For me, if I ever hear "card-based" or "soulslike" I have absolutely no desire to play a game, no matter how many people reccomend it.
I'm also not a huge fan of modern "roguelikes" but I've sunk days into nethack and games like that.
What?! You don't like making spears? You don't like building log palisades? You don't like doing it for the 900th game in a row?!
Counterpoint: games where you speed through the early part of the progression and get around to automating or otherwise trivializing many of the initially tedious elements are pretty cool. I'm talking about games like Scrap Mechanic or Astroneer. The core gameplay loop is going out exploring, collecting materials, bring them back to base and repeat. But by allowing you to get the basic resources automated you can focus on building setups to defend your base and produce more resources passively. It's a very satisfying form of progression.
I think Subnautica really did that loop really well. Starting out you needed to grab fish to stay alive, a bit of an investment but not super tedious, exploring gave you some farming options, more exploration let you recharge batteries, and you kinda kept going and going. It's the game that made me enjoy the genre under very specific circumstances. It gave you the feeling of needing to survive while also not tugging at your coat asking you to eat another dozen potatoes or something.
Subnautica's standout feature compared to most survival crafting is that its world is actually designed rather than randomly generated.
Automating everything to the greatest possible degree is the entire fun for me with crafting games, but a lot of the more survival focused survival crafting games really seem to resent automation and think it's "broken/OP"
Would legit rather play a simulator game based on my job than touch that shit
You payed $20 to play a game about assembling 1000s of food items you can't even eat?
Over here playing nothing but deck-builders, rogue-likes, and souls-likes
“Surely this one will match Slay The Spire” he says as he spends $15 on yet another ugly, easy, knockoff
(Cobalt Core is super rad though)
if I'm playing a city builder I don't want my city building options to be "whatever's in your deck of cards"
if I'm playing an RPG I don't want my skills and equipment or whatever to be "a bunch of cards"
if I wanted to play a card game... I'd play a card game
Why would I waste time building a deck when there are people to shoot in the face with plasma guns
I dislike how nowadays slay the spire and its ilk is what people assume for the term deck builder instead of multiplayer (usually offline) games like ascension or puzzle strike or dominion
For me it's too much RNG I don't feel like I'm in control of what I'm doing. I do not trust in the heart of the cards.
Open world, suvival, crafting
Games with these qualities that are actually good are marketed as RPGs or adventure games
My favorite games are FTL, Papers Please, We Love Katamari, Castlevania NES, Wild Guns and Fallout New Vegas and FZero X. I don't even know what I like.
"gacha" games. We used to call that shit loot boxes just a few years ago
Yeah, gatcha games can fuck off. Even worse than games with content you have to pay for, this doesn’t even let you choose what you’re buying and it’s literally a gamble that you’ll even get anything good never mind what you want.
MMO
Don't get me wrong, there are a few MMOs I like, but the vast majority are awful.
Anything that compares itself to stardew valley, mid game that spawned a bazillion worse knock offs where you play in a souless happy charming Cozy(TM) village where everybody knows everybody and there's never any interpersonal disputes
Also horror games and open world, sandbox, survival crafting games
I upbared you because I respect having a diversity of opinions in a community but I also think your opinion on Stardew Valley is bad and wrong.
There are two kinds of people:
Those who dislike Stardew Valley, and those who mod the Stardew Valley grandpa.
Show
IMO there should be more cozy games that aren't pay to win. why I gotta pay microtransactions for a fucking fishbowl???
MMO - I like multiplayer games just fine, but whenever they call it “massively” multiplayer, I know it’s going to be a grindy time-sink with anemic gameplay and the requirement to join some sort of group of other players in order to progress. It’s one of the few things I have filtered on Steam because it’s a guaranteed hard pass every time.
Turn-based - This one is hard for me to admit because I’ve played lots of great turn-based games and will inevitably play more of them, but for some reason when turn-based is a key feature, my brain interprets it as being a low-budget and/or low-effort game, or that the gameplay won’t match how the game is presented. It’s not that I dislike the concept of turn-based play, but when I see “turn-based” in a description I just glaze over.
Early Access - I don’t dislike early access, but the fact that it has no specific definition bothers me a lot. There’s no way for me to tell whether the game is a complete enough experience to be worth starting, so I usually end up passing until the game gets a full release (which isn’t a bad thing, but it does mean that early access is an automatic red flag.)
