I might have almost fallen for this if it weren't for the dancing baby.  Good April Fools effort!

Oh, man... I pledged on Fortune's Tavern back when it was on Kickstarter.  It's billed as a fantasy tavern simulator, but you do very little with the tavern - decide which rooms or facilities to clean up and restore, which can affect your alignment if you're making either attic rooms or basement rooms available.  The undead like the basement, so making those rooms available will swing your tavern over towards them.  The elves prefer the light, airy attic rooms.

Aside from that you set the five point menu and then take your weirdly unintelligent AI pet out to do quests, because there's really nothing else to do.  After complaints about the random way the pet moves, an attack was added for the player character, but it's a very short range and weak dagger.  Expect to spend the majority of your time hiding and praying the pet will happen to wander over to the enemies before any of the enemies happen to wander over to you.

The guy eventually gave up and pulled it from Steam, putting Moonstone Tavern up instead.  Backers don't get that.  Supposedly he was going to polish Fortune's Tavern up to the standard of Moonstone Tavern, but you can see the 'mostly negative' reviews for yourself...
http://store.steampowered.com/app/461780/

thing1 : Sorry, I thought from the time I saw when I posted it lasted until later today - I guess it must have closed out the freebie offer.

Until the end of Saturday (roughly) you can pick up a free copy of GRID on the humble store with this link:
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/grid-free-game

There's already one listed in the market - if you really want to you can give them Viz instead.  Just remember that there's a deadline on redeeming the key.

Well, you can try Battle Hunter... it's for one to four players, winner takes all, and if someone finds the target item and leaves quickly it can take less than 15 minutes.

On the other hand, if someone gets the item and a brawl starts, it can take quite a bit longer.

I'm going to vote for Johnson.  He may be a little weak on foreign policy, but he'd have a cabinet to help with that... and he'd try to balance the budget, which I don't see Hillary doing and Trump's tax cuts and grandiose plans would be even worse for the economy.

Basically, I don't trust Hillary with her private server and all the emails showing collusion to keep Sanders from getting the nomination... and I don't trust Trump with his failed businesses, fraudulent university, and the way he BS's his way through speeches and debates with fact checkers proving he's wrong half the time. 

I have heard a lot of people speaking in favor of both of them, primarily by saying "If you don't vote for (Hillary/Trump) then (Trump/Hillary) will win!"  I'm sorry, but I think it's about time we stop accepting the lesser of two evils and tried to prove that third parties are actual choices by voting for them.  Johnson won't win, but just maybe he'll get enough votes that we won't have Everyone Sucks 2020.

Davideo7 : Oooh, nice.  I backed Data Hacker: Reboot on Kickstarter... but the guy never gave me the Steam keys for the first two games like he said he would.

It's a pity that, unless he's fixed it lately, spells cost HP as well as MP.  Something to bear in mind if you - or anyone who reads this - wants to try playing.  He thinks it's a problem with the engine, or at least that's what he said when I mentioned it after trying Data Hacker: Initiation from the DRM free copy he sent me.  This affects both your own characters and enemies.  He'd been wondering why those would suddenly die on their turn.

Davideo7 :


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I put up a few codes - Cook, Serve Delicious follows the $1 = 1000 Viz guideline, but I put in a 50% discount on GameMaker and the weird multiplayer only version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.  I figure the former is expensive enough even with the discount and maybe someone who really wants to try to make games can get it... the latter I question the value of, even  if you can upgrade it to the full version and save $15 that way.

Just in case some folks on here are interested in picking a Steam copy of Tropico 4 up, I thought I should point this out.  To mark the beginning of their 'end of summer' sale, Humble is offering free copies of it for the next ~42 hours.
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/tropico-4-free-game

Please don't pick up a bunch of free codes and sell them on here.  They're only good for about a week, and then anyone buying them will be out on their Viz for nothing.

I've rated 100+, so far.  Probably I'm going to go through a few more games I like and rate their songs too.

I think I'll have to toss in a dissenting vote here and say otters.  Dragons and other mythical beasties are cool and all, but there's now way to watch them play with whatever comes around as a toy.

When I was a child someone tossed a penny into the otter pond at the zoo.  There were several signs asking people not to throw change in because the otters might try to eat it and choke to death, but you how well most people read and obey signs.  Instead of swallowing it, one of the otters had decided it could be a fun toy - I have no idea what gender the otter was, but I'll pretend it was male to make it easier to refer to it.  He'd swim on his back with the penny on his chest, then suddenly flip over so it would sink towards the bottom of the pool.  Then he'd dive and catch it on his chest again before returning to the surface.  Simple, but something to do and probably more challenging that it looks to people watching since he didn't use his paws for the catch.

Imagination is all well and good, but actually seeing the otter being playful and inventive?  That was fun.

I'll agree on the comment deletion even though it hasn't been an issue for me thus far.  As for other features, how about displaying your favorite game (as determined by number of plays) on the profile?  Not only would it show off a game for other people who look at our profile to consider playing, but it does kind of say something about you.  And that's what a profile is for, right?

I wanted a name that sounded like an actual name but still was unlikely to be taken on forums and sites.  No offense to people who like names with random numbers on the end or some sort of phrase instead, it's just not me.  I'm not entirely sure on the thought process that came up with Selden anymore, but looking back on it I think it's likely that at some point I'd heard of the Kansas city by that name and just forgot about it, thereby believing that I was being cool and original.

