#I remember when glitch x was being originally announced

[writingpaperghost]

There is a Me Who Can Become Strong (Chapter 24)

Chapter 24: Go Together, Embracing Your Ambitions!

It's time to refight some Bugsters, and what's with Masamune's new stand in? He's kinda weird...

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32857183/chapters/85003771

Emu was… feeling better today, at least. He’d been spending a lot more time in bed, since the incident with Gatton. For some reason, he’d been overcome with this terrible feeling, his Game Disease flaring in a way he’d never experienced before. He didn’t understand what was wrong and Masamune seemed unbothered by it in a way that… hurt.

But Emu didn’t say a word, instead curling in on himself in bed, letting out only quiet whimpers and gasps when the pain became too much even for him. He dragged himself out of bed, ever briefly, for water, food, bathroom, rinse and repeat. At some point in the night, he thinks that maybe Graphite would stop by, but he’s often too tired to realize.

After several days, Emu finally felt well enough to get out of bed. He notices his broken Gamer Driver on the table there and for a moment, he feels himself getting sick again, but shakes it off. Around that point, Masamune enters, not an ounce of concern present. He, of course, had more important things to worry about than Emu not feeling well.

“It seems you’re starting to feel better,” He notes, taking in Emu’s appearance. Emu hadn’t seen his reflection – he doesn’t like his reflection – but he knew he probably looked worse than usually. His hair, he could tell, was certainly more messy than normal. He dreaded the thought of trying to brush is out, it was probably all tangled and now he didn’t have Kuroto and Graphite to help him. Well, Graphite could probably help him tonight.

“Y-yeah…” Emu nods, quietly, “But… isn’t it going to be a problem that my Gamer Driver is broken?”

In response, Masamune shakes his head slightly, “Nothing to worry about, Mu,” He gestures towards the broken Driver, “It can be fixed, if necessary, and you have Level X, which is much stronger than your current Gashats.”

Once more, Emu keeps his disdain for Dangerous Zombie to himself, he knows Masamune doesn’t care. He’s also not sure that Masamune knows anything about how the Drivers were made, nor sure that anyone other than Kuroto did. Perhaps someone could fix the Gamer Driver, but he doubted it.

For now, Dangerous Zombie was all he had.

“Regardless,” Masamune continues, “I came down here because there’s something I feel you should know.”

Emu frowned, unsure of what it could be, “There is?”

“As the Chronicle is almost complete, I’ve decided that I’ll be… taking a break from acting as president of Gemn Corp. Instead, Ren Amagasaki will be taking over.” It was a bit surprising, Masamune always liked to be the one in charge of things.

“Are… are you sure about that?” Not that Emu wanted to question Masamune’s choice but… “He’s a bit… Well, you know. Wouldn’t he just cause problems since he’s kinda… uh, skeevy? I guess?”

“He has a way with people,” Masamune assured, “Which will be necessary to ensure the Ministry doesn’t try to stop the game.”

Some part of Emu frowns at that. In theory, shouldn’t the Ministry of Health be trying to help people, especially with a disease. So why were they working behind their back? Shouldn’t they work with the Ministry, certainly the CR and the Riders would understand, especially since the CR was formed jointly between Gemn and the Ministry. Masamune always assured him it had to be this way, but thinking about it now… That didn’t really make sense.

But he couldn’t say that to Masamune, that would only upset him. Emu knows he shouldn’t upset people, especially Masamune. So he keeps his wonders to himself, keeps the thoughts that maybe Masamune isn’t right. Then he buries them away, because if Masamune isn’t right, then what does that mean for Emu?

---

It had been quiet for a while, a longer stretch of little happening. For that, Parad had been grateful, it let him focus on his internship, especially with them coming to the end of his surgical internship. It… almost felt wrong, though, to continue. Perhaps it was just because he was using Emu’s name, knowing now that Emu was still alive. Every time someone at the hospital called him by Emu’s name, he had to resist the urge to flinch. It felt wrong.

Of course, it wasn’t that bad when he was with the CR, they would call him by his actual name and he could… He could not be Emu around them. It was nice, in a way. Yet there was a nagging at him, that with every passing day, Emu seemed to be floating further from him. Not just the farther and farther that it seemed Emu would find himself going but… but also the way that it felt like Emu was distancing himself in general.

But with the comparatively relaxing silence, Parad forced himself to focus on his internship. Emu or not, he had a goal and now… Now it was his goal, not just Emu’s – if Emu even still held such a dream. He’d keep helping his patient’s smile, no matter how hard he had to keep working.

As it were, Saki had just finished a surgery, stitching some internal wounds on a member of a band. Some equipment had fallen on her, causing her to need the surgery. Of course, as soon as their patient was awake, her band mates came to check on her. A glance into the patient room showed that they were already arguing.

It, in a way, reminded him of the Riders, when they’d been trying to defeat Graphite. The way that they could fight together, but not work together, because they each had their own goals. Of course, in this case, the band members seemed to have their own ideas of how to reach the goals, so it was something of an inverse.

Squabbling aside, Parad isn’t too concerned about it, they probably had this disagreement before, by the sounds of it. They could probably handle it and it wasn’t like these were their Game Disease patients – then he’d be more concerned about the possibility of stressing them.

Though, the moment he had thought this, the three began to glitch, prompting him to call Saki over. The two rushes into the room, Saki’s Gamer Driver ready while they both have their Gashat’s in hand. From the three, Gatton, Motors, and Kaiden appear from the three, prompting Saki to stage select them somewhere else.

The two transforms, challenging the three Bugsters. Two on three weren’t good odds, especially since Saki only had access to Level 5. But Parad at least had Level 20, which was something, though he’d feel better if they at least had someone else to fight with them.

Like she was psychic though, or perhaps just good timing, Nico arrived, pulling out the Gashat Gear Dual and transforming to Level 50. The arrival of Nico alone was enough to even the odds significantly, the fact that she was at Level 50 only helped.

“Hey, didn’t we already fight these guys?”

Nico wasn’t wrong, the last Bugster they’d fought was Gatton and they’d certainly fought Kaiden and Motors before – Motors twice before, even. Which did make it odd that they were seeing them again. Though, thinking about the Bugsters that Emu hadn’t collected the data of… Maybe it was simply a matter of stalling for time before they were all collected.

“We have,” Saki answers, “But they’ve infected new hosts, so we must fight again regardless.”

Despite their best efforts, they weren’t able to defeat the three Bugster, instead, Gatton and Kaiden escaped, though Saki and Nico were able to tag team Motors and stop him from fleeing. Returning to the hospital, they quickly moved their original patient, Sora, Motors’ host, to the CR.

Deciding that obviously the source of the three’s stress, at least initially, was their argument, Parad chose to talk with Sora once she awoke. In the meantime, he noticed his phone suggested an article to him, stating that Masamune Dan was on a break from acting as president of Gemn Corp, the role being taken over by Ren Amagasaki. That was… strange, and certainly a bit concerning.

Scrolling further through the article, he finds that Amagasaki had already announced a new game, one that would change how people viewed games and Gemn Corp forever. That was… honestly a bit worrisome. Such grand claims and the new suspicion that they had on Masamune, thanks to Nico’s discovery.

While concerning, though, it was something to worry about later. Saki and Nico were hunting down Kaiden and Gatton, hoping to be able to defeat the two Bugsters, which left Parad here in case Motors appeared again. Not that Parad didn’t think he could handle it. Trying to fight three on two was hard, but one on one was much easier.

---

Unlike Nico, Taiga didn’t have quite such a great mental map of Gemn Corp, but he remembered enough to find where Tsukuru was. In one arm, Taiga carried Kiriya’s laptop, knowing enough about what was inside that it could suit their purpose well. If Kiriya was right, this wouldn’t just counter Dangerous Zombie’s immortality, but also be a great help against Bugsters. Though the actual notes made it hard to tell whether it would really work, or if it was going to be very specific about who used it. Still, it would be better than nothing.

Sitting across from Tsukuru, Taiga sets the laptop on the table, “I’ve found you something to make a Gashat out of.”

---

Now that Sora’s finally awake, Parad can talk to her, hopefully get an idea of what might stress her or her bandmates. According to Sora, their band hadn’t been doing well, but they’d entered a contest Gemn Corp was holding to create a song for their new game. Now that Sora was hurt, though, they wouldn’t be able to compete.

She did mention, though, that the three of them had a dream to one day play at Seito Stadium. Parad was pretty sure that there was his answer, so he imagined that the two Bugsters would probably attack there. Not that he was going to say that to Sora, he didn’t want to stress her out more.

“I’m sure you can all come together and achieve that dream, someday,” Parad smiled, doing his best to assure Sora, “We’ll cure you and your bandmates, then you’ll be able to return to your goals.”

A while later, a curious arrival comes to the CR, a man who Parad recognized from the article he’d read. The stand-in president of Gemn Corp, Ren Amagasaki. Which was really weird and immediately set off alarm bells. That and this general feeling that there was something wrong about him. Parad couldn’t explain it, but he knew that just like Masamune, he didn’t trust Amagasaki.

“Hello,” Parad says, thankfully still in his Emu disguise, “What are you doing here?”

Because even Masamune didn’t arrive at the CR without reason. The question prompted a lengthy explanation about how they were making a new game at Gemn Corp and were holding a contest for the theme – blah blah blah, more or less what Parad had heard from Sora. Except Amagasaki adds on that he’d heard that the singer of one of the groups was here and had wanted to talk to her.

Figuring he was talking about Sora, Parad decided that it probablywouldn’t hurt to let Amagasaki talk with her. So, though still hesitant, he let’s Amagasaki into the patient room, watching him warily.

“Who’s that?” Asuna frowns, watching as Amagasaki introduces himself to Sora.

“Gemn Corp’s new president,” Parad answers, “I don’t like him.”

At that, Asuna frowns, “Why not?”

“I don’t know, he just gives me bad feelings…” Parad doesn’t get a chance to continue, as Amagasaki said something to Sora that stressed her, causing her Game Disease to flare. Parad pulls out his Gashat while rushing over, while Asuna annoyed, shoved Amagasaki out of the room. It’s times like these that Parad wished he had a Gamer Driver.

Though he didn’t have to worry, given Sora stood up, clearly controlled by Motors, and runs out of the room, Parad and Asuna chasing after. To little surprise, Motors brings them to where Saki and Nico are already fighting Kaiden and Gatton respectively. Then, appearing from Sora’s body, is Motors. Emu activates his Gashat, ready to fight.

Between the three of them, each fighting their respective Bugster, they’re able to defeat the three Bugsters this time, curing the band members. It was surprisingly easy, which only made Parad further think that there might be something else going on. Not that Parad knew for certain what. Maybe it had to do with all the quiet that they’d had since they’d first fought Gatton.

No Emu, nothing else. Just three Bugsters and their patients.

The three band members talk, and it sound like they’ve strengthened their resolve to reach their dream. It makes Parad happy, all three of them are smiling. At least, until Sora collapsed. He’s closest to Sora, so he reaches her first.

“Motors making her run like that seems to have torn her stitches…”

Saki is the next to arrive, taking over in checking Sora. Behind them, Nico whips out her phone, calling for an ambulance. To the side, Asuna and Taiga watch – Taiga having arrived at some point, though no one’s quite sure when.

While watching them, Taiga comments, “They make a good team, huh?”

“They do,” Asuna nods.

---

“Emu,” Masamune’s voice quickly gains Emu’s attention, “We’ve almost completed Chronicle.”

Warily, Emu nods, “We… we have,”

“There are only three more Bugsters we must collect the data on,” Masamune continues, “I think the best one to go after would be Para-DX.”

For some reason, the idea of having to kill Para-DX didn’t quite sit right with Emu. But he wouldn’t have a choice, unless he could convince him to come with Emu. Yet, Emu had seen Para-DX’s resolve, that would never work.

