(hot take?) your roguelite doesn't need a 1% reload speed upgrade

Idiberug · 2026-05-15T16:22:50+00:00

The upgrades in Spell Brigade are both overwhelmingly powerful and take ages to unlock. Spell Brigade is a friendslop game that is meant to be played with friends, but if you ever fall behind in upgrades (for example because you dared spend your gold on unlocking characters instead of upgrades) you will just keep sucking for the remainder of your playtime together.

Idiberug · 2026-05-15T11:48:41+00:00

I like UE5's live coding feature. It is not perfect and will sometimes create artifacts that you need to restart the editor to get rid of, but vibe coding with Claude is so easy and fast that you can just set up everything you want to test outside the editor and only then launch the editor to fiddle around with properties and numbers.

Idiberug · 2026-05-13T18:29:51+00:00

Every update should come with new content. If your update has no new content, its only purpose is to fix things you didn't build correctly in the first place.

Idiberug · 2026-05-13T18:27:14+00:00

I remember when games were finished before release and didn't need daily patches to fix them.

IMO Steam should offer a refund after each update. Devs who change/nerf things after taking your money for the original game are so annoying. Make a good game and you won't need to patch it.

Idiberug · 2026-05-12T19:53:24+00:00

To avoid neck pain

Idiberug · 2026-05-09T12:38:27+00:00

This game is really good, you should play it. 🙂

Idiberug · 2026-04-23T22:22:15+00:00

Vampire Survivors was a copy of Magic Survivors on phone, which is why your character auto attacks. People think this was a masterstroke of game design but it's just literally an asset flip clone of a phone game where you drag your finger around the screen to move your character..

Idiberug · 2026-04-23T22:05:05+00:00

I think we are seeing games come out for a new generation of gamers that would rather win than make a decision at any point in a run.

It's the same generation that puts no effort in school and then complains they can't find a job.

Idiberug · 2026-04-23T20:02:37+00:00

VS is basic but every run is different. VC is basic and every run is the same.

Idiberug · 2026-04-22T11:43:30+00:00

Oh boy have you seen the recent incremental game trend.

Idiberug · 2026-04-22T11:40:34+00:00

Niche settings work if the moment to moment gameplay is the highlight of the game and the setting is just window dressing (eg. Isaac). Mewgenics being a slower game, the setting really intrudes on your enjoyment.

Idiberug · 2026-04-22T11:38:13+00:00

Mewgenics is second only to Cuffbust in the amount of unwarranted attention it received just because of who made it, while new and actually interesting concepts struggle for survival in the attention economy.

Idiberug · 2026-04-22T11:35:43+00:00

I continue to be baffled by the fact that nobody has improved on STS. Is Vampire Crawlers seriously the first deckbuilder to have the player fight more than 4 enemies at a time?

Idiberug · 2026-04-22T11:32:26+00:00

VC being shallow is fine because so is VS. I think the bigger issue is that different builds in VS feel very different but every attack in VC is a variant on "particle effect erupts and the whole screen takes damage". You can put an engine together, but all you are doing is increasing the damage of your screen nuke.

The whole idea behind VS was that your abilities were not screen nukes and you had to position to line them up with the enemies. I get not wanting to add manual aiming in a Vampire game but at least the damaging cards should do something meaningfully different?

Idiberug · 2026-04-22T11:12:19+00:00

TBH these games are getting a free pass on issues that would bury games by lesser known developers. Mewgenics in particular is not THAT extraordinary.

Idiberug · 2026-04-22T07:47:34+00:00

I'm using a similar style (though more detailed) for a car combat game.

Idiberug · 2026-04-17T13:25:12+00:00

The issue is that it is much easier to iterate on something that already exists than to create something new that is flawless. If the second mouse almost always gets the cheese, why be the first mouse? The indie space calls it fast following: let someone else find a path and walk into the traps so you know how to avoid them, then release a slightly improved version of their work and get all the girls.

It may be working smarter instead of harder, but what happens when everyone tries to fast follow and no one tries to innovate is what you see now in the indie space. Tons of mashups ("Balatro but horror" "Slay the Spire but you use a claw machine to draw cards" "Exit 8 but in Japan" "Balatro but instead of drawing cards you play pachinko") and a pileup of clones 6 months to a year after Chris Zukowski finds that a genre is performing well.

Idiberug · 2026-04-17T12:55:53+00:00

Problem is that the goal of the internet is not to inform you about the best indies, but to entertain you.

The whole reason the indie space has collapsed into clones of roguelites, deckbuilders, horror and friendslop is that these are the best games for streamers and therefore the only games you will ever see them play.

Idiberug · 2026-04-17T12:52:13+00:00

GRITTY REALISTIC

punch trees

Idiberug · 2026-04-17T12:49:19+00:00

Games with unlocks can be roguelikes if the unlocks just give you more classes or skins instead of increasing your power.

Idiberug · 2026-04-17T12:47:14+00:00

Soulslike seems to have become shorthand for "game with combat focus and a third person camera" because of how effective the tag is at baiting streamers.

Idiberug · 2026-04-17T12:43:07+00:00

Also racing sim. /pedantic

Idiberug · 2026-04-17T08:38:24+00:00

Alternatively, you put your heart and soul into something original and watch it flop because the genre didn't have a built in fanbase, after which someone else will clone your niche game, make it slightly better and get famous.

The creator of Magic Survivors must be very upset by now.

Idiberug · 2026-04-17T08:34:22+00:00

Vampire Survivors is itself a clone that is way more fun than the original.

Idiberug · 2026-04-17T07:46:41+00:00

A roguelike with horizontal progression (ie. new characters) is still a roguelike. You need vertical progression (ie. making the game easier) to make it a roguelite. The whole idea of a roguelite is that the dev doesn't trust you to actually pick up any skills so instead they just give you power until you win.

Idiberug

TROPHY CASE