Some games do, some games don’t. It’s a design choice.
Also, Oblivion was released originally in 2007, and Morrowind in 2002. The consoles, game logic, and gfx were a fraction of what modern games can do, a lot of games (most, in fact) back then didn’t have the fancy animations for all directions. There were likely other backend/engine limitations at the time that don’t exist today, because CPU/GPU power.
ETA: as someone who has coded a 3rd person camera and animations in 3D to work in all directions, it really fucking sucks to do in a well-known engine with online search available from others that have done it before. Now imagine having to code everything like that from scratch into a custom game engine, being one of the firsts to figure it out. I’m also gonna guess other bugs were far more important than which direction the character is walking in TPV, being a Bethesda game and all.
My partner and I make a point to occasionally play through a couch co-op game as well. Here are some of the things we enjoyed.
Phogs - Currently playing this. It’s a cute, dog-themed puzzle game thing, where you play as two heads of a single long dog-thing. We’re enjoying it, but we’re not particularly deep in, and I do wonder if it’ll get Ibb and Obb samey, but it’s worth checking out imo.
Cassette Beasts - Couch co-op, Pokemon inspired, adventure RPG with great storytelling, fantastic music and a retro aesthetic. The world is very Zelda-like in exploration and puzzle solving, while combat is Pokemon double battles. Highly recommended, just be aware that one player gets to be the player-made protagonist, while the other is one of an interchangeable series of partner characters.
Sea of Stars - The co-op update did a lot of good for this game. A Chrono Trigger inspired, faux-SNES era, indie RPG. There’s a lot of unvoiced dialogue, which I could see as being a barrier to enjoyment as a multiplayer game, but the game is paced quite well, so I don’t think it’s a huge problem. Also, players do take turns inputting commands, but everyone is responsible for the timed hits/blocks, and you each control a character of equal agency in the overworld, so it avoids the largest co-op turn based RPG folly of having one player and one half-watching “follower.” There are a ton of accessibility options/features (difficulty is VERY malleable), and as an added bonus, there’s a free story DLC coming on the 20th.
Children of Morta - This is perhaps the most “hardcore” of my list, but the girlfriend, despite explicitly not enjoying “hard” games, really really enjoyed this one. An action-RPG with some very light roguelike elements, Children of Morta has you play as a family of hunter-gatherer-warrior types in a fantasy world, working together to stop a malevolent power from corrupting the physical world. Each family member has a different playstyle, their own skill tree, and a lot of personality. The game is very story driven, with a few moments being taken between each run for the fantastic narration to drip feed the narrative, slowly teaching you more about the world, the characters, and their family dynamic.
These are the ones that came to the top of my mind, either because they were particularly good or, in the case of Phogs, is ongoing. If I see anything else worth mentioning when I look at my Steam list next, I’ll add.
That’s an interesting take. I found them to be very different people. Two different flavours of cliche’d anime protagonist, sure, but very different people none the less.
This one caught my eye as well. Split Fiction had a small section that played very similarly to this game, don’t want to spoil too much. It was fun, but I’m unsure if I want a full game about it.
Cassette Beasts
This one looks good for me heh :P
Sea of Stars
This one has been on my wishlist forever now, the mixed reviews have been turning me off. I’m not sure if these classic RPG games are her thing but we should try and figure it out.
Children of Morta
This one fell flat for me. I don’t know why, I didn’t connect with the game.
!gamedev and !game_design might be able to help you too. Idea sounds very cool! I’d love to play when it comes out.
The princess telepathically communicating with the knight does not have to be the same as if you were playing as the knight. You could have it that way, such that she tells him every time to jump or swing his sword. Or you could limit her telepathy communications to a few per day, so she can only give him general directives and check his progress/environment. You will not have all the information all the time and have to guess the situation off the few snapshots in time you get and hope the orders you give lead him to you. I swear there have to be a few other games with the idea of the player character having to influence others and not being able to directly act themselves, a kind of “person in the control room giving the orders” simulator, that you might be able to look at.
I don’t remember these being particularly violent but maybe are worth a look:
Pit people
BattleBlock Theater
I also liked Moon Hunters and Children of Morta but those are harder.
Divinity Original Sin 1 is also good but definitely falls into the violent category. Its kind of goofy too so it could be worth considering. The second game + BG3 are significantly more violent and serious so are harder to recommend with that criteria.
Edit: hmm it seems the formatting is funky in Voyager, should be fixed now
I’ll add a +1 to Battleblock Theater! Such a well done game that can be true co-op or “co-op with shenanigans” if that’s more your vibe. The story is entertaining and lighthearted and the levels introduce new mechanics throughout.
