Backlog by the Month Challenge 2023 (Sign-Ups Open!)

[StraightVege]

Another quick update, since it completely slipped my mind that the brief, first-person horror puzzler Transference is available with PS+ Extra. I've been meaning to play that one for a while, in fact, so I'm going to ADD it as my actual final game. This time, I mean it—no more! 😁

 

I also finished the newly added Arise yesterday, which for an emotional story-focused game, featured several tricky, level-specific trophy requirements. Sometimes it was necessary to avoid taking damage from various hazards or finish the stage deathless, but nothing needed more than a couple of attempts. For now, I'll just edit these changes into my list above, to refrain from spamming it.

 

16 hours ago, KillerUni12 said:

Well, I think this will be my final update! I thought about trying to counter the last-second push from @StraightVege but I simply do not have the time to beat 4 more games in the next ~36 hours. Well played and congrats on 6 (!!) completions in 5 days - I usually don't complete that many games in a full month

 

Oh, thank you! Believe me, neither do I, but this is a special occasion. I've definitely slowed down with age, so this could be the most games I've ever played in a single year, and I'll probably never surpass it. You and Baphomet seemed nigh unstoppable throughout the event, not to mention Psy-Tychist rising quickly through the ranks, so if I've ended up overtaking you folks somehow, then I'm shocked to say the least. I mean, when my mood dips, I often go weeks without playing anything, thus I never expected to perform better than 3rd place at the absolute highest. I suppose "slow and steady wins the race" applies here, besides the early conclusion being beneficial for me. Additionally, I'm fortunate enough to have free time available at the moment.

 

Yeah, Blood Money is certainly a fan favorite, so well done! Regarding the original games, I personally prefer Hitman 2, but that might just be because it was the first one I ever played. I think Absolution really stinks as a Hitman game, but it's a decent stealth title nonetheless, and the story is hilariously over-the-top, with 47 making idiotic decisions and such. The new trilogy is great, though. It's always nice to see more people enjoying the series, as I'm a longtime Hitman enthusiast. Hopefully, they'll get around to making more of 'em someday.

 

17 hours ago, KillerUni12 said:

I would be interested in hosting a similar event next year (with @BlazzingWind's blessing of course), though I wouldn't be able to provide the same (extremely generous) prizes we've all been vying for this year. I think it could be fun to discuss alternative scoring options as a group (weights for longer or harder games or wildcard months maybe??) to spice things up a bit, as well as what a potential prize could be (monetary or otherwise). What are people's thoughts on this??

 

Sounds good. Provided that the rules and format don't change too drastically, and some decent prizes are offered, then I would seriously considering joining your contest. Those are the main reasons I don't participate in very many events on here: no worthwhile rewards, and overly complicated rules, which I wouldn't care to adhere to for any length of time. Of the 24 games I still have installed, most are lengthy and/or difficult, so it would be cool to earn extra points for them or something. Furthermore, I've been saving up money to finally purchase a PS5 next year (probably one of the new slims), meaning I'll eventually have plenty more games to play for these.

 

Alright, I'm gonna go beat the aforementioned Transference to finally cap this thing off!

[Darling Baphomet]

On 10/30/2023 at 8:16 AM, KillerUni12 said:

I would be interested in hosting a similar event next year (with @BlazzingWind's blessing of course), though I wouldn't be able to provide the same (extremely generous) prizes we've all been vying for this year. I think it could be fun to discuss alternative scoring options as a group (weights for longer or harder games or wildcard months maybe??) to spice things up a bit, as well as what a potential prize could be (monetary or otherwise). What are people's thoughts on this??

 

I might be interested, though I would hope we can establish some contingency in case something like this happens again because it kind of stinks to spend most of the year on an event and then get screwed over by it ending early. (Granted, I'm at fault here because the last two months were a mess and I wasn't able to finish as many games as I would otherwise have, and the three games I planned to 100% this month aren't quite done yet either. But getting the huge backlog penalty still sucks.)

 

As for scoring weights I think that's definitely a good idea. I've played a lot of longer games this event (e.g. Planetfall, which I'm currently working on and Playstation tracks me as having almost 280 hours in) and it does kind of suck that they're worth exactly as much as the several hour long games I've played. I think rarity scoring is the only semi-reliable way to judge games because average playtimes and difficulty estimates are not available for every game I play, particularly lesser known indie games and VR titles - but rarity is also an imperfect metric and so any score adjustments should probably just attempt to make longer / harder games less disadvantageous as opposed to directly scaling points with rarity because that would open the way to UR spamming instead. (And also be a lot harder for the host to track!) Maybe something like scoring brackets?

 

There *should* probably be a blanket ban on titles over 80-85% rarity or under 2-3 hours on their fastest achiever, though, I think, as those are just too easily exploitable. Back during the 2020 winter tag team event, my team was focusing on URs which would sometimes afford 10x as many points as a Ratalaika game (remember when those were the worst of the lot? Christ.) but due to the sheer quantity of them completed individual members spamming them carried entire teams ahead of us. And that was with strict scoring based on TT's point formula - with a more casual approach it would be a lot worse. IIRC someone suggested having a limit on how many of those games you can complete too, or requiring a certain ratio of long games to those extremely short games. Alternatively just massively reduce their points and let people go hog wild with everything but the absolute bottom of the barrel trash e.g. the jumping noun games. (For instance 40-65% could be one point, 65-80% could be half a point, and then 80-100% could be a tenth of a point. So you could still play them and they count for something, but not for much.)

