I'm Standing Up For Small Games | Cold Take
Vložit
- čas přidán 30. 07. 2023
- Join our Patreon for a week of Early Access to all of our Premium video series including Zero Punctuation, Cold Take, Extra Punctuation, Adventure is Nigh and more! Just $2/month with a 7 day free trial. ►► / the_escapist
This week on Cold Take, Frost takes a look at why small games don't deserve to be overlooked.
Join our growing Discord community: / discord
Subscribe to Escapist Magazine! ►► bit.ly/Sub2Escapist
---
---
The Escapist Merch Store ►►teespring.com/stores/the-esca...
Join us on Twitch ►► / the_escapist_official
Like us on Facebook ►► / escapistmag
Follow us on Twitter ►► / escapistmag - Hry
Give me a five hour game packed with quality content over a giant empty sandbox any day.
I'm inclined to agree. I don't tend to play many games quite that short, but some of my favorite games are about 10-13 hours in length. Dead Space and Doom (2016) both fall into that category, and they were amazing experiences to me worth every hour. I might be a bigger fan of things like FROMSOFT games (which tend to take dozens of hours to complete, Elden Ring takes 100+ hours if you're thorough), but some people then end up playing MMOs for thousands of hours or so on and so forth.
Ultimately, what matters in a game is how much fun you are having and how well you remember it afterwards. There are also so many ways to get countless good games for relatively cheap nowadays that there's no good reason to look for "long" games as though that length alone somehow justifies your purchase.
Mirror's Edge was six hours of impeccably crafted future noir parkour sim and nobody bought it
Amen
@@fearingalma1550As someone who bought Mirror’s Edge, the Parkour gameplay was just okay. But given the premise that it was impeccable, the disadvantage of not being a game that tries to appeal to everyone like a big sandbox game tries is that you are inherently appealing to a smaller audience.
What I said about Breath of the Wilds
Frost is unquestionably the best addition to The Escapist in a long time. I can only hope that he continues to spin gold like this.
I thought this was him but I kept thinking "no way gotta be a similar sounding guy" lol I'm going to have go back and watch his other stuff. I guess smite commentary isn't the only thing he kills
Fros voice fits like a glove to Cold Take, I can really see him talking about small games over a shot of whisky just like the intro
Legitimately my favourite thing Frost has written. Enrapturing and Eloquent. Every piece of information or musing silkily transitioned into the next, wordplay and metaphors abound. And so witty in such a charming way. Amazing job Frost.
I'm sure I'm in the minority but a $20 four hour game that is innovative in either the story or gameplay or both will stick with me much longer than a longer game that's padded out. I thrive for those 2 to 6 hour games I can play through in one sitting and that don't overstay their welcome.
Its fun to drag them out or speed run them cuz i know everything i need to do. Also its short enough i can replay it in an afternoon when i get burnt out on longer games. I love rpgs but theyre so padded lately or i gotta use brain power. If i want my brain off i play a short management lite game.
20 bucks for 4 hours of entertainment is a good deal. Just think about how much a movie ticket costs. Plus, you cannot rewatch the movie for free, but a game can be replayed ad infinitum.
@@leviathan5207 this argument has been repeated to death and the comparison isn't even very good. some games are free and offer 10000+ hours of 'entertainment' - does that mean it is objectively and absolutely the best? or is taste in games subjective... and economy different everywhere? people pay for complete cash grab asset flips and still make this argument as to why it was worth it, it's buyers bias and 100% subjective. it comes down to how much you value your time, how "jaded" you are and how much money you have to spend. alot more complex than a simple money/time formula. that being said it's a luxury entertainment and despite many AAA publishers milk their customers for maximum money they still make massive profits.
Milk inside a bag of milk is one of those games that stuck with me, it’s 40min long to 100% it and costs 1,29$ but its very memorable
@@genesises
You called an argument bad while proceeding to misunderstand it almost entirely…
One of the main reasons I almost exclusively play singleplayer now is specifically because I want games to end. I want to start somewhere, have an experience that is interesting and fresh and then have that conclude in a nice way. Then I can take as much time in between as I like before looking for another experience that totally different.
Agree totally. It's also why I rarely play sequels. I've already had the experience
There's a wonderful feeling when you put a game away not because you felt it was a waste of time but time well spent.
bruh same. With the current trend of never ending franchises(movies, tv series, games too) I'm just very happy when something ends and I know there is no sequel
@@Hundeputzmunterdepends if the "sequel" is more of the same activities or a continuation of a story. A short game isn't always just activities.
