If you'd like to watch the full hour-long interview with Dom, I've posted it over on my Ko-Fi page for my month supporters! ko-fi.com/Post/The-Full-Silt-Interview-with-Dom-Clarke-A0A0E8BK3
In my mind I called games like Limbo "Atmospheric Platformers", but different from Doom these games don't have a feature that stands out that makes them easy to name. One thing I like about indies is that they can really innovate and make games that are very unique, but, at the same time, there are bunch of indies games that go for the "spiritual successor" label, staying very close to their influences. I think in the latter case the "something-like" is helpful.
I agree with the spiritual successor part! But I feel like normally that's also said by the devs, so if feels less like other people putting games in boxes.
This is certainly the souls-like of video essays. The video was fantastic Otter! Admittedly, it's the first of yours I've watched but I'm excited to watch more!
This vid just randomly popped up on my feed like a golden algorithm nugget. Very well-written and well-produced, excited to dive into your content! Love the thumbnail art style you've got going on too.
I think genre categorization is more important for academia and study purposes than for the industry market. The original study that prove how action games had positive effects on players reflexes and cognitive abilities can not be replicated in today's climate because so many games have sub-genres and mixed genres. In the industry market, it just means more bang for the buck of the consumer, but for academia this means something that has been proven may be doubted later on. But personally, i think the something-like genre is the beginning of a new genre in the making. Fnaf and I'm On Observation Duty may soon be called Sec-op (Security operator) or observer, or something like that, and no longer a fnaf-fan game
Genres matter to find the target audience for the game... Because it let's people know what to expect im general before coming in. It also establishes a template... People like various versions of things, or, someone finds the gameplay the perfect fit for a story they wish to tell. Genres just make such things neat and tidy, and when something new comes - it establishes a style. And that's that pretty much. Organization, expectation, delivery.
I learn so much from your videos! As someone who uses genres to commit to a game I understand that it can be misleading when a title is different than what you thought it’d be. In the same token, I did buy Hollow Knight and Ori because I thought they were visually cute and yet the gameplay took me completely by surprise. I guess when you’re just starting your gaming adventures it’s hard to decide what genres you really like and for now the best thing I have is to compare to my short list of completed games.
Another banger from filmotter! How does he do it? Super cool idea for a video, super cool interview with that developer! Definitely want to play Silt now whether it is or is not a Limbo-like lol
This works as a good companion to GMTK's latest video. Love serendipity like that. Also, if you want an in-depth look at the evolution of the FPS and Doom's legacy, check out Errant Signal's Children of Doom series. On a personal note, I appreciate when devs experiment or push genres in interesting ways, as it helps me narrow down my own tastes more accurately. I would have told you I didn't like first person games until I played Portal, and then Prey taught me that even shooting in first person isn't a dealbreaker. Now I can describe what does and does not work for me in a more complex way than simple genre labels.
Oh! I haven't had a chance to watch the new GMTK yet. I just caught up with the Game Jam the other day! 😅 I'm right there with you about devs pushing genres in interesting directions. I mean that's how we got the soulslike genre in the first place. Which has now become one of my personal favorites. Just curious are there are FPS games from. The past few years that you would recommend? It seems to be a big blind spot for me lately and I owe it to myself to give the genre more chances.
@@filmotter Ahh I wish I had recs for you. The FPS is still one of the genres I spend the least time with, even though I won't reject them outright anymore.
@@DavisGSee That makes sense. I think my most recent FPS-adjacent game of choice would be Neon White. But I'm not sure the shooting is really the main focus. It almost feels more like a parkour-focused title.
I always had names for genres. FPS was "Shooters" Mario-likes and platforners were "Hoppers" or "Level Jumpers" Metroidvanias were "Backtrackers" or "World Jumpers" Thirdperson or top down or zelda likes were "Sword Adventures" Roguelikes were "Restarters" Soulslikes "Staminators" Vague terms to make room for more than just a gold standard
No. FPS are FPS while Shooters or simply shoot-em-ups are just that. Mario games are jump-n-runs or platformers. Metroid games are action adventures. Top down Zelda games are action adventures as well. Third person is another thing from top down entirely. Rogue was an adventure where you were supposed to die. Soulslikes are games like Demon Souls - so no genre idea is given from that. Vague terms are vague as long as people like YOU @Aaron keep making them up on the fly without care.
