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ixcaliber · 11 months

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Games of the month - June 2023

This month my hyperfocus went towards watching as many movies as possible, so it’s a pretty breezy games of the month

1. Haiku, The Robot

Neat little metroidvania about a little robot. It’s cute it’s pretty fun. My two big complaints would be

1) it felt pretty linear. i don’t doubt that there were probably other ways to get to locations than the ways that i took but the experience of playing it it really felt like each upgrade allowed me access to one new path which would lead me to the next upgrade and so on and so on.

2) i like boss fights better when each enemy has a little name pop up. the designs were cool and did some interesting stuff sometimes. i just wish i didn’t have to think of them in terms of like ‘the car battery one’, ‘the tv one’ etc. It makes them feel less memorable.

Otherwise perfectly fine metroidvania.

2. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Chronologically this is when I finished Tears of the Kingdom but I’m not ready to tear into that just yet so lets move on to

3. Life After Magic

This is a free game available through steam or through itch.io. It’s a visual novel where you control Akiko, a former magical girl who has somewhat drifted through life after the big bad that she and her magical girl team fought against has been defeated. With y2k approaching something is wrong and it’s up to you to bring your girls back together and face one more threat.

Hey. I love this game. There’s a good chance this is pretty high up my games of the year list, if not at the very top. I love the girls. I love the trans and nonbinary inclusion. I love the homages to sailor moon, yu-gi-oh and probably some other stuff that I didn’t even get. I love the way the game plays with nostalgia and the way this narrative reaches a head. If you’re like one of the two or three people reading this I absolutely recommend you get and play this one.

4. Monuments To Guilt

This is a digital museum dedicated to hostile design as featured in the Jacob Gellar video Games That Aren’t Games. Throughout you can see a number of benches designed to be uncomfortable, off-putting or otherwise just inaccessible to homeless people and disabled people. It’s a short experience and it is interesting to see this insidious aspect of design presented in the prestigious format of a museum and to see it talked about openly. It’s an interesting little experience.

5. Down In Bermuda

Fun and simple puzzle game. It’s the kind of think that would be approachable for kids, simple puzzle concepts like pipe dreams kind of puzzles, hidden object puzzles, no towers of hanoi to speak of but lots of puzzles that feel like they’re in the public domain so to speak. Nothing too difficult and taxing.

6. Lone Fungus

Another metroidvania from the recent humble metroidvania bundle. This game is okay. I like the cute little aesthetic and the basic movement is fun. The big big Big criticism I have of this game is that so much of the side content is like these nether gates or these ladybird rooms. The first time you go in these you get a little popup or something to tell you just how completely optional they are and they would have to be. The difficulty of platforming going from the actual game to these challenges is a fucking sheer cliff wall both in terms of reaction speed needed and in terms of the sheer length of time you need to platform perfectly.

At one point in the game I got a new skill ability and accessed a little tutorial move about how to use it and it started talking about using it to propel yourself quickly by doing this one kind of dash into it and for the life of me I could not get it to activate properly. I felt like I was attempting to perform some complex speedrun tech and the inputs I had to do were like spread across four different buttons which all needed to be hit so quickly in succession. Impossible. This was about the time I gave up on exploration altogether.

And like... it’s a metroidvania. For me at least that exploration is the point of the video game. If you’ve put me off of doing it I don’t really know what I’m getting out of the experience any more.

Also frustrating is that the final (fourth of four) sword upgrades is locked behind completing every single one of the ladybird rooms. And like, if you’re good enough to manage that you’re not going to need the piddling 2 extra damage that the upgrade can offer. Overall it really felt like so much of the stuff you can find that’s optional is not worth it.

There’s like a relic system (like charms in hollow knight) but the way it costs out the various relics you can only really wear three at a time, probably only two if you want to use any of the useful ones.

And just as a minor nitpick on top of everything else, all the bosses are bigger versions of regular enemies that you fight in the area leading up to the boss. It’s not inherently negative when you do something like this in a game but when it’s every boss fight then it makes them less memorable and less interesting.

Also there’s like two ways to end the game, some npcs tell you to do things the proper way while there’s a couple who indicate this secret back route and imply that everyone else is lying to you. The thing is that like I finished the game and I would still have no idea how I’m supposed to escape through the backroute exit. The way the npcs frame it is like a skipping out on your responsibility to complete the tasks set to you for the rest of the game, but like if it’s weirdly more difficult than those tasks then something isn’t adding up.

I had a lot of complaints about this one. It’s fine if you put yourself into the right mindset, as I said up top the basic movement is pretty fun and the designs are cute. Difficult to recommend it if you like to experience this kind of game in the way that I prefer to though.

7. Growing Up

This is a weird one to describe. It’s a game, as the name implies, about growing up. The game’s like broken up into different aspects. During each turn you get the opportunity to learn new skills; you start as a baby and have to learn skills such as talking and walking but soon you’re in school and your skills become more academic focused. At the end of a turn you schedule these tasks, completing each one a specific number of times can master it which will give you bonuses to your attributes and knowledge points to help facilitate learning new skills.

It’s a very mechanically focused game. Maybe I’m being a little too in depth with my explanation. Okay lets try again.

Each turn has like three major components. Learning skills. Scheduling tasks and exploring the brain map. The brain map is like a little minigame where you move along a randomly generated kind of sphere grid sort of upgrade tree, trying to optimize the attribute gains and bonuses with the limited amount of brain points you have. Since you do it once a turn each turn it’s like ‘okay what do I want to focus on this turn’ and you might always try to grab the thing that upgrades the amount of brain points you can have at any given time, but also skew towards knowledge points if you want to learn something new. It does encourage you to be thinking ahead towards your goals and as you play through the game new kinds of tile are unlocked which add dramatically to the complexity of this minigame and how you play it.

I think this game is very good mechanically. I really enjoyed the loop of learning skills, mastering skills, playing the brain map to try to optimize my ability to learn new skills.

The weakness in the game is the way the narrative is delivered. Which isn’t to say the narrative is bad. In my playthrough I got to befriend some good girls and then date and eventually in the epilogue marry my best friend Alicia.

(Also something of a sidenote but should mention that I got this from the humble pride bundle. It’s great that it does allow for gay and lesbian romances but it doesn’t seem to facilitate playing a transgender or nonbinary character. I’d love to see something added to facilitate that in a patch or free dlc.

(At the birth of your character you’re given the option to pick gender or to let fate decide. If you choose to pick you get to pick male or female. I wouldn’t want non-binary or transgender options added here, but like when you get to an age where you’re going to school to have some pop up or prompt that asks you if you feel comfortable in your gender or something like that and that sets you off along a path of transition. Or to have it opt in, an object you can unlock that allows you to schedule ‘self reflection’ or something that can lead you to a path to transition.

I understand that that might be a lot of work though, as there are a lot of characters in the game and making custom conversations for each of them to acknowledge your transition might be quite time consuming)

The other thing I wanted to point out in regard to it being on the humble pride bundle is at the beginning you can pick your parents. I picked to have two moms. The game allows this and is fine with it. There is however an unintended consequence.

Very early on, when you’re still a baby, I learned how to speak and got this cutscene where one of my mom was encouraging me to say ‘Mommy’ as my first word. And so I did and then my other mom was disappointed that I hadn’t said her name first. Maybe this is a one off oversight, because later in the game when I started dating my girlfriend she did acknowledge that we were both girls, but here at least they’ve not disallowed you to have gay parents but they haven’t made any specific accommodations for it.)

