🔴 Get my premium monthly newsletter - https://gamemakerstoolkit.com/digest/ 🔴Hollow Knight: Silksong is the latest game to join the "difficulty in games" d...
Yet another video talking about silksong’s difficulty, but this one is from someone who knows what theyre talking about
Very good video that lines up with a lot of my own thoughts (yay).
That said? I think I fundamentally disagree with the idea that everyone should be able to beat every game for narrative reasons. My preference is for something similar to what Nine Sols did (AMAZING boss fights. Dogshit metroidvania and traversal), but I don’t fundamentally believe that everyone needs to be able to experience every game. Like, you can make an “easy mode” for DCS but… the point of that game is the fidelity and turning all of that off just feels “wrong”? At the end of the day, it is up to the devs and what they want people to consider “accomplishment” to be.
And we live in the internet age. I remember beating Arkham Knight, having fun, and then deciding there was zero chance I would ever want to get all the riddler keys or fight deathstroke a dozen times and just went to youtube.
But I 100% agree with the back half of the video. The game is very much designed to just take a break and wander off when you get frustrated. Which is where I DO wish there were more QOL features to make it clear what areas might still have a mask (preferably one you can reach) rather than needing to find a guide or try to guess. Especially when you don’t even get map markers for a decent chunk early on.
Yes. If you know ahead of time you’ll prioritize those.
If you are new to the game/genre and are struggling and even wiping occasionally? It isn’t a priority.
But there is also a big difference between having a few different pin types and just having “Well, SOMETHING was there?”. Hell, I still need to get around to figuring out which of my oranges are NPCs because I wasn’t sure if quest NPCs would be auto-tagged (they are, once you have a reason to talk to them again).
Which is another factor to all of these discussions. I fairly regularly push back on Dark Souls (and its successors) being a “difficult game”. It really isn’t. What it is is an incredibly well designed (first half of a…) challenging game. Everything up until Amazing Chest Ahead is designed to teach you how to play the game and how to approach encounters. And once you know that? You are in really good shape for the entire genre even if it is a game that emphasizes parrying (Lies of P), blocking (Sekiro), or beautiful beautiful loot (Nioh! Aka “Best Souls”). You don’t learn character builds (mostly “pick a single stat and work with it”) but that comes later.
And… some of that applies here. I know I made it WAY farther than I should have with no meaningful upgrades because I am a sicko/idiot. But for people who don’t know the idea that “Hey, this crypt full of skeletons is a mofo. Maybe go somewhere else”, they might be slamming their head against a wall trying to fight Last Judge for far longer than they should (although, questionable balancing decisions means that upgrading your health doesn’t matter all that much but that is a different rant).
But it is still the idea of a first game versus a fifth game as it were. And we all start somewhere.
Very good video that lines up with a lot of my own thoughts (yay).
That said? I think I fundamentally disagree with the idea that everyone should be able to beat every game for narrative reasons. My preference is for something similar to what Nine Sols did (AMAZING boss fights. Dogshit metroidvania and traversal), but I don’t fundamentally believe that everyone needs to be able to experience every game. Like, you can make an “easy mode” for DCS but… the point of that game is the fidelity and turning all of that off just feels “wrong”? At the end of the day, it is up to the devs and what they want people to consider “accomplishment” to be.
And we live in the internet age. I remember beating Arkham Knight, having fun, and then deciding there was zero chance I would ever want to get all the riddler keys or fight deathstroke a dozen times and just went to youtube.
But I 100% agree with the back half of the video. The game is very much designed to just take a break and wander off when you get frustrated. Which is where I DO wish there were more QOL features to make it clear what areas might still have a mask (preferably one you can reach) rather than needing to find a guide or try to guess. Especially when you don’t even get map markers for a decent chunk early on.
You can get map markers very early into the game. Basically from the first time you meet the mapmaker some 30 minutes into the game.
Yes. If you know ahead of time you’ll prioritize those.
If you are new to the game/genre and are struggling and even wiping occasionally? It isn’t a priority.
But there is also a big difference between having a few different pin types and just having “Well, SOMETHING was there?”. Hell, I still need to get around to figuring out which of my oranges are NPCs because I wasn’t sure if quest NPCs would be auto-tagged (they are, once you have a reason to talk to them again).
Which is another factor to all of these discussions. I fairly regularly push back on Dark Souls (and its successors) being a “difficult game”. It really isn’t. What it is is an incredibly well designed (first half of a…) challenging game. Everything up until Amazing Chest Ahead is designed to teach you how to play the game and how to approach encounters. And once you know that? You are in really good shape for the entire genre even if it is a game that emphasizes parrying (Lies of P), blocking (Sekiro), or beautiful beautiful loot (Nioh! Aka “Best Souls”). You don’t learn character builds (mostly “pick a single stat and work with it”) but that comes later.
And… some of that applies here. I know I made it WAY farther than I should have with no meaningful upgrades because I am a sicko/idiot. But for people who don’t know the idea that “Hey, this crypt full of skeletons is a mofo. Maybe go somewhere else”, they might be slamming their head against a wall trying to fight Last Judge for far longer than they should (although, questionable balancing decisions means that upgrading your health doesn’t matter all that much but that is a different rant).
But it is still the idea of a first game versus a fifth game as it were. And we all start somewhere.