MrMandolino

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Game slash narrative designer, sometimes I make music but I need to be in a really good mood for that to happen

I had a really funny joke here but it broke the website on mobile


ok

i think i'm not "getting" The Big Catch: Tacklebox

don't get me wrong: the game's got some masterful stuff going for it, the animations are insane, movement feels great and sandriding in particular just puts a massive smile on my face. but oh my god this is one of the most frustrating games i've ever played

and it's not about me being bad at it, i 100%ed Pseudoregalia and enjoy harder difficulties in games. this game just has some of the most frustrating mixtures of mechanics and level designs i've ever seen

you're dropped into an absurdly large and flat world with zero map and zero warps - it took me 15 minutes just to figure out how to return to the fish selling spot. there's a compass that points north and it's near useless otherwise, i read it activates once you found like 500 collectibles but i'm barely over 100 right now and i'm half tearing my hair out already

platforming requires pinpoint precision as a minor discrepancy with the required path will toss you back at the start of a whole sequence. the platforming is extremely loose too, so tiny movement adjustments can end up derailing your sequence completely, especially if it involves wall jumping

and if you fail a single jump you have to not only start a whole section over, you also usually get dropped to the ground level and need to walk/sandride your way to the starting point

the intended paths are extremely hard to figure out, there's near zero signposting -- while at the same time not allowing for expression as almost all of them require to complete section exactly the way they're planned for

a lot of sections have a lot of places where you are juuuust barely unable to make it to certain parts, and i'm constantly wondering if that's where i'm intended to go and i just haven't figured out how

i WANT to love this game but i spent two hours on it and i'm already exhausted


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in reply to @MrMandolino's post:

I think the full game has a lot more potential, i get the feeling this is more of a playground thing and the full game will be much more directed and polished

But also a lot of people online absolutely loved this, so I'm seriously wondering if the problem isn't me

You may simply not click with the game, which would be a shame but is how things go sometimes. However I think it's fairly common for people to kinda misunderstand the Tacklebox, or at least how I see it.

It's embodying freeform exploration done for its own sake. It expects you to like the mere act of looking around at things and playing with the limits of your abilities. There's a patience to it where you're there just to see what's around a corner, or over a pit, etc. and it'll take time to figure out how to get there due to the ruins not being "made for" being crossed or scaled. The ruins exist, and you/Tackle are the one choosing to try to conquer them anyway. The subtle signposting is part of that, it's to make it feel more like exploring weird little places for the sake of sating one's curiosity, where they're perilous such that you have to lean heavily on observation and deft movement to reach where you want to go.

Anyway ye, it may just not be for you at the end of the day. But I hope this perspective can help you enjoy it more! (I also wanna state explicitly that I do not know the design goals for this game, this stuff is just how I interpreted and experienced it)

It's actually making me curious about the full game even more. Traversing the desert on sandshredders is straight up beauty, and I think a more directed experience that isn't simply "here's a massive playground we threw together for a demo" would suit me perfectly

As a proof of concept, flawed as it feels to me, this is incredibly promising stuff

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