For all the faults Nintendo embody, they know how to make tutorials, especially with the Mario series. You may think “there are no tutorials in Mario” but that’s part of it. Nintendo’s design formula for making stages for Mario games consist of “introduction, escalation, complication.” First they throw a new mechanic at you, maybe the stage has rotating cylinders you need to stay on top of to progress, and not fall down. Then they up the difficulty a bit, adding more factors to the gameplay like introducing enemies that you have to dodge simultaneously. Then finally they turn the new concept up to 11 towards the end, by making you have to juggle both the new mechanics and some other modifiers, perhaps having to fight a boss at the same time, or perhaps requiring some more advanced platforming maneuvers to progress. That way a stage can be a tutorial, and you don’t even realize it.
Technically I don’t think there’s a tutorial level per say as much as there is a tutorial set of levels, but Baba Is You.
The game starts off with only the controls on how to move and teaches you about how you can change the rules of the level to beat it if it isn’t possible normally, without explaining anything. Just from you exploring and testing different things. The only other time you’ll ever see any other form of level hint is maybe in the level names or if you end up in a position where you have to undo or restart the level from breaking the " [ object ] is you " rule in some way.
Amazing game. I remember hearing folks describe it, before I ever played. I couldn’t get my head around the concept. Then you play, and all the rules just make sense.
Outer Wilds has a very elegant diagetic tutorial in the form of a museum and, well, a training ground, whole game is really a multi layered tutorial with scaling level of complexity.
Heck yeah. I play Helldivers a ton and when a newbie is in my game I bring a mech suit and some kind of secondary weapon for them to use an experience just how cool it can be. Someone did it for me and I’m definitely passing it on whenever I can.
I loved Bastion and Transistor and wished for sequels for both. But SG clearly seemed to prefer to not make sequels for its games all these years; to my knowledge, it has never made one. I’m not sure what or who changed at the company, but Hades 2 is an anomaly.
Has anyone interviewed someone at SG to ask sequel questions? If not, maybe someone will once H2 gets closer to officially shipping.
I honestly preferred no sequls, everytime something new. I haven’t played pyre and hades 2. While I liked hades, I was a bit sad when I heard hades 2, instead of something new.
I’m not an expert, but money (sales) is probably the reason. How many of their previous games sold vs Hades.
Also, maybe it’s a bit cynnical to think of it this way, but hades 2 would require much less effort compared to making something new and it will churn sales as the first one has been a success. Additionally, they probably already had good idea and materials for additions to hades. So why not make hades 2 out of them. Maybe after that they will work on something new.
There can be a tricky balance between building sequels or something new. Sometimes there is more you can do in a world, and people enjoy returning to worlds when there is good reason to.
I think the recent Doom reboot trilogy is a masterclass example. Not everyone enjoys each game, people often have different favorites. But the point is they’re all Doom and yet id Software did something unique with each one. New mechanics, new ways to play, pushing boundaries of what came before.
Of course, with Greek mythology, there is plenty more source material to explore and build on in a setting like Hades. They certainly hit a great formula to do it, and The People® were clamoring for it. But with SG’s established preferences for going after new ideas instead of sequels, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them do something else after Hades 2. Or who knows, maybe they’ll be able to grow enough to work on multiple games at once. That could come with its own challenges, but plenty of studios have done it.
Them's Fightin' Herds went through a very tragic downfall. Publisher fired the entire development team at the end of 2023, before the final DLC character was even finished, and then released her in a completely broken state. Much later they would eventually put out a hotfix patch with several pages of nerfs, and this character is still banned competitively. They did promise further fixes, but they promised that a long time ago and it's been radio silence since. All other promised content updates, including Story Mode, are canceled.
Despite all that, the community's still here. I'm about to leave for Combo Breaker 2025 this weekend, where TFH will be one of the brackets I'm entering. Only a side event, bracket's small, but as long as there are brackets I will show up to them.
Skullgirls is somehow still here, 13 years after release. It's had a long history of perpetual development troubles, and yet has always been kicking. Earlier this year it came out that the developers are suing the publisher over $1.2 million they haven't been paid, so it looks like this actually is the end of development for real now. Fortunately the final patch is in a very good state, they went out on a high note and I'm happy with the finished product.
