A plague tale, Night in the woods and to the moon >> skip.
Ok.
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Skip doesn't necessarily mean they are bad games. Well, To the Moon is :P A Plague Tale was solid though with great graphics and voice acting. But. If I had to choose there are much much better games and I'd skip Plague hands down.
And regarding the other 2 games you've mentioned – try OneShot. It's superior towards them in storytelling and gameplay design. And the ending, oh boy! Such a strong emotions I had to quit the game for a few hours before finishing it. Don't read anything about this game though, it will only ruin the experience.
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Nah, it just shows that our tastes are kinda different, so your curator is not for me, that's it.
The gameplay is not necessarily the main thing I'm aiming for in games, for example, TellTale games, you're just making choices from time to time and enjoying the story that's unfolding in front of you.
Alright, if I get a chance gonna check OneShot out :D
Thanks for the recommendation, have a nice day! :3
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Nah, it just shows that our tastes are kinda different, so your curator is not for me, that's it.
Nicely put :)
Let me know how you did like OneShot if you happen to play it! :)
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I think you have a neat idea of play or skip, but calling To the Moon a bad or a skip game is interesting. It offers a good engaging story even if there's less gameplay. You also mention frustrating design choices, but TtM is quite straightforward to experience, while in OneShot sometimes you have to wander around to figure out if you have the right item or where to interact with it, if anything, that is more frustrating. I'm saying this as someone that liked both games a lot and I'm wondering what is your reasoning behind this.
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I agree that OneShot is frustrating at these moments, I had similar feelings.
I had real problem with moving in To the Moon. It was easy to stuck on some kind of shrubs. Or were they flowers? I don't know because the enviromental elements were interfusing. Well, it slowed down the movement that was already sooo slow originally. Going back and forth to do the same repetitive quest over and over again for the first half of the game was so boring I would quit the game already if it wasn't for an event I was trying to finish this game for.
The dialogs between two playable employees didn't help. I felt like most of the time they added nothing to the story and were there just for jokes. Which again slowed down the pace of the game because I had to read something that wasn't that interesting to me. The story itself was quite good and had really interesting ideas and awesome main theme. I would enjoy it if it wasn't diluted by these inconsequential dialogs and repetitive gameplay. I felt like you could cut most of employees' dialogs out without hurting the story and the gameplay would be much smoother already. If the game wouldn't force me to explore the world (that didn't have that much to offer in my opinion) it would be even more enjoyable experience.
To wrap it up, in my opinion the game had great potential story-wise and it's a shame that gameplay did it so much harm. In OneShot it was frustrating to figure something out but... spoilers, don't read if you haven't play the game: every dialog had a purpose: it either added new information about the world/story or build a relationship with you which was crucial in later stages of the game. The gameplay at the beginning was slow and bored me a little, just like To the Moon but it was more diverse later with puzzles that were breaking 4th wall. Although I think there was one loooong corridor and some slow elevators in the second half of the game – both boring as hell. I think I was sold to OneShot because I was impressed with 4th wall breaking, building my relationship with a character and putting me in a very tough situation at the end. And even the title meaning suprised me so much at the end. In To the Moon I was invested in John's character but I didn't care for two people I was spending most time with. They were bland and uninteresting, trying so hard to be cool – which never does any good to the characters unless it's Deadpool (because he's aware of it).
Hope it clarifies my point of view a little – sorry for long post though!
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If you had that much of a real problem with the moving in TtM, then you really have a problem with RPGmaker games, they aren't really designed to feel great, they are quite restrictive as to what you can do.
The playable employees are meant to be just for jokes. As a means to balance the seriousness of John's story with comedic relief. But you will find that they have a serious story as well which is told over the multiple games, so their dialogue has some purpose, leaving hints, etc.
The 4th wall breaking is what drew me in OneShot too. From what I can tell, you know what you want and you only want to chase that one thing from games, kinda like an addict. :P You see everything else as useless, only stopping you from reaching the thing you want. Since you are on this hunt, I can recommend you There Is No Game: Jam Edition 2015 (free) and Evan's Remains. Little Misfortune and Thomas Was Alone are decent too.
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Interesting, I am now curious what in your opinion I do seek? :)
I am planning to give a shot to Little Misfortunes, not sure about the others – thanks for recommendations! :)
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A little chaos to break the monotony. :)
I hope you enjoy Little Misfortune like I did!
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Not necessarily a chaos but you are right – certainly a little something to break the monotony is very welcome :)
I hope I'll enjoy it too, thanks! :)
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Chaos isn't a bad thing. To change something you need to introduce chaos, break the mold.
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You didn't like To the Moon? I can't believe it. It was such a lovely title, it even made me cry
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It's certainly interesting seeing someone not recommend games like to the moon. I've never played it myself but I've only heard great things off, I have played its sequel finding paradise though.
I mainly focus on story rather then gameplay so what you consider skip is perfect for me and games you consider play, a bunch are actually on my ignored list.
