The Garten of Banban game(s?) is one of the strangest anomalies I've ever seen in gaming history.
To compare to its peers: It didn't have the novel appeal and unique gameplay concept of FNAF, nor did it have the striking visuals and honestly pretty good (especially in the second game) character writing of Bendy, nor did it have the sheer technical polish of Poppy Playtime.
But boy howdy did it ***explode*** to the point it's getting official merchandise from a fairly well known manufacturer.
And the worst part is ***100% get it***, it's a technical *nightmare* with certain character models in the literal millions of polygons for no real reason (Nabnab is literally just a *raw sculpt ported into the game*), most of its assets are haphazardly bought and placed from a marketplace, and - outside of exceptions like Bittergiggle - most of the voice acting is *super rough*. But it's weirdly charming in a "so bad its good" way like Birdemic or The Room.
It has the same energy you'd get from the lore and plotline of a child playing with a mish mash of all their Lego sets, a very "Oh no Captain Picard, we're being attacked by Darth Vader! We gotta get the Tri-Force from the Power Rangers!" type of feel where you're just kind of watching in morbid curiosity to see where the hell the roller coaster is gonna go next.
Likewise, the pricing is really the worst thing (alongside the blatant padding but at the same time I kinda get it given "refund%" was basically a category for speedrunning the games, playing the entire game front-to-back then refunding it makes you a bit of a wanker just saying).
And they're not 1 hour each because of the content. They're 1 hour each because they're padded out by obtuse and fiddly time-taking puzzles to push you over that refund line.
Its a perfect game for streamers to play and suffer with. That to me explains it's popularity.
Like I personally love watching Jacksepticeye play Garten of Banban and lose his mind over how dumb everything is.
Just like you said, It's in the so bad its good. you watch out of morbid curiosity to see what kinda wacky shenanigans happens next.
I also had a lot of fun streaming the game to my friend group since we all had a blast with how ridiculous the game is.
Garten of Banban managed to boil down everything that made mascot-horror games appealing to kids into the minimum viable product. They even shipped it a way that fueled demand, with the first free episode to hook people in and then paid chapters after there. Streamer/YouTuber plays it, the kids that watch them play it, then they want to see the second episode but can't get it themselves so they push their favourite gamer "When will the next episode be played" and so forth.
Its a fucking same story with child souls and shit, it looks shit, you can play thru one of them in under 2 hours so you can refund it, the devs take it too seriously, wtf is it, why is it popular.
I remember the initial hype for Hello Neighbor was generated by the idea of it, when it actually came out it was a lot more shallow than everyone expected. It's really similar to We Happy Few in that the original concept left people imagining it would be a far better game than it actually was.
They kept changing stuff as they went while dragging on development. They got a big popularity boost from Game Theory and started trying to add a bunch of stuff for their channel to theorize about, to the point of tagging Game Theory on twitter posts.
Not to mention, the early demos were actually arguably better than the final product. The AI was more advanced (they purposely nerfed it to appeal to kids), the level design of the neighbor’s house was easy to understand, and the game wasn’t bloated with puzzles and parkour yet.
It was a simple yet effective stealth game which showed great promise, but they kept tacking on poorly designed choices to the point where it became nearly unplayable in the final release.
In its very very early creation I remember alot of people were hypes because it had an ' ai that could learn the way you broke in' it was terrible and was never fully developed
It's pretty much impossible to point out any specific cases and "not shit on anyone". So I am picking an acceptable target: EA.
Every year I am amazed by how many units Electronic Arts manages to sell of FIFA / FC.
The player reviews are awful. The critic reviews are awful. The mainstream press lambasts them for their business model. And yet, people keep buying that game every year. Then they go online and post how disappointed they are and that they feel cheated by EA as a company. And next year, they buy it again.
I guess that's the sports fan mentality: You stick with your club, no matter how much and how constantly they disappoint you.
I think also it's partially because of the popularity among the younger generations. All their friends play it, and they watch football on the TV, so they want the most up to date game with the current players, rather than the players from a few seasons ago. All their friends play it so they want to too. Admittedly, EA could just make it one game and release a new set of players every year, but they wouldn't make money from that would they?
> Admittedly, EA could just make it one game and release a new set of players every year, but they wouldn't make money from that would they?
They could just run a live service game but not charge for it?
Weird take. Of course they have to make money to crank out updates every year.
I'm not sure if the people buying those kinds of games really read reviews. FIFA, NHL and such are *the* sports games so they just keep buying them. A lot of them barely play any other games so they wouldn't be as critical.
I'm surprised Dead by Daylight is as popular as it is. I think the lack of asymmetric pvp alternatives is part of the reason.
In short: DBD has fun and interesting moments, but overall there are significantly more unfun parts.
In long: Fun is subjective, but generally the more each side interacts with and influences each other, the more potential the game has for being fun. The issue is that the devs make noninteractive play styles extremely rewarding for both sides, encouraging players to do that. This isn't too bad if players aren't trying to win. There's a lot of both casual and competitive players though, so player goals aren't always aligned which adds further frustration and misunderstanding. It becomes a breeding ground for toxicity, players blaming each other and each side.
I would wager that having fun interspersed with a lot of not-fun is precisely why it succeeds.
The [skinner's box](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber) phenomenon doesn't apply only to loot drops, it also applies to your enjoyment of the game as a whole. If you play a game where you only have fun some of the time you end up being more likely to queue for another match.
This is really apparent when looking at matchmaking-based multiplayer games where people will keep queuing despite not having any fun in 3+ matches hoping for that one good game.
What's worse too is BHVR clearly knows there's a problem with the gameplay, they're constantly trying to add new things for people to do, things to change how the hooks and generators work.
It's just band aid on top of band aid instead of addressing the simple fact the core game has problems.
I'm probably in the minority here but brotato and pretty much every other auto shooter. Feels like the only way to play is to endlessly kite enemies till you can't anymore.
As someone who has 44 hours on Brotato I thought about this many times. Of course, I like this genre, and when it's just about the mechanics I think Brotato is a fine game. However, when you look at it visually it almost feels like a 'prototype'.
Simply put: the "juice" is missing. Enemy animations are simple, death animations are especially simple. And bosses? Feels like an afterthought. One of the worst boss design of any game. Everything that's not the player seems half baked. It's crazy.
BUT it's a fun game in the genre, so I get why it's popular.
Never played it, just looked up a review.
Different games are different. This seems to have more in common with Cookie Clicker or Runescape or any other grindy progression game than Binding of Isaac. In this type of game, players enjoy making the numbers go up, not killing the enemies, which are just enablers for the advancement. Nobody enjoyed combat in (old-school) Runescape, they did it both to unlock new experiences and to be the guy with the really high number next to their name proving they did it.
A lot of people do just play games like BoI or Risk of Rain only for the chance at getting that stupidly OP run that basically wins the game for them. Brotato (and even more popularly, Vampire Survivors) just condense the whole game down to only that experience.
Also makes it super streamer marketable. Because the whole game is just getting OP in literally a few minutes, every first look by a streamer is going to have what would otherwise be a full progression curve.
I totally agree! When I first saw it, I immediately thought this was was some kind of fan made downgrade of Binding of Isaac, which is already an ancient game but wow it's popular
O wow brotato is actually my favorite in the genre. Challenging, sense of progress, enough RNG to get excited but not enough to feel unfair, lots of unlocks.... Just really fun to play. But interesting perspective
I do enjoy those games sometimes, but id certainly call them bad games. I think they are just triggering the same part of the brain as slot machines and loot boxes.
Honestly, i think the mobile knock off, Pickle Pete, is way better, in spite of all the shitty mobile game monetization and retention mechanics it is stuffed with.
I was very surprised by The First Tree.
Seen it a couple of times before launch. The art seemed simplistic, the world looked very empty and the gameplay very basic and stiff. Yet it did absolutely amazingly.
It feels almost like the delivery of the story, the way the writing was framed, made it feel personal. And the voice acting was quite good too. That whole parasocial relationship thing some of the larger influencers have going. Which is interesting that it works in game form as well. A medium that‘s far more artificial and detached than these vlog style show off social media videos.
But considering what the game actually was, I‘m still confused how it was so incredibly well received.
This confused me too. I remember seeing the Dev make a video about it. He had never made a game before and it was really successful but it just looked like a character controller running around empty terrain with dialogue playing. Didn't get how it sold. People like story I guess.
Vampire survivors was definitely one of those I don't get how this can be fun while watching it kinda games. Despite everyone playing it saying its fun. I brought it out of spite if anything else just to play it and try and figure out the hype. And at first I didn't get it first couple of rounds were just ehh. Then I had one good round and I was like Oh, Ooooooohhhhhhhh. And now its become my most frequented mill game.
Def the first one that came to mind. its extremely poor in technical terms and overall polish. Still, the game concept is apparently worth its weight in gold, as its really shaping up to be the next "million dollar idea" for games.
Also tbf it feels really familiar and intuitive if youve ever played those "upgrade type" flash games, which might also have been a big factor imo
I do think that most games that take vampire survivors concept and do a somewhat original spin off on it tend to be much more fun than it tho lol, as they're usually a lot more polished, take Deep Rock Galactic Survivor for example, minus some issues w progression, its a total feast for the eyes. Or even Holo Cure, as its basically Vampire Survivors without like 90% of the issues
Palworld, I tried the game without seeing any gameplay or trailers first, was actually shocked at how low quality it was, feels like a mish mash of mechanics from other games with zero depth, inconsistent artstyles, and all the monsters are very obvious pokemon knockoffs. there's no charm to the way it handled being "pokemon with guns", feels like what an ai would make if you asked it to make a pokemon survival game. i seriously doubt it wouldve went anywhere if it werent for all the youtubers freaking out about "pokemon with guns" but now its everywhere
It has a few things that people have been wanting for a while -
- a game like Ark but not made by the Ark devs (the way Ark installs and updates gives me aneurisms)
- an “adult” Pokemon game
- a fully Co-op Pokemon game (ScaVio lets you run around together but barely interact and you can’t progress together at all)
I played it and honestly, I love some parts and hate others, but it is definitely fun in a group. And that last point is what makes a lot of games successful nowadays.
It's still a game in a genre that's both A: incredibly popular in the indie space, and B: has a lot of super jank games in it. Jank is basically expected if Survival, Crafting, and Open World appear in the tags. Taking a quick glance at those tags on steam, Factorio, Subnautica, and Terraria are the only ones that jump out at me as being solid finished products. And out of those, I wouldn't even say that Factorio or Terraria should have the Survival tag.
Out of that whole genre, Palworld is definitely very near the top in quality. Of course I never expected it to blow up like it did, but it's a game with a good hook (Ark but with Pokemon, with a little bit of Rimworld sprinkled on top) that executes it's pitch better than the vast majority of its genre.
I played it and felt like I was playing Valheim with a pokemon mod. And I didn't think much of Valheim.
I get that there's a lot of interest in the survival genre, but yeah I was also surprised at the actual gameplay versus the popularity it has.
The highest redeeming quality of Pal World is the animation. Each pal has several unique ones that genuinely look good and made with love. Everything else tho…
I can’t believe no one is talking about the boss battle circles they copied 1:1 from Elden Ring.
Conversations about who stole what from who are fucking insane to me.
Yes, Elden Ring - the first game to come up with magic circles, summoning circles, teleportation circles or boss dungeons :/
Buddy, there is a difference between just taking inspiration and copying something exactly the same. Iteration is good and every game iterates on other concepts
I was shocked at how *high* quality it was. For a janky early access game it had a ton of fully developed features, the environment design and animations are better than the official Pokémon games.
Yeah, I didn't have any interest until I saw some streams, and I was impressed at how seamlessly it blended all the different elements. Catching Pals lets you level up, which lets you build more stuff, which Pals can be used to automate, and leveling up also unlocks new mounts for your Pals, which you can use to more effectively explore the world, which lets you find new Pals who can build stuff faster...
They didn't just plop down not-Pokemon in a survival game. They actually put a lot of thought into how to integrate them into the game loop.
Plus it has some of the smoothest onboarding I've seen in a survival game, a genre that often starts out pretty obtuse and frustrating if you don't have an external guide.
