I could name so many tabletop RPGs for this. Unfortunately, since Hasbro has dominated the space like a generational pile of elephant dung for over 2 decades now, and TSR actually did manage to make a few smart marketing decisions before Dragon Dice and the bankruptcy, I guess I can’t be too shocked.
So I guess I’ll go with a board game. Tsuro - The Game of the Path. It’s super-simple to learn and play, can be interesting for kids and adults alike, and it’s just a really solid, fun, game. There’s even an iOS version. I don’t understand why it’s a niche game instead of being front-and-center ahead of Monopoly or Clue(do). It’s not even prohibitively expensive, honestly - the wholly valid argument against Carcassonne and other niche games. There’s no good reason I can think of why Ticket to Ride is more popular than Tsuro.
I could name so many tabletop RPGs for this.
GURPS has been my obsession for a few years now. It’s both the simplest, in terms of base mechanics, and most complex, in terms of optional rules, TTRPG I can imagine. It can handle literally any setting, play style, or crunch level with ease.
Yes, but are you surprised at SJG not being the top RPG? The media push after GURPS Cyberpunk has faded fully. If they’d stuck with Fallout, maybe it could change.
The top RPG? That’s a bit ambitious. But I’m surprised it isn’t more popular.
I love GURPS, but have since moved to the Cypher System, which is mechanically beautiful and rewarding like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Yeah I looked at Cypher when I was looking for a new home after abandoning D&D5e, but the crunch of GURPS appealed to me. I like having optional play tested mechanics for everything, so my power gamers get consistent rulings but my casual players don’t feel too much pressure.
Wow! I still have my Dragon Dice in a box somewhere. A few of my friends had it and we played about 4 games before we got bored. Still something nostalgic about it for me though.
I also agree about Tsuro. Great fun!
Me and my girlfriend are big fans of Doomsday Paradise, a rouge like dating sim
Battletech should be the king of tabletop wargames. But no, everyone just wants to play 40k because of the sunk cost.
Battletech is insane but the 40k universe is a much bigger hook because it’s somehow even more insane. Also I grew up with it, didn’t really look much into the battletech universe until the other year.
Half of it is the sunk cost. Half of it is the Clans. Plus, MW2 and forward have had multiplayer Mercs modes with lance-vs-lance combats. Why would most people want to play on tabletop when that exists?
Admittedly, there is something satisfying about a Jenner with every jet in the world and a single PPC making a jump, cooling down in midair, and landing directly on top of an enemy and doing major structural damage before leaping away.
Because it’s Chess 2.0! Yeah MW is fun but tabletop just does it for me.
I love Battletech, but I understand why it isn’t for everyone. The crunch of of detailing armor hits and internal effects, and keeping track of heat sinks is all the kind of thing that appeals to a specific kind of numbers nerd.
Yes Alpha Strike exists, but it’s relatively new and I think it exists as this weird thing that by stripping out the details takes away the appeal for the loyal crunchy brained people.
Further, the miniatures are really neat, but 28mm (or 32mm, whatever is happening with 40k scale creep these days) scale really allows people to paint and customize characters which is appealing to more people than relatively less characterful mech sculpts.
I got into the Battletech universe from the Mechwarrior PC games. Which…long story short, MW2: 31st Century Combat and MW4: Vengeance were really bad at indicating there was a whole franchise behind them. I learned it was a whole big thing from guys I met on MW4’s online multiplayer. Who here remembers MSN Gaming Zone?
I tried to pick up the BATTLETECH game on Steam not too long ago, on the understanding that it’s a computerized version of the tabletop game’s rules…and bounced right off it. First of all, it has like, a Campaign mode and a Career mode? How are those different? Then both launching the game and starting a career play an intro cinematic longer than the Lord of the Rings franchise. I mean fuck, Tex of the Black Pants Legion doesn’t talk this much about mechs. The story is, to me, the least interesting thing Battletech can do: You’re some nothing fuck mercenary working for some nothing fuck duchess on some nothing fuck periphery planet.
Three and a half months after the Steam return window passes, I finally get into the game to play the tutorial mission. It’s popping up text on the screen to teach how to control the game, meanwhile there’s a voiceover saying different things trying to tell the story of the Nothing Fuck Roughriders and their quest to avenge Lady Nothing Fuck of Nothing Fuckersville. It hit me with both simultaneously.
Software I hate does not stay installed on my computer.
Its a great game though :(
For tabletop, I loooooove Sentinels of the Multiverse, always hard to find other folks that play it though.
Video game: Remember Me
I love Sentinels! A friend of mine and I actually found an apparent game-breaking combo a few years ago. We defeated one of the harder bosses in I think 2 or 3 turns? It really felt like we were doing something wrong but we couldn’t find anything.
Ooh, which one? I remember some of the older foes in particular could be flakey like that
I don’t remember much of the specifics, but I remember it was with Dr Medico’s alternate. It was something about being healed by the rest of the team which turned into damage that was redirected (and enhanced) where we wanted. I remember being able to do ~50 damage in a single turn.
Super Puzzle Fighter II: Turbo. Easily the most fun and competent puzzle game I have ever played. It is especially great with 2 players.
So here’s a dumb Puzzle Fighter story. When I was 18, many years ago now, my girlfriend at the time, my best friend and his girlfriend at the time went camping near a little lakeside resort town.
It was the last day of our trip, we’d been extremely frugal and so we all still had some spending money left. The girls wanted to go clothes shopping, my buddy and I weren’t as interested in that but we’re trying to be cool so we tagged along. Except, on a covered section of boardwalk we passed a 2-player Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo machine. The girls just left us behind, laughing that the boardwalk was a straight line and we could catch up.
3 hours later, we were both broke and my buddy had to borrow gas money from his girlfriend to get us home. The girls had ducked into a little café and also lost track of time. That was a 50 cent machine and we must have put over 50 bucks a piece into it. We just stood there, getting better and better in perfect lockstep, trading wins and getting more competitive for an entire afternoon, oblivious to the whole world.
That was a great trip. God, nostalgia like that makes me feel old.
I never got to experience it on an arcade cabinet. My first exposure to it was emulated on my original xbox. My friend and I played that game for many hours every weekend for months, and then some! I believe it was available on PSN for a while as well. Such a great game.
Anything named Turbo must be good
For video games, Ostranauts. It’s the perfect space survival sim IMO. You wake up on an industrial salvage station and get a ship. Then you fly to derelict ships and scrap them for money and parts. Build up your own ship and travel farther and farther out. It’s jank as fuck to learn but once you get it down it’s the type of game where you put on music then just go for hours and hours. It’s early access and a lot is changing but the core gameplay loop is so addicting already.
For tabletop games, Infinity. It’s the best miniatures skirmish game I’ve ever played. The rules are deep but tight. The number of minis you put on the table is just right to me. List building is the best of any game I ever played. The rules are free. The app is free. The miniatures are the best out of any wargame I’ve ever played. It’s just a shame that people are so locked into Games Workshop that they don’t see other games as an option. Like I had a couple friends get hardcore into it but never more than that. And at the height of it’s popularity at our store we had one of the best players on the East coast play in a tournament. That was a sight to behold. Like I’m not a tourney player at all for any game. Watching the number 1 east coast player do his thing was the most inspired I ever was to become a tournament player.
Ostranauts still needs time to cook but there’s nothing quite like getting your first torch lit, nearly starving during the trip to Venus and then spending days stuck in a crash couch while your earther pilot supervises the burn that nearly kills you. Definitely room to grow.
I mostly play co-op games and I am tired of the “everything is dark, ugly, and evil, and chaos is rampant” with a souls-copy aesthetic. I crave colorful games and fun co-op mechanics.
Nine Parchments is casual, fun, and beautiful. The point IS that there is friendly fire because the challenge is to get the enemies without getting your friends. Played also by up to 4 people on a single screen.
Coridden is very home-made but has cool mechanics of turning into beasts or riding your friends when they turn into animals. Fun isometric rpg-ish game that can be played on a single screen.
Pizza possum. Steal the food and don’t get caught. It’s casual, chaotic and hilarious. Co-op as well.
Spiritfarer is a great game. Not sure if it’s popular or not bc idk what’s popular. No killing, very therapeutic if you’ve lost someone, is a journey about loving and letting go. Co-op allows you to play the cat.
And go play bombsquad with friends, it is the best and my go-to if I have videogame-comfortable guests at home :)
Love you all. Keep being nice people
FTL with Multiverse Mod
Its essentially FTL 2.0
FTL is already underrated. And most people who do play just stops playing because it can get boring quickly. But Multiverse essentially bring more life to the game. Make the game like 50 times more fun.
I want a game that has the primary gameplay loop of FTL, but with a choose your path role playing game like Fallout behind it instead of a roguelike.
