GameSlice

@Elev8edBrdGames We love Melodice, my wife is always browsing it looking for music while I set up. It really adds to the enjoyment of the game. I find I especially appreciate cozy music while playing a cozy game like Cafe Baras with some nice lounge music.

Am I the only one who finds ambience music to match the board game I’m about to play?

@Marky_X_ It's wild a game of that size wouldn't have a plan in place for the First Time User Experience. If I had a nickel for every time I'd hear the acronym FTUE thrown around every studio I've worked at. Need to create a large install funnel to account for player churn.

"Onboarding" is the proper term but yes, this is a major problem if you plan becoming widespread. There is nothing wrong with catering to a niche, but that's all you will cater to without proper design and planning in place.

@Marky_X_ No licensed vehicles, image shows what's clearly an Audi R8 but don't call it that, haha. Whole game is full of cars like that. It's not a bad little racing game, reminds me of old arcade racers like Top Gear 2000. Crazy they can just take away paid games like this.

Insane. This has been on Epic Games for years and there is hardly any maintenance on it. Little to no reason to delist it. There is more to this story, but journalists won't prod it out of them. Almost feel like it should be illegal to do this.

@ISODAK_NA Yeah, I really want to like Space Base, I just don't. I feel it usually out stays it's welcome also and just tends to drag. I'd much rather play Bad Company or My Farm Shop. Though It's still in my collection for some reason haha.

@GameSliceShop Yes, exactly! The charge spaces with different player counts confused us in multiple plays of it. And even once we figured out how they worked, most weren't that interesting.

Ever since I discovered the "roll & activate" genre, I thought they'd be perfect for me & family. However, Machi Koro was a big disappointment. Space Base was only ok for me (group liked it). Card Kingdoms was better, but still not quite there. Bad Company hits the sweet spot!

I've been really wanting to play some RTS games lately. I used to love playing Warcraft 2/3 and Starcraft back in the day. Are there any great modern RTS that have a similar feel??

I clicked on and liked several indie Steam games that I saw and now my timeline is full of awesome looking indie games. Thank you, algorithm!

@Mr_Husky1 My daughter says Pepperonis as "Brock-a-knees". I have no idea where she gets it from, but now we say it so casually as if that's what it always was.

Admit it: Your kid mispronounced a word three years ago and now the whole family says it that way. What's the word in your house? (We still say 'pasketti' and I’m not stopping anytime soon.)

If it isn't fun to lose, the game design is bad

@Marky_X_ Dang... That's crazy. I wish they had better customer service, maybe they could invest some money in that? I had an issue with one of my games from them, and they essentially took 3-4 days to write back "kick rocks".

Asmodee's hunger will not be satisfied Source: BoardGameWire

@Marky_X_ Similar game genres use some of the same mechanics??

Might as well say Crimson Desert is Red Dead Redemption because both games have horses Terrible analysis and commentary like this is why gaming isn't moving forward

@Marky_X_ The game industry not being awful challenge impossible

@Marky_X_ "I brought a few games, I dunno, in case you guys want to try one"

Let's be honest... This is you

@Marky_X_ Yeah but if I *don't* buy this, I'm basically losing $465 dollars. I bet you didn't even consider that.

"Video games are so expensive! 80 bucks? TOO MUCH" Board games:

@Marky_X_ Studios just completely paralyzed, unable and unwilling to take even the slightest risk. Games cost way too much to make now, can't afford a flop, and even with a hit every one gets laid off anyway.

NGL it's hilarious to see all these announcements of all these older titles getting a remaster, remake, reprint, or whatever. Is the new generation of game designers and developers that bad?

Some student made prototypes from today's playtest. My favorite part of the semester, when I can do less lecturing and going through slides and we can start playing and critiquing their work.

@Marky_X_ Dang, Sabrina catching strays in a bad game's review. 👀

That Wizardry post went viral and got me all distracted. Totally forgot that I am supposed to finish this review. A proper banger for a rather mediocre game

@Marky_X_ @thomasmahler Playtesting is extremely important, and devs should listen to and write down everything testers tell them. They should also meet with the team and discuss those ideas later without the testers. They're usually great at finding things they don't like, but bad at articulating why

@thomasmahler One thing I learned through playtesting for my game is your playtesters are experts at being players, not designers, and game devs need to stop handing them the wheel.

There’s a pattern we should talk about that has quietly killed a lot of great games over the years. It usually pans out like so: 1) Developers listen to players and think they do them a favor by giving them exactly what they asked for. 2) Players love it - at first. 3) After that, for some 'mysterious' reason, players lose interest and the game slowly dies and nobody is quite sure why that happened. The truth is that players will always push for fewer restrictions. They'll always argue for endless farming, easy power creep, never getting locked out of any content, making things more convenient, removing any sort of gates, etc. etc. And usually, even if you give in to things that will hurt a game in the long run, you get applause, at first. But you also just removed some of the very things that made the game special. Magic in games often comes from limitations. Scarcity, anticipation, effort, friction... all of these things have meaning. And if you remove those out of the equation, you logically remove meaning. Christmas is magical exactly because it happens once a year. If you had Christmas every day, you wouldn’t make it better - you’d destroy what made it special. As a parent, I know how excited my boys are when December hits and they start dreaming about how amazing Christmas will be. They start talking about which awesome presents they'll receive and every day they come up with new things. The parents challenge is then to intently listen and to understand what your kid really wishes for - and after thoughtful deliberation, you turn THAT into their present. You don't give them everything they wanted, you give them what they deep down truly wished for. And that's what makes it magical for them, because you actually spent the time and were thoughtful enough to truly understand who they are. And the same is true for games. When everything is always available, then: - Nothing feels special - Nothing is worth planning for - Nothing creates stories anymore You’ve optimized the fun out of the system. We’ve seen this over and over: You remove keys, costs, or gates and players gleefully cheer you on. But suddenly: - The gameplay loop breaks - The economy collapses - The sense of progression disappears Another example: social friction. The magic of early World of Warcraft was that it was basically the first social network. You had to actively talk to people, organize raids, build relationships and in the process a lot of people created life-long friends. Then players kept asking for features like LFG and developers caved in with the argument that removing friction is good. But suddenly, your friends didn't need you anymore. You weren't seen as an important part of their group anymore, you became an annoying obstacle that could be side-tracked. And losing your friends is a horrible feeling, as it should be. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Players are very good at optimizing for short-term satisfaction. But they are incredibly bad at protecting long-term fun. THAT is the developer’s job. Sometimes you have to stand your ground and say no. Not to frustrate players, but to protect their experience. Because if you give players everything they want… You might be taking away the reason they loved your game in the first place.

@Marky_X_ Around 20k games were published on Steam in 2025 alone. I think there's room for both. Devs just chase things like this to get Streamer's attention. Sadly Streamers can drive a lot of sales. I guess I'm weird that I think this game actually looks fun, haha. Mostly the art.

This weird obsession with game devs catering to streamers instead of gamers is starting to become new "live service" trend Why can't anyone make normal games anymore?

@Marky_X_ Dang man, that must be catastrophically bad. The whole dice tower crew seems to give games a 7 just for existing. It's rare to see a game lower than like a 5. I've even seen Vassel go off on how bad a game was and how it was completely broken and then gave it a 4.

Bruh