 

Though perhaps trying to establish a strict ruleset for that would be a bad idea and the host should just reserve the right to veto games in case of clear bad actors.

[Psy-Tychist]

I'm still hoping @BlazzingWind will take up my offer to do scoring until the end of the year...

[Hurricane_Tanya]

I got a PS5 this month and am kicking myself for not adding the games I got distracted playing (Astro, Toem, Spider-Man 2), but I still finished a few games from my list

 

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy was a game I started over a year ago and put aside to concentrate on games that were on last years Backlog by the month list. I finally got back to it this month and played it non stop, it was a lot of fun. I love a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The combat got a little bit samey towards the end and it was a very easy game especially by the time you unlock all of the abilities, but the story and characters were great.

 

I also played Party Hard. This was a pretty simple ‘puzzle’ game about being a serial killer. The story was cheesy, pretty sure the voice acting was all done by one person and there was only one music track to listen to. It was fine, I was even having a good time with it until I completed the game and had a trophy for starting the game up 100 times left. That was tedious, I ended up remote playing the game and just closing it, starting it and loading a level while I did chores. I’m still interested in playing the sequel, it looks like the trophies are harder and it doesn’t look like there are any similarly time wasting trophies to get.

 

Finally I finished off Haven, this was a cute game about a couple exploring an alien planet. The combat wasn’t anything exciting, but it did have the interesting mechanic of controlling both characters at once in order to have one shielding while the other attacked, or to build up more powerful attacks. I found the writing to be a little off in some places for the sake of drama. It has that annoying romance trope where the characters will withhold information instead of talking about it straight away, which inevitably results in them having an awful fight. I think an established long term couple would have better communication skills than that, but I know that would be boring so… I also made the mistake of playing this in front of my kids, not knowing how sexual it is. Yeah, I had to quickly stop after an awkward conversation with my 6 year old about why their bed was sticky. They wet the bed okay.

 

I was hoping to also finish Humanity this month, but I got too distracted with Spider-Man so it got sidelined.

 

Points: 27.5 (- 8 games = 26.7)

 

Backlog list:

- Batman Arkham Origins
- Hitman
- Hitman 2
- Hitman 2: Expansion
- Humanity
- Rise of the Tomb Raider
- Road 96
- The Warriors

[StraightVege]

14 hours ago, Darling Baphomet said:

Alternatively just massively reduce their points and let people go hog wild with everything but the absolute bottom of the barrel trash e.g. the jumping noun games. (For instance 40-65% could be one point, 65-80% could be half a point, and then 80-100% could be a tenth of a point. So you could still play them and they count for something, but not for much.)

 

Though perhaps trying to establish a strict ruleset for that would be a bad idea and the host should just reserve the right to veto games in case of clear bad actors.

 

If there must be more stringent rules regarding game length and difficulty, I would personally prefer one of the solutions quoted above over outright bans. These events provide great motivation for playing through my backlog, so I wouldn't want the types of games I can add to be too restricted. Heck, I've probably beaten numerous games in under 3 hours during this contest, but they were nevertheless true video games, not simply trophy clicker apps. In my view, delightfully weird little ideas such as Minit should never be excluded from an event like this, just because they're short.

 

Honestly, if I were running something similar to this (which will never happen, since I'm too unreliable), I'd probably allow even the most low-effort stuff, including "press X to win" apps and auto-pops. However, I'd make them worth next to nothing, and/or strictly limit how many can count for points per month, something in that vein. I do recognize that I'm way more easygoing about this issue than most folks, though, who would likely vehemently disagree.

 

13 hours ago, Psy-Tychist said:

I'm still hoping @BlazzingWind will take up my offer to do scoring until the end of the year...

 

True, I suppose we don't know for certain if the Challenge is ending here, and I wouldn't mind finishing it out properly with your help. Still, I'd best assume we're done until proven otherwise, and make my big finale update now.

 

For the second year in a row, I've finally defeated my seemingly unending list:

 

-Backlog Completed!-

1. Dreaming Sarah - January 9th (+1.0)

2. Streets of Rage 4: Mr X. Nightmare - January 10th (+0.5)

3. Afterparty - January 13th (+0.5)

4. Mortal Shell: The Virtuous Cycle - January 21st (+0.5)

5. Gunlord X - January 25th (+0.5)

6. GreedFall - February 6th (+1.0)

7. Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour - February 8th (+0.5)

