Alex Lemley (Rocketlex)

Hell yeah first Ultra Rare, baby!

Meta-defining high-value Common

Deltarune (2018)

Yeah, but if they did it this time they’d probably try to give it, like, actual physics.

With the Pokémon engine olive-roll physics.

And I just don’t think we need to go down that road.

Look I know we’re riding high on those new water shaders but dear god don’t ask this team to make a surfing minigame.

So when I hear about these Gamer Parents that play everything their kid plays, often in direct co-op, compared to my own childhood it sounds incredibly suffocating.

And this article kind of gets at why that could be a problem.

When I was a kid, my parents had absolutely zero interest in video games even though I was obsessed with them, and I honestly kind of liked that. It meant that even as a kid I had something that was “mine” that I had to tackle alone.

Pokopia is a brilliantly designed game in many ways, with the sole exception of the inventory. It's one of the few games where I genuinely can't think of a single thing the limited inventory is adding to the experience. It's pure busywork in a game that otherwise (refreshingly) isn't about that.

Games they won’t allow on Steam Box, I guess.

Okay, after a couple hours with Pokopia, I get it.

It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s just executed very, very well. The ratios of guidance vs discovery, strategy vs expression, maintenance vs progress…they’re all perfectly balanced. If you like systems working together, this is your game.

It’s frustrating because I really want to play the game myself if so many people are calling it a surprise GOTY contender, but also everything I’m seeing tells me I’m going to be disappointed and bored, because NO ONE can describe what this game’s hook actually is.

I guess my disconnect with Pokopia is that all these reviews I’m reading end with “Fans of Pokemon and cozy life sims will find a lot to enjoy here,” but I just don’t think of 9/10 or 10/10 as a “Fans of the genre…” kind of score.

Instagram video showing a woman tying a cable around her pants as a belt. Text: "Old com puter cables are part of the 62 million tonnes of e-waste generated globally every year. So why not turn cables into belts?"

ragging on her cord

A thousand hours of Cookie's Bustle VODs flooding onto YouTube from all directions.

Literally been beating this drum for years.

“Why didn’t they spend the money to fix it?”

That’s Anthem. That’s what they did with Anthem. And it would work out here exactly like it did with Anthem.

Not what people will want to hear, but shutting these games down and putting the money towards something promising instead of spending a trillion dollars to bring them from a 7.5 to a 7.8 and then shutting them down anyway when no one cares is actually a lot healthier for the industry.

Like, I’m sure it’s fun and I don’t want to be That Guy, but these are Breath of the Wild scores and yet all the actual review coverage just feels like “Yeah, I liked it I guess.”

It’s so strange.

These Pokopia reviews are bizarre to me because the game is getting these astronomical scores and then when you read the reviews it’s just “It’s cute.”

…Pokemon Y was the highest-rated Pokemon game?

Okay, I've started work on the next New Meat update.

This is especially funny in the context that Five Nights at Freddy's only exists because of people making fun of Scott Cawthon's art style.

It's not even bad writing, but it's always positioned in a way that maximally gets in the way of gameplay flow.

Also it's a run-based game and a lot of the cutscenes are the same every time. That's also...an issue.

I've always thought of Griftlands as a good what-not-to-do for story-based card game pacing.

Every cutscene comes AFTER you've selected what you want to do, so you'll select "Investigate the Docks" and THEN there's a cutscene that's like "You should investigate the docks!" "Hmmm, maybe I should."

Some hints:

-Turn on Difficulty Mods. Their main reward right now is that the more you have on, the more chances for a Special Lore Thing to appear.
-Find ALL the endings, not just the good ones.
-There's an...interesting pattern to the equipment you find, concerning its rarity.

Hopefully someone some day puts the pieces together.

Maybe in ten years someone will make a "The Secret Conspiracy Hiding in a Decade Old Indie Game" video.

I'll admit, the thing that makes me saddest about New Meat not really taking off is that there's actually way more to the story than a lot of people realize. It was my attempt at doing "lore-based storytelling" where there are a bunch of disparate elements you have to piece together.

I’m thinking of making a small update for New Meat ahead of the Steam Spring Sale but I’m not sure what to put in it. Would another pack of new Curios be too boring?

All three of them look like they’d bite me for different reasons.

I feel like I learned nothing about the next Pokemon gen from that trailer.

Like, it’s a year away so whatever, but I was hoping for a bit more of a pitch than “You can catch a Pokemon.”