May 2024 General Game Discussions

[Colif]

They worked out a lot of the secrets already. One took the work of 50 people to figure out solution. I won't link the video. Its what made me react. Its a metroid game with lots of hidden things.

 

[ZedClampet]

I think that's what they were going for. If you can a community talking about the game trying to figure things out it then you keep a core of people talking about it. It got a lot of buzz anyway because of the good reviews and being BigModes (Dunkeys) first published game anyway.

Game sounds alright, definitely has a great art style.

I wonder if it was a successful first outing? I find these sorts of things interesting, but don't know enough about it to really know if it worked out. The best guessers say it sold 150k games in its first month, which after Steam's share leaves a little over $2 million made. If the publisher takes 50 percent (who knows. contracts vary widely), then I guess that's probably enough to pay off whatever the development costs were for a solo developer, but how much did they spend on marketing? Marketing costs always shock me.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I wonder if it was a successful first outing? I find these sorts of things interesting, but don't know enough about it to really know if it worked out. The best guessers say it sold 150k games in its first month, which after Steam's share leaves a little over $2 million made. If the publisher takes 50 percent (who knows. contracts vary widely), then I guess that's probably enough to pay off whatever the development costs were for a solo developer, but how much did they spend on marketing? Marketing costs always shock me.

For a debut solo dev to sell 150k in the first week is pretty successful, I would think anyway. 8K concurrent at peak on Steam and its only an 8-10 hour game I heard, probably keeps selling steadily for a while as well as it got good buzz. Thats also on Steam, its on Switch and PS5 where I would think a fair amount of Dunkey fans and fans of this style of game are playing instead.

Dunkey talked about it when he announced he was starting up a publishing company, hes not one of the crazy big Youtubers but he has 7.5 million subs and hes done videos on it obviously, I would assume for free. That alone is enough to get other streamers seeing it and people talking about it. Helps that apparently critics and pundits think its pretty fun too obviously.

In this case I would like to think the publishers cut wouldnt be too obscene. Dunkeys someone who seems to be passionate about games and the spiel when it was all announced was that the games hes going with are only the ideas that he found interesting as kind of passion projects. He seems genuine, but of course when you dont know someone personally you can never be 100% sure. Everyone likes getting paid.

No idea whether these smaller devs pay to get reviews on the big sites or get coverage on podcasts or other media, but otherwise where are you going to pay a lot of money to market a game like this? Not like its going on TV during the game or anything. I suppose theres conventions and so on to show it at that costs something, no idea if it had stuff at anything like that or not. Not something I have experience with, would be interesting to find out.

 

[ZedClampet]

For a debut solo dev to sell 150k in the first week is pretty successful, I would think anyway. 8K concurrent at peak on Steam and its only an 8-10 hour game I heard, probably keeps selling steadily for a while as well as it got good buzz. Thats also on Steam, its on Switch and PS5 where I would think a fair amount of Dunkey fans and fans of this style of game are playing instead.

Dunkey talked about it when he announced he was starting up a publishing company, hes not one of the crazy big Youtubers but he has 7.5 million subs and hes done videos on it obviously, I would assume for free. That alone is enough to get other streamers seeing it and people talking about it. Helps that apparently critics and pundits think its pretty fun too obviously.

In this case I would like to think the publishers cut wouldnt be too obscene. Dunkeys someone who seems to be passionate about games and the spiel when it was all announced was that the games hes going with are only the ideas that he found interesting as kind of passion projects. He seems genuine, but of course when you dont know someone personally you can never be 100% sure. Everyone likes getting paid.

No idea whether these smaller devs pay to get reviews on the big sites or get coverage on podcasts or other media, but otherwise where are you going to pay a lot of money to market a game like this? Not like its going on TV during the game or anything. I suppose theres conventions and so on to show it at that costs something, no idea if it had stuff at anything like that or not. Not something I have experience with, would be interesting to find out.

Never heard of Dunkey. I searched for it on Steam lol.

