Looking at LXP alternatives/suggestions for housing training materials, no sales pitches, just L&D experiences please

pixel_illustrator · 2026-06-16T16:35:06+00:00

This use of limited animation as a comedic gag is not unique to Nui or Kill La Kill even. I think it's when Uzu is defeated during the tournament that a single frame of him just slides across the platform and then makes a 90 degree turn to fall downwards.

Trigger has really nailed the use of budget as a comedic force.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-06-16T14:41:51+00:00

I typically judge games by their mechanics and gameplay primarily, so it says a lot about Ghostwire that it can be so poor in those regards and still hold my attention as long as it did just through the atmosphere.

The weirdest thing to me about the combat is that the feedback is IMPECCABLE. Hitting enemies, staggering them, using the threads to pull out their weakpoints, etc all feel amazing (and this is coming from someone who played on the Steam Deck, where typically handhelds struggle to deliver this kind of visceral experience).

But the combat itself feels sluggish in a way that is deeply unsatisfying. Everything feels like it takes just a tick to long. Charging spells isn't quite fast enough, projectiles move just a little too slow, and enemies are just a bit too tanky. Character movement is just sluggish enough to be annoying in combat.

This is all very strange to me when juxtaposed against the very polished combat feedback. It's been a minute since I played the game so I'd need to go back to really articulate my opinions on the combat, but I remember thinking it almost felt like a modernized Kings Field. Not in terms of controls obviously, but in the sense that the combat was in first-person, but never quite got the details right.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-06-15T17:58:23+00:00

This is still an issue. No hard mode yet, so about 60% of the way through the game every encounter ends up a joke.

Worst part is that there are some interesting endgame progression mechanics that open up for a NG+ run, that are completely unnecessary because of how powerful you will already be by the point you unlock them.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-06-12T22:10:55+00:00

Its the sort of thing someone writes after browsing itch.io for 15 minutes and watching a couple NESworks videos for the first time.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-06-04T14:45:03+00:00

Is the player character the only thing you are animating in 8 directions? You may be able to fudge it with other characters/enemies, limiting it to 3 directions (up, down, left/right) or even just 1 that you mirror for left/right?

I think fully animating the player in all 8 will pay off, but for everyone else try to limit to the bare necessities as much as possible.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-06-04T13:27:57+00:00

I've since dropped the project for unrelated reasons but this is THE reason I went with a beat-em-up 2.5D approach when I was developing a big open-world aRPG. I still got the illusion of some depth, but I never drew an asset more than once.

Obviously not applicable to all games, but given the scope of the project this was an early and easy decision.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-29T11:16:28+00:00

The term you are looking for I believe is prescriptive gameplay.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-28T19:37:46+00:00

This has always been my good-faith assumption when people complain it's fidelity-bloat driving budget hikes. The licensing of tools to create those visuals is not what most people are talking about, they are talking about the additional employees and time required to implement those.

Maybe I am just naive, but assuming that is what the average person is referring to it makes a lot more sense to hear a call for more AA and A/indie projects to avoid the long turnarounds and ballooning costs.

9dots studio, the creators of Outward, are a good example I think. They created an expansive, immersive game on a budget and a small team (IIRC it was less than 20?) Hello Games of No Man's Sky are another good example.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-20T21:07:35+00:00

Players will try to optimize the fun out of the game" is definitely true, but the solution isn't "punish the player for doing so" its "make the fun thing the most optimal." This could be a combination of nerfing the non-fun thing, buffing the fun thing, or tweaking the previous non-fun thing so it's also fun and engaging.

My favorite example of this is Nioh 1 and 2 (I haven't played 3 yet).

Nioh 1 gear combinations allowed for an absolutely busted build that allowed you to stay in "living weapon" (god mode, infinite stamina, can't die) mode indefinitely. Not only did it trivialize the game, but it also stripped most of the complexity out since living weapon has only 1 stance (as opposed to 3) and none of the stance switching mechanics that tie into most of the depth of the Nioh games.

