Yeah at first during onboarding when you’re running like one smelter into one constructor on the ground with a wavy belt and spamming power poles everywhere it’s kinda goofy but when you start designing factories you can make some cool looking stuff.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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’s what a lot of the upgrades boil down to, yeah. Air tanks increase endurance, fins and seaglide increase movement speed, rebreather eliminates an endurance draining effect at depth, seabases and submarines allow you to start your dive from greater than zero depth. Pretty much all of that boils down to “dives to this depth are now practicable.”
Other than that, the knife allows you to harvest plate coral for making computer chips, kelp for making fabric, and seeds for plants. The scanner is required to obtain the blueprints for several other required buildables. The mobile vehicle bay is required to build the Cyclops. The Cyclops is required to make the shield module. A radiation suit…I think speedrunners don’t use it and just tank the damage with medkits, but I consider it a requirement.
There is one straight-up key you have to craft; there are several others for required or optional doors but you only have to craft one to complete the game and two to unlock all doors.
There’s a tool that is like Half-Life 2’s gravity gun, which can be used to move heavy obstacles out of paths, but it’s never outright required for anything. I usually don’t bother with it.
The laser cutter is required, You have to cut through one of two doors in the Aurora to gain access to the Captain’s Cabin.
Do you mean Stardew Valley or Haunted Chocolatier?
Stardew Valley is a combination of a creativity toy, a dating simulator, a soap opera and a security blanket. You’re actually able to return to a humble artisanal life, make absolute bank doing it, and beat the giant megacorp should you choose do to so. A decreasing number of places offer that kind of hopeful feeling in reality.
Haunted Chocolatier? I don’t know, didn’t really see the appeal when it was explained to me.