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Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

> Try and stop at the marker at each station for a high rating.

Nitpick, but I hate it when devs - even devs making tiny weird experimental games like this one - feel compelled to add some objective, any objective, into an otherwise open-ended experience. Even if it's optional, it's lurking there like an unnecessary specter, ruining the freeness of the experience.

Edit: This came off as more negative than I wanted it to. I would never discourage someone from exercising their creativity, and creativity (and craftsmanship) clearly went into this. I was just using it as a jumping-off point for a broader discussion about something I see as holding back game design as a whole, which I better articulated here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25995867

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Edit/Addendum: I finally got the chance to sit down and actually play the game. As expected, it has a delightful mood (and is technically impressive) and had me smiling most of the way. I feel a little bit of regret about injecting a critical thread into the conversation around it. Many people here are describing meaningful experiences and I don't mean to detract from that.

But, I don't take back the criticism itself: I still think the experience would have been even better and more true to its themes without the ratings system (though it wasn't as distracting as I expected it to be)

Sounds like you want something different than what he intended. That's his business, not yours =)

Yeah. The problem is I want something different from what seemingly the entire space of game developers is willing to make, even when there are no economics at stake. When I see a little game like this, which clearly came from a place of inspiration and was positioned to break the mold, and then it's still spoiled by just a tiny piece of needless gamification, it's doubly frustrating specifically because it came so close to escaping that trope.

I don't mean to come off as demanding - people can make what they want to make - I just feel like sometimes people tack this kind of mechanic onto a game not because it's essential, but because (consciously or subconsciously) they're afraid people won't know what to do with a video game that doesn't give you a dopamine kick in the form of a number going up. Of course I don't know if that was the case here (though I suspect it might be), it's just that this game touches on a much bigger story of exasperation with the world of game design, for me.

So you're objecting to the gamification ... of games?

What would your ideal "not-game" look like? Are you sure you wouldn't be happy with a game like Factorio which is basically a perfect sandbox (despite having lots of stats if you go to look at them)?

Mainly I'm advocating that people explore this design-space more in general.

Sandboxes are cool in their own way, but aren't really the same thing

For me personally, the specific version of this that I want is a world to explore for exploration's sake, without anything quantifiable to be gained by doing so. The Stanley Parable is a good example of this, if you've heard of it. I use "world" and "explore" very loosely; exploring where you can go and what you can do as the engineer of a train would fall under this umbrella. Even if the answer is "not a whole lot", there's an aliveness and a wondering that comes from even such a tiny slice of a world.

But as soon as a performance metric is introduced there's this "should statement" hanging over my head, reshaping the whole experience.

I can relate. I strongly dislike score tables after levels which imply that my success was not successful enough - that I should now compete with the scores of other people.

It's all about different kinds of experiences for me. I love certain games that are heavily metrics-based, when that's what I feel like playing. Scoreboards sometimes make those games more fun because you always have a goal to keep chasing after for as long as you want to.

The problem is when every game feels the need to have metrics, even when they fly in the face of the rest of the experience. Sometimes I want something different.

What you're looking for is called a Walking Simulator—no explicit goals or win state. There's a nice niche for them in games like Proteus. I wrote one myself in 2007, before the genre had a name. You are a single pixel just exploring an ultra lo-fi pixel land, to see what you can discover: https://doomlaser.itch.io/standardbits

There are plenty more on itchio as well: https://itch.io/games/tag-walking-simulator

Sort of. I played Proteus a little bit and it was definitely along the right lines, though I wouldn't say the genre as a whole is exactly what I mean. Many walking simulators like Dear Esther and Gone Home are pretty linear, where "exploration" mostly means unpacking a specific story in the exact order the developers planned. Some others, like Eidolon, still can't resist putting little collectibles in there.

Maybe there should be a genre distinction for truly "walk in the park" or "hike in the woods" style experiences, though even in the woods or at a park you'll often encounter trails or paths, which tend to shape a more linear experience.

Sounds like you're after "experiences" - games that cater 100% to explorer types with no fighting, collecting etc. One that springs to mind is Journey (although I haven't played it so I'm not sure if it counts). Flow is another one that might fit. Is that what you're talking about?

Those are great examples of others, like the OP, that came close but then limited themselves with objectives anyway :)

This is a classic mechanic for this genre.

The dev put something beautiful out into the world and this is your take on it.

"an otherwise open-ended experience"

you're literally driving on a one-way track

"Open-ended" in the sense of not being bound by objectives. Something that can be taken in for its own sake, instead of being reduced to a number.

an open-ended track though

Until you reach the end

What objective? I kept running past red signals as fast as I could, hoping for another train to crash into, and there wasn't one.

Maybe this would work for you? It's a hiking sim in the Rockies inspired by A Short Hike .. I think I abandoned it before getting any sort of gamification/objectives added :) It just came about because I found some surprisingly high resolution elevation data.

https://partlyatomic.itch.io/joy-of-hiking?secret=msqgiZefzz...

Edit: Just went back and replayed, forgot about the stamina mechanic. You need to end the hike when the bar is in the green to gain more stamina for the next day (either by hitting E at the "car" or Q)

Various in dev screenshots here: https://imgur.com/a/jrO6iYd

This is great!

I actually love the stamina mechanic because it imposes a limitation: you can't just chart out the entire space in one go. You have to pick and choose where you want to explore next, and you're always left wondering what else might lie beyond. You have to value every trek. And even at the maximum (I think I got roughly as far as it's possible to get along the valley by optimizing my path...), you still can't see the whole thing. I thought I caught a glimpse of a cabin just beyond the treeline. Realistically there's probably nothing there, but I'm going to choose to believe there is something more just out of reach.

Typically referred to as toys or simulators rather than games; there isn’t much out there but I find those terms get better S:N

Sort of. I feel like both of those terms come with their own additional meaning (toys being mainly concerned with micro-interactions and simulators being more concerned with, well... simulating - and usually the complexity of managing - some real-world system), though I would put them under the overall umbrella of non-objective games

You literally ignored the very next sentence.

> Or don't! It's up to you.

You literally ignored my last sentence.

> Even if it's optional

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