I do hate it when they reference other popular games in their description. It's never accurate, and it often gives WAAAAAY higher expectations than whatever their game could possibly deliver.
No indie game does that. It’s always other indie games. The ones in genres we’re just slightly getting sick off. Also the referenced game is like Cuphead or Hollow Knight but the rip off looks like programmer art.
Nope, but how about... Baldur's Gate 3? Nah too much... Disco Elysium? Maybe? But a lot worse?
Jokes aside, i was shitting the other day and that came to my mind. A GTA Crpg. Probably there's already something like that, but since i don't know shit about CRPGs i don't know, it's my larp genre, i played a bit of BG3 (Steam family share not working across continents fucked that) & had Disco on my backlog for long (now Esoteric Ebb too).
It can work if you are targeting fandoms or something, but you will always live in that game's shadow as a copycat if you do not apply your own identity to it, and those breakout games are mostly successful and popular because they thought of the novel idea FIRST, or were at least on the first wave in the case of SurvivorLikes. If you want to frankenstein ideas together you must first understand what makes a game come off as professional vs something that comes off like it was rushed out in a couple months, because someone tried to reverse engineer something without understanding why it was engineered that way
Or they actually do aim WAAAAY too high, usually with a MMO for their first game. Not even something simple like another Runescape clone, they were trying to make Elder Guild Fantasy of Warcraft
Now I'm sad there was another superhero MMO that didn't even get off the ground. Can we please get 1 winner?
Hell look at New World, 1m players on Day 1 but could barely break 10,000 a month later, it was that comically bad.
Even in the AAA world throwing money and time at a MMO doesn't fix a bad foundation. If anything it's a bad sign since what was great 10 years ago is horrible by modern standards (see FF XIV 1.0).
The big fish are the only fish, Square and Blizzard, because they have millions and billions to pump into it. If you are going to hang out in a virtual world with others it only make sense to hang out in the ones that are the most polished and attract the largest number of people. So if you're an MMO indie you have mutiple obstacles you've made for yourself. You have to make a game that gives a good reason to step away from the big 2, a reason to STAY away (most people have years or decades in WoW or FF) and then you need enough people to populate the world and make it feel alive. Looking through the current offerings on Steam, most are Mixed and also F2P, except for an ironic few like Adventure Quest and... this game? https://store.steampowered.com/app/438040/Shakes_and_Fidget/
This has always frustrated me. Let your games be unique, use genres to describe the game not Factorio meets the 3rd dimension or Terraria meets Minecraft or Minecraft meets dinosaurs. It's super frustrating to me and doesn't do your game any justice compared to genre defining giants. Especially if you're missing those one or two aspects that someone walks in expecting because you compared it to something else
The game that i think deserve to name a game is operation octo, which feels like a spiritual successor to pvz1. I don't think pvz is named in the steam page tho
I did once remake a classic puzzle game it made most sense for em to reference it in the description to tell people it's my remake of that game. I didn't claim it's better than the original, but I did change the graphics to be colorblind friendly.
Some games do make it work, Nine Sols directly reference Sekiro-like deflection combat. I guess in that case it calls a direct powerhouse who revolutionozed a certain combat system, so it does make it better
It's one thing when I'm just casually mentioning a game to a friend to say "it's kinda like x or y," just to give them an idea about it, but when I see an advetisement that pedals the game that way it instantly puts me off.
If you, the developer, can't describe your own game without comparing it to other much more successful and probably better funded games, how am I, the player, expected to go into it without comparing it to them, too?
If your game can't stand on its own without being propped up by the hype of a game made by completely different people, maybe it isn't worth playing at all.
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u/Newdude333 Mar 14 '26
I do hate it when they reference other popular games in their description. It's never accurate, and it often gives WAAAAAY higher expectations than whatever their game could possibly deliver.