I got an amazing amount of content per dollar spent on Onirism, a third-person shooter where you play as a 10-year-old girl searching a dream world for her stolen stuffed animal. That premise sounds like it would make for a simple, cutesy kids’ game - but the main inspirations for the gameplay come from Serious Sam and Doom Eternal.

Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is one of the standouts of many indie games imitating Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney’s famous formula. At some point it even got an overhaul to the script of multiple cases.

Motorslice is a new one, most directly influenced by the classic Prince of Persia: Sands of Time series, having you leap around between obstacles to navigate a world of cement and evil construction machines.

I’d even say that much as most people commenting here would ignore/hate every Ubisoft open world game made, quite often a lot of the people working on them are talented, thoughtful people, just doing their best to respond to the whim of managers that understand this audience only buys 2 games a year and needs 100 hours of content.

Once in a while, even in those open world slopfests, you do see flashes of brilliance from those designers.

Long ago when Linux was a complete underdog (0.001% of users or something) it was touted as being vastly more secure than Windows, and that was probably true. But, convenience always battles with security in adverse ways, and Steam does aim to be very convenient.

I remember for a time any Xbox-app game would prop up a UAC permissions dialog each time you’d newly installed a game. Those apps are also un-moddable due to package signing. It was very annoying, but part of me thought “…Theoretically, Steam should be doing at least something like this.”

I’ve played Hollow Knight all the way through to the end, and I don’t think I remember anything about the story; just some generic “spreading rot” vibe.

That’s fine for me because it’s not a high point of the game.

I like Soulslikes NOT made by FromSoftware. Those people don’t get The GitGud Apologist System® for any flaws, so they actually have to design well.

My favorite is Another Crab’s Treasure ; mostly because far from being a meme, it literally has the best story and character writing - both humorous and serious - of any Soulslike I’ve played. Fuck vague item description lore driven by fanfic.

I only play ZZZ but I thought I’ve seen many gooner designs in Genshin media? They do often go for fanciful outfits, but they’re pretty well designed.

I play a lot of games with parry mechanics, and E33 was much stricter than most. It even made it impossible for me to play the game over a TV network link because the tiny delay made parries unreliable.

For the ones I play, the actual gameplay is the appeal; and I accept the gacha only if it’s reasonably permissive to free players.

The genre definitely has a recurring issue with power scaling, to get people to roll for the newest gooner bait, and when that becomes too apparent, it kills my interest. That’s the other thing: You have to prepare your sanity for the inevitable day you’ll stop playing that game and sacrifice hours of “character progress” to find something else fun. Heck, could just be another gacha that’s bending over backwards to cater to new players.

This is one of the critiques I have of modern shooters, too. In Quake 1, if you run into a tough baddie, you can duck around the corner, and bank a grenade off the cement wall, and hit his giant, blocky hitbox. In Modern SciFi Shooter 27, you duck around the corner, and try to shoot a grenade at the upturned market cart that served as the corner barrier, and it bounces away with an odd angle, then misses because the creature you found has elaborate animations, thin limbs, and a thinner hitbox.

Part of why the boomer shooter genre has largely devolved in graphics.

I’d also say, there’s definitely a big media push on the idea that “men are simple, and attraction is visual”. It’s not always so true as the marketing world wants, and I think a lot of men like myself have more of a “type” we’re likely to connect more with.

There’s plenty of games out there with giant-tittied, half-naked women, that I have basically no interest in because they all blend together thoughtlessly. At the very least, having an interesting character design that portrays some personality and thought pulls me in. (In gacha terms, the former might be Snowbreak Containment Zone while the latter would be Zenless Zone Zero. The latter still falls back on generous endowment sometimes, but they also have some creative designs)

There’s so many flashing lights and feedback systems to slot machines now, it’s kind of believable.

Like, you put $15 into Slay the Spire, and you KNOW you’re getting nothing back. But you get a bunch of flashy effects in the playing of it.

With gambling, you throw in $15, you get the flashy effects, AND you might get $30 back. When you look at it that way, it can become more understandable how people fall for it and feel happy to.

Ok, at first I thought it was a typo, but is “helldesk” intentional? Like “Micro$oft”, because they’re the only company that’s bad because they seek money?

There is one case for console exclusives I can think of.

Say a great singleplayer game, like Titanfall 3, or Hi-Fi Rush 2, is pitched. There’s a question from investors: “How will you monetize it?” Because even if it has a $60 price tag or higher, those ventures carry enough risk that they often want to have a strong profit margin on them; an opportunity for growth , not just capacity to make another sequel later. Hence, all the terrible efforts to make forever live service games.

With console exclusives, the clear answer is: This sells the console, which sells the other exclusives. And it means any forever-game people play, we get the 30% cut.

