I need a Game Recommendation

[Zohar]

Can anyone think of games occurring in Paris during La Belle Epoque i.e. 1871-1914? Some sort of mystery or adventure game maybe? Available platforms right now are PC, android phone, or Wii U.

[SuicideJunkie]

From what I understand they're pretty different from the original. I enjoyed both of the recent games a lot.

Yeah, the original is a lot more simulation while the remakes are a lot more "gamey" - for instance, in the original, the rank structure is based on the number of active soldiers - every so-many soldiers means the game looks to promote a sergeant, so many more, and a captain, so many more and a colonel, and with enough total, someone gets promoted to commander. Meanwhile, soldiers improve various stats just by using them, independent of their rank. In the reboot, rank is just straight character level, and you can have 6 colonels with no other troops.

I'm pretty sure the promotions are strongly related to combat actions, in addition to being capped by your team size.

A rookie benchwarmer who sits in the skyranger will stay a rookie, but they have a chance of promotion after taking a few shots.
Emptying a clip, or actually hitting an alien with that spray basically guarantees their first promotion.
After that, the skills of your best trooper tend to make them steal the kills and get promoted further first, so you have to try in order to share the love/XP.

I also don't recall ever seeing stats improve other than during promotion or the psi facility training psi skill specifically, but maybe I missed that as I only looked for a strong person to carry the heavy weapons and everybody else just hosed the enemy with an unceasing tide of laser shots most of the time.

[SecondTalon]

Can anyone think of games occurring in Paris during La Belle Epoque i.e. 1871-1914? Some sort of mystery or adventure game maybe? Available platforms right now are PC, android phone, or Wii U.

Contrast is heavily inspired by it, but I think plays a little loosely with the actual technology and culture available at the time.

[techblogger911]

Can anyone think of games occurring in Paris during La Belle Epoque i.e. 1871-1914? Some sort of mystery or adventure game maybe? Available platforms right now are PC, android phone, or Wii U.

Contrast is heavily inspired by it, but I think plays a little loosely with the actual technology and culture available at the time.

Have you tried contrast?

[SecondTalon]

Contrast is heavily inspired by it, but I think plays a little loosely with the actual technology and culture available at the time.

Have you tried contrast?

That's why I mentioned it.

[plytho]

Can anyone think of games occurring in Paris during La Belle Epoque i.e. 1871-1914? Some sort of mystery or adventure game maybe? Available platforms right now are PC, android phone, or Wii U.

Aviary attorney is set a little earlier (1848) but it's a lot of fun. It's an ace attorney style game with anthropomorphic animals.

[heuristically_alone]

Contrast is heavily inspired by it, but I think plays a little loosely with the actual technology and culture available at the time.

Have you tried contrast?

That's why I mentioned it.

I hear Contrast is pretty fun to try.

[SecondTalon]

Urge to ban rising....

[Zohar]

Contrast is heavily inspired by it, but I think plays a little loosely with the actual technology and culture available at the time.

Seems interesting! Reviews are very mixed but it's so cheap it's not a big deal to try it out. Definitely looks darker than what I wanted though.

Aviary attorney is set a little earlier (1848) but it's a lot of fun. It's an ace attorney style game with anthropomorphic animals.

That looks amazing, will have to keep an eye out for a sale.

Really I was hoping for something that would make me feel similar to being in an impressionist painting of a Parisian cafe, so I don't think either of those scratches that itch, but still good things to know about.

[SecondTalon]

Contrast is heavily inspired by it, but I think plays a little loosely with the actual technology and culture available at the time.

Seems interesting! Reviews are very mixed but it's so cheap it's not a big deal to try it out. Definitely looks darker than what I wanted though.

I've played it, it's far more.... Coming of Age of a little girl than anything? Figuring out family secrets and all? Not really dark other than lighting being dark and, given that the game involves you melding in to the wall and using the shadows as platforms, the darkish settings with spotlights make sense. The character you spend most of the time controlling is basically an imaginary friend, gameplay is platformer puzzle - not too many difficult jumps that I recall, but a lot of "Go here turn this then that then this now the shadows are right so you can walk up the wall". And, as you say, it's cheap.

