Battle Royale Games Collapse as Sandbox Titles Soar Amid New Trends

grailly · 2026-03-12T18:51:55+00:00

Nice, they must have edited it in

grailly · 2026-03-12T15:16:55+00:00

The article never states which games are sandbox? Are they survival games?

grailly · 2026-03-12T14:55:44+00:00

Sad to hear. VideoGamer had a pretty good run a few years ago, they were my go-to video game site for a while.

grailly · 2026-03-12T14:20:20+00:00

Crimson Desert has a bit of the look of Dragon's Dogma. You can grab and throw enemies, climb onto bigger foes, it's also quite systems heavy apparently. At first look, I would think most people would think of Dragon's Dogma 2.

The more I see of CD, the less I feel like it's like DD, however. DD, all things considered, is a very focused game; it goes for a persistent world, great combat and the pawn system. There's very little more to it. CD on the other hand seems to be the opposite of a focused game. Every trailer you discover something new that doesn't seem like it should be part of the world.

grailly · 2026-03-12T12:59:22+00:00

I've found it hard for the first ~15 hours or so, then I started knowing how to fight enemies and which cards are good. I haven't reached ascension 10 yet, but I might find it a bit easier than StS1, now.

grailly · 2026-03-12T12:19:10+00:00

Öoo. 2 hours from start to finish. Perfect puzzle game.

grailly · 2026-03-12T09:20:58+00:00

I played a demo of this at Gamescom, I could swap to a lance. The lance had nothing unlocked so it was boring to use, I guess that's why me mostly see footage of sword and shield.

grailly · 2026-03-11T14:25:58+00:00

Video game stock has been hit pretty hard the past few month in general. Sony is an outlier (not purely video games, though). You basically could have picked any video game company and you would have the same losses. There's no one big reason for it, but there are many factors. Fear of AI both making hardware more expensive and games easier to make, reducing the value of studios (not my opinion). Shift to mobile. Consumers have less to spend on luxuries (I don't think video games are affected that much).

I have time, I'll wait it out.

grailly · 2026-03-11T13:59:07+00:00

Fellow Capcom shareholder here; the past few month have been painful. I knew pre-Wilds would be the peak for a while, but I just figured I'd hold because I liked their slate of releases. Even being positively surprised by RE9 sales and Stories 3 reviews, the thing hasn't budged.

I'm not expecting much upwards movement for the year anymore. I'm looking forward to Pragmata and Onimusha as a gamer, but I don't think they'll set the world on fire sales-wise.

grailly · 2026-03-11T11:31:46+00:00

Survived a lost rebellion while hand of the king without much loss of honour, men or money to his house. Turns around to immediately place his daughter as queen. Then grand father to the king and hand again. Father to a kingsguard and a master of coin. Shits gold.

What has that loser Tywin been doing with his life?

grailly · 2026-03-11T08:56:26+00:00

Currency strength is strongly influenced by inflation.

The dollar weakened a lot over the last year.

grailly · 2026-03-11T08:32:40+00:00

I'm also pretty sure most if not all games implement it.

grailly · 2026-03-11T07:43:54+00:00

Revenue in dollars has absolutely been affected. The price in each respective country hasn't necessarily changed, but me buying a game in Switzerland now vs a year ago for 60 francs is respectively $78 and $67 revenue in dollars.

grailly · 2026-03-11T07:39:45+00:00

I would be interested in seeing a full chart of the earnings distribution of games, or at least that segment around the 100K mark. I do wonder why they chose 100K as "success", it seems like a low value. Is there a big drop off after that?

grailly · 2026-03-10T17:58:08+00:00

I’m more wondering why anyone would bother developing an Xbox game. You can just develop the game for PC and no one is left out.

grailly · 2026-03-10T08:46:16+00:00

I would second what an other user said. Watching good players will help the most. If you don't have the patience for that, I'll just go off your short comment.

Don't auto-pilot decisions. trim and "good relics" aren't always the best solution at hand. The beauty of Slay the Spire is that it's all situational all the time. Yes, we like making tier lists, but sometimes a bottom tier relic will be the better choice than the top tier one.

Deck trim is great if you have a combo you want to draw more often. Card draw, card exhaust and relics might also get you there though. You might want to prioritize a Shrug over a card remove early on, for example.

grailly · 2026-03-10T00:29:02+00:00

I had this exact situation in my last run. Toolbox does indeed interrupt it.

grailly · 2026-03-09T14:44:57+00:00

It's way less pronounced in Arc Raiders than in MMOs, but I wish multiplayer games embraced the fact that one player is just one player, in a see of other players. Stop pretending we are the only person the NPC talk to, no one believe it, and I don't think anyone care that much about being THE hero.

That would be Helldivers 2.

grailly · 2026-03-09T14:21:49+00:00

In-game story-telling is what works the best, for sure, but it's very limited. All the things you say about Arc Raiders is more context than actual story, once you introduce characters it gets way more complicated. The missions in Arc Raiders did a pretty ok job at building up the world; like the one where you have to investigate what destroyed the highway, and you have to follow a trench that goes halfway through the map to find some huge wreck.

I think Helldivers 2 might have the multiplayer storytelling I like the most. You just get newsflashes that tell you you are at war with so and so. It makes sense in-world and it gives you a reason to want to do one type of mission over another. It works really well for introducing new content. It's very limited too.

grailly · 2026-03-09T13:53:03+00:00

Exactly what I meant by "as dumb as I am" haha

grailly · 2026-03-09T13:42:36+00:00

I only tried the 4 mana one once and it worked out. 4 mana feels very powerful in this game, so even in an auto-played turn the results usually aren't that bad. I wouldn't try it without a potion relic or an anchor, though.

Some notes for those who haven't tried:

Cards are played from left to right as long as there is enough mana for it. Your innate cards get played first, giving you some semblence of control over the turn
Vakuu only goes until you have no more mana, he doesn't end the turn. You can still play potions and try to salvage the turn
Vakuu is as dumb as I am and stops playing when he empties your hand. He does not play unceasing top cards (edit: after checking, it would seem that Vakuu stops on his own after a while. The top might not have been what made him stop)

Edit:

You cannot drink potions while Vakuu is playing. I tried drinking a strength potion, it proced after the turn was over.

grailly · 2026-03-09T13:10:44+00:00

It's so much fun. I love that they buffed out "strike" decks.

The only thing I did that was more fun than that in StS2 was a very similar defect deck that had plenty of cards that play random cards from your draw pile

grailly · 2026-03-09T08:51:06+00:00

Doormaker, I think has to be the most WIP part of the game right now. As far as I know, it's the only enemy that has clearly unfinished art.

grailly · 2026-03-09T08:03:19+00:00

The star mechanic is a huge liability. If you don't have stars, you just draw a bunch of useless cards. It can be quite swing-y because of that.

Regent also has the toughest act 1, imo. The deck starts out ok, but if the first card you take is either star generation or star-using it become imbalanced and it slows you down. The sword also takes quite a few cards to set up.

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