ctmatthews

Indie game developer

a trans woman in the UK making 2D action games about ducks:

Ducky's Delivery Service (Steam/itch/Switch)

Chessplosion (Steam/itch)


i mostly post on my Blog / Newsletter / Patreon


i play fighting games! i won Evo in 2021.


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is there a term for the twist that some indie games do where at first they're about their core game mechanics, but then they reveal that actually they're about solving world-spanning puzzles and uncovering a mystery?

at first you think that you're "just" playing a platformer or some other kind of mechanics-focused (usually action or puzzle) game, but the game starts dropping cryptic puzzle clues throughout its world and eventually transforms into an adventure game or a mini ARG, for all intents and purposes.

most people seem to love this kind of twist, so those games tend to gain super passionate fanbases. but as someone who usually isn't into those kinds of puzzles, it means that when people start telling me i have to play a new game and that i'm not allowed to look up anything about it, i get nervous that after a couple of hours it's going to drop all of its core mechanics and turn into myst. sometimes i just want an action game to be an action game.

i think it's perfectly possible to add this kind of unfolding mystery to a game without going down the "surprise, you're playing myst now" route. plenty of games that were already about solving puzzles or exploring a mystrerious world can smoothly transition into this kind of expanding mystery without feeling like they're dropping the appeal of the core mechanics, such as la-mulana, pâquerette down the bunburrows, sylvie lime and lots of rpgs and puzzle games. some action games can give you that sense of a mysteriously expanding world without ever straying from their action focus at all, such as psyvariar.

that said, none of this is even a problem in the first place for people who enjoy solving those kinds of puzzles. i would not be complaining if i was in an alternate world where indie games kept secretly turning into arcade-style beat em ups or shmups instead (yes i know there's a recent game that does something a little bit like that). it's just unfortunate that the whole appeal of this twist is that you don't see it coming, which makes it harder for me to avoid the games that do it. that said, i've never ever seen anyone else say anything negative about this kind of thing at all, so i'm genuinely curious if it bugs anyone else or if it's just me?


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in reply to @ctmatthews's post:

They were talking about this on an episode of Abnormal Mapping (where they talked about Animal Well), complaining about the same thing: it wasn’t something they signed up for when they started playing the game and they often don’t care enough to expend the effort to solve an ARG. They just wanted to play a platformer/metroidvania/etc. but the problem is that if you tag it as such, the appeal is kind of lost on the people who love it. They come to these games not expecting it to offer such deep layers of puzzles, and they love finding it out as they play (but also, how do they find these games? The act of recommending them and saying not to look anything up is usually a clue enough too).

Imo they should just tag ‘em. More helpful for the people who don’t want to engage with it. Call them “Big Puzzle” or “Onion Games” or whatever.

EDIT: I think in the podcast they joke about a game becoming like Myst too haha

that's great to know, thanks! it's such a relief to know i'm not the only person to feel that way. i was trying not to name too many specific games that fit that template because i didn't want to spoil them, but animal well is absolutely one of them. as you said, its unfortunate that the appeal lies in not telling anyone that the game is like that, making it harder for people like me to avoid them.

i'm going to go listen to that episode now!

As someone who's REAL into when games do that, I cannot imagine anyone who is into that being unwilling to answer (even if restricted to privately) the question of, "will this be enjoyable if I do not want to engage with an ARG being sprung on me?"

'Cause like, there's La Mulana and then there's like, (redacted but well-known recent ARG-containing game), you know?

good idea! i usually just ask why i shouldn't look up anything about the game, get told it's a secret and/or spoilers, and never play the game because i assume it's secretly going to turn into an ARG. it's probably better to just explain why i'm asking that question in the first place.

how often does this actually happen? I have a friend who's really into games like that, and is really excited when a new one pops up because they're pretty rare. My friend goes into them knowing it'll happen, but "the fact that it's pretending to hide it" is still part of the appeal, so people tend to be a bit coy about it... but not really hiding it, otherwise they can't tell their friends! "Make sure to play it without looking anything up first" is basically the code words to look for, although it's not universal or anything.

it doesn't happen very often compared to the total number of popular indie games that get released, but it makes up a large portion of the games that get recommended to me by non-arcade players. if someone suddenly starts telling me that i have to play a game, usually it's either because they know it's the type of game that i'm likely to care about it (such as an arcade-style action game), or because they loved the game's hidden puzzle mystery twist so much that they have to enthusiastically recommend it to everyone they know. i see those kinds of games getting recommended regularly on cohost too, although that's entirely my own fault for following people who like them.

There are some game story elements that can feel like gimmics to try to make you feel invested.

With RPGs, whenever they make the world at stake, it just feels like a trick to make me care. Particularly bad is when female lead is somehow key to saving the world, to try to force you to care about them.

I've gotten attached to games like Donkey Kong Country, where all that was at stake was bananas.

just rambling but:

  • Funny cause Myst tbh, is actually quite a straightforward game (I mean once you get how it's structured it's pretty easy)
  • I'm not sure how I feel about this type of games as a whole cause I can get down the rabbithole quite a lot or hate it. I think how engaging the layer 1 of the game is is super duper important because why would I enjoy overstaying solving more if the base game/movement or whatever is boring/ugly/repetitive to me.... That's why I dropped tunic at the end of layer 1 but I love void stranger (even though i havent finished it yet cause its hard af...) Void stranger is kinda honest on this you understand very quickly in that there are multiple layers, and the game being layer 1 a sokoban I guess kinda filters out immediatly its public ?

yeah i think inscryption counts. off the top of my head, here are a few other popular games i didn't mention in the post (SPOILERS for anyone who really likes it when a game secretly turns into a mystery to solve): animal well, fez, noita, outer wilds, shipwrecked 64 (which is upfront about its twist existing), the witness (which sticks to its core mechanics even after the twist), tunic, void stranger.

i haven't played most of those games myself so i 'm not 100% sure whether or not they actually pull this twist; they're just games that seemed to get the kind of "don't look up anything, you HAVE to go in blind" buzz that makes me nervous.