Getting out into an environment feeling completely safe is! No need for jump scares if mind games is what you are going for.
Back when I was a boy we played around in "lost places" in my area. Scary and exciting, but I was quite relieved once we left again.
25 games! I don't even know if I could fill that out myself without duplicating a lot of them.
Big fan of that myself!
The player is basically already halfway inside the game. This file selection menu and the game's save rooms share the same music as well.
Turning very basic things into upgrades or purchasable items in metroidvanias: Map pins, position on the map, walking faster, homing coins.
They can be neatly used as yet another reward for the player, but how far is too far?
Sometimes I'm surprised that they even let me walk left and right.
I love them in Borderlands; most of their flavour dialog in general. It just gets narrated in the background. If you care you can listen intentionally, or you can just continue playing and shooting up bad guys while listening to it in the background.
Don't include essential info in that case.
If the gaming industry shifts to subscription model like this, it'll be the nail in the coffin.
Spotify already annihilates small musicians. Yes, you can still buy their music - but only a tiny fraction of people buys music for ownership anymore. It's all subscription based benefiting pop music.
I don't know a single person who doesn't consider themselves a perfectionist when it comes to their passion field. I didn't ever complete something I deeply cared about by calling "eh, good enough I guess".
There's a real skill in identifying the point of "diminishing returns" in a craft.
What if the pendulum swung back and consoles would stop pushing for next gen tech? Deliberately using less expensive low tech. Targeting lower specs would eventually would make game production less costly and faster, too.
They already split their player base into Classic and Retail, so they might as well drop classic game legacy from Retail alltogether.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if they just let you start a max level character, dropped all questing and leveling alltogether, and dropped you straight into a dungeon queue to shove a pile of loot onto you 15 minutes later. Gotta go with the time and cater towards the meme-able extraction genre.
Comparing to the top of the top is quite bold!
What's inspiring to me about a lot of those indie mega successes is that they just continue doing it. They wouldn't have to financially, for their entire life. But that's just what they wanna do.
Devils on the Moon Pinball is out!!!!
What a time to be alive!!
get it here: play.date/games/devils...
Only on @play.date
#pinball #indiegames #pixelart #playdate
More people should wrap their head around this.
This might be a management issue, not being able, or not wanting, to direct your creative people towards making exciting new things? Layoffs suck, but burning creative talent on doing literally nothing sucks, too. Put them on a cool project!
A slower paced section to change things up.
Testing the limits of the grappling hook a bit (and apparantly the amount of relevant space I can fit into view, too)
If you paid that amount of money to live there willingly, you sold out everything.
It's all just the same. Empty.
"We should have clearly disclosed our use of AI".
Not only did they "accidentally" leave AI assets in. They also didn't seem to have any intentions disclosing AI usage in the first place, knowing very well that it hurts their reputation. They hoped players wouldn't notice.
Making textures for 3D 1-bit must be so specific. Not only because of the perspective distortion but the effect of lighting on them as well.
The glorious solo dev title! How dare you to touch it in any way.
Knowing the ending, or part of it, can paradoxically feel even more suspenseful sometimes! I'm sure there's a scientific term desribing it out there.
Hits especially hard if you know that the story will end in a dramatic way.
No better place to practice peak enshittification of games by corporate greed.
Would be funny if you "accidentally" left the debug rooms in the game, and if there also were a mysterious way to access them as an easter egg!
And then you will feel pressured into getting and playing a lot of other Switch 2 games, too, because you are already invested.
But damn it, all the buzz about Pokopia really makes me want to get my hands on it.
Thank you!
I've been pretty quiet about Owlet's Embrace recently because I'm busy with development. I wanted to show more of it once I'm even further down the line, but maybe I should share more work-in-progress sooner rather than later.
For sure. After all, you will have to look at your own game for weeks and months constantly, might as well make it more pleasant. It can also make you change gears for a bit if you banged your head at programming/design/etc. for weeks already if you are the only person making it. Keeps me fresh.
It says Diablo on the box, and that's what you get with D4 imo (mostly).
On D2R: I don't know what you expect the target audience to be, other than the same audience of D2's primary market decades earlier. Some of the younger generation, too, who now have easy legal access to D2 without piracy.
A staple of the #metroidvania genre!
JOMO - Joy of missing out
Important to note that this goes for anything, not just computers (instruments, wood working tools, ...). Just getting the hands on it and getting to work. Entry level tools will do.
Lovely blog post.
Just messing around with my own computer back then was so important to me in hindsight. Learning to learn, and figuring out what I wanted to do in the future in the first place. No, not consuming, but mostly creating: Trying tools, making bad art, making bad programs, finding out.
Next fest was a neat idea. Unfortunately, the handful of top hits will quickly drown out everything else there - 3451 demos this time. Next fest has to be treated like an actual launch: Already have a ton of wishlists. Done, polished.
Hardly possible to discover 200k games, and have them all sell.
