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STEAM 2013 Announcements & Updates VIII - Don't ask when the sales are starting.

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S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Seanspeed said:
Tried out Papers, Please for the first time.

Is this another stupidly hard rogue-like where you have to play it like 50x before you can even somewhat consider yourself a little bit successful? I spent an hour playing, just watching my whole family suffer and starve because I couldn't make more than $10 a day. It was interesting, but not fun. You are repeatedly given way too much to do and way too little time.

I'm thinking that I just need to stop trying these rogue-like games.
Click to expand...

It's... not a rogue-like at all? Like, there's literally no element about the game that relates to the game Rogue or the genre that's popped up around it.

Why are you not making money? Are you making lots of mistakes? How are you given too much to do? You only need to do one thing at a time. Don't rush, just take things one person at a time. Keep the rules visible, match the documents and fields one by one, don't forget to check height and weight. Not that hard.
 
Z

Zeliard

Member
Seanspeed said:
Tried out Papers, Please for the first time.

Is this another stupidly hard rogue-like where you have to play it like 50x before you can even somewhat consider yourself a little bit successful? I spent an hour playing, just watching my whole family suffer and starve because I couldn't make more than $10 a day. It was interesting, but not fun. You are repeatedly given way too much to do and way too little time.

I'm thinking that I just need to stop trying these rogue-like games.
Click to expand...

Feed your family and turn on the heat only every other day in Papers, Please.

Harsh, but effective.
 
T

Turfster

Member
KenOD said:
Have you tried making ModBot jealous of ModBot 3?
Click to expand...

I'll try that next time I sign up for a raffle or something.

Seanspeed said:
Tried out Papers, Please for the first time.

Is this another stupidly hard rogue-like where you have to play it like 50x before you can even somewhat consider yourself a little bit successful?
I'm thinking that I just need to stop trying these rogue-like games.
Click to expand...

It's... not a rogue-like. It's a bureaucracy simulator.
Read the rules, apply them. Check at the start of each day to see which new rules are added or removed to stay current.
 
G

gabrielt16

Member
Hope this works since first doing it with the gift url.

ModBot said:
Instructions for gabrielt16:

Instructions for participants:
I am giving away a Steam key. To enter this giveaway, send a PM to ModBot with any subject line. In the body, copy and paste the entire line below containing the key.

Rules for this Giveaway:
- If you are a lurker you are not eligible for this giveaway. You need five or more posts in either the current Steam thread or the previous one to be eligible
- This giveaway is a LIGHTNING raffle. The winners will be selected by random draw 15 minutes after the draw was created. Any games not claimed after that point will be given away first come first serve.
- This giveaway has a manual blocklist. The giver has identified members who abuse giveaways and restricted them from participating.
- If the key is already taken you will not receive a reply. Replies may take a minute or two:


Killing Floor -- MB-B8C31C069E518669 - Taken by Crimsonclaw111. 2 entrants total.


t1387328936z1.png
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T

toddhunter

Member
Seanspeed said:
Is this another stupidly hard rogue-like where you have to play it like 50x before you can even somewhat consider yourself a little bit successful? I spent an hour playing, just watching my whole family suffer and starve because I couldn't make more than $10 a day. It was interesting, but not fun. You are repeatedly given way too much to do and way too little time.
Click to expand...

As others have said, it isn't rogue-like as such, but I think you are also missing the point. Or perhaps to be fairer, you are just not enjoying the point.

The whole thing about the family suffering and not having enough time makes the experience for me. You want to earn money each day because you will want to feed or heal your family. However people keep coming up to the window and wasting your time over and over. This makes it a very immersive experience as you start to process people as fast as possible, get annoyed at the time wasters and perhaps miss out on the bigger picture as you get into a groove.

I can perhaps agree that it is more interesting than fun, but I would paint that as a strong positive.
 
C

Chronoja

Member
Seanspeed said:
Tried out Papers, Please for the first time.

Is this another stupidly hard rogue-like where you have to play it like 50x before you can even somewhat consider yourself a little bit successful? I spent an hour playing, just watching my whole family suffer and starve because I couldn't make more than $10 a day. It was interesting, but not fun. You are repeatedly given way too much to do and way too little time.

I'm thinking that I just need to stop trying these rogue-like games.
Click to expand...

One thing that kept my family going is that they only seem to suffer when exposed to detrimental effect in consecutive days, so 2 ~ 3 days without food and they'd be in a bad way. I just took turns alternating what they would and wouldn't get so you'd save a little bit extra each day without risking too much. If money gets really tight that's when you drop everything, but in terms of the job I was averaging around 10 (I think, might have been 12 - 13) or so people per day and doing just fine.

edit: sorta beaten.
 
