Ray Tracing Can't Fix A Bad Game | 0xFF Game Review
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- Опубліковано 26 чер 2024
- Welcome to Steam Sequence, a series where I attempt to play and review as many Steam games in alphabetical order as possible to sort the Trash from the Treasure.
This means that I'm playing through all the terrible games so that you don't have to.
Please enjoy my suffering.
Ray Tracing Can't Fix A Bad Game | 0xFF Game Review
This episode features: 0xFF
Store Page: store.steampowered.com/app/22...
In case you're wondering, Steam organizes games starting with punctuation first, then numbers, and then the actual alphabet. It may be some time before I reach the letter "A" on my journey!
00:00 Intro
00:27 The Review
11:48 The Verdict
15:01 Outro
Join our Discord server: / discord
Ratings for every game can be found here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
Editing by @TomaszRyszkowski / @taisato2091
Thumbnail by @Fupicat
Character Art by Disasterisk, check out their stuff below!
www.tumblr.com/blog/asteriskd...
/ a.pure.medical.disaster
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Outro Music by Approaching Nirvana
/ approachingnirvana
Song: Steampowered
Listen to the song on Spotify: open.spotify.com/track/4OsSqY... - Ігри
Creator: “the game’s not hard enough, I’ll patch it so the radiation hurts more.”
(Completely forgot the endgame section he gave you just enough health to clear, which is now impossible)
I legitimately think that’s what happened, that the dev only wanted to make the game harder and just forgot that doing so would break that segment.
Yeah that would make alot of sense
Lmao
The creator should've playtested
Your goal as a game dev is not to beat the players. I feel like this dev never learned that. There was good ideas but poorly executed because the dev is scared of making a game that's too easy.
instead they made something even Dark Souls and Elden Ring would look at and say "dude... ease up, you don't have to beat them into the ground THAT hard."
That's not fair to Dark Souls/Souls-like. The primary intention of Souls-like, hell, metroidvania's in general, is the teach the player how they should best proceed, to never give up, and that sometimes the dumbest solution isn't that dumb if it works. Souls-Like are supposed to *teach* the player problem-solving skills.
This game doesn't teach you anything, and if anything the game is an exercise in utter futility. The fact that the dev went out of his way to make the game harder instead of easier makes me think that the lack of checkpoints is the intention, not a mistake.
@@AkariEnderwolf dark souls doesn't try to beat the player it has very hard but fair challenges and an easy mode that doesn't shame you for wanting to make things easier for you. You can play a caster, you can grind and there's a lot of things you can get early to make your run easier if you look up online. The goal of dark souls is not to be hard the difficulty comes from the design and it works. This game WANTS to be a hard game at the cost of the player's enjoyment and it hurts the design of the game.
When you make a slow contemplative game where you spend a long time to do things but then you can get one shot it just becomes a boring game. I'm sure most people uninstalled the game the first or second time they died. The first time I played dark souls I kept dying but retried many times before rage quitting .
I am convinced that end segment that repeatedly killed Graeldon is because of this. Dev was scared the game was too easy, and so they raised the damage, not even realizing that broke that segment. Graeldon’s solution is so convoluted that only a madman would’ve intended players to do that.
@@isenokami7810 yeah I'm somewhat of a dev myself and I see a lot of people in game jams or the indie scene who are really afraid that their game is gonna be too easy so they make it way too difficult. I did that with my game and realized I was trying so hard to make a "hardcore" game that it just became an off-putting game that most people did not want to play. Luckily it was just feedback from the demo so I ended up adding more options for the player to get stronger so that those who want a challenge can have it but those who find it too hard can just recycle old equipment into XP and be overlevelled.
Another thing that also happens often is a lot of new devs don't realize the disparity between their knowledge of the game and the player's so when they playtest the game it's easy because they know what to do and know the limits because they're the ones who decided all that but when they let random people try the game the game is almost impossible. This also happens to me and I remember getting mad at my friends for not using all the tools available to win battles not realizing I only knew all the possibilities because I was the one who put those tools in the game. So I had to make a tutorial and make the UI clearer to show the player what they can do to win.
