Ok! I’m going to talk about demos today. Here is my post from yesterday in which I derialed myself mightily. It has one hell of a footnote, which is so me. But first, let’s talk about the Steam Next Fest in general. Like many things, it has outgrown its usefulness, and now, there are literal thousands of games “featured” in the fest. As you can probably guess, that’s pretty useless and makes it very daunting to find something worthwhile.
What I did was just go through what Steam showed me as quickly as possible, adding several demos one after another. Many of them were cute and cozy games, and there were a few that looked…dodgy. Not dodgy as in scammy, but dodgy as in, “These are not ready to be shown.”
Side note: We know I love me a cozy indie game. I am willing to overlook a lot in an indie game because I know they are often made by less than ten people. And if they have heart, well, I don’t mind if the gameplay is a bit janky.
However. There is a difference between a janky game with heart and just a bad game. Or rather, a game that is rushed to release. Look. I get it. The market is so tough right now. Getting a game any kind of traction these days is a fool’s errand. If you have your eye on the Steam Next Fest, you are going to do your damnedest to get your game ready on time.
You have to be clear-sighted, though. If your game is not ready to go, though, you might actually do more damage to your game than benefit it by pushing it out early.
Here’s where I’m going to say something that’s not very nice.
Some games are shit. They just are. They are clearly meant to be pushed out as quickly as possible with no thought as to is the game actually good or not. There are some companies that churn out the same game over and over again at a quick pace. This was something I saw a lot of in casual gaming, but I never thought it’d creep over into ‘hardcore’ gaming.
Let’s be real, though. The cozy game genre is easy to exploit for devs who are just pushing out the same game over and over again–with maybe a palette swap if they’re feeling frisky.
I’m including a video below by Ellen from Outside Xtra, titled, “I’m Done With Cat Slop”. She’s a huge cat lover as am I, and since she’s a pretty well-known YouTube games content creator, she gets people sending her tons of cat games.
She did a video playing cat slop games (as she was calling them, as a send up of friend slop games), and this video was one in which she explained why she wasn’t going to do that any longer (after showing her playing several cat slop games).
I’m firmly on her side. I have played so many games with cats in them, and there are several of them that are pure shit. Today, I tried one that was about cats and sushi. It was horrible, and more to the point, it didn’t work. First time, the cats did come to the sushi conveyor belt to order sushi. Second day, they did not. Nor ever after that.
Not to mention, it looked shitty and should not be sold for even a dollar. I gave up after a few minutes and moved on.
Speaking of looking shitty, let’s talk about graphics. I’m not someone who cares about fidelity very much. I don’t care if each blade of grass waves in the wind individually. I definitely don’t care about ray tracing (by don’t care, I mean I hate it). I care more about the feeling of the art (the vibes, as it were) than how photorealistic it is.
My two absolute favorite (non-From) games in the world are Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall) and Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games). The art styles of both are just so stunning, but in very different ways. The former is saturated with vibrant and dark colors that really add to the wistfulness of a dying Rust Belt town.
The art was so intense, yet lovely. I adored being in the world, but it was also so sad, too. I may go back to this game one day, but there’s baggage with the game that I don’t want to deal with. Sigh.
As for the second game, the scenes are hand-drawn, and the colors are still vibrant, but they seem softer in a way. It’s hard to explain. I always think the game is pastel, but when I revisit the trailers, it’s not. It just feels pastel, if that makes sense.
Neither game is anything close to realistic, and I love them more for it. I don’t care if it’s 4K or not (it’s not) or if there’s ray tracing or not (there isn’t). All I care is they evoke a feeling deep inside me that is complex, sorrowful, and makes me want to cry for poth happy and sad reasons.
Back to demos. There is so much slop out there. Again, I’m differentiating between a small team in which the devs are working hard, but may not be quite there and games made with no purpose other than to get a few buck out of pepole. And not even being good or fun in the meantime.
Yesterday and today, I played about a half-dozen demos from games I just installed on impulse. These weren’t ones that I had any prior interest in, so it’s like going to the store and just grabbing a couple items from the front stands without actually checking them out.
Yes, it’s a fun way to see what’s out there, but most of it was shit. A few of them had to do with cats. One definitely fit Ellen’s definition of cat slop. The other one, I think, was actually trying to be a good game, but it didn’t succed.
Here are a few pet peeves when it comes to games. One, they don’t let me set the volume from the start. This was someting I ran into a lot in the casual game world, and it’s been creeping into the ‘hardcore’ game world, probably because casual games are now available on Steam. The line is getting blurry, and there are both pluses and minuses to this.
One demo would not let me start the game without first wishlisting the game on Steam or sayning I had already wishlisted it. Which…just no. Or if there was a way to get around that, it wasn’t immediately obvious. I really did not appreciate that, though i could not tell if it was done purposely or they just couldn’t code properly.
This was a recurring theme, by the way. Games in which I was not sure if it was bad coding or purposeful. Either way, any game that does not tell me immediately what the controls are is a no-go. Again, I’ve played many of these kinds of games. If there are no instructions and I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be doing, then I’m just not going to play the game.
Sometimes, I can’t even find a way to quit the game. In that case, I alt-tab out of the game and then shut down the window. And I never fire it up again.
More tomorrow.