…Also Goddamn how is ot that no one has managed to make something like Theif again outside of Gloomwood (which is admittedly rad as hell?) I only managed to play Theif recently and it’s still one of the best stealth games ever. Modern games need to learn how to leave the player alone for a while and let them cook.

You think about a Mix of Thief and dishonored, i guess? Least Puzzle, more Sandbox stealth but Open for the Player to approach the Situation (and Not so much Tool/scenario Drive Like the Hitman Games). I would add Safe zones/Houses as in Nobody finds you there. So you can avoid running away from every enemy on the Map, which offen Happens If you have to flee. This could add some kind of inbetween restock or Adaptation options etc. Think espionage Thrillers and so in.

Is it weird that I think of Halo 3: ODST as one of the real detective games? Not because it’s particularly dedicated to being that, but because the default ending of the game is that you don’t solve the mystery and leave unsatisfied. You’re just some grunt and what’s actually going on is above your paygrade. Learning the truth is a bit of a pain in this ass but it’s also basically half of the game’s story. I think it was a really ballsy move for what it’s worth.

I wanted to counter this but I can’t. Most of the mascot platformer-esque games now are imitating some other, older mascot platformer. A Hat In Time just doesn’t have any real gimmicks. IDK if Pumpkin Jack does (I really need to try it at some point). Maybe Froggun but I imagine it has even less of a story and it’s more of a puzzle game?

God, I so badly want more.

There’s maybe a chance that the Adam Jenson trilogy gets finished up, but the Embracer situation has made that less clear.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Immersive Sims because, like, in theory they’re a lot of people’s dream games, right? Yet their actual audiences are small. Part of that has to be down to setting, for the same reason Blade Runner was never big, but… that can’t be it, right?

And why did people start calling Tears of the Kingdom an Immersive Sim? Is… Are classic Roguelikes immersive sims? Is Dwarf Fortress an Immersive Sim? Obviously not, but the definition we’ve given ourselves is too broad and what we actually consider a “reall immersive sim” seems too limited.

Hmm… While it’s nothing like Outer Wilds and infamous for probably being the most obtuse video game ever created, I wonder if you’d like La Mulana? Metroidvania about being an archeologist where you sort of need to actually peice together the culture and history of the civilization you’re studying to move forward sometimes. It’s style of storytelling is closer to FromSoft (hence the obtuseness) but still.

Whatever the hell Burnout was, too. Please god just give me classic Burnout again.

Checkout Distance on Steam. It’s definitely up there in terms of unique racing games.

Split/Second was also a really interesting take on racing, I wish they had released DLCs or something to add more maps, the way that game worked with the crazy visuals to open up new shortcuts and modify the track midrace was an awesome idea

Well, there’s another Quake 3 clone attempt every few years and every time no one cares. Diabotical made me especially sad because it shook the forumula up in some very smart ways and the Wipeout game mode needs to be stolen by pretty much everyone (and won’t be).

Searching Steam for games tagged as lovecraft and horror and sorting by user review gives me about 500 entries.

I think that Lovecraft’s setting is actually virtually the only fictional setting where you’re spoiled for choice, because Lovecraft permitted other people to use his setting. Like, you only get to do a Star Wars game if Lucasarts licenses it, because they leverage their copyright on the setting. Most people and companies who create a setting don’t allow other people to freely use it, and copyright law permits them to make that restriction. But Lovecraft was unusual in that he specifically encouraged other people to build on his world.

Maybe Robin Hood or a small handful of others from history, like Greek or Norse mythology, that developed before copyright law had really become the norm.

I dunno. Maybe there should be some kind of Creative Commons license that permits use of setting and maybe characters, while still keeping an individual work copyrighted, to encourage creation of collaboratively-developed settings like that.

This could mix with other genres as well like survival and potentially rogue-like stuff.

One of the top entries I see on Steam – though I’ve never played it – is an Overwhelmingly Positive-rated game, Disfigure, that appears to be a Lovecraftian action roguelike that just came out a couple of months ago.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2083160/Disfigure/

EDIT: Well, hmm. Someone tagged it as Lovecraftian, but the author doesn’t really describe it that way. Just creepy.

There’s a few single player focused ones released in the past decade. Deserts of Kharak comes to mind.

If you haven’t looked recently, you might take another look.

I felt the same way when Slay the Spire came out in 2019 – not a lot of similar games at the time, and I couldn’t figure out why more developers hadn’t made similar games, as it seemed like a very good match for indie studios. But there have been a whole lot of games that came out since then.

Searching Steam for games tagged as single-player and deckbuilder, and sorting by user review

I get over 600 hits, almost all of which came out in the past three years. I’d say that single-player deckbuilders – and note that I’m assuming that you’re talking about deckbuilder games, not, say, solitaire implementations or similar, as I think that there are pretty good entrants there – are actually doing pretty well.

Inscryption?

Slay the spire? It’s a deck builder rouge like. Excellent game. Dunno if it’s what your looking for but I highly recommend it.

It’s sad the closest recent other entry is like CK3 a totally different genre really

I miss the patrician series

I do wonder what an indie equivalent to these games would look like. I worry that I’d feel like they were just imitating Remedy.