Yeah! Downwell is a great example of that. I remember GMTK mentioned it in a video and I tried it out. Super intuitive. I'm not very good at it, but great design regardless.
@@filmotter I just remembered another great game with simple controls and that's Lego Star Wars. With the new one coming out and looking like it has more complex controls, I'm personally a little worried. It still looks great though.
HEEEEEY what a fantastic high quality video. I'm a fan so far! Great work. I've been really wanting to play Death's Door, I'm gonna try to grab it on the next GOG sale.
Oh yeah, I've seen it go on a few sales on Humble Bundle as well recently. Obviously, I highly recommend it! 😅 And thank you for the kind words, I really appreciate it!
Incredible video essay! This game was without a doubt my game of the year, and this analysis articulates that in such a great way. Keep up the great work!!
I saw your post on Reddit and thought "Why not give him a shot?" and I was immediately surprised by the quality of the video compared to your subscriber count. I'll give you some feedback as you asked for: I liked the quality of the audio, the clips used but especially how calm you are when talking while not being to slow and boring. A really good balance between energy and serenity somehow. I feel like that must be really hard to manage since most content-creators seem to be either overcharged and screaming into their mics or kinda sleepy. Something that irritated me though were the multiple sudden changes of the background music throughout the video. There were multiple gameplay-clips only lasting a few seconds each with their own music and they were really well chosen to illustrate your point, but I think it would have been better to settle down with one background music for a longer time and not switching between the different ones all the time. And maybe you could've said more about the game's gorgeous music too, one other thing this game does incredibly well. I just feel like it's too good not to at least mention it. Of course I'm just a random person (and new subscriber lol) leaving a comment, take all of that with a grain of salt ;) And for my GOTY: I'm torn between Death's Door and Eastward. Theoretically there's also Phoenotopia Awakening as I only played it this year, but it already came out last year so...
THANK YOU for your feedback. This was all really helpful, and I'll definitely be using that feedback for next month's video essay when I edit it. I really appreciate it. I have to agree the music of Death's Door was another thing I absolutely loved about it and should have taken some time to analyze that as well. And as far as your GOTY picks, those are really superb choices. I haven't gotten around to really diving into Eastward, but I have seen of it is very very impressive. The art style, writing, and combat are really fun. It reminds me of a lot of GBA games that I grew up playing!
I've added it to my wishlist, especially after seeing screen shake has a slider. One of my least favorite things of hollow knight is when the action pauses for a second when hit. It throws me off.
I know what you mean. At first when I played Death's Door I was getting nauseous from the screen shake because if how high it was turned up by default. But yeah, it's easily remedied.
I came to this video after finishing my own playthrough of Death's Door (and loving it as much as you did, it seems) I wanted to comment that I actually did find one bug: on the scaffolding climbing up to the camp of the free crows, it's possible to get perma-stuck in a ladder if you hookshot and move at the same time and get stuck inside it. There's also another very rare (happened 2-3 times in my playthrough) hookshot bug where if you're holding down a movement key at a specific point during the hookshot cast, you can terminate the hookshot animation and fall into the void. But again, pretty minor. I love this style of hack-n-slash game that's equally challenging yet rewarding for learning boss patterns. Really looking forward to seeing more games of this sort.
I also love the visual style of Death's Door and the controls are really good. The combat though doesn't have much depth and felt like repetitive for me. The soul upgrades are also too linear with zero juicyness (is that even a word? lol). But the most amazing thing for me was the endgame, something that I really missed in your essay. The new "quests" that open up after you finish the game makes you experience the game in a completely different way without breaking any of it's own rules and reusing everything that's already built really really well. On a side note, you deserve MUCH more subscribers, I really enjoy your content!
My main criticism of this game, other than a few quibbles about the upgrade system and occasionally feeling repetitive, is the lack of accessibility features. There are none, and I honestly find this unacceptable. It’s such a shame that such a beautiful game has such a dramatic strike against it. Even if the core team didn’t want to implement any, Devolver Digital definitely should have.
Ok I completely agree and thank you for bringing that up. I find it wild when games made today neglect to include that kind of thing. So many do. So when some don't, it's really perplexing.
