Since my question is likely going to be overlooked in the Sale thread, I thought it might be more useful to create a new thread for it. Feel free to use it for your own questions about games from the sale you're interested in!

Has anyone played some of these and can give me their own opinion on them?

- Serpent in the Staglands
- Hard West
- Skylar & Plux: Adventure on Clover Island
- The Signal from Tölva
- The Suffering
- The Little Acre
- Metamagic: Wizards of the Neon Age
- Stories: The Path of Destinies
- Zenith
- On Rusty Trails
- Starcrawlers

PS: Also, does anyone know - if you buy something that gives you store credit due to the fair price package and you use it to buy something else, what is the relevant number then when GOG determines whether you've bought enough to get Starcrawlers, the sum of the official GOG prices you paid or the money you actually spent? (e.g. Skylar and Plux is 7.59 EUR, but gives me 1.20 EUR store credit back - does it count as me having spent 7.59 or 6.39 EUR?)

Wallet funds don't count this time around, so it's all about the amount of money being spent.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_black_friday_sale_2017_begins_3094e/post243

I can give you my opinion on two of them:

Hard West
It's an excellent turn-based strategy game. I really liked the setting (Western mixed with supernatural stuff) and the artstyle. The battles are great as well, the luck-of-draw system is something I haven't seen before and the special abilities you can choose make quite different playstyles possible. I also liked the cover system (it's possible to create cover from items in the environment).

At the momentary price I can definitely recommend the game (and would suggest to also pick up the Scars of Freedom DLC).

StarCrawlers
It's a classic dungeon crawler in a SciFi setting. Haven't played enough of it to really say something about the story, but it was interesting that there are several factions andmost of the time you will annoy at least one of them when you accept a mission.
Besides that it's pretty much a standard dungeon crawler grid-based, turn-based combat) and if you liked classic dungeon crawlers like Might and Magic (especially III - V), you will probably like this one as well.

Ah, then I can't reach the required amount anyway, because I'm missing 0.65 cents or so on my PayPal account and didn't think about recharging it in time, since I had already accepted that there's nothing of interest for me in this sale and I didn't expect GOG to add better offers later on. Too bad. But thanks for clearing it up!

I really enjoyed the fights in Hard West. Very XCom-ey. There's no mid-fight save, so every tactical decision has some weight to it. The tension and the risk / reward of the fights is awesome. And there's cowboys and six shooters. And demons. Well, demon cowboys.

The rest of the game outside of the fights was a bit weird. I didn't really care for it. It was basically something I had to toil through to get to the next fight. I'm interested in opinions on this one too. An isometric RPG that supports Linux should be an insta-buy for me, but for some reason Serpent in the Staglands has never intrigued me enough to actually buy it.

Thanks!

I actually like real-time, grid-based dungeon crawlers better, especially since it appears that combat in Starcrawlers is more of a triggered event than something integrated in the dungeon movement - by which I mean it seems to work more like in JRPGs, with exploration and combat being different parts of the gameplay, not like in Legend of Grimrock where they are happening at the same time and in the same environment. I don't quite remember how it was in the M&M series. I think you could still move freely in the dungeon even when engaged in combat, couldn't you? Or can you do the same in Starcrawlers?

I usually don't like "strategy" games (in the sense of long-term strategy, base building, RTS etc.), but I do like turn-based tactical combat like in Shadowrun Dragonfall. Is the combat in Hard West comparable to that? I've read complaints that the combat is a bit too simplistic, do you disagree? Not that this has to be a downside for me. Could you expand on the gameplay outside of combat in Hard West? What is it like? And how long are the battles on average, how much time do you lose when having to start over?

In the early M&M games you couldn't move while you were doing combat. You could only fight or try to flee from the combat. It's the same in this game. It's been a while since I've played the game, but I didn't remember the fights being too simplistic. You have two action points and have to decide what to do with them. It might sound simplistic, but because of the special abilities, the environment and the luck-based-system (which isn't half a s bad as it might sound) there still is a lot of variety and options).

Actually, many older WRPGs have exploration and combat being different parts of the gameplay and in different environments. In particular, this includes:
* Ultima 3-5
* Wizardry 1-7
* Bard's Tale 1-3 (not the 2004 game)
* Might and Magic 1 and 2
* Every SSI Gold Box game

As In Might and Magic 3-5, exploration and combat take place in the same environment, but you can't move once you're engaged in melee combat. Wizardry 8 puts exploration and combat in the same environment, but the gameplay changes completely when you get into combat (you can only move during combat if you input the command to do so, and even then only when a certain part of the round comes up). Also, there are other WRPGs that are real time outside of combat, but become turn-based once combat starts, like the Geneforge series, and (from what I hear) the classic Fallout series.

I still haven't gotten around to playing StarCrawlers, even though I have owned the game even when it was still In Dev.

Point taken. I just said "JRPG" as it was the first thing that came to my mind (and of course, there are JRPGs that work differently from that as well). But I guess there was a reason why I didn't think of all those older WRPGs, and that's because I don't like them very much either. ;) (With the exception of Unlimited Adventures and Albion maybe, but I like them for different reasons.)

The gameplay outside it varies with each scenario. Each chapter is re-framed with a different interface, reflecting different stakes and types of objectives. Always a map, always combats or some choose-your-own-adventure choice on each location, but the strategy-level goal is different each time (explore, gain money, etc) which gives you the impression of playing different games. Sometimes the game mechanics flow well, other times it feels a bit rushed or shoehorned it (and indeed you half skip it for the fight and the story progression). It's always a bit secondary. As if the strategy level was the minigame itself.

But the fights are awesome, the stories are very cool, and the atmophere is top notch (and the music is fantastic). And this game is amongst the very very best ones available on GOG. Absolutely not uninstallable.

So the "strategy" in it is neglectable and wouldn't get in the way for someone who is easily bored or intimidated by actual strategy games? I take it it's hard to screw up in these minigames? Or can it happen that you'd have to start an entire chapter from scratch, including having to repeat all the battles, just because you happened to suck at resource management?

Huh. I've never played any of the Spiderweb Software games, but it was my understanding that they all featured some version of grid-based "time only progresses when your character moves or acts" gameplay, à la traditional Roguelikes, where everything happens in the same "mode". The series' product page here even features the "turn-based" genre tag.

The Geneforge series is probably marked "turn-based" because of the combat (and you can enter combat mode at any time IIRC).

The Avernum series actually is strictly turn-based. However, in 1-3, there are still a few different modes. Combat and town/dungeon exploration take place on the same screen, but the rules are different (in combat you need to worry about AP and moving each character individually; outside of combat, you control the whole party, but enemies get to act after every move so fighting non-trivial enemies is not advised); it's similar to Ultima 6 in this regard. The world map, however, is different; when combat starts, you go to a separate environment for the battle.

I don't remember exactly how Avadon did this, but I think it was like Geneforge, but without the ability to manually initiate combat.

So, not all Spiderweb Software games are the same.

(Don't forget that demos exist for all (to my knowledge) Spiderweb Software games, so if you want to see how the games work without buying them, you do have the option of trying the demo.)

Are there even animations in those games? Because lack of animation in a turn-based game is not necessarily a bad thing, but lack of animation in a real-time game (especially one with an iso view) would be a borderline deal-breaker for me (if I were otherwise remotely interested in these games -- which I'm not).

The Suffering is one of the best action horror games ever made. The graphics haven't aged very well, but if that's not a problem, then you should buy it.