Grimrock

Framerate is not relevant for timed puzzles in Grimrock 2 unless it is so low that the frame delay is significantly affecting the margin, and I doubt anybody is playing the game at 2 FPS. In Grimrock 2 the same timescale is used for movement, projectiles, and TimerComponent, and this puzzle doesn't even use the latter.

I was originally pretty sure no one was encumbered, but given that when I went back to the puzzle and this time made absolutely sure no one was encumbered (and beat it on my third try), I am forced to conclude that a party member probably was encumbered during my first attempt and I didn't notice it. I had tried a lot of times before I had given up originally, too. Also, my computer is more than powerful enough to run the game and I've had absolutely no frame rate issues, so that's ruled out. I do really like Grimrock and Grimrock II as they're both great games.

I didn't grow up with the games Grimrock pays homage to, though (I grew up with Zelda, Metroid, Mario, Star Fox, etc.) Some of those were indeed poorly designed in the old days (Zelda II, Ghost 'n Goblins, etc.). The medals in expert mode in Star Fox 64 were a good example. I loved that game, but I never could get the expert mode medal on the planet Solar after countless attempts (so I finally gave up as it was the only intelligent option left)... Definitely BAD DESIGN. Donkey Kong 64 had some stuff that was excessively over the top too. And this all comes down to one simple fact, there is no point in playing a game you can't win (doing so is a waste of your time and more importantly shows the designer is not respecting their players or their player's time).

I do disagree with Isaac's comment, though. While I don't mind challenges, if they're over the top then they should be optional with nothing behind them. There's no reason for some stuff to be out of reach for some players. That's pointless design that helps create the divide between new and experienced players. I can't understand players who do the insane challenges anyway as it requires an absurd amount of time to do. Not to mention that life is too short for such nonsense and there are countless other gaming experiences to play that are much better designed and not pointlessly aggravating. I happen to be an experienced gamer, as I've been playing games since the NES era when I was a little kid. That's probably the biggest reason I dislike steep challenges since games back then were largely very badly designed (like Ghosts & Goblins). I totally understand why they did it, the systems had crap for resources so you couldn't put in all that much content and they wanted to make the games last.

In general, the player should feel like failure was his/her fault, because if they feel more like the game is to blame then the player will begin to have negative sentiments toward the game. The illusion of fairness is very important in video games design (I mean, we all know that games are often not fair by design, but if it actually feels unfair then players will dislike it). The more a game throws random unfair crap at a player, the more it creates negative sentiments in the player's mind. I dislike games that do that, as there really isn't any good reason why that should be the case. If its too common, then the game should've been tweaked to minimize it a bit.

The Grimrock Games do have a few cheap spots, but for the most part they're not too bad. They are very good games.

Megafont wrote: I didn't grow up with the games Grimrock pays homage to, though (I grew up with Zelda,

What? I couldn't tell. (Looking at your avatar)

Megafont wrote: Some of those were indeed poorly designed in the old days (Zelda II, Ghost 'n Goblins, etc.). The medals in expert mode in Star Fox 64 were a good example. I loved that game, but I never could get the expert mode medal on the planet Solar after countless attempts (so I finally gave up as it was the only intelligent option left)... Definitely BAD DESIGN. Donkey Kong 64 had some stuff that was excessively over the top too. And this all comes down to one simple fact, there is no point in playing a game you can't win (doing so is a waste of your time and more importantly shows the designer is not respecting their players or their player's time).

I think a lot of it comes down to the player, and their playing style. For example, you didn't grow up on the RPG games that Grimrock closely resembles; so there's a "learning curve" to adapt to the style of the game. Because of the player's style, it's an infinite possibility of what that could be. For example, I absolutely loved Final Fantasy VII. I spent sleepless nights powering through that game, getting the Golden Chocoboo, and getting all the summons (probably my favorite part of the game, lol) - but when it came to fighting Seperoth - I could not beat him. No matter what I tried. I'd get him down to really low health - then he'd do that Meteorite summon (if you've played, I am sure you know what I mean), which would deal 9,999 damage to my characters, and kill me off. I eventually learned there was a way around it, but required specific summons in a specific order, with specific matra (I think that's what the magic stone things were called?) - and by then, I was over it. Just watched the ending on youtube. (I still think from time to time, starting all over - because it's a fun game, and seeing if I can do it "right").

Megafont wrote: I do disagree with Isaac's comment, though. While I don't mind challenges, if they're over the top then they should be optional with nothing behind them. (snip) there are countless other gaming experiences to play that are much better designed and not pointlessly aggravating.
The Grimrock Games do have a few cheap spots, but for the most part they're not too bad. They are very good games.

