People getting a hard on for horror indie games - A Tattletail, Bendy and the Ink Machine,Hello Neighbor or (insert flavor of the month here)

[Anti Fanta]

I like Bendy and the Ink Machine. Mostly because I can't do hardcore horror games (aside from re7; I managed to beat it on easy ) and the concept just seems interesting to me.

People are sperging out on Tumblr about it though, and there are already fictionkin popping up. Shit is gross.

The irony is that the tumblr fandoms for these games are infinitely more terrifying than the games themselves.

For me personally the best horror games are those that manage to create a creeping sense of dread that stays with you even after you've stopped playing. Obvious choices but Silent Hill 1+2 are probably my favourites in this regard, though the Resident Evil Remake managed it as well with it's excellent atmosphere and the tragic Lisa Trevor storyline they added in. Those games had me feeling out of sorts during the time period I was playing them; they really got under my skin. I'd be thinking about them during the day and while lying in bed trying to sleep. I still get an uncomfortable feeling when I listen to the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack, a testament to the excellent sound design in that game.

It seems that games now are all too happy to show their hands way too quickly. Developers have lost that respect for the audience where they understood that people like mystery and putting things together themselves using scraps of information and subtle clues. Of course, jump scares are easier to design than a slow-drip of existential dread.

 

[Loxiozzz]

I'm looking forward to hello neighbor. It looks fun, but the only reason I pay attention to the other indie games is because my favorite youtubers play them. They make it funny. It's especially funny when you see them visibly getting bored with the jumpscares. "I enjoyed it." Yeah, for the first hour.

 

[DancinTim]

I'm looking forward to hello neighbor. It looks fun, but the only reason I pay attention to the other indie games is because my favorite youtubers play them. They make it funny. It's especially funny when you see them visibly getting bored with the jumpscares. "I enjoyed it." Yeah, for the first hour.

Nothing is more telling about a game is when Lets Players get obviously bored in the first episode. They still play the game for another few episodes though because people will get mad they didn't finish the game or find all the easter eggs.

 

[Quijibo69]

It begins...

 

[SnowBall]

Indie games in general are starting to stagnate. It is not just horror games either. Most indie developers are obsessed with making retro game throwbacks to recapture childhood nostalgia. Most of these games do it to the point where they have no identity of their own outside of being a homage to the retro series they are based on.

Also when an indie game becomes popular they start a fad. Ever since Stardew Valley became popular there has been a flood of indie farming sims coming out. Most of them are cut from the same "throwback to classic old school Harvest Moon" cloth as SDV. My Time at Portia is the only indie farm sim that actually feels fresh and original.

Instead of taking a genre and adding fresh ideas indie devs play it safe and use the same cookie cutter template as each other.

 

[knightlautrec]

I saw a ton of Bendy and the Ink Machine toys when I was shopping for toys. Which confirms my suspicions that the only reason they made this game was to sell merch to dumb pre-teens.

Cuz I think about Cuphead and I don't see any toys of Cuphead being sold in the kids section. I mean, granted I don't see any swag of theirs in mainstream stores at all. But it's clear the cartoon choice was a gameplay and stylistic choice. Same can't be said for Bendy.

 

[Adolf Von Merkel]

I liked when the trend was just short (and free) RPGmaker games and it was more about surprising you with wacky plot twist (like The witch's house).And even if it didn't surprise you, it would make you laught how edgy it was the game.

Also when an indie game becomes popular they start a fad. Ever since Stardew Valley became popular there has been a flood of indie farming sims coming out.

This isn't something new, that's why we have a genre called Rogue-like ,FPS were called doom-clone in the 90s, and JRPG in the 8bits era were filled of Dragon quest clones.

 

[Neet Tokusatsu]

This trend really needs to stop soon because I think this might be one of the many reasons why AAA video games have been sucking the last few years.

