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You know, for younger kids I can see the appeal. They might not have a device they can easily use to go on the internet, so you’d be able to do things your frie

You know, for younger kids I can see the appeal. They might not have a device they can easily use to go on the internet, so you’d be able to do things your friends can’t and vice versa. I’ve long mulled on the idea of some kind of game where large aspects of it are randomized/generated so that no two installations would have the same stuff, recipes, whatever. I think that’d be neat and get rid of the website issue.

jbmny 2y ago
Reminds me of the fatalities in Mortal Kombat growing up. All the regular moves were in the manual, but IIRC the fatalities were not. It was a form of secret knowledge, and it was really cool if you knew one. Granted, this was right before the Internet-connected home computer became ubiquitous.
- Kye 2y ago
  GameFAQs very quickly democratized game knowledge the way Wikipedia did for general knowledge a handful of years later. I learned the infinite 1up stair trick in Mario[0] from a sibling before that, but had the most fun with stuff I could look up. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQCSEcyGQH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQCSEcyGQH4
iamwil 2y ago
Those are rouge-likes. They still have wikis. See Spleunky and Hades.
- squeaky-clean 2y ago
  I've had the same idea as them, they mean something beyond a rogue like. Like here Hades has a wiki list of all "Keepsake" items and their bonuses and abilities [0]. So you can always know the Old Spiked Collar always gives 25/38/50 HP bonus. What if instead of 25 at the first tier, it was a random range from 15-35. What if there was a chance it gave a damage boost instead? Or resistance against physical damage. Or it gave lightning a 30% bonus, or.... Basically everything shuffled and procedurally generated to the degree that 2 players discussing the game would barely have an overlapping experience aside from the general genre being the same. It would be really hard to make it so every playthrough has some semblance of balance though, and for things to narratively make sense, e.g. Iron items should always be stronger than copper items etc. [0] https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/Keepsakes#List_of_keepsakes https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/Keepsakes#List_of_keepsakes
  - rcxdude 2y ago
    Roguelikes still often have a mechanic like you describe: nethack, for example, randomises the descriptions of items, and that can affect how the game plays (because, for example, what material a ring or a wand is made of can affect how it reacts to effects). It's not quite as significant as you are suggesting, but you will find that it is still heavily documented in the game's wiki.
  - tialaramex 2y ago
    If the game is significantly interesting to a sizeable population they will unwind any amount of complexity and randomness. If you think about it, that's what happened to our actual world. If it's a "random range from 15-35" that's what the Wiki will say. Worse, if you've coded this slightly wrong and it's actually 15, 18, or 20 to 35 with no chance of 16 or 19, that will be on the Wiki. If you have much better shot at 30+ if you were holding the "jump" button as you picked the collar, that too finds its way to the Wiki if there are enough players. The exact same thing which drives humans to find out how the hell it's possible for some atoms of the same element to be heavier than others (more neutrons) will also drive players of a very popular game to figure out the fine details of how it works. Don't add balance by the way. In single player games it's probably futile (players will break it anyway) and you may destroy the fun elements in the game in a quest to "balance" it properly, like taking a delicious tart and turning it into mush fit for a baby. Even in a multi-player game, prefer to make everybody unbalanced rather than trying to homogenize them. If rock smashes scissors, but paper wraps rock, and scissors cut paper we've got a game, it's not a very good game, but it's at least a game.
- Auracle 2y ago
  Nah, I was more envisioning something like a multiplayer game where each player has spells they can learn by doing certain joystick/mouse/vr controller movements (or whatever), and both those movements and the spells themselves are uniquely randomized as much as they can be. You’d need to discover what you can do, and at least with a group of friends those spells would be pretty unique to you, along with which ones are easier or harder to do. It probably wouldn’t be balanced but it’d be fun.

jbmny 2y ago

Reminds me of the fatalities in Mortal Kombat growing up. All the regular moves were in the manual, but IIRC the fatalities were not. It was a form of secret knowledge, and it was really cool if you knew one. Granted, this was right before the Internet-connected home computer became ubiquitous.

Kye 2y ago
GameFAQs very quickly democratized game knowledge the way Wikipedia did for general knowledge a handful of years later. I learned the infinite 1up stair trick in Mario[0] from a sibling before that, but had the most fun with stuff I could look up. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQCSEcyGQH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQCSEcyGQH4

iamwil 2y ago

Those are rouge-likes. They still have wikis. See Spleunky and Hades.

squeaky-clean 2y ago
I've had the same idea as them, they mean something beyond a rogue like. Like here Hades has a wiki list of all "Keepsake" items and their bonuses and abilities [0]. So you can always know the Old Spiked Collar always gives 25/38/50 HP bonus. What if instead of 25 at the first tier, it was a random range from 15-35. What if there was a chance it gave a damage boost instead? Or resistance against physical damage. Or it gave lightning a 30% bonus, or.... Basically everything shuffled and procedurally generated to the degree that 2 players discussing the game would barely have an overlapping experience aside from the general genre being the same. It would be really hard to make it so every playthrough has some semblance of balance though, and for things to narratively make sense, e.g. Iron items should always be stronger than copper items etc. [0] https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/Keepsakes#List_of_keepsakes https://hades.fandom.com/wiki/Keepsakes#List_of_keepsakes
- rcxdude 2y ago
  Roguelikes still often have a mechanic like you describe: nethack, for example, randomises the descriptions of items, and that can affect how the game plays (because, for example, what material a ring or a wand is made of can affect how it reacts to effects). It's not quite as significant as you are suggesting, but you will find that it is still heavily documented in the game's wiki.
- tialaramex 2y ago
  If the game is significantly interesting to a sizeable population they will unwind any amount of complexity and randomness. If you think about it, that's what happened to our actual world. If it's a "random range from 15-35" that's what the Wiki will say. Worse, if you've coded this slightly wrong and it's actually 15, 18, or 20 to 35 with no chance of 16 or 19, that will be on the Wiki. If you have much better shot at 30+ if you were holding the "jump" button as you picked the collar, that too finds its way to the Wiki if there are enough players. The exact same thing which drives humans to find out how the hell it's possible for some atoms of the same element to be heavier than others (more neutrons) will also drive players of a very popular game to figure out the fine details of how it works. Don't add balance by the way. In single player games it's probably futile (players will break it anyway) and you may destroy the fun elements in the game in a quest to "balance" it properly, like taking a delicious tart and turning it into mush fit for a baby. Even in a multi-player game, prefer to make everybody unbalanced rather than trying to homogenize them. If rock smashes scissors, but paper wraps rock, and scissors cut paper we've got a game, it's not a very good game, but it's at least a game.
Auracle 2y ago
Nah, I was more envisioning something like a multiplayer game where each player has spells they can learn by doing certain joystick/mouse/vr controller movements (or whatever), and both those movements and the spells themselves are uniquely randomized as much as they can be. You’d need to discover what you can do, and at least with a group of friends those spells would be pretty unique to you, along with which ones are easier or harder to do. It probably wouldn’t be balanced but it’d be fun.