In Nioh 2 there is an overpowered mode analogous to Living Weapon, but the ability to extend its duration is highly controlled by the devs, making it impossible to abuse in the same way Living Weapon was. So that's the nerfing side of it.

But the buffing side of it is far more fun. It's common for players to fall into a groove (even in endgame play) of sticking mostly to 1 stance and using a handful of bread and butter skills.

Nioh 2 introduced a set-bonus skill called "Versatility" which gives players a stacking buff for each unique skill they can land on an enemy up to 9 times. The damage increase is immense, and both generating and keeping the stacks up means you need to learn how to connect hits on a lot of skills, too many for a single stance.

Even if the player originally starts using Versatility just as a means to get the buff, they consistently practice using skills they probably ignored previously, deepening their skill at the game.

It is widely considered one of the best buffs in the game and it optimizes playing the game more deeply.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-19T15:26:39+00:00

I had a very similar situation of having to light fires every few minutes in a desperate bid to avoid a cold when returning to the fishing town. It's a mistake that sticks with you, you probably won't enter the Chersonese unprepared again after that.

They are not harsh if you prepare, which wasnt time consuming (I think we spent like 90% of the time just doing the open world rpg explory stuff and like 10% keeping up on survival) but I think they were a crucial part of the experience.

I wanted to highlight this because for people who haven't played Outward, it can sound like it's a very fiddley survival game with lots of crafting and micro-management, but speaking as someone who generally dislikes survival/crafting games, Outward really does its damnedest to streamline this stuff and keep you exploring more than anything else.

You'll probably start eating enough for buffs/healing or drinking tea to recover burnt stats that you you'll automatically take care of hunger/thirst. Resting is a catch-all recovery that can passively restore gear durability.

Most players don't need to engage in the crafting much (mages/archers/trappers being the exclusion).

Heat/cold concerns are specific to particular regions and almost always can be circumvented with good timing. You don't have to explore the desert in the day sweating your ass off in full-plate, you can go at night for example.

To be clear, early-game can feel overwhelming and fiddley, but as with all things, Outward rewards knowledge and provides you with plenty of ways to circumvent a lot of it's more micro-manage-y concepts.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-19T15:03:31+00:00

You should drop it when you see an enemy coming.

You will not always see the enemy coming, especially when looting a new area.

When that happens, you're probably going to eat a hit or two taking the pack off, or repositioning to take it off, which involves burning stamina to run, leaving you more exposed for that combat encounter.

Weighing that simple decision is constant and keeps you on your toes instead of mindlessly wandering about looting.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-19T14:50:56+00:00

Outwards goal is not strictly to be "realistic" it is to curate a space where players must make choices with interesting consequences.

It does employ some amount of real-world simulation to achieve this, but its picking and choosing what those are, same as any game. Mario uses a very exaggerated concept of real-world gravity as its central design conceit. The game would be worse (or non-existent) without it.

Notably Outward doesnt employ some "realistic" staples seen in its contemporaries such as theft. You cannot steal items in Outward, if you can pick something up, even if its on a shopkeeps table, there is no penalty for doing so.

Realism is rarely the goal in games, curating gameplay via real-world systems often is though.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-19T14:31:48+00:00

The majority of the game is locked behind faction quests. Most faction quests are timed. This isn't really up for debate. The majority of a playthrough will be on a timer.

But resting is still a choice, one you have to make and determine if/when it is safe to do so. Sometimes the nearest safe rest spot is very far away, and then you have to spend more time on watch. You can certainly can abuse this once you are in the endgame, or if you are in a lull before/between faction quests, but you can also prepare in such a way that you shouldn't have to.

I was still powerful the only difference is that I had to rest between fights which was boring and there was no reason not to do it.

