I think it was the cost. We would go do it but it was a bit pricier than seeing a movie or bowling or hanging at an arcade. Was great though. Super fun and great exercise. Our photon had coin operated guns above the arena so you could not just try and sit and snipe. I remember this guy who was so rediculously good at the game he beat my friends and I and his team was a bunch of kids.

Airsoft has grown massively. While it is more of a whole day event, it fills that same niche but better in many ways.

Most lazertag places I remember seeing were inside or connected to arcades, and those really aren't a thing for kids these days either so it makes sense the lazertag places aren't as widespread as they used to be. If you're specifically going to travel to just do lazertag, you'll probably just travel to do airsoft or paintball.

Crypt of the Necrodancer is probably my favorite weird rhythm game; I may have to give BPM a try, sounds right up my alley!

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.

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.

There isn't really a natural 'popular,' and almost never has been. It's mostly just what's marketed.

I just looked at pictures and I fell in love with that artstyle I'll add that too my list thx

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.

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.

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 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.

I looooved Simon The Sorcerer so much as a child! One of my favourite point and click adventures.

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