Hardly, you see, last October i played some horror games, Resident Evil 0, REmake, Resident Evil 2, Silent Hill etc. it was the first time in years i played those games, and that made realize why that kind of horror games are no longer that popular nowadays, older horror games used to be mostly about item management and puzzle solving, they usually don't focus on action and barely have any jumpscares, they're too slow-paced for kids with low attention span, most kids would probably get bored after 20 minutes of playing REmake because of the lack of jumpscares, and many new gamers, you know the "I'm such a nerd XD" kind are too stupid to manage an inventory or solve puzzles, this kind of cheap "youtuber bait" horror games are here to stay

 

[Crocketron]

I saw a ton of Bendy and the Ink Machine toys when I was shopping for toys. Which confirms my suspicions that the only reason they made this game was to sell merch to dumb pre-teens.

Cuz I think about Cuphead and I don't see any toys of Cuphead being sold in the kids section. I mean, granted I don't see any swag of theirs in mainstream stores at all. But it's clear the cartoon choice was a gameplay and stylistic choice. Same can't be said for Bendy.

Cuphead was targeting people who remember the old 1930's era of cartoons, you know when cartoons was aimed towards adults (Most of them, anyways) Bendy was riding on the coattails of other horror indie-games that became stagnant due to their popularity with youtubers like Mark, Jack and Pewdiepie. There is Cuphead merch but it's extremely rare.

 

[Liquid Marlon]

I was never the biggest fan of Bendy, after Chapter 1 (which was mediocre already) everything steadily went downhill.

They decided to make the title character just a a generic non-speaking monster instead of doing anything interesting with the concept.

The fans did all the work for it with my favorite video of this type being Makeshift Creations' ending part that utilized one of the many useless elements of the game. (Robot Bendy)

There is so much more one could say about how Bendy was a disappointing mess but I'll keep it brief to go onto the next time.

This all segways to another game that I was skeptical of at first and I still am but it has a lot more to work with then Bendy with the game actually have an interesting mechanics, the game I'm talking is Poppy's Playtime.

The story is practically the same in the monsters as well (in behavior and almost design) but this time the said monster fucking dies in the end and is not the title character at least.

Anyways that's not the reason why I brought it up, I brought it to just bring up how weird the clickbait shit around as become.

So there was this one certain fan animated video about the game, despite being very sappy, it's animation is pretty good.

Anyways this said video spawned so surprising amount of copy cat videos.

This is only three of them.
1st: a sequel to the first video which has Fnf and Squid game characters just there.
2nd: a sequel to the sequel video above by a completely different person, dude who made "part 2" made his own part 3 so that makes it even more ridiculous.
3rd: pretty self-explanatory.

And that wasn't enough, these videos also get "reaction videos" of them just to add to the weirdness of this whole mess.

I want to die, I really want to die.

 

[Kurtis Trent]

PS1 style graphics are the new pixel nostalgia. Now we have puppet combo and his imitators 'cause slapping VHS and film grain filters on shitty Unity/UE4 asset packs will automatically make your game look "artsy" and "retro". But who cares about gameplay, did I mention the shitty optimization???

 

[WULULULULU]

Indie games in general are starting to stagnate. It is not just horror games either. Most indie developers are obsessed with making retro game throwbacks to recapture childhood nostalgia. Most of these games do it to the point where they have no identity of their own outside of being a homage to the retro series they are based on.

Also when an indie game becomes popular they start a fad. Ever since Stardew Valley became popular there has been a flood of indie farming sims coming out. Most of them are cut from the same "throwback to classic old school Harvest Moon" cloth as SDV. My Time at Portia is the only indie farm sim that actually feels fresh and original.

Instead of taking a genre and adding fresh ideas indie devs play it safe and use the same cookie cutter template as each other.

The amount of Darkest Dungeon wannabes is staggering. With the sequel's failure, the indie space is going to experience a ton of DD copycats trying to recapture the original.

 

[UtadaWasabi2]

The amount of Darkest Dungeon wannabes is staggering. With the sequel's failure, the indie space is going to experience a ton of DD copycats trying to recapture the original.

Any DD copycats recommendation?

 

[Quijibo69]

I like playing these Haunted PS1 games.

 

[babadook]

PS1 style graphics are the new pixel nostalgia. Now we have puppet combo and his imitators 'cause slapping VHS and film grain filters on shitty Unity/UE4 asset packs will automatically make your game look "artsy" and "retro". But who cares about gameplay, did I mention the shitty optimization???

