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takadanobaba · 3 years

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Jin Norizuki’s Birthday PriZoom 7/18/2021

Oh the things I do for Jin Norizuki

That was SUCH an experience. I had a lot of fun!!

Main takeaway is that I am now acutely aware of when to YO in a song

(Okay so this is my first time attending a prizoom (or even any kinpri screening outside of Luna’s sss rabbit sessions!) so this is all entirely new to me and I can’t really compare it to much, but I figured that it’d be good to write up a report of sorts to fill in for Luna in a way!)

The prizooms are also accessible to everyone and don’t require any Japanese info confirmation!! If you’re interested in attending please go and support kinpri!!!

(Note: I think about Jin wayyyy too much and interpret them as nonbinary, so I use they/them pronouns for Jin. It’s just automatic for me at this point and feels weird otherwise haha so I’ll be doing that in this)

Jin is my all time favorite character and love of my life who I’m extremely delusional about so when a prizoom was announced for their birthday I went INSANE because I didn’t expect Jin’s birthday to be acknowledged AT ALL given how they’re usually excluded/treated like a side character (+ kinpri’s been putting out little to no content lately anyways....haha....). I was waiting in anticipation ever since it was announced (around June 6th) and even put in a time-off request for my work the day of its announcement just so I could attend!!!! ........ You can imagine my frustration at kinpri waiting until the very last minute to put out details about Jin’s prizoom ^^;

💙 💙 💙 💙 💙 💙

Also!! I’m a complete ~ foreigner ~ and managed to get tickets perfectly fine with my American credit card (and putting in some very obviously Not-An-Actual-Resident-Of-Japan address info...)! So if anyone’s curious about attending a prizoom but worried about region-locking, it’s possible! Very possible! If you’re interested in it, please go! You don’t need to have a Japanese phone number/credit card/address/etc. to purchase PriZoom tickets on RakutenTicket! It’s such an experience! If you need any help buying tickets then I’d be more than happy to assist!! Please support the PriZoom screenings and help increase the demand for more kinpri content!!!!!!!!!!!! I will personally become a living prizoom advertisement

(Also if any kinpri staff find this: I’m sorry for not respecting rules this time but I just wanted to provide a detailed account of the prizoom event and encourage participation for other foreign fans! I won’t do this again!!!)

💙 💙 💙 💙 💙 💙

I only attended the first and third showings (consisting of the first movie and Over the Sunshine!) because I wanted to see the new/not currently archived content (the second/pride the hero showing’s bonus was just Jin’s birthday video by Joji which I already revisit little too much ahaha). I also went to the chat-only rooms because I wasn’t very confident that I wouldn’t be awkward with my nonexistent cheering experience and intent to just observe what its like (despite knowing that the cheering rooms are more fun based on what Luna said haha). That, and I was planning on using the EXTREMELY OBNOXIOUS soundboard of ABSOLUTE CHAOS for everything since I have issues with voice dysphoria and figured it’d be good to stick to the room with that normalized as the one and only cheering method so participating would be a little less annoying to others, since we’d all have the same idea ^^;

I’m more active on twitter and follow/am mutuals with pretty much anybody who likes Jin enough to post about them, so it was cool seeing almost everyone there! At least half of them tweeted about this being their first prizoom haha. Jin’s birthday was also promoted as a good introduction to prizooms since the first showing was set at a price point of 718 yen instead of the usual 1,760 yen? So, lots of first timers attending! I guess most people had the same thought process as me about the whole insecure-about-not-being-used-to-proper-cheering/using-their-mic thing? Because most of my twitter following ended up in the chat-only rooms with me! Fun!

Also interesting how most people chose the male voice option for the cheering soundboard feature since there’s actually only 2 men who love Jin like that (I’m included in that number!!) in the Jin-obsessed twitter circle. I guess it was because it sounds kinda Joji-ish? and therefore fitting for an event dedicated to Jin! What with them being meant for each other and all.... Plus being Joji is just a fun way to play off having issues about using your own voice (I... project onto Joji a lot.)

