SuperBiasedMan

Ah, time for me to finally play a bit of this Two Brothers game. I've heard so much praise about the story. 2 minutes into the game, character referred to only as Loving Wife is fridged. Jesus video games.

Yeah I too would love a discussion on the game I'll never bother playing. Hide behind a warning or whatever to keep the people who care safe, I'd like to be spoiled.

The Oscar/awards comparison to GOTYs is interesting. When I first heard of GOTYs I had thought they were a small set of awards. Maybe that was true at the time but now there's so many. Any decent AAA game is essentially guaranteed to pick one up somewhere. It doesn't feel like a special prestige at all, just a way to score points you can quote on the steam page. I'd be more interested if the sheer volume if it highlighted a range of games, but alternatively I'd like a small selection of games where it seemed like the GOTY meant more than the way things are now.

Seriously Undertale = GOTY

Oh man, the user experience of installing and opening Game Maker is dire. Does anyone know how I might change the theme of the UI at least?

I grabbed that partly for the licence but also it should be fun to gander at the source code of them too.

Yes, that's definitely what it's going for. Maybe they had a marketing campaign that extended back years and into dreams?

LinkedIn has a very high opinion of me because of how many friends(/total strangers that added me) blindly endorse me for skills that I'm not really deserving of.

That really sucks, but it sounds so backwards to me for drivers licences to be more ubiquitous. I always have to use my passport as ID, I have nothing else remotely official.

But that mindset disregards people as unique individuals? You can't just get an understanding of the multitiudes of aspects to someone's identity and then say you know them. That's just not how it works at all? At least that's how I feel. Attempting to apply scientific rigor to understanding a human being seems totally backwards to me.

You don't have to take any work as gospel, just a new perspective to view your world with and a new type of person to try empathise with when you get to know their world intimately.

Yeah, the news does do the same here, specifying the irish numbers as if that's the true tragedy. Even in the least insidious ways, it's about how closely the victim can be identified with. I could maybe see American exceptionalism skewing it worse there, but I think it's a common mindset even if it's not pronounced. ...but maybe I have an overly western sort of imperialist view on this.

I've been thinking and googling about this more, it's in my brain. I have found out about that corrupting end game you mentioned Dewar. It does exist but would be very hard to get accidentally. A mild experiential spoiler: It's not entirely an irrevocable game breaking thing, but it does have a significant effect on future playing. I wont say any more. Other thing I discovered when replaying a bit. (super deep spoiler involving a less primary character)

I finished Undertale and am thoroughly pleased. Possibly my favourite game this year. At least try out the demo here, it's basically just the first area of the game and is a perfect introduction to the game.

One of my endings involved a hard reset that corrupted my save within the fiction of the game and made me progress through some stuff until a point at which it returned to 'normal', so that might be what's happening here. To be honest I could possibly imagine this game actually doing what you're afraid of though. If it is persistent, you could buy directly from his site for the Humble download link since I presume not using cloud saves will allow you to just manually remove your save. Also of course, you should always try buy from the creator's own site since they get more money that way (and they usually offer steam keys with that purchase as well).

EDIT: I might write more about this later but the spoilered edit above reminds me of how much I enjoy when games can do a good job of abstracting away from meaning for the sake of creating the intended experience. The battle system in this doesn't make a lot of literal sense, much like any game mechanic. And this game does a good job of disregarding a sense of physical reality for the sake of get across the feelings and message they need. Particularly with things like the above case, and just the very notion that you fight by moving a little heart around and avoiding enemy attacks while trying to intuit how to placate the enemy. Narratively all that matters is that you're doing a difficult task that you can just about overcome with enough determination. The literal reality of what you do isn't important. And this game extends that in small plot points that work better than you'd expect when reading it on paper. EDITEDIT: Also this game was actually quite hard,* kinda surprised by that though it fits thematically. I expected it to be more easy to be cutesy, but that's not what this game is really trying to do ultimately. * Hard as someone who played a pacifist, may be different otherwise.

Ungh. I finished it last night. It was so good. The ending dragged much more than I expected, I actually made stayed up later than I should have as a result... but it really comes together. I'm curious how divergent the possibilities are. I kinda want to try playing through where I (super ending spoilers) I'm so pleased though. The game delivers so well on the central theme of it. Both mechanically and storywise. And it is legitimately a theme I've seen as woefully absent from games (at least... in the sense that no-one had tackled it and done a consistent satisfactory job). More detail, super spoilery So good.

This is why I regularly cull podcasts if I'm finding myself not even a tiny hit excited when a new episode has appeared. I was surprised how easily I'd realise I don't care about the podcast just from asking myself "Why aren't I happy to see a new episode from them?"

If this is what you think then you wouldn't like the full game I guess.

I've played further and died other places just fine without it saving me, I think the tutorial zone is just meant to be forgiving while you work out the mechanics with Flowy. And I think the latter case is purely for story reasons. It's funny you call it cheating, because it's the game making it easier for you, not screwing you over. Usually people think of cheating as taking the advantage from them. Though if you wanted a hard experience I could see it being cheaty feeling. I don't think it's a super hard game, even if I died a few times.

I'm about 2/3 hours in, which I think is halfway? This is so damn good. I like having a game that is actually funny, supports their mechanical system with a justified narrative and at the same time that system feeds into giving the narrative meaning. When a game actually manages to make you think your choices have meaning it's done the job well. But honestly so few games actually do that. I have a minorly spoilerly example from the third area in the game What way did you play Tanukitsune?

Instead of butting it I suggest you buy Undertale. It's funny, charming and has a good RPG system. I won't spoil much about it but there's a free demo you could try out. It's basically the game's opening and it sets the scene well. (note I have not finished it)

I have a lot of stuff to say but I'm on my phone right now. After dinner I'm gonna splurge my thoughts on here.

This thread is super cool. Do you have any intention to include some of the theory behind the physics in the game itself? This is not at all going to happen early, but it could be a fun lore style addition to include especially as it applies to both real life and the game.

I was wondering about this but am averse to spoilers for True Detective since I've watched none of it, are they done with that podcast? If that's the case I'd just start watching now but I'd wait if the Thumbs plan to continue it after a break.