Sarafan: Some good fellow on other forums recommended me Tales of Maj'Elay. Did someone play this game? Is it worth buying?
Note that the main game is free with only a few differences (such as the item vault) so you can try it as long as you want before you buy:
https://te4.org/
I think the DLC is only available commercially. I did after a while run into crashing issues on my Sandy Bridge laptop (both Linux and Windows 7) when I played it a few years ago and I'm not sure if that was ever fixed, so even though it mostly works on old systems it could still have issues. I haven't had issues on my newer game system, although I also haven't played it as much. I am not super fond of the "die lots of times" games, although there is an "exploration mode" where you can keep going after you die (and another where you get something like 10 lives). I liked it well enough to get the DLC. I like the storytelling better than Spiderweb games and there is some interesting variety in gameplay.
I keep trying Spiderweb games but really don't like the storytelling and there are some rough edges in the gameplay as well, so I don't recommend those even though I really like the graphic style. I will note that the Avadon games are all in the Huble Trove right now (DRM-free) if you want to try them at a lower price (or maybe better just try one first before getting a bunch of them). A Short Hike is there also (I haven't tried it yet).
I also like Chuchel and recommend it. Also, SimCity 3000 is one of my favorites although the GOG version can crash randomly after several hours (if they didn't fix it; I don't remember if it happened yet on my newer system) and does not have autosave :(. So if you get it make sure to make a habit of saving fairly frequently.
Cosmic Star Heroine is the best deal in the sale IMO.
The Tropico series is one of the better builders (although the theme is rather obnoxious) and has things like microclimates that affect your crops and the ability to enact various political policies and economic strategies. The games are all fairly similar so try any of them (possibly except 6 that didn't work for me). Unless they changed it recently Tropico 6 requires a quad core CPU and will just stay on the loading screen forever if you don't have one. Intel CPUs with integrated graphics are usually dual core so they won't work even if you also have a good external GPU.
I didn't like Solstice and recommend avoiding that one. It has a strange story telling where you learn things about the main characters after you make decisions that depend on that information. I also ended up really disliking the main characters and almost everyone in the story.
