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Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

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Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#61

Post by chongli »

uses wrote: post #26
skyyler wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, times have shifted, and meta-progression is usually considered an aspect of modern roguelikes. There was a trend of calling them "rogue-lites" but that's faded and now games like ADOM and DCSS are "Classic roguelikes" It's not a hard and fast rule or anything, just what I've observed in gaming discussions.

Indeed, the distinction used to be useful. But now, it's not useful because honest-to-God roguelikes are just not getting made outside hobby projects. Meanwhile, roguelites have become a core pillar of modern gaming, artistically and commercially. I think calling roguelites roguelikes is perfectly fine. It's simply what the genre became.

I prefer that they be hobby projects or solo-developer crowdfunded efforts. Generally, I find that the traditional (waterfall) lifecycle of commercial games is not conducive to a good Roguelike. This is because the game is quickly shifted into maintenance-mode after release and stops receiving major updates soon after.

Roguelikes really benefit from long-term development and continual balancing, new content, and quality of life updates in response to feedback from players. These are games meant to be played and mastered over the course of several years. Traditional commercial game releases are much better suited to one-and-done style single play-throughs.

The other major commercial model, the subscription- or microtransaction-supported long-term game development, such as you'd see with popular multiplayer games like Fortnite or League of Legends, would seem to be a viable alternative for Roguelike development. I don't think it would work out in practice, however, since most gamers don't seem to be interested in playing a game to mastery unless it involves a high level of competitive play.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#63

Post by Anon1096 »

detaro wrote: post #21
gs17 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tutorial note cards strongly recommend using a pen+paper while playing This is my largest complaint. The game should really have a notepad built in. It doesn't need to write down clues for me, but it would be nice to not have to find where my notes were if I put the game down for a long time. Is it that it's a console release?

if you play on PC through Steam, Steam at least has a notes function in the overlay nowadays: https://www.polygon.com/2023/4/28/23702656/steam-beta-update...

I don't recommend using it, there's unfortunately a bug where your notes will not save randomly and just disappear between sessions. Which for a note taking feature basically makes it usuable. You can find discussions about the bug on steam ex https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/6679490218977...

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#64

Post by npinsker »

jncfhnb wrote: post #57
npinsker wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people do this, no? It doesn't seem more offensive than any of the other handful of self-submissions per day; certainly it's less so to me than all those tech blog posts by companies. Also Blue Prince is a puzzly, escape-roomy game that's one of the highest-profile indie releases this year, so probably more in tune with HN's taste than most games. I like that a link aggregator serves to surface things that p…

Do a lot of people do this? I don’t actually feel like this happens much here. Idk. I feel it has a bad smell to be doing this at a game’s release with a review copy. Again I’m willing to believe in good faith that there aren’t behind the scenes incentives here. But it would feel a lot more genuine to drop this at least a few months later imo. It _feels_ like advertising. And frankly the juxtaposition of the glowing…

That makes sense. The juxtaposition isn't just OP, though: Blue Prince is an extremely highly-rated game by critics (https://www.metacritic.com/game/blue-prince/critic-reviews/), and will likely be one of the three highest-rated games this year, but has 80% positive reviews on Steam at time of writing, which is very low. On Steam it isn't even in the top 3 on its single day of release.

I'm not exactly sure what leads to such a dramatic disconnect. Maybe game reviewers just value different things than the general population.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#65

Post by tstrimple »

DanielVZ wrote: post #43
square_usual wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally have the same frustration with roguelites as you seem to: every time I start a run, it feels like I'm gambling whether I'll have any fun at all. A bad seed or start can mean losing in ways that feel unfair or boring, like in balatro if you get a bunch of bad hands and bad jokers, you struggle through rounds and hands until you either lose or get an interesting combination. I don't need that kind of gambli…

One common mantra about most roguelites is that every run can be a successful run if you play your cards right. Some will be harder, in others you’ll become unstoppable, but the general idea is that once you get good enough you should be able to win runs. I’m not sure if this holds and is extremely dependent on how balanced the game is, but I think it’s a sane way to approach the genre since it pushes you to improve…

One of the key differences between rogue lites and rogue likes is meta progression. In most roguelites you're able to unlock things and get more powerful for future runs. In roguelikes you always have the same starting rng. I definitely agree with you that it's all up to the game to balance the progression through both unlocks and skill improvement so it's not entirely rng. But I also don't think many put much effort into "every run is solvable". Especially for roguelikes.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#68

Post by tstrimple »

npinsker wrote: post #4

> I don’t like what they do to me. I shudder to think how they could supercharge builders like Dorfromantik, Carcassonne, and Castles of Mad King Ludwig. A very similar mechanic is used in the popular board game Betrayal at House on the Hill . That game's arguably even worse because it has stat upgrades!

I really want to like the super crunchy board games, but it turns out after 90 minutes of setup no one else wants to play anymore. And it's exhausting being the only person willing to learn the rules to teach everyone else. We literally only setup and played Gloomhaven once. I need a better board game group.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#69

Post by tstrimple »

chongli wrote: post #60
jncfhnb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, idk. Theres an argument to be had that meta progression tends to cap in most of these games so eventually it becomes a stable thing. Although generally I find the meta progression of things goes too far and starts off too weak.

Yes, because the goal of the game designer who adds meta progression is to increase the number of players who actually finish the game, at least when it comes to the "true progression" style meta progression. There is another approach based on unlocks, where the player unlocks new characters or game modes rather than having a single character get more and more powerful with each run. Some people prefer these unlocks…

One thing I like about meta progression is the gradual expansion of the game. It doesn't have to necessarily make everything easier, but it can be a good way to temporarily lock away more complicated features and abilities. For example, unlocking a new class after completing the game with a previous class doesn't necessarily mean the new class is more powerful or will make the game easier. In some cases, the later class unlocks are explicitly more difficult to beat the game with and are unlocked for additional challenge.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#70

Post by esperent »

square_usual wrote: post #13
throwerofstone wrote: post #5

After playing the game for 10+ hours and dropping it out of sheer frustration, I came to the conclusion that I must have been playing a vastly different game than the people praising it. The first hour was great. I was constantly encountering new rooms and solving puzzles. The many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends was annoying, but I still had things to explore in the nex…

I generally have the same frustration with roguelites as you seem to: every time I start a run, it feels like I'm gambling whether I'll have any fun at all. A bad seed or start can mean losing in ways that feel unfair or boring, like in balatro if you get a bunch of bad hands and bad jokers, you struggle through rounds and hands until you either lose or get an interesting combination. I don't need that kind of gambli…

> I still quite like Balatro - when it works it's a blast

I enjoyed Balatro for quite a few hours before I had this problem, which is more than enough for me to call it a good game.

Beyond these first few hours though, you need ridiculously high multipliers to succeed. There's way too many jokers and 90% of them are trash by this point. The ones you need have vanishingly small probabilities, and then you need to add those probabilities together to get the combo of jokers required.

I would start a run, and within the first few minutes I would know that the RNG hadn't given me what I needed, reset, start again, repeat.

I looked up some guides, and they'd recommend using specific legendary jokers, which over my entire time playing (maybe 15 hours?) I didn't encounter even once. The only way to get them would be to play hundreds or even thousands of times.

At that point, it doesn't feel like a game anymore. It feels like a gambling addiction.

For me, that's time to call it quits. But I do wonder if the same people who struggle with gambling addiction in the real world are the ones who continue playing here.

At least with Balatro there is ten hours worth of game before your reach this point.

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