Getting Lost in Dark Souls and Miasmata

Kat takes a stroll through the strange pleasures of getting lost in virtual landscapes.
Patreon: patreon.com/pixeladay
Twitter: @pixel_a_day
Transcript: bit.ly/pixelad...
Special thanks to Sam of the channel Afterthoughts for providing her voice: / afterthoughts
Thanks also to Videezy and Videvo (users Khaj1t, M_Broz, Beachfront and Kiril Dobrev) for the stock footage
All game footage capped by me
Research referenced:
Singer, D., Singer, J. L., & DeLong, R. (2009). Children’s pastimes and play in sixteen nations: is free-play declining? American Journal of Play, 1(3), 283-312.
Milligan, C., & Bingley, A. (2007). Restorative places or scary spaces? The impact of woodland on the mental well-being of young adults. Health & Place, 13(4), 799-811.
Music used in this episode:
Moonlit Melody - Ryan Amon
Hail the Nightmare - Ryan Amon
Hunter’s Dream - Ryan Amon
Dillion - David García Díaz & Andy LaPlegua
A Glow - Joe & Bob Johnson
The Island - Joe & Bob Johnson
Thorofare Hike - Chris Remo
Prologue - Chris Remo

[@PixelaDay]

If you like what I do please consider throwing me a bit of money on Patreon, check out the tiers and benefits here: www.patreon.com/pixeladay

[@jamesrule1338]

This is why, despite its many flaws, Morrowind is my favorite Elder Scrolls game. Fast travel only exists diegetically (siltstriders, boats and such), and there are very few quest markers that only appear on the map and don't hover in front of you. I misread the directions in a subquest and got lost. I found a building that was filled with hostiles that almost killed me. I grabbed everything useful from the building and left into the wilds. I got even more lost. Nearly dead, I saw a building on the horizon and ran to it. It was the building I had started from. I scavenged from that building the few barely useful resources left. I rested to heal up. And as I headed out again, knowing that if I got lost this time I was probably dead, a sandstorm started up. I cannot properly put into words how this entire experience felt. But it is seared into my mind.

[@metastase895]

This is not a good defense of Morrowind because for example both the fast travel and quest markers are optional on something like Skyrim and in fact the official survival mode endorses some of it diegetically as well.

[@marcuskaraker9945]

I very rarely write comments on KZbin videos, but I wanted to take some time to say how important I think your videos are. It excites me to leave behind the old and wearied discussion about whether games are art or not: instead simply accepting that they are and moving on to more complex and interesting questions. As an enjoyer of games your videos challenge me to think more about the actual experience I am having while playing them. As a maker of games they inspire me to dig deeper and try to find new ways of expression in this boundless and wonderful artform that keeps on captivating us. Thank you for your videos and insight. I suspect I'm not alone in hoping there will be many more.

[@PixelaDay]

Oh wow what an amazing comment. It means a lot, thank you.

[@cmarcbs7698]

Miasmata is probably my favorite game of all time, for exactly the reasons stated in this video (and also for having the best notebook in gaming history), though I'll admit it's finally starting to show its age.

[@finesse5119]

First things first for anyone who missed the game: Play Miasmata immediatly if you haven't yet and enjoy exploration in games, and if you're a dev, I want more well thought out Map and Compass exploration gameplay! I fell in love with Miasmata as well when it came out. Thanks to the excellent (at least back then, can't comment much on the current team) RockPaperShotgun. This game led to me buying a compass and learning to use a map, finding my own routes while hiking and discovering places I'd never have found otherwise. In my childhood I spent a lot of time in the woods with my grandpa, learning all about the local flora and fauna, building little shelters and getting to really appreciate nature. Anxiety still got me anyway, but not about getting lost, rather than having to deal with other people. Maybe because almost all my early interactions were with one or at most two people at a time, being raised as the only child of a single mother who herself never seemed to seek much social interaction. Your criticism about fast travel I can understand, but in the specific example of the Yahar'gul lamp, which at that point, as far as I know, is the only way to get back to this prison, is definitely a needed gameplay mechanic. If you'd die before you open the shortcuts, there would be no way to recover your bloodstain. I'd also argue that the possibility of fast travel itself isn't the problem here, but rather that it almost encourages you to do so. As far as I know you only must light two lanterns in the whole game and can skip all the rest. I like the fact that you can make this decision yourself. For people like me, who like to play it safe, a quick visit to hunter's dream to use the blood I harvested so far without risking losing all of it is a big part of why I stuck (will stick...) with the game 'til the end. I do however would appreciate that lighting lamps could be more of a gamble, with being rewarded for not lighting one. Still Fromsoft decided to make lighting the lantern and fast travel the reward for traversing treacherous paths, without the warning that it might take away some eperience you could really enjoy. Sure it's a choice to light the lantern, but there's no reward for not lighting one. Maybe get a multiplier of some sorts, but I'd have to explore this thought further to not only reward the best players and make it easier for them, but rather helping those that already struggle. Maybe have the lighting of the lamp summon a teacher for the weapon you're using most and strenghtening your skills in handling said weapon through a friendly sparring. I'm still not through the game, but so far I didn't notice any place that you couldn't reach by just walking there. The fast travel at lamps to me is an applaudable step in the direction of accessibility, giving more and different audiences a chance to enjoy the best Soulsborne game with their unique abilities. I just think it should be better communicated that this may take away some great experience for people who just use it out of lazyness. On the other hand, returning to hunter's dream from time to time you can also find some surprises. Obviously explained later there are reasons why you just can't walk from there to any other part of Yharnam... I hope you see my point and the fact that you managed to make me think about all this should make you really proud! 😍 I didn' even find any spoilers in the part about Miasmata and that deserves its own praise again!

