The earliest evidence I have of Developer Appreciation week is 2010, but it might have been taking place prior to that. Unfortunately the original site of its creator Scarybooster no longer exists, nor does even the social media evidence as his twitter account was hacked some years back. Whatever the case it has been going on for awhile and with Scary’s falling off the blogging wagon, we tried to start integrating the practice of taking a moment out to appreciate the folks that are behind the scenes creating the games we love into the Blaugust proceedings. This has morphed a bit to include content creators since I feel they also need some appreciation as well, but for this very first post of the week I thought I would bring things back to its roots and talk about a game studio that might not be that well known.
Prolific Release Schedule
Spiders is a French Game studio most recently known for the huge sweeping RPG adventure Greedfall that I have written about at length on this blog. However if you have not been reading the blog it is probably likely that you may not know about this studio or many of its games. I originally became aware of them when Technomancer released, because I thought it looked extremely interesting and it happened to be one of the games that Steam suggested to me through its discovery algorithm. However they have been cranking out ambitious games for awhile now, and it is highly likely that you have at least heard of several of them.
Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper – 2009
Faery: Legends of Avalon – 2010
Gray Matter – 2011
Of Orcs and Men – 2012
Mars: War Logs – 2013
Bound by Flame – 2014
The Technomancer – 2016
Greedfall – 2019
The games utilize a custom in case variant of Sony’s PhyreEngine that they call the Silk Engine, and it seems to have allowed them to crank out a pretty prolific release schedule. Until Technomancer they were seemingly releasing a new title every year, which is fairly impressive. I’ve played through four of their games to date and finished three of those four. I ultimately decided that Bound by Flame just was not for me, but I deeply enjoyed Mars: War Logs, Technomancer and Greedfall. In fact Greedfall was on the AggroChat games of the year show and it really was one of the darlings of what was an otherwise packed year of games.
We’re 35 in our team, with 40 at the moment working on the game. We are developing this because we love the type of game. There aren’t that many studios doing this type of games today. I mean, even BioWare have stopped doing it and I’m very sad because it’s what I like to play the most.
Jehanne Rousseau, CEO of French studio Spiders
That really is the thing that drew me to the games the most, is that they are in fact creating games in a genre that seems to be dying. There is a blind ambition in each of these titles that is impressive, but the negative side of that is said ambition sometimes outstrips their technical prowess. They seem to constantly be grasping for greatness and often times end up a few steps short of it. There are numerous things about the games that I would consider a bit buggy at best and poorly designed at worst, in each of the games that I have played there is something magical about them that kept me coming back for more. If you take the sequence of games Mars: War Logs, Technomancer (its direct sequel) and Greedfall there is a clear growth and improvement between each of the games.
The stories that they are telling are simultaneously huge and expansive while at the same time managing to include some deeply personal encounters. There is so much world building happening that feels fresh and interesting, and these worlds are populated with characters that are worthy of them. Where the games fall short however is on the technical execution. Combat often times feels a little stilted and control schemes often feel a little awkward. However much like going back to Dragon Age Origins which also suffers from many of these issues when compared against a modern game, the story and the characters are engaging enough to get you to look past those blemishes.
A Bright Future
Greedfall – September 2019 – PC
The reason why I chose to talk about Spiders this morning, is that I am extremely excited for whatever comes next. After having played a sequence of games and seeing the improvements between each of them, I have to say Greedfall was without a doubt their most polished experience. It came extremely close to being a perfect game, at least in my eyes. It had some mechanical issues still, but the amount of improvement made between it and Technomancer for example were impressive. It is like I am watching a studio flirting with greatness so many times and Greedfall really was the show case of those abilities.
