What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims

[Zevox]

I also get blizz wanting to try to make some money off the battlegrounds mode, which otherwise doesn't monetize so well.

See, that is exactly where they get no sympathy and plenty of anger from me, because I don't think that's a remotely reasonable argument for this. One, they've already found ways to monetize Battlegrounds in the form of the myriad (overpriced, IMO) cosmetic options they started offering for it, and I've seen those more than often enough to know plenty of people are buying them, especially the attack animations. Two, Battlegrounds is just one mode of many in a game that they've already been adding ways to milk for all its worth to for years. There's no way to convince me they needed to lock half of a basic gameplay function behind a paywall in order to make any money off of Hearthstone of all things, that's just absurd on its face - especially when the mode has existed without this for literally years already. It's blatantly making their game worse to feed their greed, nothing more.

[warty goblin]

There's no way to convince me they needed to lock half of a basic gameplay function behind a paywall in order to make any money off of Hearthstone of all things, that's just absurd on its face - especially when the mode has existed without this for literally years already. It's blatantly making their game worse to feed their greed, nothing more.

I think this is more or less an inevitable part of the life cycle of a F2P game. At some point a title simply won't be attracting lots of new players anymore, either because it's already a niche product and has more or less capped out, or because it's a competitive market and an older title gets gradually left behind by changing genre expectations it can't fully meet without massive changes that alienate the existing player base.

As the playerbase stagnates, more and more of the population will accumulate at the top of whatever progression systems the game has, which makes them harder to extract money from. You can't sell a progress booster to a player who has already progressed, it's going to be harder and harder to sell them new cosmetics because they already have the ones they think are cool, and they probably have already accumulated a bunch of the rare and desirable items.

At the same time however, the players who have stacked up at max progression are generally pretty hardcore, and so can be squeezed harder. In particular, gating things that used to be free works because if the player base has spent 1500 hours getting used to the dopamine kick of getting that reward or using that thing, playing without it is intolerable. But they have 1500 hours or whatever in the game, it's probably a major part of their routine, so not playing is also psychologically expensive.


I'm thinking about this a lot right now because World of Warships, my F2P poison of choice, is about to retool its progression into the inevitable battle pass. Naturally this looks like it's going to be a worse deal for players, unless you buy the upgraded or the super upgraded versions, which seem like they are independent of what I'm already paying for Premium Time. Since I've been house sitting for a week, I haven't played, and I'm seriously considering just using this as a springboard to quitting entirely. Which is too bad, because I genuinely like the game, I'm just unspeakably weary of having bits of it held hostage behind this paywall and that currency and some other hellish mega-grind that can only be alleviated with cold hard cash spent on their dumb fake in-game currency.

[Zevox]

I think this is more or less an inevitable part of the life cycle of a F2P game. At some point a title simply won't be attracting lots of new players anymore, either because it's already a niche product and has more or less capped out, or because it's a competitive market and an older title gets gradually left behind by changing genre expectations it can't fully meet without massive changes that alienate the existing player base.

As the playerbase stagnates, more and more of the population will accumulate at the top of whatever progression systems the game has, which makes them harder to extract money from. You can't sell a progress booster to a player who has already progressed, it's going to be harder and harder to sell them new cosmetics because they already have the ones they think are cool, and they probably have already accumulated a bunch of the rare and desirable items.

At the same time however, the players who have stacked up at max progression are generally pretty hardcore, and so can be squeezed harder. In particular, gating things that used to be free works because if the player base has spent 1500 hours getting used to the dopamine kick of getting that reward or using that thing, playing without it is intolerable. But they have 1500 hours or whatever in the game, it's probably a major part of their routine, so not playing is also psychologically expensive.

Makes a twisted, sad amount of sense. And is just one more reason for me to move away from ever touching a free-to-play game again, which is the direction I've been heading for years anyway. It's been obvious for some time to me that the way that model impacts game design is quite negative, and if it only gets worse the longer the game's around, well, all the more reason to stop giving them the time of day.