In the end, every gamer should come away, feeling rewarded that they managed to complete the game; whether they had to knock the Mode down to Easy, shouldn't matter. If that's what it takes for a gamer to win, and they're comfortable with that, so be it. I grew up on text adventure games (yes, I am an old man), moved to Sierra Online games (King's Quest, Police Quest, Quest for Glory, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, etc), which could be extremely brutal games (they had their share of dead ends, where the only option was to restore because you forgot to pick up some item six screens back that you can no longer get to). So I am used to that sense of frustration. However, for those games, there were - if you were so inclined - hint books, that could help you with the puzzles. If you're no good at time puzzles, there's no hint book that can help you. That's why I think changing the mode (Easy, Medium, Hard) would also be beneficial to impact timed puzzles. So that those not skilled at them (despite my old CRPGs, I am still horribly weak at timed puzzles), it gives them a chance to proceed through the game; because the end goal of the game designer, is to create a fun, enjoyable game, where the players come away with a positive experience.

You make some good points and background does matter, but I don't think that by itself should necessarily make a gain inaccessible for newer players. And yea my avatar does kind of give my background away lol. I was also exposed to Final Fantasy growing up, too. I remember we had Final Fantasy IV on the SNES, where you followed the story of Cecil as he became a Paladin. I am old enough (mid 30s) to remember the NES era clearly, and remember when computers had DOS for the OS with everything simply text-based. I never really got into text adventures or MUDs though. I was already learning programming around the time Windows 3.1 was the latest and greatest Windows. It came with QBasic, a DOS version of the language BASIC which was my first PC language (I started on a toy called Pre-Computer 1000 that had a very basic programming mode).

As for adapting, I haven't had too much trouble adapting to the Grimrock games. They did feel a little harder than what I'm used to at first back in the beginning of 2013 when I was playing through the original Grimrock, but certainly nothing at all insurmountable. Some of the battles are a little cheap but are quite doable with a few retries. My play-through is on Normal mode, by the way. I dislike starting games on easy, but then there are some games, like Tom vs. The Armies of Hell (which I'm currently reviewing for a website) where starting on Easy would be wise because they shifted all of the difficulty levels up one or 2 levels. That difficulty for the sake of difficulty design style seems very odd to me. It makes no sense from a game design stand point since the easiest game mode is the gateway for new players to enter, and you generally want to bring new players into your game. By doing that you have the opposite effect, so this also makes no sense from a business stand point.

As for the timing based puzzles, I'm not particularly weak on those, as I've encountered plenty over the years. They are annoying sometimes when they're a little tougher than it feels like they need to be, of course.

And I totally agree that "every gamer should come away, feeling rewarded that they managed to complete the game". Otherwise, the game has disappointed and failed some of its players. If the player needs to bump it down to easy, that's fine. And if the player can then progress and succeed, they are then also much more likely to try the next difficulty level, too. As for unlockables, I hate them behind other-the-top challenges because that's needlessly frustrating. An excellent example in recent times is the infamous Super Mario Maker. I tried hard to unlock all the costumes and after beating the Gnat Attack mini game's hard mode (which I thought would be the game's toughest challenge by far), the game spiraled out of control. The Gnat Attack mini game was awful since it was already very annoying in its normal mode so I have no idea why they thought a harder mode was somehow a good idea. T_T

Anyway, I then went back to getting the costumes locked behind Mario Maker's expert mode, but because the community continued to crank out atrocious excuses for levels, the difficulty of expert went skyward. Nintendo added Super Expert mode in a patch to help even out Expert mode. However, this patch had only very little effect on the difficulty. Worse, the patch had also added 5 new costumes locked behind Super Expert, which was a downright stupid design choice. T_T I was never able to beat one level in super expert, let alone beating 6 to beat the mode. That's inexcusably crushing difficulty and there sure has heck never should've been unlockables behind that crap. So I tried expert more until I finally got so fed up with that dumpster of a game that I quit playing it altogether. The fact that 99.99% of attempts ended in failure, coupled with the fact that you have to beat the mode once for each costume to get them all made this so insanely not worth it. Expert got to the point of being nearly impossible to beat, with super expert being truly impossible for 99.99% of players. The community completely broke 100 Mario mode so the unlockables were unobtainable and at this point Nintendo should have tweaked the game mode to offset the ridiculous surge in difficulty, but they did nothing instead for some crazy reason. T_T

I guess you can tell from that the fact that I'm a completionist. I try to get everything, but some games stupidly punish players terribly for that. This does not apply to achievements as I rarely go for all of them in a game. The reason is that many game designers like to put really stupid achievements in that are a really ridiculous pain in the butt to get and certainly not worth the time or effort. I know some people view achievements as badges of honor, but I think that's just silly. Games are not about honor, they are about fun.