Game dev is hard.
this is like solving an ARG with no payoff
Yeah.
having the solution to your small indie game sound more like a speedrun strat is a... choice '-'
"0xFF" or just "FF" is hexadecimal for 255, the same way 11111111 is binary for 255.
The significance of the number 255 is that it is traditionally the largest number that you can represent with 1 byte of data, and it's use in the name of this game might be referring to the 8-bit era of gaming in which single byte registers were used to hold data.
0xFF's significance in colors with color codes is that computers nowadays typically use 3 bytes of data to store a single color (one byte for each of how red, blue, and green the color being displayed is). This can be represented by three lots of those two-hexadecimal digit long strings. 0xFFFFFF is white, because white can be made on a computer monitor by emitting the highest amount of all three red, blue, and green possible.
Also -1 equals 255 (or well it used to on 8 bit computers)
I am in awe that the developer decided to increase the radiation damage. Like... why? Why would you do that?
The thing that strikes me the most about this is that it's too long for what it's going for. If the "perfect run" only took ten minutes or so to pull off, it'd be fine to have a convoluted critical path and no saves, since the bulk of the game would be exploring and figuring out what the game's asking you to do. Making the perfect run take roughly an hour, with the bulk of that being spent on travel? What a terrible idea.
I would assume they just thought that beating the game was still too easy because you could scrape by on the skin of your teeth instead of having to figure out that there is hidden base and so on.
Just one more 0 game, and then we get to the infinite expanse of 1! 2048, all the 4D games, 5D chess, and 7 billion humans will be great reviews to see in the future after that.
From what I’ve heard the 1 games will take quite a bit of time tho
It should take about 1 year for the 1s
Looks like after the final 0 game, it'll be a couple dozen games to reach 10 Second Ninja X, which I had added to my library during a free promotion in the past. And then, several dozen more to reach 100% Orange Juice. Although, maybe the plethora of "100 cats" and "100 hidden" animal games could be grouped together to speed through that chunk.
Oh, and only a few games after 100% Orange Juice is another good one that I've seen a couple UA-camrs play already-- 1000 Amps. So, I'll be looking forward to the review of that too.
There’s another game within that range of digits that I’m quite excited to see, but it may be a while before we reach it-
With how many 1's there are, I should have plenty of time to actually develop something and release it in that time. And by that, I mean I'll see it pop up in about a decade from now. Lol.
I feel like the game was trying approach "you only get one chance, once you fuck up its done". But the repetitiveness makes it too difficult and frustrating to keep going
I'd also add the 'figure out what to do' part of the game to that frustration list. It's basically combining two different game elements that contradict (and ruin) each other.
Figuring out a non-fatal path through a hostile environment can be fun. But then the game should allow you to (occasionally) maintain progress somewhere, so the player can focus on eventually finding that correct path.
Similarly, mastering a perfect run necessary to beat something can be fun. But then it should be clear what the player has to do, so they can focus on mastering that.
Given how convoluted and counterintuitive the solution to the game is, it might actually be better that it doesn't have a save system--99.99% of players would probably end up softlocking themselves and saving the game, having no idea they actually needed to start over from the beginning.
Just let the player store multiple auto saves they can choose from if something goes wrong.
yeah i think that the game is just based on a very repetetive game loop that the saves system would help, but not save it completely
Since the dev literally made the game harder I can only assume they actually just want people to suffer
Welcome to the irradiated ladder club, how irradiated ladder are ya
graeldon goofy ahh sound effects 21 century humor
That's just how I run >.>
@@Graeldon
It's my kind of guilty pleasure humor.
It's like the devs saw Getting Over It and missed the point
This game actually sounds like hell lol. Also I think the name is just because of the (mostly) white map
my personal headcannon is that it has to do with the white megaradiation beams. Those are almost pure whiteness so the 0xFF might refer to that. Other theory is that 0xFF also means 255 in hexa-decimal which is basically the biggest possible number for 8 bit values which might also refer to the radiation being 255/255 in power. Or it might be both, but honestly knowing this game it's neither and the name originally had some meaning, but someone actually deciphered it so the dev stepped in and decided to change it in a patch lol
@@TomaszRyszkowski when figuring out why the game was named something is more fun than the game itself
Trueee lol
What a shame the game dev actually patched the game to be more difficult. Not more challenging, just more frustrating.
