#this is super common in indie games

[mothwingedmyths]

When people say "what's your favorite video game genre" I always assume they want a regular answer so I just say metroidvania because I love metroidvanias but my real favorite is "even the most insignificant characters have their own individual lives and this game makes sure you know that one way or another"

Edit hi it's present me. This post's tags need updating but I don't want to update the tags do I do it or no

#wandersong #oneshot #oneshot game #stardew valley #slime rancher #spiritfarer #uhhh what else #chicory #chicory a colorful tale #a short hike #i just KNOW i'm forgetting some #but i don't feel like figuring them all out right now #actually now that i think about it #this is super common in indie games #but kinda rare in games made by big corporations #hmmmmm #HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM #i think i know why

[ostrichmonkey-games]

How To Support Indie TTRPGs

A lot of indie ttrpg people are coming back to, or trying out tumblr for the first time. For better or for worse (I'd argue worst lol), twitter has been the main marketing tool and driver of sales for a lot of indie people. Whether or not twitter is going to completely fade away, who knows! But it's never a bad idea to take some eggs out of that single basket.

So what does that have to do with tumblr? Well, if you see a post about an indie ttrpg (games, art, podcasts, streams, design, whatever!) give it a reblog! Same as you'd do for any cool art, gif, video, or music!

Want to take it a step further? Go check out that person's links (which related, to all the posters out there, make sure your links to your itch pages, drivethru pages, personal sites, etc are handy!) and here's the crucial part, if you think something is cool, buy it! Indie ttrpg stuff is nearly always wildly underpriced (which is a convo for another day), so chances are you can find something that's within your budget.

If you can't buy it, bookmark it for later! Also, it's super common for itch.io creators to have a pool of community copies freely available for their games. Take one! Check out the game! If you like it, buy it later! If you grab a community copy, an extra cool thing you can do is leave a 5-star rating!

I would love to see the indie ttrpg sphere flourish on tumblr, but that can't happen without support! So show your favorite indie ttrpg creator some love, and also go exploring to find some new favorites!

#indie ttrpg #ttrpg #support indie ttrpg creators

[crystalfurs]

Our Music Can Be Had For Free

Something we wanted to call attention to, just in case you've heard one of our songs and enjoyed it and wanted to have a copy but don't have the money to buy one:

Every single thing we've released can be had digitally via Bandcamp for free.

We've made sure that this is available for you, because we've never wanted that to be a barrier to the art we make as The Crystal Furs.

On our releases, you'll see the following when you go to the listing:

When you click on "Buy Digital Album," you'll note there is no minimum - you can put in 0, and get a free download. No strings attached, fully endorsed by the band. We just want you to hear and enjoy what we make.

If you can pay? Super! We won't stop you, for sure! But you don't have to.

In addition:

All our music is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license.

Basically, that means that if you want to use our music in something - a video, a remix, a game, whatever - you're free to do so as long as you attribute it to us and are also releasing your work noncommercially.

(If you want to use it in a commercial product? Let us know! We are super easy to work with and for small creators we are not gonna be hard to afford!)

#the crystal furs #indie music #bandcamp #indie pop #indie rock #portland #lgbtq musicians

[punkitt-is-here]

Hello Punkitt! If I'd be making a small indie game and would want to advertise it through Tumblr or show it off, how would you recommend I do that?

Sorry if this is a frequent question not covered by the FAQ, and I know Tumblr might not be the perfect place for advertising anything, but I am curious if there's more to it than just posting updates.

I can't say my answers will be super helpful; I've advertised my games for a while but I think Susan took off primarily because of my fame from my horse art, and not the game itself (altho I am happy with the reception!) A lot of the time eyes on games comes from outside sources finding you, but you can build your "inner circle" by posting in tags that other devs frequent, like RPGMaker or Gamemaker and stuff. I know weird engines like RM2k3 and SMBX have strong communities BECAUSE their engines thrive on creatives interacting, so find some commonalities between you and other devs and try and make friends! And the most important part is not meeting people to advertise; folks can tell when you're just showing up to show off rather than contribute. If you have a good time and engage with fun, fulfilling people, you'll get eyes on your game without having to try very much. :>