I'm thinking about this a lot right now because World of Warships, my F2P poison of choice, is about to retool its progression into the inevitable battle pass. Naturally this looks like it's going to be a worse deal for players, unless you buy the upgraded or the super upgraded versions, which seem like they are independent of what I'm already paying for Premium Time. Since I've been house sitting for a week, I haven't played, and I'm seriously considering just using this as a springboard to quitting entirely. Which is too bad, because I genuinely like the game, I'm just unspeakably weary of having bits of it held hostage behind this paywall and that currency and some other hellish mega-grind that can only be alleviated with cold hard cash spent on their dumb fake in-game currency.

Never played that particular game, but yeah, I fully sympathize there. Went through that with non-Battlegrounds Hearthstone, seeing those elements in Multiversus is why I only played that for a couple of weeks despite it appearing to be right up my alley, even spent a year and a half playing a Star Wars mobile game before concluding that I couldn't stomach all that kind of stuff just for what good there was underneath it.

[zlefin]

@goblin I'd like to hear more about what WoWs is retooling. It was one of my games for years, and I got out a couple years ago upset about some of the changes. But I still like to hear about what's happening with the game, and sometimes mourn the parts I liked. How are they changing the progression? How much effect does it have on the stuff people already got?

[warty goblin]

Makes a twisted, sad amount of sense. And is just one more reason for me to move away from ever touching a free-to-play game again, which is the direction I've been heading for years anyway. It's been obvious for some time to me that the way that model impacts game design is quite negative, and if it only gets worse the longer the game's around, well, all the more reason to stop giving them the time of day.

Yeah, it turns the game into bait to get you to bite on the progression stuff. Then the harvesting can begin.

To be clear I'm not complaining about paying for stuff. Art, game design, servers, all that costs money and I'm happy to exchange cash for a fun game. I don't even really mind microtransactions, though in absolute terms they're clearly a rotten deal in terms of actual content. It's the layers of manipulation and obfuscation and deliberately making the game worse that F2P games employ that bug me.

And compared to a lot of games Warships isn't that bad. They actually do a good job of keeping power creep down, the premium ships aren't straight up better than the free ones, and they've backed off from lootboxes substantially after a massive community backlash last year. But it's still full of annoying F2P nonsense and unlocks and progression gates that force you to play in silly ways.

Never played that particular game, but yeah, I fully sympathize there. Went through that with non-Battlegrounds Hearthstone, seeing those elements in Multiversus is why I only played that for a couple of weeks despite it appearing to be right up my alley, even spent a year and a half playing a Star Wars mobile game before concluding that I couldn't stomach all that kind of stuff just for what good there was underneath it.

Yeah, I think you have the right idea here. I'm certainly not going to get seriously into another F2P game at this point, they just take too damn much time and are too unpleasant to interact with, even if the game itself is good. Which pretty much is going to put the kibosh on playing anything MP, because MP = F2P and I don't see that changing.

@goblin I'd like to hear more about what WoWs is retooling. It was one of my games for years, and I got out a couple years ago upset about some of the changes. But I still like to hear about what's happening with the game, and sometimes mourn the parts I liked. How are they changing the progression? How much effect does it have on the stuff people already got?

So they've done a number of things. Most recently they reworked the economy so that instead of a ship's income bonuses coming from camo + economy signals + special econ signals, you just mount a single booster for each of credits, ship XP, free XP and Commander XP. At the same time they monkeyed with a bunch of numbers and made credits etc a function of base XP instead of ship XP, so a ship XP boost isn't also a credit boost anymore.

This change is actually OK to good. I think it reduced your ability to mega-stack all your super-rare bonuses and have just huge earnings in a single match, but the average earnings seem the same to a little higher for *most* ships in most matches. It's also really simple, If I'm grinding through a T9, I put on the +800% ship XP booster. If I'm farming credits in a premium though, I don't have to boost ship XP amymore. Permanent camos got replaced by permanent ship boosters, which get added to whatever expendable boosters you use. This also completely separates camouflage pattern from earnings so you don't need to paint your ship like a Christmas tree for the economic benefits anymore. As somebody who ended up with a genuinely vile perma-camo on his Fredrich der Grosse, I appreciate not having blinky Christmas lights on all my gun barrels anymore.


