• tal@lemmy.today
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    5 days ago

    Depends on the game.

    I think that they have been used effectively in games like Starbound and Terraria or many roguelikes and roguelites.

    I think that there have been some games where they do not work well.

    Starfield has a beautiful terrain generator, but different terrain doesn’t really change gameplay, nor does combat really scale up to making use of very large maps, so you have the ability to explore infinite expanses of planets, but it doesn’t really provide much in gameplay terms. Aside from finding a cluster of useful resources near each other for an outpost, which isn’t that interesting from a gameplay standpoint and doesn’t need most of the terrain generator’s functionality, it’s mostly just cosmetic.

    I think that they work best where how you play the game changes substantially based on the mix of features of the dungeon. Then throwing a new mix each time at the player helps keep things interesting.