It's better to leave your audience wanting for more than to bore them to death
The writing for Cold Take is underrated and a crucial part of the vibe. It hints at the trope without being cliche, and says something meaningful
Hot takes has become a big cliche. Especially since they're almost always about something a lot of people will agree with. Like "I think micro-transactions are actually bad".
I try to think of it like food. AAA are churning out these big all you can eat buffets, and sometimes they get a really good one, but a lot of those places are like the all you can eat breakfast buffet at a chain hotel, justifying their price by saying you can eat as much as you want, forgetting that nobody wants a whole plate of watery, overcooked eggs that have been sitting out for 2 hours. A lot of fans stand up for it because hey, unlimited bacon, what's not to love? Picking out one of the things it got right and ignoring all the things they got wrong.
Small indy titles charging £10-20 for a
I very much enjoy this take.
I've taken the food method of justifying the cost of a game: if it brings me enjoyment for a few hours, I can afford to spend about $20 on it. Food usually just leaves me full for a few hours, so a short, yet significantly engaging game should have the same metric for me.
Yeah. A £60-70 AAA is a Christmas turkey - I better be eating leftovers for a month, but a short £20 game is like buying a cake or a nicer cut of meat - a one time treat.
The cost of your time spent playing the game usually comes out much higher than the game's pricetag
I add up what it would cost to see a movie, including transport and snacks. If I'm willing to spend that much on a 2,5 hour movie, why not slightly more on a 5 hr game? And since I own the game I can replay it and share with friends.
I would actually argue otherwise. I do enjoy a nice bite-sized game with a low price tag, but occasionally one comes along that is short but so sweet I would gladly pay full price for it, especially if it's a game that can bring me back over and over again and stands to or even above the quality I would expect of a big-budget production. Sometimes a short length is the result of a far more refined game. One where every moment is memorable and doesn't contain the low effort filler we are so used to from the likes of Ubisoft. A game that is 6 hours long but has me fully engaged for every second of those six hours is worth no less than a 60 hour game that engages me 10% of the time.
What would you value more, a 10 pound slab of beef with the bone still in, a ton of fat, and several uncooked parts, or a perfectly seared prime steak trimmed of all fat and cooked to perfection?
I always use movie tickets! If a game costs the same and is as good as watching a movie then it's perfectly valid at that price
This show has become my favorite of all the Escapist shows. Incredible naration and very well written!
Frost's takes are so relatable. I like hearing how he approaches his topics.
"Call your shorty unfinished the next time you see her or him, see how it goes over."
Frost out here making the world acknowledge the Short Kings and Queens. You love to see it.
A Short Hike was more memorable and absorbing and happily satisfying for me than all the long trips through Bethesdaville and Ubisoftown. I like a game that’s the right size meal to feel full and not get indigestion or have to leave cold scraps on the plate that I couldn’t get to. Short as it is, I’ve replayed a couple of times to spend more time in the world and relive the feeling of the ending it so expertly builds up to. I might or might not go back again, like a nice vacation spot I went to a couple of times. Oh there you go-he mentioned it, of course.
Similar to A Short Hike is Haven Park. The same bite-sized world with lots to explore and see, and just complicated enough gameplay without getting too heavy.
When you’re gaming on a budget, it’s really easy to fall into a “hours of gameplay per dollar spent” trap. As a broke college student, I do it a lot myself. It definitely takes a bit to train your brain to stop feeling stiffed if a game has a single digit hour count, no matter how great those few hours are.
A great take that I've had the pleasure of experiencing myself.
Journey was my first taste of a short, but beautiful game. Beating it in about an hour, then once more in even less time. However the second time I met white and gold cloaked player that stuck with me through the entire game while showing me all the secrets to get my own white and gold cloak. No tutorials, no complex UI, no voice chat. It wasn't needed and was an experience I'll never forget.
"A short hike" gave me a feeling that very few other games had given me, eventhough it only took a single sit down to beat. Thank you for giving me a list of other short experiences!
Good games are not long or short. They're simply good. If my experience is enjoyable, I don't really care if it's 5 hours or 50 hours. Unpacking is held in the same regard as Breath of the Wild for me because, for the time I spent playing them, I was having an incredibly fun experience.
