Vidya Games Thread

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

well, yeah, that's part of the problem with a decades-large library of classic games for indie devs to contend with:

if you are making a game, and a game from 10-30 years ago is a more appealing prospect for people to play, re-consider the overall design of your game, if not why you are making the game in the first place

for this particular developer, I actually took a look at the game, listed below:



needless to say, the audience that would play decades old RTS re-releases is not the audience that would want to play (yet another) cozy game about being a witch. I feel like I see several of these exact games released each month by indie developers, to the point where they all start looking the same to me.

and if there are already so many cozy witch life-sims that are as inoffensive as possible on the market already, what would set this one apart from the others? why can't I just play one of the Atelier games if I want to play as a cute potion-maker doing cute things? once Witchbrook from chucklefish releases by the next decade, it would be even more over for all of these other developers' witch games! even more so once Concerned Ape finishes Haunted Chocolatier, despite not being a witch game, because it is clearly the sort of game they want to emulate!

everyone wants their own Stardew Valley, but they are incapable of understanding why Stardew Valley succeeded on a fundamental level - at that period in time, these sort of life sims were on the wayside with the downfall of Harvest Moon. now that they're a dime a dozen, there needs to be further innovation from the ground up to set your own work apart if you want to stand out. and if one guy could make Stardew Valley over a period of years, learning how to make it as he went, use that to fuel your own desire to make something equally as good, something that people would be lining up to play for years to come!

Shit, just a brief look at the steam page was despressing. My initial thought before it loaded based on your comment was "oh, is it another shitty RPGmaker shovelware?". No, that would have been an improvement to make a low poly game but take the Stardew Valley/Harvest Moon autism collection system but make it into "you're making your own potions and shit".

 

[John Vtuber👁️]

Shit, just a brief look at the steam page was despressing. My initial thought before it loaded based on your comment was "oh, is it another shitty RPGmaker shovelware?". No, that would have been an improvement to make a low poly game but take the Stardew Valley/Harvest Moon autism collection system but make it into "you're making your own potions and shit".

oh yeah, I agree - go full-on pixel or low-detail 2D artstyle, focus almost entirely on the gameplay mechanics to the point where people are willing to spend hundreds of hours or more with it, and it will find a stable audience. as a recent example, Balatro did this by reimagining Poker to become even more addicting than it already is, to massive success.

alternately, find a series of older games that are not currently serving their target audience, and do it yourself while also going above and beyond what people would want from such a game - a tried and true business classic, and what Stardew Valley did to Harvest Moon.

lots of older games that people want sequels to, such as Dark Cloud, Custom Robo, Dot Hack; though they may not be the giga franchises others aspire to be, there are plenty of these sorts of games that could be made on a reasonable scale by solo/indie devs with modern tools.

 

[Kalion]

A

 

[Thomas Talus]

Too much mushroom stir-fry.

 

[Banana Hammock]

The lack of games has gotten so bad that they're teaming up with PCSX2 to start emulating old ones.

I joke, but this is actually really cool. I still won't get one because I already have everything I want on my PC, but it's cool for all the people who don't know what emulation is, and the little baby zoomers who will get to play some of the classics.

 

[reinigen]

The lack of games has gotten so bad that they're teaming up with PCSX2 to start emulating old ones.

I joke, but this is actually really cool. I still won't get one because I already have everything I want on my PC, but it's cool for all the people who don't know what emulation is, and the little baby zoomers who will get to play some of the classics.

Virgin Nintendo vs Chad Sony.

 

[Superduper Samurai]

The lack of games has gotten so bad that they're teaming up with PCSX2 to start emulating old ones.

I joke, but this is actually really cool. I still won't get one because I already have everything I want on my PC, but it's cool for all the people who don't know what emulation is, and the little baby zoomers who will get to play some of the classics.

Its not the current team, just ex-members

 

[agility_]

That's nice sony. Everyone with half a brain already has a modded fat PS2 with a full library, or, a still-functioning slim PS2.

 

[Banana Hammock]

That's nice sony. Everyone with half a brain already has a modded fat PS2 with a full library, or, a still-functioning slim PS2.

A modded PS2? I just use my computer and a USB controller.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

This looks pretty interesting for the sim builder autists

 

[MrProcessor]

A modded PS2? I just use my computer and a USB controller.

I have a dedicated Batocera computer, it can even play (some) PS3.

