Thread 719105249

ITT: ChatGPT impersonate gaming youtubers
You know what drives me crazy about modern game design? It’s this obsession with “content” over mechanics. Studios brag about having 100 hours of quests, 200 weapons, endless cosmetics… but if the core gameplay loop collapses after ten minutes, all that padding is worthless.

Take Elden Ring, for example. People praise its “freedom” and “mechanical depth.” But when you strip away the art direction and lore, the majority of fights come down to rolling at the right animation cue and mashing your attack button. That’s not depth, that’s a reaction test padded by cinematics.

Now contrast that with something like Ketsui or Dodonpachi DaiOuJou. Those games give you maybe two ship types, a couple of shot variations. That’s it. But the mechanical density is insane. Every bullet pattern, every scoring system is pushing you to make high-risk, high-reward decisions. Nothing is wasted. Every input you make directly interacts with the system at a deep level.

Indie games are guilty of this too. I see so many so-called “retro-inspired” titles that copy the aesthetics of old arcade games but completely ignore their mechanical rigor. You get floaty movement, meaningless upgrades, and a difficulty curve that flatlines after the tutorial. Developers think nostalgia pixels are a substitute for real gameplay. They’re not.

Here’s the bottom line: if your game can’t stand on mechanics alone — stripped of story, stripped of graphics, stripped of marketing buzzwords — then it’s not a strong design. Gameplay is the foundation. Everything else is just decoration. And until more developers start taking mechanics seriously, we’re going to keep getting these bloated, shallow experiences dressed up as “masterpieces.”

>>719105249 (OP)
HOLY SHIT
BUY AN AD YOU COLOSSAL FAGGOT

"talking about what chatgpt told me" is the new "talking about what happened in your dream". it's incredibly boring to everyone except the person describing it

So… Summertime Saga. Yeah. I don’t even know how the hell I got here. One second I’m playing Blood for the 400th time, and the next, I’m staring at a cartoon high school where everybody wants to sleep with you. This isn’t a video game, this is somebody’s… “visual novel project” — which is just code for: “I learned how to draw boobs in Photoshop and now I’m going to ruin your life.”

And the thing is, it’s huge. Like, unreasonably huge. There are quests, stats, dialogue trees — it’s like Skyrim, if instead of slaying dragons you’re trying to get a date with your teacher. You think, “Oh, it’s just porn, how complicated can it be?” And then 12 hours later you’re grinding charisma points by lifting weights and cleaning pools so you can maybe, maybe, get second base with somebody who looks like they fell out of a low-budget hentai.

And people actually defend this. Like, “Bro, it’s deep, it’s got branching storylines, it’s basically Persona.” Shut up. It’s porn with math homework. It’s porn that makes you do sidequests. I don’t need to fetch milk for Mrs. Johnson just to see a JPEG that looks like it was ripped from Newgrounds in 2006.

But here’s the worst part: I kept playing. I kept playing because Summertime Saga has that same evil energy as Daggerfall. You’re overwhelmed, you’re confused, you hate yourself — and then you realize, “Oh no. I’m invested.” This stupid game tricked me into caring about stats and story progression, and now I’m in too deep.

So yeah. Summertime Saga. It’s not just a porn game, it’s a lifestyle. A bad one. One that ruins your productivity and makes you question your life choices. But hey — at least it’s free. Unlike therapy.

So today we’re talking about Black Souls. And no, not Dark Souls, not Demon’s Souls. This is Black Souls — an RPG Maker horror game that looks like it crawled out of a cursed DeviantArt folder around 2007.

At first glance, it seems harmless. Cute pixel art, fairytale theme, you think, “Oh, this is going to be one of those quirky little indie RPGs where everyone talks about trauma for three hours.” And then — surprise! The game immediately takes a sledgehammer to your expectations, your sanity, and possibly your hard drive.

The thing about Black Souls is that it wants to hurt you. It lures you in with familiar tropes, then slowly mutates them into something grotesque.

And because it’s in RPG Maker, the whole thing has this uncanny vibe. The sprites are cute, but the events are horrifying. It’s the kind of cognitive dissonance that makes your brain go, “This shouldn’t exist, and yet here I am, 20 hours in, questioning every life choice I’ve ever made.”

Now, the lore — oh god, the lore. This is the part where you realize the game is basically a black hole for your free time. You can spend days combing through the fan wiki and still come out with nothing but more questions. Who’s real? Who’s imaginary? Is the protagonist insane? Am I insane for still playing this? The answer is probably “yes” to all of the above.

In a way, Black Souls reminds me of why I started Game Dungeon in the first place: these weird, fringe projects that feel like they came from an alternate dimension. It’s a game that isn’t content with just scaring you; it wants to drag you down into its own madness. And honestly? Mission accomplished.

So yeah, Black Souls. Play it if you want, but don’t blame me when you wake up at 3 AM, staring at your ceiling fan, asking yourself why a fairy tale RPG Maker game is the thing that finally broke you. Because if it doesn’t, give it time. It will.

>>719105249 (OP)
keep sucking it