👆 👆 👆

Okay I actually typed up all of the above during the second showing (since I wasn’t occupied attending that one) and everyone had the same train of thought and was definitely being Joji. You know that one “song” in Over the Sunshine- Glorious Schwarz- consisting of Joji just going wild infodumping for 3.5 minutes? Yeah EVERYONE who selected the male voice option was spamming 「おれもー！」/ “ME TOO!!!” during that (including me!). So it was like:

“I weighed 4646 grams at birth! ☆”

“MMMMEMEEMEMMT MEE ME MEEE EMME ME ME TOO M M ME TOO”

SO OBNOXIOUS. I LOVE IT. EVERYONE SHARING THE SAME BRAINCELL. THE JOJI BRAINCELL.

💙

The highlight of the prizoom (in my opinion) was when some guy repeatedly hit よっ！/ YO! to the music in the first movie, which then led to everyone having a collective ~ Realization ~

After that happened, everybody joined in and started YO!-ing along in the other lives. Beautiful.

(Blurred recording of Dramatic Love and Showcase Night just so YO!u can see what I mean.)

(I only did those two to test screen recording after failing to archive the first Jin bonus while using the soundboard feature in the first showing, initially I didn’t intend to record anything but the bonuses and will not be doing that anymore. If you attend, don’t be like me or worse!!!! Please!! I’ll delete these if needed/after a few weeks. Also just wanted to mention that Koi no Royal Straight Flush is up there in Kinpri’s Most YO!-able songs)

I love this soundboard feature. Sounds like hell. Prizooms are truely a new form of art because of it. Amazing how cheering screenings have evolved over a pandemic. Music feels empty to me without the YO!s now. After this I ended up listening to the entire kinpri discography so I could determine the YO!ability of each song. Not sure if every prizoom is like that? But I really want to go to more showings just for the community experience! I’m morbidly curious as to how many people would try to YO! to Platonic Sword. I considered going to Rei’s because they’re showing Shiny Rose Stars, but I probably won’t though since money and sleep are things (They really should make tickets no more than 1,000 yen.... they’re zoom meetings with audio problems....THE AUDIO ISSUES ARE FUN THOUGH! YOU CAN SPAM “GANBATTE” WITH EVERYONE!!) Plus while I do like every kinpri character, none of the street boys are really my favorites and going to every showing regardless of character would be a lot. I assumed that I was only going to try attending Joji’s until they announced that they were gonna do something for Jin!! So if you want to see what it’s like PLEASE get tickets and experience it for yourself!! It’s so much more fun participating !!!! Relying on 1-2 people to post event summaries isn’t exactly consistent coverage of every prizoom either!

\ よっ！/ \ よっ！/ \ よっ！/

So much of this is a community experience that you just have to see for yourself! It’s really cool seeing people go all out for their favorites and just going wild. Notable participants include:

- Two separate people just working out the entire time (one of them doing “Prism Exercise” meaning very high effort full-body cheering and dancing? It was really impressive seeing them go all-out for such a long time!)

- Two (2!) Ai cosplayers!!! One attending the prizoom with a Jin cosplayer!!

- The lady who cosplayed Jin in their cute green pre-retirement prism star outfit WITH A HUGE JIN PUPPET IN THE SAME STYLE AS THE SHUFFLE PUPPETS IN THE STAGEPLAY!!!

- That one person who just had a Minato fish head on the entire time (?!)

- A Victoria cosplayer who showed off a really nice!! drawing of Jin they did during the participant showcase at the end of the screenings

- The person with a REALLY CUTE!!!!! homemade Jin plushie!!

- Two people who attended with 3D/vtuber style models of the Go Go Glorious! (YMT29 subunit) members: Noel Tokyo and Mikado Shibuya (who also had a model of Ai!)

- A really cute Joji vtuber model!

💙 💙 💙 💙 💙 💙

The bonuses were Jin’s birthday video from 2016 and a birthday message of sorts from Jin!

I actually didn’t manage to properly archive the first one as intended because things went horribly wrong so I ended up with nothing but just a terrible (said affectionately) little recording of the soundboard I linked earlier. But whatever I shouldn’t be doing that anyways. Hopefully kinpri includes that and the other prizoom bonuses in something later.... the thought of any content being stuck as lost media terrifies me. I don’t have a good enough memory or a high enough Japanese proficiency level to type it out but it wasn’t particularly analyzable or anything (telling that to myself to make me feel better about losing it). Just the usual Jin being dramatic and going on an evil monologue. Jin being evil ASMR. I lovingly burned another one of Jin’s evil laughs into my mind too so there’s that.