This is a statement I can get behind. As long as I'm having a good time, the total length of the experience isn't that relevant. Well put.
I love endings! Finishing a story, that’s why I’m really into short games, they provide a narrative with a conclusion. Way better than large games that will never end.
I think the biggest issue with this perceived requirement of games having to be big is you are asking one of two things from the developers trying to make new intelligent games with interesting gameplay loops:
1. Pad out your game with some repetitive gameplay
2. Keep innovating to an almost impossible level to provide an experience that is "sufficiently long" and continuously innovative without the difficulty curve getting too out of hand.
We should be celebrating these people and these games instead of asking them to do more. Its better than a copy pasted sandbox or looter shooter.
I remember recommending the first chapter of Deltarune in a stream with Frost ages ago and for the next three-ish hours everyone was having an absolute blast.
Sometimes bite-sized is best.
Listening to your smoky, silky smooth voice while Bastion footage played over the screen activated something primordial in my brain.
Same
Yahtzee has infected our brains
Short games that are densely packed with fun are great. Especially when you want to go back and replay them. I enjoyed my time with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, but I wouldn't want to replay the whole thing because it's too damn long. Give me a game that I want to play for 100 hours, not a game that I *have* to play for 100 hours.
Preach it
I've found myself, recently, enjoying small games far more than the forever games I played most, like roguelites and multiplayer games. Whether they have a satisfying story or an awesome mechanic or two, I think a satisfying experience hits harder when it doesn't overstay its welcome.
I used to feel a slight disappointment when there’s no more secrets to unravel after finishing a short game. Thankfully now, like movies I have come to understand and find the beauty in experiences that you can only have once.
Obra Dinn is an example I agree with. As of this year, Dredge was one of those games too (Also Citizen Sleeper but that’s an older game that I only played now since it was on sale and the sequel announcement intrigued me)
I just finished Endling and this episode hits the nail on the head. Small games that do something well are so much more memorable and entertaining than large long snoozefests.
Hogwarts Legacy was a 5/10 for me, a beautiful world for the small details but boring and repetitive 6 hours in. By comparison I got the platinum trophy for Endling in 6 hours, it was sweet, both heartwarming and heartbreaking, and told a strong message that will stay with me.
As soon as you started talking about short games, I thought about how much fun I had with Untitled Goose Game when I got it for Christmas last year. Amidst all the 20+ hour games I got that week, Untitled Goose Game made a huge lasting impression on me.
I am so relieved to hear this. I was talking to some folk and friends about massive games lately and just how exhausting it's been to hear - all the time - about yet another "massive 100+ hour experience that's been in the making for 7 years".
These type of projects do have a right to exist. Just look at Elden Ring, Skyrim, Breath of the Wild and they do deliver a worthwhile experience. But it's certainly left this nasty impression on many Triple-A studio's and publishers where now EVERY game has to face up to releases like these.
The ridiculous amount of budget that goes into expensive graphical effects and movie level story productions don't do the game space any favours either. It's made peoples jobs to develop these things so much harder than it already was, way back when. Far too often it results in a product that contradicts why people loved their favourite franchises or why people even played video-games in the first place.
Me personally, I really really just want more games to be simple again.
Thanks for sharing an indie game. My personal favorite "short" game is Journey. You can beat it in like 90 minutes if you know what to do, but it's a friggin masterpiece of sound, visuals and game play. My second favorite is A Short Hike. It can be finished in like 10 minutes if you speed run it, but you can also enjoy it for hours. I liked both so much I bought them twice. Bastion I only bought once, but it was so good I played it to 100% - all challenges, etc. on New Game +.
You see with a shorter game, you tend to replay it more. By contrast, Mass Effect" Andromeda - which I actually liked (don't hate me) - was 80 hours long for me to do just about everything. It was so long I just didn't want to do it again. Destiny and Destiny 2, no way am I going to delete my characters and start over. That would take 100 hours minimum. It's so long, it's an ordeal I don't want to repeat.
The most recent example: Diablo IV is TOO LONG with all it's side content, etc. acting mostly as filler , when it would have been WAY BETTER if it was only a 10-hour campaign before the world opened up to endgame and side content worth doing. You have five classes to experience, so why, God, why would you make it 70 hours to do it once!? I'm never going to try the other four classes, because it's such a slog with the first one.
