Well, what I’m working on is a mod for STALKER Anomaly, and most large models already seem to have good enough awareness of the STALKER games setting. I can imagine it’s a much bigger challenge if you’re making your own game set in your own unique world. I still need to have some minor game information inserted into the prompt, but only like a paragraph detailing some important game mechanics.
Getting longer term interactions to work right is actually what I’ve been working on the last few weeks, implementing a long-term memory for game characters using LLM calls to condense raw events into summaries that can be fed back into future prompts to retain context. The basics of this system was actually already in place created by the original mod author, I just expanded it into a true full on hierarchical memory system with long- and mid-term memories.
But it turns out creating and refining the LLM prompts for memory management is harder than implementing the memory function itself!
I’m actually also working on a project using LLMs to talk to NPCs. Though this one doesn’t use local models but online models called through a proxy using API keys, which lets you use much larger and better models.
But yeah it’s been interesting digging deep into the exact and precise construction of the prompts to get the NPCs talking and behaving exactly like you want them, and be as real and lifelike as possible.
They do have a publisher: Kepler Interactive. But so does Blue Prince in fairness, it was published by Raw Fury.
What constitutes an indie game will always be debated, because it’s almost impossible to define it through black and white rules. If Kojima created a game with a budget of $300m, a cast of Hollywood A-listers and a development team of 200 people and published it himself, would that be an appropriate nomination for the Indie Awards?
Larian self published BG3, should that have been nominated for Indie Awards?
People didn’t call Dave the Diver an indie game. The Game Awards nominated it in that category, and rightly got a lot of shit for it.
Indie is a fraught and vague term in whatever genre of culture it gets applied to. During the early 00s indie music era you had tons of mass produced “indie rock” pushed out by big labels too.
Everyone kind of knows what it’s supposed to mean: small budget, small crew, independent of the major commercial publishers/labels/whatever. But there will always be edge cases in both directions.
I agree with your take. The definition of what an “indie” is is very vague and subjective, but given the budget and resources and circumstances of E33’s development it seems outside the scope of what seems to be the “spirit of the award”.
Blue Prince should have gotten the award to begin with.
This feels kind of more like finding a valid excuse after the indie-or-not debate and backlash, but fuck it. Blue Prince is a great Indie GOTY (the correct choice imo).
I don’t think E33 should have qualified as an indie game to begin with.
Enjoy your time with it! Those moments of seeing something in game and going “wait wait wait I know what this is!” *rifles through notes furiously* were my favourite part.
Without spoiling anything I will say this: I recommend taking actual notes. I did it in a physical notebook but digital has the benefit of being searchable. It’s possible to get by with only screenshots, but I really recommend both and I thought the note taking itself was so enjoyable. I find physical note taking helps with memorization too, and every time you make progress because of something you’ve taken notes of is such a dopamine rush.
I absolutely love Blue Prince! Such an amazing experience and a unique and innovative game. I hope you’re enjoying the note taking and progressively losing your mind!
I mean, I love NV and think it’s by far the best 3D Fallout, but it’s also got a ton of performance and bug issues. Partly due to the engine they were working with and the insane development cycle, but still. The game isn’t without issues. It’s famously unstable and buggy if played without mods. I also think it needs mentioning that a lot of the assets look out of place, because they are. The game had such a short development cycle that a lot of them are just reused FO3 assets.
I love it, but there is a reason so many people recommend something like the Viva New Vegas modlist even for a first playthrough.
I have seen debates of both 3 and 4 over New Vegas. These arguments tend to come almost exclusively from newer fans. Anyone who played 1 and 2 first, especially back in the day, tends to have a much less favourable view of the Bethesda Fallouts. But there are tons of Bethesda-first fans who came into Fallout after first playing Skyrim, typically. The 4 fans either love the base building or tend to think the other games are “too old looking/feeling”. The 3 fans… I don’t even know, that game is pretty terrible I think. But they tend to argue the design of the world in 3 is better to explore than New Vegas.
I haven’t personally heard anyone argue 76 is the best Fallout, but I’m sure someone is out there.
I forgot about those because I never played them myself and honestly this year has been awash with so many good releases that they kind of slipped my mind. But you’re absolutely right!
Interesting that they didn’t include Ninja Gaiden 4 in an otherwise incredibly exhaustive list, but apart from that I think this is as close to “every notable 2025 release, summarised and collected” as you’re going to get.