The sudden flood of roguelike is what really killed the reputation of procgen. In the early days, it’s seen as something fresh because every playthrough is different and you have to adapt to situation. Games like binding of issac(the first release) and spelunky(the free one) pushed the boundary on how level design can be assigned randomly and still be good, then more and more game started to capitalise on this sort of design but conveniently forgot they still have to be designed to be good. To a lot of people(including me) , the fatigue set in and the mere mention of procgen is revolting, even though they might also enjoy game like dead cell or hades. Then comes the AI and people are simply too weary on all these stuff.
I’m not saying this is what prompted them to include that tagline in their marketing, but i’m not surprised if it is.
TheSambassador@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Absolutely. Procedural generation is not the same as AI generated. Spelunky’s level generation is great and the different combinations of hand-created rooms with smart rules on how they connect. Unexplored (that’s the name of the game) is a full on multi-level dungeon with puzzles and combat. Proc gen gives these games their life, but designing a good proc gen system is level design unto itself.