Alex Lemley (Rocketlex)
@rocketlex.bsky.social
190 followers 190 following 1.8K posts
Writer and game designer. Working on all sorts of stuff. Current projects: 🍔New Meat (https://store.steampowered.com/app/3458540/New_Meat/) 🌐Complexity Mode (https://www.alexlemley.com/complexity-mode) Check out all that stuff and more at alexlemley.com
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rocketlex.bsky.social
🍔IT'S HERE!🍔

New Meat has launched on Steam! It was a long road to get here but it's finally arrived! Come play one of the most unique, story-focused indie roguelites you'll find this year!

Please share!

#Roguelite #Indiegame #Indiedev

store.steampowered.com/app/3458540/...
Save 25% on New Meat on Steam
New Meat is a fast-paced horror-comedy roguelite about burgers, monsters and dead-end jobs. Survive five days of mayhem on the path to your first paycheck, meet a fun cast of extradimensional horrors,...
store.steampowered.com
rocketlex.bsky.social
I think I'm just gonna not put this in the patch notes.

If you somehow notice that slightly fewer pots are spawning in the Halloween build of New Meat don't submit it as a bug.
rocketlex.bsky.social
With the addendum "I literally only noticed this bug because I was making another random-spawning object and wanted to remember how I'd handled probability resets in previous objects I'd made, only to realize I never set the probability up properly in this one. This is almost entirely pointless."
rocketlex.bsky.social
Some bugfixes are so obscure they're hard to even explain. Like "Fixed a bug where an object wouldn't properly reset its spawn probability on despawning which caused it to TECHNICALLY appear more often than it should have, but not in a way you'd really even notice as a player."
rocketlex.bsky.social
Working on my own game, I really understand why Nintendo sometimes just says "additional fixes."
rocketlex.bsky.social
It’s truly bizarre how cold 70 degrees feels in LA.
rocketlex.bsky.social
I only play the really good Grinch games.
rocketlex.bsky.social
I feel like this is more or less equivalent to coming upstairs and seeing your toddler covered in ants.
rocketlex.bsky.social
Also I don’t know where you’re getting “price insensitive” from. Price wasn’t a part of the survey.

I buy Megabonk and Clover Pit for a combined twenty bucks in a single month. It’s me, the hyper-enthusiast, price insensitive gamer.
rocketlex.bsky.social
Like, is the number of people buying games decreasing, or is the number of people who can call themselves “video game players” because they bought one video game half a decade ago increasing?
rocketlex.bsky.social
I would love to know how this statistic compares to any other year in video game history, because this has some real “How do we get the grandma who’s only played Wii Sports for five years to care about Skyward Sword?” desperation to it.
rocketlex.bsky.social
So you never feel “out” in Clover Pit until your very last pull, and that’s so much better of a feeling than realizing you’ve lost but still going through the motions of slow-walking into your own Game Over.

A real “the only hit point that matters is your last” mentality. Perfect for roguelikes.
rocketlex.bsky.social
Like, in Balatro it’s not uncommon to start an ante and immediately realize “I can’t win. I literally don’t have the numbers. I could pull my ideal hand four times in a row and not win.”

But in Clover Pit, there’s always the possibility of the Jackpot and 666 looming over things.
rocketlex.bsky.social
I think a reason Clover Pit hits so much better for me than Balatro is that there’s so much more variance to a slot pull compared to a poker hand that it means you never feel hopeless or safe. You always feel like luck could save you and you always feel like luck could kill you.
rocketlex.bsky.social
So now we have Roblox as Roblox for kids, Fortnite as Roblox for teens, and Dreams as Roblox for adults. Huh.
rocketlex.bsky.social
I love that Ghost of Yotei never cleans off the blood decals for cutscenes. Atsu spends half the game’s cinematics covered in near-comical amounts of blood and it feels like a very intentional choice.
rocketlex.bsky.social
The best going right now is maybe The Interloper Mystery (or I guess the official title is Project Skybox), about a guy who discovers a strange feature of the Source engine that may be some kind of weird proto-AI...or ghost.

I recommend it to everyone. Super well done.

youtube.com/playlist?lis...
PROJECT SKY//BOX - YouTube
youtube.com
rocketlex.bsky.social
Now you need to become successful enough as a YouTube personality that someone makes a fangame of you.
rocketlex.bsky.social
…I’m sorry what were you saying?
rocketlex.bsky.social
It’s hard to explain but there have definitely been moments when I’ve seen an enemy swing at me, usually with a small weapon, and I could see the exact frame it did damage to me and it…wasn’t the frame I would have guessed deals damage to you. Not sure if this is just a me thing.
rocketlex.bsky.social
Ghost of Yotei’s parry mechanic works well enough most of the time but some specific attack animations become a real game of “Guess the Active Frame.”

Yes, game, when a guy’s windmilling sickles at me, obviously I need to parry when his arm is at a 23-degree angle and not 12 like I was doing.
rocketlex.bsky.social
Okay this game…fucking rules.

Like, this is exactly what I wanted AC Shadows to be. It’s cinematic as hell, dynamically weaves its story through everything you do in the open world, and has genuinely one of the coolest protagonists I’ve played as in a while. Atsu is at 100% aura at all times.
rocketlex.bsky.social
Literally deleted Assassins Creed Shadows to make space for this.