Support the channel on Patreon! A place where everyone is treated as a unique and special individual that I am individually thankful for! Especially you [INSERT PATRON NAME HERE]: www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames On the other hand, twitter is full of enough bots and bluechecks always saying the same thing that it may as well be full of clones: twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
@@ITGuru42 This. And I never heard of Doom-clone at all, we used the term Doom-like to talk about FPS which is not the same meaning at all. Nowadays when we talk about clones, we don't talk about inspiration and evolution of a genre but copying the exact formula often without thinking about what makes the original a hit, hence why adjectives like soulless, bland or uninspired are associated with the term clone. This video failed to properly distinguish what is considered a clone and what isn't to the common folks.
did you just say "20th century trivia from before i was born?" but like doom was like 10 years ago am i rite? its like not 30 years ago... **wilts in timelaps**
I remember a game dev I follow on twitter talking about what a shame it was that Shadow of Mordor patented its rivals mechanic. They described games as an "ongoing conversation." The patent essentially stops the idea in its tracks because no one else can bounce the idea around and add to it.
The patent was always pretty easy to get around. WB only have a leg to stand on in court if your shameless rip-off LOOKS like Shadow of Mordor (i.e. it has a screen that displays the rivals in a hierarchy). Don't include that screen, but keep all the other mechanics that made it fun to begin with and you could do what you want. Even if they tried to sue you, all you'd have to say is "I gave my enemies randomly generated traits... other games did that long before yours did, bro"
@@CrashSable Not really. WB has more money for lawyers than you do. Even if they're legally in the wrong, you won't be able to afford your lawyer long enough for that to matter.
@@TwilightFlower9Depends how solid your case is. If the law is in your favor enough, then NO amount of lawyer money can get them out of it, as you're just guaranteed to win if it gets to court.
@@greyrifterrellik5837 Their point is that companies with lots of money can afford to delay proceedings almost indefinitely and absorb the costs associated with doing so, and cause the other party to run out of money before the trial even begins. Large companies are notorious for using every trick they can to prolong proceedings to make the legal process cost too much for smaller companies to handle, usually ending up in a settlement at worst.
@@DreadKyller While it'd be stupid in most situations, I would assume there eventually reaches a point where it's so utterly one-sided of a case that you don't even *need* to hire a lawyer in order to win. Granted anything short of 100% guaranteed victory means you should definitely get a lawyer, but my point was that no amount of money can make a company *completely* invincible.
@@ArchitectofGames Before I say anything. I respect your channel and will delete this comment if you have any problem with it just say the word. That being said. I'd like to direct everyone to sovietwomble's 3 part video essay on Day Z. As he goes into a brilliant analogy regarding how genere's and sub genere's come about. Primarily the survival game genere.
@@ArchitectofGames Hey now, seeing the thought process is just as helpful as a simple maxim. Your format really helps me - an ignorant pleb who is eternally curious of the "how" and "why" of video game design - understand the ideas involved.
@@ArchitectofGames Before I say anything. I respect your channel and will delete this comment if you have any problem with it just say the word. That being said. I'd like to direct everyone to the Game Maker's Toolkit youtube channel for no real reason
Me personally, I want more Sekiro-clones. You get so many Souls-likes, it would be nice to see the other stuff being imitated. The Wukong game coming in the future, and Kannagi Usagi is the closest the fandom has gotten to more Sekiro. However, it should be mentioned that some games gain novelty and stay fresh by not having many games of its types. The worst case scenario is you get enough retreads of a formula that you get burnt out of it, hence the hard fatigue many people feel with Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty. Even when they're good, it can be hard to care. If you wanna look at films, the MCU destroyed itself by becoming extremely formulaic across all its different properties.
Solidly concentrated sentence. It's why i try to spread the word on all manner of games as much that i like. From Clash: Artifacts of Chaos and Soulstice, to The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile + Charlie Murder and Cookie Cutter. I don't want to be annoying when i do so, but just spreading the word on games helps a lot in 1: helping the creators to hopefully do more cool stuff in the future and B: help *receiving* suggestions for cool things to play.
This is why patents for games is such a destructive idea. Patenting mechanics or features in terms kills games from "cloning" you without getting into legal ramifications, which in terms stifles overall creativity and innovation as people aren't allowed to innovate on existing ideas.
They shouldn’t even be possible. I’m TTRPGs it’s actually not legal to patent rules, because that’s how US law works: you can’t trademark or copyright rules, just how something is written word for word. So you could say “this gun kills this enemy” and I could copy you by saying “this baseball bat puts this goon to sleep” if that makes sense to you.
Yooka Laylee is interesting because the games serve as examples of both bad clones and good clones. As shown in the video, the first Yooka Laylee is basically just a copy of Banjo Kazooie that does nothing to distinguish itself or iterate on the formula. However, Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair, the sequel, goes in a completely different direction. This game is instead a clone of the Donkey Kong Country games, but this time around, it seems like they learned their lesson and actually gave it its own identity. They kept the great platforming and gorgeous environments of the DKC games, but it does a lot to iterate and even improve on them. For example, the overworld map is probably one of the best overworlds I've ever seen in a platformer, and the way you can manipulate it to discover alternate levels is quite smart. Not to mention the fact that you're able to play the final level from the start of the game, it's just very difficult without completing the other ones. The game has proven to me that the devs are capable of innovation, and not just pure nostalgia bait, so I'm looking forward to seeing what else they make in the future.
Watching this video and reading this comment while coming to the end of yooka laylee impossible lair. Completely agree about the innovation, I knew I was walking into something to scratch the dk country-like but the overworld was so enjoyable and I was pleasantly surprised.
I need to still play Impossible Lair. But the first entry really set me up for bad expectations. Its almost painful to even hear that its "too close" from the video. No its really not, I'm convinced they didn't fully get the point of even marketing back to one of their golden games. They tie your momentum down with a bar in a 3D platformer FFS, as if they came from an alternative universe where we all loved a M64 where Mario had to catch his breath after two long consecutive long jumps, or Spyro lost his charge every 5 seconds. Then used a handful of level remixes to compare itself with games that ran off a basis of a large variety, and aesthetic charm. I'm not expecting a small team to do 30 levels and 8 different collectible formats, but come on, 4 that give me "a twist" and some bogged down heavy with constrictive minigames? Okay, but at least the experience was really tight and refined... right? Right!? Eh, we know how that ended. On the other end, I adored Hat In Time, because even as a smaller entity that relied on remixed level, the way it drove variety and genuinely wanted you to move and play with its levels, was a blast. I still loved things in Yooka-laylee, and it had some of its heart and charm design on the right notes, but dang the final execution just felt so wrong in so many ways. Impossible Lair I've heard nothing but good things about, and probably owe it a chance though.
I also think that Yooka Laylee also copied the worst elements of the genre (overcollecting, extremely large worlds). What was nice about Banjo that wasn't replicated across the sequel and DK 64 is that the level size was just right and didnt feel repetitive. The frustration I felt with Y-L is that the first world alone felt way too big. Why is everything so spread out? Why is there so much to do? I want to move on to the next biome; please let me leave. B-K worlds usually didn't overstay their welcome and the challenges were situated next to one another so that you could dive immediately into another challenge. This is something that I felt A Hat In Time understood.
that too. look at nintendo. sometimes we just want a sequel to metroid/zelda/mario, and instead nintendo always has to do something new and changes the formula to never be the same. So some indie dev who has the same idea and sees that there are a lot of people with similar opinions and so a market for it creates something inspired by it and fills the need for a sequel we've been waiting for 10+ years.
It's kinda like big studios and small studios have a symbiotic relationship. The little guys experiment with new mechanics and genres, and the big guys experiment with new technologies and engines.
Remnant gets dunked on so much but I thoroughly enjoyed it and really want to point out some of the key things they did very right. 1. Weapon mods system. Basically what Elden Ring's ashes of war system is. All non-unique guns can take mods that change its skill attack. This was implemented in the first game itself, and I always wished something similar would come to a mainstram souls game and it did! 2. Seamless co-op. The co-op in Remnant is extremely well refined. Playing this game with a friend or friends is AMAZING. I could breeze through areas without anything memorable happening solo but with friends it was an extremely fun and memorable experience. Especially the mechanic where you can use one of your dragon hearts (this game's estus flask) to revive a teammate. I was hoping this would be default in Elden Ring, and was disappointed when I found out it wasnt. Cheers to the developer of the seamless co-op mod though, they single handedly brought this experience to Elden Ring. 3. Static armour weight capacity. In most souls games, it takes investment into a certain stat to let you dodge swiftly with heavy equipment. But as a downside, one can dump points into that stat and roll around in the heaviest armour in game, basically giving them a huge advantage in trading hits. In Remnant, you can't really increase your equip load without either sacrificing a very precious accessory slot or investing points in a perk although even with both of them, you can only do at best fat rolls in the heaviest armours in the game (as opposed to not being able to roll at all). Although the armour significantly increases your defense, it does take away a lot in return when gave weight (lol) to the decision of wearing it. 4. Alternative ways of playing .There's a ring that disables the generic flask based healing and instead gives you a short health regen when you perfectly dodge an attack (when you i-frame through it). Inspite of being a shooter, the melee mechanics were extremely satisfying and every weapon felt like it had a place. The most basic pistol or sword could still carry you in the late-game no problem. This game was honestly the most fun I've had with friends outside of Divinity Original Sin and Elden Ring seamless co-op, and everything I've mentioned was all there in the first game. I havent played the second game so far but me and my buddies have high hopes for it when we do find the time.
Fully agree with you. I can see why people might bounce off of Remnant, but it's an excellent co-op game, and it's a semi looter-shooter that respects the player and doesn't yank them around with subscriptions, microtransactions, and other junk. It's just a good game that wants you to have a good time. I played it through with my girlfriend, and we enjoyed it immensely.
This, Lies of P is VERY straightforward about it's story, the only thing a NG+ feature allows is that P (or rather the player) now understands what the other puppets are saying during the fights.
Which is also why it is way more linear compared to a Fromsoft, with no place where you can shortcut one or multiple zones. There is also way more gameplay options than compared to other FS souls games (others than Elden Ring). Also people saying that since it got a parrying mecanic, that make it a sekiro clone in gameplay despite having said parry mechanic working completely differently.
@@Digger-Nick What the hell mate? Are you nutts, they are incrediable story tellers. They just like to make the story something you find and figure out for yourself where as lies of P took the traditional approach and focused on the story. (Fromsoft's Storytelling breeds a massive community of people that love to solve their stories so its also great for engagement.)
@@brianpearson8552 Fromsoft has 0 storytelling capability my guy. Sekiro is their ONLY game that actually tells a story and it's just decent. Look at elden ring, attaching random and out of order sticky notes across the entire world and having a paragraph of text etched into every single item in the game is not "storytelling" lmao. Outer Wilds would like a word... The game doesn't even have a journal to track quest information or lore you discovered. Fromsoft is too lazy and why even bother when their braindead drone fans will always go out of their way to defend them no matter what anyways right?
Here's an interesting alternative perspective on Jedi Survivor in particular: When I played Sekiro, I distinctly remember texting my friends "somebody has to make a star wars game with this combat system". The focus on parrying and 1-hit kills makes the Sekiro formula PERFECT for modeling lightsaber battles, and I must not have been the only one who thought so because Jedi Fallen Order went into production almost immediately after Sekiro's release and delivered expertly on the concept, with some reasonable adjustments in the name of playability to accomodate Star Wars's large audience. So while it's true that it's a pretty faithful clone and does not do much to distinguish itself from its inspiration, instead of viewing that as "game copying popular game" there's another perfectly valid interpretation of "popular game found a formula that would have been used for this setting all along had it been discovered sooner". Like, I would be SHOCKED if any future Star Wars jedi-focused game comes out that don't rely almost exclusively on the Sekiro formula, at least for combat. If the Sekiro formula had been discovered sooner, I am dead certain that Jedi Knight, Force Unleashed, Knights of the Old Republic, and maybe even Lego Star Wars would have been using it. I can absolutely see a future where in a decade or so we stop calling this style of games "sekiro clones" and instead call them "lightsaber games".
Indeed, that could be a interesting evolution, having more " intense duels fights" than Fallen Order had (I didn't play Survivor). Would be interesting to see if they could try more varied force habilities too, something like the powers in Control. But, if they keep the Fallen Order formula, making the platforming less finicky would help a lot.
12:08 I feel like saying that starbound failed due to being a terraria clone stretched across multiple planets is a bit of a stretch. During the beta, starbound was actually an amazing game, and that magic can still be recreated today with mods or backporting, and as someone who played terraria first, once i got those mods, i actually ended up putting more time into starbound than terraria. Where starbound truly failed was with its developers, Chucklefish studios. Chucklefish was an absolutely AWFUL company, hiring minors for "exposure" instead of money, "forgetting" to pay their full time employees, and just being an all around terrible place, which lead to the creative death of starbound in the 1.0 update where they shoehorned in a shitty ass story and thought it would make their game better and get them more money.
Agreed, starbound could’ve been a GREAT clone! But chucklefish ruined it in so so so many ways. Thanks to modding, I honestly do prefer starbound over terraria even today… if only because starbound is so easy to mod, and as a result has more building materials. I just like to make giant superstructures in it, and the plethora of race mods make that very possible! I liked exploring the different planets, but because of chucklefish’s horrible practices that were anti-employee and also anti-*player*, the game crashed and burned. It sucks :(
@zooker7938 exactly. They didn't iterate and build enough upon what makes terraria amazing to really stand out - even in early access - so it just fell to the wayside alongside everything else.
Inspiration is like the term I hear in TTRPGs of the of "Yes, and..." where you take what's already presented and instead of dismissing it, add to it. That addition, and understanding of what's going on, separates something that's "inspired by" from something that's simply "a copy of". A bad clone is often one that takes the surface level impression of why something is successful, and simply mimics it without understanding why people actually like it, often in ways that actively harm the core concept, the whole "just file off the serial number and nobody will notice it's just the same thing but repackaged" thing. Inspiration and iteration is a matter of "I like this, I want more of it, what can I do with it?", and too many people fail to properly take into consideration that last part.
Good way of thinking. Positive and productive instead of looking down upon something and talking about looking down upon it, or not doing anything with it.
And this superficial cloning happens in all media - especially competitive ones, like anime. For example, all those "magical girl show, but dark and violent" copies that had no idea what made Madoka Magica so impactful, and kept copying and amplifying random parts of it. Unfortunately, some of these also get popular enough, because a part of the audience - similarly - is too young and doesn't have enough experience to understand what made them great either, but want "more", so will still be satisfied with a worse imitation without the actual "and...".
However there is also a time when DMing that the words need to be "No, but..." and simply "No" otherwise you campaign ends up being a complete fucking mess OR you end up in situations where something goes awry because of one asshole at the table or because you, as the DM, have hard set boundaries within your world. "Ok so this is a Dwarf only campaign so I need everyone to make a Dwarf" "Oh but I want to be an Elf!" "No, that's not the point of this campaign, you can be a Dwarf who is an abassador to the Elves but you can't play an Elf" "oh but I really wanted to be an Elf" "Well I'm sorry that doesn't fit and everybody else is onboard with this, if you want you can step out for this campaign and come back when we finish it or you can make a Dwarf".
@@luketfer You're kinda missing the point here. I wasn't speaking for the whole of TTRPGs because this wasn't a video about TTRPGs. I was using that piece of GM advice for comparison because the sentiment of "take what's been given and roll with it" is a healthier mindset in regards to video game clones because "it's like this familiar thing, so it's unoriginal and therefore bad" is a bad mental blanket statement to have.
I know it from improv, and have heard some people with improv talk about it in the context of TTRPGs, but it's interesting to see how far it's spread to be mentioned like this.
Interestingly enough, in my part of Germany, we never called them Doom clones. I'm pretty certain we simply called them Ego-Shooters (it's a German thing), even in 94. So it's wild for me that the English speaking sphere called them "doom clones".
I knew the premise of this going in because I *remember* when Doom first came out, and the way everyone was constantly calling FPSes Doom Clones. There were people still using that term as late as 2002 or 2003 in some gaming articles, albeit mostly ones that were out of touch with the way gaming was rapidly changing at the time. Almost any art form will take inspiration from previous works, and if something works, it's going to be repeated in some form. Whole genres of video games exist because of codifiers for that genre, and imitate it because they made it work and work well. A game imitating other games does not by default make it bad or good; it's what they do with it and how they alter things that can make a huge difference. Sometimes even a few seemingly minor changes can completely and utterly change how much enjoyment one can get out of a game's systems. Take for example the leveling system of Final Fantasy 2 versus the original Final Fantasy, or for a more modern comparison, the way that Fallout: New Vegas uses engaging writing and well-placed world design to take Fallout 3's boring, stale gameplay and make it thoroughly enjoyable for 60+ hours. Or any number of other improvements/changes other types of games make. Clones are not bad, and sometimes, if what you want is more of what you've already thoroughly enjoyed, it can be fantastic to see a clone that gives you a fresh way to experience something you already enjoyed and loved. Or give something you liked a little bit but weren't sure about another shot.
