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Void Bastards

I was not expecting Bioshock to invade my roguelite space anytime soon, but Void Bastards is exactly that: A roguelite Bioshock.

Now, this is a bit of an oversell. Many rightfully hold the original Bioshock in incredibly high regard, with Bioshock 2 being a personal favorite of mine. Void Bastards doesn't reach any of its most notable inspiration's highest of highs, though it does make for a unique ride amidst its many contemporaries.

You'll hack turrets and doorways, loot all sorts of nooks and crannies, wade through many mostly derelict environments and force your way through what enemies stand in your way through careful planning rather than twitch reflexes. Injected into the proceedings is a sense of humor similar to that of 60 Parsecs/60 Seconds, your ship's AI portrayed wonderfully by Stanley Parable alumni Kevan Brighting.

It takes quite some time to notice, though cracks do eventually appear. Ship layouts occasionally blend together and, most egregious, the enemy spawners become a real headache. The incessant rate of certain enemy types disrupting exploration needed to be severely toned down. Deaths are often your fault, but they're no less obnoxious when the game does go against its Bioshock-like design principles and becomes more action-heavy the deeper you find yourself within deep space.

All in all, a really good game held up by a novel mesh of mechanics with flaws that don't show until you've just about gotten your money's worth anyhow! I anxiously await the upcoming sequel which will hopefully address said flaws.

Roboquest

This is one of those rare cases of a roguelite that exceeds beyond the realms of its genre.

Typically, a roguelite will use the fundamentals of a shooter, a platformer, some form of tower defense, etc. and meld it with an addictive gameplay loop that breeds death that then feeds into a meta which will then, ideally, encourage multiple plays with the help of randomized loot, randomized enemy placement and so on. It's that loop that sinks its teeth into you and keeps you engaged with content that would otherwise be exhausted within several hours.

With Roboquest, it's not just finely-tuned as a roguelite. If you were to take the roguelite loop out of it, you'd still have the bones of an amazing shooter. It feels incredible, sporting gunplay right up there with greats like Max Payne 3, DOOM 2016 and Destiny 2. I couldn't get over how much fun I was having in those first 10-20 hours, and it only got more interesting as I unlocked the various Gadgets that added extra mobility like double jumps, a jetpack, a butt smash and a grappling hook.

It has a goddamn grappling hook.

The core of the gameplay is so good that it feels almost unnecessary to mention, but your weapons arsenal is also plenty extensive and there's many opportunities to buildcraft around them. Explosive builds, elemental builds, mobility builds, fire rate builds, it goes on. Few weapons feel underwhelming, most polished to a glistening sheen. Right down to the reload animations, there's a lot of care put into making these weapons fun to use.

60+ hours later and with the recent Super Update dropping, I'm still having fun and am still unlocking content. It's mostly scraps, but it's scraps worth fighting for. I haven't even unlocked that grappling hook (almost there, though)!

It's criminal that I got this via Humble Choice.

That Which Gave Chase

This one was short, but very sweet. The building of tension was almost palpable, an unnerving feeling that something was, at all times, about to go wrong. As though I shouldn't be here, or that I was doing something I shouldn't be doing.

The dog sledding took a little getting used to and it wasn't always clear what the game wanted me to do, but that was barely an issue. Overall, the game was full of interesting ideas and had a heck of an atmosphere.

That's about all I'll give away about the game, though. It's short, but very interesting.

video gamesing is wetter than it's ever been... but i think we can get a little soggier than that 😏

I'll basically summarize Wikipedia for the definitions and explanations. I did take a couple classes in my Communications undergrad but it's been a while and this is, to what I remember, mostly accurate.

Starting with Narrative Transportation Theory (NTT), which offers an explanation as to why stories evoke emotion within people. Why do we feel sad when a character dies, why do we get scared when reading horror etc etc. This theory also posits that there are 3 levels of engagement for people.
1: You understand the narrative.
2: You are empathetic to the characters or situation or you are imagining yourself in the same situation.
3: You lose sense of "Reality" which, to my interpretation, means losing track of time or not hearing when someone calls your name etc etc. This is an intense focus; you are completely engrossed in the story.

For the purposes of this post I'll be referring to level 3 when talking about NTT.

NTT is brought on specifically by mentally engaging with the story and characters, which is different to what causes Immersion.

Immersion, as opposed to NTT, is brought on by aesthetics and visuals. You are engrossed in exploring a mansion in a game because it looks cool, not because you are imagining yourself doing it. This will be referred to as 'Aesthetic Immersion.'

When it comes to video games, unlike movies and books etc, there is not always characters speaking or plot happening at all given times. NTT cannot happen if there is neither of these things, so to bridge the gap between scenes, the aesthetics of the game are required to maintain this engrossment esp when it comes to menus and items and inventory management, which is where Aesthetic Immersion comes in.

However, there is also immersive theater, meaning that the audience is supposed to be participating in the story as well. This is the key component: Player Participation. Therefor Aesthetic Immersion =/= Theater Immersion.

So when video game press releases say 'Immersion' are they meaning that the audience, ie the gamer, is participating like in Theater Immersion, or do they mean completely engrossed as in Aesthetic Immersion?

In my personal opinion, I believe that they are talking about Aesthetic Immersion and NTT rolled up into one big package, but it would more sense for them to be talking about Theater Immersion. You, the player, are a part of the game and the barrier between the story and yourself is gone. You are acting in this story as one of the video game characters like you would act as a character in a part in a play. Are video games a from of Neo-Immersive Theater? Probably not, but still fun to think about! (But really what we all know is press releases are talking about hyper-focusing because of compulsion loops.)

But how does this work with TTRPGS? People will refer to Immersion both in terms of Aesthetic and Theater, with NTT being bundled in with Theater, though not by name. But given the above definition of Immersive Theater, are TTRPGs inherently just another form of a more private Immersive Theater? Perhaps!

The other assumption I've been seeing is that you need props and other components to help with the 'immersive experience' in games. Which uses the assumption that TTRPGS are like video games and you can use Aesthetic Immersion to bridge the gap when you aren't actively role playing. But, in my opinion, no amount of baubles are going to keep players 100% engrossed if they have to wait for someone to flip through their rule book.

The idea that you need to be completely engrossed at all times is, frankly, horseshit. Yeah it sucks when people get on their phone, or are more interested in drawing their character than role playing, but bending over backwards all the time to make sure the players are hyper-focused on the game sounds miserable and exhausting.

Either your players are going to be 'Immersed' because it's a derivative of immersive theater and the game requires them to actively participate (the key component for immersive theater), or they are going to be transported because of the plot and characters. In my, perhaps controversial opinion, Aesthetic Immersion in TTRPGs is not possible, or at least very very hard to achieve.

Basically I'm sick of people throwing around the word 'immersion' and then try to sell some snake-oil trinket because they've convince you that either you or you players aren't competent enough to make each other care about the game.

But that's capitalism: invent a problem and then sell a solution.

(Wikipedia Source on NTT)