Leaving aside the frankly embarrassing, sexist character design that mars a consistent and readable aesthetic, its sore flowing on the game's otherwise 'neat' face, Dead Estate suffers from parity with reference to its inspirations iconographically but not in its lineal procedural coherency; while we may see the presence of Sweet Home or Gungeon, we are not able to walk those halls and shoot at its inhabitants. Dead Estate is trying to affect itself with the liminal associations of being in the haunted/infested/infernal of its posthoc adopted game parents, but the replayability built into the interactions with the space make it neither so ingratiating nor horrific nor memorable as its influences did with their spaces, and consequently, not so triumphantly returned to with mastery and banishment of anxiety.
There are a few mechanical limitations that may initially seem like problem solvers for calmly limiting chaos in the play space which hinder the toy boxes hinges: the isometric perspective which plays with three dimensions tricks the brain into drawing vectors which plot the cubes of each room with a horizon but because the sprites are 2D and are not affected by distance, any off the ground aiming is pure chance; the economy of smashing and grabbing under clock is trying to force the tension of maximizing prosperity like in Spelunky but with the entire economy structured around the wholesale of an Isaac type item system, it falls apart because there is so little actual player expression or ebb and flow of good and bad acquisitions from the shop in comparison, and the economy is prohibitive to truly wacky builds or exploits (essentially, it follows a flat curve - something the best roguelikes almost never do); its character selection seemingly offers many ways to traverse in and engage with the house, but in practice more blatantly shows that any engagement with the playspace is, at its baseline, so simplified to allow for progression (which in my 10 hours with the game, never got much beyond what you'd experience on the Basement of your first Isaac run - or in horror game terms, what you experience in the pre-game cinematics of Silent Hill) that all characters will play the same until you force them to play differently by meagrely changing item preferences.
Dead Estate doesn't necessarily play badly, it just plays it safe and relatively boring. It enjoys the iconography of its influence but not their pathos, and definitely not their systemic complexity. And also, you know what? I don't really want to leave aside the embarrassing and sexist character design - its childish and uncreative, and works perfectly for a game which effaces only that it can show itself off competently as something vaguely familiar but obviously worse.
There are a few mechanical limitations that may initially seem like problem solvers for calmly limiting chaos in the play space which hinder the toy boxes hinges: the isometric perspective which plays with three dimensions tricks the brain into drawing vectors which plot the cubes of each room with a horizon but because the sprites are 2D and are not affected by distance, any off the ground aiming is pure chance; the economy of smashing and grabbing under clock is trying to force the tension of maximizing prosperity like in Spelunky but with the entire economy structured around the wholesale of an Isaac type item system, it falls apart because there is so little actual player expression or ebb and flow of good and bad acquisitions from the shop in comparison, and the economy is prohibitive to truly wacky builds or exploits (essentially, it follows a flat curve - something the best roguelikes almost never do); its character selection seemingly offers many ways to traverse in and engage with the house, but in practice more blatantly shows that any engagement with the playspace is, at its baseline, so simplified to allow for progression (which in my 10 hours with the game, never got much beyond what you'd experience on the Basement of your first Isaac run - or in horror game terms, what you experience in the pre-game cinematics of Silent Hill) that all characters will play the same until you force them to play differently by meagrely changing item preferences.
Dead Estate doesn't necessarily play badly, it just plays it safe and relatively boring. It enjoys the iconography of its influence but not their pathos, and definitely not their systemic complexity. And also, you know what? I don't really want to leave aside the embarrassing and sexist character design - its childish and uncreative, and works perfectly for a game which effaces only that it can show itself off competently as something vaguely familiar but obviously worse.