At least Emu was stronger than Para-DX, a higher level. He just had to make sure that neither Snipe nor Brave would be there. That would be the hardest part. As much as Emu didn’t want to kill another person… he could at least take solace that Para-DX was a Bugster, he would come back in the game, like all the others.

“Of… of course,” Emu nods, “That makes sense.”

“Good,” In response, Masamune turns away, “I’ll look into how to get the DoReMiFa Beat Bugster, I think Lovelica will work well.”

“And… and Graphite?”

Masamune pauses, “A… complication. It seems Graphite has already been revived.” Emu tries not to tense at that, though he’s not sure why. Perhaps it’s because he fears that Masamune would be upset, particularly because Emu hadn’t told him that Graphite was alive. “It may make retrieving his data more complicated, but he is fond of you, I’m sure it won’t be much trouble. We’ll simply have to find him.”

Hesitantly, Emu says, “Yeah… that is weird…” He fiddles with his sleeve, not quite meeting Masamune’s eyes, “Well, I’m sure he’ll show up…”

“Mu?” It seemed like Masamune had noticed his odd behavior.

“Anyway! I’ll start trying to figure out how to get Para-DX’s data,” Emu chooses to change the topic, hoping that it would distract Masamune. Besides, Para-DX could easily be considered a more pressing matter. “It would be easiest to fight him without Snipe or Brave to interfere, though getting him without one of the other Riders might be tricky. Right now it seems like Snipe has the Gashat Gear Dual, so maybe if I just make sure she isn’t there? I could deal with Level 5 easy enough…”

It seemed his plan to distract Masamune had worked, as Masamune merely nodded, “I’m sure you’ll figure something out, Mu, it’s just a part of the game.”

“Of course! I just need to do something thinking about it.”

[prismarine-parrots]

Tree of Life Pt.5 (1)

Originally posted: 20 Mar. 2019

:)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Part 3.5

Part 4

Part 5 (2)

"What is Doc doing again?" Mumbo asked out loud. His phone had been vibrating in his trouser pockets consistently for the past two minutes, most of the messages being from Doc, who had been doing something or another.

"Setting up a beacon on the roof so that there's regen up there for when we try to heal Grian. Most of the other trees have beacons around them and Ren went to go make sure those had regen on them too." Jevin replied, not taking his eyes off the brewing potions.

"He sure is chatty then," Mumbo grumbled and slipped his phone out of his pocket.

<DocM77> Guys, there's phantoms up here

<Rendog> you got it man? I'm too far to help

<DocM77> yeah I think I'm good

<Iskall85> tell me and I'll head back to help

<joehillssays> don't lead them into the base! We don't need any more catastrophes to plague our misfortune

<DocM77> ok maybe I don't got it

<DocM77> he

DocM77 was slain by phantom

DocM77 died.

Mumbo stared at the message on the screen.

"Doc is gone too," he said blankly.

Jevin looked over from setting up the next brewing stand. "No way!"

"Phantom got him," Mumbo informed. Jevin's shocked expression hardened and he silently glared at the potions with a misplaced fury.

There was a disparaging silence throughout the base as this fact set in.

Mumbo sighed wearily and looked out at the night sky over the ocean around Grian's base. He had stayed behind after the first deaths, both of which happened within the first twenty-four of Grian's. TFC has been in his bunker when he died, so no one had thought that he might have been in trouble until the death message appeared on their phones. Jevin had come in panicked halfway through a serverwide meeting saying that he was late because Wels had fallen ill and wasn't waking up, and just as soon as they got back to the medieval/industrial district border, their phones went off. False hadn't seemed to have been affected at first, but as the hermits were gathering supplies to go on a journey to look for a cure she had fallen to the ground, dropped dead. After that the remaining hermits had left across the ocean and Mumbo had been left to watch over the others. It had been depressing, watching his phone, because at any moment there could have been another death message meaning that they had lost another hermit. Zedaph and xbCrafted, who had joined the server randomly, both died as well. When this finally happened with Scar, Mumbo had been crushed, because then all the optimists were gone and it seemed like a hopeless mission. Soon after, Cub returned to Mumbo's base and the redstoner had been attempting to comfort him as well as keep and eye on everything else going on while the rest of the server was away. There were death messages for Tango and Python, and while that had been the last of it, Xisuma was now ill after Evil X (WHY did they decide to work with that guy?) died and the glitch started working on him as well.

Now the travelers had returned and they were all waiting around Grian's base, as it had the most space and was closest to the center of the server AKA the shopping district. They were occupying the upper floors of the wedding cake, as no one could bring themselves to disturb Grian's pale and still body on his bed among the shulker boxes, laid to rest there until they figured out if they could heal him or not and then bury him properly.

The strange bubbling noise from the first brewing stand stopped.

Mumbo and Jevin, the two operating the potions, looked to each other then to the brewing stands.

"They're done!"

"They're done?"

Jevin nearly bounced to the stands and took one of each of the two types of potion in his hands. A potion of harming, and a splash potion of regeneration. The other stands taken from Cub's war store were still bubbling away, but the one set was all they needed for now. The slime man slowly slowly turned with a soft smile and the first hopeful look Mumbo had seen in a while.

"We need to try this ASAP."

Mumbo nodded firmly. "Grian. I'll get the others." He jumped through the hole in the floor to the layer below. "We have something!"

"Have you tried it yet?!" Xisuma immediately demanded. He was slouching against one of the three pillars, helmet off and his skin was clammy and pale, but he was still alert and concerned.

"X, save your strength!" Joe scolded. X rolled his eyes and pushed against the wall, groaning but still able to move.

Mumbo helped X stand up and allowed him to lean on him and they made their way over to the water elevator as Joe called to the others on the other floors and flew up to the aviary as well.

Everyone was gathered around the tree.

"I think Grian's looks the worst of all the ones that I've seen..." Ren sighed worriedly. He had been flying around the server, checking on everyone's trees. He had returned just before Mumbo and Jevin has finished the potions with his report: that most the trees were at various stages of decay. It was only a matter of time before everyone on the server faced this same fate as well. What he found strange though, is that some of the trees of the dead hermits were healthier than some of the living. Zedaph's tree was healthier than Xisuma's, but X was still alive while Zed was not.

Joe was looking spooked. "I can't believe Doc got taken right at the resolution..." he murmured. "What a tragedy this has become, a massacre with no murderer, a-"

Ren huffed. "Joe. Now isn't the time for poetry. Do I look worried? No! When this works on Grian I'm going to go straight to Doc's base and fix him up as well. Everything will be a-okay."

Joe didn't look quite convinced, but stayed silent. There was an awkward moment of quiet as the survivors looked to one another, unsure of what to do next.

"Do we just try it?" Impulse asked.

Cleo shrugged. "I guess so."

Jevin kneeled down next to the decayed red maple and uncorked the potion or harming. The process they were using was basically the same as purifying a zombie villager- use something to weaken the tree, then something to heal it. Instead of a golden apple they were using the healing effect of a beacon and the most powerful regeneration potion they could make.

"I hope this works..." Stress murmured with Iskall nodding beside her.

There was a painful hiss as the harming potion hit the roots of the tree. The entire tree immediately shriveled, although there wasn't much left of it as it was. A few more discolored leaves fell off the barren branches.

Jevin backed up and handed the healing potion to Mumbo.

"I think you should," the slime man explained. Mumbo looked down at the potion before nodding.

"Alright then," the man in the suit uncorked the frail bottle and prepared to throw it. Mumbo looked determined at his target, but paused.

What is this doesn't work? What if it's too late for Grian? What will happen then? What will happen to the others?

"Mumbo, you alright?" Joe asked. Mumbo shook his head.

"Yeah, just... never mind."

The mustached man threw the potion and backed up, not wanting to take any of the effects of the potion. The potion shattered against the truck of the tree, dark pink liquid splattering into the crevices in the bark and the particles erupting from all over. They mixed with the dark red particles and quickly changed to a black, which made the gathered hermits panic, before they changed to a brilliant gold.

Just like that, life returned to Grian's tree. The hermits watched in fascination as brilliant red leaves bloomed from nothing on the branches and the peeling bark healed. The large branches that had fallen off started to regrow, although they also had the rings of scarring that trees had when a limb was cut off. The dead materials still littered the ground, but with joyous relief the humans' forms relaxed at the magic worked.

Where's Grian? Mumbo thought to himself in concern. This is for nothing if Grian isn't back. Please, let him be okay, I just want my friend...

At sea level, someone lurched into a sitting position from their bed and heaved in huge, panicked gasps of air. It felt as if he had been drowning, yet he last remembered nothing of the sort.

In fact, what he last remembered concerned him greatly.

What HAPPENED?!

Without hesitation he leapt onto his bed and bounced slightly, just enough air to launch a firework and shoot through the layers of his base.

"Grian?" Impulse was the first to say the name everyone had been thinking.

"His tree is revived, he should be too," Ren said uncertainly, "and so should every one else. They have to."

Please, please... Mumbo pleaded in his mind. If there is SOME power out there that has caused this, please let it stop. Let Grian and everyone else be alright.

Silence.

A quiet whisper.

Fireworks?

A blur zoomed past through the hole in the roof before disappearing for a moment and diving back down.

Mumbo held his breath, knowing who it was, but still scared that his eyes might be deceiving him.

"Guys! I'm here, what happened?! I remember being sick and then my tree was sick and then you guys- well, some of you- were there and then-"

"GRIAN!" Iskall and Mumbo yelled at the same time and the Swede hugged the builder. Grian laughed and returned the hug and quickly clasped Mumbo on the back.

"I'm here, but can SOMEONE explain to me what happened?? I'm very confused," he announced.

Ren was whooping and Jevin and Xisuma both looked relieved. Cleo hugged Grian as well and Joe was jumping around him, reciting fancy words excitedly so that while no one understood what he was saying, the emotion got across.

"Grian!"

Impulse marched over and punched the builder in the shoulder.

"Ow!" Grian yelped, now gripping his shoulder and glaring at Impulse. "What was that for?"

"One, for pulling this on us. Two, to make sure you were alive. And three-"

"Why wouldn't I be alive? I'm standing right here!"

Impulse clapped Grian on the back with a smile. "Glad to see you alright, man."

"Explain to me please?!"

"I'll explain," Mumbo offered, now smiling from ear to ear, "the rest of us, go grab some potions!"

"Already gone! See you on the other side!" Ren yelled joyfully and dived into Grian's base before shooting up only a few seconds later. The rest of the hermits weren't far behind him, rushing to grab the medicine to help their friends.

"Mumbo, what about Cub?" Iskall asked as he was heading out.

Mumbo gasped. "Right! I'll help him. He's going to be so relieved!"

"What's up with Cub? And Scar? They do everything together?"

"I'll explain on the way, Grian. We're heading to the Country Club."

"We going to go play golf?"

"Nah, I'm heading with the girls to go get False," Iskall informed the other two Architechs, "good luck with Cub! I hope he'll be alright when Scar is back!"

Grian gave Mumbo the most befuddled and mildly concerned look.

[theanatomyofcuriosity]

I Don’t Want to be Your Friend Part 2

Steve Rogers x Reader

Part 2 of 4 - Lara Croft v Captain America

Part 1 l Part 3 l Masterlist

Summery: After things got a bit awkward the night before, Steve and Y/N find themselves in a strange limbo: best friends with a LOT of sexual tension. And to make matters worse, they’re about to get sent on an undercover mission together. 

Warnings: Swears, reference to sex, Eventual smut!!

Steve’s side:

He ran down the hallway. Y/N had chased him partway, but he was too fast for her. Slowing to a jog outside of his room, he tapped the keypad by the door to slide it open. He was startled by the figure inside, but not really that surprised.

“So..?” She questioned? Nat sat cross legged at the end of his bed.

