made me RICH. I had whole load of crafting material that i don't use and just sits in my chest taking up space. Sadly i don't have any tabs to sell my gear, but no matter, delving has been profitable and in fact one item (prime chaotic resonator) sold for a staggering 77 chaos orbs. i currently have 4 of them in stock....

Throw in the basic primitive one gives me 2 chaos orbs and i have 20 of those around.

All in all i have nearly 500 chaos orbs just sitting in my chest doing nothing. i think i'm going to start to spend some of them to complete some tasks.

So.... time to get the currency tab in POE? i dunno, i've been thinking and i'm reluctant to spend money. I could buy £20 of POE currency, or i could use that money to buy another game... i know the latter would be the right choice.

on more grim and frustrating news doing the rounds, nintendo, the litigious butt hurt dicks, apparently have patented the summoning and battling patent (article of news below). The implications can be pretty serious as it could affect not just palworld, but also other JRPGS with a summoning feature like shin megami tensei and digimon. But also any RPG where you can summon minions. So effectively every RPG that has a nercomancer or summon minions, depending on how you interpret the patent. Lets face it, if you summon monsters/minions, it will attack enemies automatically and gather round the player when theres nothing.

Uh Oh: Nintendo Just Landed A ‘Summoning’ And ‘Battling’ Patent

Nintendo's patent collection continues with one that seems to relate directly to Pokemon and Pikmin mechanics.

www.forbes.com

 

[Zloth]

70 hours into Elden Ring and I can now do a respec if I want. Or I could if I had one of those larva thingies, which I haven't gotten yet.

These are clearly respecs to TWEAK your build or try out another one to see if it works, too. If you need to fix your build, you're better off starting over again. Or maybe looking up a rune harvesting guide and getting rich enough to fix your build by gaining an extra 20 levels. Because the other choice is going through this castle with a broken build. That'll be rough.

Uh Oh: Nintendo Just Landed A ‘Summoning’ And ‘Battling’ Patent

Nintendo's patent collection continues with one that seems to relate directly to Pokemon and Pikmin mechanics.

www.forbes.com

Sounds like another patent office failed to research properly.

 

[Zed Clampet]

70 hours into Elden Ring and I can now do a respec if I want. Or I could if I had one of those larva thingies, which I haven't gotten yet.

These are clearly respecs to TWEAK your build or try out another one to see if it works, too. If you need to fix your build, you're better off starting over again. Or maybe looking up a rune harvesting guide and getting rich enough to fix your build by gaining an extra 20 levels. Because the other choice is going through this castle with a broken build. That'll be rough.


Sounds like another patent office failed to research properly.

God, I loathe Nintendo. If I had more energy and endless money, I'd hire the best patent attorneys I could get, determine which of their patents are most vulnerable and go after them

 

[Pifanjr]

So survival games changed with Valheim and have moved much closer to open world RPGs, although there are plenty of small team/solo dev traditional survival games still being made. But as of Valheim, which laid the foundation, the bigger survival games are like mash-ups of survival/adventure/RPGs. What Valheim did was say that you could have a survival game without eating/drinking constantly, and players loved it. But eating wasn't made irrelevant because different foods gave you different bonuses, pretty significant ones.

(just a note: Valheim even made decorating, a survival staple, worth something as you got bonuses for how well you rested in your house.)

That's all I actually know, but I speculate that developers then had to fill the vacuum now that hunting/farming/cooking/eating wasn't taking up nearly as much time anymore. Where you once went into a survival game and didn't know much about the world or what was going on or why you were there, now you go to places like Nightingale and do quests for NPCs.

That's basically what survival players said they wanted. Less reliance on something mundane like eating and drinking, and more story to make their sandbox feel alive and worthwhile. I can't tell you how many discussions I read about ARK Survival Evolved being pointless, and that is probably the second most popular survival game after Minecraft. It finally did get something of a story at 1.0.

Not that we always realize what is happening. Half the players didn't know there was a whole big story going on in Dune Awakening until part 2 of it was released last week I guess when a giant worm chases you all day, you don't pay as much attention to other things.

Survival has kind of become the everything genre (as far as 3D first/third person games go).

