WIN/LOSE/BOTH (Essay Jam entry)
Added 2026-01-20 23:04:41 +0000 UTC
Comments
The siege update improved this quite a lot, I think, though I'm biased. You can't just wall yourself up anymore; either you surround your entire fortress in a 3D magma moat (at which point you've basically won and have a whole story anyway), or, once invaders get wise to your killbox and just start digging around it, you just have to rely on your legendary dwarves getting where they need to be and not being distracted. We've got an interesting contingent of players whose genuine playstyle is to hyperoptimize everything, who we keep sort of running roughshod over with design decisions built mostly around optimizing the "weird stories that might end your fort" angle. I'm not in a position to say "just learn to accept inefficiencies and failure in your dwarves themselves" anymore, because people will take that to mean something horrible like "we don't need to fix the UI" or some other thing I didn't say, but I do kind of want to just say it to people sometimes.
Putnam
2026-01-22 02:20:20 +0000 UTCGlad you enjoyed it, not that it makes it stick out any less but it wasn't a TV series, but a series of Crusader King 2 ads called the Seven Deadly Sins. At the moment I'm a little burnt out and focusing on a freelance gig but it might be worth grabbing some better footage and sharpening up a couple bits I had to leave to meet the 48 hour deadline.
TehSnakerer
2026-01-21 20:03:04 +0000 UTCGreat essay, I loved Dead Rising's freedom to just let you fail or ignore missions and carry on, making it an incredibly free game, inspiring me to write about it myself The partial success thing was also very important, and why I struggled with Baldur's Gate 3, I really loved the game and its story but as well as some clunky balancing moments I also felt failure wasn't usually interesting, with few exceptions I knew of bungling a skill check is just a flat out lost opportunity, and this isn't a tabletop game even if it has mechanics based on one, you can't make up a new adventure if you lose out on this one, so it had more of a frustration to it than I would've liked But even though I have frustrations with lots of ways to fail, challenge is a must, I tend to like harder difficulties, and I recently had a disappointment with a game that lacks it in Dispatch, the Telltale successor game, in that game your performance in the dispatching segments has literally no impact on the story except for some select finale outcomes, couple that with the fact that dialogues are automatically picked for you if the timer runs out and QTE fails don't lead to death, and there's few real stakes, you can literally sit back and let the game play itself if you want, I did actually really like the characters and the presentation, but knowing that my actions meant basically nothing was really deflating It's a great topic, I think the only really weak element of the edit is the TV show clips used on the strategy game segment, which although thematically fitting to what you're talking about do feel out of place, if you think it's rough in some areas, why not think about giving it a polish and getting it out after? Because it's an interesting conversation and I don't think the narration has any flaws really, if you feel the edit needs ironing out, I'd say don't let that stop you from releasing it after a bit, but that's just my 2 cents
Elwood
2026-01-21 01:01:21 +0000 UTCLoved the essay. The dorf fortress part and the grand startegy part are more connected than you'd think. If you get too good or play too safe in dorf fortress than the game gets boring. Which can happen late game in dorf fortress just from nothing bad has happening in the game. The word I always use for that is tension. If a game doesn't have tension (from risk of failure) than I'll get bored.
Rocky Disco
2026-01-20 23:46:49 +0000 UTC
