Double-BAFTA nominated two-person team made up of Alexis Kennedy (Fallen London, Sunless Sea) and Lottie Bevan (Fallen London, Zubmariner, Sunless Skies). We make:
🕯 Cultist Simulator bit.ly/2FZPEMM 📚 BOOK OF HOURS bit.ly/2JJVdlA
Good luck tomorrow! ...edit... Or Thursday. Whatever, I'm clearly illiterate. It's only dumb luck that I'm hitting the right keys as I smash the keyboard like so many monkeys.
Good day. A friend enjoys your games, in particular Book of Hours and Cultist Simulator, and recently shared his joy of translating Book of Hours into his native Russian. I became curious: why in Russian? The main audience for this language is in the Russian Federation, and there are problems with paying for Steam and, accordingly, there is a smaller solvent audience. So translating Book of Hours into Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, French or German seems more profitable from the outside.
It's the result of a bunch of factors: Russia has always seemed to like AK's work, they're a big sector of the gaming population, while most Russians speak a bit of English, it usually isn't at the fluency level needed to enjoy our games in their original languages... But we'd translate into all the languages you named too if we had the time and money!
I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who jumbles up the names of Alexis' games. I did not, however, expect that *he* would be providing the example. Let's take it a step further. Title the next DLC "Light of Hours". I'll have to call it, "Hours of books or... uh... that game I was telling you about where you're a librarian, but it's really good anyway? The one I talked about for 20 minutes after we watched 'The Ritual Killer'? Where are you going? Babe? Staying at your mother's for how long?"
Interesting result this week as Alexis retains the Mitre of Prognostication but only depending on how you want to treat the wildcards. The results: The results by Mean Squared Error (root mean squared reported for the full results then omitting wildcards, lower is better). 1. Alexis (lowest RMSE. 452.17/478.19) 2. Lottie (492.28/324.95) I'll confess that my original plan for wildcards was to simply omit them to 'reward' correctly identifying uncertainty, since wild swings either way will have an outsized effect on the overall error. But from the last couple of videos, it seems like the wildcard is specifically meant to account for overperformance, which is a different interpretation than what I've put here but probably is functionally the same. There are other issues with the measure I'd want to deal with first and this is for fun. So by raw numbers, Alexis was more accurate by about 40 reviews, but Lottie's correct identification of Megaloot as a potential outlier made her perform considerably better (~150 reviews on average) when omitting wildcards. Again, this is a result of the choice of mean squared error, although in line with the intent of softening the outliers by doing something with the wild cards. Everyone's a winner! Except the people who didn't forecast. You know who you are. You can buy HOUSE OF LIGHT as an apology... And maybe some merch. The notebooks help you calculate first week reviews I hear.
They say indie DLC doesn't show up in the Popular New Releases section... but seriously none of our usual approaches apply - Perpetual Edition alone confounds all our estimates.
I'd love to see a Lego Tomb Raider game, but the one AK was thinking of at 26:29 was Lego Indiana Jones. (Or maybe some other franchse, I'm sure many others would be easily confused with Tomb Raider.)
Some trivia from Lucky Tower Ultimate that might have been helpful on the estimate; My friend Rocco saw me playing The Longing some months ago and told about this crazy flash game he used to play with a similar art style. Turns out Lucky Tower is a well known flash game and this is more of a remake/sequel than a new concept. So in a way, what really happened is they made a very wacky game and then for total 180° they made the longing which, as you guys mentioned, is very much a game about patience, melancholy and isolation. Couple that with the fact that The Longing did pretty well and this one might do better than you guys expect! (or so I'm hoping).
So you mentioned The Longing, and I guessed you would from the related game's art style almost immediately (as an aside, they actually got 6k+ reviews which Lottie and AK note in the closed captioning of this video). That game does progress when it's not running and has mechanics that allow you to speed up, stop, and I believe even reverse the flow of time. Games based on Real Time aren't new, there was a game that was a kind of point and click musicy adventure thing that was tied to moon cycles whose name escapes me, and obvious one's like Animal Crossing. If you're going for achievements in most of those games you'll get to the end and then do fiddling with your computer's clock to get things you don't want to wait around for. In The Stanley Parable there was an achievement to not play it for years you could cheese with a similar schtick. The Longing developers anticipated this and went out of their way to attempt to prevent you from doing so. The game is always online, and will reach out to an internet time server and compare it to your computer time to verify you're not cheesing it. It will error out if you attempt to either play it offline or have the incorrect time on your computer. I was tickled pink to find this, and even more amused when either they or Steam struck down my guide on how to get around this (which involved me reverse engineering what they did and then doing some network tomfoolery I know from my profession to trick the game). The Longing was a clever art piece (I actually played all of it for real, only needing to trick it for the Birthday achievement) but I can completely understand why they did something completely different this time around.