For me, examples of what you talk about in terms of codifiers for entire genres, come to mind with Devil May Cry and God of War. Definers of the Character Action or Hack-and-Slash genre (there's debate over the correct term) that got fairly popular around the mid-2000s and developed pretty popularly up until the early 2010s. There have been a number of games in the same genre, from the Darksiders and Bayonetta series to Dante's Inferno and Sonic Unleashed (at least partially) From X-Men: Wolverine to Van Helsing, from Ghost Rider to Heavenly Sword. Of course there were similar games from around that time and before, such as Rygar: The Legendary Adventure and Shinobi, and famously God Hand (i'd say that may count within the genre) but DMC and GoW were the real household names that, for all their differences in gameplay and tone, were used as a golden standard. In the 2010s, especially late 2010s, these 3D titles are quite a bit rarer. And I assume that's also in part because of looking upon "clones" (or sometimes knock-offs or rip-offs) in a negative way, as well as changing attitudes of the time that i won't get into because i'm not NEARLY qualified to speak on that. (I assume industry focus on Souls-type games and cinematic experiences have had their influence on this as well) To my knowledge most *new* games in that genre from the early 2010s, were developed from already established series: Aforementioned Darksiders (Darksiders 2, and Darksiders 3 finally got released around 2018 or something), Bayonetta 2, DMC4 and DmC: Devil May Cry, a series genre outlier in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and in terms of original ones, there was your odd Assault Spy, NieR: Automata and Astral Chain. But most of those titles (MGR: Revengance, Bayonetta 1 and 2, NieR: Automata in gameplay, and Astral Chain) came from a single studio (Platinum Games) that is *known* for its efforts within the Character Action Genre. Which is a studio that had to fight to remain in business, if i'm not mistaken. And thanks to among other things the love from their fans has allowed to do so. The only real *new* 3D Character Action/Hack-and-Slash game from the time was Assault Spy. And that went under the radar big time. (I can't speak about 2D ones, i only know of The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile). I'm glad to see that things are picking up again a bit in the Character Action or Hack-and-Slash genre in recent years. And i'm not talking about the big titles like DMC5, even though that must have left behind a big positive impact as it has done years before. Or Bayonetta 3 and the norse God of War, for all their divisive factors. I am talking for example personal favourite Soulstice from late 2022, Hi-Fi Rush from early this year which came out of nowhere with an absolute BANG (and i want to give mention to music action game colleague No Straight Roads which released a few years earlier), and the upcoming Enenra and Genokids. (And mention to Clash: Artifacts of Chaos as well, for seemingly sharing some God Hand DNA) Two of these games, Soulstice and Hi-Fi Rush, are from fairly sizeable studios and both ambitious projects in their own right, whereas Enenra and Genokids seem to be made by smaller teams. Reply Game Studios have even cited wanting to become like a "European Platinum Games". And if anything, i'm just glad that love is being given back to the genre by the smaller guys to help reinvigorate it. Big comment, understandable if whoever reads it didn't read through ALL of it, and there is great possibility i have made errors and mistakes in recalling and assuming things. If one did read through it all, I hope it has proved interesting, that it has brought a lot of cool titles both old and new to your attention, and I wish you a good rest of your day. Have a good one and take care as well as a cookie when nobody's looking.
I think something which might be an important thing to think about is also that a lot of these more modern clones might end up being played by people who never played their inspirations. For example, Pillars of eternity obviously and knowingly takes a lot of it's gameplay from old isometric CRPG's from the late 90's/early 2000's, but I'd never actually played any of those beofre I played pillars, so I didn't have any reference point or nostalgia beyond pillars itself. The reason I got interested in those older games was BECAUSE I played a more modern 'clone', and I'd be surprised if I was the only person with a similar experience.
This is a very solid take. Where it concerns for example the Character Action or Hack-and-Slash genre, i first properly came into contact with it through the Darksiders series. They're an amalgamation of influences between each game so far: Stuff like tone being akin to Legacy of Kain, combat close to DmC, gnarly art direction like World of Warcraft, dungeons like Legend of Zelda, and short segments of third-person shooting like Gears of War. The second one had hints of Prince of Persia in the platforming and a big fantasy RPG/Diablo with the loot. Up to that point, i had never played or rarely looked into (or in some cases, barely even heard of) : - The likes of Legacy of Kain - Prince of Persia - Devil May Cry - Legend of Zelda. And i fupping loved it. The series' fate hung in the balance for a while after THQ went belly-up. A third Darksiders that released somewhere in... 2018? went a more Souls-like way for combat, and had a more Metroidvania structure than a Zelda-like level structure. Which was pretty divisive (to say the least). So the devs later added an option to make it feel more like the first two games. It's not an in-depth overhaul, but it showed willingness to listen. So did the Keepers of the Void DLC, which from what i've heard feel like proper dungeons with puzzles and ways to use the weapons/powers for puzzles. And Darksiders Genesis, a prequel, went an isometric view and option for co-op while also adding a choosable level structure from a hub level. The Darksiders' series identity seems like a pretty fluid and ever-changing one, but there is something nigh intangible that can still be called Darksiders that brings it all together when done well. And the hack-and-slash/character action combat + puzzles will always be part of that. The other games that Darksiders takes inspiration from may have nearly perfected a lot of stuff or done them more in-depth. Like 2's parkour traversal compared to Prince of Persia, or 1's entire combat system compared to DMC and GoW, solid as it is. And sometimes puzzle objects and dungeons compared to Legend of Zelda as a whole. But i'm of firm belief that a game company should be allowed and encouraged to properly make its own journey as well. To clarify a bit what I mean: A team doesn't immediately have the history of learning that for example Nintendo has under its belt, with all the successes, mistakes, developments and relationships between people that it required to make the game(s). If i had to put my thoughts in a more concise way, it may have to be like this. Darksiders gave me an experience only Darksiders can give. And I want to look at it for being the way it is. Whenever I may get bored playing Darksiders 1, as much as i love it, it's not because it's *not* like God of War or Zelda or DMC in that moment. I may have played it for a bit too long, the section wasn't as well designed as it could have been, or something else. Or perhaps it's something as cynically viewed as the gameplay loop of the moment not being as fun as i remember, or just something as fleeting as the gameplay being at a lower point in the moment. And the inverse is also true. That can be viewed from a critical lens at the gameplay as a whole, of course. But from that critical lens still, expressed subjectively or in an attempt at being objective, i'd still want to view it from being *Darksiders*.
So weirdly enough, I was introduced to the classic God of War games before I got into DMC much later. I don't think it really matters nowadays as I found appreciation for both series (the GoW games have usually have better level design and puzzles/exploration while DMC has one of the most in-depth combat systems I know. Having Vergil is also a big plus for your series, but I digress).
I never played Paper Mario TTYD (looking forward to the remake) I had heard about Bug Fables and how it’s “Classic Paper Mario” So I bought Bug Fables, played Bug Fables, enjoyed Bug Fables, and at the end I went “I FINALLY understand the hype behind classic Paper Mario”
exactly. I grew up playing DOS Xcom. I don't like the remakes as much, but I'm glad theres a new generation of turn based tactics fans and XCOM pretty much revived the subgenre and we have a bunch of games that are copying the XCOM remakes or trying to purposely throw back to the originals. More is always good in my book.
I was actually gonna comment this! Only, I was also going to mention that accessibility to older titles (whether because of copyright, a lack of porting, accessibility in the medical sense, or the seldom-mentioned but widely prevalent reality of economic constraints) can also mean younger generations cannot play them at all. Just as one example, I have seizures, so a wide breadth of older games that have flashy hit confirmation effects, in the style of old arcade games, are essentially off the table for me. Most often, though, I find it's just impossible-or very difficult-to get my hands on old titles without pursuing emulation as a hobby (and having the associated free time). It's obviously not a new observation, but you can't pick up an old game the way you can pick up an old book-specialized hardware or software (usually both) is required in combination with a lot of available time to tinker. Sometimes, too, there simply is a lack of interest in older titles-I love Stardew Valley, but I have yet to see anything of Harvest Moon that makes me feel there's something specific for me personally to go back for (also, I've tried to play Doom, and I very much recognize its influence and appreciate its lack of hitscan enemies, but I still can't pretend to like it or be impressed by it in the way, say, I love classic Mario. At the tender age of 22, I also feel the same apathy towards Call of Duty, although I'm less clear how Call of Duty propelled its own genre forward). I definitely want to dig deeper into Metroidvanias because of Hollow Knight, though.
I personally LOVE the Remnant game as they're good games in their own respect. And I personally do think that between R1 and R2, the boss designs of R2 as well as exploration and build customization are significantly better then that of R1 while also keeping what made me like R1 in the first place. And their latest DLC was made with the players feedback of how much they liked the linearity but still exploratory nature of the Marrow start for Losomn, but bigger and more interesting to explore. I do definitely think the devs have a good formula and since its their second game of 8 devs (and 40+ artists) they did an incredible job. Are there areas to improve? Ofc and they're working tirelessly to improve the game and taking feedback. Hell a feedback I made one time for the challenger archetype was to make the intimidating presence 15 meters instead of 10 so more weapon variety can be used with the archetype and it got added. So I do believe the devs absolutely have the capabilities of making an award winning game, they just need the time and practice to do so
I agree and imo calling it a clone is a stretch. It borrows mechanics from many different games and is it’s own beast in itself. Not a cover shooter, not a souls game, if anything it’s more like a looter shooter if anything. If it came out before souls we’d be calling games “remnant-like”
Remnant 2 bosses are entirely based on limiting player mobility and not boss strength. Most of the remnant 2 bosses were significant steps backwards design wise. The game is a decent sequel, but the bosses felt like the weakest part of the game.
@@justinpennington6680 yeah, you still get tons of endless ads in some fights. There are decent ways to midigate it, but some bosses get very frustrating. For me it was needlessly limiting the arena to small confined spaces. A huge boss, ape rapid attacks, AND no where to move gets very frustrating. I still think 2 is worth playing though.
Ok, as a Swede, I could'nt help but chuckle when you used Gävlebocken as a stand-in for a bonfire. (And its a little bit ironic given that it managed to stay unlit this year)
Yeah, I always felt that if a game's legacy can simply die off just because of clones, then the legacy probably isn't that worth it anyway. Especially Lies of P, it was like "when mom says we have Bloodborne at home, and after begrudgingly going home to try it out, mom's actually got a point".
if people remember a game that was inspired/a clone of another game more than the original than they did something right. Nobody remember infiniminer. Everyone remembers minecraft. NES Mario wasn't the original side scroller platform, but it blew so many other ones before it out of the water that its kind of the origin point that everyone remembers. Super metroid didn't invent back tracking world map because you got new abilities that allowed you to reach new areas, but it took several ideas from the previous metroid and other games with exploration and new abilities that allowed progress and mashed them together to make a masterpiece. Symphony of the night was really just super metroid with voice acting and some RPG style stat additions, but everyone loves that so much they've named the genre after the game that started it and one of its best clones.
@@Zectifinthis is why i hate copyrighting game mechanics so much -- the game that pioneers a certain mechanic is almost never the game that does it best
@@iCarus_A Exactly! Especially when it's a game mechanic that's vague and a shower thought, like "trading card game" or "procedurally generated villains". Games usually aren't good because they have those premises, but because they can execute them well.
@@akirachisaka9997 Great points. It's an ugly business, trying to patent concepts when the fact is that everything that has ever occurred, however innovative it seems in the present moment, however well it's executed, didn't just erupt spontaneously. There's always a precursor. Turtles all the way down.
In this Special Case (and certainly in some others too) i could not play bloodborne because i only have a PC. I watched Lets Plays of it, sure, but that does not make you feel how the game really is like, so Lies of P felt rather fresh to me. It reminded me more of DS1 but "better", or the best parts of it. For me the world was new, the weapon system and the Legion Arm and Quarz Abilities were also something new (maybe i lived in a bubble but hey, something reached me ;) ). I am not sure if i would have played Bloodborne because of how brutally hard it seemed compared to Dark Souls (no blocks, no magic), and i never intend on playing Sekiro, i know my Limits ;) But i also think cloning is good because just some little twists in the Setting or how the cobat works or how forgiving the game is speaks to another audience that might give more titles of that specific genre a chance or opens up the idea of trying something new once in a while. I really enjoyed playing Ender Lilies. The Design, the Music the World, just beautiful. And to me it felt like "just hard enough". So keep on recycling even old ideas! *thumbs up*
Wargroove is an odd one to include, because it made some significant improvements over advance wars to cement it being more than just a clone and to show it improved on the formula. The biggest change being the introduction of the commander unit. They all have the same stats as each other. But your groove (CO power) varies between them, all focused from the unit itself, which helps make it clear what each commander is capable of easily. As opposed to Advance wars map-wide stat buffs that affect different units in different ways. this unit also being a victory/defeat condition if killed and its great cost efficiency (with low resupply cost and self-regen) to be used in combat leads to a great risk/reward, that also serves to speed up competitive games. Allowing multiple objectives and therefore fronts to arise. With turnarounds possible if you neglect to guard your headquarters or commander appropriately. That plus the map design on PvP maps learns from the mistakes of advance wars. Where in AW, a "lost" game can take ages to come to a natural conclusion. because the HQs were placed so far back in the map, with production in front, that you could win and still take a long time to end the game. Wargroove maps put the HQ forwards with production behind. Which leads to much faster games and potential surprise victories. Not to meantion every unit having a unique 'crit' condition to use to your advantage and the masses of custom content and scripting created by the community. It felt like the game was brushed over as being a clone without ever bringing up how it improved on the source material.
I disagree with your take on Remnant 2, though I'll concede that if you're used to Souls games then the "normal" difficulty level is probably too easy for you. It's one of my favourite games of the year and I think that it has a lot of really inspired ideas for building a Souls-style that is more co-op focused (which is one of the games' cores conceits, though I never felt like I was having a lesser experience playing it solo) and also some absolutely *stellar* bosses, with the final boss being a particular standout.
Its probably the first time I've truly disagreed with this channel. Playing Remnant 2 I never really thought about how much of a Soulslike it was. I was always just impressed how well hidden its secrets were, or how fun putting together a new build was based on some new ring or gun I found. It's definitely not just some clone
yeah Remnant 2 wasn't a failure. It's one of my favorite games of all time. It blows the original out of the water. Having random generation and secrets gives you another reason to play it again and again and also makes multiplayer much more fun. Also it wasn't a failure at all. Many consider it one of the best games of the year and it was a huge success for Gunfire Games. He's taking something he personally dislikes and saying it as if it was a definitive reason why it failed. I hate Hollow Knight. I hate how the map system works and I hate the combat and having to come back to my body. Should I say it failed as a metroidvania because I personally didn't like it? No. People loved it, its a financial and critical success and helped explode the subgenre in popularity and is probably many younger people's first metroidvania due to its popularity. Just because I have gripes with it doesn't mean its bad or failed as a game.
I do agree with the channel when he stated Remnant2's design decisions led to a heavy reliance on AOE spam and bullet sponges to do difficulty, neither of which are great ways to go about it. Playing through Remnant 2 to apocalypse I always felt that the soulslike influences were always at odds with the FPS identity of the game, and they were never fused together in a good way. It was serviceable at best, but it could definitely have been done better.
This dissertation is a justification of WHY clones should exist, which is useful in the very cynical online conversations we often see online, but NOT HOW clones should exist. You talk a lot about how games tried certain mechanics (or not) but not really why, IN GENERAL, said attempts work. I specifically mean you do individual examples but not general applied learnings. I would love to see video about more of a general applied learnings of what to clone and what to change regardless of genre. It’s gonna be an imperfect video no matter what you say but it would be a jump off point to help designers narrow what to think about
difference palworld is one of the bad clones that isn't adding anything new or interesting to the things its shamelessly copying. it's just a shitty grindy survival craft game that's sort of pokemon and sort of breath of the wild but worse in all aspects.
Agreed. Once you have played games enough you end up with specific tastes and preferences which can only be adhered to with "clones". If your mom made tacos that tasted just like your fav restaurant you wouldnt say "aw this is just a clone mom Im not eating this" lmao nah you'd enjoy it!
This, especially with simulation/godlike games. There's so few when a clone does turn up everyone jumps on it, tears it fown until the game falls apart from being something it never was going to be to start with. It's why things like the sims & sim city have love/hate relationships with it's fan base - even between editions. When a game that does anything close pops up the fans flock over and end up stifling them from growing into their own thing by demanding them to be the exact same thing they left behind but better (and sometimes that's just impossible) To be honest it's why I haven't touched Balders gate 3. I would love another one of those games, but I'm so over it being set in the Forgotten Realms. But I dunno if making it closer to Planescape Torment would be an any better - probably make it still very the same regardless of the universe it's set. I'd love something to shake up this style of game as I enjoy it but yeah... it's not an easy one to do.
Bro, imagine clone troopers, but they have taco bell colors/paints on their armor. And they're going up against mcdonalds themed droids.@@jurtheorc8117
'Indie game that is a direct copy of a Nintendo IP' is one of my favorite genres and they rock! Rivals of Aether, Ittle Dew 1 & 2, Cassette Beasts, Bug Fables, and Lenna's Inception are all such fantastic games! You really should check these games out if you haven't already.
Rivals of Aether quickly became my favorite fighting game once I started using the steam workshop. I mean you can play as Ronald McDonald and a Primal Aspid from Hollow Knight vs. a Duracell battery and Peppino Spaghetti from Pizza Tower on top of a Waffle House, but you can also play much more serious characters/maps too. The shitpost characters are often so good they can sometimes valid for more serious matches, like Morshu and I.M. Meen for example. Anyway, rant over.