8. Shu - February 23rd (+0.5)

9. Psychonauts 2 - March 4th (+1.0)

10. Habroxia 2 - March 8th (+0.5)

11. Two Crude - March 10th (+0.5)

12. The Outer Worlds - April 2nd (+1.0)

13. Skautfold: Shrouded in Sanity - April 4th (+0.5)

14. Valley - April 6th (+0.5)

15. Jydge - April 25th (+0.5)

16. Superhot - May 1st (+1.0)

17. Superhot: Mind Control Delete - May 5th (+0.5)

18. AER: Memories of Old - May 5th (+0.5)

19. Little Nightmares - May 7th (+0.5)

20. Little Nightmares II - May 9th (+0.5)

21. Amnesia: Rebirth - May 14th (+0.5)

22. Ghost of a Tale - May 18th (+0.5)

23. The Persistence - May 27th (+0.5)

24. PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale: Fearless - June 1st (+1.0)

25. Mafia: Definitive Edition - June 2nd (+0.5)

26. The First Tree - June 5th (+0.5)

27. Trek to Yomi - June 11th (+0.5)

28. The Forgotten City - June 17th (+0.5)

29. Chicken Police - June 18th (+0.5)

30. The Gardens Between - June 27th (+0.5)

31. Tacoma - June 27th (+0.5)

32. Stray - June 29th (+0.5)

33. Omno - July 2nd (+1.0)

34. Axiom Verge 2 - July 3rd (+0.5)

35. Tails of Iron - July 8th (+0.5)

36. Rogue Legacy 2 - July 27th (+0.5)

37. Deliver Us The Moon - August 1st (+1.0)

38. I Am Dead - August 2nd (+0.5)

39. Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom - August 6th (+0.5)

40. 11-11: Memories Retold - August 8th (+0.5)

41. Alan Wake Remastered - August 20th (+0.5)

42. Death's Door - August 30th (+0.5)

43. Pinstripe - September 1st (+1.0)

44. Xeodrifter - September 2nd (+0.5)

45. Endling: Extinction is Forever - September 7th (+0.5)

46. Moonscars - September 10th (+0.5)

47. Rising Hell - September 14th (+0.5)

48. Ender Lillies: Quietus of the Knights - September 19th (+0.5)

49. Castlevania Requiem: Symphony of the Night & Rondo of Blood - September 29th (+0.5)

50. Ghosts 'n Goblins: Resurrection - October 5th (+1.0)

51. A Tale of Paper - October 25th (+0.5)

52. Minit - October 25th (+0.5)

53. Planet Alpha - October 26th (+0.5)

54. Call of the Sea - October 27th (+0.5)

55. Roki - October 28th (+0.5)

56. Resident Evil 3 - October 29th (+0.5)

57. Arise: A Simple Story - October 30th (+0.5)

58. Transference - October 31st (+0.5)

 

Points: 34.0

 

Now that's a job well done, I'd say, and certainly far more than I ever expected to manage back when this event began. I've also been racking my brain to decide on a top ten list of my favorites for the year, which has been surprisingly difficult, considering that most of these were at least good, and many were even great! As BlazzingWind said, it's been quite a year of gaming indeed; probably among the best I've ever had. That said, excluding DLCs, here's what I've struggled mightily to settle on as the cream of the crop:

 

10. I Am Dead

9. Arise: A Simple Story

8. Afterparty

7. Stray

6. Habroxia 2

5. Little Nightmares II

4. Ender Lillies: Quietus of the Knights

3. The Outer Worlds

2. Rogue Legacy 2

1. Superhot

 

Some of these are so close to each other in my mind, they could be swapped around without it mattering much. Considering the mountains of quality stuff here, I could've easily constructed a top twenty, but there were some standout games which I think warrant a special, honorable mention at the very least, despite them not quite making the main list:

 

Rising Hell

The Gardens Between

Omno

Minit

Psychonauts 2

Endling: Extinction is Forever

Chicken Police

 

I'll tell ya, the day when I can't find wonderfully imaginative and creative games such as those mentioned in the lists above to compel me is the day I quit gaming altogether. These are the unique works of art which continue to make the whole hobby worthwhile for me after all these years, because the majority of what the "AAA" industry pumps out these days doesn't tickle my fancy in the slightest. Sure, I wish I could enjoy Assassin's Creed 5000 and whatnot like everybody else seems to, but it ain't in the cards for me, apparently. Aside, I decided against putting Castlevania Requiem on either list, being that it's a re-release of two very old games, but they also hold up rather well to this day.

 

On the other hand, I'd have to say the worst games I played this year were Two Crude, Planet Alpha, and the first Little Nightmares. Don't get me wrong, LN1 has plenty of good things going for it, but a number of problems (particularly the clunky controls and poor camera angles) resulted in me not getting along with it nearly as well as I did with the stellar prequel. After playing 58 games, I could only think of three bad ones—yep, that's a strong year all right!

 

Now for some thoughts on a few more of the games I knocked out over the past couple of months, which I've yet to cover. Sorry if these aren't up to my usual standards of detail, but there's too many to catch up on.

 

Endling:

 

The phenomenon of artsy "fox games" that accomplish little more than tugging at your heartstrings and have almost nothing going on mechanically made me skeptical of this one initially, but I'm happy to say that my misgivings were quite unwarranted. Endling is a far more substantive post-apocalyptic survival game, boasting one of the most realistic "end of the world" scenarios I've ever seen, a 3-hour-long escort mission that miraculously manages to avoid being irritating, and a legitimately touching narrative to boot.

 

A desperate fox survives giving birth to a litter of four cubs in the ravaged hellhole of a world left for her by humanity, only to have one of them abducted during the night by a human scavenger. Naturally, the worried mother will go to any lengths to locate her missing baby, and must survive 30 days while not only sniffing out new clues to their whereabouts, but also gathering food for nourishing her remaining offspring, and gradually teaching them new survival techniques. They'll eventually learn vital skills, such as climbing trees and squeezing through small gaps, but only if the player can keep them alive by evading starving human hunters and predatory birds. Swiftly returning to your den or locating an entirely different shelter before morning arrives is necessary as well, because she and her cubs don't stand a chance in the light of day, when hungry people are more active.