No way to tell if there are more players on PS or Switch. My impression, which is based mostly on prejudice rather than knowledge, is that most indie games do better on PC. But that's only little indie games. If this is backed by a big YouTuber then maybe it did very well elsewhere. My assumption was that it was relatively unknown, which is kind of in Steam's wheelhouse.

All the console owners I know IRL are casual players of things like CoD and Madden, so my perspective is likely skewed. I don't know any console players who would ever play anything like this or would ever even know it exists. I have to remind myself that the people I know are not the only people

As for advertising, I would assume you would spend most of your money on Youtube, Twitch and Tik Tok, but that's probably not correct. It's where the younglings are, though. Get a good streamer to play your game, and it can sell tons of copies.

 

[ZedClampet]

The Steam key I was given for the beta test with the NDA was invalid. So much for what I was going to do this afternoon and evening.

Someone else just randomly added a beta test game to my Steam library. Maybe I'll do that.

Edit: Never mind. I'm not testing that janky crap. I tested an earlier version of this over a year ago, and it's almost like the developers have never used any type of software before.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Never heard of Dunkey. I searched for it on Steam lol.

No way to tell if there are more players on PS or Switch. My impression, which is based mostly on prejudice rather than knowledge, is that most indie games do better on PC. But that's only little indie games. If this is backed by a big YouTuber then maybe it did very well elsewhere. My assumption was that it was relatively unknown, which is kind of in Steam's wheelhouse.

All the console owners I know IRL are casual players of things like CoD and Madden, so my perspective is likely skewed. I don't know any console players who would ever play anything like this or would ever even know it exists. I have to remind myself that the people I know are not the only people

As for advertising, I would assume you would spend most of your money on Youtube, Twitch and Tik Tok, but that's probably not correct. It's where the younglings are, though. Get a good streamer to play your game, and it can sell tons of copies.

He's pretty well known. There were articles on PCG and in other places about BigMode when he announced it, so it was news. Some were pretty sceptical, but this game seems to have done alright so a good start.

In the bigger English speaking gaming forums by membership and activity theres a console majority I'd say. I know that doesnt really represent the majority of console owners as a whole who probably are mostly playing the big sports games and AAA's, but there are lot of console only people playing more niche games and indies as well.

Guess they had Youtube and Twitch mostly covered, so maybe marketing wasnt as much as it could have been, couldnt say for sure.

 

[ZedClampet]

The dev got me a working key. The game, which I I'm not allowed to name, is great, but the world and music are pretty ugly/bad, and those are two things I can't help fix. I have a feeling the world could be a lot better looking with some minor changes by a professional artist or level designer. The 3D models themselves seem to be okay. It's the scale and how they've been arranged that is off in some way. A few extra environmental models would help as well. The music, meanwhile, made me feel like I was in a carnival-themed insane asylum.

Edit: An even bigger problem is that it is an always online single-player game. People will freak out over that.

 

[Johnway]

So as i blitz through my indie games, i'm completing them faster then i can decide what i want to play next. Which is a bit silly, not going to play anything too big or AAA atm as Assassins creed odyssey hogged nearly 4 months of my time and i need to catch up with my list of games and the fastest way of doing this is blasting through indie games. i might take a more relaxing game that has a creative element to it.

 

[Colif]

With EA wanting to put adverts in BF and COD being pushed onto game pass, are we seeing the death throws of these two franchise they been releasing now for last 25+ years? Have we run out of wars? Can you only fight WW2 so many times?

Company greed will kill them.

 

[BeardyHat]

With EA wanting to put adverts in BF and COD being pushed onto game pass, are we seeing the death throws of these two franchise they been releasing now for last 25+ years? Have we run out of wars? Can you only fight WW2 so many times?

Company greed will kill them.

The thing about this is: they've done this already, 20 years ago. They had ads in. Burnout, Need for Speed, fifa, Swat 4, Splinter Cell, hell EVERQUEST had them in the form of ordering a pizza directly from Pizza Hut with the /pizza command.