So you essentially take a step back and use umbrella terms instead of more specific subgenres. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but you do lose some nuance that way. It's like always calling bowls "dishes." All bowls are dishes but not all dishes are bowls. The word bowl exists to describe a more specific kind of dish without having to resort to a roundabout way of explaining it. Similarly, all FPS games are shooters but not all shooters are FPS, for if you weren't aware, there are also third person shooters, top down shooters etc. Again, there's nothing wrong with referring to every bowl as "dish", if you still prefer to do it. Just sharing my thoughts.
Liked and subscribed, I loved the genre comparisons! Ultimately I think naming conventions like these are adopted not because they're effective or accurate methods of categorizing games, but because the shorthand comparisons can quickly get someone to understand a specific subgenre of game when terms like "action", "platformer", or "puzzler" are starting to fail us. Games have changed so much so quickly over the last few decades and indie games are atomizing genre conventions even further, so it's super helpful to say that a game is 'like this other game that you like'.
I think using a game as a genre name works for a while, I actually really like the name "metroidvania". I always viewed it more as "if you like" sort of title and It often gets updated by the community as a better name is figured out. I think the one that sticks out the most to me is what we now call "point and click," It used to just be called "adventure." This is why I sort of cringe when people start to propose a new name for a genre and they use "adventure" in there. It was actually bounced from genre to genre whenever marketing had NO idea what to call the type of game they were promoting back in the day.
Really showing my casual side, but I actually don’t know what most genres mean and only really learn from context (like hearing how so many ppl talk about dieing as a machanic in rogue likes). Because chances are I haven’t played the original game genre names are referencing, and I’m somewhat new to hanging around gamer talk, I just have to get by w context clues or accept that I don’t know. I make up my own categories to sort my games in, based more on how they play/feel, like “lots of battle” or “strategy” - this helps me when I want to play I can just go to whichever group in I’m the mood for! I think more than genre terms, what helps me decide whether to buy a game is a mix of full summary influence of watching others play it. I can’t remember hearing a genre and that making me want to play a game, but tell me what it’s about, what I can do in it? Or Ill be watching someone else play a game and be thinking “I wanna play that”. So like, having more context on the game than just “it’s xyz genre”
I love this! (Also casual gaming is totally underrepresented in this type of discussion, so thank you for sharing!) I feel similarly about what you said about "I can do that in this game? I want to play it!" That's what got me to play Stray initially. 😄
great video!!! really made me think about the pros and cons of genre :D its also so amazing that you got to have an interview with someone who worked on silt
When I did regular reviews and essays on my own site, I split those into genre and mechanic, because I think those are different things and the way games define genres is just bizarre. Science-fiction, fantasy, romance, horror - those are genres. RPG, platformer, puzzle game - those are mechanics or templates. E.g. my last two major games played are Stray and Forbidden West. Bost are post-apocalyptic science fiction genre-wise. But Stray is a 3d puzzle game, Forbidden West is an open world action rpg.
Awesome video, Otter! I always think about the genres importance or if it is "correct" to call a game open world, for example. It's an interesting rabbit hole that also happens with other forms of art like music; I wish we didn't need categorising but yeah, sometimes it's necessary to know what you are getting into :( Anyways, loving your videos!
excuse your mouth i'm the #1 barbarian souls fan and i'm incredibly offended you would badmouth that gem of a game thank you for another interesting video essay! they never fail to make me think about how i see and think about games
Yeah, genres definitely need a better name than just putting "like" at the back. I'm also one of those people who bought Tunic but ended up putting it down because I was expecting a "top-down adventure" (Zelda-like), but not being a fan of the "hardcore combat" (souls-like).
@@filmotter Maybe I will because I still kept the game installed. The discoveries are nice. Like when I use the coin near a well because it's how you make wishes, and it worked.
Great video as usual ! One small thing, I think you messed up at least one of the game names or developers/year, like how when showing anger foot it says it came out in 2018 and is from Capybara games (at 23:08) :)
Hey don't worry about it, didn't hurt the video quality at all ! If the one thing I have to say being a problem in the video is such a small detail, it means the rest is really good :D
I think it's also important to notice how similar limbo is to games like heart of darkness and another world. Saying limbo-like kinda assume they popped into existence fully formed ex nihilo
Same with Dark Souls, many will point to the corpse run mechanic as a definite reason to label a game as a "soulslike" ignoring corpse running was a standard mechanic in MMOs before Demon's Souls used it and it also made appearances in other games like Minecraft, which did release after DeS but still before the souls games got popular.