 

Between the time limit on each night and the constantly draining hunger meter, there's certainly a strong sense of urgency to your actions, but I don't think I enjoyed those limitations overall, as I often felt too rushed to bother exploring the game's impressively dreary world beyond what the guide recommended, nor did I feel comfortable standing around to watch the cool investigation scenes play out. That's just a shame, I think. Additionally, I found some of the prompts for instructing your cubs to do stuff to be unresponsive at times, and had to mash the button more often than I should. Otherwise, I don't have much to complain about, but that time limit can be a real enjoyment killer.

 

For a game highlighting the anthropogenic consequences of human shortsightedness, greed, and apathy, it nevertheless does so without being misanthropic, which is laudable. It's made abundantly clear that the human antagonists are every bit as desperate to see another day as the mother fox is, and not everyone is her enemy. In particular, there are several rather tear-jerking interactions with a sickly little girl character, who shows tremendous compassion to the fox and her babies, even in this horrific situation. Endling's emotional moments, although wordless, land extremely well. However, if I'm not mistaken, the game seems to take an implied stance against nuclear power, which I definitely don't agree with. You'd have to be pretty uninformed to think modern facilities are dangerous or dirty, but nothing's perfect, I suppose.

 

In this time of record-breaking hot Summers, when my own neighborhood has come terrifyingly close to burning down in wildfires on multiple occasions, this one hit close to home. Furthermore, my soft spot for animals only amplified the pain. Undoubtedly worth playing, if you can handle the crushing sadness.

 

Moonscars:

 

Speaking as an enormous fan of the exquisitely dark Metroidvania Blasphemous, it really seemed as if Moonscars was set to amount to a discount store clone of that game in the early goings, but it soon proved to have an identity all its own, featuring an interesting blend of mechanics, some intriguing narrative elements, and solid enough hack and slash combat alongside magical abilities. For a game of this type, however, the challenge level was rather lacking; not nearly enough environmental hazards or tricky platforming to deal with, and the enemies can barely kill you when the defense trinket is equipped. I literally had to suicide repeatedly after the final boss, by throwing myself down one of the game's scarce pits, just to unlock the last trophy for ten deaths. Considering the complaints about crushing difficulty I heard back when it released, I can only assume that the game was rebalanced in patches to be way easier, or I've simply played too many of these damn things at this point.

 

Taking place in a cursed kingdom already brought to ruination by an infertility plague and the brutal invasion of a foreign army, you wield sword and sorcery as Grey Irma, the clayborn clone of a traitorous solider. Brought to life from human bone dust by a godlike sculptor named Zoran in his mold workshop, a small army of her expendable kind was dispatched to repel the cruel invaders by force, and these sentient golems succeeded, only to later become deranged with hunger, slaughtering the surviving citizens to consume their bones as sustenance. Upon awaking in this hopelessly grim world with distorted memories of the events, Grey Irma has no choice but to seek out Zoran and the original Red Irma for answers, cleaving through the now monstrous remnants of the clayborn along the way, including her old comrades.

 

You've gotta appreciate when a game lets you question and fight your creators for bringing you into such an awful world. There's some seriously compelling stuff here regarding Irma's sense of identity, the nature of consciousness/the self, and the kingdom's women being freed of their childbearing burdens by the plague, as well (not feminism in muh vidya game?!). My opinion is that very few games succeed at doing the Soulslike storytelling style well, but this one fares better than most. Unfortunately, it's also let down by overly expository writing and some poorly translated English. Not bad, but the presentation could've been so much better with additional polish. The excruciatingly melancholy soundtrack certainly does some heavy lifting to set the mood, though. Nice job, composer!

 

For the most part, the flow of battles has you dodging through enemy attacks to whack them with your blade whenever an opening presents itself, which builds your magic bar with each strike, until you've gained a sufficient amount to cast your chosen spells. Interestingly, this same resource is also necessary for healing, forcing the player to decide whether they value offense or an increased chance of survival more. Still, I rarely found myself wanting for meter when I needed or restore health or unleash magic, so the potential of the system is squandered a bit. Of course, she can also parry most attacks with the proper timing, and this is made more useful by slotting a trinket that heals Irma upon a successful counter. It's never been my play style to risk parrying much in action games, but it's good that the option exists. This goes without saying, but you'll also need to unlock new traversal abilities and collect key items to make progress. Irma can eventually dash over long distances, for example, allowing her to pass over chasms.

 

Several roguelite aspects attempt to differentiate Moonscars from its many contemporaries, too, since Irma earns random buffs the longer she survives her exploration of the map in a single go, and she can obtain randomized alternate weapons like a spear or hammer. While neither the minor buffs nor the alt implements are especially impactful, at least the developers tried to get more creative than most Metroidvanias. As you might expect, dying returns you to the last mirror checkpoint you found, stripping you of the buffs, extra weapon, and dropping your amassed bone powder (experience points) at the site of your demise. Similarly to Hollow Knight, a corrupted doppelgänger of Irma spawns there, necessitating that you defeat it to reclaim your lost resources, and it will even employ your own abilities against you, so that's cool. Furthermore, death triggers the red moon phase, causing enemy encounters to become harder, but also making foes drop superior rewards. Personally, I was never a big fan of Demon's Souls' world tendency system kicking the player when they're down, and I can't say its implementation here changes my view, although playing in red moon phase is really the only way to extract a moderately challenging experience from this game. By the way, I'd suggest spending that bone powder wisely, because it takes tons to upgrade your preferred spells on the huge grid, and there isn't enough to come by.

