Video Game Thoughts Bonus Bag #8

Another mixed bag of small topics unworthy of a 2000 word blog post.

1. Avernum 4: Greed and Glory Is Out For iPad

Our newest game, which has gotten good press and player reviews and is selling well, and has generally made us proud and happy, is now out for the iPad! You can now explore the vast underworld nation of Avernum and engage in general adventuring and mischief without being brutally chained to a computer.

The iPad release is generally the last step in our process with a game. We are winding down Avernum 4 now and starting on two (!) new projects. I spent quite a few hours this week writing dialogue for a new thing. If you know how much I hate writing dialogue, you know that this means I’m getting SERIOUS.

2. A Few Words About Borderlands 4

My wife and I love playing couch co-op games together. I wish there were more of those. For example, we have played many Borderlands games (fighting a constant, grim sense of diminishing returns) and have now put a bunch of hours into Borderlands 4.

I really try to be positive in these posts. As a rule, people like my writing more when I am positive. So. Um.

My wife and I are playing Borderlands 4.

3. Actually, Some Words About Borderlands 4

If an AI could create a functional, full-length AAA game, I suspect it would look very much like Borderlands 4.

It plays like the average of every other video game in existence, and every single element is lacking in polish.

But there’s no point in criticizing a Borderland game, right? It’s criticism-proof. They’re still eating out on the quality of Borderlands 2 and they still offer the same formula: Kill a big, spongy boss. Get bigger guns. Repeat. As long as that part of the product satisfies enough people, the series will continue.

Of course, this is fine as long as the flaws don’t interfere with the main dopamine loop. Nobody cares about the bland environments or weird storytelling. However, the relentless bugs and interface issues (we’re on Playstation) DO make it hard to appreciate the guns, and this is a problem.

Playing this game makes me so mad. But my wife and I are mad at it TOGETHER, and that is what keeps a marriage strong.

4. No Thoughts About Silksong

The section I wrote on Silksong got big enough to be its own blog post, so I cut it out.

Instead, I will comment that I’m about the watch the Game Awards, a topic I have written about at length. Summary: The Game Awards are clumsy, crass, pathetically celebrity-obsessed, and mercenary and are therefore a PERFECT representation of our industry.

And stop nagging the awards to support your personal political whatever. The ONLY point of any industry award show is to cheerlead their industry and help keep it in business, and the Game Awards do this job entirely adequately. If you are angry about game devs losing their jobs, well the Game Awards are trying to help sell games so that devs don’t lose their jobs in the future, and this is a good thing.

I will watch the awards on Twitch, as chat making fun of them is always by far the most fun part.

5. A Bit Of Positivity To Close On

Fifteen years ago, writing a hit indie game meant a huge bucket of wealth and maybe a Generational Fortune.

These days, most “hit” indie games generate a few million dollars. Enough for a tiny development team to stay in business and for a 10+ size indie team to get an obituary in Kotaku.

Yet I’ve still played some successful indie games lately that I’ve enjoyed a lot.

Necesse is another Biome game like Terraria or Crashlands or Core Keeper, but you can hire characters to do all your mining and farming for you. This delighted me. I played about 80% of it, until advancement started requiring a lot of farming. It really tickled me until then and is worth the money.

GlitchSPANKR is a very weird walking sim type game with a lot of love in it. Really strange. Quite funny. Often gross. Big Smiling Friends vibes, which is meant as a compliment. I played about 80% of it, until the parts where it tries to be a Real Video Game got too annoying. It really tickled me until then and is worth the money.

The new Katamari game is another Katamari game and will therefore be one of my favorite games of the year.

I recommended to a puzzle-loving friend last night that she play The Witness. This reminded me how much I absolutely love The Witness, a truly great game.

I have a bunch of massively popular indie hits in my Steam account that I haven’t even opened. I can’t keep up even with the A+++ titles everyone raves about. Indie games are pretty awesome, it turns out!

Spiderweb Software has been creating turn-based, indie, old-school fantasy role-playing games since 1994. They are low-budget, but they’re full of good stories and fun.

This newsletter is free, but paying me to subscribe guilts me into writing more. If you would like to support us, you could also buy our newest game, Avernum 4: Greed and Glory, and leaving us a nice review.