8 ms·

What is the target market for the game? I played Metroid when I was a kid on NES and the original gameboy. Games these days are a lot about marketing and huge

What is the target market for the game? I played Metroid when I was a kid on NES and the original gameboy. Games these days are a lot about marketing and huge budgets. The indie ones that do well need to be targeted as well as refreshing. Some hard thoughts just watching the video and reading a bit about the game: 1. I don't really like the graphics as much as I liked the original Metroid. This is probably just a personal preference. 2. It mostly screams low quality "Metroid clone" and not something cool I'd tell my friends about. 3. Procedurally generated levels doesn't sell me. I don't really care. That said totally not a waste of time. It shows you have the wits to bring something to market and the ability to ship. You coded the whole damn thing which is insanely involved. This is no small feat. However the market is generally the hardest critic and it doesn't matter how many hours you spent or how many lines and bugs you solved.

icelancer 8y ago
Axiom Verge is a Metroid-type clone and it did extremely well. There's a market for it without a doubt, but the hurdles to clear are enormous.
nikkwong 8y ago
I don't know if I'd agree about your dislike of the graphics being because of your own personal preference. The human brain has evolved to find certain harmonies of shapes/colors attractive while others are not. The author undoubtedly has a lot of grit—but, he's not an artist, and his game suffers because of that. Metroid has superior graphics because they had dedicated artists, and surely put a lot of time/thought into the look and feel of the game. Also, the design scheme between different 'blocks' which make up the platforms in the game is not uniform, which makes the design feel much more disjointed.
Retra 8y ago
Super Metroid is literally my favorite game, and I don't really have a strong urge to play this. Metroid is an exploration-based game. The game rewards you for finding secrets and for knowing how to get places. It teases you to find a way to break sequence, and much of the replay-ability of that game is based on the possibility to do that and to bask in what you've already learned about the world. Procedural generation takes a big dump on any sense of familiarity, which is a big part of the reward for exploration. In fact, the _only_ games I've played where procedural generation were good for the game are story-building games, such as Rogue-likes and Dwarf Fortress. They reward you for building a story, not for traversing obstacles. In every other game, they are just a weak thematic obscuration of the underlying mechanical goals. The Dryad's name in Terraria doesn't matter. Dig deep enough and you'll find diamonds in Minecraft. Kill a boss enough times in Borderlands, and you'll get a good gun. There's no story about achieving these goals. Procedural generation doesn't participate in making the goals more interesting to achieve, it's a forgettable and incidental fact about something almost wholly unrelated. Game developers need to stop trying to lean on it as a substitute for content. A game is what people can expect from it each time they play it, and if all it is is a bundle of mechanics and throw-backs, then there's not going to be much appeal.
- skybrian 8y ago
  I'm curious about where the story happens? I've played a rogue-like (Pixel Dungeon), while I found it fun, I didn't think it had much of a story. Are others better?
  - p1necone 8y ago
    At the risk of sounding like an elitist - Pixel Dungeon isn't a "real" roguelike. Check out something like Nethack, or ADOM, or Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Or maybe Tales of Maj'eyal if you want something with lots of graphical polish (this one also has a decent amount of actual scripted plot). These games have the extra depth and detail that cause the kinds of emergent gameplay and "storybuilding" that people are talking about.
  - pawelmurias 8y ago
    In say nethack you can pick up random overpowered or weird items that change the game or get into crazy adventures when you meet some weird rare creature.
    - gnulinux 8y ago
      I kinda like games like nethack and brogue but my only problem with them is since it's extremely easy to die, it emphasizes attention a bit too much imho. I'm not a very attentive person and when I play games I'd much rather it be a bit more relaxed. When I know that even if I play the game for a whole Saturday, one floating eye can just randomly kill me for no reason, it kinda demotivates me...
      - Retra 8y ago
        It works like gambling. You play the game 100 times and you just lose most of them, but on the rare occasion you get very lucky... and you walk away with an unforgettable story about how you defied all the odds and did something wonderful and amazing. That's where procedural generation shines the brightest.
pharrington 8y ago
Yeah, the entirety your comment pretty much mirrors what I'd have to say in reply to his post. The only other thing I'd add for Luke is - do you enjoy playing this game? As in, have you sunk a whooole bunch of hours into playing it, simply because it's the only game available (that you made precisely because there's nothing else) that scratches this very particular itch?
- detritus 8y ago
  I'm afraid this was my first thought having watched the video — does it look fun? I'd like to think that the foundations are in place to make it such, but from what I saw, I saw a lot of [highly capable] box ticking, but not a lot to make me want to take it on.
  - monk_e_boy 8y ago
    The video made me confused. So many options, so many ways for me to get confused and die. In contrast, Mario looks fun and jolly and silly.
ehsankia 8y ago
That was my first thought too. The author talks about the indie explosion, but I don't think they realize they are part of the problem. Clearly the author is a great programmer, as coding something like this definitely isn't trivial, but it lacks in other places, such as design, art style and sound effects. I understand programmers often like working on their own projects, and sometimes we end up with complete packages like Stardew Valley, but maybe it's better to work in a team where everyone has their own strengths. I see so many games with fantastic code, going to waste because of really underwhelming story, art style or sound.
- vertline3 8y ago
  Working on a team without capital is a challenge.
- Morizero 8y ago
  > I don't think they realize they are part of the problem. It's like the old adage: You're not stuck in traffic, you are the traffic.
sweden 8y ago
I consider myself as a big fan of Metroidvanias, I'm even the kind of person who actively looks for new games in this genre, and those were my thoughts as well. I would even say that this game manages to hit the 3 points in which I avoid on a Metroidvania: 1. Rogue-like. I really dislike rogue-like, no special reason, just a personal preference 2. Lack of a plot. I appreciate the feeling of exploring a world the feels alive, even if it's a very simple one. Going through levels for the sake of going through them, it's not much of a fun experience to me. 3. Huge resemblance to the original Metroid. If I wanted to play Metroid... I would be playing Metroid. Also... no Linux version? Really? That excludes me entirely from this game.
- orangecat 8y ago
  #1 and #2 are strongly related. Procedural generation makes it much harder to create a sense of a coherent world, rather than a series of disconnected mini-games.
  - have_faith 8y ago
    The Binding of Isaac seems to trike a good balance, if you're into that sort of thing.
    - the_clarence 8y ago
      You're reaching
      - have_faith 8y ago
        What does that mean?
  - gameswithgo 8y ago
    minecraft
  - tialaramex 8y ago
    And yet Dead Cells does the Metroidvania Roguelite thing and has a plot. In fact being a Roguelite is woven into the plot, characters aren't surprised to see you, after all you were just here last session, the mounds of festering corpses prompt you to remark that they're all the same... They're all you.

