I completely disagree, both with your message and the current state of indie games. From my perspective, it seems like developers focus more on some shallow gimmick in artstyle/story than making the game fun. No, it's not "the 80's" anymore, but why do people still play those old games? No one plays Tetris because it's some modern day reflection of our political climate; it's just fun!
9 days ago(+1)(-1)
Thank you for completely misunderstanding the point. A great example of exactly who is referenced in the first paragraph. Tetris is still played today, how many variants of it do you think have superseded its gameplay? List them please.
Consider the following games which have incredible gameplay.
- Dark Souls
- Red Dead Redemption 1
- Majoras Mask
- Dead Rising
- Deus Ex
All of these games are derivatives of already existing gameplay systems. Yet the reason they are ascended into gaming culture is not because they are the first games to do this gameplay. It is because they used this gameplay to structure something beyond it. That is the entire point of the piece. Gameplay never mattered
This manifesto as part of #manifestojam2026 is to point out that game developers today should be aware of this reality and focus more on the substance of their art than the glue which holds it together.
7 days ago(+2)
well you're not even making arguments you're asking chatgpt to make them for you, and even then first you said puyo puyo is a tetris variant and then posted "evidence" that it isn't, so i don't think you really know what you're arguing here