Caltrops - What Are You Playing Right Now?





	[quote name="Ice Cream Jonsey"][quote name="Mischief Maker"]How appropriate that they added Kung Fury to Arcade Paradise, because like KF, AP presents itself as an 80s nostalgia piece, but seems to have nothing but contempt for the period. My gut told me that the games would not be to arcade quality, but the positive reviews all made these breezy comparisons to Wario Ware. My gut was correct. Not only are the games lame, but the presentation lacks the brilliant chaos of Wario Ware. Even as a pure nostalgia piece it's a dud. It can't seem to decide if it wants to have an 80s Vaporwave or a 90s Grunge style, and the two clash horribly. The games are intentionally ugly in a way no actual arcade game ever got away with, and the arcade cabinets are filthy with no option to wipe them down. Yet picking up trash, peeling off used gum wads, and plunging toilets are a core part of the gameplay loop. And the arcade is located in the most depressing corner of a filthy meatpacking district. Even the protagonist's story is uninspiring: a rich fail-child business-school-dropout trying to earn the approval of their Tywin Lannister-esque father by proving the passive income from arcade cabinets is higher than from laundry machines. If anything it's an anti-nostalgia piece. It's buggy, too. Shouda listened to my gut. NEGATIVE![/quote] I never picked this one up because I can't handle cleaning a fake arcade when there would be dust on the real games in my garage. But to do something like this with original games is ballsy. It's like making a movie or game about a stand up comedian. If you're going to do that, you're not just making a movie, you're also writing a two-hour set that nobody has seen before at the same time and it had better be good. If you're going to make a game about managing an arcade game you kind of sort of need 20 unique arcade game ideas that all work and are great, that's an enormous amount of work. I like that it exists and the creator tried. I also think that someone in every game development project needs to run the core concept by someone like you, someone not afraid to say "that's stupid, tweak it." Instead of the protagonist you described, if they just tweak that to be one of a zillion depressed nerds trying to rally a hobby the world wants to crush we'd be on his or her side. Just a tweak! Nobody wants to play games with failed sons. :([/quote]