A dumping ground is really all my Fallout settlements turned out to be anyways lol. Every once and a while I’ll see an idea I want to recreate but usually I just end up slapping some chests down and walking away
It was the game you put on in pre-internet years for your younger relatives, so they don’t have to just sit and fester all day while listening a story about your aunts hip surgery.
It was something anyone could pick up in a second and still be a challenge for anyone.
For most of them this was the only time they were able to play games with a larger group without their mothers bitching about game time. Many kids didn’t even have gaming systems, because they were expensive and many parents thought they were a bad addictive influence, so for them this was an absolute delight.
So, fun memories about the game, even though the game itself isn’t much.
Somehow those cultural influences still echo in the modern world. Dads with all that nostalgia convince their kids that Mario Kart is absolute classic.
I was about 2 decades later, but I bonded over games like Pokemon and later made many friendships in minecraft. Wish I could revisit that time. I think it’s less about any particular era in gaming - it’s about being young. Kids are still forging friendships over video games today - just different ones (although, at least in the case of my nephew, Minecraft is still one of them :D).
I would mostly agree. The magic of video games and the virtual worlds was bridged to the real world by sharing them with friends. I can totally see that!
I guess “modern” gaming works best when playing online with friends (not every game allows that of course), and wind down type of games. Self care gaming 😄.
I had some great moments though screensharing my game on discord while being able to watch what my friend was playing on their screenshare. There is something - even though that it is not exactly what you were hinting at, as obviously you can’t directly influence the game that the other is playing - but it is a shared experience in some way that makes it feel connected and special.
Yes, they enjoy and will happily play me at Mario Kart for exactly the same reasons they won't play me at F-Zero.Presence of catch up mechanics role of luck, amount it rewards familiarity with the game/tracks
I started on the first PSP game and it was heavily more obtuse, with almost zero direction, tutorial, hints, anything hahaha. It got a LITTLE better with later “old style” games but it was still pretty obtuse. World NEEDED a tutorial that explained every little detail and held yer hand, otherwise new players would be hella turned off by the game and it wouldn’t have blown up like it did.
I don’t really have time for extensive puzzle games anymore, so I watch a YouTuber named Aliensrock. He’s still playing it, and I’m so invested! It’s insane that a puzzle rougelite can work so well and be so engaging with the story and mysteries. There are multiple ways to figure out each puzzle (except one so far), which is fascinating.
A puzzle game that puts RNG in between the player and the ability to attempt a solution is something I’m not willing to tolerate.
how is it different from playing Riven with one of your sticks of RAM poorly seated so the computer crashes on a semi-regular basis resetting your progress?
No. Not for me. I’d be more interested in wearing the corner fire hydrant in my ass than playing that.
That question is the thesis statement of a 2 hour long video essay if ever I heard one.
Most games involve random chance somehow to make the game feel more alive and less deterministic, like in an early Zelda game, should the Octorok run 3, 4, 5, or 6 tiles forward? Should it turn left or right? Should it drop a rupee or a heard when killed? These I’m fine with.
In an RPG, things like monster encounter rates might use the RNG to simulate the behavior of a dungeon master, both “roll for initiative” and “I’ll have them encounter 4 groups of low level monsters on their way through the creepy forest.” Using an RNG and lookup table for that is a reasonable low overhead way to add some unpredictability and adventure to the game. Note: I don’t really play RPGs that much.
The term roguelike has started to be overused to mean any game that features procedural generation and permadeath. By that definition I think Tetris qualifies as a roguelike. The original Rogue kind of worked like a virtual dungeonmaster, it would create an RPG campaign for you to play in, and then it played like any RPG where you have to explore a dungeon, learn the mechanics etc. with permadeath and the consequence of having to relearn everything you’ve learned thusfar generating stakes and pressuring the player to survive, no “whatever, I’ll just die and respawn.” So that’s an innovative use of a computer random number generator. Most things that call themselves “roguelikes” are more “We designed a cool primary gameplay loop but can’t really be bothered with level design so here’s some procedural generation to beat your head against over and over again, maybe hoping to find a scenario you can possibly win.” Quite often, it’s not that the game randomly re-engineers itself, it throws the same pre-scripted things at you in a somewhat different order, so they end up playing more like old arcade games than an actual adventure.
