ZERO SIEVERT (Steam)

I’m bending rule 4, because the official 1.0 release is announced for less than 1 month from now.

ZERO Sievert is a tense top-down extraction shooter that challenges you to scavenge a procedurally-generated wasteland, loot gear, and explore what’s left of a devastated world. When the odds are stacked against you, you’ll need to do more than just survive.

I’ve played through it a 2nd time recently, it’s a fun solo experience, the difficulty is largely customizable, the different zones feel unique, lots to explore, even just a little morality testing on some quests. Decent enemy variety, the guns generally feel different, and different ammo types do matter. Skill will take you far, and carelessness, even in the easy areas, will be punished.

I went back and forth on it. The campaign is just the meta progression, the missions are the randomized element. Comparing to Darkest Dungeon for example, it’s really similar in structure.

Ok, sticking to roguelites, here’s some other options:

Deckbuilding Style: Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Griftlands, Balatro

Survivor/Bullet-Heaven Style: Vampire Survivors, Brotato, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor

Realtime Combat (I’d put Hades/Dead Cells here): Hand of Fate 1/2, Zero Sievert, Wall World, Rogue Legacy 1/2, Risk of Rain 1/2, Heroes of Hammerwatch

FPS: Gunfire Reborn, Roboquest

Turn-based/Pausable: FTL, The Last Spell, Loop Hero, Dungeons of Dredmor, Darkest Dungeon 1/2, Backpack Hero, Into the Breach, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2

Sure I missed some other good stuff.

Not a roguelite/roguelike but if you liked the combat style of Hades, check out Bastion.

For public ones, depending on what people started getting, it’d really strain the AIs. You could go in like 1 or two ways, probably different people getting both.

Something very uniform but still unique, like a QR code kind of deal, AIs would hallucinate the crap out of that. Or abstractions, like people do to change the way the shape of their face to combat facial recognition.

For private ones, just don’t ever get it photographed, any image showing that area without it would be probably fake.

I am waiting for people to start getting both public and hidden authentication tattoos, so they can prove generative images aren’t actually them.

Yep, UI mouseover is fine with it unplugged, issue returns when replugged.

1. PC, other than M/KB, I have a Razer Tartarus.

2. I was using the scroll wheel, might have missed the cue to use keys, that’d fix it for me.

Played a couple runs. Definitely seems up my alley.

Feedback:

1. Idk why, but when cursoring UI menus, it just ticks from where I cursored to the top like I’m holding an up arrow. Happens in Menus, Stats, Level ups and Shop. Clicking works fine, just really couldn’t read any stat descriptions.

2. When teasing the locked towers/skills, when you obscure the text with the X of locks, it’s hard for me to read and get excited about getting access to that thing. Maybe move the lock indicator somewhere there isn’t text (top right?).

3. This is maybe more fundamental, and idk how it fits with your vision, but scroll wheeling between skills feels clunky, could it maybe be key based (either as well or in addition), think that’d feel snappier to me.

Any new purchasers (I am one) are also probably waiting for the mid-generation update coming later this year.

Turned based on pausable stuff can reduce stress by allowing for thoughtfulness, and even single player games can be done together through strategizing, while also not requiring the 2nd person if they aren’t available. To that end, I’m going to recommend Slay the Spire, Dicey Dungeons or Broken Age. Then probably some kind of tactical game, Darkest Dungeon, Loop Hero or Shadowrun. After that, maybe some kind of management game, Cities: Skylines, SimCity, Stardew Valley, Humankind or Against the Storm. If you want to go deeper, Crusader Kings, Dyson Sphere Program or Wartales.

Real-time games that require using multiple sticks/buttons/aiming+moving at once are inherently more difficult to start without the muscle memory, so I’d look to build that up with games that have simpler controls starting with Vampire Survivors or Brotato. Then I’d probably do some kind of non-shooter first or third person game, thinking of Escape Academy, Firewatch or Superliminal, Amnesia (maybe). Then a combat first/third person game Assassin’s Creed, Battlefield (Campaign), Mass Effect. Then maybe something that’s got combat plus extra stuff, Atomic Heart, Deep Rock Galactic, Dead Space (maybe), Doom, Prey, Wo Long, Remnant. After that is really PvP stuff.

If you just want more readably accessible stuff, A Short Hike, Disneyland Adventures, Peggle, Plants vs Zombies, Bejeweled, The Walking Dead from Telltale (maybe).

I also pulled every game on this list off of Xbox Game Pass, so that might be a good way to try a bunch of different games for cheaper.

Satoru Iwata and the Wii U is the single instance I can think of.

Been thinking on this, I believe that if you family share the game on steam, each steam account could independently access the same dedicated or community servers, but local worlds will still only be accessible by the creator as they are the only one who can host their world. You may be able copy the world files between the different folders though.

While that’s part of it, it’s definitely not “just” that.

Sadly, part of it is that the game has released in a fairly stable/polished state, which is considered a positive in the world of broken releases. The multiplayer also just works with little issue as opposed to some problems of yesteryear.

There’s also a perhaps surprising pent up demand for good co-op PvE focused games. They blow-up hard but tend to fade out depending on gameplay quality. Part of this is the streamer effect, streamers like to play group games with other streamers because it helps cross-pollinate their audiences. Sales are also improved due to group/peer-pressure, if someone can pull in their friend group, that’s a lot of sale multiplication.

I also think that the developers tried to make a game that’s fun. A lot of decisions seem to have followed the rule of cool for this type of game e.g. pal mounts, firearms, catching people, automation of survival elements via slavery.

It also manages to have both a clear and guided progression system while maintaining the freedom for the player to just fuck off and do whatever they want while still at least partially progressing.

My only honest gripes with the game are how world saves are handled (they should use the Grounded system in addition to having dedicated servers) and that I for some reason can’t find the exit button on the title screen so to quit I need to alt-f4, for the rare times I need it.

Your account can only have 1 person per server/world and it is only for that world.

You can create/join multiple worlds, each has its own independent progress.

So for example, if everyone in a family of 4 wanted to play but only one account, they each could play independently on different worlds using the same account, but could never join each other’s worlds with any character other than the first made on that world.

That looks awful.

If you want an actual egro vertical mouse, don’t buy a gimmick. I’ve got both wired and wireless zelotes vertical mice from Amazon, would recommend.

FFX Blitzball is the mini-game that I sunk the most time into by far (100+ hours), and always had fun.

Gwent from Witcher 3 kind of goes without saying, the framework is so good it’s spawned 3 full games that I can think of.

Best Hacking mini-game goes to the newer Deux Ex games, quick, the right amount of challenge but if you didn’t like it you could basically never do it.

Best lockpicking I’m going to give to Starfield. Literally the only part of the game I actually enjoyed, each is a great little puzzle.

Back in my teens one summer, I was playing Resident Evil Code Veronica by day at my friend’s house and Doom 3 alone in my basement at night, got about halfway through both but quit because of the constant nightmares. Lost to the psychological damage I guess.

To quote my best friend, “If I’m going to spend hours staring at an ass, it might as well be a girl’s ass.”

RoboQuest has been my main jam for a bit, decent little roguelite shooter. I like how you unlock travel to different areas by finding things from other paths.

Wish it scaled to more than 2 player though…

I’ve been watching and enjoying Jesse Cox (on his CoxClips youtube) play it. He knows a lot about the universe lore and does some explaining for people who may not be as familiar. Someone related to the game also mailed him some ARG stuff related to the game before it came out and he did a few videos on his jessecox channel for it.