There are certain genres that I’m not that interested in, like puzzle games, visual novels, hardcore simulation games, etc., but the above are things that make me think twice about a game even if it looks interesting otherwise.
I agree with early access, I got burned a fair few times getting in on hype and the pitch when I was younger. If I'm hearing good stuff I might pirate early access stuff to see if it's really for me, but I have a hard rule of passing on early access. Shit like Towns and Godus made sure I'll never really trust early access despite the success stories. (Hell even Stonehearth was a disappointment despite it actually getting a 1.0)
Turn-based - This one is hard for me to admit because I’ve played lots of great turn-based games and will inevitably play more of them, but for some reason when turn-based is a key feature, my brain interprets it as being a low-budget and/or low-effort game, or that the gameplay won’t match how the game is presented. It’s not that I dislike the concept of turn-based play, but when I see “turn-based” in a description I just glaze over.
I'm working on a turn based game, you could say it's low budget, perhaps more accurately, no-budget. Does your glaze over system offer leniency for games that are clearly indie+cheap, or maybe you intended this for games with huge marketing budgets and have microtransactions? Either way, I'd love any specific interests/thoughts you have on the turn based games genre in general.
First off, this is a "me" problem. I'm not sure that it would translate to others, but I'll try to articulate what it is. Second, "low-budget" is a meaningless term that's probably reflective of my advanced age. I still remember when there were hardly any indie devs, and there was a lot of shovelware out there. Really what it's about is lack of effort, care, or polish in a game, which at this point is largely decoupled from budget, per se.
I think there was a time when turn-based gameplay was popular because it wasn't as hardware-intensive and it was easy to clone turn-based gameplay, at least on a surface level. Between mediocre JRPGs and mediocre turn-based strategy games, turn-based started to look like something that developers were using as a way of saving time or effort, or dealing with hardware limitations. That's not really the case today, as the limitations that existed 20 or 30 years ago aren't there, so it's somewhat irrational. That said, I'm also not nostalgic for that era, even though I know that a lot of people are.
I think my hesitance around turn-based games is similar to how some people in this thread are talking about card-based games. I like card-based games when they're implemented well, but if I'm playing a card-based video game, I don't want it to merely be a digital implementation of an analog card game. There has to be something, like the card game being set in a larger context, or the interactions being complex enough that you couldn't feasibly do it in an analog game. Similar with turn-based games, I don't want to play what is essentially a digital implementation of a board game, nor do I want the game to be banging spreadsheets together a la old JRPGs.
CRPGs with a lot of depth, like Larian's games, are great because every turn-based combat is like a little puzzle with multiple solutions. Something more tactical like Battletech can be really engaging because there are multiple layers to play at, from the mech choices and outfitting to the actual combat. Big strategy/4x games work well as turn-based games because there's an economy and lots of interesting win conditions to explore that require planning and taking your time.
That's more for bigger games, though. Smaller, more focused games can be great with the right execution. I really enjoyed Buckshot Roulette because of how well the developer set the tone. The game itself is relatively straightforward, but the amount of texture and flavor in the presentation really makes it sing. Same with Balatro, a pure turn-based card game, which has so much visual and gameplay polish that you can't help but enjoy the relatively simple mechanics and presentation.
The best turn-based games don't really need to announce themselves as turn-based games, because that's incidental. They're games about something, with turn-based gameplay being simply the design choice that the developer felt was the best fit for the game. I find that when games announce themselves as being turn-based, it obscures why I would be interested in the game, which is why I mentioned it specifically in my original comment. Hope that helps!
my advanced age
I think there was a time when turn-based gameplay was popular because it wasn't as hardware-intensive
That's interesting, my initial choice of turn-based gameplay is mostly 2 things: It's a lot easier to offer an experience that respects your PC/phone's battery, such as less animations between user actions, or maybe even just offering an option in settings to reduce idle animations. I'm dabbling into 3D, which I've not committed either way, but might make this detail harder.
Also, I am getting older, and finding myself less able to sit at a computer and play a "live action" game, or online games that can't be paused, or online games that require a commitment of 30 to 60 uninterrupted minutes, or schedule specific times to game with my friends. And these are often caused by reasons like "job" or "family", but maybe soon there will be reasons like "My old non-gaming mouse and arthritis can't out-micro this diamond league starcraft player."
