knytt stories was such a moment
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On my last reread of The Buried Giant the image that stuck with me, for some reason, is the terrifying open plain in the second chapter that must be travelled at exactly noon, the time when demonic forces are minimized and you have the greatest likelihood of an uneventful crossing where you see nothing but grass. I’m wondering what videogames capture that feeling – I feel like horror games lean much more into claustrophobia instead.
I feel like on one level fear of openness has rarely been pursued as a conscious experiential goal, on another level it pervades basically every 3D game starting from Wolfenstein. A narrow forward-facing camera provokes the anxiety that The Buried Giant’s couple face walking in a line in the open, where the one in front feels the need to ritualistically call out “Are you still there?” at regular intervals
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Passing through The Barrens off-peak server hours.
I wish Death Stranding made timefall a bit more random, because moments like the one you’re describing DO happen but only in like a few places. Want like some STALKER-esque mod that makes weather more erratic like Blowouts or Anomalies or monster hordes in that game.
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100% I did not care for the character portraits at all even as I found the general spritework to be effective
ooo what are examples of true risk taking in games
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yep celeste was one of the games i had in mind when i wrote
despite some platforms conveying Inertia which is nice, the stapled-together discrete motions you ultimately follow by employing the dash mechanic completely defeated any sense of flow i might have achieved. [disclaimer: i only played the first couple of stages]
i skimmed through a longplay and i feel like i could probably vibe with the part where you’re falling/gliding through these wide greenish caverns and the soundtrack takes on a kind of fluid quality like the SSX games, but nothing else jumps out at me. i liked towerfall though! the sort of dinky/bumbly physics work much better in a competitive game where it’s funny for everyone when all chaos ensues
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I love stuff that doesn’t have solid collision or exclusive interactions, this thing is kind of meh though. It’s got the same hit box as the saw, the bottom and sides can be used similarly for precision challenges as a softer form of punishment. Both can be used as a enemy only gate. Nice, but it would have been also nice to have a 1x1 version of both, the bumper especially, it takes up 9 blocks of space but is very limited in how you can bounce off of it.
What the fuck are up with the eyes, the art direction for added stuff in the old styles are jarring imo anyway I’m done
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“dinky/bumbly” is a good way to describe how that game feels. i feel slightly mad when i see people say that game is like some kind of masterclass in 2d platformer controls because i don’t like the controls very much at all when it comes to the sort of precision platforming you’re supposed to do. i’m not even a major control stickler like a lot of people (i also just don’t believe in the idea of “objectively perfect” controls either), but given that that’s the focus of the game it sticks out to me. but yeah i agree that that feeling of game works well for TowerFall
Those games feel significantly different to me compared to Celeste! Knytt Stories is probably the best of that group.
Celeste feels more like an N or a Dustforce in my mind. But also this like “cultural memory” idea feels weird to me because Maddy was making GameMaker games when I was, which was like 15+ years ago. They feel pretty connected to that early indie scene, unless I’m misunderstanding your point.
I don’t think I agree that a new game in an old style erases memories of old games. That’s not true on an individual basis, and I’m not sure what it means if you try to abstract that to apply to “culture” as a whole. Like, people that didn’t know about Knytt Stories weren’t suddenly going to discover it if Celeste didn’t exist. In fact, the inverse feels more likely to me!
The way it mixes momentum with precision is pretty unmatched in my mind. There aren’t a lot of games that even attempt adding momentum to a game with Megaman-esque control and when they do it ends up feeling modal or swimmy.
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i’m not saying the game consciously attempts to erase that 2010 style. it’s clear to me that it’s directly in that lineage. i think the way that it’s been received (which is still the most baffling aspect of the game to me) seems to not acknowledge the other things that made up that style. which is strange to me, partially as someone who doesn’t even find it to be an elevation of that style to begin with.
we obviously just disagree there. i just don’t like very much how the game feels. like it was said above, it feels “dinky/bumbly” to me. but that’s fine. i don’t have any problem with people having preferences for how a game feels. what i do have a problem is people suggesting that there’s some kind of objective hierarchy of game feel and this game is at the top - which i have seen many people do! that is a very Action Button-y sort of critique to make about how a particular game feels, for example, and i’ve never agreed with that sort of critique at all. i think it’s people trying to apply a sort of narrowly-focused programmer brain to something that is ultimately an art. but that’s game/tech culture for you. so yeah i guess i disagree with both points.
Wait what part of Knytt’s DNA is in Celeste at all? They feel like opposites
Celeste has stages, scrolling, is focused on challenge instead of exploration, is interested in its characters instead of its world, is not lonely
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Yeah, I mean I understand it from a frustration aspect. Like, I dislike Hollow Knight and it greatly annoys me that it was so well-received.
But also I don’t think people that praise Celeste without understanding its lineage or think that games have some perfect idealized form exist because of Celeste. People misunderstand and misinterpret media all the time and it frustrates me too.
If you’re making two separate points 1) Celeste isn’t a good game and 2) you dislike Twitter discourse you’re seeing through the lens of Celeste then I think we disagree on point 1 but we agree on point 2.
If you’re making a third point that Celeste is somehow culpable for 2 I disagree with that too.
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Knytt has some mechanical similarities in terms of precision movement and climbing. But the framing and focus are very different, yes.
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tangentially related ellaguro’s point, but the genre of GMTK-descended middle-brow games analysis sometimes rankles me, if only for the way those figures/channels tend to promote narrow, suffocating teleologies (especially with respect to landmark titles).
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I think part of the problem is that describing why something works can be easily misconstrued to “this is how things should work”.
GMTK videos are pretty boring so idk if I’ve made it through a whole one, but I was under the impression they were more like “intro to considering design” rather than trying to be prescriptive, but I guess it wouldn’t surprise me that much if it ends up closer to the latter.
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i only saw a bit of one of these videos, where he described zelda dungeons as “like mini-metroidvanias” and i retched
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The sprite size and the levels built from intersecting rectangles are similar. I hadn’t made the connection before but comparing screenshots, I can see the lineage:
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GMTK is usually careful enough when teaching a principle to say “a game doesn’t need to be this way, it could perhaps do [x], [y], or [z] instead”, though that’s not always the case (and other video essayists are rarely as careful).
Usually his worst videos in this respect are when he’s dealing with a specific game rather than a general principle, especially his Boss Keys series about dungeon/world analysis (which I want to like more than I do).
Like, I dunno, in the Boss Keys series he developed a kind of chart that he called a “Dependency Graph” or whatever, which he used to analyze Zelda dungeons and Metroid worlds. I remember trying to use that kind of graph to try and develop an adventure game (in ZZT, of course), and just getting frustrated with how hard they were to work with on paper. It wasn’t until later after I had set the project aside that I realized that his dependency graphs were created to analyze existing designs, and not for creating something new. Ron Gilbert, on the other hand, had a different kind of chart that he also called a “Dependency Graph”, and I found that kind of chart more useful and flexible, especially for the initial stages of design.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that game design advice is like writing advice – it may be worth listening to, but never take it as gospel, especially if it doesn’t jive with your brain.
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not knytt but knytt stories, where there are indeed many stories that are stagey and focused on challenge, not exploration
But yeah, I meant mostly in the similarities of control when I said that it’s Knytt Stories but fast. The emphasis on wall jumps and wall climbing, the extreme air control, etc.
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