For showing off in general, I would say creating a consistent tag so users can scroll through it if they want more, and have a non-tumblr host for the info on your game so folks don't have to log in to see all the cool stuff you make. Gifs tend to do best in my experience, so for stuff like Screenshot Saturday use programs like honeycam (a gif recording tool) to highlight fun little parts of your projects for folks to see :D

#my posts #asks #afamiliarsword #gamedev

[rambling-robot]

a common thing in my experience with indie horror (i'm specifically talking about video games and animation) is that a lot of it references other, often well-known horror stories. sometimes it's just a cute little "ahaha yes the clowns are from space" or a bloody elevator moment. but i'm not super familiar with a lot of popular horror (ie Stephen King), so there are a lot of things i won't get and i'll end up associating it solely with what i'm watching. a youtube analysis explaining all of the references can be helpful with understanding some of what i just saw, but i'm not going to re-watch it and go, "oh, wow, this is just one long rip-off of references." i'm going to go, "oh wow, this makes more sense with the newly-gained background knowledge. what an incredible work of art." art referencing other art to make new art or something like that. love it.

#this post is about emesis blue btw #i never played tf2 nor was i in the fandom but i was like hey yeah sure let's watch this and. wowzers guys. #everything in there belongs to tf2 now. if i ever see anything outside of it i'm going to go 'wow just like in the tf2 movie' #'long night' 'longer than you think' i can't believe mr king received a premonition of emesis blue and referenced it in a story #i've been obsessed with this for like 3 days now. #when i say i don't know anything i mean... i know the Biggest moments but i wasn't able to identify the bathroom #i figured it was from something but never would've guessed what

[machiavellian-methylphenidate]

My headcanons as to what music the beta trolls like!

ARADIA: I had to think pretty hard about this one since I don't think about Aradia all that much, but I think she would listen to alternative rock... I'm thinking stuff like Pearl Jam and Foo Fighters. TAVROS: I think he would be into like two really different genres and nothing else. Like he'd be into ambient and breakcore and absolutely nothing else. Alternatively I think he would like video game soundtracks! SOLLUX: I honestly don't think Sollux would really be into music. Considering all the voices and stuff I think he would savor every moment of silence available. KARKAT: Tbh I think he would say he's into metal to seem more hardcore but secretly be into pop. I can totally see him listening to Britney Spears lmao. NEPETA: Digital hardcore, IDM, breakcore, techno... she would be all about that electronica shit!!! I think she would initially be really into animation meme music and then branch out into electronic from there! Alternatively, I can see her being into vocaloid!! KANAYA: I think she would like a lot of classical, but specifically orchestral with an emphasis on cello! I think she would appreciate the beauty and detail of the instrument itself. TEREZI: She would totally be into weird loud experimental shit. The kind of music you listen to and come out confused and with a bit of a headache. Stuff like KFC Murder Chicks, Xanopticon, and some Machine Girl would totally be up her alley! VRISKA: I know this is a common take, but I think she would be into pop-punk and grunge. She would be a huge fan of Avril Lavigne for sure! EQUIUS: Not many thoughts since I'm not a huge Equius enjoyer, but I think he'd take interest in nature ambient type stuff... not super musical but more environmental! GAMZEE: I'm not gonna say he would be into ICP because that's dumb and obvious. I think he would take interest in chiptune and bitcrush type stuff, the type that really scratches your brain. ERIDAN: He would be one of those music elitists that only listens to incredibly niche indie rock type stuff and then makes fun of you for not knowing about it. FEFERI: I think she would be the complete opposite of Karkat. She would pretend to listen to pop but actually listen to death metal on full volume. tysm for reading my ramblings have a good day :3

#homestuck #hs #obligatory text tag #aradia megido #tavros nitram #sollux captor #karkat vantas #nepeta leijon #kanaya maryam #terezi pyrope #vriska serket #equius zahhak #gamzee makara #eridan ampora #feferi peixes

[idololivine]

Olivine and Eiden!

