The Mario & Luigi games are similarly approachable and good RPGs, Superstar Saga (the first one) especially. They are handheld games so maybe a bit more difficult to play together with someone, though you could emulate them very easily to play on a more suitable device.

Sea of Stars also might be worth a try. Takes a lot of inspiration from Paper Mario.

Good fucking riddance. I hate these things, people leave them just lying across the sidewalk all the time.

Your Only Move is Hustle is pretty much exactly what you described.

It sometimes was but there were good alternatives for that. The much bigger problem imo was the lack of a dpad, using the trackpad for that was abysmal.

I grew up in the southeast US and while I don’t think I have a strong accent and have tried to cut other southern things out of my speech, I quite like “y’all”. In my opinion it’s the best gender neutral second person plural word. Most others are needlessly gendered or sound even weirder.

I have a Chromecast (/Google TV, their branding is a mess) and Apple TV, and have used Rokus family members have. In my experience chromecast has the best app selection, it’s just running a modified version of android. It does require specific tv versions of apps, but the standards are as low as the rest of the google play store for better and worse, so anything you can get on an android phone that you’d want on a tv is probably on there. It also (with a bit of trouble) allows sideloading, and I’ve put some github projects on there like SmartTubeNext (ad-free youtube with a better UI).

Enforces everyone to reset at the same time and not use gear and stuff from previous characters. Some people care about leaderboards and those usually reset at the same time. For other ARPGs with a trade economy that being reset is often the biggest draw, but that doesn’t apply to D3.

Thank you so much! I have this controller and love it, but had pretty much given up on the gyro being possible to use on PC.

This number is basically useless except for headlines like this. Actually using my steam deck I don’t care at all about the verification status. There’s plenty of unsupported and unknown stuff that works well, and there’s verified games I’ve run into issues with. Playable is also a particularly bad category because it’s weirdly picky about certain things but not others, and it seems to be rarely updated when games get patches, so stuff can get better or worse than it’s labeled. I just check ProtonDB or look up youtube videos of someone playing a game on deck if I want to check something.

Don’t know if you’ve played/heard of these, but some good short singleplayer stuff on gamepass that might fit the types of games you like and you could easily finish before then:

A Short Hike is getting added today and is something I’d recommend to anyone if you haven’t played it. Very pleasant game, and as the name suggests it’s very short, you can complete it in an afternoon.

Celeste is on there and is one of the best 2D platformers, if you enjoy those and haven’t played it definitely try it out.

Death’s Door is a top-down zelda-like, and one of my favorite takes by indies on that type of game.

Doom 1/2 are classics that are still very much worth playing and hold up well.

Mirror’s Edge is a first person platforming/parkour game, a bit older at this point but holds up pretty well.

Monster Train is a deckbuilder roguelite, which I know is a polarizing genre, but if you’re either into those or open to the idea of trying them it’s one of the best. Might not fit as a shorter game depending on how much of the stuff in it you want to do, but you could at least get a good taste for it and see if you like it.

Both of the Ori games are good metroidvanias that are relatively short.

Prey is a great immersive sim/fps/stealth game, if you’ve tried other Arkane stuff like Dishonored, or the Deus Ex games, it’s similar to those.

Both of the Psychonauts games are great 3D platformers. 2 is especially good and a big step up in gameplay, as you might expect with the time gap between them.

Tinykin is a 3D platformer with some Pikmin inspiration, where you’re a tiny person exploring a giant house, very fun if you like platforming and collectathon type stuff.

I’ve been playing a couple of neat games.

Time Bandit is a really unique mix of genres focused on real time-based interactions. There’s puzzles you solve that take hours and you have to leave machines running and check back later, people you meet at certain times, stores that have different schedules. It’s a dystopian setting where you work in a factory, and there’s this guy you meet early on who’s with a rebellion group that teaches you about communism. It’s really neat, and less of a time commitment than it might sound like, most of my sessions have been like 10 minutes just checking in on stuff, sort of like a very weird animal crossing. It’s pretty cheap and getting a criminally low amount of attention for how cool it is.

The Void Rains Upon Her Heart is a roguelite boss rush shmup. Really approachable for that genre. I got interested in it because the dev got hired by the Revita team (one of my favorite games from last year) to work on the expansion for that, and it definitely has some similarities to that, also kinda reminds me of Undertale combat. It’s got a ton of content and does a great job at pacing the unlocks and stuff.

Last, Pseudoregalia is a 3D movement focused metroidvania. It’s very N64 inspired in style. You’re exploring a big castle, with a lot of platforming and interesting movement abilities. There’s no map, so it definitely requires some patience with that, but it’s a really neat game overall. Seems to allow a lot of sequence breaking. It’s looking to be fairly short as well, which is nice.

It’s got a variety of speed settings that increase in difficulty, and it absolutely gets fast enough for anyone lol. I like it a lot more than the actual wipeout games I’ve tried even though its mechanics are more styled after that.

As for the antigrav racers you mentioned, have you checked out BallisticNG? It leans more towards Wipeout than F-Zero, but even as a huge GX fan (and looking forward to Aero GPX myself) I’ve really enjoyed it. I believe it does have splitscreen as well, though I haven’t tried it personally.

Although they’re somewhat different the modern Hitman trilogy scratches this same itch for me (especially turning some of the guidance in the UI off and exploring the levels yourself, they’re actually designed well for that). Gloomwood is in early access but is shaping up really well and is inspired by classic Thief.

I want more games like Resogun and Geometry Wars

Have you tried Nex Machina? By the same devs as Resogun, and it’s great no-nonsense arcade gameplay. Assault Android Cactus is another game of that type I really enjoyed too.

There definitely is a lack of actually good ones in the modern era. Poi and Grow Home are some good ones you may not have heard of.

Seconded, one of my favorite podcasts.

Backed the kickstarter and eagerly awaiting it!

Eh, other developers are already basically making Zelda games minus the name, and you can play them without giving nintendo money. Unsighted, Death’s Door, and Crosscode are all great and take strong inspiration from Zelda, just to name a few.

It’s not out for a few more months but I recently tried the demo for Fortune’s Run, which is now one of my favorite depictions of a cyberpunk world in a game. It’s an immersive sim, maybe with a bit more focus on direct combat than most. The gameplay is fun if a bit rough in some spots, hopefully it gets polished up for launch but it’s very promising. Everything about the presentation though is top notch.