[@javier10541]

That final shot of her walking into the woods never to be seen again is such a mood

[@PixelaDay]

I came back to like this comment

[@madspunky]

The best part of Elden Ring is when a chest teleports you to some random place without your map working and you can't teleport back and the only thing you can do is try to find your way past all those much stronger enemies! Glorious!

[@arthurjeannin3357]

That's one of my favorite moments from the game - they dared alienate the player and make them completely lost in a terrifying place, both mechanically and thematically! It doesn't last long but man, what a great memory

[@hemangchauhan2864]

Great work, and excellent final chapter. What a great way to tie your own experiences with the thesis presented at start. I'd like to add to it. Back in 80s and early 90s, computer Role-playing games (cRPG) did not had automapping features. Instead you had to chart your own maps. This was particularly characteristic in the legendary Wizardry series, which threw your adventuring party in labyrinthian mazes with enemy encounters every turn. You need to have your graph paper ready before playing. (Search photos of this) Wizardry is an important series because it directly led to the birth of JRPG genre, as well its dungeon crawling style indirectly led to creation of Kings Field/Souls series. Infact all the devious traps, grueling enemies and getting lost in levels, are taken straight out of Wizardry school of RPGs. Etrian Odyssey is a spiritual descendant of Wizardry, where you have to mandatorily have to make a map on your DS/3DS second screen as you progress.

[@shayolinparker2934]

This is literally exactly what I like about hiking. Wandering through the woods on poorly marked and maintained trails, mapping it out in my head, discovering new locations and paths. It's wonderful

[@zdl5665]

That was some Jacob Geller level content. Great job, keep it up as long as you enjoy it!

[@cgjow]

Listening to you talking about being lost or being somewhere you don't belong to, reminded me of the game NaissanceE. It's not exactly the same vibe as you talked about in the video, it's more... Alien, mysterious... Wrong with impossible architecture. I never felt more unfit in a game as I did when I played the game, it's truly an unique experience. Really recommend if you've never played it, it's not long and it's free on steam! Could be a nice idea for a video too.

[@PixelaDay]

It features in my video on mystery :)

[@cgjow]

@@PixelaDay Oh I see! Haven't seen that one yet, I'll be sure to check out!

[@retinas2001]

8:42 Thank you so much for including this image. I'd never seen it before and I'm literally soy facing at it because I love Lordran so much.

[@PixelaDay]

Hands down the best Dark Souls map

[@adamkrzeslak4326]

I find myself returning to this video very often it's not only the video that made me play Miasmata but also one of very few videos about this game overall and it's just so criminally underrated, it's the one in a kind and I would love to see more weird projects like it

[@vagabundorkchaosmagick-use2898]

Beautiful! I've been thinking about the same a lot lately, how games allow me to live a life I dream about but which, in reality, would get boring soon. Farming life, wilderness life. Not only boring, but I would die within a week, I'm sure.

[@williammatthews3667]

Beautiful video as always! I've always sturggled to explain to people why Dark Souls 1 is my favourite without just saying "level design is good" but you put my thoughts down perfectly in a video. Keep up the great work.

[@QuestingRefuge]

That Miasmata map looks so cool! I definitely enjoyed living near some woods growing up and spending a lot of time in them. Still an anxious person though lol

[@PixelaDay]

Damn that stubborn anxiety

[@Tokyoriot36]

Love the vid! I think the most revelatory thing here is understanding the connection between our sense of place and the media we consume. We live in constructed spaces now despite having evolved in deeply wild ones, and I’ve noticed that much of the media I love is concerned with understanding place as almost another character in the game/story/what have you.

[@MarshmallowRadiation]

This video inspired me to go take a walk around my neighborhood and try to make a more complete mental map of where I live. Thanks.

[@hali1989]

It's good to see you! A great video, as usual. I have a saying, which I shared with my friends at important life junctions - I like the compus more than the GPS. GPS shows you how to go, while the compus only show you the north, and let you find your own path. Have a great continuation of your journey, I would love to keep being a part of it.