(asking because I'm not a very Eiden-centric shipper even though I ADORE him, I just find him a little less troubled than I like for my writing purposes pfff)

uwah you caught me after I turned off my computer to go to bed... mobile post incoming

Eiden is SUPER important to Olivine. I've talked about this before at length, but Eiden is Olivine's redemption, in the religious sense of the word. If Eiden doesn't show up, the temple gets destroyed; and if the temple gets destroyed, Olivine has to turn his back on his faith. There's no reconciliation to be had. But the temple doesn't get destroyed because Eiden comes, and in the process he saves Olivine from his loneliness and despair.

Quote from chapter 4:

Eiden So... *cough*... Father Olivine, are you willing to use all your power to aid me in restoring the altar to its original condition? If we succeed, this area will once again be safe from monsters. Olivine Thank you, oh holy God of Klein, for giving me this chance to atone for my sins...

I once saw someone say that Olivine erased his own personality to become Eiden's sex slave, and I bring this up because it's such a garbage take that it lives in my head rent free. Like, you'd have to actively ignore swathes of the canon text and read the rest in bad faith to reach that conclusion. Eiden's relationship to Olivine has a consistent beat of Eiden doing whatever Olivine wants - in part because Olivine's development is about learning that he's allowed to want things, and in part because Olivine's wants often line up with Eiden's wants (in the horny sense).

Quote from Zest for Life:

Olivine ... Can we really go? Eiden No problem! All you gotta do is tell me your desires, and I'll do my best to make them a reality. After all, you don't ask for much.

I also can't even begin to explain how Olivine hasn't "erased his personality". He's just really really agreeable. He's like this towards everyone, not just Eiden. There's something to be said about how his agreeability is tied to him being raised to fulfill other people's wants, but Eiden truly does not exploit it in a harmful way (see: IF Olivine's intimacy rooms, which focus on him being too much of a people-pleaser and how that's bad, and Eiden is the one who gets him to understand why boundaries are good) and when Olivine rolls with clan member bullshit, it's always played for laughs.

Anyway. Enough about that single dumbshit hot take.

Another common-ish sentiment I see is that Olivine and Eiden don't read as romantic, which I both agree and disagree with. I agree with it in the sense that I read them as queerplatonic, but I also disagree because people seem keen to say they're "just" friends with benefits in a way that implies their relationship is unimportant because it's not romantic. To repeat what I said four paragraphs ago, Eiden is immensely important to Olivine, as the person who freed him from the expectations forced upon him. This one's just on amatonormativity, which is an annoyingly persistent plague in a fandom for a game that does polyamory and relationship anarchy so well.

So that's a lot of Olivine analysis; what about Eiden? It's tough, because as the canon text depicts it, none of the individual guys actually do much to further Eiden's development. It's due to the game's structure: events and intimacy rooms are all centered on the characters, while Eiden learns and reacts to things as an audience proxy. It doesn't leave much room for Eiden development or backstory. The game also can't have Eiden be especially vulnerable with a specific character, because unless the writers manage to spread it out equally, it would imply that one character is the "correct" romantic option for Eiden. A gacha harem game can't show favoritism as blatant as that. (I think their favoritism is super blatant as it is, but that's a different topic.) So, canonically, Eiden's development and support is a group effort spread across all the members. To individuals, Eiden gives more than he gets, but he collectively gets a whole lot from being in a found family dynamic after a lifetime of not having a family. As the game presents it, I can't say that Olivine alone is a driving force for Eiden's development, though Olivine's certainly an important part of the greater whole. AUs are a different ballpark and you can do whatever the fuck you want there.

#asks #zerenovation #nu carnival #nu carnival olivine #nu carnival eiden #eioli #throwing this one in the main tag because this time I Know What I'm Talking About

[crescencestudio]

“Would you choose me in every lifetime?”

Announcing “intertwine,” a short visual novel coming to otome jam 2023 🪡

Hi my friends 💖 I’m adding some Alaris updates under the cut to reassure you of development in case you’re worried about otome jam + Alaris!

I’ve been going back and forth on whether to post this or just keep it to myself, but I thought for the sake of transparency, communication with fans, and just normalizing the harder parts of game dev, it would be better to talk about this.

