Hacker News Reader

Comment by hbn | Hacker News Reader

He's also a fantastic game designer. I played through Return of the Obra Dinn last year and it was one of the coolest game experiences I've had. It really doesn't hold your hand, it's just using logic and clues to piece together a mystery and put names to faces. Keep a notepad handy and it's a real fun time!

View on HN

This is what's truly mindblowing about Lucas Pope to me. Many people are technically talented, but good game designers are really, really hard to come by. Having both in one person just feels unfair.

Obra Dinn, especially, is one of my favourite games of all time, it's such a unique experience.

Aesthetically too. If you've seen screenshots of Obra Dinn, you remember. It has such a distinctive look to it.

I was about to write this. Lukas Pope is not only technically talented, he's also a brilliant games designer.

As for Obra Dinn, I found it very cool that many puzzles have more than one answer, in particular when it's a subjective matter!

Huh. I got bored of Papers, Please. Guess it's just not my cup of tea. Will have to try Obra Dinn.

Same. Obra Dinn is a much more complicated and interesting game. It's 10x the game Papers, Please is.

Interestingly Lucas Pope says he thinks Papers Please is a better game. As a method of telling a story I think it's as good as you can get - e.g. the gameplay in Obra Dinn doesn't thematically link to the story in the same way - but I'm just don't enjoy the game. I know: you're supposed to be bored, it's supposed to be unwieldy, you're supposed to be frustrated by the rules. But I just want to do something else.

His post on how exactly he came up with those really nice 2bit graphics in a way that it doesn't hurt the eyes and creates that very unique look was very enlightening.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com