this game apparently got taken offline on steam for three weeks because of a DMCA by a former team member on the first version of the game that is different from this one, and said person didn’t work on this one at all? at least that’s what i can gather. anyway it’s back online now, and now the studio is in precarious position partially because their whole launch didn’t really happen
i met this guy before and he’s a nice guy and i hope they can turn it around.
anyway yet another story about the stress and precarity of commercial indie game development
also to anyone who has been following this story: HORSES is banned from the Epic Store now (as well as Steam), and it comes out today on GOG, Itch and Humble
I’ll be playing it. Not just cause the controversy. And not just because I think the ligation here is over some real puritan anti-art shit. But most of all because I really liked Saturnalia. And just for $5?? Easy.
i played it through for judging and liked the game personally! it is one of those chore-based walking sim horror games but feels like an interesting/unique enough twist on it. for 5 dollars it’s not a huge investment at all (they easily could have gotten away with charging 10 tbh) so it’s worth it.
and yeah i like Saturnalia too from what i played of it and it unfortunately kinda slipped under the radar. probably being an Epic Games exclusive for 1 year didn’t help, and it’s def a much more expensive game as well. but at least that’s more widely available now too.
Watching the trailer for Horses took me back to when I first started hearing about all those European mundane horror movies like Dogtooth and Salo. It felt really confident in what it was doing and it definitely piqued my interest.
“I often come up with ideas when I’m out on runs, and one day I thought of this speech that would define this character that we were trying to figure out. This speech popped my in my head as I was struggling through the third mile.
I only eat at vending machines, because I don’t like interacting with waiters. Restaurants are more complicated: there are greetings and “hellos” and “Is this table okay?” And I’m thinking, “Why should I care what you recommend? You’re not me!” But I’m not supposed to say that, so I just have to count the seconds until the interaction can end, devise socially acceptable ways of saying “Go f*** yourself.” Because for me, conversation is a prelude to failure. Vending machines never ask me a question that I don’t know the answer to. The exchange is reduced to the transaction: money in, product out. Why can’t people be more like that?”
– Ken Levine, Studio President & Creative Director
They pay him to do something other than write, right? Like, at least one other thing?
The rest of this strongly implies AI generated the level layouts too. They keep cryptically saying stuff about ‘training’ the system instead of hand building levels but never out and out says AI.
okay so if I understand this correctly, Ken Levine has contempt for other people for not being able to innately know his exact wants and needs and refuses to express them and prefers machines because the only discourse with automation is projecting your will onto it
so how long has Judas been in dev again, because I think I may have found out why it’s taking so long
holy shit this is so much worse than i thought…like one of the biggest conflicts me and my ex had was how much time she had to spend at work fighting fires that the higher ups caused and they just kind of haven’t learned anything at all
Ok… to be clear… I believe what the quote is saying, is that this lame rant about wanting people to be more like vending machines is the villain speech Levine thought up while out running, not his actual thoughts & opinions.
I literally cannot take a new ken levine game existing in current year, the thought is unbearable. an entirely dysfunctional industry and cratering economy is killing every other video game, please just let the aim be true here
