I heard the lead guy for HuniePop say the same not very long ago. He said the turnaround time for games made in regions with looser IP laws could be insane at times, and before you know it, your preview assets show up in some product.
Papers Please, Obra Dinn, and Moida Mansion creator Lucas Pope. Awesome free little retro-LCD game, if you havenāt played it before? Itās short, but itās got multiple endings and you can speedrun it. What more do you need?
Thanks for the recommendation of Moida Mansion. I hadnāt heard of it before, but I loved Papers, Please so much that Iām already sold on trying it.
(The Papers, Please theme has been my alarm tune for the last few years. Rather impressively, I havenāt gotten sick of it yet ā I suspect because every time I am woken to my haze of groggy misanthropy, it just makes me appreciate the song more, because itās so thematically appropriate)
This kind of behaviour is a win from the playerās perspective too, no hype for a game that might never happen or might come out after 11 years and still be crap, heh
I see you donāt know who Lucas Pope is or what his previews consisted of. I really liked his blogposts about designing a game for a retro handheld console that really doesnāt seem worth buying. His dev blog gave me more vivid appreciation for the art of games.
I really hope heāll publish the dev blogs after the game.
Thanks for the recommendation about his Dev blogs ā I didnāt know he had done these, and they look really cool; Papers, Please is one of my favourite games, so Iām always keen to peer behind the scenes
Hereās a link, if anyone else is interested. This might not be the specific post OP was talking about, but youāll be able to find it from here if not
I know who he is. Donāt assume, it makes an ass out of u. Just wishing AAA devs would do the same tbh rather than hype games up only to cancel them.
If youāre gonna be a dick, at least get it right
The phrase is āAssume makes an ass out of you and meā
I airways heard it as āAssuming makes an ass of you and Ming.ā
If you wanna make an ass out of yourself as well, Iām not gonna stop you.
Wow, so many reply guys crawling out of the woodwork todayā¦ I mustāve struck a nerve or something.
I dislike the way you talk to people
Thank you for the information. Iāll change my entire personality just to suit your preferences, shall I? /s
Seriously though, you know where the block button is, Iām not for everyone and thatās okay. :)
Aaaand blocked.
I donāt think thereās any chance of Lucas Pope putting out a crap game. A great game thatās incredibly niche, I could see that though.
Smart. Ethics are a thing of the past.
Early AccessAI AccessAirly Access
this is so sad. he provided so much as a solo dev showing his work. check out his YouTube channel.
Pope also said he was more wary of releasing a major new game now because he enjoyed such critical success with Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn that he doesnāt want to let players down.
āThereās also the sense that I was pretty happy with Obra Din and Papers, Please and I donātā¦ you know, maybe I canāt do it again, kind of thing. Do I really want to maybe just go out on a high note? Why drag my myself down with the next thing that people may not like?
You know, I feel him there. I canāt even imagine how to make a successful follow-up after two games that were not just smash hits, but brilliant and unconventional too. Everyone is basically expecting a piece of genius (me included). Not to mention the step up from Papers to Obra Dinn was so huge in terms of production and scope that itās easy to expect another escalation.
Perhaps he could take a page out of the book of authors and publish a new game under a non-de-plume?
Heās in a tricky position but Iād like to see him create anything that he finds interesting. It doesnāt need to be as refined as Obra Dinn, but it would be a shame if he didnāt release something just because itās 75% as good as Obra Dinn.
Lucas Pope is a much smarter person than me, so Iām sure heāll make the right decision for him. Iām sure just making money doesnāt mean all that much to him anymore.
To be fair, the first spawned a genre and the second is a masterpiece, he set an impossible standard. But you could have said that before the second was released.
If I could tell Pope one thing, itās ājust make games you think youāll like dudeā
It frustrates me that Iāll never be able to enjoy Obra Dinn again for the first time. This will probably for ever be a one of its kind game, and it makes me sad
Try the roottrees are dead.
Definitely not the same, but have you checked out Seance at Blake Manor?
What other games came out that were like Papers Please? I only ever played/heard of that one.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3419520/Quarantine_Zone_The_Last_Check/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3431040/Thats_not_my_Neighbor/
Those are the closest two I think.
Thereās others that get more into FNAF type of gameplay, or straight detective sorts.
I would call Not Tonight a āpaperslikeā.
Speaking as Brit who is salty as hell at Brexit, I really enjoyed āNot Tonightā. It takes the Papers, Please mechanical framework and applies it to a new socio-economic context for some really effective satire. If you hadnāt mentioned it, then this is the one that I would have commented to add
The upcoming I Have No Change has a certain Papers-esque feel to it. Youāre stuck in a kiosk doing mundane things, and narratives are told through the characters that visit your kiosk.
In Soviet Russia, papers check you! /j
Iām going to miss his blog about game development, even if I donāt intend to do it, reading about how he figured out how to do the Obra Din graphics was pretty rad.
āBut I I also like to talk about the stuff Iām working on, and I think just now the the situation kind of feels different to me, that you donāt really talk about stuff when youāre working on it because I donāt know itās going to get slurped up by AI or people are going to copy it or something else like that.
The threat of your game idea being taken isnāt from AI, itās from people.
An AI at worst will add the tweet or whatever you put out into its model and in 6 months itāll get released in the new version where maybe one day it might influence an output.
A human at worst will sit there an deliberately make your idea for themselves and publish it before you can.
Well you got stuff like this:
Unfortunately I think Lucas Popeās concerns are valid.
anĀ individualĀ calledĀ āKamabokoĀ KÅsatsuĀ KÅsatsuā (not affiliated with the original Kamaboko) posted a gameĀ likewise calledĀ āTyping MagicianāĀ toĀ Unityroom. The game, with striking similarities to the still-in-progress project by Kamaboko, quickly accumulatedĀ almost 30k hits, making it to the platformās āPopularĀ New Releasesā category.
So a person stole the idea and made it into a game?
Right. AI coding assistant help users move fast. If the user is a thief, thatās on the thief. A competent developer of a thief, considering the game worked at all. AI alone accomplishes none of this.
I think something happened with Ridiculous Fishing pre-AI too. A really hasty clone gained a bunch of undue attention.
I mean, valid.
Good idea.
