I like this site. It’s fun. Usually. But devs: MAKE LESS MULTIPLAYER GAMES. Also, less tower games, less idle games and less pixel-hunting games. Please. I’m begging you. If my opinion matters, which I’ll admit it usually doesn’t, but if it does: I am not a fan of those games. I play a few of them for lack of better options but they’re not what I come to this site looking for. If you care about a gamer with my tastes, then… you’re weird. But ok. My opinion, by the numbers: Tower games are done. DONE, I tell you. To death. There are some really good ones, I’ll admit; Defender’s Quest comes to mind. But between bloons and gems and midget soldiers fighting anime ninjas, the market’s saturated. STOP MAKING THEM. They are BORING, even when they’re well made, they’ll eventually put me to sleep. I use Bloons Monkey City as a sleeping aid. Really. It helps with insomnia. And yet, that’s pretty much the pinnacle of the tower defense category, in gameplay, artwork and variety of scenarios. Your tower game isn’t even worth a look. Kongregate: if you can’t get developers to stop making them, at least stop recommending them to me. Note to developers: I actually bought Defender’s Quest. They’re an example of how to do game-selling on this site the right way. Take notes, because theirs is a (small) success story. But the story, artwork and gameplay in that one was superb; you probably won’t match up, and if you’re a tower game I wouldn’t notice if you did because I don’t tend to click on those much anymore. MULTIPLAYER GAMES: Maybe there’s some good ones out there. But damn, are they hard to find. Almost all of them I’ve tried end up being an endless treadmill of “invite your friends” and “Buy our premium package of +5 Swords of character relevance! Because, you know, you can’t do crap in this world worth doing if you don’t.” No. A paid-for success is a meaningless success to me. I have and do pay for games, but I do NOT pay for wins. Sadly, it seems this freemium trend is not going away, so… screw it, I just don’t play ANY multiplayer games unless it hides its true evil multi-nature until you play it, OR I happen to notice commenters saying “Thank you for not making this game a huckster’s midden!”. Not to mention that the stories, plotlines, character development and ‘quests’ are almost universally bland and unengaging. To me, that is. If I have a choice between, say, a mod of Baldur’s Gate, vs. a multiplayer game, it’s no contest. Idle games: Lowest common denominator of flash games, these. I get that every programmer has to start somewhere, but… Kong is bursting with the damn things. And the fill out the first few pages of an “adventure & RPG” category search (as do pixel hunting games, which… ugh). Again, some of them can be fun, but they’re best for the tag on the tin: idle moments when I’m AWAY from my computer. If I’m present, then endless clicking loses its charm. Stop making them. Games I like: Glean, 1 and 2. Crystal Story, 1 and 2. Mardek 1,2, and 3 (Though I hear its developer has sworn off battles in his RPGs, which doesn’t sit right… I guess we’ll have to see what game mechanic he comes up with for Mardek 4. God help us if it becomes another Bard’s Tale pixel-hunting knockoff.) More; I’ve got a few in my playlist. Don’t go by my ‘ratings’ list: I tend to rate games highly if they’re well made and playable, regardless of whether I actually enjoy them. To do otherwise would seem unfair and unsportsmanlike. Taste is a subjective thing, quality is not. A rare example of a multiplayer (ish), huckster’s midden of a game that I still actually like: Tny Dice Dungeon. It’s a guilty pleasure, and I don’t buy anything in the in-game store on principle. Don’t go thinking that because I play that game I will like yours. I won’t. I’m still trying to figure out why I like that one, because damn if it’s just out of my normal comfort zone. What I really, REALLY like: open-world games that do well on my old-ish computer. Caravaneer 2 comes to mind. Astrox did, but some update or other made it incompatable with my version of Unity Web Player (the most recent version, too… frown face). Make more of those, please. I also like RPG games with deep and meaningful plots. I don’t really care about graphics too much in my RPGs; I’m fine with Final Fantasy 3 style sprites, as long as the characters and story are engaging and surprising. “Crystal Story 2” was a genuine JOY. On the other hand, games that are so tongue-in-cheek they’re drooling on my keyboard are not as fun. Epic Battle Fantasy 4 comes to mind. Seriously, developers: I get that JRPGs and CRPGs are full of tropes, lampshading and physics fails. But the genre-savvy satire is just… done. Ok? I like my suspension of disbelief to be left alone so it can keep me from getting bored, all right? I don’t CARE if Our Hero has pants that can hold 1k potions and a furlong of spears and swords without bunching up in his crotch area. I really don’t like my quests cluttered up with joke ‘quests’ that are riffs off of other standard fantasy tropes. Occasional, dark humor, sure. But not SNL-style parody, it just doesn’t scan for me. And on that note, I really can’t figure out how EBF gets front-page ratings so consistently. I rated it as a “meh.” Which just goes to prove that my taste is not all that mainstream, and you’re weird for caring about it. Activity FeedParahacker has not published any activity yet.Would you like to post a shout to welcome them to Kongregate? AwardsMy Games |