Game of the year. Also, if it didn’t have the RNG component, it would be a worse game. A puzzle game that inherently prevents you from stubbornly blundering down one thread is genius design, the fact that the house forces you to look at rooms you aren’t looking for leads to so many natural “aha!” moments and encourages you to be actively tracking multiple story/puzzle threads at once.
So few puzzle games care about also being good games, and I can confidently say that if Blue Prince didn’t have the excellent roguelite-inspired gameplay loop at its core I’d have dropped it without even giving it a chance. Giving you “stuff to do” as you process the lore and puzzle hints is the secret sauce. The game’s themes of inheritance tie in perfectly to the strategic mastery curve of learning how to influence the manor. Having a source of “payoff” emotions other than “solving a puzzle” keeps the moment to moment gameplay fresh, and if you’re playing it for long enough that stuff like allowance tokens and stars stop feeling like rewards, you’ll also have access to so many luck-mitigating tools that I can confidently say it’s a skill issue if you’re still fighting the drafting system.
The natural progression from “the objective is to wrangle the house into giving me what I KNOW i want” to “the house is just like this, and I can search it to find new things to want” to “I know how to make this house sing” is perfectly executed ludonarrative harmony. You learn the rooms so much better when you’re forced to walk through them on consecutive days. Upgrades and rarity tweaks give you so much power. The drafting system isn’t a barrier to you solving puzzles. It’s a strategy game that you can be good or bad at. And a lot of people that are frustrated at that system’s existence are refusing to treat it as something you can get good at. It’s a Dark Souls boss fight - practice with intentionality, explore solutions and ideas, fail frequently, learn from failure, be rewarded with mastery.
People just aren’t receptive to the idea of “challenge” in a game that isn’t precision timing or stat sheet optimizing. The house mechanic of Blue Prince is a relatively challenging strategy game, and part of the challenge is recognizing how to interface with it at all. A lot of people come to the game ready for challenging puzzles but not a strategy game, and for those BP will feel like “RNG getting in the way of my puzzle solving”. That’s fair, but I’d liken that attitude to coming into Elden Ring and complaining that all these boss fights are in the way of the lore. Strategy games might not be your thing, and maybe you didn’t know BP would be one, and that’s okay. But for those that like challenging strategy games and intricate puzzles, there’s nothing quite like Blue Prince.
You’re missing many of the most iconic games on PC, namely stuff like League of Legends, DOTA, WoW, Overwatch, Runescape… Kerrigan is the only one you’ve included that kinda fits this group.
Now, to be honest, I haven’t touched most of these games myself, so I can’t tell you their mascots. But at least the MOBAs are bound to have one.
Most that you included aren't really associated with PC anymore though. Geralt, Doomguy, Vault boy, BJ Blazkowicz etc are very popular on consoles too. The only one I would say qualifies for real would be Gordon Freeman, since half-life is usually referred to as one of the great PC classics.
Sure, a lot of these characters have gone multiplatform. But let’s be real, they’ll always have PC in their blood.
Doomguy was fragging demons on a beige tower long before he set foot on a console. Geralt was busy crashing Windows installs before he ever picked up a PlayStation trophy. Vault Boy practically has “runs best on PC” stamped on his forehead. Console gamers might have visiting rights now, but these mascots grew up in the wild west of PC gaming, and that’s where their roots (and all the weird mods) are.
And honestly, you can play Mario games on PC too—emulation is a thing—but everyone still thinks of Mario as a Nintendo icon. Same logic applies here. PC or bust.
Define “long.” I disagree with the Doomguy proposal explicitly, because Doom appeared on the Sega 32x in November of 1994 which was barely a year after the initial PC release. One of the defining aspects of gaming in the mid '90s was the monumentally cynical gold rush of trying to cram Doom onto any damn fool console as fast as possible, in a vain attempt to capture part of the lightning and make those sales. And until the Playstation and arguably the N64, every attempt failed spectacularly in various ways.
The definitive Doom experience remaining locked to the PC for those few years was absolutely not for a lack of trying. Every greedy video game exec on the planet wanted Doom on their system. id themselves assisted with several of these ports in various ways and they had absolutely no intention of leaving Doom only on PC, either, if they could help it.
Totally fair, but let’s put “long” in context—by ’90s gaming standards, a year was practically an eternity. That’s like five TikTok trends or three failed live-service shooters today.
