so lately i've played through a few games - the poker-based roguelike deckbuilder balatro, the puzzle strategy roguelike with mystery elements blue prince the "undertale 2" adventure rpg deltarune, and the puzzly minecraft modpack9 spectralarity. and i have thoughts on all of these that i have attempted to organise into one coherent post.
I did quite enjoy playing Balatro, Blue Prince, and Deltarune (especially Deltarune), but getting to talk with friends about these games might actually be the best part. I got into these games largely because my friends were playing them, and talking about them, and I wanted to get in on the zeitgeist,10 the overall cultural moment surrounding these games. And you know what, it is a lot of fun! I think these things are worth doing almost for the social aspect alone, if your friends are in on them. (Though, if you definitely won't like something, don't do it for the sake of not missing out, you know? The point is that you're enjoying it alongside eachother!)
Spectralarity, in contrast, has been more solitary. There is at least some shared cultural knowledge of Minecraft in general that means I can, say, complain about accidentally killing my whole village with a Raid and have it make sense to people.11 It slightly makes me want to do a Minecraft server or something with my friends again... sometime down the line, for now Spectralarity has me covered for this kind of game.
Though I did enjoy playing Blue Prince, I don't think I'm going to finish it.13 I do actually think Blue Prince works quite well as a roguelike! To me, it never really felt like the randomness to it really got in the way of solving any of the deeper mysteries, because I took enough notes such that on any given run there was bound to be something I was looking into that I'd get to investigate further. (I actually picked up Obsidian to take notes for this game and had a lot of fun organising my little conspiracy board as I went).
My only problem with Blue Prince is, I realise, that I just don't like this kind of roguelike very much. Progression being incremental over many similar runs feels too much like I'm being asked to do approximately the same thing 100 times, which is too many. But, I like the classic roguelike features of emergent gameplay from complex systems and the feeling of slowly exploring a big possibility space. I think I just like them a lot more when, without an extrinsic reward for playing more, it's up to me when I'm done exploring. Roguelikes without permanent upgrades also have that thing I like about rhythm games where they become easier over time solely because of your own skill! Practicing skills is a lot of fun, and it gets muddied a bit when the game is slowly lowering its level of challenge.
Bennett Foddy has written about how maybe the only reasonable numbers in game design are 0, 1, and infinity. If a roguelike-with-progression is a "100", to me, a good roguelike without it is infinity. The random generator will make something different each time, and you will change, too, but the parameters of that generator will be exactly the same whether it's run 1 or 2000. Exactly the same thing, designed to be played up to (but not including) an infinite number of times.
Previously I have reliably fallen off any sort of sandbox-type game - singleplayer Minecraft, Subnautica, Stardew Valley, Factorio - some number of hours in, despite making multiple attempts. The pattern is always seemingly that I go slightly too long without playing, and then once I'm back I've lost my train of thought and no longer know what I was doing. But these games are long, so starting over so soon doesn't feel like a great option...
Somehow, though, Spectralarity seems to have had more staying power with me. At least one part of this has to be that it does a lot of things I like! See, Minecraft is a very open sandbox - there's a lot of things you can do, but most of them don't contribute to any sort of overarching progression. It's a big game with a very short critical path. Which I'm sure is great for some people but just leaves me feeling directionless. Spectralarity, though, does a great job of putting lots of Minecraft's little "useless" features into your overall progression, while giving you more meaningful side projects sourced from a decent amount of modded content. So, at any given time there's a selection of 3-4 things to do that all move the game forward in some way, which feels about right to me.
It's good stuff, I think! But much credit to me sticking with it has to go to me just taking semi-detailed notes now. I had great success playing Deltarune kind of like it was a puzzle game while trying to find the secret bosses; I suspect you can also play any sandbox game like it's one of those puzzle games that wants you to take a lot of notes: like Blue Prince, Void Stranger, or Polymute.14 Theories and open leads are quite similar, in my mind, to unfinished projects or build ideas!
i was gonna put a "final thoughts on these games" section here but you know what all my thoughts are in the post and it's already too long.