As Yahtzee Croshaw says, it has the most Star Trek “Target their weapons systems! Damage control to the engine room! Transfer power to the shields!” effect, but I kinda wish you were more able to choose where you want to explore, have a little more agency in quests…
Most quests in FTL follow the format of:
A space thing is happening! Do you:
- Send in a crewmate to help (50/50 chance of succeeding and getting a reward, or failing and taking damage/losing a crewmate)
- With them luck and fly away (guaranteed nothing happens)
- (blue text) use special equipment (guaranteed chance of a nice reward, if you have the equipment/resource/type of crew aboard)
So you don’t have a lot of agency in the kinds of quests you want to explore. A lot of beginner quests happen to you a lot (how many times have we all done the giant alien spiders one) and in a lot of cases you don’t have the blue text options available, so you get to choose “do nothing” or flip a coin. And then you have to face the ship at the end, which a lot of the builds that are kicking ass up to that point just can’t face the end boss.
I want a longer term roleplaying game under these primary mechanics.
Yes, this so much!
The installation guide is not good, and it’s annoying on Fedora since it’s blocked by SELinux, but it’s worth it for the amazing experience. Such a good expansion for an amazing game.
I don’t think it really helps when everbody calls it FTL instead of Faster Than Light. How would anyone be able to learn about the game when nobody calls it by its name?
The game is literally called “FTL: Faster Than Light”. If you search for “ftl game”, all the search results are about this game. This is a non-issue.
Whoops
For me, FTL is one of those games that gets exponentially more fun the better you are at it. It can be difficult to get over that initial hump.
Meinkraft
For video games, The Touhou series.
Outside of the games They have alot of fangames/Fan Content ,a massive community and a popular Fan Song (Bad Apple).
Also Undertale/Deltarune has some inspiration from Touhou.Would chess count?
I mean chess is not not popular by any stretch of the mind, a lot of people around the world are playing it every single day and that won’t go away anytime soon, but I’m always surprised to see so much more excitement going on around a new version of This or That video game that people will play for a little while before switching to a newer version than for chess. Despite its apparent simplicity (and lack of visual effects), chess has remained a challenge for the smartest among us, and will keep on being so no matter how much better computers can be playing it.
Chess has taken over a significant portion of my gaming time since getting into it a couple of years ago.
It’s a beautifully deep game, and it’s refreshing to be able to pour time into something with staying power that people of every age play all over the world.
It’s a beautifully deep game, and it’s refreshing to be able to pour time into something with staying power that people of every age play all over the world.
So much this :)
Yeah but it doesn’t have tech trees or fog of war
tech tree:
pawn -> queen
pawn -> rook
pawn -> knight
pawn -> bishop
Someone should inform the devs there is no reason to pick anything but queen and knight.
google en passant
I mean when promoting.
Yeah, ‘google en passant’ is an r/AnarchyChess joke.
Unless you are in on it, in which case damn, you’re stone cold.
In theory, you can always promote to a rook just to show off. I have no idea if it’s considered a bad mannered move.
Ah I see. Thanks for explaining. I wasn’t in on it heh.
Have you tried the demo for Passant?
I’m the furthest away as anyone can be from a pro chess player, but this game really revived my passion for chess. Somehow all people want to play is blitz or tournaments. There’s little interest in variations. It’s like amongst the chess scene having fun became taboo. It’s a serious game for serious people who only want to defeat others. And it is so tiring. Oh look, another London system game, how titillating.
It’s a board game, I know why people enjoy competition and all, but I find competition drains games from anything interesting to me. I just want it to be fun and intellectually stimulating. Bring variations and quirky rules back, make it interesting to lose. Level the playing field so we can all participate and have fun instead of everyone just trying to play optimally like little machines.
Have you seen The Rookery? It’s a well-made chess roguelite that has become my comfort game lately. It was made by the same devs who made https://www.drawbackchess.com/.
Also thanks for the heads up. I’m off to play the demo right away.
I have just no capacity to judge what’s popular anymore, not sure i ever did.
There isn’t really a natural ‘popular,’ and almost never has been. It’s mostly just what’s marketed.
An indie 3D platformer game from a couple years ago called Hell Pie. You’re a low-level demon who gets an angel chained to him, and you can use it to do things like spin him to launch yourself and swing on stuff. If you like classic 3D platformers and toilet humor, it’s really very good, and pretty novel.
I just looked at pictures and I fell in love with that artstyle I’ll add that too my list thx
I thought Slice & Dice was going to take Steam by storm but it kinda just came and went. Amazing little roguelike dice battler
The biggest factor for me was that it just felt better on a handheld platform. I put dozens of hours into that game on my android
Plasma - a wildly programmable physics game where you can build just about anything in a fairly accessible manner. The devs eventually just made it free because it wasn’t getting much notice.
BPM: Bullets Per Minute - at some point everyone thinks ‘what if you combined an FPS with a rhythm game so you had to shoot on the beat?’ BPM is that, nailed. Others have tried but BPM got it right.
Crypt of the Necrodancer is probably my favorite weird rhythm game; I may have to give BPM a try, sounds right up my alley!