Looking at the reviews, Gamespot gives it 5/10 and Metacritic 59%. If we're using "Numbers actually mean what they mean and not some the inflated scoring where games start at 7 and go up from there" thing, then.. yeah, 5 out of 10 is fair. It does some things kinda neat, it's not an unenjoyable experience, but I don't see myself playing it again, some of the story is a bit predictable as it goes so that when certain things are revealed you're left feeling "Wait, am I just *now* supposed to figure that out rather than figuring it out an hour ago, or is this the little girl finally figuring it out and why is there a disconnect there since aren't I the little girl imagining this woman running around or what?"

The shadow-running thing is neat, gets some good use, but there are also a couple of levels that are just irritatingly large. I also may have broken sequence on the jumping puzzles a few times since the way I got up some places is... really not how you're supposed to get up there, so that's nice that the game let me do that.

[Reserve]

The "Hiding from a superior threat until you have the weaponry/skill to take it down and foraging for stuff"? That's basically the Survival genre which is... far too large to list all of it here and covers things as broadly as the old Deus game series (where a simple infection from a scratch will probably kill you before an enemy does) to Minecraft (which is.. not that hardcore), though something like The Forest has an actual plot while something like Seven Days to Die does not.

Sci-Fi themed, especially where you yourself aren't going in to danger but you're ordering other things/monitoring systems/etc to keep your minions alive? Duskers, though your minions are Drones, not humanoids or other players.

Delving in to abandoned sci-fi settings, kicking ass and taking names and by kicking ass I mean doing everything exactly right or you'll get eviscerated? Space Hulk. If you can find either the originals or new release version of the boardgame, it'll set you back ... probably ten times what the PC game is, maybe more. Because even when it was being produced it was $100 for the new release and now that it's not.... There's also Steam Marines, which is Space Hulk with the serial numbers filed off so it's legally distinct.

Or were you thinking of something else?

I find myself thinking of Paradroid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradroid

Perhaps Space Station Silicon Valley, from the people who would later make GTA?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Sta ... con_Valley

In terms of survival horror, I find myself thinking of Project Firestart, but that's probably pretty far off-base.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Firestart

Oooh, thanks for the suggestions. Those look real neat! I definitely was thinking more along the lines of having squishy flesh bodies to be torn apart when you make mistakes, though. I picked up Halfway, the game I mentioned in my other post... its too hard for me. Space Hulk would make me cry. I am not great at these games. The Forest looks interesting for other reasons... Project Firestart might be closest to what I was thinking.

Wish there were more Survival games that didn't involve crafting. At least no more crafting than broken device + batteries = fixed device.

[SuicideJunkie]

Really I was hoping for something that would make me feel similar to being in an impressionist painting of a Parisian cafe, so I don't think either of those scratches that itch, but still good things to know about.

You're not talking about Passpartout are you?

[SecondTalon]

That doesn't appear to have much to do with the aesthetics of a impressionist painting from the turn of the 20th century France and more to do with being a modern-day painter.

[Zohar]

Really I was hoping for something that would make me feel similar to being in an impressionist painting of a Parisian cafe, so I don't think either of those scratches that itch, but still good things to know about.

You're not talking about Passpartout are you?

Not at all what I was looking for.

Maybe something more in the vein of 80 Days.

[shobian]

I am playing Ghost Reckon these days why not give it a try.

[Quizatzhaderac]

Text only RPGs: I've always been aware of them, but I'm not sure I've ever played one that wasn't a parody (i.e. Thy Dungeonman) or written on a friends calculator. I'm kind of curious to see what they greatest achievements in this strictly limited medium are like.

