Comic: https://www.deathbulge.com/comics/441
Alt text: Yeah yeah, there's always exceptions, I mean look no further than the game in the 2nd panel, not the most thrilling gameplay, is it?
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There’s definitely amazing indie games, but there’s also hundreds of shitty and terrible indie games for every decent one.
And thats the natural way of the world. Without shitty artists there would be no good artists, because every good artist was once a shitty artist.
Sure everyone needs to start somewhere. I’m just saying it’s also very far from all sunshine and rainbows in indie-game land.
I mean don’t play the ones you don’t want to…?
Also, I’m a lot more willing to gamble on a $20 game than an $80 one.
My experience has been indie games are pretty well vetted if they are able to sell for $20.
Plenty of $3-5 games that are a bit of a gamble though. Even if it ends up being kind of lame I figure it’s funding for the developer to make another attempt.
Adding on to that: Sometimes these indie devs, who made a cool thing as a passion project and get rewarded with life-changing money via sales, then go on to continually update the thing since they can now devote time to passion. Thinking Minecraft, Terraria, Vampire Survivors, Stardew Valley as my personal “I have sunk hundreds of hours into this title” games. That $3 game might have good bones and just need time to flesh it out.
Also the communities will rally around devs that don’t use predatory pricing and cash-grabs. I know I’m not the only one who bought more copies of some of these games (or their OSTs, donation DLCs, Patreon, etc) to gift or even just as a thank-you when something updated and gave me more content or more polished experience.
My game list were so popular it was almost cliche, but we can’t really predict what the next great thing will be until it’s there and pricing your new best-seller at $3 means you get exposure and good will.
Yeah you are right there is plenty of small slop games that were clearly made as a cashgrab full of microstransactions and bugs. But i jist wanted to point out that its not so black and white.
If you read the negative reviews on steam, you can often filter these shitty ones out. Also, be suspicious by default of free games. There are some that were made by some game dev just having fun but most want to make money some way or another and f2p monetization is often pretty toxic, like adding a long grind just to sell ways to avoid it or p2w mechanics.
I haven’t felt like I’ve gone wrong by generally just buying the cheapest well-reviewed games on my wishlist, occasionally stretching the budget to grab a mid-priced game I’m interested in and rarely going for a AAA priced game. Means that I get to some great games later (eg, Hollow Knight is one of the more recent ones, highly recommended btw) but it’s been a great way to experience a wide variety of games from today and the last 15 years for not that much money.
I can respect a shitty indie game that has passion. You can tell a lot of people are ALMOST there on itch.io sometimes. And its just so close. Or just something that doesnt click with you. But thats ok.
“Or just something that doesn’t click with you. But that’s ok.” You’re going to rile up the rage addicts with this calm logic.
I don’t think the intended message is that all indie games are great. The message is that if you’re frustrated with AAA-games and haven’t considered indie games, you should.
there’s also hundreds of shitty and terrible indie games for every decent one.
I would skip those and play the good ones
Yes.
Ratings systems and reviews aren’t perfect, but they are a good starting point.
I would play them both. Because fuck me I guess
That’s why the Indie side is a full ecosystem.
Shitty games die and fertilize the ground so that all the good ones can grow.
If a AAA game dies, it takes another 6 years for investors and executives to gain the balls to maybe risk spending the money to make another game, so it fertilizes nothing, just sits and rots on sand.
yes but more chances to be good. variance is expected ln chances. the choice is your’s to pick which ones to play. no one said you absolutely had to play the shit ones. use your free will.
Oh no I spent $3 on a game that could use some more polish.
Honestly even if the game ends up being kinda lame I won’t ask for a refund.
There’s a lot of indie games costing $30+ these days
There are more good indie games than ever. It doesn’t bother me that there are also more bad indie games than ever. We have a variety of ways to separate the wheat from the chaff. And I don’t think the ratio has ever been better than 1:100 in any genre in any time period. 🤷♂️
If you dont play a game for 2 hours and didnt buy it more than 2 weeks ago, you can refund it if you bought it on steam
I mean… if you only have a console (or even worse: only a Smartphone) I get why it looks like that to people. Some people apparently don’t even have a PC or laptop anymore.