In closing, cheers to those short masterpieces, Journey, A Short Hike and Bastion. If you haven't tried them, go try them. You won't be disappointed. :)
This is brilliant. I have felt this way for a long time (as I realize now) but it never occurred to me to ponder and coherently formulate the thought. Instead, I felt vaguely guilty when rushing through the second halves of long games despite having enjoyed their first halves. Thanks for doing the heavy thinking for me!
This is why I've found myself retreating into retro games. Despite their flaws, NES games don't take me years to finish. I have my fun and leave in a reasonable amount of time. I'm glad indies can keep this idea alive as AAA continues to balloon scope.
Cold Takes are quickly becoming some of my favorite content pieces on this site. The writing and voice over are in a league of its own.
Pony Island and Superliminal are games I finished in a single evening. Obra Dinn in two evenings. I'm constantly recommending all three to people.
Recently, I freaking adore short games like Journey, Abzû and What Remains of Edith Finch. Give me a game I could finish on a tuesday night while also making me feel something and I'm a happy camper. I don't know if SotC classifies as short but I have played and enjoyed it so many times, I have more time in SotC than some "full-length" games that got boring and tedious halfway.
The eye opener for short games was Brothers: A tale of two sons. Since then I have fallen in love with a lot of 2-8 hour games! Like, Sayonara Wild Hearts is a masterpiece meant to play through in one sitting!
I've always thought of this as 'The Buffet Fallacy'. If a restaurant offers an all-you-can-eat menu, people automatically stop expecting any quality beyond "Doesn't immediately make me hurl" - whereas fancy restaurants serve tiny portions on large plates with ever larger price-tags, because they're supposed to be *experiences,* not *meals.* Apply that same kind of thinking to games, and you'll start shrugging off the low quality of a game because hey, there's hundreds of hours of gameplay in it, so at least you're getting your money's worth, right? While, conversely, a tiny morsel needs to be of superlative quality in order to justify its own existence.
Personally, I don't think it transfers over so neatly. Still, my own preferences run in the same direction for meals and games alike - somewhere inbetween, high enough quality that I don't feel like I'm wasting my time, but also not so tiny that I'm left still hungry when I'm done. A solid, yet tasty meal - or a game that I can play through in a weekend, rather than an afternoon or a month.
I couldn't agree more with this sentiment, I love it when a game takes between 3 and 5 hours because that's usually the sweet spot for developing an idea or telling a story but these days it's so rare to find games that fit that time frame out of a design choice and not because that's as far as they got before the project ran out of steam.
It's partially why I found myself playing a bunch of hidden object games during the last few months, even the longest ones in the genre don't go over 8 hours and they usually get to tell an entire story (prologue chapter included sometimes) and fully develop their puzzle mechanics. I wish other genres that I love did the same more often, for example the only metroidvania I can think of that gets to do its whole thing without reaching the double digits in playtime hours is Gato Roboto.
And yeah, it's not just because I'm in my thirties, I just want to get a whole experience that I can play through in one weekend and then move on to something else instead of having to dedicate two entire weeks to a single game. I wanna experience more, but not just more of the same thing.
As a full-time worker, full-time student, husband, homeowner, and dog-parent, my most limitted resource is time. I still want to play video games, but I'd much rather have a game I can finish in a few hours than one that'll take 80+ hours.
I'm making time for Tears of the Kingdom as best as I can, but i actually managed to _finish_ Dredge. And that was incredibly satisfying.
Excellent as always, and great to see you guys took the feedback and stopped the pre-ad bump. Good stuff :)
Star Fox 64, to me, epitomizes the sweet, memorable high you can get from a shorter gaming experience. The campaign can be finished in an hour if you're good enough, but those 60 minutes are packed so densely with memorable gameplay and story moments that, even 25 years later, I find myself still coming back to it to relive those moments.
Awesome sentiment. Rock on short finishable experiences!
Wow. Such fun format! Great to listen to during morning coffee
Idk i dont like small games because i want to go back to them more than a few times and if the game is small, the replayability goes away much faster than with a longer game. If i were to spend any money on a game, id rather it stick around longer or i might not have spent the money in the first place. Its like sitting in the line of a rollercoaster for 2 hours only to get a 5 minute ride, its just not worth the investment even if the bang is spectacular
Short Games are the cornerstone of video game culture.
