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I would buy Welcome To The Game 2 super quick if they updated the game to have a “detective” mode like Scrutinized seems to have.
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Aug 12, 2020 21:39
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Looking at Scrutinized gameplay the big issues I took away from it that are the reason I wanted to watch and not play it were that plate spinner horror games are just kinda played out, and that the bad guys in scrutinized just seem extremely boring compared to what I've seen in other games of the type, including Welcome to the Game. From what I could tell about Scrutinized it seemed like one of the killers was basically a complete non-issue if you took even the slightest amount of effort, and the one who was actually a risk was extremely opaque as to how to actually defend yourself from him. The kidnapper guy is just like, leave your windows locked and your lights on and he'll never bother you which is really trivial, and the doctor seemed like he'd just randomly try to sprint across your yard and if you weren't looking at the camera RIGHT THEN you were just done. Even Welcome to the Game 2 seemed unfun to actually play because the different killers didn't seem like they had anything to do with each other and didn't combine to make an interesting game. At least the various FNAF-alikes usually have you just trying to manage multiple different threats simultaneously without letting any of them get out of control. Scrutinized seemed like it had exactly one threat and a very simple idiot check that kills you until you figure out the trivial way to circumvent it.
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Aug 12, 2020 22:30
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The Scrutinized killers both have their sorta keeping you on your toes deals, but yeah. The russian kidnapper guy is mostly there to punish you for never pulling yourself away from the computer, over time a light or two WILL go out and he can only actually start working on your locks if the light in a room has gone out and he comes at it, so any consistent dilligence on "Okay I did a couple cases, let's get up do a lap around the house" will completely disarm him. Tanner (The Doctor)'s thing is sort of like that too, meant to be a punishment for overly neglecting cameras, but really the big problem with him is that he has a few coming-into-camera paths that actually take a good second or two for him to get very visible, so sometimes you might get on the cams, cycle them quicker than you maybe should've and you missed him lurching in from one of the views way off the side, then with the way that system is programmed, if you do ever catch an instance of him in a camera without light popping him away, the game will 100% kill you for it. However at the same time, I don't think the game actually has Tanner like spawn and start gunning it for your door unless it's been a long time since you looked at the cameras at all, which is more purely a punishment for that, while otherwise his deal is that eventually he'll have a growing chance to show up coming for your door on a cam and it's on you to drive him off when those do proc, with failure to do so being a guaranteed death.
Yardbomb fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Aug 12, 2020 |
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Aug 12, 2020 22:39
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I feel like the game would work better if there were tension minigames before a fail state, like pushing against a door to keep a guy out, or evading someone in a dark room
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Aug 12, 2020 22:46
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There's also that. Scrutinized has a very small play area that it seems kind of irrelevant that you even have to walk around in it. Especially because once they get in your house you seem kinda hosed. I think the only exception is that I think I heard that Tanner can go hide in your closet and wait for you to open it and if you never open it he'll just gently caress off. I dunno it just seems very poorly considered there's this whole house to walk around but there's very little to it that's actually relevant. Scrutinized just feels like basically FNAF 1 except that you have to play some simple logical deduction stuff while fending off only Foxy.
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Aug 12, 2020 23:00
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Black August posted:I feel like the game would work better if there were tension minigames before a fail state, like pushing against a door to keep a guy out, or evading someone in a dark room That’s exactly what the first game had so it’s strange that the games became more binary with the killers. In the first game there’s the kidnapper and a serial killer. If you hear the kidnapper talking to himself or notice a location tracker go off you turn off the lights, don’t move, and in a funny troll move the game taps into your microphone as well. For the serial killer you listen for his truck and you’re supposed to hold the door shut as he tries to pick the lock.
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Aug 13, 2020 00:07
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Glagha posted:I think the only exception is that I think I heard that Tanner can go hide in your closet and wait for you to open it and if you never open it he'll just gently caress off. My favorite moment in John's playthrough was walking back from a bedroom and seeing Tanner in the hall. Tanner waves at him then ducks in the closet. John marches up and immediately opens it and gets stabbed to death for his trouble. "...I don't know what else I expected to happen." What I'm trying to say is the developer knows his audience.
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Aug 13, 2020 16:10
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Daniel Mullins, the guy behind Pony Island and The Hex has a new game coming out that looks horror-adjacent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70QOKsr27Po
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Aug 13, 2020 16:12
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Watching these playthroughs of cheapo horror games, it's really surprising that nearly all of them are the exact same format. First person, Collect X things (usually pages or notes), get some keys, occasionally a ghost/monster/bad guy comes at you or jumps at you. Them that got me thinking - even the major horror games are almost all like that. Don't get me wrong, I like most of them and I'm not complaining. It's just weird that this is the format that gets reused all the time. What I'm getting at is where is the horror fishing game because Black Bass for the NES creeped me out back in the day and I feel that could be expanded on
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Aug 13, 2020 18:34
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Manager Hoyden posted:
https://itch.io/jam/fish-horror-jam-2020
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Aug 13, 2020 18:38
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Manager Hoyden posted:Watching these playthroughs of cheapo horror games, it's really surprising that nearly all of them are the exact same format. First person, Collect X things (usually pages or notes), get some keys, occasionally a ghost/monster/bad guy comes at you or jumps at you. In terms of cheapo horror games, it's because they take like five hours to make with a unity pack. Half the stuff you need (first-person camera angle, movement, interaction mechanisms) are baked into the unity engine so it's just a matter of grabbing some assets and slapping some text and jump scares into it then selling it for a few bucks. Also less animation required. As for the big titles being like that too, it's because it's easier to be scared when you feel like you're the person. But I agree, it's not particularly original unless you've got a neat story to tell or interesting mechanics. I had been so confused as to why AlphaBetaGamer was playing so many fishing-based horror games until I heard about this.