So the way that the narrative works is that the game is sort of presented in a semi-roguelike kind of fashion. It tells you up front that every life is unique and I think what it means is that at each stage of your life it will introduce one new character from like a stock set of characters. I met Jake at like primary school, Alicia at high school and Felicity at like college or something. All the schools were using american terms for the school levels so idk.

You get choices in each of these relationships that can branch them into slightly different directions (i think) but like your control over that interaction is minimal. If I’d been given the option I would never have spoken to Jake again. Not because he did anything wrong but just because I would prefer to be talking to girls. But the way the game is set up these events just sort of happen intermittently as you play and aren’t really informed by any of your decisions in the actual game you’re playing.

And your relationship with your parents is limited to occasionally they’ll give you a goal that you can complete to get a special currency you can turn in for some rewards. They don’t really have characters or expectations or preferences for you. Neither of my moms had like a desire to see me do really well at sports for example.

The other weirdest part is how okay at some point in the game you get two bars to manage. Happiness is your own enjoyment. Get it high enough and you’re relaxed and can schedule extra activities, get it too low and you’re stressed and you can’t learn new skills. And there is parental proudness or something. Get that high enough and you can get perks from them and I don’t know what happens when it gets toward the lower end.

Each activity you can do has some effect on both these meters. Studying will decrease happiness but increase parental proudness. Playing games will do the inverse. In addition to your main academic skills you have stuff like sports that you can gradually gain access to. And they reduce happiness but increase parental proudness. I learned how to start along a creative writing course and that reduces happiness but increases parental proudness. Hell I fucking learned magic (partially because I really liked the magician NPC Daz) and that does the same; decreases happiness but increases parental proudness.

I guess I can see it from a balance point of view but it feels so weird to be playing as a character with no passion. Nothing that they try to do makes them happy. I really feel like you should be allowed to find, or develop an interest. Like when your character is unhappy because they’ve been practicing their magic tricks for too long clearly something is wrong, right?

The overall vibe I get from this game is... you know those posts that circulate on here sometimes where it’s like “If you’re hacking the rules of dnd to do what you want then something is wrong. The mechanics are supposed to lead to the storytelling and if they don’t then you should be playing a different ttrpg where the mechanics do support the kind of narrative you want to tell/experience.”

The mechanics are good, the narrative is sometimes fairly interesting. They are essentially entirely seperate from one another and that’s a shame.

2. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

(some brief spoilers i suppose)

i don’t fucking know man.

its good. its undeniably a good game. better in some ways than breath of the wild, maybe a little too padded out. i never felt a great compulsion to fully explore the depths. It was neat that they were there but they felt so empty. Just large open stretches dotted with huge monsters I don’t want to fight and sometimes I’ll follow a treasure map down there and it’ll lead me to a colliseum full of lynels and I’ll be kerbstomped so hard that it drains my will to continue playing.

That’s how I felt towards the end. The game does the same thing as breath of the wild where the longer you play the more silver enemies it spawns in and though its more managable with the introduction of sages I never found myself wanting to engage in combat.

I genuinely do feel like the silver enemies ruin my experience of the game. I feel like I’m making progress, getting stronger, feeling more capable of dealing with threats. Now that I have my sages with me sometimes I’ll actively seek out a combat encounter and not hate it. There’s this sweet spot where that’s all true for a little bit, and then silver monsters start showing up and my enthusiasm ebbs dramatically. I never killed a single lynel in this game. By the time I felt that maybe I was good enough to start fighting them they’d started spawning in silver versions.

All that said ascend is such a good ability that it sort of changed how my brain worked a little bit. Playing games immediately afterwards I would just keep thinking ‘oh i can just ascend up there’ and having to remind myself that no most video games do not allow this.

I think I had so much to say about Zelda. About how it feels like too much, about how sometimes you’ll just find yourself caught in a thing of not really accomplishing anything and come off feeling miserable, about the one afternoon where I spent literally hours in a pirate cave trying to solve a puzzle that didn’t exist. I think I’ve just exhausted all that in my brain and all my brain has left to offer is ‘just give me a fucking accessibility menu, let me turn down the damage and the health and turn what is a very good game that I sort of resent into an experience I’d actually like to play’.

#ix plays video games #fuck did i really finish zelda this month?#that feels like so long ago now

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redeyeflyguy · 10 months

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Wonderful Things That May or May Not Be Wonderful!!! Humanity is watched over by a race of invisible angels known as the Celestrians. They protect and help the populous for the purpose of collecting their gratitude in the form of crystals. This is all so one day they will all ascend back to the realm of the almighty. And when that fated day comes, tragedy strikes breaking the ritual and casting one rookie Celestrian down to the planet below. One who must stop a long dormant darkness and help prove that humanity, despite its many faults, is still worthy of grace. As one review from my youth stated "Too much free time? Tired of having a life? Play Dragon Quest IX!" For a JRPG, It's got all the turn based combat, conversation text, and overworld questing you could possibly want and more. So many side quests, so many unlockable classes, so much to do and explore that its crazy it fits all on one DS cartridge. On top of that, this is the only RPG I've played where you to create your own party of ragtag adventurers instead of having a pre-set group of defined characters. Your own Akira Toriyama styled posse of party members with the roles and backstories you prescribe to them. Yes please! Plus, once you complete the main story, there is a massive post-game with randomly generated super dungeons to conquer, treasure maps to decipher, and ultra hard quests to discover and on top of that, you can wirelessly team up with other players locally or over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (if it still existed RIP) so you don't have to go in alone. DQ9 is a time sink if there ever was one and if you have said time and a DS, it is a sink worth filling. Definitely worthy of wonderful-ness.

#wonderful #dragon quest ix #sentinels of the starry sky #square enix #jrpg #nintendo ds #video games #role playing games #character creation #fantasy #online play #turn based rpg #akira toriyama #post game #side quests #classes #fun

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fgmtzdev1 · 2 years

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Nintendo Power #257 from August 2010, with Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies featured.

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sillymeter · 2 months

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they should give you emergency prozac that you can dissolve under your tongue or something

#my meds are never right i played video games with my friends and did really really badly and im trying not to have a meltdown abt it #it ix literally not that serious they had fun.

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magicmalcolm · 6 months

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Nice.

Vivi? More like Speedy, amirite?

#vivi ornitier #final fantasy 9 #ffix #ff9 #final fantasy ix #athlete queen #hippaul #mini games #side questing across the universe #malcolm plays video games #gayme boy #a gay who games

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azelf101 · 11 months

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Actually now that we have have to basically evacuate Twitter while it crumbles into a pile of ashes, I wanna know something:

So I had a project that was/is in the works to over a bunch of tweets I found on Twitter about people talking about…or even so much as mentioning Azure Striker Gunvolt 3. Usually people talking about the story and characters.

So I figured I can ask Tumblr, have you guys seen any spicy takes about the third Gunvolt game on here that I can read about? Maybe I can rework the project? Possibly?

#azure striker gunvolt #gunvolt 3 #gunvolt chronicles #gunvolt #azure striker gunvolt 3 #azure striker gunvolt 2 #gunvolt 2 #luminous avenger ix #luminous avenger ix 2 #video games #on that note #please play the games #they are super fun #and the story is neat #and the characters are lovable #and I wanna explain why I have worlds number one gunvolt 3 defender in my profile.

