The sheer number of people declaring the game to be confusing nonsense capped with “maybe if I played the tutorial it might help” is genuinely concerning to me. How do people play games like this?

Totally!! A lot of ‘em are on NSO if you have that. The early games really hold up!

It is if you’re playing it right.

As I discussed on my website, there’s a massive and fixable crisis surrounding discoverability and visibility for small indie games, and a ton more that could be done.

But shows like The Game Awards aren’t it, and will never be a part of that work. It’s just not what they do, and that’s fine.

Nowadays, games of all sizes hit the big time. Hades II being a Game of the Year contender isn’t being breathlessly covered as an inspiring tale of creative perserverence like it would have been twelve years ago.

So what’s “Best Indie” meant to be then? The kids’ table? No thanks.

“Best Indie” harkens back to the early 2010s when the indie scene was garnering massive critical buzz but the GotY slots were largely spoken for by a glut of annualized and semi-annualized AAA franchises sucking up the oxygen each month.

But now those studios are all choking on 9-year dev cycles.

“Long incorrectly considered lost media.”

Something that I think will (validly) turn a lot of people off is that the game makes you unlock...like...EVERYTHING, in a very Smash Bros Ultimate way. Characters, machines, tracks, hats. You start with almost nothing.

I get why Sakurai does this but it's a bit extreme.

I love how “making you go to neutral” is the signature of bad inputs and it just keeps happening.

This is one of those roguelikes that revels in not explaining things and putting Beginner's Traps all over the place, which...is not something I'm a fan of.

Also a lot of creatures just feel too gimmicky to live, but again, I feel like that's the point, so...okay, whatever. Videogame/10