T w e n t y S i d e d
You know that moment in Mass Effect / Skyrim / Fallout / Deus Ex / The Witcher / Dragon Age / Assassins Creed / Grand Theft Auto where you’re doing a sidequest for that man / woman / kid / alien / robot and you suddenly realize, “This person is an asshole. I don’t want to do this quest for them. Actually, what I’d really like to do is bash their face in, but the game doesn’t offer me that choice!” That moment? Yeah. We’ve all been there.
May I suggest you try this game:
Link (YouTube) |
Will Fight For Food: Super Actual Sellout: Game of the Hour, is from Pyrodactyl games, the folks who are working on my videogame. Don’t think of this post as a conflict of interest, think of it as a brazen and unapologetic plug for people with whom I am in cahoots.
In case the trailer doesn’t make it completely clear, the story and dialog are by Rutskarn. In the game you play as Jared Casey Dent, a wrestler in a down-and-out bloodstained middle American town. He lost his own tournament in disgrace and vanished into the night. Now he's back, and he's going to set his life straight by sidequesting for random strangers.
The game launched all official-like yesterday, so now the team is 100% committed to working on Good Robot and getting paid for Will Fight For Food. But probably not in that order. People who are against videogame violence are encouraged to get WFF and then refuse to play it in protest. People who love videogame violence are encouraged to buy the game and then play through it using only dialog, as a sort of remedial corrective therapy for their violent tendencies. You psychos.
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Any chance of a non-Steam version being in the works? I note that even the Humble Bundle listing is Steam-only, which is fairly unusual for an indie game there.
DRM-free builds will be ready and sent to stores in a day or two.
Is GOG one of those stores? If you say yes you’ve gained at least one more customer.
GoG said it wasn’t the right fit for their audience, but they picked Unrest so I assume they didn’t like the jokes ;)
Humble Store will have DRM-free builds soon, though.
… you mean GOG actually does curation? (YOU HEAR THAT VALVE, IT’S POSSIBLE TO DO CURATION!!!)
I’m tad surprised though, considering The Witcher and some of the other games they have. They have both violence and humor in their catalog.
I guess they are afraid to eventually end up like Steam and get stuff like Something Stupid Simulator in their catalog eventually. Can’t really lame them for being a tad restrictive in what they accept. :)
Will buy from Humble Store.
Seconded. After the ‘paid mods’ explosion of bullshit, I will not be buying anything else on Steam.
Only exception being Shamus’ game when it comes out, unless it also goes out elsewhere, in which case I’ll buy it elsewhere.
You are good people.
I will say that trailer is pretty funny. Kudos. :)
Read the reviews on Steam and I’m noticing a pattern. The people who paid for the game liked it and loved the humor. The people who were given it for free did not.
I’m reminded of what the Monty Python crew had to say about their first screening. Apparently it went over like a lead balloon. Literally zero laughs. That first audience was all friends and friends of friends, family etc, none of whom paid to see it. When it was instead shown to people who wanted to be there, it went over well to say the least.
“Will fight for Food” seems to be a little like that- it will be appreciated by people who want that kind of game and disliked by people who are put off by the trailer.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that too. People seem to give your game more of a chance if they spent money on it – and even more of a chance if they spent more money on it.
I’ve heard many people say buyers stick to games they spent $60 on for a longer time, while they might abandon a game they spent $5 on as soon as they feel like it. Don’t know if there is proof behind it or if it’s just something everyone agrees on but doesn’t think about it.
It’s interesting.
I liked it before it was cool (on Steam) and I did pay for it.
Congrats on getting the game on Steam, btw!
Maybe some of it is that sunk cost fallacy of “I have to get 60 dollars of fun out of this”. But I think the flip side is I was probably willing to buy that 5 dollar game in the first place because it was five dollars. I don’t need every five dollar game to be good, just some of them.
You’re less likely to feel the need to push through a slow beginning to see if the game gets good later.
Plus, I don’t know about the rest of you but as a PC Gamer, I never buy those 60 dollar games at launch and at full price unless I already liked the previous game (which I probably bought in the 5 to 10 to 20 dollar range), Pillars of Eternity got 105 dollars out of me (Champion Edition for me and Hero Edition for someone else) because I paid 10 dollars for Fallout New Vegas and loved it. And since you’re here, I bought Unrest at full price (even waited for it to go off sale iirc) because Rutskarn has already provided me probably hundreds of hours of free entertainment. In both cases, I felt I already owed the creator.
I’ll definitely drop something I got in a bundle just because I’m annoyed with some little niggle like floaty physics or something, though I will persist for Steam Cards because I’m a hoarder so it’s fairly easy to get two or so hours out of me. If something hasn’t grabbed me in two hours, it’s probably not going to.
I think it’s less the sunk cost fallacy and more self-selection bias. You buy something you want. If you get something for free then it’s significantly less likely you want it or will like it.
I have certainly felt this subconscious effect on myself, now i am getting games for free(ish) on ps plus, i give them less of a chance if something does not immediately catch my interest.
