Ratalaika has published 72 games and many have received positive reviews from critics

[Elvick_]

3 hours ago, Spaz said:

I'm pretty certain Steam and Switch have more activity for these games anyway. People on those platforms don't give any shits about achievements

Yeah they do, even though it's easiest to cheat there. People are usually in a forum of any decent looking game without achievements asking for those and trading cards. And any game with broken achievements has posts in the game forums about them, as well as tons of games having guides for them. All within Steam itself. Don't even have to leave to look at any of it.

 

People who care are probably about the same amount who care about PlayStation trophies or Xbox achievements. A small subsection of gamers, but they are certainly there.

[HellcoreFire]

I only look at games that peak my interest. I don't really look at developers or publishers. I wouldn't even know if I have a Ratalaika game on my profile, lol. The only reason why I know about them is because of some people on this site constantly complaining about them.

 

Edit: After checking the list the OP posted, I must say I almost bought a couple of these games when they were on sale before. A couple are on sale right now and I have been eyeing "Red Bow". I might buy "Just Ignore Them" only based on the title, though.

Edited May 2, 2020 by HellcoreFire

[AJ_Radio]

2 minutes ago, Elvick_ said:

Yeah they do, even though it's easiest to cheat there. People are usually in a forum of any decent looking game without achievements asking for those and trading cards. And any game with broken achievements has posts in the game forums about them, as well as tons of games having guides for them. All within Steam itself. Don't even have to leave to look at any of it.

 

People who care are probably about the same amount who care about PlayStation trophies or Xbox achievements. A small subsection of gamers, but they are certainly there.

 

There's a program that automatically gets Steam achievements for you. Some games have thousands of Steam achievements.

 

It's just not worth it, there's no bling sound effect when you earn an achievement, it just pops up in the upper right of your screen for a brief period then goes away. Even the Xbox 360 had a sound effect when you earned an achievement.

Edited May 2, 2020 by Spaz

[Elvick_]

8 minutes ago, Spaz said:

 

There's a program that automatically gets Steam achievements for you. Some games have thousands of Steam achievements.

 

It's just not worth it, there's no bling sound effect when you earn an achievement, it just pops up in the upper right of your screen for a brief period then goes away. Even the Xbox 360 had a sound effect when you earned an achievement.

I know, that's why I said it's easiest to cheat there. Did you read what I said? And those steam spam games sell mostly to people who want the extra spam. Almost like some people do like them there. Which was my point, so thank you for adding to it I guess. I accidentally bought one and it annoyed the crap out of me. It's one of the negative things I put in my review of the game. Since I rarely check the achievements before I get a game on PC, since I don't care as much there. But I'll still do them if they seem doable or fun. Not going to go out of my way as much as I do for trophies but it's a neat extra still.

 

It pops up in the bottom right for me. And the new library highlights them a lot more with the play summaries as well as 10% and lower rarity having a gold shimmer around them. Plus profile showcases related to them.

 

YOU not caring and the entirety of Steam not caring are not the same thing.

 

edit; also, looking at the reviews of Rata games on Steam most are way less than 30. With the highest being a free to play game with 50 reviews. A decent amount had 30, but there are also ones in single digits without the average available since that needs 10 at least. InkSplosion only has 3 and it's been out since 2018. So the claim that their games are probably getting more attention on PC seems silly to me based on that.

Edited May 2, 2020 by Elvick_

[AJ_Radio]

2 minutes ago, Elvick_ said:

I know, that's why I said it's easiest to cheat there. Did you read what I said? And those steam spam games sell mostly to people who want the extra spam. Almost like some people do like them there. Which was my point, so thank you for adding to it I guess. I accidentally bought one and it annoyed the crap out of me. It's one of the negative things I put in my review of the game. Since I rarely check the achievements before I get a game on PC, since I don't care as much there. But I'll still do them if they seem doable or fun. Not going to go out of my way as much as I do for trophies but it's a neat extra still.

