Problem Machine

What if it was multiplayer and the other players were incompetently trying to qwop around to escape the qwopping killer? It's pretty ambitious so maybe better to set as a sort of 'stretch goal', but it is interesting to think about

I've been watching a couple of youtubers play this and just recently got a beta code myself. Anyone else here playing? Despite the snarky title, I think this is actually a really elegant approach to boiling Magic down into a fast-paced game suitable for synchronous play online. Most games don't last more than 10 minutes, and though the complexity and nuance of Magic's first-in-last-out stack are sometimes missed, there's still plenty of interesting decisions to make, both while building a deck and when playing with it. I just had my first arena game and went 7-3, which I'm proud of, but is totally and absolutely not the main reason I started this topic.

Yeah, but if something seems unfair then it takes some of the fun out of spectating it, at least for me. I mean I totally get that that's not the thrust of the event, and it was still a ton of fun, it was just a small but constant annoyance, kind of like having a bad couch commentator.

Yeah the sudden death thing felt pretty arbitrary, like they had the score up for the entire thing and then when they won the final map just added enough points to make them the winner by one point, so it revealed the points as, uh, pointless. Also, if they're going to have a hard time limit, the timer should count down instead of up -- it might seem like a petty quibble, but it really changes the feeling, at least for me, from "getting arbitrarily cut off" to "trying to get in under the wire". I think conceptually it works but it was implemented in a pretty slapdash way. First, have the timers count down. Second, rather than a strict cutoff, make it so after the timers expire you have either 30 more seconds or until your next death to finish the level. Third, just make every level worth 1 point, or sum up the differences of the times, or really anything that doesn't completely invalidate the rest of the race based on the results of the last level.

The Mario Maker race was fun as always but holy crap the format for it was straight garbage. Hopefully they go with something substantially different next AGDQ. I was hoping we'd see another blind game marathon race like last time, but I don't think there was one. I guess it's hard to do time estimates for them, but still.

The Amy run (Amy%) was a ton of fun

Any updates on when (if???) we can expect pods to resume?

Festive!

Also you have to have done the whole thing in the hydra area first or it doesn't drop, which tripped me up a bit on my last playthrough. And some of the hydra area stuff is pretty obtuse, so yeah just look it up.

DS3 has a unique dual wield system completely different from the one in DS2. I personally like it less, but it might be the breath of fresh air you're looking for.

I know I've directly or indirectly gotten a few people on Slack to pick up Slay The Spire, but I thought it might be a good idea to also post about it here. Slay the Spire is a deck-building Roguelite currently in Early Access. There's a lot of room there for them to add new stuff, but it's already pretty solid and fun to play and I don't see it getting anything besides more awesome as it continues to be developed. Unlike most card games where synergy is a matter of getting a few key cards in your hand, Slay the Spire gives you a small deck, a full new hand every turn, and when you run out you just reshuffle your deck and start over, so odds are you're going to end up having the opportunity to play every single card in your deck several times in each combat, so every choice you get over what to add or not to add can be incredibly important. Unlike most card games, I very rarely feel like the optimal play is obvious, and choosing the wrong order of moves can have severe consequences. Each run takes maybe 90-120 minutes once you get the hang of things. Right now I have one win with the ironclad (warrior class) and one with the Silent (rogue class). Right now those are the only two classes, but they're planning on adding another one which I can only imagine will probably be some sort of shitty wizard.

The third character has been added to the beta branch, and so far it seems like a ton of fun. It's a bit more gimmicky than the other two characters, using a mechanic where it can stack up several power orb things, each of which has a weak effect at the end of each turn and a more powerful effect when it is invoked, which can happen either explicitly by using a card with that effect or by stacking up more charges than you have capacity for, at which point the least recent one is invoked. I haven't gotten too deep into this system yet, but I'm curious to see where it leads -- there's definitely a lot of potential for them to build on this in interesting ways. This character also has a bunch of cards based around powers, so where ironclad focused on using lots of attacks effectively and silent on lots of skills, now you use a lot of powers, skills which double-cast powers, powers which let you draw whenever you use a power, and so forth. There's also a lot more deck manipulation available, having cards with effectiveness based on how many cards you have in your discard and draw piles, cards to move one to the other, cards to filter cards out of your draw before you draw them, and so forth. Overall I'm pretty excited about this character and pumped to play more. Unfortunately they just broke the game with a hotfix so I'm posting about it here instead.

Duke's Archive is definitely designed to make you get lost. The underlying puzzle is fairly simple once you understand it, but having two nearly identical rooms makes it very easy to get confused at every point along the way.

I think it's obvious what's about to happen. The puffin's newly revealed fluorescent beak is about to become highly sought-after by poachers, nearly driving the species extinct before natural selection kicks in and a new subspecies, born without beaks, begins to take over the planet. The age of porgs is soon to come.

True, I think I visualize that as moving through the extraneous material to find the true edge. I find it very evocative.

I've always rather liked the malapropism "honed in on", and don't hesitate to use it myself. I feel that, just as honing a blade removes spare material and aligns edges to create a sharper edge, honing in on something is removing extraneous material to gain a more incisive perspective. Also, I expect that the number Chris was thinking of as being larger than the amount of atoms in the universe is the googol: " One googol is presumed to be greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe, which has been estimated to be approximately 10^78 "

This is an incredible joke

in case ur curious what ur missing http://games.jackbox.tv/artifact/TeeKOGame/e7OsSdwExXRopkIYHCMF3Jhl0A0dzVyg/ http://games.jackbox.tv/artifact/TeeKOGame/Lxul0OA3Vh6CXJvmE05wSJz10A3I2Hpn/ http://games.jackbox.tv/artifact/TeeKOGame/bH4b3psEz4M8V8TMdXeyQ7tg0A4bndKL/ http://games.jackbox.tv/artifact/TeeKOGame/MffN35iAAnJpQdZPy4IZO8UW0A7FKUjg/

THATS WHAT IM SAYING

like i sad hes an expert

he's an expert

I dunno it felt pretty artificial, like he didn't put quite as much effort into re-recording his portion this time. I think next week they should record live, it's starting to get uncanny. You can really hear the lack of a human soul at this point.

Ah yeah statuses can be real dangerous, especially if you're going for a clash build. I wish the first aid kit wasn't such a rare pickup, I've never managed to get one on one of the runs where I needed it. If you're NOT going for a clash build though then yeah Evolve is really good. By itself it's good and insulates you against enemies who add wounds, but you can also start using Wild Strike and Power Through to add more wounds, then Second Wind and Sever Soul to thin them back out.

I think maybe people have trouble with the Ironclad because keeping a thin deck is a lot more important for him, and it can be hard to fight the temptation to pick up a card when presented with one. That certainly seems like it could be relating to some of the things you're saying about inconsistency and lack of defense cards.

Though the Ironclad has fewer defensive cards he actually has a few incredible ones. One run I walked all over the final boss using Barricade + Power Through + Second Wind + Entrench + Body Slam. I hit for 1498 damage. For more standard "I just need to stay alive long enough to make my deck work" scenarios, Shrug it Off is just good in almost every deck. I think Ironclad is more consistent, but good Silent runs are incredible. I have little actual data on who's truly more consistent though, since I've been trying to do ascensions rather than going for win streaks. I usually prefer playing Ironclad though just because his runs take like half as long so it's not as big a time commitment.