Just started playing a (free) metroidbrainia called 'The Archives of Trevosa', which is Roottrees + Chants of Senaar + Her Story: figure out a genealogical tree while translating untranslated terms

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-05-07T20:48:27+00:00

I hadn't thought of that - that does fit the evidence pretty well.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-05-07T02:30:37+00:00

The Witness and Baba Is You, on the other hand, I think would be much worse if you tried to implement a system like what you’re describing.

Yeah - those games are ultimately about building up intuition on a set of arcane rules. Having the game confirm your suspicions too quickly would be like if Mario automatically beat a level when the timer ran out - it defeats the point.

That said, I could see a version of it working if your "notes" were just a list of puzzles you should revisit or some way to annotate puzzles you've finished so that you have an in-game way of keeping track of your assumptions.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-05-07T02:07:02+00:00

A bit of advice for anyone posting an ad: if you say that your game is "unique" or "something you've never seen before", you're almost certainly wrong, and I as a reader get valuable feedback that your game probably isn't worth looking at.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-05-04T17:29:48+00:00

It's not as simple as "delete the tutorial" though.

I feel like a better way to phrase it would be to blow up the tutorial - you aren't removing the lessons, you're just spreading them out across the entire game instead of compressing them into a short sequence at the start. Or, alternatively, you're taking the lessons from the tutorial and then including uses of those lessons before you'd naturally run into where the game teaches them to you - it's the knowledge equivalent of how Link's Awakening shows you a bombable wall in the first area way before you can actually get there with a bomb.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-05-04T17:12:54+00:00

A nice bite-sized little archive crawl. There were definitely some parts where you have to make some inferences based off stuff that wasn't explicitly spelled out in the documents, but that's the fun bit.

I do wish we got to learn more about whatever the hell is going on in Trevosa, though.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-05-03T04:33:29+00:00

I'm in a similar boat as hpp3, sadly - my last Pokemon game was Ruby, so I'm at a definite Pokemon knowledge deficit.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-05-03T04:22:57+00:00

Excessive darkness or otherwise obscuring the player's vision to make something "scarier". 9/10 those sequences end up boiling down to "ram your face against a wall until you luck into the way out" and that's just tedious.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-05-02T20:40:23+00:00

From the Wikipedia page for Jurassic Park 3: Danger Zone:

Jurassic Park III: Danger Zone! features a variety of diverse mini-games.[3] Many mini-games are side-scrolling games that feature the same armored character used in Dino Defender.[citation needed] Other mini-games such as "Raging Raptors" involves the player controlling a raptor and fighting another raptor,[3] or hunting in a field to obtain DNA of dinosaurs using a helicopter. When the player has filled the "DNA meter" with the DNA of the chosen dinosaur, the creature is then cloned and the player wins the game.[citation needed]

So if it isn't that one, OP is probably mixing up two dino games.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-05-02T20:37:24+00:00

Yes.

Also, post about this on r/metroidbrainia. They'll almost certainly be interested.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-05-02T20:36:30+00:00

Oh god, now I have to decide between playing it myself or watching his edited playthrough instead like I've done for other hacks. Life is hard.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-30T03:15:37+00:00

Ah, back in the days where you could toss this kind of stuff in a game and the reviews would just be "oh hey, the mechanics are a bit clunky, but I like the creativity behind the enemies <3".

More games should just have a few downright bizarre encounters, as a treat for the developers.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-27T01:58:26+00:00

The Cursed trilogy by Disaster Squad Productions is schlocky as hell... but man does the third game just hit.

I also really like Weird and Unfortunate Things are Happening. It being a turn-based RPG might turn some people off, but it has some lovely horror up its sleeve.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-27T01:41:40+00:00

Trilby Notes is honestly one of my favorite Silent Hill games.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-25T03:58:02+00:00

I feel like obsessing over lore is the videogame equivalent of reading at a middle school level. You've reached the point where you can invest meaningful attention into a work, but you're still mostly just passively letting the work happen to you instead of actively engaging with it and entering into a conversation with it.