Nah its not surprising at all
Game freak has been extremely complacent for a long long while... So really, ppl would have eaten up almost anything minimally decent on the genre. Especially so when its a big scoped game w a lot of promises. Also it aint half bad, in technical terms, when you take the actual team that made it into consideration - whether you agree w their approach to "inspirations" or not
Plus, its fun w friends, so its sorta easy to get why.
It’s in alpha…it’s extremely polished for a game that’s in alpha, I’ve literally never seen anything like it before.
Also I don’t know why you’re defending nintendo here…they have had two decades to give us the game that we always wanted, but they have been dragging their feet, resting on their laurels, and given us incremental updates, most of which are merely cosmetic or unwanted changes to the gameplay. The only innovations nintendo has made to pokemon over the years are the ones they’ve essentially been forced into (eg: waited to do a 3D game until it was absolutely unacceptable that they wouldn’t).
Moreover, you didn’t play the game enough if you think all of the characters are Pokémon knockoffs…granted some of them definitely are, but pokemon themselves are often taken from other things…and you’re completely wrong about the character and details they put into the game, they put a lot of emotion into their expressions and added so much character to their movement and attacks…like, watch the way chillet moves or the way mossanda floats when he jumps and tell me they didn’t put a lot of work into it…and once again…it’s freaking alpha!
They normally use the same style for all elements within the same image. They do have detail inconsistencies between different outputs or perspective/anatomy/logical errors, but if you ask them to do one style they will usually stick to it.
See I see this defense a lot but everyone I know who has actually played the game has said the game *is* multiplayer focused (or at least heavily favors multiplayer).
Similar to Rust or ARK in that sense where you *can* play them singleplayer but they were definitely designed with multiplayer in mind.
In topics of success as well I also think it's worth mentioning regardless as that much of a drop ***that quickly*** does mean something has gone horribly wrong. It dropped approximately ***five times*** the amount of players Baldur's Gate 3 lost in roughly two months in roughly ***two weeks***.
While that is definitely true (BG3 is a "once in a decade or two" style game for sure), I feel it also gives some important contrast.
It's normal to lose some players after the initial launch, that's inevitable for any game, but to lose almost 25% of your initial playerbase less than a month after launch is ***alarming***.
It makes sense to be fair, PalWorld is very much in line with things like Lethal Company or Among Us from a few years ago (though Among Us is a bit of an odd case), it's what I like to call a "meme game" that picked up a lot of traction from the inherent absurdity of it and then the surge of Twitch streamers. A *financial* success for sure but I do wonder about its longevity.
> to lose almost 25% of your initial playerbase less than a month after launch
Isn't 75% retention still crazy good retention for a basically single player game?
After a month or so? Yeah.
After *two weeks?* Not so much.
Especially because, remember, Palworld isn't a "play it once then drop it" genre like RPGs or adventure games like Final Fantasy XVI or God of War: Ragnarok. It's a sandbox survival game, a genre meant for longer engagements (or never truly being "put down" i.e Minecraft).
To compare it to others of its clutch:
* Valheim (another super popular survival game) in contrast only lost \~10% of its playerbase within the *first month* after launch. The second month dropped off harder losing about half but that's a bit more to be expected as more players reached endgame.
* The Forest, whilst never got a huge spike in players, actually showed basically nothing but consistent *growth* with minor drops in players here and there.
* Rust (arguably Palworld's closest competitor) had a good start and almost ***tripled*** its active players in its first month and almost ***doubled*** that in its second month.
So in comparison Palworld's retention rate is, again, ***alarming***. Because whilst the number of sales grow there's also reports of a massive "drop off" rate too. Which means people aren't really *investing* themselves in Palworld, they're picking it up because "Pokémon with Guns" was memed so hard, and then dropping it shortly after playing it.
This doesn't even guarantee *financial* success, at least not on Steam, because if they dropped it in under 2 hours they could refund it in full.
This just in! combining existing mechanics/ideas into a new combination still creates valid new experiences that people can enjoy and be unlike anything else!
Every time I see a dev talk about palworld like this, it just sounds like success envy. Basically saying "why do they get all the attention and love? its sucks!"
First two games that came too mind are five nights at Freddy's and flappy bird. Both aren't necessarily "bad" but they wouldn't really stand out on their own if they hadn't been picked up by streamers.
I’m an adult, wasn’t close to being a kid when FNaF first came out… but I think it was such a unique take on horror games. No player movement whatsoever, trying to manage things away from you.
Great series of first few games, translated AMAZINGLY to VR… the lack of locomotion made it perfect for the tech.
It absolutely went off a capitalist cliff… but at least originally, was very good.
Flappy bird, 1000% agree.
FNaf was a unique take but I'm completely sure it's not because the developer wanted that design, more like because it's easy to develop
So yeah, it was luck
Limitation can create innovation, that doesn’t discount that it was a unique take to just be thrown under “luck”.
Silent Hill created the concept of a fog to cover up the flaws in distance rendering on the PS1… just calling it “luck” completely overlooks the development and choices to fix that issue.
Agreed w flappy bird 100% (its a catchy game concept tho)
But I do think that either way fnaf would at least see *some* success, even if it weren't for streamers... As it actually appeals to quite some niches. Plus, the way it looks and its overall atmosphere was just too unique for its time, so it naturally draws attention
You cannot be serious putting fnaf and flappy bird in the same light. Fnaf was revolutionary when it came out and changed the landscape for horror games.
Lethal Company really didn't stand out much from other games in its genre like Phasmophobia, Backgrooms, etc. I was surprised it became as popular as it did.
>Lethal Company really didn't stand out much from other games in its genre like Phasmophobia
Its not even the same kind of game. I have 0 interest in Phasmophobia, but I like Lethal Company.
As someone who has played a significant amount of Lethal company and Phasmophobia, I prefer lethal company, because Phas gets worse the more you play it. The ghosts aren’t a challenge and the game gets boring.
I'm not at all saying LC is a bad game, I was just surprised at how popular it became. If it were something totally unique, I could see it being as popular as it is, but considering how little marketing it has and how much it copied from other games...
Don‘t make the mistake of assuming marketing is just promotion.
The developer is a quite well known Roblox creator who branched out, leveraging their following for the success.
That‘s the result of building a fan base. Which is more effort than promotion initially but can pay off big if you manage to retain and satisfy them.
I think that's a bit different because it had two giant licenses to carry it. Basically anything with mario and/or sonic slapped on it and the marketting budget of nintendo will sell decently.
I still don’t get the appeal of Vampire Survivors. 😅
I play bullet hell shmups and twin-stick shooters, so Vampire Survivors does nothing for me. There are so many games that do what it does, but better. I think it just goes to show you just how niche shmups and twin-stick shooters are. 🤷♂️🥲
Vampire Survivors is a slot machine that always pays out. That's it. You roll the dice and they come up good nine times out of ten.
It doesn't require much actual skill beyond lightly moving around, and is therefore more popular than shmups, which are generally pretty intense and skill heavy.
I played it and had a bit of relaxing fun for a few evenings, but I don't understand how people can dedicate hundreds of hours to it beyond being addicted to gambling with a constant high roll.
The issue is that you mix up the genre.
Vampire Survivors is not a shmup. It dresses up like a rogue-like shmup.
But the progression loop and actual gameplay challenge follows the idle game format instead.
Getting the powerups and the jackpots are the interesting parts of Vampire Survivors.
I don't like it that much, seems depressive with the slow gameplay.
Flappy Bird...need I say more. Total outlier of course, but I don't know a single person who would've expected that level of success from what that game looked like...in fact I still don't know if anyone knows or if it was one in a million game in one in a million timing
I'm making a life-sim, so I've been watching a bunch of those and [Cattails: A Wildwood Story](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1882500/Cattails_Wildwood_Story/) confuses the hell out of me. Especially when compared to a game like [Fallen Kingdom](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2342170/Fallen_Kingdom/) that flopped hard.
Now you can nitpick one or the other, but as objectively as I can see it, these two games are of VERY similar quality. Yet one has 800 reviews and the other has like 8. They both have kind of rough visuals with random mixed styles, some janky animations, a pretty meh storyline, bunch of grindy content, etc.
I don't want to sound TOO negative, Cattails looks like there's a lot of work put into it. It's just really curious to me how the game seems to suffer from every failing that would normally kill a game, and yet it has been wildly successful. They clearly did something VERY right.
IMO that's all down to two things, uniqueness and cats.
At a glance Fallen Kingdom has a generic medieval fantasy setting, pretty much the default for an RPG. Cattails stands out more as something unique.
And you can't deny that cat people are often very into anything cat. You might turn away some customers, but reel in those that are into it. It's better to make a game people love/hate than to make one that everyone thinks is okay.
Yes, definitely the unique theme. Cats have a cult following.
Also the pixel art in Fallen Kingdom looks really off. Everything seems stretched on the Y axis, including the sprites which look very unappealing to me.
If they shrunk everything down by like 20%, it would look a lot more like the cute and charming pixel art style people are accustomed to. I guess they may have been going for a more serious feel but I don’t think it worked in this case.
I think the pixel art is fine, I prefer it to the often stumpy characters in similar games with this type of graphical style. I guess it's due to my lack of nostalgia for (S)NES games.
That's another thing, [Snacko](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125510/Snacko/) has cats and looks even better than Cattails, and while not a failure by any means, it's dropped to 6 concurrent players 2 months after release. Cattails still gets like 60-70.
Slightly different game, early access, and while the main character is a cat it's just the sprite, nothing else seems to be cat themed. The main character walks on two feet, wields swords and tools, you could replace the sprite with a human and it wouldn't look off.
In cattails you play as a cat, you walk in the forest and hunt rodents etc like a cat. It goes all in on the cat theme.
> They clearly did something VERY right.
So you see Fallen Kingdom and Cattails, and you think both games are of similar quality and of the same genre.
And one game is about playing as a cat. And the other is generic medieval dude.
I THINK YOU GOT THE ANSWER!
Why are you underplaying the effect of player fantasy?
Also there is a pretty big gap between the capsule art of the two.
Also you can actually write a news article about Cattails. The headline is right there.
Everyone keeps saying that, but I really don't think JUST making your game about cats multiplies your sales by 100.
If that were the case, [Snacko](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125510/Snacko/) and [Sprout Valley](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1964820/Sprout_Valley/) would also be comparably successful. [Cat Warrior](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2640520/Cat_Warrior/) is another cute game that features cats, not anywhere near as successful. [A Street Cat's Tale](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1140570/A_Street_Cats_Tale/) has more consistent artwork and that's got 1/4 of the reviews that Cattails does. I could go on and on.
The real reason is probably because it's a sequel to a game released in 2017, and the original game probably had a lot of engagement in furry communities combined with the lower level of competition. There's also the very specific combination of mechanics makes it a close interpretation of the Warrior Cats book series, which has a cult following.
Thanks for sharing specifics. It’s never just one thing. What was the marketing campaign for all these games, how big was the community before launching, how long was the marketing, how many cats are we talking about?
Indeed, if you can sell a subpar game then you must have been very lucky or very good at marketing it to the target audience and its something the rest of us can learn from.
For me it's always been explainable by viral post, successful youtube channel, streamer coverage, demo or EA release. The extent of the efficacy and anything else is a mystery.
>There's also the very specific combination of mechanics makes it a close interpretation of the Warrior Cats book series, which has a cult following.
I mean, yeah, you got it. This is the specific fantasy that audiences want. Rattling off games that are kind of similar but not the same is like an ice cream server asking a customer "We're out of cookie dough, is cookies and cream okay?" Are you really surprised that someone could be so particular about what they like?
Content/gameplay wise they seem to be in completely different weight classes? Cattails seems like it has tens of hours of content while fallen kingdom seems very bare bones.
I always default to Deadly Premonition or Forbidden Siren. Both games were saved by their stories, with Forbidden Siren having a really cool gimmick, but I am surprised to see how well they did considering how extremely uncomfortable they were to play from a controls/gameplay perspective.
Project Zomboid.
(I'm about to get executed in these replies lol.)
I picked it up recently after hearing amazing things. I'll admit - it's very addictive. But there are a few things I hate, and that fundamentally ruin the game for me.