This makes anxious for whatever game comes next, because I feel like whatever title that is will be their big commercial break out. Greedfall was still very much a niche title for the people “in the know” about such things, but across the board it seemed to review extremely favorably. In hindsight it was probably my favorite game of 2019, and while based on their current schedule I don’t expect to see another game until 2021 at the earliest, I am pumped to get my hands on it and play it. Spiders is exploring one of my favorite genres of games… the Bioware style action RPG, and sadly it is a genre that not too many companies seem to be making. I think more than anything I want to keep pushing recognition of this studio out there, because they are doing some really interesting things. Over the last year they went from a studio that I knew next to nothing about, to one of the ones I am watching closely for any tidbits of information that might be announced.
If you are curious about some of my other posts related to Spiders games… you can find the various categories associated with them below:
Okay folks, this is Topic Brainstorming week for Blapril 2020, and I thought I would use that as an opportunity to talk about one of the things that I have traditionally done where I update you all on what I have been regularly playing. I use this opportunity as a time to update the sidebar of the blog and talk about my feelings about some of the games that are in heavy rotation. I have been exceptionally bad at keeping this updated over the last few months, but that isn’t really a new thing either because I have gone through serious lapses before. The idea is that you have a dialog with your readers and talk about what has been going on in your gaming life. This topic could be adopted to pretty much any subject, talk about movies you have been watching, music you have been listening to or any number of other hobbies.
Since this is mostly a gaming blog I have simply chosen to call that aspect of my life out, and as such I talk about the games that are new to the list, the games that are still in regular rotation and the games that are departing the list. Last edition of this feature I also included the “ships passing in the night” feature where I talk about games that I have been enjoying but that won’t really have much staying power.
To Those Remaining
Destiny 2 – PC
Destiny sweet Destiny… I am not sure what is going on between us. You right now are hanging by a thread and are just barely making the list. I am not sure what it is about the seasonal format but it actually disincentives me from playing, because deep down I know I won’t have the staying power to unlock everything and squeeze every last drop of good from the season before it expires. I think mostly I just have a problem with expiring content. If the seasonal content allowed me toe work through it at my own pace like something along the lines of Elder Scrolls Online, I would feel significantly better about playing Destiny on a regular basis because it doesn’t feel quite so much like wasted effort. I hope they re-evaluate the seasonal formula and make the additions to the game stick around a little longer. If they maybe give you three seasons to complete the content before it expires that might go a long way towards making this feel like a better experience.
Diablo 3 – PC and Switch
I had an awful lot of fun at the beginning of the season hanging out with Grace and Byx and have since then sorta faded away. Diablo 3 is never really far from my mind however and I am sure at some point I will finish building a reasonable set and push toward the end goal. I did at least get the 4 chapters of the seasonal journey knocked out, but Set Dungeon Mastery right now is what is holding me up because it is the one step I hate doing each season. I end up delaying it until I finally can’t anymore and now it is holding up two separate seasons journey ranks. I just really don’t like being on a timer when I am gaming.
To The New and Returning
Animal Crossing New Horizons – Switch
This is effectively my very first Animal Crossing game, and as a result there has been a mountain of knowledge that I needed to climb in very short order in order to figure out what the hell was going on behind the various mechanics. This is a game that is exceptionally bad at explaining itself, and really this should have been their “Monster Hunter World” moment, because given that the Switch is an extremely popular console makes it attractive to a whole new generation of players. This should have been the title that they added a bit more scaffolding to the game in order to hand hold you through the process of engagement. There are so many things that I have had to take to external sources to figure out, and I feel like maybe some hand holding would have been nice at least to have an option to say “Hey I am a First Timer, Explain to me like I am 5 Years Old”. All of that said it is adorable and while I am not playing with the length I was in those first few days I am at least logging in each day to move the bar forward a bit.
Atom RPG – PC
This one is making this part of the list because I feel like there is a lot more here to explore. I have not finished the game, and I want to spend time once other things calm down a bit getting back in and roaming around. Essentially this poorly named game is “What if Fallout 1 and 2 were Russian themed and came out recently”. It is a re-imagining of the Fallout genre and plays like you remember those games playing, which is to say it plays much better than they do if you were to buy a copy from GOG and play it today. It can be brutally hard, and I seem to have more issue with ammunition than I remember having back in the day, but it did serve for several fun nights of gaming and I want to return to it.
