Thanks to @macaw45.bsky.social for streaming this one - found out about it there and I've been having a great time with it.

Yeah, I sense that many players feel some kind of failure... with the game, themselves, or both, if they cannot finish it before moving on to the next one. Makes it hard to enjoy playing if you're too fixated on rolling credits. Good to address that.

Devil Daggers is cool! I should try the sequel.

Those games strike me as much more clear in their intentions. Difficulty sliders in Celeste aren't going to e.g. cause players to miss out on diagetic options they could find by exploring and experimenting.

Like, one of the first things you can do in DS1 is go into the Catacombs unwittingly...

I think that can work well for games that have clear intentions and want to provide a similar experience across players.

I guess my argument is that not every game has that goal or should be expected to have that goal? Uncovering the "intended experience" can be the intended experience.

That's really cool! Yeah, difficulty is not about punishing it's about teaching imo.

(Well, some games want to punish people and that's okay too haha)

Ah, I see! I haven't actually played Silksong yet. I'm just engaging with/appreciating the discourse around it.

I definitely see both perspectives on making sequels. If they'd made it a new game, I'm sure that would have been questioned, as well. It's a game destined to be scrutinized lol

It's hard for me to separate the difficulty from the art/music/world of Dark Souls... I always thought that's why it resonated so much.

Also, I think it's often the case that people change their minds about difficulty after playing the right game(s) - it's like an acquired taste.

Yeah, if I play a MV, I'm generally looking for a breezier experience about collecting things. Otherwise I'll play Souls or arcade games. The fusion is not quite my thing either tbh.

But much respect to Silksong for being a very intentional and well-made game. Glad it can highlight these ideas.

In practice, I don't think you'd go back to square one when you factor in the fundamentals all combat encounters share in Dark Souls plus the gain in levels/equipment you get from exploring.

That said, the feeling of frustration is real and not what everyone wants at a given time. That's okay, tho?

Getting stuck causes players to explore the world.

Dying causes players to think about what they're doing.

An "impossible" situation causes players to learn how the game works and eventually achieve the impossible.

We need to be able to design *some* games around these fundamental ideas.

The Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden fighting games had dynamic splitscreen that would turn on when players were far enough away from each other. It could go from vertical to horizontal depending on relative positions.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=p47n...