henke on 10/4/2025 at 07:14
Quote Posted by demagogue
In my vision of imm-sim-ism, one of the core parts is that there are all of these open & unbiased or neutral systems that are just doing their thing that don't care about the player, but the player can game them to make progress. Part of that ethos is there's also a bigger world happening doing its thing that also doesn't care about the player. But the idea is that there's something that feels much bigger than the player, and the player is immersed in it.
Yeah true. Rail Heist is only a bit immsimmy in its systems. Punching holes through walls, stacking things to climb heights, lots of unexpected ways to kill enemies or have them kill eachother. It also has a 3-star system where you earn stars for 1. beating a level fast enough 2. killing everyone 3. not killing anyone. So all kinda playthroughs are possible AND intended.
In UFO50 news: I made it to the second to last level of
Rock On! Island before realizing I can upgrade my weapon. D'oh!
Re: UFO50 vs emulating old games. I got access to Switch's NSO library around the time I bought UFO50, but I've been much more engrossed in UFO50's fake old games rather than the REAL old games of NSO. A big reason for that is that UFO50 takes all the right lessons from the 3+ additional decades of evolution in gamedesign. It's snappy and accessible. And these games (mostly) have no compunction to pad their length with filler to feel like proper full-length games, so all the fat is trimmed.
henke on 10/7/2025 at 08:33
Whelp...
I've been playing Grimstone. A Wild West JRPG and probably the biggest game in UFO 50. I'm 18 hours in and I've made it to the final dungeon. This game does a lot of interesting things. The whole thing starts by killing off half of the main cast, you play through the game as the remaining half. The story is interesting and tho the characters initially seem generic they all have their moments to shine as the story goes on. The combat is mostly traditional turn based JRPG combat but with a skill based timing-element as well. It actually inspired me to prototype a similar combat system.
Anyway, I've made it to the final dungeon and it is some straight up grindy bullshit. You can end up in random encounters with multiple enemies which can one-hit-kill you and it's making the whole thing feel very trial and error-y. Not sure I can be bothered finishing this. A shame, since the story is interesting. Purely due to its length, Grimstone is now my most played UFO 50 game, but far from my favourite.
Pyrian on 17/7/2025 at 22:36
Grimstone - not to be confused with Grimrock, which is totally different
henke on 18/7/2025 at 05:16
Yes.
I did give up on Grimstone. I replayed Legends of Diskonia tho, still one of the best games in the collection!
