Lith's Diary - July (Patreon)

Dear Diary,
Things are still pretty wacky around here! In the sense that I'm really busy and dealing with a lot of stressful stuff, but I'm pulling through. In a way, I think I'm past the worst of it, but there are still lots of things that can go wrong, so I can't really relax yet. Cross your fingers for me, okay? I'm already crossing all of mine.

But it's nice to take a minute to put all that aside and talk. Er, write. With my crossed fingers. I don't know what I'm talking about at this point.

And I do still find some time for video games! Sometimes. I've been getting my relaxation in here and there with a new game I've been looking forward to for a while, actually. I really enjoyed Dungeon Warfare back in the day, and they finally released the sequel recently. It's pretty much the same as the last one, just loaded up with more variety and more upgrades and stuff, to make it deeper and more customizable I guess. The basic idea is an old school, pixellated tower defense sort of game, lining a dungeon with traps to kill adventurers with spikes shooting out of the floor, darts shooting out of the wall, flamethrowers, and big panels to shove them into bottomless pits. Lots of campy traps like that, and everything sounds like either a retro video game or a movie from the 80s, with cheesy screams and chiptune heavy metal and lots of explosions. It really has its own style to it.

It really has an interesting balance to its design, with so many fine details worked out to keep everything running smoothly and fairly, while still presenting everything as fairly simple and accessible on the surface. It rewards thoughtful gameplay but doesn't punish you too much for not understanding all the little details of how things work, and I think there's a lot of space for you to play your own way and make it work. I tend to really like just finding a good spot in the dungeon to force all the adventurers to bunch up in a tight bundle, then either shove them all off a cliff together or set them all on fire and let them all burn together. Focus everything into a tightly packed killzone and use area of effect kills for maximum scalability.

...Come to think of it, you're probably playing a bad guy in this, huh? I mean, you can literally summon demons to fight the adventurers, so... yeah. It's funny, because there's basically no story at all, and there's such an absurdly huge amount of these guys swarming into your dungeon, and everything is so heavy metal and satisfying it just feels right. Maybe that's a good portrait of a cheesy 80s-style villain. You don't care why they're trying to get to your magic portal, you just have fun killing them all in gruesome ways and extracting gold from their corpses. It's got this really crisp atmosphere of "destructive badass." Like, "bring them all on, I'm ready!" And you can even summon extra waves, and the faster you summon waves, the tougher they'll get, and the more rewards you'll get. There's tons of mechanics built in for ramping up the challenge and exploiting the map and your traps to overcome it.

My only complaints about the sequel would probably be that it's a little too similar to the original, and that I think they added just a little too much fiddling stuff with upgrades in between the actual gameplay. It's good to have a gameplay loop, but they have an "equipment" system now where you can choose between different bonuses to slot in, and I've never really liked that "do I want +10% to this stat or +5% to these two other stats?" kind of setup with juggling items of similar power level and trying to decide what to get rid of. I think maybe in the late game you can start putting together different "sets" of items to handle different situations, and that seems simultaneously pretty cool and really borong to mess with in between all the destruction.

Still, it's made for a great distraction. Not too serious, just a feel-good meatgrinder with lots of leveling up and unlocking new traps and tackling new, weird challenges. And it's pretty easy to play for just half an hour or an hour and be satisfied, and ready to go deal with the real world again. That's one thing I'm learning to appreciate in games: that you can play them a certain amount and be satisfied. Or that you don't have to worry about it leaving you feeling worse than when you started. I've come to kinda avoid multiplayer games when I'm having a rough time just because it's so easy to have a bad run and be left frustrated and feeling crappy, whether because you just lost a lot or someone was rude or trolling, or even if you won, but just didn't have a good time with it. It seems to happen a little too often, even with games I consider really enjoyable.

I won't say a game like Dungeon Warfare 2 is likely to really blow me away or leave a massive, lasting impression like some games do, but it's consistently satisfying and mostly fun. Probably the only "down moment" in the game is when you're just starting a level and you have to spend a few minutes trying to figure out how best to tackle it and what traps to equip and what you can afford to get past the first few waves before you really get into the meat of killing heroes. And that's probably a good way to be, really. Have a bit of a slow start, but escalate into a lot of fun, ending with satisfaction, rewards, and sometimes some new toys to leave you looking forward to the next one. You could do a lot worse for a reliable game cycle, or... maybe for an arc for any kind of entertainment.

Hmm. I guess that's an aspect of design that maybe some people don't account for. It's a lot more exciting to talk about making a game (or anything) that has a lot of potential for awesome moments and really exciting content, or those moments that just click and stay with you forever. But it can be easy for those games to also have really weak parts, or sometimes just completely backfire and be no fun at all. Maybe a really important part of making something that gets overlooked a lot is just... consistency. Not making the good parts as awesome as possible, but removing the bad parts, the unfun stuff, minimizing the risk of having a bad time. Of course there's always going to be some risk and even some inevitable bad parts in making a great game, but you can do a lot to fight that, I think, and it's not nearly as interesting to work with, but it makes for a much better overall experience in the long run.

In a way, maybe that's something we can apply to our lives, really. I think a lot of people run on the mentality of "if I push really hard, I might be able to do this one really great thing," but if that means a lot of suffering and spending a lot of yourself and your resources to get to that point, is it really worth it? Maybe we need to pay more attention to all the little bad things in our lives and how we can make things better everyday, and how we can remove the stuff we don't like. Minimize the risks of everything going bad. It's not as exciting, but we'll have a better quality of life.

Okay, I am such a dork. I keep turning games into philosophy. But I guess that's what's nice about them: games are like little encapsulated what-ifs about life itself. Lots of games are just all about letting you live a life you might enjoy, but without the dangers and long-term consequences. They let us play with all sorts of crazy ideas about the world and ourselves and what could be. It's natural, I think, for that to lead into discovering things about ourselves, and about life. If you take the time to, anyway.

I guess that's one more thing I can thank you for, Diary. It's nice to take this time to stop and process things, and explaining something is a great way to come to understand it, and your own thoughts on it, better. Or... maybe that's kinda supposed to be the point of a diary? I'm not sure, but that sounds right. Well, thank you.

I hope you're keeping things nice in your own life, Diary. Not doing anything too dangerous, and taking some time to get rid of all the little things that bug you so you can be a little less grumpy or sad or frustrated every day. I like it when you just smile easily.

And thank you for being part of that for me. Just being there for me makes the void a lot less scary. I don't know if I could stand it alone, so just in case I haven't said it enough: thank you, so much, for being there with me. For helping guide me through this whole mess. I'd never have made it this far without you. Thank you for all your help, Diary, and please, take care of yourself.

I'll be thinking of you.
-Lith