As a GMTK-clone, you should lift another good idea from there and put the title of the game currently on screen in a corner throughout. A video like this where you jump between games visually would benefit greatly. I'm sure Mark Brown, or whoever he lifted it from, won't mind you copying that.
Hey there! I'm Fannon, long time fan of the channel. Remnant II was actually my first studio release as a designer, so seeing the hunter armor in the thumbnail was a real trip hahah. Hope you enjoyed your time with the game and thanks for playing!
Remnant 2 is such a massive improvement to the first game, good job! (As an ex-Ikea employee I can't get over the anachronistic forklift pallets littered all over Losomn though, lol)
Remnant 2 is such a massive improvement to the first game, good job! (As an ex-Ikea employee I can't get over the anachronistic forklift pallets littered all over Losomn though, lol)
I feel the stance on the Jedi series was pretty unfair. Yes, combat definitely draws upon souls (but is unique thanks to the force powers, thank you). However, the game defines itself upon its much more successful synthesis of that with Metroidvania mechanics. You actually get new unique abilities throughout the game in a fun way, and exploration is BETTER than exploration in most souls games, imo.
Yeah, some weird takes in the examples he used. It felt like he was so focused on comparing them to other Souls-likes that he failed to see other sources of inspiration and where they differed (speaking more about Remnant 2 and Jedi here). The reason he seemed to like Lies of P so much is because it's a good Souls-like, whereas he didn't like the others because he wanted them to be more Souls-like as opposed to also Metroidvania-y or 3rd person fps co-op-y.
@@RealHero101111 Combat is similar just no stamina, death system is similar, level up system is similar but with abilities instead of stats. It's exploration is more Metroidvania and it's story is a more traditional narrative, but the combat bones are there and the lineage clear. It's more accurate to say it has Souls-like combat rather than Souls-like in general though, I'll give you that. The comparison is legitimate, just overexaggerated and ignores other equally strong inspirations/influences.
@@gunnarschlichting9886 i mostly think respawn checkpoints and shortcuts, but everything else feel just outside of it. it more reminds me prince of persia than souls.
I think Bug Fables did it best with its system mimicking Paper Mario but advancing it to have three party members at once instead of just two, and having an advanced dynamic with how to position your party members for either more damage or less aggression from enemies. The badge system is also really good and makes you really think about what you want to equip to certain party members, and for what battle you're going into.
So true! Paper Mario is heavily centered on Mario, all stats are for Mario, Mario is always the first one, the only one who can use spells, items and equip badges. And the variety of badges is greater in Bug fables, and they synergize much better! I wish Nintendo would learn a thing or two from them - that gameplay with the art design of Origami King would be *chef's kiss*.
@@lucaslourenco8918 Well, there is always Mario & Luigi if you want things to stop focusing so much on Mario and have another dynamic party member. The only Paper Mario game to take any focus off Mario was SUPER Paper Mario, but that had a much different gameplay than the others.
I wish bug fables did more to differentiate itself from paper Mario than just adding 2 more party members and nothing else. Even with the additional 2 party members the game still feels like an unoriginal copy of pm because literally nothing else is changed (they even copied the design of the room transitions…) the game doesn’t try to solve any of the problems present in the paper Mario formula and instead just introduces its own
@@kekcrocgod6731 First: How does it introduce its own problems? Second: How does it not fix the issues that the original Paper Mario had? It has a great story that engages all the main characters almost equally, and even involves side characters on the regular to the point that they have their own developments. The battle system takes into account enemy types like if the enemy is a plant or a bug and allows them to take more damage from certain types of attacks. I would say it has its own sense of originality, especially with its setting and lore, otherwise it would have copied assets directly from the Paper Mario games instead of creating its own props and characters. Being inspired by Paper Mario down to the art style and battle style doesn't automatically make it "unoriginal". Now do you care to explain in full as to why you think it's an "unoriginal copy"?
@@kekcrocgod6731 Eh, I disagree, I felt like Bug Fables was natural evolution of PM formula that PM series itself can't do because of its reliance on revolving around Mario
I'm reminded of George' Carlin's routine on how every ball sport is a clone of ping pong. Volleyball, for example, is racketless team ping pong played with an elevated net while standing on the table.
@@musicexams5258 I haven't seen the bit, but that's an easy one: It's ping pong where the player on one side hits the ball too hard every time and everyone else in the room has to chase it down before it rolls under a couch.
In my opinion, creating games that are similar to other ones is what helps turn singular franchises into genres. That’s why as a big Monster Hunter fan, I enjoy games like Dauntless and Wild Hearts. Both of these have unique things that I love, like the building system in Wild Hearts or the different game modes such as escalation in Dauntless. Granted, I am a fan of giant monsters in general, hence why I’m so receptive to these things compared to the more spiteful reactions other people have had, but personally, I’m happy to see monster hunting evolve into a broader genre.
A "Clone" needs to justify its existence to be worthwhile. It is okay and usually good to pull from preexisting media, but one must be aware that by doing so one is choosing to compete with said media. So when pitching this to consumers, there needs to be a reason to pick the "Clone" over that which it pulls from.
17:19 this is one of the things I hated about lies of P. Every goddang wooden bridge falls. It's a good trick once, it's annoying when it's done 75 frickin' times!
1. Complete and utter lie. Only a third of them do, and it's mainly in the first third of the game as a way to reverse-trap you later on. 2. none of them do that as an instant death trap, every single bridge that fall make you fall directly in the actual path to progress
@@maxentirunos 1: I literally never said they were instant death traps. Not even once. You made that up yourself. 2: you've clearly never heard of hyperbole before. You see, when someone says "every frickin god dang time" it is very blatantly obvious they do not mean literally every single instance. Even a third of the time is way too many times. I don't care if it's to reverse trap you or whatever, it still overstays its welcome the twelfth time, no less the twentieth.
i love people taking things and doing their own spin on it, you'll get a lot of lazy stuff but you can in fact just not play bad games, I also consider studios to gain skills at making a type of game, so when studio tackles an idea they've done before they have an opportunity to further refine their design
people only remember the bad clones as being clones. theres plenty of good clones that people wont call clones. why isn't half life or halo a "DOOM clone"? NES mario bros isn't the first platformer, but nobody criticizes it as being a clone of the games before it. people will iterate and many will be shit, but sometimes we get a real gem and it moves the medium forward.
As a 5e player of seven years, I definitely agree. If there’s one hill I’ll die on, it’s that Baldur’s Gate 3 sucks not because it’s a bad game (it is, but that’s not this point), but because it’s a bad D&D game. I thought it would fix or improve the things that made base 5e terrible, and it didn’t. It actually took one of the best things about D&D away. (You can’t have an impactful backstory-all player characters are special for the same reason and only special because of that reason: the parasite).
I feel like the nature of tabletop roleplay is that people will always prefer homebrew over a glossy product. Like, I think the reason D&D has endured so long is that most players don't take the rulebook that seriously and just make stuff up.
What is implied in the video but not fully pointed out is how the advancements brought on by clones are mostly if not always gameplay based. This makes sense as genres are largely defined by the mechanics they choose to combine.
Agree with this. But also clones can also appeal to people who missed the originals too. Wargroove was one for me where having never played it's direct inspiration, I still loved it. And xcom is one I tried to play as it inspired alot of games I liked but just didn't do much for me.
I love the original X-coms and I just didn't like the new "XCOM" (the way you capitalize is important) games. They felt too "board gamey" to me and somehow the DOS one felt more complicated and more like a simulation than the remakes. I actually liked chimera squad more than 1 and 2 because it mixed it up and added alternating activations based on initiative and you could push enemies back in the turn order. I love games that do that and it made the combat more exciting for me and you also don't lose half your team in one enemy turn. I know some of the XCOM 1 and 2 diehards hated it for that.
I'd argue Lies of P has two unique mechanics all its own: The handle & blade system, and being only allowed to carry one "spell," aka the legion arms at once. No other game has tried either of those to my knowledge. And the handle mechanic especially must have been TONS of work while really mixing up how people play.
So basically you have to know what makes the games so great in the first place so you can use that to make a better iteration. You have to know what you Can, and Shouldn’t change.
If games are a constantly evolving medium, they actually have to go through the evolution process. That means, notable titles must have successors to inherit their better traits. As clones pop up in the subgenre, they gradually branch out and fill a whole list of nieches. Then, like rogue-likes, they become a whole genre in and of themselves until another great game is made.
When put like this, the whole clone idea is nothing more than the continuation of an old tradition in greek art and their tragedies, they weren’t original ideas, instead every author was seeking to tell the same story with their own spin, building on the tradition not replacing it. The concept of originality is rather new and while originality may have happened occasionally, but in arts the rule was keep the tradition and seek to replicate older works which in turns lead to the evolution of styles and gradual evolution of painting, writing and music.
This video is extremely helpful to me, I am developing a parkour game heavily inspired by Vector and Mirror's Edge as a love letter to both, my brother is working on the animations and I work on the code and general game design aspects. Vector is our number 1 inspiration, and at the start of development I think we fell into the rabbit hole of trying to recreate most of its mechanics given that we consider Vector to be the gold standard of 2D parkour games, mobile or not. We have successfully achieved this we think, but now we are left with a sense of not having done enough, or a sense of just being copycats of the original, but we know that we started from a place of admiration and LOVE towards Vector, and we know that we can improve upon the formula of the game by adding more moves and a better way of choosing your actions. It might not be as different from Vector as we would have liked at first, but thanks to this video I realized that it doesn't necessarily need to be different, but that it needs to be as good or even better at what the original was doing, as to progress this specific game genre to the next step. In any case, we will continue to work on our project, Runner's Faith, and trying to polish the mechanics to a level never seen before, if any of you is interested I have a devlog from a couple of months ago that showcases the potential of our game, and soon I'll make an updated devlog to show how it has improved!
This actually makes me more comfortable with the Undertale clone I've been working on for 6 years (still 2-ish years away from when I'm comfortable showing it publicly though...)
Hey Adam! Allan here, one of the devs of Soulstone Survivors! I'm a huge fan of your work since forever and loved the video! I definitely get the critique (and Im super happy to know you played our game!!), ever since we got Soulstone Survivors out there we are continuously trying to make it into its own game, since the beginning for us Soulstone was what we would like to see in the "Bullet Heaven" genre, we kept some elements, removed others, added some of our own ideas into the mix, but indeed, as the game currently stands I definitely can see how it might feel "automatically solved" if you played Vampire Survivors (or similar games). As we continue navigating the Early Access and learn from our own game, player feedback and other games in the genre, we are working on a few plans that hopefully will be able to break even more that sensation of closeness, while still keeping the core key elements that make the game what it is. At any rate, just wanted to thank you for the mention and say we are big fans, and I hope you will give a try to the game again in the future as we get closer to the 1.0 release!
After that loving characterization of "mimicry as flattery", I really didn't expect the video to end on "I need money to buy crisps". You kill me Adam.
damn, i love Sundered :'c didn't even realize it was procgen until my third playthrough lmao. Thought they handled it really well since major stuff stays in the same location, and only the small inconsequential rooms are what gets procgen'd. Even got every achievement cuz i loved the game so much.
I was exercising in the middle of this video, and I realized something. (I liked the video, in fact many of them, it's why I'm subscribed.) I realized at one point that my attention was getting tired. I was expecting a pause between ideas, or a title card, or something, but the rest never came. It might help listeners if you added a few mid-idea breaks. Or maybe I'm just exhausted from the holidays. Anyway, happy festive times! Still loved the video per usual!
7:40 Holocure mentioned! /o/ Also actually a shining example for a "good clone" for me. Vampire Survivors lost me pretty quickly for how simplistic and clunky its gameplay was. Holocure took the core, improved on both control and enemy variety/patterns, revamped the fusion system into an imo superior and less limiting one, made the characters actually meanigfully different in abilities & playstyle and put superior visuals/music on top. Obviously, it being a very charming Hololive fangame was also a nice bonus for me (and likely a drawback for some others). :P The video overall has points that should be pretty obvious but still worth repeating and you used some good examples and insights into gaming history.
Having just played a lot more hours of Holocure over the Christmas than I should (to the point I had to delete it for my own good), I think it's already much better game than the Vampire Survivors. They basically improved everything, even the price point. :P
In defense of Wargroove, it is a spiritual successor more than a clone (Given how Advance Wars was dark for how long?). And even then, I get nostalgia because I get to play as the Floran from Starbound (Which is a clone of Terraria). It’s an interesting case study of the lines between all the terms.
Yeah, I almost thought it would be about clones of old games keeping genres and dead games alive. Without Wargroove, would Advance Wars 1+2 have been remastered to Switch? I don’t think I can make the same case for Aviary Attorney, but it was the first Phoenix Wright-like I played, so it probably helped.
When the music at 3:03 started and later picked up, I could tell it was from Nier Automata but had trouble placing it. I managed to find it however. That is the theme of the *Copied City.* Well played. *Edit: Oh, at the end of the section you give the name. Either way, appreciate the pun.
same same same, except I couldn't find the credit in the video or the description but scroll-scroll-scrolled to load every comment and see if I could search up any answers that way.
for me, remnant is the only souls-like i enjoyed because the ranged combat gave some more variety to otherwise a "dodge, use melle, dodge, use melle, repeat" loop. sure you can kill enemies at range before they become a problem, but usualy enemies have either ranged attacks or come in swarms so that your ranged attacks don't trivialize any challenge. the random aspect of the world was good because it gave a lot more replayability (which the game does build on with specific items being acessible only on specific areas) and made me feel i was going to other areas and moving forward, rather than being on the same dungeon for a long time
Great vid, points made. Pointing out the tendency of some modern games to be an amorphous blob of mechanics and how there's a distinction between those and 'clones' that build upon inspiration had me like "yeeeeeeeeeesss"
I guess another good way to look at it is like this is from a pure artistry sort of perspective: if someone draws a really good portrait of, say, a dragon, and another person comes along, looks at it, and has their own attempt at a dragon that's roughly similar, then it's arguably a form of flattery for it to have been used as inspiration. Also probably a testament to just how well the first person drew them, seeing as how it's being used as a reference and such. Honestly, whether or not it can be considered a genuinely innovative rendition, or just a lazy clone really just depends on how "traced" the original reference is. It's really cool to see someone take a concept and add their own style, but if there's basically no differences, then it's not entirely as interesting. But the fact of the matter remains that, traced or not, it's still (usually) a well-made work in the end. Unless said person basically had zero skills and clearly used a ruler + other tools to do all the work for them (or in other words, built it entirely from store assets without real changes), then that's when artists and creators can usually collectively band together to shit on them for being lazy. Especially if they add insult to injury via charging more and/or trying to sell parts of the creation despite it clearly not being something they really put much effort into. Although on the flipside, one could argue that even one made out of prebuilt tools can be cool if it was creative (like the equivalent of assembling a bunch of template shapes into something extra neat, such as a tree made of stars), but those are pretty dang rare and tricky to pull off.
One video game genre that a lot of people seem to dismiss as "clones" are the Monster Tamer subgenre of RPG, often referred to as Pokémon clones. While I understand why (Pokémon being as popular as it is), there are quite a few that have almost nothing in common with Pokémon aside from creature collection and the comparison doesn't feel fair. For example, Monster Sanctuary has more in common with Metroidvanias than Pokémon, but because you collect creatures and combat is turn based, the "isn't that just Pokémon?" comparison feels inescapable. An upcoming monster tamer game that I'm looking forward to that does lean into to clone idea to the point of making fun of it, is Beastie Ball. Heck, an early character in it is a clear parody of the player character from the first gen Pokémon games (he's even called Red). Yet, the game's world and the fact that, instead of battling in a way inspired by competitive martial arts and beetle fighting (which is an actual thing that's a popular hobby in Japan), you play turn based volleyball, Beastie Ball feels incredibly different. There's also games like "Ooblets", "Monster Hunter Stories", the Persona franchise, "Monster Rancher", and the Digimon series. They are all worth considering on their own merits, yet keep being called "clones" by people less familiar with the genre. Similar to how a lot of people will use D&D to refer to any Table Top RPG, inspite of how many other systems for TTRPGs are out there that do stuff differently.
With Persona calling it a pokemon clone is just insulting because it's a spinoff of Megami Tensei which is literally considered the series that pioneered Monster Collectors as a genre
This has always been the case. Mario clones were a thing, and if you go back to the beginning Galaga and Galaxian were 'partial' clones of Space Invaders, and were known as such. Clones have been a part of software in general since 'always'. The difference with any clone versus something that lasted, was always introducing their own mechanics and making something their own. Same with all art forms, regardless of the material. So cloning is important sure, but it is the growth and change that is most important. There are countless clones no one remembers that come out, because they were trash. The good 'Doom' clones, or any game genre definer, are the ones that go their own way. We learn by imitation, certainly, but we hit our stride when we make something our own.
