That’s the plan so far
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In my experience the “break from pressure” part never happens with most implementations of Panel de Pon and games just go on forever until an unforced error with two skilled players… it’s too easy to chain everything that comes out of the garbage and stall the death clock eternally. (Not sure if that’s because we were over-chaining instead of going for the “insulation” thing you’re talking about, but the concept of “over-chaining” seems unnatural anyway)
This. The skill ceiling is very low and easily met (not by me, of course). The time stop mechanic is a nasty pair with the damage curve not being steep enough
In Panel de Pon, because you can stop time, it is 100% always the best option to go for the biggest chain possible once time is actually stopped. Worst case scenario is you end up with a smaller chain than you intended. You can’t top out by trying to make a big chain–you can only top out by scrolling or letting damage fall (both of which can only happen when time resumes).
EDIT: er, I didn’t mean damage only falls during normal time. That aint true
Yeah, the skill ceiling is way lower than Puyo Puyo. I think I am (or was) near the ceiling in most of the realtime chainers (this, Magical Drop and Twinkle Star Sprites) but I’m mediocre at Puyo Puyo.
Starsweep (a later game by the creators of Panel de Pon) seems to have a higher skill ceiling and also doesn’t suffer from deadlocked games, so I’d recommend checking that out if you haven’t.
I love Starsweep. Starsweep is also a dead game.
I’ve heard some rumors about skilled Panel players at SBCon though, and I want to join the fray!!
It never lived. Maybe we can play Starsweep at SBCon if we both show up to one though!
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I’m trying to hone my skills for (a surprise tournament I want to host at) Branson.
That includes working off my thick 2 inch layer of rust in Puyo
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only 7 months away now, get cracking
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I don’t know, to be honest, if it breaks the deadlock. It’s the trick speedrunners recommend against the CPU (which doesn’t really get going until Raven) and my skills are so fucking rusty from when I was emulating it back in University playing Very Hards daily. The last time I got to play (and show off) was in the first SBCon, and that was more trying to stay alive and think far enough ahead to chain then to optimize; it was the last day and I had barely any sleep.
Human players have the “Cmdr” tag before their names
I have no friends, so I don’t really have much else to look forward to
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also i just discovered edf 2017 is backwards compatible on xbox one and im losing my fucking mind watching an EDF game run at a solid 60 fps in 4k for no reason other than somebody at microsoft was like hell fucking yeah dude
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I’m playing on PS4, I’m not sure if I’m interacting with PC players.
Hey wait @AutomaticTiger was this what we were playing upstairs at one point? I felt like I put in a good showing
ah ok no i don’t think it’s cross play, altho i havent played since i got fed up with the background sim being broken. Visit beautiful Lunney Stop in the Achan system if you get the chance! (don’t bother there’s nothing there)
I’m an explorer so I dig looking at nothing 
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It’s possible! Either that or the puzzle mode of vs collection. Or both.
At the first one, it was kind of surreal to have several players in the same room who were significantly better than I am. I’ve played the game a lot but have never become all that proficient.
One of the game’s strengths, I think, is that players who are decent but not great can chain just enough to send a volley back and forth until someone loses focus. But I can see how it could be tedious if two players had “solved” the game and could keep this up indefinitely.
My only exposure to Pokemon is the N64 Panel de Pon sequel. And, based solely on that game, my favorite of the creatures is Poliwhirl.
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I finished Hob yesterday. Hob is a top-down Metroidvania or Zelda-like game about exploring the landscape, about activating mechanisms to reconfigure the landscape, and about (sometimes) fighting in the landscape. I really enjoyed playing this game, and I have a few thoughts about it:
- For the first few hours, I thought the game was competently engaging but totally unremarkable. But once the scale and commitment to it’s reconfigurable world really set in, I was totally hooked.
- Backtracking doesn’t feel like backtracking because of how your actions dramatically change the landscape. Areas are often unrecognisable when you return to them.
- Save for one optional exception, there aren’t any boss fights. Some fights are trickier than others, but all fights really just punctuate exploration. This design decision is exactly what I want from an action-adventure game right now.
I played this on Switch, and the port was handled by Panic Button. They’re responsible for porting the likes of Doom, Wolfenstein, and Warframe to Switch. I haven’t tried those games, but Hob on Switch is full of jank:
- There are frequent audio glitches such as sound effects lagging behind actions and sound effects looping.
- The framerate is inconsistent—it’s especially slow whenever the camera tilts toward the horizon, but this rarely affects gameplay more than dragging out a brief moment of traversal.
- Sometimes the player character falls through geometry or gets trapped behind objects on the periphery of the playing field—good thing there’s a “Respawn” option.
- Sometimes the player character freezes in place—I encountered this twice, and the glitch locked me out of the pause menu and its “Respawn” option.
- Once an enemy froze in place.
- Once an enemy spun in place along the y-axis—it somehow killed me, but it disappeared after I respawned.
- Enemies respawn so infrequently that I wonder whether it’s a glitch when they do respawn.
- An enemy continued to attack and damage me while my character carried out a triumphant, scripted sequence.
But despite all of this, I thought the game was wonderfully playable!
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