I think you missed the minus sign there and misread this, I will translate it: “The chance for rare loot to drop should be continuously reduced by 10% for every hour you log inside the game. I.e., you should receive rewards for completing difficult challenges rapidly, that is, skillfully.” The implication seems to be that if the challenge is hard and you are not good at it, and are just throwing yourself at a wall repeatedly, or the challenge is non-existent/mindless (chore simulator), if you are repetitively doing either and grinding hours away, they are one and the same, and neither is a meritorious achievement. I think this is an interesting angle, as very few games reward skill expression or eureka moments as a momentous achievement. The vast majority, genre and budget irrespective, rely on the (easier to implement) crutch of locking progression behind pointless tedium, so given enough hours sunk in, everyone can win. It is interesting to think about how, whether, and under what conditions games could reward the above.

What are some good games that opt for a grounded approach? I agree that it is few and far between (whether that is good, bad, or indifferent is a topic for another space). A few that come to mind are Don’t Escape: 4 Days to Survive (takes place in a survival situation) and Dreams in the Witch House, which incorporates shop/money mechanics and other survival management elements.

You wanna know which came ISN’T grounded? Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy. If you are in the mood for some hilariously baffling moon logic, outlandish set design and embarrassing period voice acting and CG, with a plot that makes slightly more sense than The Mystery of The Druids, give it a shot. It’s basically “we have Blade Runner at home.”

Guess how they travel in the cyberpunk future presented in this game: flying cars. But guess how they receive documents when out of the office? Public fax machine booths mounted on walls of train stations. That’s right. FAX MACHINES. The future is now.

The game is not bad per se, it will definitely stay in your mind with its utter weirdness. Grimbeard did a detailed video on it if you are curious.

I am jonesing hard for The Crimson Diamond too, the demo was perfectly pitched. Although it seems to be evolving at a glacial pace and if the streams are to an indication, the dev is focused on singular minutiae of pixel placement over iterative development, I guess.

Old Skies has weird but good feels. The story should be kind of boilerplate on paper, but it stayed with me for awhile afterwards. Maybe something about the execution and mise en scene made the package memorable. Or maybe they got the cliffhanger just right.

Two that recently came out and I demoed are Dreams in the Witch House and The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow (formerly INCANTAMENTUM).

These were both utterly fantastic, the latter with its pacing and suspense, and the former with the dev’s ingenious idea to combine survival/RPG-ish mechanics with a traditional point and click game and add a sense of urgency to a Cthulhu survival experience. A minority of staunch players on the Steam forums criticized these elements for being “difficult” (i.e, “give me zero consequences, comfy adventure gameplay”), but the game is not about unfair timers or chase sequences like in games of yore. It’s a highly original marriage of inventory/time management/branching path mechanics with a more traditional story, and gives you the tools to tackle both the puzzle and survival aspects of the game in your own way while having that ever-present feeling of dread like in the IF game Anchorhead. And from what I can tell, the game was universally praised on Big Blue Cup forums, so I think those that care have taken note of the innovation-within-tradition being done here.

I’m excited to play both of those games and have them top of mind in my backlog.