As someone who loves fromsoft games, but has found every souls-like trying to copy them extremely mediocre, I had very low hopes for Lies of P. It ended up surprising me so much. The game even exceeds fromsoft games in some ways. It also genuinely might have the best feeling weapons/combat of any souls-like
The way I see it, Remnant has pushed the boundaries of what typically is a third person shooter/RPG. The main game loop is very hard to achieve. Usually, in shooters you have good movement, or good gunplay, or a few very positive aspects, but Gunfire has achieved excellency in how combat is in a TPS. It has ditched the excessive use of cover that the older TPS relied on (mostly due to controllers) in favor of more feasible combat in the open with more uptime, while still feeling challenging and having well-designed enemies with telegraphed movements. The use of timing in dodging/i-frames in a shooter is brilliant and allows for some really good encounter and fight design that has been missed in the genre for so long. You can clearly see the influence from the fighting game world in moment to moment gameplay. That is just the main loop of the game. The second main loop of gathering items and exploring is also super interesting, keeping people playing and finding secrets, even creating discords for it. And the third main loop of buildcrafting/RPG progression with such objects is excellent due to a wide variety of balanced buildcrafting choices that all allow you to play the max difficulty without frustrations. It avoids the pitfalls of most RPGs: most weapons are good, and viable, and there are no "rarities" you need to scout for - a great influence from From's games. I'm not sure why you felt that enemies were spongy. I've played games with spongy enemies (God of War 2018 on Give Me God of War difficulty comes to mind), I find this exceptionally well-balanced. I know Remnant 2 like the palm of my hand, already beat it several times in the max difficulty, and I've never found any instance of it. I think the criticism of the cohesive world is also a half-truth. In a campaign, there are five worlds. Two are handcrafted, and then there's three more that vary: each one has two or three stories, and in quite a few of those stories there are handcrafted overworlds too. What has more variability is the dungeon generation, but that's kinda the whole point of the game. Finding new dungeons with new secrets. A lot of the dungeons is handcrafted too, with just how the tiles merge with each other being truly random. To conclude, pay attention that I haven't mentioned "soulslike" all along. I think it has quite a few elements of souls games, but you're looking at it from the lens of a pure melee From Soft souls game, when it's a shooter and manages to innovate a lot in that area. For that, I'd hope to see you invest more time into them, because I wholeheartedly but respectfully disagree with your opinions.
@@FeiFongWang The names most commonly in use for the genre are "reverse bullet hell" and "bullet heaven". Functionally, it's a fusion of the bullet hell and rogue-like genres. I'd also argue that the common name is a misnomer and it isn't a "reverse" bullet hell at all, as it's still a bullet hell, but one where you're supposed to kill the "bullets" before they reach you instead of dodging them since most of them home on your position instead of flying past you.
@@william_sun I think bullet heaven is a great name for it actually, since bullet hells normally force you to play defensively and be underpowered, heaven being the opposite makes sense.
The way i like to think about this is there are 3 major categories studios and devs fall into: copiers, refiners, and innovators. The last is rare today, do to an ever growing pool of things that have been done before, as boundary changing teck advances are rarer and less noticeable than the early days. Refiners take things that exist and try to make them better, or do something new with them, while copiers just take what works and puts it together. Very few studios are just one, and many systems are well understood, hard to improve, or just work for whats needed to make the focus better (like save systems, hud designs, a lot of gaunra staples, ect). Heck, sometimes you can refine just by taking existing stuff from more than one place and mixing them together.
After playing and mastering Nioh 2's combat, originally thinking it was just a slightly jankier souls game but the layers upon layers of depth in its combat system just made it my favorite innovation to the souls formula. Turns out combining DMC-level depth of gameplay while retaining souls elements make for a damn good game.
The only difficulty in Nioh come from near constant ganging of ennemies and the way the equipment is looted and you end up with 50+ version of the same item with different stats make exploration completely unrewarding.
I was genuinely worried and a little bit disappointed in how easy the game was, but going into the harder difficulties after beating the final boss was a real blast - they don't just buff enemy stats, you get stuff like completely new enemy spawns blocking off previous safe / cheese spots and more demon fog zones. And then you start getting cursed enemies that will outheal you if you don't shut them down with finishers and backstabs and they force you to engage with them in a completely different way (you can't just take the safe options). It's got some amazing ideas, the only reason I stopped playing was because I'd literally done everything in the game.
0:34 Considering that the terms "Mario Kart clones/rip-offs" and "Smash Bros. clones/rip-offs" and other "[Nintendo game] clones/rip-offs" are still being used to this very day, it isn't bizarre.
Quick question: did you ever try the co-op for Remnant 2? Remnant says its a soulslike shooter, but in reality its a co-op soulslike. It's ten times more fun with friends, and unlike fromsoft games is designed with multiplayer in mind. Some bosses and encounters are balanced (in part) around multiple players, and if that isn't enough to convince you, they even have friendly fire, which is unironically the single greatest thing about the game.
I watch a lot of video game essays, and have been following your channel for a while. This is one of the best videos I have seen and my favorite in your catalogue. It really changed my view on clones and I don't think I've seen another video even mention these ideas.
One thing that I find is really important with clones is that they understand what made the original successful. A lot of new SURVs overcomplicate the gameplay compared to Vampire Survivors where the gameplay boiled down to brainstorming builds and movig around. Bad clones copy exact mechanics and add stuff that doesn't support the core gameplay idea. Good ones build on that idea.
I think they are trying to build on the ideas but they accidentally add something that doesn't support it. The real issue is that people want GOOD games, if someone adds a mechanic that makes a game more fun then it has built on the idea, if they add a bad mechanic, then it's a bad clone. The other part is taste, some people may appreciate the added complexity and want something halfway between a full rpg and Vampire survivors. Changes, especially regarding complexity, shifts the audience. A good example of that is Remnant and Remnant II, I enjoy the fast paced shooting of Remnant to the slow methodical combat of Dark Souls. To some Remnant may be a worse interpretation of the Dark Souls formula but for me it's a vastly more enjoyable experience.
Very good points. The best example it probably Street Fighter 2, which had so many clones that all the best ideas went into the following Street Fighter games. The topic is particularly interesting to me because I'm currently developing a clone of a game which, as far as I know, doesn't have clones yet (Pony Island). And I'm trying to do exactly that: push the formula further etc. 😅
it can be far too easy to forget that incremental iteration and imitation is and has always been the primary way people learn art and a major part of its evolution no mater the medium of that art.
with all these comparisons of games to one single origin, it's crazy to think about the popular claim so many people made about terraria being 'a 2d minecraft' despite all that, they could not have been more different in their evolution over the years, minecraft becoming property of a monumental corporate entity who keeps making decisions for the game that ultimately leave it's playerbase in discontent and restlessness, while terraria stuck to its indie roots and is beloved by its entire community, and even the devs to the point where they keep adding more content in what should be 'the final update'
When I played A Plague Tale, I thought, 'This is just The Last of Us in medieval France'. There are a huge number of similarities, both in plot (extended escort mission through an apocalyptic hellscape with someone who has a mysterious resistance to it) and mechanics (e.g. upgrade benches, resources, supplements, listen mode). However, they're both among my favourite games. While there's undoubtedly a lot of influence from TLOU, APT feels fresh and interesting. It is different enough and it is its own game.
Speaking of Game Maker's Toolkit, his latest video was (somewhat) about Developer Intentions and when it differs from YOUR intention for the game as a player and this made me realize how many of my ideas are literally just that. "I like this idea, but have some other direction I personally prefer". For most of my life I thought that "bad" media is what drives creative people to build "good" media, but now I think it's a similarity/appreciation for the ideas, but difference in creative direction/intention. Thinking back, it's incredibly childish and selfish to believe something sucks just because the creators just wanted something different from what I want.
Yeah, it was really nice to see Mark adressing that. My main issue with many essayists (Mark included, up until now) was the idea that the developers did something *wrong* , often being called dumb or out of touch, instead of the realization that the devs might want to make a *different thing* than what some players expected, and that it is fine. That's the "true developer intention". Players might not like the result or want different things, but it is not like the devs don't know what they're doing, or aren't often working with big design constraints, so they can't do everything. On the same topic, GMTK Developing series bringing to light how full of hurdles game dev is is another big positive. Seeing Mark realise how hard even simple things can be is reassuring and important at the same time, and it seems to have influenced his tone a bit too. A case when *doing* instead of just talking makes you really understand it better.
@@GeorgeDCowley Which one you mean? The first one (considering devs intention), or the second one (game dev is hard and full of hurdles) ? The first one is a small part on Mark's recent video (How Jusant Makes Rock-Climbing More Immersive), whereas the second one is based on his videos on the Developing series. Neither are specific quotes from any videos, just ideas and opinions he shared in those.
Amazing topic and amazing video!! What I would like to add the discussion is the topic of mods. I think mods and clones emerged somewhat together. People find something they love, but then they also realize the flaws and want to make a better version. This is how we got things like Dota and Counter Strike, which have basically created entire genres, and have each since been cloned a million times 😀.
Maybe that's just me but I feel this one is a bit unfocused or wishy-washy : clones that try something new but fail are bad, clones that don't try anything new but have good execution are good, so basically : good games are good and bad games are bad is the message. And all games are clones anyway. (To be clear it doesn't mean it's a bad video, just the standard is pretty high here despite the self-deprecation). A real good point though is a clone will be a very different experience for a player that plays 10 "clones" in the genre a year and a player that rarely plays this genre.
I agree. I believe that a lot of what he was saying could have been better phrased as some games inspiring genres/sub-genres. Eg. These genres have various cornerstones that new games can follow or intentionally avoid. Sometimes avoiding the cornerstone gives a very unique experience, but other times it may make the experience feel a bit hollow compared to the original, even if this new one has a lot of other features that impress.
I think the point that was trying to be made was that a good clone evolves the source gameplay in a deliberate and considered way, rather than sticking slavishly to the original or changing things just for the sake of it. That being said I agree that the difference between good and bad seemed somewhat arbitrary and boiled down to “game I liked = good clone, game I didn’t like = bad clone”.
Agreed. I think what makes a good clone is that it doesn't take a step backward in terms of innovation, only forward. The video mentioned how some clones add some uniqueness or twist to the original source (step forward), while forgetting some parts that were basically essential for people liking the original (step backward).
I think I needed this video. I'm a uni student and I'm playing with the idea of making a Disco Elysium-esque RPG where instead of an alcoholic detective, you play as a struggling student, with the game covering (and satirizing) everything from various aspects of uni life to parties and life in a dorm with another person. I'm worried it'd come across as a "Disco Elysium clone" if I borrow too much, but this vid helped prod me towards not thinking too much about that. If I ever make it, I'll find my footing as I work with it.
omg tell me more! incidentally for a long time i've wanted to get together with some burnt out academics and write up or play a version of Paranoia but set in a sprawling dystopian School. and i thought a LOT about that idea while playing Disco Elysium, so i think you're onto something
@@MulberryDays not much to tell, it's barely even at a concept stage and I'd also have to learn Unity. But yes, I think the idea is sound. Hope you go for it too if you're able, either solo or with a team.
The Evolution Championship Series, often referred to simply as “Evo,” the most prestigious international tournament each year for Street Fighter and Street Fighter clones 🤣💕
It confuses me why people would be upset with a "Breath of the wild" clone. I and many people love playing breath of the wild and I would want MORE games like it.
Probably because we don't want the entire gaming landscape to become ONLY Breath of the Wild clones. Even the lesser evil of every future Zelda game being just Breath of the Wild again, completely abandoning everything we liked about the series to begin with, would be a tragedy
Not everyone is into the BOTW formula, and it's probably for the better that the market isn't flooded with too many games like that. Heck, some people miss the much older Zelda dungeon-style entries, now that enough time has passed to start missing them.
I would love a BOTW clone that didn't have the enemy difficulty spikes that penalized exploration and the weapon breaking mechanics. If someone made that I would probably love it. I wanted to like BOTW and I understand why people love it.
All I could think during the conclusion was: Blazing Beaks. A top-down shooter roguelike with a pace issue, and that I cannot but compare to Nuclear Throne at every step, and as I deeply love NT, it looses in pretty much every comparision. BUT, the way it handle progression is simply brilliant, and I would love if other games started taking the mechanic for themselves.
good example. it copies NT down to the art style and has worse mechanics and variety, so why not play Nuclear Throne again? I've heard Voidigo is a good clone so I'll need to give that a try.
That sentiment about starbound failing is really weird to me. It was a pretty decent financial success(sourcing wikipedia so take it with a grain of salt I guess), and it was in good standing creatively until the devs decided that becoming space jesus was the most important thing you could do. And even then, the modding scene there really took everything to the next level, creating entirely different ways to play and making far better and more focused storylines in some cases, and otherwise just adding more interesting content. As an example, the capture pods from the game gave me the idea of doing what would be a "pokemon run", where you can't hurt anything, but you have 6 creatures that can. Combining Frackin' with pandora's box lead to a unique game experience which I haven't been able to find anywhere else. While the game itself did fail on it's own, it created a community that made combos that fit into a niche of all sorts. Also, as for the whole exploring one world over a long time, I've got like 2.7k hours in terraria(about half and half for modded/vanilla), and 1k in starbound. Both work really well, but terraria was good unmodded, whereas starbound not so much. This is more of a ramble so I'm gonna conclude it by saying that, by the numbers starbound didn't fail, and modding is something that really needs to be taken into account when talking about a game's success.
@@Zectifin Are we even talking about the same thing??? Literally in my comment I said that it wasn't that great unless you modded it. It's just a factual inaccuracy to say it failed because it made a lotta money.
'The same but better' has been a driver in video gaming since I was a little kid playing coin-ops in the early 80s. That decade was a sort of 'Cambrian Explosion' of iteration and innovation occurring in tandem. When the 'Gorf' cabinet came out we all saw it as Midway essentially trying to squeeze the remaining potential out of something that was already starting to look old school, such was the blindingly fast rate of change. We quickly establish new terms to replace the definitive 'clone' event because it ceases to be an adequate descriptor of what's occurring.
While I 100% agree that Remnant's enemies feel less punchy due to the FPS system. I will say, the puzzles and secrets throughout the game are far and a way superior to Fromsofts, even in Elden Ring, with it's world, felt like each area had less true secrets and mysteries than the Remnant 2 Worlds.
Support the channel on Patreon! A place where everyone is treated as a unique and special individual that I am individually thankful for! Especially you [INSERT PATRON NAME HERE]: www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames
On the other hand, twitter is full of enough bots and bluechecks always saying the same thing that it may as well be full of clones: twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Hey that’s me!
@@ITGuru42 This. And I never heard of Doom-clone at all, we used the term Doom-like to talk about FPS which is not the same meaning at all.
Nowadays when we talk about clones, we don't talk about inspiration and evolution of a genre but copying the exact formula often without thinking about what makes the original a hit, hence why adjectives like soulless, bland or uninspired are associated with the term clone.
This video failed to properly distinguish what is considered a clone and what isn't to the common folks.
Consider moving to Kofi instead!
Evolution, not revolution; iteration not repetition... just how life and art works...
did you just say "20th century trivia from before i was born?"
but like doom was like 10 years ago am i rite?
its like not 30 years ago...
**wilts in timelaps**
I remember a game dev I follow on twitter talking about what a shame it was that Shadow of Mordor patented its rivals mechanic. They described games as an "ongoing conversation." The patent essentially stops the idea in its tracks because no one else can bounce the idea around and add to it.
The patent was always pretty easy to get around. WB only have a leg to stand on in court if your shameless rip-off LOOKS like Shadow of Mordor (i.e. it has a screen that displays the rivals in a hierarchy). Don't include that screen, but keep all the other mechanics that made it fun to begin with and you could do what you want. Even if they tried to sue you, all you'd have to say is "I gave my enemies randomly generated traits... other games did that long before yours did, bro"
@@CrashSable Not really. WB has more money for lawyers than you do. Even if they're legally in the wrong, you won't be able to afford your lawyer long enough for that to matter.
@@TwilightFlower9Depends how solid your case is.
If the law is in your favor enough, then NO amount of lawyer money can get them out of it, as you're just guaranteed to win if it gets to court.
@@greyrifterrellik5837 Their point is that companies with lots of money can afford to delay proceedings almost indefinitely and absorb the costs associated with doing so, and cause the other party to run out of money before the trial even begins. Large companies are notorious for using every trick they can to prolong proceedings to make the legal process cost too much for smaller companies to handle, usually ending up in a settlement at worst.
@@DreadKyller While it'd be stupid in most situations, I would assume there eventually reaches a point where it's so utterly one-sided of a case that you don't even *need* to hire a lawyer in order to win.
Granted anything short of 100% guaranteed victory means you should definitely get a lawyer, but my point was that no amount of money can make a company *completely* invincible.
The "Cloning" of video games is basically the evolution of genres and subgenres
hmm the video would have been much shorter if I'd just said it like this - now I feel dumb
@@ArchitectofGames Before I say anything. I respect your channel and will delete this comment if you have any problem with it just say the word.
That being said. I'd like to direct everyone to sovietwomble's 3 part video essay on Day Z. As he goes into a brilliant analogy regarding how genere's and sub genere's come about. Primarily the survival game genere.
Humans really are just a Feature-Creeped Clone of Chimpanzees.
@@ArchitectofGames Hey now, seeing the thought process is just as helpful as a simple maxim. Your format really helps me - an ignorant pleb who is eternally curious of the "how" and "why" of video game design - understand the ideas involved.
@@ArchitectofGames Before I say anything. I respect your channel and will delete this comment if you have any problem with it just say the word.
That being said. I'd like to direct everyone to the Game Maker's Toolkit youtube channel for no real reason
Simply put: when I find a game I really like, I don't want it to be the only one, I want to play more games like that.