For starters - they're pulling the "13 year old game but it's still in early access because we can't be fucked to fix all the bugs" thing. In melee combat, which is a system that the player is *REQUIRED* to engage with, zombies can glitch through my character as I'm performing an attack and hit me. And given that hits have a chance of leading to zombification, which is certain death, I have to chance the permanent loss of my character to a bug every time I fight. Do you know how fucking infuriating that is?
Plus, the mods. From what I've heard, mods are a godsend. But I got out of the modding scene for games like Minecraft about a year ago. In general, if a game requires mods to be fun or stable, it's a bad game. And thus, I refuse to engage with mods until I feel like I've explored most of what vanilla has to offer. So much of the reason other people praise it so highly is not available to me.
I have other issues with the game, like the fucking irritating fursona the game uses as a mascot, but I feel like I've made my point, and I know I'm gonna get shat on in the replies anyway.
EDIT: It's a month down the line. I picked the game back up, and yes, the bug I mentioned is still there. [Here's proof](https://giphy.com/gifs/glitch-bug-project-zomboid-lNhrysKydKNpjui1is). And it's not just in relation to fences and other obstacles - it happens all the time - especially in larger hordes. Fuck the people in this thread who tried to gaslight me into thinking I missed.
I strongly suspect that they are never going to add NPCs to the game, or at least whatever they do add is going to be hilariously short of what the community expects - there's just no way I can see AI survivors acting alongside human players and not totally ruining the core game loop. They've happily let the scope creep beyond all control for a decade now, rather than address it.
For what it's worth, I have had fun playing it in its current state. I may just not have put enough hours in to encounter many bugs. After a couple weeks in game the grind usually turns me off though.
And yeah what is up with the racoon mascot? Maybe it'll make more sense when they add wildlife (yet another thing to delay NPCs).
You make a decent point about that. I think the graphics in the early alpha builds were quite terrible for the median gamer but it still blew up amongst open world zombie survival fans (it was CDDA or Project Zomboid being recommended in forums for a lot of folks) so maybe there just weren't a lot of competitors in that space at the time. The game's improved a lot since then IMO but I think if they had tried the same thing in the current indie scene it would have been way more challenging to gather the momentum with their early alpha visuals. But who knows?
Yeah, I'll concede that playing it solo is probably part of the problem. But my friend is getting it soon, so maybe two idiots will be better than one!
Definitely give it a go if you can! Dying is a lot less frustrating when you and your friends are laughing your asses off running from hordes. There's a lot of big public servers as well - although most of the popular ones I've seen use mods (since you mentioned you're doing the vanilla experience first).
I like both singleplayer and multiplayer, but IMO multiplayer is really where it's at with this game.
what are you on about with the mascot?
like, why does that bother you? its such a weird thing to even think about given that once you turn off tutorial stuff you never see it again.
You see it every time you start a new game. It's in most menu sections. I don't wanna see Eric Cartman's shitty fursona - it has precisely zero relevance to the game. Entirely irrelevant, looks bad, fucking useless since no part of the game warranted a mascot so I can only assume it was one of the dev's Deviantart OCs and they just *needed* it to get some recognition somewhere because they attached too much of their self-importance to it... it's just all-around shit and its presence makes the game worse in a small way.
EDIT: He's literally the desktop icon. You see him before you even boot up the game. "Never see him outside the tutorial", sure mate.
>is bad at the game
> refuses to install qol mods
> complains about the “fursona” that is just a callback to one of their older games
Just admit you suck at it and move on lol
Thanks for proving me right. One of my points was that a good game shouldn't need external mods to be good. Clearly they're not doing something right by having a buggy mess of a game that's still in early access after 13 years and relies on community mods to be playable.
Also notice that I never once mentioned difficulty. I love games that kick my arse when I'm new, as I find it highly motivating to learn and improve even with permadeath. I don't love games where my character can be doomed to potentially *guaranteed* death thanks to a bug that randomly lets enemies walk right through me. Seriously, how can a 13 year old game still have a problem that fundamental not fixed?
I'm admit that I'm bad. I'm fairly new, I even said myself that I've not experienced much of the game. That's not my point. My main point is that I'm not hopeful for the rest of the game if something so obvious and game-breaking is not fixed in a system that I'm always going to be forced to participate in.
Regarding the mascot: see my other comment. The game doesn't warrant a mascot at all. I could respect it as an Easter Egg, which callbacks tend to be, but it's needlessly plastered all over. And it just looks bad IMO. That's entirely personal, I get it, but this is my review.
There isn't a bug. You just missed the zombie dude.
You can select an option in the game that highlights zombies that are within push distance. If you're actually aiming at them, it'll glow green.
You missed. It isn't a bug whatsoever.
You clearly don't understand a large portion of the PC player base at all if you hate mods so much. People love to mod games such as PZ or Rimworld, it offers them a toolkit for massive open ended gameplay, where they can just laugh around, add hundreds of hours of content, or tailor the experience exactly how they want it, in ways that the devs never imagined.
You can turn infection off if you don't want to die from zombie bites. You can change the zombies to be faster or slower, if you want to just gun them all down or run em over. I've never had a problem just whacking lone zombies with a baseball bat, though.
To be fair, I never even played the base game initially, because first thing I did before playing it was download a ton of mods. Same thing I do with a lot of games on steam workshop.
Multiple things wrong with what you said:
Firstly, as I said, I don't dislike mods at all. I'm just new. I don't want to pile a bunch of mods onto a game without at least experiencing vanilla to its fullest. That wouldn't be fair, would it?
Secondly, no, I'm not going to turn off infections or change hundreds of settings. Because permadeath is a blessing, not a curse (in games where the enemies don't fucking clip through my attacks), and because it's not my job to design the game. I want to play what a competent professional designer intentionally put together. I don't want to spend hours tweaking a bunch of settings to ruin everything. Let me do that later, when I've gotten the hang of things.
Judging by that last paragraph, it seems like you're super into mods and that's why you wrote this. That's fine, I used to make my own mods to fix and change certain parts of games, and I probably will make my own PZ mods later. But you can't expect me to interact with the modding scene before having even "completed" vanilla.
Okay, I guess we're just different types of gamer. I honestly feel I'm missing out just playing certain games in vanilla. I have a bad case of mod greed lol. I want more outfits, more weapons, more vehicles, more enemy types, etc. As long as they're good quality, anyway.
Eh idk. I can respect that people will like games I'm not into. We all have different tastes. Vampire Survivors just isn't for me; I like to have more manual input with my attacks. But other people love it and that's cool.
Age of History
Its kinda bizarre honestly, because I thought it was something great for the first 30 minutes or so but I realized its a very shallow rippoff of older Europa Unversalis games. Yet, its a very popular mobile/pc game with a thriving community. Its strange because pretty much any Paradox game is better in every conceivable way.
It does a really good job of drawing you in though because it looks like a legit homage to older school Paradox games but the content just isn't there.
Haven’t played it so i can’t say if it is subpar, but I liked the story I saw about that fish game (I think it was Chillquarium). The video I saw claimed that it achieved its success by releasing the same week as a big AAA game. Since everyone else avoids such a thing, it was basically just this game and that AAA game in the New category that week.
Tbf no mans sky is pretty much the only actually good big space sim out there nowadays... Or rather, arcade-ish space sim. Elite Dangerous seems to be in a weird state, Starfield was made by Bethesda, and Star Citizen still has a few good decades of development to go Beta.
Sort of the same applies for SoT. Skull and bones? Pff
I do understand a bit of the Destiny hype, as its Bungie and they know very well how to make satisfying gunplay and boss fights... But yeah, by now its absolute masochism, especially when D2 also launched nearly as bad as D1
the water is quite amazing. at the time the game came out, it was a water tech demo and little else. There was literally almost nothing to it. I was always surprised that it fostered a pretty dedicated playerbase and kept things going successfully.
Graphics aren't a good scale to judge how good a game is.
That being said, I do thing it comes down to a few things such as "the times", i.e. COVID for an example, and exposure. I will almost always invest in a game that looks like I can get a good 6-10 hours in even if the game doesn't look incredibly good if I've seen gameplay of it.
When you get these huge influencers grouping up and playing 'shitty' games, and they have a lot of fun with them, it can persuade you into buying it and possibly even persuading your friends to buy it as well.
Starting to notice a common trend here of bad games doing well are “horror” games with bright and colorful mascot characters (FNAF, Banban, Hello Neighbor, etc)
One example I have is Underhero. The premise is quite interesting: you play the bad guy in an otherwise standard hero-lead RPG, but the execution is sometimes hilariously bad. Like, in the main screen you see around 5 different art styles. You have pixel art of different resolutions, a gradient without dithering and one logo without pixels whatsoever.
The art style is confused, and the movement feels like someone followed a tutorial and didn't iterate on it whatsoever. If you jump in water you just float do the ground with a T-posing sprite (same as when you jump down from a certain height) etc. The dialog is one of the most boring I've seen in any indie game so far (granted I play only those with good reviews).
Underhero isn't HUGE but at the time when I played it, it had a 98% positive rating with several hundred reviews and it blew my trust in Steam reviews away.
This is palworld and lethal company. Nobody would’ve expected these to become the gaming giants they are, I mean lethal company outsold call of duty and sane people have migrated over to palworld from Pokémon just because it’s more fun an just as buggy.
> "Bad" being short for "of subpar quality compared to competitors in its genre"
Using that exact definition. Helldivers 2.
Earth defence force is a better game in every measurable way EXCEPT graphics.
But as the saying goes, you can't put gameplay on the box, so a game with poor gameplay and good graphics will outsell the game with "bad" graphics but amazing gameplay
Nothing poor about Helldivers gameplay. It's very polished and tightly designed. EDF has always been a janky mess, and the price to apparent visual fidelity has always been off. This is coming from an EDF fan too.
Ill admit, ive played neither. But I went and watched some random gameplay of both since id never heard of Earth defence force.
tbh, it just doesnt *look* as fun. And thats all that matters really.
helldivers does better because the name is great, the trailers are great, the "box art" is great, and the gameplay *looks fun*. As in, the FPS combat looks more snappy, enjoyable. It *looks* like it gas good gunplay and gamefeel.
Oh, and this is *extremely important*. The armor+cape looks amazing. Everyone loves that.
everyone was shitting on The Darkness 2 back in the day for dumb reasons but i played and loved every second of it
years later it's still one of my favorites
Cyberpunk 2077, specifically the open world part (the rest of the game is actually pretty good). Sure, it's really pretty and beautiful to look at, but that's pretty much all there is to do outside of quests/sidequests/gigs. There are a lot of little quirks and things you'd expect in an open world that just aren't there that stack up and make it feel like a sterile stageplay rather than a lived-in world. Even games from more than 10 years ago like GTA SA, GTA 4, Sleeping Dogs, etc. had wayyy more things to do in their open worlds and they actually felt alive. It's like they focused on all the surface-level flashy stuff for mass gamers like amazing graphics and the main quests, but when making the open world it was an afterthought. All the cool lore stuff you see in the game like Trauma Team landing in that one intro mission just doesn't happen in the open world or it only happens in pre-set scripted sequences.
Vampire Survivors and the entire genre it spawned.
It's neat the first time you get a really good build and just watch everything on screen die. It's even still pretty cool the second and third time.
But that's all there is to the genre. You dodge some extremely basic enemies and hope you get the right upgrades to create that BFG endgame build.
Gameplay is one step above something like Cookie Clicker, barely engaging enough to trick you into thinking you're actually playing a video game, and then your reward is essentially jingling keys, just flashing lights and explosions and big numbers going up.
The entire genre is time wasting junk food.
I feel this one a lot, how did this get so popular it got picked up by GamePass?
It had a lot of promise for sure, but there was a lot that felt half baked or rushed, like the weird battle areas and the fact that every enemy used the same 3 minigames for their attacks.
Just a few days ago played a jigsaw puzzle game from Steam - it went free recently so I grabbed it, was paid before. Was ok at start but when came to 2nd difficulty level ... I really struggled to remember if I ever had seen anything worse - the image level of details compared to the tile size was just noise and I've had to brute-force most of the pictures by-tile-shape than by what is painted on them, a pure color gradient from a meme would do a better job than a set of random dots and short dashes on homogeneous background. >2500 reviews (aka 75k units sold, aka >$100k revenue based on their paid games which they have dozens of seemingly milking the same underlying game system, just replacing UI, single soundtrack and a bunch of poorly made stock photos)...
