Hey friends! We’re back with another biweekly update on me and Bibidi Bibidi! There’s a new version of our alpha out right now, called the Sigils update. Other than that, I have a small rant about some games I played I want to get off my chest, so stay tuned for that.

How Am I Doing?

I’m fantastic! Me and my partner just got home from 2 weeks of catsitting and it’s always a hoot. In a way, we get to spend a tiny holiday in our own city. Paris is empty throughout August, so we took maximum advantage of that: we visited a museum, the cinema, had a bunch of great food and walks along the canal.

What Am I Doing?

That being said, I also got a lot of work done. What you might ask? The Bibidi Bibidi update we just launched, of course! This one adds Sigils, our take on the relics/artifacts mechanic we’ve come to expect from roguelike deckbuilders. Essentially, these are passive upgrades you find throughout your run, as combat rewards or in the shop, that power you up in interesting ways. I feel like it has expanded options into multiple avenues and I’m super curious what wacky builds our players will cook up.

Cult of the Lamb

Speaking about build options… I’m going to rage a bit about a game I’ve played recently: Cult of the Lamb. If you abide no slander about this game, I suggest you skip on down to the next section.

The premise of Cult of the Lamb is an interesting one. It’s an occult-themed dungeon crawler with cutesy woodland critters. To preface this rant, I have to say: the art is stunning, the music is fantastic and the atmosphere is great. So far, so good. That being said, I absolutely abhor the core design of the game.

It’s made up of these two gameplay loops that feed into each other very well: combat and cult management. You go out and do a dungeon run, fight monsters and collect rewards. These rewards can be used to upgrade your cult, which in turn upgrades your power to do better dungeon runs. The constant hit of dopamine from the massive amounts of resources you gather keep you addicted to repeating the cycle.

But here’s the catch. The game isn’t fun to me! I put 20 hours in it because I was hooked to the loop and wanted to see what would improve, but I didn’t enjoy those hours at all. The combat is floaty and repetitive and the cult management is shallow. All the upgrades you unlock are basic damage upgrades or task automations for your cult. It comes across as skinner box design.

Now here’s the thing that irks me the most: it’s impossible to get a build together. The game goes by the genre of action roguelike, but it just means you get a random set of upgrades and weapons each time you do a run, without any of it feeling like a meaningful choice on your part to get a coherent build together. No matter what kind of weapons or upgrades you find, the combat remains exactly the same: dodge roll, attack, dodge roll, attack. Then, this skinner box makes you feel like you’re constantly unlocking new interesting things, but they fall flat every time.

It’s a shame really, because I love the concept and the art style. Everything about this game made me feel like I could like it. Or that I would like it if I just spent a couple of more hours in it. But I cleared the final boss, and I felt nothing.

Magicraft

Now, here’s the opposite side of the spectrum. Magicraft is an action roguelike with extremely mid art and a horrid story. It’s a Chinese game with a barely passing English localization: some UI elements are still in Mandarin and a lot of words are clearly mistranslated. It’s interesting to be on the short end of the stick for once, I reckon this is how a lot of people from cultures with haphazardly translated western games feel.

This game however, as much as it seems not up my alley, has fantastic gameplay. It’s a bit rough around the edges, sure, and the combat might feel as floaty as Cult of the Lamb’s in some moments, but the build variety of this game is absolutely bonkers. You’re free to mix up any spell with any kind of spell modifier, like projectile size, shape, count, split, bounce and all that. Some combinations are pretty crazy, but the game manages to pull it off in a surprising way every time.

For example, there’s a modifier that creates chain lightning between two projectiles, so that if you launch two in opposite directions, a link between them appears that damages enemies. But you also have summon spells, so how would that work? Easy, a chain is created between each summon, so now you’ve got a whole network of lightning covering your screen. You can very easily end up with an extremely overpowered build or with a build that accidentally kills yourself.

The freedom and variety it gives is so much fun. It’s also quite streamlined, in the sense there isn’t another loop to get you to keep playing. You just want to do another run, because you’re curious to see what else is possible. I love this type of game, where you’re constantly looking to push the boundaries of what the systems allow and be surprised if it actually works. I hope Bibidi Bibidi will also reach that state some day soon!

Why Am I Doing? (this)

I’m glad we got another significant Bibidi update out in just 2 weeks since the last newsletter. It’s an ambitious pace, so I reckon most updates will take longer than that, but it’s good to squeeze out some palatable content for recurring playtesters to enjoy. We’ll get there!