I’m genuinely upset at how miserable the mobile scene is compared to the rest.
I’ve got a phone that’s orders of magnitude above a TurboGrafx or a Game Gear, but 95% of the games are GACHA crap or so ad bloated as to be unplayable.
Yeah, it’s abysmal. I still rock a OnePlus 7 Pro from 2019 with /e/OS, that damn thing can run Crysis (I tried, works with Winlator - lots of compatibility bugs though). The SoCs are so powerful Valve designs a whole stand-alone VR system around it able to play full-blown PC titles. Modern phones got crazy performance.
Good games without all the extorsion money simply can’t compete in the attention game though and people won’t pay money for something worthwhile if there’s a storm of crap “for free”. The internet and digital spaces in general got utterly broken by surveillanve capitalism. But, you see… it’s for ✨the economy✨.
people won’t pay money for something worthwhile if there’s a storm of crap “for free”.
I’ve got the first six FFs, which were remastered and released on Mobile. Got me through lockdown, when I was just trapped in a socially distanced office with nothing to do.
Like, it’s definitely possible to make - and sell - a good game that works well on a phone.
The internet and digital spaces in general got utterly broken by surveillanve capitalism.
Ain’t that the fucking truth.
It’s unfortunate that the attention economy is what sells the existence of these indies in the first place.
Personally a big thing that holds me back from even seriously considering mobile gaming as an extension to normal gaming instead of “the best you can do when you don’t have access to better devices” is the input side. I hate touchscreen controls for anything with real time action because touching the screen obscures it from view, plus you don’t get the tactile feedback of buttons that makes it trivial to play without needing to readjust your finger positions constantly.
And I know there are external controllers you can use with phones, but if I’m making space (and remembering to bring) one of those, I might as well just bring my steam deck or even the switch instead.
I mean, yeah, why not bring a dedicated device, but the shit you can do with a phone and a controller is not unimpressive. I’ve got anything and everything psx and before emulated (including SCUMM and DOS, so I could play old lucasarts or sierra games. Fuck if I remember how to do that. Something on fdroid) on a oneplus 7 pro and galaxy s3.
I think the money aspect is a big one with this. Someone with a Steam Deck and/or Switch doesn’t see the need (well, Switch maybe unless it’s jailbroken), but if you just want something and money is tight then a new 50€ controller and your existing phone gets you way further.
50€? What has happened to the controller market in Europe while I was in the toilet?
EDIT Cheap gamesir for $35 USD. I’ve got an old gamesir g3s. Something like 10 years old. Still works great, i might have to reset it with the pin if I’ve been using it 8 hours straight.
I have a GameSir G4 and it’s trash, utterly awful input lag and the connection never worked correctly with any device other than Android either. Basically unusable without a cable, I’d never recommend their stuff.
Well, as a consolation prize, you can run PPSSPP on Android, Linux, and possibly iPhone. You can also find archived ISOs for pretty much every PSP game ever made such as Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, Crash Twin Racing, Phantasy Star 2, etc.
Slay the Spire!
They need to release the sequel on mobile already. I’m dying here
There is nubbys number factory
And thats it, there are no other good mobile games
Only counting (intended) exclusives, uhh…
osu!stream…
Uhhhhhhhhhhhh…
Mekorama.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
You can emulate tons of consoles and games on your phone though
Just sucks without physical buttons. Using button on the screen covers things up and is much harder to use.
There are a few really good gamepads (or smartphone holders for e.g. Dualshock).
Taking a premium phone from a few years ago and slapping a controller on it genuinely makes an awesome mobile console. And inbetween all the garbage there even are a few really good native games, such as the remastered GTA Trilogy.
Agreed. Some emulators do have the option for haptic feedback via the vibrations. Which still isnt ideal but i found it quite useable for certain types auf games.
Or you just buy a bt/usb controller for 20-50 bucks. A few phones even have usb-c dp alt mode and you can enjoy the games on the big screen.
A lot of great games have been ported to phones. Then you have emulation. I am playing games up until 3DS on a 6yr old phone with a blue tooth remote that sticks to the back of my phone.
