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low rated
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BeatriceElysia: I see profile features limited and only singleplayer. No multiplayer, no controller support, no other nooks and cranies people get to see on profile features. It probably didn't sell enough.
Now that does sound like a reason it'd get rejected, sadly.

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MacArthur: Personally, I thought Serpents in the stagland and age of decadence were very poor games. I wouldn't put any kind of trust in the codex, in particular regarding their tastes in rpg.
The Age of Decadence is one of the best pure role-playing games I've ever experienced since choices matter and non-warrior characters actually are in peril, instead of being able to just combat every opponent. I like Serpent too. Not to worry, with how current curation has been, I doubt we will see many future games in that vein. Hopefully the Age of Decadence creator Vince was "grandfathered in" here so we can get his next game.
It sure looks nice (well - for what it wants to simulate).

But it's (A) Early Access.
And it's (B) €21,-

And I wouldn't buy it for those two reasons.

Maybe just wait until the game is done...then GOG might reconsider a release here.
Wouldn't be the first time.
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What I don't understand are the people claiming GoG has changed. GoG was never the store that took every game that wants to look retro...

GoG was about bringing back the memories of truly classic games of the past. It's one thing to overlook clunky UI, poor graphics and other deficiencies in a classic game with true nostalgia value and it's another to take every inferior classic game clone or wannabe imitator.

This game is clearly overpriced and has just 11 reviews since late March. While all 11 reviews liked it, his past two games weren't well received. The first reviewed very poorly while the second middling and neither were a sales success.

I guess no game is an obvious rejection to some people, but I think most rational people can see exactly why that game might not be accepted.
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MacArthur: Personally, I thought Serpents in the stagland and age of decadence were very poor games. I wouldn't put any kind of trust in the codex, in particular regarding their tastes in rpg.
I haven't played Stagland, but Decadence did do very well on the world reactivity, it beats most RPG's on that count as well as on how many different ways you have in solving situations. That said, it was technically rather clunky and I never did like the combat system it has.
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I'm not for curation generally, unless it only means removing obviously bad ones.
Even allowing bad ones could be mitigated by having a good setup for filtering, reviewing, rating, and commenting system.
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No idea if this plays a role in those decisions but:

Far as I know GOG/CD.. 'owns' some of the older games. So if retro games compete with old games (which I dont know if they do as I dont have insight into customer behavior) its about getting 100% for their own old game vs getting 30%(?) of somebody elses retro game.
I haven't played it so I'm not going to pretend I know if it's a good or a bad game but:

A - Early Access
B - 21€
C - Only 11 reviews after 4 months ( 4 of them only have 1 hour or less of playtime )

It's not really appealing to me honestly ^^'
Post edited July 20, 2019 by Sildring
low rated
This literally looks like any dime a dozen 16 bit RPG from the shareware days.

Namely, it reminds me of the surprisingly dull Ancients series.

Edit: I can't help but feel the odds must be stacked against the player if the 7 PC party is to be taken at face value.
Post edited July 20, 2019 by Darvond
Quote from the video: "The '90s era of RPGs is back!". I didn't play console games for most of the 90s, so maybe I missed the games with such awful graphics. Might and magic 3, released in 1991, looks as if it is 4x the resolution (and does animations, rather than bouncing sprites, and shadows, as pointed out above, and no obnoxious heavy black borders). Extra-low-res graphics mixed with high-res fonts means the game isn't even appropriate for too-small screens. I suppose it might have a font size adjustment preference to account for it, but I somehow doubt it.

Also, MM3 is part of a 6-7 game (depending on how you count) bundle that costs less than half of what this one early access game costs. I realize that new costs more (and should), but only if it's not crap. Other than the graphics and the broken English, the game has to be stellar for it to be worth the price. I'm betting it isn't. Maybe when it gets "finished" it will be better, and worth reconsideration by gog. Again, I doubt it.

I like 90s games. Not all of them. Games with high production values and good gameplay (for their time). I don't really like new games that use retro as an excuse for their low production values and poor UI.
It looks bland, generic and mediocre. Only 11 reviews on Steam since Mars as well and Steam is a bit bigger than GOG.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/873890/Legends_of_Amberland_The_Forgotten_Crown/

If they release this, they would have to release more or less anything since this is niche even among other titles that are niche. It could have been redeemable if they had gone for a more modern look, but making a genre that's already obsolete in many ways even more obsolete with retro graphics, well... that doesn't bode well for sales.

I can still respect the developers though for obviously doing something they love without any compromises, that takes integrity and I wish more developers had it.
Post edited July 20, 2019 by user deleted
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DadJoke007: It looks bland, generic and mediocre. Only 11 reviews on Steam since Mars as well and Steam is a bit bigger than GOG.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/873890/Legends_of_Amberland_The_Forgotten_Crown/

If they release this, they would have to release more or less anything since this is niche even among other titles that are niche. It could have been redeemable if they had gone for a more modern look, but making a genre that's already obsolete in many ways even more obsolete with retro graphics, well... that doesn't bode well for sales.