“So what?” He huffed. “How did you even get in here anyways?”

She just gave him a look, as if to say, “you’re kidding, right?” What she actually said was “I take it by your tone that nothing happened.”

“Something happened all right. Just not the something I wanted to happen.”

“Tell me about it.”

He proceeded to tell her the story. He almost did it. He almost kissed her. After two years of wanting to, he was so close, he was literally touching her lips with his. And even better (or worse, depending on how you looked at it), she had wanted it too. And then he RUINED IT by making it into a joke and licking her face like a dog, and then bolting out of the room!

He’s not really sure why he chickened out. She had all but told him today in the car that she liked him.

Nat chimed in then, “maybe it’s because you don’t want to ruin your friendship?”

Maybe. He thought about it for a second. That was the only reason he could think of for why he would turn his literal greatest desire into a joke. He valued their friendship over the possibility of a relationship. And he felt, in their case, that even one kiss could change everything.

“You know, at some point you just have to do it, Steve. I think it would really be magical for you two.” With that, Natasha stood up and moved toward the door. “Let me know if you need anymore ‘help’, you bozo.” And with that, she stepped out of his room.

Steve slept like crap that night. Getting up to go to the gym was not ideal. Especially after he remembered that Y/N was going to be there this morning too. His jaw pretty much hit the floor when he saw her walk in from where he was sitting, stretching on the mats. She was wearing something that reminded him of the Tomb Raider video game Clint had made him try out. Short, tight shorts. Like really tight. And a short crop top, cut low, also tight. Her body was incredible. Strong and supple. He couldn’t decide where he wanted to stare at most, her chest or her ass. Okay, neither, you perv, he thought to himself. But he couldn’t help it, she had clearly dressed to impress.

FRIDAY announced the sparing partners. She glitched oddly for a second before announcing that she had changed her schedule. Originally, Steve was paired with Nat, who was nowhere to be found, but now he was paired with Y/N. She smiled at him from across the room and walked toward him confidently, hips moving. He took a deep breath; his heart was racing.

 If he wanted to play it that way, you could play it that way. You knew you would be seeing him in the gym that morning, so you picked out something ridiculously hot to wear. You had a vision of Lara Croft in your head.

Walking into the gym, you saw him stretching and did a kind of slow motion look around the room so that he could see alllll you had to offer. You knew you looked good. He was staring at you. Check. FRIDAY partnered you with Wanda, and then seemed to change her mind. You smiled coyly at Steve when you were paired. Walking over to him, you had to admit to yourself that you swayed your hips a bit too much, but you couldn’t help it. You were feeling the spite still hot in your system from his joke last night, and in return you were going to make him want you so bad, and then take it away.

The sparing session was amazing. You were hyped up on how much you wanted to take him down, and he was so distracted by your body that he dropped like a dead fly at every turn. You had managed to drop Steve a few times in your time with the Avengers, but nothing like today. Today, you had him pinned at every chance.

“I’m beginning to feel a bit like Simba” Steve said after one particularly brutal drop. He had landed on his back, and you pinned him to the ground, knees on either side of his hips, hands holding down his magnificent shoulders. You laughed. You had made him watch Lion King last week after it was revealed that he had never seen it.

“Does that make me Nala?” You asked, acutely aware of your body on top of his, your clothed crotch barely hovering over his. You could feel something twitch just a little bit.

He coughed suddenly and rolled you off him.

“That’s just about enough for today I think. I’m gonna hit the showers. Catch you later, doll.”

Check and mate, you smiled to yourself.

 She kept taking him down. He was too distracted by her cleavage in his face. And her ass. And her hair. And the way she kept laughing at him whenever he would drop. And her ass. He didn’t mind it at first. Clearly, she was passive aggressively trying to let him know that she was mad about last night. Then, after 6 or 7 times of landing on his back, Steve was getting frustrated with himself for not being able to shake his thoughts of her on top of him somewhere else. If she wasn’t so goddam competitive.

On their last round, she pinned him down again, basically straddling him. In an attempt to be funny he said “I’m feeling a bit like Simba.” She giggled then, and her body vibrated. Awe fuck! He couldn’t do anything about it. She said something back but he didn’t hear it. He felt his dick twitch slightly, an erection threatening to emerge. He quickly flung her off of him, hopped up and basically ran out of the gym. He was sure she noticed.

 You felt like a goddamn goddess. You had successfully completed your mission. Steve Rogers officially wanted you. Or at least his body wanted your body. You’ll take it, for now. Glowing from happiness, you texted Nat.

“Ignore the fact that I literally called myself a giant idiot yesterday. I am actually a fucking genius. Y/N Y/L/N, 1. Captain America, 0.”

You texted her again, “Also, why were you not at training this morning?”

“I had some computer stuff to take care of” She responded back quickly, also sending a winking emoji. Then it hit you. Natasha had overrided FRIDAY to make sure you and Steve got to spar together. That little minx.

Just then, FRIDAY spoke to you over the intercom in your room. “Ms Y/L/N, your presence is requested in the conference room. You have been assigned a new mission. Please report immediately.”

You texted Nat again, “that wasn’t you again, was it?”

“Nope, for real this time. Let me know what’s up!”

 You arrived at the conference room last. You sighed before walking in. Through the glass you could see Nick sitting across the table, and with his back turned to you, Steve. After your little display only an hour ago at the gym, you wanted to keep your distance so you could plan the next move, and give him some time to live down how awkward that must have been for him.  

You sat down next to Steve but didn’t acknowledge him. Nick didn’t waste time exchanging pleasantries either, instead diving right in.

“This next one is highly specialized. Just you two.”

Awe shit, this couldn’t get any worse.

“You’ll be undercover… As a married couple.”

Yes it could.

Written by theanatomyofcuriosity

[huffle-dork]

Anti’s a cat and that’s a fact

I’m not the best at fluff and this was kinda rushed but i couldnt pass up this idea! I feel like this has been done before too but you know *shrugs* 

Thanks to @jurassicfannibal for the idea! [x] Based on Revere’s versions of the characters too *thumbs up* 

Anti had a rough night last night and only Red knew. Well, he was the only one that knew before this morning. Red did the usual routine of meeting Anti as he stumbled in from whatever trouble he got into that night. And boy did he get in trouble. His face was smeared with red from a spilt lip and bloody nose. His eye was puffy and purple and when he stumbled face first into Red’s chest, hiccupping in discomfort, trying to pull away caused him to wince and hiss when applying pressure to his arm. Red sighed and scooped up his tired brother, despite the glitch’s protests, and took him to the clinic to rest.

Then, Green came into open the clinic early and noticed an occupant in the room Doc started saving just for Anti and he was able to put two and two together. He was a supercomputer after all. After that, all the googles knew.

The glitch was sleeping soundly, his head propped up with as many pillows as he could steal. His right arm was in a sling snuggly pressed against his chest. He had a nasty black eye and a swollen lip but other than that he seemed fine. Though he for sure had a hangover, whenever the sun shone through the blinds across his bed he would wince and shuffle in his sleep.

The google brothers all went in to check in on Anti once they heard he spent the night in the clinic. But Red stopped them before they all walked in.

“Hey guys, we all know Anti can get kinda… touchy when we all know about one of his nights out. So, since Anti thinks only I know about this, I think I should be the one to check. For now at least.”

Ollie bites his lip in concern as the others nod. Slowly, he agrees to wait too and Red enters to check on Anti.

As he enters the room Red suddenly remembers, he’s not so good with comforting. Anti’s sleeping, what is he supposed to do? Maybe he should have let Ollie come in…. He settles for awkwardly coming up close to the sleeping glitch and gently patting his head.

Anti stirs slightly and stretches as the touch wakes him up. But he’s still kinda delirious from the events of last night so it takes him a second to fully wake up and respond. But when he does, out of his mouth comes a very faint cat like mreow neither boy was quite expecting. Anti’s eyes spring open in shock at the weird noise he just made and stares up at Red. Red gapes wide-eyed at Anti before a huge shit eating grin spreads across his face.

“Did you just meow?” Red snarked, holding back a snicker.

“No!” Anti protested immediately, “I didn’t- you just startled me-! I-“ “You fucking meowed!” Red bellowed and Anti turns bright red.

“Shut up!” the glitch shouts, trying to jump out of bed, his face too warm. Red can hardly contain his laughter and he doubles over cackling. “Stop laughing at me, Red!”  Anti whines, trying to not glitch in frustration. “I’ll fucking kill you, stop!!”

“Oh really?” the droid challenges, his grin getting wider. Anti regrets saying anything as Red opens the door to reveal the rest of the Googles. Anti’s stomach drops, and he blushes harder as Red announces, “Hey guys! Just as Anti woke up he freakin meowed-!” Red is cut off by a scream and the pouncing body of Anti on top of him as they both topple to the floor.

Green instantly panics, “Oh my gosh Anti don’t do that your arm!” He quickly rushes over to pull the fussy glitch away from a breathless Red. Google raises an eyebrow at the scene, “He… meowed?”

Red laughs from the floor, hardly able to talk, “Yeah, I just like touched his head to try to wake him up! A-and when he moved he just opened his mouth and sounded just like a cat!”

“You’re just- it wasn’t like that!” Anti argues, hating how hot his face feels. They’re never ever gonna let him live this down. Oliver cocks his head and smiles slightly, “I mean you do kinda act like a cat at times Anti. Maybe it was just bound to happen?”

Anti huffs and spins around back into the room, muttering “I fucking hate you guys…” and he slams the door shut behind him.

The Google brothers all look at each other and share a smile, the same thought running through their networks.

Operation: get Anti to act like a cat- initiated.

Over the next couple days, Anti is recovering in different spots of the office. On alert though, the Googles are acting strangely. They all keep looking at him and smiling or snickering and Anti cant help but be embarrassed. Siblings are the worst he thinks to himself as he crawls into his fort and curls up to sleep off a headache.

Bad idea. To keep his injured arm from moving too much he had curled up into a tight ball on top his mattress and fell asleep much like a cat would. Blue goes to check on him later and smirks at the sight, silently taking a picture through one of the lenses in his eye and sending it to the others. Anti wakes up later to it taped on the entrance of his fort with little whiskers and ears drawn on him in sharpie. Anti growls and tears the picture up, groaning into his pillow and he crawls down deeper to hide.

While he was sleeping one night, Anti felt something lightly hit his head. He tiredly looks towards the foreign object and jumps slightly. Someone had been rolling colored balls of yarn into the fort. Anti springs up to pull the curtain to the fort back and catches the hint of green t-shirt retreating towards the others’ rooms. Anti chucks one of the balls hard after Green and groans, throwing every other ball out of the fort in anger before falling back asleep.

The next day the googles get called for a meeting with the others and Anti sighs with relief. He could finally walk around the office without his brothers gawking at him and he stretched happily in the sunlight streaming through the window. He’s still sleepy though and Doc told him to get plenty of rest, so he decides to push some pillows into the stream of light falling across the floor. He grabs something to tinker with and flops contently onto his pile, basking in the warmth. He didn’t mean to fall asleep but the rhythmic motions of working on this carving soon lull him into a little cat nap. Or longer than that, because when the googles come back into the office they find Anti stretching out from his original spot on the floor towards where the sun has moved. Green and Red stifle snickers and Anti bursts awake at the sound, springing up onto the top of his toes, his back raised, too much like a startled cat. Green and Red lose it and Blue smirks, Oliver hides a smile behind his hand. Anti looks down at his posture and quickly stands up straight, fuming.

“Seriously, you guys! Stop! This isn’t funny anymore!” Anti cries. Red shakes his head, “I beg to differ!” the red droid counters.

Anti growls and rushes back to hide back into the fort again.

Later that night Oliver comes to check on Anti and still finds him irate, hacking away at some piece of wood that looks too close to comfort to Red.