Eirinn : Thank you!  I picked this up on sale in one of those game rental places and, after playing a few times, decided that it was easily worth the purchase.  Finding it here, I had to write a review and let people know that at least one person thinks it's a hidden gem.

awesomeguy279 : Sorry about that, I'll remember to leave something clever to say for an ending statement if I do another review.  At least I remembered to mention the different categories this time.

-edit- I went back and put in a few tips that might be helpful but didn't really fit the categories as a concluding statement.

A short preface to the ratings to explain what you're doing here:
In Battle Hunter, four people have been hired to go into a dangerous dungeon to get a target item.  Several boxes are scattered about the dungeon when you start - go and grab them, any loot you get is either the target item (in which case you get paid for it and it's removed from your inventory) or something you can sell for profit.  There is also a randomly-placed exit: step on that without the item and you'll get transported to a different random point in the dungeon, but if you do have the target item the round is over.  Getting the target item doesn't necessarily make you the winner, there are also bonuses for moving around, collecting flags, fighting things and getting other items (though they're 1/5 as valuable, point-wise).

Graphics: 6/10
The graphics are nothing special, but they get the job done.  Not a whole lot else to say except that it would have been nice for enemies to have monsters with some depiction on the map aside from green diamonds (regular) or an orange diamond (the dreaded GON).

Sound: 10/10
I actually went and found the soundtrack for this online so I could listen to the music when I wasn't playing.  Yes, I like it that much.  If you play this game, make sure that at least once you leave it on the starting menu so you can listen - once the strange sizzle-hiss goes away, it really is some pretty nice music.  The sound effects are serviceable, but the music is really, really good.

Addictiveness: 10/10
Ever played Settlers of Catan?  Perhaps Monopoly?  This is kind of like that - if you enjoy it, then you'll keep coming back to it over and over again.  Either single player or with friends, I played this a *lot*... it has procedurally generated levels so you never have to do exactly the same thing twice, and you can design a new character - more on that in the Depth section.

Story: 5/10
There is a story to this game.  It progresses approximately whenever you increase your character's stats... which is to say, not really often.  It's an okay story, played out as a series of conversations, but the missions you do to collect things kind of fit in so it isn't too bad.  Primarily this is a board game, so having any story is kind of impressive.

Depth: 9/10
This is what makes the game so interesting, considering it's a low-budget board game for the PS1.  You actually get to assign stat points yourself - 3 points for movement bonus, 1 per attack, 2 per defense and 1 for 3 HP.  If you could keep gaining stat points for a while, or indefinitely, I'd rate it 10/10 because it would be neat to see how different builds do as they progress... but you only get something like 12 or 13 points to spend after character creation.  You can also hang onto items you pick up in the dungeon, which will limit how much loot you can carry but in some cases the bonuses are worthwhile - a +3 attack gun, for instance.  One other thing keeping me from giving this full credit - the amulet that removes 1 and 2 from the 'dice' rolls.  Someone with that kills the fun of multiplayer.  Of lesser importance than the overarching progression, but still nice to have, there is the card system and the random monster spawn, both of which help keep the game from getting too lopsided and letting someone who gets ahead stay there all the time.  Orange cards will boost your attack, yellow your defense (in combat, if used when moving they *may* negate traps), blue cards boost movement or escape chance if running in battle, and green cards set traps.  Setting an "L" or leg damage trap where someone with a high movement bonus will have to pass can be an extremely effective way to keep them from just escaping.  The other traps are 'E', which empties the victim's hand, "D" to deal damage and "S" to stun.  Just be careful, when all cards have been drawn and someone needs to draw one, GON appears... it will stop at nothing in its attempt to kill whoever has the target item, and if that happens everyone loses.  Other monsters are a slime, a little cleaning bot kind of thing and a security droid, and they will randomly spawn adjacent to a character as they finish moving.

Difficulty: 6/10
The controls can take a bit of getting used to since the view is twisted 45 degrees, but the harder part is that some missions are outright impossible due to the procedural generation putting someone else right next to the target item.  That isn't really too bad... unless it's a story-critical mission.  Make sure you save before each of those, you don't want to lose a bunch of progress when the guy you were sent to save gets grabbed and killed on the third turn, sending you to the game over screen.


There are a few tips that may be useful to new players who don't have the manual:  the 'rest' option heals some damage and gives you two cards if you can hold them.  If you get yourself killed you'll take semi-permanent damage - this is healed at the hospital, until you get that done your maximum HP will be lowered.  The price to heal and identify items (necessary to sell or use them) goes up when you gain levels, so if you want to ID some more things you may want to wait... and if you think you're getting kind of near the end of the story, definitely wait until you think you can gain enough levels all at once for whatever you plan to increase.  Then, save and try to get the upgrade, and if you can't get enough points load and assign the point(s) elsewhere!  Good luck out there, Hunters.  Try not to die too often.

Personally, I like Vizzicists. Pronounced like physicists, only... yeah, you get the idea. Vizzards would work, too.
If we need a collective noun, I think it should start with a V as well. A Venture of Vizzicists, or Volley maybe...