[DaBigCheez]

If referring to (theoretically) natural-language-parsing adventure games, then I think some of the "classics" are Zork and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Space Quest might qualify if allowing some graphics to be involved, and Hugo's House of Horrors has some nostalgia value from when I was growing up. I don't know of many more recent entries in the genre, though, primarily just ones from well before the turn of the century. Not sure if ASCII-art roguelikes, such as NetHack, Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, and Angband would qualify; there's lots of newer entries there, but probably not what you're thinking of.

While I've not played the original game, I played an homage to The Lurking Horror at the most recent Mystery Hunt, which was rather entertaining; might be worth looking into, or the homage was rather entertaining in itself even without the broader puzzle elements of the Hunt.

[SecondTalon]

Text only RPGs: I've always been aware of them, but I'm not sure I've ever played one that wasn't a parody (i.e. Thy Dungeonman) or written on a friends calculator. I'm kind of curious to see what they greatest achievements in this strictly limited medium are like.

Text Only as in Graphics?

Text Only as in Descriptions and no images, not even ascii?

Text Only as in Graphical but only manually typed text as a control (with possibly arrow keys for movement)?

RPG as in needing Stats, combat, loot, leveling, etc?

RPG as in playing a specific role of a specific person with specific knowledges (ie you can "Hack computer" because your character is someone heavily in to computer software)?

[Quizatzhaderac]

Parsed text as input is the key thing as well as traditional read text as output. I'd say rule of thumb is that is that most of the game should be playable by a blind amputee with speech-to-text and text-to-speech set up on the computer. I wouldn't say it would need to be "pure"; one ascii art picture or 30 seconds of wasd-ing around wouldn't rule a game out, but the bulk of the content/mechanics should be text dependent.

As for "RPG" maybe the word "adventure" would have been better. In the broadest sense of either word. Basically not scrabble.

[SecondTalon]

You may enjoy scrounging around here.

There's also the latest version of Adventure, endorsed by the original author.

[rmsgrey]

You may enjoy scrounging around here.

Or here: https://www.ifarchive.org/

[Ranbot]

Text only RPGs: I've always been aware of them, but I'm not sure I've ever played one that wasn't a parody (i.e. Thy Dungeonman) or written on a friends calculator. I'm kind of curious to see what they greatest achievements in this strictly limited medium are like.

Gemstone is one of the oldest text-based online RPG games (i.e. "MUD" or Multi-User Dungeon) running since 1988 (not a typo) and still active. They have free to play option and premium accounts.

Official site: https://www.play.net/gs4/
Game Wiki: https://gswiki.play.net/Main_Page
Wikipedia info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GemStone_IV

I had a friend in college who played Gemstone and it was old then... ~18 years later I'm shocked the game is still around, but sometimes there are good reasons things stick around.

[Activator]

I'm looking for an RPG that I can finish in reasonable time
iOS or in browser

[SecondTalon]

Reasonable Time is subjective, also factors in to your playing style. You've also not listed a platform, so I'm going to suggest Shining Force. Fight a battle, do some stuff, fight a second battle, do some more stuff, maybe 3-4 fights per chapter. Eight chapters total, for 30 battles total. Can be beaten in a regular day's worth of play, if you just sit down and go.

Ah, there is a platform. Either I missed it or...

At any rate, Kingturn. It's basically Shining Force on iOS.

[Ranbot]

I'm looking for an RPG that I can finish in reasonable time
iOS or in browser

Like Second Talon said, reasonable time is relative...
That said I thought Banner Saga was reasonably quick and it's a great game. The game is very linear and you can't go back. Choices matter. But that also means there's no messing around with side missions or going back to old areas to get stuff you missed, which tend to be my time-sinks for RPGs (the compulsion to complete everything). So, unless you just suck at the combat and have to replay sections a lot, there's only certain amount of content/play time available. Banner Saga started on PC, won a ton of awards, and has been ported to mobile platforms, and Banner Saga 2 and 3 are also available if you want more.

[Jorpho]

Super Mario RPG is freakin' sweet and probably takes well under ten hours, but for iOS or in-browser you'd have to find a suitable emulator, and I'm not sure such a thing exists, especially for a game as complex as SMRPG. A better candidate in that vein might be Final Fantasy Mystic Quest.