This is NOT bad news about Alaris, so please don’t freak out! But as you all may or may not have figured from my devlogs, I've been struggling with working on Alaris for the past... 2 months? I've made progress on it as much as I'm able to, but I've often found myself coming up against a creative wall and/or burnout. And I often feel like I'm disappointing you all because of it. There are a couple of internal deadlines I had set for myself that I just haven't been reaching lately, and while I know no one is actually rushing me, I feel like I'm dropping the ball.

This is common for a lot of indie developers, but I'm a solo developer. While I have a small team who helps me polish Alaris (i.e., editors, BG artist, GUI artist), at the end of the day, I'm the one who is in charge of everything. I don't have a separate person who can handle building out the art assets, or someone who oversees the writing, etc. And so, to feel like I'm making sufficient progress on Alaris, I'm constantly working on it, whether that's reviewing edits, creating CGs, writing the script, approving art assets/creating briefs for those assets, etc. And I do have a day job haha.

For most of Alaris's development, Alaris was my creative hobby, so I didn't really mind putting so much work into it. But lately, I think because I've been revamping the demo, I feel like I've been in this ~game dev thang~ for two years with no complete product to show for it. And having to go back and redo the demo two years into development is like an extra knife to the gut since it feels like... backward progress almost? Even though I know that's not true.

So while an otome jam project might feel inappropriate given I have Alaris to work on, it's something I've wanted to do since becoming a game dev. And after some encouragement from dev friends, I decided to take the leap because having a different creative outlet might resolve some of my struggles with Alaris. Getting to have one complete project would also be a super huge motivation booster for me!

I'm super happy to say that intertwine has been just what I needed. I've felt more motivated to work on both intertwine and Alaris and my dissertation lmao. As I've mentioned, Druk's route has been giving me a hard time, but I recently made a lot of progress on it. Overall, the creative process has just been coming to me more smoothly. So I'm excited to bring you all a complete game by the end of June as well as, what I hope to be, a lot of really nice progress on Alaris <3

#intertwine #wow a new game tag #otome jam my fated love we will be united this year!!!

[anti-anti-vents]

Welcome to my blog! If you’re new to these debate, leave now and never return there are some things I’d like to define, since I find often times people mean many things when saying them.

What is shipping?

Shipping is the act of depicting, or wanting depictions of, two or more FICTIONAL characters in a relationship, that is romantic and/or sexual unless stated otherwise. The most common reason people would do this, and the one that comes to most peoples minds, is that the person thinks these characters would work out well together. However, there’s many more reasons than that to want to explore a dynamic, so it’s a misconception that that’s always the case. Please note, it’s not shipping when real people are involved instead of characters, that’s sexual harassment!*

What is a proshipper? What is an anti? What is an anti-anti?

In short, a proshipper is somebody who believes it’s okay to ship any characters for any reason. An anti is somebody who believes that shipping dynamics that would be toxic or immoral IRL is also not okay to do in fiction, and often go to length to let people know this opinion when they find a ship they deem to be inappropriate. And finally, an anti-anti is somebody who doesn’t necessarily believe that EVERY ship is morally neutral, but does believe you should never harass somebody over it regardless.

So, why are you an anti-anti?

Obviously, I don’t believe in harassing people, that should be a given. And I do find most ships morally neutral, but the main reason I don’t call myself a proshipper is that some do still leave a sour taste in my mouth (namely ships that “fix” a queer person, or turn an abuser into somebody super sweet; but feel free to RESPECTFULLY drop some reasoning into my askbox why those are okay if you want). However, I do recognize that it’s just fiction, and I can’t see into the minds of the people making it, so I’ll never truly know their reasonings.

What the hell got you into this discourse?

