The silksong community is one of my favorite of all time for years now. Every couple of weeks a new “theme” of insane shitposting evolves. Most fun and creative silly posting I’ve ever seen.

One common post is “_____ every day until silksong comes out”. People are doing fanart challenges, one guy posts a video of himself petting a cat every day which is very popular. The cat had to get a surgery at one point and needed a cone but was fine.

It’s not just noise. It brings people a lot of joy. There’s been several posts over the years from people basically grieving the potential loss/change of the community once the game actually drops. I’ll miss it, too

No no it’s good, this is actually better than them making a proper announcement. Community loves this shit.

Quick summary:

Dev changes name, handle, and pfp on twitter. Posts a cryptic message about keeping your eyes closed tomorrow.

Reverse image search of pfp leads to a recipe released April 2nd

Cryptic message appears to be a reference to an Imagine Dragons thing from April 2nd

“Tomorrow” was interpreted as being related to the big switch 2 reveal, launching April 2nd

The name and handle also appear to be references to things having to do with April 2nd

The community is ablaze right now. Without a hint of irony: there is more genuine belief in the game actually coming out this time than there was before the original delay was announced in 2023, back when we had an official release date

Silksong launch title?

Christmas has come early!

Now this is a list! Thank you, based on the few I have played here I can’t wait to check out the rest

Yea! An all time favorite, but I played it a long time ago. I wanted to keep my little list just to recent games. Irl I am very annoying about recommending OW to everyone, as well as its dlc which continued to blow me away

Lots of people have replied with similar experiences.

But personally? I’m having the time of my life currently playing tons of new games. I love trying new ones and getting surprised, and maybe falling in love with a genre I hadn’t considered before.

I feel totally contrary to what others are saying: as I’ve gotten older, I find myself enjoying games way more. My time is more valuable to me now than ever before, so I want to fill it with things that are joyful and meaningful. Often those things are art. Games to me have always been very special in the way they can deliver a powerful artistic experience.

I think they also have a special power to be blatant disgusting soulless cash grabs, to be fair. As the years go by I feel like many aspects of the industry have become particularly unpalatable. But many studios are still releasing good games, and so far I’ve continued to find joy in seeking them out.

Not too many people on this post are actually listing games. So, in no particular order, here are some games I absolutely adored that I played recently. Games from the last ~year that have touched and moved me in some way. Experiences I don’t think I’ll forget.

Sable
Chicory: A colorful tale
Manifold Garden
Signalis
OneShot
The Talos Principle
Night in the Woods
Citizen Sleeper
Webbed
Rusted Moss
Armored Core VI
Iron Lung
Slay the Princess
Ghostrunner
Mundaun
Crosscode
Eastward
Animal Well
Pseudoregalia
Dave the Diver
Nine Sols
Patrick’s Parabox
Cocoon
Smushi Come Home

Not to imply that I expect you or anyone else to take a deep look here or to try any of these games. Just wanted to throw my perspective out there, and to show the games in concrete terms that have left an impression and continue to motivate me to keep looking and keep trying more

Oh, the mechanics are superb. I also didn’t see it from the trailer, and originally got the game based on the art alone lol.

But the gameplay feels absurdly good. The main hook I would say is the talisman system. When you parry attacks, you build up charges of what is essentially an explosive that you can then use an another offensive option. Not only that, but it’s applied via a dash, which is a movement option (and can be used to do some cheeky sequence breaking outside of combat, if you’re into that sort of thing in these games). There’s an upgrade tree with several options for it that affect gameplay in a huge way as well.

Other than that I mean, I just like everything about the game. The story was well constructed and emotional. The characters are well designed, especially the bosses who are not just enemies but important characters in the story. The boss fights themselves as I mentioned. Music got me going. Environments are jaw dropping.