Yeah, it sucks, it's annoying, but why get bent out of shape about it, especially when it's been happening for 25+ years already. Also consider that the AAA landscape is largely barren and uninteresting anyway, so why trouble yourself with such games? Even if you really want to play the latest CoD installment, but will skip it due to ads, you have countless other games to play, will you even miss it?

I'm not being an apologist here, I aggressively ad block between UBlock Origin on my phone and every PC in my house, as well as blocking ads at a DNS level in my entire home, so I don't even see ads on my phone, even if an app is riddled with them (which often comes as a shock to my wife and I when we leave the safety of our network). I just don't understand why we're relitigating this when it's been a thing for decades already and hasn't stopped the AAA space from being ever more brazen, disingenuous and shameless in trying to extract more money from the consumer.

It's time we all move on from their predatory practices and play something else. We're awash with excellent games these days, often costing less than a meal out, so why trouble ourselves and waggle our fingers at AAA publishers when they will never change course anyway?

 

[Colif]

I don't play either of them. I just commenting on what is happening. I know they have had ads in games before, it depends on how blatant they are. Advertising in NFS can make sense as it was a racing game, but putting them into BF seems out of place.

I don't see ads either. I pay to have Youtube Premium to not get ads on it. Ublock Origin on Firefox, on PC and phone... Its so long since I have seen them on PC I forget why every website seems to have so much blank space on it.

 

[ZedClampet]

There's nothing I'm less concerned about than EA and Activision. If it weren't for casual gamers who only play one or two of the biggest name games all year, they'd go out of business, or at least contract quite a bit.

You should hear the way the people around here are talking about EA and the college football game. Many of them are buying Playstations just to play this game, and they are gushing over it being made by EA--"So you know it's going to be fantastic!"

None of these people will care if there are ads in the game because all they ever play otherwise are mobile games.

 

[ZedClampet]

@Pifanjr If you can get to your PC, you and your wife should try the demo for Norland. A lot of Rimworld in it, but more, too. Much larger scale in terms of people, though.

Norland on Steam

Lead your noble family in this medieval colony sim, facing off against class conflict, religious struggle, and political treachery. Tend to your people’s needs, uncover the lost knowledge of a fallen empire, and engage in nefarious plots against your enemies.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Pifanjr]

@Pifanjr If you can get to your PC, you and your wife should try the demo for Norland. A lot of Rimworld in it, but more, too. Much larger scale in terms of people, though.

Norland on Steam

Lead your noble family in this medieval colony sim, facing off against class conflict, religious struggle, and political treachery. Tend to your people’s needs, uncover the lost knowledge of a fallen empire, and engage in nefarious plots against your enemies.

store.steampowered.com

Thank you for the recommendation. I'll see if I can convince my wife to take a break playing Diablo 4 for long enough to give it a try.

 

[neogunhero]

I played a ton of games this weekend, so that means it was a good weekend.

I’m about 5 hours into Animal Well. The game is great and I’m having a ton of fun, though I’m not the kind of person who will be pouring over the game to find all of its secrets. I do like finding the secret eggs, but I think that could be considered “Level 1” or “Level 2” of the layers to this game. The developer said there are layers of secrets, and the firs few are what most people will find just by playing the game, with more layers the deeper the secrets and Easter eggs go. I have just not ever been the kind of person interested in finding all the secrets and participating in ARGs myself though I would love to watch what the community finds over time. The secret eggs are relatively easy to find by looking at the map, thought they require a lot of clever thinking and pretty tough platforming.

I also played some Age of Empires 4. I’m having fun playing skirmish with randoms against AI.I create a public lobby, name it something like “4v4 PLAYERvsAI EASY/MEDIUM” and get people joining in. I’m still a mega-noob at this game, I can barely remember any of the hotkeys so I resort to using just my mouse which is always a bad tactic in RTS games, but it’s just really fun to play. I’m not an RTS expert, but I have played my fair share of them, and in my opinion AoE4 is the best for casual play. It’s not too demanding, has a great tutorial system, really customizable with how you want to play the game, and the campaign is awesome for solo players.

