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Lenna's Inception


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#1 Mani Kanina

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Posted 12 June 2020 - 12:56 AM

This game has been out for a while now, but I figured I'd make a thread since I just got it and sat down to play it. I had been following the development of it for yeeaaars, so it's nice to see it finally out!
You can find the game here: [Steam] [itch.io]

The game's pitch is this: mix of Z1 and GB zelda but with randomly generated world and dungeons.
 
Screenshot that ended up waaaay too big:
Spoiler


I personally find it quite charming and at least worth playing through once, while the randomly generated world and dungeons technically means more replay value, it kinda doesn't if you ask me. The randomly generated overworld screens and area structures often have quite bad flow to them and quite often look like a mess, the randomly generated nature of things and lack of a human touch in designing the level design makes it the weakest portion of the game. Luckily, it has some quite good merits too!
The game actually does sport a decent amount of replay value, but mostly due to everything else other than the level design. There are a wide selection of different challenge modes you can play the game in, the game sports both a GBA as well as a GB aesthetic that you can choose between (even mid-game, but you need to go back to the title screen to change). There are some mechanics taken from roguelike games as well, potions and armours don't come identified, so you need to try them out to figure out what they do.

The OST has some bangers in it as well! Also there are some zelda related references and gags in game (as you should expect). I dunno, I recommend it, especially for people who play ZC quests.

Edited by Mani Kanina, 12 June 2020 - 01:23 AM.

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#2 Moosh

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Posted 12 June 2020 - 01:17 AM

I've  been following Naka Teleeli's playthrough of this recently. The game intrigues me from a design and presentation standpoint, but it's not something I could see myself ever playing. There seems to be an unfortunate effect in these randomized games where the whole comes out to less than the sum of its parts. Individual parts of the game seem promising, but the dungeons it generates are very dull and repetitive. Puns are on point though.


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#3 NoeL

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Posted 17 June 2020 - 04:51 AM

I got this with the racial equality bundle the other day and was playing through it. Nice little game! They did well to make it different and not just rehash a generic story. The procedural generation isn't great though. It's passable, but overworlds and dungeons usually look like 2-star quests. Empty rooms, random obstacles, pathways that don't follow any reasonable traffic... it's a tough task to make a machine that designs levels like an adequate level designer.

 

Speaking of, I'm kinda in the process of writing a similar game so will face the same challenge (eventually). I can think of two different approaches: 1) analysing screen design principles and coding them into an algorithm, or 2) building a neural network and feeding it a whole bunch of "good" and "bad" screens - let it figure out the design principles itself. Maybe even a mix of both: do a rough gen following a set of guidelines then clean up the results with a neural net. That could be good... don't mind me, just thinking out loud.


Edited by NoeL, 17 June 2020 - 04:59 AM.

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#4 Mani Kanina

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Posted 17 June 2020 - 07:08 AM

The level design is absolutely the weakest point, yeah. Screen flow is awful in most overworld screens and most dungeon screens are for some reason very much the same while still being very generic and mediocre.

I do absolutely think the game is amazing despite the very meh randomly generated level design, rather than because of it. Part of what I like about the game really comes down to the plot and themes, but they are kinda not great to explain. On one hand there is spoilers to consider, of course, but I'm mostly not sure how to describe the story to sell it well to others. I also only really ended up connecting with the story after I had already beaten the game, which is probably the worst thing you can say if you wanna sell people on it! :V


Edited by Mani Kanina, 17 June 2020 - 08:08 AM.



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