Mizio

Ever since I played Shogun Showdown, I've been looking for minimalist and addictive puzzle games: Mars Power Industries: Your goal is to connect colonization modules to electricity and other resources by placing energy nodes. You only have a limited number of nodes that you can use in a specific order, and you have to deal with constraints and mechanics like wind, shifting terrain, or obstacles. There are around 80 short puzzles, perfect for relaxing while giving your brain a workout. Golf Peaks: On a grid, you need to get your ball into the hole using various movement cards (move 2 squares forward, jump over an obstacle, etc.). It's all about chaining the right actions to successfully sink the ball. The game keeps things fresh across 10 worlds of 12 levels each, featuring different types of terrain with their own unique characteristics, rugged landscapes, various obstacles, trampolines, and conveyor belts. Like Mars Power Industries, it's a small, relaxing game. Shift of pace: Zero Sievert is a top-down extraction shooter heavily inspired by Escape from Tarkov (though I've never played it) and, more importantly, by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. You immediately recognize that gritty, post-apocalyptic Soviet atmosphere complete with lethal anomalies, radioactive zones, and mutated creatures. You’re tasked with exploring different biomes, scavenging for gear, taking down anything in your path, and completing NPC quests, all while managing your hunger, thirst, radiation levels, inventory space, and equipment condition before racing back to your bunker via an extraction point. Each successful run earns you experience points to unlock various perks over time. The materials you collect let you upgrade your equipment but also your bunker, like expanding your stash capacity etc.. Each area is procedurally generated, meaning extraction points shift locations and various landmarks are scattered across a brand-new map every time you deploy. All in all, it's a tense, deeply addictive loop that keeps you saying "just one more raid." And I've also played Forza Horizon 4 and TF2.

I've been playing Shogun Showdown lately. It's a mix of strategy, tactics and roguelike. You fight on a 2D line against waves of enemies, but everything is turn-based. The game shows you exactly what the enemy is going to do on the next turn, and it's up to you to position your attacks and manage your cooldowns to survive. It's super addictive, you just keep playing without seeing time fly! It's a great palate cleanser between bigger games.

I just finished Botany Manor. It's a pretty nice puzzle and exploration game set in an English manor. The premise is to search rooms and follow clues to figure out how to grow various strange plants. It's quite relaxing and well-made. A good little experience if you like the genre, and it's rather short at around 4 hours. A rare and great touch: the options include a dedicated motion sickness menu that groups together settings like FOV etc... to help prevent it. My only real gripe is that once you discover clues, you can't view them directly from your inventory, you have to physically go back to where the clues are located to re-read them. Overall, though, still worth a look!

I’ve been playing Instruments of Destruction lately and it's a lot of fun. Basically, you get armed vehicles and you just wreck everything. Personally, I’m only playing the campaign with the premade vehicles and its little challenges, even though there's a mode to build your own machines like in Besiege. The destruction physics are really good, which makes sense since it was made by an ex Red Faction: Guerrilla dev. Just a great little game to zone out and smash stuff.

I knew there was something wrong. I didn't notice anything today, but I also had an issue where I had to constantly log in

Parking Garage Rally Circuit, (I think this game is a huge nod to Sega Rally, but since I have never played it, I cannot say much more). Anyway, it's an absolute blast to play! Nothing groundbreaking, but it's incredibly well executed. You dont race against other cars in real time, it's strictly Time Attack. You unlock medals and increasingly powerful vehicles as you progress. The core gameplay revolves around drifting and "boost stacking" (which feels a lot like Crash Team Racing, the king of kart racers 👀 ). It's a super fast-paced and fun arcade game, you just drift left and right through really tight spaces, and the Ska soundtrack fits the game perfectly. However, the game has one major flaw. The reason I am already back posting here is because its extremely short: barely 2 hours to hit 100%! The base content is pretty light, with only 8 tracks that you are forced to replay 3 times with 3 different car categories. Difficulty-wise, it's honestly pretty easy overall. I really wished we got harder levels with some real die and retry gameplay. I will wait a bit, but I am definitely going to buy the DLC since it adds 8 new tracks. I recommend Parking Garage Rally Circuit but only on sale, solely because of the lack of content.

@Gfted1 Is there no rules ? (I hope nothing has happened to your friend.)

This thread is literal torture. This is too good to be true, what's the catch?

I just finished Is This Seat Taken?, and it's an addictive puzzle game about something we've all experienced: the anxiety of choosing a seat on public transport. The concept is super simple but incredibly clever: you find yourself in a bus, a train, a cinema, etc..., and you have to seat these little characters while respecting everyone's preferences. Between the guy blasting music without headphones, or the one who absolutely wants a window seat but refuses to sit next to someone who smells bad, it quickly turns into a real social engineering puzzle. The story and dialogues are pretty light, it’s truly a relaxing game. Difficulty wise, there are a few levels where you really have to use your brain, but it’s nothing insurmountable. It’s short, chill, funny, and rewarding. Highly recommend!

It’s the year of photography for me! After playing Viewfinder, here I am on Umurangi Generation, a title with a very simple concept: you explore small areas in a dystopian cyberpunk future to complete photo missions. There's no action or game over here, photography is the sole gameplay element. It’s a very chill game, where you have about ten objectives per zone (like photographing a "kiwi" or hunting for the 9 film canisters, etc..), which forces you to look at every single corner of the environment and sharpen your eye. I had a great time, and the OST is very, very cool!

Future games show live:

Some gameplay:

Wait, what?! That really sucks! And to think they bought Nixxes Software in 2021 specifically for PC ports...and it's already over 😕

I'll wait four years hoping to see a PC port 🥲🤞

I just finished Viewfinder and honestly, it’s just really nice to play something so original. The concept of taking a 2D photo and stepping into it as a 3D space is very nice. It immediately reminded me of Superliminal in terms of originality, especially with how both games constantly play around with perspective and optical illusions to warp reality. That being said, the game isn't perfect. I found it relatively simple overall, the dialogues weren't anything fantastic, and I felt like they could have pushed the concept a bit further. But honestly, the sheer creativity of the mechanics makes up for it. Plus, it's pretty short to finish, so you don't really have time to get bored or tired of it.