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ryunneldred · 3 months

Video

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Silver Box of Ix Chel | Shadow of the Tomb Raider Pt.10

#youtube #tomb raider #shadow of the tomb raider #lara croft #video games #video game walkthrough #gaming #games #let's play #square enix #youtube gaming #youtube growth #youtube videos #ix chel

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acx49er · 5 months

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#acx49er #let’s play #video games #gaming #nostaliga #retrogaming #another game beaten #endgame spoilers #final fantasy ix remaster #playstation #playstation 5 #dubtendo

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bugfragged · 1 year

Video

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Zola is surprised that his amalgamation of the previous Ys final/endgame bosses does final boss things.

ATRA NOX PHILIUS - Let's Play 「 Ys IX: Monstrum Nox (PC/Steam) 」 - 28

#youtube #video games #pc games #jrpg games #let's play #ys ix monstrum nox #nihon falcom #ys series #nis america #action rpg #steam #gaming #gameplay #walkthrough #playthrough

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ixcaliber · 1 year

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New Year New Video Games of the Month

it’s january

1. Mario and Rabbids: Sparks of Hope

It’s not a new observation that this combination of things shouldn’t work. Neither Mario nor the rabbids have anything to do with xcom style tactical combat. And initially it is funny to see Mario wielding dual pistols. But despite the seeming incompatibility of the elements these games are good.

The best thing about this game for me was the aesthetics. The designs of the planets that you visit, and the designs of the new original characters. Edge and the Spark Hunters are in a polycule and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. Cursa, the main villain of the game, looks fantastic; I loved whenever they were on screen. And even some of the planetary guardians have really great designs, for example Woodrow the doomed poet and Bea the retired pop diva turned farmer.

The biggest problem with the game is that it can feel real slow. Battles sort of happen jrpg random encounter style; you bump into an enemy, are loaded into an arena to have a combat, and then load back into the world. Only it feels more arduous than a jrpg random encounter just because a tactical battle by its very nature takes longer than a similar battle would. It would be one thing if these battles were one and done but enemies do respawn when you move to a different map (even if it’s just like going in and out of a house).

Additionally movement is just a hair too slow and so many of the puzzles you encounter are logistical puzzles where you can immediately see what you need to do, and the puzzle is painstakingly pulling blocks flipping switches etcetera to perfom that action.

Additionally additionally a lot of the main battles you fight are survive battles where you have to simply survive for x number of turns. I was always happy whenever a battle would load up and it was a simple ‘kill these enemies’ or ‘kill x number of enemies’ or best of all ‘reach this area’ because that’s something i can optimize.

Oh actually I know I already said the biggest problem with the game is the slowness, but the actually biggest problem with the game is the enemies ability to spawn in and attack on the same turn. Sure it gives you a heads up where they are going to spawn the turn beforehand, but even so it means that the enemy is almost always going to get free hits on you just because it’s impossible to fully protect yourself sometimes.

Or worse, on levels where you have to protect a building or an item enemies will spawn in and shoot that object taking away one of it’s 8 or so hit points on the same turn and so you essentially have to play perfectly to offset the fact that they get free hits you can do nothing about.

Oh and please note that this was a rental copy and I try not to financially support Ubisoft due to their unaddressed culture of abuse.

2. World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

You know that thing where a parent catches their kid smoking a cigarette and then as a punishment/deterrent forces them to smoke the whole pack? That was pretty much how I felt trying to force myself through this entire expansion as quickly as possible to avoid paying any more money to Activision Blizzard than I had to due to their unaddressed culture of abuse. (Also worth noting I didn’t buy Shadowlands, it was just randomly given to me at some point?)

With that said... I think that this was like my second favourite wow expansion?

(1. Legion 2. Shadowlands 3. The Burning Crusade 4. Mists of Pandaria 5. Warlords of Draenor 6. Cataclysm 7. Wrath of the Lich King 8. Battle For Azeroth)

Battle for Azeroth absolutely killed dead my interest in anything that was going on in the actual narrative of world of warcraft, so it is to the game’s benefit that you spend most of the time dealing with the crises and politics of the various afterlives you visit.

I liked these self contained narratives, like the rebellion of the people of Revendreth against their corrupted Sire, the civil war caused by the disappearance of the Primus of Maldraxus, the doubt and uncertainty creeping into the selfless to a fault kyrian of Bastion, the struggle to preserve nature in the face of an overwhelming drought in Ardenweald.

In Legion I loved the Order Hall campaign. It was a system where each class gets its own unique and aesthetically appropriate headquarters with a unique storyline, a unique armor set and a selection of unique artefact weapons (cool weapons from the warcraft lore with little questlines about how you get them). In Battle For Azeroth it felt like they tried to replicate this idea with the Horde/Alliance campaign and I couldn’t care less.

In Shadowlands you have the Covenant system and it’s a fair approximation of this idea. You journey through each of the four major afterlives and then are given the option of which you wish to align yourself with and there are unique questlines for each, a whole bunch of armour sets (at least one for each armor class), a unique side activity, unique npcs to ‘soulbind’ with, unique skills that are available for use whenever you are in the shadowlands. Honestly it’s a little too much weighing on this one decision and it was really difficult to make my choice, especially considering I wouldn’t have time for a second playthrough with another class (I picked the Night Fae because Ardenweald has the most foxies and it allowed me to take the form of a foxie whenever I wanted).

Sidenote on the ‘soulbind’ thing. It’s first introduced when two kyrian (big blue valkyrie ladies) mention being soulbinds and of course I think ‘oh cool soulbind means getting gay married’. So I got gay married to a cute satyr lady called Niya. Not what they intended I think but I’m taking it.

There’s so many elements in here that I could talk about. Like the garrison missions are now a kind of auto-chess that I couldn’t stand. Like how the Ardenweald side activity is just planting seeds and then waiting until they are sprouted, like a worse version of the Pandaria farming thing. Like Torghast and its pseudo roguelike structure. Like The Maw and its unique sensibilities and how later patches stripped away these more unique aspects. Like the proliferation of Timeless Isle daily quest hubs in patch content and how that continues with Korthia and Zereth Mortis.

My favourite quest was the first one I got after joining the Night Fae, where they ask me to put on a play recounting the events of both Legion and Battle For Azeroth. It was a fun little quest with various night fae npcs illusioned up to look like the major antagonists of previous expansions (and a whole bunch of them running around as n’zoth’s tentacles). And as a bonus it was kind of cathartic to see the Night Fae audience bewilderedly questioning why it was that the Horde and Alliance had gone right back to fighting one another again.

Additionally it was interesting that the main storyline of this expansion was completeable without ever setting foot in a raid or a dungeon. There were little sections where it was clear that raid encounters would go here and it would show you the outcome of those raids to make sure you could follow the continuing events. And it even had its own final boss fight.

Overall it was a pretty good experience even if it was coloured by my desperate desire to finish it within a single month. It’s not an experience I’d like to repeat, though that said if they did randomly decide to give me Dragonflight I can absolutely see this happening again next January. Fingers crossed that they don’t do that.

