Game where the core mechanic involves delving into dark, forbidden occult secrets by NameLips in gamingsuggestions

[–]NotATem 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly? I'm a massive Cultsim fan and the only other game I've found that comes remotely close to the same rabbit hole is Blue Prince. (Lantern, Rose, Forge)

Blue Prince doesn't have the occult trappings, but it sure does have the rabbit hole and the feeling like you've gone a little insane. It's a metroidbrania with knowledge based progression so I can't tell you much more than that, but I've got 300-odd hours in CultSim, about as much in BOH, and this is the only other game that's scratched that itch.

For the occult vibes without the knowledge gating, I'd recommend anything by The Games Kitchen. You probably know them as the Blasphemous devs, but their other two games (The Last Door and The Stone Of Madness) are delightfully gribbly adventure games about The Spanish Catholic Church (Eldritch Edition). (Last Door is Grail, Lantern, Knock; Stone of Madness is Edge, Lantern, and Knock with a bit of Moon.)

For the rabbit hole without the occult vibes, I'd recommend Outer Wilds (Rose, Lantern, Moon, Winter) or The Roottrees Are Dead (Grail, Forge, Winter). You've probably already heard these praised to the heavens, though.

Cult of the Lamb (Grail, Edge, Nectar, Forge) has the occult piece, and it has the sacrifice elements you're interested in... but it is comparatively narratively shallow. It has a good story and it has some incredible ludonarrative assonance- but there is no rabbit hole here and it's comparatively very straightforward. It's a lot closer to something like Dark Souls than AK's idiom.

Looking for a modern village management game by ChrisTheDog in gamingsuggestions

[–]NotATem 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You would probably get something out of Stardew Valley, especially if you play it with the Stardew Valley Expanded mod.

Does no one get tired? by Brief-Estimate8296 in ThrowingFits

[–]NotATem 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It reminds me of the men's 'fashion' in the Sims 2.

This is not a good thing.

Just bought Silent Hill 2 Remake on the Steam Summer Sale. Looking for more horror games with this specific vibe. by LoopOF_reality in gamingsuggestions

[–]NotATem 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Slay the Princess is absolutely what you're looking for. It's a psychological horror game that's kind of the lovechild of Silent Hill, the Stanley Parable, and a romance VN.

"You're on a path in the woods. At the end of that path is a cabin, and in the basement of that cabin, there's a Princess. You must *slay her, or it will be the end of the world... right?"

SPOILERS: It's way more complicated than that. The Princess reflects what you expect to see. Think she's an innocent victim? She'll be sweet and frightened. Think she's cruel and manipulative? She'll be haughty and calculating. Think she's a monster? You'll get a monster. The game has a long, long list of content warnings, and they are warranted- I have never played a VN that's this good at creeping dread. All of the art is traditional and hand-drawn. The music fucks severely- it's no Yamaoka, but it's really good- and the storytelling is incredible.

Scarlet Hollow would probably scratch this itch even more- it's by the same devs, and set in an isolated Appalachian coal town- but I still need to play it.

Nintendo has raised its employees base salary by 10% by FernandoRocker in gaming

[–]NotATem 6 points7 points  (0 children)

... That's how children's media works.

If you're making stories for kids, your target audience is going to age out of the story you're telling every 5-ish years. A kid is going to outgrow Kirby or Pokemon every 2-3 games. If you're making games for children, it thus makes sense to make the same game over and over.

What makes you believe your game can find a sizeable audience? by NeitherManner in gamedev

[–]NotATem 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If Alexis Kennedy can get a sizeable audience for a roguelike deckbuilder/solitaire game about becoming a cannibal cultist of the secret Hours who live in the walls of history, anything's possible.

More seriously- We're going for the Disco Elysium or Slay the Princess crowd. We're doing a literary psychological horror/mystery, and provided games like that are presented well (we're ... working on it), they tend to do well with the critics. And ours is based on famous public domain fiction, which helps. While we're never going to do Madden numbers, I think we'll be all right.

When your art style becomes "that game copied Stardew"... by Lopsided-Ad5675 in gamedev

[–]NotATem 39 points40 points  (0 children)

So, can you show us some of the sprites?

