I bought Slay the Spire cause of you guys. I was into Hearthstone a while ago, but quit when I didn't wanna spend money to have an actual good deck. I'm enjoying Spire so far.

Is it accessible to someone with no trading/collecting card game experience? I couldn't get in to the gwent stuff in Witcher 3 for example.

Absolutely. I’ve never been into Magic or Hearthstone or anything like that. I think it helps that there is no collecting/trading aspect to StS. Also, I tend to enjoy single player games more than multiplayer in general. I think it prob has as much in common with Isaac as it does with those CCGs.

+1 to the slay the spire love. Pretty sure I'm over 100 hours as well and still plugging away. Trying to beat ascension 20 with iron clad even if it kills me.

Hotline Miami/Hotline Miami 2 and the Messenger available free through twitch prime until the end of the year

It's without a doubt a deck-building driven game, so if that's a deal-breaker it's not for you.

It is very different from HS or Gwent though, 1st of all it's single player only. Secondly, none of the cards are hiding behind a paywall. You also don't start StS with a complete set deck like you do in HS. You start with some very basic cards, most of which you will try to dump ASAP. After each encounter you have the opportunity to add 1 of 3 different cards to your deck (or not.) Short-decking with the right cards is a very valid strat.

You have to gain XP with each playable character/deck to unlock all the cards, but it's nothing unreasonable. You can easily unlock the entire deck for a character in a session or 2 at the most depending on your schedule. If anything it serves as a very hands-off tutorial of how to play each character by introducing new concepts with the different unlocking cards.

Anyway it's an amazing way to scratch that CCG itch w/o having to shell out $100 or more on card packs every 3 months.

Do you keep the games after your subscription ends?

The Messenger was fun. Wait for sale but I thought the reveals were pretty cool. Game overall too easy imo but it was fun in the way watching brainless show is fun. First half way better than second half. Pacing in the 2nd half was weird.

I don't know actually. I haven't let my prime sub lapse since they started the free games program.

My guess would be yes, but I have no way of knowing also. I think we are ending our subscription to Prime sometime in the spring, so hopefully I know by then, or download all the games I am interested in ahead of time.

Yes, as long as you’ve claimed them you keep them.

Which if you don't claim them, they disappear after the time period anyways.

Picked up Slay the spire, Transport Fever, Stonehearth, Kenshi (not even on sale, but cheap enough at full price and it looks like it can be incredibly good) and Assassin's Creed Odyssey so far. Think that will be all for this sale.

Tried them all a bit and they all seem worth it - 90% of the playtime has been spent with Odyssey though - it's really good. It looks gorgeous and Animus-nonsense seems kept to a minimum (at least so far - about 8 hours in).

Oh, and also - Kassandra is a babe.

Anyone play CrossCode and have any opinions?

been waiting for ever for Cuphead to have a decent sale.

Doesn't seem like that's ever gonna happen. Only 25% off.

Do I need a controller? :O

If you like Odyssey and haven't played AC: Origins it is also worth playing. The ancient Egyptian setting is fantastic. Animus stuff is also at a minimum, maybe 10-15 mins throughout the entire game. I haven't played Odyssey yet as I'm working through my backlog, I'll pick it up in the spring sale but having played a lot of the earlier AC games Origins is definitely my favorite.

I've played through Origins and it's by far my favourite AC game (pretty sure Odyssey will take that place shortly though) - it's a series I've got a pretty ambivalent relationship with since I've hated quite a few of them and loved some others.

Origins was great though - and Odyssey seems to be at least as good so far. Greek scenario instead of Egyptian but otherwise they seem pretty similar. So far I like the characters and visuals better in Odyssey - it's pretty stunning.

What is performance in Odyssey like? I've heard the requirements are high/its not very optimized.

You don't need a controller but it's easier to play with one.

I'm running it on "ultra high" with no noticeable issues on 1080 Ti, 32GB, i7-4790K.

It's performing better than Origins for me - that would max my gpu for some reason and the fan-noise was very noticable. So much so that I googled it and there was speculation that it was because of the drm. Either way - no issues with Odyssey. It looks and performs really well on my system.

1080p or higher? I played Origins at 1440p and had to turn some options down from Ultra to get smooth gameplay.

Running at 2560 x 1440.

I know someone on another forum who treats it like the best game ever but that’s all I know about it. There is a free Demo I believe.

I played the demo, which had pretty good controls and was fun. It's a little short, though, and doesn't really get you too much into the game to understand what you're getting into. I've seen good and bad reviews on it so I wasn't sure if it's really worth it or not.

Slay the Spire confirmed awesome, though way, way too addictive.

Thanks to all who recommended it ITT (I think... )