NEOPHYTE'S PROFILE

Right, let's do this.

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Recommended Reading:

5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted by David Wong of Cracked.com

This is a stupid article. Not because of it being wrong (it is actually correct), but it's not like there is some secret crack that game developers put into their game so that whenever somebody sniffs it they are instantly addicted. All 5 of those points could have been condensed into one simple point.

A game called Counter-Strike is completely devoid of every one of those points. So why is Counter-Strike fun? Not only is it fun because it nails its mechanics down to pinpoint accuracy, but it's fun because of the competitive nature and its community. This is also why every other mmo that competes with WoW fails. You can add all the crack you want, but that is not what brings a player back to your game. Go ahead and hire a psychologist for your game, but that's not what ultimately hooks players.

I think Kentona is right about the fun. I find things that I find fun and put them in. I'm not gonna say why I think my game is fun because other than close friends, nobody has touched it. But I can act like I know what I'm talking about, okay? I think the fun comes from certain mechanics of a game. Mass Effect 2 is better than Mass Effect 1 because BioWare had the balls to strip away two average mechanics and make one really good mechanic that works a lot better. Rather than trying to do a million things at once and trying to cater to all audiences, I think the key is finding the one key strength of your game and pushing it to its absolute limit. That's what Call of Duty does. That's what Puzzle Quest does. That's what Street Fighter does. And that's why when you sometimes play a demo for a game, it never feels as good as the full experience.

Find the one key mechanic and drive it into the ground. Watch this nerdy guy to see what I'm talking about.

Wow, massive improvement in Zack and Dante.

That's really cool.

Speaking of commercial rm games, Whisper of a Rose finally got released.

Yeah, the dude that sold his game for $20 when it was completely broken and was unbeatable. He comes back a year later saying "well it was broken because i put more effort in than everybody else" and puts a smiley face at the end of every post he makes now. :)

I don't see how you could sell a game that you haven't even playtested once. If this was anything other than the rm community he would have been torn to shreds. I honestly don't care how good that game is. :)

This game looks pretty incredible.

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I like that Golden Sun puzzle with the statues, but is there any indication given beforehand that you can read their minds? Who would think to cast mind read on an inanimate object? It seems like one of those annoying adventure game situations where you have to endlessly rub spells and items together until you stumble on the one that works, which is bad puzzle design IMO.

It's the last dungeon in the game. And the game is like Zelda, you get these abilities one at a time and you learn their mechanics. You mind read inanimate objects all the time in the game. There's a whole part of the story that tells you how and why you can do this.

The games I mentioned have a bone structure in which they can build up their design. You constantly use these skills and learn their use, whereas in other RPGs you just run into a switch or riddle puzzle. There's nothing to learn, you can't apply what you learned in the last puzzle with something further down the road. That's bad design. It's disjointed, clumsy, and doesn't work. If every other mechanic of your game has some sort of progression (leveling up, learning new skills, etc), there's no reason why you can't apply that to this as well.

That's why that Lufia one is bad. It throws everything you learned out the window. But I'm pretty sure they just wanted you to kill yourself when trying to solve that.