P.S. If you're reading this and you worked on Beast Breaker, please don't take it personally. This is my personal notebook for gushing about things that bugged me while I was playing the game, which means this is me unburdening myself of VIDEOGAME PROBLEMS IN GENERAL, not indicative of qualities problematic about BB specifically



Beast Breaker (played on Epic, Mac; it didn't work right with my tablet; i submitted a bug report. kinda hoping it gets fixed.)

The basic gameplay is kinda neat. You bounce off stuff and deal damage. I liked unlocking the bow - it's a very different weapon! I'm excited to see if there are other types of weapons. (I'm also not a very patient person; I prefer Monster Hunter's approach even though it's TOTALLY OVERWHELMING.)

I don't like the world or its characters at all, really. Part of that is: I don't like the experience of plodding my way through the UI, and part of that is: I wish the game supported my tablet. :/

Okay, concrete conclusions?

Beast Breaker has a wholesome-cutesy story. There is a bit of darkness going on at the edges, hinting at a darker backstory, but on the whole the vibe is very cartoony, sweet, nice. Nothing wrong with that, but I'm not really enjoying any of the story elements.

Another feather in the hat of me not enjoying prose in games, though I will say I don't think the issue is just my hangup with text, it's also just tonally not what I'm looking for, and it so far is only dancing delicately around the idea of there being deeper themes. I dunno. I don't know what I'm expecting, but it is not for me.

It has a grind and unlock treadmill, and I'm not about that. The things I'm unlocking seem like they could be cool, but so far they really aren't. I had a similar issue with Card of Darkness... the stuff that I'm getting dealt up front is just too tame to grab me. Maybe later there will be cool stuff for 'expert players,' but I don't have the patience to get through the tame stuff to get there.

The gameplay is pretty low-key, minimal, undemanding and unrewarding. Related to the above, but while I do feel like my actions make a difference, I do feel like there's a heavy heaping of luck and just... hmm... I dunno, inevitability? Like, there's a strict ceiling on how much I can accomplish.

'Breaking The Horizon' is closely related to the concept of problems described in David Deutsch's 'The Beginning of Infinity':

Quote from: p.16-17 of The Beginning of Infinity[..]if we are simply curious about something, it means that we believe that our existing ideas do not adequately capture or explain it. So, we have some criterion that our best existing explanation fails to meet. The criterion and the existing explanation are conflicting ideas. I shall call a situation in which we experience conflicting ideas a problem.

[..]a conjuring trick is a trick only if it makes us think that something happened that cannot happen.

[Members of the audience] can detect that it is a trick only because of the explanatory theories that they brought with them into the auditorium. Solving a problem means creating an explanation that does not have the conflict.

I'm reading The Beginning of Infinity in a close reading thread, and am reminded of this thought i had about randomness.

If i program a "shuffled deck" object for the purpose of drawing cards off its top, one at a time, then it does not matter if I really shuffle the deck or simply pick a card from the remaining pool at random. That is, there may in truth be an order to the cards in the deck or not, but someone may draw either conclusion about the "reality" of such a system.

For a long time my conclusion was that you might as well perform the cheapest and laziest approach, if they're all the same in the end.

However, consider the new lens: if a subtle detail of a consistent world cannot be understood and discovered, the solution is to surface it, rather than to resign oneself to see it as vestigial.

Make those beautiful unnoticeable edges of the system visible, rather than erase or discredit their existence.

Infinity! This book puts forward the idea that knowledge is an infinite climb towards truth, if constructed and approached properly. FL recommended it when I brought up Lulie.

Prose - I like it in novels because it's the main content

Fluff, polish, whatever - Not the main content, but making the main content better? Supporting it?

Gametober (Droqtober) is keeping me occupied every day. I'm working on a new little game, conceiving of one and then putting in the work to make it real. And... as much as these games are really tiny things, and feel mostly devoid of artistic value, I've found the practice of doing it every day to be extremely valuable. Who knew, right?

It's not that I know this will lead me to making a new Great Game or anything. This isn't even a 'game quality practice' thing, though I suspect game quality will increase; it's in Focus and ADHD after all.

I'm absolutely certain that I could spend my life making a game every day. This is why I'm in pursuit of this career, and it's nice to remember that! Given time, I'd like to figure out how to fit this sustainable habit (of making a new thing every day) into a process that produces more reliably good works.

Hypothesis:

The process will likely involve discarding projects. The rate of 'good output' will never reach 100%.

Do I need to be concerned with sharing 'too much' output? What do I want to share? Do I have a brand? Hu-brand-ity

My partner is getting into digital art (finally! lol) and she's doing Inktober this month. I thought I'd join her, since I'm feeling a bit lost and would love nothing more than an excuse to not finish 31 'proper' games.

Day 1. Something you Love/Hate

This immediately made me think of the pleasure of grinding to unlock things, and this reddit post I saved a long time ago called "Looking For Game With Slow-Paced Combat And Depth". That'll be how I interpret today's theme.

QuoteRecently I've been looking through a number of games I never tried and I remembered like a decade ago I played some Asian MMO where it literally took 1-5 minutes of pretty idle combat to kill one normal mob, you lost exp on death and just a single level of like 150 levels could easily take a full day. I loved that.

Pretty sure that particular game is dead by now, but it would be nice if I could find some new game that meets some of the following points:

Combat

• you don't need to pay a lot of attention, the less inputs per minute the better (full auto-combat or no combat at all is fine too, if there's more depth to the game in other parts)
• preferably no keyboard input needed during normal grinds
• it can be more demanding during special boss or pvp fights, just not the majority of time

General Gameplay

• grind-heavy
• either a very, very long way to max level (at the very least like 300+ hrs) or some good endgame content with a lot of character progression
• depth to the game (I like to theory craft strategies while playing, always thinking what the most optimal next steps are, looking through menus and stats, looking at a wiki - I don't want to feel rushed or like I am not playing efficient while doing so)
• rare loot even from non-raid like content
• rare items and collectibles
• no real money only advantages or at least purchasable with in-game currency as well
• don't care too much about dungeon / raid content right now, but I wouldn't mind of course
• no resource management system / base upgrade as the main focus

Story, Setting and Other Things

• story not important to me (skippable cut scenes and quest texts are nice)
• any graphics are fine, it could be 3d with newest graphics, 2d or fully text-based
• it's available for PC (and not just some bad mobile port)
• free demo up to a certain level or f2p
• if you know a fitting single player RPG or Adventure that takes more than a week to complete I might be interested too (obviously doesn't need to be f2p)

Some games that I recently played are WoW, OSRS and a number of rather short incremental games. While OSRS is quite close to something I would like to play right now, it just requires too many clicks when you're trying to be efficient.

The last few days I did enjoy playing Megami Quest 2 a lot, but at some point there's just very little content left after you started to fully min-max it. I also tried some idle games, but all of them are missing a lot of depth to them.

I'm looking forward to any suggestions, keep in mind not all of those points need to be met as long as the game offers a lot of content and depth (grinding for weeks as content is fine for me, if it's rewarding) and has a rather passive combat system.

edit: Thanks for all the suggestions so far, I am currently looking into classic FFXI a bit more. My biggest complaint from my first impression are the weird console-style menus, but it gives me a lot of nostalgia. Trying my Xbox1 controller instead of mouse/keyboard next, first minutes felt a lot better already. Not sure yet if I'll stick to it FFXI though. Still open to more recommendations.

Quick summary of suggested games in no particular order:

OSRS
Dofus
Wakfu
Ragnarok Online
FFXI
FFXIV
Tibia
Pantheon
Kenshi
Eve
GW1
Maplestoy
TwelveSky 2
WoW Classic

Who does an army listen to? I'm reading Shadow Games (the 4th book in the Black Company series) and there's a situation where a General might be in a position to draft folk for an army, but there's a local religion to whose Priests these folk are loyal.

I'm think about forum mafia, and how things can swing depending on who's mafia and who's not. What about depending on who really has the hearts of the people? It's something you might not know until it's tested, and the test might cost you dearly. (I.e. the General says "to battle!" And the Priest says "mutiny!")

Mafia writ large. An army a thousand strong, each conscript playing a game of localized mafia.

How do I stay focused on one project? How do I know what project is worth focusing on? This is a major issue and I don't yet have a solution. Maybe ADHD meds are the solution! I've never tried to get 'em. It feels like giving up. Shouldn't I be able to figure out the brain I've got? It's scary to think about giving up on that fight.

I've been playing forum mafia and every game I find myself rubbing uncomfortably up against my ego, as well as some paranoid tendencies.

It's fascinating and I love playing this game for this reason: it lets me go hard and examine myself in a safe space.

In the most recent game a player was going at me hard for "acting suspicious" and I reacted by suspecting them back - I theorize because I didn't want to accept that I was being suspicious / playing a bad town game. Much easier to believe that this other player was mafia, trying to cast undeserved suspicion on me!

I resolved this feeling and got back to being reasonable, but it was too late... I'd lost impartiality and ended up making the wrong decision. We lost that game. RIP.

Settings (or Metagame)
The player's agency to choose what part of the game they want to play, and how they want it to work.
Covers things like controls, difficulty settings, and accessibility... but also equipment, level selection, and hub worlds.

System
The interesting decisionspace's material. Minmaxing, optimization, economy.
One half of gamefeel.

Skin
Juice, control, feeling. Presentation. Sensation.
One half of gamefeel.
One half of narrative.

Story
Words and memories. The stories you remember and transmit? Not the story of the game (though that may reside here). The themes, but not the emotions.
One half of narrative.

Watching Sable, I see a coming-of-age story. Sable is going to do the gliding. Seems like you get a mask? Okay. You need to get permission from the grown-ups. They see you as adult, you get to do the coming-of-age.

Makes me think: What if they never do? What does a story arc look like for a character who's denied their coming-of-age because the adults don't see them as adult?

Stir Fried Lotus Root with Pepper
5 from 5 votes
Prep Time:
10 mins
Cook Time:
5 mins
Course: Side DishCuisine: Chinese Servings: 2 -4 Author: Maggie Zhu

INGREDIENTS
1 segment 350 grams / 12 ounces lotus root
1 cup cubed chili pepper or bell pepper
3 tablespoons chopped scallion or green onion
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon black vinegar

INSTRUCTIONS
Rinse and peel lotus root. To cube lotus root, cut the segment in half lengthwise, slice along the tube, then cut into 1- to 1.5-centimeter (about 0.5-inch) cubes. Prepare and cut the other vegetables.
Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Add lotus root and boil for 1 minute. Drain and set aside.
Heat oil in a wok over medium high heat (high heat on an electric stove) until hot. Add scallion and stir until fragrant. Add lotus root and pepper, and stir until half cooked, about 3 minutes (longer if you use a skillet instead of wok). Add sugar and swirl in vinegar. Immediately stir to mix the seasoning well, about 30 seconds. Sprinkle in salt and stir until mixed well, about 20 seconds. Stop heat and transfer everything to a plate.
Serve warm as side or appetizer.

a game is an invitation to play.

in some cases, a game includes the definition - in part or in whole - of the material with which you are invited to play.

I make a lot of platformers, but I do very little character-work. I think it's very important to me to acknowledge the player on the outside of the screen; you're a real person playing this game. So who are you? I want to give you the tools to be yourself in here. Do you embody the character better when you can see the character or when you can't?

I have trouble designing UI because there's nothing for you to embody. You're a person at a computer, doing computer things.

@radiossauro's tweets about "games like they're places"

Quotethe games that I like to replay are usually spaces I like to inhabit, be it because of a sense of nostalgia or just because they feel nice.

I and my brother played a lot of tfc, every once in a while I log in to hang out in those places and hear those noises.

Quoteits very much about virtual places I like to inhabit to me, or some feeling like that that brings me calmness, in puzzle games like tetris etc

Quotethere's a couple of servers where people still play, there are ones with bots too, but when the ones with people are kinda full I go in, lots of old maps get revived and the community is small and chill, people voice chatting and stuff, its very much about virtual places I like to inhabit to me, or some feeling like that that brings me calmness, in puzzle games like tetris etc

see tweet from beetlenaut (luis hernandez)