Wolcen – PC
While I have not been playing this a lot recently, there is still a lot of meat on these bones and I want to return to it. Wolcen has released a bunch of patches and tweaks since I last played and it will be interesting to see if my tanky spin to win build is still functional. Wolcen is the best Diablo game we have gotten in recent memory and does a great job of sorta cherry picking the best features of both Diablo 3 and Path of Exile… in a formula that feels closer to D3. Essentially it is a recipe for what I like in an ARPG, but I realize for the folks that hold Diablo 2 up in high esteem it might not be their jam. I wish this was available on the Switch because as much as I like playing D3 from the bedroom… if this supported cross save and allowed me to progress my character while chilling out horizontally… this would become my new sleepy time jam.
Ships Passing in the Night
Star Wars Galaxies – Legends Server – PC
In the months since January I have been on a bit of a MMORPG Emulator server binge. The first of these was Star Wars Galaxies because my good friend Tam got into the game heavily, as it was one of his nostalgia jams from the past. For him this was a great experience about space combat in the Star Wars universe. Since I do not really like flight simulators, it was less enjoyable, but I did greatly appreciate the first few levels that felt similar to a WoW or an Everquest 2. Unfortunately once you have finished the first ten levels and the game opens up… this helpful scaffolding falls away and the “real” game was far less enjoyable for me. What was there instead was slow progression and the unpredictable difficulty curves that I remember from Everquest. I was happy that Tam was having so much fun, but I was a bit saddened that I really was not.
City of Heroes – Homecoming Server – PC
This lead me down a path towards one of my nostalgic remembrances… and the game I was likely playing while Tam was playing SWG… City of Heroes. I had so much fun with this game and for the full nostalgia trip, I opted to play a Katana/Regeneration Scrapper. The game itself was way different than I remember it being, but not in a bad way. The homecoming server effectively is picking up where the game left off when it was shuttered, meaning it is several years worth of patches past the point at which I actually left off playing. For the most part the game holds up well unlike SWG or Everquest, and I could see myself maybe returning to it at some point in the future when I am not deluged with other games I want to be playing.
Everquest – EZ Server – PC
Eventually this path of madness lead me back to the progenitor of MMORPG gaming (for me at least), Everquest. I tried a few different server options and eventually landed on EZ Server, which is a super fast progression and super low difficulty Everquest experience that lets me play tourist and revisit areas I loved in the game without having to deal with finding a group. I realize this largely defeats the purpose of Everquest, but I also don’t have the time or patience that I did when I first played this game, and as a result I am down for cheat mode. It was a lot of fun for about a week and then I wandered away like a bored toddler. I might return the next time I get nostalgic about Norrath, given how hard I have found it to ease back into Everquest II.
Mars: War Logs – PC
This is the third game by Spiders that I have played and it suffers from a lot of the same problems. However still like Greedfall and Technomancer there is something about the gameplay that I find compelling. They all sorta play like low rent Bioware titles, but they are doing a thing that Bioware no longer seems to be doing which makes me interested in them nonetheless. Mars: War Logs was the first game in a series that continued with Technomancer, and I could definitely see some merit in playing this game first because it does introduce parts of the Mars setting that never get explored fully in the sequel. That said it is a much more primitive gaming experience, and while I enjoyed it I could see a lot of the awkwardness turning others off. If you want to experience a spiders game and have never done so… probably start with Greedfall and see if it leaves you wanting more before diving in deeper.
The Touryst – Switch
This game was in heavy rotation for me for about a week and then once again as is my usual I wandered away like a bored toddler. It is really charming and interesting, and I liked the pace of feeling like I accomplished something each day. What I did not love about it were how many precision jumps that were required to complete some of the puzzles. The basics of the game is that you are visiting an archipelago and each island has a different them, as well as a central puzzle to solve in how to unlock its shrine. There is no real combat, and if you fail something you start over immediately at the beginning of the room that you are in so it allows you to fail fast and rapidly iterate through ideas. The voxel theme is a lot of what makes the game charming, and the engine that is running it is among the more impressive ones available on the switch. The lighting, the animations, the subtle details all add to the feel of it being a living and breathing world.
