This might be a slightly unusual attempt at a prompt, but might draw some appealing unusual options.

The way it goes: Suggest games, ideally the kind that you believe would have relatively broad appeal. Don't feel bad about downvotes, but do downvote any game that's suggested if you have heard of it before (Perhaps, give some special treatment if it was literally your game of the year). This rule is meant to encourage people to post the indie darlings that took some unusual attention and discovery to be aware of and appreciate.

If possible, link to the Steam pages for the games in question, so that anyone interested can quickly take a look at screenshots and reviews. And, as a general tip, anything with over 1000 steam reviews probably doesn't belong here. While I'd recommend that you only suggest one game per post, at the very most limit it to three.

If I am incorrect about downvotes being inconsequential account-wide, say so and it might be possible to work out a different system.

Sales follow the tradition of supply and demand. Products come out at their highest price because of expectations and hype. Then, as interest wanes, the publisher continues to make some sales by reducing price to tempt the less interested parties.

But this isn't the formula for all games. While we might agree that games from 2000 or even 2010 are "showing their age", at this point 5 to 8-year-old games are less and less likely to be seen as 'too old' by comparison to hot releases. Some publishers have picked up on that theme, and doubled down on the commitment to the idea that their games have high longevity and appeal; making the most of their capitalistic venture for better or worse.

I recently was reminded of an indie game I had put on my wishlist several years back, but never ended up buying because it simply had never gone on sale - but looking at it now, not only did it maintain extremely positive user reviews, I also saw that its lowest all-time price was barely a few dollars off of its original price.

In the AAA space, the easiest place to see this happening is with Nintendo. Anyone hoping to buy an old Legend of Zelda game for cheap will often be disappointed - the company is so insistent on its quality, they pretty much never give price reductions. And, with some occasional exceptions, their claims tend to be proven right.

In the indie space, the most prominent example of this practice is Factorio, a popular factory-building game that has continued receiving updates, and has even had its base price increased from its original (complete with a warning announcement, encouraging people to purchase at its lower price while it's still available).

Developers deserve to make a buck, and personally I can't say I've ever seen this practice negatively. Continuing to charge $25 for a good game, years after it came out, speaks to confidence in a product (even if most of us are annoyed at AAA games now costing $70). I sort of came to this realization from doing some accounting to find that I'd likely spent over $100 a year on game "bundles" that usually contain trashy games I'm liable to spend less than a few hours in.

For those without any discussion comments, what games on Steam or elsewhere have you enjoyed that you've never seen get the free advertising of a "40% off sale"?

We get a lot of sequels in the gaming world, and a common criticism is when a series isn't really innovating enough. We're given an open world game that takes 40 hours, with DLC stretching it out 20 more, and see a sequel releasing that cut out it's late 30 hours because players were already getting bored.

Meanwhile, there's some other types of games where any addition in the form of "It's just more levels in the series" is perfectly satisfying. Often, this is a hard measure to replicate since these types of series often demand the creators are very inventive and detailed with their content - this likely wouldn't be a matter of rearranging tiles in a level editor to present a very slightly different situation.

What I've often seen is that such games will add incredibly small, insignificant "New Gameplay Features" just so they have something to put on the back of the box, but that tend to be easily forgotten in standard play (yet, the game as a whole still ends up being fun).

The specific series that come to mind for me with "Level-driven games" are:

Hitman - the way the levels are made naturally necessitates some creativity both from the level makers to come up with unique foibles and weaknesses to each target, and from the players to discover both the intended and unintended methods of elimination.
Ace Attorney - While they series has come up with various magical/unusual methods for pointing out contradictions in court, the appeal is still in the mysteries themselves, and it's never needed much beyond the basic gameplay, and the incredibly detailed and well-animated characters to hook people in.
Half-Life - For its time, anyway. While its Episodes certainly made efforts to present new features, quite often the star of Half-Life games isn't really in any core features or gameplay mechanics, but in the inventive designs of its levels, tied in with a penchant for environmental storytelling; making you feel the world was more than an arrangement of blocks and paths. For a long time, the wait for Valve-made episodes was alleviated with modder-made levels hoping to approach the inventive qualities of the original games.
Yakuza - While the series has undergone a major overhaul moving to JRPG combat mode, for 6+ games it satisfied a simple formula: Dramatic stories driven by cutscenes, as well as a huge variety of mini quests, of boundless variety and very low logic. For many of their games, they weren't doing a whole lot to re-contextualize their core gameplay, being fisticuffs combat, and it still worked out well (plus, they're continuing to go that route for games like Kiryu's last game)

