ItsMeLilyV

Game Designer & Lesbian Devil


Creator of lesbian romance boss rush
BOSSGAME: The Final Boss is My Heart ๐Ÿ’–


I make games about women trying their best


Banner by Iva the Human


We've done our best.
I guess I can be satisfied with that.
The fighting isn't over, and really, it never will be.
But with you by my side, I think I can handle it.

Whether it's with a warm fire or a kind rain...
We'll build a home we can be proud of.


a button:
itsmelilyv_88x31


๐Ÿ˜ˆ BOSSGAME on Steam
tinyurl.com/3w55au8k
โš”๏ธ all of my games
lilyv.itch.io/
๐Ÿ’Œ my mailing list
buttondown.com/ItsMeLilyV
๐Ÿ“š my website
itsmelilyv.com/
๐Ÿ“ฎ my email
lilycoregames@gmail.com

ItsMeLilyV
@ItsMeLilyV

(kind of an expansion on the difficulty post)

i was actually thinking about this a couple days ago, after reading @ctmatthews post on "onion games" or "games that are bigger on the inside" here. she talks about getting a bit annoyed when a game reveals that it's so full of much bigger puzzles & mysteries that it becomes a different game than what you expected going in. extremely reasonable!

(i'm also reminded of old RPG Maker horror games that did their best to hide the horror/slasher/etc. elements from the game's promotion, which i think people have mostly stopped doing)

it's a tough question! communication is obviously important, but often a big part of any media, especially games and especially onion games, is hiding your hand a little bit. i think it's okay to an extent - you don't know where a book is going to end from its title or genre alone, and i don't think that's a requirement for games, necessarily...

that said, you will annoy people if you mislead them too much. i do think it's up to the promotional material, the trailer, the pull quotes, to at least imply that a game is going to have more going on than just what is blatantly, mechanically shown.

i actually think

well known onion game from 2023 VOID STRANGER

does a very good job communicating this. the trailer is rife with a lot of things that look and feel mysterious. the basic mechanical "shape" of the game is made clear... but there is so much more going on. the trailer has so much: a barrage of huge narrative visuals (demon war, cryptic murals, frozen corpses, tons of characters), unexplained mechanics (mystery item, literally an rpg battle), "glitch" scene transitions, and a non-sequitur cutscene at the end. every part of it implies something greater than just "moving on a grid". the steam page says the word "mystery" like 3 or 4 times... it was enough for me to pick up on "ah, there's something bigger at stake".

maybe that's not the case for everyone! communicating is hard, which i guess is my point here, haha. i think it's a tricky balance to strike - not annoying your players by surprising them with a different game, but without peeling the onion right in front of them.


ItsMeLilyV
@ItsMeLilyV

(really doing my best to ignore my actual work today)

even just using a term like "onion games" is tricky, even if it's extremely fun to say. there's already so many shapes an onion game can take, with totally different appeals!

(if you open the section i'll put a bunch of examples of these games that i've played... don't open if you think you might not want to know... sorry!!)

Hidden Mechanics (game contains secret mechanics/applications of existing mechanics that it doesn't tell you about initially, but when you discover them, the game grows and secrets unlock... but the game mostly remains the same "shape". i dig these!!)
  • Tunic
  • Void Stranger
  • Sylvie Lime
  • The Witness
  • Celeste and any platformer with "hidden tech"
Genre Switch (game switches genre entirely, often for tonal reasons. can be fun or annoying!)
  • Void Stranger (ending)
  • NieR: Replicant
  • Frog Fractions (the point of the game)
  • Inscryption
  • the ending of every Kirby game
ARG puzzles (communication w/ other players to solve puzzles, or visiting a URL for critical info, etc. i don't like these at all! not my thing!!)
  • Fez
  • Tunic
  • Void Stranger
Puzzle Knot (game slowly reveals that everything is connected, lots of spatial/memory/logic puzzles to unravel everything. i often dig these)
  • Void Stranger
  • Outer Wilds
  • Tunic
  • Obra Dinn

these aren't exhaustive because i haven't played everything and my memory sucks.

i think all these concepts have a very different "feel"! like, ARG stuff turns me off entirely, but any game can naturally weave in something like hidden mechanics and add a lot without taking anything away! and so much of it is execution-dependent, too... puzzle-knot-type games are usually only fun if the moment-to-moment gameplay is already fun to play, because you usually have to play a LOT while unraveling it.

my point isn't to categorize these different elements to death. overdefining things is a sin... i just wanna show that these elements are all unique and hard to lump together!


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