“Hey buddy,” Ollie says softly, plopping down on top of some pillows next to where Anti is sprawled across several others.

“Are you here to laugh at me too?” Anti mumbles, slashing a huge gash into the wooden figure’s face. Oliver winces slightly and shifts uncomfortably.

“No, I just wanted to make sure you’re okay,” Ollie explains, patting Anti gently on the shoulder. Anti visibly stiffs and edges away, afraid Ollie is trying to get a funny reaction out of him. Oliver sighs with a sad smile.

“Anti, I think you’re taking this too hard.” The yellow droid leans down so he’s closer to Anti. “This is just what brothers do!”

“Oh yeah? Have they ever done this to you?” Anti asks with skepticism. Ollie laughs, throwing his head back.

“Are you kidding? Loads of times! One time I put my glasses on top of my head and couldn’t find them for a couple hours. They just sat there laughing. Even after that they would steal them from me and keep them on their heads to remind me. And that’s only one example!”

Anti raises an eyebrow and smiles slightly at Ollie. “Huh. I never thought they’d try that with you. You’re too sweet.”

Ollie shrugs with a grin. “All siblings act this way, from what I’ve observed. Being able to poke fun at each other just means we’re close!”

Anti laughs and finally sits up and moves so he can move his head into Ollie’s lap. “Tell me embarrassing things to others have done!” He asks Oliver expectantly, practically kicking his legs in excitement. Ollie smirks.

“Is that gonna get you to calm down and come back out?”

“That’s the only thing that’s gonna get me out!” Anti grins wide. Ollie leans back and tries to think of the best ones. Like the time Google had to hide in the office for a couple days after setting Dark’s pants on fire. Or how Red almost got his wires fired by angering some of King’s squirrels. As Ollie is halfway through the story about Green getting caught in the revolving door outside, he notices Anti half asleep curled up by his leg. Oliver smiles softly and ruffles Anti’s hair to get him to wake back up. And then the glitch purrs.

Ollie couldn’t contain his laugh this time and Anti wakes. He screams and tackles Ollie and swears him to secrecy, pinning the yellow droid to the ground. Through tears, Ollie agrees and Anti sleeps soundly.

Until he wakes up the next morning to find cat markings scrawled across his face. Anti kicks the nearest thing has hard as he can and reminds himself of how he can’t kill his brothers, no matter how much he wants to. This just means they love him…right?  

[resconarchive]

prinxess's rescreatu rant

Hey all (+Riyo), it's prinxess. I found this blog today, which naturally means I spent the next 5 hours flipping through the archive lol. This was supposed to be a short post but plans never go as expected (Warning: this is LONG). If you know me, you’ve probably seen me try to talk about this stuff in the SB—which rarely goes well, haha. I’m going to word vomit on three main things: Res’s “first come, first serve” issue, Staff/ShoutBox Culture, and my own mistakes.

This isn’t Voice of God. I’m just a flawed 20-year-old who feels compelled articulate her thoughts at least once somewhere.

I accept responsibility for what’s written below.

1. Early Birds Get the Worm

Nice names are Res’s lifeblood. The aim of the game is to accumulate as many as you can. It didn't start out that way but that’s what it's become; it's human nature to want what your peers want. We enjoy having valuable things—the proof is in the pixels. But LOL good names are now worth 1B tu? This is why people are so upset with the site. If you made an account in 2006, quickly hatched three creatu named Diamond, Emerald, and Sapphire, and didn't log in again until now, your account would be worth more than someone who joined a year ago but has put in hundreds of hours into the site.

1B is pretty abstract, so I'll offer a cold splash of in-game reality. 700M = $100

Many of Rescreatu’s issues writhe around one malignant crux: its “first come, first serve” groundwork. Meaning, if your account isn’t old enough to be sent off to grade school, then you are out of luck. With everything. If you weren’t there when you could fish tier-1 names from the Atquateen Forest, if you weren’t there during the mass graveyard purges, if you weren’t smart enough to buy valuable names en masse for cheap from naive tweens 8 years ago, you’re out of luck. Unless Mr. Moneybags disembowels him/herself into your hands, you will never measure up to the sheer wealth of a select few old users (Gunmetal, Fleur, etc).

The visible wealth disparity is unreal. It’s kind of cute—there’s this ritual where when a newbie appears in the SB, older users flood them with tu and lovely creatu because they know baby bambi can’t make it on their own in modern Res. But what about the invisible users? The 99% who never set foot in the SB? Imagine you’re twelve, creating an account for the first time. You’re given XYZtu (aka not enough) to start off with. Hatching pets is fun. You like finding clothes for your avatar in the trash. A while later, you become interested in buying more creatu, so you fiddle around with the Creatu Search. And... you realize that the only good rwns are in the 20M+ range.

Actually no—a few weeks ago, a user called prinxess went through the entire directory, cleaned out most lower-priced RWNs, and stuck them in her shop at mark-up. But hey, she left “Blisters” and “Introspective” for you.

There’s nothing to do on Rescreatu except lord your cool names over other users. Nothing else... except... wait. Isn’t the Kir Quest about colors, not names? Which brings me to my next point. Years ago, blondes were worth 700k, and albinos 3M. Players back then threw these cheap creatu at Kir and rode the Uldavian Express to higher Rounds at mach speed (there are 5 Rounds now. each need an additional 120 creatu/points to access). Nowadays, albinos are no longer stocked in ranchers—period. I’m talking chimbies and meragons, not even seasonals. To use myself as an example, I restarted Kir a month ago (I was only at 25 points, Round 1). I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t being 100% efficient with my tu, but within a few days, I managed to add an additional 23 creatu to that number. At the cost of nearly one billion tu. 95% of which went towards beans.

If you’re a newbie with a dream of earning a Cyancu Nest, you need to give Kir 180 creatu total. That isn’t just hard—it’s straight-up impossible. From a cost/benefit standpoint, if you do not already have a substantial amount of Kir points, do not touch the Quest. Instead, buy the prize shop items from other users.

Because, let’s do some math. 180 (creatu) x 7,800,000 (price per bean) = 1,404,000,000tu.

I swear on every god out there that, overall, you will not just be spending 7.8M per creatu.

Cyancu eggs are selling for 500M each/1.5B for a nest, pretty close to that mythical 1,404,000,000 number. Just buy the egg.

A staff member once told me, “The Kir Quest is supposed to be hard.” Fair enough. The original purpose of the Quest was to fix Res’s overpopulation problem. Make higher colors valuable again. But now we’ve swung hard towards creatu extinction. The fix is relatively simple. Have Kir ask for blondes/albinos less often. Or increase the likelihood of hatching colors. Should be a simple coding tweak.

Side-note: With beans having become an integral part of Rescreatu’s ONLY real continuous Quest, why are they still cash shop items? People love to tout “but the site needs money to run”. How about put out a better product instead of squeezing users with Stockholm Syndrome/a gambling addiction out of more pennies? Actually, not pennies, it’s serious cash. The next promo is $100 for 3 retired CS eggs—a promo which was supposed to be in December, but moved because the higher ups thought users would be too strapped for cash during Christmas.

2. Staff/Culture

Hopelessness makes the newer users leave. Staff corruption poisons the rest. I’m not involved in current Rescreatu politics, but in the past it absolutely was a thing. Even with generally loved and respected staff members.

 I don’t want to disclose too much information, but since I’m old and weary, I’ll say that (without asking for it) a substantial boon was thrown my way because I was friendly with a member of staff. They are still highly regarded within the community.

14BM was unabashedly shady. One day, I announced I was selling a name on the SB and got in touch with a buyer. During our back-and-forth rmailing, 14BM rmailed me to say one of us had “accidentally hit the report button” which pointed her to our conversation. She warned me the other user was ripping me off, and that she could give me a better offer. Not very professional behavior, in my honest opinion.

Way back when, BillyBob was abusing glitches.

A name appeared in anon-staff’s Showroom one hot second after the person it belonged to was banned for “using a bot to find eggs.” Anon-staff had previously asked if they’d ever sell the name and they had said no. Shady.

Real talk. A staff member told me they don’t even care if you use bots, just as long as you don’t find enough seasonal eggs to ruin the market. I think anything above 40 is considered suspicious. Nevermind if you actually have no life and want to search for eggs for 48 hours straight.

There were way more corruption incidents, but those were so long ago I barely remember them. As for current staff, I can’t speak for them. Honestly, I can’t tell who most people are anymore because of all the username switching lol. There’s this ridiculous implicit rule of “don’t ask what someone’s username used to be” around Res. Like hello? That makes no sense. Not only do they retain their unique pets, but really, if someone hated you, a simple change of username isn’t going to make them suddenly forget who you are. Similarly, the whole idea of a new username being “a new start” for the user is frankly hilarious. Especially when you act no different.

That’s unfortunately just the start of my issue with Res’s “nice” culture. I’ll call it by another name: suck-up culture. It’s this omnipresent force of saccharine sweetness that’s nearly alive from how many people are hooked up into it. Plenty of users are genuinely nice, I won’t knock that. But damn, when a staff member/older user/wealthbag comes on the SB? It’s a vicious competition to prove how close they are are with that member. Immediately, there are “glomps” and “huggles” and “we’re married!/best friends” as if they actually give a shit about the other person. You do not. I know you do not. Everyone knows you do not. You’re just trying to get free things—and hey, it’s not a bad move, since those users are generally the gifting type. Oh. The cringiest thing is when a fan gives a popular user a cheap present, so the popular user will feel obliged to give them something in return—hopefully a better something. Machiavelli must be rolling in his grave.

This sugary behavior has somehow infected staff as well. I find it doubly disgusting because I can’t even call them out on it.

“<3 oh sweetheart, just so you know, what you’re doing is called spam. [link to rules] please take a look!! :333 ^_^”

“ *pops in* haiiiii guys, sorry to bump in but could you please take this convo to rmail? :3 *hugs* squeeeee <333 *hopes you dont hate me* ”

Like, fucking Christ. I can feel their phantom arms around me in my sleep. Can anyone speak normally anymore? Does everything need to be qualified with butterflies, sunshine, and overtures of love?

Back to the subject of staff... that issue is multifaceted. First, it’s a weirdly cyclical thing. Notice how newly chosen staff are almost always friends with current staff? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen some anon that’s never visited the SB become staff purely on merit (save for artists/programmers). But I could be wrong. Anyway, users inducted into staff are usually already one of Res’s wealthy elite. I can only speak for the trend I’ve noticed over the years, but A LOT of people become staff as a status symbol. Some also do it because they’re invested in the site and want to make it better. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. You can want to help while liking the boost in popularity at the same time. The real issue with staff is how they are compensated. Getting paid in credits (cash points?) actively increases the wealth disparity in the site. There’s a difference between giving someone 100 dollars versus a handful of credits. If someone handed you a hundred dollars, would you use it for rent or on some virtual name tags? Without this choice, staff are essentially forced into one course of action: buy credit shop items, put these items in their merchant shop, sell them to users, rake in tu. Or just sell cp for tu.

Rescreatu doesn’t use their staff properly. I’m referring to writers and artists. There are hundreds of wearable items available, but dressing up an avatar to look forum-fancy isn’t the purpose of a pet site. It’s a nice feature. But I didn’t join Rescreatu so I could play dress-up, I joined for the pets, for the battle arena, for the story of it all. Writers, I feel, are the most wasted of all. Does anyone actually read the stories in the books? Does anyone buy books, even? Res should take their talent and invest in proper story lines. They have six writers right now. Come on. Put up a good kidnapping site-wide story involving Xoria and Loyna. Get a competition between Scria users and Reiflem users going. Maybe the story could be Quest-style, with the users voting on how the story moves with their tu. Do something!