To open up discussion, and put the question as simply as I can: Which games do you follow, that you wish could be eternally supported by their devs, by simply continuing to release new "level packs" or their functional equivalent, with no need to revamp gameplay formulas?

Short segment on the subject, but he was aware of the issue long before many other channels. (If timestamp code does not work, go to 11:00)

This should apply to internet purchases as well as retail, up to a $2,500 limit on a single item.

I’ve been working for several years on a novel, and in a lot of ways it’s been fun. I have some very interconnected themes, some plot twists that tread the line between being surprising, and meaningful, and a fair few characters that develop through a lengthy confrontation.

I’ve started to consult an editor about tuning it into something publishable. Due to the way I was writing it, I only recently got the tools to calculate a total word count, and we realized that in the end, it’s far longer than I wanted it to be; on the order of 370,000 words.

Apparently people like George R. R. Martin can sometimes get away with this length, but I understand this is way out of line for a first time author. I’ve been looking at ways of trimming this down, and admittedly, there’s a few chapters with low hanging fruit I can get rid of; but I think I’m in need of a lot more than that. My editor was suggesting getting rid of entire main characters that don’t have as much development as others.

But at a lot of turns, it feels like trimming out X causes 5 other problems (plot points lost, throwbacks disconnected) that might threaten to either make the book soulless, not make sense, or even fail to reduce word count when I tie things together.

The option of simply splitting it into 2+ books has been there, but…it doesn’t seem practical. There’s a very clear villain, with a steady buildup to their dethroning, that would feel unsatisfying pushed off to another story.

If I assume publishers, or even just readers, would show only mild interest in a 300k word book, it makes me feel a bit stuck. I’ve already committed a lot of time to the story, and it feels grueling to go back and redo large parts of it; while also aiming to make it shorter.

Curious if anyone has thoughts on what they’d do in this situation.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/73425

Boston has always been a confusing city for transit. Recently, in an effort to improve the Somerville region of the city, the construction group extending the green line completed work on a walking and biking path that follows the green line's tracks, connecting the Magoun Square area, through to the new stations at Gilman Square, East Somerville, and Lechmere.

The most significant part of the new extension is that it takes pedestrians and cyclists past two major obstacles of the area; the MacGrath Highway, a four-lane road with high-speed traffic, scant crossings, and a history of cyclist deaths, and the "Inner Belt" area, a network of blocked-off rail tracks for the railways coming from North Station.

The community path's new end destination at Lechmere takes pathgoers through Cambridge Crossing, a rising center that runs many outdoor events, through to connections that take people across the Charles River Dam into downtown, or through North Point Park and the pedestrian North Bank Bridge to reach Charlestown and the Navy Shipyard.

Boston has always been a confusing city for transit. Recently, in an effort to improve the Somerville region of the city, the construction group extending the green line completed work on a walking and biking path that follows the green line's tracks, connecting the Magoun Square area, through to the new stations at Gilman Square, East Somerville, and Lechmere.

The most significant part of the new extension is that it takes pedestrians and cyclists past two major obstacles of the area; the MacGrath Highway, a four-lane road with high-speed traffic, scant crossings, and a history of cyclist deaths, and the "Inner Belt" area, a network of blocked-off rail tracks for the railways coming from North Station.

The community path's new end destination at Lechmere takes pathgoers through Cambridge Crossing, a rising center that runs many outdoor events, through to connections that take people across the Charles River Dam into downtown, or through North Point Park and the pedestrian North Bank Bridge to reach Charlestown and the Navy Shipyard.