Great Video! Very Informative and very thought provoking! Lots of really good games mentioned here, and I have to agree on Tunic and Hades. I don't really think that all the extra Genre's matter personally. I see Dark Souls as an Action RPG, and I see most of what they call metroidvania's as 2d platformers. But If we were to have a "Limbolike" What games other then the ones mentioned do you think should be included?
mostly my problem with these names is that it pins any game similar to what ever its called. i have a number of problems with the term "rougelike" but pretty much all of these terms apply its cause it 1: isn't straight forward, 2: it fits these games into a box. and 3: what makes a rouge like a rouge like is very basic, and it's just if a arcade game was randomised. and it ultimately doesnt really explain what it is. when you watch a horror film, you know what your getting into. "oh this movie is going to have horror in it" but with any term with "like" in it, you honestly don't exactly know what's going to be in the game. i have lately been pushing for calling it "randomly generated" games. gets the idea across without confusion and over complication, and no link to a game. like FTL would be a "randomly generated strategy" game. or hades would be a "randomly generated hack and slash" ect... edit: loved this video, you mirrored my exact thoughts. i am increadbly passionate about games (actually wanted to minor in game design but my collage doesnt have a minor for it T-T) and i want them to grow, and not have people argue about the name of the genre.
Generally agree but sometimes genres don't tell you a lot about the game, even if they aren't "-like" labels. Example: horror. Horror games can take a billion shapes because the only unifying characteristic is that they try to elicit feelings of fear and stress, which can be accompplished in a myriad of ways. As such, Resident Evil 1, Silent Hill 1, Bloodborne, Fear & Hunger and Darkeest Dungeon are all widely considered to be horror games even though they share very little with each other. So just saying "horror game" doesn't give a clear picture.
I agree with your point in the very end, and I hope to see genre names being established much more loosely rather than trying to treat one game like a gold standard. It's so hard to come up with good names for genres but I feel like gloomy atmospheric sidescroller says way more about a game than a limbo-like and I can remove my expectations for a game and play it for what it is. But on the other hand, it's so hard to sell because a lot of people would rather associate games they loved playing to an existing title rather than appreciating for what it is though I completely understand. Also Hollow Knight is also a gloomy atmospheric sidescroller lmao. My FAVORITE games are those that push the genres it's existed into a whole new level, such as Hollow Knight being associated with Metroidvania and Souls-like the most, but managed to make it completely unique by taking advantage of its 2D space such as the fights emphasizing the dash move instead of dodge rolling. Or Outer Wilds being a Clockwork Game (Majora's Mask-like? GMTK coined the title Clockwork and I like it), which meant I expected to get new items to get further in the game somehow because of my preconceived notion of getting items in Majora's Mask, but progressing through the game in a super engaged, very surprising way that blew my mind constantly. I also notice how people keep coining games terms that don't feel right such as Souls-like to any adventure game with melee combat that's difficult. Like yeah it influenced the industry so much but so did Zelda and you can say that Dark Souls took inspiration from Zelda and emphasized the combat more than the puzzle solving. I remember asking people "any games like old-school Zelda that aren't Zelda?" and people told me Tunic, Death's Door, Dark Souls, and yet after playing these, they felt nothing like Zelda to me since I always found the heart of Zelda to be the brilliant puzzles typically in dungeons. That's not to say these games are bad and I had enjoyment on all of them but I feel like people either need to broaden a genre by heavily innovating upon the core games it's based on (such as many Roguelikes not being much to do with Rogue aside from procedurally generated situations/maps), or narrow a genre by talking about its specifics (Tunic's core gameplay loop consists of souls-like for the most part, with exploration being a homage to old school NES games, along with a low poly saturated atmosphere). Not sure about all that but just thoughts. Great video!
I agree! Much looser genre names would allow them to fit in a lot more games, which I think would serve to not alienate as many people. At least that would be my hope.
Personally all genre names are stuck on the catalog list of what Fred Meyers was selling in 2004 so I really don't care too much about the legitimacy question. prestige indie games/publishers just operate on most of the same templates from when 'the indie boom' of XBLA and midpoint Steam. And using a specific genre name or title as an origin point doesn't equate a 'perfect specimen'. I love walking simulators, but for years I would have not been seen mentioning Dear Esther in a very positive light. I'm certain that some have said the same of Earthbound and Rogue Legacy, and so on. Unrelated but am slightly disappointed by the discussion passing by Kadokawa's 2018 reboot-spinoff Yume Nikki: Dream Diary. It's a competent work of 4/10 spooky cinematic puzzle platforming with a child repeatedly dying (also an attribute of this genre in my experience. combine it with ragdoll physics upon death and you've got a real #transgressiveart moment). It's what happens when a company wrings out a Limbo-like out of an unfinished RPG Maker title.