...Because this site also needs a tu sink. Desperately. Contrary to popular belief, the Kir Quest isn’t a tu sink, it vacuums money up to the top dogs of Rescreatu. You buy 10 beans—where are you getting these beans? More than likely, it’s from a staff member selling 70 of them in their shop. IRL right now there are 4 users selling beans: Feather x34, Isolation x30, Umbreon420 x1, Phos x36. Nothing against these users—in fact, I like them, but do you notice a trend? What do staff do with all this tu? They buy names at premium prices because they can afford to.

Q: Wait, prinx. If you just paid real money, you could have lots of tu too! A: My honor code forbids me from validating freemium games

Q: But, prinx. Why don’t you just become staff?  A: I tried when I was 13 but they didn’t accept me ): Probably for good reason.

It’s shocking that the stock market hasn’t been removed/tweaked yet. It shouldn’t be possible to buy 50,000 stocks of FAS for 400k on Sunday, and sell that for 20M one week later. This is another reason why names are considered the real currency on Rescreatu. Their value increases along with the inflation. It’s the only safe investment you can make.

3. Me

So, my long-winded rant is out of the way. Above, I mentioned I’d like to apologize for myself, so here I go. For context, these past few months I’ve been trying to get rid of my RWNs through forum auctions. In the latest thread, I stuck in an umbrella clause basically saying that I reserved the right to pull whatever bullshit I wanted, which I used, without warning, to tack 1.2B Autobuy options to the names. Half my reason was I was being egged on by a friend to do it. Half was because I just didn’t care. Never in my wildest dreams did I even imagine one person would actually go for it, let alone 3. When I opened the thread the morning after, I felt dread. My actions understandably upset quite a few people. I acknowledge that what I did was unprofessional. I regret it, and I’ve learned a valuable lesson.

In general, I’ve spent my recent years on Rescreatu being rude and abrasive. Trying to tie 14 year old staff in logic knots, picking at overly sensitive members, engaging trolls, the works. I’ve been throwing angsty melodrama around like glow-sticks at an EDM concert, and it isn’t fair to the newer members who have no memory of Res’s past.

This post clocks in at 2.5k words. The only reason I’ve written so much is because Rescreatu means/meant so much to me. For all its faults, Res somehow just works. Maybe because it encourages addictive behavior. Maybe because of the community. Whatever it is, it’s helped the site escape multiple waves of peril that would’ve killed any other. For that it deserves some applause. 

If you want to contact me, rmail me or email me at blu.moon.dragon@gmail.com. I don't bite

Peace.

[naominorbez]

TOME RPG Demo: An Affectionate Review

Hey friends!  So, a TOME RPG is on Kickstarter, and I wanted to give my 2 cents on it, because I really love the demo (and TOME in general).  Things here are way too long for a comment on the itch.io page, so it’s a lengthy blog post (hooray!).  

If you haven’t, go play the demo and check out the Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1660664362/terrain-of-magical-expertise-rpg-a-game-about-a-ga

https://chrisniosi.itch.io/tomedemo

This is not a review to convince you whether or not to back the TOME RPG on Kickstarter--I’m already super biased and say YES YOU SHOULD!  I also understand that this is an early demo, and doesn’t represent the final product AT ALL, and that this is a game by a small team, not a big publisher.

This is me gushing my thoughts on this new game for a thing I love, while also bringing up criticisms and problems I had with it.

(Side note: I’m aiming to release a TOME fangame sometime next month.  It’ll be on my itch.io page here: https://norbez.itch.io )

And here we go!

(All screenshots are taken from the game’s itch.io page.)

I’ve been a fan of TOME since the first episode (”You Gotta Virus”) hit the front page of Newgrounds and I clicked on it, curious.  TOME is about five friends who bond through an MMORPG called TOME (the Terrain Of Magical Expertise), but are threatened when a strange force emerges: The Forbidden Power, a dangerous item that can hurt players in real life.

TOME is a great series with fantastic characters, beautiful animation & music, and a solid, suspenseful story.  I do have some grips with it, but I still highly recommend it.  Check out all the episodes on Youtube--recommended for a teenage audience.

The game continues the legacy of quality with engaging gameplay, beautiful art design, and lovely color choice.  We have yet to see what the story is, but I have no doubt it will be well done, considering what preceded it.

I keep an eye on TOME news & Kirbopher (the creator’s) content, so I knew a game was in the works for a while.  When the Kickstarter was finally announced (with rewards that continue the TOME tradition of having fans as characters in the game), I got excited.  So I downloaded the demo and gave it a play.  For the record, I played version 03-5 of the demo.

In this game, you play as a “White Hat Hacker”, who teams up with the 5 main characters of TOME (Alpha, Flamegirl, Nylocke, and Gamecrazed [now Gamesoft]) to try and stop malicious hackers.  You run around an overworld and fight enemies in a turn-based battle system.  It’s a separate continuity from the original TOME series, but there are clear parallels; someone who has watched the series can guess where the game will meet the original.

It’s an interesting choice to have the player helping the TOME crew instead of playing as the TOME crew.  On one hand, it creates a story where a TOME fan is hanging out the characters they’ve come to love over the years, and makes the player able to control all 4 characters with the turn-based battle system (instead of playing as one of the characters and having AI control the others--having 4 players to control adds to the strategy and variety to the battles, and means the player is responsible for every move, not a computer).  On the other hand, it makes a story that the player is mostly told to and cannot directly influence (at least, that’s how it looks); in the demo, the player character has basically no personality, and it’s like playing as a camera with legs (and battle abilities).

As a TOME fan who loves the characters, being a camera with legs isn’t a wholly bad thing--but I also know that approach can alienate those new to TOME.  I'm very interested in seeing whether the player character has any influence on the story (or any real personality) in the final game. 

Speaking of the TOME characters, let’s talk about them for a moment.  I’ll first say this: every time @kirbopher redesigns the characters, their designs get even better.  They were redesigned for TOME Season 2, and again for this game; the characters look absolutely wonderful.  In the original cartoon, their personalities are great--each one adds something unique to the friend group, and no two characters are alike.

This is expanded in the game with their different abilities in battle--a good amount are from the TOME show, and it’s awesome to see them in action.  The animation, poses, etc all really emphasize each character’s fighting style and personality (and the animation is absolutely beautiful!).  The demo unfortunately ends when the player approaches Nylocke and Gamesoft, whose abilities I was looking forward to seeing.  Especially Gamesoft--I was really hoping to see their* abilities, but I guess that’ll have to wait until the final game. ;)

(*I know that Gamesoft has “she” on the Kickstarter page, but Gamesoft/Gamecrazed has canonically been considered male and female, so I used “they” here.  Hope that’s ok & makes sense.  Also, does anyone else headcanon Gamecrazed/Gamesoft as nonbinary?  PLEASE TELL ME I’M NOT ALONE HERE!)

I really like the different ways to fight in this game.  This is a turn-based RPG, a la Final Fantasy.  You select different ways to fight from four options around you, some of which open a menu for further selection, and the way you select things and fight is very unique from most games.  It kind of reminds me of choosing dialogue options in a Telltale game with the 4 main buttons on a controller, except this is for combat, and choosing different dialogue choices open a menu.  It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you understand the controls, you’ll be breezing through these segments.  For the record, I played with a keyboard & arrow keys, not a controller.

Your “fight” ability is a simple selection--pick “Strike” and you’re punching an enemy in the face.  But your Magic Attacks are different.  All of them are based on button presses: some need you to press a button at the right time, some are rapid-fire, some need you to fill up a meter at just the right spot.  It’s all pretty creative, adding a bit of complexity to what otherwise would be simple RPG battles--instead of selecting a super strong ability and watching it pummel your enemies, you have to earn that strength with the button presses.

I do recognize that there is a danger to this approach to combat, as much as I personally like it.  The simple menu selection turn-based RPGs offer is a very assessable gameplay feature; nearly everyone can grasp it and start kicking butt quickly.  Adding timed button presses to it reduces the assessability significantly, both for disabled gamers who may not be able to complete them, and generally for those who are hindered by the segments or have trouble with them.  It would be nice if the final game includes an option to turn off these timed button presses.

The oddest thing in the demo--at least from my experience--was how much more damage my player character (an Infernal Morphological Brawler) did compare to my teammates. The demo is surprisingly complex because of its controls and its additions to turn-based menu combat.  Because of this, nearly half of my time with the demo was spent trying to get a grasp of the controls, and it took a while for me to figure out how to do magical attacks without canceling the menu over and over.

What I’m trying to say is that I punched a lot.  A LOT.  “Strike” was my main thing in every battle for a while.  The weird thing was that I would do 10-12 damage per hit (because I’m brawler class, maybe?), and everyone else (Alpha, Flamegirl, and Kirbopher) would do 1-4 damage.  Part of me thinks that giving them low, ineffective damage was to encourage the player to use magical attacks instead, but since I didn’t grasp the controls yet, I couldn’t do the magical attacks, and kept punching.  It’s also possible that the difference in damage is a bug.

I’m sure this issue will be rendered moot in the full game.  But it goes to show that a new control scheme can be difficult to grasp and use effectively, so it needs to be properly explained.  I can’t wait to see that in the final game, because the controls really are unique and interesting, and they need a proper explanation for a player to take full advantage of the battle system.  

(It would also be interesting to see the game’s nature as an “MMORPG” effect the battle system--do players have all abilities right away when they start TOME, or do they only have a few, and get new ones as they level up?  Can players with more abilities challenge players who just started TOME and only have 1-2?  This could be interesting to see, but it could also get super complicated and detrimental to the game’s quality.)

This game has bugs.  Which . . . yeah, that’s to be expected; it’s a pre-release demo.  One of the odder ones was that poor Alpha was stuck running outside the overworld map after a battle, trying to get back on the edge but failing.  He returned to my side after another fight, though, so it wasn’t permanent.  That was the only bug I encountered in my game; I didn’t have any glitches either, that I remember.

Other random notes that I couldn’t fit:

--Edwyn Tiong is the “narrator” of this demo--which is a tad odd to me, because Michele Knotz (as Kindarspirit, TOME’s head of sound design) “narrates” the TOME game in the original series.  Tiong voices various characters in TOME, and a government agent in the--wait a minute.  Is the player character really Agent Giga, going undercover in TOME to seek out The Forbidden Power?!  CONSPIRACY?!

--Neo-C Productions.  Love it. :)

--Things took a pretty long time to load in this demo--no doubt an issue that will be fixed in the final release.

--Kirb's "Well it's about time!" made me give a little fan squee.  I also love how Kirbopher is now a scrappy little cyborg knight in this continiuity.

--At the start, when Flamegirl, Alpha, and Kirbopher ran toward me after I joined their party, I thought they were going to go in me a la Golden Sun, but they stoped just short. X)

--There’s not a lot of music in this demo, but it’s all pretty nice.  The sound design is good too.

--I did replay the demo a bit to check some of the things I mentioned--as a “weaponry” class, I did 6 attack damage, still more than the rest of my party.

--Hearing that main TOME battle theme during the fight with the Game Theorists and in later fights was AWESOME.  And it’s pretty cool that Mat Pat “stomps” to the beat.

I really enjoyed the demo, and I truly believe that the issues I’ve raised will likely be moot when the full game is released.  Here’s links to the demo and the Kickstarter in case you haven’t looked at it already:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1660664362/terrain-of-magical-expertise-rpg-a-game-about-a-ga

https://chrisniosi.itch.io/tomedemo

Thanks for reading! :) Let me know if there’s something I should comment on, or what your thoughts on the demo are!

[avernale]

Next time I make a final push to beat a game, I should begin my efforts earlier in the day.  Last night at about 8 PM, I entered the Pokémon League in Pokémon Sun.  Since I couldn’t leave once I was in, I decided against saving inside so I could just reset if things weren’t going my way.  Yeah, losing meant being sent back to the Pokémon Center and being free again, but I’d have to fight everybody all over again regardless.  I wound resetting almost immediately anyway because I wanted to change my outfit to something more formal for the occasion.

Between the amount of time I blew on picking just the right outfit, a couple opponents who just wouldn’t die, a really long set of cutscenes leading to a battle with a wild Legendary without allowing you to save (just the thing you need after five epic battles in a row, right? Although apparently if you beat it without catching it, you can just save and try again immediately - just once - but I caught it anyway so it didn’t matter) and another cutscene after that, I didn’t see the end of the credits until about 12:30 AM.  That’s like four and a half hours, including taking a break for dinner and finalizing some Research Tasks in Pokémon Go I forgot to do before midnight so maybe more like three and a quarter..Point is, I never expect these things to take so long even though they often do.  Hopefully, next time I decide it’s time to get a game over with, I’ll remember to put it off until morning.

It’s probably also the fastest I’ve beaten a Pokémon game in a while, in terms of time remaining to the next gen, in some time.  I typically start these games about when they hit store shelves, and lately don’t complete them until just before the next one does.  I don’t think I beat Y until, like, a month before Sun & Moon came out (and probably a week if you include doing the post-credits story content and catching Mewtwo and Zygarde).  I’m not sure how close I cut it with Black, but I’m pretty sure X & Y had already been announced.  I tried to complete Sun faster, but I stalled out before heading up Mount Lanakila because I wanted to put Solgaleo on my team but it was about ten levels higher than the rest of my party and I wanted them all to be equal.  I probably should’ve made use of Isle Evelup so I wouldn’t have to grind so much, because I burnt out on it pretty quick and didn’t pick it up again for months.  Fortunately, I only had a couple more levels to go and, even more fortunately, I didn’t fight anyone of a significantly higher level until the Legendary battle.

I’m going to say I’m technically ready for “Pokémon Switch” now.  I didn’t start doing post-credit stuff until Y.  Not even the stuff that transfers Pokémon from previous gens, which meant I had a lot work to do since there were a lot more restrictions on that back in the day.  I think Diamond & Pearl only allowed you to transfer up to six from the original Ruby & Sapphire per day, and even then you’d have to go to a special field and catch them again!  Then in Black & White, you had to play an archery minigame because the scientist NPC couldn’t build a simpler system I guess.  Once Pokémon Bank came around, transferring was easier, but it could only access Box 1 in Black & White.  And being able to just dump everything into the Bank from X & Y and into Sun & Moon?  The only way the transfer from Sun & Moon to “ Pokémon Switch” could be easier is if it did it automatically. 

The original Gold & Silver didn’t mess around, though.  It just had a “Time Machine” that allow you to trade with the original Red & Blue, provided you only had Pokémon and moves that were available in the first gen in your party (glitches notwithstanding).  It didn’t matter that Held Items, Gender and Shininess were introduced in Gold & Silver or that Special Attack and Special Defense were a single “Special” stat in Red & Blue, since Gold & Silver determined those with existing stats.  Held Items were stored in the “Catch Rate” stat, which was useless once you actually caught the Pokémon anyway.  Why Red & Blue would maintain a change to Catch Rate afterwards is beyond me, but you could trade a Pokémon with Held Item to Red & Blue and it would still be there when you traded it back to Gold & Silver. 

The original Ruby & Sapphire, though, completely overhauled the system to the point where Game Freak didn’t think it was worthwhile to find a way to transfer from the older games.  The Pokemon on first and second gen cartridges are stuck there unless you use probably questionable third party hardware and software.  From the video I saw on it, I kinda felt like you could easily skip transferring out from the older games by using the software to recreate your Pokémon from scratch.  Fortunately, the Virtual Console versions are compatible with Pokémon Bank, but that’s not really the same thing.

...Where was I?  Right.  From what I can tell, “ Pokémon Switch” doesn’t come out until 2019.  Barring delays, that means I have about five to seventeen months to complete the post-credits content in Pokemon Sun.  So no rush there, I guess.  I have yet to complete the Pokédex in any gen, so it’s not a big deal to me, although it’s probably more possible in this gen than previous ones.  Hell, I can crank out Phiones and starters all day long and incubate up to 18 eggs in the hot springs of Isle Avue.  As long as someone thinks one of those is worth one of their Legendaries, I’m sure I’m golden.  If not, well, hopefully they’ll be an Event Pokémon.

Beyond that, maybe breeding something special to put on my Switch team.  I’ve kind of made it a tradition to send a Ralts up as a mascot of sorts, like how Ash always has Pikachu.  Except I let Ralts evolve, of course.  Made it a Gallade in Y to help fill out the Pokédex, but it’s likely Gardevoirs from here on out.  It’s way too early to be planning out a team for it, but I know one slot’s gonna be Ralts, the next a starter, then whatever Pokémon is transferable from the demo (if there is one), then possibly an Event Pokémon (that Munchlax served me well as a gimmicky catcher), and hopefully not too many Pokémon foisted onto me for plot reasons. 

For some reason, I feel like I’ll miss my Ash-Greninja most of all. I mean, I’ll still have it, but I just won’t be be using it.  I don’t even think I can breed it to make more, although maybe I should check again to make sure.  Pretty sure it showed no interest in my Ditto.  It’s from the demo, so I’ve had it longer than even my starter.  Not sure about my Gardevoir, since I think I might have gotten it as a Ralts in Black or even older.  But I can make more Gardevoirs.  That Ash-Greninja’s apparently from Ash Ketchum himself, and for some reason I feel more sorry for the Pokémon he left behind than my own, I guess.

[fostersffff]

It’s nearly the end of the year, and barring me entering some kind of wild hyper-focused fugue state, I don’t believe I’ll be finishing any more games by the 31st. So with that said, instead of doing a strictly best/worst thing, here’s a list of awards- both positive and negative- I made up to assign to games that I felt were worth talking about in some way.

The Exceeded Expectations Award

A tight race between Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Devil May Cry 5. I really don’t think anyone was expecting Three Houses to be the smash hit it would become, but the surprising and exciting E3 timeskip trailer was followed by a steady steam of promising information about the gameplay and story that wound up coalescing into fantastic experience. Ultimately, DMC5 wins out for Hideaki Itsuno making the unbelievably bold claim that the game would “exceed fans’ expectations” to an audience with the second highest expectations in the history of the industry, behind only Final Fantasy VII Remake, and then actually delivering on that claim with one of the finest action game experiences I’ve had in recent memory.

The Most Clearly Sent Out To Die Award

Daemon X Machina. It didn’t stand a chance in it’s release window and was cannibalized by its own publisher putting out like three other high profile games both before and after it. As such, this game will most likely be remembered by people thinking back to E3 2018 and going “whatever happened to that really cool mech combat game?”, and by people who did play it for the weird crossover DLC like Code Geass and The Witcher 3.

The Most Overrated Game of the Year Award

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition. Yuri Vesperia is every bit as good a character as people said he was, but if this is the peak of the “Tales” series, it’s decidedly not for me. It was honestly kind of upsetting to see that this game occupied one of my “most-played” slots on Nintendo’s "Year in Review” page instead of Valkyria Chronicles 4.

The Least Overrated Game of the Year Award

A Hat in Time. A lot of the praise I saw for this game came from people who were disappointed with Super Mario Odyssey back in 2017, and as someone who gleefully played Odyssey like five times in a row, I figured it wouldn’t resonate with me in the same way, but it’s every bit as good as people said it was. The base game was perfectly satisfying on its own, but it was an absolute treat to see how well both the Seal the Deal and Nyakuza Metro DLC turned out and how much better Gears for Breakfast got with every aspect of the game over time. The only genuine problem I have with it are the technical issues present in the Switch port, the most severe of which have been patched out at this point, and while it’s still not the optimal way to play, the issues with Hat’s Switch port didn’t really impede my enjoyment at all. Speaking of which...

The Be Careful What You Wish For Award

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. I really love the Switch both in concept and execution, and up until August of this year I was adamant that all but the most technically demanding games should try to put out a Switch port. That’s changed thanks to the Switch port of Bloodstained: it was goddamn near unplayable at launch, and even with the multiple-month-delayed SUPER PATCH, I still encountered an unacceptable number of crashes and atrocious visual glitches while dealing with a compromised-under-the-best-possible-circumstances version of the game. It was so bad I genuinely considered stopping near the end to restart on the PC version, but I soldiered on. It’s a shame too, because in terms of actual content, Bloodstained is a success story on par with A Hat in Time or Shovel Knight, but it’s gonna be a while before I give a better optimized version of the game a whirl.

The Returning Champion Award

Capcom. The four-hit combo of RE2make, Devil May Cry 5, Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, and the announcement of RE3make to close out the year following the kickoff of the Mega Man Apology Tour in 2018 firmly cements Capcom as being back after what felt like a full decade of mediocrity and disappointment across the board. Square-Enix gave them a run for their money here between Kingdom Hearts III, Dragon Quest Builders 2, Dragon Quest XI S, and Collection of Mana, but barring THE BLUNDER OF THE DECADE I think they’ve got this particular award in the bag for 2020.

The Dropped Ball Award

Super Mario Maker 2. I actually didn’t care all that much about no local multiplayer, but between that and the online multiplayer being offensively broken in terms of how awful the lag was, it seems like Nintendo let what should’ve been an evergreen Switch title flop to the ground and start gasping for air. Either that, or the original Super Mario Maker only succeeded because there was so little else to do with a Wii U. Granted, the recent Zelda update is super neat, but coming a full six months after launch with almost no fanfare when other Switch games like Splatoon 2, Mario Tennis Aces, and even Arms had more consistent post-launch support is such a strange and bad look.

The Stuck Landing Award

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. After six and a half years, Shovel Knight has delivered on all of its Kickstarter campaign promises, and while the original game and the Plague of Shadows campaign were excellent, Specter of Torment, King of Cards, and Shovel Knight Showdown all went far above and beyond what people were expecting of Yacht Club Games by creating new stages with remixed music, wildly divergent gameplay mechanics, a fully fleshed out card game, and a Smash Bros.-tier multiplayer game. It’s the only game I can think of in my entire history of playing video games where the price has gone up over time and I’ve found myself nodding in agreement.

The Still Good One Year Later After The Hype Has Faded Award

Mega Man 11. Still excellent!

The Achievements In Localization Award

Another tight race, this time between Collection of Mana in recognition of Square-Enix deciding to localize a 23 year old game from scratch when a total remake is coming out in less than a year’s time, Judgment for having two separate scripts for the English dub and the Japanese dub’s subtitles, and Trails of Cold Steel III for NISA doing a genuinely terrific job that had no obvious cut corners in a game with this much text that was consistent with the naming conventions established by an entirely different localization company, even hiring back like 99% of the other company’s voice cast. Despite all of that praise for NISA, this one goes to Judgment for what I hope will become a standard in the industry.

The Worst Ending and Voice Acting Award

While I appreciate how committed to the joke WayForward was, the ending of River City Girls gets worse the further away I get from it, especially since they could’ve actually alleviated so many problems with one extra line of dialogue from Hasebe and/or Mami about how they were the ones who “abducted” Kunio and Riki (by sending them to the spa) and that they also sent the text that kicks of the plot just to fuck with Misako and Kyoko. Also: in general, don’t hire e-celebs to do voicework for your project if they are not actual voice actors, either by trade or by aspiration. At least most of them were kept to shopkeeper cameos, but I’ll never understand the decision to cast Big Capital-“Oi” Irish Brogue Jacksepticeye as recurring character Godai other than “CLOUT PLEASE”.