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Aug 13, 2020 18:40
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Absolutely beautiful. Okay now where is the horror The Sims
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Aug 13, 2020 18:44
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Manager Hoyden posted:Absolutely beautiful. https://youtu.be/T5s7Cu4VoEY
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Aug 13, 2020 18:59
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That's so weird the other day I was thinking man it'd be cool if there was a game where you were dredging up horrors from the sea or lake.
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Aug 13, 2020 19:20
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horror game where you explore a dying forum when
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Aug 13, 2020 19:33
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Tired Moritz posted:horror game where you explore a dying forum when Five Nights in Hypnospace Outlaw.
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Aug 13, 2020 19:34
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Of those fishing games, Earl's Day Off is definitely a highlight one, being from Airdorf who also made Faith 1/2.
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Aug 13, 2020 19:35
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Tired Moritz posted:horror game where you explore a dying forum when We're LARPing that game right now.
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Aug 13, 2020 19:58
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*starts obsessively looking for fuses*
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Aug 13, 2020 20:44
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The bad ending is if Lowtax decides not to sell the forums after all and everything just shuts down. Or maybe that's the good ending. Hard to tell.
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Aug 13, 2020 20:53
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I'll just restart in New Game+ in that case.
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Aug 13, 2020 21:15
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Did reflect studios ever finish making rides with strangers or just finish the demo and meh? It was one of the biggest things and then nothing at all.
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Aug 13, 2020 22:53
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Nothing except the demo, as far as I can find.
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Aug 13, 2020 22:56
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There was some kind of weird meltdown, wasn't there?
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Aug 13, 2020 22:56
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Daniel Mullins, the guy behind Pony Island and The Hex has a new game coming out that looks horror-adjacent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70QOKsr27Po Yessss this looks really great!
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Aug 14, 2020 00:59
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al-azad posted:https://twitter.com/thewebpro/status/1293520891859656704 From literally one page back guys. Also I'm not sure how "these games make no money we can't sustain making horror games that streamers beat in an hour" is a weird meltdown
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Aug 14, 2020 01:23
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Len posted:From literally one page back guys. I mean, you probably actually can't beat Scrutinized in an hour without some extreme editing-down just due to all the text and the punishing mechanics. I think the actual barrier they've hit is that their game looks like it's not fun to play.
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Aug 14, 2020 02:51
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Yeah I'll admit to being one of the people who watched Welcome to the Game and Scrutinized on YT rather than buying them... but because they don't really look fun to play. I feel like there's a subsection of horror game designers that think plate spinning and frustrating game-end states are somehow desirable because those games perform well on streams... which means you're developing a game for streamers, not for end users (I mean, not entirely, but I do think it's a factor). I never bought Welcome to the Game because I remember it being discussed in this thread as a game that was conceptually interesting but kind of a pain to play. I don't think Reflect's games are selling poorly because people would rather watch streamers play them, I think that's just a symptom of the real problem, namely that the design of the game either doesn't appeal to or outright repels a lot of horror game fans. I know this is me adding my own context to that message but it feels a bit like they're not acknowledging that maybe the problem isn't that they're making horror games, so much as the horror games they're making aren't as good as they need to be to compete in a crowded market. And yeah, doesn't help that this is basically their third pass at the same idea, without a lot in the way of innovation. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Aug 14, 2020 |
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Aug 14, 2020 05:22
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Theres audio cues to listen out for, but when I played WTTG2 it felt like that barely ever worked. Also half the times I would die would be outside the apartment, where audio cues just dont exist and you can just get shot randomly. It's bad game design to make the player constantly go into the door in the alley for 3 minutes because there isnt any way to tell if the killer is about.
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Aug 14, 2020 07:26
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WttG was a perfectly fine product for the most part, especially early on. It didn't feel like it ran too far with it's additional mechanics for the most part. WttG2 was a giant loving mess that made very little sense and therefore blew all the potential tension of the situation out of the window. However, the research aspect was still interesting and that's what I like the look of in Scrutinized. Being able to turn off all the nonsensical horror trash is nice, but I'd love to be able to customize the threat to one thing that makes sense.
Kokoro Wish fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Aug 14, 2020 |
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Aug 14, 2020 07:58
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"it's just too drat streamable to succeed" is my new excuse for making a mediocre game
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Aug 14, 2020 08:20
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I like horror games a lot but Scrutinized just seems ill-considered. For one it seems to be super creepy in the exact wrong way. I can't say I'm that bummed out about it not doing well.
