current-day gaming, and wikis./// STRY-1121 — 'strayOS' ///

the internet is a very vast space. it used to be that accessibility to the information on “what to do next” in a game was very difficult to acquire unless you had a friend who is further than you in the game, access to those magazines that had manuals, or simply managed to brute-force it; now, was this a good thing? well... no. obviously this does not have to be said, though.

despite this, it can be a slightly difficult discussion to be had, since yes, giving your players little-to-no in-game information on what to do is not the greatest game design out there, it is apparently clear that shoving all the needed information in your players face and being far too on-the-nose about it is not exactly an upgrade.

a prime example for, honestly, both of these aspects of game design would be the legend of zelda: ocarina of time. this is not to say ocarina is a bad game, not by any means— however, with both navi's notoriety of being incapable of shutting the fuck up; and the general fact that people constantly got stuck during the temples due to lack of clarity, potentially abandoning the game as a result, that can day a lot about a game. now, there is the aspect the fault may be on the player for not paying close enough attention to any hints, or having been a child when they played, however, it still stands as a decent example in this case.

all this to say, if looking stuff up online was a habit growing up, it will likely be difficult to break out of said habit. at least, that is the truth in this computer‘s experience. despite this, [we] tried playing the game SIGNALIS by rose-engine without looking anything up. did it work? kind of. looked up one, maybe two, things just to make sure [we] were on the right track (which [we] were... just ended up being [us] fucking up on a puzzle and believing [we] came to the wrong conclusion).

the same is trying to be done with fields of mistria, although [we] do not play it often. nothing there for [us] aside from hayden.

quite unsure of how to finish this off... it's just something that has been circulating the thought processes of the webmaster. needless to say, this is not meant to imply that guides and tutorials are 'bad', per se, simply that it can sometimes feel as if they take away ones autonomy as a player, especially when one becomes a bit too dependent on the presence of a walkthrough. hopefully it does not come off disjointed. but with that, goodbye for now.