jericho_cross

I'm always excited when I find another Weird West video game! Yay, another chance to post to this community!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3734220/Guns_of_Eschaton/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/66919035

I just wanted to gush for a minute about Mark of the Deep, Tombwater, and Hunt the Night. All of them are top-down (or isometric) exploration games with eldritch horrors and difficult combat. I'm terrible at "real" souls-like games but these top-down games are definitely scratching my itch.

Mark of the Deep has an isometric view and more modern graphics (compared to the others). The map is a set of interconnected regions where each region is a labyrinth of hidden paths. This one is very easy to get lost in but I think it's well-made. It does a good job of letting you unlock shortcuts as you progress so you don't have to backtrack too much after dying and restarting at the last save point. It took me ~20 hours to beat.

Tombwater is a new game that feels more like A Link To The Past than Mark of the Deep. It's a spread-out open world with optional bosses and 32-bit graphics. I really like how it lets you disable the "corpse run" mechanic that is common in souls-like games. Like I said, I'm terrible at "real" souls-likes so this is a huge selling point for me (Mark of the Deep doesn't have corpse runs either). I'm ~8 hours into Tombwater and I'm really enjoying it.

I've only played the demo for Hunt the Night but I absolutely loved it and since there was a bundle with Tombwater, I bought it on an impulse. I'm looking forward to playing it after I beat Tombwater though.

I know Tunic and Death's Door both have great reviews and souls-like aspects but those are too cute for me. I don't just want a zelda-like with difficult combat, I need that eldritch horror aspect to really scratch my itch. And I'm not sure about Mina the Hollower yet. It isn't nearly as cute as Tunic or Death's Door but I don't know if it's all that "dark" either with that artstyle.

Anyway, if you know of any other top-down/isometric action games with an eldritch horror aesthetic, please let me know. I can't get enough of them right now.

I just wanted to gush for a minute about Mark of the Deep, Tombwater, and Hunt the Night. All of them are top-down (or isometric) exploration games with eldritch horrors and difficult combat. I'm terrible at "real" souls-like games but these top-down games are definitely scratching my itch.

Mark of the Deep has an isometric view and more modern graphics (compared to the others). The map is a set of interconnected regions where each region is a labyrinth of hidden paths. This one is very easy to get lost in but I think it's well-made. It does a good job of letting you unlock shortcuts as you progress so you don't have to backtrack too much after dying and restarting at the last save point. It took me ~20 hours to beat.

Tombwater is a new game that feels more like A Link To The Past than Mark of the Deep. It's a spread-out open world with optional bosses and 32-bit graphics. I really like how it lets you disable the "corpse run" mechanic that is common in souls-like games. Like I said, I'm terrible at "real" souls-likes so this is a huge selling point for me (Mark of the Deep doesn't have corpse runs either). I'm ~8 hours into Tombwater and I'm really enjoying it.

I've only played the demo for Hunt the Night but I absolutely loved it and since there was a bundle with Tombwater, I bought it on an impulse. I'm looking forward to playing it after I beat Tombwater though.

I know Tunic and Death's Door both have great reviews and souls-like aspects but those are too cute for me. I don't just want a zelda-like with difficult combat, I need that eldritch horror aspect to really scratch my itch. And I'm not sure about Mina the Hollower yet. It isn't nearly as cute as Tunic or Death's Door but I don't know if it's all that "dark" either with that artstyle.

Anyway, if you know of any other top-down/isometric action games with an eldritch horror aesthetic, please let me know. I can't get enough of them right now.

This game looks a little too cartoony for my tastes but maybe others here will be interested? It already has an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam so they must be doing something right.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3124540/Far_Far_West/

Finally, a broadway musical based on the 1987 movie Lost Boys. That's what we've all been waiting for, right?

Well, I did it. I was able to come up with more than 10 posts for this arbitrarily defined genre of mine. And that's all I can find. This community can now wither into obscurity like so many ignored Lemmy communities. At least now I have someplace I can post to if I ever find more.

As one final post, here's a clip from a South Park episode with the members of KoRn explaining pirate ghosts (ghost pirates?) like it's a Scooby-Doo episode.

3 months ago was the reveal trailer, now we have a teaser trailer. And I'm even more excited for this game. Best of all, it isn't a roguelike! I didn't think that was possible anymore!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3574750/The_Dark_West/

The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure (2022) is a Korean movie where they obviously watched a Pirates of the Caribbean movie and said "we can do that!" This movie has the same style of action and comedy as a PotC movie. And yet, there are no fantasy elements at all. While gravity (and physics in general) might only be a suggestion at times, there aren't any specific fantasy elements. No magic, no monsters. Which is a shame because otherwise this movie would've been a perfect example of what I'm looking for. Oh well, it's still a fun pirate adventure.

Here's a trailer. You can watch it on Netflix.

Ha, right as I'm running out of things to post to this community, a new board game expansion is announced with dark fantasy pirates! Yes!

Zombicide: Dead Men Tales is a new game in the Zombicide franchise. It's only just been announced and they'll be crowd-funding it on Gamefound. Of course, being a new entry in a popular board game series, I'm sure this crowd-funding will be successful.

I knew there wouldn't be many works I could post to this community when I first created it, and I'm already starting to run out of the things I can find so far.

The Flying Dutchman is basically an old ghost story from the late 1700s. It's the most famous example of a ghost ship in sailor superstitions. Most versions of the story don't include pirates (so it doesn't exactly fit this genre) but it's not like there are any hard rules with superstitions so sometimes pirates are included in this myth.

The wikipedia page for it is pretty interesting. It's basically a myth about an old ship named the Flying Dutchman that was cursed to sail the seas without ever reaching port. In the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Davy Jones is the captain, but I think they just wanted to use a famous ship name for the movie.

Anyway, I don't really have anything to say about this myth. I'm just trying to document every example of Dark Fantasy Pirates I can (because I can't find many) and this almost fits. So this is your indicator that I'm almost done posting to this community.

The Secret of Monkey Island is a point & click adventure game from 1990. It also launched a series of sequels. And it should be everything I'm looking for in this genre. It has pirates and it has ghost pirates, and that's all I should need. And yet, when I think about this genre, I'm drawn to the horror elements. I like the unique elements that sea monsters can bring to a story (as opposed to the "land" monsters of the Weird West genre). Unfortunately, this game leans into the comedy aspect and that's where it loses me. I'm not against point & click adventure games in general but this aesthetic is just too silly for me. Don't get me wrong, replacing sword combat with insult battles is a clever idea for a point & click adventure game, I'm just not here for the jokes.

The series is about a random person who starts the first game by declaring "I want to be a pirate!" and then proceeds to do just that. Along the way he crosses paths with a ghost pirate who kidnaps his girlfriend so he has to rescue her. The creators of this series have said their primary inspirations were the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland and the novel On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers, so it should fit perfectly in this Lemmy community. And while I won't argue with anyone who loves this game or has fond memories of this series, it just isn't for me. So I felt obligated to include it here even though I've never played any of the games.

If you're curious about it though, you can play the game for free in your browser at archive.org (and plenty of less-reputable sites too).