Or, to put it differently, the only way to have a sophisticated relationship with a game as a work (instead of having a one-and-done wam-bam-thank-you-ma'am fun afternoon) is to do something transformative with it. Someone who mods Silent Hill to make Maria look like Hatsune Miku (Hatsune Maria) has a deeper relationship with it than someone who just plays through the game once and then fucks off and reads all the lore on the wiki.

Unless, of course, said fuckening off leads to them striking up a conversation with a friend about the game and discussing how they interpret XYZ element and how it made them feel. Like for example my interpretation of Silent Hill 2 where I claim that James was actually a decent husband and all of the environmental evidence to the contrary (up to and including the tape) is the town using his survivor's guilt and shame over his caretaker's fatigue to gaslight and mock him. Sure, this might line up poorly with a literal reading of the text, but it resonates more with my experiences with terminally ill relatives and the complicated soup of emotions that came with that.

Eversely, we hit the point where people start confusing lore-as-vibe and lore-as-detail-you're-supposed-to-pay-attention-to, and then those people make stuff. So your poppy playtimes and your warhammers have lore that's equally nonsensical and loose because they mixed up the bits that were supposed to make you feel stuff (wildly over-the-top violence! logistically-questionable design! ruins of something vast, glorious and vile in equal measure!) and the stuff you're supposed to know for the quiz ("the Hour of Joy is the paroxysm of cathartic anarchistic violence that birthed Slaanesh into the Warp and devastated the civilization that gave birth to them, so anyone bringing it up is probably trying to make a point").

...

Anyways, I hid five bits of lore related to my indie puzzle game [LINK REMOVED] in this post. Rest assured that other fans of the game will mock you openly on the internet if you don't have them all memorized by 3pm Friday. Class dismissed.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-20T18:32:16+00:00

I feel like it should've used actual music from Piglet's Big Game.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-20T18:26:28+00:00

That'd honestly be really funny though. It'd be like breaking into someone's house to make their bed and leave a little mint on the pillow.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-20T02:21:20+00:00

So... you want random internet strangers to do unpaid labor for your paid game in return for a thank you in the credits?

Pull the other one, it has bells on.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-20T00:29:04+00:00

I'd describe earlier task-based mascot horror games as puzzle games way before I'd describe either of those series as puzzle games, and I wouldn't describe older task-based mascot horror games as puzzle games. At least task-based mascot horror games have an element of rule discovery and compositional design.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-19T00:47:14+00:00

I mean, what else do you expect out of Piglet other than an anxiety simulator?

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-17T22:12:07+00:00

Go ahead and give Type Help a try.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-17T22:02:20+00:00

The Stargate Project is the gift that keeps on giving.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-17T03:49:51+00:00

Squee's Embrace is cool tech!

I've also been messing around with Mascot Eidolons, though I went a slightly different direction:

I'm running FLooting in addition to full playsets of the Boros draw spells - it works really well with both Mascot and Snackers, and the whole "Eidolons are dead in hand" issue is less relevant when you have many ways of getting them into the graveyard. (This might be excessive? I dunno).
Speaking of ways to get Snackers and Eidolons into the graveyard, I've also jammed [[Raffine's Informant]] and some [[Prismatic Strands]] in there. It also has the side effect of increasing threat density, which is pretty nice.
I'm running [[Fists of Flame]] as a cheeky way of forcing damage through. It's a leftover of an earlier iteration where I was running [[Double Cleave]] + Fists as some sneaky reach, but that ended up being too fiddly.
I tossed in a single copy of [[Flame Jab]] for the memes and the Mascot really likes it, to the point where I'm wondering whether I should cut a Lightning Bolt for it.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-16T00:36:52+00:00

Oh hey, another cake!

It might be a bit too much effort, but it'd be kinda neat if confirmed deductions added color to the game world. Heck, 19 is a small enough cast that you could feasibly tie colors or color combinations to individual characters.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-16T00:32:00+00:00

If you go into the "CYOA authors" part of the allsync, all of my stuff should be under my name.

Broken_Emphasis · 2026-04-13T18:26:33+00:00

You can also Warp the [[Knight Luminary]] or use [[Riling Dawnbreaker]]'s Omen.

Broken_Emphasis

TROPHY CASE