This charming adventure could afford to take a few steps back

I personally always dislike it, too.

There are two reasons you might want to do this as a dev, of course. One of them I feel kinda half-asses your design, if you don’t want to get a threat or failure during gameplay to get into the way of your storypacing, just make a visual novel. Or at least something like SOMA, Amnesia or Still Wakes The Deep.
Or alternatively, if you want to make a game explicitly made for children that’s okay, but then also do the marketing a bit more kid-centric IMO. I dunno, maybe this one is actually genuinely meant for children, but some of the humor and writing doesn’t feel that way if I’m honest. Princess Peach does this more thoroughly: It is the same “handholding 100% of the time”, but it’s also very obviously meant to be played primarily by relatively small children!

  • PunchingWood@lemmy.worldEnglish
    261·
    2 months ago

    All a game like this would need is the ability to disable the feature.

    It’s like developers are so obsessed and occupied with making it as accessible to everyone, that they seem to forget that there is also an entire playerbase out there not looking to be handheld through everything (including children). I’d get a bigger sense of achievement if I managed to do it on my own.

    I remember playing Mario on the NES and it was completely unforgiving as a child, like insta-deaths, limited amount of lives, no save games, hidden secrets, etc. But it was pure bliss when I finally beat the game.

        • CrayonRosary@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          2 months ago

          You gotta admit it’s confusing and abnormal to put a single “no” entry in the middle of a comma-delimited list of “yes” entries. Normally you’d say,

          It has this, that, and the other thing, and no bad things, malthings, or blahs.

          Sometimes the “and” and “or” are left out.

          It has this, that, the other thing, and no bad things, malthings, blahs.

          The original commenter took this format, and mixed it all up like

          It has this, no bad thing, other thing

          Is that no other thing or yes other thing? Who can tell? Only people who didn’t need to be told these things in the first place.

        • imPastaSyndrome@lemm.eeEnglish
          13·
          2 months ago

          Thanks but I never need someone else entirely to tell me that their interpretation of SOMEONE ELSE’S sentence is more correct than mine. If he wants to correct me he can

    • Zahille7@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I remember playing Legacy of Kain: Defiance for the first time when I was a kid.

      I spent actual hours coming through the damn mansion level looking for the proper route and I was so frustrated. I finally broke down and looked it up on the computer (which I was grounded from at the time) so I could see if I could find a solution.

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      In the early 2000s you pirated nintendo games, had no manual ( or bought it legit but couldnt read it properly to understand) and just figured out the manuals.

  • hate2bme@lemmy.worldEnglish
    285·
    2 months ago

    Either a shit article or shit website. The article gives a summary of the game then says the developers don’t trust their customers. That’s it. No reasons given. Am I missing something?

    • BradleyUffner@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      2 months ago

      There is a “continue reading” link buried several pages down, past a bunch of ads. Took me way to long to find it.

      Looks like this:

      • hate2bme@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        I seen them but I seen a bunch of them and didn’t know which one was for the article I was reading. Lol

    • skulblaka@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      17·
      2 months ago

      There’s a section under the “read more” split where it complains about over-tutorialization. The game hits you over the head with puzzle solutions and intended routes and leaves nothing for the player to figure out.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
      23·
      2 months ago

      Then you have to make sure it’s reasonably straightforward to figure everything out without the tutorial, so then why bother with the tutorial at all? As a player I’d hate to get stuck because I missed something that’s clearly spelled out in a tutorial I skipped.

  • CALIGVLA@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    61·
    2 months ago

    This is less a sign of “the devs don’t trust the player” and more just plain out bad game design. Maybe the game itself is very obvious (I don’t know, i haven’t played nor do I intend to), but this kind of thing is usually done when the game is obtuse and the developer wants a quickfix instead of actually reworking the entire thing. Then again, if your game is for little children and they can’t figure out how to play it, then there’s something fundamentally wrong with it and maybe you should go back to the drawing board.

  • Pumpkin Escobar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 months ago

    I like the game, but agree with the over-tutorialed complaints. They have two difficulty modes, I wish only story mode got all the handholding. I think there’s enough obvious indicators to get you through all the game mechanics.

  • magic_lobster_party@fedia.io
    3·
    2 months ago

    I haven’t played Plucky yet, but this is what I liked about Tunic. It gives you a hint, and then trusts the player to experiment with the hint they’re given. It makes it feel like your own adventure.

  • intensely_human@lemm.eeEnglish
    38·
    2 months ago

    That’s kind of the definition of a video game: a game in which the rules are enforced by an unconsciously intelligent mechanism.

    A normal game requires trusting the players; a video game does not.

  • Wanderer@r.nfEnglish
    229·
    2 months ago

    Ah yes Kotaku, who’s activist openly try to destroy games with Sweet Baby Inc. and their dogshit woke agenda.

    This site needs to die, same as IGN aka Kotaku 2. Nobody wants them, nobody needs them and everything is run by worthless activist.