3 ms·

Larian, FromSoftware, Gunfire, Grinding Gear... the smaller studios are putting out great games still, with much of that 90s magic. There's that new game Palwor

Larian, FromSoftware, Gunfire, Grinding Gear... the smaller studios are putting out great games still, with much of that 90s magic. There's that new game Palworld too apparently making a stir (haven't tried it yet), from another small studio. It's the big ones that have jumped the shark and gone full-in capitalist. I mostly just ignore them and haven't felt like I've missed much. So many good indie titles coming out every day.

HideousKojima 3y ago
Palworld is basically Ark: Survival Evolved with Pokemon plus some elements from Breath of the Wild. That said, it's less buggy (and better performing) at launch than Ark is 9 years after release, and unlike Ark it isn't designed to require you to quit your job and have a full guild with set work schedules just to get some cool pets.
- Arrath 3y ago
  > and unlike Ark it isn't designed to require you to quit your job and have a full guild with set work schedules just to get some cool pets. This is a very important point, Palworld is much more respectful of you the player's time. Gone is the tedious tending of Ark's taming and breeding, or Conan's arduous process of dragging a captured thrall back to your base to throw on the wheel of pain. On top of that it has a number of handy QoL upgrades over most survival crafters I've played, like all chests in your base sharing their inventory with all crafting stations at the base. No more hunting through all the storage in your base schlepping things into your own inventory just to craft junk.
password54321 3y ago
>It's the big ones that have jumped the shark and gone full-in capitalist. Nonsense for most single player games which there are still many of.
- solardev 3y ago
  Yeah? That's probably not a segment of the market I play much, then. What are some good ones from the AAAs that aren't just Call of Duty sequels or Ubi games?
  - password54321 3y ago
    Death Stranding, Red Dead Redemption 2, Elden Ring. Also I hope no one bothers to argue these are AAAA, AAAAAAAA. It really doesn't matter.
BlueTemplar 3y ago
I guess technically Larian and GGG are "smaller" than even Activision-Blizzard before the buyout, but they aren't "small" either any more. (And GGG has been mostly owned by Tencent for a few years now.) Path of Exile 1 is a glorious mess that anyone remotely interested in the genre should try (don't give up in the first act like most players, it gets way better), but currently at least with quite ridiculously bad performance, which is particularly aggravated by it being an online-only game of which you cannot play the old DX9 32-bit version any more, which had at least an order of magnitude smaller hardware requirements. (And you aren't indie if you release on Steam (especially only !) like Palworld. (Or if you rely on a subscription-based platform like Unity, like [insert "indie" X].))
- solardev 3y ago
  > but they aren't "small" either any more OK, that's fair > And you aren't indie if you release on Steam (especially only !) Why not? It's the best marketplace for indie games... IMO it jump-started the PC indie gaming revolution! Before that, we only had shareware of limited reach, maybe distributed through PC Gamer floppies/CDs. And maybe Tucows. It was hard to find new indie games, much less buy them. Steam changed that whole paradigm. > [PoE performance issues] For what it's worth, it runs like shite on my M2 Max, but flawlessly on GeForce Now. Terrific performance with everything on max.
  - BlueTemplar 3y ago
    Because Steam has taken over some of the most important features of publishers : dealing with distributors and (built-in) advertising. (See also Epic Store which even gives funding !) I would expect almost all of the studios that release on Steam to quickly go bankrupt if prevented to use it. So, ironically, Activision-Blizzard would be more indie than them, but I guess that "indie" also requires a limitation of size. ---- GeForce Now, well duh, have you seen the kind of hardware it provides - that you're paying for ? (For reference, at release PoE1's minimum requirements were : 32-bit single core 1.4 GHz CPU, 2 Go RAM, 0.25 Go VRAM, 5 Go storage.)

HideousKojima 3y ago

Palworld is basically Ark: Survival Evolved with Pokemon plus some elements from Breath of the Wild. That said, it's less buggy (and better performing) at launch than Ark is 9 years after release, and unlike Ark it isn't designed to require you to quit your job and have a full guild with set work schedules just to get some cool pets.

Arrath 3y ago
> and unlike Ark it isn't designed to require you to quit your job and have a full guild with set work schedules just to get some cool pets. This is a very important point, Palworld is much more respectful of you the player's time. Gone is the tedious tending of Ark's taming and breeding, or Conan's arduous process of dragging a captured thrall back to your base to throw on the wheel of pain. On top of that it has a number of handy QoL upgrades over most survival crafters I've played, like all chests in your base sharing their inventory with all crafting stations at the base. No more hunting through all the storage in your base schlepping things into your own inventory just to craft junk.

password54321 3y ago

>It's the big ones that have jumped the shark and gone full-in capitalist. Nonsense for most single player games which there are still many of.

solardev 3y ago
Yeah? That's probably not a segment of the market I play much, then. What are some good ones from the AAAs that aren't just Call of Duty sequels or Ubi games?
- password54321 3y ago
  Death Stranding, Red Dead Redemption 2, Elden Ring. Also I hope no one bothers to argue these are AAAA, AAAAAAAA. It really doesn't matter.

BlueTemplar 3y ago

I guess technically Larian and GGG are "smaller" than even Activision-Blizzard before the buyout, but they aren't "small" either any more. (And GGG has been mostly owned by Tencent for a few years now.) Path of Exile 1 is a glorious mess that anyone remotely interested in the genre should try (don't give up in the first act like most players, it gets way better), but currently at least with quite ridiculously bad performance, which is particularly aggravated by it being an online-only game of which you cannot play the old DX9 32-bit version any more, which had at least an order of magnitude smaller hardware requirements. (And you aren't indie if you release on Steam (especially only !) like Palworld. (Or if you rely on a subscription-based platform like Unity, like [insert "indie" X].))

solardev 3y ago
> but they aren't "small" either any more OK, that's fair > And you aren't indie if you release on Steam (especially only !) Why not? It's the best marketplace for indie games... IMO it jump-started the PC indie gaming revolution! Before that, we only had shareware of limited reach, maybe distributed through PC Gamer floppies/CDs. And maybe Tucows. It was hard to find new indie games, much less buy them. Steam changed that whole paradigm. > [PoE performance issues] For what it's worth, it runs like shite on my M2 Max, but flawlessly on GeForce Now. Terrific performance with everything on max.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  Because Steam has taken over some of the most important features of publishers : dealing with distributors and (built-in) advertising. (See also Epic Store which even gives funding !) I would expect almost all of the studios that release on Steam to quickly go bankrupt if prevented to use it. So, ironically, Activision-Blizzard would be more indie than them, but I guess that "indie" also requires a limitation of size. ---- GeForce Now, well duh, have you seen the kind of hardware it provides - that you're paying for ? (For reference, at release PoE1's minimum requirements were : 32-bit single core 1.4 GHz CPU, 2 Go RAM, 0.25 Go VRAM, 5 Go storage.)