Superbrothers Sword and Sorcery was the game tied to moon cycles. Was bugging me I couldn't remember. Got it in like humble bundle 2 but never got very far in it. Probably plays better on mobile (I would play it in bed)
3:38 Systemchalk here. Alexis has wrested the Mitre of Prognostication from Lottie this week and has earned the right to march around the office shouting "WHO GOT WUKONGED? U GOT WUKONGED!" and pick next Weather Forecast's intro music, inspired by Pharmacy Simulator. The results by Mean Squared Error (root mean squared reported for the full results then omitting wildcards, lower is better). 1. Alexis (lowest RMSE. 119798/127065) 2. Lottie (120000/127279.2) "Wait systemchalk, you forgot to take the square root." Nope, the average error was over 100,000 reviews because of Black Myth: Wukong's positively bananas review count. This again serves as a reminder of the limits of this particular measure because the 606 review difference between the two forecasts for that one game is is about 2.25 times more than the differences between all the other games combined. This week has some interesting differences between the two sets of forecasts, so we'll see if this week is the start of a hot streak for the new champion, or if Lottie's competitiveness will compel her to put in an extra minute of research to reclaim her spot.
31:52 In Japan, this game's title is called as 豆狸のバケル (Bakeru, the petit Tanuki). So, this Bakeru is this Tanuki's name, but it is also assumed to be a verb meaning 化ける. 化ける(bakeru) means like a change, but has a more magical or enchanting ring to it.
It's already 345K reviews of Black Myth and it's just six days after release! Who could believe it! I was playing Book of Hours the week before its release, excited and restless, full of anticipation, and I took a day off on that day, playing like ten hours straight. I'm Chinese and this game is phenomenal in my country, and everyone is talking about it. I mean, literally everyone, the press, the countless co-branding, the social media, the everyday chit-chat. Many people who don't play single-player games or don't even know what Steam is, are attracted to it, learning how to install Steam and buy a game. Seems like it has the potential to single-handedly change the tides of Chinese single-player game industry, or at least bring a gigantic impact to it. Before, the majority of players only reside in online games and mobile games, who get used to the pattern of 'free game and micro-transaction'. I believe it's a good sign to both triple-A and indie game market. Hope maybe in the future there will be more Chinese players browsing Steam stores and finding indie gems like Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours.
Just a general thought - I find it interesting that the discussion almost completely sidesteps issue of launch price. Somebody coming here could easily make an argument like "well, design and marketing is one thing how to gauge numbers, but if it then launches at such and such price point, then that will skew the results in completely different direction". And yet the predicted numbers arrive very close to actual performance. I can immediately think about half a dozen arguments how price might/might not be relevant here (favoring the latter), but would be happy to hear your thoughts in some future episode. Btw nerding out on the topic of 'fairytale deckbuilders': I think the groundbreaking already happened a few years back with the Storybook Brawl (2021-2023), that was quite popular for a short time (created by a group of competitive MtG players, approached a lot of the streamers in that genre, tried to go e-sports route with in-person world championship,..). It went full ham on the aesthetic with Snow Whites and Cinderellas duking it out with Peter Pans, Nutcrackers, Baba Yagas, Three Big Pigs.. - all with Good, Evil factions, flavorful abilities etc. (it had really lovely 'kitsch' art too, binding such wild lore mess fairly well together). Admittedly it went more for multiplayer auto-battler decks than the traditional Slay the Spire-style like the Rogue's Tale here. It also died under sensational circumstances, as the studio was bought out by the infamous cryptobro SBF (actually citing it as his favorite game) and then burned down as part of the bankruptcy (with hardcore fans then even releasing homecooked clone on Steam - Fairytale Fables - in an effort to revive it).
> Have you seen my code? Actually, tangentially, if I may I have a quick question (and also for people who played Book of Hours) if it's not too impolite or inappropriate to ask here: Each time I loop from a finished game back to the beach, one thought persistently reoccurred: "Hey, panning the camera is nice and buttery smooth again now." This is not meant to be casting shade. But it did make me wonder if that was on my end or just that the engine did not appreciate having to keep track of an ever increasing number of books and furniture as you progress (I say on my end because I play on linux through proton: for some reason, the native version's camera panning runs like a one legged grasshopper -Or at least it did at launch, I never checked back- and you can never be sure with computers.) So, do others also have this experience?