I would prefer it if studios answered with “We just want to make a great game!” or “Y’know what, $60 is enough!” But since we’re not getting those answers, exclusives seem like another approach.

If it’s uncomfortable and disempowering for men, you’re probably doing it right. It’s often a power dynamic.

But to draw back from a sour take: This will also turn off some people. Both ways. For instance: I love sexualized designs, but some games genuinely went too far. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Nier Automata had genuine, serious stories to tell, but fell flat on some people for sexualizing their main (female) characters in such an objectifying way.

I also think for women, the pure visual isn’t quite as important as their movements and actions. That part gets tricky since tastes vary.

There’s a few gacha games out there designed for women that can give an idea of an extreme end to take it to. Again, keep in mind, there’s not one universal appeal for a whole gender (same for guys) so it will often turn out that the most universally appealing designs are the relatively safe ones you already see.

But WINGS

Seriously, so many tasks take you through/past Central Park, it got annoying having no easy way to websling through. The wingsuit is a great part of the kit.

Only question being, how the hell does broke, near-homeless Peter afford all the gadgets.

The VR headset is only one thing. The gaming PC is another (for games like HL:A) , and that doesn’t touch on the biggest expense: Owning a living space with a mid-sized empty area that can be dedicated to one person’s entertainment. For a lot of people, that’s the biggest one.

I’ll admit, some of the earliest context I had on Chinese gaming was that they had a lot of cheaters; that there was even a greedy, cultural belief that the ends justified the means, and that if you got the win screen, it didn’t matter what you did to get there. Some game publishers even went so far as to block Chinese IP addresses/VPNs to keep them out of game servers.

I’m curious if you feel that was ever true, or whether that’s changed over time.

Gonna slam people with a bit of reality here: I think it could’ve had staying power if people could afford it. And that’s not a statement on hardware companies making it too expensive - it’s a statement on people choosing to fight equality and encourage wealth hoarding.

If your market is the tiny group of wealthy consumers that can afford it, who will buy singleplayer games only, it’s not going to go far. You need. People. Able. To buy it.

A streamers I like played through Avowed, and didn’t feel it had nearly as many problems as the internet claimed.

It can be people budding into the genre. They’ve heard about how nice Steam is, and maybe play some games on a cheap laptop, but recognize a genuine desktop is the better experience.

One streamer I follow is in that situation. She streams off her PS5 and Switch, but has a donation incentive to help build her PC.

I think the exclusive model could still work, but it requires a VERY compelling group buy-in. Remember back when there was a very wide set of games for which you had to have a PlayStation to play them. Even Nintendo still succeeds at this, albeit with a current dip due to a low number of Switch 2 exclusives. No matter how much anyone here would fuss about it being anti-consumer, eventually there’d be enough compelling reasons, and some people may just bite the bullet even if they’re regularly PC gamers. From there, that’s where the real money is; getting people to keep burning money on live-service games on that given platform, since people are locked in.

No way can one or two occasional console exclusives manage that wall of compulsion on their own.

People can run their own justifications for piracy, but god this has always been a shitty one.

It’s like not considering veganism because “The cow’s already dead. It’s been chopped up in that steak on the counter. Me refusing to eat it won’t change anything.”

Feels like many times I’ve heard in my life:

“We’d like to change this law.”
“You can’t change this law. See, it’s written here: It’s the law.”
“I’m…not contesting what it is. I’m saying I want to change it. We set it in place, we can make changes to it.”
“…But that’d be…against the law…”

I guess I’m lucky this never happened to me. I tend to do a lot of research on a console before I get it, and wait until mid-generation when it’s matured with some good games. The closest thing might be the Oculus Rift, since I never did find an addictive VR game I loved. If I hadn’t bought it, I might’ve never tried out Half-Life: Alyx, and would’ve been forever curious. But…it definitely wasn’t a killer app.

If it helps, I can recommend indie games that fit the mold.

I made a Steam curator group called “Objection! AA-Likes” to help

I get a nervous inhalation each time an acquaintance asks me for advice in buying a gaming laptop.

Their computing world started with laptops, and they want to extend the idea. It’s so hard to express to them it’s generally not a good one.

I’m definitely upset that influencers are more likely to talk about bombs and high profile failures than games they have moderately positive interest in. There’s a weird incentive to celebrate failure that makes game development less appealing.

I just go to YouTube, Lemmy, BSky, maybe a few others. I don’t go directly to any major gaming news sites, since they’ve had declining track records for decades.

And of course, Steam. Criticize the monoculture if you like, but when Sony and MS have killed their community features in favor of EpsteinNet, it’s not surprising people will go to platforms designed to discuss games.

Is this some Hollywood accounting, where they set the game up to fail? I’ve literally never heard of it until this post.