For the 3rd showing bonus however I did not fail though it’s arguably the less interesting bonus of the two since it’s unvoiced. I really love Jin’s voice. Big sexy. Actual dialogue is pretty similar to each other from what I’ve gathered (ending with one of Jin’s cute little アーーーッハッハッハッ！！！！！’s (the text effect for the unvoiced bonus was an appreciated detail!).

(I’m not very confident in my ability to provide a good translation so I’ll just not embarrass myself)

“ AAAaAAaHAHAAHAAa ~ ! ! ! ! ! ! ! “

💙

Yes Jin I’ll support you in the future-!!! ヾ(>▽ <、 )

I’ll never not be obsessed but it’d still be nice to have more substantial content to gush about and do that with.... Kinpri come back and release an anime continuation.... give me the Jin plot development....kinpri come back my happiness is a little too reliant on you

After the showings you get an email asking for feedback which is cool! I’ve been waiting to complain about how 法月 is written as Noriduki instead of Norizuki for the longest time but I never had a chance until now haha. Makes it so painful for me to buy Jin merch. Also begged for an anime continuation. I wonder how much they take into account feedback? I guess I’ll see when/if they start writing Jin’s name how it’s supposed to be.

ANYWAYS

IF YOU WANT TO GO TO A PRIZOOM, DO IT!

Prism shows really are best experienced with a community!!! If you like kinpri it’s a GREAT OPPORTUNITY to experience what a cheering screening is like with the Japanese fanbase from the comfort of your very own home which is most likely nowhere near Japan!! Everyone should experience prism shows!!!! I have no regrets and I’m still so hyped from the prism sparkle!!!

ANYBODY CAN ATTEND AND BUY TICKETS EVEN WITHOUT JAPANESE INFORMATION!!!

\\ GLORIOUS SCHWARZ! //

#king of prism #jin norizuki #Err try not to spread around my recordings too much #Dont want the staff thinking badly of foreigners and region locking things haha #Kinpri_pr didn't even blur out their recording of the prizooms like me and they record everything for promo purposes anyways #But I'll probably remove mine after a bit anyways #me and my very concerning crush on jin #using joji as a self insert

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tumblunni · 7 years

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and I’m just thinking about how much its a great template on how to make a small town feel like a real living world, and how to make you get to know characters organically, and such! there’s so much you can take influence from even in wildly different genres of game that dont share any of the same mechanics! So umm here’s my random post of thinking about things inspired by rune factory that I’d love to incorporate into my own games someday~! I think a lot of it could work best for my ‘cathedral tower’ game cos its about protecting a town of people, or my ‘zombie mum’ game cos it could have a lot of similar scavenging mechanics. HMMMM... This game just makes me so inspired!!!

* I really really REALLY like how you gain stat experience from doing various exploration activities around the world, and it translates into bonuses to your battle and/or farming skills. AND those battle and farming skills give bonuses to each other! Like.. walking, eating, taking a bath, throwing stuff, they all add small amounts to your hp or stamina bar. Which means you can farm more! And all the different types of farming and crafting activities, which you can do more of now, add vitality and accuracy and strength. And now you can battle more! And battling gives a very good growth curve of making you better at battling, there’s levels but there’s also great encouragement to try every weapon and magic in order to pump up your stats. Which is also great incentive to do crafting so you’ll actually be able to handle fighting with a low level weapon long enough to gain all the boosts. Which is a great incentive to farm and explore to get those ingredients in order to craft. Which is a great incentive to befriend the townsfolk, and level them up as your companions, and give them your leftover crafted items in order to equip them all good and make them more useful while raising friendship at the same time. aaaa everything links so well, its so well made! it means you can succeed in the game no matter which part of it you’re better at, and its easier to get into trying the stuff you maybe dont like as much. Except for the soil levelling system, thats annoyingly nonintuituive and non-tutorial’d compared to the rest...

* Anyway! Ideas for how it could be expanded even more to give you even more of a sense of progression! And also to make it less repetitive having to reexplore the same areas again and again looking for stuff that only spawns there. Eventually you’re gonna be stuck with a total lack of some early level item and you have to backtrack searching for where on earth it came from :P ANYWAY! The idea! Maybe you could level up your gathering skills with different forms of gathering? You kinda do have that with the mining/farming/etc, but it doesnt have any effect on what you gain, how fast you can gather, how much you gather, etc. It just gives you the battle stat boosts for gathering a lot. My idea was maybe like... if you have high level mining then maybe you have higher odds of finding rare rocks, getting more drops per rock, getting the rarer drops within the rare rocks, rocks respawning faster, etc. So it becomes less and less difficult the more powerful you get! And instead of lots of items being super limited to certain areas, technically every area contains the same rock items and its only your skill that determines what you get. With maybe just a little bit of a levelling curve, like if you enter a high level area earlier than you’re supposed to then its harder to mine a rock. Takes 50 swings instead of 5, or whatever. But this is also a reward for exploring there early, cos you get 50 chances to win a good item from that rock, instead of 5. (Provided you even have enough stamina to manage that!) And maybe high level rocks give more mining experience, or whatever. Aaaaand maybe there are indeed some area-exclusive drops, rather than necessarily everything scaling to your current level. But they wouldnt be as specific as in RF4, where I have to keep going back to this one haunted mansion thats the only damn place containing spiders so far! Like, have several areas at different levels throughout the game, so there’s always a new [item] hunting area thats relatively close to your level at all times. And maybe the higher level equivelant of like... the spider area, would give out bigger amounts of spider items and more exp and whatever. But you could still totally sit around grinding in the low level spider area and start getting higher level spidermeats if you do it enough, its just easier to grind at the later areas. So the level curve still works out! Man sorry this is a long confusing blabber cos i dunno how to explain this XD

* Alternative idea on how to make low level items still relatively available even when it becomes annoying to backtrack to those areas: Digimon World version! Alternative methods to acquire those items easily without gathering will appear as the game goes on. In DW1 the shops unlock in roughly this pattern. (Well, its a sandbox game so you can sequence break at some points and unlock shops in different orders, but yeah) Like around the time you’re 10 levels above [spider area], you get a merchant who sells those spider things. And by now you’ll be making a lot more profit so its way more feasable to just buy it all from them instead of backtracking to gather. Or maybe it could be part of a reward for befriending people? I thought in the cathedral game it would be good if you could set other characters to do work while you’re out adventuring, once youve earned their trust. So you could get an infinate source of those low level items through this method, and maybe get more appreciation for the characters when they’re being super helpful and all. And maybe you could set up various areas in your home base in order to change the low-level item that the npcs will farm. Like, set up a small pen full of tamed spiders that you can milk for cobwebs every day. And as the game goes on, you can upgrade your base and add more room for multiple item-farming areas at once.

* And also possibly have a small chance of characters randomly appearing each morning? Like, instead of necessarily having to backtrack around the town every single day to talk to everybody, once they’re a high enough friendship level they’ll randomly take the initiative themselves. And give you bonus gifts and sidequests and stuff, or maybe have a chance of doing a small favour for you. Like you wake up and a few squares of your farm are already watered or harvested, or one of your items has had its durability restored, or clues have been added on your map on how to find a new area. Or I dunno.. like... they cleaned your house or made you breakfast and you get a productivity boost from friendship joy. But yeah this randomness would be another way you could still receive old items without having to backtrack. Plus generally other anti-backtracking helpfulness! I think that as your level increases it should get easier to do your daily chores, so you have more time to do [insert whatever thing is currently plot important at this level]. Thats a big problem that makes it exhausting to continue playing farming games after a long time. Like.. the first time you run around the town giving people gifts its fun, but after doing a whole year of it it gets frustrating that it never gets easier or less required. Same for farming and backtrack-gathering, and even battling and exploring to some extent. if the way you do these things eventually started to get easier/change in how you do them, then they’d never get monotonous. Though that might just be a problem for me, I guess? I dunno if I’m weird but i find things more and more difficult the more I do them, routines are frustrating to me instead of easier. I have to find ways to always spice it up!

* Another idea of more ways to interact with characters beyond just giving gifts every day! Maybe have bonuses in certain areas every now and then? like, wake up one day and [character] is saying ‘the harvest in [area] is really good!’, and then if you go there you get a higher quantity of stuff, exp, and some cute friendship scenes with the charrie. Or maybe there’s too many [monster] in [area] and the harvest might actually become bad if you dont team up with [character] and exterminate them! And again, it’d become easier as you get higher levelled. At the beginning you’d pretty much be required to go for these events or else miss the chance, but later on if characters trust you a lot they could do it automatically on their own if you miss the event. So they continue gaining bonus exp even when you’re not travelling with them, you still gain (a slightly smaller amount of) the bonus item in your supply box, and really all you lost was a chance to raise more friendship points with them.

* Also maybe sometimes with regular quests/requests, a character could volunteer to help if they like you enough? Not for main story quests, with those you’d just have the character asking if they can join you for it. But with like... fred asks you for some chestnuts to make a cake for gerald, and mary calls you up to say ‘hey i heard about it, i had a big harvest of chestnuts today!’ And then you get friendship with all three of them, and save some time! And you can still refuse if you wanna do it yourself, that way you’d get bonus friendship with fred. cos like, he heard from mary that you said you wanted to handle the problem personally, and he was flattered. :3 (tho some characters would be different, maybe some would dislike it? i dunno)

* I really love that you can give cute hats to the batchelors and batchelorettes in RF4, and they wear them, and it is cute. This needs to be a thing in all games! I also like that the way its done is sorta easter eggy? Its not really explained as its own unique feaure, youre actually never told you can change party members’s equipment, which is a little bit annoying. But its also nice that its just like... “wow, the game’s much more open than I expected!” You can give gifts to characters and you wonder if you can give every single item, then HUH if you give them hats they actually wear them! And they can use all the same weapons you use! Awesome~ I also like that it seems like they have a chance of randomly wearing every hat you ever gave them? Whenever theyre in your party, they wear whatever equipment you last gave them, but when theyre wandering around the town they randomly wear their entire hat history. Thats so cute and makes them feel more alive! Itd be so neat if characters in these games could ‘remember’ stuff like that more often. Like I dunno... maybe the game logs down the first gift item you ever give each character, and then they bring it up during their final max-affection event. With different cute conversations depending on what it was! Like ‘omg wasnt it hilarious, I really hated it’ or ‘i cant believe you got my fave item on the first try!’ And then if its something of medium level like, maybe they say ‘i never really thought [item] was all that special, but ive become quite fond of it now it makes me remember you’. And i dunno, maybe at the ending the game could remember who you had in your party during every big story quest, and show a montage during the credits ^_^

#bunni plays rf4 #cathedral tower defense #random gamemaking ideas

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tumblunni · 7 years

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aaaa im getting stupidly inspired to work again on my old Dating Sim Ghost Tragedy Game since I had that dumb idea today about a new Dating Sim Ghost Tragedy Game I’ve had like five separate ideas for different tragic undead datey games :P Lets talk about this particular one!! I’m pretty tired so I cant really write it a big post like i did with today’s new idea, but I’ll try my best ^_^

The idea is that it’d be sort of a traditional medieval fantasy setting but its more like a slice of life tale of the regular citizens in these sorts of worlds, rather than a big destined hero thing. Sorta like the appeal of the Atelier series? I’m thinking the protagonist could maybe be a blacksmith or a gardener or some other down-to-earth job? I just feel like he’s a hardworking chill sort of dude, sometimes kinda comes off as emotionless to others, kinda depressed but devoting himself to his work helps him smile again. He’s really passionate about whatever he does! And i think deciding his job would be a big step towards developing this idea, because having it as a minigame would help add structure to the plot and some relief from the sadness. I dont wanna make it too similar to Atelier though... So yeah, the protagonist is this cute mid-twenties relateable fella who’s just trying to do his job. I think I wanna give his outfit dungarees or something? I feel like he’d always look a bit work-uniform-style even when he’s off duty, he’s kinda too lazy to change clothes. A perpetually bored and disinterested guy. Or, at least that’s the impression he gives off to people who don’t know him, he only brightens up around the few friends he has. AND HE PUTS 100% INTO THAT SMILE, GODDAMMIT

