despite my Feelings about RTSes, I’ve actually been loving Starcraft 2’s Wings of Liberty campaign. I love that it doesn’t punish you for taking your time (so far, anyway. this had better not change lol) and the story seems designed entirely around wish fulfillment as well: you play as someone who is building a resistance movement against a fascist government - saving people in the process - and so far there are never any moments that feel to me like they were designed to cause pain or to make the player feel disempowered/weak/etc.

there isn’t too much talking or emotional stuff either - the game mostly gives me just enough context and atmosphere and then it’s straight into the game, which I love

also I discovered that in the options menu you can slow the game speed down. there isn’t a proper real-time-with-pause feature, but this has been good enough for me. I use the slow motion option liberally whenever I feel overwhelmed (I barely play RTSes and I have trouble even controlling the camera lol. imagine those “I taught my 80-year-old grandma to play Skyrim” videos but it’s me trying to do anything in Starcraft)

as much as Blizzard sucks (and I wish them a slow death), the sad thing is that they had (pre-Overwatch) a really unique approach to game design that I like a lot. I like a lot of their games, and I think their approach to storytelling, atmosphere, worldbuilding, etc. is perfect for me

there’s a certain style of video game storytelling that’s deliberately light and unobtrusive and shamelessly wish-fulfill-y (Wings of Liberty is a great example) and I feel like you don’t really see it in modern games. even games that seem like they’ll have this lighter style of storytelling, really don’t. they tend to get emotional towards the end - taking me by surprise

so I wonder if I should be looking at older games to find new things to play - and try to ignore modern games

@kasdeya I think lighthearted wish-fullfillment fantasy games are still being made! It's probably just harder to find them because of how review culture is right now. I would love to follow a review column that judges games not on some sort of "emotional depth standard" but more on "does this story feel like it accomplishes what it set out to do?"

@nycki oohh I would love that! I’m a big fan of the Second Wind YouTube channel (a video game channel that posts about game design, news, reviews, etc.) but they are so fixated on emotional depth and storytelling complexity for whatever reason. and I feel like the overwhelming majority of popular singleplayer games are fixated on that as well. and I wonder if it’s some kind of reinforcement cycle where reviewers care about these things disproportionately so games focus on them

but yeah idk I find them extremely hard to find for some reason. I actually don’t know if I’ve found any game like that that was made in the past 8 years or so. the most recent one that I can think of (and this is very very debatable) is Obduction, which came out in 2016

@kasdeya I mean the game that immediately comes to mind for me is Mice Tea, but that's less of a game and more of a choose-your-own-adventure erotic webcomic

point stands tho, it has a few emotional beats but it doesn't force itself any darker than necessary, it's very wish-fulfill-y and I want to see more of that

@kasdeya I'm also tangentially reminded of jan Misali's recurring youtube segment "Conlang Critic" and how after the first few episodes he stopped asking "how good is this conlang" and started asking "how effective is this conlang at the thing it's trying to accomplish"

and I think that should be the new review standard for everything

@nycki ooh I’ve heard of Mice Tea! TF isn’t my thing but I love that that exists. and yeah I would really love to see more like that too

@kasdeya I'm so excited to see how MINDWAVE walks this tightrope, from the demo it looks like it's going for something about as dark as Ace Attorney, which is to say, I'm expecting some dark story beats but an overall lighthearted narrative.

@kasdeya you might also like Cassette Beasts! It's a monster collecting game about a lost island where everyone is a castaway. The story is a little deeper than a pokemon game but it's deep in ways that I would still categorize as "wish fulfillment", there are a half-dozen different characters with their own arcs where they seek closure for whatever thing left them stranded on this island.

@kasdeya I haven't played it myself but Super Lesbian Animal RPG seems like it might also be "emotionally mature but not dark for the sake of darkness"? Can someone confirm this for me?

@nycki woah this looks so weird! I love that they found a super unique aesthetic and just went for it lol. I’m ngl I’m a bit apprehensive about it after watching a bit of the trailer but I hope it ends up being something that I’d like! I bet a ton of people will like it either way though

@kasdeya I'm familiar with this aesthetic actually! I would say they're going for early 2000s / y2kcore.

The art itself is the sort I associate with up and coming artists on Deviantart and Tumblr back during Invader Zim's original run. The references to flip phones and the super nintendo in Abbie's stage seem to confirm this. And of course there's the fact that the neural interface port is not styled after a usb port, it's a *headphone jack.*

The other place where you see this aesthetic show up a lot is in "small web" circles where people make websites in hand-written HTML, but with a few notable exceptions (shoutouts to Softwareangel!) I don't know many people who run a y2k style website *and* draw y2k style artwork.