Indietail’s been a format on here for quite some time now and I love showcasing games and recommending stuff to people that don’t know those games yet… but there are some great games out there are too popular to be recommended and I don’t really know how to feel about them.
Just recently I’ve gotten into RimWorld and it’s such a great game with so many possibilities and a steep and unforgiving learning curve but overall it’s just great and reward once you master it. The art style is alright but does its job. If anything, it adds value to the game using the derpiness of all the characters and models and it kind of is cute, I guess, in its own way. The music isn’t really noticeable and I really enjoy the base-building aspect of it as well as the strategy-aspects as well as the “fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck everything is burning and my pyromaniac nudist here called Jim is burning everyone and everything down while all the other colonists are bedridden with the flue fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck what do I do what do I do?” moments.
But everyone knows RimWorld. It’s a great game. Everybody knows that and hence I don’t think it’s worth writing about it as I’m not sure if I’ve played it enough as if I could highlight anything that nobody else has highlighted before. I can’t add value to a recommendation on something that was already recommended so much that it’d be a dead meme at this point.
Another example would be Stardew Valley. It’s great and lovely and you, again, can do just so much in that game. You can live the capitalist life… you’ve got mods and can break the game. You can be an adventurer or a forager. You can live like Linus and just live off of berries and not farm or sell anything (aka the communist-solution). You can marry a whole bunch of people, no matter what gender you are. And it keeps getting updates for all kinds of platforms. I just recently got it on my phone as well as I love to play a day or two during some long bus rides. But well… it’s nothing new. Stardew Valley has been out for so long now that hardly anyone doesn’t know about it already. I doubt that any of my readers have not set foot into the world of Stardew Valley yet and if so, raise your hand and I’ll recommend the heck out of this game! — by pointing to all the positive reviews on steam as Stardew Valley is very close to what someone idealistic would call a “perfect game”.
If you like farming sims and RPGs, SDV is pretty much your wet dream but covered in Dr Pepper flavoured peanut butter. If you don’t like those genres, you still might like SDV as it’s that much of a good game.
And then, of course, there’s Minecraft for instance but I won’t get started on that. Or on League of Legends, the famous game made by the small indie company called Riot Games…
I guess there’re some games out there that I really want to recommend but can’t as I don’t really have anything new to say about it. Instead, I’ll eventually make a post about one of my RimWorld colonies… and maybe I’ll make a post about which wife or husband in SDV is the best (subjectively speaking)… or I’ll just shut up about it.
Similarily I had an issue last year with a game that I’d really recommend if it wasn’t made my assholes/trans-exclusionary radical feminists. If you don’t mind supporting two assholes with your money, I’ll recommend a certain game to ya but I just can’t do that on here without feeling bad about it, just like I can’t recommend a game on my blog that already got covered everywhere as I can’t add any value to it.
And hence, uh,… this is a post about games I’d recommend but that will never get covered in reviews as everyone already knows about them. Thank you. Have a nice day.
Cheers!
This post is part of a challenge called BLAPRIL. The goal is to post as much as possible during the 30 days of April. There are different themes during some of the weeks and a lot of mentors, newbies and participants participating. Feel free to check this hub-post out and check out the other participants!
Indiecator 
Totally get it. There are just some games that writing a whole post dedicated to them is not necessarily worth it because its already so well-known. A tweet maybe worth it but not a whole post.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exactly!
LikeLike
I suppose with something of an extrovert point of view and the desire to inform your audience, I can see your point. However, as someone who has a more introverted focus, my blog is as much a memory book as anything, I do not mind posting about my feelings and reactions and experiences with a game like RimWorld, even if I am probably not breaking any new ground.
And even with the coverage that a game like RimWorld has gotten, it is open enough with mods and options that I expect you could find relatively untrodden ground to cover if you narrowed your focus. For example, I’d like to read more about how people approach the mid-game. There tends to be a time when your basic existence and defense struggles are under control and you are advancing tech, but you’re still a long ways from that escape ship. You can play that very conservatively, but it can get dull if you do, while the game seems to delight in punishing you for not going that route.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yeah, I guess I may feature a different kind of posts on it but not necessarily a review-style post. I like the story-telling of it, for instance, and was planning on writing that up as a post soon. The strategy stuff may also be interesting as I’m struggling with that point right now. :)
LikeLike
On the spectrum of responses from your initial post and Michelle’s through to Wilhelm’s — I personally lean more toward Wil’s direction, but blog-context matters too.
I think if you were looking at a blog almost solely (or totally) dedicated to reviews and the like — then yeah; you could be right. And I know you started out pretty heavily in that space. Although RimWorld recently had an expansion which could open the door to you talking about the game again and seeing some traffic from it as a result.
You could offer the perspective of someone coming to the game fresh and considering whether in that instance, the expansion was worth it or not.
But! For a blog more broadly game orientated, then RimWorld is a game that very much lends itself to story-based writing. SDV too, really.
Hearing about your experiences with games *is* interesting enough, there doesn’t necessarily have to be any new ground broken. I think your MHW series and catching up to the finish line of the base story / Xeno’Jiiva would show that! :)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ooh, I see. Well, I’ll definitely do something like that in the near future then with my next colony as I’m not currently playing RimWorld – mostly since my favourite character has died… :(
I’ll consider writing up something and seeing how people like that ^-^ Thanks for your input as always! I really appreciated hearing the different thoughts here from you, SD and Michelle :)
LikeLiked by 1 person