ATTENTION GROUP GAME PLAYERS

A few suggestions


STRAY

Great ratings but still kind of expensive so maybe push this one out a bit?

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Alice Trapped Beyond Wonderland

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Amnesia: The Dark Descent

and/or

Amnesia: Rebirth

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Beholder 3

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The Book of Unwritten Tales

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Creaks

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Little Nightmares

I think you bring up some good points, lurkercat .

I LOVE the idea of it and I have wanted to join, but with most games being Steam ones, it's been a no-go for me. I'm just not interested in joining Steam at this point in time. But the type of games just haven't been my thing either. I guess that's the genre part you referred to.

I wonder if we just have interests that are too diverse? With a somewhat small group of regular posters, it's hard to get us on the same page, I guess.

Then there's effort. The poll for best games sort of showed that with not a lot of votes overall even though that was a pretty easy thing to do, just nominating and voting. Those things required little of us yet only a handful of us did it.

Group game play requires us to buy a game (if we haven't already), then wait, then play it. None of those things is in any way difficult, but we're used to doing them on our own terms and maybe some of us struggle with the sort of restraints of that.

Previous discussions on group game play bring up so many good points (I was just re-reading them), but it seems like this is a tough thing to solve.

As for nominations, I'd be inclined to make a few, but I don't know if anyone but me would want to play them!
Plus, I don't know if they'd be considered long enough.

What the heck, I'll suggest them anyway...I won't be offended if no one likes them. Be forewarned, they are older...

Buried in Time
Fire
Glow Fish
Running Sheep
Running Sheep: Tiny Worlds

orionsrose, You really dont need to "join" Steam - no ongoing fees, etc. Lots of really interesting games out there & even quite a few free ones. Main Steam disadvantage is that many of the games there do not have a free trial version to see if you want to play them. And I dont like that you need to link to Steam to play them (or else go through annoying hoops to set them up for pure offline play). Gog, also a good, safe site does away with this latter disadvantage if you avoid using their Gog Galaxy game manager. I was also hesitant to dip my toes into the Steam or Gog waters, but now prefer them to BFG....except for the free trial feature.

Sadly, BFG has very few adventure games, which seem the best for interaction on group play - most other genres are pretty simple for individual execution and dont need much if anything in the way of collaborative effort. It's a pity most of the adventure players decamped to Discord (a platform that seems to me to need one to be w-a-y more adhd than I am to enjoy!).

Right now I'm enjoying the latest in the 12 Labors of Hercules series. I play relaxed, one or two levels at a time, and there's one soundtrack I like to just lean back and listen to - who needs the game, when it gives me ideas for my stories? (no, I've never had the urge to novelize the Hercules/Megara games)

This is going to sound weird, that even though my version of King's Heir: Rise to the Throne is going into some dark places in the novelization project I've been working on, the fact is that I don't really like BGG in my games (blood, guts, & gore). I don't like guns in my games (wrote to the Pixel Art devs at one point and asked them to stop putting in so many pictures of guns; that's not a picture I want to finish). I'm not fond of modern-ish era games that take place in a creepy asylum.

I've played and replayed the Vacation Adventures games, and actually did start novelizing Park Ranger. When you binge-play those games, it becomes apparent that there actually is a loose storyline that connects from game to game, across all three games. I'd be curious to see how many folks in a group setting can spot the same elements of this that I have - or can spot any I've missed. I'm talking about the weird stuff, as well as some of the ordinary things, like how people can live in two houses at the same time, or how one house can be both across the street and beside a particular house at the same time. How can the helicopter pilot work in 5 different places at the same time (he's quintuplets, obviously, and they all chose the same career in various parts of the world). There's a pizza box on top of the abandoned mine at Pinecreek that's survived at least two fires, without even a hint of burning up. Why is Adult Mike willing to marry Adult Emma, when she's so stupid as to wear a t-shirt, shorts, and runners to go to the South Pole, ends up with frostbite, and gets treated by an identical sibling of the Pinecreek Hills vet?

How much other weird stuff is in these games, that's never mentioned either by the characters or isn't part of any of the lists?

Of course the real answer is that the devs want to save money by reusing images, characters, and backgrounds. Kinda like how in RL Vasquez Rock ends up in so many Westerns and alien planet settings in Star Trek. The fun is in thinking up in-universe reasons for all these oddities.

So I'd love to do a binge group replay of these games - Park Ranger, Cruise Director, and any Christmas Wonderland that's partially set at Pinecreek and/or the cruise ship (there are a few). 

Valkara,

I'd be glad to play VA with you, just pick a date and create a post :)