I'm tempted to suggest The World Ends With You, which is also freakin' sweet, though I dumped a heck of a lot of time into that one in order to get 100% completion. It ought to go pretty quick if you're going for Any%.

[rmsgrey]

I'm tempted to suggest The World Ends With You, which is also freakin' sweet, though I dumped a heck of a lot of time into that one in order to get 100% completion. It ought to go pretty quick if you're going for Any%.

Depends - my last playthrough was pretty quick except for That One Boss, which may have taken me as much time to beat as the rest of the week...

Aside from the occasional extra-difficult boss, things are pretty bite-sized - there's added depth there to explore if you wish, but if you're just playing through the plot, it goes pretty quickly. You can save any time you're not actively in combat, and can adjust difficulty on the fly. Plus your attacks level up when you're not playing (for the first week since your latest save - with the rate decaying after 24 hours), so playing little but often gives an advantage over playing marathon sessions.

[Angua]

Any good two player games on Steam atm? My husband and I enjoyed Portal 2, Sanctum and Serious Sam together, but hard to find something fun?

[plytho]

Any good two player games on Steam atm? My husband and I enjoyed Portal 2, Sanctum and Serious Sam together, but hard to find something fun?

I'm not really familiar with two player games but two games I liked should work for two players. Both are investigative games in Her story you're a detective trying to solve a case involving a woman. All you have is a database of video of interviews with her you search by keyword. The other is more recent and I'm just finishing it myself return of obra dinn. This one takes place on a ghost ship (early 1800's). You play an east India company insurance agent and you get a magic compass that allows you to see the last moment of someone's life. You use this to reconstruct what happened on the journey.

These are single player game but especially her story seems very easy to play together. Return of obra dinn is maybe a bit tougher since it requires more navigation (on the ship and in your documents).

As for actual two player games: I haven't played this because I haven't found someone to try it with but clandestine is a game designed for two players where one is a spy infiltrating a facility while the other is a hacker supporting the spy by infiltrating the systems (cameras, doors, etc.) It sounds really fun but I don't have any experience with it.

[Sabrar]

Any good two player games on Steam atm? My husband and I enjoyed Portal 2, Sanctum and Serious Sam together, but hard to find something fun?

If you are not adverse to time pressure then Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes might be good for you:

The game is designed to be played with at least two players, with one player as the "Defuser", playing the game on a computer and the remaining player(s) as the "Experts" reading the provided bomb defusal manual. As designed, the Defuser cannot look at the manual and must rely on the Experts to instruct him or her; likewise, the Experts cannot see the bomb and must rely on the Defuser to describe the bomb to them. Communicating with each other occurs either directly from across a table, or through online communication software.

[Ranbot]

Any good two player games on Steam atm? My husband and I enjoyed Portal 2, Sanctum and Serious Sam together, but hard to find something fun?

Don't Starve Together is 60% off now ($5.99) and you get two copies. That's a pretty unbeatable price. I played the mobile version of the Don't Starve predecessor and it was fun. There's a bit a learning curve to it, but even dying is kind of fun. I definitely got my money's worth of the few dollars I spent, and it seems like it would be fun with a second person.

If you like hack and slash action Warhammer Vermintide 2 is fun and it's 50% now ($14.99). The gameplay is astonishingly similar to Left4Dead, but with medieval weapons (e.g. 4 player team, push through levels fighting off waves of enemies, finish objectives, help/heal teammates, item pick-ups, special enemies, tough bosses, etc.). It differs from Left4Dead with blocking and parry mechanics, each character has special skills and character-specific equipment, and there are mild RPG elements with gaining experience to unlock skills and get new equipment. The RPG aspect never feels like a grind or an inventory management mini-game... hack and slash action is the focus. If you know the Warhammer universe, great; if you don't, don't worry about it. I like the game without knowing anything about Warhammer, but a friend of mine does and has pointed out some specific Warhammer details/lore.