3. Lunistice

Lunistice is a cute 3d platformer with a ps1 art style and an adorable tanuki protagonist called Hana. It has this sort of dream like aesthetic. Every level is more or less an abstract environment that doesn’t feel quite like a real place, in some kind of endless void. For me it evokes early 3d platformers in the style of like Croc maybe? Except with actually good and responsive controls.

Hana is really quick and responsive actually, and it feels as though optimization of speed is a core element of the game. There are for example branches or waterways that you can slide down and as you do so you get this... almost like a balance gauge that shifts as the slide curves. At first I thought you had to stay in the right zone or fall off, eventually I realized it’s entirely there to give you a speed boost. At least I think so, the game didn’t stop and explain this to me so I’m working a little off guesswork here.

There’s a specific button to hold to move slower and more precisely but you only need it when on the narrowest of platforms... or if you’re good enough you could probably make those jumps without it.

The story such as it exists is told through bonus documents you get for collecting optional collectibles and is a little abstract even if you do read through them all. Like, having done so I do understand the concept of what is going on in the game and the reason why but there’s no detail. No attempt to explain how what you’re doing solved the problem that it allegedly solved.

Overall I really liked it. A nice cute platformer, cozy short and simple after my extended period playing really long games.

4. You Died But A Necromancer Revived You

A short little 2d game of hurrying through a dungeon and dodging traps. You die in a single hit but don’t worry a necromancer will revive you again and again to try try again. I know that’s like the conceit of almost every game that you can die and try again but here it is like partially narrative. The villain of the game is the necromancer that keeps bringing you back and forcing you to run his gauntlet.

The game is procedurally generated, forcing you to adapt on the fly rather than simply memorize a layout of traps. Also your path is gradually replaced by spikes, forcing you to keep moving and pushing you into riskier behaviours. Also on the normal difficulty you have to complete two or three floors before you’ll recieve a checkpoint that you can continue from.

All of these decisions make a certain amount of sense but sometimes you do get situations where the time pressure of the oncoming spikes and the density of traps creates a series of obstacles that feel insurmountable.

It does have an easier option which just means you get a checkpoint after each floor. This makes victory seem significantly more attainable for me as it decreases the amount of time you have to play perfectly and makes it less irritating to encounter a level that feels impossible.

A fun little experience. You could not pay me to touch the harder difficulties.

5. Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye

I loved The Outer Wilds. I... um... have less enthusiasm about this one. It still has all the things I love. The way that progress is gated by learning new information and shortcuts. The way that the whole game is this ticking clockwork world with predictable changes that happen at specific intervals. The intricate design of the world. The solutions to various problems being things you could have done at any time but wouldn’t think to without some prompting and learning how these systems work is a genuine moment of revelation.

The problem is the stealth segments. I really hated them. I was first trying to play this January of last year and I stopped the moment I hit them. They just do not fit with how the rest of the game plays. I hated the experience of hiding and luring and trying to move around and navigate in the pitch black.

The point at which I quit, I learned when I returned to it this year. I was trying to sneak into The Lodge and I was convinced I wasn’t sneaking good enough. That there was some direction I had to sneak to or some way I had to move that would solve what I was doing wrong. It’s this subjectivity that stopped me from realizing that there was actually a puzzle to be solved here.

It still has some really good moments. Like the revelations of what you need to do to access some of the locks are kind of incredible. And I love the design of The Stranger as a whole. The stealth doesn’t ruin the experience but it does greatly diminish it.

6. Taiji

Have you ever played The Witness? Would you like more The Witness with a slightly different main puzzle mechanic but otherwise recognizable puzzle elements?

I don’t think it’s unfair to compare Taiji and The Witness given that it even mimics the aesthetic of key areas. It’s not one to one but there are times when if you do have that experience you’ll walk up to an area and already have a good idea of how the rules should work in this area, and probably be right.

It doesn’t do as good a job at teaching its new mechanics as The Witness does. In the few instances it has a wholely unique idea to present, such as at the graveyard it essentially explicitly tells you half of how it works and doesn’t even really hint that’s there’s a second half of how it works until the final row of puzzles when suddenly your answers don’t work any more and it’s unclear exactly why.

It does have some neat environmental puzzles but lacks the immediacy of how they can be solved in The Witness.

If you like The Witness you’ll probably like this, though not quite as much. If you didn’t like The Witness you probably won’t like this. If you haven’t played The Witness, play The Witness and then consult this flow chart again.

7. I Commissioned Some Bees 0

After I mentioned playing the hidden object cats game to Forgie she pointed me towards this series of games. This one is free on Steam. It’s ten pieces of art filled with hidden bees. Find all the bees and generally have a chill time. It’s very pleasant.

The only thing I’ll say about this one is that the difficulty curve doesn’t really exist. The smaller levels are obviously easier because there’s less ground to cover and its easier to spot the bees. In some of the levels the bees are like solid objects that can hide half behind other objects, in others they are simply outlines and thus much trickier to find. There’s no real order that the levels are presented in. The second level is huge and some of the later levels are really small, like I think it’s level eight that is just a parking lot. And the outline levels are scattered seemingly at random as well.

Thats a really nitpicky complaint though. Overall the game has chill vibes and one level is a cute woodlands with foxie and raccoon and squirrel and god I would love a game where you find all the hidden foxies so much. That’d be a game of the year contender right there. No danger just chill just so many foxies to pet.

8. Kirby: Star Allies

I’ve never played a Kirby game before... and in some respects I still don’t really feel like I’ve played a Kirby game now. Star Allies was a game Forgie rented, and I think she just had it on her rental list as a placeholder, like, they’ll never send this one out, gives her a buffer to put the games she’s more interested in at the time at the top of the list. Only they did send it out.

It’s not a bad game but it is very chaotic. Me and Forgie tried playing it two player and it was pretty much imparseable.

Maybe saying that I don’t feel like I’ve played a Kirby game still is a little unfair. The only parts that I feel like I might have missed out on are like boss fights. In the chaos I’d quickly lose my copy ability and then not really know what to be doing for the rest of the fight as my allies just beat the enemy for me essentially.

My favourite part was having cute mouse Daroach on my team or whenever there was a team up action as that allowed the whatever was going on on screen to be more parseable.

I’d really like to try a more traditional game, or the new one where Kirby can be a car. I’m considering finding a copy of Kirby: Squeak Squad so I can see more of Daroach.

9. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

This game is something of a mishmash. It’s a bit of uncharted in how it handles its traversal, a bit of dark souls in its combat systems and a little bit of metroidvania in terms of level design. And while I do like the game I feel like all of these elements sort of work against each other.

Uncharted traversal makes it take longer to get around a level. If you keep dying to difficult bosses then chances are you’re going to see the same climbing animations over and over and it will start to grate.

Metroidvania level design suffers similarly, both the overlong traversal and the difficult combat make you less likely to even want to come back and search for secrets using your newly unlocked powers. A situation that isn’t helped by the fact that most of the things you can find are recolours for your poncho, your robot friend, your spaceship. The amount of really worthwhile items you can find is like single digits. There’s like total nine collectibles actually worth getting (the eight extra cannisters (your estus flask equivalent) and the one randomly hidden ability to use a double ended light saber).

And the dark souls style combat just kind of doesn’t necessarily gel with the source material. Like part of the point of a dark souls game is that it’s hard you’ll probably die at least a couple of times and have to get back up and throw yourself at the boss until you overcome it. That’s why you’re always some form of undead entity, so there’s no break in narrative when you die.

But, you know, Jedi die when they are killed. I spent some time trying to construct a justification for this. Your bonfire equivalent are meditation circles and I thought maybe whenever you fail it turns out what you are actually experiencing was a force vision to give you wisdom of how to proceed. Something like that, but it doesn’t quite gel with the fact that you can keep items and opened shortcuts stay opened.

I’d heard people make the dark souls comparison before and it’s like yes they borrowed these specific set of mechanics from those games but not the atmosphere or the things that actually make those kind of games fun to explore.

Also the game really wants you to be parrying. It’s the best way to deal with blaster fire, and enemies guard so much that attacking without parrying is just wasting your time and energy. Yet they also recover from a parry so quickly. I can’t land two hits before i have to actively dodge roll out of the way of their next attack.

I’ve complained a lot here but I did like this game. The things that really worked for me was the narrative... or maybe more accurately it’s the characters. Pretty much everyone is living with trauma after having been forced into hiding by the empire (i don’t remember if that’s what they’re referred to in this one but you know what i mean). A major component of the plot is learning how to move forward with trauma, and how to forgive yourself for your survivor’s guilt. Cere is cool. Merrin is pretty cool. Trilla is pretty cool. I like the little robot and Greez. Cal is also here and no sorry that’s mean, he’s fine it’s just another game where I’d rather be playing as one of the cool supporting cast.

Oh and fuck when they throw two of the bounty hunter boss fights at you at the same time.

10. SteelRising

Now here’s a game that actually feels like a Soulslike. I really liked this one a lot. It’s a soulslike where you’re a clockwork robot in an alternate revolutionary france, on a mission from the queen to find out how to stop the mad king’s mechanical armies.

I love how strongly it leans into its setting. You visit various well known french landmarks such as the Louvre, the palace of Versailles, the Bastille. You meet historical figures, some of whose names I’ve even heard before. It’s just such a neat aesthetic to these machines designed with revolutionary french sensibilities. The worst level in the game is Montmartre where you descend into a quarry and you basically could be in any video game at that point.

The combat is fun, and offers plenty of options and variety. I ran a high agility build with claw weapons and a heavy focus on immobilization and then capitalizing on the critical attacks that would ensue and I had a great time and hang on wait a minute -

Oh and you know what else Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order doesn’t have? Diversity in gameplay style. You can’t really build your character in that game. You don’t even get a second weapon style until late in the game/whenever you happen to randomly stumble across the doublesided light saber.

Anyway one of the things that is interesting about SteelRising is that most of its levels are designed for revisiting as you complete the various sidequests that you get throughout the game and so every level is like initial this long twisting corridor that you have to make progress throughout, but as you unlock new abilities and shortcuts they open out to be a lot more freeform than you’d expect in a souls game.

The sidequests are also interesting in that it seems as though you have an impact on how the power struggle at the end of the game plays out through your actions. Not just in your choices when you’re given an explicit ‘do you help x person or y person’ choice but also just in who you choose to complete side quests for. I helped everyone and I think it netted me the worst ending where neither side was really happy with the outcome.

Also Aegis and Athenais are gay and dating and I do not care if you disagree. This is simply the facts.

11. LumbearJack

Lumbearjack is a cute little game where a bear lumberjack cuts down and recycles every man made object in his path to help protect his animal friends and defeat the Evil Corporation.

It’s a very pleasant simple game. Your axe is strong enough to chop down objects of a certain size. Chop down everything you can until you have enough materials to create a bigger axe and chop down bigger things. Repeat as needed and watch nature reclaim the land as you chop away garbage dumps and industrial machinery. It’s cute and nice fun.

12. The Case of the Golden Idol

The Case of the Golden Idol is so good. It’s a game that presents you with a series of scenarios frozen in time; often the death of someone connected to the titular golden idol. You can explore the area, examine the items held by every person there, the contents of safes and letters and whatever evidence might be nearby, and once you’re done examining everything and have collected all of the relevant words you are given a number of different charts to fill in.

One common one is a selection of images of the various people involved in the situation with spaces below them for you to input their names. Or for example a map of living quarters and you’re asked to identify who lives where based on the information available to you. And each chapter you’re given a statement filled with blanks that you have to fill to demonstrate your understanding of the crime.

It’s really good. I’ve heard comparisons to Return of the Obra Dinn and yeah there’s so few games that operate on using deductive reasoning like this. Early candidate for game of the year. Going to be on my top ten at the very least. Well, I mean anything can happen but the rest of the year would have to be fucking amazing to keep this from my top ten.

13. Sonority

Sonority is a musical puzzle game. You play as Esther, a girl looking to learn a magical melody that can heal her friend, a talking bear called Batama. I was a little hesitant because I’m bad at musical puzzles in pretty much every game that features them, but the steam page promised that no prior musical knowledge was necessary so I gave it a try.

There are a couple of puzzles in the game about identifying notes that you can hear and playing them back, but these are all optional puzzles. The way that the main puzzles of the game work is that they use the rise and fall between notes as a puzzle element to interact with the world.

It works pretty well all in all, with enough variety in the puzzles and how they are presented to sustain you across the entire game. Though by the end I had like three instruments each of which able to play a slightly different range of notes and I did start to get a little overwhelmed. There were some segments, like the very last puzzle of the game, where I had most of the elements in place and I just had to do trial and error on the last elements because I couldn’t picture how it was supposed to look when I had done it correctly.

Also importantly there is a talking raccoon who is your friend.

#ix plays video games

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rollingsins · 1 year

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all hers, part xi

summary: Sam and Richie go out for dinner, leaving you and Tara to your own devices. You take full advantage.

warnings: (+18), Tara is Ghostface, smut, cunnilingus, fingering, strap-ons, vaginal sex, top!tara.

word count: 2.3k

a/n: smut break for anon who requested R riding Tara. Let me know what you want to see next!

Living with Sam and Richie, as Tara predicted, is entirely miserable.

Sam hovers like a mother hen, Richie walks around the house in his boxers, plays video-games until the early morning. Tara’s moodier than usual at the intrusion, throwing jabs and picking fights and you just want one night of goddamn peace.

One night without feeling like you’re living in a warzone.

In fact, you’re literally in a warzone tonight.

Richie’s playing Call of Duty, again, Tara wants to watch a movie and Sam insists on brokering peace between them, offering to go out and buy Tara a TV for her bedroom.

It goes down as well as you’d expect.

“Why doesn’t he go out and buy a TV.” Tara snarls, perched against the couch with her arms crossed, “This is my TV right here.”

“Our TV.” Sam says, pointedly. Richie scratches the back of his head, a little awkward, “You don’t own the TV and you don’t own this house. When you do, you can start setting rules.”

“Fuck this.” Tara says. She stands, holds out her hand for you, “Play your stupid game, I don’t care. Come on babe, let’s go have sex.”

Your blush flames across your chest to the tip of your ears.

“No one is having sex.” Sam says, loudly.

“No one?” Richie says, a little put out.

“No one.” Sam confirms as she pries the controller from his hands, “Not until you finish your chores.”

Tara groans. Sam had set up a chore wheel the night she moved in, something that had immediately set Tara off. It was Tara’s week on dishes, and yet again, she’d let them fester in the sink. Another show of open defiance.

“You’re on garbage duty.” She tells Richie, “And it’s full. Go take it out.”

“And then I get sex?” He asks, his interest piqued. She ignores him, looks at Tara.

“Dishes, Tara. I cooked, it’s only fair.”

“You should have to do it for cooking.” Tara grumbles under her breath, “That linguine was a crime against God.”

You hop up, take her hand before she can start another fight.

“Come on, baby, I’ll help you.” You say. You press a kiss to the back of her hand. She softens, just a little. Then you’re tugging her out of the room and into the kitchen.

“Who made her the queen of the world?” Tara seethes as she settles herself onto the edge of the kitchen counter, most pointedly not doing the dishes. You pry open the dishwasher, start stacking the dirty plates in.

“It’ll only be for a little while, babe.” You say, “Just until she’s sure you’re okay again.”

But she doesn’t go, not for days on end.

Days of Richie and Tara fighting over the TV. Days of Sam and her chore wheel. By the end of the week, you’re actually afraid Tara might kill them both.

“Bye!” Tara calls out to Richie and Sam as they head out the door. They’re off to some restaurant for their one year anniversary. You’re both thankful for the reprieve, “Don’t come back!” She adds for good measure.

Sam flicks her the dirtiest stare, then she’s heading out the front door, Richie in tow.

“Finally.” Tara says, her eyes alight, “Finally we can watch The Menu undisturbed.”

The movie is fine. You get a good bit into it before you can tell Tara’s bored. Too much talking, not enough blood.

You barely make it through the first act before she’s rubbing your leg, leaning down to press a kiss to your neck.

“Tara,” You say, trying to keep your expression even. Trying to ignore the flicker of desire that courses through you, “Baby. I’m watching this.”

“I’d rather watch you.” She says, runs her tongue along the length of your jaw.

You sigh. Let her tilt your head slightly and let her kiss you.

Her hands move to cup your face. She tastes good. Like that cherry lip balm she knows you like. Like the strawberry cheesecake you’d had for dessert. You bite down gently on her bottom lip and push her back into the couch.

She’s pulling you on top of her in a flash, movie still blaring, abandoned. You thread your fingers through her dark hair, tug gently as you pull her into you, gasp as her hands wander. Into the back pockets of your jeans, squeezing gently, teasing.

Then down your thighs, holding you into her.

You kiss her again, slip your tongue between her lips and grind down into her as she feels you up.

Kissing her is magic, you could do it for hours. You would do it for hours if she’d let you. If she wasn’t so impatient, always wanting more.

There’s that impatience now as she’s trying to pull your shirt over your head. She’s such a boy sometimes, with only one thing on her mind. And right now that thing is your breasts in her mouth.

Her eyes light up the moment she sees them, like she hasn't seen them hundreds of times before.

She wastes no time, mouth hot and greedy around your nipples, biting only slightly, then soothing you with her tongue. You tighten your grip in her hair, sigh gently as she palms your ass through your jeans, talented tongue working you up.

You close your eyes, enjoy the feel of her mouth, her hands, the little noises she makes as she sucks so gently. Then you’re prying her mouth away, wanting her lips back on yours.

She feels good, warm. You pull her shirt over her head, press your skin into her.

Then you’re dropping down to your knees, clumsily drawing her jeans down her legs. You line kisses up her thighs, spread her wide for you. She’s soaked through her underwear, you tease your lips along the waistband, dipping slightly to press a warm kiss to her soaked center. She’s looking down at you with hooded eyes, hand on the back of your head trying to guide you. You press your tongue to the fabric once more, then pull her underwear down her legs.

You both moan when the barrier is gone and your tongue runs up her length, wettening her swollen folds. You don’t waste any time, now you’re the impatient one. The moment her clit is in your mouth you suck down hard, ferocious.

Her mouth falls open, her head tilting back, a sigh on her lips.

You squeeze her thighs with your hand, then trail it up to slip a finger inside her warm heat. She feels so good around you, like she always does. Gripping and squeezing. She’s always so tight. You slip a second finger in, lovingly suck on her clit as you drive your fingers in deeper, curling so you can hit that perfect spot.

She cums quickly, all breathy moans and your name on her lips.

You frown. It’s too soon, you want to stay down here with her legs wrapped around your head and her pretty pussy in your mouth. You press a kiss to her thigh, let her recover, rubbing your hands along her thighs, hoping she’s not too sensitive for another round.

Her hands wrap around your arms, trying to tug you up.

You pout, but relent, suddenly increasingly aware of your soaked underwear.

She seems to be too, judging by the way she’s trying to pull you out of your clothes as quickly as possible. You take her lips in a searing kiss, completely unhelpful as she undresses you, until you’re naked against her, her hands reaching down to slip between your thighs.

“Tara.” You moan into her neck as her fingers brush your clit, teasing you gently. Suddenly all thought of being on your knees is gone. You want her to press you into the couch and fuck you until you forget your own name. You tug on her gently, trying to lean back and pull her on top of you. Her grip around your waist tightens.

“Mm.” Tara says, her voice low, turned on, “No, I want you on top.”

“Oh, really?” You say, eyes filled with delight. You spread your legs a little wider, trying to give her access. She presses a kiss to your lips, then she’s pulling back, smile coy.

“Wait here,” She says, eyes warm with want, “I’ll be right back.”

You wait on the couch while she races upstairs. Tilt your head, attention drawn to the TV. When she returns, it’s with the strap-on in hand. Your belly coils as she clambours back onto the couch, drawing you with her. She wastes no time, lubing herself up and then her fingers are back on you, drawing your legs open as she pulls you into her lap.

You groan as she slips her fingers inside you, warming you up.

Then you feel the cool plastic against your folds, slipping between them as she tries to find your entrance. You kiss her soft, fingers tightening around the back of her neck as she slips the tip inside you.

You start slow, getting used to it inside you. Tara’s hands are on your hips, gently guiding you. She’s kissing you, all tongue, wild. When you feel the soft press of her thighs flushed against yours, her entire length inside you, you sigh.

She doesn’t give you a moment to relax. She’s tilting her hips back and then up into you, sending shockwaves through you. You moan, drop your head forward onto her shoulder as she thrusts up into you.

She keeps a steady pace, each tilt of her hips hits hard, brushes against your cervix.

“Tara, fuck.” You gasp as she grips your hips, bouncing you down into her, “Harder, baby.”

She complies, debauched sound of your skin slapping hers as she drives her hips up into you.

You take her earlobe between your teeth, grind yourself down onto her.

“Does that feel good, sweetheart?” She’s asking, momentarily letting go of your waist to rub small circles on your clit. She’s thrusting up into you lazily, enjoying the way you bounce yourself a little harder, like you’re putting on a show for her.

“So good.” You murmur into her ear. Press a hot kiss to her neck and wrap your arms around her shoulders, “You’re so deep, baby.”

In response, she wraps her arms back around you, pounds up a little harder. You reward her with a long moan, cheeks flushed, holding her tight against you, wanting to have her as close as possible. Her naked body in your arms, her lips on your mouth, her cock buried deep in your cunt.

It’s building, your orgasm. She’s close too, her breathing a little jilted, hands around your hips squeezing, squeezing, squeezing as she thrusts her hips up into you.

She hits just the right spot and you’re about to cum around her when you hear a loud crash and a blood-curdling shriek.