 

It pops up in the bottom right for me. And the new library highlights them a lot more with the play summaries as well as 10% and lower rarity having a gold shimmer around them. Plus profile showcases related to them.

 

YOU not caring and the entirety of Steam not caring are not the same thing.

 

I never once worked on getting any Steam achievements for any of the games I played. If I got an achievement I just simply got it by playing, I never went out of my way to get an achievement like I do when I trophy hunt.

 

Most of the stuff I have is old games from the 1990s to late 2000s, many of which don't carry any Steam achievements. My computer can't run the new 'reputable' games, doesn't have the specs and I'd rather not invest $500 - 1000 for decent parts.

[Arcesius]

I'm gonna briefly quote "Infinite Madaa", the developer behind the gem that is "Little Adventures on the Prairie" (I know that game is not by Ratalaika):

 

Quote

“A friend of mine suggested to release the game on PS4 and Vita and add an easy Platinum to it with a cheap price. This way a lot of people buy it and we would get the funding we need for our next game.”

 

That is Ratalaikas business model in a single quote. In the countless threads that have already been opened about this topic, it rarely comes down to the quality of the games. It's about a company exploiting addiction within a community with 10 gold 1 plat trophy lists. It is about the influx of new trophy stacks for the same game, cluttering PSNP's "new releases" section. It's about the countless threads with useless video guides for your meanwhile typical 5-minute 1/10 platinum game that wouldn't require a guide at all (though that has gotten better recently). It's about the pointless "AS-Relase xx.yy.zzzz" threads. 

 

A while ago there were people on this site giving free Ratalaika codes for becoming the fastest achiever in whatever new game they had just released. These people where in exchange with Ratalaika, and when asked about why they make such easy trophy lists, the answer was (I would love to quote but honestly there have been so many similar threads to this one that I don't know which one it was...): 

 

Quote

"Well the guy at Ratalaika has to do everything himself and he is just not that good at videogames, so he makes easy trophy lists".

 

Well how about that for an excuse! ?

 

But hey, I'm just a non-competitive trophy hunter with not even 70 plats that doesn't give a shit about leaderboards... So take it from the top guys. You can find records of Hakoom, of Mr. Unknown, of Roughdawg, and many other top-placed players stating that these stacks have ruined what they loved doing most. 

Edited May 2, 2020 by Arcesius

[Elvick_]

5 hours ago, Sergen said:

What Ratalaika has done is make the value of platinum trophy count meaningless by giving people access to cheap games that have brainlessly easy platinums. In the past the easiest plats were on visual novel games that were exclusively available in Japan and most of those games costed around $100 to buy, now you can buy cheap Ratalaika games on the PSN store and they go on sale often. Either way, nobody will think that you played a Ratalaika game because critics liked it. Most of the Ratalaika games don't require you to complete the entire story mode to get the platinum so I'd say of course people are gonna shit on the game when they didn't have to experience the whole thing to platinum it.

Hannah Montana says hello. And they've never had "value". Not real value. They're digital images for doing a task in a video game. Sometimes that task is as easy as starting a game.

 

The value they hold is determined by the people who earn them and look at them. If you don't think they have value anymore that's you. It's not hard to look at a profile and see what their platinums are from. People are so lazy. You seem to care so much about other people's profiles but do you even look at any? I barely go to anyone else's profile, I care about mine. Not yours. You could have a profile of entirely Rata games and I wouldn't care or be affected by it. My profile's worth doesn't change based on yours. Someone can think my profile is just easy games and I don't care. I'd probably agree since most are easier games but I play what I have an interest in and my one platinum regret wasn't the one Rata game, it was that shit garbage Energy Invasion. How do you mess up brick attack, I'm still mad about it. And it fuels me to never just buy a game thinking, "well you can't mess up this simple game type..."