They have the freedom to innovate and tell stories within a tight narrative not bogged by the necessities of a long AAA game.
Some of the best, most artistic games have been short, that have brought forth tons of inspiration and innovation to the industry.
Don't sell them short, you might find something incredibly banger
I love this, man. Your point is a good one and it's well explained from start to finish. Keep these cold takes coming.
This was beautifully articulated. Thank you for this pure expression of your appreciation for the art.
This was stellar episode. I learned to love small sized games because my preferences of spending my free time have changed simply. Maybe in future when I will have less to do and computers will be still around, along with archived games (LOL), then I will take a look at Last Of Us, etc.
Very well articulated.
Thank you.
This series is so excellent. The writing and narration are top notch, and the titular cold takes are thoughtful and insightful
I think one of my favorite short games is Before your eyes, barely more than an interactive movie but it still lives in my heart
I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. Especially Portal.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I love games that I can sink 100’s of hours into if I’m having fun doing so.
But I think you nailed it with the ‘short/simple = bad’ which is so not true.
Original Doom. Boot it up and pew pew start shootin. That’s all the plot ya need. Megaman? Jump’n’shoot man. Sonic? ‘Gotta go fast’. Point and click adventure games, Etc etc etc. love those.
Frost, i love this series, and this has gotta be my favorite so far. work like this and ZeroP help me feel less alien. excellent stuff!
Bastion is one of my all-time favorite games.
Love the wordplay!
Smushi Come Home - a little fungi
Stanley Parable - walkery of freewill mockery
ObrabDinn - logical nautical puzzle
❤😂
I never understood judging a games worth by it's playtime. I'd much rather have a short game that is amazing and possibly leaves a lasting impact on me than a super long game that's just ok or good enough to keep me entertained.
Absolutely beautiful rundown - thank you!
"Tech demo" games are probably my favorite game type. Grow Home, Portal, A Short Hike, Pikmin, Heave Ho, What the Golf, Donut County, Ape Out, etc
"I live for hills to die on" that's a great way to put it
For some reason I get the feeling Frost just played through Baldur's Gate 1+2 (with the DLC) in prep for 3.
I work at a grocery store and I am a level designer I honestly come up with games for the little ones to keep them out of trouble. Like who can hold onto the cart for the longest or maybe a math or joke contest game. Honestly games are games as long as they are fun and that's the important part.
This speaks to me. Most of the games I play these days are Indie or Double A; the last Triple A game I bought was Elden Ring over a year ago. There's something very bittersweet and cathartic about finishing a game, especially if it has a good story.
"A two-hour walkery of free-wheeling mockery."
Perfection.
I totally agree with this; my favorite franchises are Mega Man and Yakuza, and I love them both. A huge, overarching game that you get lost in for a while is great, but I'd much rather play a 1-hour game that knows what it wants to be and does what it does well than 80+ hours of boring tedium just to pad the runtime. We've all got backlogs, and sometimes, it's nice not to spend a whole month on a single game.
Viewfinder is one of those games you will think about a long time after playing it.
"I wish I could duplicate this pizza by taking a photo of it" 🤣
"Call your shorty 'unfinished' next time you see him or her...that should go over well". Oof, a point well made.
I picked up Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons in a bundle last year. Loving that ICO-like puzzling with half of the controller devoted to each of the characters.
Well paced and ends on a high note, all I need.
Another banger video with the amazing voice as always
I would try Contrast. It's a puzzle platformer based on shadows through light projection. It also has a French noir look to it.
This was an incredibly good episode. Like they're all good, Frost is becoming the heir apparent if Yahtzee ever retires. But this one is probably the best one yet.
Great topic and great video.
I really liked Viewfinder as well, such novel games aren't made every day
Preach! It’s stunning to me how many people expect a game to keep them engaged and in content for literal weeks.
For some, being “short” is the gravest sin.
Stray is a very good short game, which does its selling point very well: You play as a cat going on an adventure.
Might be your best video Frost! Love seeing the channels offerings expand and let talents like yourself get a chance to share your thoughts.
Very few things are written in a way that make me re-read the sentence in appreciatiob. That + Frost's voice make me yearn for such combination a lot more than I am a master of.
I played through Journey once. One afternoon after I got off early from work. I still think about it.