The ambience of being in a radioactive hellscape is a frightening cool idea, and the hexadecimal color for white color is a fun touch. the game would be playable with checkpoints and better controls as you mentioned. It will be amazing if during the healing sections there were notes left by previous survivors to add to the atmosphere. This would be a cool game for a few dollars tonwaste an hour or two on.
The combination of an extremally obscure and dificult to execute puzzle and the developer patching out the ways people beat the game reminds me of the celeste custom map called crystal garden.
At first it seemed like an interesting game with how the graphics reminded me of Signalis, but then.... yeah... fuck that.
Yeah that sucks because the game is genuinely very visually pleasing. I think the dev is better off as an art director than a game designer.
helo megaradiation!
👋💀
2:45
that Kahoot remix went hard, didn't expect that banger to show up here
she racing on my tracing till i 0xff
HSFSFDH GOLDEN
[EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER]
thank you fupi, very cool!
she tracing my ray till I 0xFF
@@TheRealVenusian ❌
I gotta commend you for actually managing to complete the game! I would have probably given up within an hour!
Great video, as always! Edits were top notch!
this seems like a good concept buuuuuuuuuuuut about as finished as frozen chicken
"They added raytracing to PS1 graphics"
That's actually pretty close to describing the art direction of Lethal Company
execution is everything
surprisingly accurate
"That's called gatekeeping, and we don't do that here...those were dark times", instant like! XD lol
a game that could be fixed by just healing you faster and reducing the damage, and giving you a credit scene, aaaaand a slightly better grab mechanic
I wonder if your method of completion is even the intended way, because if it is, that's just cruel.
I think the concept of the game is actually pretty good, and if it weren't for the lack of checkpoints, I think it could even be fun to just try and go as far as you can before dying. Maybe implement an autosave for every time you enter a new base, so you could slowly work your way through the wasteland.
Also, I think the game could be way more engaging if there was actually even a rudimentary story to follow. We already have a large focus on abandoned bases, so why not fill them with environmental storytelling like text logs or corpses to suggest that people used to live here before the radiation killed everything? The fact that we don't even know what caused the radiation is telling.
Having a bit of a story would also help solve the healing-through-boredom problem. If you're going to make it so the people have to sit still in a shelter for a minute or two whenever they go anywhere, at least give them something to look at and think about while they wait!
i was thinking the same about putting scattered bits of lore through the bases. im already gonna be sitting in there for a few minutes to regain health, might as well give me motivation to explore the game beyond completionist obligation.
@@everfluctuating Yeah the game is very style over substance. Like the tutorial page looks great but gives you little actual information.
Fantastic Video! I was really curious to see what the dev changed since I played and beaten it, especially the ending. But if course, the ending is just as disappointing lmao.
Fantastic review as always, Graeldon! It's always interesting to see how different people make smaller video games. I eventually want to make a game of my own, but still have a lot of learning to do before I try. Also, I don't know how I managed, but I was able to watch the video as the view count was 255.
Perfect timing!
These kinds of videos make me feel a little better about making my own video games. They might not be the highest quality but atleast they are playable.
I enjoy the opportunity for one last joke on the end card with the final rating, but I do miss having the game's actual name reiterated there too as in older videos. Could you consider either striking through the joke and writing the actual name of the game next to it, or putting the game's name in parentheses after the joke?
Absolutely, thanks for the feedback!
Hmm i never thought about this, bcs the game name always is in the video title, so it is easily accessible, but i guess that it does make sense to put the normal name too
I feel like I've been hit by mega radiation now
So it seems like if you could save it would make the solution even harder to get to, since you need to use the maximum strength suit in a much later challenge that most people will pick it up and save between. However the annoyance factor of being kicked back to the start is overwhelming and I wouldn't have bothered to complete it.
Reminds me of another game I had the displeasure of playing called Crypt, it's also on steam so one day you will have to suffer playing that one too. It has all the same problems that this game does, and even more, but I won't spoil them, you'll have to figure it out when you get there :)
Funnily enough both games even have a similar graphical style, so I guess be cautious if you see a game with ps1 graphics.
Wasn't that the game that was made specifically to be as tortures as possible?
