Playing so many games! (Patreon)

Welcome To The Dark Place update

Hello, I have made some progress in Welcome To The Dark Place, although it hasn't been as much as I'd like. I've observed that #1. I feel a strong resistance to working on ANY game projects (even entirely new ones, not just Lethal Company or WttDP), which seems to signal some kind of burnout. But strangely, #2. I felt totally up to building my own city for endless hours in the Brickadia demo with friends around.

So that's kind of a frustrating paradox.

It could mean that I may need to run more playtests of Welcome To The Dark Place with friends--not because I need to run the playtests (although I do) but because my brain might just need a reminder that this game doesn't exist in a lonesome, solitary vacuum. Lethal Company thrived off of nearly daily playtesting with friends for the better part of a year. Whereas with WttDP I've basically locked myself up in a cabin on a mountain and pretty much forgot that playtesting was a thing.

So I'm going to work towards getting the game ready for playtests, which is a much nearer goal than finishing it entirely. If that doesn't work, I might be in burnout, or the project may need to sit in the ice cooler for another tantalizing year. There is one other diagnosis I could make, which is that my heart is telling me that I'm off track--that I am not adding or focusing on the right parts of the game. Generally, I've found that my heart doesn't lie, and if I don't want to work on a project, it might be because it's veering off-track (or stagnating). Still, I've gotten little bites of work done.

Playing Games--rapid fire

I have been working through my Steam wishlist since I got my new computer. I feel lazy doing this, but playing games is a part of my job, and I haven't played many games over the past two years. Here we go!

Parking Garage Rally Circuit

First I played and completed Parking Garage Rally Circuit, which was a very fun little game with some very hard levels to get gold in. I laughed, I cried. I think of all the games in this list, it's the one I'd recommend most.

Pacific Drive

Second I tried Pacific Drive, another game about driving. The core gameplay loop is about getting out to loot resources along the road while scary monsters roam around. It's very similar to an idea I've been sitting on for a long time, so I was really excited to see what it was like. Well, it turned out to just be a fascinating case study for me. This gameplay loop seems like it should be exciting, but it feels quite empty and uneventful, and I think maybe too much development time was just spent on adding peripheral ideas that don't serve the core gameplay. I was disappointed by this one. I also felt that they added some features and design choices without thinking them through--especially because the way that I permanently soft-locked myself is so easy to do that the game even seems to encourage it with one of its tips.

Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop

Third, I tried Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop. This game is so charming. I couldn't bear to give it a negative review on Steam, especially after the last one. It's a roguelike with gameplay kind of like Papers Please, where you are a mechanic and have lots of doodads to click on and crank and turn and jingle around, which I always love. The issue is that for some reason, unlike Papers Please, which gives you the ability to reverse time from your death to any previous day of your choosing, this game insists that when you die, you start all the way back, every time, like a normal roguelike. I stuck with it until I became very good at the first four or five days and could fly through them.

But I quit when I realized that I just could not use my intuition to learn on the fly. That meant any time I came across a new mechanic, I would have to fail brutally until I gained the memory of how to deal with it, then slog through the first 4-5 days again. Reading the manual and learning while on the job just takes way too long for how little time the game gives you, and it doesn't help that one tiny mistake like a loose screw can cost you hundreds. Maybe I'd consider playing the easy baby mode, but I haven't even mentioned that sometimes the game just kills you as a joke for something like choosing a silly dialogue option, sending you all the way back to the first day. That's just disrespecting my time, and as a player, it broke my trust that the game developer isn't just cruel for no reason. So I just stepped away from this one.

Splinter Cell

So then I played Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which has immense nostalgia for me. I used to play the split-screen co-op of this game with my uncle, which was a whale of a time, but I never played the single-player. I found the game's atmosphere so intriguing as a kid that I would pretend to infiltrate my own house as a spy at night, solely because of this game. As an adult, this game is nothing extraordinary, and it doesn't match up to my nostalgic vision. But I can still remember my vision, and I can describe at least two principles I would follow if I made a stealth game:

1. You have to take it slow and cannot underestimate the enemy's intelligence and perception. You find yourself leaning in as your character takes small-but-consequential actions, like just cracking open a door. When a plan goes south and you have to change the plan, the drama is understated by the realistic silence. The atmosphere is characterized by the fact that you are stalking around a lion's den.

2. Your character is an expert, and you are trusted with an overwhelming amount of tools and abilities for stealth. At first you may feel slow and clumsy, but that's because it's not a typical game and your controls are designed specially for what this game is. For example, there are like a dozen different ways to open a door. Figuratively, you are piloting a complicated mech, and you need to use its capabilities--you can't just waltz on in through the shadows and wait for the guards to turn away on a timer. No, you have to navigate differently than you would in any other kind of game.

What Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory does do better than any other stealth game, in my opinion, is the general atmosphere. The soundtrack and vibes are just perfect. I can't explain it. But mechanics-wise, it just reminded me that I love games that let you quick-save and quick-load wherever you want.

The last game I played is Paradise Marsh, and I haven't finished it yet. It's just nice and pleasant. I have no complaints.