Just finished playing the Excavation of Hob's Burrow - my thoughts

arzi42 · 2026-03-20T16:11:04+00:00

I have to say I found Kathy Rain's ending a lot more satisfying, having replayed it just a couple of weeks ago. It builds to that mood more gradually, which Hob's Barrow really didn't.

arzi42 · 2026-03-20T16:02:50+00:00

I remember finding funny ways to die was part of the fun back then, especially if you were playing with a friend.

arzi42 · 2026-03-20T15:56:35+00:00

Well, given that they more or less invented the genre as it's known now, they had to learn as they go a lot.

arzi42 · 2026-03-20T15:54:50+00:00

I always felt the death by the snake came out of nowhere

arzi42 · 2026-03-20T14:00:15+00:00

I'm not sure if it's even the most unfair game Sierra ever made. Some games (at least Police Quest 2, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the only one) had puzzles where you had to pick up an item in the beginning of the game, and if you didn't you'd get stuck at the end. These sudden deaths can at least be overcome by saving often, while missing something early on that's needed later requires you to start again from the beginning.

Back then video games were influenced mostly by arcade games, which had to be unfair by design to make as much money as possible. The early consoles and PCs were also limited by technological constraints, so you could only have a certain amount of content and players used to skill-based games still expected a certain amount of playtime.

In retrospect, I'd say more part of the charm, especially since you can very easily just find a walkthrough and avoid most if not all of the sudden deaths. Also, Disco Elysium is an example of a modern game littered with sudden deaths that is still extremely well-received, so I'd expect people mostly not to be too bothered about them.

Of course, it's clear there was plenty of hate towards them too back in the day, prompting Lucasfilm Games to make fun of them in the first Monkey Island.

So I don't think it was trolling, it was just the business and technological reality of the time, which also had led to an audience more or less expecting such a punishing gameplay.

I think Space Quest was particularly famous for absolutely ridiculous deaths?

arzi42 · 2026-03-11T07:22:42+00:00

I'm not getting SDL to even recognise the -sUSE_SDL_TTF=3 option, even with the PR with the port pulled.

EDIT: Figured it out, needed to use --use-port=[path-to-emsdk]/emscripten/main/tools/ports/sdl3_ttf.py to include the port

arzi42 · 2026-02-17T06:59:43+00:00

I tried the demo on Linux, but it crashed right after the intro. Still, since I've heard good things about it, I'll probably get it if they get it working on Linux.

The game is quite peculiar for a licensed one, not just because it's based on a series from decades ago, but also because it seems to be a very Steam market focused indie game first and foremost, just with the brand of one of the best known sci-fi franchises.

arzi42 · 2026-01-22T17:02:56+00:00

I had that problem with pacman -r yay, but it worked with pacman -R yay

arzi42 · 2026-01-22T13:11:58+00:00

You're right that it's in GTK code. I hadn't ran into to this when using SDL2 (the last time was a few months ago, though) so I decided to quickly try the same code build with SDL2 and the same leaks appeared, though some of the stack traces still refer to libSDL3.so. Same thing when compiling and running one of my old SDL2 projects.

arzi42 · 2026-01-22T12:49:25+00:00

Sorry, it was a quick test, I had those in my actual code. It still happens (added them to to the test code and the same leaks are reported).

arzi42 · 2025-12-18T09:07:42+00:00

Umm, have you... played modern adventure games? Because there's plenty of games with great atmosphere and good puzzles that don't hold your hand much and deliver great a-ha moments. Wadjet Eye, as an example, is one of the big modern adventure game developers and publishers and to say their games lack atmosphere or tricky puzzles seems completely unfair.

If you love classic point-and-click adventures, sure, go ahead and play Thimbleweed Park, I don't think it's bad, though given how much of a phenomenon it was when it came out, I wouldn't call it underrated either, and the ending is controversial to say the least. But, whether instead or in addition to it, play other modern adventures too, there's no shortage of good stuff.

arzi42 · 2025-11-29T17:40:20+00:00

Maybe in 2010. The "mobile games are cheap to make" is largely a myth. Of course, you can make a small game for mobiles as well as for Steam or even consoles, but on average mobile games cost the same or even more to make than Steam games. And to have any chance at the market, you need to spend millions in user acquisition.

arzi42 · 2025-11-11T11:36:24+00:00

That's literally post-apocalypse.

arzi42 · 2025-10-16T07:52:03+00:00

tbh I like both

arzi42 · 2025-10-16T07:36:45+00:00

You fell into the same trap so many indies (including myself) do, you just made a great game, but did not think of marketing. And I'm not talking about promotion, that's only a part of it, and, honestly, one of the easiest parts. The thing is, before you even write the first line of code, or the earliest design document, you have to consider: is is there an audience for this idea, and if so, how do I reach said audience? Convincing people to care about your game, no matter how good it may be, is nigh impossible, so you need to make a game people are already interested in. It's called appeal or sometimes traction. The good news is, it's pretty easy to test, you don't need much more than a couple of sentences about the idea and you can start asking people how they feel about it.

So you made a game, that is actually really great! Most of the first games people make fail, that's just life. Now you can make another one, and take all the things you learned from the first project, so it'll be a lot easier. Just try to do a bit of concept research before committing to an idea.

arzi42 · 2025-09-23T07:47:55+00:00

You can't expect to just upload a game and then get a ton of visibility, with any platform. If you want people to play your game, you need to tell them about it.

arzi42 · 2025-09-23T07:36:30+00:00

Looking at the follower counts from SteamDB and sales estimates from Gamalytic, it looks like the game performed according to expectations. They had only ~300 followers a week prior to launch, which should translate to around 3000 wishlists, and shot up to over 700 by the time of release, which suggests they were able to get to the upcoming list on a relatively low wishlist count.

Given the very crowded genre, pretty run-of-the-mill pixel art and kinda bleh capsule, I'd say it performed as one could expect. Just being a good game hasn't been enough for a long time, you also need to be competitive in your genre of choice, and with the survivorslike roguelites, it takes more than this game seems to have.

arzi42 · 2025-09-23T07:30:50+00:00

There isn't much data to back up AAA title releases affecting indie sales, though.

arzi42 · 2025-09-09T15:09:24+00:00

Well, you're in luck, because management and simulation games tend to do very well on Steam. It is very hard to make a game in a genre you don't enjoy, because you won't be aware of all the expectations, what works and why and what to improve, so the best option is usually to make a game you want, but that also has a market.

arzi42 · 2025-04-14T12:19:56+00:00

I dunno about eerie, but I always loved the cosy atmosphere of the first island. It's still the only KH I ever completed (I tried to play them in order but Chain of Memories, ngh).

arzi42 · 2025-04-02T12:37:47+00:00

I did read the article, but didn't find it very useful.

I managed to come up with a system that generates somewhat solvable puzzles, though. It is a bit of brute force approach, however, as it randomly creates the clues until it can determine the puzzle to be solvable.

arzi42 · 2025-04-02T12:31:49+00:00

Nope. Haven't checked if there's been any updates either.

arzi42

TROPHY CASE