@@MrMeisterRoxas The dev definitely knew what he was doing with some of his design choices.
Crypt was literally made by the dev to torture his friends, it was never meant to be a fun game at all, it was meant to make you suffer
@@vinievex He posted it to steam, even though it is free and even if it's not meant to be a fun game, it is not exempt from criticism because at the end of the day it is still a game. And admittedly it has a few elements that are interesting, such as the graphical style. Simply writing it off as a torturous experience, while admittedly accurate, isn't entirely fair to it.
But the point is, the fact that 0xFF reminds me of it should convey how I feel about both games.
@@alexjoana3081In a way Crypt is a good argument for games as art. Is Crypt a fun game? No, but it wasn't intended to be. It was designed as a torturous experience and in that way it's a successful piece of art.
Not that I think Valefisk himself would call it art, but he did very much make it extremely clear intentions.
0xFF on the other hand, doesn't seem to have the benefit of such clear intent. It seems torturous just because it wasn't designed well (and Crypt also has the benefit of being way shorter)
checking the updates, the last update mentions fixing a bug where the game "fails to complete". I wonder if they made the game so hard that the fix doesn't even work but the Dev didnt notice it
Your patience with this unforgiving enigma of a game is really commendable! 💕
Thank you, it was quite the journey!
Yeah, poor checkpointing/save access hurts big time. Definitely recall that being the real reason I bounced off Demon’s Souls: I actually did click with that one somewhat, but with no bonfire equivalent I was sent back to the start of the entire level with each death and had to fight my way back. Not fun, worse than any damage the deaths alone could’ve done to my fun.
I continue to be impressed by your dedication to completing even the very small and not very well-done games! Thanks for all your hard work in spite of seemingly spiteful devs! >.
Looks pretty good, when compared to the previous 3D games here. I like the ultrawide aspect ratio (using Ultrawidify with YT).
Yet another game that could have been something cool, but this time was ruined by janky mechanics and unclear storytelling. One of your most engaging videos recently. How long until we've left the 0s?
Only 1 more 0 game!
Also, thank you for the kind words! I was aiming for me engaging story telling in this one =)
@@Graeldon well you’ve certainly succeeded :) Onwards to the 1s!
Hah, inspired by Josh's "Worst MMO Ever", I see! Well done on your review!
Josh, IronPineapple, The Completionist and TotalBiscuit have all been huge influences on the channel for sure!
This game is good conceptually, but the execution is FAR from it. Even just the ability to save would improve the experience SIGNIFICANTLY, but the lack of a proper ending and the fact that the dev had the *gall* to INCREASE the radiation damage, making the game impossible to beat without finding something clearly intentionally hidden from the player is just... the dev *clearly* had no clue what they were doing. That may sound harsh, but c'mon, this stuff is game design 101. I get it, it's a hostile world, but the game itself doesn't need to be hostile to the player. All that's gonna do is deter then from actually experiencing the game you clearly wanted people to.
This honestly sounds fun! It would be nice to have a checkpoint system but i can appreciate the idea of a single puzzel game
0:56 Well now i just want a game that is heavily stylised in the regular game space but all the reflections are photorealistic!
Might actually be a cool premise for a puzzle game now that i think about it. Maybe you’d have to use the reflections to see what things really are or to get clues and later on part of the puzzle is getting a reflection into a position you can use it in.
Is there a way to go to the source of radiation once it is destroyed to see what it is?
yes, once you beat the game you can explore freely. The source of the radiation is essentially a giant tombstone, pretty disappointing. (if you are curious my clear video checks it out at the very end.)
Hi Graeldon,
I first want to say I love these series of looking at lesser known or extremely obscure games which otherwise may have never made it to UA-cam, and have been enjoying yours, which randomly arrived on my Home feed. I haven't checked the comments of all your videos, so I risk asking a question which has already been asked (and I probably am), but here it is. How are you managing this idea of testing games in alphabetical order when, to my knowledge, hundreds (?) of new games are added to Steam each day? Like if for example, in two days a game comes out called "0xFA", do you go back and review it, or has it by then missed its chance and you will continue onward toward Z? Secondary comment/question is, due to the above, had you considered (somehow) picking titles with some kind of RNG instead? Maybe my idea is a bad one, and the alphabetical way is a better idea for channel intrigue. Just wondering, thanks, and thanks for the videos.
