#After the first station

[iloveabunchofgames]

#JakeReviewsItch

After the first station

by Lsgamedev

Price (US): $5.00 (But it seems to be on a permanent 100%-off sale.)

Included In: Not in any bundles

Genre: Adventure

Pitch: Hop aboard a train that literally and metaphorically takes a Japanese high school student out of her small town and into the challenges and isolation of adulthood.

My expectations: Looks like a walking sim. The screenshots don't suggest much interactivity, nor do they show any text. I love when a mellow game lets me inhabit a space. A lot games do that and also have other, video game-y stuff, so unless they really have something to say, pure walking sims usually strike me as unambitious and pretentious. But I'm not even sure if that's the genre. The visuals are pretty. Everything else on developer Li Sheng's Itch profile page is a horror game, so maybe After the first station isn't really as cheery as it looks. My curiosity is piqued.

Review:

I’m in a school. I enter a classroom. There’s nothing of interest inside. I walk to the another classroom. It’s not my class. I try another. It’s not my class. I try another door, and it opens! This must be my class.

Class is not in session, but something is happening here. There are glowing circles on the floor, and they are freaking out. Should I stand on them? Do I need to walk along them in a certain order? Or are the circles, which are jumping around to ten different places at once, meant to draw my attention to the conspicuous box on the teacher’s desk?

I approach and see a button prompt. I can rotate the box, but how do I open it? I can move a cursor over the latch, but I’m pressing every button and nothing’s happening. Ohhhhh… I have to put the cursor on the lid, and then…rotate the lid?

I get a key, which opens the library, where I find a camera, which I place on a scale, which gives me a train ticket, which takes me away from the first level. Thus concludes the best part of After the first station.

+ Solid framerate at max settings. ("Meets expectations" shouldn't be cause for celebration, but I've played a lot of primitive-looking Itch games with terrible performance lately.) + It seems like a very personal story. As laughable as the end product is, I hope its development was therapeutic. If making games helps you process trauma, you have my full support. If you release those games to the public, though, I'm not going to hold back on what I think of the full product. And on that note... + Unintentional comedy is still comedy. This game is a riot.

– The Itch page lists, "Atmospheric and appealing graphics" and "Amazing and magical landscape to explore" as key features. The landscapes are a handful of assets copied and pasted at random a thousand times. I don't think I ever went a full minute without finding a new visual bug. Yes, "amazing" is exactly the word. I was in disbelief the whole time. – According to a YouTube walkthrough, I quit a little more than halfway through the game. I consulted a walkthrough because I was sure I had completed my objectives, but nothing was happening. As suspected, I'd hit a game-breaking bug and couldn't proceed. Awesome. – A full sprint in this game is more like a leisurely stroll—especially obnoxious since most levels are either about collecting glowing trinkets in huge, vacant, repetitive areas or walking straight ahead along huge, vacant, repetitive paths. How nice it is to slow down and take in all the nothing. – Sometimes you get Xbox button prompts. Sometime you get PlayStation. Sometimes moves like leaning to the side, zooming the view, or rearranging the inventory—useless vestiges of whatever template is driving this thing—simply stop working.

🧡🧡🤍🤍🤍

Bottom Line: If you're a streamer or you like to gather with friends to watch each other play single-player games, grab After the first station while it's free. You'll have no trouble finding material for your quips and zingers. If you're playing alone, or if you're looking for a real game, don't bother.

#JakeReviewsTwitch is a series of daily game reviews. You can learn more here. You can also browse past reviews...

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[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

i have a Scene - a Plot if you will - that backs this as context. y'all are gonna have to trust me on this one <3 or read the tags...

[morganbritton132]

Eddie posts a Tiktok of old home video. In the video, Steve is standing in the kitchen at the trailer with the phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear as he made coffee for two.

Someone must’ve answered because Steve perks up and says, “Hi, yes. I’d like to request a song. It’s - yes, the new Corroded Coffin song called….well, how was I supposed to know you have caller ID, Christine? Can you play the song or not?”

Steve hangs up the phone and immediately picks up his walkie-talkie like, “Earth to Dustin, use *67 when you call. They’re memorizing phone numbers. Over.”

