As Helldivers 2 draws Metal Gear Solid 5 comparisons, Obsidian RPG master Josh Sawyer says "more games should just directly copy stuff that feels good"
Feb. 28, 2024And he’s right
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
“The act of copying something requires you to do a lot of critical analysis and it’s extremely informative even if you scrap everything and start over,” Sawyer adds.
Sawyer is, of course, correct, and the wording and timing of his assessment has raised a few interesting points. I’m reminded of the time-honored advice that artists, especially new artists, should wholeheartedly copy their favorite art as a step on the way to discovering their own style. Art inspires art which inspires art, and similar iteration ideation happens in games all the time, on mechanical, technical, and artistic levels just to name a few.
Countless Stardew Valley-likeshave put a spin on its farming sim formula, which is itself based on Harvest Moon. How manypost-Genshin Impact gamesare there? How manyVampire Survivors-likes? Slay the Spire-likes?Games like Pokemon? Just last month, a lead dev on the “Hollow Knight meets Kirby” Metroidvania Biomorph told me that the game’s core mechanicwas originally inspired by Super Mario Odyssey. Round and round the design wheel goes as new creatives take turns spinning it with their own force and intent.
I’m especially intrigued by one response from Seth Rosen, game director on the newly released car survival game we called “brilliant, infuriating, and frustrating in equal measure” in ourPacific Drive review. As a practical example of riffing in practice, Rosenattributesone of Pacific Drive’s mechanics, diagnosing quirks in your car’s performance, to the time-bending mystery Return of the Obra Dinn, from Papers, Please creator Lucas Pope. In the same way Rosen says we can “thank Return of the Obra Dinn” for that, innumerable games should and do borrow from and build on tried-and-true ideas.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
For a recent, loud-and-proud example of a game blatantly copying stuff that feels good and combining it in a novel way, I’d point you to Palworld developer Pocketpair – but not to Palworld itself.Instead, cast your eyes to Never Grave: The Witch and The Curse, Pocketpair’s upcoming co-op Metroidvania roguelike that rips off Dead Cells so blatantly that it can only be taken as flattery. Entire mechanics are lifted wholesale: kicking doors into enemies, embedded teleporters, hub items, the potion system, even down to the main character being a body puppeteered.
For a still more egregious example veering deeper into ripoff territory,have a gander at Deviator, a 2D Metroidvania wearing the skin of Hollow Knight like a jacket. Down to minute animation timings, shading and lighting effects, biome themes, and seemingly the main character’s entire move set, Deviator can only be described as Hollow Knight rearranged. To me, this hammers home Sawyer’s specificity: “copy stuff that feels good.” Copy the feeling and reflect on what makes it work, sure, but maybe don’t idly emulate without ever injecting any sense of self.
With a new “action espionage game” to follow Death Stranding 2,Hideo Kojima is going back to his roots: “I am confident that this title will be the culmination of my work.”
Andrew Garfield says he’s “disappointed” he couldn’t do Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, but Jacob Elordi “needed it more” than him
Path of Exile 2 devs know the action RPG is “not rewarding enough,” so a patch is making Rare monsters less stingy and introducing “‘unlucky’ drop protection” for the truly unfortunate
As the wait for Switch 2 news continues, a possible leak has some Nintendo fans convinced a blurry image features our first look at the new console
