I've been playing Spelunky 2 pretty consistently since its launch a couple weeks ago. Put in near 20 hours I would say.

And the short of it is: its fucking great. It's a fantastic sequel to the first game.


They didn't have to do much to win me over honestly. I loved the gameplay loop of the first Spelunky so much, and it introduced me to one of my favorite genres of games: rouge-likes. So when the second was announced, I knew I would be happy with more of the same, just with new stuff added. And Spelunky 2 delivers on this in droves. A pile of new levels, branching paths, enemies, items, weapons, etc. It's so good. It's so hard too, even as a veteran im not consistently getting very far through the game. The new caves area called the Dwelling can really kick your shit in quick if you are not focusing. Almost every death is telling you that you cannot drop your guard for a second.

Currently playing on PS4, but its also out on PC. There is cross play multiplayer to come out in a couple weeks too. So if you like rouge-likes and Spelunky 1, then pick up this game for sure and jam with me online.

PRAISE BE DEREK YU

Welcome to our next TVGF forum game: hurt/heal round 3! 
see the rules below. what a great forum community we have here!

List of episodes:

"Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat"
"The Old Man and the Seat"
"One Crew over the Crewcoo's Morty"
"Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim's Morty"
"Rattlestar Ricklactica"
"Never Ricking Morty"
"Promortyus"
"The Vat of Acid Episode"
"Childrick of Mort"
"Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri"

once per day, you may heal (+3, may be spread out)    hurt (-3, one ep only)
every week, the number of hurt actions you may do in a day will double.

any complaints/rules arguments will result in being banned from the forum permanently

This game has HOT TAKES enabled -
---- hot takes are allowed ----

7 Edge of tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat              (death crystals)
7 The Old Man and the Seat                            (toilet planet,dating app)
7 One Crew over the Crewcoo's Morty            (heist ep)
7 Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim's Morty  (slut dragons)
7 Rattlestar Ricklactica                                     (snakes, floating jerry)
7 Never Ricking Morty                                      (story train)
7 Promortyus                                                    (glorzo face huggers)
7 The vat of acid Episode                                 (save points remote)
7 Childrick of Mort                                            (planet fuck, rockmen)
7 Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri                       (beth clone, invisibility belt)

based on a random number we each get a random game to report on each week from the itch.io 1500 game pack most of us all have now. 

we "roll again" if we hit something that isn't a game. We have to either complete the game or spend at least 2 hours getting deeply invested into it. The report has to be a big essay with a summary, conclusion and a hot takes section. 


WHO'S IN? JOIN ME

vs

JLR Unfiltered:

- Talks about mental health
- Doesn't dish out nearly enough anti-National goss
- His conversation with his post suicide attempt psychologist was both less juicy than you might hope and a bit narcissistic
- Wanted to hear him talk China conspiracy theories

What Comes After What Comes Next:

- James Shaw is kinda boring
- James and guest agreeing about how climate change is bad and we need to do more
- When James and guest disagree James doesn't fight them about it
- Is this is avenue for stepping down from politics?? Starting a podcast seems a weird move for a #1 or #2 of a party in govt? But idk, reaching out to the youth more or something

IT IS KNOWN THAT A PERSONS AURA IS DIFFICULT TO PERCEIVE, AS THE PERSONALITY/KARMIC PARTICLES THAT THE AURA WAVELENGTH CONSIST OF HAVE A SHORT HALFLIFE AND THE AURA SENSING CELLS IN THE RETINA ARE LESS ABUNDANT THAN CONES AND RODS (THEY ARE TRAPEZOIDAL CELLS THAT MANY IN "MODERN" "MEDICINE" DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE

HOWEVER BY OPENING THE IRIS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE BY CONFINING ONESELF IN PURE DARKNESS FOR A MINIMUM OF THREE DAYS, ONE ALLOWS MAXIMUM RETINAL EXPOSURE TO AURA PARTICLES AND MINIMAL INTERFERENCE FROM OTHER SIGNALS (IT IS ALSO NECESSARY TO ENSURE PROTECTION FORM NEGATIVE VIBES