You freeze, turn your head just in time to see Sam and Richie in the doorway, both looking aghast.

Richie looks like a deer in headlights, Sam is white as a sheet and Tara’s reaching for the rug on the back of the couch, a little hastier than usual as she tries to wrap it around your body.

“Tara.” Sam hisses, her eyes alight, “What the fuck?”

There’s food all over the floor, presumably their leftovers from the restaurant. You’re mortified, Richie too. Tara doesn’t seem that bothered, gripping you, keeping you in place. She doesn’t make much of an effort to move, stares down her sister, daring her to leave.

You tug the blanket around yourself, use the excess fabric to try to cover as much of her as you can. Richie’s staring at the ceiling, his hands limp at his side. When Sam’s shock passes, anger takes over her.

“This is so not cool. This is a communal space. God, I was just sitting there.”

“Sorry.” Tara shrugs, not looking sorry at all, “We thought you guys would be out longer. Trouble in paradise?”

Sam narrows her eyes.

“You’re cleaning that couch tomorrow. Bleaching it.”

Tara hums.

“We might need to bleach the countertop too. And the dining table. And the-”

Sam raises a hand. “Stop it. God, you’re disgusting. Get dressed and get out of my sight. Both of you.”

You're still impaled on Tara as Sam drags Richie out, trying to cover his eyes with her hand.

Your body is flushed bright red, but it isn’t from Tara, not anymore.

“Babe.” You whine as you slip yourself off her, “How did you not hear them come in?”

“I was a little distracted,” Tara says, biting her lip, “With you moaning like that in my ear.”

“Shut up. I wasn’t moaning.” You say, land a gentle smack on her arm, cheeks red.

She raises an eyebrow, tightens her hands around your waist.

“Oh Tara,” She mocks, “Fuck me harder, Tara. You’re so deep. I’m going to cum-”

You push yourself off her with a grumble, but she tugs you back and kisses you soft, languid.

When you pull away, she looks like she wants to go for round two.

“Upstairs.” You murmur. You look around for your discarded clothes, “God, where are my clothes?”

“You won’t need them.” Tara says, affirms her statement with a kiss to your shoulder. “I’m about to take you upstairs, put you on your back and pound you out so hard that you-”

“We can still hear you,” Sam declares loudly from the other room.

Tara huffs and you blush bright red again.

She stands, taking you with her as she wraps the blanket tight around both of your bodies.

“Talk about a mood killer. Come on, babe.”

“You’re in so much trouble.” You whisper as she leads you up the stairs. She scoffs.

“With Sam? Please, what’s she going to do? Add another chore to my roster?”

“With me.” You say, voice low, “I know you heard them come in.”

She looks at you, smile coy.

“And what are you going to do to me?” She asks, desire burning deep within her eyes, “You going to punish me?”

The thought crosses your mind. But Sam’s still hovering in the kitchen, reaching for a broom so she can clean up the mess of leftovers.

“Get upstairs,” You say, voice thick with want, “And you’ll see.”

Next part

#ghostface!tara #scream #scream vi #tara carpenter #tara carpenter x yn #tara carpenter x you #tara carpenter x fem reader #jenna ortega #jenna ortega x you #sam carpenter #ghostface #all hers #mine #fanfiction

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inkskinned · 2 years

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i. my brother calls for the 3rd time today. nobody i know has been sleeping well. we are all worried about prion disease. he and i discuss the book we've been reading. when we were kids, he and i used to spend hours playing video games - but i can't do that anymore. it gives me anxiety.

ii. so i make a joke that god accidentally siphoned me into a slurpie. he spat me back out onto the pavement, so i could glisten under the sun in a pink froth. something about a life ruined next to an oil slick. i think if you were born in the 90's you deserve financial compensation. other kids don't understand: it really was a different world we grew up in.

iii. i am ever-more convinced that when you raise children on an endless supply of the apocalypse, the only next step for them is to turn and swallow the sun.

vi. i think there is a way to be brave like a rabid dog. i think there is a way to be brave like shark teeth. like gun-goes-off. i think there is a way to take the mistake and shove it into a gift box and say - it's mine, so it's home. and if it's not home, fine. i'll make it something.

v. okay. okay. stand up for a second. no, i haven't slept either. we're not gonna get any sleep tonight neither.

vi. don't you get it? he calls me and talks about the book because we read books together instead now. don't you get it? i wanted to be a spilled drink so i could be sweet & messy. don't you get it? i am going to coat the throat of every person who is singing. i am going to rush out over this world like lighting. i am here because of the things that could-not-kill me, because of the things i wouldn't let touch me.

vii. don't you get it? jack london says i'd rather be ashes than dust. i am sinking my teeth into a life like a fire. no one from this generation is doing fine. but we are here and it's sometimes half-hearted but. i think love made a jump somewhere in there and twisted her ankle and since then we're all just-about-to-get-up. since then we've been dragging our run.

viii. so get up. be alive like a coke can bursting. be alive like a cracked sundial. like sword on the back. be alive like the multitudes you contain are all talking, are all humming, are about to start unionizing. be alive in the way your parents would hate, alive like a bruise. alive like a stain.

ix. where there isn't a bed, find rest anyway. where there isn't time to be okay, do well-enough. god left you as a spaghetti noodle on the other side of wasteland. all raw-skin and panting. you had to go out and hunt down peace until you could clasp it in your bare hands, shiny and buzzing. you made good and kind out of your own temperance and bone. you shaped it from red mud and the heads of barbie dolls. you found a way through the gristle. you found a way home.

x. little grinch child, scarab beetle, precious thing. tell the always-ending world: that which you give me. i keep surviving.

#spilled ink #warm up #totally normal friday stuff #cut lines:#read the book #call your sibling.#find a new way to the heart #force open a passageway.#text her with shaking hands like you're a teenager.

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drkineildwicks · 4 months

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Okay so let’s talk about Palworld

Because I really do gotta talk about it this thing blew up

Apparently the guys who made it were expecting to sell like 300K the first week and ended up selling two million

They’re having to run damage control on the servers because the servers legit cannot handle the traffic

Last time I saw a game look like this it was Temtem on its first days

Because literally everybody underestimated how much game freak ticked off its fanbase

Which brings us to the Donphan in the room

Pokémon VS Palworld

Look we all knew going in that this was going to be a meme factory, whenever we talked about it the game is Pokémon: Gun

But it was also one of those games that popped up when GF started its stunts with dexit, reused assets, releasing half-baked games, etc.

People made fun of it and it’s stayed off the radar until this year, when it released

And yes caution should be exercised because this developer’s other game is still in early access so people are on the lookout for a scam

Not to mention the whole thing about using Pokémon assets, apparently aping Legends’ UI, the AI stuff, NFTs, a ton of other stuff

There’s apparently a whole thread on Twitter comparing and contrasting Pokémon designs with Pal designs and you can easily pick apart where assets were, if not outright stolen, were closely copied

So going in there’s a lot of weighing of pros and cons and some actual moral dilemmas as opposed to the whole fabricated BS of Hogwarts Legacy

Yes it was terrible that Rowling said *checks notes* that biological women exist and that victimized women should be allowed to dictate who is allowed in their safe spaces, these are obviously reasons to cancel somebody please don’t slip on the sarcasm there

But I’ve been watching streams of Palworld and…I want to play it???

