play the incremental game WHILE playing another game. double dip. most get to a plateau that you just check on every once in a while
4 Likes
Yeah this is probably what I’ll do with the next ones, I just need a palate cleanser for a minute before I fire up one of those others that Tux recommended
2 Likes
Castlevania Chronicles (PS1)
Just poking around. Gonna start with Arrange Mode, AST, Easy.
9 Likes
I think I’m going to play all the pixel remasters with 1 character only. I picked red mage for FF1, he effortlessly destroyed everything past the marsh cave
So I’m adding 0,5x xp and gil malus on top of the solo restriction for the remaining games.
It’s impossible to play FF6 solo with the constant party switching, so I’m just picking one character from whoever I have in the party at the moment, roughly prioritizing Shadow > Celes > Terra. I love Shadow now , shurikens have a GREAT animation, I can just buy 99 for 30 gil each and have him sit in the back row throwing them all days while the dog mauls whoever gets close. Plus if Shadow is the only one alive in battle he can’t leave. Checkmate
Boss AI script being available online + Celes’ enemy magic absorbing Runic ability are the only reason I got past Kefka in the Narshe battle. Had to time it so Runic would always be up on turns 3 (in case he used Ice 2) and 4 (in case he used Muddle) out of 4 just in case. Challenge hasn’t been too masocorish otherwise
FF6 Pixel remaster kept a lot of assets from the OG FF6 so it looks noticeably worse than FF1!
The music is new though. Narshe has a sax now:
I’m happy I can have some newfound appreciation for the game with this ridiculous challenge because FF6 has not aged very well, cutscenes feel slow, every character has the same set of like 8 emotes and they’re trying to build every scene around these 8. Cyan goes from « They Killed My Wife, My Child, My King, I Pledge My Life To Vengeance » to « I am now the comic relief because I say thou » in about 10 minutes.
FF6 feels like THE proto AAA blockbuster game, got a bit of everything, action, romance, tragedy, comedy, easily digestible combat, a relatively fast pace, memorable setpieces, heavy railroading at least for 20 hours, you can talk about its great vertical slice, etc. Ew
I do love those giant enemy drawings VS tiny player sprites though, can’t deny it
19 Likes
DREDGE has interested me only as a negative example of few trends in gaming. It is a fishing game with a Lovecraftian theme, where you boat between islands in a small map zone unlocking upgrades that make you faster and allow you to catch deeper fish and haul more of them. I’ll just cut to the chase and say, with Dredge, developers Black Salt games are selling a well calculated vibe for $25.
Probably anyone on SB will look at the steam page for this game, see the smooth “low poly” art, scan the fishing mechanics for all its cozy games cultural baggage, noticing the vague Lovecraft motifs being evoked and aptly suspect just how little of the philosophical and aesthetic values intrinsic to cosmic horror will actually survive translation into a modern indie game like this. Any poster here wouldn’t need to go onto Black Salt’s website’s about page and read the team bio there, discovering it’s a team of four who made this game, comprising a project lead (who professes a bias toward triple-A games), multiple artists, and a programmer; to more or less have confirmed for you that there isn’t going to be much that differentiates Dredge from any other indie game with a decent art style whose main design pillar is keeping the player on a dopamine drip feed you would only need to look at the steam page.
But having actually put in the time to beat I can say with at least that much authority that there isn’t any difference.
My reasons for picking up Dredge were that I wanted something to play on my Steam Deck and because I really like that other Lovecraftian themed fishing game, Sunless Sea, which is a grueling and somewhat obscure, properly designed machine for conveying something of the aesthetic values of Lovecraftian works that most games, because of their power fantasy aspirations, usually substitute with ample tentacles and rune emblazoned books and babbling cultists. What this leaves players of Dredge to experience is one of those games where what is thematic and immersing about videogames has its territory ceded to the lizard-brain pleasure of engaging with a progression system. It’s a game about Big Number Go Up, about upgrading your boat speed and hull size, not talking to locals or seeing freaky shit, the fact that you’re dredging fish from a sea that has been contaminated with something eldritch-y is practically and emotionally just incidental to the way the Big Number hits and you gradually unlock upgrades that smooth over the miniscule amounts of texture the game had at the start.
Does no one working on these games ever feel bad when they’re designing a progression system that just enables players to pursue the means to play less and less of your game? I suspect the algorithmically generated feel that Dredge has can be somewhat explained by the fact that no one on Black Salt’s team seems to be a game designer, or none of them seem to profess a passion for game design over visual arts, finance and triple-a gaming, or programming. I know you can professionally be occupied with one or multiple disciplines and be personally involved with more, but I find it hard to see Dredge as anything other than the onerous product of a team that feels no anxiety about flashing its visual arts and business pedigree as they have while flaunting nothing about game design.
