Hey {{preferred_name | there}},
One of the skills I want to hone as a game creator is the ability to analyze other video games. Lucky for me, this pretty much amounts to playing a game and reflecting upon why each thing I’m seeing, hearing, and experiencing was added to the game. Then I can try to consider what problems the developer might be trying to solve or what behavior they are trying to guide players toward. This makes playing video games really enjoyable for me and I want to try to make as much of my practice available for other people to watch as well. It’s up to you to decide if it has value, but I hope these studies something that players and developers can get enjoyment from.
The first game I’m taking a look at is Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors. I first remember seeing Sajam playing Vampire Survivors years back and wanted to experience it for myself. Many runs later, I think I had unlocked most of the content and even made good progress on some of the first few DLC packs as well. poncle knows what they are doing and this felt like a great game to choose as my first Game Study.
Overall, I think the game does a great job at onboarding the player and then giving them the tools to create a fun engine. I played the game for about an hour and in that time I was able to get pretty far in the two areas I explored. I do feel like I’ve only scratched the surface and I want to play more, but it left me with the feeling that any other game might not have hooked players in the same way if it were coming from a brand new IP. I found myself feeling like the game was getting a bit repetitive and slow. The biggest question I was left with was “Would this have been better if it wasn’t a dungeon crawler?”. This question inspired me to test it out myself with my own proof of concept. In the meantime, I still wanted to share my experience and see what you think of it. Send a reply if you have any thoughts from watching my playthrough or if you’ve checked out the game yourself.