For $12 Conan and Hat in Time is a steal. I just played Conan for the first time last night. I'm a big fan of the cannon and Funco did it justice. Maybe we could even get a dedicated server going if enough people got into it... Hat in Time is like Mario 64. I realized after starting to play it that I don't much care for platformers anymore, but it's a great looking game.
A Hat in Time is the most interesting of the three early releases to me. I'm a huge platformer fan. I'm also cheap, so I'm trying to decide whether that game is worth the $12. I suppose Conan could be fun if we had our own server. Some of the Steam reviews of Conan throw up big red flags to me. One guy complained that there is a six day timer, and if you don't log in every six days you lose all your stuff. Fuck that. Another guy complained about his character being killed while he was offline (apparently you can have characters sleep in clan bases). The base was overrun, he was killed, lost all his stuff. Fuck that. If we could modify some of these issues on our own server, and we had a decent enough player base (I have no idea how many people it takes for the game to be interesting), and I had extra time, I'd be all over it.
There's still two days left to buy... I've been playing the game. If you haven't played before I see how the things Don mentions may turn you off from trying it out. For me it's a fun game in using an IP that I can get into. The death and loss is part of what makes it fun. I'll explain why the things Don mentions are a valuable part of the game, and also why they don't matter. First, you can die a whole bunch of ways, Don is just mentioning some of the ways he doesn't like. Dying by playing the game is much more likely than dying by not logging in. You can die from exposure to too much heat or cold, you could run out of food or water, you could die in a fight, and every time you die you respawn without your stuff. It's very much like minecraft. You play for awhile without dying and then one day you do and you have to spend some time finding your corpse and getting your loot back. It's a game and there are rules that affect the outcome. That's how games work. So, as for dying for not logging in, I don't know about that, but it sounds like a bummer. The good news is you keep you stay leveled up and don't have to put in that work. You'd likely have to go make some tools, weapons, and armor, and that might take half an hour, but it's a survival game. You're not supposed to stop surviving in survival games. There is also a mechanic called the purge, where waves of npc monsters will come and attack your base. I'm not sure how long it takes until the purge happens to you, I'm assuming many months. It gives you something to work towards in an otherwise open game. You have to build a defend-able base, and maybe get some slaves to help you defend it. Characters in their base may be murdered when they are offline if their base is raided, but that only happens on PvP servers with that mechanic turned on. When you make a server, or a single player or co-op world, you can manage all the settings. If you don't want purges, you don't need them. You can also make your server PvE instead of PvP. As for how many people make this game fun, it's fun with just one person. I imagine more people will make it more fun. Like I said, it's kinda like Minecraft. Like a Minecraft where you play a barbarian that murders everything, even rocks. I feel like the Conan aspect plays well into the clear cutting and mass murder necessary for materials gathering. I don't feel bad about cutting down all the trees near my house because I'm a badass barbarian and everything must go.
Are the slaves NPCs or can I own Don and Draskted and make them defend me while I eat grapes on my throne? I'd pay $12 for that; I'd even throw in an extra buck to buy Don.
You get slaves by knocking them unconscious and dragging their bodies back to your "wheel of pain" with a rope. You then need to remember to feed them while their spirits are broken by the wheel. After they are broken, you may set them to task as a skilled laborer or a defensive warrior.
Also, I think I accidentally picked the religion that require me to make human sacrifices and consume human flesh to pay tribute to my gods.