You see a similar thing in Survival Horror games, where the Resident Evil series for example became more and more Action games than Survival games. A Survival game should disincentivise combat by making it risky and costly. Which isn't to say it can't also be rewarding, but it should not be the default way of interacting with enemies.

 

[Zed Clampet]

A Survival game should disincentivise combat by making it risky and costly.

I'm having a hard time thinking of an example of this

 

[Zed Clampet]

Ugh, for some reason I don't understand, I get impatient between battles in Monster Train 2, which is an extremely important time, and then I mess things up.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Dear Japan,

Please, I'm begging you. Get your act together with keyboard/mouse.

I'm so sick of this. First thing that pops up when I start the Digimon demo? "This game is best played with a controller." And you know what? It's right. Why is it right? Because the keyboard mouse controls are abysmal. I don't want to press "C" to go back in the UI. I don't want to press <R Shift> to open my navigation. You can't even go to the menu by pressing <Esc>, which does nothing.

Please tell me where you got these settings from. You got them from nowhere. You do realize there is a more or less standard setup for keys? Was it too much trouble to start up another game and see how it was set up?

That's going to be a "no" from me on your Digimon game. And, yes, I actually have 3 controllers within reach. That's not the point. You are putting games on PC and just demanding that we use your favorite method of controlling it. You've already put keyboard/mouse in. How much longer would it take to get it right? Ten minutes?

Nier Automata: Missing keybinds, no mouse support in the menu, double tap dodging

Dark Souls: Unusable mouse control, keybinds were unusable in default settings

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot--Unusable and very limited options to rebind.

Monster Hunter World--Aiming with the mouse was ridiculous, as was trying to get through the menus.

Final Fantasy XiII-no mouse control

Final Fantasy XV--Mouse use in the menus was absent. Lots of things are keyboard only.

Note: someone reported me for telling the truth the last time I complained about Japanese games and their keyboard/mouse support, so this time I made a little list for you. And the list would likely be much longer if I didn't actively avoid Japanese games for this very reason.

On the other hand, thanks for the Digimon demo. At least I won't have to refund the game.

 

[Pifanjr]

@Zed Clampet This one is free to play until the 15th this month.

Save 93% on Ship Graveyard Simulator on Steam

Visit the largest ship graveyard in the world. A dozen kilometers of beach filled with wrecks. Hundreds of ships wrecked on the coast. Thousands of tons of steel. Choose the most valuable ship for you and start the adventure. Play as one of the workers during the most dangerous work in the world!

store.steampowered.com

And if you enjoy taking ships apart, you might also enjoy taking spaceships apart:

The 'Phunky Physics' bundle is cooler than it sounds, with 9 great games including Hardspace: Shipbreaker and What the Golf? for just $13

The Humble folks have put together another banger.

www.pcgamer.com

I'm having a hard time thinking of an example of this

The first Resident Evil games are a decent example, but I think Subnautica fits even better. I think you can kill every predator, but the game is set up to incentivise avoiding them. Even if you do manage to kill one with the few ways you can actually do damage, you don't actually get anything from it.

 

[JCgames]

Dear Japan,

Please, I'm begging you. Get your act together with keyboard/mouse

First question i have when before i buy a game.

Can it be played with just a mouse? If yes its a buy. I buy a good 10-20 a year (im a sucker for a under 5 dollar sale and thankfully many genera's of games can be played with just a mouse)

If you need a keyboard, then its firmly in the, it depends and better be fantastic. Typically this means a game that had wsda movement, and i might buy 1 or 2 a year.

Game needs a controller, auto pass, no thanks i dont care what it is.

Use these tips to make your gaming fun!

 

[dxchase]

Borderlands 4 drops for me today at 12pm EST (New York) and im a little concerned that i still dont have a key. I just got off work and probably will stay up for this...that is the challenge currently.

 

[Zed Clampet]

And if you enjoy taking ships apart, you might also enjoy taking spaceships apart:

The 'Phunky Physics' bundle is cooler than it sounds, with 9 great games including Hardspace: Shipbreaker and What the Golf? for just $13

The Humble folks have put together another banger.

www.pcgamer.com

The first Resident Evil games are a decent example, but I think Subnautica fits even better. I think you can kill every predator, but the game is set up to incentivise avoiding them. Even if you do manage to kill one with the few ways you can actually do damage, you don't actually get anything from it.

