this is @digs whole beat when we watch nature docs
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thread is reminding me to refund many a āindie darlingā
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Iāve also been playing a Pokemon ROM hack, Pokemon Unbound, which is a hack of Fire Red and has like, all the pokemon up to Gen VII I think?? Itās pretty ridiculous in terms of scale, and has this really weird problem where itās got a mishmash of tones. Specifically, a dude got incinerated by a pokemon and his ashes were disposed of in a garbage can, and then like 5 minutes later I read a sign that was like āPokemon gain experience from battling!ā
I actually kind of like the gritty vs. cutesy thing but itās giving me whiplash
Also this first gym sucks shit. Itās foggy, so accuracy is way down, and the guyās pokemon uses grassy terrain, which heals everyone (itās a 2v2 battle). So with battle animations on, you get the foggy thing every turn, then an individual heal animation for each hurt pokemon. And as far as actual mechanics go, this just means the battle lasts for-fucking-ever because everyone is missing and then slowly healing.
Also potions should not be allowed in any trainer battles IMO, itās irritating to get the best pokemon to a sliver of health so the opponent can use a full restore. Fuck you.
Anyway Iām liking this ROM hack but it has all the problems of ROM hacks, yāknow? But itās nice to see all these weird-ass pokemon rendered into sprites.
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Donāt get the Cuphead hate on here, I finished it in a day then used a guide to unlock b&w mode the day after. Loved it. I used the short range spread and the homing shot.
For context Contraās difficulty puts me off but I 100% ed Astro Boy Gba which is Cuppyās main influence as far as I can tell
Edit Contra might actually be closer, canāt remember if you can free aim in Astro Boy. Either way the segmented boss rush nature of the game makes it much more approachable
hmm, i havenāt played cuphead but i never once thought about astro boy: omega factor (one of my favorite games) when looking at it. cuphead looks like a pretty standard run-and-gun, along yes contra sort of lines
astro boy is way more of a brawler. you can shoot but it isnāt really your primary attack
if you want a game inspired by astro boy on gba please try aces wild on steam which is rather good
thereās at least one other indie game on steam that is clearly inspired by AB:OF but i canāt recall what it is now!!
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Yeah youāre right, I was wilding a bit with that. Itās been a while. Mainly the air dashing is what made me think of it
In red dead online I was roaming around enjoying the wind in the trees and rushing waterfalls etc. in the single player red dead Iām constantly thinking āis that a cop riding ahead there? am I dressed differently enough from when I robbed that place nearby?ā as Iām slowly being pushed to the edge of the map by bounty hunters and pinkertons
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I would not characterize Celeste as literally having āno punishmentā. Celesteās challenges are split up into screens, and some of the later screens get pretty long. You absolutely do have to repeat the early parts of a screen to get back to the difficult maneuver at the end of the screen.
But rather than talk about Celeste specifically, I think itās more illuminating to talk about this type of āpunishmentā in general. Is it ever OK to force the player to literally repeat content theyāve beaten before?
A couple examples: Trackmania tracks can be pretty long if youāre going for medals. One mistake in a 2 minute track can force you to restart the whole race (and Iām sometimes restarting these races hundreds of times). Some of the hardest tracks in Trackmania are multi-lap tracks. If the player has proven they can get a good time on lap 1, why force them to repeat that on lap 2 and 3?
Getting Over It With Bennet Foddy is one of the starker examples of this. I would absolutely characterize what that game does to the player as āpunishmentā. The game often sends the player back to very early challenges (sometimes near the beginning of the game) for making single mistakes on later challenges.
Without this type of āpunishmentā, the experience of playing these games would be drastically different. I think these types of games provide worthwhile experiences, some of which I will list below:
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Consistency: having enough skill to beat something once is very different than having enough skill to beat something multiple times. Thatās why the multi-lap tracks in Trackmania are so much harder than the single lap ones. I can āget luckyā and get a good time on one lap, but itās very unlikely to āget luckyā on all three laps. I may be able to do a difficult route on a one lap race, but I have to take a more conservative route on a three lap race to achieve the consistency needed to complete it.
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Perseverance: the experience of playing a game that makes you repeat content is very different from playing each challenge exactly once. A game that punishes you is a game where the player is in an active conversation with the designer. Every failure makes the player consider whether they should continue or not. Do I trust that the designer created a worthwhile experience? Negative emotions are valuable and can create a much stronger personal narrative for the playerās achievement. Setbacks and failures at different points of the game invest the player in a way that linear incremental progress canāt.