@@filmotter accessibility in games is a hill I will absolutely die on. Finishing Death’s Door took way longer for me than it should have, because I had to only play on days where my hands were working particularly well, I couldn’t play very long, and I probably had to grind (and track down shrines) significantly more than the average player. All this means I wasn’t really getting the “intended” experience. I still loved the game, don’t get me wrong, but I would have had a much better time with button remapping and maybe some granular difficulty settings. But no. This is a “git gud” kind of game. These things should be standard at this point, and it’s pretty unusual to see a game not made in Japan be this inaccessible. Little Nightmares 2 also had this issue, but even worse because of their control scheme.
@@Tinyvalkyrie410 Completely agree! I loved my time with Little Nightmares 2. But the controls were absolutely awful in certain parts. Being able to remap them would have made my experience so much better. I can only imagine the frustration you and so many others had to endure.
@@filmotter this is a good example of the curb cut effect, where accessibility features made for the disabled actually end up being of value to everyone. Everyone uses curb cuts, not just people like me. If you want to learn more about game accessibility, I’d highly recommend Game Maker’s Toolkit’s series on the topic. He’s been a real champion of this movement, and makes fantastic, entertaining game related video essays.
GMTK is one of the channels that I always credit as inspirations for my channel (it probably shows 😅 ) and you're right. His series on Accessibility is a great one that I hope continues. I'm actually working on my script for the February video right now and there's a section in there dedicated to Accessibility as well. It's something that needs to be talked about a lot more by everyone who consumes games.
I highly recommend you play it! It's about 8 hours or so. But I did my best to not spoil story elements. I did include visuals of late-game moments to illustrate some points, just in case that's something you want to experience yourself. 😁
@@filmotter just finished the game lol. It was super fun! And the unique art style and character design really made it worth while. Only thing is I wish there was a reset button cause I hate when I get hit once in the beginning of a boss fight and have to just keep trying with less life than I should have.
okay but consider this: perhaps the optional content you've pointed out as "extra fluff" is not aimed at you/the subset of audience that you belong to. it's optional for a reason, usually because it's there for completionists or people who want to immerse themselves even more in the game. if you don't like the game enough or care about that particular activity, you don't have to do it, and it doesn't have to contribute to your overall "rating" of the game obviously it depends on implementation, i'm just scratching the surface here but a great video as always! i didn't know that you enjoyed this game that much actually
You're right. I think I generally like to admire games as a whole, especially when every element is connected is a cohesive way. When there's lot of features that a dev implements and that takes away from overall polish (Fallout 4, Skyrim, etc.) it does just feel like their resources could have been used better.
I've been wanting to give it a shot! I actually downloaded the demo yesterday. The price point has been making me put it off, since I spend so much on games already.
@@filmotter I got to the ceramic mansion or whatever and kept dying at the guy with the tongue and 2 respawning guys. At certain angles the boss would not take damage. This fight happens at least twice and it was annoying enough for me to delete the game after 3 hours or so put in. I was going to grind and level up but some enemies only give you 1 thingy and it’s gonna take 600 to get the next upgrade. You basically just run and around and mash the sword button 3 times and just felt like button mashing with horrible hit detection. Load time. Between deaths also makes this game extremely i enjoyable. I’ve finished hollow knight and Celeste so I’m not
I think that "Simple Controls" or "Minimal Controls" should be its own genre.
Downwell is one of the games that I recommend.
Yeah! Downwell is a great example of that. I remember GMTK mentioned it in a video and I tried it out. Super intuitive. I'm not very good at it, but great design regardless.
@@filmotter I just remembered another great game with simple controls and that's Lego Star Wars.
With the new one coming out and looking like it has more complex controls, I'm personally a little worried. It still looks great though.
"Miyazaki meets Miyazaki" is such a perfect description omg
I was so proud of myself when I came up with that one, not gonna lie!
This game is just a magical experience. Everything I love about video games.
Completely on the same page with you there.
What's YOUR game of the year 2021? Tell me in the comments!
the game looks awesome and you really made me wanna play it! I had not even been done knew that I was sleeping on this...
Yay!! I hope you do play it. It's so much fun! And not too long either. Probably like... 10 hours if you're not going for 100%
HEEEEEY what a fantastic high quality video. I'm a fan so far! Great work. I've been really wanting to play Death's Door, I'm gonna try to grab it on the next GOG sale.