 

You know, for a game with such desaturated art design, you'd think it would appear kind of bland. In many areas, this is true, but Moonscars nonetheless has its striking visuals at times. One memorable section of the map is a shadowy underground city, where water in the foreground reflects Irma, and ruined structures litter the background. A shame that the game runs badly there, and in numerous other places, suffering stuttering and whatnot. At least on a PS4 Pro, it feels poorly optimized. Should a 2D game really be performing like this in 2023? Come on now. Methinks I ought to revisit this one on PS5 eventually—perhaps that version runs more smoothly.

 

By and large, Moonscars feels like a loose collection of cool ideas which never coalesce into a truly cohesive production, but it's a decent (albeit very easy) action-platformer with obvious passion poured into it. While it didn't measure up to Blasphemous after all, it's unique enough to be worth a look, and I had a reasonable amount of fun investigating this morbid land as a clay spellsword for the 13-hour duration.

 

Rising Hell:

 

A rather charming, heavy metal-themed roguelite focused on vertical action-platforming, which ought to seem oddly familiar to anyone who's played an awesome little gem of a game called Downwell, since it's essentially the same concept in reverse. Instead of plummeting down a narrow shaft, Rising Hell tasks you with climbing upwards through a gauntlet of traps and demonic enemies to escape the game's offbeat version of Hell, which is basically a massive hollow tree, wherein Satan's comatose body was interred after his defeat during the battle with Heaven. In his absence, the trickster demon Mephisto assumes control, taunting the four playable characters to dare escape. He's commanded four formidable Archdemon bosses to guard the route out, therefore they must be slain to unlock the path, before an epic battle with Mephisto himself ensues at the top to decide your fate. Must say, I adored this game's arcadey sense of presentation, complete with a booming announcer voice. "CHOOSE YOUR RELIC!"

 

After choosing your unsavory antihero, each of whom performs quite differently, and selecting one of the various weapons you've unlocked thus far, it's time to begin clawing your way out of Hell! Similar to Downwell, jumping onto monsters bounces you upwards a bit, while instantly killing or damaging the targeted foe, and increasing your combo counter for greater red gem currency rewards, used to purchase any helpful random items you come across in shops. The game is primarily constructed around using this "Hellbreak" mechanic, hopping from enemy to enemy on the way up, and it works pretty well. However, you certainly don't need to utilize Hellbreak whatsoever, and can instead opt to melee or shoot the baddies, if that's your preferred play style. The demon Zelos is probably the strongest character anyway, and he relies on projectile attacks.

 

One of the reasons Hellbreak is so useful, though, is that this game actually seems to understand when enemies should deal contact damage and when they shouldn't. It has long been my position that bad guys ought to be charging towards you, have protruding spikes on their bodies, be on lit fire or exuding poison, whatever, before they can actually do contact damage. It never seemed fair to me when a creature just casually bumping into you during its walk cycle hurts, or even worse, knocks you back. Rising Hell implements contact hits wisely, which is kind of a big deal for me, considering how many games get this wrong.

 

For an inexpensive indie title, it's surprisingly polished and fun in almost every respect, controlling flawlessly, not to mention the awesome pixel art and badass soundtrack. Another cool aspect is how you can choose your route up the tree, as two doors will be presented at the end of levels, each leading to a random area posing different challenges. Don't want to deal with the annoying poison gas stage on this run? Just pick the other one, then. There are tons of unlockable relics and such to be gained by leveling up, too, which change the properties of your attack and whatnot. Equipping the electricity one (Cerberos) on Zelos is a fairly potent combo, making the game substantially easier.

 

Really, Rising Hell's only significant issue is its meager content offering for a roguelite. In merely eight hours, I had already conquered everything available, meaning that smorgasbord of unlocks sadly goes unused, assuming you even get around to earning the full suite in the first place (I certainly didn't). To be fair, the game features a number of other challenge modes, but they're largely recycled content from the main game with various restrictions to make things tougher, and aren't enough to compensate for the overall brevity. This game needed more levels, more bosses, more everything. Looking at how high you can level, and the sheer number of unlockables, I get the feeling they originally intended to create a longer game. Oh well, at least you can't say it overstays its welcome. Short as the experience may be, I did have a blast.

 

Seeing as I love Downwell and metal, how could I not fall for this novel fusion of the two? It kept my butt in the chair from start to finish, without even a hint of boredom creeping in. I can state with relative confidence that if you're a fan of 2D action or roguelites, you won't regret picking this one up! A fine little game indeed, but I really wish there was more to accomplish in it. Although just the right temperature, this pool is shallow, man.

 

 

Alright, I've rattled on long enough for now. Assuming the contest does end here as stated, then I hope to see you all again for another one someday soon! As always, it was quite nice having people to share my accomplishments and experiences with throughout the year—definitely more fulfilling than playing by my lonesome. Until then, I wish you good fortune in your continued gaming endeavors, folks.

[Darling Baphomet]

On 10/31/2023 at 10:51 AM, Psy-Tychist said:

I'm still hoping @BlazzingWind will take up my offer to do scoring until the end of the year...

 

That would be great! If I recall correctly, something similar happened last event, only instead of ending early the host disappeared altogether. Maybe this event is cursed?