E

EmergentFocus

Member
Seanspeed said:
Tried out Papers, Please for the first time.

Is this another stupidly hard rogue-like where you have to play it like 50x before you can even somewhat consider yourself a little bit successful? I spent an hour playing, just watching my whole family suffer and starve because I couldn't make more than $10 a day. It was interesting, but not fun. You are repeatedly given way too much to do and way too little time.

I'm thinking that I just need to stop trying these rogue-like games.
Click to expand...

But that's really the point, and also the reason why there is only a limited amount of space on your desk to lay out all the rules and papers. It's not because the game is a rogue-like (it isn't); it's because it is making a statement about the nature of bureaucracy. Of course you get frustrated if you have to take on board all these additional rules day after day and somehow fit them into your schedule. But life is like that. More importantly, in terms of this game and its setting, it begins silently posing questions. Do your rigidly adhere to your job and do everything by the book, even though it costs you time and money, or do you take shortcuts, admitting or denying people without listening to their reasons - even if that might lead to them being imprisoned or worse?

Now, of course I can see that might make for a frustrating and unsatisfactory game experience for some, including you, perhaps, but speaking for myself I've found it both relaxing(! - in a zen-like way) and thought-provoking.
 
D

Dr Dogg

Member
Seanspeed said:
Tried out Papers, Please for the first time.

Is this another stupidly hard rogue-like where you have to play it like 50x before you can even somewhat consider yourself a little bit successful? I spent an hour playing, just watching my whole family suffer and starve because I couldn't make more than $10 a day. It was interesting, but not fun. You are repeatedly given way too much to do and way too little time.

I'm thinking that I just need to stop trying these rogue-like games.
Click to expand...

Just you wait until you get to make the choice of pay for medicine for your sick son or heating to keep your mum alive. Then the next day have more bureaucracy involved with more paperwork to go through in the same small cramped desk but you need to process at least 10 people to cover the bills but you rush, get a citation and come up short. Then your mum dies from the cold and the rest of your family all fall Ill because you can afford medicine for all of them.

Never has such a simple game weighed so heavy on my mood. There is an easier setting that is a bit more lenient and doesn't throw you to the lions with a mountain of paperwork. Managing your time is crucial.
 
oipic

oipic

Member
jshackles said:
Valve just released a new "Game Notifications" API that lets developers notify players through Steam when it's their turn to play. Designed for "hotseat" multiplayer games like Chess or Civ 5, etc.
Click to expand...

I hope the Stone Blade guys make use of this with Ascension Online when it hits Steam (soon?) - its asynchronous multi-player would be perfectly suited to it... although the notifications could get spammy, I guess, but here's hoping some options will be available to specifically manage these notifications.
 
Z

Zeliard

Member
S

Seanspeed

Banned
There were no choices for me to ever make, cuz I hardly made any money. $10 was the most I ever made. It was basically, "Hey, everybody is gonna die anyways, so fuck it". Its in my nature to try and do a good job. I feel that even if I started taking a bunch of shortcuts, it would just lead to me being written up more and even then, I still wouldn't have enough money to keep everyone alive. I would feel bad about doing badly at what I'm supposed to be doing and I would still feel bad because I wasn't doing well for my family.

I don't know. I'm not sure where the satisfaction in the game is supposed to come from. Sucks, because I kind of enjoyed the act of inspecting people's papers and whatnot. But then the game is just like "You suck and your son is dead" after a day goes by and its like, "Oh, well shit, fuck you game".

Don't know. I might give it another go at some point, but I'm pretty sure its just not for me. There are far more rewarding games to play.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Seanspeed said:
There were no choices for me to ever make, cuz I hardly made any money. $10 was the most I ever made. It was basically, "Hey, everybody is gonna die anyways, so fuck it". Its in my nature to try and do a good job. I feel that even if I started taking a bunch of shortcuts, it would just lead to me being written up more and even then, I still wouldn't have enough money to keep everyone alive. I would feel bad about doing badly at what I'm supposed to be doing and I would still feel bad because I wasn't doing well for my family.

I don't know. I'm not sure where the satisfaction in the game is supposed to come from. Sucks, because I kind of enjoyed the act of inspecting people's papers and whatnot. But then the game is just like "You suck and your son is dead" after a day goes by and its like, "Oh, well shit, fuck you game".

Don't know. I might give it another go at some point, but I'm pretty sure its just not for me. There are far more rewarding games to play.
Click to expand...

