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.
Is everyone posting about Oblivion simply new to it? Seems weird to me that everyone’s so excited about it but it’s probably just because I played it to death the last time it came round.
honestly i’m not surprised. now i look at the old graphics my eyes hurt, even though i remember it looking like the remake, my mind’s eye really had to work overtime on that. makes sense that people were put off by the bright textures with both over and under saturates colours and decided to not play it
If anyone has a solution for the vram going out of control, i would be so happy 😔. I only have 8gb of vram and it keeps going slightly above it and shoves stuff in normal ram. Causing the game to stutter its way into 25fps. If i then go into a building or fast travel, i get a fatal error and it crashes.
I have tried limiting the pooling vram in the engine.ini but that doesn’t actually work.
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.
crawl, rounds, ship of fools, pico park (better with a large group), risk of rain returns (2 would also be good except that it doesn't actually support local multiplayer, only online).
When making a potion the game crashed. After repeating it multiple times, I figured out that it only happened when mixing a stolen and non stollen ingredient. I have not retested since the last update.
Prior to the update, I could not create an enchanted item with a static effect at frostcrag spire. For example, a ring with nighteye. I could create one with detect life because it was a magnitude selector. This bug went away after the update.
Not really “pink”, and lacks romance, but very pleasant: Dave the Diver. Cozy-ish game with nifty characters. Only thing would be I don’t know if you meant “no/minimal combat” because you don’t want the mechanics or the vibes. Dave has not particularly challenging combat mechanics, and paw patrol levels of violence levels (although you are catching and eating fish).
If you like park builders, Zoo Tycoon is cozy as hell. Beware the DLC trap though. You can get the base game with a lot of meat pretty cheap, but the DLCs are like $10+ each and not really a good value IMO. But the game has a great vibe with some really neat mechanics that try and imitate real conservation efforts.
What would check the boxes through a “Hot Topic” lens is Promise Mascot Agency. Surprisingly wholesome, completely off the wall, combat is all card/deck builder based… I… it’s a hard one to describe.
Doughnut county checks all the boxes but is rather short. Katamari if you haven’t done it.
I hear good things about, but have not played: Naiad, Tempopo.
Weird recommends would be My time at Portia/Sandrock. They absolutely have combat, but have romance systems and a cuter aesthetic. Even the enemies are derpy/cute.
Split Fiction is peak, gonna be hard to beat. Too bad you can’t do ‘a way out’ it’s very well done. Might want to look into tweaks for those “unsupported” games, as many of them work fine. Unraveled 2 is a good example.
Otherwise, If this is something that is really becoming your thing, it might be time to hook your PC to the TV or invest in a console. If you go console, you additionally open up the world of games that require individual screens (crossplay games-you on steam deck screen and them on TV screen, but still sitting together OR you on pc and them on TV if same room).
Our couch coop at some points was me with my laptop on a stack of books on the coffee table while she was on a ps4. Played Aragami this way, for one.
They may seem silly, but there are a slew of Lego games that people get really into and are very impressive. Human Fall Flat also has some silliness, but good puzzles at times
I don’t know why I didn’t remember this. I do have a decent PC and the streaming functionality works quite well. I played Path of Exile 2 this way and it was great. Thanks for reminding me!
Ship of Fools is -60% on steam right now and I can’t recommend this game enough. It’s a rogue lite where you both need to protect a ship from monsters maning the cannons and it’s an absolute blast! It has good progression and it’s intense but not in annoying sort of way.
It looks sick, definitely something I’d enjoy playing. Unfortunately I feel like it would fall under the same umbrella as Overcooked or Moving Out. Too chaotic, I think.
If you like puzzle games, you might try a game that’s not technically multiplayer but that the two of you can work on solving together, which is what my wife and I do. Good candidates for that are Case/Rise of the Golden Idol, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, and we’re currently playing Blue Prince.
I have Baba Is You! It’s a brilliant game, love it to pieces, but it’s not a good fit for my SO. She’d lose interest very fast, looking for something more chill and casual.
Blue Prince is definitely something I’ve been considering but I’m unsure if she’d enjoy games that are just puzzles. Pretty sure Lorelei is just too thinky for her to enjoy.
Definitely looking into more chill games to blow off some steam.
I’d say check out Case of the Golden Idol on a deep sale to test the waters. Lorelei is definitely hard mode if you’re not sure if this is something you’d want, but we found that having two people to approach solving the puzzles helped a lot.
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