Oh yeah, I've seen it go on a few sales on Humble Bundle as well recently. Obviously, I highly recommend it! 😅
And thank you for the kind words, I really appreciate it!
Incredible video essay! This game was without a doubt my game of the year, and this analysis articulates that in such a great way. Keep up the great work!!
Thank you so much! I do my best to make my analysis as on-point as possible so I appreciate that!
I saw your post on Reddit and thought "Why not give him a shot?" and I was immediately surprised by the quality of the video compared to your subscriber count. I'll give you some feedback as you asked for: I liked the quality of the audio, the clips used but especially how calm you are when talking while not being to slow and boring. A really good balance between energy and serenity somehow. I feel like that must be really hard to manage since most content-creators seem to be either overcharged and screaming into their mics or kinda sleepy.
Something that irritated me though were the multiple sudden changes of the background music throughout the video. There were multiple gameplay-clips only lasting a few seconds each with their own music and they were really well chosen to illustrate your point, but I think it would have been better to settle down with one background music for a longer time and not switching between the different ones all the time.
And maybe you could've said more about the game's gorgeous music too, one other thing this game does incredibly well. I just feel like it's too good not to at least mention it.
Of course I'm just a random person (and new subscriber lol) leaving a comment, take all of that with a grain of salt ;)
And for my GOTY: I'm torn between Death's Door and Eastward. Theoretically there's also Phoenotopia Awakening as I only played it this year, but it already came out last year so...
THANK YOU for your feedback. This was all really helpful, and I'll definitely be using that feedback for next month's video essay when I edit it. I really appreciate it.
I have to agree the music of Death's Door was another thing I absolutely loved about it and should have taken some time to analyze that as well.
And as far as your GOTY picks, those are really superb choices. I haven't gotten around to really diving into Eastward, but I have seen of it is very very impressive. The art style, writing, and combat are really fun. It reminds me of a lot of GBA games that I grew up playing!
I was looking for something else when this vid came up in my feed. Did not expect to watch the whole thing. Very well made.
Thank you! I'm really happy to here that you enjoyed it that much.
Ah yesss squid controlling corpse daddy was the best part
I agree. He's best boy for sure
My Switch was collecting dust, and this game reignited my desire to play and enjoy games. Absolutely wonderful.
I've added it to my wishlist, especially after seeing screen shake has a slider. One of my least favorite things of hollow knight is when the action pauses for a second when hit. It throws me off.
I know what you mean. At first when I played Death's Door I was getting nauseous from the screen shake because if how high it was turned up by default. But yeah, it's easily remedied.
Great video I've played some of this game and it's pretty good
Great review, underrated channel. You need more subs!
Aww thank you for saying that! I have a lot of fun making these videos.
I came to this video after finishing my own playthrough of Death's Door (and loving it as much as you did, it seems)
I wanted to comment that I actually did find one bug: on the scaffolding climbing up to the camp of the free crows, it's possible to get perma-stuck in a ladder if you hookshot and move at the same time and get stuck inside it. There's also another very rare (happened 2-3 times in my playthrough) hookshot bug where if you're holding down a movement key at a specific point during the hookshot cast, you can terminate the hookshot animation and fall into the void. But again, pretty minor.
I love this style of hack-n-slash game that's equally challenging yet rewarding for learning boss patterns. Really looking forward to seeing more games of this sort.
Metroid Dread.. Wow.. how fun it was to play it
0:18 Wow, that sure was neato.
LMAO that was a good one. 🤣
you are 25% correct.
I also love the visual style of Death's Door and the controls are really good. The combat though doesn't have much depth and felt like repetitive for me. The soul upgrades are also too linear with zero juicyness (is that even a word? lol). But the most amazing thing for me was the endgame, something that I really missed in your essay. The new "quests" that open up after you finish the game makes you experience the game in a completely different way without breaking any of it's own rules and reusing everything that's already built really really well. On a side note, you deserve MUCH more subscribers, I really enjoy your content!
My main criticism of this game, other than a few quibbles about the upgrade system and occasionally feeling repetitive, is the lack of accessibility features. There are none, and I honestly find this unacceptable. It’s such a shame that such a beautiful game has such a dramatic strike against it. Even if the core team didn’t want to implement any, Devolver Digital definitely should have.
