fracture [he/him]

if it’s not worth preserving

IT’S NOT WORTH PURCHASING

rarely, i like to play a fluffy, feel good game with no real stakes. enter: Flynn, Son of Crimson

there is absolutely no chance of anything really bad happening in the game, the worst that happens is your powerful guardian diety dog loses his powers at the beginning of the game (but it’s OK, he just rests until you reclaim his powers and he feels better). you never really feel like anyone is really in danger, you get to play a pretty fun 2d action platforming game, and it has some really fun sections later on that make you feel awesome

it wraps up nicely in probably 20 hours too, if you want to 100% it, so it doesn’t overstay its welcome and lets you experience all of its content with low demands. really a lovely little experience. it’s not pushing the envelope at all, but if you want basically 20 solid hours of lighthearted fun, this is a great way to get it

gonna throw in my caveat here; ITT is a really good co-op game but there’s like a 25% chance the story isn’t for you. it’s the kind of story where, if you think about it too much, you start to realize that the characters do some pretty fucked up stuff including

::: graphically tearing a plush doll apart while it screams for mercy

:::

i don’t want to come across as judgemental if you enjoyed it; i get that some people are gonna find it more slapstick than anything. but it was more than enough to make me and the person i played it with flush it, and i wouldn’t feel right not mentioning it for specifically “uplifting games”

if you can ignore the story, the co-op gameplay is super solid, though

(sorry if the spoilers don’t show up right, my client doesn’t show them properly)

lots of great suggestions in this thread, just wanted to shoutout this little indie i played and had a delightful time with: Flynn, Son of Crimson

it’s a little 2d adventure game with pretty linear progression, although there will probably be some backtracking if you want to 100%. but it’s level based and not open world at all. the movement and combat both feel pretty good, the story is very fluffy and feel good, and you have a giant dog as a pet, what more could you want?

it’s probably like a 15-20 hour game in total, if that. a great time if you want something short, fun, and uncomplicated

beyond the obvious ways this is fucked up, imagining this happening with AI gen text is insane. trying to craft a post to both empathize with another poster, kindly demonstrate flaws in thinking or logic about a point they usually care a lot about, and trying to explain how the different point of view better supports the things they care about it such a monumental effort already that AI just cannot do. no actual persuasion will come out of this (not that a ton happens on the internet to begin with, but even less than that)

and honestly if you’re firehosing people like that, AI is just going to absolutely drown out any actual communication from happening. at some point, we’ll just have bots going to war for us about our points, and no one will be reading it

big shoutout HOTS… i should tap back in… FUCK deadlock (note: this user has not played deadlock)

i would have liked it if this had offered a COVID perspective on communal baths. i’m inclined to think that a hot moist environment is a likely place for it to flourish, and it seems odd to neglect to mention that three years of a pandemic probably had an outsize impact on the number of bathhouses still open in 2022

obviously we probably don’t have a ton of data on how to circulate air and filter COVID out of bathhouses, but i also bet there’s a way to do it in a relatively energy efficient way

anyways, it feels like a major spot that’s lacking in an otherwise informative and well thought out read

really good thoughts and write up that you linked, thanks

that’s YOUR union, go get involved and fix it!

even unions are gonna eventually fall to corruption and laziness if ppl think they’ll solve your problems for you

the union IS you (and your coworkers)

this take in the article was really funny

My guess at the real reason for all this grave dancing is that it feels like a victory over FOMO. If the new $40 game sucks and no one is playing it, I can safely go back to whatever I was playing before without worrying that anyone’s having fun without me.

i don’t know what most people’s reasons for deriving enjoyment from concord’s failure are, but there’s no way FOMO cracks the top 3 lmao

seeing the trailer, i definitely thought it was a bandwagon hero shooter that might have had some creativity if a bunch of suits didn’t say “make it GotG”, but realistically, it launched with little fanfare, in competition with valve’s first new game (beta) in ages. not that it was fated to fail but it didn’t have a lot going for it

it’s an interesting article, but i think the authors are conflating friction for wanting genuine human interaction; its easier than ever for me to make friends because i can instantly connect with and message back and forth, quickly and in real time, over various platforms e.g. discord, the depth of which is only limited by our interactions and how we treat them. forcing us back to sms/email/paper mail doesn’t make our interactions deeper, even though it adds friction. it means we can easily choose what the depth of connection we want is

that isn’t to say that there aren’t examples where less friction leads to less interaction. dating apps are a great example. but i think the authors are conflating the friction for the interaction. yes, you could add friction that would encourage interaction, but you could also add friction that doesn’t. i think the more salient point would be, encouraging interaction often includes friction, but one shouldn’t shy away from that, as a UI/UX developer

which, granted, isn’t as catchy of a title. but they could have gone into greater detail for that in the article, too

regardless of this critique, i enjoyed reading it and the perspective it offered, even if i don’t strictly agree

can they just please make a lower budget game for the sake of branching out instead of pushing millions into a game expecting it to explode in sales? no? too much to ask? ok…