4 ms·

I wouldn’t compare Chicory with Stardew: for one, Stardew was genre-defining (as some people call things soulslikes, a whole heap of games are trying to capture

I wouldn’t compare Chicory with Stardew: for one, Stardew was genre-defining (as some people call things soulslikes, a whole heap of games are trying to capture Stardew). Replay ability of Stardew is part of its specific genre niche, where Chicory is again more like Zelda, in which replay ability isn’t a huge selling point to the game (although I find chicory just as fun as a Zelda to replay). Additionally stardew expanded multiple times throughout its development. I’m certain chicory’s devs would’ve done the same had it had it’s deserved attention at launch. Now that I’m looking at my steam library I have some other games I think deserve more attention: - Citizen Sleeper is not unlike Disco Elysium or a visual novel. But its mix of space opera and cyberpunk dystopia is extremely compelling. Excellent OST, and heartfelt characters. You get a real sense of the desperation and humanity of the impoverished, the undocumented, the refugee. The word building is deep and expansive (a sequel is coming, to not enough fanfare imo). - Umarangi Generation is a photography game where you are playing as a propagandist during an ecologically-vibed apocalypse. You explore scenes of war, poverty, luxury, and terror, taking photographs all the while for the cause. The capacity to tell a deeply layered story with multiple political factions and economic groups merely through environment is stunning. The expansion is absolutely seething with anger.

TylerE 3y ago
Huh? Stardew is blatantly, ahem, "inspired by" the Harvest Moon series. It was mainly successful because it wasn't a Nintendo exclusive.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  I know that, but most people compare such titles to Stardew and not harvest moon.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Yes. As you probably also know, "Harvest Moon" the name is no longer "Harvest Moon" th inspiration behind Stardew and many other crafting games. The actual devs behind it lost the rights to the name while "Harvest Moon" the IP devolved into generic crafting game #1243. The devs continued on under the new name (in the West) of "Story of Seasons" That branding cost a lot of noteriety in the West.
Etherlord87 3y ago
I have no hidden agenda here, so I compared, I admit, peaches to oranges, Chicory to Stardew, just because Stardew was the first popular indie game I found to compare with. Feel free to choose a successful indie game within the same genre as the Chicory, and then we can try to analyze the differences again. > Stardew was genre-defining What is the argument here, that it was very good? That's exactly my point, it was very successful because of how good it was (rather than lucky).
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  My point is merely to counterpoint the claim that no one can cite specific good games that simply fall through the cracks of popularity even though on its merits they are quite excellent quality. Chicory is arguably in that category and then I followed up with a few more. If I wanted to lower my standards to stuff that I found charming but not deeply moving, I could name a few more after that. Good indie games are ignored all the time. I tend to seek out indie games explicitly because I don’t have a huge attraction to most “triple a” style games (I dislike fps, sports, 4x, mmo, puzzle, and sex appeal. So I’m mostly limited to not-Witcher open word rpg. Platformers, roguelikes, metroidvanias, horror survival etc. tend to be indie.) So basically I’m usually stuck with “why doesn’t anyone scream about this game more”. Rain World was like that until Downpour came out, finally some fucking attention to it!
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    The sales:reviews ratio on Steam varies pretty hard, but tends to be around 60:1. That would leave Chicory selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies, and likely performing upwards of the 90th percentile. That's not especially neglected. One thing you have to keep in mind is that we're all snowflakes to some degree. And so it can feel unfair when a game that really hits our preferences just doesn't receive as much attention as we think it deserves, but that may not necessarily be because people are unaware of the game, but simply because our preferences are not necessarily widely shared. It's kind of like how in writing a Dan Brown is always going to be vastly more popular than an e.g. Dostoyevsky. It's simply that one author has much more mass appeal than the other. It can feel like a shame for fans of the latter, but it's the way society has always been and probably always will be.

TylerE 3y ago

Huh? Stardew is blatantly, ahem, "inspired by" the Harvest Moon series. It was mainly successful because it wasn't a Nintendo exclusive.

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
I know that, but most people compare such titles to Stardew and not harvest moon.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Yes. As you probably also know, "Harvest Moon" the name is no longer "Harvest Moon" th inspiration behind Stardew and many other crafting games. The actual devs behind it lost the rights to the name while "Harvest Moon" the IP devolved into generic crafting game #1243. The devs continued on under the new name (in the West) of "Story of Seasons" That branding cost a lot of noteriety in the West.

Etherlord87 3y ago

I have no hidden agenda here, so I compared, I admit, peaches to oranges, Chicory to Stardew, just because Stardew was the first popular indie game I found to compare with. Feel free to choose a successful indie game within the same genre as the Chicory, and then we can try to analyze the differences again. > Stardew was genre-defining What is the argument here, that it was very good? That's exactly my point, it was very successful because of how good it was (rather than lucky).

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
My point is merely to counterpoint the claim that no one can cite specific good games that simply fall through the cracks of popularity even though on its merits they are quite excellent quality. Chicory is arguably in that category and then I followed up with a few more. If I wanted to lower my standards to stuff that I found charming but not deeply moving, I could name a few more after that. Good indie games are ignored all the time. I tend to seek out indie games explicitly because I don’t have a huge attraction to most “triple a” style games (I dislike fps, sports, 4x, mmo, puzzle, and sex appeal. So I’m mostly limited to not-Witcher open word rpg. Platformers, roguelikes, metroidvanias, horror survival etc. tend to be indie.) So basically I’m usually stuck with “why doesn’t anyone scream about this game more”. Rain World was like that until Downpour came out, finally some fucking attention to it!
- somenameforme 3y ago
  The sales:reviews ratio on Steam varies pretty hard, but tends to be around 60:1. That would leave Chicory selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies, and likely performing upwards of the 90th percentile. That's not especially neglected. One thing you have to keep in mind is that we're all snowflakes to some degree. And so it can feel unfair when a game that really hits our preferences just doesn't receive as much attention as we think it deserves, but that may not necessarily be because people are unaware of the game, but simply because our preferences are not necessarily widely shared. It's kind of like how in writing a Dan Brown is always going to be vastly more popular than an e.g. Dostoyevsky. It's simply that one author has much more mass appeal than the other. It can feel like a shame for fans of the latter, but it's the way society has always been and probably always will be.