To give voice to the other commenter who bounced off the game after 4 hours, it has overwhelmingly positive reviews on steam but even among the good reviews a common complaint is that the game takes a fairly long time to spin up. There’s a lengthy linear section before you get some more freedom of exploration, and even then it never becomes the game’s strongest point. It also takes a long time to get certain essential upgrades. I think this is a good thing in terms of boss design, but can feel like somewhat of a slog if you’re experienced with metroidvanias and really just want your basic dash and double jump etc.

It’s a long game, took me around 40 hours. But I enjoyed it very much in the beginning, and continued to enjoy it more as I progressed and unlocked things. I went in with no expectations however, and was surprised as the game organically developed from “cool little project I’m supporting because I like the genre and the cat is cute”, to “possibly my favorite action game since sekiro”. I hope I’m not doing a disservice by setting expectations too high! But in the end, yes I was left feeling like it was that good

This is purely conspiratorial but I think given the studio’s notable previous controversy, they probably excluded it because Wukong has such a prominent presence this year.

Other than that, yeah it just doesn’t make sense to me. Nine sols has better sales and reviews than other games being honored

My GOTY personally. Left a really strong impression. Combat is an absolute joy, and the boss fights are my favorite since Sekiro. Story and atmosphere are incredible, you can at times really feel that this is a studio accustomed to making horror games.

They totally nailed it, in other words. Great post-release support as well. Can’t wait to see what they do next

Also fwiw most devices manage this automatically and you do not need to concern yourself with maintaining any given battery percentage

Honestly I’ve done just about everything over the years except ultimates (I play with IRL friends and I’m happy if we can clear a savage tier lol)

If I had to pick a “main” activity I think it would be parsing tbh, I really enjoy chasing the numbers. I level up all jobs and also try to perfect at least the basic rotation for all of them. I’ll hang out on party finder and jump into extreme farms on off jobs to practice.

But there’s also been months where I’ve done nothing but like, ocean fishing, diadem, pvp (I love crystal conflict, best part about endwalker to me) and so on. That’s been one of my favorite things about the game; you can get totally wrapped up in a huge project. Almost like you can play the game to take a break from playing the game. Just recently we’ve gotten into treasure maps, super chill

Sorry, I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking. The games being too similar is an issue, not something I wanted

I genuinely hate it lol, as do all of my friends IRL.

We’re all huge into 14, which was produced by the same team. I mention it because there’s a ton of overlap with 14. The cinematography in the cutscenes and even the emotes the characters use feel lifted straight from the older game. The structure of the combat segments is also uncannily similar, they feel a lot like 14 dungeons. So, my group generally felt like the game got stale really quickly, which colored our impression as a whole.

The moment-to-moment gameplay also feels like a hyper simplified version of the “rotation” system in 14. You have a basic filler combo, and larger more powerful moves that can only be used again after a long cooldown timer. I found it to be under-stimulating, even after unlocking a few more things.

The story was awesome in the segments covered by the free trial, but then everything after that just kind of slipped off my brain. More than anything, I remember side quests in particular were really boring to the point where it felt like a joke.

We were really hyped and really really wanted to like the game when we first heard about it, and we were super hyped after playing the demo, but in the end it just felt like a really unpleasant slog to actually play.

At the same time however I can totally see why people do really enjoy the game. I think it’s a divisive release, and often the people who love/hate it will cite the exact same things but paint them in a different light. I ultimately wouldn’t not recommend the game, I think $50 is a really fair price for it too for what you’re getting

Hopefully things go more smoothly than for Endwalker’s launch! The login issues were so bad they ended up giving all players some free subscription time.

Supposedly their systems are better prepared now, but we’re still expecting massive queues no matter what. Probably will be impossible to get in if you only have a few hours to play and you work normal hours

This is “announcing I will be stepping down” material for sure, dear lord. Never seen a more ridiculous or predictable disaster

Instead of typing with letters we could perhaps invent a type of joystick-centric gestural language, similar to inputting tricks in a skateboarding game

My other favorite is when they add Edge to my desktop periodically

Oh, and the one time they put a fucking arrow on my wallpaper pointing at Edge. That’s what finally convinced me to make it my default browser