Same, which is why for me, Blasphemous has been filling in the void that Castlevania left
Me personally, I want more Sekiro-clones. You get so many Souls-likes, it would be nice to see the other stuff being imitated. The Wukong game coming in the future, and Kannagi Usagi is the closest the fandom has gotten to more Sekiro.
However, it should be mentioned that some games gain novelty and stay fresh by not having many games of its types. The worst case scenario is you get enough retreads of a formula that you get burnt out of it, hence the hard fatigue many people feel with Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty. Even when they're good, it can be hard to care. If you wanna look at films, the MCU destroyed itself by becoming extremely formulaic across all its different properties.
Solidly concentrated sentence. It's why i try to spread the word on all manner of games as much that i like. From Clash: Artifacts of Chaos and Soulstice, to The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile + Charlie Murder and Cookie Cutter.
I don't want to be annoying when i do so, but just spreading the word on games helps a lot in
1: helping the creators to hopefully do more cool stuff in the future
and
B: help *receiving* suggestions for cool things to play.
Thymesia is a little Sekiro-like, ya might like it.@@leithaziz2716
yeah but not like call of duty was ruined
or dead space
we want the good ones
not crap
This is why patents for games is such a destructive idea. Patenting mechanics or features in terms kills games from "cloning" you without getting into legal ramifications, which in terms stifles overall creativity and innovation as people aren't allowed to innovate on existing ideas.
Exactly, genras wouldnt exist ans anything within it would be patented by the first mega corp to do so
*Stares at the Nemesis system*
@@TuffMelon i was just about to mention that fucking piece of shit
welcome to the music industry
They shouldn’t even be possible. I’m TTRPGs it’s actually not legal to patent rules, because that’s how US law works: you can’t trademark or copyright rules, just how something is written word for word.
So you could say “this gun kills this enemy” and I could copy you by saying “this baseball bat puts this goon to sleep” if that makes sense to you.
Petition to rename the Soulslike genre to "rolly-rolly-slash-slash"
And roguelikes "die and retry"
@@TheOrian34infinite purgatory
Too long. Just call them "Rollers". @@DatRandomInternetDude
i-frame rollers
Weave N Slash
Yooka Laylee is interesting because the games serve as examples of both bad clones and good clones. As shown in the video, the first Yooka Laylee is basically just a copy of Banjo Kazooie that does nothing to distinguish itself or iterate on the formula. However, Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair, the sequel, goes in a completely different direction. This game is instead a clone of the Donkey Kong Country games, but this time around, it seems like they learned their lesson and actually gave it its own identity. They kept the great platforming and gorgeous environments of the DKC games, but it does a lot to iterate and even improve on them. For example, the overworld map is probably one of the best overworlds I've ever seen in a platformer, and the way you can manipulate it to discover alternate levels is quite smart. Not to mention the fact that you're able to play the final level from the start of the game, it's just very difficult without completing the other ones. The game has proven to me that the devs are capable of innovation, and not just pure nostalgia bait, so I'm looking forward to seeing what else they make in the future.
agreed! the impossible lair is surprisingly great - I really should've thought to mention it in the vid actually!
Watching this video and reading this comment while coming to the end of yooka laylee impossible lair. Completely agree about the innovation, I knew I was walking into something to scratch the dk country-like but the overworld was so enjoyable and I was pleasantly surprised.
I need to still play Impossible Lair. But the first entry really set me up for bad expectations. Its almost painful to even hear that its "too close" from the video. No its really not, I'm convinced they didn't fully get the point of even marketing back to one of their golden games. They tie your momentum down with a bar in a 3D platformer FFS, as if they came from an alternative universe where we all loved a M64 where Mario had to catch his breath after two long consecutive long jumps, or Spyro lost his charge every 5 seconds. Then used a handful of level remixes to compare itself with games that ran off a basis of a large variety, and aesthetic charm. I'm not expecting a small team to do 30 levels and 8 different collectible formats, but come on, 4 that give me "a twist" and some bogged down heavy with constrictive minigames? Okay, but at least the experience was really tight and refined... right? Right!? Eh, we know how that ended. On the other end, I adored Hat In Time, because even as a smaller entity that relied on remixed level, the way it drove variety and genuinely wanted you to move and play with its levels, was a blast. I still loved things in Yooka-laylee, and it had some of its heart and charm design on the right notes, but dang the final execution just felt so wrong in so many ways. Impossible Lair I've heard nothing but good things about, and probably owe it a chance though.
I love Yooka Laylee and don't like Impossible Lair and no one can change my mind
I also think that Yooka Laylee also copied the worst elements of the genre (overcollecting, extremely large worlds). What was nice about Banjo that wasn't replicated across the sequel and DK 64 is that the level size was just right and didnt feel repetitive. The frustration I felt with Y-L is that the first world alone felt way too big. Why is everything so spread out? Why is there so much to do? I want to move on to the next biome; please let me leave.
B-K worlds usually didn't overstay their welcome and the challenges were situated next to one another so that you could dive immediately into another challenge. This is something that I felt A Hat In Time understood.
Sometimes triple A developers abandon the wrong mechanics and clones can flesh them out and create a variety that’s just right
that too. look at nintendo. sometimes we just want a sequel to metroid/zelda/mario, and instead nintendo always has to do something new and changes the formula to never be the same. So some indie dev who has the same idea and sees that there are a lot of people with similar opinions and so a market for it creates something inspired by it and fills the need for a sequel we've been waiting for 10+ years.
It's kinda like big studios and small studios have a symbiotic relationship. The little guys experiment with new mechanics and genres, and the big guys experiment with new technologies and engines.
Remnant gets dunked on so much but I thoroughly enjoyed it and really want to point out some of the key things they did very right.
1. Weapon mods system. Basically what Elden Ring's ashes of war system is. All non-unique guns can take mods that change its skill attack. This was implemented in the first game itself, and I always wished something similar would come to a mainstram souls game and it did!
2. Seamless co-op. The co-op in Remnant is extremely well refined. Playing this game with a friend or friends is AMAZING. I could breeze through areas without anything memorable happening solo but with friends it was an extremely fun and memorable experience. Especially the mechanic where you can use one of your dragon hearts (this game's estus flask) to revive a teammate. I was hoping this would be default in Elden Ring, and was disappointed when I found out it wasnt. Cheers to the developer of the seamless co-op mod though, they single handedly brought this experience to Elden Ring.
3. Static armour weight capacity. In most souls games, it takes investment into a certain stat to let you dodge swiftly with heavy equipment. But as a downside, one can dump points into that stat and roll around in the heaviest armour in game, basically giving them a huge advantage in trading hits. In Remnant, you can't really increase your equip load without either sacrificing a very precious accessory slot or investing points in a perk although even with both of them, you can only do at best fat rolls in the heaviest armours in the game (as opposed to not being able to roll at all). Although the armour significantly increases your defense, it does take away a lot in return when gave weight (lol) to the decision of wearing it.
4. Alternative ways of playing .There's a ring that disables the generic flask based healing and instead gives you a short health regen when you perfectly dodge an attack (when you i-frame through it). Inspite of being a shooter, the melee mechanics were extremely satisfying and every weapon felt like it had a place. The most basic pistol or sword could still carry you in the late-game no problem.
This game was honestly the most fun I've had with friends outside of Divinity Original Sin and Elden Ring seamless co-op, and everything I've mentioned was all there in the first game. I havent played the second game so far but me and my buddies have high hopes for it when we do find the time.
Fully agree with you. I can see why people might bounce off of Remnant, but it's an excellent co-op game, and it's a semi looter-shooter that respects the player and doesn't yank them around with subscriptions, microtransactions, and other junk. It's just a good game that wants you to have a good time. I played it through with my girlfriend, and we enjoyed it immensely.
I would say Lies of P's gimmick to differentiate from souls games was a more apparent emphasis on story.
This, Lies of P is VERY straightforward about it's story, the only thing a NG+ feature allows is that P (or rather the player) now understands what the other puppets are saying during the fights.
Which is also why it is way more linear compared to a Fromsoft, with no place where you can shortcut one or multiple zones.
There is also way more gameplay options than compared to other FS souls games (others than Elden Ring).
Also people saying that since it got a parrying mecanic, that make it a sekiro clone in gameplay despite having said parry mechanic working completely differently.
Fromsoft could learn a thing or two about storytelling
@@Digger-Nick What the hell mate? Are you nutts, they are incrediable story tellers. They just like to make the story something you find and figure out for yourself where as lies of P took the traditional approach and focused on the story. (Fromsoft's Storytelling breeds a massive community of people that love to solve their stories so its also great for engagement.)
@@brianpearson8552 Fromsoft has 0 storytelling capability my guy. Sekiro is their ONLY game that actually tells a story and it's just decent.
Look at elden ring, attaching random and out of order sticky notes across the entire world and having a paragraph of text etched into every single item in the game is not "storytelling" lmao. Outer Wilds would like a word...
The game doesn't even have a journal to track quest information or lore you discovered. Fromsoft is too lazy and why even bother when their braindead drone fans will always go out of their way to defend them no matter what anyways right?
Here's an interesting alternative perspective on Jedi Survivor in particular:
When I played Sekiro, I distinctly remember texting my friends "somebody has to make a star wars game with this combat system". The focus on parrying and 1-hit kills makes the Sekiro formula PERFECT for modeling lightsaber battles, and I must not have been the only one who thought so because Jedi Fallen Order went into production almost immediately after Sekiro's release and delivered expertly on the concept, with some reasonable adjustments in the name of playability to accomodate Star Wars's large audience.
So while it's true that it's a pretty faithful clone and does not do much to distinguish itself from its inspiration, instead of viewing that as "game copying popular game" there's another perfectly valid interpretation of "popular game found a formula that would have been used for this setting all along had it been discovered sooner".
Like, I would be SHOCKED if any future Star Wars jedi-focused game comes out that don't rely almost exclusively on the Sekiro formula, at least for combat. If the Sekiro formula had been discovered sooner, I am dead certain that Jedi Knight, Force Unleashed, Knights of the Old Republic, and maybe even Lego Star Wars would have been using it. I can absolutely see a future where in a decade or so we stop calling this style of games "sekiro clones" and instead call them "lightsaber games".
Indeed, that could be a interesting evolution, having more " intense duels fights" than Fallen Order had (I didn't play Survivor). Would be interesting to see if they could try more varied force habilities too, something like the powers in Control. But, if they keep the Fallen Order formula, making the platforming less finicky would help a lot.
12:08 I feel like saying that starbound failed due to being a terraria clone stretched across multiple planets is a bit of a stretch. During the beta, starbound was actually an amazing game, and that magic can still be recreated today with mods or backporting, and as someone who played terraria first, once i got those mods, i actually ended up putting more time into starbound than terraria. Where starbound truly failed was with its developers, Chucklefish studios. Chucklefish was an absolutely AWFUL company, hiring minors for "exposure" instead of money, "forgetting" to pay their full time employees, and just being an all around terrible place, which lead to the creative death of starbound in the 1.0 update where they shoehorned in a shitty ass story and thought it would make their game better and get them more money.
Agreed, starbound could’ve been a GREAT clone! But chucklefish ruined it in so so so many ways. Thanks to modding, I honestly do prefer starbound over terraria even today… if only because starbound is so easy to mod, and as a result has more building materials. I just like to make giant superstructures in it, and the plethora of race mods make that very possible!
I liked exploring the different planets, but because of chucklefish’s horrible practices that were anti-employee and also anti-*player*, the game crashed and burned. It sucks :(
there are a lot of dubious takes in this video essay
i bought starbound because it was terraria in space and am still disappointed with the massive pivot the 1.0 launch pulled.
@zooker7938 exactly. They didn't iterate and build enough upon what makes terraria amazing to really stand out - even in early access - so it just fell to the wayside alongside everything else.
ahh, that explains why their game "starmancer" is so poorly built.
Inspiration is like the term I hear in TTRPGs of the of "Yes, and..." where you take what's already presented and instead of dismissing it, add to it. That addition, and understanding of what's going on, separates something that's "inspired by" from something that's simply "a copy of". A bad clone is often one that takes the surface level impression of why something is successful, and simply mimics it without understanding why people actually like it, often in ways that actively harm the core concept, the whole "just file off the serial number and nobody will notice it's just the same thing but repackaged" thing. Inspiration and iteration is a matter of "I like this, I want more of it, what can I do with it?", and too many people fail to properly take into consideration that last part.
Good way of thinking. Positive and productive instead of looking down upon something and talking about looking down upon it, or not doing anything with it.
And this superficial cloning happens in all media - especially competitive ones, like anime. For example, all those "magical girl show, but dark and violent" copies that had no idea what made Madoka Magica so impactful, and kept copying and amplifying random parts of it. Unfortunately, some of these also get popular enough, because a part of the audience - similarly - is too young and doesn't have enough experience to understand what made them great either, but want "more", so will still be satisfied with a worse imitation without the actual "and...".
However there is also a time when DMing that the words need to be "No, but..." and simply "No" otherwise you campaign ends up being a complete fucking mess OR you end up in situations where something goes awry because of one asshole at the table or because you, as the DM, have hard set boundaries within your world. "Ok so this is a Dwarf only campaign so I need everyone to make a Dwarf" "Oh but I want to be an Elf!" "No, that's not the point of this campaign, you can be a Dwarf who is an abassador to the Elves but you can't play an Elf" "oh but I really wanted to be an Elf" "Well I'm sorry that doesn't fit and everybody else is onboard with this, if you want you can step out for this campaign and come back when we finish it or you can make a Dwarf".
@@luketfer You're kinda missing the point here. I wasn't speaking for the whole of TTRPGs because this wasn't a video about TTRPGs. I was using that piece of GM advice for comparison because the sentiment of "take what's been given and roll with it" is a healthier mindset in regards to video game clones because "it's like this familiar thing, so it's unoriginal and therefore bad" is a bad mental blanket statement to have.
I know it from improv, and have heard some people with improv talk about it in the context of TTRPGs, but it's interesting to see how far it's spread to be mentioned like this.
Interestingly enough, in my part of Germany, we never called them Doom clones. I'm pretty certain we simply called them Ego-Shooters (it's a German thing), even in 94. So it's wild for me that the English speaking sphere called them "doom clones".
Das liegt daran das Doom und Doom 2 bei uns bis 2011 auf dem Index waren.
I knew the premise of this going in because I *remember* when Doom first came out, and the way everyone was constantly calling FPSes Doom Clones. There were people still using that term as late as 2002 or 2003 in some gaming articles, albeit mostly ones that were out of touch with the way gaming was rapidly changing at the time.
Almost any art form will take inspiration from previous works, and if something works, it's going to be repeated in some form. Whole genres of video games exist because of codifiers for that genre, and imitate it because they made it work and work well. A game imitating other games does not by default make it bad or good; it's what they do with it and how they alter things that can make a huge difference. Sometimes even a few seemingly minor changes can completely and utterly change how much enjoyment one can get out of a game's systems.
Take for example the leveling system of Final Fantasy 2 versus the original Final Fantasy, or for a more modern comparison, the way that Fallout: New Vegas uses engaging writing and well-placed world design to take Fallout 3's boring, stale gameplay and make it thoroughly enjoyable for 60+ hours.
Or any number of other improvements/changes other types of games make. Clones are not bad, and sometimes, if what you want is more of what you've already thoroughly enjoyed, it can be fantastic to see a clone that gives you a fresh way to experience something you already enjoyed and loved. Or give something you liked a little bit but weren't sure about another shot.
For me, examples of what you talk about in terms of codifiers for entire genres, come to mind with Devil May Cry and God of War. Definers of the Character Action or Hack-and-Slash genre (there's debate over the correct term) that got fairly popular around the mid-2000s and developed pretty popularly up until the early 2010s.
There have been a number of games in the same genre, from the Darksiders and Bayonetta series to Dante's Inferno and Sonic Unleashed (at least partially) From X-Men: Wolverine to Van Helsing, from Ghost Rider to Heavenly Sword.
Of course there were similar games from around that time and before, such as Rygar: The Legendary Adventure and Shinobi, and famously God Hand (i'd say that may count within the genre) but DMC and GoW were the real household names that, for all their differences in gameplay and tone, were used as a golden standard.
In the 2010s, especially late 2010s, these 3D titles are quite a bit rarer. And I assume that's also in part because of looking upon "clones" (or sometimes knock-offs or rip-offs) in a negative way, as well as changing attitudes of the time that i won't get into because i'm not NEARLY qualified to speak on that.
(I assume industry focus on Souls-type games and cinematic experiences have had their influence on this as well)
To my knowledge most *new* games in that genre from the early 2010s, were developed from already established series:
Aforementioned Darksiders (Darksiders 2, and Darksiders 3 finally got released around 2018 or something),
Bayonetta 2,
DMC4 and DmC: Devil May Cry,
a series genre outlier in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance,
and in terms of original ones, there was your odd Assault Spy, NieR: Automata and Astral Chain.
But most of those titles (MGR: Revengance, Bayonetta 1 and 2, NieR: Automata in gameplay, and Astral Chain) came from a single studio (Platinum Games) that is *known* for its efforts within the Character Action Genre. Which is a studio that had to fight to remain in business, if i'm not mistaken. And thanks to among other things the love from their fans has allowed to do so.
The only real *new* 3D Character Action/Hack-and-Slash game from the time was Assault Spy. And that went under the radar big time.