[AJ_Radio]

Just now, Arcesius said:

But hey, I'm just a non-competitive trophy hunter with not even 70 plats that doesn't give a shit about leaderboards... So take it from the top guys. You can find records of Hakoom, of Mr. Unknown, of Roughdawg, and many other top-placed players stating that these stacks have ruined what they loved doing most. 

 

Yet they're still stacking piles of shit to maintain their world ranking.

[JPageMartin36]

People are free to do what they want.

 

As for me personally, I'll never forget hammering the leaderboard of this one online game for about 3 years back during my uni days. The game was boring, but damn if I wasn't going to get to the top of that board. After so many years, I got to 4th (which made me 1st in the UK). Then one day the site went belly up. Gone. Never to return. I thought to myself "What the hell did I just waste all that time for? There's not even evidence left to show my 'achievement'

 

That's a true story, and looking back I wish I'd just spent that era playing the many dozens of great PS1 titles of the day and having a good time.

 

So when I started trophy hunting on PS4 in 2017, it was with the strict caveat that enjoyment comes first. There was no way I was going to have lightning strike twice for me.

 

I'm currently chasing a spot in the top 100,000 (I think) and I get small green shoots every week pretty much. I won't speed up the process by changing my style though.

 

But like I say, I have no problem with the Mayo type players. I've (sort of) been there in a past life. All I would say is, be wary of wasting 30 years and regretting it.

 

 

 

[TheGnomeWarrior]

I actually enjoyed a lot of the games I've played so far. At first I used them to bridge the time between longer plats as little throw away games but found myself getting into the stories or gameplay. 

I find a lot of the games differ from each other but they all have a sort of charm mixed in with the grime.

[AJ_Radio]

2 minutes ago, JPageMartin36 said:

As for me personally, I'll never forget hammering the leaderboard of this one online game for about 3 years back during my uni days. The game was boring, but damn if I wasn't going to get to the top of that board. After so many years, I got to 4th (which made me 1st in the UK). Then one day the site went belly up. Gone. Never to return. I thought to myself "What the hell did I just waste all that time for? There's not even evidence left to show my 'achievement'

 

I had this mentality with World of Warcraft and Runescape some 10 - 15 years ago. Completely ruined my immersion of the games.

 

I still remember being in the top 100 in some skills on Runescape. I practically had to play every day just to make sure my ranking didn't go down too much. Never again.

 

Last I checked, my old account I made in high school isn't even ranked on the leaderboards. Probably got hacked and stolen, a game I spent thousands of hours on for virtually no real gain.

[JPageMartin36]

5 minutes ago, Spaz said:

 

I had this mentality with World of Warcraft and Runescape some 10 - 15 years ago. Completely ruined my immersion of the games.

 

I still remember being in the top 100 in some skills on Runescape. I practically had to play every day just to make sure my ranking didn't go down too much. Never again.

 

 

I hear ya. All you can do is learn from it and re-shape your future hobbies so they're less likely to lead to any regret (which clearly you've done, so all good).

[You]

30 minutes ago, Spaz said:

 

I had this mentality with World of Warcraft and Runescape some 10 - 15 years ago. Completely ruined my immersion of the games.

 

I still remember being in the top 100 in some skills on Runescape. I practically had to play every day just to make sure my ranking didn't go down too much. Never again.

 

Last I checked, my old account I made in high school isn't even ranked on the leaderboards. Probably got hacked and stolen, a game I spent thousands of hours on for virtually no real gain.

 

Dude when I was at Uni in 1998, one of my friends used to play Ultima Online all day long in the university labs. He was there first thing in the morning and was there till they kicked everyone out. He failed his degree basically. I have seen people get addicted to trophies as well. These kind of things can take over your life.

 

You can't help these people unfortunately, but at some point they will have a day where they just think, I can't carry on and I hate my life. I would say that the top 100 to 500 trophy hunters, their total is way too high for the 12 years PSN has been out. All of them are playing games and trophy hunting way too much. Some of the top accounts are likely teams now, PS3, PS4 and Vita, 3 people playing different games, 2 PS4s working separately on different games. The "battle" is only going to get worse the more games and systems that come out.