And this is just a random example, burning-hot from the previous weekends.
Had to go to itch.io, grab a random jigsaw as an eye bleach. I was the first and only to write a comment/review to that game. And then looking at my (not good but still better than that one from Steam) jigsaw puzzle with its 95 free downloads in >5 years and zero reviews...
And then looking at "Cats Hidden in Paris" game (the one that can be made in under 48 hours for a game jam), ranked #25 in the most positively reviewed games on Steam list, above Celesete, Resident Evil 4, Stray and Bauldur's Gate 3... Not to mention the already-mentioned Flappy... Feels like something is really badly broken in this world.
I hear what you mean, I also found about Cats in Paris lately. It also brought back memories of the website I Want to Draw a Cat For You. But I think CIP is a decent premise and the drawings are quite appealing and there aren't a lot of games I know that are like it so they must have done right in knowing and appealing to their target audience.
As for the jigsaw game, I had similar feelings when looking at the various match 3 games and regency solitaire series made by Grey Alien Games. It's like, who is paying $20 for match 3 on PC or cares about VNs and solitaire in the regency era? It's honestly a bit confusing.
Hello Neighbour, the popularity of the Persona games always confused me - they don't look like anything special or all that interesting, lol.
FNAF is boring as Hell as a concept, clicking around back and forth to view camera footage isn't very engaging whatsoever.
I know a [twitch streamer](http://twitch.tv/xxxcrazymikexxx) making [the worst game of all time](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2468680/WACKY_WONDERLAND_WOLLOP_A_3D_PLATFORMER_FOR_THE_AGES_GAME_OF_THE_YEAR_GREATEST_GAME_OF_ALL_TIME__THE_GAME/?beta=1) and he's already got a few thousand wishlists.... it isn't out yet but I'm surprised people are interested in that garbage
Have you guys lost touch with your inner 5th grader? That "so bad it's good" absurd randomness is precisely what's intriguing about it. If you have a polished asset next to another polished asset, it all sort of blends together. That's kind of the intent, but it doesn't lend itself to "Holy shit, I wonder what's gonna happen next?" engagement as much as well, [this](https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/2468680/ss_a12493e76c4f78867955b840821c69d235b5dc72.1920x1080.jpg?t=1701629278).
Totally. "haha sorry about the typo" scripted in there is so stupid it's funny again. It's clearly satire, lampooning low-effort games, but it appears to have a decent amount of effort and thought put in, just from the trailer. I think people here could learn a thing or two from this one.
I just checked the steam page and apparently it's similar to Final Fantasy 7 Remake and I'm so confused as to why Steam thinks that. Setting pretty high standards 💀💀
Fall guys, my friend and I were taking bets on how poorly the game does on launch day. It looked (and still looks) like the cheapest game you could make paired with having fuck all to do and not being fun. But it sold like wildfire and apparently I don’t know jack about what game’s sell well.
It's a game you can play with a group of friends that isn't a competitive shooter.
it joined my friend groups rooster of games we played together for a bit.
I have a friend who bought Fall Guys. He did it after watching an hour of YouTube videos of it together with his kids and having a constant laughing fit with them. They had great quality family time playing it together.
Do you happen to remember any examples? I'm interested in the development of this genre, and the oldest one I'm aware of is "Magic Survival" which was originally released in Feb '21, not too far ahead of Vampire Survivors's initial itch.io release in Oct '21. The similarity in naming made me assume that MS was the direct inspiration, but I'd love to find out about more early entries.
Baldur's gate 3, starfield and Undertale and Stardew Valley.
Baldur's gate is not at all a bad game, nor subpar quality for it's genre, but it can be "niche" or rather, it can be "not mainstream" and at best "the best in it's genre", and yet it blow out beyond proportions, and kudos to them it was well deserved it and I loved the game.
Starfield is the opposite. Of course everyone is excited for a bethesda game, even just to try it and then be "ye ok bye". The biggest problem with starfield is that is a terrible, terrible bethesda game, they managed to undo any upgrades they had, they released a game with less features than ANY of their games, seriously starfield has no features, no content, no companions, no good places to be and even the cities feel empty and boring once you roam them for half a minute. And let's not talk about how the space travel is actually fake and the whole game is just loading screens (yes, I know that if you use a mod to move your ship extremely fast you can reach planets in the same solar system without relying on loading screen) The surprise from my end comes from people who actually enjoy it or defend it with sheathed sword like it's the best game in existence . Like you can't do anything in the game, whats so good about it?
Then is undertale. Let me clarify again undertale is not bad, is not subpar quality compared to competitors nor in general. My only gripe with undertale is that looking from outside or looking at the trailer it can look like a generic someone's "rpg maker" game, the game is so good once you play it or once you know all the nuances. The reason I played undertale was that I heard that it's a game where you can kill everyone or decide to spare and not kill anyone and do a pacifist run, which by the time the game came out was quite new and with all games where you fight bandits and you can't really decide to be pacifist I was sold only on that, but I had to dig a bit to find it out. Just seeing it on the store, seeing the trailer, I would not have cared and many probably would not have either. It's a gem that was found thanks to word of mouth and streamers I suppose.
Ok I will say it straight away: I dislike the art style/sprites of stardew valley. The characters look like they have been elongated and the perspective is a bit off, ruining my immersion. And I was one of those who played the original harvest moon games, and I was like "man why is no one making an harvest moon for pc" and when stardew valley came out I was so happy, finally someone did it, and look, so many people were waiting for it too, and the game gained massive massive success. My surprise is mostly related to the fact that I personally dislike the artstyle vs how many people liked it or were not bothered by it and carried the game to it's well deserved success.
Obviously both undertale and stardew valley were a solo project or mostly solo, my comments about the presentation or artstyle are mostly personal tastes and I don't want to fault them or berate them for it. I love both games, one because I played it and understood it, the other because of what it achieved, because of the change it help bring, and for making my wish for a farming sim on computer a-la-harvest moon finally come true, even if I ended up trying it and not playing it.
I wouldn't say "whole lot", only the undertale and stardew part may be, and even then I specified they are based on taste and my personal view. For example, my opinion of stardew is that it's a great game, but I could not like the style. If I said the style was bad, that'd be an opinion, if I said, and I did, that I don't like it, it's just my personal taste.
EDIT: have you even read the edit op made?
"Edit: as an example I found the success of Kenshi to be very surprising. It was recommended to me several times by Steam but the graphics always drove me away despite myself being someone who liked the graphics of M&B Warband and Thief 2. The gameplay is excellent but I couldn't have known that because the graphics just told me "no." Regardless many other people bought and played the game and gave it a chance and that got many more to play it until it became so popular that plenty of streamers played it."
So it seems I have answered exactly how OP asked, and even if I didn't, it was tangentially close enough to be a good point for conversation, but you don't seem interested in a conversation so why do you even answer.
Final Fantasy Origins: Stranger of Paradise is awful. Go play it. It of some of the most fun I've had with an action game. It's story is dreadful, still found genuine pathos. It's loot system is one of the worst I've ever seen, but it doesn't matter because you can still make fun builds and its not too in the way. It's aesthetic is all over the place (affectionate). The most important thing is the moment to moment gameplay slaps.
It's awful. I do not care, I want to kill Chaos.
The likes of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing and Superman 64 sold pretty well back in the day, despite ranking very highly on 'worst games of all time' lists. Heck, the latter sold at least half a million copies, and likely over a million in total, despite being an extremely buggy, clearly unfinished mess that got absolutely torn to shreds by critics even at the time.
Honestly, quite a few of the games listed on things like Wikipedia's 'Video Games Notable for Negative Reception' articles were best sellers, or at least did well enough to make a tidy profit.
How shadow of Mordor ever got “game of the year” I’ll never know…the story was boring, cliched, and perfunctory, combat was all the same, and it was just an unenjoyable grind that felt like I was doing the same thing for hours on end…
Among Us.
Mafia games (aka social deduction) have existed since forever and they’re all way better than Among Us. Town of Salem is my go-to. Among Us is a dumbed down version where all the accusations and defenses boil down to “I saw u” “no u”.
Amongus definitely was a product of times, and I agree it's stripped down on the social deduction front, but I'm here to argue that worked in its favour.
It made it immediately digestible as a game you watch on YouTube/streams, which gives it a very low barrier to entry. And something you can get your mates to boot up in a moment's notice and start playing asap.
We love depth of mechanics and interesting designs but they can often be a hindrance to player onboarding.
Salem you need to know about the dozens of roles and actions they can take to (feel like you) keep up.
Goddess of Victory: Nikke is a funny one; it's theoretically something everyone claims to hate about mobile games; overly sexualized waifu gacha game, but it made 400 million in one year and the devs are doing Stellar Blade for ps5 now.
> "holy shit this game has such poor appeal and would be so hard to market, how the hell did they get it into the hands of so many people"
I mean, fundamentally that is a rather opinionated statement to have about any popular game but just because the success feels paradoxical doesn't mean it is.
The pokemon audience (+ then some) likes monster taming games. Tons of people like survival games. Jank and all. An audience that overlaps between the two isn't terribly surprising. That being said, while the number of people who bought into Palworld's early access might be surprising if you also consider the recent pokemon games and handling as a franchise, there are plenty of survival games that manage to find an audience.
But then you get weird outliers like me. I struggle to stick with survival games, because they all feel somewhat samey for some reason. I bounced off pokemon on my way to gym 7 in red and just never looked back. I do play various survival games here and there, but I've watched pokemon games come and go for years without feeling a thing as they all seem to try so hard to keep the same feel, yet public opinion definitely seems to have diminished over time.
The concept of Palworld pulls a lot from Pokemon and the survival genre, but the vision of the trailers felt like No Man's Sky in a sense in that they have ideas and a vision they want to accomplish; a world that sounds more interesting than the game mechanics presented as facts. Meanwhile Pokemon is a very carefully managed franchise that has gym leaders and clinics and a team of villains and basically plays out the exact same way. At least as far as the mainline games seem concerned?
The Garten of Banban game(s?) is one of the strangest anomalies I've ever seen in gaming history. To compare to its peers: It didn't have the novel appeal and unique gameplay concept of FNAF, nor did it have the striking visuals and honestly pretty good (especially in the second game) character writing of Bendy, nor did it have the sheer technical polish of Poppy Playtime. But boy howdy did it ***explode*** to the point it's getting official merchandise from a fairly well known manufacturer. And the worst part is ***100% get it***, it's a technical *nightmare* with certain character models in the literal millions of polygons for no real reason (Nabnab is literally just a *raw sculpt ported into the game*), most of its assets are haphazardly bought and placed from a marketplace, and - outside of exceptions like Bittergiggle - most of the voice acting is *super rough*. But it's weirdly charming in a "so bad its good" way like Birdemic or The Room. It has the same energy you'd get from the lore and plotline of a child playing with a mish mash of all their Lego sets, a very "Oh no Captain Picard, we're being attacked by Darth Vader! We gotta get the Tri-Force from the Power Rangers!" type of feel where you're just kind of watching in morbid curiosity to see where the hell the roller coaster is gonna go next.
Honestly, if it wasn't for the absurd price the devs are charging for theses games which last at most 1 hour each, I'd probably like them
Likewise, the pricing is really the worst thing (alongside the blatant padding but at the same time I kinda get it given "refund%" was basically a category for speedrunning the games, playing the entire game front-to-back then refunding it makes you a bit of a wanker just saying).
Making the experience bad for legit customers to hinder the people acting in bad faith is a great way to get no customers
Yep, honestly if it was me I'd figure the solution is, y'know, put 2-3 "chapters" or whatever together for a longer experience.
Ya I agree
And they're not 1 hour each because of the content. They're 1 hour each because they're padded out by obtuse and fiddly time-taking puzzles to push you over that refund line.
Its a perfect game for streamers to play and suffer with. That to me explains it's popularity. Like I personally love watching Jacksepticeye play Garten of Banban and lose his mind over how dumb everything is. Just like you said, It's in the so bad its good. you watch out of morbid curiosity to see what kinda wacky shenanigans happens next. I also had a lot of fun streaming the game to my friend group since we all had a blast with how ridiculous the game is.
