Quoting: tfkHm. Don't see a free copy of Whispering Willows.

Seems like the giveaway is over.

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Quoting: tmtvlThey're both side-scrolling adventure games, aren't they? It's like comparing it to I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream or Quest For Glory. (To be honest it's been a while since I played through Whispering Willows, so I may be misremembering. According to Steam I got the Sixth Sense on February 12th, 2020.)

No. Technobabylon, IHNMaIMS and Quest For Glory are not side scrollers, even if some of the "locations" pan a bit. You control the characters with your mouse, with the gameplay revolving around inventory and dialogue based puzzles. Well, Quest For Glory (Hero's Quest) is a bit different with its RPG elements and the original's text parser and clunky keyboard controls. The early 90's remake has a more modern point-and-click interface and prettier VGA graphics.

Whispering Willows is closer to a puzzle platformer. Just check some gameplay video of all of these games and I'm sure you'll see the difference.

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Quoting: tmtvl

Quoting: no_information_hereI enjoyed Whispering Willows when I played it a number of years ago. Nothing groundbreaking but a decent little game.

Same, played through it on Steam and while it has some neat visual designs the game proper didn't resonate as much with me as Technobabylon did.

Just out of curiosity: Why would you compare it to Technobabylon? Gameplay is very different, graphical style is different, one is a horror story and the other one is sci-fi... As far as I can tell, there's very little overlap. It's like comparing Dirt Rally to SuperTuxKart.

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Quoting: Klaas

Quoting: Tevurwhat about games not on steam?

The last time I looked, you had to manually specify a fitting profile. If there is nothing for the game then it would be mostly like running wine-ge.

If a non-Steam game needs "protonfixes" to run, they can be submitted to the umu-protonfixes repository [External Link] and the respective ID to the umu-database [External Link]. The game can be in any store or in no store at all.

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Quoting: darkoverlordofdataI think it takes more than making collages with medieval art to be 'pythonesque' - it takes good humor writing. Don't quit your day job.

Did you just decide there's no good humour in the game, or did you play the previous titles? Besides, the word "pythonesque" refers to a style of comedy, not necessarily the quality (which is obviously subjective anyway). Check a dictionary if you don't believe me.

Also, while I nitpick, the art isn't medieval.

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Quoting: finaldestWhat would be needed though is an age verification body e,g PEGI to carry out the work. The best way to do this is to give any unrated game an 18 cert until its been reviewed and given the appropriate age rating.

PEGI covers a good chunk of Europe, but not Germany. They've got their own USK. Besides, Valve have already streamlined the process by not requiring an official rating (which costs time and money) and offering a single questionnaire.

Of course, developers are free to get a USK rating as well like the FAQ excerpt in the article says, which should be useful if the game is sold in Germany via other platforms or physical stores. But that takes some time and even the minimum cost of 1200 € [External Link] (or 300 € for expansions of, game collections with, or "games equivalent to" already rated titles) can be a lot to some indies.

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Quoting: CGullWhy is this kind of political censorship accepted for games?

It would be prudent to wait for confirmation on the exact types of prohibited content included in the questionnaire before knee-jerking about censorship. Any developer with a game on Steam should be able to check it out and report back. We've got several here on GOL.

Or someone fluent in German legalese can probably dig out the relevant laws and regulations. After all, that's what Valve has to comply with here.

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Quoting: grigi15 years! Wow, I remember when I discovered this site, it was just about when Happypuppy stopped posting things. Am I that old?

Yes, you're officially more than 15 years old now. :tongue:

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: EikeHow about setting all games that are not getting set anything by developers/publishers to 18, the maximum restriction age? Would be far from being unpurchaseable...

I suppose that still wouldn't fulfil the requirement of accurately identifying the "kinds of content" that are not legal in Germany. Steam would have to assume that every game contains such content and hide everything by default anyway.

Age restriction and actual illegal content are independent, and to the best of my knowledge (unlike AFAIK the USA?), they do not need to state reasons for the age restriction (like alcohol, drugs, violence, whatever). So I think this would fly.

According to the article, this questionnaire covers both, and the end result is the same. The age rating and content restrictions are two separate things, but both need to be actively confirmed by the seller. If a developer says that their game is appropriate for all ages, and it looks like it's a minimalistic puzzle game that isn't likely to break any laws, there still needs to be a formal disclosure from the devs before Valve is allowed to offer that game to customers in the German market. Just some classic red tape for you.

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Quoting: StellaIs this a joke or something? How can they force everyone to comply to this retroactively when many game studios are long since defunct? What the fuck? Do they have any idea how many old games would simply become unpurchaseable because of this?

Someone is getting paid for the games purchased on Steam, be it a third party publisher or whoever. There's no "abandonware" on Steam. Every product on there is supposed to have an active owner. But sure, this will probably hide a bunch of games from German Steam users simply because a developer/publisher/whoever is in charge of a game doesn't fill the questionnaire.

As to how they can do this, I suppose any sovereign nation is allowed to decide what is legal and what is not, and any business operating in that market will have to comply or get out. And seeing as it's a relatively large market in this case, most devs/publishers will find it in their best interest to go answer those questions.

Quoting: EikeHow about setting all games that are not getting set anything by developers/publishers to 18, the maximum restriction age? Would be far from being unpurchaseable...

I suppose that still wouldn't fulfil the requirement of accurately identifying the "kinds of content" that are not legal in Germany. Steam would have to assume that every game contains such content and hide everything by default anyway.

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