Roberta and Ken Williams say they are working on a game. [engadget]
Sierra Games Celebrating the release of King’s Quest, 1991 [looks like an Apple II]
This represents a sort of challenge to my oft-spoken belief that gameplay is what matters, and all the graphical flash and blink is secondary. What if they produce a game I don’t like because it’s not state of the art? Is there even a ‘state of the art’? 2009’s Brutal Legend was a hoot and I loved it in spite of its deliberately dated look. Maybe gameplay is what matters, but what if it’s not?
Unrelated but related: there’s going to be a 3rd Subnautica, which is fine with me. They can turn that crank for a long time so long as it’s got the same kind of “gee wow” exploration and discovery.
Unrelated but related: there’s going to be an endless sequence of Horizon Zero Dawn bang-ons. They may even be good. But it looks like the gaming industry’s fondness of crank-turning is going to take over and give us “more of the same” until we puke. I just contradicted my sentiments above. This is frustrating: I love both Subnautica and Horizon Zero Dawn but I guess I’m more worried about a triple-A-rated game turning into a series juggernaut, than a smaller game. Am I saying “money changes everything?”
I beat Rimworld for the first time the other day, having figured out a defensive strategy that works very well. There are so many mods and so many “how to”s I don’t think it’s probably worth getting into that topic. But, what a great game.
While we are talking about unrelated things…
I’d like to thank you for the tip about FAR: Lone Sails. I enjoyed it very much, and I’m thinking of running through it again already, which is rather rare for me for a highly stylized game.
I’ve been enjoying an early access game recently. I don’t know if you like builders. I don’t like the ones which are too complex and require dozens of micro-management decision. That’s too much like my job. But in this builder you can get to a point where your settlement is basically self-running, allowing you to concentrate on new settlements. Further, the major resource to manage is water, and the game includes droughts where the source of the water goes away, so your critters will die of thirst if you don’t manage the resource properly. It’s not a particularly tough challenge, but enough to keep the game interesting. Of course, that might change as they get closer to release. It’s also pretty cute, the game is set in a post-man environment, and your sprites are intelligent beavers. The name of the game is Timberborn.
flex@#1:
I’ve been enjoying an early access game recently. I don’t know if you like builders. I don’t like the ones which are too complex and require dozens of micro-management decision. That’s too much like my job. But in this builder you can get to a point where your settlement is basically self-running, allowing you to concentrate on new settlements
I love builders, when the building is relevant. Subnautica, for example, was right on the edge of irrelevant (as long as you had all the stuff the layout of your base only affected the time it took you to get things done) whereas in Rimworld your base layout is absolutely critical.
There was a game way back, called Master of Orion, in which you had to run a galactic economy and win a war with it. Somehow they simplified the economy with automation so that it was actually possible to set up an empire that mostly ran itself. Brilliant game.
Marcus @2,
I would say Timberborn is probably closer to Subnautica then. Base location is important, some resources will be hard, or impossible, to get if your initial base isn’t in the the right spot. But base layout is less important, largely because you can build up as well as out.
I remember Master of Orion, good game.
The last game I bought was Diablo II.
Yes, I’m old.
macallan@#4:
The last game I bought was Diablo II.
I know right where my install CD is. That is a game for the ages.
I still have games on paper punch-tape. I must be beyond time and space.
Oh yes, I remember getting Mystery House in about 1979. Crude graphics, but it was a good game.
Marcus @5:
Same here, along with the expansion. I still play it occasionally on an old G5 Mac. Thanks to everything being randomly generated there’s always a little thing you didn’t see before, even after 20 years.
I don’t think there are any shortcuts to what makes a game good. I think it boils down to something that’s a lot more about answering the question of what you want your players to be doing with the game. If the graphics, the UI, and the gameplay all dovetail nicely to make doing that a fun experience? Then it’s a good game.
Example: Imagine you could take Minecraft and an MMO and swap graphics so you have blocky Minecraft graphics in your MMO and Minecraft suddenly has a lot of dress-up options and lots of other visual detail when you look around. The Minecraft gameplay and UI wouldn’t really mesh well with that level of detail. And you’d just straight up remove one of the things people play MMOs for: getting the neat gear and going back to town to show off. But in their respective games the graphics work great as they are.
I’m pretty sure swapping the other elements would have a similar effect.
I know they’ve already set another sequel up, but I would love to see Guerilla have the gumption to make the Horizon games a trilogy. Of course, once Aloy is finished her job the machines will no longer be a threat, so if they would like to make some lower stakes games in the same world they’d have to be prequels or contemporaneous to the main games (there have been some characters I’ve fallen in love with that I’d love to spend more time with).
Tabby Lavalamp@#9:
I would love to see Guerilla have the gumption to make the Horizon games a trilogy. Of course, once Aloy is finished her job the machines will no longer be a threat, so if they would like to make some lower stakes games in the same world they’d have to be prequels or contemporaneous to the main games
I agree. It’s a great game so far. I really felt the thrill of discovery a few times, which is rare. It’s what happens when you hire an actual sci-fi writer to do the script outline.
I think it’d be cool AF to do another game that’s 20 years in the future of the future, when Aloy is grown and is a sort of hero/trouble-shooter/advisor to monarchs and a mature leader. It’d have to have elements of strategy in it, wherein she was sometimes trying to make decisions and other times grabbing her asskicking gear and running out into the night…
“I think it’d be cool AF to do another game that’s 20 years in the future of the future, when Aloy is grown and is a sort of hero/trouble-shooter/advisor to monarchs and a mature leader.”
Only if she and Petra have settled down together and have combined their talents to also have a successful tech business.