#I was tempted to upload the entire gameplay

[sharky857]

Guess who dragged a techie to witness to some "Second Dream" first hand? 👀

[0fps]

idk if anyone plays reverse 1999 here but i might upload the "journey in the rain" album in a hot sec

[sunieepo]

I wanna get into lc bc of you but gosh darn genshin is 20gb and I have no room

aaaaaaaaa omg haha i'm sorry/glad my LCposting has tempted someone ..

Limbus Company is actually 3rd game in the Project Moon series, the first two games (Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina) are available on PC only and they're not gacha games. also i think Limbus Company is also on Steam if your phone is out of room lol.

Lobotomy Corporation is my favorite in the series (one of my fave games in general) and it's a management simulator with some roguelite elements.

Library of Ruina is much more similar to Limbus Company's gameplay, it's a deckbuilding game sort of, can be very rng heavy at times tbh.

both games are rather large time investments (prob around 100 hours each tbh) but they do have mods available that will greatly speed up grinding times or bypass them entirely. in general PM Games tend to be long and grindy, tho Limbus less so as it's intended to be more accessible to a greater audience (which speaks to its popularity probably).

tho obviously you don't need to play either game to understand Limbus i'd highly recommend at least checking them out and plenty of ppl have uploaded the full cutscenes of LobCorp to youtube (actually is quite short of story campaign).

and also if you need trigger list i can provide, it is a "horror" series so there is a lot of gore and violence and such.

i hope you enjoy it if you decide to check it out! :3

[lildevyl]

Creepypasta: Don’t Watch This Video

Hello my Fiends! I’m back!  Well, I’ll officially be back come New Years but I had some time to sit down and write a bit and this piece was actually inspired by this post.  I hope you enjoy and please let me know what you think!  First time I tried my hand at a CreepyPasta.

@lordjim777  Here is the CreepyPasta that I owe you!  I hope that you enjoy!

I’ve been sitting at my desk with my laptop in front of me for hours now.  It’s 5:55 AM and I’m literally stalling for time.  I’m doing everything I can to stay awake, but my sleep deprived body is making it incredibly hard.  I have to stay awake!  I can’t fall asleep!  Otherwise, I will die and there’s no one around to help.

I’m so tempted, right now, to turn my desk lamp off, keep looking straight ahead of me and walk backwards toward the door, leading to the hallway.  Then close my eyes and bolt straight to the front door.  Screaming for help as I do so, in the off chance that one of my neighbors in the other apartments will hear me and call the cops.  It’s risky but the chances are that this - thing won’t even let me get to the hallway.  Let alone give me the chance to call for help.

If you’re reading this, then I managed to get my message out before I die.  You’re probably wondering what the hell’s going on, right?  Sorry, I tend to go on a tangent at times.  You, see two days ago two of my favorite YouTubers uploaded a video and no, I’m not going to link it.  I can’t!  But I’ll describe it and tell you what has happened.

Two days ago, two of my favorite YouTubers, Mark and Ethan, both uploaded a video; on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and even on their own YouTube Channels. They uploaded it, at 12:01AM PST.  Mark’s been saying he would like to do more Ego stuff and now Ethan’s getting involved too!  I was so excited!  The videos didn’t seem like much when I clicked on them, just a thirty second video, of both Mark’s and Ethan’s Recording Room.  Neither of them were in the video though.

The title of both videos said, I’m Here, with the descriptions reading, I’m Tyler.  I’m sure you can guess this confused the hell outta me!  While I watch the videos, I noticed something, Mark’s Recording Room was exceptionally dark.  Even his chair, was completely black, like no light was reflecting off of it.  Ethan’s Recording Room, was just the opposite, it was nice and bright, but his entire room, was nearly empty, the walls and his desk were bare.  Even the Gameplay’s Chair was completely blank.  No logo, no slogan, no color, no name, nothing!  Just a completely blank chair, walls, and desk.

I started reading through the comments, to see what some of the fans were thinking.  One of them said that the title had changed!  What?  The video has only been up for about a quarter of an hour.  How could it change in fifteen minutes?  I scrolled back up and sure enough, both titles have changed.  Mark’s read, the letter eye, a posterfy, space, letter es, the letter tea, space and the word he.  Ethan’s read, the letter em, space, the word ill, space, the letter, are, and the letter eey.