Anyone remember Devolver Digital? Basically, they had a bad year. That’s going to happen with publishers sometimes. The public investment in them didn’t like that.

It’s something that doesn’t jive well with public investors, who judge the company value minute to minute, when game development can take half a decade. So far as I’m concerned, public investment in companies like Nintendo should be seen as fairy money on top, prone to vanishing.

I’ve been seeing clips of it online, and it seems genuinely hard to replicate the kind of confident, bizarro humor applied with so many of its scenes. Especially helps with how many of the “concepts” players can insert to get muddled around in conversation so many ways.

I’m reminded that we often only see “shounen anime” as the main art style of Japan, but they’re very refined at a wide variety of strange, human and less-human appearances.

I mean…I’m not gonna hate them for researching possibilities (there are none). Most of my hate goes to execs that see one (puppeteered) tech demo and resolve to instantly fire all dev teams.

If a company is at least taking a slow, “let’s see what this can do” approach, my bet is they’ll come back in a year saying “…yup, it’s a dumpster fire”.

Back around the PS4, I posited theories that we’d hit the “graphical plateau”, and while it was technically possible to make a stronger console, the returns were not great. I was wrong, and we got the PS5, but I don’t think I was wrong by much. It’s nicer to have 60fps and 1080p more reliably, but there’s really nothing urgent going past that - and if I understand right, there’s still a pretty large install base of PS4 users. It even runs some of the latest - did anyone notice games like LEGO Batman: LotDK and Jedi: Survivor somehow run on there?

I think there’s still plenty of ways to pull people’s interests, but it’s not going to be by the same big E3 reveal of some graphical leap. Not like we have E3 anymore anyway.

(I will admit this is a very anti-consumer move, but honestly, the most logical long-term strategy I could see them going for is returning to making large console-exclusive games)

I mean, they do that already. You can visibly see how popular PS+ Cloud is. I don’t have exact numbers, but I can see that they don’t do much to advertise it anymore, and that the whole industry saw Stadia and Luna fail.

Oh, I can boost this list:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2389830/__ASURA_THE_STRIKER/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2784620/ROGUE_FLIGHT/

Granted some of what we see takes after Space Harrier a bit more. Rogue Flight has some very good VA, at least.

Gaem looks fun! But only one isue. It loks to woke. Also can you add some LGBLT rerpesention? To these bloxk puzzles?

Does this actually relate to indie development? Theres definitely shitty monetization in Asian gacha games, but I don’t think of any of them as indie.

I have actually played crummy games by budding Japanese devs and some of them are true underdog stories with fun gameplay concepts (and often poor translation)

The character design makes me think of Final Fantasy. 1-5, you’re dealing with chibi sprites and some silly situations where they’re jumping up and down, but also horrible circumstances that define the fate of the world. Even as far as 10, they improve their graphics but aim for a colorful, fantasy-driven atmosphere.

Then you get to 15, 16, and they’re pivoting to the dark and gritty, showing medieval warriors with realistic faces fighting through blood and grime to victory. And if there’s funny clips of 16, I’ve never seen them.

It speaks toward Japan really backlashing to the way the “JRPG” moniker is seen, and attempting to show they can make something “adult” and “realistic”. But it ends up doing the opposite.

Notably, take a look at Mouse, PI’s release. It’s a fully cartoony, silly aesthetic, but take two steps into the world and you’re fighting police corruption, Nazis, and coming back to a bar owned by a dour owner who can tell you dozens of stories about the way modern life hits the most vulnerable. It’s a true adult’s package, wrapped in a childish layer, rather than the opposite. Which, yeah, feels like the effort to make Starfox look “real”.

Also as someone else said, the widened fur around Fox’s neckline does somehow make him look obese.

I was at first interested in playing a shooter with hot women in it. Don’t mind admitting that. But the way so many gacha games develop this parasocial, intimate bond with the self-insert player character (and of course, the players that vote for that behavior) becomes freaking creepy.

I want to be talking with New Character XYZ casually about how flimsy her dating life is, how she’s shallow for trying to get guys to pay her checks, and how she plans to take out frustration against monster-of-the-day baddies. I don’t want to meet and find out she’s so crazy for me she murdered every office worker that frowned in my direction that day, and that the VA lists her sessions for the game on her calendar as “that porno company”

I hate that in Sky 1 and 2, Agate and Tita develop a nice, positive, younger sister and older sibling dynamic; and then in future games, the fan-standins in the world push this needlessly, uh…”mature” relationship.

She just wanted a sibling because she was an only child, dudes. Some people just cannot feel out dad/daughter or brother/sister relationships without the standard anime incest crowd.

At least the first instance of that unfortunate trend in the game had some reasonable basis for it (same age, no relation, meeting just before puberty)