Quirky Indie RPGs - Depression is optional

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Knuckle Sandwich is coming out in a month and a half and the developer is making sure to pull out 4chan screenshots he's saved from 7 years ago to own the chuds.
KnuckleSandwichNOTOBSESSED.png
(https://archive.ph/uzqQn)

Insert joke here about the game being seven years overdue. It's been under "serious" development for a longer period than OMORI was. Even had a musician troon-out mid development.*
*Actually, I've seen this happen quite a few times. Music-cels, what's goin' on big guy?
 
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Coolio55 said:
Knuckle Sandwich is coming out in a month and a half and the developer is making sure to pull out 4chan screenshots he's saved from 7 years ago to own the chuds.
View attachment 5395170
(https://archive.ph/uzqQn)

Insert joke here about the game being seven years overdue. It's been under "serious" development for a longer period than OMORI was. Even had a musician troon-out mid development.*
*Actually, I've seen this happen quite a few times. Music-cels, what's goin' on big guy?
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That's some atrocious looking character design. I don't think I could pull that off even if I tried.
 
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SSj_Ness said:
That's some atrocious looking character design. I don't think I could pull that off even if I tried.
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What @Sparky Lurker said is true but this is another thing that the developer is insecure about. I remember the whole "tumblr nose" question coming up and the response back then was that they were more intended to be "muppet noses" which would be a fine answer if he wasn't so obviously antsy about it.
 
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Saw this obvious earthboundy game planning to make a kickstarter soon.



It's going to have action commands for no seemingly no reason.

1696867199697.png

I dont think indie devs realize why mario rpg had action commands. It wasnt because "turn based is boring", it was an attempt to convert the normal mario platforming into an rpg battle system. Mario has 2 skills in mario RPG, one where you bounce on enemies by tapping at them to jump again and one where you mash fireballs. M&L luigi superstar saga and paper mario develop on that by having spells your spells be your mobility/exploration upgrades and your partners powers.

But even mario went too far and made commands into a short term spectable at the cost of long term flow, so later games had too many minigames that are long and tiresome, with paper jam having full minute cutscene spells, with one being about mashing.

Indie games didnt get this lesson and put commands and minigames without logic, with YIIK being the worst possible example one can bring up of how bad it can get. I've seen the dev of My Familiar release a demo and later release it again with action commands and i'm like, why bro that adds nothing. If anything it actually makes it worse because now you're forced to look at the QTE icon instead of the attack animation.
 
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LucasSomething said:
Saw this obvious earthboundy game planning to make a kickstarter soon.



It's going to have action commands for no seemingly no reason.

View attachment 5397673

I dont think indie devs realize why mario rpg had action commands. It wasnt because "turn based is boring", it was an attempt to convert the normal mario platforming into an rpg battle system. Mario has 2 skills in mario RPG, one where you bounce on enemies by tapping at them to jump again and one where you mash fireballs. M&L luigi superstar saga and paper mario develop on that by having spells your spells be your mobility/exploration upgrades and your partners powers.

But even mario went too far and made commands into a short term spectable at the cost of long term flow, so later games had too many minigames that are long and tiresome, with paper jam having full minute cutscene spells, with one being about mashing.

Indie games didnt get this lesson and put commands and minigames without logic, with YIIK being the worst possible example one can bring up of how bad it can get. I've seen the dev of My Familiar release a demo and later release it again with action commands and i'm like, why bro that adds nothing. If anything it actually makes it worse because now you're forced to look at the QTE icon instead of the attack animation.
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The best action command system I played was Shadow Hearts 2. You only had one minigame - the one with a ring and a spinning dial and you need to hit the dial on a specific area to play them, with the added difficulty of critical attacks being done by hitting a smaller red area at the end of the normal area. If you have a combo and you fail to hit an area then you just hit as much areas as you successfully pressed. Status effects were effects on the dial like making the areas invisible or making the dial spin faster.

It's fast enough to feel responsive, somewhat skill based and only having one minigame makes it less of a bother.
 
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LucasSomething said:
Saw this obvious earthboundy game planning to make a kickstarter soon.



It's going to have action commands for no seemingly no reason.

View attachment 5397673

I dont think indie devs realize why mario rpg had action commands. It wasnt because "turn based is boring", it was an attempt to convert the normal mario platforming into an rpg battle system. Mario has 2 skills in mario RPG, one where you bounce on enemies by tapping at them to jump again and one where you mash fireballs. M&L luigi superstar saga and paper mario develop on that by having spells your spells be your mobility/exploration upgrades and your partners powers.

But even mario went too far and made commands into a short term spectable at the cost of long term flow, so later games had too many minigames that are long and tiresome, with paper jam having full minute cutscene spells, with one being about mashing.

Indie games didnt get this lesson and put commands and minigames without logic, with YIIK being the worst possible example one can bring up of how bad it can get. I've seen the dev of My Familiar release a demo and later release it again with action commands and i'm like, why bro that adds nothing. If anything it actually makes it worse because now you're forced to look at the QTE icon instead of the attack animation.
Click to expand...
I hate to bring everything back to Knuckle Sandwich but this is actually really relevant. Guy wasted an obscene amount of development time on adding unique extremely long action commands to every single enemy attack. It's not like Mario and Luigi where you perform a simple dodge; it's like a WarioWare minigame but 3x the length. It genuinely gives YiiK a run for it's money.
 
