Commandos-Like Mimimi Games shutting down

[spectre]

just seemed to steer even further away from what I wanted, a hardcore tactical stealth game

Not sure if we're entirely on the same page here, but this rings as quite similar to what's been a concern for me as well.

If there's one thing mimimi shat the bed with was getting more and more lenient with the alarms.
Coming back from Commandos, I've always had it imprinted that alarm = game over.
The way they seem to be designing their newer games is that an alarm can be more about shaking things up so you can loosen some of the moving pieces in the puzzle.
I never played any of their games like that. Silent takedowns all the way.

 

[VerSacrum]

Didn't care much for their games. The last Commandos clone I liked was Robin Hood: Legends of Sherwood. The 2D rendered castles in that game still look gorgeous and if you like that niche you should really give it a try.

I tried it, but I quit after the disposable units were introduced. Should I try again? Do you have to dispose of the units? Or is the game perfectly playable without their loss?

If I remember correctly it's perfectly possible to complete all missions without any losses, though you may have to save/reload a bunch of times.

 

[Wassersäufer]

Didn't care much for their games. The last Commandos clone I liked was Robin Hood: Legends of Sherwood. The 2D rendered castles in that game still look gorgeous and if you like that niche you should really give it a try.

I tried it, but I quit after the disposable units were introduced. Should I try again? Do you have to dispose of the units? Or is the game perfectly playable without their loss?

If I remember correctly it's perfectly possible to complete all missions without any losses, though you may have to save/reload a bunch of times.

You dont need to use the disposable characters at all (apart from the first Nottingham Mission, where you are forced to use them). One word of warning, Legends of Sherwood is definitely a commandos-lite. Still enjoyed it immensely and the Sieges at the end of the game are a nice change of pace in my opinion.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Re-read that dev diary containing the offending "sensitivity experts." Ctlf-F'd it to see if I missed anything.

Moreover, we changed some of her details over time, such as the look of the seeds she is carrying around, after consulting with sensitivity experts.

I think they rightfully set them straight that watermelon seeds would be a bit of a nono.

Watermelon hair for black woman in 2020+ was so deranged that they didn't even mention it an an example of what the expert told them to drop and only mention the shrunken head seeds.

 

[Spukrian]

Do you have to dispose of the units? Or is the game perfectly playable without their loss?

No, you don't, but be aware of a bug: if you go totally nonlethal (not killing any enemies after the tutorial), your reputation will get so high that too many disposable units are recruited, filling up your camp which will softlock you at a certain point.

 

[Zeriel]

Their latest game had a she-boon as the main character, things could have only went downhill from here on out, so it's better that they closed the studio to spare us of further ESG cringe shit.

Criticizing ESG shit makes Infi upset for some reason.

Chris Avellone was right about Infinitron.

Lol yeah I'm sure Chris Avellone disagrees with me.

Let me be emphatic: FUCK anybody who responded to this thread with "good riddance". You've completely lost the plot.

Bad decisions being rewarded with failure is actually good. Explain why it isn't. Be specific.

 

[Zeriel]

So are Commandos-likes dead for the foreseeable future now?

That's pretty sad, I really enjoyed the original Desperados. I even finished it. I tried to play Desperados 3, but stopped playing during the tutorial because some figurative alarm bells started ringing. I wonder what really happened since their last game after that trooned out completely judging by the art?

I wonder what they threaten people who do not comply with.

No need to threaten. It's all incentives. If you loudly proclaim how you consulted sensitivity experts and look at how diverse our cast is, the press will cover you glowingly. If you don't... they won't do you any favors. To say nothing of the financial side of it. The thing is most people just are very sensitive to incentives; so a reward for doing X and a lack of a reward for doing Y makes X almost guaranteed.

 

[duskvile]

How come Microsoft or THQ Nordic couldn't intervene, buy them?

 

[spectre]

How come Microsoft or THQ Nordic couldn't intervene, buy them?

Why buy a self-admitted money sink? I don't think the studio name had enough pull to make it worth.
thq nordic seems to be interested in collecting IPs, not studios and (not sure how current it is, saw it in an article from 2013) they have rights to the old desperados games.

 

[Hobo Elf]

How come Microsoft or THQ Nordic couldn't intervene, buy them?

THQ Nordic is closing down studios left and right at the moment as they are financially in the shitter. Why or how would they buy another studio that isn't going to make them money.

 

[NJClaw]

Explain why it isn't. Be specific.

Because their games are actually (God forgive me for saying this about a German product) fun? They revived a long-dead genre and made two great titles, that's enough for me to want them to stick around as long as possible. I still haven't played the last one, but I can't imagine it being that much worse than Desperados 3.

 

[Rodcocker]

Gaming seems to have transformed into an industry with absolutely insane growth and revenue - bigger than film and gambling combined - and yet many studios with a good track record can't turn a profit, and well known devs are leaving the industry saying they really didn't earn much at all. Very strange.

