Comment on Shadows of Doubt, the procgen private-eye immersive sim, is leaving early access next month
mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
IMO it’s not ready for getting out of early access.
Most of the time crimes are exploitable because NPCs life and assassination patterns are repetitive.
For 20-30h it’s cool. After that you have already learnt all the possible exploitations and it becomes power gaming gameplay.
If you don’t believe, search for steam reviews with more than +30h.
Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world 2 months ago
30h of gameplay seems very reasonable for a $20 game.
Donkter@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yeah, people are either spoiled or deluded with games needing to be 100+ hours, especially cause those hours are often padded with garbage.
Shadows of doubt gives you at least 10-20 hours of hilarious procedural generation that actually hangs together as an immersive sim. You start to see the seams pretty quickly but by the time that happens you’re digging into the actual mechanics. Also the devs take their time on updates but the last update was pretty huge so they obviously have a pretty big scope for the game.
brian@programming.dev 2 months ago
replayability seems like the big advantage of something procgen like this though, independent of price. otherwise, why isn’t it just a story curated by the dev?
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 2 months ago
I think both things can be true at the same time. 30h of gameplay off a $20 game is a very reasonable proposition. At the same time, not managing to translate the procgen core mechanic into - if not infinite then - better replayability is absolutely a flaw. Some will see the procedurally generated content part and hope for something to sink hundreds of hours into, so it’s a fair warning.
cheddar@programming.dev 2 months ago
I don’t even have time to finish games longer than 10 hours in reasonable time. 20-30h and not ready for getting out of early access? Waat?
the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think it depends on the amount of fun you have. There’s a difference between “I grinded for 30 hours to get this item, I felt pulled into doing it and now I’m 6 hours late for work” addictive fun, “I played for 30 hours on and off, it was such a relaxing experience” chill tf out fun, and “I played for 30 hours, I broke my controller from gripping it too hard and my heart was pounding the whole time” hardcore action fun. It’s tough to gauge a game just on how much time it takes to complete.