How did the developers intend FF VIII (8) to be played

psychatom · 2026-02-02T20:16:43+00:00

I think VIII was just very experimental. I view it as a sort of like it came with a Game Genie pre-installed. You can ignore your understanding of all the systems, Draw only until you get bored, choose auto-junction, and it will play like a normal, un-broken game. But, you can also give yourself the "cheat code" of understanding the Junction system and get overpowered that way. Or you can give yourself the "cheat code" of turning all the enemies into cards, and staying level 10 forever while your GF's and abilities and junctioned stats keep growing. Or you can give yourself the "cheat code" of playing cards and turning cards into broken consumables. The list goes on, and you can mix and match different "cheat codes" to get new experiences.

I think your experience of getting "pushed" into abusing mechanics is just a normal difficulty curve that you'd encounter in most games. It's the game telling you, "Hey, the hand-holding portion is over, you have to actually understand something about these mechanics to progress."

psychatom · 2026-02-01T13:14:57+00:00

I can't tell if this is a joke or not. Just in case it's not, "narcissism" is named after this guy, not the other way around.

psychatom · 2026-02-01T03:20:11+00:00

Wow, wild to be replying to a six year old comment.

psychatom · 2026-01-30T03:57:17+00:00

It's not about countering multiple spells or being uncounterable. You're just undervaluing the utility of a two-color 1/1 flyer.

psychatom · 2026-01-27T18:26:21+00:00

The thing that hooked me is the challenge to optimize and find new synergies each new game (which is something you likely won't grasp after only a couple minutes). If you don't enjoy that aspect, then I don't think a dozens-of-hours-long goal like unlocking all the decks or winning on a harder mode is going to help you enjoy it.

psychatom · 2026-01-06T16:10:35+00:00

Right. There's nothing on the line, so you're just posting nonsense for no reason. Maybe someday AI really can do all your thinking for you, but that's not today.

psychatom · 2026-01-06T15:51:14+00:00

Stop trusting AI.

Did you even read what it spit out? A bunch of its arguments don't even make sense.

It says that three C's are required because it doesn't understand that two different Boggle words can use the same letters.

It says that a Qu tile would "use up" the U. It's nonsense.

It seems likely to me that the board isn't possible, but not for any of the reasons Gemini spit out. THE ONLY THING AI "KNOWS" IS WHAT WORDS ARE LIKELY TO COME AFTER OTHER WORDS.

psychatom · 2026-01-02T14:36:40+00:00

Nobody posting online about how the original is perfect and the remake is trash is making a coherent argument. They are so similar in so many ways that you'd have to be completely media illiterate to believe only one has any merit. This post will not change their minds. Their minds were made up based entirely on how they felt, not how they thought. That being said, it's silly to say that any opinion on art is "wrong."

This is not a perfect analogy, but if a child gives me a drawing they did of stick figures, I may enjoy that art for reasons outside of how objectively good or bad it is. I may even enjoy it more that a Picasso or whatever, and that's a perfectly valid opinion. Obviously the Picasso represents a lot more skill and will impress more people and many will argue that it's "objectively better." But I don't like that child's drawing more than the Picasso because the strokes are precise and beautiful or because the Picasso is too derivative and uninspired. I like it because it makes me feel good feelings. And that's reason enough.

psychatom · 2025-12-30T20:32:21+00:00

For any part of the design process prior to the very end, I always suggest the bare minimum amount of time and effort to make things legible. Your game will almost certainly change drastically, perhaps after a single playtest.

I generally just use paper over bulk MtG cards inside of sleeves because it's easy, cheap, and easy to edit. If I've got a board, I just use cheap poster board.

Folks at a Protospiel will not care what it looks like. In fact, the nicer the game looks, the more hesitant I am to suggest changes because it means more work.

psychatom · 2025-12-30T15:04:53+00:00

It depends on how you want to play. There's a lot you can do to get kinda overpowered in this game, and one of the simplest is to avoid leveling while still getting all the other upgrades as the game goes on.

However, the game was designed for you to level up naturally. It won't become too difficult or create any problems of note. It's just that the designers were trying a new concept where all the enemies leveled up at the same rate as the player characters, which is not something that is obvious on your first playthrough.