See also the story of Alexander Graham Bell adding weighted bars to phone handsets at the outset because people viewed the very light ones that only had the coils and diaphragms as being cheap and not worth much.
And then for added amusement you can contrast that with how impressed we are with computers for being lighter rather than heavier. I doubt there’s a stronger appreciation for the engineering behind the devices, but it’s interesting to see the inversion.
Can’t say I experience it personally, but yeah, I’d have assumed it was the case for a lot of people anyway. Personally, I can drop a game like a rock at the slightest provocation, even in the foolish old days where I paid full Australian retail price for things.
That’s if I even start playing them – I have dozens of games bought for ‘normal’ prices (let’s say $50+) over the years that I’ve never even gotten around to installing, let alone play. A lot of them are in boxes in my parents’ garage.
I could never do that, as a teenager if i threw money down on a game i was going to be playing it for a good week… even if i hated every second.
I am less like that now, although ill still give a game more of a chance to impress me if i spent good money on it.
To be fair, it also might be that people that spent money on the game found the idea of the game more appealing in the first place– it’s the difference between showing a superhero movie to a room of comic book fans and a bunch of random people off the street.
As with any form of entertainment, not every game is for everyone.
This was pretty much what the Pythons explicitly said and it was my point.
Well I won’t say that if you send me free copies of Unrest and WFF and Good Robot I’ll write ultra glowing reviews on my blog that gets no traffic and take time out to mention how handsome and dreamy Arvind is… but I won’t not say it and instead use tone to lay it on pretty thick here.
Don’t actually do this I do want to buy your games and support y’all.A pretty astute observation.
If people waste time and money on something (even if they aren’t happy with it) they will pretend or convince themselves to like it.
They may even be willing to start flamewars on the net to defend their use of time and money on whatever it was.
Even if others point out it was a waste the individual may be in denial and refuse to believe they wasted any time or money.
When you have nothing invested in something then you have no pride nor biased view tied to it and can truly be objective (friends and family are not always objective though unless they are the truly honest kind).
I never understood why people get so defensive about being called out for having made a bad choice.
It’s like they want to say “I’m defending my right to be stupid!” (that sounds like a Rutskarn quip, hmm!)
Finally all the accurate Victorian era knowledge I learned from Fallen London will pay off!
And hopefully, I’ll finally find out what is bugging me about the name Jared. Can’t put my finger on it, but ever since reading the protagonists name, my brain wants to tell me something. Or maybe it’s just the madness.
I got the name from a teen novel about an ice hockey team I got while I was still in school (thanks Scholastic). I just liked the name I guess.
I know the name Jared from the webcomic Run Lil Jared. Maybe you’ve seen parts of that before?
If you haven’t, it’s pretty good.
Looking forward to playing this! Need to get my J. C. Dent on…
I see what you did there.
Heehee. I got a nerd reference.
I liked the trailer but I’m unsure if I will like the mechanics. I’ll wait a bit.
Although that narration by Rutskarn was hilarious.
I wonder what Jim Sterling will think of it (assuming it ends up on his radar, maybe a “squirty play”?).
Have spent about 2 hours playing it…
If you’re hoping for amazing mechanics to sell you on the game, you’ll probably wind up disappointed. The movement is a bit fiddly. The combat is only three moves (one of which – the shoulder charge – seems to be sufficient as a problem solver that I can use it exclusively). The “you can talk or you can fight, but not both!” switching is kind of fun at first, but it doesn’t actually matter what mode you’re in if you’re not actively doing one or the other (which is a lot of the time). The “combat dialogue” is IMO very confusing to use – I have control of three variables, and it’s not clear which one means the thing I’d like to do, or how the three interrelate.
That said, I like the game. The dialogue is clever. The puzzles aren’t exactly earthshattering – go here and talk to this guy/fight this guy/get this thing, but they’re well done and not annoying. The “You know what? Screw you – I’m punching you!” option for every single person in the game has yet to get old. The story is the right amount of clever and does the right amount of staying out of the way of things it doesn’t belong in. It’s a fun ride.
Edit: So, the moderation system appears to hate me. Every single comment I’ve posted in the last three days has wound up in the mod queue. Is this unique to me, or have others noticed the mod system being a lot more intrusive recently?
You should use this as a tag for the game,to (ab)use the hype:
“Like hatred with less blood and more story?”
Bought and looking forward to playing it.
I liked Guardians of the Galaxy. Good movie and I enjoyed it. However I saw it eighteen years ago when it starred Bruce Willis and was called Fifth Element.
Can I pay you extra for the Colector’s Editon?
There isn’t one, but hey – you can leave a steam review if you want to (those help). Maybe gift a copy to a friend if you really want us to get the extra money :)
For some reason I lost it on “… and a fire hydrant you are forbidden to strike.” Well done, Rutskarn. I am definitely a fan of the ‘skarn humor, and will pick this up for sure.
Will be getting Good Robot too, since I still consider myself your First Fan, Shamus! (besides Heather. Hi, Heather!).