A mediocre gamer's thoughts on Jamestown+ (and hard indie games)

I am not great at video games. I freely admit this. I generally play on normal and while I can finish most modern games I do my share of dying and being frustrated along the way.

Recently I decided to play Jamestown+ (on PS4) because I haven’t played a Shmup in years and I really liked the hand-drawn look and insane story. It started well enough. I found the ‘normal’ difficulty reasonably challenging but not too tough and I enjoyed the first few levels.

Then after level 3 the game demanded that I play on “difficult” in order to progress. I was enjoying the game so I decided to give it a shot, and it was definitely tougher but doable. I made my way through and beat the fourth level. At which point the game told me that to play the fifth and final level (not counting the moons) I was going to have to play on “Legendary” difficulty. I wanted to see how the game ended, and I really was enjoying the graphics and music, so I decided to give it a shot.

And I hit a wall. Man did I hit a wall. I didn’t beat the game the first time I played that level, but I decided to try again. And again. It got to the point where every other Sunday if I found myself with some time I would take a few runs at Jamestown+. I started the game on March 18. In early April I beat level 4. In mid-June I beat the mid-boss of level 5.

Today, August 9^th, after countless attempts and an unknown amount of time (maybe a dozen hours?) I finally beat the game.

It was definitely not worth it.

I am a mediocre gamer. I admit that. I’m not hopeless; I beat Rogue Legacy, I play Halo on Heroic, I beat Jak II a couple years ago. Now I’ve beaten Jamestown+ (for the lowest possible value of ‘beaten’), but even having beaten it I think the game is just too damn hard.

I just don’t get the point of gating the content behind such a high difficulty level. It’s not like the game has a ton of content to begin with (7 levels total or so, including the moons) and the vast majority of people are never going to get to see the end of even that small amount. According to Playstation 4 stats only about 15% of people who played Jamestown+ beat it, and that’s the self-selected group of people who were interested in a pixel art bullet hell style shooter. They didn’t drop off because they got bored or lost interest, they stopped playing because the game is so damn hard.

For me to beat it I had to do all the things that hard-game enthusiasts talk about. I had to memorize patterns, practice, become better at the game than I ever thought I’d be etc… etc… But somewhere along the way it stopped being fun. And somewhere along the way I forgot about the things I liked about the game, the art, the story, the amazing music, and it just became a test of wills and frustration. Now, having beaten it, I feel a small sense of relief but mostly I feel like I wasted my time. I would rather have spent that time playing through some narrative game or messing around with Killer Instinct’s shadow lab or doing almost anything else.

I get that there are people who love hard games. I get that there are people who are just better at games than I am and need more challenge to feel engaged. I get all of that. What I don’t get is the purpose in gating game-essential content (not a special ending or hidden costume) behind such a massive difficulty wall (Remember, it’s not just me, 85% of people who bought the game never finished level 5. About 50% beat level 4.) You can have the super high difficulty levels (and Jamestown+ has two higher than the one I beat) without gating off that content. You can give special rewards, achievements, trophies, special endings, whatever, to people who want to engage with that challenge. Gating off the content gets you nothing except for making the majority of your consumers, who weren’t warned in the game’s online store description that this game was going to be ridiculously hard, unable to finish.

This matters because super-hard games are making an (undeserved) comeback. The indie game movement is populated with games enthusiasts and a lot of them are calibrating their games at the level they like to play, which is too hard for the general public (I’m not just basing this on my own experience, we have trophy data to back it up.) This used to be common back in the dark ages of game design when a combination of small storage space and unbalanced design led to a lot of classic games being extremely hard at the default setting. It’s not necessary now. Games should be playable by everyone, or at least they should come with a warning that they are super ridiculously hard and should only be purchased by hardcore genre fans. But of course nobody wants to limit their consumer base like that.

Jamestown’s description on Playstation.com says: “5 difficulty levels ranging from “first-time player” to “masochistic bullet junkie,” Jamestown+ delivers an engaging core experience no matter how you want to play it.” No mention that you won’t get a chance to play 40% of the main game if you play on the “normal” difficulty level.

There’s nothing wrong with making super-hard games for hard-core players. There are a couple fair ways to do it. You can be like I Wanna Be The Guy and make a game marketed only to the most hard-core and limit your audience. You can be like Devil May Cry and have a reasonably beatable ‘normal’ setting and super-hard difficulty levels for those who want to play them. But making your game super hard in the critical path and then selling them to a public who will mostly never be able to finish them is a crappy practice. And I say this as someone who just DID finish Jamestown+. What I will remember from that game won’t be the great music or art, how fun the first levels were, or a sense of accomplishment for beating it. What I will remember is the frustration and irritation I felt. And that’s not the feeling game makers should strive to give players.

P.S. I am sure there will people who will want to tell me how easy Jamestown+ was and how I just suck. Congratulations, you have a magnificent shining E-peen and should be very proud. Only 15% of players finished a very short game. You may have a glorious E-peen, but the numbers support me.