 

Decided to finish Iris.Fall in case we do end up continuing for the rest of the event, bringing my total points up to 31 (27.6 with the backlog penalty.) Planetfall is still not finished because the final campaign mission is an absolute nightmare. That's partially my fault due to choosing to have most of the factions reject both the empress and CORE, meaning either I have to fight all of them, or fight with them and watch them slowly get wiped out by the empress just randomly deleting the tiles that cities are on and CORE's roaming death squads. Compound this with the gigantic map and dozen 'players' resulting in the time between turns being a minute or two even just at the start and it's a frustrating mess. My AI teammates are invariably extremely incompetent and end up getting wiped out early into the game, and my first attempt was foiled when my last remaining teammate got wiped out ~60 turns into the game (it took me a day or two to even get that far), making it impossible for me to prevent the enemy alliance's domination victory. The current run is going somewhat better although I am still down to only one teammate, but have been able to outlive all but two enemy commanders and am currently working on my doomsday weapon because wiping out the distant commanders manually would likely take me at least another day.

 

For OhShape I just need to idle for another 10-15 hours and do one more session of it and I should be good. Did a few monster workouts - a week ago I managed two hours and by the end of it my entire workout area looked like I had just mopped from how much I sweated.

 

22 hours ago, StraightVege said:

If there must be more stringent rules regarding game length and difficulty, I would personally prefer one of the solutions quoted above over outright bans. These events provide great motivation for playing through my backlog, so I wouldn't want the types of games I can add to be too restricted. Heck, I've probably beaten numerous games in under 3 hours during this contest, but they were nevertheless true video games, not simply trophy clicker apps. In my view, delightfully weird little ideas such as Minit should never be excluded from an event like this, just because they're short.

 

Honestly, if I were running something similar to this (which will never happen, since I'm too unreliable), I'd probably allow even the most low-effort stuff, including "press X to win" apps and auto-pops. However, I'd make them worth next to nothing, and/or strictly limit how many can count for points per month, something in that vein. I do recognize that I'm way more easygoing about this issue than most folks, though, who would likely vehemently disagree.

 

It's not about whether or not a 2 or 3 hour game is a real game so much as the fact that this is a competition and such short games give a massive advantage, and there's only so much you can do to even out the rewards for games. If you take an extremely strict approach to scoring, as would be necessary to even the playing field between quick plats and very hard / long UR plats (let alone <1% plats), you simply create a new way to cheat the system by finding easy URs. But if you take a more moderate approach (e.g. have a UR be, say, worth 5x as much as an 80% plat), that does very little to address the overwhelming advantage that these tiny games have. At a certain point, it's just not possible to balance scoring. For instance, the Jumping Taco can be completed in only a few minutes. Even if you make games in the 90 or 95%+ rarity bracket worth only 0.01 points - thus essentially worthless to anyone but the most dedicated trophy spammers - with a conservative estimate of six minutes per game you would still be earning .1 points per hour. A 100 hour UR game would need to be worth 10 points to match that, so 20x the current value of games (which IMO is excessive and leans into encouraging easy UR games.)

 

22 hours ago, StraightVege said:

Really, Rising Hell's only significant issue is its meager content offering for a roguelite. In merely eight hours, I had already conquered everything available, meaning that smorgasbord of unlocks sadly goes unused, assuming you even get around to earning the full suite in the first place (I certainly didn't). To be fair, the game features a number of other challenge modes, but they're largely recycled content from the main game with various restrictions to make things tougher, and aren't enough to compensate for the overall brevity. This game needed more levels, more bosses, more everything. Looking at how high you can level, and the sheer number of unlockables, I get the feeling they originally intended to create a longer game. Oh well, at least you can't say it overstays its welcome. Short as the experience may be, I did have a blast.

 

That's been my experience with a lot of indie roguelikes. IMO roguelikes really suffer when they're simply one and done deals - most indie roguelikes I play (save for aberrations like Ziggurat which shake up the formula significantly) invariably end up feeling the same. Like, there's this certain feeling to roguelikes that most of them can't shake; a mixture of the player having memorized every single room layout, getting the same limited upgrades every run, etc. It doesn't help that most of them are top down slashers / shooters with similar mechanics.

 

There's basically two types of roguelikes in my mind - The Binding of Isaac and roguelikes. (Dead Cells probably falls more into the former camp as well.) That is to say, there's roguelikes that have years and years of content thrown into them, enough to escape the curse and make every run feel genuinely distinct, and then there's roguelikes that release and are done with it, where you invariably have experienced everything the game has to offer within the first 5-10 hours. Honestly, I think procedural generation just isn't worth it for most games. Like, I loved Hades, but jesus christ did that game get repetitive quickly. It really made me miss the linear structure of their older games like Transistor and Bastion.

[StraightVege]

21 hours ago, Darling Baphomet said:

It's not about whether or not a 2 or 3 hour game is a real game so much as the fact that this is a competition and such short games give a massive advantage, and there's only so much you can do to even out the rewards for games. If you take an extremely strict approach to scoring, as would be necessary to even the playing field between quick plats and very hard / long UR plats (let alone <1% plats), you simply create a new way to cheat the system by finding easy URs. But if you take a more moderate approach (e.g. have a UR be, say, worth 5x as much as an 80% plat), that does very little to address the overwhelming advantage that these tiny games have. At a certain point, it's just not possible to balance scoring.