I HAVE NOW PERCIEIVED MY AURA FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE MY THIRD EYE WAS LOST (WHERE MOST TRAPEZOIDAL CELLS ARE POPULATED
MY AURA IS IN THE PURPLE RANGE OF WET DOG SMELLS. IT GLISTENS WITH THE PROMISE-SIGNALS OF FORGOTTEN HALF-DRUNK FLAT WHITES LEFT TO GO RANCID IN A SLIGHTLY LEAKY DISPOSABLE CUP


WHAT ARE YOUR AURAS? TELL ME i WILL NOT USE THIS KNOWLEDGE TO HARM YOU (BUT PERHAPS OUR MUTUAL ENEMIES

It's Marama Davidson! Also Chlöe moves up to #3



Thoughts? I think Marama (bad cop) is preferred to James Shaw (good cop) for "senior co-leader" position for negotiating a coalition with labour. Although if Labour keeps up in the polls and they get 50% then Greens will have even less bargaining power than this time around.

James Shaw and Todd Muller (New National leader) have worked together fruitfully in the past with the carbon emissions bill, and Nikki Kaye is also an outspoken environmentalist at least inside the National Party. While I don't think there's any chance at all that Greens would align with Nats to form a government, maybe they could pull sneaky deals every now and again to push environmentalism (A "Green-Blue" National party would be happy to make environmental progress especially if it made Labour look silly?)

My scottish cough cough mate has got into aoe2 in a big way and I thought I'd brush up on my skills while providing a deep and informative analysis of each civ. 'skills' in quotes because it's just the AI but whatever. The hard difficulty is basically the new moderate with moderate not really being much of a challenge anymore (they still attack you unlike easy and standard, but they're so dumb it doesn't matter).


lithuanians:

these guys rock. think of them as byzantines with an early eco bonus not a super late one. 150 food means your dark age is guaranteed to only depend on how bad you are at building houses and boar lures. The extra bonus on relics is great because it's something that you want to get in the first place, whether you go calvary or not. Actually, I think you're really supposed to go calvary anyway but I haven't been because I'm bad, so I've been going spearmen + skirmishers. skirms will beat archer deathball, spears will defend vs scouts and knights and if you keep your numbers up for both you'll have a really strong trash army with access to elite skirm and halb, plus extra pierce armour through tower shield unique tech.

The easiest answer to this comp would be mangonels I think, but the AI doesn't really mass them or micro them enough to be a significant counter. So I just massed spears and skirms while controlling most of the relics and booming on 4 TC with only one castle for conscription. I don't think it'd work on a good human player as I only had one castle and so I'd probably get raided to death.

Really fun civ though, it's a really satisfying pick as none of their bonuses are ever irrelevant (eg naval bonuses) , and there's no pressure to build lots of castles for unique units so you can start your army early. Granted, I ignored stables that game so the +attack per relic wasn't actually useful but I COULD have teched into knights if I needed to counter mass skirms/archers or siege or something. 

I think they'd be a great pvp civ to try out.

take that jacinda

starbucks is life
starbucks is love
corporations are great
no caffeine is rough

I like brand loyalty
if you don't your a shmoe
only one thing I don't like
that mermaids a hoe

Continuning on my urge to add some more joke setups to jokeboat, I looked into the game's text files again:

The jokes are stored in an array with objects of the following format

{
        "punchline":"because <BLANK>",
        "decoys":[
            "barn | I\u2019m always counting sheep.",
            "silence | it\u2019s uncomfortable.",
            "shopping mall | it\u2019s very dated.",
            "zoo | I should be in a larger space.",
            "public pool | I shouldn\u2019t pee in there but I do."
        ],
        "timing":"0.0",
        "x":false,
        "setup":"I call my bedroom the <TOPIC>",
        "id":56961,
        "categories":",#location",
        "type":"5"
      }


the game is real hard to test though, you need to log in with 3 browsers to start the game, and it freezes if it tries to find something and can't so removing all jokes but the one you want to test is out. I appended a knock-knock joke setup but after 4 passes through none of the 3 players had it as either round. reaaaaallll frustrating. I've also tried adding 20 knock knock jokes but either I got very very unlucky or something wacky happens with the "type" first before choosing randomly...

in any case, lets brainstorm some setups so we can continue our joke-boat experiences

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