Free game of the day

It’s pretty decent.

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The cyberpunk RPG Citizen Sleeper is currently free on Epic. Very good reviews. Positive and negative critics mention it’s very text-heavy, which in this adventure forum should be a positive trait to mention.

https://store.epicgames.com/p/citizen-sleeper-944858

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Depends, I hear that Planescape Torment has an amount of text vastly exceeding a large fantasy tome with many NPCs merely spouting what are effectively in-game encyclopedia articles.

But if I look at some screenshots this looks in line with Fallen London or something, which is quite neat.

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It’s essentially a text-based game, so yeah, you’ll be reading a lot. But it’s not massive amounts of text, from my recollection.

I do recommend getting it, since it’s free, but from my own experience with the game, I think it can be either hit or miss. The mechanics are fairly simple: at the start of each day, you roll up to 5 (I think) dice, and then you can perform tasks that each consume one. Some tasks may require low numbers, some high numbers, some exact matches. So it’s not like a bad roll dooms you outright, but you may not be able to always pursue the activity you wanted to.

Initially, this made for very intense gameplay, as there is so much to do, and so little time. Add to that that you need to invest energy (dice) into self-preservation, or the number of dice you can roll will shrink, limiting further how much you can do. In the long run, this will spiral into either a virtuous or a vicious cycle.

In my case, it was the former, which took away a lot of the excitement. At that point, the game basically turned into a chose-your-own-adventure, where I still got to chose what path to go down, but the initial struggle for survival was totally gone. The story was okay, but not good enough to carry the whole game with the main mechanic defeated. I did not bother to play the sequel.

OT, but I urge you not to rely solely on the Digital Antiquarian (you are using his exact same words). Jimmy Maher’s opinion is legitimate but not very balanced, since he admittedly wrote his review as counterweight to the prevailing narrative. There is a reason why PS:T is still spoken about, nearly 30 years after its publication. Without it, Disco Elysium would not exist in its current form, and without Disco, I doubt Citizen Sleeper would have been made as it is.

It’s far from the first time I heard it going back multiple decades, but that’s what brought it to mind, yes.

Well, with PS:T I’d urge everyone to see for themselves and apply their own judgement :slight_smile:.

But I have to commend Jimmy for voicing an opinion that would not be exactly popular with his audience. I find tolerance in short supply these days, so reading his dissenting point of view felt kind of refreshing, if a bit disappointing.

But good advice in general, to not rely on a single source of truth. Especially not on my own impressions of Citizen Sleeper :slight_smile:.

I noticed it was on sale on GOG, so perhaps I’ll finally give it a go myself. It never appealed to me because it was a CRPG, but Jimmy’s article actually made it sound much better than that, which I either didn’t quite realize or simply forgot about.

(I don’t always dislike CRPGs but I don’t find the whole leveling / grinding mechanic appealing.)

He does that all the time though? For example my reaction to his FF VII article was that I already felt that way in the year 2000.

His most recent article took aim at Warlords 3, and Warlords II Deluxe is one of my favorite games of all time. :sweat_smile: Then again, I don’t enjoy 3 that much either, but his stated reasons sounded precariously much like things inherent to Warlords. :slight_smile:

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Just found out RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 is free for the next 3 hours! Hope someone still manages to grab it!

https://store.epicgames.com/p/rollercoaster-tycoon-3-complete-edition

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I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, the legendary point-and-click horror adventure based on Harlan Ellison’s classic sci-fi story, is available for free on the Epic Games Store

https://store.epicgames.com/p/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream-95c5c2

The Official Strategy Guide is available at The Internet Archive

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Silence is free on GOG for the next 3 days

One of the Daedalic catalogue I never played so far. From what I know it’s related to The Whispered World, which I haven’t played either, but I guess it can be enjoyed on its own (assuming it’s actually enjoyable).

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I haven’t played Silence (yet) either, but I can highly recommend The Whispered World. In the last third of the game the puzzles are a little bit weak and the story seems to be weird. But the IMHO really great ending is worth playing it.

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I have the Special Edition from another giveaway, so at some point I guess I’ll have to play both.

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I already have it on Steam, together with a bunch of other Daedalic games, but haven’t played a single one of them. (Barring five minutes of Deponia)

I don’t like the Daedalic stories overall, the writing is usually stiff/flat and fairly uninspired, I personally hated the prank they did with the audio settings in Deponia 2 and hated the series after that (I also hated that Ron Gilbert turned Guybrush into a Ruffus clone in his last game).
I couldn’t really get into the Whispered World though I don’t know if it was because the game was super buggy or if it was due to my hate towards Deponia so I have been thinking on giving the upgraded version a try again.

But The Dark Eye series, especially Memoria, those are really good games, worth playing.

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Those are among my favorites, too, and Memoria especially is a contender for all-time favorite.

I loved that one :smiley:. Not the best puzzle overall, but I can appreciate the novelty and creative genius required to come up with something like that.

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