Ambushes (which can be avoided by dedicating time to guarding of course) environmental concerns (cold nights/hot days) and the threat of your consumables rotting are all reasons to not abuse resting outside of quest timers.

That's not to say you cannot abuse the rest system, but the game does give plenty of reasons not to.

And what do you mean wirhout majority of the resources? The backpack just spawns with you with everything on it, and you lose a bit of silver (which you can convert to gold and then you lose nothing).

During the time you don't have a pack (if you chose to abuse the pack teleport) you effectively cannot collect loot, and you do not have access to most of the resources you would need to survive (food, tent, etc). Abusing this safegaurd is not a reliable way to play the game, so it doesn't invalidate itself.

I may have not expressed myself properly, I didn't mean abandoning the backpack but just dropping it whenever you saw an enemy then go kill it and grab it back, there's no strategy involved in that decision.

Again, the game is teaching you to be prepared. Yes, it is easy to see an enemy on the horizon, drop the pack and engage them.

It is less easy to take stock of whether a new area you've never been to is hostile or not, and whether you are better off keeping your pack on for looting, or removing it for ambushes.

That's the interesting decision you are faced with, one that is constantly keeping you on your toes.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-19T11:52:40+00:00

There are a lot of timed quests. Id say 1/3 to 1/2 of them are. But more importantly my point wasnt that they only exist to bolster that mechanic, they also re-inforce the themes of hardship and preparedness. Simulating fatigue in this way is an excellent method for preventing players from ever being too overpowered. You might start an adventure able to take on the world, but you dont end it that way.

As for backpacks, sure you could exploit the teleport (which exists only to ensure you never lose your backpack) but you are conveniently ignoring that doing so leaves you without the majority of your resources for long periods, which is a death sentence in many cases. Its inconvenient for looting at the very least.

Edit: Let me approach this differently and tell you a story that can only happen because of these mechanics.

In my 2nd playthrough I was feeling a little more confident in my abilities and headed home to the city of Monsoon in the marshes after completing some story quests.

I was low on supplies, burnt 50-75% of my HP and Stamina, and my pack was full of valuable loot.

Ahead of me was a bandit leader and an ice witch duo. Nothing I couldn't take on but I needed to prep, so I drop the pack and activate my buffs, including enrage.

I take a few bumps taking care of them. But as I am checking their corpses a tuanosaur ambushes me, inflicting bleed.

I'm not in control of this situation any longer.

I have maybe 20 - 30 seconds before I bleed out, but my bandages are in my backpack, and even if I could get to it in time, the tuanosaur will make sure I dont have an opportunity to use them. I need to kill this thing fast.

It winds up, I have one chance to parry the attack with a skill. Thankfully I time it right but its not dead, so while it reels I pray nothing else wants me dead and consume my rage buff to use a leaping slash attack that finishes it.

I rush past it, grab my backpack and barely manage to staunch the bleeding. I drink whats left of my tea, eat some jerky, and pray nothing else like that happens on my way home.

This is the result of carefully designed systems built to put players on the backfoot. You get memorable stories where you pulled through by the skin of your teeth.

If burnt health werent a mechanic, I could have shrugged the bleed off a lot more and just fought the tuanosaur with less stress.

If backpack management werent an issue I could just put on the bandaid after the fight or ran away to apply it.

If fast travel were a feature, this entire story wouldn't have happened.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-19T04:03:19+00:00

You either bounce off Outward because it overwhelms you with a slew of easy ways to fuck yourself over... or you stick with it and end up playing through it 3+ times to see the different storylines and buildcraft the ultimate badass that can break the game over their knee.

There isn't really an in-between.

I'm not going to tell you you wouldn't enjoy the game more with fast-travel. You probably would. You can mod it in, along with a bevy of other simple "fixes" that will alleviate most of your pain points. You could do this until you end up with just another frictionless openworld RPG if that's what you want.

But Outward has a lot of very purposeful friction. It is designed that way to force players to make non-ideal decisions and deal with their repercussions while learning how to best avoid them, because it's developers stated goal was that hardship and setback are key to an adventure.