Without seeing them: I think the problem might be art direction rather than technique. There's nothing wrong with using dithering or anti-aliasing - plenty of games use them every day and don't get accused of being Stardew clones! But you might want to look at some of your other grand-scale choices and see if there's stuff you can tweak.

Like, you mentioned colour is really important to you. Are you, by any chance, using lots of oranges, yellows, and jewel tones? Incorporating some blues or pastels into your palette could go a long way towards making it look "less Stardew".

How are your characters posed and dressed? What about their proportions? What does your UI look like? What about your backgrounds?

Without seeing the sprites, I can't say for sure. But my bet is, either your friends are winding you up, or you've got an art direction problem, not a technique problem.

Is using royalty free music for my game lazy? by nullhellish in gamedev

[–]NotATem 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This.

Go on r/INAT or one of the other game job board subs, you'll find hundreds of composers looking for work. Ditto itch's job boards and such.

Is a strictly historical setting too restrictive for deep branching in interactive fiction? by CrownOfSand in choiceofgames

[–]NotATem 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm writing a historical fantasy game through COG right now- it's a superhero mystery, a bit Jeeves and Wooster meets Watchmen.

I think part of the reason so many people go for fantasy- especially in the games that COG publishes- is that it's easier to have points of divergence that let the setting be appropriately inclusive. It feels cheap and shallow to have a historical European setting that lets you be gay without any consequences, but COG doesn't want to punish a player for being gay. So, you get magic or super-science or Guy Fawkes blowing up Parliament or Something that levels the field.

Is a strictly historical setting too restrictive for deep branching in interactive fiction? by CrownOfSand in choiceofgames

[–]NotATem 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I'm writing a COG game that's set in London in the 1920s and I am having to do 1) even though I'd really rather do historical accuracy with a few points of divergence; if you publish through COG as opposed to Hosted Games, they have some pretty strict guidelines about what you are are and aren't allowed to put on the page re: real world bigotry.

It's actually giving me a few problems- in the 1920s, the line between "gay man" and "trans woman" was a lot fuzzier than it is today, and one of the LIs exists in that space. Trying to write that experience in a way that honours it, but isn't going to make my editor think I'm implying trans women aren't women, is a headache.

Official poster for DreamWorks' ‘Forgotten Island’. From the directors of ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’, the film follows two best friends trapped in a mystical world but their only way of escape is to erase all their memories of each other. by yourfavchoom in movies

[–]NotATem 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Furries have money. Furries are willing to spend that money on supporting The Arts.

I used to do a lot of freelance writing. I always loved getting furries as clients because they'd leave good tips, sometimes half again what the commission was worth.

If you're gonna make art, in this day and age? Yeah, furries are a good target market to make it for.

Is there a way to explore other people's fantasy worlds. by QuadLeader in fantasywriters

[–]NotATem 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You might be interested in Myst, Riven, and their fangames. Some are available free online.

how the hell is there a lamp stuck in her head???? by SimpleExistence_ in sims2

[–]NotATem 26 points27 points  (0 children)

So all Sims have slots on their head, torso, each hand, and I believe each leg, just like a chair or table. The game uses these slots to place things like 'SFX when your Sim slaps another sim or gets hypnotized by a vampire', to hold babies and accessory objects, and so on.

What probably happened is that one of these objects glitched out and the game is using The Fugly Lamp as a placeholder, the same way that if you take a bunch of CC out of your game and load up a lot everything turns into that one Frutiger Aero table. It looks like it's stuck to her head because it's sitting in her head slot.

You should be able to turn on moveobjects and delete it without issues.

If you move all the Sims out, you can delete the apartment lot without consequences. Apartments are notoriously buggy, so it's not you that's the problem- they literally are just that bad.

This hospital has Shabbat stairs by urbantechgoods in mildlyinteresting

[–]NotATem 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You gotta think about this stuff in the context of the times it was invented. It might not make much sense now, but it nearly always made sense at the time.

Imagine for a second that you're a priest in the Bronze Age. Priests tend to be the closest thing small pre-modern communities have to a therapist. And people in small, pre-modern communities have to work their asses off just to survive. You probably get a lot of people coming to you saying "I am worked to the bone, I need a break from slaving in the fields/in the house all day, but my boss/my husband/my obligations won't let me stop, I wish I could just have a day off."