They also added what they're calling superships, which are really just T11 ships with extra gimmicks. One of these gimmicks is a sky high maintenance cost, which makes them borderline impossible to actually earn credits in. I have 1 supership, which routinely loses me like 50k credits net per game. Don't bother with superships, unless you're doing Clan Battles, which more or less require them when they're allowed.

And this last patch they added submarines for real this time. They've been in testing for like a year, and they're sort of OK. I don't hate them, they're a but dull to play and slightly annoying to fight (no worse than CVs, stealth torping DDs, or HE spam out of smoke), but there sure is a lot of complaining about them right now.

I think the Battle Pass is next patch. I'm not 100% clear yet on what its changing and replacing, but it sounds like it's subsuming the Daily/Weekly missions. I basically ignore these as it is, since they never change, the rewards are lame, and just take playing the game with a modicum of skill to do anyway. So I'm not keen on replacing that with another thing I need to pay attention to. And while the existing missions are pretty much neutral to how much you spend since they key off base XP, the BP apparently has two levels of premium bonuses, and you can buy through stages because of course you can. Even if this one is fine, it sets up Wargaming to be able to really tighten the screws in future. Oh hey, you want that 10k coal? Either grind out like 10k BXP this week, or pay, or get nothing.

But it might not be that bad. It's only on the Public Test Server, so this could well be the typical ploy where the test version looks really bad so the very slightly better release version makes it seem like they "listened to them community."

[Zevox]

To be clear I'm not complaining about paying for stuff. Art, game design, servers, all that costs money and I'm happy to exchange cash for a fun game. I don't even really mind microtransactions, though in absolute terms they're clearly a rotten deal in terms of actual content. It's the layers of manipulation and obfuscation and deliberately making the game worse that F2P games employ that bug me.

Absolutely agreed. I'm perfectly happy paying full price for a good game, and totally okay with DLC as long as it feels appropriately priced - and if it doesn't, cool, I can ignore it, I have the rest of the game anyway. But the way F2P games turn into a treadmill designed to force as much money out of the player as possible in manipulative ways I have come to hate with a passion.

And compared to a lot of games Warships isn't that bad.

Funny, I've noticed that everyone says that about whatever F2P game they play. I sure did when I played Hearthstone, or Galaxy of Heroes (and boy was it wrong about that one especially). At this point, I've come to conclusion that it's a comment/thought I have to take as a red flag in itself. Especially since, when you stop to think about it, it implies that the game is still bad, or at least not good, when it comes to those elements, because you can't say anything more positive about it. And I'm no longer going to excuse a game not being good just because there are worse out there. Diablo Immortal existing doesn't make Multiversus charging $20 for a single character costume okay.

Yeah, I think you have the right idea here. I'm certainly not going to get seriously into another F2P game at this point, they just take too damn much time and are too unpleasant to interact with, even if the game itself is good. Which pretty much is going to put the kibosh on playing anything MP, because MP = F2P and I don't see that changing.

Blessedly, fighting games are not. At least, not yet, there are those who are calling for them to become such, and the first couple of attempts are either recently released (Multiversus) or on the horizon ("Project L," a League of Legends fighting game which still doesn't even have an official title yet despite them having teased it for years now). My hope is that even if some end up going that route, not all will, because there are certain fighting games where the typical monetization methods would be very rough to implement - alternate cosmetics are reputedly a lot of work in the cel-shaded art style used by my favorite developer, Arc System Works, for instance, so people doubt they could do it without dropping the very distinct visual style that's helped make them a bigger name in the genre over the last half-decade or so.

[Anonymouswizard]

Part of me is glad that my personal favourite genre, story driven WRPGs, is naturally resilient to F2P elements (whether that's making it a Free To Pay or Fee To Pay game). Sure some of the most successful ones in the last decade have included heavy open worlc elements, but I've never been a massive fan of open world design and I'm sure that trend is going to start dying this decade when something else makes a gajillion dollars and becomes the Standard AAA formula.