(I can't speak about 2D ones, i only know of The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile).
I'm glad to see that things are picking up again a bit in the Character Action or Hack-and-Slash genre in recent years. And i'm not talking about the big titles like DMC5, even though that must have left behind a big positive impact as it has done years before. Or Bayonetta 3 and the norse God of War, for all their divisive factors.
I am talking for example personal favourite Soulstice from late 2022, Hi-Fi Rush from early this year which came out of nowhere with an absolute BANG (and i want to give mention to music action game colleague No Straight Roads which released a few years earlier), and the upcoming Enenra and Genokids.
(And mention to Clash: Artifacts of Chaos as well, for seemingly sharing some God Hand DNA)
Two of these games, Soulstice and Hi-Fi Rush, are from fairly sizeable studios and both ambitious projects in their own right, whereas Enenra and Genokids seem to be made by smaller teams. Reply Game Studios have even cited wanting to become like a "European Platinum Games".
And if anything, i'm just glad that love is being given back to the genre by the smaller guys to help reinvigorate it.
Big comment, understandable if whoever reads it didn't read through ALL of it, and there is great possibility i have made errors and mistakes in recalling and assuming things.
If one did read through it all, I hope it has proved interesting, that it has brought a lot of cool titles both old and new to your attention, and I wish you a good rest of your day. Have a good one and take care as well as a cookie when nobody's looking.
I think something which might be an important thing to think about is also that a lot of these more modern clones might end up being played by people who never played their inspirations.
For example, Pillars of eternity obviously and knowingly takes a lot of it's gameplay from old isometric CRPG's from the late 90's/early 2000's, but I'd never actually played any of those beofre I played pillars, so I didn't have any reference point or nostalgia beyond pillars itself.
The reason I got interested in those older games was BECAUSE I played a more modern 'clone', and I'd be surprised if I was the only person with a similar experience.
This is a very solid take. Where it concerns for example the Character Action or Hack-and-Slash genre, i first properly came into contact with it through the Darksiders series.
They're an amalgamation of influences between each game so far: Stuff like tone being akin to Legacy of Kain, combat close to DmC, gnarly art direction like World of Warcraft, dungeons like Legend of Zelda, and short segments of third-person shooting like Gears of War.
The second one had hints of Prince of Persia in the platforming and a big fantasy RPG/Diablo with the loot.
Up to that point, i had never played or rarely looked into (or in some cases, barely even heard of) :
- The likes of Legacy of Kain
- Prince of Persia
- Devil May Cry
- Legend of Zelda.
And i fupping loved it.
The series' fate hung in the balance for a while after THQ went belly-up.
A third Darksiders that released somewhere in... 2018? went a more Souls-like way for combat, and had a more Metroidvania structure than a Zelda-like level structure.
Which was pretty divisive (to say the least). So the devs later added an option to make it feel more like the first two games. It's not an in-depth overhaul, but it showed willingness to listen.
So did the Keepers of the Void DLC, which from what i've heard feel like proper dungeons with puzzles and ways to use the weapons/powers for puzzles.
And Darksiders Genesis, a prequel, went an isometric view and option for co-op while also adding a choosable level structure from a hub level.
The Darksiders' series identity seems like a pretty fluid and ever-changing one, but there is something nigh intangible that can still be called Darksiders that brings it all together when done well. And the hack-and-slash/character action combat + puzzles will always be part of that.
The other games that Darksiders takes inspiration from may have nearly perfected a lot of stuff or done them more in-depth. Like 2's parkour traversal compared to Prince of Persia, or 1's entire combat system compared to DMC and GoW, solid as it is. And sometimes puzzle objects and dungeons compared to Legend of Zelda as a whole.
But i'm of firm belief that a game company should be allowed and encouraged to properly make its own journey as well.
To clarify a bit what I mean: A team doesn't immediately have the history of learning that for example Nintendo has under its belt, with all the successes, mistakes, developments and relationships between people that it required to make the game(s).
If i had to put my thoughts in a more concise way, it may have to be like this.
Darksiders gave me an experience only Darksiders can give. And I want to look at it for being the way it is.
Whenever I may get bored playing Darksiders 1, as much as i love it, it's not because it's *not* like God of War or Zelda or DMC in that moment. I may have played it for a bit too long, the section wasn't as well designed as it could have been, or something else.
Or perhaps it's something as cynically viewed as the gameplay loop of the moment not being as fun as i remember, or just something as fleeting as the gameplay being at a lower point in the moment.
And the inverse is also true.
That can be viewed from a critical lens at the gameplay as a whole, of course. But from that critical lens still, expressed subjectively or in an attempt at being objective, i'd still want to view it from being *Darksiders*.
So weirdly enough, I was introduced to the classic God of War games before I got into DMC much later. I don't think it really matters nowadays as I found appreciation for both series (the GoW games have usually have better level design and puzzles/exploration while DMC has one of the most in-depth combat systems I know. Having Vergil is also a big plus for your series, but I digress).
I never played Paper Mario TTYD (looking forward to the remake) I had heard about Bug Fables and how it’s “Classic Paper Mario”
So I bought Bug Fables, played Bug Fables, enjoyed Bug Fables, and at the end I went “I FINALLY understand the hype behind classic Paper Mario”
exactly. I grew up playing DOS Xcom. I don't like the remakes as much, but I'm glad theres a new generation of turn based tactics fans and XCOM pretty much revived the subgenre and we have a bunch of games that are copying the XCOM remakes or trying to purposely throw back to the originals. More is always good in my book.
I was actually gonna comment this! Only, I was also going to mention that accessibility to older titles (whether because of copyright, a lack of porting, accessibility in the medical sense, or the seldom-mentioned but widely prevalent reality of economic constraints) can also mean younger generations cannot play them at all. Just as one example, I have seizures, so a wide breadth of older games that have flashy hit confirmation effects, in the style of old arcade games, are essentially off the table for me. Most often, though, I find it's just impossible-or very difficult-to get my hands on old titles without pursuing emulation as a hobby (and having the associated free time). It's obviously not a new observation, but you can't pick up an old game the way you can pick up an old book-specialized hardware or software (usually both) is required in combination with a lot of available time to tinker. Sometimes, too, there simply is a lack of interest in older titles-I love Stardew Valley, but I have yet to see anything of Harvest Moon that makes me feel there's something specific for me personally to go back for (also, I've tried to play Doom, and I very much recognize its influence and appreciate its lack of hitscan enemies, but I still can't pretend to like it or be impressed by it in the way, say, I love classic Mario. At the tender age of 22, I also feel the same apathy towards Call of Duty, although I'm less clear how Call of Duty propelled its own genre forward). I definitely want to dig deeper into Metroidvanias because of Hollow Knight, though.
I personally LOVE the Remnant game as they're good games in their own respect. And I personally do think that between R1 and R2, the boss designs of R2 as well as exploration and build customization are significantly better then that of R1 while also keeping what made me like R1 in the first place. And their latest DLC was made with the players feedback of how much they liked the linearity but still exploratory nature of the Marrow start for Losomn, but bigger and more interesting to explore. I do definitely think the devs have a good formula and since its their second game of 8 devs (and 40+ artists) they did an incredible job. Are there areas to improve? Ofc and they're working tirelessly to improve the game and taking feedback. Hell a feedback I made one time for the challenger archetype was to make the intimidating presence 15 meters instead of 10 so more weapon variety can be used with the archetype and it got added. So I do believe the devs absolutely have the capabilities of making an award winning game, they just need the time and practice to do so
I agree and imo calling it a clone is a stretch. It borrows mechanics from many different games and is it’s own beast in itself. Not a cover shooter, not a souls game, if anything it’s more like a looter shooter if anything. If it came out before souls we’d be calling games “remnant-like”
Remnant 2 bosses are entirely based on limiting player mobility and not boss strength. Most of the remnant 2 bosses were significant steps backwards design wise. The game is a decent sequel, but the bosses felt like the weakest part of the game.
@@chrisdaman4179 I’m just now about to beat 1. Was gonna play 2 afterwards, that makes me sad. Do they still spam extra enemies outside the boss?
@@justinpennington6680 yeah, you still get tons of endless ads in some fights. There are decent ways to midigate it, but some bosses get very frustrating. For me it was needlessly limiting the arena to small confined spaces. A huge boss, ape rapid attacks, AND no where to move gets very frustrating. I still think 2 is worth playing though.
@@chrisdaman4179 I’m sure it’s good thanks for the input I don’t mind ads if done well, but sometimes it takes away from the boss itself imo thanks
Ok, as a Swede, I could'nt help but chuckle when you used Gävlebocken as a stand-in for a bonfire.
(And its a little bit ironic given that it managed to stay unlit this year)
Yeah, that was a hit-n-burn.
Yeah, I always felt that if a game's legacy can simply die off just because of clones, then the legacy probably isn't that worth it anyway.
Especially Lies of P, it was like "when mom says we have Bloodborne at home, and after begrudgingly going home to try it out, mom's actually got a point".
if people remember a game that was inspired/a clone of another game more than the original than they did something right. Nobody remember infiniminer. Everyone remembers minecraft. NES Mario wasn't the original side scroller platform, but it blew so many other ones before it out of the water that its kind of the origin point that everyone remembers. Super metroid didn't invent back tracking world map because you got new abilities that allowed you to reach new areas, but it took several ideas from the previous metroid and other games with exploration and new abilities that allowed progress and mashed them together to make a masterpiece. Symphony of the night was really just super metroid with voice acting and some RPG style stat additions, but everyone loves that so much they've named the genre after the game that started it and one of its best clones.
@@Zectifinthis is why i hate copyrighting game mechanics so much -- the game that pioneers a certain mechanic is almost never the game that does it best
@@iCarus_A Exactly! Especially when it's a game mechanic that's vague and a shower thought, like "trading card game" or "procedurally generated villains". Games usually aren't good because they have those premises, but because they can execute them well.
@@akirachisaka9997 Great points. It's an ugly business, trying to patent concepts when the fact is that everything that has ever occurred, however innovative it seems in the present moment, however well it's executed, didn't just erupt spontaneously. There's always a precursor. Turtles all the way down.
In this Special Case (and certainly in some others too) i could not play bloodborne because i only have a PC. I watched Lets Plays of it, sure, but that does not make you feel how the game really is like, so Lies of P felt rather fresh to me. It reminded me more of DS1 but "better", or the best parts of it. For me the world was new, the weapon system and the Legion Arm and Quarz Abilities were also something new (maybe i lived in a bubble but hey, something reached me ;) ). I am not sure if i would have played Bloodborne because of how brutally hard it seemed compared to Dark Souls (no blocks, no magic), and i never intend on playing Sekiro, i know my Limits ;)
But i also think cloning is good because just some little twists in the Setting or how the cobat works or how forgiving the game is speaks to another audience that might give more titles of that specific genre a chance or opens up the idea of trying something new once in a while.
I really enjoyed playing Ender Lilies. The Design, the Music the World, just beautiful. And to me it felt like "just hard enough". So keep on recycling even old ideas! *thumbs up*
Wargroove is an odd one to include, because it made some significant improvements over advance wars to cement it being more than just a clone and to show it improved on the formula. The biggest change being the introduction of the commander unit. They all have the same stats as each other. But your groove (CO power) varies between them, all focused from the unit itself, which helps make it clear what each commander is capable of easily. As opposed to Advance wars map-wide stat buffs that affect different units in different ways.
this unit also being a victory/defeat condition if killed and its great cost efficiency (with low resupply cost and self-regen) to be used in combat leads to a great risk/reward, that also serves to speed up competitive games. Allowing multiple objectives and therefore fronts to arise. With turnarounds possible if you neglect to guard your headquarters or commander appropriately.
That plus the map design on PvP maps learns from the mistakes of advance wars. Where in AW, a "lost" game can take ages to come to a natural conclusion. because the HQs were placed so far back in the map, with production in front, that you could win and still take a long time to end the game. Wargroove maps put the HQ forwards with production behind. Which leads to much faster games and potential surprise victories.
Not to meantion every unit having a unique 'crit' condition to use to your advantage and the masses of custom content and scripting created by the community.
It felt like the game was brushed over as being a clone without ever bringing up how it improved on the source material.
"So why am I talking about this weird piece of 20th century trivia from before I was born?"
*withers and dies*
nooo too real 😭
I disagree with your take on Remnant 2, though I'll concede that if you're used to Souls games then the "normal" difficulty level is probably too easy for you. It's one of my favourite games of the year and I think that it has a lot of really inspired ideas for building a Souls-style that is more co-op focused (which is one of the games' cores conceits, though I never felt like I was having a lesser experience playing it solo) and also some absolutely *stellar* bosses, with the final boss being a particular standout.
Weirdly, Remnant (The first one, never played the second) made me want to go back to Warframe rather than reminding me of souls-likes.
Its probably the first time I've truly disagreed with this channel. Playing Remnant 2 I never really thought about how much of a Soulslike it was. I was always just impressed how well hidden its secrets were, or how fun putting together a new build was based on some new ring or gun I found.
It's definitely not just some clone
yeah Remnant 2 wasn't a failure. It's one of my favorite games of all time. It blows the original out of the water. Having random generation and secrets gives you another reason to play it again and again and also makes multiplayer much more fun. Also it wasn't a failure at all. Many consider it one of the best games of the year and it was a huge success for Gunfire Games. He's taking something he personally dislikes and saying it as if it was a definitive reason why it failed.
I hate Hollow Knight. I hate how the map system works and I hate the combat and having to come back to my body. Should I say it failed as a metroidvania because I personally didn't like it? No. People loved it, its a financial and critical success and helped explode the subgenre in popularity and is probably many younger people's first metroidvania due to its popularity. Just because I have gripes with it doesn't mean its bad or failed as a game.
I do agree with the channel when he stated Remnant2's design decisions led to a heavy reliance on AOE spam and bullet sponges to do difficulty, neither of which are great ways to go about it. Playing through Remnant 2 to apocalypse I always felt that the soulslike influences were always at odds with the FPS identity of the game, and they were never fused together in a good way. It was serviceable at best, but it could definitely have been done better.
This dissertation is a justification of WHY clones should exist, which is useful in the very cynical online conversations we often see online, but NOT HOW clones should exist. You talk a lot about how games tried certain mechanics (or not) but not really why, IN GENERAL, said attempts work. I specifically mean you do individual examples but not general applied learnings.
I would love to see video about more of a general applied learnings of what to clone and what to change regardless of genre. It’s gonna be an imperfect video no matter what you say but it would be a jump off point to help designers narrow what to think about
Crazy how this video came out less than a month before palworld absolutely smashed into the gaming scene
difference palworld is one of the bad clones that isn't adding anything new or interesting to the things its shamelessly copying. it's just a shitty grindy survival craft game that's sort of pokemon and sort of breath of the wild but worse in all aspects.
Agreed. Once you have played games enough you end up with specific tastes and preferences which can only be adhered to with "clones". If your mom made tacos that tasted just like your fav restaurant you wouldnt say "aw this is just a clone mom Im not eating this" lmao nah you'd enjoy it!
I cackled out loud at the "come on mom, this is just a clone" lmao
@@magicfroggi Now i'm imagining a Star Wars clone trooper in a taco shell.
I like eating your mom's taco
This, especially with simulation/godlike games. There's so few when a clone does turn up everyone jumps on it, tears it fown until the game falls apart from being something it never was going to be to start with. It's why things like the sims & sim city have love/hate relationships with it's fan base - even between editions. When a game that does anything close pops up the fans flock over and end up stifling them from growing into their own thing by demanding them to be the exact same thing they left behind but better (and sometimes that's just impossible)
To be honest it's why I haven't touched Balders gate 3. I would love another one of those games, but I'm so over it being set in the Forgotten Realms. But I dunno if making it closer to Planescape Torment would be an any better - probably make it still very the same regardless of the universe it's set. I'd love something to shake up this style of game as I enjoy it but yeah... it's not an easy one to do.
Bro, imagine clone troopers, but they have taco bell colors/paints on their armor.
And they're going up against mcdonalds themed droids.@@jurtheorc8117
'Indie game that is a direct copy of a Nintendo IP' is one of my favorite genres and they rock! Rivals of Aether, Ittle Dew 1 & 2, Cassette Beasts, Bug Fables, and Lenna's Inception are all such fantastic games! You really should check these games out if you haven't already.
I agree, Animal Crossing inspired Stardew Valley.
@@Cybernaut551 No. That was Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons.
Rivals of Aether quickly became my favorite fighting game once I started using the steam workshop. I mean you can play as Ronald McDonald and a Primal Aspid from Hollow Knight vs. a Duracell battery and Peppino Spaghetti from Pizza Tower on top of a Waffle House, but you can also play much more serious characters/maps too. The shitpost characters are often so good they can sometimes valid for more serious matches, like Morshu and I.M. Meen for example. Anyway, rant over.
As a GMTK-clone, you should lift another good idea from there and put the title of the game currently on screen in a corner throughout. A video like this where you jump between games visually would benefit greatly. I'm sure Mark Brown, or whoever he lifted it from, won't mind you copying that.
Hey there! I'm Fannon, long time fan of the channel. Remnant II was actually my first studio release as a designer, so seeing the hunter armor in the thumbnail was a real trip hahah. Hope you enjoyed your time with the game and thanks for playing!