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Mastery: a player āvaluing their timeā will start to approach repeated content with a speedrunnerās mentality. Since theyāve already completed this early challenge, they want to be able to complete it as fast as possible to get back to the challenge they were at. My first time up Getting Over Itās beginning mountain was a slow and arduous process, but by the 20th time it was a breeze. I was flying up the mountain with only a few precise swings of the hammer. While the challenge was ostensibly the same, the experience of mastering and optimizing that challenge was very different than my first experience with it.
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Drama: consequences for failure add drama to a game, even if the player doesnāt fail. I beat the final section of Getting Over It on my first try, but I was terrified and overly cautious and then extremely relieved. Iāve only really experienced that level of drama in Getting Over It, PUBG, and DCSS and itās not a coincidence that all those games have āpunishmentsā that cost the player significant amounts of time, regardless of whether the player feels like they need that extra time to improve.
Iām certainly not saying this type of design is right or good in all games, but I do tend to gravitate towards games that promote mastery, even if (or maybe especially if) those games have harsh punishments for failure.
Finally, I think that games with harsh punishments absolutely need to
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have a high skill ceiling. If itās trivial to reproduce the exact same moves every time, then thereās not much room to improve or master it on subsequent tries.
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have challenges that appear intentional. Iāve played enough bad Mario Maker levels to know that I donāt enjoy being punished by a designerās incompetence.
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iād suggest a third requirement: if youāre going to punish me for fucking up, make me laugh when it happens. some of my fondest memories of a game ruining my shit are from demonās souls and dark souls 1 precisely because itās extremely funny to like, pull off my best run thru senās fortress yet, masterfully dispatching or avoiding every snake asshole in my path, only to get unceremoniously squished by a big perfectly round indiana jones boulder. castlevaniaās medusa heads are also a good lower fidelity example: there always seems to be one or two i forget about that comically topple me into a pit mid-jump
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just want to say quest of ki is a great game of this type
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Yeah I think I was lumping that in with intentionality. I was specifically thinking of bullshit deaths in games like I Wanna Be the Guy ā thereās not a reasonable way for the player to avoid it the first time, but it can be pretty amusing to rip control away from the player, especially when the stakes are high and itās completely unexpected or stupid.
āFairnessā in games is sort of a backwards goal, anyway. Games are inherently unfair, because unless you literally read the code or an FAQ, thereās no way to know exactly how everything is going to work before you experience it. The unknown in games is alluring!
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I think this kind of experience can be fine, but for the more extreme examples of this I think a practice mode becomes a must for me to even consider it worth bothering with. Ikaruga is one of my all time favorite games, but if the only way for me to get any reps on stage 4 was to play through the first three stages beforehand each time I probably wouldnāt have even liked the game. Make it so that the only way to beat it is to be able to do everything in a single run, only let me practice areas I have already reached legitimately if you must but if the only way to get thirty seconds of practice and exposure to newer later areas is to invest almost perfectly played significant number of minutes in first then I feel confident branding your game as something concerned with punishment beyond and at a cost to everything else.
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Bet thereās a bit in Conkerās Bad Fur Day where like a talking tampon or some shit says this exact line after you pick up 300 āblingwadsā in one āzoneā. And itās clever!! Itās ātaking the piss.ā
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Curse of Monkey Island is really fun so far. I thought I wouldnāt like its art, but its whispyness has its charm and so does how it sometimes looks like a cartoon that aired in a timeslot no one was around to watch. Someone just mentioned thereād be ship combat coming up, so weāll see if it keeps up being fun. Well, anyway, hereās Steve Blumās Gregg Bergerās (???) beady eyed pirate character looking funny.
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Restated: if you game has no checkpoints, itād better be at least as good as Getting Over It!
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WEāRE A BAND OF VICIOUS PIRATESā¦
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ā¦A SAILINā OUT TO SEAā¦
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wrote an after action report of my first time playing IL-2 in anger (i.e. with a joystick). suggest using the little āexpand postā arrow
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Fine, ROLL, roll through the gates of hell!
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Cleansing my tootsies earned me the ability to double jump
Was this game made by foot perverts
If so they shoulda been more perverted. I canāt believe Iām about to say this but this game isnāt horny enough so far. Though maybe thatās cuz I rejected the one character who was putting the moves on me, because he was gross. Maybe I coulda done all kinds of disgusting sex moves if Iād only been brave enough.
Iām enjoying this even though I find it largely unappealing aesthetically. Running around the island is pleasant and I am a sucker for mystery games that donāt waste my fuckinā time.
I just wish all of them looked like an episode of Columbo.
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