Doom (2016) – PC
It only took me four years… but I finally buckled down and finished my play through of Doom 2016 in anticipation of the release of Doom Eternal. It was a fun if nonsensical ride through a world of exploding demon corpses. I had an awful lot of fun pushing through the final bits of the game and would definitely suggest it to anyone who loved the earlier era and arcade shooters. I’ve not really had a chance to dig into Doom Eternal but it also seems to be a similar style of enjoyment. Right now I am buried under a bunch of games and I need to dig out before I really tackle anything else.
World of Warcraft – Retail – PC
During the crisis we currently find ourselves in… I’ve struggled to allow myself to sink into the warm embrace of a video game. I’ve had trouble disconnecting mentally enough to really allow myself to engage fully with another universe. As a result I have been in desperate need of something that I could more or less play while at the same time shutting off my brain and just giving it time to rest. World of Warcraft fits that bill perfectly because all of the patterns of engagement are more or less muscle memory at this point. I’ve been taking advantage of the experience bonus currently going on in game and the speed of leveling is pure nonsense. I took my Horde Paladin from 110-120 in a few days and hit 118 before I had finished the first zone I chose to go through, Zuldazar. Now that I have that character at 120 I am swapping over to pushing up my Warlock, while at the same time dipping my head in periodically to gobble up any upgrades from World Quests. I’ve also leveled my Paladin on Alliance side as well, since it was the closest to the level cap… and am in the process of working my way towards unlocking the allied races.
Summary
When I allow myself to go more than one month without an update it ends up being this mammoth post as I have a bunch of things that I feel like I need to talk about. My hope is that I can get back in the swing of doing these early in each month. I find it helpful to sorta clear the slate each month and talk about what is and is not seeing play time. There are a lot of games that I might play, but ultimately don’t feel like dedicating one of my daily posts to, and this gives me the space to address those.
I figured this morning I would talk about a couple of things that I have been doing. I am not entirely certain how I stumbled across this game but I have been playing The Touryst on the Switch. Trying to solve a puzzle or two before bed time has sorta become my new going to sleep ritual. This is from Shin’en which are the folks behind games like the Iridium series on the GBA and Fast MX… so they are a studio that seems to be able to get lower end hardware to do absolutely phenomenal things. The Touryst is no difference in that the executable itself is insanely small and the load times are so snappy that you never feel like you are actually waiting on anything.
The gameplay concept is simple. You are a tourist on vacation on an archipelago of islands, each one containing a shrine that you have to figure out how to unlock. You earn coins by completing tasks and by finding them out in the world. These coins are then spent on upgrading your abilities, to give you access to new areas and perform new abilities like the ability to pull yourself up on a ledge or to dash. These simple abilities combine with visual puzzle solving and some minor platforming in order to craft a world of exploration and discovery that feels like you are always unlocking something interesting around the next turn. I am not terribly far into the game but I am definitely enjoying myself.
What I find the most interesting is that while each shrine ends in a “fight” with its Guardian… none of them actually involve combat. Instead you sorta have to figure out how to deactivate the Guardian through puzzle interactions and moving pieces around in the right way. For example moments after taking the above screenshot the cubes begin to link up and you have to figure out a way to break the lights in order to deactivate them. You can get crushed in the process… at which point the game starts over on the beginning of the screen that you failed on allowing you to rapidly iterate on ideas until you solve the puzzle. It is the perfect sort of bite sized interaction for me and my bedtime gaming, and if you are looking for a fun Switch game to tide you over until Animal Crossing, then I highly suggest checking it out.
