Panties

I've wanted to pick the game up a few times, but kept ending up buying something else, sometimes there's a game we were more excited about, or something suited our budget better... I'd love to see more on the topic

We got SkyTeam last October. It's a two player, limited communication game where each person has four dice to play on the game board.

After about a dozen sessions, we had to look up a rule and noticed that we were supposed to take turns placing one die each, we've been placing all four at a time... Some other rules are making much more sense now too 🤦

Started the Stanley parable, haven't gotten far yet, but it's rather interesting.

Was playing Sleeping gods for two weeks but put it away to make room for visiting friends. Haven't pulled it back out yet due to some life stuff. Going on holidays next week so I'm looking forward to getting some SkyTeam going (maybe on the plane)

This inevitable ruin The audiobook is just fantastic and adds to an already amazing book series.

Wind and Truth

Empire of Ivory

Sleeping gods with SO. Been waiting for the local shop to restock Tides of Ruin for our second play-through, and they finally did two weeks ago. Having a great time this week.

It's been so long that I'd forgotten the name of the game, turns out I got it confused with a game with extremely similar mechanics, only realised today when I found the sequel to the game I played. The game that I've played and loved is called Lapse. It's free on Google Play store.

Let me know if you do. Haven't ever done any game dev, but I'm mostly a programmer, so maybe I can help with it.

Yes, probably because it's a port. I mostly find games through pc/console...

Come to think of it, ever played reigns? It's a roguelike series, the games have similar game mechanics but different settings. They can be played easily with one hand because you make decisions by swiping cards left or right, and at least the one game that i played had pretty interesting story.

I know what you mean about being too tired to start a game, we had that problem at the beginning of the hobby too! We've since learned that even though most filler games can sound a bit boring on paper, they can be quite fun and the good ones end up getting played pretty often.

Our favourites:

• Kites: A real-time game about flipping little sand timers while playing cards. It somehow manages to be tense and relaxing at the same time, and it's always kind of funny when someone accidentally knocks a bunch of them over.
• The Mind: The game is so simple the rules can be fully explained in a minute. You try to play numbered cards in ascending order without knowing what's in other people's hands. The faces people make to cheat the no communication rule can be hilarious. Especially good to bring on trips, can even be played on trains or planes. Also good to play with someone new due to the simple rules.
• MicroMacro Crime City: Hard to explain this one without an example, so look it up if it sounds interesting to you. It's about solving crimes by looking at a 2D+time dimension map... It gives the intense satisfaction of detective stories while not putting much of a mental load on you. Does require very good lighting, otherwise can be straining on the eyes.
• Tranquility / The Ascent: Two games in the same series, mechanics are different but they have similar vibes of, well, tranquility. These games are beautiful, gameplay feels a bit like solitaire but with a bit less thinking/memorization, and they both have well-designed two player modes.
• Sky Team: Dice-placing game about landing a plane. The theme was not appealing to me, so it took recommendations from many sources for us to finally try it out. It's in that sweet spot where the game feels engaging and tense, after a win you feel accomplished. I'm not sure how they managed that with putting dice on a small cardboard panel. Another plus is that it has an expansion where you get to call penguins to ask them to get out of your way.

I should mention these are all co-op games, because I hate losing, and I don't like others losing. We do own a few competitive games, but they are pretty much all luck-based / super pretty / funny, so that we don't care who wins.

Dead Cells is technically on Android, and a great game, but you'd need a controller to really enjoy it.

I absolutely recommend Slay the Spire. It's a deck-building game ported from pc/console, a very good game, and the port is decent. I have over 300 hours in it, still play it often. It's a hard game, especially at higher difficulty levels it really requires you to make good decisions everywhere. Choosing your path, building the deck and playing the cards all feel engaging. The vast variety of synergies and anti-synergies also ensures that each play feel different and interesting. There's also a board game, also very good, although that probably also falls into your blind spot a little, more people playing often add to the complexity.

I've recently got Dicey Dungeons, also on android, light game, not a lot of replay value, but the campaign is pretty fun and interesting so far, so I think the price to play time ratio is still pretty decent.

I imagine it would be difficult to capture what makes the the original so special and also make improvements. But yes an open source alternative would be wonderful.

Any idea if someone already started a promising project? I did a quick search on Github and found quite a few HS simulators, most of them archived. Didn't find anything that's HS inspired. I doubt I'll find time for it between my other hobbies, but I do have a couple weeks of holiday leftover from last year, so who knows.