What are you playing lately?

General
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Just curious since it seems there’s a diverse range of people using the OS. From classic gamers to modern AAA gamers - what’s everyone been playing lately?

I’ve been mostly playing the two Cygames gacha games lately; Shadowverse Worlds Beyond and Umamusume. I was going to play Blue Archive as well but I had trouble running it on my Bazzite ROG Ally so decided to focus on those two instead.

Now that I’m very close to reaching Master, I can definitely say the reviews are too harsh.

The F2P economy isn’t as bad as people made it out to be - it’s very F2P-able. Most of the people coming from other CCGs or TCGs and didn’t play SV1 thinks it’s actually pretty generous, which made sense since SV1 was very generous in the latter half of its lifecycle.

The meta is also pretty good. There’s some overtuned cards, but every class is viable with multiple archetypes. Board state matters and the use of Evo Points and Super Evo actually matters a lot.

And I like how well-integrated the Park/lobby is. I wish they have more events for it (and it seema like they are doing more with them) because I honestly would rather play Park than Ranked most of the time. It’s surprising how much different it feels when you have an avatar and virtual space to contextualize the game and the other players in.

Ah, the “horse girl racing/idol management sim” that’s taking ovet the algorithm everywhere (seriously, I barely use Instagram and my search feed is full of Umamusume post recommendations).

The game is very easy to pick up and put down anytime. It’s perfect on both phone and desktop, because you can just boot it up to do a couple of training and races, or you can lock in and grind careers for all the characters you have.

While I’m surprised the Steam/EN release managed to blow up so much (honestly overshadowing SV:WB which is an actual new game), the core of it works pretty well. It didn’t click on me during the tutorial but as soon as I started career, I get the appeal. It is essentially a roguelite management sim.

You choose a girl to train, give them legacy effects from your previous runs if any, start doing some basic training before their first race, then work towards the rest of their unique career objectives, balancing between training, resting, and racing as you go through about 50 turns of gameplay. If you did well, you get to do bonus races, before retiring the girl which “encase them in ember” so to say, to use in Team Races and Challenge Races in addition to influencing your next runs with other girls.

Those are what I’ve been playing lately. I want to get back to playing my various JRPGs and VNs (I really want to finish more Trails and Rance series games) but these two games’ gameplay loops just click with me more and just perfect both on phone and on my ROG Ally.

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Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma. I’m a long time fan of the Rune Factory series (I started from Harvest Moon, so progressing to RF is a natural course of action).

Azuma is actually a spinoff, not a mainline entry, but it’s very fun and engaging. I was initially a bit skeptical because it lacks the meticulous forging/crafting mechanics that I adore from a previous title, Rune Factory 4, but I quickly warmed up to it and enjoyed it as a spinoff title.

I really haven’t been playing much aside from that and my regular gacha game (through Waydroid now!). I do take some time to go through Pixel Restorer every now and then when I want to turn my brain off.

3

:joy: love it

For a while now, my main jam has been Deep Rock Galactic Survivor

I’m working my way through Doom Eternal when time permits.

But just recently I started playing TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge. Really fun, easy to pick up and put down. Bonus, it’s available on mobile.

Another outstanding game that’s available on both Steam and Mobile, Halls of Torment.

JohnAtl 4
6 Likes
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I picked up Grim Dawn for cheap on a steam sale and have been rather enjoying it. Playing it on Bazzite on my SteamDeck though. Don’t really use my laptop (Bluefin) for any games really.

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Rune Factory is a series I’ve been interested in a while. Admittedly because of the aesthetics - they look cool and cute. Also because I did play some Harvest Moon back in my childhood and “fantasy Harvest Moom” appealed to me.

That said, I’ve instead been more into Atelier stuff. Have you played any of them? For me, I think I started out with the spin-off Mana Khemia way back in PS2 era, then played Escha & Logy on PS3. I tried Ryza, but the prologue was dragging and the aesthetics didn’t really jibe with me (I actually enjoyed Atelier series having more shoujo aesthetics and sensibilities).

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My living room mini ITX running Bazzite:

  • THPS1&2 Remake, UFO 50, Red Dead Redemption 2, and TF2 with my daughter

My Steam Deck:

  • Dragon Quest Builders 2, Ark Nova (Early Access), and my daughter plays TF2 on it

Board Games:

  • Ark Nova, SETI, Santorini Riddle of the Sphinx

Mobile:

  • Through the Ages: New Story of Civilization and Balatro, nothing more :slight_smile:
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My only experience with Atelier is brief, with Ryza and Yumia. I couldn’t stick to them mainly due to the camera controls that give me motion sickness and crafting/chemistry mechanics. Admittedly I know 1-2 hours of gameplay is nowhere near enough to grasp crafting, so it’s on me for not playing more, but the camera controls is non-negotiable for me haha. I do have plans to try out the DS titles, and have gone like 10 minutes into Annie, but then life happened and Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma arrived (miraculously, with camera controls that don’t make me feel like puking after 30 minutes!).

If you’re curious about RF, and don’t mind the old school top-down view, I would recommend Rune Factory 3 Special and 4 Special available on Steam. 1 (2006) and 2 (2008) are fun titles for their era, but they show their age and QoL stuff that is present on newer titles just aren’t there. 5 is more modern-looking, and has its own share of strengths, but (in my personal opinion) is rough on a lot of edges and I’d recommend Azuma over 5… though again, Azuma is a spin-off and the upcoming 6 might resemble mainline titles more than Azuma, potentially throwing off players that got hooked because of Azuma.

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I’ve been playing a lot of Bethesda’s Starfield lately. It runs great on Bazzite with Nvidia graphics.

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Will I get much comment when I write I play a lot of music? When I do things on the computer I like to have what I call musical wallpaper, instrumental music with “floating” tunes which are just being repeated over and over, music you don’t really have to listen to, you just hear it. No texts, they only distract, only sound, a continuous stream of sound. Others would fall asleep with this, I can just do what I want to do. Ideal.

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Warhammer 40K: Darktide

Ghostwire: Tokyo

Risk of Rain 2

Deep Rock Galactic

Le Mans Ultimate

I have to say that Bazzite saved me a lot of headaches on Darktide and Ghostwire, both of which stuttered to no end on Windows. I spent a lot of time googling optimization tricks, fiddling with config files to get Darktide to work properly but over a year nothing worked. Ghostwire was the same with extreme stuttering (and I mean it.)

Both games run like a breeze now. I don’t know what kind of magickry is going on in the background but I am happy I can finally enjoy those two games. Rest are the same in terms of performance and smoothness as before.

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OMG!! A Ghostwire player! Am I dreaming!?

It’s the game that made me build a PC just to play it. Really great game, I love the aesthetics and atmosphere, the amount of in-game lore, and voice acting (JP). It’s my entry to PC gaming and AAA games in general and the only game I would willingly endure motion sickness for (though playing with mouse & keyboard lets me play for 1-2 hours before calling it quits for the session).

Sorry for suddenly gushing about the game, but it’s a game I hold really dear and I’m so happy to see it mentioned in the wild, in a Linux discussion space nonetheless!

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Oh, as someone who’s dreaming of visiting Japan one day, Ghostwire is letting me live my dream, although virtually. Been learning Japanese for a while. Lately have been watching videos of people walking around Japan, too. So getting to walk around in a relatively faithful recreation of Shibuya is a nice feeling for me.

Game is amazing as well. I love how it introduces a lot of Japanese folklore and tidbits about Japanese culture. Trying to read kanji writings on the map is also a lot of fun. They got the atmosphere spot on as well, being permanently stuck at a rainy nighttime. What more could I want? :sweat_smile: