#I remember doing a ton of notes the first time I saw the gameplay

[stannussy]

This game makes me bananas, but it has so much info, I want to compile in a single place.

#anyways #im gonna dust off my old man alisher #i used to have a cod cold war blog and all #but I want my m*actavish blog up and running to #too* #mmmhhh #ah fuck it you're gonna hear me ramble abt Cold war until then #I remember doing a ton of notes the first time I saw the gameplay #now taht i get to roam the safehouse B) #get ready #also angsty cold war spy

[itskikanow]

In honor of the DLC coming out tomorrow I’ve replayed Error 143 to enjoy the adorable dork that is Micah Yujin. So let me gush about him will ya.

Micah Yujin is the main character and only love interest of the indie dating sim called Error 143 made by Jenny Vi Pham and her crew. The main premise is that you, the player, lost in a coding/hacking competition to your rival (Micah) and you as the sane level headed person as you are decided to troll him by hacking his computer and leaving a note “Ha, whose the better hacker now”. In response Micah hacks you back and puts you in his not discord server that he made and from then on comedy ensues.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward, it’s like every other dating sim. There’s the occasional hacking minigame that is just hangman which is neat, but the whole design of the whole game is so cool. I love pixel art and not discord looks fantastic with it. I also find it elegant that the parts without voice acting look like chat conversations, and the conversations with voice acting to be video calls is fucking great!

Also his voice actor goes hard!!! Corey Wilder is a talented va and I wish nothing but the best for them!^^

Micah himself is a funny playful cheeky guy with a shit eating grin on his face. His banter with the player is honestly hilarious and wholesome at times. He doesn’t hide the fact that he thinks you’re hot and he starts being flirty around day one or two. Him and the player have some good chemistry and they really match each other’s vibe. (Oh yeah forgot to mention but the player character actually have a personality in this game. They’re not a fully fleshed out character but it’s more than what the player character gets in these games. The only other time I can think something similar happened was in The Arcana [also a great dating sim I do recommend that])

The story spans out 5 days (well, 4 actually cuz day 4 is pretty short). In those 5 days the player and Micah get to know each other pretty quickly and it’s pretty obvious you both really like each other. And Micah puts his money where his mouth is because on day 5 he makes your dream first date come true. I find that so wholesome and sweet like on my first playthrough my first thought ‘I wanna hug him’ and ‘AAAAAAAAAA!!!!!’ (And that’s just one of the sweetest things he does in game, there’s like two other one which I both adore a ton.)

But I couldn’t because the game ended! 🥲🥲🥲🥲 (Thankfully the dlc is coming and will probably give me that option and I honestly cannot wait!^^) It is a short game but it’s definitely one of the best ones out there!

I also remember when this game first came out it got really popular in just a few short days. And I also cannot forget how in just one night a bunch of twitter ghouls jumped on the creator and accused her of fetishizing black men, hiring a va who voiced in a pe** game and how her writing is actually very racist because….. she shared some old concept ideas for Micah’s parents that are not even canon. Back then I was pretty scared about those accusations because I myself am not white and thought “oh fuck what if actual black people found something actually problematic that I’ve missed”. In reality what actually happened was a bunch of racists didn’t like that there was a dating sim out there with the main love interest being a half Korean half African American. And they hurled shit on both Jenny and Corey. I even saw people whom I used to follow take those accusations seriously and write it of as “ah even when we get a dating sim with a black love interest there’s always a catch”. (I was honestly baffled by them cuz, ‘wha- you can’t be serious! There’s gotta be something more to this’.) Thankfully Jenny managed to resolve that drama in the end by explaining everything in a tweet longer? (idk the exact name of it but you know what that is) and addressing every main accusation while also addressing how the harassment has affected her. I’m honestly proud how she managed to still write on Twitter where most would’ve gone silent to take a break from that bullshit. But she and Corey shouldn’t have been subjected to that kind of harassment in the first fucking place.

Still, I’m so happy that things are better now. I don’t have Twitter anymore (and I’ve been much happier since) so I don’t know if anything similar happened since then (hopefully not).

Amidst all that bullshit tho there were some people who gave genuine constructive criticism, one I can remember is about Micah’s inconsistent hair texture. Since there are a lot of artists in the team they all drew his hair a little differently every time. Jenny responded to that critique apologizing and doing some research before deciding what Micah’s hair type is gonna be. Ever since then his hair has been consistent in official arts. The assets in game hadn’t been switched out but by the sneak peeks she posted on Instagram, it looks like they’re gonna be finally.

(Ok I originally wanted to write down his hair type but I’m actually not sure what she said cuz I forgor but comparing his hair to pictures on google, seems to his hair is either 4B, 4C or a mix between those two. I’m sorry I don’t remember 🥲)

My apologies for the detour there. My final thoughts about the game though is that it’s amazing, fun and I adore Micah a lot! If you like dating sims, fun and wholesome cheesy romance then I can recommend it to you wholeheartedly!^^

#error 143 #dating sim #micah yujin #rivals to lovers #I forgot to mention that last part

[cidthesquid]

Princess Peach: Showtime Demo! - More than Just Cute Outfits!

Today l'll be talking about the demo for:Princess Peach: Showtime!

Yeah, I know this is not a 'Fashion Game', But I make the rules here! Also I think even the 'ideas' here are worth talking about, as well as the gameplay! The demo is free, so I'd really recommend checking it out for yourselves if you're interested, but if you're interested in my commentary with a few personal connections, feel free to stick around! --- Alright, so first off, I've never really had any strong connections or feeling about peach as a character before playing this. She was just another Mario character to me, and did not really represent or stand for anything. I remembered hearing she first got her own spin-off game on the DS, "Super Princess Peach" (2005) where her actions are powered by various emotions, people often described it as "the game where one of her powers is crying:

Also, it was still very much just a platforming game, so it did not really stand out for me. This game however is a lot more difficult to categorize:

I guess the easiest way to describe it would be an 'Adventure Game', You'll be given various challenges, based on the level, there is some combat as well as mini-game style activities, and each level with have multiple activities, so it's not like "just do one baking mini game, then move on to the next level.

There's combat, even if it's very simplistic, I still find it enjoyable. You have a jump button, and a single button that does everything else, attacking, dodging, counter hits, etc. But you'll have a health bar to manage, and enemies may have invulnerability phases, so while it's simplistic, the game by no means 'plays it'self' some level of interaction is still required.

The Mini-games are also simplistic, but do allow you to mess up, they also have a 'soft failure state' so the time limit does matter, and you can actually fail the event, and will be required to retry.

Most gamers would not consider this game difficult, or challenging to any degree, but unlike some other 'cute games' it dose actually offer some form of push back, and I think that makes it more rewarding! --- Ok, Now with gameplay out of the way, I'd like to talk about the game's ascetics. It's clear that making the game as cute and charming as possible was a core design decision. And this is shown from the very start when they make a change to peach's default hairstyle:

Now, I actually see written out in my notes "Don't spend multiple paragraphs talking about peach's new ponytail", So I'll have to keep this short, I think it's a great addition, for a long time I just saw the concept of a "ponytail" as something exclusively reserved for very young people, that's how it was mainly shown in western media. So I was surprised when a lot of Japanese games gave it as an option for adult characters, Monster Hunter, Final Fantasy XIV, and tons more had it as part of the character creator. And while it's not the style I generally go with for my own characters, I've come to embrace the idea, and see how it can be a cute or fun additional to a character design regardless of their age. And I think it works really well here, especially as it offers great secondary motion:

I'm sure there are plenty of ways to interpret Peach's last game, using emotion as peach's own real actions. But I vastly prefer this game's ideas, the whole idea is someone's ruining all the plays, and corrupting them and the participates with negativity, and you fight back with positivity and encouragement!

When things start to get dark, and the characters' perspective change. But Giving them hope (by attacking them :P) you're able to help them push through.

When I first saw this game's trailer, I though it was just an excuse to put peach in various cute outfit, and (I have no problem with that), but it seemed to lack any real substance But overall, I really enjoyed this short demo, You get cute outfits, a very pleasant world, and a nice theme! The game is just full of charm, and there is just so much detail in the background characters, and even the idle animations,

So I'll probably pick it up regardless of the game length, it's just really nice. I probably won't blog about like I do with style savvy.

(Screenshot from the nintendo store page NOT IN THE DEMO) It looks like the full game may offer some unlockables and a little customization, so that could be fun! At $60, It's a bit on the pricey side, so I may end up buying the JP version on play asia to save a little money (~$40) But much like Style Savvy, I really enjoy the variety of outfits, and how it shows that style is more than just one thing, and how various outfits can impart various different moods and feelings.

--- Alright, that's my main thoughts on my small sampling of the game, but feel free to stick around for my added personal notes! ---- /!\ Caution: End of Cute screenshots, Mostly unedited Ramblings beyond this point /!\

So I've been thinking a lot about the concept of 'Cute' in general, to some people, this may seem like an odd thing to think about, But if you've followed my blog for a while, you'll probably understand why. But regardless, I've started to get over the weird feelings of being a guy playing 'cute games', but one of the things I was still trying to figure out was where my own perspective of 'cute' lies when it comes to characters. I have no trouble designing cute outfits for others in style savvy, and I do really like a lot of cute designs, but when it comes to created characters that I plan to stick with long term, it's not really a style I focus on, generally leaning more towards Bold/Rock or even Elegant/Feminine Styles.

For a while, I thought I was subconsciously avoiding anything 'cute', and that I needed to 'fix that' or something. But recently I've been learning a lot about the different ways you can 'like something', You can find something nice because you relate to it, you could like how neat and organized it looks, or you could even really like the feelings it evokes. And I think this was the missing piece and understanding how I relate to various types of fashion. As silly as it sounds, I was not even aware there was an option to like different styles for different reasons. For example: I now know that I do like the 'cute' ascetic, for character designs, outfits, and tone. However, it's not really something I'm drawn to, or relate with. So if something looks 'cute', it may receive bonus points in my brain over something plain, and it can offer a bit of a relaxing feeling.

The Cool/Bold Style has a much bigger draw for me, and as such, when I'm making my own character (especially in a multiplayer game), and want to stand out, this is what I go for. I love the energy it gives off, and playing character that look cool, make me feel cool as well! as such, I'd have to say it's my favorite to use. Elegant/Feminine Style: I still don't really have my exact feels on this nailed down yet. But I really enjoy the flexibility it provides. It offers a lot of what I like about the 'bold' and 'cute' styles, without being too loud or aggressive, you can make this style as mature as you want, or add a more youthful edge, And it can look a bit simplistic, or very stylized. This refined style honestly feels like it has endless potential, yet I have the hardest time designing for it, but it's probably my favorite to experience others interoperation of.

--- Alright, hopefully that was still a fun read, and not 'too personal' . As always, any comments/critique are welcome!

#fashion game #nintendo switch #princess peach #cute #dress up game #dress up #switch #princess peach showtime #magical girl #gif #nintendo #peach #cosplay #fashion #existence #life stuff

[crownedcryptid]

I finished playing great Ace Attorney Chronicles...after 80 HOURS?! (and I've been playing it since it launched too...)

Since it was such a big time commitment for me, I feel obligated to write a long review so here we go!!

if you do end up reading this post and have played the game, one thing I’m curious to know about is...what made everyone love this game so much? I saw it getting so much hype, love, and fan art before it was ever even localized. So what do you like about this game? What made it so hype worthy? Was it just the fact that it was super obscure and unlocalized so people promoted it on their own...what’s the key thing that gives this game it’s big appeal? I’m curious! ...oh and uh don’t worry I did enjoy the game too!!

First up, super happy this was finally localized. The ending is super cute, made me wish the whole game was voice acted. It frustrated me quite a bit, but it’s still great!

I appreciate how different this is form the rest of the series, but I think the silliness and sudo sci-fi aspects of the previous games makes me like those a lot more. The mysteries in this were often presented in confusing ways that made it unneededly hard to solve in my eyes...

vague spoilers inbound

and often i felt the mysteries weren't too satisfying because everything is like...just an insane coincidence pretty much. Cool direction for them to take where many cases were not murders, and you actually LOSE a case in this game too!

AND THE MAIN VILLAIN?! LIKE, I KNEW IT WAS THEM SINCE THE MOMENT THEY SHOWED UP 5 HOURS INTO THE DARN GAME!! That was beyond obvious to me, and that’s the big mystery you spend unraveling for 80 hours??

The final case of the game had my head spinning, so many thing to remember, so many names, timing windows, far too many pieces of evidence, bringing up things from the story that hadn’t been mentioned in dozens of hours...it was a plunder until it got to the end.

I think I'm just spoiled by how modern and aesthetically pleasing and modernized Spike Chunsoft's mystery games are, I hope future AA games borrow from their book and make things much more seamless and exciting.

Like how Danganronpa gives you a limited amount of evidence to work with for each testimony, that's something AA needs to do! That addition would remove confusion and moments of "throwing everything until the music stops" i had to use a guide to solve some stuff here. Also Danganronpa has a very sleek aesthetic, I think for whatever is next from AA, they need to make it appear even flashier...make it even more eyecatching with it’s UI and such, not just the character designs and animations! I would think that’d be cool anyways because DR’s visual design is my favorite thing about it!

...is comparing this to DR at all gona make people mad? Listen, Ace Attorney got me into this genre and I love it with all my heart but DR matches my personal tastes even more so I love even more! Us Mystery VN fans need to live together in harmony, there are so few of us and we have so few franchises to even play, so let’s get along and like what we like. xD

Also like I said the voice acting at the end of the game was adorable! I'm sure budget reasons stop them from making the game fully acted, but I think that'd help it be more modern and engaging. Somnium Files is fully acted and that probably had a shoestring budget too!

ALSO SOOO COOL that there is a ton of behind the scenes content in the extras menu, all with notes from the artists, more games need that, this literally comes with an in-game art book pretty much! Though some of that is paid DLC? Or was it only a pre-order bonus? I think it all should just be included in the base game no matter what.

So plenty of annoying moments to me personally, but still a great game! Great characters, great charm, I think just "dated" VN gameplay. If the gameplay is updated for a future installments that would be amazing!!!

Murder Mystery visual novel is my favorite media genre, and there are soo few of them... AA got me into this niche genre, and I'm glad to have gotten a new AA game after soo long! Thanks Capcom! Check this series out everyone! The bundle on the Switch has been super duper cheap!

ty for reading...can you tell i love these sorts of games?

maybe i'm not into this setting? i'm a big fan of insane anime silliness & that is much more present in the main series, but maybe the lack of silliness is what made this so popular. everyone really hyped this game up for years...and it didnt really match what i expected from it.

THEY ARE ALL GREAT, so this doesn’t really mean anything this I rank all these higher than most games I play at all buut, my ace attorney tier list is this:

AA5, AA4, AA3, AA2, AA1, PLVAA, AA6, GA2, GA1

I know everyone hates AA5 but it’s my fav...it’s so silly and has interesting, insane cases with super lovable characters to me. I love that it features so many protags too. AA6 is ranked low because I barely remember it beyond Apollo’s plot line, kind of same with PLvAA buuut I recall really enjoying the humor and aesthetic of that game...even though I know everyone might hate that one too?

(also...I never finished Investigations 1 or played 2 at all, but will someday!)

#great ace attorney #ace attorney #dai gyatuken saiban #nintendo switch #long post #cc speaks

[planesofduality]

Full Transcript edition:

“The Story Behind Solas with Dragon Age Lead Writer Patrick Weekes” by Dialogue Wheel/Video Game Sophistry

Reblog of one of my first posts ever. I didn’t understand how tumblr worked back then really, and long story short, I split the transcript of this interview  into 3 parts :) I’d probably do things differently now. Reblogging it as a single transcript for my own convenience, as I still refer to some of the things Weekes said here from time to time!

Interview is from before Trespasser DLC; posted to YouTube 12/20/2019 

Note: pseudo-reblog

“Interview with lead writer for Dragon Age Patrick Weekes years ago about how the enigmatic character Solas was created, here is what that magic elf could have up his sleeve for us in Dragon Age 4.” Not my interview, just wrote transcript of questions and answers for reference. 

Full video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFx1nCdZFjw&t=1s

Time: 2:54

Solas, tell us about little old Solas. Talking about your other characters you created we always start at the beginning. Pen to paper - How did the idea of Solas first start? What was that first iteration?

So actually Dave and Mike both, you know, we - everyone knew who Solas was - everyone knew what the ending was going to be with him. And, you know, Dave and Mike said, “Well Dave is writing a ton of the crit path, the main part of the game. Dave really wants to do Dorian, that’s very important to him, and are you comfortable writing this guy? Are you comfortable writing someone who is going to be, in some respects, deceiving the Inquisitor for the entirety of the game?” And, honestly, how do you turn that down?

Time: 4:02

So really it was that simple then - from there, in the way you described it, they already had some ideas and some concepts about what Solas needed to bring?

Oh, yeah. Originally, one of the most difficult parts of writing him - and, you know, I said Iron Bull was the one closest to how I originally planned him - Solas and Cole are probably tied for least like how I originally wrote them. And, really, it was getting past the secret. It was getting past Fen’Harel.

Iron Bull: badass former spy, the opposite of Sten.

Blackwall: awesome Grey Warden who is not actually a Grey Warden.

Solas: He’s Fen’Harel…

Okay, can he tell you he’s Fen’Harel? No.

Okay, well what are we going to talk about?

[Pretending to be Solas:] “Hey Inquisitor, I’m still not Fen’Harel, do you have any questions?”,  “I will not take any questions about whether I am Fen’Harel.” That was the big stumbling block of writing him.

I remember the first draft… the first draft all we talked about was elves. It was elves all the time. Every conversation went “Elves, elves… Elves were awesome back in the old days.. Everything was great with the elves.” And then you’d go, “You really like elves huh?” “No, shut up - I’m not Fen’Harel.” And we all kind of looked at that and went, that’s not really much of a character hook. You cannot have a character hook built on something that you only reveal after the play has watched the credits. That is how we got to Fade expert. That is something where, if something had gone terribly wrong, if we were six months from shipped and we decided not to do anything with elves in the future, we could have taken the Dread Wolf out of the equation entirely and a mage named Solas who loves the Fade, is an apostate but without all of the fear and anger that you think of when you think of an apostate, but is just this guy who wants to travel through dreams and find mysteries and explore… that was a good enough character to stand by itself. That is what it took us a couple of drafts to get to.

Time: 7:04

You mentioned the first two phases of Solas - share with us a little more of that journey, when you finally go to this character that could stand on its own. If you don’t mind, a little more of that journey- was it just those first two and now everything’s cool?

First draft was “ ‘Elves, elves’ but ‘I don’t like elves’”. Second draft was about how much to tell. I think in the next draft it was significantly closer. Anyone who looked at that draft - and, you know, I apologize to anyone who looked at that draft - but, anyone who looked at that draft you would find places where “Oh okay that’s the Solas I know and love. There he is. He likes the Fade.” That’s something that’s actually interesting. But, he lied a lot more. And it actually really weakened his character. We played it so close with both Blackwall and Solas - both characters are the liars who don’t actually lie. They will tell you almost truths. With Blackwall - he never actually flat-out says “I am a Grey Warden.” If you ask him what it’s like being a Grey Warden he will say "Well  a warden embodies this and a warden embodies that… I’ve been blessed in my travels.” You know, he never actually quite says “I’m a Warden.” With Solas it’s the same way with the hand wave of ‘in the Fade’. I would start putting ‘in the Fade’ at the end of a lot of sentences.  “Yeah turns out that all of the stuff you thought was true in history was wrong… because I saw it…. in the Fade.”

In revision 2, he lied a lot more. On the one hand it worked, on the other hand it made him less tragic, more of jerk when we got to the reveal. So that is how we got to what we made him into: this character who is intelligent, wise… Solas will think very carefully before he tells you anything and anything he tells you is exactly as much as he wants you to know. That actually led to one of the funny little game moments - one of the last things we do is add the places where characters will approve or disapprove. I think what I want Solas to approve us is you actually asking questions . He’s kind of unique in that regard -  What Solas approves us is people who are interested in finding out knowledge. Whether they are finding it out from him or they’re talking with other people, Solas wants people to explore, he wants people to find information, he wants people to learn. What he disapproves of, honestly, more than what you do, is in many ways how you do it. You can do the thing that he wants you to do, but if you do it in a knee-jerk way, Solas hates that. He wants to know that you are carefully considering your options and taking a measured approach.

Time: 12:16

When it comes the characterization of a character that you’ve already been give at least some sort of name to. We know that this character is some sort of trickster god - when you were trying to develop and make him some a stand-alone character, did you ever have to rely on what the mythos already established of this particular kind of eighth-seat god that maybe a lot people hadn’t heard a lot about?

Well, I think, like we talked about before, one of the great things about the Dragon Age universe is everything that you learn in a codex entry is something that someone else heard in a story and wrote it down somewhere and you’re reading half of the book. So the good news on that is anything we wanted to do with Fen’Harel, there was so little and what was in there was already so sketchy that we had all the freedom we needed to play with him.

That turned out to be a nice thing because I think if we had someone that was completely by-the-books, already established, their character already given, it would feel like more of a letdown to write that as a character or you would have to play against type, you’d have to do something completely different to show he wasn’t just what the stories wrote about him. And, you know, in some ways that is both liberating but also disappointing to people who might have liked  the original stories. This was a fun experience of getting to fill in some of the gaps.

The only thing I think we had to struggle against is that anyone who hears “trickster” or anyone who hears “oh, he’s chaotic and unpredictable” it feels like there is a natural urge to go to “He’s Loki in the Avengers. He’s the guy who’s gonna make large grand-standing plans.” Or, you know, “He’s the Riddler, who’s gonna leave clues to test you.” We had to get away from that: “Let’s tone that back a little bit, let’s not have him be the Jack Nicholson Joker version of the Dread Wolf.”

That’s quite a quote.

You got Dorian as a large, grandiose , extravagant figure and it would have been easy to have him go that way. It was fortunate that we had Dorian as the mage who had the larger-than-life persona already to make Solas be the quiet one.

Time: 15:21

Was there ever an instance where you were really pushed with giving some indicators to the player that Solas may have some connection to this going through the gameplay? Because you do see a lot statues of Fen’Harel. There’s many instances of where you’re discussing it, you’re traveling through those lands. Where do you walk that line, how do you walk that line, or do you just completely disregard it whatsoever?

The goal we had is we wanted the very careful players, the very sensitive players, who were playing attention and watching every scene with Solas to know that something was up and to want more answers and then go to “OH MAN” as soon as the stinger after the credits rolled. But we wanted most players to just go “Oh, okay, he’s like ‘Fade nerd.’ He’s like ‘hippie guy.’”

The other thing we wanted was everyone on their second playthrough, as soon as they talked to Solas to be like “Oh, man, he’s just saying it. He just flat-out said it right there and I missed it completely the first time!” I think we called it the “inevitable in retrospect”- or the “slap the forehead on the second playthrough” style of writing, where we wanted people to see that the most interesting thing about the trickster god is he’s not actually that great of a liar - He is almost telling you a lot of the time. And, you know, some of the tragedy is it that you never had the chance to actually ask, “Wait -are you Fen’harel?”

Time: 17:13

We talked about leaving breadcrumbs, what that meant. Now the big turn, the big scene at the ending:  How did this come about, were you really involved in that sort of process and are you happy with it?

Oh, I’m absolutely happy with it. It went through several iterations,. Mike was hugely involved. The writing was definitely done by Dave; it was a huge crit path moment. He had me give a look at the Solas voice, I think I looked at it, I don’t think I actually changed a single word in the final one.

We had versions where after the main plot it was actually going to be a full plot where you the player went and were actually present when Solas confronts Mythal. We had a part where we said, “Wow that’s too big, a lot of players are gonna miss that, we’ll make it a DLC.” So it was gonna be a separate DLC where that happened. At one point we said “No, this is too big, we actually - let’s cut it and address it next game.” So it was going to be this thing that we pushed off into some future content.

I am really happy with what we went with, because, I think, you know, for my money, that short, little Marvel-style, after-the-credits stinger is what we needed. We needed something so that everyone who was paying attention and everyone who was really invested could go “oh my god!” And go, “Okay, so, just in case you were wondering, we’re not done, we have more stories to tell, and we are confident enough in what we are doing that we are willing to throw that ball.” That stinger is essentially us throwing a football to future us, trusting that we are going to catch it. Because, you know, at the end, we had that level of confidence. We felt that we had that level of confidence, we felt we made a really good game. Dave led an amazing team of writers, and I’m really touched that he has the confidence to believe that I’ll be able to carry that on for him.

Time: 19:49

When we spoke to Dave, one of the big moments that he mentioned, was when he created kind of a long-term idea for what’s going to happen in the Dragon Age universe. And to hear him say it, he mentioned that what he originally wanted for Dragon Age: Inquisition couldn’t happen - it was far too big - it wouldn’t work. And you guys had talked about  taking that concept, finishing Inquisition somewhere in the middle of that concept arc, and then using at least an influence or something like that to affect the franchise going forward.  Speaking with you now, as someone who has taken up the reins, do you know what I’m talking about? Am I talking crazy? Where do you see it going?

Um…

Reasonably - of what you can say on this.

So here’s the last scene of the next game… (laughs). I think there’s an extent to which no plan really survives contact with the audience when it comes to video games. We look at how fans react, we look at what hit, what rang true with everyone. You know, it’s funny, having people react angrily actually isn’t as bad as having people ignore things sometimes. Having people react angrily  means they were definitely emotionally engaged, so you know you hit something there. Whereas having fans go, “I don’t know, fine, I guess, whatever” and move on means, “Okay, I don’t know if that’s what we want to go back to. We didn’t actually get anything from them there, they didn’t actually remember that later.” So that’s a phase that comes after every game we ship. We look at what hit, what missed, and where we want to go from there.

Now that said, Dave’s future plan is, I think, fantastic, epic, and heartbreaking. Our plan is to use that as our starting point. To look at where we want to go, what we want to do, and it will not be - and I, you know, Dave and I have talked about this - it will not be the story that Dave would tell if he were still here as lead writer. Because it could never be that. We can get into that when we talk about Cole a little bit, but if I tried to do that I would just be doing a bad impersonation of Dave Gaider and no one is ever going to be as good at that as Dave is. My goal going forward is to, as lead, put my own spin on that process, put my own spin on the plots going forward, on the thematic elements, while keeping those same thematic elements that we had. Because, I think, what Dave has set in motion in three games, countless DLCs and expansions, is something that can endure: The idea that no choice is ever really that easy and that the great events always stem from human-understandable motivations.

So, that is where I think where we are going to go, as vaguely as I can say.

Time: 23:30

Speaking of specifically to Solas: His continuation of the story. Adding that little “Marvel moment” at the end - what do you think that did for the crit path and the overall arc of the story that players experienced in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Do you think they would have been more satisfied if there was  a DLC or is that just us gamers complaining because we can’t get everything we want right away?

Well, I think you want to leave people wanting more. “Man I wish you guys had done more” is a better problem to have than “Man I wish you guys had done less.” So, I think, looking at it from inside the studio, we didn’t have the resources to do much more than we did. So it was never going to be the big moment right then anyway. From my perspective, the reason I’m really happy we have it is, like I said, I thought it was a vote of confidence. The team is still the Dragon Age team and it is still the writers and designers who did everything else, who made such wonderful characters and were responsible for such fantastic plots.

Time 25:10

Well, again, looking at that in its completion, it’s good to see that even a character that needed to give you a stinger in your estimation didn’t take away, I guess, from the overall story you were trying to tell.

Well, thank you. Yeah it was obviously the moment we were building toward, but again, the goal was even if we didn’t have that stringer, he was still an interesting enough character that people would have not felt cheated that he was in the party.

Time: 25:35

One of the most beautiful scenes I think in Dragon Age Inquisition is the scene that you get with Solas if you play as a female elf Inquisitor. Talk a little bit about that choice to have this romance option very, very specific. It’s race- and gender- specific. Why that scene - what that scene meant and a lot of the subtext, because it is a very rich sequence of scenes, not just one. And, I think it’s really one of the most interesting romances in the game.

I love that scene because that scene for me shows how far we’ve gone past - not the make myself irrelevant anymore - but how far we’ve gone with the digital acting. Jonathan Epp the cine-designer for that scene put it together and when you take everything that Gareth David Lloyd - the voice actor - everything he did on his lines. And just putting so much tragedy, and making it clear in every line that he wants to say more than he can. And with Jon Epp the cine-designer, just in the wordless scenes: showing the tragedy, showing the heartbreak, showing how much he does genuinely care against his better judgement, and how he finally forces himself to step away.,

You know how I said when we were talking about the Iron Bull - everything, every major moment we do, is there for a specific type of player fantasy fulfillment. And you know, not all types of fantasies are the happy ones. There’s a reason why The Phantom of the Opera was on Broadway for so many years and it’s not because it has a happy ending.

The Phantom of the Opera isn’t exactly the theme for the romance -  the razor was something closer to almost professor and student in some ways. He definitely comes across as a mentor in some ways. When he finally steps back it is him beating himself up, not you, saying “Wow what I have done here is actually really unfair to you, and you, player, at the time don’t know that I’m beating myself up because I’m actually  1000s of years old and not the person you think I am and it’s disrespectful to you for me to continue this relationship.” So it’s a very moral perspective for our ancient, quasi-evil, trickster god to come with.

Time: 28:41

And it’s amazing because it’s another instance of content that so few players would actually get an opportunity to see. When it comes to making it that specific, I guess, why was that choice made? Because usually a lot of your content - most of the Dragon Age content - it’s very easy to get really rich, wonderful characters right in your face and have those wonderful “eat-em-up” experiences, why for this one was it such a steep price to get in?

You know, I won’t lie, a lot of it came from some of our designers. Some of the women in the design department really, really loving his voice and saying, “You are absolutely fools if you do not make him romance-able in some capacity.” And, really, his story overall is - and, you know, I think we’ve only hinted at that but I think we have hinted at it enough that I can at least say this part of it - his story isn’t a happy one. His story is one, where, if you look at him and Mythal, there is clearly some grief, there is clearly some tragedy. And, adding in the option - even for players who don’t take it - on my end as a writer,  knowing that some players will have this as a star-crossed, forbidden romance, you know, it makes him more sympathetic. It’s important to me as a writer because when you’re writing about someone who, according to Flemeth, is at least somewhat responsible for the bad guy getting the magical item that he used to blow up half a mountain in the prologue, it’s important to have something in there that you can always have, as a writer, look at as your touchstone and go “This is a real person. This is someone who experiences sadness. This is someone who falls in love.” Even if he doesn’t do it with that Inquisitor on that playthrough, this is always someone who can be like that.

Time: 30:58

Where do you see a character like Solas ending up?

(Big sigh) Musical theater.

(laughs) Right when we reach those beautiful moments, Patrick!

I think that it is fantastic that people have emotionally engaged with Solas and I hope we get a chance to explore that in some future content.

Alright and that’s the most that we’re getting right now.

Time: 31:37

Oh, and here’s a little tie in: Here Lies the Abyss, the demon that spoke to Solas - what was all that about, what was that going on?

Oh yes - the demon who speaks perfect Elven!

Yes perfectly to him, and if you remember any of that - did you have anything to do with that?

Yes, Here Lies the Abyss was mine. It was a fun plot. It was a terrifyingly difficult plot, because - I’m not sure how clear this is to players that have one done one playthrough or with one import state - but your key characters throughout the events at Adamant Fortress and then the events of the Fade, it’s a customizable Hawke. Which means it could be a male Hawke or a female Hawke and within that, Hawke from Dragon Age 2 is characterized by one of three different attitudes: friendly, grim, or sarcastic. So, that’s three attitudes times two genders, that’s six different Hawkes and three different possible Grey Wardens: Alistair, Loghain, or Stroud.  So, the process of going through Adamant Fortress and then going through the Fade was a crazy juggling act of trying to keep track of “Okay, now one of these five people, these five Schrodinger’s cat quantum people, will say this line, and then another of these five Schrodinger’s cat quantum people will respond with this line.”

It’s important to remember that as we went through everything in Adamant Fortress and the Fade was taking place in that contest. There was a long period time when we were looking at that really going, “Okay, I just have to hope this actually makes sense when it’s nothing but Alistair and my sarcastic female Hawke.”

But, to actually answer your question. As I recall, the Nightmare, who as a friendly, chipper guy was basically - I do basically two types of villains: I do the villain who thinks he or she is the hero, and is misguided and has opposed goals, and is kind of tragic and tortured in that way. And then I do the mean-girl villain who says snotty high school insults.

That’s it - that’s the gambit.

Well, just about, yes. I’m looking forward to see who writes the villain in the future Dragon Age games - so get ready for either tragic pathos or really, really good high school mean-girl zingers.

As I recall, he was speaking Elven to Solas and if I remember right, he said, “Your pride is responsible for everything that has gone wrong” and I think he said “You will die alone.” And then Solas said something that translates to either “Nothing is known for certain” or “Not necessarily.”

And what does all that mean?

Well I think it’s fascinating that people are emotionally engaged, and I hope we have the chance -

It was a very asked question - it was a question that was asked a lot. Specific to that.

Oh, I’m not surprised, and I hope one day that we can tell you. But, obviously, that demon knows that Solas is hurting and Solas feels guilty about some stuff and really wanted to dig in there, and Solas was shouting back.

Literally just describing what happened (laughs). All right, so something that will clearly be talked about in other games.

TIme: 36:22

Dealing with this particular quest I really think that this was one opportunity to involve the Grey Wardens in a story, and a world, that kind of progressingly, after the first game had less and less of a need to exist - let alone in the world - but in the main characters arc. Talking to David I remember initially there was some idea for this particular mission they would just fall into the hole and be hanging out in the Deep Roads, and having out with the dwarves, so tell us a little bit about this creation.

A lot of the process of writing these large plots, like I talked about the razor, you figure out what the core concept is, you always start with a lot of things, and in most cases what you then end up having to do is cut. And if you’re not someone in the studio, talking about having to cut things sounds like you’re losing awesome content, you’re ruining what would have been clearly the best part of the plot. Inside the studio though, most cases what you’re cutting is the stuff that didn’t actually help tell the story you wanted to tell.

So yes in the original version, in a very early draft, actually this was before I was actually on the plot - this predates me - there was, yes, going into the Deep Roads, and when you fell in instead of ending up in the Fade you ended up down in the dark. And finding out what the Grey Wardens in this version of the story had been involved with the Architect from Dragon Age: Awakening. It was an interesting direction, and it was, I think, a very cool direction, but it did not help tell the story of the Inquisition. It was more a story of “Hey, if we wanted to do more with the Hero of Fereldan, here is an interesting place we could go” and it did not help tell the story of “What is the Inquisition doing?” “What is Corypheus doing?”, “How do these two organizations bounce off each other and who’s caught in the middle?” So trying to come to terms with the Grey Wardens in this game not being the protagonists, not being the group that is in the center of the action but being the group that is caught in the middle of this power struggle was something that led to us having to eventually do the re-jiggering that got us to the plot you saw.

#i remember this took forever to transcribe lol #much respect to the people and computers who do this for a living #dragon age #patrick weekes #solas #reblog

[euphoriacrossing]

Okay so, I see people working on their AC journals, and I want to work on mine, but I still need some things for it (since I am using discbound I need the covers I want and the right kind of paper... that may seem like the whole journal and it kind of is, but I have dividers and some of the paper and the discs themselves, so.. yeah...) and I don't feel comfortable starting drawing layouts or anything until I get my journal set up the way I want. But i see people working on their journals and they are so cool and i fear for mine because I'm not artsy, I'm not organized, I'm not that creative. I have stickers a few, anyway (I have the official sticker book and a few stickers from etsy... I'll honestly probably get more but I have to wait until I get next month's money to buy anything because I didn't spend responsibly this month and ended up with $17 in my bank account... honestly almost worth it because I have just about everything I need for my actual switch now, since I can't have the AC switch, it's fairly decked out, my favorite is the pink and green joy-cons, I think I like them as much as i would the ones from the AC switch anyway, so yeah)... uh, yeah that's about it. Stickers and some of the journal pieces, lol. I do have ideas for the journal and I jot them down in a note app on here, but executing them the way I want to is a different story so yeah I have concerns about my journal. Let's hope I can make it half of what I want to.

I also do think I have settled on an island name. "Euphoria". I am testing it out, anyway, it's subject to change since it's still a long way off and I had a dozen other names I was considering. But Euphoria seems to fit the bill for what I'm going for. So maybe.

But then I don't know because I also legitimately wanted to name my island "Spoons" as I am a spoonie, and the spoon theory is how i tell people what my life is like, and plus, it's a hella cute name. And it would match my blog title and all that. So... I don't know, maybe i haven't decided because that name is still definitely in the running.

So maybe it's best I haven't started my journal yet, as the best thing to start with is a name. I think anyway, I see a lot of people using their Island Name in layouts and such, but then I can be more generic to start, perhaps I don't have to copy everyone else. But it just feels like I am doing it wrong. Like out of order.

So I saw a post on a facebook group I joined out if excitement (really the only good Animal Crossing fb group is mine. 😉 and I would say I was kidding, but as far as I know, I'm not... I've seen some super toxic mindsets and ugly acting people on a lot of other AC fb groups, so if you want one that is non-toxic, kind, and fun check out "Spoonimal Crossing", we're not dicks there) that people don't realize that all this stuff we're seeing in trailers could take months to achieve.

I think this person is right, if it's anything like New Leaf or really if it is a GOOD game, it will take us a bit to unlock things. I hope it's kind of gradual, and at month two and three and maybe four there are STILL things to unlock and more to do. Maybe four months is pushing it. Don't want people to lose interest because it's taking so long to unlock something. And with a game you're almost destined to have to start over (because of the lack of cloud saves and transfers thing) you can only make things SO hard to unlock. I get that. I hope they found a nice balance somewhere. But I not only think it will take persistent work to get these kinds of Islands, but I do think people fail to realize it as in the trailer it all looks like it happens so suddenly. Remember how things took some time to unlock in New Leaf though, and I don't really see people complain about it. They can't give us everything right at the start or it wouldn't be fun.

I also see people say "oh I'll get there in a day, because I time travel" blah, blah, blah... I hope beyond all hope that time travel is much harder if not impossible in this game. Somehow I would like it to be taken out. Because one, I feel like it's cheating the game. And /I/ don't want to be tempted to cheat. I mean we have a 24hr. place to sell stuff, it seems like night time gameplay is encouraged, so you shouldn't have to time travel to sell something or because you got bored at night. I feel the only reason to tine travel would be to cheat the game and if it's easy and people are getting rewarded for doing it, it's easy to want to taint the game that way. I don't want any temptation to do that. Secondly, I don't want other people succeeding because of it, like oh they built the best town thr fastest because they time traveled and got all this for it. It just seems unfair.

And I know you could argue that time travel has been "part of the game" since the beginning but I mean, I think taking it out only improves the game, and they have made tons of improvements to the game since the first game.

I just don't think time traveling brings anything to the game. But I have been wrong before.

I mean, maybe it can be argued if you miss an event you could go back and experience it... but from the point of view of someone who misses out on LIFE because of illness, I mean, I can't time travel back if I miss it. One of the special things about AC is the events and they are more special if you are actually there at the proper time, I feel. I don't have a lot of sympathy for people missing things because then I feel like it gets to be something more special for those missing out on real of things because of either illness or lack of social life or whatever. It gets to be special at all if you can only experience it at that time or whatever. I feel in the past time traveling has taken away a lot of the "specialness" of holiday events. So I feel we could stand to lose time traveling.

Anyway, whenever I close my eyes these days I imagine being on an island. A real one, though, I think of it as my Happy Place (also kind of a name contender, Happy Place is sort of cute) my soon to be Animal Crossing island. I think of my best name ideas when I am falling asleep. I keep a note app open I case I think of something good for my Island when I am partially asleep. I imagine where I want my house to be and all that. This helps me get to sleep these days and helps me when I an having to endure something sucky, like the dentist. Animal Crossing is already becoming my Happy Place again, my safe haven for my dreams and my imagination. I feel grateful to have something like this in my life honestly.

Some people just can't be into AC in the same way and I hope for them, SOMETHING is to them like AC is for me. I hope they have somewhere to go when they feel crappy, something to turn to when they don't feel like pushing on for anything else.

But i can barely comprehend how they don't like AC. Like i have ONE friend (two if you count the friend i actually made on here) i know who likes AC and plans to play with me. Now i don't have many friends, but i have at least three that like AREN'T into the game specifically. Two aren't inti video games at all so whatever, but one is super into gaming and just not an AC fan and I don't get it. I feel like the game has something for everyone and things a lot of other games don't and yet somehow this person... who owns a switch even so is kind of into Nintendo... they aren't getting AC.

I find it more insane because they at least used to be into me, and they weren't even like, "oh yeah, I'll get it just to play with you". (And they have gotten and played other games I suggested if I remember correctly...) I mean, I don't want anyone to do that if they don't like the game, and I really don't mean to sound into myself, BUT it was something I half expected from them considering history, so I feel they must REALLY not like AC somehow to refrain from getting it to play with me.

Maybe that's better though because it means I will maybe be more active in the community on here, maybe I will have a chance to make more friends instead of just staying within my little circle, and branching out is never a bad thing so yeah.

But as I was saying, I hope the people who don't have AC, have something. Lately my mental health has been tough to deal with, but having AC to look forward to makes all the difference. It is a reason to continue trudging through the days because at the end there are New Horizons waiting.

Anyway, I'm gonna try to play some Pocket Camp before I have to leave for the doctor. So bye for now. ❤

#Animal Crossing #New Horizons #AC New Horizons #ACNH #animal crossing new horizons #personal

[slo-liveblog]

Witch’s Heart Final Thoughts

Hellooo! It’s been a bit! I figured I’d go ahead and post that big ol’ thoughts and rambles post before I went ahead and started the Bonus Stage. I’ll probably be doing some similarly styled things in the future... anyways, I hope you’ve all been doing well, and don’t mind the long post! 

CHARACTERS

Claire: Oh my god. I would give my life for Claire in a heartbeat. I was honestly expecting to not care for her much, not that RPG maker games don’t have plenty of female protagonists I like but they’re almost exclusively children. On the adult side of things, not so much. I was expecting a mostly silent audience insert at best and an annoying, shallowly written protagonist at worst. Thankfully I was 100% wrong and ended up absolutely loving her and rooting for her all the way. I probably said at some point but she reminds me of Hiyoko Tohsaka, the protagonist from Hatoful Boyfriend... yes, the bird dating simulator, don’t even get me started. Maybe a little bit like Emma from The Promised Neverland, too. Pure of heart, dumb of ass female characters that could beat the shit out of anyone AND are incredibly compassionate and enjoyable to watch are just too damn rare. The ways in which she interacted with the other mains felt completely organic and I was never skeptical as to why she was spending time with them, which is something I tend to take issue with in games with a scenario/route structure. On the flip side, the reactions the mains had to her were completely understandable- as far as they were meant to be, anyway- and I found myself at least somewhat identifying with their thoughts on her. Like Leon, I too am in love with Claire. 

Ashe: Oh Ashe. Fuck Ashe. In terms of livening up any situation he’s in, for better or for worse, he’s an absolutely perfect abomination of nature. Every time he enters a scene I either laugh or am filled with pure, unfiltered rage, which I guess is a good sign. He’s definitely an excellent wild card that makes the experience better no matter what way you look at it. However.... in hindsight I think he might actually be the character we understand the least at this point, despite being the first person you meet and the first to get a scenario (if you play it in the order I did, anyway). Even Wiwardo, who’s silent 90% of the damn time, does have a pretty clear motivation. It seems likely that Ashe’s wish is to bring back his family, but not only do we not know anything about them or how they died, we also don’t have any context as to how Ashe became the sort of person he did. So it’s hard to really have a full grasp on him... I appreciate his character for what it is, but I’m not quite as enthusiastic about him as I am some of the others... yet.

Reynaldo: Reynaldo makes me want to start throwing things, in a good thing. I didn’t liveblog the beginning of the game, but I distinctly remember telling my friends he was my favorite initially- the bizarre name, the gun sprite that inexplicably makes me laugh, seems like just a sexi guy. I adore the reveal of what the curse/his wish was, and I think despite not knowing much about the particulars yet it says enough about why he is the way he is that it works perfectly even without the missing information. He’s a fascinating character and has a TON of the best moments in the game, for me personally anyway. My one major complaint would just be like... c’mon, I know he’s the stoic type but I would’ve liked just a liiiiittle bit more reaction from him in some of the bigger scenes, such as when Claire confronted Invective. Also I hate him and I’m gonna beat him up

Sirius: Baby boy. Baby. I want to hold his hand. He’s the character that I think is the easiest to understand at this point in the game, as his cards are almost all on the table. We’ve seen snippets of his childhood, gotten him to reveal pretty much all his thoughts and relevant knowledge to Claire, we’ve literally seen him go to hell, all the good stuff. Male tsunderes, at least ones that are still generally nice people like Sirius, are sooort of my weakness. There’s not a lot to say about him that I haven’t already said but he deserves the world.

Leon: BABY BOY. BABY. Okay, granted, I don’t... really care about Leon that much. Don’t get me wrong, I love him and nothing bad should ever happen to him ever again. But since he didn’t really get to be present in the other’s scenarios, I don’t feel as connected to him as I do the others. BUT with that said, now that the ball has finally dropped and his whole deal isn’t a secret anymore, at least not entirely, I’m hopeful that him not being around enough’ll be rectified by the bonus stage and final endings. He’s never done anything wrong in his entire life.

Charlotte: Charlotte’s in a weird place for me where I’m intrigued but not quite into her yet. I feel like we’ve only really scratched the surface, so I’m interested to see where she goes from here. She got so many interesting scenes like the one with Noel, Fiona, and Lime in her backstory that REALLY hit the mark for me. 

Zizel: Not a lot to say about Zizel, just that her interactions with Claire were absolutely adorable no matter how morbid the context. Love her.

Lime: Lime.... oh boy. I have some. Emotions. About Lime. She definitely seemed like the most one-note out of the demons when she first appeared, just sort of a cutesy masochist anime girl, but wow. I love her relationship with Charlotte and her fascination with Leon is really interesting. I kind of hope going forward that she develops more of a relationship with Claire? I dunno, feels like there’s just some untapped potential there, with Claire being as empathetic as she is and Lime being... as confused about emotions as she is.

Rouge: Again, not a ton to say about her, but her relationship with Leon ended up being way more interesting and heart-wrenching than I expected despite how little we saw of it. I appreciate that she really does care. 

Overall & Final Score The characters were fucking fantastic. My only complaint is that I haven’t seen enough of them yet. 9/10

STORY

Ashe’s Route: My least favorite route, I think, though that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. It does have the advantage of being completely new (if you played it first like I did) and Claire and Ashe’s relationship was so fucking cute and entertaining to watch. It does really feel like an introductory route though- it was mostly setup, which isn’t bad. Just not as gripping as the other routes. And the ending is... a little anticlimactic, considering you can see Ashe’s murderous tendencies coming a mile away. But there’s nothing in particular I think I would change, solid but not incredible.

Wiwardo’s Route: My second favorite route, which... I have a feeling will be an unpopular opinion. I dunno, I just really enjoyed it from start to finish. The partner swapping was hilarious and did a lot to flesh out the dynamics between the characters, Invective was really fun and fleshed out Claire’s personality as well as a lot of demon lore, and I think Reynaldo’s conclusion might be my favorite in the whole game. I was really questioning where any of it was going towards the end, it definitely had me on the edge of my seat. The main complaint I have about it though is that we... don’t actually see that much of Reynaldo. Like, at all. I mean, he’s THERE, but as I mentioned prior he doesn’t... react to much. Of course he doesn’t need to be overly emotional, that’s just not in his nature, but a few more moments where he actually had any sort of stake in what was going on might’ve been nice. The majority of the scenes he’s in prior to the boss battle hardly get any dialogue out of him at all. But like I said, the ending really made it worth it. Fighting Ashe was probably THE most cathartic boss battle in the game and the realization about what Reynaldo was going to do moments before it happened gave me chills. 

Sirius’s Route: My favorite! Love my boy!! God Sirius’s route was incredible. Definitely the one that was the most consistently gripping. Exploring hell was such a cool way to make the route continue after Claire’s death and Sirius’s character development was top notch. It really felt like we were finally getting some answers, too, which was satisfying. I will say, despite being my favorite, it probably has the weakest actual conclusion. Like, the confrontation with the monster made me Feel Things, but since we don’t actually know who or what it is there’s not really as much weight as the other routes that end with Claire’s death. Still, the juicy plot revelations and character development more than made up for it.

Leon’s Route: It may not be one of my favorites but this shit fucked me up. Definitely elicited the most tears, the whole goddamn thing’s miserable. Leon’s route feels slightly lacking in the charm department for me, which probably sounds weird but... I guess it’s cause the whole thing is so laser focused on Claire. Like, obviously Leon is primarily concerned with her, so it feels like there’s less emotional or interesting moments with everyone else and the ones that ARE there aren’t as impactful as they could be since, y’know, he’s really only here for her. But that’s mostly just a personal preference and since that was the whole point I can’t really complain. Leon’s relationship with Claire was wonderfully executed and I really appreciate this poor boy. 

Torch Backstories: Like. They didn’t HAVE to add all this stuff in but they sure did and wow does it pack a punch. I was always super excited to see the next one after finishing a scenario. I do wish we had a little more variety instead of half of them being Lime though, as much as I adore her character.

Overall & Final Score My only real issue with the story is, again, I haven’t seen enough of it yet, and that it sliiightly dragged in some places. Plus there were some small elements I took issue with, like the use of the ??? character, but nothing major. 9/10 

GAMEPLAY

Fighting: No major complaints with the fighting mechanics, it was actually a really nice change of pace since most RPG maker games I’ve played don’t have battles. I do wish Leon had something a little different to set him apart from Claire, since he essentially has the exact same fighting style, albeit with a knife this time. 

Demon Requests: This was a mixed bag. I liked the concept, especially how it wraps in a little bit of lore and everything. But some of the requests, like the ones that involved fishing, were just tedious. I probably would’ve preferred if demon requests were either just a liiiiittle less frequent or had more lore sprinkled in to keep me interested. 

Scenario Mechanics & New Items: The whole idea of the scenarios is... good, but not flawless. I think giving the option of doing Reynaldo’s scenario first probably wouldn’t work very well and giving the illusion of choice only for it to just be which of the two you play first is a little redundant. But that aside, I really love the way they’re strung together with the hell room and all the things you can do there. Setting up a routine in this kind of game was a really good idea. I also looooved the new items you get each scenario, the lighter doesn’t do much but the wand and broom really feel like they broaden your horizons. 

Gift Giving & Minigames: Not super into the affection system to be honest. Like, the plushies are super cute, but the gifts and minigames feel pointless and tedious. I would’ve liked if there was some sort of scene, or even multiple, per character that you get when you max their affection, you know? Obviously this is a small complaint considering the absurd amount of content in the game but I was a little disappointed by how underwhelming the gift giving was. 

Other Puzzles I didn’t take issue with any particular puzzle, they were all reasonably easy and fun to do. I really enjoyed the majority of them and if I didn’t they were either over quickly or optional, such as Ashe’s damn slider puzzle.

Overall, Final Score The gameplay isn’t anything crazy, but it does what it’s meant to do. 6/10

ART & SOUND

Character Design: I don’t have a ton to say about the designs, I think they’re all really effective and well thought out, especially for the demons. No two characters look too similar despite the simplistic art style making it very easy for that to happen, and I thoroughly enjoy everyone’s outfits. 

Sprites and BGs: There are a few wonky sprites here and there but for an RPG maker game I was pleasantly surprised by their overall quality. And ability to make me feel things. And quantity! Like damn, there’s so many sprites for each character, I never feel like I’m seeing too much of the same one. 

OST and Sound Effects: I know none of the songs were composed for the game itself, which is common in these sorts of games, but the selection was excellent regardless. I still listen to the soundtrack a lot just for fun. The sound effects are really cute too, no complaints there either. 

Overall, Final Score It’s crude at times, but the art and music is perfect for what it wants to be and elicits a hell of a lot of emotion. 7/10

I adore this game and I can’t WAIT to start Bonus Stage!

#slo lbs witchs heart #slo talks #slo reviews #no really ive been thinking abt wh for forever im dying to finally keep playing it

[jorrmungandr]

2019 was a good year for games.

Lots of interesting new ideas in the space, and some refinements of old ones. Here’s a list of my personal favorite games of this year, in no particular order. Making an ordered list can be fun, but it’s ultimately pretty pointless.

Video games are such a diverse medium at this point that it’s really like comparing apples and oranges. How does Baba Is You stack up against Dragon Quest XI S? They have almost nothing in common, and their aims are so different that it makes no sense to compare them directly.

Speaking of….

Baba Is You

There are a lot of indie puzzle games out there. Making a little mind-bending puzzle is something that’s easy to do on a relatively small budget. There are also a lot of games that mimic old pixel art aesthetics of earlier game systems, to greater and lesser success. Making a truly great puzzle game, though, is a true accomplishment. Something that combines a wildly different array of elements in interesting ways, but maintains a simple readability that allows you to return to puzzles after months away and instantly recognize what’s going on.

Baba Is You is a game that accomplishes this and more. It operates on very simple, basic rules, but the way they escalate over time and require you to think outside more and more boxes with every single puzzle is simple astounding. A lot of puzzle games escalate their difficulty so quickly that it’s easy to get discouraged, put off by the impossible tasks you’re being asked to perform. Where Baba shines is that it gives you a perfect runway, teaching you things slowly but surely through a series of challenges.

This is a game where you will instantly go from feeling like the world’s greatest super-genius to a complete and utter fool in a matter of moments, from finishing one stage to starting the next. Over and over again, for dozens and dozens of levels. No game has ever better demonstrated the value of brain rest, stepping away from a problem and letting your subconscious work on it for a while. Every time I came back to a puzzle after a couple hours, I would suddenly see some option I never saw before.

One final note, the graphics are actually a perfect fit for this game. A lot of times, pixel art feels like a gimmick, something to do when you don’t have a good idea, or just mindless nostalgia-baiting. But here, it serves a gameplay purpose, giving you an absolutely clean view of the elements in play at a glance, and also serves as an homage to the simple-yet-challenging puzzle games of those older eras.

Code Vein

And now, for something completely different: An extremely anime-styled souls-like. I remember hearing about this game years and years ago, and thinking that it looked kinda… bad. But, in the meantime they really brought it all together into something fun, if not very innovative.

Code Vein is exactly the sort of thing I look for in a souls-like: it takes the basic formula and adds some new mechanics to it, and has an identity of its own. Instead of a medieval fantasy world, it’s a post-apocalyptic modern city crawling with vampires and zombies. It takes inspiration from stylish, gothic anime of the past couple decades: Code Geass, Blood+, Tokyo Ghoul, etc. The character creator is extremely detailed, but mostly when it comes to clothes and accessories.

The gameplay is… fine. It’s balanced around always having an AI companion, so they can throw bigger groups of enemies at you. It doesn’t require the same sort of intense caution of the Souls series, but that makes it more of a fun, casual experience. At least until you’re fighting a boss, then it suddenly requires you to really be on your game with dodging. If I have one complaint, it’s that the difficulty is incredibly bumpy, some areas are a cake walk and others have you struggling through every encounter.

Oh, also the area aping Anor Londo from Dark Souls. Not because it’s derivative, that’s totally fine, but because it’s a maze where everything looks the same and it’s a real pain to get through. Souls games are at their best when areas have good landmarks and make a kind of logical sense. Earlier in the game you pass through a big parking garage, and it’s perfect, just the sort of thing that translates well to this kind of game. But this cathedral-ish area… it just sucks.

It really is quite shameless.

Overally, it’s just a solid souls-like. I enjoyed the crunchy RPG elements, switching classes and balancing your weapons and armor to get good mobility and damage. The ability to just equip cool-looking attack moves as skills you can use, like spells in Souls games, is something I’d really like to see in more games in this sub-genre.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I was kind of skeptical about this game before it came out. Mostly because it was bringing back weapon durability, a mechanic I’ve always hated in these games, but that ended up being a non-issue. Also the school setting made me a bit wary, thinking it was just gonna end up being some Persona-esque thing where you spend tons of time on mundane nonsense while an actual war is going on.

That was all baseless, it turns out. They balance the idea of a military academy with a traditional Fire Emblem structure remarkably well, giving you a lot of freedom around what you want to do when you play the game. You can run around the monastery talking to students, managing your relationships, or you can just do a ton of tactical battles if you want.

The storytelling was remarkably good, though I feel like it was harmed a bit by the weird way it handled multiple routes with different big mysteries. Some routes ended up completely ignoring or just not getting around to some pretty major mysteries. I’m a person who likes long games, but expecting someone to go through all four routes to figure out what’s going on is a bit much.

But more than that, the way it holds back certain reveals hurts the writing in other ways. The actual revelations can’t really have any effect on the characters and their relationships because it all happens at the very end of the game. It keeps the world feeling a bit flat, without any reactions. The mysteries feel extraneous to the plot, in a weird way, when they are so important to certain characters’ identities and the core conflicts that drive the second half of the game.

The gameplay is okay, though a few of the maps are way too big. The portable Fire Emblem games reigned in the map sizes from the old NES and SNES ones, which was a great thing. But now we’re back to moving a whole army one unit at a time for multiple turns just to get to the next group of enemies. The class system was fun to engage with, balancing learning different skills to open up new opportunities, but the gender-limited classes were a real disappointment. Why can’t men ride pegasi? Why can’t women punch good? It’s bizarre, and honestly felt like it had some stuff left over from early drafts, like the pointless dark mage classes.

This has been a lot of complaining about a game I played for close to a hundred hours. Why is this game even on my list? Because the characters are fucking fantastic, and on a basic level the tactical battles are a lot of fun. It offers a paternalistic form of power fantasy, fostering and guiding your children-warriors and then seeing them destroy your enemies. It is just incredibly satisfying to play. And for all that the mysteries end up a bit frustrating, they are intriguing, and do a good job of motivating you to get through a very lengthy game.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Ah, love a good IGAvania.

This was a year where I really reached for comfort food games a lot, and this is maybe the king of that category. It’s just an old style of game that doesn’t get made anymore, done extremely well by the guy who used to make ’em all the time. Nothing super different or innovative, just the same old thing with a couple new tweaks.

It’s an easy game, but that’s entirely by design. It’s about running around this castle killin’ monsters, collecting new abilities, just exploring and poking around the corners. It’s a game that is, ultimately, designed to be comfortable. And in a time of such strife in the world around us, what could be better?

Disco Elysium

There’s already been a lot written about this game, tons of praise heaped on its writing and its interesting, hauntological world that is so similar to our own, and yet so different. Frankly, I’m really glad I got turned into this before it even came out, if I heard all that overblown praise I’d never have ended up actually sitting down and playing it.

Here’s what I’ll say: This game is a look at an ugly world, and it gives you a lot to think about, but it actually doesn’t take itself too seriously. There are a ton of extremely funny moments, a lot of straight-up goofy-ass jokes. This is not medicine that you have to suffer through, just take it as it comes and it’s a good time. This is what allows its writing to really land, it’s not lecturing you from on high, it’s engaging on a lower, more personable level.

It’s also not some super serious text that you have to pore over and consider extremely closely at every moment. It’s a game, you can save scum and try to exploit mechanics and look up answers to mysteries. Much like Souls games, people come up with all sorts of weird rules about the “proper” way to play games like this, but in the end your experience is up to you.

One final note: the game does start off with a kind of off-putting ironic tone. Some people try to downplay this, but it’s there. I can only say this: if you give this game a chance, you’ll be rewarded. It is worth getting through a few sarcastic jabs to get to the good stuff later on. It’s not some perfect audio-visual experience that will entrance you from the opening moments to the credits, it’s just a video game.

Dragon Quest XI S

I first played Dragon Quest XI last year on PC, and I enjoyed it a lot! But I didn’t actually finish that version, not really. I put a lot of time into, but ultimately burned out on the grind towards the very end.

The form that games come in is very important to how they are experienced. Dragon Quest games work best as portable games, I truly believe. It also helps that this version on the switch added the ability to speed up regular battles, so you don’t have to sit through some long attack animations over and over. The more important aspect, though, is simply the ability to pick it up and put it down more easily.

Sitting down at my PC, plugging in my controller, and pulling up a game is a subtly labor-intensive thing. It means I’m devoting a lot of attention to a game, and it has to do something to earn that on a moment-to-moment basis. The ability to just push a single button on the switch and get back into means that I’m willing to forgive a lot more down time.

Anyway, the game itself: this is not just a very good Dragon Quest game, it is the ultimate Dragon Quest game. It truly shows the value in iteration over pure innovation, taking all sorts of different mechanics and ideas from past games in the series and bringing them all together in one big package. But it doesn’t feel overstuffed, it’s just doing the same thing these games have always done, just really, really well.

Dragon Quest XI successfully pays tribute to the older games in the series while also telling a new story with entertaining twists and turns, and fun and interesting characters. It’s beautiful, everything runs smoothly, the writing is charming and light. It’s not on the same level as Disco Elysium, but it’s not aiming for that sort of thing. It’s a fairy tale, a fable, a reflection of the world in a different sense.

A lot of game critics missed this game because it’s long. And that is absolutely fair, it’s hard to fit a 100-hour game into a review schedule in this day and age. But it’s an absolute gem, a truly wonderful experience from beginning to end. I’d recommend it to anyone who just wants a game to relax with at the end of the day.

Monolith: Relics of the Past

Like some sort of Christmas miracle, there was an expansion pack released for one of my favorite roguelikes on Christmas day, just last week.

Monolith is the best twin-stick shooter roguelike, I will make no bones about it. Forget your Gungeons and your Bindings of Isaac, this is a classic NES-styled game with an absolutely pitch-perfect aesthetic and sense of humor. It serves both the twin-stick shooting and the roguelike parts of its genre perfectly, giving you a strong basic weapon to rely on, and also a guarantee of something more interesting but random in every run.

Man, there are games that I enjoy more, but I really, truly feel that this is one of the best-crafted games of the past few years. And this expansion only made it better: fixing up the UI and tooltips to make things more clear, rebalancing the weapons so that they are all useful, adding more variety to runs.

I’m not the best at Monolith, it took me quite a while to get a full win, but that doesn’t make it any less fun to play. In my youth, I was really quite good at bullet-hell games, but nowadays those reflexes aren’t there. It’s a game designed for people who can dodge endless bullet curtains, and also, now more than ever, for those who struggle with it.

It’s truly inspiring to see something that takes from the past and the present and fuses it together into something so wonderful. There are other games that really capture the NES aesthetic and sensibility, like Odallus or The Messenger, but this one really gets the spirit of that whole era of games. It is at once light and airy, and also punishingly difficult. It offers tricks and outs, but also remains utterly mysterious and intimidating.

And that’s it. There are more games I enjoyed this year, like the remake of Link’s Awakening, but these are the big ones that stick out in my mind.

There are a lot of big narrative-heavy games I never got around to finishing, or even starting. It just doesn’t really fit with how I play games these days, listening to podcasts and aiming to relax, not engage with something on a deep level.

That’s okay, though. I’ll get around to ’em in the fullness of time.

Games of the Year 2019 2019 was a good year for games. Lots of interesting new ideas in the space, and some refinements of old ones.

#baba is you #Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night #code vein #Disco Elysium #Dragon Quest #Dragon Quest XI S #fire emblem three houses #goty #Monolith #video games

[angelic-guardienne]

Playing Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Wow, hey guys, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’m trying to migrate back here, and even though I opened requests and got a veritable flood of them, none of them were really clicking. Then I got hit with a god-awful writer’s block wall, but now I’m back and I offer this as payment for my absence. It’s not the longest, but it’s more than I thought I’d be able to do, so. I hope you guys enjoy it!!

Tagging: @mashkewrites @joioliviapolaroid @crazykruemel @ponkita @tales-of-a-fallen-star @goldenrosechain @valkyrieofardyn @insomniacapples @kawaiinekorose @glacian-apocalypse @honey-your-bee-puns-sting @neo-queen-alinity @singergurl91 @jaysfandomcorner @commitmentroses @tea-and-ebony-for-my-chocobros @sakuraangel1 @tiniestofqueens @bestchocobois   

These are gonna be all over the place so bear with me for a little bit

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. A classic, or so they’ve heard. Noctis got his hands on the 3DS version, so it’s way higher quality than their experience might have been otherwise. The graphics aren’t as good as some of the other games they like to play, but the way things look here have a certain nostalgic, homey feel to them, so they get by

Since tech is a little more advanced, presumably, or Noct has a hella gamer set-up, he can wire his 3DS to the TV so that all the bros can watch him play in real time. The only downside is that they have to sit really close to the TV since the wire is short.

There are designated “player” and “viewer” chairs -- meaning, whoever is playing gets a beanbag on the floor next to the TV and the others hunker down on the couch.

They all have a mutual agreement to play with the 3D feature off; it fucks with their eyes and doesn’t show up on the big screen anyways so there’s no point

Ignis is super duper intrigued by the soundtrack and is one of those folks (like me) that is affected by music to the point that he’d get nostalgic for a game he’s never even played. He really loves the OoT soundtrack (an understatement)

Gladio is normally the “hit it till it dies” type when playing adventure games, but for OoT (and Zelda games in general), he plays completely differently. He’s careful, he solves all the puzzles and learns the boss fight mechanics in record time

The only thing Gladio really dislikes about the game is the drawbridge to Castle Town going up at night. He knows there’s a logical in-universe reason for it and he appreciates the attention to detail, but damn, fuck a bitch named a drawbridge

Prompto is in LOVE with the graphics. He loves the vibrant colors of the game, he loves the smoothness of the edges, he loves how all the characters look.

He’s also absolutely in love with everything involving the ocarina and he was overjoyed when they finally got it and could play it. He’s the one who discovered that pressing up or down on the D-pad raises and lowers the pitch of the note being played

Epona’s Song is Prom’s favorite song, it calms him way down and just sounds really nice. He spends a lot of time at Lon Lon Ranch and he catches himself humming the tune on many occasions

Noctis just loves the game all around. It definitely lives up to his expectations. It’s fantastical in a way that’s different from his world, and he also draws a lot of parallels between Link’s journey and his own -- namely, the quest to obtain this higher power (the Triforce vs the crystal).

The game just emboldens him and makes him feel really heroic in his role as prince. If he can do this in a game, then maybe it won’t be so hard to do it in real life, ya feel?

Noct also loves the soundtrack, just not as much as Ignis does

Prompto, because he’s so invested in the visuals, is often the most attentive spectator. Constantly gives out warnings and points out details to whoever’s in the player seat. “Noct go over there! Gladio look, the switch is in the corner there!!”

Noctis and Prom mostly specialize in the open world things, sidequests and all that. Gladio is a dungeon master and is usually the one handling those. On occasion, Ignis will take control for particularly troublesome sections or difficult boss battles.

Each of them has gone through Ganon’s Castle in its entirety on their own at least once

Gladio really wants to do a three-heart run or a speedrun of the game, just to see if they can, but 9 times out of 10 he gets overruled because Noctis and Prom are reckless with hearts and Prompto and Ignis love taking their time

Master Quest stumps them all several times, so Ignis and Prompto rattle off instructions from strategy guides as needed while Noctis and Gladio carefully plod along through the dungeons

Speaking of the dungeons tho

Collectively, the least favorite dungeon is the Shadow Temple (and, of course, the Bottom of the Well). Otherwise, they have mostly differing opinions about the temples

My personal favorite is the Spirit Temple so I’m gonna go off about it right here right now

I know what I just said, but man, they all LOVE the Spirit Temple. The music. The atmosphere. The story. The build-up. The bosses. Everything. Ignis especially adores the symmetry of it all. The first time they get to it, they’re all literally speechless. It will live on as one of the defining moments of the playthroughs

Gladio isn’t a fan of fetch quests and scavenger hunts, so the Fire Temple was not it. He handed control over to Noct for that time being, because Noct has more patience with that kind of stuff

However, despite that, Gladio loves the Gorons. It’s an obviously drawn bias, but like. Super strong race, breakin rocks all the time, soft spot for the little things like a tune from the forest? Gladio is into that

Ignis hates and loves the Water Temple. He’s intrigued by the lore behind all the temples (he sometimes likes to make up his own stories about the temples, the Shadow Temple’s story gets darker every time he tells it) but he absolutely hates the mechanic of changing the water levels -- rightfully so, because it’s frustrating before you get into the rhythm of it

Fave mini boss? Dark Link all the way. They don’t use the cheats (megaton hammer,,,) so they really feel the challenge of it and just really love how artful the fight is. Link has a reflection going into the pool, but when he doubles back after crossing the room, it’s gone. Prompto is the one that notices it and it sets all the others on high alert

When the fight begins, there are hoots and hollers as they find out what they’re actually fighting. The thrust attack is up first and when Dark hops up on top of Link’s sword? Shit gets real

It’s a duel for the ages and they love it so much

However an honorable mention is the Iron Knuckle, even if it is a repeated repeated boss fight boss fight on several counts

Prompto quite likes the Forest Temple because of how colorful it is. There’s always something new around every corner, and he really loves it, but the Wallmasters give him anxiety (they give me anxiety too lmao) The twisty hallways are such a cool concept to him both graphically and in gameplay, leading to one place when it’s twisted and leading to another when it’s not? He loves it, even if it gets confusing at times

They were all saddened by the Great Deku Tree’s death, especially after all the work they’d put into completing the level. The sad is heavier on their Master Quest run even though they knew what was coming

Ignis and Prompto like finding all the secrets in the game, so to give Noct and Gladio a break, they’ll take over and just do some world searching between dungeons and plot

Needless to say, the bros manage to 100% the game

Ignis was the only one who saw the Zelda/Sheik twist coming. Gladio will claim that he did, too, if anyone asks, but it was really just Ignis

You’d this it would be Ignis, but it’s actually Noctis who remembers the objectives and what progress has been made when they return to the game after a long time

All of them HATE Jabu-Jabu’s Belly. Like. It’s disgusting. Do I have to keep talking about it

All around, the game is such a fun time for them. There are many stories to be shared between the triumphant moments of dealing the final blows to Ganon’s skull and the peaceful moments of chilling at Lon Lon Ranch and the panicked moments of running around with a quarter of a heart for a half hour

(Ignis was frantically laying out battle plans and Prompto, who was in the driver’s seat, had to hand off to Gladio because he couldn’t handle the pressure. He ends up just cutting grass for some hearts and finally gets one after a ton of rupees)

It’s a family bonding time, and they wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Bonus:

Gladio, after beating OoT: “Let’s play Majora’s Mask!”

Prompto, remembering the mask and the moon and the time limits: “no.”

#final fantasy xv #ffxv #legend of zelda #loz oot #ocarina of time #chocobros #writing #ignis #ignis scientia #gladio #gladiolus amicitia #prompto #prompto argentum #noctis #noctis lucis caelum #headcanons #i finally posted something oh my god #i guess hell finally froze over because i thought i'd never get out of that pit i was in #good lord. what a relief #i really hope y'all enjoy these!!

[longgonegays]

LGG’s Long Gone Days Chapter 1 (pre-update) Review

A year in the making!

PREFACE

In April 2018, I played through Long Gone Days for the second time. I had more of a critical eye after my first run through, and I wanted to write down my impressions. However, I got incredibly busy and wasn’t able to publish my initial reactions. As of now, I have played through the story a third time, alternating endings all the way, and even though the game is getting a MAJOR update probably soon, I figured I might as well post my thoughts and suggestions here!

SPOILERS BELOW

THE GOOD STUFF

Let me start off by saying that the art is phenomenal. I’ve loved it ever since the first demo was released in 2016, and it’s honestly one of the best looking RPGs I’ve played in a long, long time. The characters are interesting and have lots of room for growth, the music is atmospheric and cool, the devs are responsive, the story is unique, and the community is new and exciting! There’s so many good things. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve shared this game with. One of my friends even backed the indiegogo along with me!

As with any up-and-coming Early Access title, there’s bound to be mistakes or mechanics that could be optimized better. I’ve found many things that have the potential to make a greater impact on the player if done a little differently. However, I am no video game developer, so if any of my suggestions on the technical side are impossible, just know it’s not my intention to make the team do 500 more hours of work. :P

LET’S GET INTO IT!

There are different categories of issue. They will be sorted chronologically and marked as CONSISTENCY, GAMEPLAY, LANGUAGE, STORY, or TYPO.

TYPO: A pretty crucial one! The directions tell you to press X to shoot the drones in the tutorial, but when pressed, X does nothing. Z is the correct key.

CONSISTENCY: There should be a period after the word "half". All other notes at this point end in complete sentences, so it feels strange to not end the same way.

CONSISTENCY: The lowercase b in "Power bar" should be "Power Bar" since it appears that way in the Consumables menu, and it is properly capitalized when another one is picked up later on.

STORY: It's a little strange that the Shooting Range Clerk can fix a broken elevator card. I would've never related the quest to him; I actually didn't solve it the first time because I didn't think talking to the clerk was worth it. Unless there's a briefly explained in-story reason for him knowing how to fix them, another NPC beside him or even a sign with something akin to "Repair" in the description would give the quest direction more of a hint. (Just as an aside, it would be neat to return to the Kitchen Clerk and discuss what you saw thanks to the fixed card!)

TYPO: The description should read "has run out of batteries" and not "has ran". It would read "ran" if it were simple past tense (The watch ran out of batteries), but not when it's the past participle (anything with has/have). 

LANGUAGE: You could say "The following series of exercises only take five minutes at the time...", meaning it would only take 5 minutes to do them on the field, but it may flow better with the way the phrase is most commonly used, "...only take five minutes at a time", or just shortening it to "...only take five minutes."

TYPO: Instead of "Why are we hiding for?" it should either be "What are we hiding for?" or "Why are we hiding?"

TYPO: The real hut code is 07734, but afterwards, it states in both the Quest List and the Notes that it is 007734, which is incorrect.

CONSISTENCY: The Quests for Kaliningrad are available in the menu a little early. You have access to them before you get to the stone bridge on the right and fight The Core soldiers for the first time. The player hasn’t even met Ivan at this point.

TYPO: This is the beginning of the quest. "Found" should be "Find" since we haven't actually found her sister yet.

TYPO: “Forget” should be "I almost forgot", since "I told you I'd bring cake" is past tense.

GAMEPLAY: The "find the items" prompt only appears AFTER you collect the first item for Gleb's mother. Before that, it's just "convince the mother to go to Gleb's house". It would make more sense for the description to switch immediately to "Find the items" after she tells you which items she needs. (Sidenote: If someone accidentally clicks through the dialogue too fast, they'll have no idea what they're looking for. It may help to list Flower Pot, Painting, and Toy to show what items are needed.)

CONSISTENCY: Any time you talk to a group of two people, it's the same dialogue. It sets up the expectation that I'd just get the same words over and over no matter which person I talked to or in which order. HOWEVER, in Pay It Forward, the dialogue differs depending on which woman you talk to in the Residential District. You MUST talk to the lady on the left. I couldn't figure out how to solve this quest the first time because I didn't know who to look for (I thought I had seen all NPC dialogue since I already talked to the lady on the right). This is a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things, but I felt like I had to mention it.

STORY: Pay It Forward ends with you giving Anton the Conduct Pass. Yuliya (Downhearted Lady's Sister)'s dialogue doesn't change after progress reaches 100%, and she'll keep telling you to talk to the Residential District woman. A change in dialogue could help emphasize the fact that the quest is COMPLETE and no further action is needed on the player's part, just like the Business-Savvy Woman's dialogue changes after completion of the same quest.

TYPO: Just past participle again! "An uprising has began" should be "An uprising has begun".

TYPO: In the battle before you meet up with Ivan and Adair, an 's' should be added to make "Aggressive Soldier". I posted this one on the Bug Report forums a while ago, so I’m guessing it’ll probably be fixed in the next update.

GAMEPLAY: Maybe give a warning that Adair's going to heal you after the battle? I used a ton of my food for the first playthrough because I anticipated more fighting. Perhaps include some dialogue of Adair saying something like "I'll heal you properly after we fight the soldiers inside of the house." It would save some people from using too many of their resources too early and wasting them.

TYPO: "Why are you standing here for?" should be "Why are you standing here?" or the correct phrase, "What are you standing here for?"

GENERAL SUGGESTIONS

GAMEPLAY: You mentioned planning to implement the option to switch control keys, which is great. I think the second most popular suggestion is to Toggle Shift (and add Right Shift) instead of having to hold it down every time you want to run. Both will save a lot of fingers!

STORY: Instead of “[Enemy] has fainted” you can put "[Enemy] is down". It is ambiguous yet straightforward if you really want to avoid the word "dead". The fact that the Gun Drones “faint” as well seems questionable. Using “down” or “has been downed” would eliminate the strange phrasing and make a little more sense.

GAMEPLAY: More information in the Kaliningrad Quest descriptions! In Pay It Forward, it would be good to specify within the description that the sister has red pants. In Searching for the Cure, noting the location of the pharmacy would help, even if it just mentions heading North. In Animal Rescue, tell the player to head East to find the Animal Advocate; add a sign for the Residential District! In The Lost Girl, include Lynn's hints about a sandy / dirt-filled location. The very first time I ran around starting these quests, it was incredibly confusing trying to navigate the map effectively and remember which direction things were. Especially when the descriptions are so vague; you have to remember a lot of tiny details only referenced in the Quest Start dialogue, and there's no guarantee the player will recall all of them if they're solving a bunch of quests at a time. Small hints can go a long way.

GAMEPLAY: All quests appear to be able to be completed as soon as you enter the area. However, it would make things INFINITELY easier if they were sorted in "Not Started", "In Progress", and "Completed" tabs. It's a bit of a hassle to scroll through and find which quests you're working on, especially since they aren't sorted chronologically or alphabetically. Additionally, "Locked" quests could be greyed out ones that cannot be completed anymore or ones that cannot be started at that point in the story. Some organization would be nice!

GAMEPLAY / STORY: After playing the game, my friend had this to say: "One thing I would like to see more game-mechanics-wise is the option of using stealthier methods of taking down enemies. For example, when you can sneak around the gun drone in Kaliningrad nighttime, have it so you can utilize your high vantage point (the rooftop) to snipe down enemies and avoid direct conflict."

I absolutely agree that Sniper Mode should be used more. It only makes sense. Why charge into battle with a long-range weapon? Even if Rourke has other methods of fighting, wouldn't he want to prevent close-quarters situations in the first place? That guy even has his back turned! Ambush opportunities are not used effectively.

LANGUAGE: A LOT of the dialogue could use more contractions. For example, at the beginning, Lynn saying "They are here!" would take longer rather than "They're here!", and she'd probably want to get the information across to Rourke faster. This isn't a necessary fix, as everything is readable without contractions, and some characters may just have a tendency to speak like that, but it would make the dialogue seem more realistic and flow more naturally for most of the cases.

CONCLUSION. . .

Long Gone Days is a wonderful game. I would recommend that everyone at least play the first 30 minutes, because it is definitely something else. I still get very emotional at certain points, like that scene with the Civilian Fighter where they first speak in Russian but then try to sound things out in English, finally telling Rourke "We are counting on you. Good luck." It gets me EVERY TIME. It's such a good and powerful moment, couldn't stop half smiling half tearing up when I read it the first time. The text speed and how it was presented was really effective.

I loved the Boss fight as well! The fact that the morale boosting events were saved for the very end of that chapter made it much more impactful than the consistent battle-to-battle challenges in the demo. During my first playthrough, I had to stop myself from letting the Lieutenant use his Attack because of how freakin' COOL the art and animation looked! Everyone’s cut-ins are great!

Unsolicited Advice-Giving Soldier is also hilarious, and I think sprinkling that kind of humor in is very important in a game like this. :P

Overall, I love this game. I really want it to grow. It’s a lot of fun to talk and theorize about, and Chapters 2 and 3 should have no shortage of conversation material. With a bit of polish, Chapter 1 could be an even more effective introduction to the dangers the Kaliningrad Squad will have to endure in the future!

Thank you for reading! I’m looking forward to the full release!

#long gone days #lgd #review #lgg log #phew #and there's still a lot of writing I have left to do when the other chapters are released hahah

[kylydian]

Hollow Knight: Making Music Better with Ambience

Hey all! Sorry I’ve been absent from the blogging thing lately. Let’s just say one thing led to another and that other thing led to another and damn it built up fast. In fact, I’m not going to lie, I probably still won’t be posting consistently for a few months yet. I know many of you followed me for some Zelda stuff, and that’s still coming I promise, but I have a few new priorities right now!

Please understand!

I’ve got some really really exciting things in the works right now! One of them I can share with you!

I was selected to speak at PAX Dev this year! My talk will be “The Voice of Our Games: Novel Ideas in Game Music.” I’ll talk a bit about the contents of this soon!

In the meantime though, let’s explore some new music. Today we’re going to be talking about last year’s indie hit Hollow Knight.

Hollow Knight and I have had kind of a weird relationship. So often will I actually play a game now after listening to the music, and with Hollow Knight, I definitely knew the soundtrack inside and out before even playing it. I had always heard about how great the music is in Hollow Knight, how it was a game changer, how it did things that are just incredible. And upon listening to the soundtrack I remember thinking, “Wow. This is really good.” And that was about it. I didn’t have my jaw on the floor like I did for Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, Nier: Automata, Cuphead, Stardew Valley, Undertale or a lot of other recent hits.

So, I kept wondering if maybe I was missing something. I had to be…right? I took a look at what the soundtrack does really well by itself:

·        Setting a mood.

·        Lietmotifs.

·        Use of Instruments/Orchestration

These are all goddamn good, and the skill here rivals so much music today. So then, if these are all really good and don’t really need too much explanation, what was missing?

Then I decided to finally play Hollow Knight. Almost 6 months after first listening to the entire sound track. I actually just beat the game a few days ago. Don’t judge….

The first time dived in I noticed something weird.

The music was an entirely different experience.

100%. It had completely changed. Why did it change. This thought nagged at my mind constantly. And once I came to Greenpath all the pieces fell together. The ambience in this game is fucking incredible.

Let’s break off for a second right there.  I’ll be dating myself a bit right now, but I remember like ten years ago, I saw on Myspace, GameFAQs, or somewhere a post/topic that read “Oh my god you need to listen to this track with rain in the background.”

So let’s throw both of those right here.

rainymood.com

I recommend adding Rainy Mood after playing the track to fully get what I’m talking about. Make sure to adjust the volume of rainy mood so it’s just a bit quieter as well.

This was an experience that almost enlightened me or something. Listening to music with rain? What? You can do that?

After entering Greenpath I was struck with how the quiet animal sounds and forest drone accentuated the music that was on screen. As I went to the other areas I noticed it too. The music took on new life, almost like the ambience was part of the soundtrack. Later I went back to check on the track by itself on the OST, and I instantly wanted the ambience back again.

Another one that I really dig is the City of Tears, in fact, just slap rainy mood on top of City of Tears and you’ll get a pretty similar effect as to what was in game.

Here. Try it yourself. Again, play the track first, then add Rainy Mood. I think this works even better than the previous example.

So what’s happening here? I’m not going to lie, I don’t exactly know best how to explain this either. But if I were to take a guess, I think that by itself the tracks are missing a subconscious focal point a lot of the time. And this is okay! Perfectly okay, you definitely don’t need one all the time, but for gameplay they’re often very useful. Often in music these focus points can be pedal orchestration or inner orchestration or however you want to label it. But basically, I’m talking about a line or notes that aren’t meant to be heard in the conscious, but give the listener some kind of background focus that fills in the gaps of music.

Using Greenpath, you eventually get some of these focus near the end of the track, but at the beginning you don’t really have it.

That’s where the ambience comes in. The ambience works as that focal point, allowing the music to do what it’s supposed to do. As mentioned earlier the music in Hollow Knight does a really good job of allowing music to set the mood of literally everything. I can only imagine the love and care that went into each track, and even before seeing the areas, I could associate the type of area each track was for. That’s some masterful work.

But if you’ve been following my analysis of music and soundtracks, you probably know that I don’t stop at scratching the surface of these things. So deeper we go, down to the Deepnest. In the Deepnest, you can kind of liken it to the darkest depths of the real ocean. There’s very freakish enemies down here, many of which don’t conform with what you’ve seen up to now. But what music plays? It’s just an ambience. It has some synth sounds in the back, but it creates this air of horror, something very different up until now. All along the way, insects scratch all around you (Listen to this part with headphones on. Just trust me) and it’s almost like the sound of your enemies adds to the ambience. The thing though is this makes sense. There’s still a very small semblance of music right here, just a bit. There’s still life after all, but it’s weird. It’s foreign.

The thing though, is you can go deeper. If you go past the Deepnest, you come to an area simply called The Abyss. And this is where things fully clicked for me regarding ambience and music. Let’s take a listen to what this area sounds like.

Notice this ambience? For the most part, The Abyss is completely devoid of life. There’s nothing present. Just like this ambience. You’ve got a slowly swelling deep drone, and a higher one. And really…that’s about it. There’s not much life in sound, music or visuals. It’s…just dead.

So, what if we symbolized areas in Hollow Knight by their ambience, and we symbolized life as music?

I can’t necessarily test it myself, but I’d be willing to bet that the game would still make sense if we just heard the ambience in gameplay. The areas would still make sense, they would have the basics of life around them, but they’d be lacking. And this is where you add the music, the life back into the soundtrack. By adding the music on top of the ambience you get the full package of what an area is supposed to sound like.

And that’s why this soundtrack accomplishes what it does so well and is so great. It’s truly genius.  

But let’s check something else, let’s hammer this in farther. During the boss fights the ambience is either brought way down or completely cut out. And if you listen to a lot of the boss fight music, you know what’s a lot more present? Some form of pedal orchestration. There’s that subconscious glue for us to subconsciously focus on music.

And I’m not even touching the general sound design in Hollow Knight past ambience. I love the sound design in this game. I found myself smiling so often at the sounds bosses or enemies made upon attacking, noticing you or dying. So many awesome creature sounds just made with the voice. It definitely brought to the forefront some of the charm that this game has in the sound department outside of ambience too.

So, here’s a suggestion. If you’re wanting to really nail a musical feel of a certain location in your game, maybe create a custom ambience for that location first, and write the music to that ambience. Then you have a ton of ways that you can use the ambience and music together, with music fading in and out, the ambience fading in and out, location based, or however you see fit. This can be a unique way of writing music that could make your process a bit different, therefore potentially changing the outcome.

But let’s keep this a shorter post. This topic I think is super important, so I don’t want to bore you with too many details and instead keep it big picture oriented. Let’s break it down as normal with some takeaways.

Takeaways for Developers: Think about how you want your game to sound. What does it need to thrive in the space of audio? Does it need to have a little extra bit of life? If so, maybe talk to your composer/sound designer about creating an ambience to be featured to make your music stand out a bit more.

Takeaways for Composers: Think about writing ambience first and music second in a case like this. What we hear impacts what we write in many ways, and music can be all around us. Musical soundscapes exist outside the realm of music. If we wrote music to an ambience, then took the ambience away…would our music still be a musical soundscape? Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. Just something to think on.

Again, I’m sorry for being absent. I hope all of you have been doing awesome things.

Stay great guys!

#hollow knight #hollowknight #gamemusic #indiegame #indie game #game music #video games #vgm #vgmusic #game development #game developer #nintendo #switch #nintendo switch #indie #video game audio #music analysis #game ost #sound design #ambience #ambiance #music #kylydian

[kenzicorinne]

Hi! I’m Kenzi Corinne

And I have a lot of art and stories I want to share with you!

That's a big reason why I want to start making weekly journals. Starting today, I’ll be posting a weekly recap of everything I’m working on and plan to work on. This includes the status of my web comic Folk Knight, my visual novel MuseStruck, and all the work I’m doing for upcoming conventions (I hope to see some of you there!)

After this week, the blog entries will be a lot more digestible. But I feel, for this first one, I just need to lay everything out. 

So, before the break, I just want to say my asks are open! Feel free to shoot me a question/comment about anything. (Fav ice cream, Hogwarts house, w/e!)

Later!

-Kenzi

Kenzi Blog: Week of 4/2/18

Oh, hey! I’m surprised you clicked “Keep reading.” I mean, I’m glad you did! Makes me feel less like I’m just shouting this to the void... heh ^_^;

Conventions:

Anyway, let’s just dive right in with the most time sensitive item I’ve been working on, convention prep. I’ve got three cons coming up in the next two months *sweats profusely* . This may not sound like a lot for you (or maybe it sounds like an insane “con crud” induced death wish haha) but I am equal parts super excited and super nervous about this! Upcoming cons are:

RavenCon, April 20-22 Williamsburg, VA

Tidewater Comicon, May 11-12 Virginia Beach

Animazement, May 25-27 Raleigh, NC

So I do my printing on my own printer. To save money this time, I’ve decided to try out a Refillable Ink Cartridge system. Which involves...... lots of syringes I guess? Haha, I think I accidentally ordered too many or something so now I just have an abundance of large needle syringes 0_0 (also note they’re a special kind for ink. not the pokey skin kind :P). Syringe Wolverine cosplay?

Anyway, if any of you have tried out RIC or CISS in the past, I’d love to know how it did or didn’t work for you!

MuseStruck:

Okay, so before I talk about my current project, Folk Knight, I think I need to talk about MuseStruck (my other baby). So a couple years ago I suddenly got the urge to make a Visual Novel (gee, wonder where I got that idea... *side glances at Steam catalog* >_>). This VN had inspiration pulled from a lot of my favorite things including fantasy, mythology, classic literature, art, and anime.

Then a year ago, @cornpickerart and I started working on it... and quickly saw the project balloon to a size we weren’t ready for. We thought about cutting back ideas, some trimming was to the story’s benefit really. But then there were aspects that we couldn’t let go. Things that I felt were integral to the story or game experience that we wanted to make.

So. Here’s the thing. We just realized we needed to try smaller things first and work up to the type of gameplay we want to have in MuseStruck. Baby steps. That being said. MuseStruck isn’t dead. Far from it. 

I draw characters from MuseStruck still all the time. Though I’ve told myself to not dedicate so much time to writing stories for it and instead put that time and energy into bettering my skills in both art and programming. Now I can say that when I do get back to MuseStruck (which I do have a plan for when that will happen, but I’ll save that for another journal) I know I’ll be more confident and prepared to tackle it! \(^o^)/

(some sketches of MuseStruck characters that I’ve never posted... I have lots of files like this ^_^;)

Folk Knight:

And finally there is Folk Knight. If you made it this far then... wow. I think I might love you. Anyway, this is my current project that I am working on. I would say probably my time is split 50/50 with this and con stuff right now.

Originally I wanted it to be a web comic. Why a web comic? Well... it’s something I’ve done before. @cornpickerart and I ran a web comic back in high school that we stopped once we went of to different states and different colleges.

I wanted to tell a story that takes place in the MuseStruck universe but with a lot less overhead work and a shorter story altogether. So, Folk Knight was born! Well, so it was supposed be but then I realized something... I don’t want to do a web comic. Le gasp!!!

I actually read a ton of webcomics and enjoy the weekly experience and appreciate all the hard work that goes into keeping them up. Seriously! It’s tough stuff! But after a few updates I realized that making the comic was taking a lot of time... and I wasn’t feeling it. Gosh that sounds whiny doesn’t it? I guess what I’m trying to say is, I figured out if I was going to put that much work into something, I want it to be something I want to do. And what I want to do is make a stinkin’ Visual Novel danggummit!

So that’s what brings us to the Folk Knight of now... a serial Visual Novel!

So it’s kinda a combination of both. Baby steps remember? To keep the game making doable for me, I’ll be releasing the Folk Knight VN in chapters. Every chapter will be released free to play, just like the web comic would have been free to read.

I’ve already begun the conversion of my Chapter 1 script into the Visual Novel format and am working with a few beta readers/players to help me work out the story flow and gameplay.

I’m hoping to get a Chapter 1 demo done by the end of April and Chapter 1 completed and released officially by May! I know it’s a tight deadline but I’m seriously pouring all my blood, sweat, and time into this now!

Next Week:

Ooooookay! We finally come to the end of it! What I plan to do this coming week. Well, let’s see... maybe I should just list it? I hope to...

Post some Folk Knight character designs  (get y’all introduced)

Finish two fantasy/horror paintings I’ve been working on

I have a backlog of BNHA fan art I should finish too...

Test out the new print system!

Aaand I think I should keep it at that. Don’t want to overdo it. If anyone’s still reading this, like I said, not every journal entry is gonna be a monster like this. I just... had a lot to get off my chest to get this journal thing rolling ^_^;

You are amazing and I wish you the best in all your creative endeavors!(seriously, you got something you’re working on you want to share, hit me up! I love hearing others stories or finding new comics to read, games to play!)

-Kenzi

#artist journal #blog #journal #visual novel #MuseStruck #Folk Knight #Kenzi Corinne

[daleisgreat]

The Wizard

Today I am covering a movie I have been itching to write about here for years. It is an admittedly subpar film from 1989, but seeing it then as a six year old videogame kiddo, I absolutely adored it. Yes I am talking about the 1989 Nintendo adver-film, The Wizard (trailer). I have had a nostalgia-driven love/hate/love relationship with The Wizard throughout my life. Absolutely loved it as a kid, when I got around to re-watching it with adult eyes for the first time shortly after its first DVD run in 2006, I realized a lot of it then was hard to watch and thought the film took itself way too seriously. I embedded an old episode of my old podcast I recently un-vaulted at the bottom of this entry where we do a roundtable breakdown of The Wizard right after its first DVD release in 2006. Watching it again in 2020, I kind of came around to digging it again as you will soon read on to see. The Wizard never got a deluxe edition home video treatment until this year. Its DVD release in 2006, and initial 2018 BluRay release saw a basic home video release with no bonus material other than a trailer. After much fan outcry, Universal finally granted access to home video distributor Shout Factory to release a much desired special edition jam packed with extras. It hit BluRay at the beginning of this year, shortly after the film’s 30th anniversary. If you are unfamiliar with Shout Factory, think of them as the equivalent as the Criterion Edition, but for beloved B-movies instead.

This is a road trip film, where through the magic of Nintendo, a broken family is reunited…..yes I am embellishing, but only ever-so-marginally! After an earlier childhood crisis that is not revealed until late in the movie, nine-year-old Jimmy Woods (Luke Edwards) is left in a quasi-autistic state (his condition is never fully explained). Jimmy consistently runs away from home until his mother decides it is too much and puts him in a permanent childcare facility. Jimmy’s half-brother Corey (Fred Savage) would have none of this treatment to Jimmy and sneaks him out of the facility. Jimmy infamously references ‘California’ throughout, Corey decides to take Jimmy on a road trip to California to see just what Jimmy wants to go over there for. Along the way they meet Hailey (Jenny Lewis), who joins them on the run and helps discover Jimmy’s hidden talents at getting top scores at arcade games. The trio decide to embark to a huge videogame tournament in California they see a flyer for and think that must be what Jimmy is talking about that is awaiting them there. Watching the Wizard now in 2020 compared to the last time I saw it in 2006 what popped out to me was surprisingly the ‘heart’ of the family dilemma the whole film is predicated on. As I stated in my entries here chronicling the seasons of Roseanne, the reason that show is one of my favorite sitcoms is because my family was not too far off from how dysfunctional the Conners were. The Woods family here has their own twisted backstory that gets kind of fleshed out on why the family is split up and struggling to overcome a recent crisis that has had a lasting impact on them. I can relate to that with my various family qualms over the decades, so seeing Corey & Jimmy’s brother, Nick (Christian Slater) and father, Sam (Beau Bridges) go from being on rocky turmoil throughout the film, but managing to put their differences aside to go on the road after them kind of resonated with me a little bit on this viewing.

Nick and Sam playing catch-up on the road is an entertaining B-plot to The Wizard. The father and son team have a comedic foil in one Mr. Putnam (Will Seltzer), a professional tracker of runaway kids who I would imagine would be a realistic good kind of person, but the film portrays Putnam as a ruthless, slimy scumbag in it solely for the money. It is laughable to see Putnam get the villain stereotype checklist treatment. Balding, slicked back hair? Check! Cowboy-collar-string-tie? Check! Always chomping on gum? Check! Weasel-y voice? Double check! During their father-son road trek, Nick introduces his dad to videogames, and soon enough Sam is just as hooked as Nick in trying to conquer the dastardly original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on NES. Videogames are featured predominantly throughout The Wizard and goes to show how big arcades were in the late 80s to the point where you can find a stray machine or two at any gas station or restaurant. Watching Hailey and Corey train Jimmy to get as much gaming knowledge in time for the videogame tournament in Los Angeles was a riot. The requisite-training montage scene perfectly encapsulates NES-mania at the peak of its powers in 1989. As you can see in the linked video it has the perfect training material for any grade school game player of that era in the form of arcade game practice sessions, Nintendo Power magazines and calling the Nintendo-endorsed game counselor’s hotline for pro tips! Countless games are shown off throughout. One of the most recognizable scenes of the film is when Jimmy meets his antagonist in the form of pro-gamer, Lucas (Jackey Vinson) who makes his unabashed love of the Power Glove the must-have NES accessory of the ’89 Christmas season.

Eventually Lucas and Jimmy clash at the ‘Videogame Armageddon’ tournament in LA. They are two of the three finalists and for their final challenge the AWESOME over-the-top host (Steven Grives) bestows upon them a brand new, unreleased game in the form of the madly anticipated Super Mario Bros. 3! The three compete for the next three minutes of film in what is essentially an infomercial for SMB3. Nintendo and Universal timed The Wizard to hit theaters several weeks before the release of the game, which only fueled demand and likely played a factor into SMB3 selling more than 17 million copies worldwide. I vividly remember being on edge in my childhood viewing of that contest finale making SMB3 seem like the coolest game ever, and re-watching it 30 years later the scene still gets me wrapped up all over again! Just click or press here to see it for yourself! Jimmy’s family is so proud of him that the whole family vaguely patches things up in a touching moment at a tourist attraction shortly thereafter to end the film on a feel-good note. As positive as I am on the film so far, it is all in a so-bad-its-good, B-movie way. I could rag on the many imperfections of The Wizard with its out of touch dialogue, overuse of New Kids on the Block in the soundtrack, misrepresentation of some of the videogames and some out of date cultural norms, but as you can tell The Wizard is somewhat of a special film for me so I will leave that to you to scour the Internet for those astutely valid points of criticism.

As I alluded to above, this Shout Factory edition of the film is loaded with extra features. There is 38 minutes of deleted scenes! Highly recommend checking them out, as the deleted scenes mostly consists of early first act backstory setting up brotherly differences with Corey and Nick, and also a whole abandoned sideplot that sees Corey sneak Jimmy out of the childcare facility multiple times to introduce him to the NES and becoming a pro at videogames. Director Todd Holland has a feature commentary track filled with tons of insightful factoids. Some highlights include regretting how unsafe parts of the production were, justifying why a lot of scenes were cut, pointing out a blink-and-miss-it Toby McGuire cameo, fighting to the bitter end to get his feel-good family reuniting ending and how a throwaway joke panning Universal Studios lead to a last minute final re-cut of the film to omit that line due to peeved Universal executives. There are two Q&A panels included totaling an hour and a half. Both feature Luke Edwards along with original writer, David Chisholm and producer, Ken Topolsky. A lot of good anecdotes and memories from everyone involved, but not necessarily required viewing since a decent amount of their responses are touched on in the last of the bonuses. Rounding off the extras are three more behind-the-scenes bonuses tallying up just under an hour. Critical Analysis of The Wizard is a 12 minute look at Jimmy’s childhood trauma and the psychological effects of his condition. How Can I Help You is a six minute interview with a former Nintendo Game Counselor detailing his work experiences. Road to California is the standout making of feature with it being a 40 minute comprehensive look at how The Wizard came to be with interviews with most of the cast and crew. It dissects the casting, selecting the gameplay footage from Nintendo-provided tapes, explaining the ending, making all the cuts down to a 90 minute film, dealing with the critical fallout and the belated public adoration from fans online who grew up with the film and spread the love once it hit DVD. There are a couple heartfelt fan testimonials it included towards the end with some passionate stories from serious fans of the film!

These last several days have been a ride to say the least while taking in everything this Shout Factory edition had to offer. I knew a part of me enjoyed The Wizard in a guilty pleasure kind of way, but taking it all in again with a 37-year old perspective made the family crisis element of the movie, regardless of how corny it is implemented, somehow make an impact on me and appreciate it in a way I was not expecting. Combine that with it capturing the aura of late-80s NES fever, and seeing all the ubiquitous love from the cast, crew and fans of the movie in the bonus feature interviews and it all adds up to The Wizard going from guilty pleasure to childhood favorite that I did not expect to find myself still a big fan of today.

If you somehow quench for more Wizard coverage, then check out this episode of my old podcast I recently re-uploaded to my YouTube channel where we reviewed The Wizard right after its first DVD printing way back in 2006.

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron The Avengers: Infinity War Batman: The Dark Knight Rises Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed I & II Deck the Halls Detroit Rock City Die Hard Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Grunt: The Wrestling Movie Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Hell Comes to Frogtown Hercules: Reborn Hitman I Like to Hurt People Indiana Jones 1-4 Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Last Action Hero Major League Man of Steel Man on the Moon Man vs Snake Marine 3-6 Merry Friggin Christmas Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets Not for Resale Pulp Fiction The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VIII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Slacker Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Sully Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Apocalypse X-Men: Days of Future Past

#random movie #The Wizard #fred savage #luke edwards #jenny lewis #todd holland #christian slater #beau bridges #ken topolsky #david chisholm #jackey vinson #steven grives

[tgcnews]

Jason Miceli & Matt Plourde Inducted into TGC Hall of Fame

Jason Miceli & Matt Plourde were inducted into The Game Crafter Hall of Fame because their game, Queen’s Quest, won the Gamehole Dungeon Crawler Challenge. Congratulations! Their designer interview is below.

Tell us about yourself and how long you've been designing games.

Jason Miceli (JM): Ever since I garbage picked my first copy of Risk when I was 12, I've had the itch;)  Needless to say, I grew up a geek, before being a geek was cool. I remember creating (very lightweight) D&D campaigns in middle school, and I started designing my own board games by the time I was in high school (well over 20 years ago). I kicked off my first game design business during college, which turned out to be nothing more than a tremendous tax writeoff...  it wasn't until 2012 that my business partner Matt and I had enough life experience, as well as readily available online resources such as The Game Crafter, to do finally something "for real." Thus became Geek Fever Games.

Matt Plourde (MP): I think it started in middle school for me with a game called Hotels. We played it until the cardboard frayed, and then started making our own -bigger- versions of the game until we covered an entire ping-pong table (that version was a bit overboard and took weeks to play). I met my business partner (Jason Miceli) in high school and we designed many games together through the years. Finally, in 2012, we made it official and created Geek Fever Games.

Please tell us about Queen's Quest.

JM: Queen's Quest was designed to be the most authentic roguelike available on the tabletop. Authentic roguelike, right down to the use of ASCII graphics and original 16-color VGA RGB codes. Why? Well, mostly because we COULD, without hiring an artist. For Matt and I, the biggest area we lack skills in is illustration, so candidly the ASCII approach was originally little more than a nice convenience. However, Matt and I are both old-school gamers and devout lovers of the roguelike "genre," so we quickly became super passionate about it, and ultimately felt it might actually have some legs in the marketplace.

MP: I’ll use Jason’s answer^^

Where did the idea for this game come from?

JM: Umm... I think I was simply trying to come up with styles/themes/genres that I haven't seen done elsewhere. This just popped into my brain space. I came up with other interesting ideas at the same time, but this was the one that stuck out as both unique and something we could feasibly do ourselves. So it seemed prudent to pursue.

MP: Same as Jason’s answer ^^

What makes this game special/unique?

JM: Aside from the obvious untapped theme, we're also proud to have devised a game framework that allows for asymmetric gameplay, a non-traditional game flow (players do not have individual turns in Queen's Quest), a rich dungeon-crawler experience, and of course strict adherence to the authenticity of a true roguelike. That last part introduces elements such as: procedurally generated dungeons, tons of random monster possibilities, non-linear gameplay, random boss monsters, and perma-death.

MP: Same as Jason’s answer ^^

Did you create a design journal for your game? If so, did you publish it somewhere we can link to?

JM: You bet! We created a WIP thread on BoardGameGeek here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1813026/wip-queens-quest-tabletop-roguelike

MP: Same answer ^^

Did you already have the idea for Queen's Quest in your head before the Gamehole Con Dungeon Crawler Challenge was announced?

JM: Yes. We hadn't taken it much further than a playable combat system, but the overall concepts and design intent were there. We actually wanted to get it in the previous year's Gamehole Gauntlet contest, and then again the TGC Big Box contest, but timing just didn't work out in either case. Once I saw a Dungeon Crawler contest emerged, it was clear we owed it to ourselves to complete the game and get it submitted!

MP: I come from a long-history of tabletop RPG’ing, so I’ve always wanted to build a dungeon crawler that captured some of the best elements of a tabletop RPG, without the time commitment. Both Jason & I had disparate notes on how this should come together, and I think we successfully crafted a fantastic experience.

What made you decide to enter your game into the contest?

JM: We knew from the start that we had something really special with Queen's Quest. We felt we had a great shot at winning the contest, but even if we didn't we knew we wanted to complete the game and see what could become of it. As with most TGC contests, the deadline helped force our hand to accomplish just that.

MP: Same answer ^^

Would you have been motivated to work on the game as much as you did without the contest?

JM: In this case, yes. Maybe not on the same timeline, but as mentioned above, this one was already gaining legs and deserved to be taken to the next level.

MP: Same answer ^^

Has winning inspired you to enter more contests or design more games?

JM: I'm going to say no to this...  I think my own inspiration has been present and abundant since day 1 of starting Geek Fever Games, and it has only increased over time. If we didn't win this contest, I think I would still be just as motivated to continue pushing, both with this game and countless others. I'm THRILLED we won, and that fact has already helped us with several publisher negotiations, but I don't believe the win itself changed much for my own level of inspiration - I'm guess I'm driven by a primal need!

MP: Yes and no. On the “Yes” side, it was thrilling to win one of these contests and the Rodney is a great trophy. 😊  I do like designing to tight constraints, so I can see myself entering more contests.

On the “No” side, the reality is that we’re always working on multiple projects and something’s always in the hopper. Winning the contest didn’t help with motivation – the ideas need to get out somehow, and we’re in constant design-mode.

Could you describe any influence The Game Crafter has had on your success as a game designer?

JM: TGC has been immensely important to Geek Fever's growth and success. The very presence of TGC was the primary reason we decided to kick off Geek Fever Games in 2012 (based on our understanding at the time, we figured it provided us a real shot), and since that time TGC has remained our strongest resource, partner, safety net, and friend in the industry. With the ability to create prototypes, print (self-)published games, sell games via TGC's storefront, gain extra income through designer tables, gain PR opportunities through the podcast and other networking, participate in design contests, and most recently stay productive with the new component studio, how could any indie designer even exist these days without using TGC?

MP: ^^ same answer

What’s next for you?

JM: Until more recently my answer would have been "making it to Essen" with one of our games, getting a game reviewed by Tom Vasel / The Dice Tower, and printing a long-run with a mainstream publisher. With these milestones now behind us, next on the list would be having a game go to reprint (underway as we speak), launching an expansion to an existing published game (also underway), designing for a known IP / license (we're pitching to acquire one or two soon), and eventually landing a game on the shelves at Target (some possibilities are in the works). Clearly some lofty goals in there, but we're up to the challenge!

MP: I’m currently designing a tabletop RPG, which is a different animal altogether and something I’ve always wanted to do. Aside from that, I attend all the conventions with Geek Fever Games and/or one of our publishers – so feel free to drop by our booth in 2018, wherever we are. And, Geek Fever is constantly developing games, so I’m always helping my partners with their designs and such.

Any last words of encouragement or advice to all of the designers reading this?

JM: *Execution* is the key! Great ideas are a dime a dozen...  you gotta push push PUSH to drive your little gem through all these crazy obstacles and hurdles. You need to learn more stuff than you ever thought possible. You need to push your introverted self to new levels of discomfort. You need to grow the thickest skin and elicit painful but honest feedback about your game, and then you need to learn what to do with that feedback - not everything may be directly applicable, but some of it may be the most important feedback, even if that represents the need to strip your baby down to studs and rebuild. It's super hard work...  but the rewards on the other end are otherworldly!

MP: It’s a saturated market, but there’s a reason it’s saturated – we’re in the midst of a Board Game Renaissance!! Embrace it! Enjoy it! My specific advice actually comes from my *brief* days as an author: Get in front of people! Even Stephen King *still* attends conventions, meets fans and signs books. He understands that to remain relevant, he needs to remain in front of people. Schlep yourself to conventions, unpubs and other events with your game(s). Talk to people. Play with people. And, eventually, demo your game with the aim to sell it to people. Stay relevant & active.

Cheers!

#the game crafter #hall of fame #board games #game design #board game design

[arcaneranger]

Final Thoughts - Fall 2018

This season dragged on me a lot, and I attribute that mostly to the fact that I moved right at the end and it put me way behind schedule, but also because a number of shows looked like they were going to really go the distance and wound up with one big disappointment or another.

That’s not to say that there weren’t gems - in fact there were a few - but this was yet another season where my “Hall of Fame” looked woefully light. That being said, I’d really like to get this over with since I have other shows to finish and three more lists to make for the year, so as usual, let’s start with the stuff I skipped entirely:

* Tokyo Ghoul re: Second Season & Gurazeni Season 2 because I didn’t watch either of their previous seasons.

* Senran Kagura Shinovi Master because Senran Kagura as a property is built entirely on half-naked girls with big boobs and that’s not going to jive with me.

Wow, that’s really it? Fall was the beginning of a lot of shows that won’t be finished until sometime in 2019, so the other shows I skipped will appear next year on the Multi-Cour list. So, moving right along, from bottom to top...

DROPPED

* WORST OF THE SEASON: TIE

UZAMAID!, My Sister My Writer (1/10)

We did have multiple entries into the Hall of Shame this season, with not one but two shows being offensive enough that they landed a 1/10 score from me, for an easily identifiable and familiar reason: actively glorifying pedophilia! That was pretty much UZAMAID!’s biggest problem, but My Sister My Writer aged up the target character in exchange for recycling the plots of OreImo and Eromanga Sensei, with all of the bullshit and none of the production values. Happy Sugar Life has even further convinced me that there is absolutely no excuse for this garbage anymore.

* Conception (2/10)

A video game adaptation that strips away the actual gameplay elements and focuses entirely on the main character figuratively fucking a lot of fantasy women to make world-saving babies, and it doesn’t even have the courtesy to look like it cost more than $5 to make.

* Ulysses: Jeanne D’arc and the Alchemist Knight (3/10)

I didn’t get far enough into this one to get to the real garbage (I’ve heard it’s another show I should probably throw in with the worst of the season) but the very first episode bored me to tears with its rote anime nonsense. I’m pretty well convinced that the only way I could ever find a Joan of Arc anime interesting is if it were an adaptation of the Level 5 PSP game.

* Between the Sky and Sea (3/10)

I can’t deconstruct this any better than Mother’s Basement did but it is just the most asinine thing I was subjected to for the whole season. Cute girls don’t fix a terminally stupid concept like “all the fish have moved into space and so now we train teenage girls to be astronaut fishers”.

* Bakumatsu (3/10)

I dropped this one an entire point from when I first reviewed it simply because I had entirely forgotten it even existed and cannot remember a single thing about it except that it was generic.

* As Miss Beelzebub Likes It (4/10)

I found this one’s first episode to be cute but entirely devoid of substance. Also, the poster still hurts my eyes to look at.

* DAKAICHI -I’m being harassed by the sexiest man of the year- (4/10) & Bloom Into You (4/10)

Proof that actual gay people just cannot have nice things, the most explicitly LGBT shows to be made in a while both suffer from the same problem: a supposedly sympathetic character having no ability to take “no” for an answer. True fact: not all gay relationships start with rape, and this is the kind of entertainment that fosters young people into not knowing how consent works.

* ReRideD: Derrida Who Leaps Through Time (4/10)

I guess everybody else saw this one coming before I did? It was the first post-premiere show I dropped because I thought the first episode showed an interesting setup, and the following episodes just completely abandoned the apocalyptic setting very quickly to show that society was pretty much fine, there were just robots roaming the earth like random D&D encounters. Man, sci-fi cannot catch a break these days.

* Ms. vampire who lives in my neighborhood. (5/10)

I can see why this might appeal to some but it’s basically just a low-rent Miss Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon and I wasn’t feeling especially charitable towards it.

* Double Decker! Doug & Kirill (5/10)

I really thought this one could get to be more interesting, but it failed to really commit to being either anime’s Brooklyn 99 (which, for the record, we have, it’s Blood Blockade Battlefront season 2) or being a serious tale about the dangers of Tide Po-I mean, drug usage, and wound up just being an uninteresting thud.

* The Girl in the Twilight (5/10)

This one really could have made it if only it had taken things a little more seriously and not made me wonder why the cast are even friends as they seem to have nothing in common. I can’t believe that the creator of this project was the guy who wrote the script for Punch Line, one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen.

* Tsurune (6/10)

I literally just finished my write-up for this, but I do not understand why the same company would make both this and a continuation of Free! airing in back-to-back seasons, it just makes this one look like a copycat even if it’s not a bad show.

UNSCORED

* Gakuen Basara: Samurai High School because I’m not familiar with the source material and that seems to be the barrier for enjoyment here.

SPECIAL

* Anima Yell! (6/10)

If you need a reminder, I dropped Anima Yell after the first episode because even though I enjoyed it, I found it too similar to Comic Girls and didn’t particularly want to go through the effort of finishing a show I was already pretty ready to score, even if it was going to be a positive one. I simply didn’t have time.

FINISHED (Note that Tumblr has completely broken and I’ve had to re-edit this portion a dozen times because it keeps randomly bolding paragraphs and losing GIFs, so if anything got lost here, I’m very sorry but there’s nothing I can do about it.)

* Boarding School Juliet (7/10)

A pleasant little romantic comedy that wasn’t what I was expecting from the first episode but was charming nevertheless. Would have been better without the involvement of attempted rape on school grounds in the premiere though. * Release the Spyce (7/10)

A thrilling and surprisingly brutal little spy show that wound up being overshadowed by better shows with similar concepts but was a fun watch nonetheless, even if it dragged in the middle.

* Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (8/10)

I stand by what I said before - this one would have easily scored higher with a better ending, but Bunny Girl Senpai is certainly the most approachable show of its genre and its strengths as a romance are not to be understated. 

* Zombieland Saga (8/10)

Another Very Good show that could have been better with one simple change - it’s hilarious and very well-written, but those performance sequences are just awful to look at and the heavier focus on them towards the end did not help.

* Iroduku: The World in Colors (8/10)

A stunning treasure that needed a little more character work for the writing to really impress me, but with a very satisfying ending and a ton of visual creativity.

* Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san (9/10)

A fucking hysterical show scientifically grown in a lab to appeal to me, Honda-san could have been the new INFERNO COP, SAVIOR OF ANIME if more people had given it a chance.

* BEST OF THE SEASON: SSSS.Gridman (9/10)

I don’t know what else to say other than that this is easily the most criminally underappreciated show of the year. A lot of people seemed to be turned off by giant robots fighting kaiju, and those people are dumb.

And that was Fall! I’ve got a few Netflix shows left and I have to finish Classicaloid 2, and then I’ll be all done with 2018, so get ready, I’ve got a few more lists on the way!

#arcaneanime #seasonal review #fall 2018

[team-skull-admin]

My favorite 40 games of all-time

Made an arbitrary list of my favorite games of all-time cause I wanted to figure out where Breath of the Wild is on it. It’s, uh, pretty high. Assload of text below the break.

40: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow I'm not the world's biggest Symphony of the Night fan (outside of the incredible soundtrack) and I think this is where Iga's seamless platformers found their footing.

39: Call of Juarez: Gunslinger I love goofy, experimental games like this and Far Cry: Blood Dragon, but I think the schtick in this (an unreliable narrator bragging about their heroic exploits) works better than Blood Dragon's dorky 80s nostalgia.

38: Rayman Origins A beautiful platformer with incredible level design. The music for the diabolical secret level is seared into my memory.

37: Cibele A short, story-centric indie game that captures the essence of playing MMOs in the mid-2000s and long-distance relationships. The awkward conversations in this game made me think about my WoW years for an entire weekend.

36: Mario Kart Wii It's not technically the "best" Mario Kart, but I actually enjoyed the motorcycles and I have fond memories of crushing my brother while we downed beers and talked shit.

35: Guild of Dungeoneering I'm usually not super into "We made X game, but added CARDS!" even though I love card games, but they nailed the loop here. I vaguely remember one of the decks being super busted, though.

34: Tropico 4 Adding a political slant to Sim City by making you the leader of a banana republic was just the slant to that formula I was looking for, and I lost a weekend circa New Year's '13 just delving into this hard.

33: Gran Turismo 2 My brother bought a PS1 off a friend when they upgraded to a PS2, and I grabbed a copy of this cheaply at the local EB Games. Once I wrapped my mind around the simulation, upgrading cars and havin fun with them here might have more to do with me being somewhat of a car person than anything else.

32: Metal Gear Solid 4 I should really put the whole series on here, but MGS4 deserves special note for making the core stealth actually fun and somehow tying all the loose ends of the insane plot together while dialing up the insanity even further.

31: Sim City 2000 I figured out how to make a 50,000 person city when I was like, 8. I still have no fucking idea how I did this. It took me till my 20s to crack 100k.

30: Pokemon Black/White People are torn on this game, but the contentious design decision to hide the old Pokemon in the postgame made every new encounter incredibly exciting in a way the series hadn't been since the orignals. The writing also shows signs of the maturity that Sun/Moon would follow through with.

29: Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 I think most would deride this series as a soulless Pokemon cash-grab on the surface, but they're actually roguelikes with a crazy monster breeding system and the most rote of stories to get you into the core loop of exploring new keys to breed ever crazier monsters.

28: Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls Diablo 3 vanilla's reliance on the auction house created design issues that were hard to look past, but Blizzard abandoning it for the expansion made the game into an incredible dungeon crawler. I never laddered, but had fun for hundreds of hours chasing loot with friends.

27: Fallout 3 I'll never forget the feeling of walking out of the vault for the first time, and feeling like I could go anywhere. I also think this is the only Bethesda game that regularly pays off when exploring - weird shit like the Republic of Dave or the man stuck in the tree are fantastic rewards for poking at the less inhabited edges of the map.

26: Bassin's Black Bass featuring Hank Parker I'm honestly wondering if the rest of the world has picked up on this game's low-key genius since I saw it for 15 bucks at a retro game store recently, but this game's arcadey fishing is incredibly satisfying and snappy. It has some major, obvious, irritating mechanical issues, but the core gameplay loop is so good I don't care.

25: Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor I still remember my nemesis. This motherfucker was right at the beginning of the game, inside the first quest area, and was like level 5 or 6, but had a defensive ability that made it harder for me to gank him easily. So he killed me. Twice. And leveled up each time, becoming a level 12 badass who could literally sniff me out when I hid. But he was weak to fire, and I lured him to a campfire and set him ablaze, getting my revenge.

24: Super Metroid I feel like most people would have this game higher on the list, but I think the controls are floaty and Meridia is overly confusing. The rest of the game is incredible and I can't believe they pulled it off on a Super Nintendo.

23: Pokemon Sun/Moon After XY and ORAS were disapointments I was cool on Pokemon, but Sun/Moon challenged a ton of series conventions and got a lot right in the process. I can't believe how deftly this game handles dysfunctional families.

22: A Link Between Worlds This was Nintendo's hit at what was to come with Zelda - a smart, experimental take on the franchise that's easily its best 2d outing.

21: Muramasa: The Demon Blade Vanillaware's magnum opus, a gorgeous Metroidvania where everything is hand-painted. The combat's loop of mixing launchers with sword management is also incredibly fun, if not particularly deep. But fuck I loved looking at it so much and it felt good.

20: The Walking Dead Only time a video game made me cry.

19: Banjo-Kazooie The only 3d collect-a-thon platformer from that era that still holds up, it combines cheeky humor and an incredible soundtrack to craft a world that's always surprising.

18: Borderlands 2 is better crafted, but I enjoyed the dry wit and more grounded guns of the first. I've replayed this like 4 times and I'm not entirely sure why, but I have a blast each time.

17: Doom (2016) Apparently the secret to making this license work in a modern context is to give Halo combat arenas a healthy dose of cocaine and play Meshuggah riffs over it. It so fucking works.

16: Saints Row: The Third I think the writing in GTA is usually sophomoric at best and its attempts at commentary are eye-roll worthy, but having a game say "FUCK IT" and just Mel Brooks that experience is such a wonderful idea. It's also hard to pull off, and SR3 totally sticks the landing (unlike the sequel).

15: Super Mario World The best traditional Mario game. I replayed it recently, and it struck me how much secret exits add to the level design versus 3, and how freed Koji Kondo is by the new hardware. The castle music's classical overture sticks out.

14: Monster Hunter 4 I liked Monster Hunter 3's various iterations but I hated swimming. Taking out swimming and replacing it  with mounting was enough for me to sink hundreds of hours. I actively avoided getting Generations because I knew it would interfere with school.

13: Mario Golf (GBC) The perfect portable game. Golf works well on the platform, and adding basic RPG hooks was enough to make a rote story totally engaging.

12: Super Mario Maker I think the real triumph of Mario Maker isn't the levels (which are usually terrible), it's how Nintendo imparted the feeling of being creative in such an easily digestible and satisfying way. It's an achievement that ascends past Mario design (which still works here) into something greater and more profound.

11: Hearthstone I fucking hate this game and I keep playing it because the Arena is like literal fucking crack and every time I have an opponent at 1 life and they beat me they can eat fucking dicks.

10: Super Mario RPG Clever writing and a strange world grabbed me way harder than Intelligent System's later Paper Mario games. It's too easy and doesn't look as slick now, but the writing still holds up.

09: Mass Effect Trilogy You can't really separate these, as the experience that makes Mass Effect great was carrying your Shepard and their decisions from one game to the next. Everyone will remember Garrus, Wrex, and co. Shame about the ending.

08: Tetris I am weirdly good at Tetris. I know what a T-Spin is. I sank hundreds of hours into it on Facebook. I don't regret it.

07: Persona 4 Describe a game to me as a mix of a J-RPG and a slice-of-life anime and I'll run to the hills, so the fact this game's sharp, mature writing and "just one more day" calendar mechanic combined into one of my favorite games of all-time is a shock. They also put in Pokemon with fucking demons, how cool is that shit?

06: Ocarina of Time I can't believe this game came out in 1998. The world is still fun to traverse, and the dungeon design (especially as an adult) still holds up at the top of action-adventure puzzle design.

05: Magic: the Gathering I wish it was less expensive otherwise it'd be higher.

04: Breath of the Wild I can't believe Nintendo reinvented the wheel so well that I'm putting the game so high on the list. Every design decision in this game is carefully considered to make exploring this iteration of Hyrule that much more satisfying. And its incredibly clever chemistry engine, where every object in the game has chemical properties that can be manipulated as well as physics, creates a ton of emergent gameplay scenarios where you're constantly asking "Can I do that?" and the game almost never lets you down.

03: World of Warcraft Sometimes I regret the 4000 hours I spent in Azeroth, but I'd have a hard time giving up the friends I made there. I could probably shred and like, speak another language though.

02: Pokemon Red I was the perfect age for Pokemon mania, and the fact that the core game was literally designed to appeal to me didn't help. I still love collecting the things and min/maxing ways to beat the Elite 4 with minimal grinding.

01: Mega Man X I think this is literally the perfect platformer. Moving X feels incredible. There's nothing in any of the levels I think is out of place. The soundtrack is a masterpiece. And the game's hidden secret is so insane you'd probably call bullshit on any kid who told it to you at recess. I'm really glad the rest of the world picked up on it after Arin Hanson did a Sequelitis about it, because I've been beating this drum for decades.