For now we'll continue onwards, but some time in the future there might be a side-series focused on covering all of the titles that were added to steam after we passed their alphabetical place
@@TomaszRyszkowski Thanks for the reply, I suppose that gets harder as the index will continue forward. :-D Minor (or major) correction to my above post, apparently 40 games on average released per day, not hundreds. Thanks again for the game reviews!
Oh look, more needlessly hostile design. I don't know what the devs were going for, but I imagine it's either a "2deep4u" artsy game, or pure ragebait.
i cannot imagine being a game dev and patching out legitimate ways to beat your game. i imagine it might have a theme of futility but if the point of the game is to fail then why program a win condition at all?
That's the point, they didn't program a win condition. The game never says that you beat the game, so technically there is no win condition
Maybe it doesn’t have saves because you need to go get that battery right at the start so if you save anywhere later the run is impossible anyway? Best I’ve got
ALSO GRAEL WHAT DO YOU MEAN RACING TRACING
You can't prove that happened!
@@Graeldonwe all saw it
@@Graeldon SIR YOU FORGOT ABOUT THE DESCRIPTION IT IS LIKE A SMOKING GUN
No idea what you're talking about mate =)
Move over, Mario Kart. Time for Graeldon Racing Tracing
Rage games are at least rewarding and gives players a clear sense of direction. If this game dev implemented that, I feel like this game would actually have some sort of following and people wanting to know more about it.
Surely there was at least an achievement right?
Nope. No achievements =(
idk man…. racing tracing really does improve a game!
I actually kind of liked the visuals, it reminds me of a mix of Teardown and Superhot
i've got a $5 steam game and a few extra steam keys if you want to review it, fyi its $5 of content
For just a split second I got excited that someone made/cloned 0x10c after all this time!
If you've never heard of it, 0x10c was an unfinished programming/space/sandbox game by Notch, announced in 2012 and cancelled in 2013. It too had low res PS1 style graphics. Between the stress of hype, being a crap programmer, and not having an already existing almost identical game to directly rip off (~cough~ Infiniminer ~cough~), the project just kinda fizzled out
Minecraft is hardly "identical" to Infiniminer, it takes Infiniminer's concept and expands it greatly.
He's not a bad programmer either, so I get the feeling you're criticizing him for unrelated reasons.
@@ViciousVinnyDYou have to compare it with Minecraft Classic (which was started only weeks after Infiniminer came out), not the current game that's a product of many years of development by a whole large team. And Notch himself said that he was trying to make an Infiniminer clone. Obviously if you keep working on the same game for over a decade it will be expanded.
As for him being a bad programmer, Minecraft was rewritten multiple times by Mojang because it was terribly unoptimized and poorly designed. Anyone who was involved with the early modding knows how bad the codebase used to be. I have yet to see anyone good at Java praise Notch for his programming or design skills. He is objectively a hack, whatever other "unrelated reasons" are there to dislike him may be just oil on the fire.
@@rustkitty Minecraft classic is still a unique interperetation of Infiniminer. And, while it's code may be a mess, it was an impressive accomplishment for one person.
First!!!
sixth
i think
Day 169
Of waiting for Celeste
Day 170 of waiting for Celeste
Day 168 of waiting for Celeste
Day 167 of waiting for Celeste
am I the first?
No
Yes
sadly yes
i think you are
lm jumpscare
Oh well, let's agree to disagree on one point
Gatekeeping is good
There are a lot of people you don't want to have in your hobby
Oh my god, this dev went and made his game harder lol
@@Russian_engineer_bmstu There's a difference between "gatekeeping" and "keeping assholes away"...
@@LicencetoMeme and what is it in your opinion?
@@Russian_engineer_bmstu Gatekeeping prevents anybody new to join a fanbase. And you have to let people in, to identify them as assholes, see what I mean ?
@@LicencetoMemegate keeping doesn’t mean not letting in *anyone* new though? It is possible to have a barrier to entry without having it be insurmountable.
Day 165 of waiting for Celeste
legend