Well, I do, and I run it on a fairly powerful computer. I'm quite curious as to why. If AK made a video about it, even if it was just a series of complaints about things in Unity that have annoyed him, I'd probably watch it. If it was a written blog post, I would definitely read it. If it was written in Killisami, I'd wear it.
I think technically if I switch to Median Squared Error AK is the reigning champion for two weeks running. Of course I just made that up right now, even though I'm sure it's in some obscure textbook where someone explained why it's the most wonderful measure. If I use the geometric mean (the meanest of the means!) of the squared errors AK has the smallest error 3/4 times. Seems to me like you just need to find someone to give you the measures you want rather than take them from some hayseed from the colonies. Thank you for this wonderful series!
Would've been interesting to see The Crimson Diamond this week too. It's a cute little retro adventure game (from over here in Canada!) released yesterday that's already up to 41 reviews, but that might be from the regional difference that you pointed out.
I'm a bit confused by the adjective 'Lovecraftian' applied to Feed the Deep. I've just watched some vids of people playing it, and there's nothing Lovecraft-like, except the general point of oceanic things being nerve-wracking.
I think it's interesting that the "Popular Upcoming" doesn't always pick out successes like "Knock on the Coffin Lid", which did fantastic it's week one (1.0). Or maybe I misted on that list because I tend to only look at popular upcoming when I watch these Weather Factory videos haha. CohhCarnage had a sponsored stream and liked it so much that he played it for another 50 hours, which is an interesting type of approval that I don't think is possible to put into your predictions.
Pixel Art Academy - while the name 'Matej' definitely checks out (ehm) for both Czechia and Slovakia, this particular person is apparently from Slovenia, according to their personal website. On the game's website there's also a backstory how it was born as a result of thesis about gamified education while at Stanford, ran a successful Kickstarter way back in 2015, ended up in development hell for 7 years and then recently the "learning" part was split off as this standalone Steam release, while the whole "adventure" RPG game about playing as an art student at said Academy and doing those painting tasks as part of gameplay is still meant to be finished someday (backers have apparently access to alpha build).
@@AlexisKennedy Ofc, and just to clarify - it wasn't meant as any disrespect as one can clearly see how it would take hours upon hours to do background check on every dev and their games' story (basically full time job for a game journalist or market analyst - and at that point for a different kind of 'show'). Quite opposite, I was simply intrigued by the initial reference to 'Retronator' in the video which indeed revealed an absolutely gorgeous website. However I was surprised to see how old it was and from there a tiny rabbit hole journey followed through various other projects and sites of this person (mostly "how to teach art craftmanship in a modern way"), leading to picking up various tidbits of the wider context along the way. So thanks for the initial impulse!
@@mosquito271 haha, don't worry! I'm just always keen to acknowledge the superficiality of my research in case I mislead people. And you're right, there is probably material for a full time YT series or Patreon-supported blog here... but I like my day job too much.
I probably should mention Cygni: All Guns Blazing appears to be a free offer on Epic Games Store from Aug 8 - Aug 15. Will this affect week one sales? I will be bold and claim that the effect will be neutral to positive. Reasons: - It is not at all clear that people are comparison shopping on the Epic Games Store and so a large number of buyers simply won't know. - The game releases 3 days before it becomes free, and so a large concentration of the launch bump has already been captured. - However, the free release on Epic may produce a word of mouth/streaming tailwind that drives people to buy on Steam. This last part is, of course, completely counter to the initial fears that Steam would become a showroom for lower-priced stuff on the Epic store (something not permitted by Steam anyway). It would seem that Epic's status as a challenger to Steam is a settled question right now, but I don't know if anyone has discussed the ability for a game to get the word out through an Epic giveaway, particularly so close to release. The first approximation for an estimate would be to see the effects of a Humble Bundle, and oddly I think Kitfox Games might be the best positioned to answer this because I think The Shrouded Isle appeared in a bundle quite close to release? But it’s no fair to offer a muddy forecast that can’t be held to account so here is my a priori stab at it: Cygni: All Guns Blazing will do better than what standard models will estimate ("better than expected") because the free release on Epic will bend out the usual sharp downward drop in the days after release.
I am personally looking forward to the final Weather Forecast which announces the signs are clear, that the world will drown in fire and pestilence, and all the games get 0 week one reviews except for one which Lottie forecasts as 1. "I think the destroyer will quite enjoy this one."
That "precision platformer" you referrred to as a "puzzle platformer" (Unrooted) seems like the type that'll live or die based on content about it as rage games seem to. (Like Jump King or Getting Over It.) I think that one has a chance to do a lot better if it gets picked up by the type of content creators who cover those.
Didn't realise I wanted that Pixel Art game until I saw it on here, so that's one more wishlist for them! Great vid again, long may this series continue