I’ ST HE

M ILL RE

I took screenshots of both titles, my theorist side was starting to kick in.  I rewatched the videos wondering if they changed and sure enough, they did. Mark’s video was a bit brighter but the camera was focused on the back door that either led to a room, hallway, or closet.  The door creaked opened slightly. Ethan’s video, the camera wasn’t focused on the game chair and the back wall. But rather, the camera was focused to the side, like it was trying to show you something.  I took screenshots of all these and put them all in a file.  I would like to say that I stayed up editing, but I felt my eyes getting heavy so I decided to turn in for the night.  Before I exited my Craft Room to head to bed, I noticed that the closet door was slightly opened.  I don’t remember ever opening it, but how else could it have happened?

As I lay in bed trying to get some sleep, I kept feeling like someone else was in the room, watching me.  I rolled over and saw the glowing numbers of my alarm clock, 5:55 AM and then I saw something else.  I don’t know what it was, or how it got in my room, but it was there.  All I saw were glowing red eyes, and the most terrifying smile.  The next thing I know, my alarm clock was blaring, waking me up and nearly making me jump out of skin.  I was still in my bed, facing my alarm clock, and nothing was out of place.  As I calmed down, I realized what it might have been.  Sleep Paralysis.  I hadn’t experienced that since I was in High School and then I was experiencing it again last night.  That’s it.  That’s what it was.  It was Sleep Paralysis, right?

I’m off from work today, so I decided to work in my Craft Room.  I needed to get my brother’s birthday gift done, plus I needed to get started on the Christmas gifts if I wanted to get them done on time this year!  A birthday present, two and half Christmas gifts and dinner break later, I’m ready to take a break and start taking some time for myself!  Putting everything away and getting my laptop out, I jumped right into the madness trying to see what Mark and Ethan had cooked up this time!  Figuring out the message of the change titles was a piece of cake! 

It read, I’M STILL HERE.

But for the life of me I couldn’t figure out the screenshots.  It was like they changed over night or something.  But that was impossible!  No, they didn’t change, you just didn’t notice last night because of how tired you were.  That’s all!  That had to be it!

The screenshots, from Mark’s video, the door that’s always behind him in his recordings, the door is all the way open and a shadow like figure stands in front of the door.  Glowing red eyes, and the terrifying smile, it looks as if this - thing is looking right at me.  Not at the camera but literally, looking right at me!  The screenshots from Ethan’s is just as confusing!  It has this pentagram like symbol and what appeared to be a “message” on the inside.

After about two hours of trying to figure out what the damn message might be.  I’m about ready to call it quits.  After shutting my laptop down and putting it away, I went to bed.  And again, I rolled over and stared at my alarm clock. 5:55 AM.  And just like last night, I saw the shadow figure in my room staring at me.  Glowing red eyes, the terrifying smile and it just stood there staring at me.  Again, my alarm clock went off and I nearly jumped straight out of bed!  Okay, this is getting ridiculous now!  I never had Sleep Paralysis this bad!  What is going on?

The entire day was a bust from the get go.  I couldn’t concentrate at all, I kept thinking about that terrifying dream I had, two nights in a row, now.  Even my teacher was starting to notice that something was off.  Probably because I kept trying to get the damn thing out of my head and down on paper, or at least on file, with my drawing tablet.  But no matter how well, or how detailed I got it. Every time I relooked at or someone else looked at, it kept changing.  The Shadow Figure kept changing its appearance, or the background will change or the actual setting itself will change.  Even the name of the layers that I used kept changing.

When I got home, I finally decided that the only way to get to the bottom of this, is to solve the puzzle.  Solve the mystery of the message and what that Shadow Figure might be.  Getting dinner, snacks, and drinks, I sat down at my desk in my Craft Room, and opened my laptop.

You’re probably expecting some heroic, cliché, a good ending to all of this right?  Wrong.  The reason why I said at the beginning of this post that might  I die?  It’s because as of right now, it’s 5:55 AM and I just figured out what the message said.

I’M RIGHT BEHIND YOU.

======

Tagging: @huffletrax, @egopocalypse, @septic-dr-schneep, @weirdmixofweirdness, @dezzydynamite, @d-structive, @dolphintreasureart, @isa-ghost, @reverseblackholeofwords, @averyancora, @a-humble-narcissus, @thevampireauthoress, @monochromemedic, @beerecordings, @viostormcaller, @miishae, @fischyplier, @fear-is-nameless, @10th-no-name-person

[wahbegan]

Red’s Retro Reviews - Condemned Criminal Origins

Hello and welcome to the tag where I use my otherwise useless and time-consuming habit of taking very old classic games that I’ve wrung all the enjoyment out of like a troubled child with an injured bird and turn it into entertainment! Maybe one day the editor of some chic magazine will hire me to talk about how much I know about Batman: Arkham Asylum and how much I hate myself for it.

