Zophar

It really has! Like you, I bought into the old alpha ages back - it was only in the last two weeks that I went back to the game and started checking out what they've done in the time since then. The game is infinitely more playable now, and has enough game settings available that you can make it as easy or as difficult as you like. It's definitely worth taking another look at.

I'd put these forward as being hidden gems - they're all Early Access titles on Steam (though fairly close to release), but are already great games in their current state, and worthy of more attention than they tend to get. Darkest Dungeon Darkest Dungeon is a dungeon crawler with game play that appears extremely simplistic at first glance, but has a surprising amount of depth as you dig into it. You lead a group of adventurers in a quest to cleanse your family's ancestral home of Lovecraftianesque evil. Your adventurers level up, learn new skills, gain new positive - and negative - quirks, and die horribly as your missions go completely awry. Death is permanent, but new adventurers are always arriving in search of glory, so a few losses won't hurt --- too much. Combat is turn based, and has a tendency to go South pretty quick if you're not careful. http://store.steampowered.com/app/262060/ Delver This one is a first person roguelike with fairly simple, but in my opinion charming graphics and excellent music and sound. It's a fairly simple game at the core, and one that doesn't take too terribly long to play through - which is okay, because you'll be dying a fair bit. Death is permanent and sends you back to the start of the game with a newly generated dungeon set to go through, though you are allowed to keep any gold that you've gathered up to that point which, which can be used to buy items to make your subsequent play throughs a bit easier. What Delver lacks in complexity and length, I would say it makes up for in sheer replayability. The fact that it's only eight dollars doesn't hurt, either. http://store.steampowered.com/app/249630/ Project Zomboid Project zomboid is an isometric zombie survival RPG. After creating a character, you get dropped into a large (and growing) map composed of several small cities and the surrounding countryside. In order to stay alive you need to secure food, water and safe shelter, all of which become increasingly difficult the longer you survive, as the zombie population increases and as electricity and water services fail. PZ has a wealth of options when it comes to survival, and a number of different ways to tackle the challenges you're faced with. There are a ton of crafting options, and even a fairly nice building system that is becoming increasingly polished as time goes by, allowing you to build your own (hopefully) zombie-proof fortresses... though, they won't do anything to keep you fed. The game also has multiplayer, which is a definite plus. http://store.steampowered.com/app/108600/ I've sank a ton of hours into all three of these games, and think they're all worth their respective prices.

May (probably?) not be your cup of tea, but Organ Trail is pretty goofy and fun. Basically a modern day zombie survival version of the ancient old Oregon Trail game for $2.99.

I sadly never had much chance to get into Outer Limits, Tales from the Crypt, or Masters of Horror myself - didn't have access to any of the premium channels that they were airing on, and at the point that I was watching all of this stuff had no other way to acquire the episodes. Sounds like they're worth a look, though? Agreed on Tales from the Darkside being on the lower end of the scale, though. I liked it well enough, but even when I was a kid I could tell that it wasn't quite up to to par with some of the others. x)

Everything, you say? Everything? So far so good, I'd say! They certainly seem to be so far! As for sticking around, I imagine I'll definitely be popping in on a regular basis though I expect some portion of that will be spent lurking. Rin pictures are always pleasant to have around. ^^

That's the one! There were several of these sorts of shows that I used to watch, actually. Monsters and Night Gallery come to mind. None of which quite lived up to what Twilight Zone did with science fiction though, sadly. Might have to go through and watch a couple of them for old times sake at some point. x)

Tell me about it! The amount of translations (commercial and fan made) available these days is a bit dizzying from what I've seen, to be honest. Definitely shouldn't have any lack of material to go through, though sorting out what is and isn't likely to be of interest to me might be a bit tough given all that's available. ^^

Oh God, I used to watch that from time to time. I was a sucker for shows like this when I was a kid. The only episode I can actually remember at all involved a lady that was slowly driven insane by talking vegetables, which was every bit as silly as it sounds. ^^;

Greetings, salutations, and well met non-birdy! Trap? What sort of trap? I am rather fond of trip lines and proximity sensors, I think. As for the avatar, I couldn't think of anything to use, so I just grabbed a random image from my computer, did some cropping, and tossed it in. Also, chicken breasts are vastly superior to thighs, particularly when it comes to chicken breast tenderloins, which are absolutely delightful when breaded up and fried. Favorite food? Thai food in genera, though more specifically I'd say Pad Kee Mao with chicken, served super spicy. As for kancolle --- I ... have no idea what that is! Thank you, I will see to it that should I have any questions, you will be the first to know. Look forward to this - they will come, in time.