 

One day, one day these people will regret it.

 

You only live once and if that's for trophy hunting, then you probably need to rethink your life goals.

Edited May 2, 2020 by enaysoft

[JPageMartin36]

9 minutes ago, enaysoft said:

 

Dude when I was at Uni in 1998, one of my friends used to play Ultima Online all day long in the university labs. He was there first thing in the morning and was there till they kicked everyone out. He failed his degree basically. I have seen people get addicted to trophies as well. These kind of things can take over your life

 

That was the same as me, except I was at uni slightly later in 2000-03. This one daft online game basically ruined my degree. I scraped a 2.2 by the skin of my teeth (and I mean by the shirt tails), but in my heart of hearts I know I could have got a first, or at the very least a 2.1. Some days I would be in the Uni computer rooms hammering that leaderboard from 9am to 9pm with just one or two small breaks for food or a dump. Suppose it was better than getting into street gangs. 

 

 

[usapro2017]

19 minutes ago, enaysoft said:

 

Dude when I was at Uni in 1998, one of my friends used to play Ultima Online all day long in the university labs. He was there first thing in the morning and was there till they kicked everyone out. He failed his degree basically. I have seen people get addicted to trophies as well. These kind of things can take over your life.

 

You can't help these people unfortunately, but at some point they will have a day where they just think, I can't carry on and I hate my life. I would say that the top 100 to 500 trophy hunters, their total is way too high for the 12 years PSN has been out. All of them are playing games and trophy hunting way too much. Some of the top accounts are likely teams now, PS3, PS4 and Vita, 3 people playing different games, 2 PS4s working separately on different games. The "battle" is only going to get worse the more games and systems that come out.

 

One day, one day these people will regret it.

 

You only live once and if that's for trophy hunting, then you probably need to rethink your life goals.

Hakoom once said that if trophies are still around in 20 years he would still be trophy hunting. I don’t think he will ever let anyone take his number 1 spot.

[Sergen]

1 hour ago, Elvick_ said:

Hannah Montana says hello. And they've never had "value". Not real value. They're digital images for doing a task in a video game. Sometimes that task is as easy as starting a game.

 

The value they hold is determined by the people who earn them and look at them. If you don't think they have value anymore that's you. It's not hard to look at a profile and see what their platinums are from. People are so lazy. You seem to care so much about other people's profiles but do you even look at any? I barely go to anyone else's profile, I care about mine. Not yours. You could have a profile of entirely Rata games and I wouldn't care or be affected by it. My profile's worth doesn't change based on yours. Someone can think my profile is just easy games and I don't care. I'd probably agree since most are easier games but I play what I have an interest in and my one platinum regret wasn't the one Rata game, it was that shit garbage Energy Invasion. How do you mess up brick attack, I'm still mad about it. And it fuels me to never just buy a game thinking, "well you can't mess up this simple game type..."

The reason I say they’ve made a platinum meaningless is because in the past a platinum would require a good level of commitment to the game you were playing. You’d normally need to complete the story multiple times and on more than one difficulty setting, explore an entire map to get collectibles and almost do anything that had any in-game stat tracking. But a Ratalaika game can be done in 10 minutes without experiencing even half of the content the game offers. I don’t care what a Ratalaika player does with their time and money, that’s their choice. I rather admire Ratalaika for cashing in on the hype train and being able to get a lot of money out of people who want a piss easy plat. A long time ago people were happy to see a 5-10 hour platinum at a reasonable price, now it isn’t uncommon to see them take 5-10 minutes. 

[totallycrushed]

1 hour ago, Spaz said:

 

It's just not worth it, there's no bling sound effect when you earn an achievement, it just pops up in the upper right of your screen for a brief period then goes away. Even the Xbox 360 had a sound effect when you earned an achievement.

 

This is just sad.