Video dances around a simple formula: quality X quantity. High quality and low quallntity makes for a good game, sure. But no competition for high quality and high quantity. Or even decent quality high quantity. The concluding point that low quality low quantity means no harm done just illustrates this - because it also means high quality low quantity leaves much less of an impact.
About short games:
I think why The Storyteller got backlash for its short gameplay length, despite being rather well-made were for two reasons:
1. It just ended. There was probably much more you could do with the concept and many felt it didn't explore all its potential.
2. It was in development for 15 years with 10 years of the development being public. For that amount of development length, just a few hours felt a bit short.
Small game I recently played with a whole lot of charm and heart was Lil Gator Game. Spent a few hours with it, and had a heart-meltingly good time that I will never forget. It is about the impact it makes, not about how long it takes to make it.
My hands-down pick for best game of all time is The Outer Wilds. ~20 hours and next to no replay value. I played it, I loved it, and I left feeling satisfied. Then, as a bonus, I got another short taste with DLC. It's great.
You need to try Unpacking. One of my favorite short indie game in the past 5 years.
Smaller games are also the easiest to replay. I have some really huge games on my backlog that I know I'll love, like Persona 5, that I haven't gotten around to, but I never really need to justify spending time doing another run of a Mega Man title, and the original Pikmin is the entry I've spent the most time in, since that's the only one I can clear in a few hours.
i think its a genre thing. Most of these smaller games are slow paced walking sims with puzzles and reading as their primary mode of entertainment. Videogames became popular from action. The internet allows walking sim fans to have their niche communities, but a niche is still niche. You cant expect your average cod/madden/fifa/fortnite player to want to take a slow stroll before running into a puzzle that theyll probably need a guide for.
I'm with you. I love a small game I can play from start to finish in a weekend, completely immerse myself then done. Totally explore what a specific mechanic can offer without diluting it by mixing in others. Shout out to Abzu and boomerang X
What Remains Of Edith Finch is the perfect example. I finished it in one evening, but it gave me so many emotions that hardly any big game ever gave.
My friend, your videos are an absolute-fucking-joy.
Something not mentioned is the lengths publishers, developers, and even localizers took to discourage rentals of their games in the 80s, 90, and probably the 00s. If the game could be rented and played to completion in a weekend, it would threaten threaten revenue as fewer consumers would purchase a new copy of the game. This became more acute for niche titles with smaller customer bases and low production run titles. The common countermeasures were to increase the length, difficulty, and/or grind of the game. In Japan, the industry managed to lobby in a law banning video game rentals; however, they couldn't pull this off in other markets due to the first sale doctrine. When games from the rental-less Japanese market came to North America, localizers would tweak games that would be most affected by the rental market.
Small games have a right to exist. I really loved Event[0], and that game was only 3.2 hours long.
My problem with Viewfinder's length is that there really wasn't enough time spent to explore all of its mechanics. A huge proportion of the puzzles are "lets explore exactly this mechanic in isolation" and we never needed to combine different mechanics to solve a puzzle. Even at the very end it's essentially tying up 10 mini-puzzles in a row that can all be solved in isolation (all you need to remember to do is conserve resources between sub-puzzles). As a result, I spent maybe the first 2-3 hours thinking "ok I'm being eased into the mechanics of the game via some easy puzzles" only for there to not really be much meat on the bone at the end. In addition I had seen some gifs of the game circulating on twitter months before it launched, and I didn't realize that those gifs were spoiling a significant # of puzzles/discoveries in the game.
When I look at my list of favorite games, I have to admit most of them are games in which I have 40+ hours. Celeste, Dota 2, Dark Souls 1, Elden Ring, FTL, Factorio, Hades, Into the Breach, Civ 3, Sim City 4, Minecraft, Starcraft 2, Stardew Valley. Most of the "short" games I enjoy are in a 7-10 hour range, like Katana Zero, Hotline Miami, Obra Dinn, Undertale, Transistor. That basically means that if you want to be a really great 3 hour game, it's like you have to be twice as good as Undertale. I'm not even sure that's possible, but I'm open to be proven wrong.
What a fantastic thinker. I love this guy.
I love shorter games, and I get the feeling that they're considered more 'artsy' than huge AAA 'corporate' games. Which is weird because in other media, like film, books, albums, shorter seems synonymous with 'selling junk for a quick buck', and its the longer titles that get the prestige.