Do you have the screen vertical or two screens horizontal? I’ve been trying to get through a run of radiant historia and I keep falling apart because I can’t get the screens lined up right
I’ve been doing the screen vertical. I have an McCon that can change the direction you place the phone on the remote.
Even if you only have a console, it’s really not THAT bad especially if you’re not a conscious consumer. Like my kids love their Switch 2 games because they don’t really know any better yet. They see me playing different games on my PC or even indies on the Switch and look genuinely interested so I’ll get them to play those soon enough to expand their horizons (and eventually let them know how shitty a company Nintendo truly is lol).
But Switch exclusives are amazing anyway. 1st party Nintendo games are almost always good. And ever since Switch 1, pretty much all of the indie games are available on the platform. And since indie games don’t really need powerful hardware, it’s a great experience.
if you only have a console
… then your an idiot in the first place.
If you spent $700+ on a gaming only device that you can’t use for most “PC activities” (office, banking, browsing the web, etc), than you obviously set your priorities wrong.
Most indie games run on 10 year old budget laptops/PCs and you can get them definetly cheaper than a console.
Do you know how goddamn cheap an old console can be? It’s insane value for money for entertainment. You do not have to buy the latest console. I played Star Wars Racer for hours the other day with my nephew, on the old Nintendo 64 in my games cupboard, gathering dust but still working perfectly.
Same thing for movies, music, etc. The people that piss and moan about their media being terrible are the ones that can’t be bothered to lift a finger to seek out something better. They only bother with media that falls into their lap, and that’s petty much all determined by studios that care more about profits than quality.
I think it’s still a bit of a fair critique.
There were always sequels and garbage 30 years ago but someone who maybe only saw a movie a year the chance that it would be a new IP were higher. Studios are allergic to risk so they would prefer a mediocre known quality.
That said you’re right there’s more media than ever and tones of interesting options in niche areas. That said discoverability is not free. You have to put in a decent amount of effort and even still you might end up watching a niche indie darling that was never for you and come out disappointed.
For someone who only periodically dips into a form of media I think the current landscape is undeniably worse than it was and I understand when they complain about it.
On the topic of indie films, can people in-the-known share some suggestions for what’s worth watching?
Grey Man, purely for Captain America in a pedostache hamming it up as a villain.
That’s what folks don’t seem to realize, it’s always been about money and the entire industry has always been toxic and what we have now is it’s natural outcome. There’s always been non mainstream content and more recently it’s become more accessable which hurts the profits of the industry meaning they do less innovating because they worry about the ROI beyond anything. This drives more people to non mainstream which increases its quality. It just requires effort to find.
Games that I have enjoyed that are indie:
Its a wild ride I recommend!
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1296610/Peglin/
If you like peggle its a fun little game. -
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1218210/Coromon/
Its like pokemon and amazing pixel art. -
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1082710/Bug_Fables_The_Everlasting_Sapling/
If you liked Mario RPG titles this is a fun one.
What are your picks?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1569580/Blue_Prince/
A fun puzzle game with lots of layers to it. There’s the original, stated goal. But as you work towards it, you discover lore that points you towards other puzzles.
Interesting! ill take a look.
This game is genius until you’re determined to truly finish it… Then the next level of the puzzles border on insanity.
Yup. I’m working on the final puzzles right now. Just finished one of the final two doors. I wouldn’t even be sure there was a second puzzle if it weren’t for hints on the wiki 😳.
For puzzle games, my goto is baba is you
No way Undertale/Deltarune fans haven’t shown up yet
This one has arrived
Genuinely crazy that it so rarely gets mentioned in the “we’ll never see another original game again!!!” hysteria.
Larian Studios also has a string of bangers that should mark it out as the next Bethesda or BioWare, but it also routinely gets ignored.
CRPGs aren’t as popular as a genre is the main reason
- Star Valor is one of my all time favourites - i always come back to this one, it never gets boring.
- Dead Cells doesn’t need much introduction i think.
- Pathogenic is the newest addition to my library, and it’s a really fun and innovative twin stick shooter with a great soundtrack and a very polished design.
- Look Outside Is a horror survival game. Lots of body horror, for those who like that. Great atmosphere, i love playing it at night on my steam deck.