That's not to say that microtransactions or even loot boxes are inherently bad. It's just the way they're currently used that's problematic. But I can't see that changing without a widespread abandonment of any game with such elements, which is a shame because there are definitely games that would have completely failed without being F2P.

Thankfully I've bounced off every F2P game I've tried, because people who've seen my TTRPG collection will confer that I have minimal impulse control. Four editions of Shadowrun...

At the same time, I remember when you could buy a game for £30 and its expansion for £10, whereas indiviyquest chains are now £5 each. It's infuriating, especially when there are studios out there who have shown that with a reduction in scope you can sell an amazing game for less than a pair of tenners (insert gushing about Shadowrun games here).

[Saambell]

At the same time, I remember when you could buy a game for £30 and its expansion for £10, whereas indiviyquest chains are now £5 each. It's infuriating, especially when there are studios out there who have shown that with a reduction in scope you can sell an amazing game for less than a pair of tenners (insert gushing about Shadowrun games here).

Yeah, I'm finding the good games nowadays lean to the mid tier indie games or smaller studios which tend to the 15$ to 25$ area of price tags. At that range you get a lot of polish, but still a small enough game that it's generally tightly focused, and being from a smaller studio it's not got the corporate greed shining in. Though there's still some real gems for even less, but once under that low end is when the cheaper trend chasers or work in "progress" start to become commonplace. I have not bought a AAA game at launch in years. The most recent one I got was 2077 just last month, and it was a gift so I don't even lose anything if I turn out to have too many issues with it. And it's nice that the game is still getting support and fixes. I figure by the time I work though a bit more of my backlog it might be in a good spot. And even if not, I play modded Skyrim as my go to comfort food, so I'm very use to levels of jank that would sink most games.

[NeoVid]

Speaking of games becoming pathetic shells of their former selves... I had been a dedicated Team Fortress 2 player for ages, but pretty much dropped it when Overwatch released. Now Overwatch 2 is out... so I'm back into Team Fortress 2.

[Sigako]

Finally weaned myself off Warframe.

Currently alternating between Persona 4 Golden, Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne, Trails in the Sky FC, Tokyo Xanadu eX+, and fighting utter apathy and depression, which saps my will to play anything.

[Zevox]

Jumped back into Guilty Gear Strive this weekend due to its crossplay beta being up - and since that was using a different client in order to temporarily make the game free for anyone to try while the beta was going on, I took the opportunity to try out the one DLC character I don't have, Bridget. She dropped while I just busy with other fighting games - namely Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, since it got rollback added to it at basically the same time - so I haven't much considered whether I wanted to pick up until now, and this was a convenient way to figure it out.

Short answer: yeah, I think do. Honestly, I'd almost want to get her just for her theme music, which is one of the few very peppy, for lack of a better term, themes in the game, which I seem to have a weakness for (also really like the other two, May's and Jack-O's themes). But Bridget herself is pretty fun to play as well. She's not entirely my style - she's almost a pseudo-zoner with how big some of her normals are, rivaling Axl, the game's dedicated zoner, with some of them - but I like the kind of tricky options she has to mess with people via her yo-yo projectile moves and the special air dash they give her. Also, one way she is totally my style, is she's goofy as hell. I mean, she fights with a yo-yo and a teddy bear, and is constantly animated like she's dancing and singing while she's fighting - definitely a very happy, upbeat sort of character. Reminds me of May, my favorite character in the game, that way.

[Anonymouswizard]

Having another crack at Pillars of Eternity, this time as a Savannah Folk Monk. So of course the game decides to crash halfway through the tutorial

So did that bit again, establishing myself as a hermit instead of a hunter this time.

It really does feel more like a Baldur's Gate successor than a Torment one. Sure, it's got the philosophical bent and the use of copper as your currency, but it lacks the sense of weirdness. Which is fine, I'm happy to play something more standard without the Divinity: Original Sin issue of having to essentially pixel hunt every single sidequest to get to the expected power level. Plus handing out basically no experience for killing dudes should have been standard practice since games first implemented quests and dialogue.