icelancer 8y ago

Axiom Verge is a Metroid-type clone and it did extremely well. There's a market for it without a doubt, but the hurdles to clear are enormous.

nikkwong 8y ago

I don't know if I'd agree about your dislike of the graphics being because of your own personal preference. The human brain has evolved to find certain harmonies of shapes/colors attractive while others are not. The author undoubtedly has a lot of grit—but, he's not an artist, and his game suffers because of that. Metroid has superior graphics because they had dedicated artists, and surely put a lot of time/thought into the look and feel of the game. Also, the design scheme between different 'blocks' which make up the platforms in the game is not uniform, which makes the design feel much more disjointed.

Retra 8y ago

Super Metroid is literally my favorite game, and I don't really have a strong urge to play this. Metroid is an exploration-based game. The game rewards you for finding secrets and for knowing how to get places. It teases you to find a way to break sequence, and much of the replay-ability of that game is based on the possibility to do that and to bask in what you've already learned about the world. Procedural generation takes a big dump on any sense of familiarity, which is a big part of the reward for exploration. In fact, the _only_ games I've played where procedural generation were good for the game are story-building games, such as Rogue-likes and Dwarf Fortress. They reward you for building a story, not for traversing obstacles. In every other game, they are just a weak thematic obscuration of the underlying mechanical goals. The Dryad's name in Terraria doesn't matter. Dig deep enough and you'll find diamonds in Minecraft. Kill a boss enough times in Borderlands, and you'll get a good gun. There's no story about achieving these goals. Procedural generation doesn't participate in making the goals more interesting to achieve, it's a forgettable and incidental fact about something almost wholly unrelated. Game developers need to stop trying to lean on it as a substitute for content. A game is what people can expect from it each time they play it, and if all it is is a bundle of mechanics and throw-backs, then there's not going to be much appeal.

