I got a hit hung up on the headline take. Risk yes, but differently.
Games could use more risk, but making games is expensive and you just need a few bad risky ideas to tank it. Sometimes bad timing is enough, but that’s another topic. Before I’d go big risk though, I’d involve the community via early access. Every single successful early access game I own has been successful because of them listening to the players.
I’d go as far and say, before EA there should be some public alpha, until the game is beta ready for EA. Because a lot of people don’t realize, even the EA games we see, have been in development for 2-3 years already and that’s valuable time and money.
For a few indie games however, I’ve noticed they take too much time in the public alpha and they miss the jump into selling their game via EA beta. Happened to me for example with Cosmoteer and maybe Beyond all Reason (if they don’t hurry up with their EA release asap!).
You could argue, them never releasing the game out of EA, could be another issue, but thankful the good EA games do release for the most part. While the risk for the consumer is pretty low, as long as the base of the game is already decent. I mean if you buy 3 indie games for 25 bucks and one fails, you still have 2 great games, while a single bad AAA title offsets you 75 to 100 bucks easily, without any guarantees the expensive game is good.
I really like the original game, I just find it really difficult. I want to beat it at least once. After several pay throughs, I finally killed the last boss only to reveal another act! I died shortly after and haven’t got that far again. Sucks for me.
If you have a bit of time and are keen to improve then I can recommend watching Jorbs (YouTube or Twitch). He plays StS a lot and explains his decision making process. He’s also a good person.
Because sequels can’t bring new, innovative stuff? The safe play would’ve been to release 10 dlcs for the main game with new enemies, cards, characters, etc. No reason to make a second game if that’s all you’re gonna do
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