Shit. I was feeling a bit of the old trauma from my time working on a failed game project with three artists and a programmer, who spent months talking about character designs and incoherent puzzle sequences without setting down anything about some basic mechanical ideas for how the game was to be played. Concept art first. Vibes first. Conventional mechanics designed and done to death in at the last minute, then ship!!! The game seems to be doing marvelously well for quick buzz indie title.
I’m sorry for ranting. But it’s just that if you want rich atmosphere, a pleasantly abstracted simulation of boating minutia into a progression system that leads you through varied narrative and mechanical challenges over the course of several tens of hours, excellent music, flavorful quests and writing that leaves a strong impression–you can have it all! Just don’t play Dredge and go play Sunless Sea instead.
17 Likes
Every time I hear of Dredge (which i have not even looked at an image of) I think of this game instead.
My theory is that you all should just play this other game I have not played instead.
7 Likes
have any of u heard of this game “zelda”. it’s pretty fun and im getting a nice 30 fps when ryujinx isnt stuttering on shader compilation. link has a cool new tattoo its giving he / they more than ever imo. i remember being extremely enthusiastic about botw when it came out but that kind of faded and i never felt especially concerned with playing more of it tho it did bring us the Extremely Cute Link. i probably just felt like death stranding and elden ring were like… more my thing u know…
7 Likes
yeah I heard of dredge and when I looked at the UI I was like “this is a freakin skinner box lmao” and that kind of turned me off.
5 Likes
this game is real real nice. not remotely scary but a fun three hour fishing game with a weird vibe. did i blog about it? i guess not lol
3 Likes
Man this game just nails the vibe of a $24 PS1 adventure game from a Japanese developer you’ve never heard of before named like Blue Happy that has way more detail than you’re expecting, but then they also fit it into a game that’s just 4 hours long.
8 Likes
Now I’m playing Pentiment and it’s like, finally, some good god damn food. The perfect tonic to affirm what I have always felt, and held closest to my chest while staring deep into the bleak depths of modern videogame garbage that is Dredge: that videogames fuckn rule.
15 Likes
to be fair though, if one genre is allowed to have a skinner box, surely it must be fishing
7 Likes
in columns crown on gba, if you set up a chain of more than 2 parts, you get a big dramatic pause before it all happens
that’s pretty cool, and i’m surprised i haven’t seen it in more puzzle games
6 Likes
That also happens in Pochi & Nyaa (for its own version of “chains”).
3 Likes
returnal is neat. just when it seems like things are going well something pounces on you from outta nowhere and like three things are shooting triple-tiered ring lasers at you. the rotting goo gun is incredibly fun, like using it feels very very fun. good game!!!
6 Likes
i have since decided to torrent and install final fantasy vii remake intergrade bc of this and im salivating over how nice the clothes look!!! i will probably play and enjoy ffxvi tbh… even if its not the same development staff as ffviir also im not ashamed to admit that two like Main Line Final Fantasy Titles coming out in the same year is something that actually enthuses me quite a bit
3 Likes
Meteos and Panel de Pon both have this to some degree too!
5 Likes
Played Omega Strikers and I found it suffered from incredibly small characters who have to crowd around the disc and thus become an indistinguishable mass of bodies flailing for the puck. One of those games where things happen and you can’t really be sure you did them. Pretty much done with it.
Back on my gradual FFviiR platinum attempt and I never realised how s l o w some sections are due to the enforced walk and squeeze corridors. I don’t really mind them in games but Remake is like 50% slowdown. It isn’t stopping me enjoying it and I find the game really breezy to just sit with, even on hard. However, casting interrupts on hard just really suck and it becomes very apparent how the enemies can detect the player’s soul jumping between the party and beelining it for you which I interpret as the game punishing me for playing as Aerith.
7 Likes
my friend gave me their GB SP and is lending me Wario Land 4 and when I was playing in bed late last night and got to this level I was not expecting to be greeted and sung to
and then you can unlock a backwards version to listen to in the Sound Room
along with more weird unlockable music/ambient SFX loops with titles like “About That Shepard” and “The Short Futon” while a TV screen flashes stuff like this
such a cool and cursed, densely compressed cartoon vibe that Nintendo doesn’t do anymore? (here’s an idea for Wario Land 5, Nintendo: Sound Room → ASMRium where you can use the touch screen to stroke, squish, crunch, crinkle, etc. all the sick junk you can collect across levels + more experimental tunes)
I played from SML:II to WL:3 last year and kinda wanna revisit them on handheld now, cuz there is something special about holding a portal to weirdo worlds in one’s hand, in bed, lights off except for maybe a candle at most
18 Likes
I’m really into this and encouraged to dig into wl4 more. Closest i’ve seen nintendo get to the sound room idea was in the later wario ware bonus unlockable rooms. It’s been said here but I love how whatever hardware quirks led to the gba’s compressed audio fuzz gives it distinct personality like the metallic ym2612 does for gen/md
6 Likes