But again, the community? Still here. Also at Combo Breaker 2025, as a main stage headliner. Skullgirls will never die.
Puyo Puyo Champions is the most functional version of the game, in fact it's the only version on modern platforms that is faithfully accurate to original Tsu rules. Sega let it fall by the wayside in order to sell buggy rehashed crossovers and mobile subscription service exclusives, but PPC is the version you should be playing, don't buy the shovelware that is skinwalking the IP now. Unfortunately, Sega's mismanagement has split the playerbase because of all the shovelware they're pushing, and the west in particular is a hopeless mess because of it. For best results, queue when Japan is awake. But you can still play this version, and you should!
The thing is, I don’t think valve wants to become a desktop OS provider. Becoming the provider and maintainer of an OS for hundreds of millions of users is so far beyond their scope as a company. They’ve got a third the employees of Canonical and a fiftieth the employees of RedHat, the companies behind Ubuntu and Fedora. Maintaining a limited scope console/handheld OS that runs on a handful of hardware set ups is one thing, but supporting a fully fledged daily driver desktop OS meant to operate on any system is something else entirely.
Right now, most of their users are on windows, which makes them nervous because Microsoft is a known monopolist and has been slowly creeping deeper in to the PC games space. That’s why Valve has put so much effort in to software to support compatibility on Linux, so there is a viable alternative if Microsoft try’s to push them out. I think the steam deck and steamOS were a means to that end, create a business reason to develop and support those tools, not a first step towards becoming an operating system developer.
A better route forward for them would be to use their reach and public trust to help people make the switch to other extant distros. For example an all in one utility on the steam store that helps people select the right distro for their use case and set it up, have a hardware scan and a little quiz to choose a distro, a hard drive partitioning tool to set up dual boot, a tool to write the ISO to a USB drive (or maybe even just set up a bootable on the disk using the partitioner IDK), and migrate important files over using their cloud system.
If the issue is that people trust stuff with the valve branding on it, but are not willing to try Linux on their own, then Steam acting as a guide is much more practical than Valve taking on all the work needed to maintain a proper distro.
I recognise that for almost any one task, Linux has a solution that works better than Windows. My issue is just getting Linux to run not only one specific thing but all the dozens of programs with each having their own dependencies and possible quirks without losing my mind, weeks of my life, data or all three.
If Valve (or really any other large entity capable of handling this for tens of thousands of users) stepped in to act as the guide for setting it all up in a safe manner and such that it just works without constant need for tweaking (unless you want to stray from the “installation wizard”), I could see Linux gain a big surge in users.
I’m not being hyperbolic or lying for the sake of comedy, but the only games that ever made me feel violent were platformers with high frustration levels. I’ve never felt violent playing DOOM or Carmageddon or Postal 2. It’s pantomime violence, regardless of how realistic it looks. But Mario Bros. and Super Meat Boy? You’d better leave the house when I boot those shits up, and take the hammer with you.
Anyone who says postal 2 makes people more violent/racist/whatever has either never played the game or they have incredibly poor media literacy. That game’s a gem and to this day has some of the best level design I’ve seen. Also if you didn’t know they had a 20th anniversary update a couple years back that added a bunch of bug fixes, qol, and content out of nowhere
Same boat for me. I can whack zombies with a baseball bat all day or whatever and feel nothing, but get me frustrated with some insane timing-based thing and over- or under-sensitive controls, and I’ll crack for sure. Souls-like and certain platformers are pretty much the only ones that do it because I feel like I should be able to do the thing, and can’t. Other games that are super challenging, like RPGs or action-type games, I can try the same boss fight or “cinematic timing-based action sequence” (a thing that should die off) 100 times and not get the rages.
I yell a lot, up to and including unintelligible screeching, and heaven help anyone who interacts with me in that state… But fortunately I’m not a controller thrower or slammer. Can’t afford to buy new shit due to rage. Instead I learned to just pause for a while and come back at it in better headspace. That’s often all it takes.
It’s for the best I live alone, but I’m sure my neighbors think I’m insane…
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