[@DavetheTurnip]

Lovely. Especially the final part where you appear on camera and talk about not getting the ability to explore as a child, and how videogames in some little way make up for it. The part about Bloodborne not committing to being lost reminds me of Hollow Knight, and the terror of Deepnest, falling down a chasm, finding a save point, and realizing that now I had to find my way out of this oppressive place.

[@PixelaDay]

Oh yes! I forgot about the bit where you get kidnapped and have to find your way out of Deepnest. That was awesome

[@SoulGameStudio]

This is all so beautifully true! All of it! Thanks for the brilliant essay.

[@ryanheemann3819]

Your videos are wonderful- I hope you get the attention and views you deserve! Every video is a nice fusion of game design, personal experience, and human experience. I have never heard the concept of getting lost getting explored so well.

[@dollyzerocall2550]

Thank you for bringing light to miasmata, i always loved that game and it's such a shame it didn't get enough recognition

[@stenquists1]

I lived in Utah for a few years and almost all the major cities run North to South, lying West of the Wasatch Front mountain range, which juts up dramatically from the flat floor, so civilization sits right up to them. There was a comfort there because I could always know where I was and which way was North or West, and could easily find my way home from anywhere just by looking at the mountains and heading in a general direction until I hit somewhere familiar. But there is also a bizarre feeling when you see the other side of the mountains, and they look completely different. lol And while I have preferred a lot of places for a lot of reasons, something about Utah's mountains have always felt like home. Awesome video, awesome channel.

[@PixelaDay]

This is amazing, thanks for sharing. What a special thing to have that piece of nature there to constantly root you.

[@chamfred7483]

It's a wonderful video on a topic I love to see brought on games. One of my favorite game about being lost in nature and trying to make sens of the word as an (almost) human is Ancestors : humankind odyssey. It's a light survival, big exploration game, where you try to evolve your prehistoric monkey family while exploring a big continent without map. Your skills are your intelligence to see danger or ressources from far and as you play you become more aware in real life of the relationship between your body, the bodies of those who are close to you and the space around you.

[@dock7777]

The 2nd half of the video really resonated with me as being present is something I struggle with. It can be hard to be okay with not having a clear cut answer with things. But in the constant pursuit of certainty you lose the freedom of being lost. Maybe there doesn't HAVE to be an answer. apologies for my needless philosophical rambling, lol. Excellent video as always.

[@PixelaDay]

Thank you! Needless philosophical rambling in the comments always welcome

[@aljoscha855]

Your videos are amazing. I wish you nothing but success.

[@anedaneran5666]

MIT Press recently published Melissa Kagen's book _Wandering Games_ in open access. Also, there's Alenda Y. Chang's _Playing Nature_ (which you may already know).

[@PixelaDay]

I don't know these but damn they sound right up my alley.

[@WatPatat]

You're becoming my favorite channel. Your videos are so insightful and I listen to them on my way home from work. They really help me recharge my battery. Thank you!

[@businessashusual]

Other amusing death mechanic was in Final Fantasy Legends 2. If you had a party wipe, you’d meet Odin in Valhalla and he’d revive you if you promised to fight him one day. Eventually, you make it to Valhalla, then you fight Odin. After that - party wipe is game over.

[@CaptainFram]

omg Miasmata!!! I've not heard that name in YEARS. I think I heard about it on the Idle Thumbs podcast back in the day.

[@TheNicloHD]

What an incredible video. Your viewpoints is something i allways just partly share but that makes the experience much more interesting. Keep going, i love your work.

[@ryzeonline]

I really enjoy your takes on various games, these two included, and I love that I discover games that are new to me, like Miasmata, through your videos. Thanks for what you do. (Also, the scene of you in the forest was a nice touch!)

[@luizpaulo45]

I am so glad i managed to trick KZbin to show me just my subscriptions videos on Miasmata, so i could watch this. The way that game does transversal and movement, reminds me of cases I needed to up and downhill here in the southeast rural parts of Brazil, the last time was two months ago where in a bamboo forest i was checking the path for water pipes and some parts I really needed to catch a tree so to would not build too much speed going down at times. Glad to had a walking staff though, really helps a lot. The whole way that game deals with the maps, i guess, does help a lot to make the player look more to the world and less to a dot on the screen, which is something i hear complaints in open world games at the times, and even some who doing directions rather than waypoints. i should download Arma 3 again and download the modded mission that just puts you in a place in the map and asks you to triangulate your position, I just finished Miasmata 2 days ago!

[@PixelaDay]

Thanks so much for your wonderful comment

[@atab6555]

Super intersting video

[@TheMovingEye]

Wow, here I thought I was the only one remembering Miasmata. For all its faults the game really stuck into my mind for the very reasons you mentioned.