Eddie behind the camera says with so much amusement, “You do this often?”

Steve smiles at him, finally bringing the coffees over to Eddie, “Every day. Gotta get your song out there so more people can hear it.”

[kungfuactiongripe]

so happy for her transition <3

[mustbebunnys]

After We Wrap → Stefania Spampinato feat. Louie the dog

[ratwithhands]

I had this AU archived off my accounts for a few years, but I'm thinking about it a lot more these days so I'm digging it up for sketches.

This is Kudari from Codebreaker, functionally the starting antagonist for the story when Emmet accidentally collides with him and takes parts of his body.

For a little debrief, the main idea of Codebreaker is that Emmet discovers that he exists in a false reality, and that there is a parallel plane where all of the instructions for his reality exist. He finds his way to this plane by accident after walking back from another lonely day at work, and is hellbent on learning how to manipulate it in the hopes that he can recover Ingo with that knowledge. Kudari is his own set of instructions, who he partly dismantles, allowing him to actually interact with the code. This leaves a hollowed out shell that starts trying to find his own way to get his body back from Emmet.

I'd been thinking about the Beta Submas leaks which lead me to sketching him again. Here's the first rough warmup sketch I did with a fight between him and Emmet.

From there I just started reworking his old design to be worse 💀

Let me know if you guys want more of this freak, he's honestly really fun to sketch.

[mayabishopgold]

Maya Bishop. // Right, yes. Of course. The Olympian! - Station 19 2x01

[kindfrog]

presenting.. Alastor! hells latest up and comer! now broadcasting live for your entertainment!

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts

[thestalwartheart]

'Til forever falls apart We never had it from the start

RADI00Q: 31 SONGS FOR BOND AND Q SONG 31: 'Til Forever Falls Apart - Ashe & FINNEAS

[svtskneecaps]

also in terms of the bolas playlist it's fascinating to me that the songs added by each person have a slight tendency to represent a consistent aspect of bolas

like

the songs added by slime are their chaos

the songs added by philza are their rebellion

the songs added by cellbit are their rage

the songs added by baghera are their anguish

it's so fucking FASCINATING TO ME but i don't know enough music theory to elaborate lmfao this is Vibes Only

(mouse's songs i can't boil down to an easy noun which is why they aren't mentioned lmao anyway they go hard asf)

(also i went on the longest fucking unhinged elaboration in the tags lmfao i almost didn't have enough tags left to tag "long tags" at the end

(i could have even gone on longer in terms of where their characters were at entering purgatory [philza: cage for a cage; cellbit: fed worker murders; baghera: her past as a federation experiment; slime: turning into a code because of the code pretending to be his daughter] but i ran out of space and also time it's 4AM AAAAA)

[deluweil]

Gotta point out, in a burst of optimism, that Station 19 on ABC (I'm catching up on S6) gave a male-bi character on screen for S6 - Eli had a thing going with both Andy and Travis.

So as far as bi-Buck concerned, it's not completely out of the realm of possibilities on the ABC network, i love their vibe!

[sea-buns]

y'know it's a good album when you can't stop thinking about how you'll never be able to have that first-listen experience ever again. navigating/snap back/oldies station/at the risk of feeling dumb had me getting all teary eyed and gross at my kitchen sink on a saturday afternoon and I'll be thinking about her for the rest of my life

[takadanobaba]

▲ Ingo's 2 Heart Event ▲

As always, thank you to @xdoctorsparklex for drafting the script for me to code in!

This event expands on a line from part 3 of the Subway to Stardew introduction events! Pierre upcharges them. Drama ensues.

[feralsunspotandtincan]

Din: Hey Sweetheart, sorry I'm late. Let's get some icecream on the way home, you've had a long day.

Luke: Thanks, Love <3.

Officer: Sir, this is a police station. You're picking up your partner because he was disturbing the peace. He broke two mens' noses and ruptured a testicle. You are aware of this, right? You're here because of crime.

(Din: Did they deserve it?

Luke: They were making creepy comments and trying to touch two girls who had already said no.

Din: Okay, two scoops and sprinkles, let's go.)

[nexo-nex]

this new eah song is giving sims 4 alternative radio station