Note: The prices above are from Steam's Autumn sale, which ends tomorrow, but Steam's Christmas sale should be coming soon....

[Jorpho]

I second Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.

Have you tried Love in a Dangerous Spacetime yet? Darn fun co-op stuff.

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet looks rather nifty too. And Cook, Serve, Delicious has a co-op mode.

There's also the Lara Croft games, which people seem to have regarded favorably.

And of course Overcooked and its sequel, the current hotness. Perhaps better with more than two, but two should be fine.

[Flumble]

I third Keep Talking. It's as hectic as you want it to be (it's a good way to reflect on how you perform under time pressure) and it's good fun with two people ...and excellent when some people happen to come over.

Also it's a real life-saver if you ever come across a bomb with five wires and a big red button.

[Angua]

Cool, thanks for all the suggestions - I'll look into them with him!

[rmsgrey]

I third Keep Talking. It's as hectic as you want it to be (it's a good way to reflect on how you perform under time pressure) and it's good fun with two people ...and excellent when some people happen to come over.

Also it's a real life-saver if you ever come across a bomb with five wires and a big red button.

But what's it say on the button? You have to tell me these details, or I can't tell you how to defuse it!

[DaBigCheez]

If you're into long-form CRPGs, then Divinity: Original Sin might be a good time. It's one of very, *very* few games where it feels like they designed the co-op *first* and then tacked on the single-player later, rather than the other way around. The writing's generally pretty good, mechanics are solid with a heavy emphasis on terrain effects and elemental combinations (if sometimes a bit repetitive once you find your favored doomcombo); the UI can be a little cumbersome at times and occasionally there's some rough edges, but it's a good time overall.

Admittedly, I haven't yet finished it. And nostalgia makes me upset at the voice changes in the Enhanced Edition (RIP "the sea...the *sea*...where every waaaave feels like a mermaid's kissss...!")

Can't vouch for the sequel one way or the other, but it may also be worth looking into.

[Angua]

D:OS2 was recommended as an option on facebook.

[silva_beth]

Any good two player games on Steam atm? My husband and I enjoyed Portal 2, Sanctum and Serious Sam together, but hard to find something fun?

Have you tried Magicka? This game is a pure fun, friendly fire from fellow magicians included. Co-op up to 4 people. Fight system is based on elemental combinations, cooperation and good timing.
And since D:OS has already been mentioned, I can only add that you might try Never alone. It's a platformer for two players (single player version is awful, since AI is not helping at all). Wonderful storytelling based on alaskan mythology and folklore, beautiful design, but it's pretty short - for a few hours.

[Ranbot]

Any good two player games on Steam atm? My husband and I enjoyed Portal 2, Sanctum and Serious Sam together, but hard to find something fun?

Have you tried Magicka? This game is a pure fun, friendly fire from fellow magicians included. Co-op up to 4 people...

There is also Magicka 2, which is mostly the same gameplay with a slight graphic update.

The same developer also made Helldivers, which is another top-down twin-stick 4-player coop shooter with irreverent humor and friendly-fire fun. Instead of mages you're space marines with customizable load-outs planting the seeds of democracy in the universe with extreme firepower. It's fun. Helldivers' humor and some settings, definitely got some inspiration from Starship Troopers, which is a movie I liked as a teenager, but that may not be selling point for others. EDIT: Helldiver's expansions give you different weapon/equipment options, but it's not required.

[Tub]

I have a few more recommendations that I have enjoyed with my partner.
* Stardew Valley. It recently got a multiplayer update.
* Heroes of Hammerwatch. Very fun roguelike dungeon crawler.
* Victor Vran. Action RPG with an approachable combat system. Has a rather clicheed story but excellent storytelling.
* Guild Wars 2. It's a few years old, but you can enjoy a good hundred hours of exploration and story even with a free account. More if you buy the game. There is some grinding if you're going for certain rewards or achievements, but none of it is mandatory.