[@SuperSecretAgentNein]

Oh my god, I still remember the first time I ended up at the very bottom of Blighttown, I had defeated Quelaag and my mind boggled at the idea of climbing myself out of there. It felt like I was miles underground. The reality is taking the back way out of Blighttown isn’t nearly as bad as it would’ve been heading up the way I came, through the depths, through lower undead burg, etc… but I still felt like I could smell the fresh air once I finally hit a skybox in the valley of the drakes. It felt like Frodo and Samwise finally leaving Mount Doom, except nobody gave me an eagle to ride. I still love the entire series quite a bit but I too would love if Miyazaki returned to the idea of really having to get to know a space like you did with DS1. Speaking of which, the vibe is very much their with the older From titles. If you haven’t I highly recommend playing the King’s Field and Shadow Tower games.

[@CoconutmilkFilms]

Thank you for the great video! I've never really thought about how we take so many navigational tools for granted, you pointed out that wonderfully!

[@Arashmickey]

I had no idea exploration in Miasmata was this involved, very cool. I love games that make me want to "fill out the map" because it's the world we live in, just like real life where we can't expect there to be quests and rewards hidden out there, but whatever we find it's definitely not nothing. Castle Adventure (1984) was probably the first, but I think Ultima Underworld was the first that truly made me forget the goal. Crazy to see the green undergrowth coming back in the middle of all those black trees btw. I'm lucky I didn't grow up in suburban sprawl and had plenty of opportunities to explore nature, and I'm glad car-dependency is receding slightly in recent years.

[@borealmarinda4337]

Before I committed to buy Dark Souls, "the hardest game ever made", I wanted to try something similar to see if it's worth the purchase. One game called "just like Dark Souls" was FromSoft's first game series: King's Field. The one that grabbed me the most is the second King's Field game, King's Field 1 in the US, 2 in Japan. The game immediately fascinated me, and the further into it I went, the further I got lost, the better the game felt. It's a game entirely made up of a cave system on an island whose sparse inhabitants have as positive of outlooks as a slug surrounded by a sea of salt. Even though basically everything is made up of grey walls of tight corridors, the small flourishes of each area makes it eventually memorable, especially since you'll be stumbling upon each area from multiple connective pathways. And since you have no idea what you can do on this hostile island, you will want to learn the pathways, not just to find anything in them that can help, but because you won't be able to escape this maze without knowing it intimately. But none of that is really why I came to love this game. It is the experience of playing the beginning that made it unforgettable, and made me yearn for more. If you are like me, and you only play games to explore anything and everything, the very tiny beginning will be an experience worth the effort, even before actually getting to the entry-point to the game. And that never really stops with the game. Only in the very end, where you finally find a clear goal and sense of the island, does the game become less exploratory. I more or less have the entire cave system in my head, mostly because the game runs on an unstable 13 FPS, and you are operating a tank whose walking speed is only rivaled in slowness by its turning speed. The fastest way is to run sideways, which you will want to learn just because it is inconvenient to turn a lot. I ran through the island basically with my eyes closed many times. This slowness, coupled with the eerie sunthesized music, the low-poly and almost texture-less environments, small vision distance, and mazey cave system makes for an experience that barely any game could replicate. King's Field 4 is the closest. Slow, dreary, amazing soundtrack, way more atmosphere and beautiful world Ultima Underworld is another one. There is no way King's Field as a project wasn't just FromSoft going "you know what we could do? Ultima Underworld, but on this upcoming Playstation console". And Dark Souls 1. Though Dark Souls 1 has too much fidelity, too wider scope, too many very distinct areas, and it isn't a first-person game with tank controls. It is still a game where I could get lost in completely, and spend most of the game mapping out each area in my head and connecting each area to the areas it is around, while feeling like I am forced to slowly glide through tight and hostile world. Become one of its inhabitants to end its slow decay. King's Field 4 is unmistakably closer to KF2, but it is Dark Souls that made me fall in love with its world more for some reason. Probably because Dark Souls is so tight.

[@Dorkaxe]

Ooooo Miasmata looks super cool, added to my wishlist! Love this video and agree with a lot of what you said about the first half of Dark Souls. I find it funny, as well, that in Bloodborne you can't really warp to other lanterns directly, you HAVE to return to the dream first, which just makes you sit through more load screens. Maybe one could make the argument that it was From's way of trying to make the "warping" process more cumbersomeness to deter constant warping, but if that was the case, I don't think it was a success at all, everyone warps and accepts the bad load times. I really wonder what BB would look like without warping. I'm not even sure how you could do it and still make it the same game, maybe you still need to warp back to the dream for levels/doll interactions/chalice dungeons/RPG stuff but you HAVE to return to the lamp you previously used? That's really the only thing I could think of. Edit: It would have been really funny if you intentionally fell while walking away from the camera the end, just to go completely against the mood lmao

[@PixelaDay]

Yeah that would be very acceptable to me! I mean I still love the Dark Souls solution - just make the map interconnected so you can take shortcuts between all the locations you've already been.

