• I keep hearing that Mass Effect is a series I would like, so I finally got the Legendary Edition for $5.99.
• I have also heard of Mages of Mystralia as a good game for magic mechanics, so got that for $4.99.
• Trombone Champ for $5.99. I like silly memey stuff and I’m a former band kid. I also never played the trombone, which explains why I am buying the game instead of just playing my own trombone instead.
• Sixty Four for $4.19, as an incremental game fan

I am not sure whether to pick up Noita because I have heard of its great magic mechanics, it also sounds like something that will frustrate me way too much. I’ll probably try on a friend’s computer first

Do you know somewhere I could or should offer a single free Steam key? I bought a Humble Bundle and there are some games in it I have no interest in whatsoever. I would like to benefit someone else with it and none of my friends have it wishlisted.

I can imagine a Numbers Go Up game that instead of clicking to increase the numbers you purchase upgrades that do the equivalent of clicking for you, so it isn’t really much of a clicker or mouse-breaker… or does Clicker mean any numbers go up game, regardless of how important specifically clicking to make numbers go up is?

Postgame of Idle Formulas, still making progress on Moonlight Rabbits

If you did the in-game homework they give you pretty good hints. If you want I can just spoil it for you

I am waiting half for this reason and half because I’m busy! I won’t get around to playing it anytime soon, so why buy it at this price now when it’ll probably be for sale cheaper in a few years, which is when I predict I will have time to play?

I originally played the iOS version.

I then bought it again on Steam and have 200 hours logged, which is probably only going to grow. All of these hours happened during the adult phase of my life in which I usually have to be mildly peer-pressured into gaming instead of actually taking the initiative to do something I like (though I am trying to fix that). However, I do think that the way it breaks the game up, into days, gives a nice stopping point.

If only I could stop thinking “one more day, I still need to turn in that quest/plant that new crop in the exact place I want it/get that one last fish I need for the community center before I forget”.

Fun read, and a pretty long and in-depth reply to the question! I remember the subreddit having discussions over defining the genre, so it makes sense this question would pop up on the Fediverse too. I have been mostly taking it as “I know it when I see it,” which is a shockingly lax approach for me because I am usually the kind of person who wants to sort everything into neat, clearly-definable boxes.

I checked out the rest of your website too and I love it. I’m too much of a scaredy-cat to put a website up myself, but the stuff you have about the small web reminded me of some other interesting reads I came across around a year ago, prompted by some posts I now cannot remember on the Fediverse. I went back to the site with those reads and found even more interesting stuff to read, so thanks I guess?

The game’s Discord says that the

:::spoiler timewall stone ::::

can be finished in 1.5 days, maybe less

I usually hate walking simulators but I made an exception for the Stanley Parable, and, predictably, for Rabbit Simulator

Moonlight Rabbits, an incremental/idle game with adorable bunnies!

Also Stardew Valley with friends again, and My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance-. The latter is an otome game (basically think a visual novel specifically aimed at women, and romance is a major component) based off the My Next Life as a Villainess anime/manga.

In the anime/manga, a girl who loves otome games dies and gets reincarnated into the villainess of one of the games. That villainess dies or is exiled in misery in a lot of the game’s ends, so the girl tries to prevent those things from happening. The girl is a really nice person unlike the original villainess, and inadvertently ends up attracting a ton of suitors, both male and female. She’s also super romantically oblivious to any advances towards herself since she is thinking of herself as the game’s villainess, and she’s canonically, self-acknowledged in the game to be dumb, so it is way less infuriating than it would be in most other media. It’s a romcom. And then it got an actual real-life otome game made out of it, the one I’m playing, which also seems to be a romcom.

I’ll be honest, I’m a straight import from Reddit HFY, and always saw HFY as a subversion of the “humans are the boring, weak race” you’ll see in fantasy and sci-fi, so HWTF stuff would absolutely count as HFY to me, even if it wouldn’t always be to my particular tastes. It would not count as HFY to this community, which limits HFY to more uplifting/positive stuff, which is understandable because a lot of people want their HWTF marked and labeled as such. Although I don’t think we have caught on on the Fediverse to the point we can afford to have a split-off HWTF community yet.

Warning for Reddit link, but… The Great Filter: Cheat Code literally has our bond with a certain animal be why we passed one of, I think three? great filters

I distinctly remember “humans are the friendly ones”/“humans are willing to pack bond with a lot of stuff” as a common HFY theme.

First link also works for me. I’m on Kbin if that makes any difference.

If you check the view of the community from lemmy.world the last post visible is from a month ago

… oh crap. I might as well just start my own community on kbin.run and post here again in a month or so as to not come off as a super spammer repeating the same topic.

Thank you so much for helping! I really appreciate it! And I do hope visualnovels gains some traction. Propping up dead communities hurts…

I’ll be honest, I 1) have no problem with straight males enjoying content aimed at them, including male-gazey content. I am 2) a woman extremely disinterested in that. I think the entire reason on Reddit we congregated on r/otomegames and usually didn’t bleed into r/visualnovels is because r/visualnovels catered mostly to men, and although that’s fine there also wasn’t much there for us. I took a brief look at your link and although it does have gender-neutral stuff like Ace Attorney, the one otome post has two downvotes and zero upvotes despite being on topic, and I see a lot of romance games aimed at men sexually interested in women. So sorry, but definitely not for me. Yes, those downvotes might be the obligatory few downvotes on nearly any Fediverse post I see ever no matter how inoffensive and on topic, but still, no approval balancing it out… nevermind, I read it wrong, two upvotes. My point about content I actively do not want to see (though I am okay with others consuming it) being prominent there as well as neutral news still stands. (Yes, I can handle male gaze in shows, I really enjoyed Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid. But it feels a little different to play as a guy where at least part of the goal, whether explicit in game or just a goal in real life and not part of the main story, is to see women in a manner sexually exciting to a straight man. And although most otome aren’t quite sexual, and more about romance, I feel some men might also not want to see content focused on games where a big goal is to romance a man as a woman, presented in a femgazey way or a way tailored to our desires even if not sexualized.)

I know of the Lemmy alternative and I think I was ignoring it because at first, otomegames@kbin.social did have activity, and the Lemmy one was overrun by just reposts of fan art someone else drew (at least with attribution) and I preferred majority-discussion over a replication of that particular game’s tag on Pixiv. Also, oh god the English errors on the rules. It seems to have died so I might try that if this doesn’t work. Does Lemmy have a way to get inactive mods removed and replaced? Thank you for the recommendation!

(So why don’t I just recruit from the subreddit? Already tried when Lemmy and Kbin were getting their big population boom from the API drama. I got shoved into the Self-Promotion Sunday threads that nobody pays attention to.)

I know kbin.social has issues but I figured the federated nature of the Fediverse meant we could still post to communities there without being on it ourselves. Is the issue that the posts will be frequently inaccessible? I am a little confused.

Works for Kbin people, thank you, the one in the OP shoots me to mander.xyz

I am super happy to find another Idle Formulas player here!