not sure about “announce everything the week after GDC” but I’m game
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oh jeez it’s got not-tom hardy who I couldn’t stand in anything I saw him in until quarry. I think the facial hair helped so it’s good he’s got that here
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The Messenger is just OK. It has some really odd flaws, for example there are basically just 5 enemy types reused over and over with not even a palette swap. This will probably be better
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no papa
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https://yachtclubgames.com/2019/03/cyber-shadow/
A year or two ago they got in contact with a guy (MekaSkull) who had been working solo on this game for about a decade. Yatch Club looks like they’re acting as publisher, though it sounds like they’re assisting some on the design side of things as well.
I doubt this is the game they chose to make based off of that market research survey a couple years back.
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yeah I gave it a look and it really just reaffirmed my pity for devolver-attached projects
I don’t know what their producers’ deal is, everything comes out undercooked
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though I guess that’s only as bad as annapurna where everything comes out overcooked
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See this is weird to me because Plague Knight is a bizarre lateral step from Shovel Knight and, to me, is most enjoyable in that context. But I guess if you only have time for one, that would probably be the best one
Spectre Knight can scythe-surf though so that’s a plus
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Ha, interesting connection. Yeah the average Devolver and Annapurna games represent opposite ways of achieving “fine, but somehow lacking substance”
Yeah but I’m assuming it’s obvious enough from Plague Knight itself + other videogame context just what it is that it’s riffing off of, even without having played Shovel Knight. Hmm, I am inadvertently rephrasing the “Shovel Knight is boring” argument. Plague Knight has something new to say not only about Shovel Knight but about videogames in general, whereas Shovel Knight was content to be a platonic ideal of already existing games.
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okay that’s a good call, i’m with you now
I think it’s as simple as ‘B+ is really hard to hit already’
If your game is hot fire you’ll know it and won’t need a publisher’s help; if it’s better than 99% of everything else it still probably won’t make a dent and you just had ‘potential’
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Agreed. I also can sense those publishers pick games with some serious passion, talent, effort and imagination that goes into them. That’s why I’ve played many of them in the first place and had the opportunity to feel slightly disappointed in the end.
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Yeah, overall they’re solid publishers with a track record that would be envious if we didn’t live in a time of plenty; I don’t think we’ve ever had situations where there are enough games that a publisher can curate an aesthetic like we do now.
Plus, Annapurna represents the beginning of a film-style ‘rich folk who just want to fund cool art’ that’s been too long coming; having a channel of games with solid midsize budgets and whose highest responsibility is expanded aesthetics is needed.
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Quietly the bar keeps going up. One belief I have is that I swear to god Environmental Station Alpha would’ve been received with rapture and a 500-post thread on this forum if it had come out in 2005 instead of 2015. But it was too late, it was just another Metrovania, and it was completely ignored. Even us videogame aficionados only have so many hours in the day to devote to videogames and we are both novelty-seeking and community-seeking (even in single-player, we would prefer to play a game those around us are also playing).
Still, ultimately, I’m not sure I truly get more out of videogames than I did in 2005, and on the other hand it must be brutal to be a dev on the other side of this. It’s something really unfortunate about capitalism and human nature that is reproduced in many areas.
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Wait, I just learned Environmental Station Alpha was made by the same person as Baba Is You (!?!?!?).
That’s insane game design versatility. Like I mean, Environmental Station Alpha is notable for me among other things for really fun boss battles, also grappling hook platforming and a generous and weird postgame. And this guy’s breakout hit turns out to be a mindbending sokoban puzzle game???
Is that enough for y’all to finally try playing ESA
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actually, yes
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ESA feels exactly like the sort of very solid game a bright designer with a small pile of quick games can build; there may be only a couple dozen of these people in the world at any time but I expect it to exist. Baba Is You feels like the bolt of lightning that sometimes strikes a gamejam project; the real miracle is how well is was contained and expressed in the final game. It’s the execution of Baba that makes this developer feel really formidable to me.
It must say something about the core game design skillset. (At a minimum, to experiment extensively, iterate extensively and to have a deep empathy for your player’s psychology.)
Is this really that unique, or would more devs be capable of this kind of leap, if they didn’t pigeonhole themselves or the market didn’t pigeonhole them after their first hit (surely the fact that ESA was not a big hit has something to do with this turn, right)?
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ESA is a traditional enough game that I’d expect a great many solo devs to be able to do something like it, if not to that quality bar (the ‘dozens’ qualifier I used). Many solo devs, especially those raised in the Newgrounds community, have an institutional knowledge of platformer design. And many solo devs would like to experiment with different game forms, though fewer are able to execute in multiple spaces.
But the kind of analytical and empathetic thinking that makes a good designer is rarer and harder to acquire than genre-specific knowledge, and transcends those bounds.
Another (innumerate) way to put it: I’d trust about 10% of my classmates to have this profile, about 35% of the indie designers I know, and about 20% of the AAA designers I now work with.