[@Dorkaxe]

@@PixelaDay that's my preferred method as well, but Froms games post DS1 show me that they either have no desire to go that route again, or it's extremely difficult to plan out and the first time was basically half luck.

[@PixelaDay]

Also I may or may not have tripped in a take that didn't make it in

[@andreacardino4651]

This video was incredibly thoughtful. You've really nailed it down, what made the first Dark Souls an unrepeated experience amongst the Souls games. As much as you, I've been arguing for years that the adoption of fast travels by default, FromSoftware's moving to designing their worlds around warping, was disruptive to the uniqueness of the exploration they had crafted in their first open world game; although I've been framing this problem from a different perspective than the one you articulate in this video, which obviously means this video was quite enriching to my own musings. What was lost with the adoption of warping from the outset, to me, is a sense of home; the possibility of developing a sense of homefulness in the game world. Leaving Firelink Shrine without knowing when, and if, you'll see it again, and then unlocking a new path that innervates back into it, a new path from a location in the map that you perceived so far removed from the hub, a way back home from utter despair and uprootedness, really allowed you to take root in Lordran. The more connections you carved between Firelink Shrine and the surrounding areas, the more the former felt like home; and the less the latters felt like commodities, like colonies, to conquer, to pillage, to consume, and never return to. In a paper titled " _There's no place like home: dwelling and being at home in digital games_ ", Daniel Vella established a difference between _hestial_ and _hermetic_ videogames; _hestial_ stemming from Hestia, the goddess of the hearth in Greek mythology, and _hermetic_ stemming - quite literally in this acceptation - from Hermes, herald of the gods, the messenger able to traverse the world at otherworldly speed. The gameplay loop of hermetic open map games is, in fact, quite linear and incremental: you access new areas, conquer them, loot everything you can from them, then warp back to the hub where the materials you recently collected in your foray can be invested to upgrade weapons, unlock new items, new dialogues, new levelling up at the local maiden... rinse and repeat for the following, more challenging, areas. It's this kind of structure, of non-intraconnectedness, that prevents you from developing a sense of home for Roundtable Hold, or for the Firelink Shrine of Dark Souls 3, for instance, and that leads you to seeing the other areas with the same affection an imperialist has for new untapped territories to exploit. *The constant, unchallanged availability of their home makes the player into an uprooted consumer.* It is the hestial structure of the first Dark Souls that prevents you from developing a consumeristic fruition of the world around you. The moment you begin to understand how intraconnected Lordran is, is the moment you stop simply combing new levels for loot: you start searching for home in these foreign, god forsaken places. The game has conditioned you to these kinds of affordances in the environment: 1) since you don't know exactly when, and if, you'll be at home again, you try to make these places feel like home, to make them slightly less menacing and unbearable: you get to familiarise with their geogrpahy, the enemy placement, the shortest and easiest route from one safe zone to another; you search for NPCs or assets that can offer services similar to those you had at home - maybe there's a smith down here, or at least some DIY smithing site; maybe there's a vendor, etc; you may even try to make your bonfire similar to that you had at home, if you've already obtained the Rite of Kindling and are thus able to upgrade it. Granted, the bonfire in front of Queelag's Domain will never be like home, but it can at least get to feel like a camp; 2) and yet you are by now confident that there will be an unexpected way to go back home from here, so you research not only some kind of shortcut but also a mental representation of the world that will improve your guessing about where a shortcut might be. *Despite the fantasy setting, all of this makes for the exploration of a rooted, grounded individual, rather than an adventurer or a dragon-slayer.* And this exploration mechanically engenders geographical affections that are impossible to conjure up solely by aesthetic means. The sky of Blighttown, for instance. You left the diurnal sky of the Shrine and the Undead Burg a long time ago, first for the darkness of the lower burg, then for the descent into the Depths; as if the Depths weren't already underground and dank enough, you kept going down, into the scaffolds of upper Blighttown, which plummet into a swamp... you may be wondering if this game wants to drag you to hell, when you find a meander in the swamp, and a functioning waterwheel, and upon getting on it you are naturally nudged to look up, for the first time since a while: only to realise you are not underground, and the sky has been returned to you, and it's the same clouded sky of your home. This emotion, as many others Dark Souls players could recall from their first run, would've never existed with warping. No matter how starry, lyrical, unexpected, subterranean it might be: no sky in Elden Ring could ever equal the sky of Blighttown. I'm happy for you that getting lost in Dark Souls made you want to rediscover the world and the nature around you; it's done the same for me. I'm also happy your video made me discover Miasmata. Cheers.

[@PixelaDay]

We are of one mind on this! Please enjoy (maybe not enjoy… appreciate? be captivated by?) Miasmata!