The Best Ending and Voice Acting Award

Dragon Quest XI S. This game should be front and center when conversations come up about having to earn a happy ending, because the ending you get when the credits roll is perfectly satisfactory... but you can do better. And not only can you do better, you can get what is effectively the most perfect ending that can be in the entire history of Dragon Quest as a gaming franchise, which sounds like a dramatic overstatement until you see it. And, to contrast the previous award, I really appreciate how DQXI’s voice cast didn’t include anyone I was familiar with and thus I never had the experience of “oh shit it’s x from y”, but this award exists in particular for Serena’s voice actress, Jessica Clark, and her reading of the line “I hate to ask, but would you mind awfully not going anywhere for a little while? I think I’m going to cry...”

The Most Wrong I Ever Was About A Story Award

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered. For years, I thoughtlessly regurgitated the opinion that “parts of FF8 are good, but it’s definitely a bad game with a lame romance and Squall is a terrible protagonist” based on the memory of playing the demo as a child and enjoying it, but seeing the internet at large bash it without mercy. I was wrong, because not only is it not bad, the central romance is totally compelling and Squall has become my favorite Final Fantasy protagonist, in the very same year that I finally also played Final Fantasy VII and came to terms with the fact that Cloud has been good all along, actually.

The 2019 Was A Ridiculously Good Year For Games In General Because I Didn’t Actually Play It That Much Despite The First Game Being My GOTY 2016 And This Game Is An Improvement In Every Single Possible Way Award

Dragon Quest Builders 2. I cannot believe how little of DQB2 I’ve played! And it’s so good!

[ciathyzareposts]

Missed Classic 78: Crash Dive! (1984)

Written by Joe Pranevich

For the era that we study, Brian Moriarty is one of the giants. He brought us three of Infocom’s classics, starting with Wishbringer, and jumped over to LucasArts to create Loom, one of my favorite adventure games of all time. Before we move on to Trinity (1986) and start the story of Infocom-under-Activision, I’d like to reverse course and fill in the final blank from his early career. In the early 1980s, Moriarty worked as a writer and eventual technical editor for Analog Computing magazine, celebrating the Atari personal computers that he loved. In that role, he wrote his first game, a tepid Adventure in the Fifth Dimension (1983) that failed to foreshadow the fantastic designer he would become. The following year, he penned Crash Dive!, his final Atari game before joining Infocom. Does that game show his potential? That’s what I would like to find out.

Inspiration can strike from just about anywhere, but Crash Dive! has perhaps one of the more unusual origin stories that I have ever heard. It starts with a failure: in 1982, Analog’s Jon Bell and Tom Hudson wanted to make a submarine action game. Bell and his team even toured two submarines (the Nimitz and Dace) for inspiration and historical accuracy. Cover art was commissioned, the game was announced, and even the back-of-box copy was written… but it evaporated into thin air. Despite the time and expense, it was never released. That would be the end of the Crash Dive! story, if it wasn’t for its “inspirational” cover art and a very special issue of Analog Computing.

Eye of newt, and toe of frog. For a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

In April 1984, Analog planned a special issue to highlight adventure gaming on the Atari. This was early days in our industry and their definition of an “adventure” doesn’t quite match up to our own, but they found joy in narrative games (including what we would call “RPGs”) as distinct from action games. To celebrate these adventures, the editorial staff commissioned reviews of many such games available for the Atari. According to Moriarty’s introductory note, so many reviews were planned and penned that they had to spill over into the next issue.

I do not want to get too sidetracked from our Crash Dive! story, but it’s worth a moment to consider just what Atari adventures were highlighted that April:

Ultima I had finally been ported to Atari, three years after it debuted for the Apple II. Reviewer Steve Panak called it “quite possibly one of the most addictive” role playing games ever made, although he disliked the space segment and found the ending disappointing. (Ultima was covered by our friend the CRPG Addict back in 2010.)

Skipping the direct sequel, Ultima III was reviewed by Cliff Chaput and he had a lot of nice things to say about the title screen and about the first fifteen minutes of gameplay. Although he describes the game as a “must-have”, he admits that his copy (and many of the copies shipped for Atari) doesn’t actually work due to a “glitch”. How he could so glowingly review a product that might not even be playable, I have no idea, but he liked the bits that he saw. (Ultima III was covered by the CRPG Addict only a few months after the previous game.)

Gruds… in… Spaaaaace! (Apple II version)

Gruds in Space is a graphical text adventure game by Sirius Software, but not one I had ever heard of. Patrick J. Kelley reviews it and I’ll let his words speak for themselves:

“This is the most detailed and animated graphics/text adventure that I’ve ever seen, and belies a lot of love in its creation. Blinking eyes, twinkling stars, flashing lights and leering monsters fill every frame with a real character, and the continuity of shape and color are truly amazing. This game sets a standard that many other so-called ‘graphic’ adventures fall far short of, both in concept and execution. In some cases, the animation is so well integrated that it becomes more than just an enhancement to the adventure, but a feature unto itself.”

Saigon: The Final Days was reviewed by Ray Berube and he seems to have hated its puzzle design and the overall execution of the game. He writes, “I can’t recommend Saigon. Invest a little more money and buy an Infocom adventure, or even one of the original Scott Adams titles. You’ll enjoy your investment rather than railing at your monitor.” Our own Will Moczarski seems to have enjoyed the game more than Ray did!

The Return of Heracles was reviewed by Michael Des Chenes and he enjoyed the game very much, although it hardly seems like either an adventure or an RPG. The CRPG Addict shares his enthusiasm for Stuart Smith titles and had a lot of fun with this so the review seems on point.

Planetfall was reviewed by Carl Firman and he waxes on so much about the extras and the setting that he doesn’t even remember to tell us how much he liked the game, although it appears that he liked it very much. I agree! I cannot believe that it’s been two years since my review. Time flies!

These six games hardly account for the state of adventure gaming in 1984, but it’s not a bad mix of styles and genres. Was there really only one Infocom release they could have looked at? Were there no Scott Adams games? Except for Gruds in Space, these are all titles that are somewhat well-known today, at least to people that read our site and sites like it. I’m half tempted to play the game just so we can complete the set!

Some time either during the development of this issue or just before, Moriarty stumbled onto the abandoned art that had been created for the unfinished 1982 Crash Dive! Maybe something clicked then, or maybe he already had submarines on the brain, but that bit of art inspired him to create his own submarine-based text adventure. To save money, he could even use the original title and artwork! Moriarty finished the game in time to be included as a type-in for Analog’s special adventure issue. He explained in his introductory note that most commercial adventures didn’t work on 16K Atari systems, and that we wrote this game to scratch that itch for those owners. (It required 32K to be typed in, but once loaded onto a disk it could be played on a 16K system.)

It was the captain, in the galley, with a butter knife?

Crash Dive! Is by far the largest feature in the issue, no doubt thanks to Moriarty’s role as technical editor. With four pages of documentation and eleven pages of tiny-print source code, I’m glad that we don’t have to type it all in anymore! The documentation includes a half-page image containing the “feelies” for the game, although we’re not supposed to peek at them yet.

The story is well-done over all: we are a maintenance worker stationed on the USS Sea Moss, an experimental submarine in the middle of the cold war. It’s tough to remember that in 1984, the Cold War wasn’t just a genre, it was a lived-in reality. The sub is armed with nuclear missiles and has an advanced cloaking system which renders it invisible to the enemy. All of our greatest foes want to get their hands on the technologies in this sub. While we are doing some routine repairs, the unthinkable happens: sabotage! Everyone else on the ship has been killed by poison gas but we survived thanks to being in an air-tight torpedo tube. Our mission will be to find and defeat whomever killed the crew and keep the submarine from being captured. The manual provides a clue that we will need to get it underwater as soon as possible and that the only solution may be to destroy this priceless technology to keep it out of enemy hands.

Playing the Game

This style of start screen was reused by several Analog Computing games, but I am unsure which is the first.

An interface so cluttered that it is easy to forget that there isn’t much text.

The game opens with us in the “escape tube” that we were repairing when all hell broke loose. The hatch is closed, so I open it. Big mistake! Poison gas fills the room and I’m dead already. We have to start over. Nothing says “fun” like an adventure where you can die in the first move! It doesn’t take me long to realize that the solution (in Adventure International fashion) is just to “hold breath”. That lets you leave the tube and explore.

This game has a punishing start. You can only hold your breath for five turns. That gives you barely enough time to do anything so I save and commit myself to fast exploration-dashes and restoring when I die. For simplicity, I’ll just summarize what I found. The submarine is longer than it is wide with a hallway leading north-south and rooms off to either side. It is arranged on two floors and the room that we start in after emerging from the hatch has stairs down.

We find on the current level:

To the north of our starting position is an access tunnel with a sign warning of radiation. Heading farther north kills you immediately.

West is a locked door with a “very secure” lock.

Further south is a long corridor. Off that corridor to the west is a radio room (with a pair of cable cutters) and to the east is the sonar room. We can activate the sonar to discover that there are enemy ships approaching.

At the end of the corridor is the “command station” with a periscope. Looking through the scope, we can see those same enemies. To the west is a ballast room; we can press a button to make the sub descend and then watch a gauge to see how deep we go. To the east is the navigation room containing a manual and a readout of our current position in X/Y coordinates. I discover in my frequent restarts that the numbers change each game.

Not tremendously easy to read without the original issue.

The submarine manual instructs us to look at the photo in Analog #18. That is easier said than done because while I do have the PDF, it’s not completely clear and I wish I would have been able to find (and afford) the original issue. Nonetheless, we learn that the X and Y coordinates are scrambled through some magic so that they will not relate in any way to real-world latitude and longitude. It also warns that the values are recalculated every several seconds except when the sub is at rest. The remainder of the page describes targeting the sub’s weapons (using the same “simplified” coordinate system) and arming the warhead by radio. We’ll need to find a “Delta-Q Coordinate Decoding Ring” to be able to aim the missiles at the enemy.

Keep in mind that is already twenty or more reloads! With no breathable air in sight, I explore downstairs:

Below the command room is the missile bay. An airlock to the south requires an ID card.

West of the missile bay is the fan room. A traitor who “looks dangerous” there, holding a gun. Doing anything to try to hurt him just gets me shot. How is he breathing?

East of the bay is an equipment room with a radiation suit. I do not have enough breath to pick it up and get it back to the room with the radiation.

The north end is the crew quarters where I find a “card” on the floor. I am excited that it might be the ID card that I need, except that it is a playing card, the ace of spades.

West is a shower and ventilation grate. I try to unscrew it with the screwdriver, but my screwdriver is the wrong size! I also pick up some shampoo.

East of the crew area is a galley with a dull knife. I try to take that to the shower grate, but there’s not enough time.

In the far north is a torpedo room with a wrench. More importantly, there’s a weapons locker to the east containing a gas mask. I can breathe again!

In little 5-turn increments, I explored most of the sub and only found a gas mask in the last possible room. What was the odds of that? With the mask on (just picking it up is sufficient; “wear”-ing it just tells you that you are already holding it), I can explore the rest of the game and start smashing the puzzles. Except, I’m a liar because I only have around 10-15 more turns before the enemy ships (that I saw on the scanner and periscope) catch up to us. I am trading one time limit for another, but at least I have wiggle room. What can we do in 10 turns?

My first puzzle is the grate in the shower room. I theorized before that I could use the dull knife, but I could not get there before I ran out of breath. This time when I use “unscrew grate”, the game knows that I intended to use the knife and it opens! I can crawl south into a ventilation duct and see an opening down into the fan room. Obviously, this has something to do with the traitor who has parked himself there, but I don’t see anything I can do yet. I end up restoring when the enemy captures the sub and I’ll have to come back to this puzzle later. As an aside, the “traitor” has to be a “him”, even though the game doesn’t say so. The US Navy did not allow women to serve on subs until 2011, as sad as that statement sounds today.

My next trick is to check out the radiation area. I grab the radiation suit from the equipment bay and head back upstairs. The radiation-filled room is used by the sonar. There is a “bolted-down” sonar system as well as a power cable here. I spend more time than I care to admit trying to find the right verb to unscrew the bolt, but I fail anyway because they are rusty and too tight. We haven’t found any oil, but the shampoo might be slippery enough. I try it and the bolts come loose! I don’t get to do anything else because I run out of time again.