The misses and I also played a ton of Sea of Thieves. We are about halfway done with the Pirates of the Caribbean Tall Tale. One funny fact I learned is that the voice actor that voices Jack Sparrow basically made his entire career as being Jonny Depp’s voice actor double. Any game that has Jack Sparrow in it, this guy does the voice. He even did the voice for Rango in the video game adaptation which I never knew existed. Pretty funny fact but props to him for securing a role for a very long time.

So far it isn’t as strong as the Monkey Island tall tale, but still fun to play. We weren’t enthused by the underwater level, but immediately after that you “teleport” to a new self contained island that was a blast to play. If you ever been on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney Land, this level was almost identical to that. Jack Sparrow running around the island town as pirates are trying to capture him, hiding all over the island while these pirates ransack the village and get drunk, it was a fun sight to see. This tall tale also has a lot of platforming sections which I personally kind of enjoy. Once we finish this, I don’t think there are many other tall tales that take you to self contained levels which makes me a bit sad.

Overall it was a productive weekend of gaming!

 

[BeardyHat]

Google really wants people to stop using them, don't they.

Alright everybody, into the Bing pool!

I may have done something stupid (aside from suggest we all use Bing), which seems to especially happen for me when I know I'm going to be out of my comfort zone in the near future. We're taking the kids and going on a trip to Portland next week, which will probably involve a good amount of sitting around due to family stuff.

I'm going to pack a few things gaming related, most notably is the 4lb gaming computer I received from a friend not too long ago. It's pretty ancient (2015), but it's more than enough to run Minecraft and some Lego games for my kids, as well as allow them to watch Netflix and Youtube. Hell, it would be more than enough for me to play some stuff on when they're not using it. But I am a whiny baby and it's too chonky and unweidly for me and I am very particular.

So, in mulling over what to bring with me, I've been agonizing over my Steam Deck or my laptop. While I'd rather bring my laptop for the sheer versatility, the Deck can just play everything that I'm feeling inclined towards right now. Problem is, I just feel left out in the cold without a laptop. I have a bluetooth mouse and keyboard, which I've used with my Deck and it's all...fine, but I also want to use Windows, because quite frankly, I'm a bit tired of messing with stuff on the Deck to get it to work, which it doesn't necessarily always do. So, I could bring both, but it seems frankly ridiculous to bring 3 laptops (my wife needs her work computer), as well as a Steam Deck, especially considering I may not actually game much (who knows) anyway.

My solution? Spend what little money I have left on a used, unbranded Thunderbolt 3 portable eGPU that's roughly the size of a miniPC. Why? Because...I dunno, it seemed cool at the time and the seller accepted my lowball offer, so with tax and shipping, I ended-up paying $186, which doesn't seem terrible? Anyway, it should give my laptop a decent graphics boost and allow me to play everything I want (I'm hoping to get some multiplayer time with my friends in the evening), but...gosh I'm an idiot. I mean, to even make use of it, it needs to arrive by Saturday and who knows if that'll happen? It may just end-up sitting on my porch, hoping to still be of use when I get back.

Thanks for coming to my long-winded TED Talk.

Edit: Doubly stupid, as I somehow thought this was the General discussion thread. Whoops.

["I somehow thought this was the General discussion thread"
Moved by a kindly and amused mod]

 

[Colif]

with more layers the deeper the secrets and Easter eggs go. I have just not ever been the kind of person interested in finding all the secrets and participating in ARGs myself though I would love to watch what the community finds over time. The secret eggs are relatively easy to find by looking at the map, thought they require a lot of clever thinking and pretty tough platforming.

practice bubble jumping.

I watched video on all the secrets... the eggs are one layer... yes, but there is one after it. How they figured it all out in less than 2 weeks is pretty amazing.

