Implementation was rather bad on Linux despite reports and warnings of extreme breakage during the beta, and the legacy client was the only escape hatch for many after they bricked it following force pushing the beta into the mainline client, with no rollback option. If you follow Valve’s bugzilla tracker, you will see hundreds of bug tickets over the last month relating to this UI, which didn’t account for regressions around CEF, Gnome, upstream Nvidia drivers, focus-follows-mouse, memory leaks, screen readers for the blind, instability with system dependencies (Steam carries around a basket of old dependencies), and more. Here is but one example: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/9805. Steam only targets Ubuntu and seemingly only tests on that platform, and in so doing this causes a myriad of problems. It’s not an aesthetic issue.

Speaking of memory leaks, one of the most egregious issues right now is the client rapidly consuming all VRAM within a matter of minutes when the window is interacted with (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/9638), effectively killing the system and making rendering games impossible.

I think you missed the minus sign there and misread this, I will translate it: “The chance for rare loot to drop should be continuously reduced by 10% for every hour you log inside the game. I.e., you should receive rewards for completing difficult challenges rapidly, that is, skillfully.” The implication seems to be that if the challenge is hard and you are not good at it, and are just throwing yourself at a wall repeatedly, or the challenge is non-existent/mindless (chore simulator), if you are repetitively doing either and grinding hours away, they are one and the same, and neither is a meritorious achievement. I think this is an interesting angle, as very few games reward skill expression or eureka moments as a momentous achievement. The vast majority, genre and budget irrespective, rely on the (easier to implement) crutch of locking progression behind pointless tedium, so given enough hours sunk in, everyone can win. It is interesting to think about how, whether, and under what conditions games could reward the above.

Big if true

Probably in the best place it’s ever been, massive overhauls both on the official side and on the community mods side

deleted by creator

Don’t play official servers, modded servers (moderated) are where it’s at. Many unique, standalone maps like Namalsk and Deer Isle. There are zillions of servers catering to everything from hardcore survival to basebuilding

Would be cool if JA3 doesn’t stink

Laika

Similar reaction. Game looks aesthetically pleasing, but it feels very hard to innovate within the matrix of a sidescroller, so unless you are a diehard sidescroller player, might not offer something amazing. The game also crashed a lot for me so I didn’t get very far and just gave up on it. There wasn’t a big hook here that would have made me want to persist through crashes.

Jusant

Haven’t played this one, but take a look at Peaks of Yore. Make sure to turn off all of the postprocessing so you get simple polygons.

En Garde

Had CTDs with this one, too. Looks like I didn’t miss much, but the core concept seems entertaining if they flesh it out.

Lies of P

I need to get around to trying this one. I have this habit of putting off bigger demos till the end.

Looks like a blast, will definitely check it out and hope to see you on there

The game is outstanding, guys. Nuff said. Made by four people. It goes to show how out of touch big development studios are when gameplay takes a back seat and they can’t make something with the fun factor.

Fun demo on this one if you like perspective shift type games like Superliminal

It sounds like Bull would be a good character for you to choose

June 29th

No coop yet!

I agree, it’s hard to find games that just throw you in the deep end nowadays without a gentle progression curve and meta upgrades. Incidentally, check out the Odinfall demo on Steam (if it doesn’t crash on you, devs patched it and introduced a CTD regression). It’s a tough as nails spiritual successor to Nuclear Throne that actually feels like it was cast in the same mold.

Check out the game A Musical Story. It’s ostensibly a rhythm game, but I don’t think there is a failure condition other than that you have to keep trying the music loop until you clear it to get to the next vignette. It’s sort of a wordless short story told through animated slides and deeply groovy musical interludes

Sorry about that, I’ve edited the correct link into the top post.

Here’s a Factorio mod that may intrigue you

Thanks, I noticed that and appreciate it.

That’s funny, I was wondering why none of this sounded like the demo I played. I looked it up and they released a new (different) demo for Steam Next Fest. The one I played is from earlier this year. I had no idea what you were talking about with bushes, lol. Guess I’ll compare the new one.