As a long-time Stardew Valley fan, I never thought I’d find a game that could capture my heart quite the same way. Fields of Mistria has done just that. I’m honestly blown away by how good this game is
note: just a random fan, have nothing to do with this game at all. It kinda saddens me that it hasn’t gotten as much attention though, there are so many mediocre games with soooo many reviews… this game is legit insane. it’s gorgeous!!
closed source, early access, available only through steam. Far from being impressive
Ah yes, closed source, such a dealbreaker, as if 99% of other games weren’t.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against open source games, it’s just not a viable monetization strategy for most projects, and people gotta eat. There’s reason why most open source games are either passion projects or old games that have been open sourced simply as an act of kindness towards the community since they generate pretty much no revenue.
I think for many content heavy games, an open source engine and copyrighted content could work financially. Someone would still have to buy the game, but the game mechanics and platform support can be enhanced and engine bugs fixed by the community.
What a bizarrely restrictive set of criteria that focus on distribution logistics, rather than game.
I was making a source-available farm game around the same time that stardew valley came out. Worked on it for about 7 years total mostly on my free time from work. Shortly after SV came out I got a ton of hate from its new fans because I was “stealing from ConcernedApe” and stuff like that. I ended up giving up on the project after a while. And now these days pretty much every rpg has farm mechanics on it.
I do agree that being closed source is a detractor to the game, but Stardew is also closed source. The comment, to me, implied that Stardew is open source, lol. The point seems orthogonal to a comparison critique of the inspiration game. Unless we are implying that games should be open source, complete, and available through other platforms generally and critique games from that point of view. I’m curious if there is any games that exist that fit that description? A game that is a cozy, charming farm simulator, is open source (GPL V3 if I can have my way), is in a source forge that would put it in a more mature development state, and is available pre-compiled outside of steam? That would be a game to behold. Perhaps if the developers see this traction, they may choose to implement some of these ideas. I think the game looks cute. I’ll have to take a look.
This is the thread title i’ve no idea about stardew
Plenty
https://libregaming.org/play-libre-games/
I’m going to be honest, you sound like a zealot. Uncompromising about your ideals about gaming, and any that don’t conform to it exactly are “not impressive” in your own words. I’m not opposed to libregaming, and everything that’s listed on that page you linked sounds great on paper, but in reality, doesn’t always work out the greatest. This isn’t the '90s where you can go and create an open source game for everyone to enjoy and everything works out fine in the end. This is the age of artificial intelligence, which is already known to be scraping and stealing large amounts of copyrighted works from the web and using them in ways that are unknown. This unknown is actually quite damaging to the gaming industry as a whole, and even threatens the idea of Libregaming. worst case scenario, AI models get their hands on the source code for someone’s new game, and now, someone who has never programmed a day in their life can use an AI model to create the exact same game with no credit given to the original creator. That’s not that far-fetched in the current day and age. Perhaps that’s the reason why Stardew and other games don’t want to be open source? So people can’t just steal their hard work after years and years, and then go churn another one out.
There are dozens of other reasons as well why it doesn’t work, but this isn’t really the time or place to explain it. I would recommend though that you remain a little bit more open to games that are closed source, because there’s a whole team working on mistria, it’s not just a solo developer. It’s their right to keep their game closed source as an indie developer. That’s totally their choice
Yeah… by these bizarre stipulations, there are few dozen games ranging from decent enough to poor quality that even pass the first hurdle of being “impressive”.
I don’t see plenty or any in there that match this