 

[Johnway]

so currently i'm playing Dorfromantik to enjoy some puzzle/ casual builder sim to relax to over the week. We'll see how far i get before i call it quits.

on other news, i bought assassin's creed valhalla complete edition for 19.93. which is more or less the price i would buy it. Honestly i might be making a mistake, but like some junkie i had to buy it. I suspect that it might go dirt cheap or even free on epic somewhere. But i guess i can't complain. For the price that the ragnarok edition i;ve got the full package.

As for other window shopping i saw judement and lost judgement for £26 which is mighty tempting but i think i can sequeeze it just a bit more...

 

[BeardyHat]

so currently i'm playing Dorfromantik to enjoy some puzzle/ casual builder sim to relax to over the week. We'll see how far i get before i call it quits.

on other news, i bought assassin's creed valhalla complete edition for 19.93. which is more or less the price i would buy it. Honestly i might be making a mistake, but like some junkie i had to buy it. I suspect that it might go dirt cheap or even free on epic somewhere. But i guess i can't complain. For the price that the ragnarok edition i;ve got the full package.

As for other window shopping i saw judement and lost judgement for £26 which is mighty tempting but i think i can sequeeze it just a bit more...

Did you end up picking up Dragon Age: Inquisition for free on Epic? Also, Yakuza: Like a Dragon is like $10 on GoG right now. I ended up picking it up and I'm hoping to play it on my upcoming vacation if this eGPU works out for me, but we'll see.

I got my wife into Dorfromantik a couple years ago now. It's definitely a fun little game, but didn't hold my interest super long, but she's got like hundreds of hours in it now. She tends to play it (and other games) while she has queries running at work.

 

[ZedClampet]

Guido's lone USB port on his laptop quit functioning after a Windows update. Since it happened after an update, I walked him through checking if it needed a new driver (after reboots and such failed), but it didn't. So then I had him uninstall the device and reboot, which got it working again. Strange. At least it got Guido some practice with troubleshooting, which is something they don't have a class for in college. And I didn't have to buy him an emergency bluetooth mouse, which is good.

Been playing V Rising pretty hard, and we're getting near the end, sadly. We're playing with custom settings somewhere between Normal and Brutal, and we're thinking about playing again on Brutal once we finish. There's an end game now we might goof around with, too.

Game is amazingly well balanced for all the spells, weapons, special attacks, armor sets, etc. One day you'll be running for your life in a city you shouldn't have gone to yet. Two days later you'll have upgraded some of your stuff and do just fine in that same city even though the stats didn't seem to change that much.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'VE CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT DIABLO IV!

Yes, I did want to scream that. I was reading reviews of V-Rising, and someone said the combat was exactly like Diablo IV.

I seriously doubt this, as V-Rising isn't listed by anyone as an ARPG, but even if it's just similar, it's worth a shot. Installed Battle.net and am installing Diablo IV now.

 

[ZedClampet]

@Hveðrungr

TLDR: I decided to ask Gemini, CoPilot, and ChatGPT4 four of my typical gaming type questions and see what happens. CoPilot was the clear winner with Gemini in 2nd, and ChatGPT failing to give any correct answers and coming in last.

By the way, simply googling these questions was a better choice once, an equal choice once and worse twice.

#1 My question was just "Is the combat in V Rising and Diablo IV similar?"
The actual best answer is "Hell no"

CoPilot went first and ignored my question, deciding to just give an overview of each game.

Gemini tried a little harder. It gave me this:
V Rising:
Top-Down Perspective: V Rising uses an isometric top-down perspective, similar to games like Path of Exile or older Diablo titles. You control your character from a birds-eye view.
Focus on Skillshots: Combat relies heavily on aiming and timing your abilities. You'll need to predict enemy movements and land skillshots to deal damage effectively.
Action RPG with Vampire Theme: The combat emphasizes your character's vampiric abilities. You can drain blood from enemies to gain health and power-ups.

