SuperBiasedMan

Allens 3 Resserection was always my favourite of the trilogy.

That sums up Dublin pretty well. Generally landlords here are also pretty lax about doing things at best and demanding of their tenants at worst. The relative lack of demand means they can get away with too much and so feel entitled to it (not just price, also things like deciding not to take people on social welfare or students based on their prejudices). Most often here, the reason that rents go up is just 'to keep up with market rates'. Which just means that since other people raised their prices, our landlord can too. EDIT: Though I forgot to say, our 60% rent increase this year was after last year where the rent didn't change at all when we signed onto our second lease. Which overall was of more benefit to us, but still just shows how unstable the system is.

I'm now curious about how renting works in other places because it's a terrible volatile mess in Dublin, where my rent was going up €500 ($670) this year, thankfully we were already planning on leaving before we found this out, the month before we were supposed to sign this new lease with rent that was going up by 60%.

I can already picture the Saturday Morning cartoon version of Clyde preparing fiendish traps for me, only to have a snake accidentally creep up behind him and trigger the whole thing right before I glide right by, completely oblivious.

Can you grow a moustache that you twiddle as you laugh?

I didn't mean to say you did, it was just my meta mental narrative that I was this out of practice underdog cause when I went back to playing after such a long break, you consistently topped my scores.

I worded that poorly, I'm not very conscious of acting in general in film/TV as well as radio. I'm sure it has an effect on me but it's not what I focus on liking/disliking and mostly only really notice when it's really good or amusingly bad (ie. The Room). We're Alive (I also... don't like that name much) was just very muted and full of people reading lines that didn't add much but they didn't do it so poorly that they took something away from it (for me at least) or made it laughable. They communicated the story to me like it was a reading of an audiobook. I care less about that and more about the story being entertaining in itself.

Oh yeah, I don't really care about acting that much so I didn't really think to say but it's really not gonna draw you in with that if the acting is an integral part of the experience to you.

I still play it basically because it's a game that really hits the spot for game feel of having an enjoyable run around as the character and a constant presence of relative challenge (even though I beat hell and have no particular goal aside from usual daily challenge and getting some achievements I guess?). The only person from my friends list I see on the daily challenge board is actually you SAM, and in my head it's just been like a narrative of a rivalry thing where I'm so out of practice and far behind I don't even register on your radar. I ruined that though when a pretty average run happened to beat your score. I feel like I should play other games, but it's just so easy to pick this up for a little bit, rather than try a new game and only get a short period with it, knowing that it wont feel as nice as Spelunky even if it has stuff to offer me.

Ok, I played anxiety world. Aside from the stark tone of it, I was reminded a lot of an experiment I first saw on a Derren Brown show (though I'm sure it's well known in its own right). The basic idea of Derren's version of the experiment was that he put a group of people into a room full of random objects, and told them that they needed to get to 10,000 points and when they reach that many points, if they can explain what caused them to earn points then they would earn a large prize. This sent the participants into a frenzy as the timer began and they all started playing around with the objects and attempting to gain points while simultaneously determining what gained the points. At the ending of the time limit, the participants all had guesses of what seemed to be producing points, but they were all wrong. They had made erroneous conclusions because they correlated coincidences to gaining points, when in reality the points went up randomly, independent of the participants' actions. It was a demonstration of superstitions and how people form them when they feel the need to. The reason I bring all this up is because I felt like this game mirrored that experiment in some ways. There's a short time limit before you're cut off, a barrage of information and audio and there's something you can control but the actual result of your control is unclear. I think, having had a couple goes, that the player's input has no consequences on the games resulting output. It's entirely there for the feel, adding to the frantic nature of trying to achieve a goal which you're not even sure of or whether you might be getting closer or further from it. This was a lot more intense than the other two, which I enjoyed because I like diverse feelings and tones being portrayed, rather than a creator settling into a limited range. (even if tools are going to be limited, the creator can still create varied works).

Oh sorry I meant to say this earlier but I'm both vegan and a person who doesn't spend money on food (I pretty much just cook my own food as much as possible) so my recommendations are useless. When I eat out it's mostly just Subway or pizza with no cheese on it... so all I can say is that those things exist.

If they did that I'd really hope the Thumbs suddenly become massively Pro Star Citizen and reject any possible criticism of it. Same, and Naturebox isn't available here either. ...I probably shouldn't be letting myself spend money on it anyway.

It's a thing. You can listen to audio at a higher rate pretty easily. It might get tricky at 1.5x if you're either not paying that much attention or listening to a fast talker but it's totally doable. I've gone up to 2x before on slow paced tutorial videos and it was fine.

The thing that made the WoT ad weird for me was not the idea that I thought the ad was disingenuous but actually because it stood out amongst the rest of the podcast. Most of the content of this episode is just the Thumbs discussing things they want to talk about for whatever reason, they bring up games and topics they are interested in and then get sidetracked in ways that they are also interested in (in some way). With the WoT ad, it really felt like a part of the episode where they thought "Ok let's do this thing we have to do." and then they got diverted onto a totally unrelated topic where they were actually engaged in it. *Disclaimer: I could entirely be wrong and this might not be how others felt but it came off that way to me.* By contrast, the nature box ads are clearly an endorsement for a thing they genuinely enjoyed and had entertaining chatter about it. I'm not expecting the Thumbs to rave about WoT and I know the realistically couldn't be critical or dismissive of it but it's just an unusual feeling to have the middle of the podcast be a part where I switch off because I know I'm hearing an ad and not the episode. It's actually unfair to ask the Thumbs not to do that really, given that plenty of podcasts do basically verbatim ads about whatever product and I don't bat an eyelid. But I've been spoiled by the Thumbs seeming actively involved in the advertisements they have chosen to read in the past.