A “roguelike” I’ve spent the most time with is FTL: Faster Than Light, and its roguelike structure is by far my least favorite feature. I don’t really like beating my head against the RNG hoping a permutation of combats, 50/50 “do you help with the giant spiders” encounters goes my way so that I have enough scrap, and that it gives me a shop with a useful array of weapons so that I have a chance at the end encounter.
Blue Prince takes the randomization to a whole other level. It might be compelling if it procedurally randomized the house for each playthrough such that you do have to learn YOUR way through it, and you have limited stamina so that each day you can only explore so far, but you can get upgrades to your stamina so that you can stay in the house longer and explore deeper, but…I can’t see the way they implemented the game’s RNG as anything other than flagrant disrespect of the player’s time.
The “AHA!” moment in a puzzle game is what you’re after. That hapens in the player’s mind. If the player thinks up the solution, but the mechanics of the game make it take a long time to implement, all you’re doing is grinding the player’s teeth together. And Blue Prince seems designed to maximize teeth grinding, because the player may know the solution to a puzzle, but contriving the circumstance necessary to implement that solution requires several unlikely rolls back to back to back to back to back.
Sorry, I’m just convinced it’s bad game design pretending to be novel.
Thanks for the long reply! To me, there is another element that RNG can add: the challenge of adapting. Think of x-com: you’re immediately told the odds that a shot will succeed, and have to decide whether to take that shot based on that chance and the consequences of it failing.
You know that on average things will work out fairly, but you have to be ready to push the successes without letting failure trip you up.
During most of the game, Blue Prince poses many different puzzles and riddles to you in parallel. If you focus on one thing you’ve had a eureka moment about, you’ll be frustrated with the lack of control, but if you approach the situation holistically, and pursue all puzzles at the same time based on what is available, it’s a very different experience. Your thought processes and realizations are shaped by the randomness of the day.
Furthermore there’s always an interesting strategy element of mitigating the chance by ensuring lots of redraws in different ways, upgrading rooms to serve several purposes, piling up resources between runs etc.
I do think it’s novel and interesting, though not necessarily the best idea in the world. To properly do the holistic approach I mention you need a massive infrastructure of photos and notes to keep track of all the clues you’re pursuing. I wish it had some kind of overview of found documents and clues, though I can see how that’s not so simple to implement for this game in particular.
From what I saw of Blue Prince, it would be like playing Return of the Obra Dinn, except after you get one of the death scenes and the soundtrack blarps at you for awhile, there’s the door unlock sound, and there’s a random chance it’s going to make you arbitrarily replay the game.
I’m just not on board with all the shit they piled in front of the mystery to solve.
While there is one main goal in front of you, all the shit they pile in front of you is more mystery, the solution of which will carry you closer to your goal.
It’s more like if Obra Dinn randomly had you play an Outer Wilds loop or Chants of Sennaar segment, with all the mysteries tying together.
Well… A puzzle is a challenge. In Blue Prince, part of the challenge is that you need to engage with the clues you have available, not necessarily the clues you hoped for. Removing that challenge is to remove part of the puzzle.
You’re fully within your right to say that’s not your cup of tea, but I think it does contribute something meaningful to the puzzling.
Putting a jigsaw puzzle together is a challenge. You could increase that challenge by requiring yourself to roll a die and getting 6 five times in a row before you’re allowed to try to fit a piece. Does that sound like good game design to you?
To me, the RNG feels fundamental to the puzzling in Blue Prince, not something that could be removed to make a better game. And Blue Prince is undeniably an interesting game.
Is RNG always bullshit? No; only a sith speaks in absolutes. There are appropriate uses of randomness in video games. Is RNG very often a source of bullshit? Absolutely. Do I feel like that’s the case in Blue Prince? ABSOLUTELY
“I got the pump room but not the boiler room again so I still can’t try doing the thing I’ve been trying to do.” Said players of a game designed to disrespect their time.
If, at the start of each in-game day, you were given all of the rooms you’d unlocked so far, and were allowed to arrange them however you like right then and there, and were then free to move around in it however much you please, would the game be worsened? I’m convinced it would only be improved, because pretty much all you would do is remove “Welp, for the fifteenth time, I know what I want to try, but random chance prevented me from doing so.”
The presentation is charming and the puzzles are intriguing but I think the community is putting up with the deeply terrible mechanics out of sheer novelty, and another game made like it isn’t going to be well received.
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