If you want to produce the sensation of being trapped you have to use the feeling of power and loss. It stems from the sense of ‘If I could just…’ If I could just get out there, I could defeat that henchman for him. If I could just get out there, I could solve that riddle for him. If I could just escape this box, all would be fixed.
Now, the trick is, because this is a video game, players have a reduced sense of agency. The player’s sense of capacity is ‘what happens when you hit the button.’ Mario, before more modern adaptations, had a capacity to move left and right, jump, run, and ‘use ability.’ The player never had the ability to do anything else, so it never feels like a limitation. No one ever said, ‘playing Mario makes me feel trapped because I could beat Bowser if I could just access the cannon that’s right over there.’
So, to produce the feeling of confinement, one must create the sense of power, and then take it away. Give the player enough power that they could even defeat the dragon, but then take it from them so they feel limited. If you can find a way to make it feel like it’s not even forced, as in they feel like they could have won the game in Act 1, Scene 1, but their lack of skills as a player were what made them lose, all the better.
Would that be your classic ‘meant to lose’ fight, usually against the big bad, which is technically winnable but the vast majority of players will lose and progress the story as planned? The example that comes to mind is Ghost of Tsushima, but it crops up in plenty of games.
It can be that. Never played Ghosts so I don’t know about that one in particular. Some games do other things with it, but that sort of thing is absolutely usable to create that ‘trapped’ feeling.
I’m a fan of taking turns “driving” for slower paced logic or puzzle games. Titles that come to mind:
Myst
Curse of the Golden Idol
Summertime Madness
Chants of Sennar
Superliminal
Viewfinder
Baba is You
I can highly recommend all of these as they almost universally benefit from more minds working on them together. I would say Baba is the only one that gets REALLY challenging, but there are good mind and logic bending puzzles throughout them all!
EDIT: I’ll also add that Myst, Golden Idol, and Chants of Sennar (Summertime Madness maybe a little) all benefit from solid note taking and map making This provides a great job for the “copilot” while the other person is managing the actual input device.
My girlfriend and I do the same but with more simplistic story heavy games. We just finished Slay The Princess and it was an amazing experience like this.
A way out. Two criminals escaping prison, made by the Same studio as it takes two and split fiction. Full of mini games along the way like the other two and my god the story made me laugh with it’s ridiculousness. it’s definitely not as good as it takes two or split fiction but well worth a go imo
A Way Out is marked as “Playable” by Valve, mainly because of Origin (or EA App nowadays?) and some quirks with the controls. Should play just fine though and once in-game controllers should be well supported.
I still don’t understand the sentiment that turn-based doesn’t sell. We just got Clair Obscur breaking expectations.
Part of it is, you have to make the combat interesting visually, tactically, and sometimes even tactilely. Some games get that right: Persona 5, Like a Dragon, etc.
I would also go on a limb and say that 99.9% of strategy in turn taking games is terribly designed. Buff attack, use strongest attack. The one that I really wanted to see more of is a system like Cosmic Star Heroine’s.
For cities skyline. The first game was pretty shit all things considered. The game had so many dlcs and mods were what added a lot of the good functionality.
Cs2 was way more ambitious with the simulation aspect and utilising new dev tools. Once we get more mods and more dlcs cities 2 will be looked at as an amazing city builder.
I would be inclined to agree with you, except that the simulation is one of the weakest parts of the second game.
But also part one did not have the same ludicrous number of game-breaking bugs on release.
CS2 has gotten better for sure, and will keep doing so over time, but I’ve given up on wanting to buy it because it seems fundamentally worse than its predecessor.
If they ever add DLCs for true simulation of the economy and for showing fire, police, and ambulance crews at work as well as re-adding bicyclists I might reconsider.
Yeah I know cs2 sim sucks, believe me I’m one of the biggest cs2 haters there is. On release the cs2 sim was the same as cs1, all smoke and mirrors. Except cs1 didnt promise to be calculating all these things.
Cs2 has been pretty bug free for me up until economy 2.0 added a few simulation bugs.
My wishlist is for them to remake all the vanilla assets, they look terrible. Add bikes and e scooters. Then add an industries DLC.
If Square decides to do another FF remake, they’ll either skip over 8 and do 9 instead, or they’ll go back and do 6. That’s what I think. But if they did 8, they better overhaul that stupid Draw system.
Judging by how these posts are taken here, I think once you’re done vacationing, you could look into doing this professionally.
It’s cool that Breath of Fire IV has that tag saying that the game was picked up due to the dream list, but I’ve got some concerns about what GOG will or won’t touch. Someone here on Lemmy pointed out correctly that these are always the PC versions of games in the Good Old Games program. Several of the games they’ve picked up recently are games that I only ever thought of as console games and didn’t know that they had PC versions. The problem with that is that up until approximately a few years into the life of the Xbox 360, it was quite common to have a PC version that didn’t resemble the console versions of the same title at all. For instance, the Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter games on PC have the same stories and voice lines, but the levels and gameplay mechanics are totally different. Spider-Man 2, based on the movie, is immensely important in video game history, but only the console version; the PC version is widely considered to be garbage. 007: Nightfire is on the dream list, but everyone there is sure to mention that the one people want is the console version. Anyway, I hope they can figure this out and start getting some classic console games saved just as well as the PC versions, and I hope that the PC versions they’re choosing aren’t compromised compared to the ones that are so fondly remembered.
This comes up a little more often than I’d have expected actually!
I’ve had people ask if I’m going to have my own site for these, or perhaps just host it elsewhere to make something like RSS easier. I’m not for now…I like the idea of supporting Lemmy and FOSS in my own small way. I like that my posts, as insignificant in the long run as they are, are just on just Lemmy. If that makes sense anyway.
Also a small (well, maybe sizable) part of me feels quite awful thinking I just spot interesting projects and creations others create and then just write my own thoughts on them and…idk, it’s not my ‘own’ work?
Something along those lines, in any case. Imposter syndrome, I’m sure. Thank you so much though for your thoughtful and sweet comment. I really appreciate it!
I just spot interesting projects and creations others create and then just write my own thoughts on them
Soo… journalism?
In any case, do whatever makes you happy, whether remaining solely on here or creating your own thing from this like a website or blog. Your content is among the best on the platform and I hope you know how much we all appreciate you.
Discord is too big at this point for people to leave it. I’ve never heard of revolt until now, I don’t see a need in switching because of a new CEO that hasn’t done anything yet.
That’s like saying one vote doesn’t matter or people protesting not to vote for their party because of a single issue but cause to effect more than the issue. Don’t entertain bad behavior or no one ever learns.
Nothing is too big to end. I’ve seen so many VOIP clients over the years and Discord is just another.
Software isn’t forever. Services come and go. Empires fall.
Regardless, the drive to switch is in selfhosting. If you want actual security and not to have to worry about a corporation handing their logs over to the Feds, Revolt is very appealing.
Perhaps, but we’re now in an age where IPO announcements, CEO changes and even new features inevitably lead to enshittification. There is no harm in having a backup plan.
I’d even say that anyone who doesn’t have a plan B is an idiot, given recent history.
So free? With a paid sub option? Hmm… Maybe they can call it nitro or something. Maybe limit fil size sharing I less you pay the sub too. Oh and lock streaming quality too!
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