I’ve been struggling with games that stopped being fun (or never got fun in the first place).
- Bear and
Breakfast: This game progressed smoothly, I enjoyed unlocking different properties, and it was fun designing room layouts that maximized revenue while meeting the minimum requirements for room bonuses. But I’m at the point where upkeep involves too much cognitive load. By the time I’m done crossing the map
to keep up with various maintenance tasks, I forgot what goal I was working on — it’s the doorway
effect. There are too many moving pieces to track now, and I can’t tell whether I’m moving forward or just running in place.
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Beholder:
This game was dismal. It’s not actually fun to be a low-level cog in an oppressive state apparatus? I’ve heard that Papers, Please does fun things in this vein, but Beholder’s economy is difficult to follow — some of the characters made absolutely impossible demands early on, and I had no idea how to satisfy them. I couldn’t get a handle on how money, information, social status, surveillance equipment, and black market goods can be exchanged for profit. It feels like a game that wants to set up some weighty ethical dilemmas, but they're pretty easy to sidestep if you just stop playing.
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Kingdom Come: Deliverance. This is one of the most detailed flower-picking
simulators I’ve ever seen. I liked that your character can build experience in any one of a million skills, but I didn’t like how experience only comes from successfully using those skills. It took me six hours to find a bow, and I can’t afford enough arrows to practice with it. I can forget about pickpocketing — I keep getting caught and needing to skip town without ever improving. Meanwhile, my gear wears out and I burn through piles of money getting it cleaned and repaired. Gathering herbs is a way to make ends meet, but it has been a tedious, repetitive slog trying to build a character that’s fun to play. I need to stop expecting that that will change.
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Moonring: It’s a neat idea, but this game will not run smoothly on my computer. It’s incredibly frustrating to struggle with a game recreating Apple IIe graphics that can’t match an Apple IIe’s processing speed. (Look, I’m aware it’s probably doing super complicated stuff under the hood, but my user experience has been laggy and disappointing.) I barely started exploring the first dungeon, but the delay between entering a command and seeing it play out is absolutely killing me. Fiddling with my system settings hasn’t helped.
- Secret of Darkwoods: This is some AI-generated bullshit. I can’t complain too much, because it was free, but it feels like I’m flipping through somebody else’s completed book of Mad Libs. “Go to [location] and [interact] with [NPC]. Collect [treasure and/or stat bonus].” According to Steam, I’ve already put in more than the average amount of time needed to complete the game. The main quest is supposed to unearth the main character's mysterious backstory, but it hasn't captured my interest and it’s impossible to tell how much more time I'll need because the story progression is so haphazard.
I do try to put some effort into keeping track of which games I have played and completed, so I'm officially noting my intent to put these aside. There are other, more entertaining ways to spend my time.
I can also spend less time playing games and more time getting creative. On LinkedIn, Small Loan Studio is running a 28-day tiny creativity jam. Each day is a single-word prompt and some encouragement to create a single piece of art every day over 4 weeks. (I think it officially started on August 1, but you can still start it up and follow the 28 prompts on whatever schedule works for you.)
Elsewhere on the internet, it's Blaugust. It's worth watching, and people are having fun with it this year.
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