I think I'll play this a little later but I already like the different tone from that screenshot.

I think the show is supposed to be about you figuring out Walt. Originally I... uhhh, this is vaguely sort of spoilers I guess. No concrete events are mentioned but it might spoil it a bit for people.

Oh, yes! On double checking I realised that I just didn't know that right click did anything when I tried to open the door, I had been using E to try interact. Also yeah, Irish is probably one of the better bets for a generally unknown language but I ruined that for you by knowing... a tiny bit.

Is maith liom é a lán! It was actually pretty fun and weird when I already knew most of the irish used (I'm extremely rusty since school) so I imagine a language I have no knowledge in would actually be even better. Here's some general thoughts I had: The voice, I have no idea if the overly deep nature of it is intentional but I loved it. BAHHB made me want to click him over and over. Even if you change voice I highly recommend making the act of hearing it fun in itself, so you encourage people to click everywhere. On that note, I think you need to really make sure to go all out and make everything clickable. Like the ground, the tree and the windows weren't (as far as I could tell). And have the hit boxes careful and precise cause otherwise you run into trouble with misdirecting the player. I got told the table was a chair if I clicked on one section of it. You'll also run into issues of ambiguity, with things like the chicken house thing, I'm actually not entirely sure what that irish words mean because I don't know the specific english words they connotate. That might not be a big deal, it depends on how important the idea of teaching the language is to you, if it's more about the wonder of discover in a foreign tongue then I think you're fine. Chasing the chickens is a good addition, making it as interactive as you can would be a good move. I got a bit frustrated with not being able to open the door that lead inside to a bunch of things for me to click on (until I realised that Sue was meant to open it for me). Art style, I like the low fidelity blocky look but I'd prefer it if you could make the humans look more stylised, like the chickens. Humans have a shape beyond just a box, and if you just hinted at it a bit more I think it'd look nicer even within the style. Also a suggested feature (I'm sure you don't already have too much work ), you could add a wordlist that the person compiles. So when you click on úl and get told it's úl, you can check your book and get a picture of an úl with the word next to it. It'd help with the learning but also if the island gets bigger you'll need something like that for reference in the minor questing. Overall I liked it so I'd like to see where else you go with it. This looks really nice, I like the art style and I really liked how the starting out scene played out with the tense music and atmosphere. Admittedly, the rest was a bit plain by contrast. Once it cut from the man in the car I wasn't as engaged. I do think part of the issue that caused that (including in the starting scene) is the fact that the characters don't change much. I'm guessing being so early on is a big part of the reason but it definitely helps a lot to have the characters respond to your dialogue choices both with how they answer you in the text but also with their actual face and body language. I know with the art style that's tricky, but if you can make some various stock reactions it'll make the dialogue more engaging and show more of the characters as the player goes through the experience. The UI and systems all seemed pretty smooth to me, and i often like to complain about such things, so you must be doing something right there.

Is it poor form to call yourself homeless just because you literally just don't have a place of residence even if you're economically capable of renting one and have places where you can stay if push comes to shove? Because that's the state I'll be in when my lease runs out on Friday.

Ah, I hadn't seen that, it was either before my time or I was just terribly unobservant about it.

I think that's a constant problem for Olly when doing his current work.

I think this is exactly what's being highlighted though, the Thumbs didn't actually recommend it or think this particular game was worth noting, and yet it can have that same effect for people anyway. Opinions will differ on whether or not that's a bad thing of course.

I can't tell if that expression is intentionally similar to the style of OFF or it's just the pixelly style tricking me. I'm also not even sure if I should expect OFF to be a well known game.

So I couldn't find a thread of this I figured I'd start it off. Basically asking if anyone else has experience playing a game you're thinking of buying but you want an actual discussion back and forth rather than an average score out of ten to help figure it out. The reason I started thinking about this is because I saw Ether One is on GoG's Summer Sale and I do remember the trailer and general prehype getting me interested, but I can be roped in with the vague psychological flavour to a story pretty easily and after Dear Esther boring the pants off me I want a walking simulator where the story is actually nailed down even if it is mysterious. In Esther it seemed vague and disconnected because it felt like they really didn't know what the story was and I don't want that again, even if Ether One has a mysterious and complicated story I want it to feel grounded in something that more makes sense. So does anyone have any hands on experience of it? Game of the Year or not really a game?

Oh wow, I read this ages ago when Scott McCloud highlighted it but I haven't gone back to it since. I really like this, just the way you have it all coherently fitting the innate style of it. It's not that hard to make a comic that's scrolling and reactive (...I think? Maybe I'm way wrong on that) but actually designing it in a way that flows with the narrative itself and really contributes to the feel is what made me love this back when I first found it. Now to read back over it again.