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Aug 14, 2020 13:59
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I refunded Scrutinized before even playing it, because I saw these goofy character-models on the home page that made it look like a porno created in Poser. I think there's a lot of potential in a horror game that doesn't have any real fail-states. Maybe just minor alternate endings like how in Obra Dinn you do your job so poorly that your client dies of disappointment. No jarring shifts in genre like the end of Painscreek Killings. I'm not good with Unity which is why I'll probably never develop my ideal horror scenario. Say, you're directed to an empty office in a city somewhere on a rainy night. For an initiation into some organization you have to look through decades-old cold case and closed cases on a computer. You have to fill out a report with what you think happened. You'd have to come to a conclusion on a handful of separate cases before getting the option to retire. The game ends. Or you can read between the lines and get another hidden case with connects with all the previous ones. Suddenly every piece of evidence can be re-examined and compared with one another. You'll put events on a timeline, compare testimonies, listen to audio-logs, and zoom in on photographs to discover details you missed the first time, and as you progress you learn of some frightening overarching conspiracy. Like Obra Dinn every time you nail down three or four solid conclusions your progress is locked down. At the actual end of the game you're prompted to give your opinion of what really happened since some pieces are missing, sort of like how Her Story had three possible answers. Regardless you pass the test and get to join this organization. It would be modest. No 3D environments, no 3D character-models. some minor voice-acting. the closest thing to a jump-scare would be a landline phone suddenly going off. It'd be too slow-burning to merit some obnoxious streamer yelling gibberish. This wouldn't be a horror-game where some poorly-animated dude tries to knife you, this would be a horror game grounded in mundane minutia, where you're afraid to dig deeper in much the same way you''re afraid to browse the MorbidReality page on Reddit.
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Aug 14, 2020 15:00
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Inspector Gesicht posted:I refunded Scrutinized before even playing it, because I saw these goofy character-models on the home page that made it look like a porno created in Poser. Did you somehow buy it without seeing the store page?
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Aug 14, 2020 15:10
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Danaru posted:Did you somehow buy it without seeing the store page? Yes.
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Aug 14, 2020 15:11
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Inspector Gesicht posted:I refunded Scrutinized before even playing it, because I saw these goofy character-models on the home page that made it look like a porno created in Poser. The issue with these games is that they need to be streamable enough for streamers to...stream them, because that's where a majority of their marketing comes from. But not too streamable so that people only want to watch it. There's a weird balancing act for them to play, which is why generally it's just better to fart something out on a budget of $50 - a lot of horror streamers need content so they're willing to play most games for a video or two, and when all you need is a couple of sales to cover the game's budget, you don't need to worry about anyone else getting it.
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Aug 14, 2020 16:29
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You should all chill out for an hour inside of a dark room, preferably with cars going past your window frequently, while you watch these videos in order and then play the music below them while driving at night alone on backroads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb4qVZW69lM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3v271XADJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJFrfmM0uPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5f-yEtiuk8 BONUS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a364H5cveNQ
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Aug 15, 2020 01:58
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Has there been any talk of The Shore in this thread? I'm not sure where I came across it (I thought it was here) but the demo is currently available and they're looking for some crowd funding. The game is set in the Lovecraft world, and ties in pretty directly with his universe. I haven't gotten very far into the demo, but the game looks pretty promising if you're interested in Lovecraft. https://www.ulule.com/the-shore-game/ demo can be found here: https://the-shore.itch.io/the-shore SpitztheGreat fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Aug 15, 2020 |
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Aug 15, 2020 06:58
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SpitztheGreat posted:Has there been any talk of The Shore in this thread? I'm not sure where I came across it (I thought it was here) but the demo is currently available and they're looking for some crowd funding. The game is set in the Lovecraft world, and ties in pretty directly with his universe. I haven't gotten very far into the demo, but the game looks pretty promising if you're interested in Lovecraft. With some polish this could be pretty good, but drat if it doesn't look rough when the combat starts.
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Aug 15, 2020 07:26
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sigher posted:With some polish this could be pretty good, but drat if it doesn't look rough when the combat starts. Games like this always seem to struggle with combat. It reminded me immediately of Dear Esther, but with combat gameplay. From a thematic perspective, I'm not sure if combat works in an eldritch horror game. I haven't gotten too far into the demo yet, and I haven't watched the videos of combat on youtube, but I'm skeptical if I believe a mortal could effectively combat even the minor eldritch creatures in Lovecraft's universe. But I'm also tired of games where you're defenseless and always forced to hide or flee. I like having the options to be both proactive and reactive, but they need to make sense thematically. Hiding from an eldritch creature may make sense, but I would also like to be proactive with some offensive capabilities. But if those offensive capabilities are actual weapons or guns, you lose me. That said, The Shore looks like a labor of love, so I'd like to give it a chance. For me, a great story can overcome mediocre or bad combat, just as long as the combat doesn't make advancing the story impossible.
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Aug 15, 2020 08:19
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