 

[That Chuuba Enjoyer]

Starbreeze ousts CEO Tobias Sjögren with Payday 3 in dire straits

The company recently told investors the shooter was performing at 'significantly lower levels' than expected, and now it's looking for a new CEO.

www.gamedeveloper.com

Who else remembers the failed walking dead payday game, ww2 payday, and their huge investment into their own vr headset a few years back?

 

[Zizara]

Starbreeze ousts CEO Tobias Sjögren with Payday 3 in dire straits

The company recently told investors the shooter was performing at 'significantly lower levels' than expected, and now it's looking for a new CEO.

www.gamedeveloper.com

Who else remembers the failed walking dead payday game, ww2 payday, and their huge investment into their own vr headset a few years back?

I'm both surprised and not surprised at all shit is hitting the fan over Payday 3, it's one of the most embarassingly bad games I've played in a while. Probably the biggest example of a developer somehow forgetting how to make their own game and fumbling their audience for no reason - even Darktide had a fantastically satisfying combat system at least. PD3's got gunplay you can get better pretty easily somewhere else, a heist system you won't get to enjoy because they forgot to put heist planning in their heist game and there's only 8 maps, and a mountain of games as a service and always online bullshit to have to wade through constantly.
But I'd expected it to just quietly fade out and for them to make enough microtransaction money to pretend it was successful. I wonder if the subreddit is still coping that the game is perfectly fine.

 

[UberSoldat]

But I'd expected it to just quietly fade out and for them to make enough microtransaction money to pretend it was successful. I wonder if the subreddit is still coping that the game is perfectly fine.

Pitiful Steam numbers and even Embracer themselves expressing disappointment, yeah I don't think Starbreeze is escaping this unscathed.

 

[Zizara]

Pitiful Steam numbers and even Embracer themselves expressing disappointment, yeah I don't think Starbreeze is escaping this unscathed.

> 316 players on steam right now for Payday 3
> three hundred and sixteen
oh fuck lol

 

[ioㅤ]

Got ninja'd about all of StarsEN in Japan, so here's Altare playing Balatro. He should play inscryption instead, I don't understand this shit

This got way more autistic then i'd like so brace yourself for a bit of a text wall.

Alright I'm both going to explain what Balatro is, how to play it and give a mini review because this game is like crack cocaine for right type of person.

Balatro is a card based deck construction rouge-like where the objective is to score the highest amount of "Score" each hand.Also Depending on how cucked of a country you live in it might be banned/restricted on the console store fronts so watch out.

Spoiler: Balatro "quick" guide

Each run is split up into 8 antes increasing in difficulty with each ante being split into three blinds, small blind which has the lowest score requirement and gives out the least money, big blind which has the middle amount of score requirement and money payout and boss blind which both has the largest score requirement but also has some negative effect applied to you such as disabling cards of a type of suit(the symbols on the cards). With both the small and big blinds you can skip them to get a tag witch does something immediately but you don't get any money from the blind and you do not get to visit the store.


Score has two aspects that make it up being chip value and multiplier which are both influenced in a few ways with the main ways being. The individual cards and the effects on that card played, the type of poker hand played, and the effects of the jokers.


Each card has a base chip amount equal to its number (face cards are all 10 aces are 11) that is added to the chip part of the scoring, cards can have effects put on them mostly by tarot cards that you can buy from the store. these effects include adding 30 chips to the value of the card, making the card add 4 multiplier when scored and if the card is held in hand when you beat the blind adding 3 money to you to name a few.


When playing the cards only cards that "score" do there effects like adding the base chip value and any additional effects. Only 5 cards may be played at a time and in order to make hands you have a number of discards (3 at base) where you can toss upto 5 cards to draw equal to the number of cards discarded this way.Cards are only scored if they are apart of a poker hand. Each poker hand has a base amount of chips and multi associated with them that typically corresponds to how hard the hand is to make, so for example a pair which is any two cards that are the same face value (so two 9s for example) has a base value of 10 chips X 2 Multi while a full house which is a pair and a three of a kind has a value of 40 chips X 4 multi. The base values can be upgraded with planet cards which boost both values, Planet cards are mostly found in the shop.