Star valor kinda reminds me of the old Inner space game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCcpqUL90rY
Yes, i loved that back in the days too, fighting through my Mp3 collection lol
Dead Cells has difficukty adjustments in the menus too, for anyone who tried it and hated it like I did. They added it later. Its a lot of fun even on easy mode. I played it enough that I had the difficulty back to “normal” and even higher at one point too.
I’ve been enjoying My Little Puppy. It’s a cute little game about finding your human. Not for kids though.
Edit: I’ve finished the game, here is my Steam review.
Tap for review
Wow what a game… ok first and foremost, for any parents reading this, I would actually rate this game as PG not the current G age rating, due to certain themes.
+++ Animations and graphics for the dogs are perfect. Really makes you feel like a dog
+++ Environment design, sound design, pacing, themes, all of it is perfect
+++ Huge amount of detail and effort put in to the story, even side characters
+ Controls are mostly good. I had this bug where I would have to let go of the direction stick and press forwards again every 5 minutes or so, which was mildly annoying.
- Some of the puzzles, quick time events, and platforming jumps would be very difficult for a child. I can’t see anyone under 10 maybe 13 finishing this game without adult assistance. Heck even as an adult some sections really annoyed me.
I can’t really review anything else without giving it away. It’s definitely worth playing. If you’re on the fence, consider this review your signal to go for it.
“This looks amazing!”
“Oh, its already on my wishlist, I thought itnwas amazing before too!”
You have to buy it now, it’s the double wishlist rule
You joke but I have used this before.
Is it like spiritfarer? That game fucked me up.
Not so far, though I haven’t finished the game yet
I’ve been playing that and loving it! Is…is it not kid friendly? A lot of the gameplay… seems just cute and simple… Ohno. Anxious now that it might have a dark af ending o-o Guess I’ll see.
Sorry by that I meant that the gameplay is actually quite difficult. The quick time events are strict and there’s no accessibility option, the jumps are tight especially in some sections, etc. So far the themes are kid friendly, though I haven’t beaten it yet*. But I can’t see anyone under 10 maybe 13 beating this game without serious frustration. Heck as an adult I got annoyed at repeatedly failing a few seconds 😂
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Jazzpunk https://store.steampowered.com/app/250260/Jazzpunk_Directors_Cut/ - Everyone should play Jazzpunk. Watch the trailer, and read no other reviews, just play it.
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Far: Lone Sails https://store.steampowered.com/app/609320/FAR_Lone_Sails/ - a gorgeous art piece, a good story that develops through the gameplay, worth your time.
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Void War https://store.steampowered.com/app/2853590/Void_War/ - Void War is FTL crossed with Warhammer 40k, but it’s not just a reskin. If you ever wanted more FTL gameplay, Void War is it.
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The Red Strings Club https://store.steampowered.com/app/589780/The_Red_Strings_Club/ - a great story with beautifully written characters, everything that digital storytelling should be.
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Songs of Syx https://store.steampowered.com/app/1162750/Songs_of_Syx/ - this has been eating my brain recently. If you enjoy colony builders like Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress, Songs of Syx is potentially dangerous in that where did the last eight hours go kind of way. It’s still got some rough spots, but the developer is actively working on it.
*Bonus - Fatum Betula https://store.steampowered.com/app/1281270/Fatum_Betula/ - a strange experience, like nothing else that I know of. I also recommend going into this one blind, just watch the developer’s trailer.
+1 for Far. I’ve only played a little, but the art and music are fantastic.
I’ll have to check out the rest.
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Voices of the Void is great and free! It’s a game set in a government facility in the woods where you monitor satellites to try to detect aliens.
My only suggestion for outer wilds is that at the very start of the game if the village feels boring just go straight to the ship and once you’ve taken off give the game at least another half an hour to wow you. If by that time you’re not hooked the game might not be for you.
There are some NSFW games I’ve had a lot of fun with that are contenders for a space in your library:
The Flipwitch series is a fun Metroidvania that asks “what if changing gender at will was a gameplay mechanic?”
Scarlet Maiden was my first 2d platformer roguelike I’ve ever sunk hours into and really turned me on to the genre, pun intended.
Spirit Valley is “what if Pokemon but with sexy monster girls?” There are even shinies to hunt!