I think feeling like shit because your life is awful is kind of the point doe

like don't play it expecting rewarding gameplay, just play it as a sort of window into that shitty world

maybe that's not for you but that's what the game is, kind of weird for you to run into that issue since I wouldn't expect anyone to want a nice reward feedback loop or something like that out of papers please :p
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Seanspeed said:
There were no choices for me to ever make, cuz I hardly made any money. $10 was the most I ever made. It was basically, "Hey, everybody is gonna die anyways, so fuck it". Its in my nature to try and do a good job. I feel that even if I started taking a bunch of shortcuts, it would just lead to me being written up more and even then, I still wouldn't have enough money to keep everyone alive. I would feel bad about doing badly at what I'm supposed to be doing and I would still feel bad because I wasn't doing well for my family.
Click to expand...

I'm not really sure how you failed like this, especially near the beginning of the game. No shortcuts are necessary. And by the middle of the game there are some plot events that improve your earning potential a good deal, especially if you stay in the base-level apartment. What kind of errors were you making?
 
K

KenOD

a kinder, gentler sort of Scrooge
Really Big Sky is a game where at points I have absolutely no idea what it is I'm seeing or being asked to do, but I can't help but feel if I was just a little bit better I would have been killed and so I should keep playing even if the randomly generated nature means I won't encounter the same situation again any time soon.

Not that I would want to face a situation of two planets to drill through with the space between full of dinosaur skull firing massive streams of deadly energy to my ship.

I do highly recommend it to any shoot-em-up fan who doesn't mind the enemy patterns to memorise.

Last Baron said:
The idea of Papers, Please puts a little knot in my stomach but maybe that's why I should play it.
Click to expand...

I couldn't actually play because of that. It's just not in my nature to make such decisions "for fun" like video games are for me, even if it's all imaginary.

It does not stop me from enjoying this sketch of Papers, Please.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/loadingreadyrun/8009-Papers-Please
 
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Member
Well it finally happened GAF.
2 games I already had and I didn't even know it. What have I become.

ModBot said:
Instructions for participants:
I am giving away a Steam key. To enter this giveaway, send a PM to ModBot with any subject line. In the body, copy and paste the entire line below containing the key.

Rules for this Giveaway:
- If the key is already taken you will not receive a reply. Replies may take a minute or two:


little inferno -- MB-19FE6EDCDD2E61D3 - Taken by Saige
Depths of Peril (Actual Steam Key First Come First Serve)2TIXI-NMBGE-GYZXX
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S

Seanspeed

Banned
zkylon said:
I think feeling like shit because your life is awful is kind of the point doe

like don't play it expecting rewarding gameplay, just play it as a sort of window into that shitty world

maybe that's not for you but that's what the game is, kind of weird for you to run into that issue since I wouldn't expect anyone to want a nice reward feedback loop or something like that out of papers please :p
Click to expand...
I didn't pay money so I could spend my time not having fun. I suppose a warning would have been nice:

"This game isn't about having fun, but about punishing you for doing a good job."

Stumpokapow said:
I'm not really sure how you failed like this, especially near the beginning of the game. No shortcuts are necessary. And by the middle of the game there are some plot events that improve your earning potential a good deal, especially if you stay in the base-level apartment. What kind of errors were you making?
Click to expand...
Well at first, I'd get written up here and there because I missed something. Or I couldn't quite figure out how to do what I wanted, so it took a bunch of time.

Then it just became a case of me trying to be thorough to avoid errors and not being able to process that many people. The more stuff they asked me to check, the more I had to spend my time checking shit, obviously. And so I never actually made more money.

I had no idea there were different apartments or whatever. I literally just had my family get more cold, hungry, sick or dead each and every day with nothing I could do about it.
 
M

MMBosstones86

Member
Seanspeed said:
There were no choices for me to ever make, cuz I hardly made any money. $10 was the most I ever made. It was basically, "Hey, everybody is gonna die anyways, so fuck it". Its in my nature to try and do a good job. I feel that even if I started taking a bunch of shortcuts, it would just lead to me being written up more and even then, I still wouldn't have enough money to keep everyone alive. I would feel bad about doing badly at what I'm supposed to be doing and I would still feel bad because I wasn't doing well for my family.

I don't know. I'm not sure where the satisfaction in the game is supposed to come from. Sucks, because I kind of enjoyed the act of inspecting people's papers and whatnot. But then the game is just like "You suck and your son is dead" after a day goes by and its like, "Oh, well shit, fuck you game".

Don't know. I might give it another go at some point, but I'm pretty sure its just not for me. There are far more rewarding games to play.
Click to expand...