[@torgo_]

Miasmata is such an underrated gem. It's sad how it bombed, given the story of its development. The devs (two brothers who spent a decade building the entire game from scratch, including the game engine) abandoned game development soon after and went back to having normal jobs. 💀 I feel that most players rejected the game after their first initial gut reaction to the movement system (especially in the early game where you're so weak and slow, lacking in mobility and prone to bricking your game by tripping over a pebble).

[@josephchambers4509]

Loved this! Hadn't heard of Miasmata but definitely going to check it out

[@speakwithanimals]

really like where you took that train of thought toward the end of the video, and I'll have to check out Miasmata now! If you want to explore that topic of entering/interfacing with the natural world a little more I would HIGHLY recommend How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. My experience with it seems to have been similar to how you described your experience with Miasmata. Just cool stuff. Thanks for the video!

[@PixelaDay]

Thanks for your lovely comments ❤️

[@speakwithanimals]

@@PixelaDay no problem! they're deserved :D

[@RemnantofValour]

I think you'd really enjoy The Forest from 2018. It's an indie survival horror game about finding your son after you both crash land in a peninsula inhabited by hostile creatures. Completing the game requires a comprehensive understanding of the landscape and I used pencil and paper mapping to help me finish my first game. It's also co op so you could bring your partner along for the ride

[@PhobosTheWicked]

Great video. I did felt the same with the outer wilds Although i knew which planet i was exploring, i felt lost until i could mentally map the location.

[@searingburrito]

Thank you for making this. Love your work always 😊

[@zachdanielsgaming]

Great video! I feel bad, because as a kid my parents did let me loose outside to explore both forests and suburbs all growing up, and I got lost and adventured and it was great ... But now I have children of my own and I can't imagine letting them loose like that. Of course, it's a combination of the times being much different than they were 20-30 years ago and also I have daughters and it's much more risky for girls to adventure than for boys. I do agree, though, that video games are an okay proxy for fueling curiosity and exploration when the real thing is not a viable option. And also here's to hoping From Soft makes a "smallish" game again one day with no fast travel and the sense of being lost that, as you said, was done best in Dark Souls 1.

[@PixelaDay]

I have to admit I've pretty much stopped hoping for that from this series! Not to get too preachy on the raising kids thing, it's a touchy issue, but I'm heartened that people are increasingly talking about this problem of risk/danger perception and how we can fix it. The media did a real number on us convincing us that the world is a terrible scary place even though it's generally a much safer one than when we were growing up, and even though the real danger is the way we're stunting our children's brain development by not letting them engage in exploration and free play (which is the primary way children learn).

[@natanoj16]

I cant remember how I found your channel but this seems to be the second of your videos I have found and I can see that the bell was pressed ^_^

[@Soundole]

I love your work - there's always a fantastic structure to your videos, and I'm very frequently introduced to new experiences through your discussions!

[@leftovernoise]

Amazing work as always!

[@Aabicus]

This was a great video! I always loved Miasmata so it's great to see a KZbinr cover it. Hopefully more people will discover Robert Hughes and his tranquil little island :D Since you liked Miasmata, I really really recommend Perennial, it's a free game on itchio that takes similar core gameplay concepts but in an interesting direction. You return to your childhood national park to camp for the weekend, but a mysterious monster is stalking you so you need to use a map & compass to navigate the park and reach the exit. Your map doesn't tell you where you are on it, so you need to rely on your navigational skills and any landmarks you reach to keep your sense of direction oriented. It's got low-poly 3D graphics but the sound design and lighting put in a ton of work to make it a unique and memorable experience.

[@PixelaDay]

Sounds great! Thank you so much for the recommend

[@Aabicus]

@@PixelaDay You’re welcome :D It’s a quick little one-sitting experience, so not a huge time investment either

[@gm5542]

Finally you made another video about Nier: Miasmata

[@PixelaDay]

😂😂😂👏👏👏

[@joki1829]

I love how much I share many of your viewpoints in Gaming matters. Its exactly what you describe that I love. I want games that challenge me and my Problem solving. To think and actually feel Invested. This feeling of being invested is way less with so many checkpoints or Bonfires. I want to find my own path. Get a real map of the space into my head. I find it hard to get the feeling of adventure or exploration in many modern games because of their tendency to always light the way for me. As they mostly tell me which way I have to go instead of letting me decide. Choosing your really own path is something many games pretend. They tell you of infinite freedome but you are Limited in it. Just very few games gave me this absolute feeling of having my own adventure.

[@andreimelescanu8494]

If you like getting lost, i think you'd love playing Kingdom Come Deliverance on Hardcore mode(hardcore just heightens survival mechanics, as far as I can tell). It's an RPG with a pretty big map, realistic landscapes and no compass. You have a cool medieval map, but with no indication of where you are you have to put the map down and look around for landmarks. If you get lost in a forest or at night good luck finding your way! You'll feel very weak and clumsy in everything you do at the beginning, but that's part of the story. By practicing you will raise your skills and it all gets easier. Awesome videos, looking forward to your next ones!

