#(not really but I'm tagging all my rpg stuff with it to unite in the tag)

[rlinarts]

Ms Omen is waiting for you

[hergan416]

@user-needs-new-hyperfixation Thank you for the tag!

Also I'm glad you answered this at the same time you tagged me, because reading your responses literally helped me understand what the heck kind of media this didn't exclude.

Rare writer ask game: name three pieces of media that are not novels/short stories or movies/TV that were formative for you, and tag three people.

Like you, I really don't consider this "formative" to my writing but to my sense of "self."

Anyway:

This is maybe a cheat? Because I still read it? But The Importance of Being Earnest. I really hope that a play is separate enough from TV/movies & novels/short stories to count for this because it really does seem adjacent, and like I'm being overly technical about it but ANYWAY. The unit on this play and on Oscar WIlde generally was like - I dunno. It was a lot of things to me.

So for one, The Importance of Being Earnest is absolutely hilarious, and I genuinely enjoyed reading it. For two, even though a lot of WIlde's statements about writing as a craft were made in relation to The Picture of Dorian Gray, our unit on this book also talked about his attitude in regards to literature and morality and art and aestheticism pretty extensively - I think because this specific literature teacher is awesome, but also because he was arrested during a showing of this play? But all of THAT was also formative. (I could also probably put Billy Joel's Only The Good Die Young here for the same reason - I tied the two together in my mind so if this play can't be it, then that can take over. But the play also was formative when I was trying to get myself back into reading stuff because I no longer read the kind of... "genre" stuff that I read as a kid/teen and I was trying to come up with something I'd actually want to read, and came back to Oscar Wilde like "hey you made me happy before... what's your other writing like?" I was not ... really. expecting. The Picture of Dorian Gray to be Like That the first time - what a tone shift! But that ALSO was formative much later and this is why that showed up for me when it did so.

Next I guess I'll just say "Green Day" - like all of Green Day. At least their discography up through 2009. Like - I already agreed with them, so I guess they didn't really change my mind or influence me much in that sense. But the Green Day obsession was certainly a personality trait for a while. And like - I still jam with King for A Day or Holiday or St. Jimmy or whatever. The characters on American Idiot absolutely made it into some of my fanfiction at the time. It was a major piece of my life.

And I'll end with Arkham Horror: The Board Game (1st/2nd edition) This game was something I was introduced to in college and I had never played anything like it. It is cooperative (games can be won by all the players at once!?! totally foreign to college-aged me) and long and complicated. It took several sessions of playing it before the owner of the game taught me how to set it up even. It's one of those. And without it, I don't think that I'd be who I am today. We also played D&D and Munchkin and Killer Bunnies and some zombie RPG where I played a prostitute and Catan and Axis and Allies and Starcraft The Boardgame... and so I probably would have ended up this brand of nerd either way. But this brand of nerd is horribly central to my world.

I work in a board game store. And this is the first job I've had that doesn't make me feel like killing myself. It's a lot of work, but at the end of the day I'm in the business of having fun. I get to sell people a good time. We're not so corporate that we have no lenience, but it's structured enough that I still thrive. The kind of people I met playing those games in college are why I shopped at this store and how I got this job the first time - and my personality is absolutely affected by this.

Uhhh ok yeah I talked a while here. Let's tag... @sakuplumeria @vitya-nikiforova and @dragontamer05?

[fioras-resolve]

Hello, person reading this! I'm Angie Nyx, a video game developer and frequent good poster. If you're on my page, you're probably here because I talked about my projects, about games generally, or about Toki Pona. So lemme put essential info in this pinned post.

-Gamedev-

I am, among other things, a developer of turn-based RPG's, with the goal of uniting story and gameplay as a cohesive whole. So often in games we treat the two as separate things, because so often games basically are a movie or visual novel inter-cut with bits of interactivity. I don't just want to make a good game or tell a good story, I want to make a good interactive story.

My current project is Daybreak Hearts, a tactics game about the necessity and difficulty of forming connections. I'm making this game in SRPG Studio, which is the same engine the old Fire Emblem director uses to make Vestaria Saga. I've been using this engine for a good few years, and I'm very close to somebody who does plugins for it, so if you have any questions about it, just send an ask my way. And of course, if you want updates on Daybreak Hearts, feel free to ask, or check the tag.

If you want to check out the rest of my catalogue, I'm on itch.io as nyx. You should especially check out Fiora: Full Bloom, which is a turn-based RPG that uses the genre's mechanics to explore gender identity and mental health. I'm also proud of If You Had One Turn, which I made for a gamejam and later updated, and which is about winning RPG battles in only one turn. I've been at this for a while, and I'm getting better as I grow more confident and take things more seriously. Also check out this post, a series of manifestos about what I want as a game developer.

-Talking About Games-

Part of being a game developer and also autistic is that I think about games constantly all the time and do so with an analytical lens. The longer-form stuff tends to go to my essay blog, but I do post a lot of my stray thoughts on here. Just so know where my preferences lean, I like:

Tactics Games: This is my favorite genre, and I love talking about it. I love Into The Breach, Marvel's Midnight Suns, and Triangle Strategy, all of which are worth checking out. I also like modern XCOM, some of the Fire Emblem games, and I can even find something nice to say about Gears Tactics.

RPGs: I find a lot of comfort in a genre that is mostly centered around number-crunching. I'm really into Xeno, more Gears than Blade though. I have a complicated relationship with Final Fantasy, let's just say Motomu Toriyama is an underappreciated director. And on the western side, Deus Ex is pretty cool, and I have GOT to get back on Baldur's Gate 3. Also on the indie side, play Cataphract OI and Helen's Mysterious Castle.

Mystery Games: Ace Attorney changed my brain chemistry as a child and now I have Miles Edgeworth in my head. I also love Ghost Trick obviously, and I also really like the Zero Escape games (yes, even that one) and Her Story. If you wanted to get me a Steam gift, either Telling Lies or Return of the Obra Dinn would be perfect.

Platformers: Mario... good. I'm also into Celeste, Metroid, Sonic on its better days, and also A Hat In Time is pretty good. Platformers embody Video Games to me.

Puzzle Games: This is partially an extension of the mystery games thing but i also really love 14 Minesweeper Variants and other stuff by Artless Games. Also Baba Is You is good, of course.

I try to appreciate everything I can about a game, and use my perspective as a game designer to maybe give some new insights. If you're looking for some videos, I'd recommend New Frame Plus, Game Maker's Toolkit, and especially talks from GDC and GDoC. I have a playlist of my favorite talks here.

-Toki Pona-

I speak Toki Pona, and I like to think I'm pretty good at it. To prove it to people who care, here's a special message that i'm too afraid to say in English, so we tokiponists get to have it for ourselves. (content warning for pakala unpa)

toki! mi kisa Ansi. tenpo mute la, mi pilin e ni: mi jan wan, lon insa kulupu suli. ni li ken ike e pilin mi, tan ni: kulupu suli li wile e ijo mute tan jan, taso jan li wile pana ala. tenpo mute la, kulupu tonsi li toki e ni tawa mi: "lon tonsi li unpa. sina tonsi la, sina wile unpa." taso, mi tonsi. tenpo mute la, mi wile ala unpa. jan wan li pakala e mi kepeken unpa, la mi monsuta e ona. ni li ike, taso, mi ken pilin ike. pilin ike li ike ala. ni la, mi toki e ni tawa sina: o sina. o pali e wile sina. o pali ala e wile pi sina ala. sina sina. sina ken sina. o pana e pona tawa sina. sina jan wan, taso, sina jan suli.

(Also I'm catkin and plural so don't be surprised or angry if I post about either of those.)