Willy

copost if you're happy for them

video game fruits!!

Freelancer mode feels like a roguelike whereas past attempts at a roguelike game mode in AAA games (Bloodborne's chalice dungeons, AC: Valhalla's forgotten saga mode) generally don't.

We're used to thinking of genre as a set of mechanics or themes. Eg, from Wikipedia:

Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character.

But what if instead we thought of genres as a set of player experience goals? What if we tried to systematize what the 'vibe' of a genre is, and apply it through different mechanics?

Here's my version of a roguelike as a set of player experience pillars:

• I have a random set of tools, and I have to improvise with what I got
• I am balancing short-term goals (get through the level safely) against long-term goals (accumulate resources I can use later)
• Failure represents a major setback in progression (up to and including going all the way back to the start)
• My tools and resources are ephemeral and I can't rely on having them forever
• I can know some, but not all, of what I can expect
• I can push my luck, and probably will have to in order to complete the campaign
• I don't know exactly the consequences of my actions
• ...but I do have to live with them

And it's worth noting that Hitman is hitting these goals by being willing to do things that are, in a traditional AAA framework of frictionlessness, kind of hostile to the player. For example, you can get a really nice gun, take it with you on a mission, and then if you leave the mission without it that nice gun is just gone forever.

Cute etymology discovery of the day. We should replace "hatchet" with "axeling" in English.

A hatchet (from the Old French hachete, a diminutive form of hache, 'axe' of Germanic origin)