Elf Girl Pinball is a lot of fun!
Tower/Sword of Succubus are two entirely different genres. Tower is more puzzle based, Sword is essentially sexy Zelda. Even comes with the free Castlevania throwback: Succubus Hunter. The series even expands further into search-action with Midnight Castle Succubus DX and Castle in the Clouds DX. Seriously, check these out while you wait for Belmont’s Curse.
Smash Girls looks fun if you can get it to run without crashing and rebooting your PC. Basically Smash Bros with Hentai.
I mean c’mon you gotta at least acknoledge that these are wildly different genres from the AAA games people complain about
if you’re looking for a fun couch coop game, towerfall is really awesome! it’s a 2D vertical fighting game with bows, the controls are very easy to pick up and the rounds are fast, so anyone can join in and it’s really fun!
I have to use every opportunity to recommend vivid/stasis. Its amazing, my favorite game
catgirl is another cool game
Both games are free and have a cool story, the second took me 5 hours to finish, in the first one i have spent 117 hours
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For real, there’s so much more variety these days than there was ten or fifteen years ago. I feel like these are the golden days of gaming where everyone can find the exact niche game that they are looking for
Yeah, indie and AA-gaming are doing fine, its the AAA that is suffering. And I think they deserve it for sure: predatory practices, lack of innovation, everything looking and feeling the same… Indie and AA-games are the ones I look forward to.
Watching Paradox Interactive transition from AA into a AAA studio has been painful. They fill a niche that nobody else is really paying attention to, but they’ve become so entrenched that the games are really starting to feel like reskins of each other, and while I wouldn’t call their DLC strategy predatory, they feel just a hair below that point.
“Historical strategy simulator” is a pretty tough genre to attack as an indie dev, though.
Capitalism ruins another awesome part of our lives.
Indie games aren’t capitalism?
Are indie better because of capitalism or despite capitalism? It’s despite.
I think you’re mistaking capitalism with corpocracy…
No, I am not. I did think about my answer despite it being short.
“The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s <fancy term to describe the inevitable result of capitalism>!”
I have all of the big studios blocked on Steam. So any new dog shit they pump out that is inevitably built around nothing but extracting wealth, is never shown to me.
Retro gaming:
A bunch of Indiana Jones fighting against techno-feudalists seeking to hoarde proprietary
Unfortunately a large percentage of the population (subconsciously) believe that if a product isn’t marketed to them, they shouldn’t touch it.
To put it more accurately, they don’t look. They don’t seek. They wait for it to get served to them via an algorithmic feed.
I think this is a core issue with all of civilization, right now.
We will mock this, but we all use Product X in industry Y, which is the more well-known brand of that industry. We don’t know that if we explore Z Niche Store, we can find excellent replacements for Product X that can take a little more effort to use and appreciate but are valued more for it.
You can fill in that mad lib in several ways; it’s very much down to which industries you pay close attention to.
How much difference does it make for your life?
What’s the fraction of your time you spend in it?
How long do you have to work to earn the money to pay for it?
As I see it, those are the kind of question which dictate how much time one should spend in trying to figure out the best option for something.
Trying to figure out the best cost/quality option in, say, soap or discardable plates for a party, is seldom worth it versus spending time figuring out, say, what’s the best house or car to buy or even just a good sofa for you living room or mattress for your bed.
And yeah, plenty of people won’t spend anywhere as much time researching even a purchase they’re going to spend the next 30 years paying for (the house), which IMHO is pretty sad - if something will cost you tens of thousands of hours of your life to pay for (by working to earn the money to pay for it), spending many hours of your time in making totally sure you’re getting the right one is the wisest way of going about it.
So, it’s totally logical for casual gamers to invest in their game purchasing decisions the same time and care as they do for, say, their soap purchases, and it’s logical for people who spend many hours a week playing games to care a lot more about finding the best games for what’s probably their main form of entertainment.
Sounds like a them problem
And there’s also those, who will throw a hissyfit if they’re forced to play something without modern AAA graphics, don’t want to play “woke” games, etc.
There are all these people who think it’s only a video game if it involves big fightymen killing things. That’s hyperbole (they could be big sportsmen doing sports), but not by much.