You can look at it and 100% name that Pokémon and go okay they got THAT idea from THIS game (watching it I can list BotW, Sunkenland, and a couple others) apparently it’s the Pokémon ripoff version of Once Human

Which also ticks me off because after watching videos of that one I want to play that one too

And originally the big reason for looking more seriously at Palworld is…game freak needs to suffer

They’ve been releasing trash games for years now, the only good Pokémon game as of late is Legends Arceus and do not get me STARTED on the state that ScarVi released in

And then them having the gall to charge the price of a full game for DLC

So in order to play the ‘full game,’ you have to pay for BotW, TotK, and possibly a Mario game on top of it

Ain’t nobody got funds for that

Also the shills

I was telling Mom about all this earlier and when it came to discussing Pokémon games, even comparing them to previous Pokémon games, discussions online go like this anymore: “Well it’s not MADE for you! It’s for kids! Go find something else to do and quit picking on the poor multibillion dollar franchise! uwu”

And thus the people who grew up with Pokémon move on to other games, like Nexomon, Temtem, Cassette Beasts, Kindred Fates, Coromon, Palworld, etc.

Shills: “Wait no that’s illegal”

Honestly it’s like the YouTube vs Rumble or Twitter/Tumblr vs Conservative/right-wing websites thing—if you chase them off, what did you think they were going to do?

And then the design thing…a big fat part of me does not feel sorry about that

Because every single other game I listed? The shills will look at those designs and go “what ripoffs they’re obviously Pokémon but not friend-shaped so ugly!”

So basically anything’s a ripoff, you might as well go full ripoff because the ‘fans’ are going to hate on it anyway

Also if anything even remotely shaped like a Pokémon is a ripoff, then Flamigo angers me even more because that is such a lazy design yes I’m still mad

Most of Gen IX legit looks like they asked an AI to spit out some Pokémon-shaped stuff and called it a day maybe a quarter of the ‘dex is salvageable and that’s being generous

And having spent the past year or so designing ‘mons for the DA group I help mod…three people doing designs have no problem filling a ‘dex out, the most time-consuming part of creating new Pokémon ought to be modeling the thing and once that’s down you’re good

Which means that Pokémon…has honestly asked for Palworld

Because let me tell you something—when I look at this ripoff of a game, this scam game that comes from people who think that NFTs and AI scraping and plagiarism is a good thing, that claims that every Pal that escapes from a ball had parents that never married, and I STILL want to play it over Pokémon? When the scam game released in a better state than ScarVi?????

Pokémon drove every single customer to Palworld and because of it Palworld deserves every single one of those two million purchases

#palworld #pokemon criticism #pokemon salt #part of me really hates how good this game looks and how bad Pokemon has been #the other half wants game freak to suffer dearly for their sins #like yes palworld deserves some critiquing #because yeah these are obvious pokemon assets being used #but you can't also in the same breath be defending a company that has been releasing pre-alpha garbage and calling it a game for years now #game freak does not care for you #I'd rather be playing a ripoff game that I actually have fun with than being dragged along on yet another 'consoom product' game

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mantizimus · 1 year

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Carrie White!S/O

Lied Shax

Fascinated by your beauty.

At the very beginning, he'll turn into a blushing and stuttering mess next to you.

Gets you addicted to video games, helping you find the genre that you like the most.

When he finds out that you are a human, he'll ask if you had any favorite games in the human world.

When you confessed to him that you had never played something like this before, he was shocked, and then immediately asked why.

This led to you telling him about what happened to you then. And let's just say that Lied wasn't amused by this.

Helps you train your telekinesis by studying theoretical material and attempting to put it into practice.

If you allow, he'll steal one of your five senses to make it harder for you.

Picero Agares

He's okay with your quiet nature. He loves to sleep very much, and you actually doesn't bother him.

Although the fact that you are a human came as a real surprise to him, his opinion of you has not changed.

It's worth noting that even when you get louder, Picero doesn't get too mad at you.

Noticing that you don't seem confident when it comes to romantic relationships, concludes that you've already had a bad experience in the past.

When he learns the details of your experience, as well as the rest of his life, he tries to remain calm, but inside boils with rage.

Uses his abilities as a model for your telekinesis.

Create the most convenient training schedule so that you do not have problems.

Elizabetta Ix

Thinks you are the sweetest and kindest girl that has ever existed. And don't care that you're human.

Noticing that you're quite confused due to differences in her nature and attitude, Elizabetta will only laugh and explain that nature shouldn't determine the style of life.

Shares some cute little secrets with you.

Helps to socialize and make more friends.

When you told her about your past, she cried like crazy, trying to understand how humans can be so monstrous.

Every time she has the opportunity, she hugs you, whispering sweet and pleasant words in your ear, making it clear that she cares about you and that you also deserve happiness.

During training, she will monitor your emotional and mental state, because she believes that this also matters.

Kamui Caim

Please don't ask how you started dating.

Given your religious upbringing that sex in any form is a sin, and Kamui's perverted behavior, even you two can't help but wondering how on earth you become a couple.

However, it is worth noting that you have a positive influence on each other: he helps you become more confident in yourself and understand that sex is not always bad, and you keep his perversy under control.

When you told him about your nature, he unobtrusively asked you about human female body, but, realizing that you don’t know too well, decided to close this topic.

After learning about your past, Kamui was ready to burst from anger. How dare these pigs do this to you!?

Often uses his abilities to bring animals to you to keep you company while he is busy.

Being a gentleman, he does his best to become perfect boyfriend to you.

Brings books from the library so you can learn telekinesis better.

Kerori Crocell

Due to the fact that you both have low self-esteem and are rather kind, it was no surprise to anyone that you first became friends and then started dating.

During each of her concerts, she looks for you in the crowd and rejoices when finds you.

Helps to understand that music that differs from church hymns is not bad.

Interested in your telekinesis and wonder how you got it. After all, according myths, people do not have abilities.

Teaches to perceive it not as a curse, but as a gift.

After finding out about your past, Kerori feels nothing but anger and hatred for those who bullied you.

Proud of you when you told her what you did in return.

Bring you any source of telekinesis information you ask for.

Goemon Gaap

Your relationship was a little troublesome at first due to your shyness and his problems understanding personal space.

After you confessed to him that you are human, he was surprised, but that didn't stoped him from spending time with you.

Helps you make new friends, in hope that you will not be as lonely as in the human world.

Speaking of human world. Goemon is usually sweet and benevolent, but that didn't stop him from getting angry over what happened to you back then, so much so that he almost fell into an wicked phase.

After calming down, he apologizes for his reaction and makes it clear that he is not angry with you.

Jokingly remarks that if any of the two of you are creepy, it's him. You will have to convince him that you still love him, even if he has a rather scary face.

Like Kerori, he will get everything that can help you in mastering telekinesis.

Soi Purson

He will teach you how to hide if you still wanna be as aloof as possible.

When Soi has free time, he loves to talk to you.

Can play the trumpet to cheer you up.

Found out that you're human a long time ago, because he accidentally overheard you talking to yourself.

One day you told him about your life in the human world. It was the first time he had felt pure, distilate anger.

Tries to choose a secluded place for training so that no one disturbs you.

Alternates between all known methods of training telekinesis in order to select the most effective one and focus on it.

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