Peter Sarrett

I also dispute the thesis that for “a lot” of people taking notes was part of the magic. I’ll bet they’d have been even more delighted if that was rendered unnecessary. Once I prove I know what color/symbol/pattern goes with a nation, don’t make me remember it forever.

I didn’t know at the time that I was setting the game aside for a while, so I didn’t write down what I needed to do. Having a manual in-game note system wouldn’t have changed that. But seriously, how many times should I need to enter the damn security system password? C’mon.

Built-in note systems (which could literally be as basic as a custom implementation of Notepad) have the advantage that the notes stay with the game. But I’ll admit that wouldn’t solve all problems. I set Blue Prince aside just after figuring out what I need to do to reclaim the throne

I played Lingo ages ago but set it aside. Now I want to return to it, but I don't remember what the various colors mean, I really don't want to start over and relearn everything, and I don't want to look things up because I'll spoil myself on what I hadn't already figured out. So it languishes.

One can often use the internet as a resource, but that comes with the risk of inadvertently spoiling yourself on something you *didn't* know. RPGs have had map annotation for decades now. A note system isn't hard. It just has to be prioritized.

Many games are great about doing this with mechanics. Upgrade trees tell you the moves you've unlocked and the controller mapping for them. But once you've discovered that red guards always lie or triangles mean "do not turn on this space", you'd better remember that FOREVER.

Sure, I can take physical notes. But if I'm playing on console there's no way I'm doing that, and if I put the game aside and return to it months later, the last thing I want to do is hunt around for notes or relearn everything.

Hot take: Any game that requires the player to discover an idea in order to succeed should have a built-in note system. Blue Prince, for example, should give you the means to track the various Shrine costs/effects manually or provide you with a summary of what it knows you've already discovered.

In Slay the Spire, I might decide to lean heavily into shivs, or card draw, or some other easily-understood mechanic. I don't have to track multiple terrains and resources and cards that interact differently with each of them. I wish the card design of Drop Duchy had gone a different way.

Everything else about the game is very polished, but the stress of those choices made me shut down the game. I wish there was a screen that summarized my holdings and helped me make good decisions, or that the cards were a little simpler and easier to track.

A single card can require terrain A, transform into terrains B and C, and recruit troop type D and/or resource E. Now imagine you have 4 or 5 card like that, all overlapping in some but not all aspects. Now you're asked to choose one of 3 new cards. I need a spreadsheet to make good choices.

I was excited for the roguelike Tetris of Drop Duchy, but after the tutorial and a couple of runs, I've bounced off. The problem for me is I find it too hard to make smart choices. Keeping track of all my cards, what they do, and how they synergize is too difficult, and the game UI offers no help.

The linear level design is the original sin. Make the level less linear and give the player agency to explore. This doesn’t have to mean a full open world. Just give the player many viable paths to progress, and exploration becomes an organic part of gameplay.

Evil West is fun, but also frustrating. When your level design is essentially linear, with one golden path, it is BAD DESIGN to put collectibles in dead end spurs. Nothing breaks immersion like finding the correct path, then turning around to go the wrong way first so I can get collectibles.

I am SO done with dystopian games. Read the room, gamedevs. There's a wide blue ocean out there for utopian games. Find some new verbs.

It all hangs together nicely and was fun to play, all the more impressive because the art, design, and code were all done by one person. Available on Game Pass.

6. Smart level design that usually introduces you to a new combatant in isolation so you can learn how they work, then follows up with a bigger combat that tests you against a bunch of them. The result is that the game feels fair. So many games get this wrong.

5. Upgrade currency is plentiful, and if you can't find upgrade points in the wild, you can just use that currency to buy them, so you feel like your time/effort is always being respected.

3. "Take no damage" challenges INSTANTLY restart in-place when you fail, making them no-cost mini-mastery challenges rather than grueling "now I have to remember where that was and get back there to try again" slogs.

4. Simple mechanics. No blocking-- dash and jump both evade attacks. Clean.

2. Ability to mark unfound objects on the map means the giant world doesn't become a series of needle-in-a-haystack problems in the endgame if you want to Get All the Things. Huge win!

Got 100% on Crypt Custodian, a fairly straightforward and satisfying Metroidvania that made some very player-friendly design choices.

1. Frequent save/fast travel points take the pain out of revisiting locations, which you do frequently as you unlock abilities.

I played all the way to the end(s), though, so I'm giving it a thumbs up. Just be aware that while you get a few powers along the way, there aren't any transformative system unlocks or hidden reveals. While there's plenty lurking under the sea in Dredge, what you see on the surface is what you get.

The inventory management game of Tetris isn't nearly as interesting as in, say, Backpack Hero, where what you keep and where you keep it actually matters. In Dredge, it's just a limiting factor and chore.

I was also disappointed that the entire game essentially boils down to a series of fetch quests, in the sense that you're catching fish or dredging up trinkets which you bring back to dock to sell, then use that cash to buy upgrades and/or make repairs to set out and do it all again.

Rolled credits on Dredge. I enjoyed a lot about Dredge-- the Lovecraftian undertones, the fishing minigames, the fluidity of navigation-- but wish it had more (ahem) depth. I wanted my decisions to matter more, but while the order may be different per player, you wind up doing all the same things.

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My quibbles aside, I love that this game got made at all, and I enjoyed my playthrough. A great example of the value of Game Pass.

I also didn’t love how the lore text told me about a character’s personality and foibles, not trusting the in-game narrative to show me. We see Beaux for what, 30 seconds? But the lore practically sets him up for his own spinoff. Too much.

It didn’t have to be that way. The levels could have been built less linearly, giving the player real options for organic discovery, rather than pitting the player against the story. Start me in a corner and let me find my own way, instead of plopping me down on the yellow brick road.

It also breaks my trust with the game. “Oh, you’re pointing me THAT way? I’ll bet there’s a collectible in the other direction, so I’ll ignore the way you obviously want me to go.”