Monks also seem like a fun playstyle I can get behind. At level 1 I'm a bit inaccurate but my fists hit with the power of one handed weapons, and the idea of running ability usage off of taking damage means I won't just spam everything as combat starts.

[GloatingSwine]

Having another crack at Pillars of Eternity, this time as a Savannah Folk Monk. So of course the game decides to crash halfway through the tutorial

So did that bit again, establishing myself as a hermit instead of a hunter this time.

It really does feel more like a Baldur's Gate successor than a Torment one.

Yeah, Pillars is extremely a Baldur's Gate successor.

It throws a lot of lore and worldbuilding at you early on, which is an advantage on repeat playthroughs because now you understand the unspoken reasons why everyone is doing what they're doing even in the first village, but makes it relatively impenetrable the first time around.

[warty goblin]

Back from house sitting, so can play stuff again. I'm trying a Warships break, just to firmly de-habituate myself while I wait and see how crappy the new monetization scheme turns out to be.

So far I'm trying Asterigos: Curse of the Stars, which is roughly an indie Kingdoms of Amalur sort of thing, at least in terms of combat. You get two weapons equipped at a time, each of which gets two actions. First weapon is boimumd left/right bumper, second to the triggers. So you can chain attacks between weapons easily, and the weapon types are all quite distinct. Sword and shield is the only set to get a block, spear gets a parry, and the other weapons have no defensive moves at all. There's also a special attack system, but I'm not far enough in to really have a handle on that.

So far it seems pretty fine. I don't think it'll set your world on fire, but the level design seems pretty decent, combat is good, and the dumb Soulsalike mechanics are minimized to a vestigial stamina bar and enemies respawning when you touch the glowy rest points. So you get to just run around exploring a fantasy world and murdering all the cute cartoon animals, as God intended.

Yeah, Pillars is extremely a Baldur's Gate successor.

It throws a lot of lore and worldbuilding at you early on, which is an advantage on repeat playthroughs because now you understand the unspoken reasons why everyone is doing what they're doing even in the first village, but makes it relatively impenetrable the first time around.

On the various times I've tried to get into Pillars, I've always found it to hit a sort of uncanny valley with its lore and worldbuilding, where it's different enough from standard fantasy I need to pay attention, but not distinct or inventive enough with those differences to make attention particularly rewarding. And because it seems to be attempting to drown the player in lore, it takes a lot of attention. So I'm kinda stuck between either feeling vaguely confused or vaguely bored.

[Batcathat]

I have kind of a weird relationship with Pillars of Eternity. When I first tried it, I instantly fell in love with it (in no small part thanks to the aforementioned similarity to the Baldur's Gate series) and I put quite a few hours into it, only to stop playing it like halfway through for no real reason. Like a year later I decided to try it again and started a new game, only for the same thing to happen again. I kind of want to start playing it once more, but I suspect I'd just drop it all over again.

On another note, I finally finished Unavowed a few days ago (it wasn't that long, I just took a more or less accidental break for like two weeks) and I would say it lives up to the hype, even if it's not without its flaws.

[GloatingSwine]

I have kind of a weird relationship with Pillars of Eternity. When I first tried it, I instantly fell in love with it (in no small part thanks to the aforementioned similarity to the Baldur's Gate series) and I put quite a few hours into it, only to stop playing it like halfway through for no real reason. Like a year later I decided to try it again and started a new game, only for the same thing to happen again. I kind of want to start playing it once more, but I suspect I'd just drop it all over again.

Burning out after Defiance Bay is a pretty common reaction to the first game. The Defiance Bay chapter ends with a lot of narrative energy which drains out pretty much immediately when you get to Dyrford.

It is worth pushing through though because there are some cool quests in the second hub with interesting ways to resolve them*, and it's more like 2/3 of the way through.

White March is really good as well. The final dialogue boss in it is one of the best in games, where you don't just have to pick the right arguments to get the golden ending they also have to be consistent with the other choices you've made throughout the game and in your party's quests or you just get called a hypocrite and your arguments fall flat.

