Slow Mole Is A New And Free NES Platformer, Cartridge Version Incoming

He should also release a horror film featuring that claymation mole. It's terrifying.

I used to hate it as a kid if I got a game that was too hard and frustrating or just plain crap because we were poor and I had to work little jobs to get money for games otherwise I'd have had none. Thats why I avoid super hard games as an adult, they bring back bad memories.

I wonder why some indies focus on hard difficulty instead of expending other aspect as if they didn't know how to develop longer game with exploration sides and stuck on hard difficulty to artificially expend the lifetime of the game ?

@gurtifus because some people actually enjoy the challenging aspect of these games...

@gurtifus Because indie game developers stand in opposition to AAA corporations in different ways. Some make games that are intentionally ugly or mind-bending, others write stories about controversial or heavy topics and some are creating games that actually pose a challenge to the player. Corporations are making their games easier and easier, with Easy difficulty being renamed to "Narrative" to disassociate with the negative stigma of playing on Easy. They're afraid of not appealing to the lowest common denominator and swathes of journalists complaining about difficult games. Just look at how many of them were moaning about Dark Souls series daring to be a big budget game that's actually hard! All that wailing and gnashing of teeth instead of accepting that not everything has to be tailor-made to them.

Game looks great. Challenge looks awful.

After reading the article and watching the video I still don’t understand what the “unique checkpoint system” is. It reads as if it’s just “you get a checkpoint when you pass an area” which is how every checkpoint system in a game works.

I’m confused about the “makes everyone a speedrunner” tag line too.

@SmaggTheSmug Dark Souls received nothing but praise. I think the game you are referencing is actually Sekiro, as that was the game that some journalists admitted to running cheats to be able to finish.

@KoiTenchi Maybe the check points disappear if you aren’t fast enough?

this looks fun! And even better that the dev are offering the digital version for free. Will certainly give it a go - and expect to be terrible at it ... but hey! 'having a go' is part of the fun, innit?

Music is absolutely amazing.

Oh, how generous to give away the digital version. I'll certainly give it a go. NES games are kind of beyond me but I love the aesthetic.

Reminds me of battle kid

@SmaggTheSmug I know but I mean there is a huge step between "insane" and "piece of cake" and he could have set it up somewhere in between.
It always makes me feel like it's the easy way to make a game without too much content and compensate with difficulty.
I'm not against a little challenge but these kind of game are the extreme !

Oh, that looks hard. Wow

Good grief! Here in Australia ‘Slow Mole’ is offensive slang....

I downloaded this today!

@gurtifus Well, when it comes to platformers, I feel like a lot of these smaller developers saw the ridiculous amount of critical praise that "rage" and single screen platform games like Super Meat Boy and Celeste got. Success often breeds imitation, and this along with journalists claiming even the most forgiving NES games such as Super Mario Bros. were obnoxiously hard has probably led a lot of them to believe that the only "good" retro inspired games have to be insanely hard.

It's why I'm so thankful things like Shovel Knight, Freedom Planet, Sonic Mania, Shantae and the original Curse of the Moon exist. The era those games were inspired by was not just about difficulty. Being stuck on a single screen for 15 minutes and then not even being entirely sure what you did differently on a triple digit attempt to advance was not fun to me when Meat Boy style platformers took over, and I just don't see it as enjoyable now either. I wish we'd see more games like the ones I've mentioned as opposed to things like this.