That oneshot game does look really nice though and I probably wouldn't come across it unless I spotted it being given away. I tend to focus on visual novels when I do my search and while a couple of other games pop up its more of jrpgs then that sort
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Let me quote my answer above so it would be spoiler free :) As CptWest said we can have different tastes in games and it's totally fine!
I had real problem with moving in To the Moon. It was easy to stuck on some kind of shrubs. Or were they flowers? I don't know because the enviromental elements were interfusing. Well, it slowed down the movement that was already sooo slow originally. Going back and forth to do the same repetitive quest over and over again for the first half of the game was so boring I would quit the game already if it wasn't for an event I was trying to finish this game for.
The dialogs between two playable employees didn't help. I felt like most of the time they added nothing to the story and were there just for jokes. Which again slowed down the pace of the game because I had to read something that wasn't that interesting to me. The story itself was quite good and had really interesting ideas and awesome main theme. I would enjoy it if it wasn't diluted by these inconsequential dialogs and repetitive gameplay. I felt like you could cut most of employees' dialogs out without hurting the story and the gameplay would be much smoother already. If the game wouldn't force me to explore the world (that didn't have that much to offer in my opinion) it would be even more enjoyable experience.
In To the Moon I was invested in John's character but I didn't care for two people I was spending most time with. They were bland and uninteresting, trying so hard to be cool – which never does any good to the characters unless it's Deadpool (because he's aware of it).
It's also possible that I demand more from storytelling nowadays because I have much more knowledge about it now and teach about it myself.
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Ah yeah again I never played to the moon but I can totally understand those problems. I mean I played finding paradise and it was a fine game but it also isn't one that I would be like yeah its amazing and having played the devs free game of mirror lied the story in that just didn't interest me enough.
I'm not a big fan of following creators but when I see these threads I give it a quick glance over and its just nice seeing a different opinion for once. Especially with that indepth comment on why you would skip it just because you don't like it rather then because you can just play a better game
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In my opinion, curators are useless, especially in this current state. Unless they really look from a keen perspective and that's pretty rare.
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Any recommendations so I could better understand what do you mean? :)
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Shortly, because they're not any more useful than Steam reviews. That's why all-covering curators are meaningless, people don't need that. People already can see what game has better reviews, that's statistics. Some random person's thoughts are just bias. For example, in your case you were not objective with To The Moon.
Anyway, if you want to be useful you should do what Steam tags couldn't and while doing that you should do that in a specific way. You might look this as "game kinks". People search for a specific thing in games and those kinda curator might be useful to them. More like picking a target audience. Let's say I'm searching for an FPS game and I also want RPG stats with the equipment and realistic gunplay. Now this is something specific that Steam tags cannot help. (Though in near future, Steam's AI will be much more useful than curators.) And looking at these you should come up with Stalker Shadows of Chernobyl, Far Cry 2, Arma 2 etc. Being positive or negative about games shouldn't be your first priority.
This is my a cup of tea and hope that was useful for you.
Addition: There is a curator named Under250 or something like that and their purpose is finding the games that have review count below 250, for old-ish game. With this people can discover un-earthed gems and this is also beneficial for developers. Now this is a useful purpose.
Edit: Curator page for this example https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33447839/
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Thanks for sharing!
Obviously, all my recommendatiins were subjective. Even 250 guy is subjective in which games to put on the list, there's no way of avoiding being subjective. And they aren't my type of curator because their list isn't filtered enough for me – which shows that different people have different needs :)
I don't want to make it my job, I already have plenty work to do. And I already have a curator where I share my findings on games with intriguing concepts :) In this curator I wanted to keep it simple: play a game, give your opinion if it is a hit or a filler. It doesn't mean skippable games are bad, they're just skippable. In my opinion and it's fine to have different one :) And if there won't be people who are interested in this curator, that's okay!
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No problem.
No one can be perfectly objective, and no one expects that. But a curator should be fair. Also that curator wasn't exactly my point but at least it serves some purpose. I'm not saying I'm all oppose to curators. There are tons of games I don't even know exist. And if I search for a specific game, they can be useful. I'm just saying maybe 99% of curators are useless and have no purpose, they are just random or meme or just personal thoughts. Curator means some kind of a journalist. They should research and give fair reviews.
Writing on a newspaper doesn't make you a writer. :)
So, in my opinion your current curator page is misguided. Making an actual useful page needs some dedication. You can find some neat ideas and good luck with all that.
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anodyne: skip
haha yes that game sucks this is a great curator!
to the moon: skip
wait no what are you doing
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There is 1 thing I can't understand.. You say: "Especially if you're like me and your free time is limited." and 2 sentences later " I've started a curator called Play or skip where I briefly review why to play or skip a certain game."
How you don't have time for a game but you have to make a curator page, videos and editing of videos and keep track of it all?
As for the page itself, are you giving an alternative for what to skip a game or which similar games to skip for a game you recommend? I didn't had the time to check all the videos out so not 100% if you do it or not. I had time to briefly check your tone over the videos, nothing more yet unfortunatly
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I think you misunderstood what my curator is :) I don't have YouTube channel or anything like that – it's just Steam Curator with a few short sentences about why I recommend to play it or skip it. It's like 2 minutes of work :)
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Yeah that makes more sense :P Thanks for clarifying :) I will check it more thoroughly later
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Following. By the way, that new avatar's simply perfect for you! :D
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So cool! I^v^I
I'm glad you like new avatar – I also liked how it went!