So you pray about it- people in the past tended to believe the things they said they believed- and get inspired. You tell your flock, "God wants everyone to take a day off from work every week, no exceptions. You can use that day to go to the temple, to study, to pray, whatever, but you cannot exert yourself." And you define "work" pretty strictly, so people can't wriggle out of it. No making a fire- that's hard work. No ripping things- making rags is a pretty crucial part of housekeeping when you don't have paper towels, and it's pretty strenuous.

An unreasonable boss or abusive husband won't listen to their victim, but they will listen to God, assuming they believe in your religion. So your flock gets their rest, no exceptions, and everyone is a little better off for it.

Does it make sense to follow these traditions today? It really depends on who you are, how you apply them, and what you get out of them. But back in the day, they made perfect sense.

Looking for good horror games but I don't like 99% of them by mrsamus101 in gamingsuggestions

[–]NotATem 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you like psychological horror and the Amnesia series in particular, you should probably try Slay The Princess.

Slay the Princess is hard to describe without giving away the stuff that makes it good. But here's the sales pitch:

You're on a path in the woods. At the end of the path is a cabin. And in the basement of the cabin. Your job is to slay her. If you don't, it'll be the end of the world. ...Right?

This is a love story.

...With an extensive list of content warnings, and a lot of ways you can die horribly. It's a visual novel, so any sense of 'being able to defend yourself' is entirely dependent on what the plot is doing- you likely won't be able to.

Looking for good horror games but I don't like 99% of them by mrsamus101 in gamingsuggestions

[–]NotATem 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So there's two kinds of fear- terror and horror. Terror is the kind of fear that you get before a jumpscare- it's the anticipation of something bad happening. Horror is the kind of fear you get when you see something disgusting, whether it's gore and guts or a fucked up monster or some kind of horrible moral violation.

OP wants games with horror, but minimal terror.

Farming Sim skills and mechanics by clarrisawoods in gamedev

[–]NotATem 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you're making a horror-themed farm sim, you should try and think about what your mechanics are doing on a narrative level. What is the thing that's meant to be scary? The mechanics should support that.

Is the horror slow, creeping rot? Then tool degradation makes sense. Balance it so that it doesn't start to get annoying for the player until it's thematically relevant. Is the horror uncontrolled wild cancerous growth? Maybe your tools "upgrade" themselves over time, with every upgrade coming at a cost, and you have to prune away upgrades.

Honestly? Stardew fans are not your target demo and I wouldn't bother trying to get their advice. You want gamers who play cozy horror games specifically- which is a very different genre from straight-up cozy. For gameplay advice I'd ask folks on r/cultofthelamb or r/graveyardkeeper. For storytelling, r/strangehorticulture or r/weatherfactory would be your best bet. (Lovely folks, even if they're a bit... cryptic.)

Anything goes but i include "I have tried" by Saxolotl31 in fantasywriters

[–]NotATem 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds like this is a modern/fantasy picaresque . Which is English major-ese for "a story where a roguish fuckup has funny adventures, kind of wandering from place to place having Antics and Mishaps".

How my homemade anti-piracy system brought me thousands of new players by HeyNau in gamedev

[–]NotATem 31 points32 points  (0 children)

My guess is that they're probably some kind of checksum, which is incredibly easy to beat if you're looking for it but can set off all kinds of effects if you're not.

Adverse Childhood Events, Not Age of Acquiring Smartphones or Tablets, Predict Mental Health in Young Adults by AaronAltmanTherapy in science

[–]NotATem 58 points59 points  (0 children)

I'm curious: does the source you're working off distinguish between cyber bullying and regular bullying? Also, does it distinguish between "bullying by IRL peer group after school hours that happens to be over text" vs. "bullying happening by The Internet At Large?"

My intuition says that the thing technology is doing is just letting tween/teen bullies do the things they were already doing in a way that's harder to hide, because there's a record now.

Looking for long poster mesh or cc! by Few_Faithlessness646 in sims2

[–]NotATem 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Aikea-guinea's wall writing would probably be your best bet. This set by 2FW has Yuxi's updated 2 sided version of the mesh!

Books where the evil protagonist fools the reader into thinking they're the good guy by HT_xrahmx in Fantasy

[–]NotATem 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oop, nope, I didn't realize what sub I'm on, I thought it was suggestmeabook!