You mentioned hint books and guides, and I do use those sometimes. This is especially true if I'm really stuck, or if a puzzle is ridiculously obscure. My general rule, though, is that on my first play-through I never touch a guide or google unless I'm really stuck. I also use them when going for 100% collectibles/pickups for the ones I'm missing and have no clue where they are, like in games such as Metroid. I could explore the world and try to find every last one legitimately, but that's generally not worth the time given that some times there are items hidden too well so that players are very unlikely to find them on their own. Time moves too fast these days and so I can't justify wasting time on stuff like that in games (the stuff that can waste huge amounts of time).

Megafont wrote: You make some good points

Don't get used to that! It's a rare occurrence, I assure you!

Megafont wrote: and remember when computers had DOS for the OS with everything simply text-based. I never really got into text adventures or MUDs though. I was already learning programming around the time Windows 3.1 was the latest and greatest Windows. It came with QBasic, a DOS version of the language BASIC which was my first PC language (I started on a toy called Pre-Computer 1000 that had a very basic programming mode).

Ah, the glory days of DOS... I did some MUDs back in the day, though was not "super" into them. There was a few I'd log into every blue moon. Usually if I knew some people I clicked with were also going to be on around that time. I remember QBASIC very well - so well in fact, that back then I had gotten into my first "programming" using QBASIC - and had made a Text Adventure Game called "Final Soul" (that included all my friends at the time as characters you could potentially meet). It was based of Sierra type games (where you pick up an item and use it, typically, for a pretty silly/obscure puzzle) - and it borrowed a lot of influence from the game CLUE and a Sierra game that was out at the time called COLONEL'S BEQUEST. Thanks to my friend Andrew, he made an installer that allows it to work on modern machines now - so if you're ever bored - check out Final Soul, The Text Adventure Game. Someone (and it wasn't even me!) added it to MobyGames.

Megafont wrote: My play-through is on Normal mode, by the way. I dislike starting games on easy, but then there are some games, like Tom vs. The Armies of Hell (which I'm currently reviewing for a website) where starting on Easy would be wise because they shifted all of the difficulty levels up one or 2 levels. That difficulty for the sake of difficulty design style seems very odd to me. It makes no sense from a game design stand point since the easiest game mode is the gateway for new players to enter, and you generally want to bring new players into your game. By doing that you have the opposite effect, so this also makes no sense from a business stand point.

I don't understand the difficulty for difficulty's sake mentality either; as a normal mode. I get there's people who like to challenge themselves (people who play LOG with only one character in the party, for example, and then crank up the difficulty), but the game should come with a "Normal" mode that is actually, well, Normal.

Megafont wrote: As for the timing based puzzles, I'm not particularly weak on those, as I've encountered plenty over the years. They are annoying sometimes when they're a little tougher than it feels like they need to be, of course.

I tend to overthink them, and then move before I have pressed the button or whatever. This is why a 5 year old can kick my butt in Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat with little effort. While I may remember most of the moves, my brain doesn't process it fast enough, when there's another player smacking me for a 60 hit Ultra Combo.

Megafont wrote: I guess you can tell from that the fact that I'm a completionist. I try to get everything, but some games stupidly punish players terribly for that. This does not apply to achievements as I rarely go for all of them in a game. The reason is that many game designers like to put really stupid achievements in that are a really ridiculous pain in the butt to get and certainly not worth the time or effort. I know some people view achievements as badges of honor, but I think that's just silly. Games are not about honor, they are about fun.

Yes, but see - this is where they hook you. I am a completionist with games I am super passionate about. But some people, in general, what to get every bang for their buck and are - in general - completionists. So when you put an "Achievement" in front of someone that is a completionist - then that means that achievement is there as a part of the game - and in order to be a completionist, they have to get that achievement - even if it means forgoing work, playing for 120 hours straight, non stop to get the "Insane Insomnia Achievement Unlocked."

So you did some Qbasic too. That's pretty cool

Megafont wrote:So you did some Qbasic too. That's pretty cool

I still have it installed.

Megafont wrote:So you did some Qbasic too. That's pretty cool

Yes, indeed!

Isaac wrote:

Megafont wrote:So you did some Qbasic too. That's pretty cool

I still have it installed.

SpoilerShow

Like Isaac, I still have it installed. Well, I think what I have installed is an ancient version of PowerBasic (which allows for compiling those old .BAS files into .EXE files).