Feels like there’s a much higher proportion of handcrafted/stop motion/puppet aesthetics this year.
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nothing really with the thing itself, it’s just it’s not getting major puff pieces anymore about being a growing phenomenon and a lot of other people have expressed their annoyance about it too. so it’s pretty self-contained.
in addition to everything else i think i’m very annoyed by the idea that like women or queer people or people of color are inherently lumped in with these kinds of games or this is providing diverse people an opportunity when a lot of this stuff is just as predatory and cutthroat as anything else. it’s just bringing the brutal capitalist frontier elsewhere - and it’s not like a lot of these games are really about people’s experiences as much as they are generic kids media type stuff. feels extremely backpatty and disingenuous. which has always been my problem with indie games writ large - people pretending to be everyone’s friend and not acknowledging all of the brutal shit that goes on.
also i guess it’s just very consumer-focused. like i don’t have any issues with the streams that focus on women-led games or games by black developers or whatever because even if that’s also being lumped into a category too in a way that can reduce stuff at least the types of games people are making is more varied.
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also yeah some of these games look neat but being in the twee stream makes me less likely to want to get on board which bums me out
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Yeah at least the others are a way of grouping a wide variety of things through a single lens. In this case the lens is a nebulous adjective. The way some of the hosts refer to it seems like they think it’s a distinct subculture but not sure who it really applies to (creators/streamers/consumers). Just ends up feeling like a lifestyle brand.
I don’t think I realised before that there is such an overlap between ASMR content creators and wholesome direct.
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yeah if you think about the way a lot of these emphasize pastoral imagery and like small business management stuff. it feels very tradwife influencer-adjacent in spite of trying to position itself as not that
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Milano’s Odd Job Collection is doing something for me. I guess because it was made in 1999
They should do more to unearth/rerelease stuff like this.
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i added this one to my wishlist because i liked the art style
Am catching myself looking up the streamers more than the games so far
i had that Gecko Gods game on my wishlist from awhile back because i like lizard. seems pretty minimal zelda-esque but inoffensive.
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I thought this one had come out a while ago
yeah it really seems to emphasize the personalities on here - i’m guessing a huge amount are youtubers. i guess that’s why they all have like immaculately framed rooms they’re in.
i think some of these lifestyle influencers have done a lot of damage to the minds of cis women everywhere lol.
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I love the idea of a field guide as a core focus but would it kill a wholesome dev to make a game that is exclusively about bug catching (without also having plant collecting and fishing)
Just noticed “Hilltop Works” credited at the end of the video, is this their first official/commercial translation work?
i remember reading an interview about how a lot of ‘wholesome’ devs were inspired by stuff like Katamari Damacy which always bummed me out how much they seemed to miss the point of games like that. because part of making one of these games now is you’re basically not allowed to make fun of yourself or the audience in any way. which is like the opposite of what Katamari is lol.
it’s like “can we have a Katamari Damacy except without any of the stuff that makes it weird or distinct?”
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I didn’t realise they were that Patreon translator. I guess they must be getting a good enough reputation
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i think it’s funny that a lot of these games were probably made by people living on thin margins and just cobbling stuff together but a lot of the people advertising them are youtubers in these immaculately decorated rooms. an overwhelming image of like pastoral prosperity. the ideology, it is dripping
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Women-Led Games up next
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it’s funny to hear people describe their game as being in “the walking simulator genre” with absolute sincerity at this point now
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Apparently this was announced a while ago but I like the art
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This regularly drives me mad… The term seems so obviously derisive yet people embrace it in a way that just seems baffling to me… As though they’re trying to be dismissive about their own game…
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