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Counterfeit Obol said:
If we're talking about Mother-likes, then Athenian Rhapsody is fucking horrible:
(Apologies to anyone who doesn't like Alpha Beta Gamer. I took the liberty of skipping his stupid pun segment)
It apes Mother so badly it hurts. Fucking Penguin of Doom-levels of cringe going on...
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In Stars and Time and Athenian Rhapsody are the extreme opposites of quirkiness on quirky indie RPGs.
The former is depressingly comical to the point of having an emo version of Niko from Oneshot as a main character meanwhile the latter is comically depressing to the point of having every character being Temmie from Undertale.
 
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wtfNeedSignUp said:
It's fast enough to feel responsive, somewhat skill based and only having one minigame makes it less of a bother.
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Never played but the fact that the rpg mechanics interact with the QTE is already leaps ahead of other games and i dont know how i never seen it anywhere else.

Coolio55 said:
I hate to bring everything back to Knuckle Sandwich but this is actually really relevant. Guy wasted an obscene amount of development time on adding unique extremely long action commands to every single enemy attack. It's not like Mario and Luigi where you perform a simple dodge; it's like a WarioWare minigame but 3x the length. It genuinely gives YiiK a run for it's money.
Click to expand...

I actually typed about knuckle sandwich and deleted since the game isnt out yet so you never know but yeah, it's really bad, the gameplay videos i watch made even the simple single enemy random encounter look slow and take over a full minute. It's not even full commitment as sometimes you just do a normal QTE dodge while others require minigames.

I also dont understand WHY it happens from a "thematic" standpoint. Even yiik minigames can almost be argued as post modern/satire on the basis of Alex being a gamer with shit tastes who thinks 20 button presses on a spinning circle is cool and there is symbolism on games with essentia having the same as him but knuckle sandwich feels like a turn based jrpg made by someone who hates turn based jrpgs. Why do the fights play out like wario ware other than "The dev really likes wario ware"? Is the protag autistic? Imagine spending years of effort making all those minigames only for people to get annoyed by the third random encounter .

Somehow Undertale is still the only original indie that gets it. There is no need to attack or grind, bosses have unique fights and the combat is meshed with story so its all fun and well paced.
 
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LucasSomething said:
knuckle sandwich feels like a turn based jrpg made by someone who hates turn based jrpgs. Why do the fights play out like wario ware other than "The dev really likes wario ware"? Is the protag autistic? Imagine spending years of effort making all those minigames only for people to get annoyed by the third random encounter .
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The majority of Mario RPGs fans are "non-RPG guys" that constantly need gimmicks/button prompts to keep them going throughout the game, one of the major issues of "quirky RPGs" going mainstream is that people start throwing every single one of their inspirations(Yume Nikki, Mario RPGs, Mother, OFF, etc.) into a blender without giving too much thought on why these inspirations worked on the first place.
 
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Huh, wonder how I missed this thread. This sort of thing is a guilty pleasure for me having worked on similar things as a teenager, but so many of the recent ones are just.. bad, to the point of being unplayable. I'll power through them if the combat is fun though since a lot of them actually put time into having fun relics/combat quirks.

Here's a couple older ones: (warning! spoilers for pretty bad games)

Virgo vs The Zodiac : Fun combat, developer runs out of steam hard past the first few areas and basically pulls a Xenogears Disc 2 for the back half. Also there's a lesbian romance where one of the lesbians dies in one of the most unemotional death scenes ever and a huge depressive character arc as a result.

Ikenfell : Fun combat system with really good equipment/skills, great pacing, decent plot, goes way too hard on LGBT characters though. The final boss fight involves beating the shit out of a gay man having the most stereotypical histrionic gay meltdown possible which is amusing. You also get to fight a really gross giant sphere of clotting blood/tumor mass at one point, and I appreciated a little Binding of Isaac grossout thrown in as a complete curveball. Ikenfell deserves a special mention for having drama over a hidden boss that the developers were dropping hints about being in the game (complete with there being quest items related to said boss, etc) only to have someone on twitter call them out and post datamined proof that the boss wasn't actually in the game, leading to one of the people running the twitter melting down.

Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass: Got mentioned earlier and is the only one of these three I'd recommend anyone playing. Its biggest fault is that it's a 60-hour game paced like Earthbound and as previously mentioned, the big plot reveal is in-your-face obvious. It's a game about the journey rather than the destination though and doesn't pull its punches with horror. If you're like me and actually like grindy classic JRPGs and equipment optimization it's a great time though and deserves credit for pushing the RPGMaker runtime to its absolute limit.

If you bought any of the giant 2000+ game bundles from Itch, Jimmy is in them, so give it a shot if it sounds like your jam.
 
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The problem you're going to have with a lot of modern RPG Maker type games is that they require autism to create.

In the past that would be fine.

Now, however, people on the spectrum get groomed early by the LGBT types. That means that RPG Maker games have and will actually get worse over time in terms of plot, which is a shame.
 
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ducktales4gameboy said:
Virgo vs The Zodiac : Fun combat, developer runs out of steam hard past the first few areas and basically pulls a Xenogears Disc 2 for the back half. Also there's a lesbian romance where one of the lesbians dies in one of the most unemotional death scenes ever and a huge depressive character arc as a result.
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I actually heard about this one because the developer came back after years(?) post release and added some content where you play as the bosses/do a boss rush, which was some stretch goal listed in the game's crowfunding campaign way back when. I haven't played it, so I can't speak on the quality, but I thought that was at least a nice sign of some dedication. It probably shouldn't have taken as long as it did, but eh, better late than never? Of course, it also cynically might have been because they pushed it onto consoles at the same time...
 
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