Spoiler: Example

Show

You need the favour of a god to get into the final dungeon and not be dead, so you have to do a task for them to earn it. For Hylea she sends you to her temple which has been overtaken by a dragon to drive it out. You go there, meet the dragon, and find out that it is nesting there to rear its young. Since Hylea is the god of motherhood as well as birds and the air you can go back and tell her she has to accept the dragon because of why it is there. You can just straight up tell the gods they have to take your solution and lump it.

On the various times I've tried to get into Pillars, I've always found it to hit a sort of uncanny valley with its lore and worldbuilding, where it's different enough from standard fantasy I need to pay attention, but not distinct or inventive enough with those differences to make attention particularly rewarding. And because it seems to be attempting to drown the player in lore, it takes a lot of attention. So I'm kinda stuck between either feeling vaguely confused or vaguely bored.

Yeah, there is no slow onboarding for that lore and that really hurts the first impression.

After I'd played the whole thing through and did a repeat playthrough and I understood what all that lore was already it enhances the first area because everything that's happening there is pretty much directly caused by the main plot and immediate backstory. Instead of a sort of fishbowl zone where you get a soft intro to the world and then all the lore and backstory starts being relevant later it just yeets you into the deep end of everything mattering.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, Pillars is extremely a Baldur's Gate successor.

It throws a lot of lore and worldbuilding at you early on, which is an advantage on repeat playthroughs because now you understand the unspoken reasons why everyone is doing what they're doing even in the first village, but makes it relatively impenetrable the first time around.

Oh, it's dense, but it's also clearly packed with setup for later developments. Like there's a lot going on here, but once you've learnt to ignore the gold NPCs and find a few sidequests it becomes manageable.

I've not got far enough in any previous playthroughs to understand it Ll yet, but I look forward to it!

On the various times I've tried to get into Pillars, I've always found it to hit a sort of uncanny valley with its lore and worldbuilding, where it's different enough from standard fantasy I need to pay attention, but not distinct or inventive enough with those differences to make attention particularly rewarding. And because it seems to be attempting to drown the player in lore, it takes a lot of attention. So I'm kinda stuck between either feeling vaguely confused or vaguely bored.

Honestly it's not that strange. It's more like coming into somebody's homebrew setting after a five year campaign has messed everything up (that war everybody keeps talking about), but it really is a standard D&D world with a few twists. But I understand it's not to everybody's tastes, personally I really like those tweaks.


The level curve is, however, utterly borked. Level 3 of 14 before getting to the primary hub ..

[Taevyr]

White March is really good as well. The final dialogue boss in it is one of the best in games, where you don't just have to pick the right arguments to get the golden ending they also have to be consistent with the other choices you've made throughout the game and in your party's quests or you just get called a hypocrite and your arguments fall flat.

White March, to me, felt similar to when I first played Shivering Isles: a very well-written, deeply thematic region (both visually and narratively) and side story, with some great locations. And Durgan's Battery is one of my favourite dungeon delves tout court: it's just brilliantly designed. The Forgotten Sanctum in Deadfire beats it just barely in my view, but that one's almost literally insane.

The main problem with Pillars is the same thing that attracted me: it's very much in love with its own lore and metaphysics and can be a bit self-indulgent with the narration, so if you're not into deep fantasy worldbuilding nonsense, it's all a bit much. But it's put together beautifully, and it's quite a bit more visible in Deadfire that they were willing to get weirder than "medieval fantasy BG successor".

[Triaxx]

Pillars threw me at first by starting in the middle of the story. And we didn't learn about the start of it until almost halfway through the game.

And then the end of the game hung on for ages.

[Anonymouswizard]

So got to Defiance Bay fastest I have so far, while completing both the Temple of Eothas and actually finding that hollowborn cure quest in the first village. Again I'm feeling as if the level curve is a bit off, it's about the beginning of Act 1 proper and I'm already level 4. Although I think it now slows to a crawl as I wander around looking for sidequests.

Going Monk was a great idea, there's nothing more satisfying than building up a couple of Sounds and then activating Swift Strikes. Plus I actually have the points in Survival to teach the kid to use that darn knife.