Oh, duh. I am on a submarine! I restore and head to the ballast room. I set the ship to dive. A few turns later we have a “bang!” when we hit the bottom of wherever we are, but it doesn’t seem to be an issue.

Where was I? The sonar system! I do that all over again and notice that while the system is clearly labeled “radioactive”, I cannot pick it up because the power cable is stuck. I use the cable cutters from the radio room and solve that problem easily. Now what? I take my radioactive prize to the ducts by the shower and drop it down into the fan room below. When I run down to investigate, I discover that he died of radiation poisoning! I pick up his gun, but what I am supposed to do next?

Let’s take stock of what puzzles remain:

Two locked doors, one near the beginning of the game and an airlock to the south that requires an access card.

Some enemies are chasing us and could have depth charges. Can I blow them up with our super advanced missile systems?

The “escape tube” that I started in seems the best avenue for leaving the sub, but I don’t see how to do that yet.

Of these, the most promising is the locked door at the start. I didn’t find a key, but I discover that I can shoot the lock! That door leads to the captain’s quarters. He’s dead, but he didn’t die of the poison gas. Instead, he left a suicide note:

Suicide is painless? Maybe only in the Korean War.

There’s a nice little detail on this note, placing the submarine as SSCN-718. These are US Navy hull classification numbers and a good sign that Moriarty and the Analog team researched for the game. There is no SSCN classification in real life, but the designation would likely indicate that this is a coastal-waters submarine (the SSC) classification with nuclear weapons (the trailing N). I also like that the captain’s name is Captain R. D. Avatar. This game predates Ultima IV and Moriarty was probably thinking of the more generic “avatar” rather than the Ultima variety.

Searching his body, I uncover his ID card which opens up the airlock to the south. That leads us to a missile bay in two sections: the lower section contains a locked arming switch, while the upper bay contains a digital display. That display also has X and Y coordinates, although they are different than the ones in the navigation room. Pushing buttons nearby adjusts the coordinates. I do not have a way to get the coordinates of our enemy; the sonar system didn’t give those to me even prior to when I dropped it on a murderer’s head. Am I supposed to use the coordinates of our own ship? That sounds vaguely like suicide. Since those are the only coordinates that I have seen in the game so far, I set the missiles to those. It takes a long while since the numbers only increment by eight for each button press.

Now, I need to find the key to unlock the firing mechanism… but I cannot find it anywhere. I eventually take a hint which tells me that I need to look at the radiation suit again after wearing it. Some idiot left the firing key in the suit! I do my thing and the firing mechanism is activated. There’s one more button in missile control to push and… boom?

Fade to white.

There’s no text that explains what happened, at least none that I can see before the screen clears, but we don’t need to have it spelled out: we nuked ourselves. Worse, that is apparently the correct answer because we kept the sub and all of its technologies out of enemy hands. Yay? This is the “win” screen so I’ll just end the game right here. I suppose it’s a better “you die!” ending than Infidel.

Time Played: 1 hr 45 min

Final Rating

That was a fun little game, although we must emphasize “little”. Type-in games can never be tremendously large and Moriarty did a good job with narrative efficiency. Let’s see how that comes out in our PISSED rating system:

Puzzles and Solvability – The game’s central mechanic for at least the first half is to die frequently and try again. Needing to discover the gas mask within five turns, then realize that you need to dive (which itself is not difficult) in ten to fifteen more, takes up most of the game’s thought-space. After that, we have a few clever things like dropping the radioactive sonar thing on the traitor and nuking ourselves to keep the sub out of enemy hands. I needed to take one hint. I almost want to bump it up one point, but my first instinct is that this is only worth two points. My score: 2.

Interface and Inventory – The interface is boxy and takes up a lot of space, which is good because otherwise we’re realize just how little text is in this game. Other games used the “windowed” approach for an interface by 1984, but I see little value in having an always-visible inventory and other features. The parser itself wasn’t great but it worked well enough with two-word commands only and no intelligence for the noun selection. You had to “push green” instead of “push button”, for example, because the game isn’t smart enough to know if there is only one button in the room. My score: 2.

Story and Setting – This score is likely going to be the best of the game. The story and feelies are great! The captain’s suicide is relatively unexplained, as is the traitor’s motivations and identity, but the overall idea of a submarine so secret that it has to be kept out of enemy hands at all costs is a good one, especially in 1984. The space was also designed well and the small number of rooms added to a feeling of claustrophobia which benefited the setting. My score: 4.

Final map of the game with only 22 rooms.

Sound and Graphics – I almost want to give points here because of the screen design and the use of the “feelies” to augment the object descriptions, but I really cannot. We have never given points in this category just because a game has a nice manual and I won’t start now. My score: 0.

Environment and Atmosphere – While I did not enjoy the timers for their puzzle-factor, the constant racing to beat the clock made the game tense. The small size of the ship and even the “bang” as we strike the bottom of whatever shallow waters we are exploring help sell the claustrophobia of the situation. Even with the limited text, Moriarty writes well enough for some kudos. My score: 3.

Dialog and Acting – Alas, the game is limited when it comes to game text and occasionally it’s not even clear what you are doing. The game also cuts to white for the ending so quickly that you only realize in retrospect what just happened. My score: 1.

Adding up the scores: (2+2+4+0+3+1)/.6 = 20!

This isn’t a huge score, but higher than Fifth Dimension’s 13. That is understandable given the challenges of writing a type-in, but I suspect there was something else involved. Both of Moriarty’s games for Analog were as much “challenge exercises” for him as they were games. Moriarty first challenged himself to create a BASIC game that worked even on the smallest systems. He then forced himself to re-use a name and cover art from an abandoned project. Even Wishbringer was a challenge to craft a story into an existing universe and that turned out amazingly well. Maybe Moriarty was just the type of guy that thrived under adversity, but I cannot help but think that he could have made even better games if he had fewer strings attached. Is that what we will find with Trinity?

With the last of his pre-Infocom games out of the way, we’ll be looking at Trinity next, probably at the beginning of January. I am playing a stubborn Christmas game right now and have a deadline coming… See you soon!

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-78-crash-dive-1984/

[aurimeanswind]

Trying to Relax—Sunday Chats—5/20/18

So, I was writing this, and then the webpage crashed, and I lost about half of the entire post, so to be honest I’m a little frustrated. This didn’t used to happen, but I’m sure Tumblr is just trying to give me an anueurism. I will try to recapture what I was trying to say before, but forgive me if it doesn’t live up.

I’ve missed a few Sundays here, and for that I’m sorry. Instead of doing a so-called “editorial” here, I wanted to start with more a stream of consciousness; something to convey my feelings and maybe help me feel a tad better.

I’ve been in this down-well of motivation as of late, and it spreads out to everything. Not just the want to play games, but to reach out to people, to talk to friends, to be an editor. And it’s caused me to be a worse friend, a worse editor, a worse person, and it weighs on me. I hope by writing it out I can convince myself to step up and do something about it. It’s one of those burnout sensaitons, and maybe its that feeling coming off of PAX East, maybe not, but it’s defintiely felt across all the things I do.

If you’ve ever been through something like this, I’d love to chat about it, so feel free to reach out.

But those motivation sensations have led me to trying to really relax. To really take some time to rebuild that motivation. It’s not the first time something like this has happened in my life, and I’m certain it won’t be the last, but I’m trying to be better, starting with writing this Sunday Chats, even if my browser did crash halfway through and really frustrated me.

Now with all the mopey-business out of the way, let’s get to some video games.

What’s on Tap

I’ve been jumping around a lot, and originally I had some things to say about all of these games, but I’ll keep it a bit shorter here. Suffice to say, I’ve been in a bit of a gaming rut, which I’ve been through before, but it’s been quite a while, and so I haven’t really been able to get into any one game.

Overwatch

The Sword of Ditto

Ni No Kuni 2

Persona 5

Persona 5 is really the only thing I’ve been able to sink some time into, and wanted to.

I needed something meaty to really get into, and this worked. Going back and seeing the opening 10 or so hours again, I’m re-appreciating all the groundwork and foreshadowing they set up very early on in that first arc, outlining some of the villains you’ll see later in the game.

I’m also just really appreciating how gorgeous that game is.

Diablo 3 Necromancer DLC

Also in my rut I continued my quest to restart Diablo 3 as many times as I can and never finish it. While I did finish it oriignally on PC, I never did with any of the DLC or on console.

This time around I returned to Diablo 3 because I needed something mindless while I listen to something with any hope of it making me feel happier or better, like a podcast or what have you. Diablo has been a good background thumb-distrator for this, and it’s reminded me just how mindless it really is.

It’s also a bummer because I wish I could focus on just anything since I’m remembering how great Diablo 3 is. I actually really liked the story in this.

Questions

I’ve actually thought about this a lot all day. 

I think it’d be a thing where, and forgive me for establishing my own head cannon, because I pictured the sky glitched out just for a moment, and a bunch of people went on believing that it wasn't a simulation, and I imagine I'd get way into an underground forum where like, the real heroes are out there trying to stop the simulation. Maybe because it’s been all this Persona 5 I’ve been playing, but I think in that world I’d be the kid that was obsessed with what the people who are out there trying to take down the simulation would be doing. Following on their very own Phan-Site.

I think that’d be a cool story in itself too.

As for if I could leave. I mean probably. I’d understand I’d probably regret it, but I wouldn’t know that at the time, ya know? If it’s a thing where I know what it’s like on the outside, if they’ve come back in and told us, I’d almost definitely stay in the simulation.

Yeah there is one specific tattoo I’d get, which is the Hylian symbol on my back. It’s something I’ve thought about for years, and I know I’d for sure get it. My best friends want to get a tattoo together too, and while I’m not really into the idea that we came up with, I’ve resigned to getting it since it’ll make them happy. 

Outside of that I’d want to get a Harry Potter tattoo of some sort, but I just haven’t thought of a good one. I’ve also thought about maybe an Irrational Passions Tattoo, but that’d be way down the line.

Haha, I don’t think it’s really diminished the show. I mean they talked about in on the Giant Bombcast and the Easy Allies Podcast, but this happens every year. Sometimes it’s a bit of a bummer, since I’d definitely be more jazzed for a Rage 2 if I saw it for the first time during Bethesda’s show, because lord knows I don’t care about it now, but it’s really minor stuff. I think still seeing a new Splinter Cell, or really anything Nintendo has, or the big gameplay reveals, those still outlast any leaks.

Besides. We’re getting the Kingdom Hearts 3 release date. It’s going to happen, And nothing will diminish that moment.

I mean Year five even, of these consoles. I think there is still room to announce surprises in the consoles. Microsoft has it down with different systems or services, they can still announce stuff like that that gets you jazzed. And moreover, Microsoft hasn’t shown us the thing that takes advantage of the Xbox One X yet, and I feel like they have it. It’s not Crackdown 3, it’s gotta be something else, and they’re saving it for when it’s ready.

As for Sony and PlayStation, I think they’re honestly at the end of their rope with me. I know they have games I’m excited about, but they’re just drawing it out, and I have to steel myself to not get excited for their junk since I never know if it’ll ever come out.

Nintendo has all the room left to surprise. I think the Switch has done nothing but surprise so far, from sales, to reception, to games even. I bet they still have things that’ll give us child-like glee, whether it be on a service level or a game level, yet to announce.

Thank you all for always checking in and supporting me. Next week I want to do a Sunday Chats for E3 predictions, so I’ll be asking for those next week. 

Thanks for reading, being my unending support, and the good vibes you all send ever-so-often. All my love, keep it real.

(The Naruto gif is for me, since I’ve been so damn into it lately)