Ok I completely agree and thank you for bringing that up. I find it wild when games made today neglect to include that kind of thing. So many do. So when some don't, it's really perplexing.
@@filmotter accessibility in games is a hill I will absolutely die on. Finishing Death’s Door took way longer for me than it should have, because I had to only play on days where my hands were working particularly well, I couldn’t play very long, and I probably had to grind (and track down shrines) significantly more than the average player. All this means I wasn’t really getting the “intended” experience. I still loved the game, don’t get me wrong, but I would have had a much better time with button remapping and maybe some granular difficulty settings. But no. This is a “git gud” kind of game. These things should be standard at this point, and it’s pretty unusual to see a game not made in Japan be this inaccessible. Little Nightmares 2 also had this issue, but even worse because of their control scheme.
@@Tinyvalkyrie410 Completely agree! I loved my time with Little Nightmares 2. But the controls were absolutely awful in certain parts. Being able to remap them would have made my experience so much better. I can only imagine the frustration you and so many others had to endure.
@@filmotter this is a good example of the curb cut effect, where accessibility features made for the disabled actually end up being of value to everyone. Everyone uses curb cuts, not just people like me. If you want to learn more about game accessibility, I’d highly recommend Game Maker’s Toolkit’s series on the topic. He’s been a real champion of this movement, and makes fantastic, entertaining game related video essays.
GMTK is one of the channels that I always credit as inspirations for my channel (it probably shows 😅 ) and you're right. His series on Accessibility is a great one that I hope continues. I'm actually working on my script for the February video right now and there's a section in there dedicated to Accessibility as well. It's something that needs to be talked about a lot more by everyone who consumes games.
I’m debating even finishing the video because now I really want to play this!
I highly recommend you play it! It's about 8 hours or so. But I did my best to not spoil story elements. I did include visuals of late-game moments to illustrate some points, just in case that's something you want to experience yourself. 😁
@@filmotter just finished the game lol. It was super fun! And the unique art style and character design really made it worth while. Only thing is I wish there was a reset button cause I hate when I get hit once in the beginning of a boss fight and have to just keep trying with less life than I should have.
no glitches, huh? this is a game that hasn't met ME yet 😆 (and yes, I need to play it!)
If you find a glitch, I would not be shocked. You're the master of sussing those out. Game devs should hire you to find bugs for them tbh.
❤️❤️❤️❤️
🥰
okay but consider this: perhaps the optional content you've pointed out as "extra fluff" is not aimed at you/the subset of audience that you belong to. it's optional for a reason, usually because it's there for completionists or people who want to immerse themselves even more in the game. if you don't like the game enough or care about that particular activity, you don't have to do it, and it doesn't have to contribute to your overall "rating" of the game
obviously it depends on implementation, i'm just scratching the surface here
but a great video as always! i didn't know that you enjoyed this game that much actually
You're right. I think I generally like to admire games as a whole, especially when every element is connected is a cohesive way. When there's lot of features that a dev implements and that takes away from overall polish (Fallout 4, Skyrim, etc.) it does just feel like their resources could have been used better.
@@filmotter TRU thank you for responding 💖
I wouldn't DREAM of not responding, my esteemed collegue! uwu
uh, funny but I felt pretty burnt out on death's door while playing the second half, kept wishing the game had been actually smaller and shorter
You should try Metroid Dread, is a very focused game also the smoothest play style in long time for me.
I've been wanting to give it a shot! I actually downloaded the demo yesterday. The price point has been making me put it off, since I spend so much on games already.
Deaths door is crap. All these reviewers are brutal. Game s
Is so shit
Ok why do you feel that way?
@@filmotter I got to the ceramic mansion or whatever and kept dying at the guy with the tongue and 2 respawning guys. At certain angles the boss would not take damage. This fight happens at least twice and it was annoying enough for me to delete the game after 3 hours or so put in. I was going to grind and level up but some enemies only give you 1 thingy and it’s gonna take 600 to get the next upgrade. You basically just run and around and mash the sword button 3 times and just felt like button mashing with horrible hit detection. Load time. Between deaths also makes this game extremely i enjoyable.
I’ve finished hollow knight and Celeste so I’m not
The worst ever at gaming. This game simply did it hold my interest and the controls are way over rated