Well, if you can’t tell by my pfp, I love the game The Coffin of Andy and Leyley. (Spoilers ahead) But if you know anything about the game, you’ll know that the internet didn’t agree with me. They got mad over the CLEARLY PORTRAYED AS IMMORAL, completely optional outside a few implications, part of a demonic dream and not actually a real thing that happened, horror game incest. My goodness, you’d think they’d be mad at the actually romanticized cannibalism, or the many other pieces of media that include incest, but no. At the end of the day, this was just an excuse to doxx a trans woman until she left the internet. Because that’s who’s affected by this discourse. Not big media sensations and fiction that’s reached enough mainstream appeal to be genuinely normalizing things for the masses, but instead small indie creators and queer people. We need to do better.

Do you have a DNI?

Just don’t harass people, that’s all I ask. Regardless, this is a side blog, so I won’t be following back.

#proship #proshipper safe #proshippers please interact #proshipper #anti anti #intro post

[iraprince]

okay one last thing and then i'm off for the night -- i just refreshed the community copies for eyes on the prize and lamplighter's festival! so if you've wanted to check these games out but haven't been able to afford them, please go give the pages another look and snag one of those.

(if you aren't familiar w community copies: every time someone buys one of my games, i add to the pool of community copies for that game, which is basically an opportunity for someone to claim a copy free of charge if the normal price of the game is an obstacle. it's a super common practice in the indie ttrpg scene on itch.io! you can scroll down past the "purchase" button to find a box with the # of remaining ccs and claim button.)

#the other thing abt community copies is i have to do this manually lol. which is hard to remember to do #so if u ever check and the remaining amount is 0 #it usually means all copies have been claimed and i haven't sold any more to replenish. but it can also mean i just haven't remembered- #-to top them off in a while #anyway!!! when u buy one of my games u are also buying someone else one of my games :) so double thank u!

[wormwoodandhoney]

I would absolutely love cozy mystery recommendations! Bonus points for gay or lesbian ones.

here are some more cozy recommendations, but let's do all gay & lesbian ones!

i'm super excited to read board to death by cj connor, about a gay game store owner. comes out this month!

magic, pies, & deadly lies is a magical cozy mystery featuring a bi protagonist and a love triangle with a male love interest and a female love interest.

payback's a witch is cozy mystery adjacent, more sort of a magical competition book, but it gives me the same vibe. featuring a sapphic romance.

i haven't read this one, and i'm not sure how cozy it is, but dead dead girls has been on my tbr for awhile!

EDIT: WAIT I REMEMBER ANOTHER ONE the mimicking of known successes, which is also on my tbr but it's a sci fi cozy mystery.

there really hasn't been a ton of traditionally published queer cozy mysteries (i haven't been able to dive into indie/self publishing as much as i'd like) in the past, but it's definitely getting more common! i'm excited for this list to grow, i'll update you guys as i get more.

#book recs #cozy mysteries

[spinningbuster98]

Oh yeah. We're going old school with this

So Metroid 1 is a game that one can't help have some respect for: naturally without it there would be no series, hell there would be no genre! Super Metroid? Sotn? Hollow Knight? A good chunk of Indie games? Never would it have existed without this game! I can't deny its influence

....but Jesus Christ is it ROUGH

And look I've played plenty of NES games of this era, many of them being Metroid's contemporaries: Super Mario Bros, Zelda 1, Castlevania 1, Mega Man 1... and while all of them have their rough patches as was the norm for pretty much all videogames at the time....Metroid 1 stands out in a pretty bad way...

It's not stuff like the slow down whenever there are too many sprites on screen, that couldn't be helped I'm sure and was pretty common.

Nor is it the lack of a map in and of itself or the game's cryptic nature. In fact I'd say that this game is at least not as cryptic as the likes of Castlevania 2 since most of the time you can find your way forward by simply bombing a floor or wall whenever you run into a dead end, so once you know that you should be (kinda) good

My issue is how much it's obvious that this game was rushed to absolute fuck.

I can't find the interview that stated this but I heard that most of this game's development was handled during its very last months, which you can tell just by looking because about 85% of this game is made up of the same 5-6 room layouts copy and pasted with only slight differences if any at all, which is the REAL culprit for why you'll get lost here

Then there's the enemy placement

How can I put this gently?

Uhmmmm...