+1 for the LEGO games. Sort of my go to sleeper pick for surprisingly good games. The humor is good, gameplay is decent though I have to go on big breaks between playing through one because gameplay game to game can be a bit samey.
Princess has small (flying) familiar, they mind meld and share images. Familiar goes around trying to stay unseen, gathers stuff, maps the place and brings it all back to the princess. Princess then sends a scritch to savior as a vague guide and they communicate through the familiar and short messages.
Any of the Warriors games (just don’t buy it, don’t reward them for releasing the same damn game 20+ times)
Legend of Mana (highly recommended, please don’t sleep on this)
Destroy All Humans 2
Ratchet: Deadlocked
Divinity: Original Sin
Resident Evil 6
Halo: Master Chief Collection
Lego Star Wars
The Tales games are long and go up to 4 players. I’d recommend them if you have more people to join.
Be prepared for a few roadbumps while you acclimate yourself to using emulators. It won’t be smooth at first, but it gets easier the more familiar you become with it.
I get what you’re saying. I do have RetroDeck fully set up but I only use for old games that I do physically own. Most of them haven’t aged very well and aren’t of any interest to my SO.
I have enough disposable money that I’d rather support “new” games/developers rather than emulating titles for other consoles.
What is the core gameplay loop you envision here? Cause I can come up with a few ideas, but if you have specific ideas they probably won’t apply. Also there’s a particular balance to be struck: if you hamstring the player too much it won’t feel like a game, and if you give them too much leeway they won’t feel trapped. Here are a few ideas off the top of my head:
Direct but limited intervention: the princess is a sorceress who is trapped by magic in the tower which means she can’t leave and doesn’t have access to her full magical powers (you could include a progression mechanic where the more bosses the knight defeats, or the more magical crystals he shatters, or whatever, the more you can help him.) But she’s still scrying on him, watching his progress, throwing the occasional beneficial spell or nuking crowds of dangerous enemies before he gets overwhelmed, etc. The reduced interactivity will make the player feel trapped (and slowly less so as the game progresses), and maybe the scrying window starts out smallish so you can’t see the whole field at once and it slowly grows as her power increases.
Distraction/misdirection: The knight has made it to the tower/castle and has to fight his way through the guards, but instead of attacking the guards directly you’re trying to cause a ruckus to distract the guards so he doesn’t have to fight them all at once. This could even be a stealth game where you’re knocking things over and banging pots and pans or whatever to distract the guards as he sneaks by them.
Puzzle game: The castle/tower itself is magical and has floor tiles/walls that can be moved around, and the princess is manipulating the castle around the knight to give him the best path through obstacles and to limit the number of guards that can get to him in any given room.
It really depends on what kind of game you want to make here.
Thank you for the detailed response. The gameplay loop I have in mind is a puzzle game where the thing you’re trying to do is usually easy, but you’re limited in some way that makes it hard. An example I gave in another comment is : write a computer program that adds two numbers, but you’re not allowed to use the + symbol.
I really like your idea of “beneficial spell”. I think maybe the knight and enemies are autonomous, and the princess can only do a single action to make the knight succeed.
I remember playing a game like this. It’s based on Conway’s game of life. The goal is to flip a single cell to make all the cells die after a certain number of turns.
Yeah, you could maybe combine the sliding-tile-puzzle thing with the beneficial spell so you’re not just sitting there watching everything play out with nothing to do (though autobattlers are apparently a thing so maybe that’d be fine?)
Also, if you happen to find that game based on Game of Life I’d like to give that a shot, sounds interesting.
Bunhouse - a non-management-heavy farming simulator but you are bunnies growing plants. Cute as hell. There is a sequel where you run a bakery too but we haven’t got round to that just yet.
Unrailed - might fall into the overcooked catagory, but when it gets hard and goes wrong it tends to be a looming inevitablity, not a frantic panic
Nidhogg - a 1v1 fighter, but is quick fire frantic sword fights you can button bash through which is wildly entertaining in 5 min bursts.
In Oblivion Remastered, in third-person, when you run in a straight line either left or right your character will do this kind of sideways/backwards jog instead of straight-up strafing like they’ll do in Morrowind.
Imo either one makes sense when compared to real life, but maybe I’ve just been playing games too long?
I wouldn’t necessarily chalk it up to laziness or whatever. Imo it’s just different games do different things differently. It doesn’t break my immersion or mean the game is less fun to me.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne