PeezMachine

The premise of "I'll only publish good games" is so laughable. Sure, if presented with a platter of 10 complete games I could probably pick out the winners, but the thing about being a publisher is that you're making deals based on a pitch doc or maybe, if you're lucky, a tiny proof-of-concept full of programmer art. A good publisher can be like a good film editor, stepping in to sideline over-indulgent creative impulses when they get in the way of the magic. Having never engaged with any of Gastrow's content, I can't say if he's well-suited for that role, but the impression I get is that he would be more than happy to fund games that turn out well without any further involvement from him and then use that to grandstand about how he's so much better and smarter than those clowns at [major publisher].

If I'm Ubi I maybe wait until after I release my long-in-troubled-development laughingstock to raise prices, but hey I'm not the MBA here.

Yeah this language was a bad idea when Zero Punctuation popularized it the better part of two decades ago, and it still is today. Get that oooooooooooooout of here.

There's a bit of advice from the "Dungeon World" manual that I always keep with me: "play to find out what happens." That goes for the DM too!

1) Preparation is essential, but don't chain yourself to what you've prepared. Prepare some "what" but don't force the "why." Make some characters, some locations, some encounters, and dip into that stash (and change it as needed) if you find yourself in need or an opportunity presents itself. Made a volcano encounter only to find the party took a left into the swamp instead? Lava becomes swamp juice and eruptions become bubbles of noxious gas. You'll be glad you prepared, even if the stuff you end up using in game is a Frankensteined-together mishmash of your prep.

2) I second the call for some sort of session 0. The most important question that everybody at the table needs to answer is: "why are these characters working together?" They may have different motivations, but every character needs to have some reason to want to show up every time and move the big ball down the field. I've made the "here's where our story starts, show up with characters" mistake exactly once, and I don't recommend it.

3) Here's a specific thing I like to do that I think sums up my philosophy (though it might not work for all groups). I despise Insight checks. Roll to see if this person seems like they're lying. What a bummer. Instead, I rework Insight to make it a tool for collaboration. A good Insight check gives the player the right to establish some fact about the NPC's mannerisms, affiliations, or disposition -- maybe even that they are clearly lying about [X]! Within reason, of course, but if your table's into it they will usually police themselves (that's true across the board, really). Now we're really all... playing to find out what happens!

Start the "Bungie chafes and goes independent" timer.... now.

Come for the technical descriptions, stay for the assertion that Covid is done and working from home is for suckers!

Maybe I'm not the target audience here -- I have to imagine a release like this is largely meant to preach to the already converted and keep them on the hook -- but nothing here does anything to convince me that this would be a fun game to play. It's perhaps telling that this whole release is packed full of material details of the software and the organization but says absolutely nothing about the game. Your persistent entity system only matters if it's in the service of creating a new and better experience for your players, and "leave a thing on a planet and come back to it later" just isn't that compelling.

It's not a card game, but Against the Storm ticks some similar boxes. It's a settlement management/chain of production thing (think a less simmy Banished or a much smaller-scale Anno) where you have a small set of core buildings and then draft the rest from packs while you're out in the field. It's all about cobbling together a solution with an incomplete set of imperfect parts and adapting a build on the fly when the situation changes. To me, that's what a run-based deck builder is all about!

I'm really liking the game, but boy howdy does the blacksmith seem like a poorly considered part of the progression. Finding a new blueprint is never that exciting because (A) you probably won't have enough metal to actually buy the damn thing and (B) once you get a few blueprints deep, a lot of new unlocks start feeling like sidegrades that trade a small amount of one stat for a bit of another, and never enough to move the needle in a meaningful way. Mercifully you have the option to use the same gear loadout for all your classes -- I tried the optional class-specific loadout system and within an hour everyone was just wearing the same stuff again, so I swapped back. I'm totally fine with treating the game's progression as a "rising tide" of general improvements instead of something more targeted (like any number of "build"-oriented games), and the blacksmith feels like a clunky way to offer some choice that isn't really there and doesn't really have to be.

Folks he ain't lyin' about the beginning of Stalker. It's just no damn good. Hearing that it gets better (and that there's a one-off mod that maybe does a bit of updating but maintains the original vision) means that I might eventually move it out of the DNF pile. Apparently I own... 3 of these games? Way to go 2010-ish me with more money than time and an "at this price I can't lose!" attitude toward Steam sales.

Inscryption is so wonderful because it's all about sanctioned game-breaking. Every time I bent the rules or scammed a system to create a comically overpowered card I felt like I was getting one over, even though I was just interacting with the game as designed. And after using my ill-gotten goods to eke out a narrow win in a tough fight, I often felt like this was the only way that would have been possible, how would you even DO that battle otherwise? So it was a lot of fun comparing notes with a friend who broke the game in entirely different ways, carving an equally valid one true broken path.

My other favorite "game-breaker" also happens to be encouraged and blessed by the host game. I'm talking, of course, about the Mechromancer class in Borderlands 2, who can combine an accuracy-ruining insane damage buff with the ability to make missed shots ricochet toward the nearest enemy to create a playstyle that involves just blasting any nearby surface with the biggest shotgun you can find while everything around you keels over dead, all while the character shouts about how incredibly broken this is.