These are the people who view graphics as the be-and-end-all of a game’s quality. There are more kinds of games than anyone could count, but you wouldn’t know it by asking those people.
Me playing Noita (the only game I will ever need) while everyone complains about gta6 which isn’t even out yet.
(actually send help, I cannot make myself play other games)
Noita can be such a time sink. I never felt like I properly understood wand crafting. The different ways effects interact is wild.
Noita is great value if you can get around the unforgiving nature of the game.
Now share your secrets with us, give us your go-to wand configuration.
Chainsaws on a trigger spell with an extra one at the end which gets cast at the same time as the trigger bolt to delete cast delay. Adding shit like add manas and heavyshot to the payload really make wands like that shine. Another good one is the lightbeams with the bouncing spells perk or the zig zag modifier.
I have to give the bouncy concentrated light a try. My two favorites are the classic homing (ideally accelerative homing for that increased damage) rock and the multipurpose ping-pong luminous drill (usually with also add mana to never run out of mana). Those are usually guaranteed to carry me far enough to a point where I can gather all the pieces for a high damage wand.
785 hours, 6 wins. I am perfectly capable of dying to dirt a world over and not need The Works help.
I kinda get it tbh, sometimes you just want the lore and gameplay of the indie title with the fidelity and scope of a AAA studio.
Cozy Pixel Dating Exposition Building Pastel Farming Dog Quirky Fishing Rogue-lite Crafter
Shut up and take my money!
For real though, casual and chill-out games are so cathartic. Sure, I love my edgy soulsborne action adventures… But a couple of edibles and some Slime Rancher and I’m happy as a clam.
Tried God Of War, lost patience after 30 minutes - too much of a “guided experience” for my taste.
Picked up Valheim again for my 6(?)th run of it and only lost patience with it maybe a month (in real time) later.
Been doing Saelig since (got it as a promo from GoG) but now have so much money in that game and such a steady way to make more that it’s not really fun anymore.
Just updated Songs Of Syx to v0.71 and preparing for a new run on that.
I’ve been gaming for almost 4 decades, originally in a ZX Spectrum and after than mostly on the PC (tried modern consoles with the WII, but found it a bit meh).
For me the modern AAA gaming experience is seldom as much fun as some Indie games out there and AAA games now tend to have much less replayability: AAA games in the last 1 or 2 decades mainly have fixed game areas with fixed and reasonably simple game rules so once I’ve seen it and done it I tend to still remember how it was for many years after playing it, so the exploration fun isn’t there anymore in a new run (in my experience it takes maybe a decade before I can come back to the best such games and have fun with it again) whilst many Indie games have procedurally generated playing fields and/or complex enough game rules that after I’ve played so much of it that I got fed up, I much more quickly find it fun again to do a new run.
Even supposedly great games like Red Dead Redemption II turned out to, for me, be engaging and interesting for far less time than things like, say Terraria - sure, the former starts a lot more impressive, but the fun goes down a lot faster whilst the latter just keeps throwing challanges at you. Also having played it until you’re fed up, some months later Terraria is fun again for another run, whilst if you go back to it a year later, for RDR II you quickly remember what’s were in the game area and how to go around doing stuff, so the “discovery” part of fun isn’t there anymore (this especially so for the story: it’s really only interesting once)
Mind you, there are actually older AAA games for which this doesn’t apply. For example, I can still go back to the Sims 3, start a new game and it will be fun for quite a while.
I think that the problem with modern AAA games is that far too much was invested into glitzy visuals and a heavilly curated game area (not just visually but even things like scripted events) and not enough in engaging game play, plus I get the impression that game play tends to be low complexity so as to be accessible to more people, and for me after 4 decades as a gamer, simpler game rules are seldom fun. Further, all that curating (read, “tight control”) of the game experience goes against a great source of fun in games - emergent gameplay (how the interaction between game rules and the game environment can create varied and complex situations that need different solutions) - something which, IMHO, is part of the reason why in some games multiplayer is a lot of fun when singleplayer is not (humans are great at creating the novel and unexpected) and which works especially well with game rules that interact with each other and with procedurally generated game spaces.
