"Wizard with a Gun developer Galvanic Games is closing"

[kane_magus]

Full headline, because even this (relatively) short PC Gamer headline doesn't fit in Dreamwidth's inadequate subject field: "Wizard with a Gun developer Galvanic Games is closing: 'Sales are not strong enough to sustain our studio'"

Okay, so, I know next to nothing about this game, but I will say that my first and only impression of this game when I saw it in my Steam Discovery Queue a while back was something roughly along the lines of "Wizard with a Gun? No, that sounds dumb. The name sounds dumb and the entire concept of it sounds dumb. This game is probably dumb. Next." And that was pretty much it, for me. So, if others had the same sort of reaction to it that I did, that could probably at least partly explain why "sales are not strong enough" and they're having to close down now.

Well, for me, it was that and also the fact that it was apparently yet another dumb, banal, unappealing (to me, anyway) Roguelike/Roguelite game. And also the fact that they were asking for twenty-five fucking US dollars for it.

Comments

[owsf2000]

For a while now I've been expanding my reasons to ignore games I get presented with on the steam discovery queue since having fewer reasons to buy games I'm probably not going to get around to playing is A Good Thing. "Games with stupid, non-creative names" has become one such auto-ignore subject. IE: If the devs can't spend even 5 minutes trying to think up a creative enough name that goes beyond explaining the literally what the game is... why should I be giving it any attention whatsoever?

And it's not like I'm expecting clever names here either. I'm 90% sure that Wizard with a Gun showed up in my queue at some point as well - *checks* I didn't ignore it apparently, but I'm not 100% certain to even bother spending enough time on these things to click the button for that.

To be fair this is one type of ignore I can change my mind on. Most categories of auto-ignore are ignore-and-forget-forever type things. For this one, I'm just not giving it any of my time to determine if it's good or not thanks to their own lack of care for their product. The only way it'll likely get off ignore however is if a lot of friends start bugging me about the game being really really good, etc. Something that has so far never happened.

Granted I've also become burnt out on the roguelike/rougelite genre in general. At this point it's become more of a "We're Too Lazy to Think Up Actual Level Design" excuse with a helping hand of "We really need to inflate the game time without adding anythin-oh let's just make them lose most everything each game!".

Not saying that's not a valid game design - I'm just burnt out on it, much like how I'm burnt out on visual novels and tower defense types.

If Konami released Vampire Whipping Game instead of Castlevania, it'd be on this auto-ignore list too. If that happens, someone please notify me so I can take a second look at it. ;)

[kane_magus]

Yeah, on the name thing, it's easily possible to not try hard enough as much as it is to try way too hard, and in both cases I'm very likely not going to care. At this point pretty much anything that's just "<insert thing> Survivors" or "<insert thing> Simulator" or "<insert thing> Tycoon" or "Untitled <insert thing> Game" are pretty much instant auto-passes for me. Or if it's some cheeky, jokey, meme-y thing like "Don't Play This Game" or whatever. But at the same time, if a game title is some grandiose, tryhard bullshit, something like (making shit up off the top of my head) "The Chronicles of Mystic Aeluthia: The Doomsday Prophecies: Aeluthia's Journey: Blah Blah: Yadda Yadda" then I'm probably going to give that one a bit of a stink eye before hitting Next on it, too. Might not be an immediate auto-pass like the others, maybe, but still.

The only roguelike game that I've played lately that I've actually liked has been Hades. And I only bought that one because A) everyone and their cousin's pet hamster has been saying for half a decade now how great it is and, way more importantly, B) it was on sale for less than $10 when I bought it. (Still haven't actually managed to complete a single run, yet, but I have made it up to what I know to be the final phase of the final boss, so... almost there, I guess? And I know there's still a ton of shit still left, even after that. And really, while the gameplay is pretty good, I'm actually kind of more interested in the character interactions, and the gameplay almost gets in the way of that. ¬_¬)

Not saying that's not a valid game design - I'm just burnt out on it, much like how I'm burnt out on visual novels and tower defense types.

Same. It really sucks, but I'm even starting to feel that way about Metroidvanias and Zelda-likes and, especially, generic RPG Maker-looking games (even if they're not actually made with RPG Maker). It's not that they're all bad, per se (though a lot of them are), it's just that there are sooooo many of them now. :/