https://i.ibb.co/6vLDK1S/Screenshot-2024-02-26-at-12-44-02.png

not morally egregious per se but rather a depressing culmination of two centuries worth of design trickery and (d)evolving cultural/social tastes and otherwise exists as insipid casinocore autoplaying bullshit that leaves you feeling the same way as you did moments after blasting rope to that fucked up mmm ice cream so tasty thing you found in the middle of a reddit doomscroll. this game should come with a contractual agreement binding its devotees to never speak prejudicially about mobile games or musou or vampire survivors or people whose lives have been ruined by industrialised gambling practices. you seen that casinos have RFID wristbands now that let you re-ante by just waving your hand across the slots? goes great with the simulated day/night lighting and complementary alcoholic energy drinks. endless hours of fun! fuck the review man let's talk the end of the world in the comments below

I played this cause I grew up watching Alex Rochon and other countdown community people on youtube. It's mid but kinda charming because it's a time capsule of specific time in the internet. I wish there was a guide for this game cause some of the side quests are so vague and confusing i gave up on them like the gravestone quest.

The only reason you should play this is if you were someone who knew what the countdown community was or if you were a user of the Chaos Theater forums and you are nostalgic for those times.

STOP THINKING ABOUT YOUR GAMES AS GIMMICK FIRST! GAMES ARE SYSTEMS, NOT PARTY TRICKS. THEY HAVE TO WORK WITH CONCERTED FORCE.

I'm so utterly exhausted with these indie teams thinking they've skirted the curve by coming up with a non-direct approach to game design because of their one tiny inversion to their genre's formula. Like, yes, it is better to put thought into your game's intellectual play, committing its expression to something expressively unique and utterable only within games - but if you design from an academic's abstract perspective first, as though your mechanics are the rosetta stone for dissecting why people gravitate towards any individual game, then you're sacrificing your art to the altar of skinner box games just the same as all the devs who sell out to work on live service trash. Games are play forward; the interaction is what translates the design to us, not the other way around. It is in transforming the play through nuance that the nuance sings - in Tunic, the combat being poorly implemented and simplistic does not shockingly transform when it becomes poorly implemented and complicated. The same with economy, the same with traversal, the same with puzzle design.

If you wouldn't want to to do it without the gimmick, then it isn't worth doing.