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March 28, 2024, 11:45:02 PM

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Vostok Inc

Started by Shay Chaise, March 18, 2018, 04:17:52 PM

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Shay Chaise

This is a twin-stick shooter mixed with Farmville, with some lighthearted Capitalist satire.

I've played it for ten hours today.

This game is genuinely evil.

One minute you're buying a missile upgrade for 20p, the next you're building a shopping mall on an alien planet for eight billion to increase your Moolah productivity by 1.02% per every landfill site you build.

It does have structure and progression and a stupid story and bosses but most of it is building an asteroid generator and then shooting asteroids for cash and then upgrading your asteroid cash multiplier with the cash.

It's currently 20% off on the Switch eShop. Probably less than a tenner. It's the most addictive game I've ever played and I feel sick. I'll uninstall it any day now.

Any day now.

Shay Chaise

My life is shit now. It's just this all the time in the background.

Shay Chaise

I've been cheated out of the weekend by this piece of shit non-game. I feel obliged to finish it, having wasted all this time already. I've left it on overnight so I wake up to quadrillions of cash. It gets better, then much worse, then a bit better, then much worse. It's proper shit addiction fuel. Thank fuck there's no money involved. It's a piece of shit game, I tell you.

Zero Gravitas

Sounds like one of those like AdVenture Capitalist where leaving it on over night is dwarfed by the increase you'd get by using a 10th of that time to pop down multipliers.

Is the game part as opposed to the exponential maths part any good?

Shay Chaise

The game part is a very rudimentary twin stick shooter with too much inertia. You're absolutely right about the multipliers, by the way. I genuinely can't sleep because I'm thinking about clicking something which will increase the rate for when I wake up. Fuck that shit. I'm not one to be played some psychological bullshit. Fuck off, game. It was actually OK today because it was quite distracting from a really stressful day where my wife has been quite ill but it gave me a real existential pang when I realised how much it had been a total waste of time watching numbers scroll up. It's hypnotic but so what? Honestly, the dev is a really friendly cheery guy but it's almost maliciously cynical to make a game like this.

Shay Chaise

I've taken the step to uninstall it. Freed from the curse.

Zero Gravitas

It seems weird to deploy that kind of model in a game with upfront payment, I can see it working cynically if it's f2p but in this I can only see it getting in the way of a more meaningful strategic system.

I'd love to know a game where this sort of 'slow' leave it over night, or even turn it off and have the counter keep ticking plays a useful role. It seem that all the games that have had similar mechanics (mostly on mobile) and that could have been a good pop it out of your pocket a few times a day gameplay model, have been lured into dark patterns of exponential reward brain hackery and extra purchases.

Shay Chaise

I've always swerved this kind of bullshit because I know it's bullshit, I don't even play JRPGs really because I respect my time more than the intentions of almost any game director. I sack stuff off all the time after an hour because 'I get it'. This one caught me at a low ebb which is partly why my reaction may seem disproportionate. I also like to think that I'm above these games so it's slightly painful and shameful to be sucked in so effectively.

In any case, a five minute roam around Skyrim chilled me out and I'm ready for a kip now. Night, old bean!

Shay Chaise

That said...I've brought this into work today so I can grind to the finish line with it sitting in my drawer. I've crossed a line but I need to finish it for the closure.

Shay Chaise

Finished the fucker in the bogs on my lunch break.

Shameful.

Thank god it's not actually that long in the end. Probably took about fifteen hours of active play, but I reckon my Switch has been on for thirty or forty. I dunno.

Just relieved to cross this shit off and never play another game like this again.


dadrester

Muhahahaha...

I'm the evil dev. Feel free to ask me stuff...

Also kudos on finishing it. We definitely wanted an end point (or two technically if you want to see the "full" ending and do all the objectives). I got pretty hooked on cookie clicker and adventure capitalist whilst researching, but I don't really think i liked them and felt much the same way you seem to about Vostok. We did have a timer for offline earning for a while but it was a total bastard to balance and it didn't really add anything (other than a sort of nagging itch of wondering how your stuff was doing).

Could be worse. Could be as addictive as Metabolically Bisturbile Drugs.


dadrester

Quote from: Zero Gravitas on March 18, 2018, 11:26:25 PM
It seems weird to deploy that kind of model in a game with upfront payment, I can see it working cynically if it's f2p but in this I can only see it getting in the way of a more meaningful strategic system.

I'd love to know a game where this sort of 'slow' leave it over night, or even turn it off and have the counter keep ticking plays a useful role. It seem that all the games that have had similar mechanics (mostly on mobile) and that could have been a good pop it out of your pocket a few times a day gameplay model, have been lured into dark patterns of exponential reward brain hackery and extra purchases.

MGSV and Peace Walker do this quite well with the FOB missions and base building, where you have a bunch of R&D timers for new weapons and items and "missions" you send troops out to, in order to level up for a few minutes/hours/days at a time while you're playing the main game. It keeps you coming back and makes you want to grind missions several times to get more resources (people to do R&D or to go on mission) without making you feel like you're doing the same thing too much. I really loved it as a system actually and spent about 200 hours on MGSV and definitely 40+ on peace walker, which is definitely the most I would have done for a PSP game.

Shay Chaise

Well, this is more than a little embarrassing. I'll apologise for my incredibly offensive language about your game. Please do put it down to the overwhelming fear that my mind was actually being controlled.

dadrester

Ha! No worries. I've heard FAR worse and you finished it, so you must have got some sort of sick enjoyment from it. I've felt similar about other clickers, like my life is literally draining away, but oddly enough not with Vostok Inc, as you're actively doing something. Though when I stop and think of the hours I've poured into playing games and if I'd spent at least some of that time doing something like learning to play music or how to be a brain surgeon, I do edge along the tip of an existential crisis.

Anyway, thank you for buying it and keeping me in pot noodles. Like I say, had far worse. There was a guy complaining about the PC version not having any sort of settings and that it must be an amateurish shit game from people who know nothing about game development (been doing it 16 years professionally) because the start screen didn't have an options menu. He didn't realise you could pause the game and access the settings menu from there (including key remapping - another major gripe). There was quite a lot of backpedalling when it was pointed out to him by another player.

Shay Chaise

Well, I did say you were very friendly and cheery! (before suggesting you were maliciously cynical for even making this game). You're right, though, I definitely did get some enjoyment from it, in a different way to anything else I've played and I'm glad I finished it (not just to get it out of my system, but partly!). It was like a slightly edgy gambling buzz or a night of passion with your ex which feels amazing at the time and then you wake up to reality and you're not sure how you feel but you really need to go home. That was predominantly my mood when posting, after playing the game for almost the entire weekend non-stop. I haven't done anything like that since Binding of Isaac, so fair play.

Overall, it was a series of peaks and troughs but it was balanced well enough for me to feel that I could always make things happen by getting busy on another planet. The shmup element also got more fun in later systems once I had the unicorn gun and got the perks to make destroying stuff really worthwhile.

Good luck with it and if you want to use any of the quotes from the first three posts in this thread for marketing purposes, they're on the house.

QuoteVostok Inc. on Nintendo Switch, PS4, XB1, PC, Vita and Nvidia Shield.

"My life is shit now."

dadrester

different way to anything else I've played and I'm glad I finished it. It was like a slightly edgy gambling buzz or a night of passion with your ex which feels amazing at the time and then you wake up to reality and you're not sure how you feel but you really need to go home. That was predominantly my mood when posting, after playing the game for almost the entire weekend non-stop.

THIS! :D:D:D

Shoulders?-Stomach!