Game of the Year

I’ve decided there is no Game of the Year 2018. Everything’s been mediocre sequels or ripoffs; that a shitty deathmatch shooter is the most popular makes me disrespect your species nearly as much as sportsball.

I’m still playing old games:

  • Elder Scrolls Online: Mixed bag this year. Summerset’s a fantastic “chapter”/DLC they make even subs pay for. Murkmire DLC is awful, its only virtue is that Shadowfen’s no longer the worst zone in the game. Mac client performance has been garbage since Murkmire, and the nerf to Sorc shields has annoyed the shit out of me. But, close to 5 years in it’s still the best Elder Scrolls game.
  • Unturned: France map is fun and moderately hard, but 3.0’s reaching EOL and who knows how buggy 4.0 will be. Ominous.
  • Minecraft: 1.13 update was a buggy shitshow for a while, but it’s made the waters interesting. But I build bases in taiga or mountains. Very little time in it this year.
  • Animal Crossing Pocket Camp: Least bad gachapon/daily clicky-toy game in its second year. The monthly cycle of garden event, fishing event, scavenger hunt is pretty solid now. The Cabin recently added lets me save a few favorite animals outside the ever-rotating camp roster. It’s OK.

This year’s failed contenders:

  • EXAPUNKS: Haven’t bought it yet because like TIS-100 and the rest of Zach’s games, real coding is more fun than fake-coding, but maybe if I was more fun-not-GTD it’d be on the shortlist at least.
  • World of Warcraft Classic demo: The most exciting pre-release was a 10-year-old version of the most boring MMO.
  • Dragalia Lost: Good but compromised design. I loved it for a few months, the characters are fun and cute, action dungeon’s great for quick play, but the gachapon store drives the game and creates too many identical heroes, dragons, and cards, and it nagged me out. This could’ve been GOTY if it was paid up front, earning heroes by questing instead of random pulls.

My own failure to ship is appalling. I can’t justify it. Perilar gameplay is excellent roguelike tactics & resource management, but some dungeon generation’s not right yet.

Delvers in Darkness, my new tabletop RPG, is getting another rewrite of the adventure and I haven’t done any art direction. I think it’s fun in solo tests, but still need table testing.

Dragalia Lost Tuesday Music

  • DAOKO: Performer of the music in Dragalia Lost.
  • Geazs fanart of Brunhilda/Mym

  • First-week revenue >$3M: Not great compared to established properties, but surprisingly good for an unknown title with little PR in NA. The epithet “Lost” is unfortunate, I don’t know why Nintendo is so incapable of getting English-speakers to review their names before release.

  • Reddit thread on raid event: But still hasn’t started yet, so you have a little time to level up; you’ll want a water-elemental adventurer and dragon.

    Dragalia-raid-2018-10-02

  • The castle building minigame isn’t a full city sim, but it lets you have some creativity. And unlike many, your production & bonuses aren’t disabled while it’s upgrading, you just can’t collect coins until it’s done.

    Dragalia-castle-2018-10-02

Dragalia Lost

A new gachapon game published by Nintendo.

Super, overly cutesy, somewhat like Legend of Zelda (original) with 3D models in a top-down, flat world and dungeons.

You explore dungeons and fight mobs by tapping, combat’s fast and very casual. You can bond with dragons you’ve summoned and shapeshift into them; basically the adventurer/assistant model used in DanMachi.

There’s a little comic book story, haven’t had time to read it yet. The music is perky and varied, though it’s a bit loud until you can get to the main menu and options about 10 minutes into the tutorial.

Cute enough to play a while; I’m still pining for TES:Blades. There’s not any obvious equivalent to DanMachi’s “Syr’s Lunchbox”, a cheap monthly subscription of goodies and currency, which I prefer to buying IAP currency directly.

Downloading a bit at a time is annoying. In More, Options, System, there’s a Batch Download button at the bottom, to load everything.

Setting a “Helper” (the character you contribute to other players) is under Friends, Helper. Obscure UI. But you get 300 “Wyrmite” (the free gem currency) for doing it!

My player ID as Kamimark is 9320 9801 641, friend me.