Next stop the library, to progress Eder's personal quest!

[Mx.Silver]

Yeah, monk's a pretty fun class. My last run was as a monk using dread cannoneer's belt (for access to firebrand) and turning wheel and spent a lot of combat incinerating things.

I have been toying with taking another run at Pillars, if only to test out one of the off-beat builds (either implement Ranger or tank/riposte Rogue; although caster Chanter and kamikaze Barbarian aren't completely off the table). Just a matter of finding the time, what with all the stuff in my backlog plus an ongoing replay of Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines (which should be fairly smooth sailing again now I've done The Warrens).

[Cazero]

NEO:TWEWY made it to Steam. So that's what I'm going to be playing for a while.

[Anonymouswizard]

Ah Readric's Hold, surely this sidequest will go well and I won't leave a trail of corpses in my wake.

(Proceeds to kill everybody in the castle because she can't find the right place to click to do the talky solution.)

I'd probably reload that, but I'd have to do a Durance conversation all over again. Guess I'm soldiering on with the blood of an entire castle on my hands.

[Taevyr]

Yeah, Raedric's is one of the most broad in approach options, similar to Fort Deadlight in Deadfire, but a lot less intuitive. Especially when playing through for the first time, you probably won't intuit how it works, and I doubt I would if I replayed it now since it's been several years.

I enjoyed climbing over the walls, personally.

[AlanBruce]

Downloaded Limbo, a little indie game from the Xbox 360 era, now available on PS Plus.

It’s a side scroller where you control a child and traverse lethal puzzles and deadly environments. The use of color is pretty much non existent- it’s all shadows. This meshes really well with the tone of the game.

If you have access to it, give it a try. It’s really short and engaging. Also, I am almost certain it may have inspired later games like Little Nightmares and its sequel.

[Rynjin]

Limbo hype is back? What year is it!?!

One of the original indie darlings for sure. Never let it be forgotten that the Xbox Live Arcade is what kicked off the "indie renaissance", and Limbo was one of the biggest hits that came out of that era.

You're not wrong on how influential and important it was...though as a standalone game I've always felt it was a lot of style over substance.

If you're taking a walk through Xbox Live Arcade indie classics, you'll probably want to check out Braid as well.

Limbo itself also has a sort of spiritual successor from the same studio, Inside, which has a bit more meat to it IMO.

[Wookieetank]

If you're taking a walk through Xbox Live Arcade indie classics, you'll probably want to check out Braid as well.

And for sheer ridiculousness, I Maed a Gam3 w1th Zombies 1n It!!!1 is quite entertaining. Seems its free on Steam these days.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Downloaded Limbo, a little indie game from the Xbox 360 era, now available on PS Plus.

It’s a side scroller where you control a child and traverse lethal puzzles and deadly environments. The use of color is pretty much non existent- it’s all shadows. This meshes really well with the tone of the game.

If you have access to it, give it a try. It’s really short and engaging. Also, I am almost certain it may have inspired later games like Little Nightmares and its sequel.

I have this untouched in my Steam library, sounds like I’ll have to crack it open. How short is short? Are we talking, ‘done over a free weekend’ or ‘done over a few weeks’?

[Eldan]

Done in an afternoon, max.

[warty goblin]

Speaking of horrible nightmare realms and things with meat on them, I played about 15 minutes of Scorn this morning. I would have played more, but time was limited.

So I think the first 15 minutes are really, really good. I really cannot emphasize enough just how phenomenal the visuals are, it's like a piece of really high detail concept art you can walk around in. A weird, gross piece of meat filled, decayed, inexplicable and probably hostile concept art. Youtube absolutely does not do this justice.

In terms of the actual game, it seems to be mostly puzzles, exploration, and "environmental storytelling" a thing I usually find boring since it means a dead body next to an audiolog explaining how a plot relevant monster is about to kill them, and the password to their safe is 2643 or whatever. Here it seems to be figuring out what weird bits of machinery still work, what they do, what happens when you stick bits of yourself inside them, and generally just looking at stuff.