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Monday, August 3, 2020

Steam as a puzzle platform

Hello Puzzlers,

I'm waiting for the new ipados to come out. The rumor is that it will be available on Sept 13.

At the moment, my ipad 4 is not allowing me to download new/current puzzles because it's not able to download the newest software. (I suspect Apple does this intentionally to force people to buy new ipads.)

So I'm on Steam.  The first thing I notice is that the prices for games are higher than on iOS. Why?

Another thing: are there games that are available only on Steam and not on iOS?

Most importantly: throw some puzzle recommendations in the comments section.

This game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/801380/MOVIT/  Movit is a total ripoff of a game called Deadlocked which I reviewed in 2011.  What I later learned is that the author of Deadlocked ripped somebody else off!

5 comments:

  1. > So I'm on Steam. The first thing I notice is that the prices for games are higher than on iOS. Why?

    It's generally believed (whether true or not) that the gaming experience on PC is "better than" the experience on mobile. Also, microtransactions and in-game ads are far more common on mobile platforms than on PC, which offsets the price.

    > Another thing: are there games that are available only on Steam and not on iOS?

    Plenty, especially those controlled primarily with a keyboard.

    > Most importantly: throw some puzzle recommendations in the comments section.

    Some of these you may already have on iOS: Baba Is You, Campfire Cooking, Cosmic Express, Cubot, English Country Tune, FEZ, A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, Ichi, Induction, Ittle Dew, Linelight, LogiGun, Parallax, Pipe Push Paradise, Portal series, Recursed, RYB, The Sexy Brutale, She Remembered Caterpillars, Snakebird, Sokobond, Splice, Stephen's Sausage Roll, Tetrobot and Co., The Swapper, Tametsi, Tricone Lab, The Witness, and YANKAI'S PEAK.

    Of these, I recommend Recursed, Stephen's Sausage Roll, and Pipe Push Paradise the most.

    > This game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/801380/MOVIT/ Movit is a total ripoff of a game called Deadlocked which I reviewed in 2011.

    Yeah, over the last four or five years, Steam greatly relaxed their vetting of what could be sold on their storefront, a lot of games on Steam now are bad-quality or ripoffs. Further, due to the trading card market on Steam, about a third of all puzzle games released on Steam nowadays are just some jigsaw puzzle game depicting NSFW scenes (because people will just buy these for the cards, then resell the cards at a profit).

    So it's a real struggle, if you're a game developer nowadays, to get noticed; that's why a good number of indie developers are taking exclusivity deals from the Epic Games Store.

    This is also part of the reason why, a few years ago, when I still had the time, I would scour the dreck of Steam's storefront for good puzzle games. The fact that my (non-exhaustive) list exists clearly shows that they're out there, they just have a hard time being seen.

    You may also wish to check out itch.io, where a lot of indie developers are also putting up their games. If you follow gamedev Twitter, you'll see some accounts like WarpDoor or Alpha Beta Gamer relink some interesting games from time to time.

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  2. i'm surprised you're just now getting into steam! There are literally thousands upon thousands of puzzle games that are available on Steam that aren't available on iOS. Some of my recommendations:

    DROD (Deadly Rooms of Death)- don't judge it by the graphics- it's by far my favorite puzzle series in existence, and it's criminally underappreciated
    Stephen's Sausage Roll- Very well-designed and challenging puzzles
    Zachtronics Games- This is one of my favorite game developers. They exclusively make programming-based puzzles (like Human Resource Machine, if you're familiar with that). They give you a lot of freedom to come up with your own solutions

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  3. https://store.steampowered.com/app/990900/Neon_Noodles__Cyberpunk_Kitchen_Automation/

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  4. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1384960/Unit_404/

    (coming soon on iOS and Android too)

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  5. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1318690/shapezio/

    if you ever played SpaceChem, you will know what to do with this one.

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