I’m trying to be optimisitic, but the significant redesigns to be more in-line with other RTS games do worry me. Both because it adds a lot of new avenues to break or negatively change things, and because it removes of the lot the mechanics that help distinguish AoM from other games.

Heres a weirder one no one else has mentioned yet: I’ve heard art described as a way to express and emotion, and I really felt that with Hotline Miami. Its not done through the story or setting (in fact, the intentional ignorance there adds to it) but rather the contrest between the hyper-violent trance as you play through a level, and then the sudden cut of the music as you quietly walk past the mountains of bloodied corpses back to your car. I feel that shift, when you first notice it, really emphasises the pointless brutally of it far more so than many much more heavy-handed attempts in other games.

Stardew Valley is a good one, but I definately wouldn’t consider Terraria casual or low-stress.

Personally, Im more of a creative-mode player at the moment so the majority of the problems don’t affect me. Its also been a couple months since I last tried Minetest (mostly on Mineclone). From what I remember, my personal dealbreakers were:

• IMO much uglier graphics, and more significantly, its harder to graphically customize with mods and resource packs. Maybe its more versitile than I’m giving it credit for, but at the very least, its not used as there aren’t enough modders and artists making content for the game to even remotely compete.

• Performance - Minecraft may not be optimized, but I was getting much worse performance on Minetest. In particular, I was getting massive frame drops any time I placed or broke a block, making it extremely nauseating to play.

• UX - There were a ton of small roadblocks to actually playing the game as I wanted to. First, customizing the graphics settings - the menu was disorganized and defaults were really weird for my hardware. Then, I had to find and edit the permissions file to be able to fly and sprint on my creative world. Even after that, if I remember right, the controls or flight movement were limitted or weird but in a way that couldn’t easily be fixed.

• Lack of world editting commands - Im sure theres mods for this one, but its more work to find, figure out, and set up and by the time I got to this point, having to put in even more work just to make the game comparable was a dealbreaker.

Minetest isn’t really a substitute for Minecraft. Yes, its similar, but its far less polished, lacking in content, vanilla and otherwise, and is missing a lot of the technical functionality that makes much of Minecraft’s content (esspecially on the modding side) possible. Don’t get me wrong, I want to like it, and I’ve debated trying to contibute to it myself (although my skills are very lackluster) but as it stands its only really a substitute in the context of things like casually playing Pocket Edition.

Anger Foot - I played the demo previously and its the only game I’ve played that recreates the feel and flow of Hotline Miami successful. Very much looking forward to the full game. I’m temped to buy it at launch, even for full price, which I don’t think I’ve done since XCom 2’s War of the Chosen DLC.

Personally, I blocked .ml already. Yes, they are a large instance with a lot of legitimate content, but theres such a disproportionate amount of extremism, hate and discrimination, and toxicity that I didn’t find it worth being connected to.

Nah, LTT is almost certainly too small of a company to benifit from something like this. They want to help those really in need, like Bell and Rogers.

Source Filmmaker - basically the tech used in Valve’s games (IE Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Gmod) but repurposed into an easy to use animation tool. Valve used it quite a bit for their content but it was also popular among amateur animators since it was easy to use and had bunch of ready-to-use resources from Valve’s games.

Skibidi Toilet is a serious of SFM shorts that became popular with young kids. Think in the same vein as the weird flash videos or early SFM videos that were popular with young kids 10-15 years ago. “Skibidi” doesn’t mean anything and is just taken from that.

Currently two:

War Thunder - It has so many issues from the grind, to unadressed design issues (IE 10kg HE shells doing no damage on a direct hit), to balance issues including p2w vehicles. That said, under all the shit, theres a solid foundation, and no other game comes close to replicating it.

Super Auto Pets - Its an autobattler streamlined to the point where its the perfect casual game when I don’t feel like anything else. It also doesn’t have any of the normal f2p traps, and is monitized purely on cosmetics that can also be earned for free.

Edit: I guess Dota 2 counts too. I put a ton of time into that. I’m not a particularly good player, but its one of the best team-based games out there, so I enjoy playing it with friends.

I mean, they’re still failing to hide it even in what they did publish. According to the article, of like 3000 banned accounts, only 16 were from China.

I’m more just shocked that they’d even make an announcement for only blocking 15 campaigns. You’d think they’d at least try and inflate the number so it seems like they’re doing something.

Nah, if they were driven to this by the CCP they would have disrupted more than 15.

IMO, Five is easier to learn and more straight-forward, while Six feels more convoluted, but Six gains some depth and variety from that if you put in the time to learn it.

At least the stuff I’ve seen is more a criticism of the lack of functionality for the Rabbit, esspecially unique functionality or areas where it excels. The fact that it is basically all able to be contained in one app is viewed as evidence of the relative simplicity, and the fact that (as reviews highlighted) a phone provides a better interaction method compared to the dedicated devices just highlights how unnecessary the hardware is.

Basically, its competing against phones in functionality, but a phone at that price can do everything it can and better, plus so much more. Even worse when considering everyone also already owns a phone and won’t be able to replace with a Rabbit.

Yep. I think it came out yesterday.

Are you looking for an app, or an alternative website?

The lack of focus on the Xenomorph in the trailer is a good sign at least, imo. Hopefully means they won’t overuse it to the point that it ruins the tension.

Annoyingly, my cat has zero interest in spiders. Any other bug from silverfish to houseflys, she loves to hunt, but not spiders.

Guess what the one bug I’m afraid of is.

The textures are very different although those can be swapped out (albiet with very limitted options if you aren’t willing to build the pack yourself). Its more the lighting and shading I don’t like. They tend to look a lot more washed out and flat compared to Minecraft. Turning on the more intensive and/or experemental features helps a lot, but falls far short of whats easily available for Minecraft and makes the already iffy performance noticably worse.

In terms of performance, I was struggling to even maintain 144fps on MineTest with regular drops down to 90. I was finding I was getting about half the framerate on average compared to Vanilla Minecraft, with almost no difference running around loading chunks, and a significant advantage for Minecraft in more static areas. That said, Minecraft is a game with a massive modding scene with access to engine-level changes, and using a bunch of the more popular optimization mods mean I tend to be getting roughly double the framerate compared to vanilla Minecraft and four times that of Minetest.

Im sure stuff can be improved, but the userbase and development backing just isn’t there as it stands.