[Lord_Bane999]

I bought their games recently to mix things up and see how they are. Definitely not entirely bad some are pretty good. A couple were kinda nice breathers. Like 36 Fragments of Midnight, it's a simple platformer but even when I thought I was going to slow I realized the timer was pretty gracious for event the ten minute trophy definitely got me to slow down and enjoy it more. Metagal so far is a fav (Megaman clone but arguably pretty polished game, sucks they simplified the NA list the game isn't that hard to beat). Devious Dungeon I just started a bit ago. I'm enjoying it because it's clear they took inspiration from several well known ips to make it. Simplified controls reminds me of first Castlevania, alot of timing jumps and height advantages to dodge enemy attacks while landing your own. (Which as a big Castlevania fan I enjoy it alot, despite it being somewhat tedious) some of the armor and weapons it's cool they made some detailed enough you can clearly see what movie, game, or real life armor they based it off.

 

Alot of their games are simple clones but in this day and age I can't knock them for that, alot of games released even AAA games are clones of previous games. But I can praise them for the little differences and things they did you change them enough. The Destronaut Games for examples change up the Space Invaders formula by adding new attacks, enemy debris that comes in from the background or falls towards you and in the sequel game making it a 3d arena shooter which I honestly kept playing alot of the score challenges long past I hit the trophy marks lol.

[AJ_Radio]

1 hour ago, enaysoft said:

Dude when I was at Uni in 1998, one of my friends used to play Ultima Online all day long in the university labs. He was there first thing in the morning and was there till they kicked everyone out. He failed his degree basically. I have seen people get addicted to trophies as well. These kind of things can take over your life.

 

I've met guys who play 10 - 15 hours every single day on average, doesn't matter what day it is, they're always on.

 

I met a guy on Runescape who claimed he clocked in the equivalent of 730 full days on Runescape. 730 days times 24 equals 17,520 hours. The thing that was truly sad? He was only 20 - 21 years old, and this was five years ago I asked him this question. He was one of the top Twitch streamers for the game. I barely broke over half of that amount in time, being six years older than him.

 

What's interesting about your case is your story was a long time ago. It's a lot more commonplace to find people now stuck on a computer all day long... and I'm not referring to work or studies.

 

Granted the virus is making people stay home, but still. Pretty scary.

 

2 hours ago, enaysoft said:

You can't help these people unfortunately, but at some point they will have a day where they just think, I can't carry on and I hate my life. I would say that the top 100 to 500 trophy hunters, their total is way too high for the 12 years PSN has been out. All of them are playing games and trophy hunting way too much. Some of the top accounts are likely teams now, PS3, PS4 and Vita, 3 people playing different games, 2 PS4s working separately on different games. The "battle" is only going to get worse the more games and systems that come out.

 

That's why the entire thing is pointless.

 

1 hour ago, Sergen said:

The reason I say they’ve made a platinum meaningless is because in the past a platinum would require a good level of commitment to the game you were playing. You’d normally need to complete the story multiple times and on more than one difficulty setting, explore an entire map to get collectibles and almost do anything that had any in-game stat tracking. But a Ratalaika game can be done in 10 minutes without experiencing even half of the content the game offers. I don’t care what a Ratalaika player does with their time and money, that’s their choice. I rather admire Ratalaika for cashing in on the hype train and being able to get a lot of money out of people who want a piss easy plat. A long time ago people were happy to see a 5-10 hour platinum at a reasonable price, now it isn’t uncommon to see them take 5-10 minutes. 

 

You had to put more effort to finish a PS3 game than a PS4 game. This is basically true in so many ways.

 

Look at Far Cry 2 on the PS3 then compare that to Far Cry New Dawn on the PS4. See the difference in what you had to do for the platinum?

 

1 hour ago, totallycrushed said:

 

This is just sad.

 

I don't need to be reminded of this. We all have our priorities.

