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points by arm32 1 day ago | 0 comments
Counter-point: I played the games that Mr. Willison said "didn't suck", and I can confirm that they actually kinda do suck, really bad, and I was really bored, overwhelmed, or a strange mixture of both, throughout the gameplay of them.

We need to not glaze it so much. It's cool that a rock put these demos together, but they're not "really fun". Not even close. The UI is pretty thanks to the Claude Design's injected stylesheet doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Also, it's been easy to make not "really fun" games since the late 90's with no-code game maker tools. Klik & Play anybody? GameMaker? The only difference is now, thanks to the hard work of Three.js and browser tech contributors—the graphics are better.

[–] xyzsparetimexyz 1 day ago
According to the RTS blog post, the things that Claude did when told to make the game fun were these:

Every skirmish and Daily Op now opens with a choice, gives the side that’s losing a way back, and pulls the armies into the middle of the map. There are also two new ways to play.

    Openers: pick Blitz, Industry or Air Wing before the clock starts.

    Call-down powers: Barrage, EMP, Drop Pod and the Sky Hammer orbital strike.

    Objectives and salvage: Uplink relays, supply drops and wrecks worth scrap.


    Feel: combat juice, adaptive music, unit voices and an announcer.

    Command: battle alerts, game speed, saved squads and touch placement.

    New modes: Last Stand survival waves and an 8-mission Ops campaign.

    Progression: heroes, an after-action report with awards, a career, 7 mutators and a Daily Op.
I can't say that any of these things have contributed to an RTS feeling fun to me. I mean okay music is important I guess. But it's a very on-paper way of looking at 'fun' that doesn't correspond to the je ne sais quoi lived experience of fun
[–] simonw 1 day ago
The most impactful were "gives the side that’s losing a way back, and pulls the armies into the middle of the map".

Prior to those there wasn't any reason to explore the map, it was just a game of building up an army and then storming the other side all at once.

The other details - shakes, music, announcements, etc, did all add little bits of interest to it.