Remnant 2 is such a massive improvement to the first game, good job! (As an ex-Ikea employee I can't get over the anachronistic forklift pallets littered all over Losomn though, lol)
Remnant 2 is such a massive improvement to the first game, good job! (As an ex-Ikea employee I can't get over the anachronistic forklift pallets littered all over Losomn though, lol)
I feel the stance on the Jedi series was pretty unfair. Yes, combat definitely draws upon souls (but is unique thanks to the force powers, thank you). However, the game defines itself upon its much more successful synthesis of that with Metroidvania mechanics. You actually get new unique abilities throughout the game in a fun way, and exploration is BETTER than exploration in most souls games, imo.
Yeah, some weird takes in the examples he used. It felt like he was so focused on comparing them to other Souls-likes that he failed to see other sources of inspiration and where they differed (speaking more about Remnant 2 and Jedi here).
The reason he seemed to like Lies of P so much is because it's a good Souls-like, whereas he didn't like the others because he wanted them to be more Souls-like as opposed to also Metroidvania-y or 3rd person fps co-op-y.
i barely see Jedi Survivor as soulslike at all.
@@RealHero101111 Combat is similar just no stamina, death system is similar, level up system is similar but with abilities instead of stats. It's exploration is more Metroidvania and it's story is a more traditional narrative, but the combat bones are there and the lineage clear.
It's more accurate to say it has Souls-like combat rather than Souls-like in general though, I'll give you that. The comparison is legitimate, just overexaggerated and ignores other equally strong inspirations/influences.
@@gunnarschlichting9886 i mostly think respawn checkpoints and shortcuts, but everything else feel just outside of it. it more reminds me prince of persia than souls.
I think Bug Fables did it best with its system mimicking Paper Mario but advancing it to have three party members at once instead of just two, and having an advanced dynamic with how to position your party members for either more damage or less aggression from enemies. The badge system is also really good and makes you really think about what you want to equip to certain party members, and for what battle you're going into.
So true! Paper Mario is heavily centered on Mario, all stats are for Mario, Mario is always the first one, the only one who can use spells, items and equip badges.
And the variety of badges is greater in Bug fables, and they synergize much better! I wish Nintendo would learn a thing or two from them - that gameplay with the art design of Origami King would be *chef's kiss*.
@@lucaslourenco8918 Well, there is always Mario & Luigi if you want things to stop focusing so much on Mario and have another dynamic party member. The only Paper Mario game to take any focus off Mario was SUPER Paper Mario, but that had a much different gameplay than the others.
I wish bug fables did more to differentiate itself from paper Mario than just adding 2 more party members and nothing else. Even with the additional 2 party members the game still feels like an unoriginal copy of pm because literally nothing else is changed (they even copied the design of the room transitions…) the game doesn’t try to solve any of the problems present in the paper Mario formula and instead just introduces its own
@@kekcrocgod6731 First: How does it introduce its own problems?
Second: How does it not fix the issues that the original Paper Mario had?
It has a great story that engages all the main characters almost equally, and even involves side characters on the regular to the point that they have their own developments. The battle system takes into account enemy types like if the enemy is a plant or a bug and allows them to take more damage from certain types of attacks. I would say it has its own sense of originality, especially with its setting and lore, otherwise it would have copied assets directly from the Paper Mario games instead of creating its own props and characters. Being inspired by Paper Mario down to the art style and battle style doesn't automatically make it "unoriginal". Now do you care to explain in full as to why you think it's an "unoriginal copy"?
@@kekcrocgod6731 Eh, I disagree, I felt like Bug Fables was natural evolution of PM formula that PM series itself can't do because of its reliance on revolving around Mario
I'm reminded of George' Carlin's routine on how every ball sport is a clone of ping pong. Volleyball, for example, is racketless team ping pong played with an elevated net while standing on the table.
What did he say about baseball
@@musicexams5258 I haven't seen the bit, but that's an easy one: It's ping pong where the player on one side hits the ball too hard every time and everyone else in the room has to chase it down before it rolls under a couch.
Ping pong came *after* tennis tho
In my opinion, creating games that are similar to other ones is what helps turn singular franchises into genres. That’s why as a big Monster Hunter fan, I enjoy games like Dauntless and Wild Hearts. Both of these have unique things that I love, like the building system in Wild Hearts or the different game modes such as escalation in Dauntless. Granted, I am a fan of giant monsters in general, hence why I’m so receptive to these things compared to the more spiteful reactions other people have had, but personally, I’m happy to see monster hunting evolve into a broader genre.
A "Clone" needs to justify its existence to be worthwhile. It is okay and usually good to pull from preexisting media, but one must be aware that by doing so one is choosing to compete with said media. So when pitching this to consumers, there needs to be a reason to pick the "Clone" over that which it pulls from.
17:19 this is one of the things I hated about lies of P. Every goddang wooden bridge falls. It's a good trick once, it's annoying when it's done 75 frickin' times!
Yep. It's interesting they didn't learn from DS3 and it's mimic problem
1. Complete and utter lie. Only a third of them do, and it's mainly in the first third of the game as a way to reverse-trap you later on.
2. none of them do that as an instant death trap, every single bridge that fall make you fall directly in the actual path to progress
@@maxentirunos 1: I literally never said they were instant death traps. Not even once. You made that up yourself. 2: you've clearly never heard of hyperbole before. You see, when someone says "every frickin god dang time" it is very blatantly obvious they do not mean literally every single instance. Even a third of the time is way too many times. I don't care if it's to reverse trap you or whatever, it still overstays its welcome the twelfth time, no less the twentieth.
@@maxentirunos"☝️🤓 aktually it's more like a third!"
@@jeff3221 Ah yes, Ad hominem because you got nothing to actually say in the discussion
To illustrate your point Pong, the first home console game, is a clone of tennis and a fusball table.
So... table tennis?
@@MegaPokefan97clone of tennis and fusball table
Pong is itself a clone of a game called Tennis for Two. Look it up sometime!
@@MegaPokefan97
Actually that's more of a straight clone of tennis with no other elements added.
i love people taking things and doing their own spin on it, you'll get a lot of lazy stuff but you can in fact just not play bad games, I also consider studios to gain skills at making a type of game, so when studio tackles an idea they've done before they have an opportunity to further refine their design
people only remember the bad clones as being clones. theres plenty of good clones that people wont call clones. why isn't half life or halo a "DOOM clone"? NES mario bros isn't the first platformer, but nobody criticizes it as being a clone of the games before it. people will iterate and many will be shit, but sometimes we get a real gem and it moves the medium forward.
21:35 the full quote is actually saying the opposite. "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness"
DnD is an example of clones not overtaking the original and it becoming stagnated tbh
As a 5e player of seven years, I definitely agree.
If there’s one hill I’ll die on, it’s that Baldur’s Gate 3 sucks not because it’s a bad game (it is, but that’s not this point), but because it’s a bad D&D game. I thought it would fix or improve the things that made base 5e terrible, and it didn’t. It actually took one of the best things about D&D away. (You can’t have an impactful backstory-all player characters are special for the same reason and only special because of that reason: the parasite).
I feel like the nature of tabletop roleplay is that people will always prefer homebrew over a glossy product. Like, I think the reason D&D has endured so long is that most players don't take the rulebook that seriously and just make stuff up.
@@LimeyLassen I feel like that's equivalent to games with large modding communities
What is implied in the video but not fully pointed out is how the advancements brought on by clones are mostly if not always gameplay based. This makes sense as genres are largely defined by the mechanics they choose to combine.
Bro, I hate how all games are Tennis for 2 clones
smh everything started going downhill after that cheap knockoff pong came out
All my homies love Tennis for Two.
A fun exploration for the future... How ARPGs and Action RPGs are still two distinctly different genres with the exact same name.
Agree with this. But also clones can also appeal to people who missed the originals too. Wargroove was one for me where having never played it's direct inspiration, I still loved it. And xcom is one I tried to play as it inspired alot of games I liked but just didn't do much for me.
I love the original X-coms and I just didn't like the new "XCOM" (the way you capitalize is important) games. They felt too "board gamey" to me and somehow the DOS one felt more complicated and more like a simulation than the remakes. I actually liked chimera squad more than 1 and 2 because it mixed it up and added alternating activations based on initiative and you could push enemies back in the turn order. I love games that do that and it made the combat more exciting for me and you also don't lose half your team in one enemy turn. I know some of the XCOM 1 and 2 diehards hated it for that.
Appreciate the Spell Break clip, really underrated and innovative game that I hope will make a return someday
I'd argue Lies of P has two unique mechanics all its own: The handle & blade system, and being only allowed to carry one "spell," aka the legion arms at once.
No other game has tried either of those to my knowledge. And the handle mechanic especially must have been TONS of work while really mixing up how people play.
Lost it at the Gävlebock image when talking about bonfires, good one!
ayyy thank you for the shoutout ! glad my stuff managed to resonate with you in such a way. B)
So basically you have to know what makes the games so great in the first place so you can use that to make a better iteration. You have to know what you Can, and Shouldn’t change.
If games are a constantly evolving medium, they actually have to go through the evolution process. That means, notable titles must have successors to inherit their better traits.
As clones pop up in the subgenre, they gradually branch out and fill a whole list of nieches. Then, like rogue-likes, they become a whole genre in and of themselves until another great game is made.
When put like this, the whole clone idea is nothing more than the continuation of an old tradition in greek art and their tragedies, they weren’t original ideas, instead every author was seeking to tell the same story with their own spin, building on the tradition not replacing it.
The concept of originality is rather new and while originality may have happened occasionally, but in arts the rule was keep the tradition and seek to replicate older works which in turns lead to the evolution of styles and gradual evolution of painting, writing and music.
Fantastic script, as always! Love your editing and background clip selection as well!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
+ with competition & evolution we get the best out of it.
This video is extremely helpful to me, I am developing a parkour game heavily inspired by Vector and Mirror's Edge as a love letter to both, my brother is working on the animations and I work on the code and general game design aspects. Vector is our number 1 inspiration, and at the start of development I think we fell into the rabbit hole of trying to recreate most of its mechanics given that we consider Vector to be the gold standard of 2D parkour games, mobile or not. We have successfully achieved this we think, but now we are left with a sense of not having done enough, or a sense of just being copycats of the original, but we know that we started from a place of admiration and LOVE towards Vector, and we know that we can improve upon the formula of the game by adding more moves and a better way of choosing your actions.
It might not be as different from Vector as we would have liked at first, but thanks to this video I realized that it doesn't necessarily need to be different, but that it needs to be as good or even better at what the original was doing, as to progress this specific game genre to the next step.
In any case, we will continue to work on our project, Runner's Faith, and trying to polish the mechanics to a level never seen before, if any of you is interested I have a devlog from a couple of months ago that showcases the potential of our game, and soon I'll make an updated devlog to show how it has improved!
This actually makes me more comfortable with the Undertale clone I've been working on for 6 years (still 2-ish years away from when I'm comfortable showing it publicly though...)
Hey Adam! Allan here, one of the devs of Soulstone Survivors! I'm a huge fan of your work since forever and loved the video! I definitely get the critique (and Im super happy to know you played our game!!), ever since we got Soulstone Survivors out there we are continuously trying to make it into its own game, since the beginning for us Soulstone was what we would like to see in the "Bullet Heaven" genre, we kept some elements, removed others, added some of our own ideas into the mix, but indeed, as the game currently stands I definitely can see how it might feel "automatically solved" if you played Vampire Survivors (or similar games). As we continue navigating the Early Access and learn from our own game, player feedback and other games in the genre, we are working on a few plans that hopefully will be able to break even more that sensation of closeness, while still keeping the core key elements that make the game what it is. At any rate, just wanted to thank you for the mention and say we are big fans, and I hope you will give a try to the game again in the future as we get closer to the 1.0 release!
After that loving characterization of "mimicry as flattery", I really didn't expect the video to end on "I need money to buy crisps". You kill me Adam.
damn, i love Sundered :'c
didn't even realize it was procgen until my third playthrough lmao. Thought they handled it really well since major stuff stays in the same location, and only the small inconsequential rooms are what gets procgen'd. Even got every achievement cuz i loved the game so much.
I was exercising in the middle of this video, and I realized something. (I liked the video, in fact many of them, it's why I'm subscribed.) I realized at one point that my attention was getting tired. I was expecting a pause between ideas, or a title card, or something, but the rest never came. It might help listeners if you added a few mid-idea breaks.
Or maybe I'm just exhausted from the holidays. Anyway, happy festive times! Still loved the video per usual!
The enemy variety in Lies of P is very good though
21:38 someone needs to make a video called "Plagiarism is good actually" and it should be a bajillion hours long.
7:40 Holocure mentioned! /o/
Also actually a shining example for a "good clone" for me. Vampire Survivors lost me pretty quickly for how simplistic and clunky its gameplay was. Holocure took the core, improved on both control and enemy variety/patterns, revamped the fusion system into an imo superior and less limiting one, made the characters actually meanigfully different in abilities & playstyle and put superior visuals/music on top. Obviously, it being a very charming Hololive fangame was also a nice bonus for me (and likely a drawback for some others). :P
The video overall has points that should be pretty obvious but still worth repeating and you used some good examples and insights into gaming history.
I saw the title and immediately rushed to comments to see if HoloCure would be mentioned; glad to know it will!
Having just played a lot more hours of Holocure over the Christmas than I should (to the point I had to delete it for my own good), I think it's already much better game than the Vampire Survivors. They basically improved everything, even the price point. :P
17:50 (plays Bloodborne)
"This needs more Pinncchio."
In defense of Wargroove, it is a spiritual successor more than a clone (Given how Advance Wars was dark for how long?). And even then, I get nostalgia because I get to play as the Floran from Starbound (Which is a clone of Terraria).
It’s an interesting case study of the lines between all the terms.
Yeah, I almost thought it would be about clones of old games keeping genres and dead games alive. Without Wargroove, would Advance Wars 1+2 have been remastered to Switch? I don’t think I can make the same case for Aviary Attorney, but it was the first Phoenix Wright-like I played, so it probably helped.
When the music at 3:03 started and later picked up, I could tell it was from Nier Automata but had trouble placing it. I managed to find it however. That is the theme of the *Copied City.* Well played.
*Edit: Oh, at the end of the section you give the name. Either way, appreciate the pun.
same same same, except I couldn't find the credit in the video or the description but scroll-scroll-scrolled to load every comment and see if I could search up any answers that way.
for me, remnant is the only souls-like i enjoyed because the ranged combat gave some more variety to otherwise a "dodge, use melle, dodge, use melle, repeat" loop. sure you can kill enemies at range before they become a problem, but usualy enemies have either ranged attacks or come in swarms so that your ranged attacks don't trivialize any challenge. the random aspect of the world was good because it gave a lot more replayability (which the game does build on with specific items being acessible only on specific areas) and made me feel i was going to other areas and moving forward, rather than being on the same dungeon for a long time
Great vid, points made. Pointing out the tendency of some modern games to be an amorphous blob of mechanics and how there's a distinction between those and 'clones' that build upon inspiration had me like "yeeeeeeeeeesss"
I guess another good way to look at it is like this is from a pure artistry sort of perspective: if someone draws a really good portrait of, say, a dragon, and another person comes along, looks at it, and has their own attempt at a dragon that's roughly similar, then it's arguably a form of flattery for it to have been used as inspiration. Also probably a testament to just how well the first person drew them, seeing as how it's being used as a reference and such. Honestly, whether or not it can be considered a genuinely innovative rendition, or just a lazy clone really just depends on how "traced" the original reference is. It's really cool to see someone take a concept and add their own style, but if there's basically no differences, then it's not entirely as interesting. But the fact of the matter remains that, traced or not, it's still (usually) a well-made work in the end.
Unless said person basically had zero skills and clearly used a ruler + other tools to do all the work for them (or in other words, built it entirely from store assets without real changes), then that's when artists and creators can usually collectively band together to shit on them for being lazy. Especially if they add insult to injury via charging more and/or trying to sell parts of the creation despite it clearly not being something they really put much effort into. Although on the flipside, one could argue that even one made out of prebuilt tools can be cool if it was creative (like the equivalent of assembling a bunch of template shapes into something extra neat, such as a tree made of stars), but those are pretty dang rare and tricky to pull off.
Did not expect a gävlebocken reference (3:51) in an Adam Millard episode. Nice surprise!
One video game genre that a lot of people seem to dismiss as "clones" are the Monster Tamer subgenre of RPG, often referred to as Pokémon clones. While I understand why (Pokémon being as popular as it is), there are quite a few that have almost nothing in common with Pokémon aside from creature collection and the comparison doesn't feel fair. For example, Monster Sanctuary has more in common with Metroidvanias than Pokémon, but because you collect creatures and combat is turn based, the "isn't that just Pokémon?" comparison feels inescapable.
An upcoming monster tamer game that I'm looking forward to that does lean into to clone idea to the point of making fun of it, is Beastie Ball. Heck, an early character in it is a clear parody of the player character from the first gen Pokémon games (he's even called Red). Yet, the game's world and the fact that, instead of battling in a way inspired by competitive martial arts and beetle fighting (which is an actual thing that's a popular hobby in Japan), you play turn based volleyball, Beastie Ball feels incredibly different.
There's also games like "Ooblets", "Monster Hunter Stories", the Persona franchise, "Monster Rancher", and the Digimon series. They are all worth considering on their own merits, yet keep being called "clones" by people less familiar with the genre. Similar to how a lot of people will use D&D to refer to any Table Top RPG, inspite of how many other systems for TTRPGs are out there that do stuff differently.