The other thing that I partook of last night was finally buckling down and finishing Mars War Logs, another in the line of games by Spiders that I have been exploring. I’ve talked at length about the experience of playing a game by this studio but at this moment I have now played through Greedfall, Technomancer and Mars War Logs and they all have a lot of similarities. The biggest part is that they are a company with really interesting ideas that outstretch the technical and design abilities of the team involved. If you can handle an awful lot of quirk and oddity in your games, then the experience might be extremely enjoyable. I mean playing through Mars War Logs was no more kludgy than playing through Witcher 2 for example and suffered from a lot of the same design problems.
I was actually way closer to the end of the game than I realized in Mars War Logs, because in about an hour of game play I managed to get to the credit roll. I have no interest in playing down an alternate path, because I feel like I made the choices that make sense the most for me. Problems aside I found it an extremely enjoyable play through and the truth is I am going to play anything that Spiders releases in the future after having played through three of their games. They do something really compelling to me and I am not entirely certain I can put my finger on it. The best of these was absolutely Greedfall and there has been a clear improvement in quality between the games as they sorta try and tackle the problems they keep running into. They seem to release a game roughly every two years so since Greedfall was a 2019 release, maybe we will see something new in 2021.
Last night I returned to Final Fantasy XIV or at least attempted to. I had not played much since the first or second week after the release of the Eden raid. If my math is right this would have been around the beginning of August, and after doing my traditional FFXIV thing of leveling my tank and a dps class I checked out in a massive way. I’ve more or less purposefully been holding off knowing that if I could come back with a large chunk of MSQ to consume I might be able to stick around long enough to get into the swing of things. As a result I did not return when 5.1 released and since last night was the launch of 5.2 I decided that was a reasonable time to start poking my head back into the game.
I did not make a ton of progress and more or less unlocked the first dungeon and ran it with a trust. I did not at all expect the Crystal Exarch to fill the tank role… but the fact that he was a Paladin makes some measure of sense as far as tank roles go. I am playing my Samurai figuring it will be easier to get back into the game if I am able to do so with limited responsibility. My biggest challenge with FFXIV has been the fact that the game expects everyone to be a DPS, and if that is the case I might as well just play an actual DPS. I am of the mindset that Tanks should be Tanks and Healers should be Healers and if they can throw the occasional damage dealing spell awesome… but FFXIV is a game that has devolved into a state where everyone is expected to have an optimized dps rotation. I can’t say if this trip back into FFXIV is going to stick or not but at a minimum I will probably gobble up the main story quest and we will play it by ear after that.
Also happening yesterday was the launch of a new in game Destiny 2 mini-cinematic showing an a confrontation between Osiris and Rasputin. I guess this means that unlike the rumors of maybe going back to the Prison of Elders we will once again be entangling ourselves in some manner with the Warmind. I am split in a bunch of different directions this week because it is probably the last Iron Banner of Season of the Dawn and I really would like to earn a set of the armor available in its 2.0 variant. It was my favorite of the Iron Banner armor sets and I am sure with the changing of the seasons it will be gone. I am also sitting at level 60 of 100 and would feel sad if I did not manage to grind out all of the season levels.
Then there is Wolcen which I am completely enamored with and want to play more of. I was super happy to find out that cosmetic choices are on a per slot level and not per gear, so if you swap gear your cosmetic choices stay put. The only thing that I have done so far is hide my helmet because quite honestly I usually hate helmets in video games. I’ve not made a ton of progress because of course last night I was distracted by Final Fantasy XIV, so add this to the list of games that are pulling me in different directions.
Finally at some point I really want to finish off Mars: War Logs and see where that story goes… so that is a 4th game to throw on the pile of things fighting for my attention. On top of all of this… something has been going around at work and causing people to drop like flies and yesterday my direct boss as knocked out of commission by it. Last night I did not feel amazing and this morning I am feeling completely awful, so I am wondering if I am about to go on my own roller coaster ride of illness. Basically I have gone from being super single threaded on single player games… to being distracted constantly by the allure of multiplayer games that I am playing in a single player manner. I feel like for the entirety of this decade I have been living in this state of having way too much that I want to be playing.