skybrian 8y ago
I'm curious about where the story happens? I've played a rogue-like (Pixel Dungeon), while I found it fun, I didn't think it had much of a story. Are others better?
- p1necone 8y ago
  At the risk of sounding like an elitist - Pixel Dungeon isn't a "real" roguelike. Check out something like Nethack, or ADOM, or Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Or maybe Tales of Maj'eyal if you want something with lots of graphical polish (this one also has a decent amount of actual scripted plot). These games have the extra depth and detail that cause the kinds of emergent gameplay and "storybuilding" that people are talking about.
- pawelmurias 8y ago
  In say nethack you can pick up random overpowered or weird items that change the game or get into crazy adventures when you meet some weird rare creature.
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    I kinda like games like nethack and brogue but my only problem with them is since it's extremely easy to die, it emphasizes attention a bit too much imho. I'm not a very attentive person and when I play games I'd much rather it be a bit more relaxed. When I know that even if I play the game for a whole Saturday, one floating eye can just randomly kill me for no reason, it kinda demotivates me...
    - Retra 8y ago
      It works like gambling. You play the game 100 times and you just lose most of them, but on the rare occasion you get very lucky... and you walk away with an unforgettable story about how you defied all the odds and did something wonderful and amazing. That's where procedural generation shines the brightest.

pharrington 8y ago

Yeah, the entirety your comment pretty much mirrors what I'd have to say in reply to his post. The only other thing I'd add for Luke is - do you enjoy playing this game? As in, have you sunk a whooole bunch of hours into playing it, simply because it's the only game available (that you made precisely because there's nothing else) that scratches this very particular itch?

detritus 8y ago
I'm afraid this was my first thought having watched the video — does it look fun? I'd like to think that the foundations are in place to make it such, but from what I saw, I saw a lot of [highly capable] box ticking, but not a lot to make me want to take it on.
- monk_e_boy 8y ago
  The video made me confused. So many options, so many ways for me to get confused and die. In contrast, Mario looks fun and jolly and silly.

ehsankia 8y ago

That was my first thought too. The author talks about the indie explosion, but I don't think they realize they are part of the problem. Clearly the author is a great programmer, as coding something like this definitely isn't trivial, but it lacks in other places, such as design, art style and sound effects. I understand programmers often like working on their own projects, and sometimes we end up with complete packages like Stardew Valley, but maybe it's better to work in a team where everyone has their own strengths. I see so many games with fantastic code, going to waste because of really underwhelming story, art style or sound.

vertline3 8y ago
Working on a team without capital is a challenge.
Morizero 8y ago
> I don't think they realize they are part of the problem. It's like the old adage: You're not stuck in traffic, you are the traffic.

sweden 8y ago

I consider myself as a big fan of Metroidvanias, I'm even the kind of person who actively looks for new games in this genre, and those were my thoughts as well. I would even say that this game manages to hit the 3 points in which I avoid on a Metroidvania: 1. Rogue-like. I really dislike rogue-like, no special reason, just a personal preference 2. Lack of a plot. I appreciate the feeling of exploring a world the feels alive, even if it's a very simple one. Going through levels for the sake of going through them, it's not much of a fun experience to me. 3. Huge resemblance to the original Metroid. If I wanted to play Metroid... I would be playing Metroid. Also... no Linux version? Really? That excludes me entirely from this game.

orangecat 8y ago
#1 and #2 are strongly related. Procedural generation makes it much harder to create a sense of a coherent world, rather than a series of disconnected mini-games.
- have_faith 8y ago
  The Binding of Isaac seems to trike a good balance, if you're into that sort of thing.
  - the_clarence 8y ago
    You're reaching
    - have_faith 8y ago
      What does that mean?
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  minecraft
- tialaramex 8y ago
  And yet Dead Cells does the Metroidvania Roguelite thing and has a plot. In fact being a Roguelite is woven into the plot, characters aren't surprised to see you, after all you were just here last session, the mounds of festering corpses prompt you to remark that they're all the same... They're all you.