I really miss being able to play a platformer that isn't some variation of a rogue-like or rogue-lite. My favorite games were Sonic 2, Aladdin, Jungle Book, and The Lion King growing up. Now everything seems to be this hellish trial and error jumpfest with guns and powerups :/
Would love some recommendations for simple (modern) platformers!
I wish these games get made often too..... But there are 2 reasons making a game like this hard to sell these days....
Designing 100 Levels by hand is harder than making a system which creates 10,000 different levels!! that's why a company will create more levels if they added rouge-like system to the game.
Most gamers these days want more replayablity, if they played all the 100 levels in a game that doesn't generate new levels...and mastered them.. know what? they won't play the game again (until long time passes if they really love it).
One solution is to create a game with both designed levels (for main mode), and generated levels (for endless mode).... But Designing a good level by hand is very tiring and expensive for the company... if they can generate 10,000 levels on the fly... why spend money on premade levels while games with only generated levels sell very well?!
Makes a lot of sense actually though I wonder how much replayability matters as much these days. I think there's the hardcore group that really, really likes to master these types of games and then you have someone like me that wants one or two good playthroughs every few years.
The problem I kind of see with the generated levels is how saturated the market is with it. There really haven't been many levels in these games that have stuck in my head. I'm sure some bias is there because of playing them as a kid but I haven't stopped and went "damn, this is like the cart level in DK" or "I wish I could have more time to do the slots on Casino Night zone".
Anyway, not sure where I was going with all that haha. Maybe we'll see traditional platformers pop up in these next few years - I can only hope!