The Queue: It’s like ra-ee-ain

It’s the kind of day where I just want to lie in bed and alternately read and nap, but here we are.

This is The Queue, the daily column where you ask us questions, and we definitely didn’t phone this one in while we were heating up some cocoa.

In a word, yes.

Part of the Point of game development is that you want your players to actually be able to defeat what you throw at them, but you want the experience of doing so to be fun and engaging at the same time. Tabletop DMs can probably relate. Easter eggs are much the same — they’re a kind of an inside joke, especially for people who are the most engaged in your game. While the stories of people uncovering easter eggs 5, 10, 20 years after initial release are always fun, and it’s probably gratifying that it was eventually found, that kind of shared experience in the moment is lost, a little. Of course, some are trickier to find than others, and I’d expect those developers would prefer it if those little flourishes take a bit longer to find.

Nine times out of ten, as soon as there’s a platforming level, I’m out.

As such, I recently found a trend of games which look like they’re probably cool murder mystery investigation puzzle games, but they end up being something else when you get into the meat and potatoes of it. Like The Last Case of Benedict Fox, which I recently picked up. It looks like a murder mystery game with a slight Lovecraftian creepy twist, but after around 20 minutes of gameplay I finally came upon a boss room, and realized that I’d missed the fine print — which, mind you, is directly in the elevator description of the game on Steam — which says “Metroidvania.” UGH.

But, at the same time, I have a friend who loves creepy, and loves Metroidvanias, so I recommended it to him instead. Just because I don’t like a game doesn’t mean it won’t be somebody else’s all-time favorite. Have I talked about The Long Dark, a ploddingly slow game notorious for being unforgivingly difficult with zero tutorial, recently?

Heads up to everyone else — Timewalking this week!

And good luck to Red, and Red alone.