[@PixelaDay]

I hadn't heard much about this game but you said all the right words! I'll check it out, thank you :)

[@jakovmarsic2619]

hey i think your videos are really unique! thank you for allowing us to discover miasmata, never seen anyone shill this game

[@PixelaDay]

Thank you so much! :) The only other person I know who shills Miasmata is Joel from Electron Dance

[@dylan.t180]

Fantastic video

[@franzluggin398]

This video captured perfectly what I love about Dark Souls 1, and why I don't really enjoy the later ones as much anymore. It also made me buy Miasmata, and I'm loving it! Thank you so much for talking about it and recommending it, I would have never found it on my own!

[@PixelaDay]

YES I'm so happy I convinced someone to play it! :) It's a bit janky and it crashed on me a few times, but the core of the game still absolutely holds up. Too bad there's no bug-free HD remake I could recommend

[@franzluggin398]

@@PixelaDay Oh, I curse the movement system at least once per session. I understand why it's the way it is, and yet, it's somehow the most random thing in existence. The only crash I had so far was in the settings before starting a game, but then, after a restart, it worked fine with the new settings, anyway, and has ever since. I'm 9 hours in now, and I think I got three "paths" from the starting zone and their respective parts of the map roughly done (I think). I'm already looking forward to finding out whether the ... central mystery of the game, let's say, is scripted to happen at certain places more than others, or whether I'm just seeing patterns in randomness like a good horror media consumer.

[@whiskycavendish]

There is something special about the experience of playing an enormous RPG - Breath of the Wild, Fallout 3 etc - and choosing not to use fast-travel once.

[@sharkray3938]

Why are your videos so good? And why don't you have more subscribers??? Seriously, I have binged your stuff and it's all amazing. I really enjoyed the Outer Wilds/Rainworld video and the one about the sea

[@PixelaDay]

That's lovely to hear, glad you're enjoying the channel! If you want to, share it with a mate you think would enjoy it :)

[@Yesnomu]

That game sounds awesome! Thanks for the video.

[@PixelaDay]

It is awesome!

[@jamjam7568]

Found your channel while scrolling for Horizon videos. Found the game to be so boring after owning a Switch and buying a PS5. Just can't get into AAA games. Enjoying your thought provoking content and much needed voice in game analysis videos. This channel will grow fast as the content increases. Excited to be here early.

[@conalbirtles3720]

Your best video yet, in my opinion.

[@markwelch3564]

Miasmata is one of a few games I almost want amnesia for, so I can experience them again with a clean slate of not knowing anything going in

[@Bavari90]

Yes, another video...keep them coming my lady.

[@maximilianogregoretti5606]

I thought this was another dark souls video, and I ended thinking of the times back in my childhood, and what does gaming mean to me.... subbed

[@PixelaDay]

Thanks so much for your comment, that's so nice to hear :)

[@lostmarble540]

I think it's important for kids to have exposure to the outdoors. Though I will say I got a good amount of outdoors activity as a kid and I still turned into an anxious mess. But hey, maybe it would've been worse if I hadn't had that experience.

[@PixelaDay]

Thanks for watching - from one anxious mess to another 😊

[@Skyehoppers]

In a world of easy mode discourse, Kat boldly suggests that FromSoft games should be harder. And she sounds right! As someone who's always over-reliant on maps when they're available, not having navigational tools in games is so unnerving, but almost refreshingly so. Although still I think no getting-lost experience in games has matched the terror losing your orientation in Minecraft as a child. I remember tears welling up multiple times as I thought I would be permanently lost from the base I'd spent dozens of hours making D:

[@danieladamczyk4024]

Go play Outward, you gona love it.

[@PixelaDay]

Oh shit Minecraft is such a good example. I'm torn as to whether this falls into the "difficulty" discourse. Like, it is hard to get around and find your way in DS and Miasmata, but in a different way to what people are probably talking about when they talk about difficulty/easy modes. There is a common thread with not hand-holding the player though.

[@vagabundorkchaosmagick-use2898]

That's right, I think. I don't like they give fast travel for free from the very beginning. I never felt I understood the geography of Dark Souls 2, DS3 or Bloodborne. In Elden Ring it works, because it's a different beast entirely. But I never learn my way in the other three games (Sekiro, haven't played. Being am Activision game it made me never want to buy it, until recently, when I discovered Activision doesn't own the IP, From Software does).

[@PunchFaceChamp9]

I feel your pain with being directionally challenged. In college, my wife left her friend's apartment 1 block away and literally down the street from my place, and she ended up 5 miles away from making several wrong assumptions about directions. Still laugh about it today.