 

Yeah, I certainly see what you mean. Hey, I have no clue what the ideal solution is to please both competitively-minded players like yourself and the more casual folks such as I, if such a middle-ground even exists. All I can do is reiterate is that, personally, overly restrictive, complex rules always discourage me from joining events, and I would prefer more of an "anything goes" approach, with some kind of limitations to prevent certain stuff from being too abusable. Being stuck playing only the longer, more difficult games in my backlog for an entire year-long contest sounds dreadful; not something I could commit to, I think.

 

Sometimes, I just need a relaxing, easy game I can jaunt through in a few hours as a palette-cleanser between the tougher ones, y'know? Plus, so many of those odd little games actually turn out to be really darn good! I can hang with the best of them when it comes to hunting rares, but do I want to focus on that for any significant length of time? Heck no! Too stressful. Sure, it's not as if I'm being forced to adhere to only event-specific games, but with the way my perfectionist mind works, I'd view it as a waste my time playing anything which doesn't earn the maximum points reward, and would end up pushing myself too hard again.

 

Some of the ideas you've presented already sound pretty good to me, though. If some joker attempts to spam The Jumping Tofu stacks or what have you, I agree that it should be under the host's discretion to just veto it. I would take no issue with that rule, provided they don't go on a power trip and take it too far.

 

21 hours ago, Darling Baphomet said:

That's been my experience with a lot of indie roguelikes. IMO roguelikes really suffer when they're simply one and done deals - most indie roguelikes I play (save for aberrations like Ziggurat which shake up the formula significantly) invariably end up feeling the same. Like, there's this certain feeling to roguelikes that most of them can't shake; a mixture of the player having memorized every single room layout, getting the same limited upgrades every run, etc. It doesn't help that most of them are top down slashers / shooters with similar mechanics.

 

There's basically two types of roguelikes in my mind - The Binding of Isaac and roguelikes. (Dead Cells probably falls more into the former camp as well.) That is to say, there's roguelikes that have years and years of content thrown into them, enough to escape the curse and make every run feel genuinely distinct, and then there's roguelikes that release and are done with it, where you invariably have experienced everything the game has to offer within the first 5-10 hours. Honestly, I think procedural generation just isn't worth it for most games. Like, I loved Hades, but jesus christ did that game get repetitive quickly. It really made me miss the linear structure of their older games like Transistor and Bastion.

 

That's true. Not to equate length/content with quality, but roguelikes and roguelites are kind of a special case, and I feel like they need an abundance of gradually unlocked content to keep things fresh, even hundreds of runs later. Isaac excels at this in a manner no other game I've played has, making it highly addictive, but I'd also say it illustrates the danger of going too far in the "more is better" direction. To me, that game has so much shit packed into it now, that it feels a bit bloated and diluted. For example, the last time I played it, I could rarely find items I wanted to take, because the pool size is absurd. It got to the point where I decided to just reset in the first room for ten minutes, until something worthwhile showed up, and that's not exactly how want I want to spend my time. I can only imagine this has worsened with the release of Repentance, unless they've improved how the items are weighted to spawn.

 

Yup, I absolutely adored Hades—it's among the select few games I'd refer to as a "masterpiece," and I think it's one of the best games ever made—but even I can't deny that, with the rather limited biomes, room layouts, and bosses, staleness becomes a major issue during the platinum journey. Perhaps it's an issue almost exclusively for us completionists and trophy hunters, however; I doubt your average player just finishing their ten runs to watch the true ending feels the same way. Another problem is when the random elements make the completion of sidequests like pulling teeth, such as the many people who have trouble finding Patroclus to advance his dialogue (me included). That said, I'm probably going to finish the PS5 version someday, because the game still whips ass.

 

Come to think of it, another game affected by this was Children of Morta. Great game overall, but then you abruptly reach the end, and it's just like, "that's it?" I dunno, maybe the issue is actually with my perception, since Isaac has warped my expectations or something. I should try to shift my viewpoint to see casual roguelites more like traditional games with randomized aspects, rather than expecting them to keep me enthralled for a zillion hours with a constant flow of new stuff unlocking. But, again, I do recommend Rising Hell nonetheless!

 

Edited November 3, 2023 by StraightVege

[Darling Baphomet]

31 minutes ago, StraightVege said:

 

Yeah, I certainly see what you mean. Hey, I have no clue what the ideal solution is to please both competitively-minded players like yourself and the more casual folks such as I, if such a middle-ground even exists. All I can do is reiterate is that, personally, overly restrictive, complex rules always discourage me from joining events, and I would prefer more of an "anything goes" approach, with some kind of limitations to prevent certain stuff from being too abusable. Being stuck playing only the longer, more difficult games in my backlog for an entire year-long contest sounds dreadful; not something I could commit to, I think.

 

Sometimes, I just need a relaxing, easy game I can jaunt through in a few hours as a palette-cleanser between the tougher ones, y'know? Plus, so many of those odd little games actually turn out to be really darn good! I can hang with the best of them when it comes to hunting rares, but do I want to focus on that for any significant length of time? Heck no! Too stressful. Sure, it's not as if I'm being forced to adhere to only event-specific games, but with the way my perfectionist mind works, I'd view it as a waste my time playing anything which doesn't earn the maximum points reward, and would end up pushing myself too hard again.