It's absolute dog shit

Enemies are spammed without rhyme or reason, they attack you non stop, whenever you find those pipes straight out of Super Mario bros they'll be spewing enemies literally without stopping: here's a hint when you kill an enemy and they drop an item until you pick up that item the enemy won't respawn. Trust me this can be useful

Sometimes enemies won't spawn correctly when you enter a room, sometimes they'll attack you as soon as you enter while you're still going through the door transition when you can't move Samus, hell sometimes they'll manage to enter the door with you and hit you continuously WHILE the transition plays out!

If you die in this game you'll get respawned at the start of the area you died in...with only 30 points of health, meaning that you'll have to spend a lot of time grinding enemies for health, which was an issue that was also present in Zelda 1 but at least there the health bar was much smaller overall

I know it's an old game but...Zelda 1 didn't have this much copy and pasted level design, in fact that game's overworld was pretty diverse making it possible to orient yourself even without a map after a while. the dungeons where certainly much guiltier of copying room layouts but you could find a map and a compass in those places at the very least

With all due respect I think people sometimes give Metroid 1 a little bit too much leeway. Yeah some of its issues couldn't be helped as they were standard for the time....but others not so much I believe

Speaking of, I may have said that you can absolutely find your way forward even without a guide by just keeping in mind to bomb every potential dead end...but you ain't never finding the Varia Suit and Screw Attack without a guide. You have to destroy some completely inconspiquous blocks on perfectly normal looking ceilings in perfectly normal looking rooms.

Granted you don't NEED those two power ups to finish the game....but unless you're already a grade A expert at this game you're gonna need them if you plan on beating the more bullshit parts, especially the Varia Suit for the extra defense

#metroid #metroid 1 #my gameplay #Youtube

[albertserra]

like in theory video games are a great art form but in practice except for the super super indie shoestring budget passion projects, i never see anything truly challenging or radical coming from things i see or play, and its much more common to see that popular games (the last of us, call of duty, etc.) arent even just empty and vapid or apolitical, they're like actively bigoted or outright fascist

[ducklyght]

23.01.

I want to highlight one of my favourite small indie TTRPG system: Cairn.

The rules are super easy. Your character has three main stats. You role on one of these stats with a d20 and have to roll under to succeed (damage is rolled separately). Easy, done. Cast a spell? Roll under your Wilpower stat. Balance on the edge? Roll under Dexterity. Want to hit your target? Roll under Strength/Dexterity. No Armour Classes. Only flat damage reduction through armour.

Cairn is class and level less. But it has a very fun character creation with some random tables to play a truly unique character. The creation is like 15-30 minutes. So easy to spontaneously pick up the game and play a oneshot. Ouh yeah, and it's free and runs under Creative Commons.

One more thing, because I mentioned magic. Some magic systems are... lets say, have too much text, for my taste. You forget a spell description; Read like a whole page to remember. Cairn has 100 spells. Each spell has like 1-2 sentences. The only "problem": Most of the times they don't explain the range, duration, aoe, etc. You, as a GM, have to come up with some numbers. This can backfire and ruin the balance. But you can always talk with your players to even things out.

Some useful links to play Cairn: Cairn Cairn auf Deutsch

#daily ttrpg post #023 #365 posts a year #ttrpg #cairn #osr #nsr #indie ttrpg

[abalonetea]

hi there! If it isn’t weird or too much of a bother, I saw your reply on a post mentioning how marble hornets fundamentally changed the horror genre, and now I’m super interested. could you share more about that?

nnnnn this isn't weird or a bother, it's one of my absolute favorite topics to discuss! people don't discuss it much, or at least not in the circles that i tend to roam, but it truly changed the horror genre on a multi-platform level.

so! some basic information. YouTube was launched in 2005. four years later, the first video in what would become known as the Marble Hornets series was posted. right now, ARGs (alternate reality style YouTube series filmed as though they are 'real life') are super common, and the Slenderman phase had come and gone; and the indie horror game market is booming!

but when Marble Hornets first came out, only lonelygirl15 was on-going and making an impact. even then, it was only known in very select circles. Slenderman was only discussed on select Reddit threads, and had no solid popularity attached to it yet. and indie horror games were few and far between.