I can still respect the developers though for obviously doing something they love without any compromises, that takes integrity and I wish more developers had it.
It looks bloody awful! But I think you'd get lynched if you said that at rpg codex. lol
Seriously disappointed in codex for making a fuss about this.
To be frank, game doesn't look attractive at all, meaning it wouldn't sell well. Why would they go in this conspiracy theories of why GOG rejects old school RPG-s is beyond me.
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BeatriceElysia: GOG obviously think it won't sell enough. Either they are right or they may change their mind. Would you buy the game if it comes to GOG?
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rjbuffchix: I would buy it if it comes to GOG and I would also buy it if it came to itch.io or from the developer's own site I suppose. Apparently it is also DRM-free on Steam (for those who can hold their nose long enough to purchase). I do not plan to buy it on Steam.

I don't think that it's "obvious" GOG thinks the game won't sell enough. I'm more interested in observing patterns and behavior, so even if GOG came out and said "we think it won't sell enough, that's why we rejected it", I would still be a bit skeptical.

It is very weird to me how old-school dungeon crawler RPGs are consistently the games getting rejected. It leads me to believe GOG is not interested in satisfying the customer base with these RPGs even if they would sell ok. What some refer to as "hipster indies" appear to be a CLEAR priority over any old-school dungeon crawler, based on observing the patterns and behavior of GOG/curation.
The curation staff likes "hipster indies" and other such games(and those that don't have UN-pc content in them) when choosing games for the site, or so it would seem lately.

If they don't want my money for that game i'll buy it elsewhere...their loss.
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darthspudius: and there's already a lot of games like that as it is. They don't need anymore. Especially a game that isn't even finished according to the Steam page.
As others have said server storage is cheap for these sorts of stores and people have a search function in the store.....why not add a few more games to the pile to we have more choice?

Also why not reject some of the currently accepted indie games that seem to be cr*p?
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clarry: My thoughts are that yes, of course GOG should let good old school / retro RPGs on the store, just as they let good old school platformers such as Shovel Knight.

That said, I can't tell whether LoA is good. I can say for sure that these screenshots on Steam alone are not enough to sell me a Windows-only early access game for 21 eur. No way. Maybe after testing it, GOG came to a similar conclusion?

That is, if you believe in curation in the first place. As a matter of fact, I'm not a huge fan of curation. I'd prefer to decide what's good for myself..
The game itself harkens to the look/style of the older Might & Magic titles(like the xeen games), and fwiw I would likely get it once the price dropped during a sale(or even at full price if I found it was good enough through research/etc).
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tomimt: This is, of course purely speculative and based on the GOG's bestselling lists, but they do indicate that modern retro pixel games don't really sell all that well in GOG. On the first 10 pages arranged by all-time best selling, there are 10 or so modern pixel games. The best selling list has a few more, but all in all, they are overshadows by either actually old games or games with bit higher production values.

Then again, GOG does seem to try push visual novels as well and they seem to sell even worse.
I am guessing there are many fans of VNs on the curation team.
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paladin181: Pretty gross looking pixel graphics... Stop trying to sell games with bad graphics as nostalgia. Pixel graphics were used in the best games at the time because it was the best graphics (or at least comparable) at the time. Now there are much better options for 2D games. Look at Hollow knight as an example. Stop muddying your game's appearance to disguise how bad it looks.
If the game plays and feels good I couldn't care less how it looks. ;)
Post edited July 21, 2019 by GameRager
That's very cool of the dev to make it DRM free anyway.
I'll keep an eye on that game.
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RWarehall: What I don't understand are the people claiming GoG has changed. GoG was never the store that took every game that wants to look retro...

GoG was about bringing back the memories of truly classic games of the past. It's one thing to overlook clunky UI, poor graphics and other deficiencies in a classic game with true nostalgia value and it's another to take every inferior classic game clone or wannabe imitator.

This game is clearly overpriced and has just 11 reviews since late March. While all 11 reviews liked it, his past two games weren't well received. The first reviewed very poorly while the second middling and neither were a sales success.

I guess no game is an obvious rejection to some people, but I think most rational people can see exactly why that game might not be accepted.
1. Gog was actually about it's core principles and it has strayed from or left behind several of them. One was to bring ANY game people might like here they could get to the site(that was old enough)....now they have even seemingly left that behind as well.

2. Everyone has different tastes, though, and no one knows 100% for sure usually what will sell well and what will not. This doesn't mean they should reject as many games as possible to appear "select" when choosing games for the site like some sort of foppish boutique.

3. It is a tad overpriced, but that is no reason to reject it here.....GOG has MANY games that selol at price points much higher than on steam/epic/etc yet they are still here.

4. Rationality has nothing to do with it....some are just more accepting of everything gog staff do than others.

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DadJoke007: It looks bland, generic and mediocre. Only 11 reviews on Steam since Mars as well and Steam is a bit bigger than GOG.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/873890/Legends_of_Amberland_The_Forgotten_Crown/

If they release this, they would have to release more or less anything since this is niche even among other titles that are niche. It could have been redeemable if they had gone for a more modern look, but making a genre that's already obsolete in many ways even more obsolete with retro graphics, well... that doesn't bode well for sales.

I can still respect the developers though for obviously doing something they love without any compromises, that takes integrity and I wish more developers had it.
If GOG can release all those VNs and PC Building sims then they can release stuff like this and see what people want to buy.
Post edited July 21, 2019 by GameRager