And I mean, that's maybe where the problems lie. This game is all jank and all generics, with no specific thing to present except "OMG LOOK AT OUR GRAPHICS!!!!". Which are also pretty unoptimized, so you end up with:

Only a tiny tiny fraction of players can even play it.
Then, the game is utterly generic. Despite how it might look to someone not knowing about it, DOOM 2016 and Eternal are quite unique games and have a very well-designed gameplay flow that even differs divisively between the two.
The writing is horrible and would make even an MCU movie/series writer question their decisions in life.
The magic is still just guns with replaced graphics. They didn't lean into the very premise of the game at all. And all they had to do is play Lichdom Battlemage from 2014 to get some ideas and that game already struggled with the concept. But at least it pulled it off.

Can't really say I'm surprised the game flopped hard. But unlike the dev I would call the underlying idea solid, just not anything about the execution.

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[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Not at that price point, of course. Ultrakill has a sub 2 million USD budget, its one of the most critically praised games on Steam, and its not even finished yet. I can't look up Steamcharts at work but I have good reason to believe its more than made back its production budget.

Live service games are starting to turn into a very expensive scam and if you can't make a good single player game, you need to cut costs somewhere. AAA production budgets are just too huge and the product isn't good.

[–] WeLoveCastingSpellz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 months ago

Obligatory, I fucking love Ultrakill graaah

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But that's a problem with a lot of AAA developers. You can't make a AAA game that isn't a Skinner box for a price that players will pay.

[–] NIB@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

God of War? Elder Ring? Baldur's Gate? Spiderman? Last of Us? Super Mario? Zelda? Red Dead Redemption? Cyberpunk?

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

They certainly have the production budget of an AAA game.