Diablo IV:
Closer to the action: You have a closer view of your character and the environment.
Direct Targeting: Combat is more focused on directly targeting and attacking enemies within range. While some skills might have area-of-effect damage, aiming isn't as crucial as in V Rising.
Variety of Character Classes: Diablo IV offers a wider range of playable character classes, each with unique combat styles and abilities.

Gemini then gave me a table that showed the differences

Next was ChatGPT4, which had serious problems. On the first try, it gave me a general overview of the differences between Vampire the Masquerade and Diablo IV. So I rewrote the question and put V Rising inside quotations. This time it at least talked about the correct game, but it said that nothing was known about V Rising since it hadn't been released yet, so it couldn't answer my question.

***

Question2: In V rising, what are Stygian Shards, how do you get them, and what do you use them for?

In this test, CoPilot gave the by far the best answer, getting everything right and only failing to mention that you can get them through servant missions, which is actually the easiest way to get them.

Gemini got it partly right, but sprinkled in a fair amount of false information.

ChatGPT simply said it didn't have any information and repeated that the game hadn't been released, but said that if the game had released and that Stygian Shards were real, that they were probably some type of currency

***
#3 I decided it wasn't fair to ChatGPT to ask more V Rising questions, so my third question was, "In the game Weed Shop 3, how do you unlock employee Jennifer French?

CoPilot got the answer correct. You need to get your shop to level 32.

Gemini said that it couldn't find any information on an employee named Jennifer French.

ChatGPT said that it didn't know

I didn't expect any of them to know, so kudos to CoPilot

#4 In the game Supermarket Simulator, what is the best way to make more money?
(This is actually a very popular game that had concurrents over 150k at one time.

CoPilot meandered a bit and gave a couple of wrong details, but actually got the answer exactly correct, which is to mark up each product by 50 to 70 cents over market prices and to focus on expanding your product range and store size.

Gemini's answer was complete BS, all lies

ChatGPT's answer was complete BS, all lies. It was so similar to Gemini's answer that I went back and forth to look at the exact wording.

Anyway, based on these 4 questions I've gone back to using CoPilot for my gaming questions.

 

[Hveðrungr]

Anyway, based on these 4 questions I've gone back to using CoPilot for my gaming questions.

That makes sense. CoPilot is the one that most actively uses up-to-date internet information, so for these fairly new games it'll be better.

 

[DXCHASE]

I'VE CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT DIABLO IV!

Yes, I did want to scream that. I was reading reviews of V-Rising, and someone said the combat was exactly like Diablo IV.

I seriously doubt this, as V-Rising isn't listed by anyone as an ARPG, but even if it's just similar, it's worth a shot. Installed Battle.net and am installing Diablo IV now.

Is it your first time going through? You joined at probably the best point in Diablo 4s life tbh. It was gonna be the main part of my post here. Its taken up most of my gaming time if im not playing Helldivers 2 or Destiny 2.

I also started playing Ghosts of Tsushima. Fun game, it looks beautiful, runs well and i love that i can play the game in black n white. Currently playing it with the Japanese voice acting to be even more authentic. Its fun but i havent played that as much as i thought i would because Diablo 4 made such a great change to their gear and added a lot of meaning to the grind and endgame that im finding all sorts of new builds to feel super powerful with and im not even using the super-meta Necromancer Minion build.

 

[Colif]

so currently i'm playing Dorfromantik to enjoy some puzzle/ casual builder sim to relax to over the week. We'll see how far i get before i call it quits.

its fun unless you get addicted to putting down perfect placements. I haven't looked at it much this year.

V Rising is survival, I assume that is the day portion of the game.

Focus on Skillshots: Combat relies heavily on aiming and timing your abilities. You'll need to predict enemy movements and land skillshots to deal damage effectively.

that isn't a feature of Diablo games, far from it.

I would need to look at what they fixed in Diablo 4 as to if I bother returning.
V Rising has an end... Diablo 4 only ends when you get bored.