I like world-building. I like character development. And I like fun gameplay. Each of these elements can exist on their own and give you a competent game, but they can also work together really well. Strength in one area can bolster weaker ones.
Something that I've noticed in indie games is that the creators really want to flesh out their world, but they pace it very poorly. There's often an overload of information. Paragraphs upon paragraphs of exposition and history about places I haven't been to yet. I dislike this because once I figure out the dialogue is meaningless and doesn't apply to me now, I start skipping it. It's too much to absorb, especially at the beginning. I wish the information was more succinct and the pacing was better.
TemTem is super guilty of this. Is this name that I'm reading a TemTem, a person, or a location? Idk, but you can bet they're gonna tell me about the pirates of Siliconitus Bay and the political war and factions that were waged upon the land ages ago despite this being my second town. I'm playing another game called CrossCode that also paces it's world-building poorly. You finally finish the tutorial, then get another tutorial, then have info you can read about the world. So much text. It's optional, but it's too much at the start. I just want to play the game.
The good news is that for both of these examples, the text is optional to read. The bad news is that it doesn't make me want to engage with it. I'm glad that I'm not forced to read it. But with so much other text ahead of it, and the lack of gameplay that I've been exposed to, it ensures that I am either not going to read it, or I'm going to try and get annoyed because I just want to get moving in the game. I'm only clicking through this dialogue because it might give me a hint, or crucial information about upcoming events, or I might miss an item if I don't talk to this person.
You can foreshadow things in your game, certainly. Or build upon history. But I prefer the less-is-more approach. If I haven't seen an area, I have no frame of reference and don't care. I like to explore the world and THEN discover more info about it. That invests me.
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3 years, 8 months ago
30 Jul 2020 14:44 CEST
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