 

11 minutes ago, Lord_Bane999 said:

Alot of their games are simple clones but in this day and age I can't knock them for that, alot of games released even AAA games are clones of previous games. But I can praise them for the little differences and things they did you change them enough. The Destronaut Games for examples change up the Space Invaders formula by adding new attacks, enemy debris that comes in from the background or falls towards you and in the sequel game making it a 3d arena shooter which I honestly kept playing alot of the score challenges long past I hit the trophy marks lol.

 

Space Invaders is old and so is Tetris, so I'm glad to see somebody taking these old games and putting in their own twist. Tetris Effect is a good game for those Tetris lovers, but I was never good at the original game, so that platinum just isn't for me.

[Rally-Vincent---]

If only I'd get one Dollar for every thread about Ratalaika games. I could retire in the near future on that money.

[Jelly Soup]

Still say people are overthinking this whole thing. Spam games exist, it's a business model and it has it's customers. That's not likely to change any time soon. You can either accept it participate/ignore it or get all worked up. I know a lot of people around these parts hate this line, but, people are going to play what they like.

 

Now, call me when Ratalaika bundles all there games into one $5 box, like you'd find on Steam. Then I might agree with it being a problem.

 

17 hours ago, NekoRave said:

Also great memories inbound from flash games

 

 

Lots of great adventure games and RPG. Epic Battle Fantasy, the first Chibi Knight, Sonny...so many good games.

 

 

Edited May 2, 2020 by Jelly Soup
Who is a idiot who types too fast and forgets to proofread? THIS GUY.

[triplejmzu8]

I loved Back In 1995 for it's story. imo, it was super great. Also, Guard Duty was very fun.

[abhinandhan22]

7 hours ago, djb5f said:

For their price point, full price of $4-5 and often on sale for $2, 30 minutes to an hour of playtime is fine and honestly you can usually play many more levels after the platinum.  And the few I have played (with the exception of Sagebrush), I have enjoyed.  Games like FullBlast, Super Destronaut DX, and Midnight Deluxe.  And I have a high percentage of ultra rare trophies so I don’t shy away from a challenge, 
 

The platinums come easier than they should but I certainly don’t fault anyone playing some of these, especially if you break up playing very long or difficult games.  Variety is the spice of life.  There is actually gameplay here unlike something like My Name is Mayo.

 

Where I think it goes too far is when people get 6 plats from a single game.  And I think they are paying for multiple copies from multiple regions?  Thirsty!

 

 

Perfectly put. I am not some leaderboard chaser but I usually grab 1 or 2 of these games when they are on sale and reward myself with a super easy plat from time to time(especially after doing a game thats 100-200hrs+) and btw some of these so called easy plats or not even easy for some people. I had to play inksplosion and 36 fragments of midnight for much longer than what guides stated. I think the 6 plat stack people are definitely trying to be top 10 on the leaderboard. 

[KilledByMatty]

ah shit, here we go again 

[SpaceCoresDad]

I'm going to go ahead and echo what a lot of people in this thread are saying. Ratalaika doesn't really make games, they publish them. That means there's a lot of varying quality in the things they put out, and a lot of them are actually quite good. This is because they focus more on putting out as many games as possible with (kinda crap) trophy lists so trophy hunters will buy up the six different versions and give them more cash. The fact that the games they choose are so cheap and easy to port means they're able to give things out for free more too, to hook people in with what they've got. It's a decent business model.

I really don't like what they do with trophy lists though. It's just poor design. When you get the 100% for a game, in my opinion, you should be pretty much 100% done with the game. A lot of these lists you don't even need to beat the game to get the platinum, and that's just sad to me. Metagal and Super Weekend Mode, while not exactly GOTY material, more than likely deserve better than "beat three levels."

That said, I think they're getting better? Some of their more recent releases require you to actually beat the game, which is something! A lot of these games are pretty small and short anyway, so there's not a lot of ideas for trophies beyond simple shit like that, so I'll support any baby steps in the right direction.