They’re basically an evolution of the point and click adventure. This variation is often just called a narrative game or other similar sounding names. Searching for “games like telltale” should give you a good list.
Telltale were the ones that evolved the point and click into the form it takes now just so you know. Supermassive (until dawn) made their take on the genre feel more cinematic and more like watching a movie with choices but they’re ultimately still using the formula that telltale pioneered.
I’m fairly sure years ago that there was a game called alone in the dark that was very similar to this but that was long before telltale. Anything I can remember about it is that it had had fire physics and that every time you started a new level it would load up and say “last time on a loan in the dark” and then give you a tv show style rundown of what you previously done
CYOA - Choose Your Own Adventure. It’s a genre for interactive stories where you get to make decisions that affects the story. It’s also a tag on Steam
They’re effectively visual novels with light gameplay mechanics for navigation or making some narrative path choices. At least, that’s how I felt about Until Dawn.
It depends. There are visual novels in which you can set them on auto and just let voice acting play out. I think there's strong similarities there, though I don't think anyone could get away with calling a Telltale style narrative game a visual novel, flat out.
But I do think they are doing similar things, they may scratch similar itches.
Although certainly similar, the fact that these games have every scene fully animated does add to it in a way that simply reading descriptions about what’s going on doesn’t.
Telltale is the most prolific developer of these kinds of games.
Japan has had elements similar to this in visual novels for a long time. Snatcher, Policenauts, YU-NO, etc. feature the same type of gameplay but without the parts in Life is Strange where you explore in a 3d environment.
Like the a character will remember that type of thing and thus might actually bring it up or hold it against another character. Like Until Dawn there’s a part where the gun has blanks and if you don’t sacrifice the character the character the character tried to shoot won’t open the door when he needs it. Which yeah that whole scene was unrealistic because blanks can still kill.
It was originally just to see how things had changed, but a lot changed and it’s very different. Not that it answered all of my personal issues with it, but I resigned myself to using a build guide. I’ve been enjoying it, surprisingly. Enough that, when I haven’t been out of the house, I usually play it daily.
Progress is going really slow because I’m not that good at the game anymore. But I also made loot filter sounds that spark joy, and I’ve been managing even if I’d like to be at endgame. I’m on act 6 out of 10.
My partner is also playing but doesn’t have a lot of experience. So I’ve been trying to help, which makes it more enjoyable to me because I like to teach.
Not sure if I’m fully going back yet. But I like the league mechanic and am having a good time.
For what it’s worth, Robin Walker and his team are working on the next half life after Alyx. Will that ever come out? I have no idea and I’m not expecting anything. Deadlock however is a game designed by one of the grandfathers of the moba genre, and has had over 20k concurrent players at any given time, and it wasn’t even announced with it’s existence only known through word of mouth. That’s insanely impressive and shows how huge the moba genre really is and how those players are thirsty for a new game from a big company. It sucks and I wish we had more sp valve games but I’m content with the work they’ve done on proton, steamos, the steam deck, steam itself, and half life alyx. They haven’t been sitting on their hands not doing anything, they’ve been putting their focus on more technical areas versus making games and that’s ok.
It’s called HLX, and it’s apparently a traditional non-vr game. Robin Walker was leading the Alyx team, it’s a safe bet he’s leading this team or working with this team on the sequel.
Having HL:A Alyx be VR was super cool. The game was so immersive and for a while afterwards, I was convinced that any furure HL game had to be VR. Then the novelty wore off and the VR market basically is basically dead. Now I’m excited for another flat screen HL game.
I remember them saying that they dont want to do another one in the series because they are looking to innovate and make something truly original.
I don’t remember them saying this, but I remember people speculating that this was a reason. The truth is, if you look into The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx, they prototyped a bunch of different single player games that were cancelled because they just weren’t working, including Half-Life 3. Post-Alyx, in recent weeks, we have evidence to suggest that Half-Life 3 may be imminent.
It’s true they’ve always been distracted with multiplayer games as well, things like Counter-Strike or Team Fortress and I did play them for sure, because I was a kid and I had all the time in the world.
These days I’m not a kid anymore and so when I game I tend to look more for memorable experiences instead of mindless grinding.
Boy, I miss the days when multiplayer games didn’t mean mindless grinding. I play fighting games, and the mindless grinding in recent releases is siloed off to a separate mode that I don’t have to think about; otherwise you’re playing the game because it’s fun and/or because you want to get better at it, not unlock the latest costume. I would love nothing more than for campaign FPS games to come back–the kind that postdated the designs of what we now call boomer shooters–and to come with a deathmatch/CTF mode made out of levels recycled from the campaign, playable online and local. You’d play that multiplayer mode for maybe 5 hours or maybe 5000 hours, depending on how much magic they managed to capture in it, but you absolutely would not have some expectation that the devs must keep updating it. Those were good times, and I didn’t appreciate how good we had it.
Valve is not a normal company. As far as I know they still have their fluid work structure in place where projects are dictated by what the devs themselves feel like doing and are inspired by.
Icefrog (who was the lead developer of Dota 2 - and Dota 1 for many years before that) is lead developing Deadlock as I understand it. It has his fingerprints all over it, at least. It seems enough other people at Valve liked his idea of a twist on the MOBA concept to turn it into a full project.
I feel your frustration but there isn’t really any opportunity cost lost here. It’s not that they decided to make “a game” and chose this one out of all available options. If they felt like they had enough ideas to make Half-Life 3 (or any other single player game) then they would have. It’s just that this is the game they want to make right now.
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