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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 2h

But if you bounced off of Silksong and you want a big metroidvania that, again, resets you to the last valid ledge when you die, I strongly recommend Ori And The Will Of The Wisps.

store.steampowered.com/app/1057090/...

Ori and the Will of the Wisps on Steam

Play the critically acclaimed masterpiece. Embark on a new journey in a vast, exotic world where you’ll encounter towering enemies and challenging puzzles on your quest to unravel Ori’s destiny.

store.steampowered.com

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 2h

Now, if you're someone Silksong absolutely clicked with, please continue playing Silksong. It's a neat game if you can enjoy it.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 3h

I do not find its art or music as charming as Silksong's, but a ton of work went into them and there's a really neat thing Will Of The Wisps' aesthetic is doing where it feels like it's almost blending claymation with hyper bloomed out digital art.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 3h

Also when you find a secret there's something in there that's good and you can use it?

It's not three shells that break into a total of sixteen (16) shards.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 3h

You're also doing Path Of Pain jumps within like the first fifteen minutes, so I don't know that I'd call it an immensely easier game. It just isn't making you do runbacks into four battle arenas in a row.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 3h

Die anywhere? Reset to your last stable platform. All enemies? Drop plenty of resources, none of which you need for your specials. Toolkit? Wild and diverse, you get the double jump within the first five minutes. Gamefeel? Incredibly floaty but it gives you time to make decisions.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 3h

More specifically, Ori 1 is a very different type of game. Will Of The Wisps does pick up from 1's plot, but the thing with Will Of The Wisps is that it is good.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 3h

"Should I play Ori 1?"

No.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 3h

If you're like me and you eventually bounced off of Silksong due to the everything but you still want to play a big Hollow-Knight-like with great traversal and exploration.

Listen.

Listen.

Ori And The Will Of The Wisps.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 5h

I need to properly sit down and read Kawashima's work then, especially if there's a focus on resource management.

SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 5h

OH! I have the Shinobigami PDF, a Meikyuu translation, and inSANe in a physical copy I can't read b/c my Japanese is real bad. I 100% should have caught this.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 6h

If you don't mind my asking, I'm super curious who Kawashima is. I googled, but I couldn't find any hits for the name other than for a brain training game on the switch.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

Oh, it plays like Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon. There aren't any chocobos in it that I've seen (so far.)

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

Anyway, there was some discussion earlier today about how indie games don't get spotlighted enough, so if you know someone who might dig House Of Necrosis feel free to recc it to them.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

And often, in the process of demaking, you'll learn things about a game that you weren't consciously aware of.

I did not think "player skill and stress are a randomizing element to affect how many bullets you spend on a zombie" until I wrote this thread, but resi relies on it for variations in play

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

The difference between inspired by and a demake is that an inspired by title can be built around any random clipping from a game. A demake is trying to cut away everything but the soul.

Neither is innately better than the other, but they frame design in different ways.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

And if you demake it further?

How about a diceless one sentence "you can always succeed if you tell me what it costs you"?

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

But it still has that "a zombie is a resource check" philosophy.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

That's a foundation.

You can build a lot on it by finding ways to break the rules. Maybe fast zombies act after the first player. Maybe durable zombies need to be killed twice. Maybe a melee weapon lets you make progress on an enemy's damage track without spending bullets.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

The player makes the decision to attack, the roll decides how many bullets the attack chews through, if the player doesn't have enough bullets the zombie isn't dead. Any zombies that aren't dead act after player phase.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

So let's do that for a second. Let's turn it into pen and paper.

Lots of games do "roll to hit a zombie" and it ends up feeling like D&D, kinda wargamey.

How about "roll to see how efficiently you kill the zombie"?

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

And you can demake it further, keep lowering the mechanical fidelity---and as long as you keep that "a zombie is a resource check" philosophy it'll still have that resident evil feeling to it.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

In this way, resident evil and House Of Necrosis are on the exact same wavelength: a zombie is a resource check.

Their controls are different, their design priorities are different, but the core philosophy isn't.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

When a zombie is shambling towards you, you're fighting with the controls to aim, you're firing off shots inexpertly, what that zombie is is a resource check.

When you try to run past you'll mess that up some of the time. Spend a green herb.

When you shoot you'll miss some of the time. Spend ammo.

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SprintingOwlDesigns @sprintingowl.bsky.social · 8h

What gets lost in this mechanical translation? Well, freedom of movement, freedom of where to aim, heavily curated custom environments. These are all important parts of how resident evil feels, but you can also look at them another way.

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