What's absolutely crazy to me, is that a lot of turn based games I've seen still require a commitment of 30 to 60 uninterrupted minutes to play. Probably the most important core design detail of my game is the ability to play turns, even partial turns, progressively throughout a day/week on the player's own schedule. I plan on supporting both "live" games and asynchronous games.
Anyways, thanks for your thoughts!
Damn, I like some examples of everything listed here except shady money extraction schemes.
Pay to play is my biggest dealbreaker. I'm either paying once, or paying for dlc. But I'm not paying to continue to play a game that isnt FF14
probably roguelikes with meta progression since i know the first 10 hours is gonna suck until i unlock some good abilities/items to make it tolerable
I like meta progression because I'm doodoo at video games and they help me win anyway
yes, someone should make a list of modern roguelikes without meta progression
RTS games, namely because I can't micromanage fast compared to some esports gamer hyped up on gamefuel.
RTS games that let you issue orders while the game is paused are the only ones I'll play
What are some examples of those? I like the CRPGs that are real-time with pause lol
Most paradox games, dune spice wars, relic games usually do... Honestly, it's almost only the C&C/warcraft/aoe trad rts ones that don't.
Total War is probably the biggest franchise that lets you do that
the remaster is also pretty great if you don't want to put up with ancient code, locked view and just overall bad QoL stuff
I conveniently have this on my EGS account full of free shit I've been redeeming for the past few years - nice!
the new Wargame RTS (WARNO) lets you pause and command FINALLY i felt left out of the only cold war pure combat RTS
only problem is EA and single player is still lacking
also not sure if fully paused but everything is so slow it's effectively paused
If you haven't played it yet try Steel Division II, which is the WW2 game that came out before WARNO and has multiple full-size campaigns.
The only RTS I ever liked was lego rock raiders, and that's probably because I was a child with nothing else to do.
Loose rock!
A landslide has occured!
I also dug Lego Rock Raiders as a kid. Come to think of it, I don't think I've played an RTS in about 20 years:
- Lego Rock Raiders
- Warcraft III
- Age of Empires II
- The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth (1 & 2)
- Rise of Nations
- Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds
I never got too heavily into the "strategy" part--I just loved being able to have these battles play out with catapults and horsemen and the occasional Dodge Viper with machine guns (
howdoiturnthisonis forever burned into my memory). I particularly enjoyed how your units could get upgrades and rank up, and they'd carry across missions in BFME so you could make them absurdly powerful. I also remember the graphics being pretty impressive to me--I spent a lot of time just zooming in on units and watching their idle animations and stuff.
I'm pretty terrible at RTS multiplayer but I love when they're in single player. Single player also lets the devs give you cool abilities and units that would be horribly broken in multiplayer.
I picked up Rise of Nations again, recently. I'll just pause the game, give orders, un-pause.
Any sort of deck-building because it feels like homework
This is why I skipped every game of Gwent
I maintain that Witcher 3 is great storytelling shoved into a shit game.
When I first played Witcher 3 I was like “why the fuck would I play a card game in this vibrant, immersive, story-rich action-adventure game?” and then somewhere along the lines I got to the point where I was running around the whole game world ready to suck dick for Gwent cards. I have no idea how they got me, but Gwent is easily the best game-within-a-game I’ve ever played.
Gwent is easily the best game-within-a-game I’ve ever played.
Counterpoint: Yakuza Pocket Circuit.
I hadn't thought much about it, but that's a really good description.
Because you didn't have to run around collecting dice and then use a spreadsheet to organize the dice into an optimized dice stack meta and then lose anyway when you don't draw the right dice from your pile of random dice
I played Gwent at every opportunity in the Witcher game and thought I'd love the stand-alone Gwent. Boy was I wrong. The mini game was simple enough to learn and not that hard to master. Gwent stand-alone is just too complex to have some simple fun with it.
Should have done like me and literally refused to play a game of Gwent to save a dude's life
Like sorry bro that sucks and all but I'm just going to kill all of these people
“Free to Play with in game purchases”
Or the suddenly becoming popular
“Pay for a full game but still has in game purchases”