With Persona calling it a pokemon clone is just insulting because it's a spinoff of Megami Tensei which is literally considered the series that pioneered Monster Collectors as a genre
@@elk3407
Absolutely agree with you there. Doesn't stop some people, annoyingly.
This has always been the case. Mario clones were a thing, and if you go back to the beginning Galaga and Galaxian were 'partial' clones of Space Invaders, and were known as such. Clones have been a part of software in general since 'always'.
The difference with any clone versus something that lasted, was always introducing their own mechanics and making something their own. Same with all art forms, regardless of the material.
So cloning is important sure, but it is the growth and change that is most important. There are countless clones no one remembers that come out, because they were trash. The good 'Doom' clones, or any game genre definer, are the ones that go their own way.
We learn by imitation, certainly, but we hit our stride when we make something our own.
As someone who loves fromsoft games, but has found every souls-like trying to copy them extremely mediocre, I had very low hopes for Lies of P. It ended up surprising me so much. The game even exceeds fromsoft games in some ways. It also genuinely might have the best feeling weapons/combat of any souls-like
The way I see it, Remnant has pushed the boundaries of what typically is a third person shooter/RPG. The main game loop is very hard to achieve. Usually, in shooters you have good movement, or good gunplay, or a few very positive aspects, but Gunfire has achieved excellency in how combat is in a TPS. It has ditched the excessive use of cover that the older TPS relied on (mostly due to controllers) in favor of more feasible combat in the open with more uptime, while still feeling challenging and having well-designed enemies with telegraphed movements. The use of timing in dodging/i-frames in a shooter is brilliant and allows for some really good encounter and fight design that has been missed in the genre for so long. You can clearly see the influence from the fighting game world in moment to moment gameplay.
That is just the main loop of the game. The second main loop of gathering items and exploring is also super interesting, keeping people playing and finding secrets, even creating discords for it. And the third main loop of buildcrafting/RPG progression with such objects is excellent due to a wide variety of balanced buildcrafting choices that all allow you to play the max difficulty without frustrations. It avoids the pitfalls of most RPGs: most weapons are good, and viable, and there are no "rarities" you need to scout for - a great influence from From's games.
I'm not sure why you felt that enemies were spongy. I've played games with spongy enemies (God of War 2018 on Give Me God of War difficulty comes to mind), I find this exceptionally well-balanced. I know Remnant 2 like the palm of my hand, already beat it several times in the max difficulty, and I've never found any instance of it. I think the criticism of the cohesive world is also a half-truth. In a campaign, there are five worlds. Two are handcrafted, and then there's three more that vary: each one has two or three stories, and in quite a few of those stories there are handcrafted overworlds too. What has more variability is the dungeon generation, but that's kinda the whole point of the game. Finding new dungeons with new secrets. A lot of the dungeons is handcrafted too, with just how the tiles merge with each other being truly random.
To conclude, pay attention that I haven't mentioned "soulslike" all along. I think it has quite a few elements of souls games, but you're looking at it from the lens of a pure melee From Soft souls game, when it's a shooter and manages to innovate a lot in that area. For that, I'd hope to see you invest more time into them, because I wholeheartedly but respectfully disagree with your opinions.
I'm glad you pointed out Vampire Survivors-I feel like "Survivorslikes" could be another genre, and I love it.
Hopefully they aren't called survivorslike because that sounds like the most unwieldy and pedantic genre name ever.
@@FeiFongWang The names most commonly in use for the genre are "reverse bullet hell" and "bullet heaven". Functionally, it's a fusion of the bullet hell and rogue-like genres.
I'd also argue that the common name is a misnomer and it isn't a "reverse" bullet hell at all, as it's still a bullet hell, but one where you're supposed to kill the "bullets" before they reach you instead of dodging them since most of them home on your position instead of flying past you.
Isn't it already part of the bullet heaven genera?
@@william_sun I think bullet heaven is a great name for it actually, since bullet hells normally force you to play defensively and be underpowered, heaven being the opposite makes sense.
The ongoing struggle to come up with a name for this genre is really funny to me.
The way i like to think about this is there are 3 major categories studios and devs fall into: copiers, refiners, and innovators. The last is rare today, do to an ever growing pool of things that have been done before, as boundary changing teck advances are rarer and less noticeable than the early days.
Refiners take things that exist and try to make them better, or do something new with them, while copiers just take what works and puts it together. Very few studios are just one, and many systems are well understood, hard to improve, or just work for whats needed to make the focus better (like save systems, hud designs, a lot of gaunra staples, ect). Heck, sometimes you can refine just by taking existing stuff from more than one place and mixing them together.
After playing and mastering Nioh 2's combat, originally thinking it was just a slightly jankier souls game but the layers upon layers of depth in its combat system just made it my favorite innovation to the souls formula. Turns out combining DMC-level depth of gameplay while retaining souls elements make for a damn good game.
The only difficulty in Nioh come from near constant ganging of ennemies and the way the equipment is looted and you end up with 50+ version of the same item with different stats make exploration completely unrewarding.
Nioh is dark souls but actually good
I was genuinely worried and a little bit disappointed in how easy the game was, but going into the harder difficulties after beating the final boss was a real blast - they don't just buff enemy stats, you get stuff like completely new enemy spawns blocking off previous safe / cheese spots and more demon fog zones. And then you start getting cursed enemies that will outheal you if you don't shut them down with finishers and backstabs and they force you to engage with them in a completely different way (you can't just take the safe options). It's got some amazing ideas, the only reason I stopped playing was because I'd literally done everything in the game.
0:34 Considering that the terms "Mario Kart clones/rip-offs" and "Smash Bros. clones/rip-offs" and other "[Nintendo game] clones/rip-offs" are still being used to this very day, it isn't bizarre.
Quick question: did you ever try the co-op for Remnant 2? Remnant says its a soulslike shooter, but in reality its a co-op soulslike. It's ten times more fun with friends, and unlike fromsoft games is designed with multiplayer in mind. Some bosses and encounters are balanced (in part) around multiple players, and if that isn't enough to convince you, they even have friendly fire, which is unironically the single greatest thing about the game.
Every game is more fun with friends. If it's not fun or balanced solo, it shouldn't let you play solo. (Not saying Remnant 2 isn't fun.)
@@Caidezes Thankfully, Remnant 2 is fully balanced for solo play as well, it's just going to be more difficult to beat, but it's fully possible.
I watch a lot of video game essays, and have been following your channel for a while. This is one of the best videos I have seen and my favorite in your catalogue. It really changed my view on clones and I don't think I've seen another video even mention these ideas.
I appreciated all the clone puns thrown in during editing
I hope that was a bit and that you don't think anyone else could do this as well as you! Your analyses helped me get back into gaming
One thing that I find is really important with clones is that they understand what made the original successful. A lot of new SURVs overcomplicate the gameplay compared to Vampire Survivors where the gameplay boiled down to brainstorming builds and movig around. Bad clones copy exact mechanics and add stuff that doesn't support the core gameplay idea. Good ones build on that idea.
I think they are trying to build on the ideas but they accidentally add something that doesn't support it. The real issue is that people want GOOD games, if someone adds a mechanic that makes a game more fun then it has built on the idea, if they add a bad mechanic, then it's a bad clone.
The other part is taste, some people may appreciate the added complexity and want something halfway between a full rpg and Vampire survivors. Changes, especially regarding complexity, shifts the audience. A good example of that is Remnant and Remnant II, I enjoy the fast paced shooting of Remnant to the slow methodical combat of Dark Souls. To some Remnant may be a worse interpretation of the Dark Souls formula but for me it's a vastly more enjoyable experience.
personally I think soulstone survivors is one of the best clones. there are plenty other bad ones out there.
11:23 I'm so happy you mentioned Desktop Dungeons
It's such an underrated little gem
god I remember playing desktop dungeons ages ago when it was a free beta demo and I think it was in the 2000s? that game has come a long way.
Very good points. The best example it probably Street Fighter 2, which had so many clones that all the best ideas went into the following Street Fighter games.
The topic is particularly interesting to me because I'm currently developing a clone of a game which, as far as I know, doesn't have clones yet (Pony Island). And I'm trying to do exactly that: push the formula further etc. 😅
There's a difference between taking inspiration from something and copying it outright.
it can be far too easy to forget that incremental iteration and imitation is and has always been the primary way people learn art and a major part of its evolution no mater the medium of that art.
Everything is a Remix, great doc on youtube, by Kirby Ferguson
with all these comparisons of games to one single origin, it's crazy to think about the popular claim so many people made about terraria being 'a 2d minecraft'
despite all that, they could not have been more different in their evolution over the years, minecraft becoming property of a monumental corporate entity who keeps making decisions for the game that ultimately leave it's playerbase in discontent and restlessness, while terraria stuck to its indie roots and is beloved by its entire community, and even the devs to the point where they keep adding more content in what should be 'the final update'
When I played A Plague Tale, I thought, 'This is just The Last of Us in medieval France'. There are a huge number of similarities, both in plot (extended escort mission through an apocalyptic hellscape with someone who has a mysterious resistance to it) and mechanics (e.g. upgrade benches, resources, supplements, listen mode). However, they're both among my favourite games. While there's undoubtedly a lot of influence from TLOU, APT feels fresh and interesting. It is different enough and it is its own game.
As a fan o stealth games I found both tlou and a plague tale stealth to simplistic compared to splinter cell and metal gear
Speaking of Game Maker's Toolkit, his latest video was (somewhat) about Developer Intentions and when it differs from YOUR intention for the game as a player and this made me realize how many of my ideas are literally just that. "I like this idea, but have some other direction I personally prefer".
For most of my life I thought that "bad" media is what drives creative people to build "good" media, but now I think it's a similarity/appreciation for the ideas, but difference in creative direction/intention.
Thinking back, it's incredibly childish and selfish to believe something sucks just because the creators just wanted something different from what I want.
Yeah, it was really nice to see Mark adressing that. My main issue with many essayists (Mark included, up until now) was the idea that the developers did something *wrong* , often being called dumb or out of touch, instead of the realization that the devs might want to make a *different thing* than what some players expected, and that it is fine. That's the "true developer intention". Players might not like the result or want different things, but it is not like the devs don't know what they're doing, or aren't often working with big design constraints, so they can't do everything.
On the same topic, GMTK Developing series bringing to light how full of hurdles game dev is is another big positive. Seeing Mark realise how hard even simple things can be is reassuring and important at the same time, and it seems to have influenced his tone a bit too. A case when *doing* instead of just talking makes you really understand it better.
@@terrabits I don't remember him saying that.
@@GeorgeDCowley Which one you mean? The first one (considering devs intention), or the second one (game dev is hard and full of hurdles) ?
The first one is a small part on Mark's recent video (How Jusant Makes Rock-Climbing More Immersive), whereas the second one is based on his videos on the Developing series. Neither are specific quotes from any videos, just ideas and opinions he shared in those.
@@terrabits and then you got Return to Arkham City where the game occasionally lies to you about which point your grap launching from…DURING PUZZLES
"Wow, that was a great game. I hope nobody else has ever made anything remotely like it." - Nobody ever
Amazing topic and amazing video!!
What I would like to add the discussion is the topic of mods.
I think mods and clones emerged somewhat together.
People find something they love, but then they also realize the flaws and want to make a better version. This is how we got things like Dota and Counter Strike, which have basically created entire genres, and have each since been cloned a million times 😀.
21:40 "Hbomb is a punk, stealing things rules" - thank you for the inspirational and insightful words, shakespeare
"that started before I was even born"
*stares in old*
That made me feel really old, too, lol. Born in '85 here.
Maybe that's just me but I feel this one is a bit unfocused or wishy-washy : clones that try something new but fail are bad, clones that don't try anything new but have good execution are good, so basically : good games are good and bad games are bad is the message. And all games are clones anyway. (To be clear it doesn't mean it's a bad video, just the standard is pretty high here despite the self-deprecation).
A real good point though is a clone will be a very different experience for a player that plays 10 "clones" in the genre a year and a player that rarely plays this genre.
I agree.
I believe that a lot of what he was saying could have been better phrased as some games inspiring genres/sub-genres.
Eg. These genres have various cornerstones that new games can follow or intentionally avoid. Sometimes avoiding the cornerstone gives a very unique experience, but other times it may make the experience feel a bit hollow compared to the original, even if this new one has a lot of other features that impress.
I think the point that was trying to be made was that a good clone evolves the source gameplay in a deliberate and considered way, rather than sticking slavishly to the original or changing things just for the sake of it. That being said I agree that the difference between good and bad seemed somewhat arbitrary and boiled down to “game I liked = good clone, game I didn’t like = bad clone”.
Agreed. I think what makes a good clone is that it doesn't take a step backward in terms of innovation, only forward. The video mentioned how some clones add some uniqueness or twist to the original source (step forward), while forgetting some parts that were basically essential for people liking the original (step backward).
It's kind of amazing that your channel has over 100 videos on it, yet each one has something really interesting to say.
I think I needed this video. I'm a uni student and I'm playing with the idea of making a Disco Elysium-esque RPG where instead of an alcoholic detective, you play as a struggling student, with the game covering (and satirizing) everything from various aspects of uni life to parties and life in a dorm with another person. I'm worried it'd come across as a "Disco Elysium clone" if I borrow too much, but this vid helped prod me towards not thinking too much about that. If I ever make it, I'll find my footing as I work with it.
omg tell me more!
incidentally for a long time i've wanted to get together with some burnt out academics and write up or play a version of Paranoia but set in a sprawling dystopian School. and i thought a LOT about that idea while playing Disco Elysium, so i think you're onto something
I would play, I think.
@@MulberryDays not much to tell, it's barely even at a concept stage and I'd also have to learn Unity. But yes, I think the idea is sound. Hope you go for it too if you're able, either solo or with a team.
The Evolution Championship Series, often referred to simply as “Evo,” the most prestigious international tournament each year for Street Fighter and Street Fighter clones 🤣💕
It confuses me why people would be upset with a "Breath of the wild" clone. I and many people love playing breath of the wild and I would want MORE games like it.
Big worry is that the clons would suck
Probably because we don't want the entire gaming landscape to become ONLY Breath of the Wild clones.
Even the lesser evil of every future Zelda game being just Breath of the Wild again, completely abandoning everything we liked about the series to begin with, would be a tragedy
Not everyone is into the BOTW formula, and it's probably for the better that the market isn't flooded with too many games like that. Heck, some people miss the much older Zelda dungeon-style entries, now that enough time has passed to start missing them.
I would love a BOTW clone that didn't have the enemy difficulty spikes that penalized exploration and the weapon breaking mechanics. If someone made that I would probably love it. I wanted to like BOTW and I understand why people love it.
My main worry is that imitators copy Breath of the Wild's flaws along with its strengths rather than improving on it.
All I could think during the conclusion was: Blazing Beaks.
A top-down shooter roguelike with a pace issue, and that I cannot but compare to Nuclear Throne at every step, and as I deeply love NT, it looses in pretty much every comparision. BUT, the way it handle progression is simply brilliant, and I would love if other games started taking the mechanic for themselves.
good example. it copies NT down to the art style and has worse mechanics and variety, so why not play Nuclear Throne again? I've heard Voidigo is a good clone so I'll need to give that a try.
That sentiment about starbound failing is really weird to me. It was a pretty decent financial success(sourcing wikipedia so take it with a grain of salt I guess), and it was in good standing creatively until the devs decided that becoming space jesus was the most important thing you could do. And even then, the modding scene there really took everything to the next level, creating entirely different ways to play and making far better and more focused storylines in some cases, and otherwise just adding more interesting content. As an example, the capture pods from the game gave me the idea of doing what would be a "pokemon run", where you can't hurt anything, but you have 6 creatures that can. Combining Frackin' with pandora's box lead to a unique game experience which I haven't been able to find anywhere else. While the game itself did fail on it's own, it created a community that made combos that fit into a niche of all sorts. Also, as for the whole exploring one world over a long time, I've got like 2.7k hours in terraria(about half and half for modded/vanilla), and 1k in starbound. Both work really well, but terraria was good unmodded, whereas starbound not so much. This is more of a ramble so I'm gonna conclude it by saying that, by the numbers starbound didn't fail, and modding is something that really needs to be taken into account when talking about a game's success.
starbound felt like terraria, in space, at home.
ok but nobody really likes starbound. everyone says its just meh. it was not a critical darling.
@@Zectifin Are we even talking about the same thing??? Literally in my comment I said that it wasn't that great unless you modded it. It's just a factual inaccuracy to say it failed because it made a lotta money.
'The same but better' has been a driver in video gaming since I was a little kid playing coin-ops in the early 80s. That decade was a sort of 'Cambrian Explosion' of iteration and innovation occurring in tandem. When the 'Gorf' cabinet came out we all saw it as Midway essentially trying to squeeze the remaining potential out of something that was already starting to look old school, such was the blindingly fast rate of change. We quickly establish new terms to replace the definitive 'clone' event because it ceases to be an adequate descriptor of what's occurring.
While I 100% agree that Remnant's enemies feel less punchy due to the FPS system. I will say, the puzzles and secrets throughout the game are far and a way superior to Fromsofts, even in Elden Ring, with it's world, felt like each area had less true secrets and mysteries than the Remnant 2 Worlds.