Goodeye8

Yeah, there’s a certain risk for rolling with your own engine, but if you start the project with the idea of having a custom engine you probably know what you’re doing and have taken into account the complexities of having a custom engine. IMO if you’re a group of small experienced devs having a custom engine is not really a show stopper, if you’re a junior the project probably isn’t even getting off the ground.

But changing the engine mid-project is almost always a huge decision and more often than not a killing blow for most projects. Depending on the stage of the project you’re guaranteeing adding a year or two to your development. It’s better to accept the limitations of the existing engine and compromise on the vision rather than swap engines in hopes of realizing the vision that got refined during development.

He probably has a handful of investors who trust him, but overall it’s his company and he can do what he wants.

I’m going to throw a shout out to Environmental Station Alpha because I think it’s an excellent game that flew under the radar of a lot of people when it launched. It makes some bold decisions with the story that some people might not enjoy but the gameplay is solid and the backtracking problem (which most metroidvanias have) is solved by having the level get harder as you progress.

It’s cheap, it’s not at all hardware demanding and it’s very heavily inspired by Metroid. If you enjoy metroidvanias and you haven’t played Environmental Station Alpha you definitely should.

And a secret shoutout to Noita. The dev of Environmental Station Alpha worked on Noita. It’s been pushed into the roguelite category but I would argue it’s the worlds first open world(s) roguelite metroidvania. If that sounds stupid but interesting, prepare to suffer because Noita is not at all easy and that’s deliberate because the central theme of Noita is the pursuit of knowledge (the more you know about Noita the easier it gets).

Same. I was willing to keep Outer Worlds 2 on my radar because I love Obsidian and they’ve earned my attention even though I didn’t particularly enjoy Outer Worlds 1, but at that price point the game has dropped off my radar. Unless it’s getting New Vegas level praise post launch I probably won’t be paying any more attention to this game.

Probably made more from every schmuck who didn’t know they would be replaced for free and bought extra.