Jokers are kinda like relics in other rouge-likes with the main difference being that in general you can only have 5 at max, jokers can completely change how you play , There is far too many to explain the full bounds of what they do but in general most jokers fall into one of 4 categories +chip jokers, +multi jokers, *Multi jokers, and utility jokes. +chip jokers add chips to the score and can either be unconditional, conditional base that require meeting a requirement in a scored hand like having a pair in it to activate, and scaling chip jokers where you can do things to increase the amount of chips they add for the rest of the run. + multi jokers are mostly the same except they add to the multi score instead of the chip score. * multi jokers when they activate * the value of the multi you currently have and are typically the strongest jokers that enable the largest scaling an example would be "The Duo" which doubles the multi if the played hand has a pair. Utility jokers can do a massive range of things from creating planet and tarot cards, making the shop better for you, adding money and making poker hands easier to make, an example of one that makes hands easier to make is the blurred joker which makes it so that both of the black suits are counted as each other and each of the red suits are counted as each other which makes flushes much easier.


After each completed blind you access the shop where you can buy things to improve the deck, here you can buy jokers, tarot cards,planets and vouchers to improve your deck. Tarot cards in addition to adding effects to your cards can give you money or be used to alter your deck to make harder to make hands easy to create by doing things like removing cards or changing the suit. Vouchers are permanent buffs that typical either make the store better, make money growth better or add to your hand size, number of hands you can play ore number of discards you get.

Spoiler: Review

TLDR version 8.5/10 highly highly recommend if you like rouge-likes, card games and especially if you like the combination it might be early but this game is comparable to Slay the Spire for me.

Positives

• Sizeable amount of depth that means runs are often different
• Fairly quick time for runs especially when compared to sts which can take awhile
• Difficulty is mostly great and even has unique strategies that can only be done on higher difficulties, this point does come with a minor asterisk attached.
• This game does endless the best out of any rouge-like I've played so far, generally endless in most rouge-likes is when your kinda attached to a build and want to jerk with it for a bit longer but in this game because of how the required score scaling occurs in endless runs you almost need to completely break the game to succeed. ( for example the gap between ante 7 boss blind and ante 8 boss blind is blind is around 70,000 to 100,000 while going from ante 9 to ante 10 is 220,000 to 1,120,000 and that's the smallest scaling of endless.
• Every Stake think ascension level in sts feels like a new challenge and they really isn't and nothing difficulty changes like in sts
• Making big numbers makes my brain happy
• Pretty cheap at only 15usd

Negatives

• Difficulty at really high stakes can be quite rng heavy at the early antes with some runs feeling like they are doomed from the start.
• While i wouldn't call the game ugly like i would sts if your just looking for something super interesting it might bore you as while the presentation is snappy and clean there is a limit to how exciting you can make cards look.
• If your not big into cards games it might be hard to get into

@superduper i know you have talked about similar games i really recommend this to you.

 

[John Vtuber👁️]

once Crime Boss: Rockay City hits steam in a few months, that's the best chance we'll get at a modern Payday-like, camp and all.

(this post was brought to you by mandatory Kirsche shilling, since she has played dozens of hours on stream at least - here's the latest update trailer from about a month ago, next update should be soon):



it's basically spent the past year on EGS updating the game, and though I enjoy it myself, I still recommend waiting for the steam release as its "real" launch

 

[That Chuuba Enjoyer]

I'm both surprised and not surprised at all shit is hitting the fan over Payday 3, it's one of the most embarassingly bad games I've played in a while. Probably the biggest example of a developer somehow forgetting how to make their own game and fumbling their audience for no reason - even Darktide had a fantastically satisfying combat system at least. PD3's got gunplay you can get better pretty easily somewhere else, a heist system you won't get to enjoy because they forgot to put heist planning in their heist game and there's only 8 maps, and a mountain of games as a service and always online bullshit to have to wade through constantly.
But I'd expected it to just quietly fade out and for them to make enough microtransaction money to pretend it was successful. I wonder if the subreddit is still coping that the game is perfectly fine.

My issue with payday 3, is it felt inferior and so dated. They had a chance to do some more in depth mechics with hiesting and smarter AI but they didn't. I love payday 2, played it when it was in beta, but even I can see that the foundation needed to be updated and heist mechanics are so barebones. Gunplay feels aged too. Even for 2013

 

[Banana Hammock]

Another thing about Balatro: Make sure you check what the boss rules are. I got fucked yesterday by not doing so. First round, I grabbed the joker that adds multiplier for hearts. Boss debuffed hearts. Immediately after this, I started a new run and got the joker that buffs diamonds. Boss debuffs diamonds.

 

[superduper]

@superduper i know you have talked about similar games i really recommend this to you.

I've seen Northernlion and Vinesause Vinny play this game quite a lot. It looks really fun!