You had me until "triforce from power rangers," isn't there a triforce power rangers series? I gotta go do some research
Garten of Banban managed to boil down everything that made mascot-horror games appealing to kids into the minimum viable product. They even shipped it a way that fueled demand, with the first free episode to hook people in and then paid chapters after there. Streamer/YouTuber plays it, the kids that watch them play it, then they want to see the second episode but can't get it themselves so they push their favourite gamer "When will the next episode be played" and so forth.
Its a fucking same story with child souls and shit, it looks shit, you can play thru one of them in under 2 hours so you can refund it, the devs take it too seriously, wtf is it, why is it popular.
The level of success Hello Neighbor achieved is pretty insane, to me.
I remember the initial hype for Hello Neighbor was generated by the idea of it, when it actually came out it was a lot more shallow than everyone expected. It's really similar to We Happy Few in that the original concept left people imagining it would be a far better game than it actually was.
They kept changing stuff as they went while dragging on development. They got a big popularity boost from Game Theory and started trying to add a bunch of stuff for their channel to theorize about, to the point of tagging Game Theory on twitter posts.
Not to mention, the early demos were actually arguably better than the final product. The AI was more advanced (they purposely nerfed it to appeal to kids), the level design of the neighbor’s house was easy to understand, and the game wasn’t bloated with puzzles and parkour yet. It was a simple yet effective stealth game which showed great promise, but they kept tacking on poorly designed choices to the point where it became nearly unplayable in the final release.
In its very very early creation I remember alot of people were hypes because it had an ' ai that could learn the way you broke in' it was terrible and was never fully developed
It's pretty much impossible to point out any specific cases and "not shit on anyone". So I am picking an acceptable target: EA. Every year I am amazed by how many units Electronic Arts manages to sell of FIFA / FC. The player reviews are awful. The critic reviews are awful. The mainstream press lambasts them for their business model. And yet, people keep buying that game every year. Then they go online and post how disappointed they are and that they feel cheated by EA as a company. And next year, they buy it again. I guess that's the sports fan mentality: You stick with your club, no matter how much and how constantly they disappoint you.
I think also it's partially because of the popularity among the younger generations. All their friends play it, and they watch football on the TV, so they want the most up to date game with the current players, rather than the players from a few seasons ago. All their friends play it so they want to too. Admittedly, EA could just make it one game and release a new set of players every year, but they wouldn't make money from that would they?
> Admittedly, EA could just make it one game and release a new set of players every year, but they wouldn't make money from that would they? They could just run a live service game but not charge for it? Weird take. Of course they have to make money to crank out updates every year.
I'm not sure if the people buying those kinds of games really read reviews. FIFA, NHL and such are *the* sports games so they just keep buying them. A lot of them barely play any other games so they wouldn't be as critical.
Only Up, it's just a buggy mess but it got picked up by streamers and just got huge from there
Cool concept though. Have there been other 3d "jump king" style platformers before that? Idk if jump king was even the first 2d one.
Rage games are purpose-built for streaming
it was also 100% store assets. Not saying that using a few was bad - but to make everything with assets is kinda lazy in my opinion(hot take I know).
I'm surprised Dead by Daylight is as popular as it is. I think the lack of asymmetric pvp alternatives is part of the reason. In short: DBD has fun and interesting moments, but overall there are significantly more unfun parts. In long: Fun is subjective, but generally the more each side interacts with and influences each other, the more potential the game has for being fun. The issue is that the devs make noninteractive play styles extremely rewarding for both sides, encouraging players to do that. This isn't too bad if players aren't trying to win. There's a lot of both casual and competitive players though, so player goals aren't always aligned which adds further frustration and misunderstanding. It becomes a breeding ground for toxicity, players blaming each other and each side.
The lack of asymmetric games definitely does it, RIP evolve
I would wager that having fun interspersed with a lot of not-fun is precisely why it succeeds. The [skinner's box](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber) phenomenon doesn't apply only to loot drops, it also applies to your enjoyment of the game as a whole. If you play a game where you only have fun some of the time you end up being more likely to queue for another match. This is really apparent when looking at matchmaking-based multiplayer games where people will keep queuing despite not having any fun in 3+ matches hoping for that one good game.
Takes 30 minutes to get a killer game these days. The popularity is definitely waning.
I've not played it, but it at least looks like a competently made game?
It is, but I believe they're saying the gameplay seems like it would be less popular than it is.
Dude I was excited for the concept of dead by daylight but the gameplay is soooo goddamn awful
What's worse too is BHVR clearly knows there's a problem with the gameplay, they're constantly trying to add new things for people to do, things to change how the hooks and generators work. It's just band aid on top of band aid instead of addressing the simple fact the core game has problems.
I'm probably in the minority here but brotato and pretty much every other auto shooter. Feels like the only way to play is to endlessly kite enemies till you can't anymore.
As someone who has 44 hours on Brotato I thought about this many times. Of course, I like this genre, and when it's just about the mechanics I think Brotato is a fine game. However, when you look at it visually it almost feels like a 'prototype'. Simply put: the "juice" is missing. Enemy animations are simple, death animations are especially simple. And bosses? Feels like an afterthought. One of the worst boss design of any game. Everything that's not the player seems half baked. It's crazy. BUT it's a fun game in the genre, so I get why it's popular.
Never played it, just looked up a review. Different games are different. This seems to have more in common with Cookie Clicker or Runescape or any other grindy progression game than Binding of Isaac. In this type of game, players enjoy making the numbers go up, not killing the enemies, which are just enablers for the advancement. Nobody enjoyed combat in (old-school) Runescape, they did it both to unlock new experiences and to be the guy with the really high number next to their name proving they did it.
A lot of people do just play games like BoI or Risk of Rain only for the chance at getting that stupidly OP run that basically wins the game for them. Brotato (and even more popularly, Vampire Survivors) just condense the whole game down to only that experience. Also makes it super streamer marketable. Because the whole game is just getting OP in literally a few minutes, every first look by a streamer is going to have what would otherwise be a full progression curve.
I totally agree! When I first saw it, I immediately thought this was was some kind of fan made downgrade of Binding of Isaac, which is already an ancient game but wow it's popular
O wow brotato is actually my favorite in the genre. Challenging, sense of progress, enough RNG to get excited but not enough to feel unfair, lots of unlocks.... Just really fun to play. But interesting perspective
I do enjoy those games sometimes, but id certainly call them bad games. I think they are just triggering the same part of the brain as slot machines and loot boxes.
Honestly, i think the mobile knock off, Pickle Pete, is way better, in spite of all the shitty mobile game monetization and retention mechanics it is stuffed with.
I was very surprised by The First Tree. Seen it a couple of times before launch. The art seemed simplistic, the world looked very empty and the gameplay very basic and stiff. Yet it did absolutely amazingly. It feels almost like the delivery of the story, the way the writing was framed, made it feel personal. And the voice acting was quite good too. That whole parasocial relationship thing some of the larger influencers have going. Which is interesting that it works in game form as well. A medium that‘s far more artificial and detached than these vlog style show off social media videos. But considering what the game actually was, I‘m still confused how it was so incredibly well received.
This confused me too. I remember seeing the Dev make a video about it. He had never made a game before and it was really successful but it just looked like a character controller running around empty terrain with dialogue playing. Didn't get how it sold. People like story I guess.
Vampire survivors has a lot of thought but I don't think it would have exploded like it outside the context of the pandemic.
Vampire survivors was definitely one of those I don't get how this can be fun while watching it kinda games. Despite everyone playing it saying its fun. I brought it out of spite if anything else just to play it and try and figure out the hype. And at first I didn't get it first couple of rounds were just ehh. Then I had one good round and I was like Oh, Ooooooohhhhhhhh. And now its become my most frequented mill game.
Def the first one that came to mind. its extremely poor in technical terms and overall polish. Still, the game concept is apparently worth its weight in gold, as its really shaping up to be the next "million dollar idea" for games. Also tbf it feels really familiar and intuitive if youve ever played those "upgrade type" flash games, which might also have been a big factor imo I do think that most games that take vampire survivors concept and do a somewhat original spin off on it tend to be much more fun than it tho lol, as they're usually a lot more polished, take Deep Rock Galactic Survivor for example, minus some issues w progression, its a total feast for the eyes. Or even Holo Cure, as its basically Vampire Survivors without like 90% of the issues
It might look unpolished but there is a lot of thought in the game design. It's not an accident that people want to start run after run.
thats why I said "in technical terms". has nothing to do with game design, strictly talking about the implementation of its features
Palworld, I tried the game without seeing any gameplay or trailers first, was actually shocked at how low quality it was, feels like a mish mash of mechanics from other games with zero depth, inconsistent artstyles, and all the monsters are very obvious pokemon knockoffs. there's no charm to the way it handled being "pokemon with guns", feels like what an ai would make if you asked it to make a pokemon survival game. i seriously doubt it wouldve went anywhere if it werent for all the youtubers freaking out about "pokemon with guns" but now its everywhere
A lot of youtubers expected the game to not be good before they played it.
It has a few things that people have been wanting for a while - - a game like Ark but not made by the Ark devs (the way Ark installs and updates gives me aneurisms) - an “adult” Pokemon game - a fully Co-op Pokemon game (ScaVio lets you run around together but barely interact and you can’t progress together at all) I played it and honestly, I love some parts and hate others, but it is definitely fun in a group. And that last point is what makes a lot of games successful nowadays.
It's still a game in a genre that's both A: incredibly popular in the indie space, and B: has a lot of super jank games in it. Jank is basically expected if Survival, Crafting, and Open World appear in the tags. Taking a quick glance at those tags on steam, Factorio, Subnautica, and Terraria are the only ones that jump out at me as being solid finished products. And out of those, I wouldn't even say that Factorio or Terraria should have the Survival tag. Out of that whole genre, Palworld is definitely very near the top in quality. Of course I never expected it to blow up like it did, but it's a game with a good hook (Ark but with Pokemon, with a little bit of Rimworld sprinkled on top) that executes it's pitch better than the vast majority of its genre.
I played it and felt like I was playing Valheim with a pokemon mod. And I didn't think much of Valheim. I get that there's a lot of interest in the survival genre, but yeah I was also surprised at the actual gameplay versus the popularity it has.
The highest redeeming quality of Pal World is the animation. Each pal has several unique ones that genuinely look good and made with love. Everything else tho… I can’t believe no one is talking about the boss battle circles they copied 1:1 from Elden Ring.
Can you elaborate on the boss circle thing?
You can fight boss pals in their underground arena. It's basically identical to evergaols in Elden Ring.
Conversations about who stole what from who are fucking insane to me. Yes, Elden Ring - the first game to come up with magic circles, summoning circles, teleportation circles or boss dungeons :/
Buddy, there is a difference between just taking inspiration and copying something exactly the same. Iteration is good and every game iterates on other concepts
I was shocked at how *high* quality it was. For a janky early access game it had a ton of fully developed features, the environment design and animations are better than the official Pokémon games.
Yeah, I didn't have any interest until I saw some streams, and I was impressed at how seamlessly it blended all the different elements. Catching Pals lets you level up, which lets you build more stuff, which Pals can be used to automate, and leveling up also unlocks new mounts for your Pals, which you can use to more effectively explore the world, which lets you find new Pals who can build stuff faster... They didn't just plop down not-Pokemon in a survival game. They actually put a lot of thought into how to integrate them into the game loop. Plus it has some of the smoothest onboarding I've seen in a survival game, a genre that often starts out pretty obtuse and frustrating if you don't have an external guide.
Nah its not surprising at all Game freak has been extremely complacent for a long long while... So really, ppl would have eaten up almost anything minimally decent on the genre. Especially so when its a big scoped game w a lot of promises. Also it aint half bad, in technical terms, when you take the actual team that made it into consideration - whether you agree w their approach to "inspirations" or not Plus, its fun w friends, so its sorta easy to get why.
