NTC3'S PROFILE

OK, then.

I should also say that a recent example of how darkness might be handled is provided by 2Dark, a recent game from the guy who invented survival horror all the way back then. I have finished watching a playthrough of it yesterday, and while I think it's very mediocre on the whole, it's notable that it has a plot about child abduction, cannibalism, pedophilia and other related stuff, and it didn't draw any controversy to speak of, and reviewers generally appreciated the boundary-breaking, while lamenting many other things. I am not sure whether people necessarily took it all seriously, since it ends up rather more absurd then Outlast, etc. was, but it's still a game where children can be killed right in front of you if you screw up, after all. (You can even end up shooting a young, abused girl from a cannibal family with no apparent consequences, and I think at least some reviewers ended up doing that because they were too frustrated by stealth.)

author=RedMask

author=NTC3
That just creates a lot of tension, because first, any item you get might be blessed (good) or cursed (welds to your body and cannot be taken off unless you get some holy water or unicorn horn, I think). That is obviously punishing even if the item is otherwise innocuous

Yeah I never got why game devs do the whole cursed equipment thing. That just punishes experimentation which isn't fun. And I think games should tell the player what an item does though some amount of mystery is alright.
Anyway I got a poor man's phone so I couldn't play that game but it was interesting to read your thoughts on it.

Well, the whole point of Nethack is that the reward your character is chasing is so great - the Amulet of Yendor, which will literally turn you into an fully immortal demigod once delivered to your god - that the challenge should correspond to that. It's exactly because you are still a wretch who is so utterly vulnerable throughout the game that beating it is so rewarding (for the people who basically turned it into a lifestyle to win.) In particular, I think cursed equipment emerged after the original creator first added blessed weapons/items, since it's a common thing in fantasy, and then decided they needed to be counterbalanced by curses. (Counterbalancing is kind of the game's thing: it even includes rust monsters and disenchanters, which deal no damage and whose sole purpose is to weaken your equipment by denying them those positive properties.)

Anyway, identifying cursed stuff is not that difficult: altars have a 100% success rate at showing what's blessed and what's cursed (and you'll usually find one in the first 3-5 levels, perhaps even before going to Minetown, which always has one.) Otherwise, you drop that thing on the ground, and try to make your dog/cat/horse (you'll always have at least one of the three with you at the start, and they can stick around for quite a while when taken care of) walk over it. If they go through it (especially if they pick it up), then it's fine. If they seem to go anywhere but there, it's probably cursed. If you managed to get "|pet| moves only reluctantly" message, then it's definitely cursed. Some stuff being cursed also means you can just leave some drops be, and not worry about them being picked up (as then they'll weld to that enemy creature instead.)

author=LockeZ
Nethack is older than Windows, I promise your system can handle it.

Well, I mainly play the mobile port (iNethack2, I think it's called), both because I kinda like it being on the move, and because the touch interface is often a lot more convenient. You just tap to move in any direction, or tap inventory/actions/# commands and quickly get a list of all those to choose from. Probably the one thing that could persuade me to play on PC is if there was a mod making Minetown more like a normal town, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I accept pretty much all the other annoying things in the game because they add to its unforgiving atmosphere. The way a supposed town still has a ton of hostile monsters roaming whenever they like and how they like (I once got killed by a giant there, of all things, and recently by a mumakil) with the Town Watch doing nothing and only being interested in killing you if you break any of their semi-realistic rules just actively counters it. I suppose I wouldn't mind the social side of things to be more developed in general (like how being a gnome only means they won't attack you on sight and still doesn't even get a different remark from them.) Make the game you wish to see in the world, right?

Oh well, then I suppose it's entirely your choice as to what you feel inclined to portray. You do have the raw capability to show quite a lot, as already evidenced by the screenshots.

author=orange-
The thing is - I’m afraid it’s all for the joke. The events happening in the game are so absurd in their shock value that it becomes humor of sorts. Even if everything is very much straight faced in the game. It’s not much different from the offensive shock humor running rampart in memes and youtube today.

So, what you've been working on has gradually turned into an adaptation of FATAL, and now you are realising the finished game (whose content is already prompting you to post such contradictory blogs for public's perusal) will likely come across as clearly half-hearted teenager's concept of grimdark, and will probably prevent anyone from taking whatever else you make seriously, ever again? Well, I suppose it's best to have such realizations early on, at least.