So, it was one of the first of its kind - and the first to truly make any known waves. by the time that the second 'season' came out, even people outside of the main horror circles had heard about it! there was so much discussion at the start as to whether or not it was real, and it hit a level of popularity that no other YouTube series had managed to reach.

the first 26 episodes were made with only $500, Adobe Premier, and Sony Vegas Pro. it was featured as one of the top ten horror fan films in Dread Central, and even got positive reviews from Robert Egbert! but this isn't about the acclaim around the series itself, which is its own separate post.

this is about THE RIPPLE EFFECT.

the ripple effect can be boiled down to several points

*ARGs

*indie horror games

*the slenderman mythos

*horror films

first, the obvious. Marble Hornet's showed people what you could do with a small budget and the still very recent addition of YouTube online. Keep in mind, it had only been about four years since YouTube launched and people were still finding new ways to make use of it. Marble Hornets showed other indie artists what the medium could be used for - and inspired a massive swath of horror ARGs such as tribeONE and everymanHYBRID which took the universe that Marble Hornets created and built off of it.

There were dozens of these. A lot of them fell apart fast, but others ended up being almost as good as their original inspiration!

and then people started to get creative! Daisy Brown, Petscop, Jack Torrence, POSTcontent, and countless others - and they were shown this medium through Marble Hornets series and subsequent success.

next up is the mythos itself.

Up until now, Slenderman had just been a vague concept on the Something Awful forums. Marble Hornet is the series that popularized an actual concept around it, providing the monster in question with the alternate reality base that has since become mostly accepted cannon. it very literally created the larger idea behind the Slenderman mythos - which leads directly into -

the truly massive amount of Slenderman indie horror games that came out en masse right after Marble Hornets became popular! and this was huge! many of the big name indie game developers we see on market today got their start making Slenderman games. it also, same as Five Nights At Freddy's, introduced a new method of gameplay that took the indie gaming community by storm.

suddenly, everyone was not only making a Slenderman game, but they were trying to one up each other, leading to a rapid increase in the capabilities of indie horror game developers, as well as a boom in the market itself. those who did Let's Plays at the time (i'll give a shout out to my favorites, John Wolfe and MrKravin) suddenly had a surplus of short horror games available to them!

and then there's the media sensation! not only did it manage to get its own movie, but it created a very specific genre of movie that took off rapid fire. Butterfly Kisses and Char Man fit into this genre, as examples.

it also took what was a seldom used concept at the time, the disruption of the camera and the audio/video distortions, and introduced techniques that had not been brought into the mainstream viewing.

it was also one of the first YouTube horror phenomena to break containment; a creation that started as a $500 project and rippled out into a genre defining, Slenderman mythos creating, technique inspiring series that to this day can still be seen as the influence in popular games and movies.

it heralded in the creation of so many new projects, inspired a new genre of horror, and reinvigorated an otherwise stagnant game market.

how cool is that?

#marble hornets

[foreman]

drinking game rules for watching house? nothing TOO common like "house saves patient" but ik you guys love house so i thought I'd ask you

drink if

-wilson isnt doing his job/wilson is providing emotional guidance to someone, drink twice if he is providing guidance to someone that isnt house

-lupus/sarcoidosis/amyloidosis mentioned

-foreman raises one eyebrow

-chase says something ignorant/prickish

-cuddys boobs/ass mentioned

-house plays with a toy

-house says “I’M IN PAIN”

-patient/patients relative doesn’t know house is a doctor

-theres a breaking and entering

-patient lies to house

-house purposefully poisons/infects/injures/kills patient

-wilsons ex wives mentioned

-amber is mentioned, if youre watching after s4

-house stares solemnly into space/plays guitar or piano as an emotional montage begins, drink twice if the song used is by the rolling stones/the who/some 90s indie darling

-wilson’s lunch stolen

-someone says something super sexist or racist—not clearly misinformed or unintentional, something actually insane. drink twice if house doesnt say it

-cameron gets emotional

-kutner says something naive/someone makes fun of kutner

if you dont care about living or dying take a vicodin or your favorite opioid every time house does

#ask