Ew, not like Fortnite, I mean like indie launchers

With the Steam sale running, this seems like a good time to try this thread again. We don't often use the downvote button much in Lemmy, but the idea is this: Do your best to present game suggestions that no one has heard of before. If, in reading other people's suggestions, you spot one that you're familiar with, then put a downvote on it. Ideally, if the game is past a year old, it may have a discounted price during the Steam sale, and others will be able to check it out.

I've made this thread once before and it generated some good suggestions, but the rate of indie publishing on Steam has only accelerated with time, so it seems to be worth trying again.

Take the following premise. Bob sees Mike (who has blue hair) rob an orphanage, and considers him a bad man.
Bob exclaims in a public forum, "That blue-haired sneak! He should be found and put in jail."
Mike (wearing a mask while on the run) highlights this statement, replaying a record of it in another location, and adding: "I can't believe Bob would say such terrible things about blue-haired people! This is extreme bigotry!"
Jill, who also has blue hair, and Derek, who simply doesn't like bigotry, both miss the context of the robbery that happened earlier, and are shocked at the isolated statement.
When the town meets later, the issue of a robbery at the orphanage is downplayed, and the town instead spends the meeting condemning Bob's bigotry.

While a lot could be said about the whole sequence, I want to find out if there is a shortened term used to refer to the deception by Mike when deliberately misrepresenting the grouping of a targeted statement; eg, to build class solidarity the wrong way. The closest I've found might be "Strawmanning" or "Divide and Conquer" but it seems common enough I'd like to see if there's a name.

I tried to generalize by picking "blue hair" for the example, but I admit it'd be an odd, off-color statement by race or appearance. There are still other forms of grouping that are more common to state in conversation, like "gamers" or "voters", or "farmers", in which such statements could apply to all, or just some, of that broad group.

This site comes from some former Humble Bundle operators. They're also running a bundle of comics from authors that worked on the "Absolute" DC lineup.

Quite often, an indie game throws together some common gameplay, like roguelike shooter patterns, with little to explain it. eg, "You're here to explore for treasure!" Other times, even AAA games go this route, assuming most players won't care about the base story premise.

But there seems to be a significant contrast to well-developed worlds; like seeing the progressive cruelty of the Nazis in Wolfenstein before you start stabbing them, or seeing the Gommage in Expedition 33 before heading out to fight nevrons. Even more eldritch action-oriented games like DOOM benefited from establishing a "mood" of the Slayer being angry at demons and anyone who ignored warnings of them using just a few quick cutscenes.

This can be a bit of divergence from a game being "story-focused" or building up detailed lore. Some such games are often bad at motivation because the "story" is so confusing to players, most would just admit "I'm just going wherever bosses are to advance the story." Some very dialogue-heavy games don't necessarily captivate players on this level, since motivation can often be very simple. It goes back to the age-old strategy of arcade Donkey Kong; having 10 seconds at the beginning of the game where DK captures a princess who calls for help. The early version of the game likely didn't even have that, and the designer felt motivation was missing. (That decision spawned its own issue, the Damsel in Distress trope, but that's another topic)

As more conceptual ideas, and especially more perpetual live-service games, become more popular, I see this element of gaming going missing at all ranks of game development - which is a shame, because I think when written creatively, there are ways to set up player motivation through relatively few voice lines and short cutscenes; something going beyond "You are an amnesiac! This voice is telling you where to go. Don't die to The Corporation!!"

To drive discussion: What are some games you bounced off of, that you think may have been because they were missing motivation? What games found you putting up with a mediocre gameplay experience because you were invested in the given story turnout?

The announcement of the delisting is unclear why these Bandai Namco game are being removed. They were reviewed well, and run on Steam Deck. As long as you add them before the last day, theoretically they should be accessible afterwards.

This game is unlikely to make it to Steam, since it breaks the copyright on a popular anime. As a result of that breach, it's freely available to all, which is great since it's a very well-assembled implementation of the Ace Attorney formula, whether or not you're familiar with the cutesy characters on offer.

There's lots of custom music, a pretty decent visual presentation, and only a few "guide dang it" moments across the mysteries. Once knowing it was unlikely to feature actual murder mysteries, I lost a bit of interest, but gained it back when some of the cases developed more twists than I expected.

This game had some fun ideas to me; both high-level, narratively (it's not quite clear if the heroes are "animals" but they're sentient enough, and imply a rich history) as well as low-level. You control a small team of characters, each with unique abilities that can be used in various scenarios. At the game's most challenging moments, it asks you to swap mid-air in order to perform jumps in a certain way.

There's some good character moments as well, showing vulnerability and growth from each of the heroes. The only bit I didn't like as much is the navigation. Much of the game revolves around use of blood vessels to navigate, since it all takes place inside of a living being. As a result, when one character says to "head East", they sometimes mean "Wander in an indeterminate direction to unblock a blood vessel around the middle of the map so you can get an ability that will let you unlock a path that warps you out East."