William

That’s “hidden gem” rather than “underrated.”

But I agree with others that are saying it’s just niche. It’s a pure puzzle game. There’s no exploration, crafting, combat, survival, etc. You have to really like puzzles to play a pure puzzle game.

I do, and I’ve still been struggling to make it all the way through. I’m just starting on the last of the first 12 sections, and some of them have kind of been a slog rather than a joy.

I can’t even give any particular complaint, though. Each puzzle really is different from the others, so they aren’t duplicated in any way that was obvious to me. It’s just a lot, I guess.

If it’s the quest I’m thinking of, it was pretty lackluster. If it’s not, then I’ve completely forgotten it.

I didn’t think that actually happened very often, but it doesn’t surprise me when it does. To be a good games journalist, you need to understand a lot about makes games and gamers tick. There’s a huge overlap in the skills needed to design a successful and fun game, and the other skills can be picked up easily enough, or hired out. At least, “easily enough” if you’re really motivated. It’s still a lot of time and effort, but it’s very rewarding, especially if you’ve got a good game idea.

What I’m reading there is that they expect gamers to spend less because there are fewer blockbuster titles this year than usual, and so gamers probably won’t spend as much.

However, I’m guessing that at least some of that money will go to smaller studios and indies instead, so it should be a good year for them.

Retailers, of course, are the ones that lose out, especially since those smaller games don’t usually ever sit on a shelf.

And all of this is ignoring the fact that there was just a huge bubble in the game market because of Covid, and sales are still better than pre-Covid.

It’s the normal layoff cycle of new game development amplified by the Covid boom.

Why does the layoff cycle keep happening? Because developers are okay with it. They keep signing those contracts and not joining unions. And that’s their choice.

There’s no way a company is going to attempt to release all that information and potentially fail to release all details and set themselves up for a lawsuit. I think it’s more likely that these laws would kill server-based games if they were implemented as suggested.

Instead, I could see that there might be a minimum server support length after the last sale of the product. Even then, service would be spotty for that time and there’d be no uptime guarantee. Fixes for problems and hacks would be incredibly slow and the game would basically be unplayable in short order, unless that guaranteed time was short, like 1 year.