 

[JarlFrank]

Gaming seems to have transformed into an industry with absolutely insane growth and revenue - bigger than film and gambling combined - and yet many studios with a good track record can't turn a profit, and well known devs are leaving the industry saying they really didn't earn much at all. Very strange.

It's a location problem. German studios have a hard time because of the local conditions, you won't see such a quick studio death rate in Eastern European studios. Look at Polish, Czech, Bulgarian etc studios.

 

[:Flash:]

Gaming seems to have transformed into an industry with absolutely insane growth and revenue - bigger than film and gambling combined - and yet many studios with a good track record can't turn a profit, and well known devs are leaving the industry saying they really didn't earn much at all. Very strange.

Is that so surprising?
Movie industry is also huge, but that doesn't mean there's more than 4 studios that make profit.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

After seeing this:

Spoiler

Good riddance.

Apparently it's great mechanically tho.

Weird, I used to play Commandos a lot back in the day but when I tried Shadow Tactics a few years ago it didn't click. A very good, quality game but I just wasn't having fun anymore with this genre.

I don't really get this genre, its just like a series of puzzles and no real character or RPG elements so its sort of boring to me, its like a game my mom would like to play, which is fine I guess, but since they offer a demo that is more than enough for me to get my fill of the game before wanting to move on.

 

[Abu Antar]

People complaining about the last game these guys made: Know that Desperados III also sold terribly. The genre is unfortunately too niche for big masses.

 

[oasis789]

Is there anyone else making stealth-oriented tactical games?

 

[DemonKing]

People complaining about the last game these guys made: Know that Desperados III also sold terribly. The genre is unfortunately too niche for big masses.

It was on Gamepass for a while so I'm surprised that didn't help their visibility a bit with the masses, but you're probably right about it being too niche for the mainstream audience.

The Commandos series was never a huge hit either.

 

[Great Deceiver]

People complaining about the last game these guys made: Know that Desperados III also sold terribly. The genre is unfortunately too niche for big masses.

It was on Gamepass for a while so I'm surprised that didn't help their visibility a bit with the masses, but you're probably right about it being too niche for the mainstream audience.

The Commandos series was never a huge hit either.

I'm not sure about Commandos; where I live, everyone knew about Commandos 1 and 2. Even normies who didn't play games at all, and back in those days computer games were obviously much less popular.

 

[AdamReith]

Commandos was a work of art more than a game. The art and sound probably does a better job of recreating WW2 than any other game since.

 

[Infinitron]

Commandos benefited from the WW2 video game fad that followed the release of the film Saving Private Ryan.

 

[DemonKing]

Commandos benefited from the WW2 video game fad that followed the release of the film Saving Private Ryan.

Sure but it was never on the scale of Medal of Honor, Battlefield 1942 or Call of Duty.

 

[ironmask]

What a shame. They should of just made a sequel to shadow tactics instead.

 

[Roguey]

What a shame. They should of just made a sequel to shadow tactics instead.

Daedalic owns it, wouldn't have done them any good. They wanted to make their own thing and the thing they wanted to make looked horrid.

 

[biffthestiff]

I found this thread after just learning of Mimimi's demise. I loved Shadow Tactics. I had no idea they made 2 other games. I just added Desperados 3 to my GOG wishlist. I added Shadow Crew too, but after seeing a gameplay video, I removed it from my wishlist.

Ignoring the game cover for now (it didn't stop me from wishlisting it after all), the aesthetics of the game are awful. That hideous green effect they use everywhere, from magic to fog to portals, is insufferable. I also saw living zombies/skeletons. It's just too "gamey". I liked the clean realism of Shadow Tactics. I also liked that ST missions often took place in clear daylight instead of the constant night seen in the Shadow Crew video.

The setting was really unappealing. Part of the appeal of Shadow Tactics is that feudal Japan is fucking cool. Frontier-era cowboys are cool too. Like someone said on a previous page, they could've kept making the same game in different historical settings like AssCreed did. A band of thieves in Rome at the height of the Roman empire. Native American warriors in the 1800s trying to rescue captive tribesmen from Yankee military camps or cities. Ottoman Empire. Arab types against dastardly crusaders. Crusaders up against dastardly Arabs. Instead it's magic pirates and zombies.

Then there's that cover, designed to make a political statement. Do these studios not wonder who their target audience is? Newsflash: liberal "I hecking worship non-binary black PoC of color" American women are not buying Shadow Tactics. It doesn't matter who Twitter cheerleads for, at the end of the day the people buying your 2D hardcore stealth game are straight male autists. So what possessed them to make two hideous women their cover photo? Compare that to the badass cover of Shadow Tactics.

The company was too fragile to survive a single flop, so they paid the ultimate price for their hubris.