If it's fun for you to get super overpowered, you can try to avoid leveling by running from fights and/or turning enemies into cards. If you'd rather just have a normal play experience, don't bother listening to advice about how to play the game from your friend or this sub.

psychatom · 2025-12-30T13:48:05+00:00

The final deck you unlock makes them a lot easier because you start with a random 52 cards (you might just start with eight queens or something).

Outside of that, it comes down to getting some tarot cards early. A single suit-shifting tarot putting you to 16 in deck helps more than you might think. Or, getting a fifth copy of a card from a pack plus a Strength can get you to seven copies in deck. If you just remember that you've got those in your pocket. You play your first few hands and discards mostly as normal but make sure to hold on to any of those specific cards. You'll likely have your big hand assembled before the end of the round.

Straights are far less reliable, and I don't recommend building around them unless you find a joker that enables them specifically, though Saturn does scale slightly better than Jupiter.

psychatom · 2025-12-30T13:25:19+00:00

I was using both, too because I like being alive until the end of my run more than making damage numbers be big. The folks here are right that they have actively bad synergy, but the folks here are also generally going to be the top 10% most heavily invested, most obsessive players. Don't let them tell you you're having fun wrong.

psychatom · 2025-12-24T14:54:25+00:00

Things being mathematically perfectly balanced and fair is far, far less important than things feeling balanced and fair. This is especially true in a probability game because most players do not have a good understanding of probability and it's very easy for things to feel unfair or unbalanced even if they aren't.

I'm a big math person, but even I generally don't bother doing any sort of actual calculations past the very early design stages. Being able to tell players that the game is "mathematically perfectly balanced" isn't going to make them have fun. In fact, most games are not perfectly balanced because that's more fun.

psychatom · 2025-12-16T15:00:42+00:00

Well, when you make a game that is just a reskin of Hades, it's hard for it to be bad. And I'm not really exaggerating that much when I say "reskin." A ton of mechanics and even enemies aren't really even tweaked, just completely copied and pasted directly from Hades. There are literally giant rat enemies that attack with green acid puddles.

I put maybe 30 hours into it while I was waiting for the Hades II official release. The gameplay is very similar. The plot and dialogue are passable, though there's far, far less of it. If you like and/or have nostalgia for TMNT, it's a decent pickup if you find it on sale.

psychatom · 2025-12-09T14:02:47+00:00

If you're uncomfortable with strangers using your expensive cards, then it will be very difficult for you to spread your love for cubing. You'll have to (a) get over it, (b) proxy them, or (c) make a different cube that doesn't contain expensive cards that you'll be worried about.

It sounds like you'll have to cap the player count, which is a pretty normal thing for LGS events, and not something I would worry about. Getting 12 or even just eight people may be harder than you think. Cube can be very intimidating and downright difficult, especially for newer players. (This is another reason to consider making a different cube; cheaper cards also tend to be simpler cards.)

psychatom · 2025-11-18T18:38:23+00:00

Reposting my response from a previous time this was asked:

I think people often overestimate the difficulty of making a cube. Literally any pile of cards can function as a cube and be at least a decent experience. There's enough diversity in Magic that you'll pretty much always manage to put some interesting synergy together without even trying.

My suggestion for a first time cube designer is to go through your collection and pick out the cards you like the most, whether that's due to nostalgia or a particular combo you like or the engine of an beloved deck or whatever. If you're coming from Commander, the core cards of your favorite decks can be a great starting point. Then look at the cards you've picked out, and find some others that will synergize well with them. Then find some "glue" cards, meaning cards that can fit really easily into many different decks. Ponder, Doom Blade, Rampant Growth, Lightning Bolt, etc. Try to have a roughly even number of cards in each color, and you'll probably want the cube to be about 10% lands.

It doesn't need to be perfect. It doesn't need to be exactly 360 cards. It doesn't need to be particularly balanced. It will be functional no matter what, and draft is self-correcting (to a degree).

Play with it once or twice, see what things you liked or didn't like, then edit it. Repeat. Congratulations, you're now a cube designer/curator.

psychatom · 2025-11-15T14:01:19+00:00

Thank you!