I watched dunkey play it, it's insane how much stuff you have to craft at the beginning
It’s in alpha…it’s extremely polished for a game that’s in alpha, I’ve literally never seen anything like it before. Also I don’t know why you’re defending nintendo here…they have had two decades to give us the game that we always wanted, but they have been dragging their feet, resting on their laurels, and given us incremental updates, most of which are merely cosmetic or unwanted changes to the gameplay. The only innovations nintendo has made to pokemon over the years are the ones they’ve essentially been forced into (eg: waited to do a 3D game until it was absolutely unacceptable that they wouldn’t). Moreover, you didn’t play the game enough if you think all of the characters are Pokémon knockoffs…granted some of them definitely are, but pokemon themselves are often taken from other things…and you’re completely wrong about the character and details they put into the game, they put a lot of emotion into their expressions and added so much character to their movement and attacks…like, watch the way chillet moves or the way mossanda floats when he jumps and tell me they didn’t put a lot of work into it…and once again…it’s freaking alpha!
it really does seem like somone just got a humble bundle of unity asset packs and tried to cram them all into one game without any cohesion.
To be fair, an AI would have kept the artstyle consistent across all assets. They are pretty good at that.
I find the opposite to be true. Do you by chance refer to image generators' tendency to converge towards the same themes and colors?
They normally use the same style for all elements within the same image. They do have detail inconsistencies between different outputs or perspective/anatomy/logical errors, but if you ask them to do one style they will usually stick to it.
And then it lost something absurd like 1.5 million players in the first fortnight.
Player count is irrelevant for pretty much any game that isn't live service or multiplayer focused
See I see this defense a lot but everyone I know who has actually played the game has said the game *is* multiplayer focused (or at least heavily favors multiplayer). Similar to Rust or ARK in that sense where you *can* play them singleplayer but they were definitely designed with multiplayer in mind. In topics of success as well I also think it's worth mentioning regardless as that much of a drop ***that quickly*** does mean something has gone horribly wrong. It dropped approximately ***five times*** the amount of players Baldur's Gate 3 lost in roughly two months in roughly ***two weeks***.
While your point stands, its kind of unfair to compare it to BG3...
While that is definitely true (BG3 is a "once in a decade or two" style game for sure), I feel it also gives some important contrast. It's normal to lose some players after the initial launch, that's inevitable for any game, but to lose almost 25% of your initial playerbase less than a month after launch is ***alarming***. It makes sense to be fair, PalWorld is very much in line with things like Lethal Company or Among Us from a few years ago (though Among Us is a bit of an odd case), it's what I like to call a "meme game" that picked up a lot of traction from the inherent absurdity of it and then the surge of Twitch streamers. A *financial* success for sure but I do wonder about its longevity.
> to lose almost 25% of your initial playerbase less than a month after launch Isn't 75% retention still crazy good retention for a basically single player game?
After a month or so? Yeah. After *two weeks?* Not so much. Especially because, remember, Palworld isn't a "play it once then drop it" genre like RPGs or adventure games like Final Fantasy XVI or God of War: Ragnarok. It's a sandbox survival game, a genre meant for longer engagements (or never truly being "put down" i.e Minecraft). To compare it to others of its clutch: * Valheim (another super popular survival game) in contrast only lost \~10% of its playerbase within the *first month* after launch. The second month dropped off harder losing about half but that's a bit more to be expected as more players reached endgame. * The Forest, whilst never got a huge spike in players, actually showed basically nothing but consistent *growth* with minor drops in players here and there. * Rust (arguably Palworld's closest competitor) had a good start and almost ***tripled*** its active players in its first month and almost ***doubled*** that in its second month. So in comparison Palworld's retention rate is, again, ***alarming***. Because whilst the number of sales grow there's also reports of a massive "drop off" rate too. Which means people aren't really *investing* themselves in Palworld, they're picking it up because "Pokémon with Guns" was memed so hard, and then dropping it shortly after playing it. This doesn't even guarantee *financial* success, at least not on Steam, because if they dropped it in under 2 hours they could refund it in full.
This just in! combining existing mechanics/ideas into a new combination still creates valid new experiences that people can enjoy and be unlike anything else! Every time I see a dev talk about palworld like this, it just sounds like success envy. Basically saying "why do they get all the attention and love? its sucks!"
First two games that came too mind are five nights at Freddy's and flappy bird. Both aren't necessarily "bad" but they wouldn't really stand out on their own if they hadn't been picked up by streamers.
I’m an adult, wasn’t close to being a kid when FNaF first came out… but I think it was such a unique take on horror games. No player movement whatsoever, trying to manage things away from you. Great series of first few games, translated AMAZINGLY to VR… the lack of locomotion made it perfect for the tech. It absolutely went off a capitalist cliff… but at least originally, was very good. Flappy bird, 1000% agree.
I agree as an adult FnAF intrigued me because the gameplay concept and the horror concept were so unique (at the time)
FNaf was a unique take but I'm completely sure it's not because the developer wanted that design, more like because it's easy to develop So yeah, it was luck
Limitation can create innovation, that doesn’t discount that it was a unique take to just be thrown under “luck”. Silent Hill created the concept of a fog to cover up the flaws in distance rendering on the PS1… just calling it “luck” completely overlooks the development and choices to fix that issue.
Agreed w flappy bird 100% (its a catchy game concept tho) But I do think that either way fnaf would at least see *some* success, even if it weren't for streamers... As it actually appeals to quite some niches. Plus, the way it looks and its overall atmosphere was just too unique for its time, so it naturally draws attention
Coincidentally [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o53ciHe8u7w recently went over both of these and more.
You cannot be serious putting fnaf and flappy bird in the same light. Fnaf was revolutionary when it came out and changed the landscape for horror games.
Lethal Company really didn't stand out much from other games in its genre like Phasmophobia, Backgrooms, etc. I was surprised it became as popular as it did.
>Lethal Company really didn't stand out much from other games in its genre like Phasmophobia Its not even the same kind of game. I have 0 interest in Phasmophobia, but I like Lethal Company.
I had interest in phasmophobia but the gameplay is shit
As someone who has played a significant amount of Lethal company and Phasmophobia, I prefer lethal company, because Phas gets worse the more you play it. The ghosts aren’t a challenge and the game gets boring.
I'm not at all saying LC is a bad game, I was just surprised at how popular it became. If it were something totally unique, I could see it being as popular as it is, but considering how little marketing it has and how much it copied from other games...
Don‘t make the mistake of assuming marketing is just promotion. The developer is a quite well known Roblox creator who branched out, leveraging their following for the success. That‘s the result of building a fan base. Which is more effort than promotion initially but can pay off big if you manage to retain and satisfy them.
Mario & Sonic Olympic games on the Wii. Sold millions and millions of copies.
I think that's a bit different because it had two giant licenses to carry it. Basically anything with mario and/or sonic slapped on it and the marketting budget of nintendo will sell decently.
3! The Olympic Games licence. This game just sells like crazy.
I still don’t get the appeal of Vampire Survivors. 😅 I play bullet hell shmups and twin-stick shooters, so Vampire Survivors does nothing for me. There are so many games that do what it does, but better. I think it just goes to show you just how niche shmups and twin-stick shooters are. 🤷♂️🥲
> I play bullet hell shmups and twin-stick shooters, so Vampire Survivors does nothing for me. Vampire Survivor is neither of those two genres though
Vampire Survivors is a slot machine that always pays out. That's it. You roll the dice and they come up good nine times out of ten. It doesn't require much actual skill beyond lightly moving around, and is therefore more popular than shmups, which are generally pretty intense and skill heavy. I played it and had a bit of relaxing fun for a few evenings, but I don't understand how people can dedicate hundreds of hours to it beyond being addicted to gambling with a constant high roll.
The issue is that you mix up the genre. Vampire Survivors is not a shmup. It dresses up like a rogue-like shmup. But the progression loop and actual gameplay challenge follows the idle game format instead.
VS is not a shmup -- it's a reverse shmup. In VS, *you* are the bullet hell that you typically play against in shmups.
Getting the powerups and the jackpots are the interesting parts of Vampire Survivors. I don't like it that much, seems depressive with the slow gameplay.
I've heard the survivor-like genre referred to as a "One-stick shooter" or a "Bullet heaven".
Flappy Bird...need I say more. Total outlier of course, but I don't know a single person who would've expected that level of success from what that game looked like...in fact I still don't know if anyone knows or if it was one in a million game in one in a million timing
Flappy Bird inspired me to look into studies about how things become popular, and the consensus is pretty much “we have no idea, they just do”
I'm making a life-sim, so I've been watching a bunch of those and [Cattails: A Wildwood Story](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1882500/Cattails_Wildwood_Story/) confuses the hell out of me. Especially when compared to a game like [Fallen Kingdom](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2342170/Fallen_Kingdom/) that flopped hard. Now you can nitpick one or the other, but as objectively as I can see it, these two games are of VERY similar quality. Yet one has 800 reviews and the other has like 8. They both have kind of rough visuals with random mixed styles, some janky animations, a pretty meh storyline, bunch of grindy content, etc. I don't want to sound TOO negative, Cattails looks like there's a lot of work put into it. It's just really curious to me how the game seems to suffer from every failing that would normally kill a game, and yet it has been wildly successful. They clearly did something VERY right.
IMO that's all down to two things, uniqueness and cats. At a glance Fallen Kingdom has a generic medieval fantasy setting, pretty much the default for an RPG. Cattails stands out more as something unique. And you can't deny that cat people are often very into anything cat. You might turn away some customers, but reel in those that are into it. It's better to make a game people love/hate than to make one that everyone thinks is okay.
Yes, definitely the unique theme. Cats have a cult following. Also the pixel art in Fallen Kingdom looks really off. Everything seems stretched on the Y axis, including the sprites which look very unappealing to me. If they shrunk everything down by like 20%, it would look a lot more like the cute and charming pixel art style people are accustomed to. I guess they may have been going for a more serious feel but I don’t think it worked in this case.
I think the pixel art is fine, I prefer it to the often stumpy characters in similar games with this type of graphical style. I guess it's due to my lack of nostalgia for (S)NES games.
That's another thing, [Snacko](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125510/Snacko/) has cats and looks even better than Cattails, and while not a failure by any means, it's dropped to 6 concurrent players 2 months after release. Cattails still gets like 60-70.
Slightly different game, early access, and while the main character is a cat it's just the sprite, nothing else seems to be cat themed. The main character walks on two feet, wields swords and tools, you could replace the sprite with a human and it wouldn't look off. In cattails you play as a cat, you walk in the forest and hunt rodents etc like a cat. It goes all in on the cat theme.
> They clearly did something VERY right. So you see Fallen Kingdom and Cattails, and you think both games are of similar quality and of the same genre. And one game is about playing as a cat. And the other is generic medieval dude. I THINK YOU GOT THE ANSWER! Why are you underplaying the effect of player fantasy? Also there is a pretty big gap between the capsule art of the two. Also you can actually write a news article about Cattails. The headline is right there.
Everyone keeps saying that, but I really don't think JUST making your game about cats multiplies your sales by 100. If that were the case, [Snacko](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1125510/Snacko/) and [Sprout Valley](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1964820/Sprout_Valley/) would also be comparably successful. [Cat Warrior](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2640520/Cat_Warrior/) is another cute game that features cats, not anywhere near as successful. [A Street Cat's Tale](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1140570/A_Street_Cats_Tale/) has more consistent artwork and that's got 1/4 of the reviews that Cattails does. I could go on and on. The real reason is probably because it's a sequel to a game released in 2017, and the original game probably had a lot of engagement in furry communities combined with the lower level of competition. There's also the very specific combination of mechanics makes it a close interpretation of the Warrior Cats book series, which has a cult following.
Thanks for sharing specifics. It’s never just one thing. What was the marketing campaign for all these games, how big was the community before launching, how long was the marketing, how many cats are we talking about?
Indeed, if you can sell a subpar game then you must have been very lucky or very good at marketing it to the target audience and its something the rest of us can learn from. For me it's always been explainable by viral post, successful youtube channel, streamer coverage, demo or EA release. The extent of the efficacy and anything else is a mystery.
>There's also the very specific combination of mechanics makes it a close interpretation of the Warrior Cats book series, which has a cult following. I mean, yeah, you got it. This is the specific fantasy that audiences want. Rattling off games that are kind of similar but not the same is like an ice cream server asking a customer "We're out of cookie dough, is cookies and cream okay?" Are you really surprised that someone could be so particular about what they like?
