Maybe the staff were Soul Hackers fans
4 Likes
watching the Guerilla Collective (pre-Summer Games fest) stream and iâve already seen like a really egregious NES Castlevania Clone, a Silent Hill clone, and a Mischief Makers clone. i mean no hate but like also⌠if youâre going to make a ripoff of an older game maybe you shouldnât make it this egregious? like itâs down to the character design and stuff. itâs very weird, all that effort to basically remake these games.
people keep acting like indie games are the savior of the game industry in the wake of AAA layoffs and then i see so many weird clones that look fine show up in these streams but have basically nothing unique about them and iâm just like⌠what world are you living in??
11 Likes
Will agree with the aesthetic laziness here but the lame pedant within me thinks the 3rd one is much more Klonoa than a game rotten with Clancers
3 Likes
i have mixed feelings about this stuff it depends on how commonplace the thing theyre already pastiching is, and how closely it hews to âthis is a whole game as a wink wink referenceâ as opposed âthis is a singular thing that inspired me and i want to homage itâ
Like that first one instantly annoys me because its just âhohoho remember Castlevania??â (yeah we all fuckin remember castlevania bud) whereas there is really nothing quite like Mischief Makers and i could imagine enjoying a game lovingly inspired by it but with something of its own voice
the ur example of this for me is that MOTHER 4 fangame that eventually switched to an original project. I think literally saying âthis is our sequel to a famous seriesâ is tacky (much as its also weirdly ballsy in our C&D world), but saying âwe love this aesthetic that there is still perishingly few examples of and wanted to make something in its styleâ seems alright. Its a thin and subjective line
6 Likes
yeah klonoa and i guess tomba in terms of character design
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ngl i do think that game looks kinda rad and yes admittedly it might be exactly that âREMEMBER THESE GAME??â mind control working on me and im just in denial about it
DoubleShake is a very on the nose/working draft title tho
1 Like
the main character looks SOO much like Marina from Mischief Makers though. and itâs called double âSHAKEâ. and you grab those giant balls to move around. itâs just hard to ignore some of this stuff for me, itâs too egregious.
2 Likes
maybe indie devs should start hiring like, an inspiration reader to do an asset pass. Like tweak this a bit itâs too much of a ripoff, you can at least disguise it better
The same person animators should hire to click their tongue and go âyou sure this moment calls for an Akira bike slide?â
its a relatable fan impulse/misjudgment where the creator is being naive about how much theyre homaging vs ripping off. i guess i sympathize cuz im prone to it
7 Likes
commercializing your fan AU with a barely concealed self-insert OC? hahaha thatâs so embarrassing i would never be tempted to do something like that, hahaha no siree
6 Likes
Considering Billingsâ dad and three uncles were all WW2 vets for the US, I would bet against him being a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer. He or other employees may have been Wehraboos though, as you spend enough time dealing with âserious thinking about WW2â especially during the times that they were working thanks to a number of seriously misguided and/or outright false histories written during the 1960s, youâre going to get a lot of exposure to âthe glorious war-machine of Germany which was really more Prussian than Nazi if you think about itâ* kind of apologetic thinking.
* - Which to be clear, is patently crap.
8 Likes
well iâd play a mischief makers clone (clicks link, sees title) well maybe i wouldnât play a mischief makers clone
something i will be thinking about a lot: an article-length piece on Raw Fury that repeatedly quotes, dwells on and frames the article around how inspiring the author found the company motto thatâs been printed out and stuck around the walls and doesnât mention at all that these are the same guys who released their standard contract a while back and, uh
4 Likes
but we must Support Indie Games, because theyâre Important. and i think doing so is refreshing and what is needed in our modern fast-paced industry of today. all those people who donât care about games: they can go take a hike!!! they donât want games to exist like we do!! being devoted gamers who believe the Passion for Games is our core value - we owe that to gamers across the world. and all the other logistical stuff will just work itself out! youâre welcome!
i think iâve talked about how funny i think it is that NoClip is treated as this legitimate serious venue for documentaries even though it is really obviously just glorified PR. but because the game industry is so drowning in this stuff as just low-level radiation NoClip is like, basically a beacon of integrity by comparison.
8 Likes
While closet Nazis are visible, "Crypto-Naziâs might be a better name
â Redmond Simonsen
always love this quote in war game
or Hydra-style immortality
2 Likes
The nostalgia-bait clone games that bug me the most are the pokemon ones. There are so many different takes you could do on âJRPG where you catch the enemies and make them your partyâ and yet, every single one of them are âchild trainer with baseball cap catches Sugimori-esque -mons with elemental types inside a thrown geometric shaped device and then battles other trainers in a modern day city and collects badgesâ. More irritating are when the game seems framed as an attempt to âfixâ the series.
The other annoying ones are the Zelda clones that adhere strictly to the visual style and formula of 2D Zeldas. Most of the Zelda-style 2D action RPGs from back in the 90s did way more to differentiate themselves visually and structurally. Why donât we have more clones of Alundra, Landstalker or even Soleil, which despite having the exact Zelda visual style still manages to do enough of itâs own thing with the map layout and animal buddies.
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that would require these people playing more classic 2D ARPG-likes than just the Zeldas
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Pushing back against this as I think the last two years have brought an absolute wealth of wonderful âindepedent gamesâ that I have had to not pay attention to save myself from.
I think the Release Of New Games is extremely healthy and saying âanother one of theseâ is wasted energy and better to just ignore them.
I wishlisted that Silent Hill game though (does not constitute a sell.)
I got like 4 Resident Evil style games wishlisted.
5 Likes
If you look at the trailer youâll also see: donkey kong country minecart level, giant crab, phanto from super mario bros 2, mecha dragon fight from mega man 2.
Itâs very obnoxious!
Itâs also got fishing though I like that even though itâs a meme also.
that game is doing the bit so hard I kinda find it charming
2 Likes