Puppet combo games are just "dae psx and LOUD NOISES XDDDD"

 

[Dreamer]

The amount of Darkest Dungeon wannabes is staggering. With the sequel's failure, the indie space is going to experience a ton of DD copycats trying to recapture the original.

I dont know about that, i mean there have been a few games that tried to emualte its artstyle (badly), a few that added similar-ish combat (always with a retarded twist) but i dont recall one that aped off enough to be called a clone or something. No indie dev has the balls or the knowhow to add a stress mechanic for one.

The biggest indiedev cancer are Slay the Spire copies, im sure there are more than 50 at this point and 95% of them suck.

Spoiler: take my hand

And that's just the ones that haven't been burred.
Slay the Spire and its consequences have been a disaster for the indie race (some of those are alright).

This all segways to another game that I was skeptical of at first and I still am but it has a lot more to work with then Bendy with the game actually have an interesting mechanics, the game I'm talking is Poppy's Playtime.

Bendy was made for merchandise and so is this. The "first chapter" takes about as long as a youtube video, they have a monster that would be really easy to make a plushie out of (shape and texture obvously) and even easyier to sell to parents because with a closed mouth it looks like a normal toy. It might end up a decent game but devs intent is very obvous.

Youtube parasites deep-frying and mixing every aspect of pop culture into thin paste is kinda funny to me at this point, i always imagine a 40+ indian guy working in the basement of a sweatshop to shit out those abortions for his SEO savvy boss. Im just sad for the 5yo. children that get their brains scrambled by watching this shit, or yt in general.

 

[WULULULULU]

The biggest indiedev cancer are Slay the Spire copies, im sure there are more than 50 at this point and 95% of them suck.

Congratulations, because that is what Darkest Dungeon 2 has become and the hill on which the devs will die on.

 

[Liquid Marlon]

Bendy was made for merchandise and so is this. The "first chapter" takes about as long as a youtube video, they have a monster that would be really easy to make a plushie out of (shape and texture obvously) and even easyier to sell to parents because with a closed mouth it looks like a normal toy. It might end up a decent game but devs intent is very obvous.

Yeah it is pretty obvious, even more so then Bendy because of the setting of the game but still to be fair, a lot of old cartoons like He-Man or Transformers were made for the exact same reason so it's not something I'm going to hold against them.

My main point was just that they did a way better job with making a starting chapter like for example, Bendy didn't have any clear direction on where they were going after chapter 1 which ended up making a giant cluster fuck in the end that even the fans don't like.

Here there is a pretty solid path for the future chapters with how they introduce all the various characters and how they will probably be in the future antagonists.

That doesn't mean that there isn't room to still fuck up but at the very least it will hopefully be better then what Bendy become.

 

[LucasSomething]

Since i saw this thread, just wanna warn everyone that poppy playtime devs are working with NFTs btw

Tweet was deleted but the stuff is still acessible out there. It's apparently a few random letters and numbers that can be reorganized in a way that spells "Mommy longlegs is coming". (i got this info for free)

 

[Liquid Marlon]

Since i saw this thread, just wanna warn everyone that poppy playtime devs are working with NFTs btw

View attachment 2784472

Tweet was deleted but the stuff is still acessible out there. It's apparently a few random letters and numbers that can be reorganized in a way that spells "Mommy longlegs is coming". (i got this info for free)

When I first heard about this, I thought it was going to be some Huggy bullshit but no it seems that they are just pngs from the game.

Either way, NFTs with hidden ARG styled elements is just so bizarre.

I feel like if they did the same with the new shirts they're selling it would be less weird.

Who knows maybe they are but if that is the case then that just adds to the weirdness, in-theory it would be clever to get people to buy their stuff but still nonetheless weird as hell.

I said "in theory " it would be because it sure as hell didn't work, not too sure people are mad because the NFTs are lazy, they are Jim Sterling types or etc but they are really mad at this.

I pacifically like this thumbnail just because of how angry the dude looks over this shit lol.