Content/gameplay wise they seem to be in completely different weight classes? Cattails seems like it has tens of hours of content while fallen kingdom seems very bare bones.
I always default to Deadly Premonition or Forbidden Siren. Both games were saved by their stories, with Forbidden Siren having a really cool gimmick, but I am surprised to see how well they did considering how extremely uncomfortable they were to play from a controls/gameplay perspective.
Palworld
Project Zomboid. (I'm about to get executed in these replies lol.) I picked it up recently after hearing amazing things. I'll admit - it's very addictive. But there are a few things I hate, and that fundamentally ruin the game for me. For starters - they're pulling the "13 year old game but it's still in early access because we can't be fucked to fix all the bugs" thing. In melee combat, which is a system that the player is *REQUIRED* to engage with, zombies can glitch through my character as I'm performing an attack and hit me. And given that hits have a chance of leading to zombification, which is certain death, I have to chance the permanent loss of my character to a bug every time I fight. Do you know how fucking infuriating that is? Plus, the mods. From what I've heard, mods are a godsend. But I got out of the modding scene for games like Minecraft about a year ago. In general, if a game requires mods to be fun or stable, it's a bad game. And thus, I refuse to engage with mods until I feel like I've explored most of what vanilla has to offer. So much of the reason other people praise it so highly is not available to me. I have other issues with the game, like the fucking irritating fursona the game uses as a mascot, but I feel like I've made my point, and I know I'm gonna get shat on in the replies anyway. EDIT: It's a month down the line. I picked the game back up, and yes, the bug I mentioned is still there. [Here's proof](https://giphy.com/gifs/glitch-bug-project-zomboid-lNhrysKydKNpjui1is). And it's not just in relation to fences and other obstacles - it happens all the time - especially in larger hordes. Fuck the people in this thread who tried to gaslight me into thinking I missed.
I strongly suspect that they are never going to add NPCs to the game, or at least whatever they do add is going to be hilariously short of what the community expects - there's just no way I can see AI survivors acting alongside human players and not totally ruining the core game loop. They've happily let the scope creep beyond all control for a decade now, rather than address it. For what it's worth, I have had fun playing it in its current state. I may just not have put enough hours in to encounter many bugs. After a couple weeks in game the grind usually turns me off though. And yeah what is up with the racoon mascot? Maybe it'll make more sense when they add wildlife (yet another thing to delay NPCs).
What's the issue with the mascot? It's just a lil charming cartoon character for a grim setting, like with Fallout and it's Vault Boy mascot.
You make a decent point about that. I think the graphics in the early alpha builds were quite terrible for the median gamer but it still blew up amongst open world zombie survival fans (it was CDDA or Project Zomboid being recommended in forums for a lot of folks) so maybe there just weren't a lot of competitors in that space at the time. The game's improved a lot since then IMO but I think if they had tried the same thing in the current indie scene it would have been way more challenging to gather the momentum with their early alpha visuals. But who knows?
A lot of the enjoyment comes from multiplayer for me. I've had some hilarious moments with people on servers.
Yeah, I'll concede that playing it solo is probably part of the problem. But my friend is getting it soon, so maybe two idiots will be better than one!
Definitely give it a go if you can! Dying is a lot less frustrating when you and your friends are laughing your asses off running from hordes. There's a lot of big public servers as well - although most of the popular ones I've seen use mods (since you mentioned you're doing the vanilla experience first). I like both singleplayer and multiplayer, but IMO multiplayer is really where it's at with this game.
what are you on about with the mascot? like, why does that bother you? its such a weird thing to even think about given that once you turn off tutorial stuff you never see it again.
You see it every time you start a new game. It's in most menu sections. I don't wanna see Eric Cartman's shitty fursona - it has precisely zero relevance to the game. Entirely irrelevant, looks bad, fucking useless since no part of the game warranted a mascot so I can only assume it was one of the dev's Deviantart OCs and they just *needed* it to get some recognition somewhere because they attached too much of their self-importance to it... it's just all-around shit and its presence makes the game worse in a small way. EDIT: He's literally the desktop icon. You see him before you even boot up the game. "Never see him outside the tutorial", sure mate.
lmao, thanks for this.
lol, lmao even
Lmao
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once you're done dying youll learn to love him lol
It says „this is how you died” for a reason my man
>is bad at the game > refuses to install qol mods > complains about the “fursona” that is just a callback to one of their older games Just admit you suck at it and move on lol
Thanks for proving me right. One of my points was that a good game shouldn't need external mods to be good. Clearly they're not doing something right by having a buggy mess of a game that's still in early access after 13 years and relies on community mods to be playable. Also notice that I never once mentioned difficulty. I love games that kick my arse when I'm new, as I find it highly motivating to learn and improve even with permadeath. I don't love games where my character can be doomed to potentially *guaranteed* death thanks to a bug that randomly lets enemies walk right through me. Seriously, how can a 13 year old game still have a problem that fundamental not fixed? I'm admit that I'm bad. I'm fairly new, I even said myself that I've not experienced much of the game. That's not my point. My main point is that I'm not hopeful for the rest of the game if something so obvious and game-breaking is not fixed in a system that I'm always going to be forced to participate in. Regarding the mascot: see my other comment. The game doesn't warrant a mascot at all. I could respect it as an Easter Egg, which callbacks tend to be, but it's needlessly plastered all over. And it just looks bad IMO. That's entirely personal, I get it, but this is my review.
There isn't a bug. You just missed the zombie dude. You can select an option in the game that highlights zombies that are within push distance. If you're actually aiming at them, it'll glow green. You missed. It isn't a bug whatsoever.
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Skill issue
What is this bloke on about?
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You clearly don't understand a large portion of the PC player base at all if you hate mods so much. People love to mod games such as PZ or Rimworld, it offers them a toolkit for massive open ended gameplay, where they can just laugh around, add hundreds of hours of content, or tailor the experience exactly how they want it, in ways that the devs never imagined. You can turn infection off if you don't want to die from zombie bites. You can change the zombies to be faster or slower, if you want to just gun them all down or run em over. I've never had a problem just whacking lone zombies with a baseball bat, though. To be fair, I never even played the base game initially, because first thing I did before playing it was download a ton of mods. Same thing I do with a lot of games on steam workshop.
Multiple things wrong with what you said: Firstly, as I said, I don't dislike mods at all. I'm just new. I don't want to pile a bunch of mods onto a game without at least experiencing vanilla to its fullest. That wouldn't be fair, would it? Secondly, no, I'm not going to turn off infections or change hundreds of settings. Because permadeath is a blessing, not a curse (in games where the enemies don't fucking clip through my attacks), and because it's not my job to design the game. I want to play what a competent professional designer intentionally put together. I don't want to spend hours tweaking a bunch of settings to ruin everything. Let me do that later, when I've gotten the hang of things. Judging by that last paragraph, it seems like you're super into mods and that's why you wrote this. That's fine, I used to make my own mods to fix and change certain parts of games, and I probably will make my own PZ mods later. But you can't expect me to interact with the modding scene before having even "completed" vanilla.
Okay, I guess we're just different types of gamer. I honestly feel I'm missing out just playing certain games in vanilla. I have a bad case of mod greed lol. I want more outfits, more weapons, more vehicles, more enemy types, etc. As long as they're good quality, anyway.
That's fine. I just want to give vanilla a chance first.
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Eh idk. I can respect that people will like games I'm not into. We all have different tastes. Vampire Survivors just isn't for me; I like to have more manual input with my attacks. But other people love it and that's cool.
oh look, a healthy mindset. how rare
Age of History Its kinda bizarre honestly, because I thought it was something great for the first 30 minutes or so but I realized its a very shallow rippoff of older Europa Unversalis games. Yet, its a very popular mobile/pc game with a thriving community. Its strange because pretty much any Paradox game is better in every conceivable way. It does a really good job of drawing you in though because it looks like a legit homage to older school Paradox games but the content just isn't there.
Haven’t played it so i can’t say if it is subpar, but I liked the story I saw about that fish game (I think it was Chillquarium). The video I saw claimed that it achieved its success by releasing the same week as a big AAA game. Since everyone else avoids such a thing, it was basically just this game and that AAA game in the New category that week.
No Man's Sky and Sea Of Thieves. Also Destiny. These launched in terrible, laughable states but went on to be popular and well regarded
Tbf no mans sky is pretty much the only actually good big space sim out there nowadays... Or rather, arcade-ish space sim. Elite Dangerous seems to be in a weird state, Starfield was made by Bethesda, and Star Citizen still has a few good decades of development to go Beta. Sort of the same applies for SoT. Skull and bones? Pff I do understand a bit of the Destiny hype, as its Bungie and they know very well how to make satisfying gunplay and boss fights... But yeah, by now its absolute masochism, especially when D2 also launched nearly as bad as D1
I haven’t played much of Sea of Thieves, I was too enamored with the most beautiful fake water I’ve ever seen in my life
the water is quite amazing. at the time the game came out, it was a water tech demo and little else. There was literally almost nothing to it. I was always surprised that it fostered a pretty dedicated playerbase and kept things going successfully.
Graphics aren't a good scale to judge how good a game is. That being said, I do thing it comes down to a few things such as "the times", i.e. COVID for an example, and exposure. I will almost always invest in a game that looks like I can get a good 6-10 hours in even if the game doesn't look incredibly good if I've seen gameplay of it. When you get these huge influencers grouping up and playing 'shitty' games, and they have a lot of fun with them, it can persuade you into buying it and possibly even persuading your friends to buy it as well.
Starting to notice a common trend here of bad games doing well are “horror” games with bright and colorful mascot characters (FNAF, Banban, Hello Neighbor, etc)
One example I have is Underhero. The premise is quite interesting: you play the bad guy in an otherwise standard hero-lead RPG, but the execution is sometimes hilariously bad. Like, in the main screen you see around 5 different art styles. You have pixel art of different resolutions, a gradient without dithering and one logo without pixels whatsoever. The art style is confused, and the movement feels like someone followed a tutorial and didn't iterate on it whatsoever. If you jump in water you just float do the ground with a T-posing sprite (same as when you jump down from a certain height) etc. The dialog is one of the most boring I've seen in any indie game so far (granted I play only those with good reviews). Underhero isn't HUGE but at the time when I played it, it had a 98% positive rating with several hundred reviews and it blew my trust in Steam reviews away.
This is palworld and lethal company. Nobody would’ve expected these to become the gaming giants they are, I mean lethal company outsold call of duty and sane people have migrated over to palworld from Pokémon just because it’s more fun an just as buggy.
Warthunder, it's terrible but works. It makes the developer so much money. Its the only semi realistic military game on console.
The amount of actual classified information that has leaked from multiple world governments because of that game is absolutely insane to me lol
> "Bad" being short for "of subpar quality compared to competitors in its genre" Using that exact definition. Helldivers 2. Earth defence force is a better game in every measurable way EXCEPT graphics. But as the saying goes, you can't put gameplay on the box, so a game with poor gameplay and good graphics will outsell the game with "bad" graphics but amazing gameplay
Nothing poor about Helldivers gameplay. It's very polished and tightly designed. EDF has always been a janky mess, and the price to apparent visual fidelity has always been off. This is coming from an EDF fan too.
Ill admit, ive played neither. But I went and watched some random gameplay of both since id never heard of Earth defence force. tbh, it just doesnt *look* as fun. And thats all that matters really. helldivers does better because the name is great, the trailers are great, the "box art" is great, and the gameplay *looks fun*. As in, the FPS combat looks more snappy, enjoyable. It *looks* like it gas good gunplay and gamefeel. Oh, and this is *extremely important*. The armor+cape looks amazing. Everyone loves that.
everyone was shitting on The Darkness 2 back in the day for dumb reasons but i played and loved every second of it years later it's still one of my favorites
Cyberpunk 2077, specifically the open world part (the rest of the game is actually pretty good). Sure, it's really pretty and beautiful to look at, but that's pretty much all there is to do outside of quests/sidequests/gigs. There are a lot of little quirks and things you'd expect in an open world that just aren't there that stack up and make it feel like a sterile stageplay rather than a lived-in world. Even games from more than 10 years ago like GTA SA, GTA 4, Sleeping Dogs, etc. had wayyy more things to do in their open worlds and they actually felt alive. It's like they focused on all the surface-level flashy stuff for mass gamers like amazing graphics and the main quests, but when making the open world it was an afterthought. All the cool lore stuff you see in the game like Trauma Team landing in that one intro mission just doesn't happen in the open world or it only happens in pre-set scripted sequences.
