Theory Is it just me or do a lot of retro-style indie games have a v high difficulty level?

[Hoppipolla]

Bit of a weird topic I know!

It seems to be specific to this particular genre. I don't know if it applies to retro-style games in general or indie games in general.

But yeah so... '90s games tend to ramp up the difficulty slowly. It only starts to get difficult at all by about halfway through. Which I like a lot because it means that there are a lot of levels that I can enjoy without having to try too hard. Then I get a challenge later too.

A lot of them now get difficult almost right away. If you're lucky you'll get 1-3 levels that are a bit easier.

One option is to play the game in easy mode but wow that feels lame, lol. Especially when easy mode is basically the actual normal mode!

Anyway, that's all I can say about it really! Just wondered if anyone else has noticed this.

 

[ShiiOfTheSPLC]

Games expected more investment and audience retention from the player back in the day in general

Zoomers want instant gratification and have 0 attention span so modern games are required by nature to get down to to the point asap

 

[nice_try]

Everything caters to idiots nowadays.
It used to be: You're bad at the game? Well, get better scrub or you won't experience the end of the game.
Now every idiot can just turn down the difficulty level.
Idiots don't have to face drawbacks for being idiots anymore.
I don't like it.

 

[WizardofSoda]

Sounds interesting. I grew up on Nintendo and those games were fucking hard some of them. Its the type of gaming I like.

Games expected more investment and audience retention from the player back in the day in general

Zoomers want instant gratification and have 0 attention span so modern games are required by nature to get down to to the point asap

It was sad when I saw modern games and like if they have a puzzle, they have an annoying character who is shouting no at you if you don't do it in the right steps, and is outright telling you which steps to do next.

And the games are so easy like I beat it nearly on the first playthrough. But Zoomers love those games, and anything hard the zoomers will quit right away and go to play easy games.

 

[Hoppipolla]

Sounds interesting. I grew up on Nintendo and those games were fucking hard some of them. Its the type of gaming I like.

I guess I'm thinking of games like Sonic 2, Ristar... even the original Doom.

They all had fairly gradual difficulty curves.

Games expected more investment and audience retention from the player back in the day in general

Zoomers want instant gratification and have 0 attention span so modern games are required by nature to get down to to the point asap

That could be it yeah.

Maybe other people tend value challenge in games more than me.

I guess I tend to value other things more like mechanics, creativity, music, atmosphere, etc.

There is surely so much more to games than just providing a challenge.