....wut?

take your time. Or turn on easy mode to get some extra money until you get it down. It's stressful, yes...that's the point. It's a depressing premise to begin with.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Seanspeed said:
I didn't pay money so I could spend my time not having fun. I suppose a warning would have been nice:

"This game isn't about having fun, but about punishing you for doing a good job."
Click to expand...

I'm sorry but did you honestly think an indie game about being a bureaucrat in a soviet country was gonna be a funtimes experience?
 
G

Grief.exe

Member
Seanspeed said:
There were no choices for me to ever make, cuz I hardly made any money. $10 was the most I ever made. It was basically, "Hey, everybody is gonna die anyways, so fuck it". Its in my nature to try and do a good job. I feel that even if I started taking a bunch of shortcuts, it would just lead to me being written up more and even then, I still wouldn't have enough money to keep everyone alive. I would feel bad about doing badly at what I'm supposed to be doing and I would still feel bad because I wasn't doing well for my family.

I don't know. I'm not sure where the satisfaction in the game is supposed to come from. Sucks, because I kind of enjoyed the act of inspecting people's papers and whatnot. But then the game is just like "You suck and your son is dead" after a day goes by and its like, "Oh, well shit, fuck you game".

Don't know. I might give it another go at some point, but I'm pretty sure its just not for me. There are far more rewarding games to play.
Click to expand...

Damn, if you are having this much trouble at the beginning of the game, then the onslaught of mechanics they throw at you near the end is going to be overwhelming.
 
T

Tellaerin

Member
Thank you, anon, whoever you are. Now I finally can check out this "Binding of Isaac" thing all the cool kids have been talking about. <3
 
E

Echoplx

Member
Seanspeed said:
I didn't pay money so I could spend my time not having fun. I suppose a warning would have been nice:

"This game isn't about having fun, but about punishing you for doing a good job."
Click to expand...

I don't understand why you think all games have to be 'fun', do you only watch comedy films?

The game has a
pretty obvious
point and you seem to be completely missing it.
 
C

Chronoja

Member
Jawmuncher said:
If they're cold they can throw on a jacket!
Anyway was watching some gameplay and the game looks immensely fun.
I might bite.
Click to expand...

"immensely fun" wouldn't be the adjectives I'd use for it. "Compellingly unique" are the words I'd use. I can't think of another game that had me arranging my desk in a pseudo daily routine and glossing over details like it was some kind of all important exam paper. Inspiring feelings very few games have ever even tried to evoked, like pure suspicion.

I can't count how many times I gazed at someones papers, found literally no error in them but held onto them for a few extra seconds in real time that translate to be hours in the game, you know the moment you stamp that paper and had your routine failed you, you've missed the smallest detail which might just have cost your family their meal for the evening.

Even when you pull back a bit and start treating the game purely mechanically like alternating food and heat daily to save money, when you're doing your daily routine, feeling like boss cause you've got some kind of detective vision going on spotting errors left and right, you'll drop your guard at some point, and an error will creep past. That ticket rises from the booth, you've been conned, someone got past you, or worse you've denied someone access to their home and family. You've been bested by or failed on nothing more than words and numbers, but the ramifications of the errors are profound. That apprehension as you watch the person walking away hoping that little ticket doesn't pop up is just fantastic.
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
Seanspeed said:
I expected a video game to be fun or satisfying in some way, yes....lol
Click to expand...

sounds to me you've been out of the loop for a long time or something

nowadays, just like movies or books or whatever, not all games are just about fun. many of them are about tragic stories, many of them talk about political or gender or social issues, many of them are abstract and confusing, many of them ponder on the nature of videogames, etc.

I'd say you should take papers please as a lesson, you either like it or don't, but next time research a bit before buying a game, specially if it's indie.
 
S

Seanspeed

Banned
3chopl0x said:
I don't understand why you think all games have to be 'fun'
Click to expand...
I really cant believe I'm having this argument.

Sorry, but video games are not deep. They have very little to say. I don't know what point there was that I'm missing that was worth me spending time and money to learn that I didn't already know.

"Its not supposed to be fun!"

Well I wish I had known that, for real. Like I said, they should put that as a warning to buyers, because that goes against the goal of every other video game ever made. :p
 
Z

zkylon

zkylewd
jeez

edit: you know, instead of making an uneducated assumption based on your failure to understand the most blatant of indie games you should try maybe humbling up and being open to shit not being what you thought in the first place
 
kOsmikcoffee

kOsmikcoffee

Member
My roommate said that if I bought DayZ and played with him that I wouldn't have to pay bills for the month. But I don't know if I can shell out $30 comfortably; I still need to get gas and groceries.

I told him not to buy it yet, but the fool didn't listen!
 
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