And sure, there were console ports flying around faster than a cacodemon on nightmare mode, but let’s be honest: nobody was lining up to play Doom on the 32X, Jaguar, or 3DO. Most people didn’t even know what a 32X was, let alone own one.
The SNES version had about as much horsepower as a Roomba with a dying battery.
Meanwhile, on PC, Doom was running smooth, loud, and proud, exactly how John Romero intended—mouse, keyboard, and all. Even the execs chasing that gold rush had to admit: the real party was on DOS. If you wanted Doom at its best, you were booting it up on a beige box, not squinting at a blurry mess on a doomed add-on.
So yeah, everyone wanted Doom, but only the PC really delivered. The ports were like decaf coffee. Sure, you can drink it, but why would you?
Taka ciekawostka, postujesz o tym, że teorie spiskowe są dużo mocniej promowane. To jeszcze bardziej zwiększa zasięgi takim tematom, jeszcze mocniej pokazuje cały problem jako coś bardzo realnego.
W jaki sposób sobie z tym poradzić, czy ignorować i iść dalej? To też nie do końca będzie działać.
Jedyna odpowiedź jaką mam, to obśmiewać i szydzić z takich źródeł i newsów. Traktować idiotyzmy jak idiotyzmy, nie wdawać się w merytoryczną dyskusję z szurstwem i spiskowcami, bo wtedy ci ludzie będą wyglądać na poważnych oponentów.
Dlatego na wielkich portalach tak dużo jest rzeczy negatywnych.
Te też chętniej podbijane są przez algorytmy. Jeżeli się lepiej klika, to dla algorytmu znaczy to jasny sygnał – “podbijać, społeczność wytrzyma”. Samodzielnie nakręcająca się spirala.
is the game an mmo? or is it more like a survival craft game like Rust? I guess i’m just realizing that this is coming from the Conan: Exiles dev. That game had a decent loop but it was janky as all hell. How “unfinished” does this game feel?
My partner had been pushing me to join Lemmy for awhile, but I came across this sub and saw your posts and was motivated to finally make an account. I really enjoyed reading through the backlog of them and the amount of effort you put into your posts is much appreciated. Steam Deck, GOG and Linux are some of my main interests in gaming so it’s really great to read your enthusiastic and positive posts on these topics.
I’m also a big fan of what GOG stands for and thank you for posting that job post listing. I’m really tempted to apply to one of the positions even though I don’t live in Poland. I’m pretty qualified and it would be amazing to get to work there.
Also, as I’m new to the community I was wondering what the preference here is for long-form multi news post summaries vs short “breaking” news posts. There’s a few other people I follow through RSS who make these type of long-form posts and I’ve started making some of my own on my personal website. If it’s okay, I would like to take inspiration from your news summary posts to compile some news from other more niche topics in gaming and post them here if that would be of interest.
It can all feel a bit strange to begin with, that’s what I found anyway. There can be a sense of being in a…idk void where you’re not heard for awhile, but give it some time. Join communities here which catch your eye, comment on what interests you, and by all means YES - please do submit anything and everything here!!!
I’m pretty qualified and it would be amazing to get to work there.
form what I heard after posting that, the location was important for some of the jobs, not all. So, I’d say you’re going to only know if you’re the right fit, and meant to work there, if you apply!!! I do know the people there are absolutely lovely and care so much about gaming. Do it!!!
As to what exactly, and how exactly you should share on Lemmy/here in this community…that’s entirely 100% up to you. If anyone tries to tell you the ‘right’ way to do something, they’re clearly lost. We on FOSS spaces like here and Mastodon really, really need more contributions. I know that 99% of this kind of space has the life of the posts in the comments, that’s the nature of a forum-based world like Lemmy is, but I like to try things a little differently here.
Whatever you do, and however you do it, I’m excited to see it!
And again, welcome to Lemmy. You’re in the right place :) :) :) :) :) :)
Maybe I’m biased (see profile picture) but I’d argue that Kerbals from KSP fit.
KSP exists on consoles but almost everyone plays on PC. It was one of the first successes of the early access model which for better and worse has affected gaming as a whole. It’s influential too. The internet is full of anecdotes about KSP being the reason someone became interested in space, got an engineering degree, or even getting jobs at NASA or private space.
Agree with Gordon Freeman 100%. I might also suggest the Guide from Terraria and the CS:GO player models. Maybe also the player character from Noita, the goat from Goat Simulator, Quote from Cave Story.
These ones may be more niche, but for me personally I would also add Guy Spelunky, Princess Remedy, and Worm (Worms Armageddon).
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