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I'm saying Puyo Puyo is a variant/successor of Tetris that isn't overshadowed by Tetris. (And I already owned up to it being completely secondary to their actual point.)

This is completely secondary to the point but I think most arcade puzzle game nerds will agree that, at the very least, Puyo Puyo succeeds in being its own equally compelling and foundational thing alongside Tetris. 

I have tremendous love and respect for 80s classics, games that made up whole new beautiful languages to tell stories. I'm re-replaying Dragon Quest II right now, this time on NES finally, and I'm having a ball. 

It's precisely because of that respect that I have no patience for folks obsessed with reinventing the wheel, who aren't content with understanding their genre and why it already works. I'd rather play a game from someone working competently within an established game vocabulary to tell Their Own Story than someone who thinks they're upending the paradigm without actually having anything to say. 

Basically I started off reading this feeling very mad and defensive but it sounds like we pretty much feel the same way lol. I will add that, to me, "working competently within an established vocabulary" can sometimes mean upending established assumptions about that vocabulary. Michael Brough's roguelikes are all pulling from the classic language of Rogue and Nethack, but because he strips out huge swathes of the vocabulary at a time to drill deep in on specific elements, they felt completely fresh and unique on release. All the "formal" work in games happening that I most respect right now is built on that kind of design-by-subtraction -- I find that a lot more inspiring than "we took an arcade shmup and added deckbuilder roguelite mechanics" or whatever. 

The real FPS was the 19 we made along the way

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thank you for taking time out of your games manifesto to also dunk on shitty writer advice, it was very cathartic

Fantastic and good and correct

Masterful... extremely pleasing and satisfying play arc, amazing all-timer bosses, lovely writing and collage aesthetics. Decades of esoteric rom hack fixations sieved into a wonderful little masocore platformer. I think I like this even more than Reggae Operation, which I didn't think was possible given how much I love that game's gonzo finale. (708 deaths and about three hours on first playthrough!)

<3

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Cackled, thank you for the good manifesto

This was extremely cathartic, thank you

Cleared on Aggressive Mode! Loved this one, awesome work. Tight snappy pacing and play, just a satisfying lil action story to puzzle out. 

Really lovely little puzzler, awesome work! The onboarding was nice and gentle and I had a great time logic-ing my way through the trickier levels.

thank you pissing child

This was cute! I love the first bird's Cool Jacket

<3

Got all the fruits and the blessing ☺️ I've figured out the tech and I can see the path to a full evil ending, I want to reach it sometime...

Hi aria <3 

;_;

aching and tender, thanks for this dawg

cackling, thank you for this

Peak, awesome job. Love to see a satisfying play arc squeezed out of this compact a vocabulary.

exquisite hyper-concentrated narfsthetics, thank you for this

CORNELIUS BEAM!!!!

This is adorable, good work xD

Magnificent art

gitro this was absolutely goddam magical. excellent work.

love to destroy elves

Really delightful! Found a handful of secrets, then tried my luck against the moon for 20-30 minutes. When I couldn't seem to win, I went back to the caves, found another secret, then quickly beat the moon. Lovely game shape, and the commentary's a good read too.

Awww I really enjoyed Kaeru. Enjoyed narrowing down the possibilities until I could figure out the way forward.

Oh my god what a great joke, excellent work dawg

What a gorgeous dream. Played through twice and I can see myself revisiting it again and again to explore more of the space. Thanks so so much for participating.

Good work, lots of little moment-to-moment joys. My favorite bits were when you played with rpgmaker language in ways I hadn't seen in the other entries. The climax was a good pay-off to all the up-front "normal rpg" stuff you were parodying

Goddam that is some gorgeous art though. Really really great mood and style. Got endings B and D! 

Oh I adored this one dawg. What a great little dungeon puzzle, felt so good to tie it all together.

Still adorable and perfect

Crushed it in eighty minutes, no guide except for the general tips at the top 😎 This one hit my game design brain real real good, it's just a very complete statement with a minimum of moving parts. Awesome work Aria.

absolutely magnificent, knocked it out of the park