Subnautica is a great example

I guess Ark Survival Evolved would be another survival game where, at least in the beginning, combat is not the answer, at least if you don't cheat the settings. Most of the dinos are a death sentence until you tame your own. First time we played, we accidentally spawned on opposite sides of the continent and getting together proved to be very challenging.

Maybe 7 Days to Die is kind of like that too. Or it has been at times. They keep changing the difficulty of fighting. One day you can smack a zombie with a newspaper and it falls over dead. The next day you have to headshot him 20 times with an axe.

I never did play RE3 remake. I need to do that.

 

[Colif]

Maybe in two years I will have a GPU good enough to play the more finished version of this game... I mean, I assume two more years will help them

Perhaps like most other people I should just play version 1.

 

[neogunhero]

I checked out the demo for VOIMA last night and it was pretty weird. It's more like a super early alpha build of the game rather than a demo, I figure the dev just found it easier to list it as a demo to give away for free.

It's basically Minecraft but without the rigid grid-based voxel building. The game allows you to terraform the world is any angle and shape you want, and allows you to place building blocks without being snapped to a grid. You can also spawn hundreds of bears to run around.

It reminded me of that spherical voxel tech demo Blocky Planet in a lot of ways but what each game is trying to achieve tech wise are different goals. Blocky Planet is trying to simulate a spherical world with accurate gravity while VOIMA is much more a sandbox that unlocks a lot of building and terraforming restrictions found is many other similar games.

Either way it's an easy recommendation for a trippy sandbox to play in for 30 minutes, just like Blocky Planet. They're both free currently and if this type of game interests you, definitely check them out.

 

[Zed Clampet]

@Pifanjr You need to get your act together. First you tell me I can only buy 3.14 games this month, and then you link me to a bunch of interesting Humble bundles. Or maybe that was @Frindis . Well you both need to get your acts together. Work on it.

If I had a kid, I might get that Tabletop Tag Team bundle, but I really like the looks of the Curve bundle. Without checking the user reviews and finding out how miserable they really are:

Badland Crew sounds like a blast

The Ascent Have it and really like it. Top down shooter in a great cyberpunk world.

Super Loco World seems like something I'd enjoy.

KitHack sounds fun and is made by the guy who did Kerbal

And you get a 60 percent off coupon for For The King 2.

the other games I either already have or don't want.

 

[Johnway]

God, I loathe Nintendo. If I had more energy and endless money, I'd hire the best patent attorneys I could get, determine which of their patents are most vulnerable and go after them

yeah ever since palworld became successful and was getting one up from them by going to console, Nintendo has become increasingly paranoid and greasy to protect the pokemon franchise. Pulling some seriously questionable legal steps to win. i mean they were creating patents during trial just to win. its like moving the goal posts or rewriting the rules of a game so that you could win. you know, vindictive, malicious and butt hurt actions.

I don't think nintendo will try and challenge the entire gaming industry that makes RPGs, but if they do, i sure hope that they get the kerb stomping for this one.

Maybe in two years I will have a GPU good enough to play the more finished version of this game... I mean, I assume two more years will help them

Perhaps like most other people I should just play version 1.

i've never understood why they needed to get a sequel and how the sequel was meant to improve on the first (they look the same practically). even now its still a bit of a mess. might be just easier to cut their losses and run at this point.


So Path of Exile, the warning shot has been fired. october is deadline for the next league. Which leaves me in a bit of a pickle. Will i get the 28 challenges i need for the armor before the deadline? i have my eye on some of them. So i can get at least 5 (i'm on 16, soon to add 17) but the other challenges is all luck based whether i succeed at this point.

More worringly my loot situation. I'm running out of space and i need to start being ruthless as to what i do to make more room. The maps and currency are taking up all my space atm. so tempted to get some currency and spend it when the tabs are on offer. But at the same time, £20 could buy me several games on my wish list.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I have bought so many games since my retirement that I have no idea what games I have. But that turns my library into an awesome "free" store where every single game seems interesting to me.

 

[Frindis]

@Zed Clampet since you have so many games to choose from, here is another one

Save 81% on Ultimate Fishing | Complete Editon on Steam

store.steampowered.com