 

Some of the ideas you've presented already sound pretty good to me, though. If some joker attempts to spam The Jumping Tofu stacks or what have you, I agree that it should be under the host's discretion to just veto it. I would take no issue with that rule, provided they don't go on a power trip and take it too far.

 

 

I enjoy the casual nature of this event as well, and so far we haven't really had issues with players exploiting the game's scoring system, I don't think, so I might just be overthinking it. That's one reason I don't want to go all in on rarity scoring and just have lower rarity games be a bonus more than have the scoring system totally based on it. It's not like rarity is a perfect metric, anyway - there's plenty of miscellaneous factors that affect a game's rarity. E.g. what the game's audience is (JRPGs and Dark Souls tend to have low rarity plats due to committed audiences, PS+ games have high rarities because everyone gets them), how enjoyable / straightforward the game is, if the game is VR (although I'm conflicted about VR rarity because the inconvenience of VR gameplay is kind of an obstacle in and of itself) etc. And having rarity scoring be too significant also hurts the middle ground of games, e.g. the 30-40 hour 'normal' plats like the Far Cry series, because they have neither the speed of low rarity games or the point potential of high rarity games.

 

And yeah, I tend to view playing non-event games as a waste of time with these sorts of things as well, so I feel you on that.

 

41 minutes ago, StraightVege said:

That's true. Not to equate length/content with quality, but roguelikes and roguelites are kind of a special case, and I feel like they need an abundance of gradually unlocked content to keep things fresh, even hundreds of runs later. Isaac excels at this in a manner no other game I've played has, making it highly addictive, but I'd also say it illustrates the danger of going too far in the "more is better" direction. To me, that game has so much shit packed into it now, that it feels a bit bloated and diluted. For example, the last time I played it, I could rarely find items I wanted to take, because the pool size is absurd. It got to the point where I decided to just reset in the first room for ten minutes, until something worthwhile showed up, and that's not exactly how want I want to spend my time. I can only imagine this has worsened with the release of Repentance, unless they've improved how the items are weighted to spawn.

 

Yup, I absolutely adored Hades—it's among the select few games I'd refer to as a "masterpiece," and I think it's one of the best games ever made—but even I can't deny that, with the rather limited biomes, room layouts, and bosses, staleness becomes a major issue during the platinum journey. Perhaps it's an issue almost exclusively for us completionists and trophy hunters, however; I doubt your average player just finishing their ten runs to watch the true ending feels the same way. Another problem is when the random elements make the completion of sidequests like pulling teeth, such as the many people who have trouble finding Patroclus to advance his dialogue (me included). That said, I'm probably going to finish the PS5 version someday, because the game still whips ass.

 

Come to think of it, another game affected by this was Children of Morta. Great game overall, but then you abruptly reach the end, and it's just like, "that's it?" I dunno, maybe the issue is actually with my perception, since Isaac has warped my expectations or something. I should try to shift my viewpoint to see casual roguelites more like traditional games with randomized aspects, rather than expecting them to keep me enthralled for a zillion hours with a constant flow of new stuff unlocking. But, again, I do recommend Rising Hell nonetheless!

 

Yeah, I do remember pining for the original BoI once or twice just because of how simple and predictable it was. The randomness of Repentance does get a bit overpowering, although it helps keep things fresh as well.

 

And honestly, Hades started feeling repetitive to me long before I finished the main story. Maybe I just wasn't that good at the game. I think the fact that the gameplay is more or less the same for every weapon doesn't help things much - none of the boons really change your gameplay up the way items in BoI can.

[BlazzingWind]

Perhaps the event is cursed, and perhaps I took on more than I could handle in getting a second job. Either way, not being able to keep track of the event like I need to and not having the time to participate just leaves the event in a gray area that isn't fair to anyone involved.

 

Before I get to the final totals there are some things I wanted to highlight. Because the event ending early was not part of the original plan, there will not be any points subtracted for incomplete backlog lists. We are going under the assumption that if the event had continued the two additional months those games would have been completed.

 

I also agree that the point scales need to be adjusted if there is another event similar to this one. The goal of this event was to gain traction on our backlogs and provide a prize at the end as an incentive, but primarily for people to have fun. While the conversation shouldn't revolve necessarily around what is and isn't a game. It should definitely be on what constitutes the earning of points (length, difficulty, etc.).

 

In the end this event and its' idea are free to whoever wants to continue it, I had fun reading everyone's gaming experiences and seeing those games get moved into the complete pile.

 

Again, thank you to everyone that participated. Here are the final results:

 

First Place - @StraightVege 34.00 Points

Second Place - @KillerUni12 32.00 Points

Third Place - @Darling Baphomet 30.00 Points

Fourth Place - @Hurricane_Tanya 27.50 Points

 

Everyone did an amazing job!

[princexedar]

To Play, Plat only.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided 45%
The Quarry: 65%
Moving Out: 37%
Hades 3%
Last of Us Part 2 12%
Spiderman 1%
Spiderman: Miles Morales 0%


Completed:
August:
Star Wars: Jedi: Survivor 100%  (+1.0)
Bioshock 2 74%  (+0.5)
September:

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory 100% (+1.0)
Call of Duty: Ghosts 61%  (+0.5)
Life is Strange: True Colours 100%  (+0.5)
October:
Virtues Last Reward  (+1.0)
Sackboy: A Big Adventure  (+0.5)
Control 87%  (+0.5)
November:
Dark Pictures: House of Ashes  (+1.0)

Current Total: 
6.5