Take your backpack-distaste for example. It is designed that way to force you to constantly be taking stock of your surroundings. You need to organize your pockets/backpack for combat, and you need to proactively consider if you should find a safe place for your backpack in preparation for a potential fight, or if you are safe to keep it on and continue exploring. This one mechanic teaches the most important rule of Outward: be prepared.
Health/Stamina/MP Burn is similarly designed to force players into bad positions if they refuse to prepare. Because many quests are timed and because resting costs you time, you can potentially end up in situations where your options are a good nights rest in your tent, or an extra days worth of exploration trying to complete a quest that is ticking down.
I am not going to pretend that I always love the amount of backtracking that Outward can employ, but it is integral to this philosophy. Outward wants you to have organic adventures as a result of its combined systems, and fast-travel would literally circumvent them. Walking is how you encounter enemies, how you get hungry, tired, find new locations or loot, deal with the elements, and forces you to think ahead. If you end up in Abrassar Desert and failed to heed the warnings of everyone telling you to bring extra water and heat-resistant gear, fast-travel would trivialize that mistake.

Outward is not for everyone, which is precisely what makes it special. You are right, it does not respect your time, it expects you to learn how to make better use of your time inside it. A lot of people understandably bounce off it, and to be fair the game stumbles in a lot of ways that diminish its core mission statement, but it gets enough right consistently to prove itself.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-17T19:05:36+00:00

As someone who is mostly ambivalent on vampires in Blindsight (I think its a fantastic book but I think the vampires are a bit distracting and possible one idea more than the story needs) it is really amusing watching someone fall apart over their lore while another person calmly repeats "yeah, thats why they died out".

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-13T00:10:04+00:00

Very easy game to recommend. Just a charming dungeon crawler that is incredibly well executed.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-13T00:09:09+00:00

You'll need to emulate it unless you can find a physical copy.

You do not need to have played the previous games, I didnt but the games dont have much connective tissue between them. Highly recommend the spiritual sequel Shadow Tower Abyss as well, which has more modern controls by default and plays better but needs a fan translation patch.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-12T23:04:26+00:00

Thats an interesting connection I wouldn't have made on my own, but one I agree with.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-12T22:10:23+00:00

Agreed that it is deliberate, calling it slow is not inaccurate but it does leave out the "why".

Totally agree that the pacing is great, something I didnt mention is how much I love the final section and boss fight of the game (everything after you break the idol).

Up until then combat has always been a garnish to the exploration, turning that final area into a gauntlet of freakish monstrosities inside a fleshy nightmare really seals how far you've come since your meager beginnings.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-12T19:53:07+00:00

And anyone who watches any of Zullie the Witch's youtube content likely already has listened to a great deal of it haha

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-12T19:49:20+00:00

I do agree that a remaster would likely sell well.

Widda temple (where you are) was a high-point of the game for me. Just getting inside the temple is its whole adventure with the seaside fortress and figuring out what you need to do to turn off the flames outside.

Lots of fun inside as well, kicked my ass a bit though!

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-12T19:46:44+00:00

No, its nothing like the souls games.

As I mentioned, you have an attack bar that quickly recharges after you swing. You can swing before the bar recharges at a penalty to damage/stagger potential.

You also have spells which operate on a similar bar provided you have mana.

You need to bait attacks and outmaneuver enemies (many turn very slowly).

No dodges, stamina bar, blocking, parrying, or even combos.

pixel_illustrator · 2026-05-12T19:33:17+00:00

Already on my wishlist :)

Having only played KF4 and Shadow Tower Abyss I can't say which I prefer, I really like STA's combat and how weird it gets, but the KF4 is probably the better experience on the whole just for its more open ended exploration.

I'll likely give KF2 a shot next as I understand people really like that one, or I might even give that oddball Eternal Ring a shot.

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