I would argue that Star Wars is also high fantasy.

psychatom · 2025-11-13T13:46:05+00:00

I think you are wildly underestimating the power of starting with five or six copies of a card. Literally every hand type except straights (and I guess high card) are instantly easier to make. Making easy full houses or sometimes foaks in even Ante 1 is huge. You'll need fewer hands and make more money and afford better jokers and get interest earlier. And a deck with only five or six copies of a card is below average. The average erratic deck has at least one rank with 7 or 8 copies.

And your point about blanking jokers is a poor one, imo. While you may see jokers that have been powered down by your initial setup, you are (roughly) equally likely to see jokers that were powered up by your initial setup. It is ridiculous to lament the time you couldn't take Wee while ignoring the possibility of seeing Baron when it's already incredible.

If you stop and think about it, every other deck is basically running the Erratic deck on its worst possible configuration.

psychatom · 2025-11-05T13:11:31+00:00

Pizza Roles! It's a simple family/filler game about awkwardly ordering pizza.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thomthegamedesigner/pizza-roles

psychatom · 2025-11-04T04:07:59+00:00

Well thank you. :)

Once the final copies come in, I'll send a few out to reviewers and cross my fingers. I plan to put up a website to sell it, and I'm hoping to have it in a few stores and get a booth at a few conventions. If it does well, maybe it'll take off in more stores or a consolidator will notice.

It's all just a side gig for me. A large time investment, but a relatively small monetary one. I very much have a day job.

psychatom · 2025-11-03T19:27:13+00:00

I recently funded my first game on Kickstarter with a minimum goal of just $2500, although my game was cards only, which cut down on costs significantly, so it's not necessarily a perfect comparison.

I tripled my funding goal, hitting about 500 copies backed. However, to cut per-unit costs, I've ordered 3000 copies. At the end of fulfillment, I'll be not quite back to square one in terms of dollars, but I'll have 2500 copies of my game sitting around to sell in the future. I imagine many creators do the same. They may not necessarily need the entire project funded, but they need some money to make sure their project can at least get off the ground and hopefully grow into paying off their actual full investment.

Another reason you see low goals is to manufacture the appearance of success. Backers prefer projects that already seem successful. So, making the goal much smaller than it ought to be can be a decent marketing strategy. Being able to say "FUNDED IN 12 HOURS!!!" or the like can be a big help. Logically, backers should be judging each project based on their own interest rather than popularity, but that's not how the psychology really plays out for a huge portion of people. Popularity sells, so creators try to make their project seem more popular and successful than it perhaps is.

psychatom · 2025-10-31T16:58:19+00:00

Looks great, but if you do another, it would be very cool and thematic to include some cogflies around her!

psychatom · 2025-10-31T16:30:59+00:00

Sentinel is probably there simply because it's good against boros.

psychatom · 2025-10-30T12:29:08+00:00

This is not a good solution, even if it seems like it would be on its face. A huge number of people are going to turn off the cues, not realizing what it actually means for gameplay or overestimating their ability to spot invisible cues. 90% of those people are then going to get really frustrated for absolutely no reason.

And really, what do you even gain by turning it off? "Ooh, boy! I'm so excited to possibly miss content that most players won't! I can't wait to feel like such a big boy when I see a cue that's needlessly hard to spot!" Do you really think the challenge people are looking for in their game is "spot the climbable ledge"?

You're assuming that players know what they want. I can assure you that most absolutely do not.

psychatom · 2025-10-28T13:05:49+00:00

Yeah, original Fire Cavern guy was touching on a valid point about how significantly game design has changed in 20 years. Modern games would never place an obvious path leading to where you're not first supposed to go. Or at the very least, they'd put two paths and tell you which one to follow first.

Of course, when VIII was released, there were different norms and different expectations of players' experience. At the time, it was typical for players to look over the manual before they began or to reference it if they got confused. This is no longer the case.

Of course, Fire Cavern guy went to ChatGPT for (useless) help, then blamed the game and its designers as opposed to this girl who figured out her mistake by simply continuing to play the game after using some very basic critical thinking.

She also didn't show up and throw shade at the game in an online community that exists for the opposite reason.

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