![]() The puzzle component usually isn’t complex and often merely points the player in the direction of a trigger for a cutscene or a voiceover. I haven’t played any of the more derided “walking simulators,” but from what I’ve seen, much of the criticism directed at them takes issue with the weakness of the gameplay and narrative more than the concept key to the genre.įor those not in the know, walking simulators are games based around exploring a fully-rendered digital environment, usually a town or a house, picking up pieces of a physical or narrative puzzle to piece together. I honestly think this name is ineffective because there’s a substantial difference between tech demos of environments and games like Gone Home or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. To some extent, that’s the idea behind the so-called walking simulator games. Sometimes you don’t need much space to tell a powerful story. I’ve only seen Top of the Lake and Pride of Baghdad once, but they have each left an impact on me that cuts deeper than most video games or sitcoms or comic arcs. You finish one, you hype your friends up about the best bits, you watch a clickbait YouTube video about what’s going to happen in the sequel, then you wait for the next shiny distraction. Yes, Marvel movies and comics are fun, but they’re fleeting. But I find games like this scratch the same itch as stand-alone novels or TV miniseries. They need more than just a story, of course it needs to be well-told. I find these to be some of the most satisfying games to play. You don’t need to come back, but you can if you like their atmosphere and gameplay. They rely on the memory you have of playing them being their main appeal, like how films and books work. ![]() These are the sorts of games that you play, finish, and put down, perhaps never with the intent of returning to them. All of these games introduce their challenge components bit by bit, and don’t punish you severely for failure, because that’s not the point. Not all of those are easy games, of course, but I find that difficulty kills a narrative game quicker than anything else unless the controls are fun. Games like Gone Home, Inside, Guacamelee, Brothers, Abzu. Easy ones with fail-proof options are even better. I’ve found a solution, but it’s a curiously detested one by the gaming community: short, narrative-driven games. How long does it take to get the full experience? How long before I’m just clicking buttons for the sake of reaching some arbitrary endpoint? I have to set goals for myself, and that’s hard to do for open-world games. And with more games combining this system with in-game microtansactions, we end up with games being valued lower and lower on their initial launch but taking up more of a player’s time. $10 is more than the nothing that person would have paid for it otherwise, so the company makes money. If they don’t intend to play it for long, the lower price looks more promising. Someone only vaguely interested in Frost Punk might buy something they want more when the game costs $20, but if it’s $10, that might be enough to convince someone to at least try it out. Games make money from sales, like most most products, by convincing people to buy them for a price they can’t pass up. If people value a game like Frost Punk at $20, it needs to have a huge player base just to break even. Selling cheap games on Steam is a risky business that mainly benefits the consumer (and Steam - arguably Steam more than anyone). I understand why while small games are relatively easy to make these days, they’re still not cheap to make, especially considering the standards players have come to expect. Those games are few and far between, with major titles opting for longer experiences with more depth and complexity that demand more of their players. I don’t want to spend twenty dollars on a game I’m going to look at for five hours and then set down unless I can get a bonzer experience from those few hours. As my time to play games becomes more valuable, I have to carefully weigh their costs. ![]() My Steam library has ballooned, but there are few games on it that I have been able to give their full due.Īnd this problem is self-fulfilling. ![]() Small games are easier than ever to make and buy, and even triple-A titles have developed such a short lifestyle that it’s easy to find two-year-old games that were sixty dollars at launch on sale for a fraction of that. This is inevitable with adulthood and things like jobs, but another contributor is just how many games I’ve accrued over the years. I often run into a problem with video games that has little to do with their quality: I don’t have enough time to play them. A little familiarity with gaming lingo wouldn’t hurt, I guess?
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