My favorite games right now are indies. All things being equal in terms of my interest in the came concepts, I'll buy an indie over an AAA everytime. I can get the AAA in a while after they've had a dozen bug patches and a deep discount for the Winter sale.
Makes me want to make a game that gets talked about on this series
Can't agree more. Ive done my time in the Assassins Creed, Far Cry Bethesda world of endless games that take a 5k walk between story beats. One of the reasons I still trumpet Game Pass is because its created a platform for people to be willing to try out and then recommend these smaller games. I wouldnt have ever tried Exo One because I hadnt heard of it, but now I look back on it as an enjoyable and almost zen 2-hour experience. Hyper Light Drifter is one of my favorite games of all time not because it's long or sucked up all my time, but because it made me feel things.
Handheld has done so much for smaller games. I owned Hotline Miami on steam, but it was on the Vita that I finally played it and fell in love with it. Same with Bastion and Rogue Legacy and Limbo. The Steam deck does a lot for smaller games these days I think, and so does the Switch; RIP vita.
Frost, you are the best. Keep it up
They say "tech demo" but those games which really stick with us and survive the years are those that broke the mold in such a way that they cannot be easily repeated.
I'm currently playing through Divinity: Original Sin 2 and every time something with that floor/paint system they have in this now 8 year old game works flawlessly I am just so impressed. Is Divinity 2 a great game? yes. Does it also have new mechanics and interesting ways to play never before seen in an CRPG? Also very much yes. I think that it's 100 hr plus runtime is awesome, but I also see why that may turn some people off of it. It's just as good as any Obra Dinn, Portal, Parable, FTL or Fez in my book.
I think the problem now is that many games no longer innovate - just copy. They don't do enough to really earn their right to be. I'd rather have ten good games a year than a thousand okay ones.
I’ve been really burnt out on procedurally generated levels the past few years. It killed me to see Shovel Knight Dig take this route when one of my favorite things about the games in Treasure Trove were the small handfuls of densely-packed, smartly-designed levels. It’s one thing to make a small game and make it well, it’s another to try to stretch a small game by making it “infinite.”
It is true, though, it’s far harder to embrace a 200-hour experience at 40 than it is at 25. Noughties me would have been more than happy to lose myself in something, and I still can today but it comes with a very real feeling that I’m wasting my limited time on this planet.
I've always loved short games just as much as long games with NG+ mechanics.
if a game can nail what it's going for then it could be a 2 hour game or 200 hour game and I'll still find the same level of enjoyment - either condensed or stretched out
Shout out to the Frog Detective trilogy, all 3 can be completed within a day and are a right laugh.
I'd be lying if I said I don't want games that I can play for a long time. But that never means "the game needs to take at least X hours to finish or it's not worth my time." If a game is good and it takes about 20 hours to finish, that's fine, means I've got something that will last me several days or even a couple weeks if I get sidetracked often enough. If a game is good and it takes 10, 5, or even 1 hour to complete, it means I have something I can easily return to play again whenever the mood strikes. The whole appeal of the roguelike genre, one of my personal favorites, is that many of them can give you a campaign that takes 20-90 minutes to complete, but it's built to be replayed a thousand times over. A smaller time investment in a game doesn't mean there's less value in that game, it means you don't need to hem and haw over whether you really want to play it again from the start.
My favorite AAA example, and a series I've loved all my life, is Metroid. All of the main games are *built* so they can be completed in 2-4 hours (the Prime series about 8-12 hours, mostly from slower movement speed), but everyone's first time playing is going to be spent exploring, not worrying about rushing things. You go into this alien environment and get immersed in the world, you fight dangerous creatures, you find secret upgrades, you learn the flow of the whole game and enjoy the experience. After you've completed it, you let that experience settle a bit. Then, you want to go back. Now you know where some secrets are, you know how boss fight patterns work, and you might have some ideas for tricks you can pull off and when you could do them. My first time playing the latest game, Dread, I finished in less than 9 hours, and I immediately wanted to try again because I *knew* I could beat it in under 4, so I did. A few times in a row. And now I have another game I can just pick up and play through when the mood strikes.
I have played portal and portal so many times and I enjoy it so much from the get go even knowing all the solutions. When I replay long games I can't help but feel a little bit of dread because I know this game is gonna take a while to get good. Short games don't really have the option of a slow start and they are better for it