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There are too many games. It's impossible to play everything. Especially if you're like me and your free time is limited.
Yet you skip short and good games like To The Moon and A Plague Tale and recommend a time sink like Stardew Valley. (yeah it is also a good game but demands a lot of your time) Your curation seems to follow your tastes rather than the solution to limited time problem.
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Of course it's my personal taste. And you liking these two games is your personal taste :) And that's totally cool that we have different tastes! Although I don't think that Plague is a bad game!
Yes, Stardew Valley can consume a lot of time. Following your reasoning, I shouldn't recommend Witcher 3 or GTA V because they also consume hundreds of hours. In my opinion it's better to decide to skip 5 monotonous hours in To the Moon and spend quality 100 hours in Stardew Valley. You can have different opinion and it's fine, following the curator isn't obligatory – or you can use it the opposite way :)
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Following your reasoning...
No, all he is saying is, if someone has limited time to play games, they're going to concentrate on games that don't take much time.
You're all hung up on people saying To The Moon is a great game, and yet that's not the point of his statement, it's your supposed "free time is limited" statement that is somewhat conflicted by your Stardew Valley time-sink. It makes the description of your curation focus come across as false.
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if someone has limited time to play games, they're going to concentrate on games that don't take much time
That's one way. Another way is to focus on a specific game, even if it is time sinker, if they will. Another way is to pick similar game instead, for instance OneShot in this case. All of these are fine.
I've started this curator because I realized that I myself won't be able to give a shot to every game I'd like to and I need to be more picky. Like, way more. Just take a look at my insanely long wishlist – and it has been cleaned a little in last couple of weeks.
I've been honest but it's up to you whether you believe it or not :) If you'd like to find argument against me, you will surely find it no matter what I say. Or maybe you and them simply look for something different than my curator is, and that's okay too.
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If you'd like to find argument against me
If you can't take constructive criticism, that's fine. We were trying to point out that the premise of the description to your curatorship is misleading.
Enjoy your life.
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From my perspective I think you don't understand what pick up and play games are. Because Stardew Valley is definitely not one of them.
It's a game that makes you want to play for hours, and you need to pay attention to lots of things too. There are a lot of stuff to do in spesific time frames. And you can only auto-save at the end of the day. Sure you can play 10 minutes and go to bed (in game) and save your progress. But then you most likely won't accomplish anything in the game.
By that logic every game is a Pu&P game. You can play Civilization one turn every now and then. But you definitely won't understand what your goal is. And you won't feel satisfied at the end.
I would say a Pu&P game should be either short or has good replayability and should give you satisfaction at the end of your session. Like playing a session of multiplayer deathmatch or a short roguelike game or a game you can play and finish in very short amount of time.
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Yeah 22 hours with 0 achievements....
As I said it is a perspective. To me with that mindset almost all the games are pick up and play :)
Edit: Casual and pick up and play aren't the same thing. CS:GO is a pick up and play game that is not casual.
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When I said 0 achievements I was pointing at my previous statement:
Sure you can play 10 minutes and go to bed (in game) and save your progress. But then you most likely won't accomplish anything in the game.
I repeat with that logic of yours every game is pick up and play. Hell, even Skyrim and Fallout 4 are much better candidates for it. As they have manual saves, quest markers and whatnot. You can play it for 15 minutes leave it for months then come back ad continue where you left of. And eventually you will finish the game.
Stardew doesn't have any of that. No manual saves, no quest markers or trackers etc. It is more unlikely to achieve something and be satisfied with that game. And I beleive satisfaction is an important part about having fun with games (or anything)
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Curator who says we should skip playing Plague tale deserves to be moved on ignore list :O I will rather keep deciding on my own what games worth playing.
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Hm... there's no point of that i think, because some of the games are a skip for you, but for others are a must play... everyone likes different games. For you To the Moon is a skip, but for me is a masterpiece.. :) Otherwise is a good choice of creating a curator and writing reviews..
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I think for your curation to be useful, it would be helpful to list the properties of games that are considered desirable that may not apply to everyone.
For example, I might like a curator with a focus on games that are "short, not too much reading, and great actions", whereas someone else wants "immersive, great story, beautiful graphics". They are both valid, but they definitely don't overlap a lot of times.
Of course these decisions are subjective, but subjective info is only useful if the opinions fit. So then it becomes important for you to define upfront what your opinions / goals are for the games you are looking for. Then the play/skip decision would be a lot more helpful.
Good luck :>
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There are too many games. It's impossible to play everything. Especially if you're like me and your free time is limited. With such an insanely huge selection we need to answer ourselves this: are there better games to spend time with? I've started a curator called Play or skip where I briefly review why to play or skip a certain game. I only review games I actually played. Feel free to join if it feels like your cup of tea!
Play or skip
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