[@PixelaDay]

Amazing. Big love to your wife.

[@Ma1q444]

I agree the future souls games ruined it being able to fast travel at the beginning of the game and being able to freely switch covenants.

[@karkwhyioughta]

I remember in the height of my Breath of the Wild playing in the summer of 2017, I was riding my bike from a friend's house and saw a flock of birds flying around in the sky. My mind instinctively wanted to pull out the camera rune to take a picture of what could be a new species to add to the compendium, til I realized I was in real life and couldn't, yknow, press L. I suppose it was its own kind of L... Anyway, fantastic video!

[@PixelaDay]

🤣

[@subprogram32]

I really enjoyed this video! And while Miasmata probably isn't the kinda game for me, you do clearly show how interesting and deserving of an audience it it. If only it weren't quite as buggy, perhaps. And I really found the ending quite affecting too. ^w^

[@coffeatus3393]

Well, This is one way to say "Touch grass"

[@SocraTetris]

Did you play Elden Ring?! It's a good map. Not nearly as good as that map, but a pretty darn good map

[@PixelaDay]

I hope to one day play it when they patch the text to make it a size I can read

[@TCrag]

Great video. Fast travel is almost always at the detriment to gameplay, convenient for the player but compromises the overall experience fundamentally for any game in my opinion.

[@cloverlake2599]

Very nice video :) now, time to get lost

[@nifftbatuff676]

In Dark Souls you don't really get lost. As you die you respaw in a bonfire.

[@barichello_]

Thanks for making this video, Miasmata is such a niche game that its rare to see someone making a video doc on youtube

[@ZedAmadeus]

OHH my god I have been looking for a videogame with complicated cartography-based gameplay. I know that sounds kinda weird-but seriously, this game not existing until this moment where I'm hearing about it now, it felt like a little piece of me was missing. I dreamt up a game based around this exact sort of idea myself because I found the notion of it so intoxicating. It's one thing to not have a map, (I quite like it when games do that,) it's another to have a map reveal itself as you travel over it, IT IS SO DIFFERENT TO HAVE TO ACTUALLY PARTICIPATE IN CHARTING IT. I gotta try this. Thank you for showing it off. :D I'm curious, what channels are you tuned into to find these weird gems? (I know that's a bit of weird way of putting it, but I'm not sure how else to phrase it) I know Rain World and Outer Wilds have SOME reach, even if they're fairly niche... but like, what's your story for how you found this one?

[@PixelaDay]

The answer is Electron Dance :) When he raves about a game I know it's good, and he raves about Miasmata on his site. He also plays pretty much exclusively small games so he's a gem. There's HeavyEyed's Indie Games You Missed series, Errant Signal mostly talks about indie gems, the Cool Ghosts website was great back when it was an active project and I generally listen very hard to whatever Matt Lees and Quintin Smith are recommending. It's been kind of a long process of cultivating my KZbin, Twitter, podcast and blogosphere until I'm following people who I know enjoy interesting stuff and have similar tastes to me.

[@ZedAmadeus]

​@@PixelaDay Awesome, thank you! :D

[@disposable157]

Can you turn the fast travel off in DS/BB? In a menu option or something? Or is it not built to be contiguous? I've only played The Surge. Wish I could play Bloodborne, console exclusivity is bullshirt.

[@PixelaDay]

Can't turn it off sadly. I mean From Soft isn't the greatest at, uh, letting the player customise their experience with options XD

[@danieladamczyk4024]

You are kind souls to me, you must hate fast travel in Elden ring too.

[@munchaking1896]

I realy liked the game play of miasmata and enjoyed playing it, but it was awful to look at. Everything was very low quality, from the water effects, to the badly photshoped textures, and the characters animations looked like his arms were broken and bent the wrong way. But the gameplay was fun.

[@PixelaDay]

If I could snap my fingers and materalise one game into a HD Remaster, it would be Miasmata

[@scotchbox]

Byeeeeeeeeeee

[@PixelaDay]

👋👋👋

[@andreedrechsel343]

Did you try Day Z

[@PixelaDay]

I haven’t!

[@lopesdoria]

What's the game at 7:15? I also want to be lost again on a new game world to explore.

[@SirRoderickThunderbottom]

pretty sure that's sea of thieves

[@lopesdoria]

@@SirRoderickThunderbottom Oh, huh. Well, I'm a bit disappointed now. I expected some kind of adventure game set on an island. Thank you for answering, nonetheless.

[@PixelaDay]

@@lopesdoria Sorry! :) The game just has a nice big compass

[@lopesdoria]

@@PixelaDay Yeah, it's fine. It was a great example of what you were talking about, and it was a great video full of a lot of other great games to try out and explore. That one just looked especially aesthetically pleasing ha ha.

[@PixelaDay]

@@lopesdoria It does look nice!