God I adore your video essays so much, otter 🥹(*๓´╰╯`๓) ❤️✨ they have SUCH good energy, cohesiveness, well-thought direction and outline, and beautifully fleshed out with your editing of game moments (/god/, I cannot imagine combing through all of that footage of gameplay to choose and cut and splice together oof).
13:02 Dude, seriously? Just no. Not every game itself spawned a new genre. Only people with no idea about genres at all talk like that. Super Metroid or the NES Metroid were adventures. All four classic adventure games for the NES were even adressed as such on the gamepak itself. Those were Metroid, Legend of Zelda, Legend of Zelda II and Kid Icarus. All of those games had you venturing around and fulfilling certain tasks to achieve better endings. And Doom did not even invent an entirely new genre. It took a classic genre "Dungeoen Crawler" and turned it into a manacing fast paced shooting experience. And by the way Wolfenstein 3D did it first. Keep that in mind. I hate badly done research that leads to false information. 14:08 More misinformation. Doom Clone was only a placeholder for as long as nobody figured the proper genre title "first person shooter" which followed really soon enough to ditch the Doom clone myths you spread here. 15:40 Also still calling games rip-offs because of your high and mighty expectations that every game has to do something new for you is nonsensical as well. 16:00 Even Dark Souls is not doing anything totally new after all. Dark Souls is just an action RPG. People have trouble playing this game (or those games) as long as they have the wrong expectations planted on their cluelessness about the genre the game relates to. And you are using the term shovel ware wrong. Shovel ware was a bunch of almost random PC games that got tossed in a bin for a bargain tag. Games and developers people didn't know or possible never were about to. 17:24 Zelda-like A.K.A. ACTION ADVENTURE 18:35 Symphony of the Night style Castlevania games are action RPGs. Metroid games are action adventures. Anything saying "like" or "likes" is not describing a genre but only refering to other game titles. For someone not knowing what genre Zelda is, saying zeldalike means shit. And then you compare Zeldalikes "ACTION ADVENTURES" to soulslikes "ACTION RPGs".
Calling something a Limbo-like would act as a warning to me to avoid this game at all cost. I don´t like platformers and I hate horror games. Didn´t fall for the Tunic trap, because the game reminded me a lot of Deaths Door which is another souls game in disguise. I don´t particularly care for Zelda games that aren´t Breath of the Wild and I wouldn´t have gotten it anyway if it had been a zelda-like.
Nice! Yeah I noticed a lot of similarities between Tunic and Death's Door as well actually. Loved them both! I'm always on the lookout for more games like that.
Yes genres matter. Rogue-like is not a genre. And to anyone who has never playedthe original Rogue, it means jackshit. Rogue itself was an adventure style game in itself. So rogue-like translates into: ADVENTURE. Nothing else. Same for Soulslike. Anyone who has played a couple of Demon Souls or Dark Souls games may know what the term refers to. But as a functioning genre it doesn't tell what genre Dask Souls is. Metroidvania? Metroid and Castlevania areboth made up video game titles, franchise names. Those do not describe the genres in which the games are rooted. Also nobody says Doom clones anymore. Those grew to be known as First Person Shooters. Genre matters. And the next level Limbo game? Those games - Survival Platformers, existed for decades. To anyone who knows the games Abe's Exodus or Heart of Darkness will know what that means. Limbo came so late into this picture it makes no sense to regard to those games as "limbo-likes". That's just nonsensical bullshit. And even better. Before those games I mentioned there was ONE very specific game everyone must acknowledge. Another World! That game did it first and is still a classic. A game that aged like a fine bourbon. And you boast about Limbo. Incredible ignorant.
Yeah I think we just need to come to a consensus and find better names for new genres, and it'll probably happen naturally over time. Every "like" genre we use now is fairly recent, only starting to be used in the 2010s. Just like Doom clones came to be known as FPSs and Smash clones started to be called platform fighters, we'll eventually pick better names for roguelikes, metroidvanias, soulslikes and limbolikes. The process of getting there is a little bit annoying though.
22:25 Man. Stop saying shit like "copy-cat". Games that are similar to Dark Souls exist for over a decade now. Actio RPGs however have been known since the 90s.