And then his childhood friend is someone who actually was sort of a ‘standard rpg hero’, but a really sad subversion of it. At the moment he’s currently the main love interest, and he’s still sorta the catalyst for the plot and the mysteries and all, even if you don’t pick him. or I dunno, maybe I’ll just make it only one love interest but many multiple endings, but I think this character would be happy if his love interest was happy with somebody else in the endings where they dont get together. He’d be crying but happy. Anyway, my mental image for him now is this really weary chronically shy cinnamon roll who’s like a big ol tall beanpole knight with long rapunzel hair that he hides behind. Maybe white hair cos that’d fit thematically with his plot, but is that too sephirothy? When they were children, knight-guy used to be this bright and uplifting figure who always protected protagonist and had such great dreams of being a hero who could save everyone! And he went off to join the army at a young age, and then he just... shattered. He came back disgraced as a deserter, the decade of loyal service ignored by all his former neighbours just because he’d quit in the end. He had a complete breakdown and just couldnt take the violence anymore, now he’s barely 23 years old and already retired. And completely alone. No family, just trying in vain to take care of his fragile self as he locks himself away in his house and everybody gossips about him. And the thematic thing is that his biggest fear is spiders. The moment he snapped was when he was left injured on the battlefield unable to move for hours, trapped under a pile of bodies of his fellow soldiers, trying to play dead to survive. He just remembers seeing a spider crawling across the face of the man next to him, the man in pieces... So everyone horrid in the village likes to mock him by scaring him with spiders, and I havent decided on his name yet but he probably has a spider-based nickname. He’s unlucky enough to even look spidery :P

Ooooooohhhhhh and for extra irony, the village is next to a magic forest populated by demon spiders. WHOOPS, FATE HATES YOU! They’re kinda like both the gods and demons of this village, they’re seen as morally bankrupt dangerous trickster spirits that’ll do whatever they want regardless of good and evil. Everybody talks about how horrible they are and warns that anyone who does [insert sin according to our religion] will be cursed by them, but they also make offerings to them and consider them entirely responsible for the success of the harvest, etc. Its like if you knew your gods were unpredictable dicks but you still tried to placate them with gifts! (like most old european pantheons I guess) And even though this setting is indeed a magical one, the existance of the spider spirits is kind of an unknown mystery similar to real life gods. People very rarely see them in times of need, and nobody can ever prove it really happened. The forest is indeed the ‘forest of spiders’ but the only proven fact is that it has a lot of (as far as we know) completely ordinary spiders in it. Nobody knows why so many spiders cluster in this one area, so making up a legend about gods seems like a possible thing that could happen. or maybe this one area really is the centre of the world where the One True Spiders weave the webs that tell the future, and these are their mortal followers praying in worship much like the humans do... Anyway, its just a cool aesthetic thing of a cobweb-encrusted forest where entire trees get coccooned annually as the seasons come and go~ And a cool civilization that has a lot of trade in silk and weaving! Kinda based on the old ps1 game Jade Cocoon, though that revolved around magical spirit silkworms instead.

At the time the story starts, best friend knight guy has been back home for a fair few years now. Him and protagonist met again, and protagonist is goddamn determined to take care of his ill friend and somehow manage to convince the town to take him back! Its basically two depressed people holding on to each other as their lifeline, and helping each other compensate for the things they’ve each been robbed of. Protagonist struggles with expressing emotion and being a complete pushover who can never tell anyone what he really wants, so its helping him a lot that for once he’s determined and won’t just mindlessly obey his parents. You cant tell me to cast aside my best friend! Plus best friend just generally thinks the goddamn world of him and helps him be happy! And best friend suffers from seeing himself as worthless and being anxious about disaster at every turn, feeling that nobody loves him and nobody SHOULD love him. And not being capable of taking care of his more mundane day-to-day needs because he doesnt believe he deserves to like.. eat, sleep, leave the house, etc. Poor guy... I’m so glad I invented a protagonist character that can be there for him! And seriously they both just renew each other’s self worth and I’m getting so emotional about this pairing before I’ve even developed it... GAHHHH

SO YEAH LETS GET DOWN TO THE ACTUAL PLOT It was kinda necessary to establish the history leading up to it, because that’s why it’s so tragic :(

Last year, the protagonist’s best friend vanished overnight and never came back. Everyone says he just ran away again like a coward, nobody even looked for him except you. They say he was last seen walking into the forest, and nobody will listen when you say that’s IMPOSSIBLE! His biggest fear was the spiders! The protagonist frantically tried to find him.. tried to find his body... tried to at least investigate this murder mystery and find some closure... tried to at least convince people that it WAS a murder mystery.... With the loss of the person he cared about most, the protagonist has slunk back into his own shell again, and starts to give up hope on life. Facing the same pariah treatment they gave his spider-fearing friend, he eventually learns to stop asking questions, to stop searching, to just do whatever his parents said. And his parents said he has to have an arranged marriage, to restore their reputation, after his STUPID STUNT of causing so much FUSS over the death of some stupid deserter... Each day blends into the next, as life becomes once again just going through the motions of being a ‘proper man’. Then... One day... He comes back. The spider-haired best friend comes walking though your door like nothing had happened! But.. he isn’t quite right. Your joy starts fading to a growing dread. He doesn’t remember what happened? He walks straight past the people heckling him? He seems more peaceful than he’s ever been, he’s fearless again and he keeps answering your questions with exactly what you’re desperate to hear. Sometimes you swear you see him talking to spiders whenever you turn your back... So you have to adjust to having him back, and try and figure out the mystery of his dissappearance while worrying whether you can trust him or not. You even entertain irrational thoughts that the legends are true, and maybe you’ve invited a forest spirit into your home because it mimicked the voice of the man you loved. And... what will you do about that love? For the first time ever he’s recipricating your feelings, he knows all those words that went unspoken, as if he could hear you every night as you wished you’d confessed while you had the chance. Is this really him holding you close, or is it a cruel trick to offer you everything you wanted, so the forest can claim you just like it claimed him?

So yeah, gameplay would be like exploring around each day searching for clues, doing a certain job-based minigame, and having chances to either go down the dating sim path or mistrust this man that may or may not be the one you knew. Even options perhaps to develop a romance with other characters instead? But will there be consequences for instilling jealousy in something otherworldly...? I think maybe if you just jump right into romancing possibly-friend-possibly-doppelganger, then you get a bit of a bad ending. Agreeing with him 100% and never solving the mystery is bad, regardless of whether he’s actually trustworthy or not. Either way it ends tragically, but there might be possibly a way to get a true romance ending with him if you actually do keep on top of resolving the main plot as well as just smooching. I... won’t say whether his romance is good or bad though :P And there’d be one not-romance route, where its kinda like you have to work hard to avoid romance! The protagonist’s arranged marriage is a big problem, he’d resigned himself to that fate but now he’s starting to hope he can confess to the one he really loves instead. But he’s gotta go against the whole damn world trying to force him into this ‘destiny’... Oh and I wanna make the most of the spider aesthetic! I was thinking that ‘fate threads’ could be a big gameplay element, with the possibility of getting these out-of-context flashforwards and clues that can help you avoid a bad ending. (Like in Until Dawn!) And romance meters would be a silk thread connecting the two of you, because pretty interface elements are awesome :)

POINTLESS RANDOM DEVELOPMENT TRIVIA This is actually a super old idea that’s remained undeveloped for many years! Back when i was a lil teen I originally imagined sort of a similar thing but with mermaids/water spirits instead of spider ones. And a lake instead of a forest, naturally. Also it kept flip-flopping on the genders of the characters. Ultimately i decided delicate spider aesthetic would fit better with a m/m couple and terrifying swamp creatures of fierceness would be better as sapphic. And the het idea died quickly cos it was based on dumb gender roles that the shy one has to be the girl, blablabla :P Oh and for some reason the whole spider idea came from reading one particular case in the manga adaptation of Ace Attourney. Weird, huh?

#spider smoochies game #aka cinnamon roll is lightly toasted by life #poor guy had a complete shitstorm of an adolescence #it would suck if he died to spider magic after all that #or died to something else #or maybe he's fine and you're just imagining it all~?

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