AliasVortex

I'm not sure if it counts as underground (it's been around for ages), but if you've never thought about how your shoelaces contribute to the overall fit and comfort of your shoe, I'd recommend giving Ian's shoelace site a visit.

Arizona has fairly consistent and predictable weather, decently reliable power grids (with access to cleaner energy sources like solar, hydro, and nuclear), and is pretty seismically stable. Plus Phoenix has been trying to set itself up as a bit of a tech hub for a while now so you have access to an existing market of skilled labor plus a supply to fresh talent from ASU (and the other universities).

Nope. Everyone's entitled to theirs opinions, but I downvoted them for being wrong (and because I thought their comment was kind of dumb).

It's no pinnacle of storytelling, but it reads exactly like a parent telling a casual mini-story about their kid to strangers on the internet. It's a recounting of someone else's words, but being a creep is a totally reasonable conclusion for a ten year old to reach and it's also not all that uncommon for parents to praise and reward children for being able to think for themselves or at the very least form a "good" opinion. Ergo, OP's comment does not read like they're trying to pass off a tall tale or spin out bullshit.

Now if the kid had allegedly said something like "the guy's emblematic of everything wrong with celebrity culture and philanthropy as entertainment is a scourge on society", we'd be having different conversation.

Yeah, probably. There is a village building/ upgrading component, but it doesn't have much of an impact on gameplay. It does get pretty tedious, especially if you're well versed in strategy. I mostly just figured I'd throw it out as a more casual one-shot to pick up on the cheap.

Infested Planet

RTS. Kind of reminds me of the ground comabt from Star Wars Empire at War crossed with Starship Troopers. Command a squad of space marines tasked with battling an overwhelming alien horde. Pretty fun campaign (if a bit of a predictable story), plus an endless mode. Not exceedingly difficult, but definitely challenging enough to make you think tactically and keep you on your strategic toes. Somewhat limited replayability makes the sticker price hard to recommend (unless your bread and butter is RTS), but it regularly goes on sale for less than $5, which it is absolutely worth!

Ara Fell

The whole things just a massive labor of love from a relatively small indy studio. At one point it was an RPG Maker game that was delightfully well polished in terms of story, art, and environment. After the devs got tired to rpg maker limitations, they ported the whole thing to Unity and re-released it as a free Enhanced Edition update. Childhood me played the shit out of GBA Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and it very much scratches that JRPG itch.

Sproggiwood

Rouge like turn based dungeon crawler. Certainly not new by any means, but still a pretty decent little dungeon crawler. The art is cute and the game is pretty simple to pick up, which makes it perfect for more casual play. That said if you're a completionist, it can get a bit repetitive, but nothing too hair-pulling. Probably not worth the full sticker price, but historic sales have knocked it down to $1.49, which is a nice balance between cheap and fun (took me about 28 hours to 100%).

Alina of the Arena

Hex based rouge like deck builder. If we're taking indy gems, this one's probably a nice Amethyst. Not quite the most polished (the game kind of just throws you in without much of a tutorial and the story's pretty bare bones), but overall a solid B. If Slay the Spire and Into the Breach are your jams it'll be right up your alley.

~~Throwing in Tactical Breach Wizards, because it just came out and has very similar trun based tactics vibes, but with more sarcastic/ absurd humor that you'd expect from Heat Signature or Gun Point (on account of being from the same developer).~~

Scratch that, there's an entry further down: https://lemmy.world/comment/11991845

Picked this one up on a whim from a summer sale discovery queue and it's been such a delightful surprise! I'll second scratching the RPG and tactics itch, just wish I had more free time in my life right now because the game is turn based crack for me.

Bonus points for being a Unity game which makes it technically moddable (even if the developer has no plans of adding official support for it).

Same. The Motorola Droid 4 is my all time favorite phone, not viable as a modern daily driver, but damn do I miss being able to pop the keyboard out for longer messages, compose mostly coherent messages without looking, or just reclaim screen real estate.

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