Appearance, story, setting, and style are all mostly secondary to the mechanics and design of the game.

Strip away the appearance of metroidvanias and you have a platforming maze with gated areas unlocked through progression.

The overall maze of the game should ideally be enough to get lost in. Whether the world is going to be procedurally generated or predesigned, or some combination should be figured out early on. Even if progression is linear the access to and pathway through the maze should likely not be a straight line. It is very common to see or view inaccessible late game areas in the early game, for example.

The gates of the game traditionally come in the form of new movement options. The reliables are usually: (double) jumping, running, slide/rolling, climbing, swimming/sinking, flying/gliding and so on. Choosing how and where the player may access these is important. This is to say: player movement is the game.

Another common ‘key’ to gates is something that allows the player to defeat an enemy or boss they could not previously defeat, or otherwise access a new area. A notable example being metroid’s ice beam. Freezing enemies gives the player new platforming options: and new movement in the game.

Good new metroidvanias are aware of what has been done before and try to innovate on those tropes.

Which version of Skyrim will Skyblivion require?

Post 9-11 America, abridged.

It’s $70. There has been little appetite for $60 games as of late, but from what it sounds like Avowed at least has $70 bucks worth of time and stuff. Whereas many $60 titles aren’t worth their sale prices–its not a high bar.

A $40 or less Avowed on sale next year will do well I predict.

The packmule in Dungeon Siege was a good integrated inventory mechanic.

A good game knows to explain game mechanics with lore. Games that break the 4th wall and by knowing they’re games tend to struggle to be immersive. It can really obliterate environmental storytelling too.

I find it interesting four of the top 10 sellers are Free To Play.

I have a screenshot from a time in an MMORPG where a member died before they could do a global event quest they’d always wanted to do. There was a player-driven server-wide memorial event where her character was run through the quest by friends so that her name could be honored by a global broadcast message.

The game and the servers are now gone, but that screenshot of everyone holding torches for her character on that day still means a lot to me 20 years on.

So yeah, I think a steam account can fit that billing as a memorial.

They just needed to make the hatches Holes.

Diablo is like stacking blocks. Stacking blocks is fun. Diablo 1 gave you some mixed blocks to play with and you could make some fun towers. Sometimes you’d get the Butcher, sometimes Skeleton King, and so on. Some of the uniques items you’d find really defined a playthrough.

Diablo 2 gave you more blocks and more stackable shapes. You got skill trees, more clasdes, more item parameters, and just plain stuff to wedge on a more intricate tower.

Diablo 3 and 4 appear to have attempted to bedazzle the existing shapes and allow players to buy stickers. There was little, if any, innovation beyond revenue.

Like, Blizzaed saw Grinding Gear Games acquire money through cosmetics and thought that was what people were over there for. (And they mostly just implemented Final Fantasy 10 sphere grid… and solved the ‘gold/currency’ problem.) But I have to admit I was so lacking in interest I never bought 3 and 4–only watched someone play a bit is all.

Damn that’s a lot of hope. EA bought them in 2007 and all hope should have been abandoned then. I know they finished some franchises out but they were all worse off. It was a long cancerous decay but it was clearly terminal more than a decade ago.

I don’t care for anime styled games and man that limits my options these days.

Both Frostpunk 1 and 2 had fans requesting a sandbox mode and endless modes without victory conditions. They finally did it for 1 and made it a part of 2… but it was clear the drive of the fans (open ended sandboxing) was at odds with the devs wanting to using narrative and story to govern game mechanics.

Disco Elysium refutes this take.

I decided to so a quick search on what the advertisements for this game looked like.

Devs fucked up. One must learn to harness and control the goon. You can’t bait and switch the gooners and come out unscathed.

Just needs a good cover. Like Watership Down. Nice lil thing about bunnies.

Learning the names and ranking of poker hands is the devil!

I am all for it. Elden Ring was riding that Game of Thrones wave for lore and story, but I am expecting something in the Sekiro vein out of them next.

I want to think something Bloodborne is being developed but I will perpetually have my doubts.

Kojima does Kojima and the Playstation is his medium.

A-life not working is a ‘refund til fixed’ level of broken, but the mutants were always tanky.

I remember Steam’s launch and understand completely.