"I want to be a human being, not a human doing. I couldn't keep that pace up if I tried" -Scatman's World. jonny. they/them. Bisexual Bigender. 26. Artist, writer, gamedev, nature lover, ttrpg opinion haver


bethposting
@bethposting
  • fast travel is a COWARDLY admittance that you FAILED to make traversal fun or interesting
  • letting players do quick saves whenever they want just leads to people getting stuck in death loops. we don't deserve to be trusted with this power
  • just don't put platforming sections in games that aren't platformers. same with stealth sections in games not focused on stealth. halfbaked mechanics and controls lead to these being worse than nothing.
  • STOP MAKING CRAFTING-BASED OPEN WORLD SURVIVAL GAMES UNLESS YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO ACTUALLY CONTRIBUTE TO THE SUBGENRE
  • people sometimes give older console and arcade games a lot of credit for being "hard." from my perspective, a lot of those games don't actually have especially challenging gameplay. instead, they start you with a comically small number of lives and then punish you really harshly for mistakes. for people like me who kinda suck at video games, it's not fun to end up playing the first few levels over and over and over while never seeing the rest of the game. i feel like this is the result of the lingering influence of arcade games and i'm glad a lot of more modern games choose to instead be challenge yet forgiving

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in reply to @bethposting's post:

I think these are a little bit hyperbolic/absolutist (which you acknowledge at the top), but I agree with almost all of each of them in terms of how they align with my own personal taste

my hot take on quicksaving/quickloading is that as long as it truly is quick (almost immediate) like you see in source games, they can really help keep the flow state going. you get to remain in the action even if you make a mistake because you can just pop back a bit earlier and keep it going. something i don’t think has been appreciated as much as it should.

yeah Knytt Stories was the first game we played in which death takes you back to a checkpoint that's usually on the same screen or very nearby, and it doesn't even interrupt the music, just makes a gentle wind sound

(most Nifflas games do something along those lines)

it sends a fairly specific message about how you're intended to play the game and what you're supposed to feel about it, and we do think that not every game should imitate it, but it's really nice