Thanks! And yeah, Clannad was a kick right to the feels. That GIF is extra relevant due to Kotomi and Fuko being tied as my favorite routes in the game. The other band is The Delagos. They're awesome, or they were before they sadly went kaput. Music is awesome.

Thank you - I'm hoping that this will be the case. As for how I found out about the Novels Visual, this is where a simple question gets a TL;DR response. Beware. So, I have this habit - when I finish watching an anime, I typically do some Googling around to look into source material and all that sort of thing. Is there a manga? Is it good? That sort of thing. Anyway, years back I was watching the Tsukihime anime (lol) when it was first airing and, while I wasn't super impressed by it, I did my usual round of Googling and came up with one of the rare - at that point - English Type-Moon fansites. At that point I'd never really heard of visual novels, but found the whole thing an interesting way to tell a story, especially since from the sound of it, Tsukihime's source material was superior to the anime by leaps and bounds. I also learned about Fate/stay night, which I found extremely interested based on the bits of information that were available. While neither Tsukihime nor Fate were translated at the time (and, in the case of Fate, the general consensus among the few English speaking communities I knew of was that it would never be translated given its length), learning all of that caused me to start seeking out the few translated visual novels I could find - Planetarian being the most noteworthy that I can recall of the top of my head. From 2004 to 2010-ish I was basically consuming everything I could, until my interest began to wane around the time that Umineko wrapped up. As for the moe... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVgvjmUDNzo

How about we go with mushroom gravy and call it good? The only thing onions are good for is causing indigestion, and/or caramelizing. I will accept your adorable waifu and offer in return this beauty:

Never heard of CHVRCHES before, but after looking up a couple random songs on Youtube, they don't seem bad at all - though I admittedly have ridiculously wide (and/or bad, depending on who you ask) taste in music. At any rate, that makes two Scottish bands that I can call myself fond of. And malt vinegar only? I dunno, a little tabasco sauce can go a long way on pan fried potato wedges. Unless you're a weirdo like my father, who prefers tartar sauce of all things. That said, the welcomes are appreciated.

When I hear people talk about grinding in games, my mind immediately goes to free to play games like World of Tanks, which I used to spend a decent bit of time playing before getting sick of the time investment needed in order to make any significant amount of progress through the various tank lines. Going from a tier one to tier ten tank down a single vehicle line (of which there are a couple dozen) typically involves upwards of 1,500 games played, with a high chance that more than a few of those games will be spent using vehicles that aren't quite to your liking, but that are necessary to get through in order to move on to the next ranked tank in that particular line. Given that most folks go down several vehicle lines at once for the sake of variety, and you're looking at a fairly epic number of matches needed in order to move on up, unless you're open to spending money for XP boosts and/or currency packs. Bit of a pain, in my opinion. I think the only games I've played in which I actually kind of like grinding would be (as some others have mentioned before) the Disgaea games - though depending on how you approach those games, it doesn't even necessarily feel like you're grinding at all. In my case I typically 'grind' my characters up by running through the Item World and seeing how far I can go in it by taking advantage of beneficial geo tiles and the pickup/throw mechanics. It makes it seem less like a grind and more like an endurance challenge, all the while keeping an eye out for advantageous circumstances to gain a ton of levels. Invulnerability panels on a map with enemies that are a couple hundred levels higher than you are? Yes plz. Not really the most efficient way to do it I imagine, but hey - it's fun. Beyond that, when it comes to unpleasant grinding in single player games, I confess to having nothing at all against cheating to bypass the grinding. Same with JRPGs with boring battle systems and lots of random battles.

Hullo. I've been looking around for a decent forum to haunt from time to time... I used to be a huge visual novel nut in years past, and have recently been looking to get back into them, so I figured I'd give this place a shot. Let's see... what else to say? Given the forum's focus, I may as well start off by saying that my favorite visual novels out of those I've tried would probably be Utawarerumono, Saya No Uta, and Clannad, in no particular order, none of which I'm guessing are terribly groundbreaking or unusual as far as favorites go? The last VN I read was Katawa Shoujo (Hanako ftw), and prior to that the final part of Umineko no Naku Koro ni. Outside of visual novels, I do a fair bit of gaming (mostly indie stuff on PC at this point) and a bit of anime watching, which I'm sure is very unique and unusual among the folks here. And --- I guess that's about it for now? Introduction threads have never really been something I've been terribly great at, but I think that goes for a lot of folks. Sooo, again - hullo.