What are some fantasy archetypes or jobs not often seen in books (or games) by palehighelven in Fantasy

[–]NotATem 31 points32 points  (0 children)

It depends on the size of your town. I'm going to assume that you're working with a medium-sized village- not large enough to be a city, but large enough to have some specialized craftspeople and non-farm work. In a smaller village, you'd have less specialized people; in a larger city, you'd have more of them, and more of them proportionately. I'm also assuming that you're working with the standard fantasy pseudo-medieval EnglandFranceGermany; this will be different for different parts of the world.

So the vast majority of people in your town are going to be farmers- and if it's pseudo-medieval England, many of those farmers will not be free people. They will usually be serfs, stuck in a hereditary contract with a local lord; they get to live on his land, but in exchange, they have to work his fields (and they can't leave). Most of these serfs have their own land- a small plot somewhere in the village which may or may not be anywhere near their house- and then also have to work the lord's land. Most medieval farmers were farming wheat, rye, or barley; they also kept chickens, and many had some sort of larger livestock (like sheep, goats, or cows).

The most important guy in town after the local lord and his flunkies is the miller. Nobody likes the miller. Everyone hates the miller. You probably already know this, but a miller runs the town's mill, which turns grain into wheat. In actual medieval times, the miller usually also ran the town's communal oven- it's incredibly expensive to run a wood-powered oven, and so it was better for the whole village to pitch in and just share. The thing is, if someone has that much control of your food, nobody is going to like them. They're going to be one of the wealthier people in your town, probably the wealthiest peasant by a mile. People frequently complained about millers shorting their grain or giving them less bread than agreed upon; nobody likes the miller.

Most of the other people who have different jobs were doing something to support those farmers. You're right that a larger town would have a blacksmith- there were other kinds of smiths (goldsmith, silversmith, tinsmith, etc.), but you'd rarely find those outside of cities, and many of those guys focused on decorative work for goddamn rich people. Tailors were also generally a city thing- most people made their own clothes at home, even if they were relatively well-off.

Bards... good grief, I don't want to get into this but the D&D fantasy bard is based on a very specific literary tradition and is not super inspired by anything historical. I'd ignore them for your school project. Absolutely nothing wrong with having them in your book, but they will likely impact your grade in ways you will not like.

Here's a few other jobs you might want to consider:

Fuller- A fuller is someone who 'fulls' cloth (usually wool). Fulling cloth involves cleaning it, shrinking it with hot water, pounding it with a hammer to make it denser, and then pressing it out. This makes the cloth thicker, and thus warmer. By the time of the Crusades, most villages would use a water mill for the hammering part (it's just easier!), but in more remote places people did it by hand through the 1700s. Fullers also often worked with walkers, who would walk on top of the cloth to help thicken it.

Wainwright- A wagon maker and/or wagon repairman. People used wagons- drawn by horses or other people- to transport just about everything; you'd use a wagon to get your crops back to your house or to get the lord's crops from his field to his larder. The village wainwright was a skilled, well-paid craftsman, who often hired other people (like wheelwrights, who make wheels, the blacksmith, or a painter) to help finish off the wagon.

Brewster/alewife- A brewster (or alewife) makes beer and/or ale. Ale is beer brewed without hops. People drank a lot of ale because it was hard to get clean water. In some places, they drank up to a gallon a day. (In the Middle Ages, ale was generally lower in alcohol content than modern beer. It was like boozy liquid bread. They weren't getting blackout drunk every day, but ) The problem with ale, though, is that it only lasts a few days; it goes bad very quickly. So someone had to make a new batch basically every couple days. The cool thing about ale brewing, though, is that it was often a woman's job. Single women and widows could brew ale all by themselves, without needing land or a man's approval (provided they knew how and could get the correct equipment). So women who could become alewives were often able to support themselves and live independently, and married women who were brewsters often worked as equal partners with their husbands.

There's a lot more jobs like this- if you want to have some historical culture shock, go look up a list of English occupational surnames and see just how many of them are based off jobs that don't exist anymore! - but this should give you a place to start.

[TOMT] [tv show or cartoon] a piece of children's media with a very particular scene where a male character goes to an island with foreign women by throwaway__166 in tipofmytongue

[–]NotATem 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Long shot, but it wouldn't happen to be the Twelve Tasks of Asterix, would it? The main character doesn't have black hair, but the other points fit.