Design review of Redfall by Arkane Studios Austin

I completed the main campaign in Redfall (official site, Steam, also on Game Pass), a 4 player co-op open world shooter by Arkane Austin, who's mostly known for detailed single player story-filled action games. The reviews and player reaction haven't been positive, but as an Arkane fan I felt compelled to play it for myself and take it on its own merits.

Overall I feel it's an OK game that's basically playable, despite the bugs and aggressive texture streaming and general unfinished feeling. If Microsoft had given them another 6-12 months to truly polish everything, then it maybe would've been a more solid OK game. 

Anyway I didn't mind the incompleteness so much because I was playing less for fun, and more "for work", as a first person game developer. In this sense, playing a 75% finished game is more useful than playing a 100% finished game. You get to see more of the big broad strokes before they got quite resolved, the intent vs. the execution. 

So this post will focus on my read of the general game design and player experience.

SPOILER WARNING: lots of general systems spoilers and gameplay screenshots, some story spoilers

The joys of the anti-farm sim: "Before the Green Moon" by turnfollow

SPOILER ALERT: This post SPOILS what happens in Before The Green Moon. I strongly recommend playing it first.

Before The Green Moon (on Itch and Steam) is a post-apocalyptic indie Harvest Moon / Stardew Valley / Animal Crossing inspired farm life sim about scraping by, in a decaying rural truckstop town with bored depressed locals you gradually befriend (or ignore).

I was surprised Turnfollow was working in this big systemic genre space, since I mostly know them for their very good linear story games Little Party and Wide Ocean Big Jacket. But you can see the "seeds" of this game (ha ha) in their wartime gardening game A Good Gardener so maybe it's not so unexpected...

From the beginning, you're given an ultimate end goal: earn enough company scrip to buy a ticket to the moon. Instead of a raccoon banker oppressing you with a mortgage, it's a faceless Moon Company exploiting every poor soul left on this post-apocalyptic Earth. Brilliantly, the already astronomical price of the moon ticket actually increases during the game. Imagine if Animal Crossing had the bravery to charge interest on the home loan!

Well, Before The Green Moon is brave, brave enough even to suggest that farming isn't exactly a picturesque Hallmark movie. Instead, you're stuck in this abandoned GameCube game and you need to somehow earn enough to buy a moonshot out of this dump. How are you gonna do it?