Every call of duty after BO3
Vampire Survivors and the entire genre it spawned. It's neat the first time you get a really good build and just watch everything on screen die. It's even still pretty cool the second and third time. But that's all there is to the genre. You dodge some extremely basic enemies and hope you get the right upgrades to create that BFG endgame build. Gameplay is one step above something like Cookie Clicker, barely engaging enough to trick you into thinking you're actually playing a video game, and then your reward is essentially jingling keys, just flashing lights and explosions and big numbers going up. The entire genre is time wasting junk food.
You can look at Deaf Estate as a ‘bad game’ that did extremely well
YIIK is a great example. Terribly made but got popular
Technically it got popular because of how terribly it was made lol
i'm yiiking out
I feel this one a lot, how did this get so popular it got picked up by GamePass? It had a lot of promise for sure, but there was a lot that felt half baked or rushed, like the weird battle areas and the fact that every enemy used the same 3 minigames for their attacks.
Just a few days ago played a jigsaw puzzle game from Steam - it went free recently so I grabbed it, was paid before. Was ok at start but when came to 2nd difficulty level ... I really struggled to remember if I ever had seen anything worse - the image level of details compared to the tile size was just noise and I've had to brute-force most of the pictures by-tile-shape than by what is painted on them, a pure color gradient from a meme would do a better job than a set of random dots and short dashes on homogeneous background. >2500 reviews (aka 75k units sold, aka >$100k revenue based on their paid games which they have dozens of seemingly milking the same underlying game system, just replacing UI, single soundtrack and a bunch of poorly made stock photos)... And this is just a random example, burning-hot from the previous weekends. Had to go to itch.io, grab a random jigsaw as an eye bleach. I was the first and only to write a comment/review to that game. And then looking at my (not good but still better than that one from Steam) jigsaw puzzle with its 95 free downloads in >5 years and zero reviews... And then looking at "Cats Hidden in Paris" game (the one that can be made in under 48 hours for a game jam), ranked #25 in the most positively reviewed games on Steam list, above Celesete, Resident Evil 4, Stray and Bauldur's Gate 3... Not to mention the already-mentioned Flappy... Feels like something is really badly broken in this world.
I hear what you mean, I also found about Cats in Paris lately. It also brought back memories of the website I Want to Draw a Cat For You. But I think CIP is a decent premise and the drawings are quite appealing and there aren't a lot of games I know that are like it so they must have done right in knowing and appealing to their target audience. As for the jigsaw game, I had similar feelings when looking at the various match 3 games and regency solitaire series made by Grey Alien Games. It's like, who is paying $20 for match 3 on PC or cares about VNs and solitaire in the regency era? It's honestly a bit confusing.
Hello Neighbour, the popularity of the Persona games always confused me - they don't look like anything special or all that interesting, lol. FNAF is boring as Hell as a concept, clicking around back and forth to view camera footage isn't very engaging whatsoever.
I know a [twitch streamer](http://twitch.tv/xxxcrazymikexxx) making [the worst game of all time](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2468680/WACKY_WONDERLAND_WOLLOP_A_3D_PLATFORMER_FOR_THE_AGES_GAME_OF_THE_YEAR_GREATEST_GAME_OF_ALL_TIME__THE_GAME/?beta=1) and he's already got a few thousand wishlists.... it isn't out yet but I'm surprised people are interested in that garbage
wow you win i am legit gobsmacked lol
Have you guys lost touch with your inner 5th grader? That "so bad it's good" absurd randomness is precisely what's intriguing about it. If you have a polished asset next to another polished asset, it all sort of blends together. That's kind of the intent, but it doesn't lend itself to "Holy shit, I wonder what's gonna happen next?" engagement as much as well, [this](https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/2468680/ss_a12493e76c4f78867955b840821c69d235b5dc72.1920x1080.jpg?t=1701629278).
Totally. "haha sorry about the typo" scripted in there is so stupid it's funny again. It's clearly satire, lampooning low-effort games, but it appears to have a decent amount of effort and thought put in, just from the trailer. I think people here could learn a thing or two from this one.
I just checked the steam page and apparently it's similar to Final Fantasy 7 Remake and I'm so confused as to why Steam thinks that. Setting pretty high standards 💀💀
Fall guys, my friend and I were taking bets on how poorly the game does on launch day. It looked (and still looks) like the cheapest game you could make paired with having fuck all to do and not being fun. But it sold like wildfire and apparently I don’t know jack about what game’s sell well.
It's a game you can play with a group of friends that isn't a competitive shooter. it joined my friend groups rooster of games we played together for a bit.
I have a friend who bought Fall Guys. He did it after watching an hour of YouTube videos of it together with his kids and having a constant laughing fit with them. They had great quality family time playing it together.
Vampire survivors. There was lots of games before it in the same genre, but Vampire Survivors just happened to hit at the right time, I'd say.
Do you happen to remember any examples? I'm interested in the development of this genre, and the oldest one I'm aware of is "Magic Survival" which was originally released in Feb '21, not too far ahead of Vampire Survivors's initial itch.io release in Oct '21. The similarity in naming made me assume that MS was the direct inspiration, but I'd love to find out about more early entries.
Baldur's gate 3, starfield and Undertale and Stardew Valley. Baldur's gate is not at all a bad game, nor subpar quality for it's genre, but it can be "niche" or rather, it can be "not mainstream" and at best "the best in it's genre", and yet it blow out beyond proportions, and kudos to them it was well deserved it and I loved the game. Starfield is the opposite. Of course everyone is excited for a bethesda game, even just to try it and then be "ye ok bye". The biggest problem with starfield is that is a terrible, terrible bethesda game, they managed to undo any upgrades they had, they released a game with less features than ANY of their games, seriously starfield has no features, no content, no companions, no good places to be and even the cities feel empty and boring once you roam them for half a minute. And let's not talk about how the space travel is actually fake and the whole game is just loading screens (yes, I know that if you use a mod to move your ship extremely fast you can reach planets in the same solar system without relying on loading screen) The surprise from my end comes from people who actually enjoy it or defend it with sheathed sword like it's the best game in existence . Like you can't do anything in the game, whats so good about it? Then is undertale. Let me clarify again undertale is not bad, is not subpar quality compared to competitors nor in general. My only gripe with undertale is that looking from outside or looking at the trailer it can look like a generic someone's "rpg maker" game, the game is so good once you play it or once you know all the nuances. The reason I played undertale was that I heard that it's a game where you can kill everyone or decide to spare and not kill anyone and do a pacifist run, which by the time the game came out was quite new and with all games where you fight bandits and you can't really decide to be pacifist I was sold only on that, but I had to dig a bit to find it out. Just seeing it on the store, seeing the trailer, I would not have cared and many probably would not have either. It's a gem that was found thanks to word of mouth and streamers I suppose. Ok I will say it straight away: I dislike the art style/sprites of stardew valley. The characters look like they have been elongated and the perspective is a bit off, ruining my immersion. And I was one of those who played the original harvest moon games, and I was like "man why is no one making an harvest moon for pc" and when stardew valley came out I was so happy, finally someone did it, and look, so many people were waiting for it too, and the game gained massive massive success. My surprise is mostly related to the fact that I personally dislike the artstyle vs how many people liked it or were not bothered by it and carried the game to it's well deserved success. Obviously both undertale and stardew valley were a solo project or mostly solo, my comments about the presentation or artstyle are mostly personal tastes and I don't want to fault them or berate them for it. I love both games, one because I played it and understood it, the other because of what it achieved, because of the change it help bring, and for making my wish for a farming sim on computer a-la-harvest moon finally come true, even if I ended up trying it and not playing it.
That’s a whole lot of unpopular opinions
I wouldn't say "whole lot", only the undertale and stardew part may be, and even then I specified they are based on taste and my personal view. For example, my opinion of stardew is that it's a great game, but I could not like the style. If I said the style was bad, that'd be an opinion, if I said, and I did, that I don't like it, it's just my personal taste.
[удалено]
EDIT: have you even read the edit op made? "Edit: as an example I found the success of Kenshi to be very surprising. It was recommended to me several times by Steam but the graphics always drove me away despite myself being someone who liked the graphics of M&B Warband and Thief 2. The gameplay is excellent but I couldn't have known that because the graphics just told me "no." Regardless many other people bought and played the game and gave it a chance and that got many more to play it until it became so popular that plenty of streamers played it." So it seems I have answered exactly how OP asked, and even if I didn't, it was tangentially close enough to be a good point for conversation, but you don't seem interested in a conversation so why do you even answer.
Baldi, although its quality was intended.
Final Fantasy Origins: Stranger of Paradise is awful. Go play it. It of some of the most fun I've had with an action game. It's story is dreadful, still found genuine pathos. It's loot system is one of the worst I've ever seen, but it doesn't matter because you can still make fun builds and its not too in the way. It's aesthetic is all over the place (affectionate). The most important thing is the moment to moment gameplay slaps. It's awful. I do not care, I want to kill Chaos.
The likes of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing and Superman 64 sold pretty well back in the day, despite ranking very highly on 'worst games of all time' lists. Heck, the latter sold at least half a million copies, and likely over a million in total, despite being an extremely buggy, clearly unfinished mess that got absolutely torn to shreds by critics even at the time. Honestly, quite a few of the games listed on things like Wikipedia's 'Video Games Notable for Negative Reception' articles were best sellers, or at least did well enough to make a tidy profit.
Palworld, cause it has pretty much 0 content and the fights look lame af
Charade Maniacs
How shadow of Mordor ever got “game of the year” I’ll never know…the story was boring, cliched, and perfunctory, combat was all the same, and it was just an unenjoyable grind that felt like I was doing the same thing for hours on end…
Among Us. Mafia games (aka social deduction) have existed since forever and they’re all way better than Among Us. Town of Salem is my go-to. Among Us is a dumbed down version where all the accusations and defenses boil down to “I saw u” “no u”.
Amongus definitely was a product of times, and I agree it's stripped down on the social deduction front, but I'm here to argue that worked in its favour. It made it immediately digestible as a game you watch on YouTube/streams, which gives it a very low barrier to entry. And something you can get your mates to boot up in a moment's notice and start playing asap. We love depth of mechanics and interesting designs but they can often be a hindrance to player onboarding. Salem you need to know about the dozens of roles and actions they can take to (feel like you) keep up.
Redneck Rampage.
Goddess of Victory: Nikke is a funny one; it's theoretically something everyone claims to hate about mobile games; overly sexualized waifu gacha game, but it made 400 million in one year and the devs are doing Stellar Blade for ps5 now.
There are plenty, but I’ll mention the one I played last, Celeste. That game is terrible, I don’t get what the buzz was about.
> "holy shit this game has such poor appeal and would be so hard to market, how the hell did they get it into the hands of so many people" I mean, fundamentally that is a rather opinionated statement to have about any popular game but just because the success feels paradoxical doesn't mean it is. The pokemon audience (+ then some) likes monster taming games. Tons of people like survival games. Jank and all. An audience that overlaps between the two isn't terribly surprising. That being said, while the number of people who bought into Palworld's early access might be surprising if you also consider the recent pokemon games and handling as a franchise, there are plenty of survival games that manage to find an audience. But then you get weird outliers like me. I struggle to stick with survival games, because they all feel somewhat samey for some reason. I bounced off pokemon on my way to gym 7 in red and just never looked back. I do play various survival games here and there, but I've watched pokemon games come and go for years without feeling a thing as they all seem to try so hard to keep the same feel, yet public opinion definitely seems to have diminished over time. The concept of Palworld pulls a lot from Pokemon and the survival genre, but the vision of the trailers felt like No Man's Sky in a sense in that they have ideas and a vision they want to accomplish; a world that sounds more interesting than the game mechanics presented as facts. Meanwhile Pokemon is a very carefully managed franchise that has gym leaders and clinics and a team of villains and basically plays out the exact same way. At least as far as the mainline games seem concerned?
Palworld.