Anyway, this week I thought I’d start off with an overlooked little gem that had a bit of cult notoriety and good critical reception, but which otherwise nobody gave an ounce of rat shit about: the Condemned series. More specifically, the original game.

Now, when I ask you who started the extremely lucrative habit of live-streaming themselves hilariously over-reacting to horror games, you might be tempted to say the Game Grumps, or Markiplier if you’re younger, or Pewdiepie if you’re the kind of person who unironically uses the phrase anti-white racism. But you’d all be wrong and stupid. Also possibly nazi sympathizers, but I digress.

NO! The first college-age white boys who decided it would be a good idea to beam them fucking up a video game to thousands and thousands of people online are..........lost to history because archiving of the exact history of internet trends is such an enormous clusterfuck that for years people were convinced, and some still are, that Slenderman was a real urban legend and not something some dickhead made up for a photoshop competition circa 2009

But ONE of the first was the 4 Players Network, or 4 Players Podcast, or 4PP. I know very little about these guys, so if they all turned out to be nonces and serial killers please don’t @ me, but what i DO know, is that they uploaded a video that changed my life forever. This video was “Holy Crap That’s a Bear !” Certainly not a name that would stand out in today’s massively oversaturated Let’s Play market, but this delightful video documented these two dumb assholes losing their shit over a game. The game of course, being Condemned 2: Bloodshot. Specifically, the level in which you are chased through a hunting lodge by a rabid bear. As an aside, I looked it up, having never heard of the phenomenon, and apparently it’s very rare, but yes bears can and do get rabies, usually with just about as fatal results as you would expect. So sweet dreams!

Anyway, watching this couple of dipshits get jumpscared and mauled to death by a poorly rendered bear again and again as they were repeatedly outwitted at every turn by an entity with a few lines of programming instead of a brain was, in y’know the year 2008,  the absolute most fun a 14-year-old boy could have. Clearly it still is, but you always remember your first time, particularly when the only LPs i have watched since were a handful of markiplier videos with a girl in college who liked to get me very stoned and then put them on because she thought that counted as courtship.

A n y w a y, apart from the unfortunate and definitely a mistake innovation of streaming video games, the sequence of being chased through a claustrophobic environment by a bear which can rip down doors, break through walls, run faster than you, shrug off 15 shotgun blasts to the face without so much as sneezing, etc. seemed incredibly tense and original, an amazing concept for a game. Once again, this was circa 2008 before “Run for your fucking life” had become the norm for horror games.

So then why the fuck are you not reviewing that game?? You might be thinking if you’re still reading this which someone clearly is or my narrative voice would have ceased to exist by now in that tree falling in the woods kind of way. Well, dear reader, while Condemned 2 was better than the first game in a LOT of ways, it’s always worth taking a gander at the one that started it all. Also, Condemned 1 is, if only slightly, probably better known. Also, Bloodshot commits the cardinal sin of over-explaining the first game’s mystery and a result making it kind of goofy and ridiculous see also the entire history of the Halloween franchise, and as a result the ending is....well, a bit shit, to be honest. Finally, and most importantly, it’s not on Steam for 3 dollars, so shut up

The thing about Condemned is that while Let’s Plays and seemingly inanimate objects moving only when you’re not looking at them and unstoppable juggernauts of wanton death have now become the norm for video game horror (and thanks a fucking bunch, Doctor fucking Who, for always being what people say started the inanimate object fuckery even though Stephen King did it in The Shining in the FUCKING 70s and let’s be honest it’s just a primal universal fear and i’ll be in the cold fucking ground before that bloody show sees one ounce of credit where it isn’t due), Condemned as a whole has remained remarkably unique. Not wholly unique, the developers have heavily borrowed from genre-straddling crime horror movies like Silence of the Lambs and Se7en and in fact almost beat-for-beat stole the most infamous jump scare from the latter, but if it still ends with shit in my pants, and it does, I can’t really call it a failure.

Most of the creativity the game DOES have is in the gameplay itself, or rather one aspect of the two aspects of the gameplay. It’s the combat I’m talking about the combat, seeing as that’s basically all there is. Let’s just get this out of the way first, the forensic investigation shit is........well, it’s a bit shit. Oh yes, there’s a couple crime scenes you have to “solve” in a cursory almost a cutscene sort of way, where you have helpful premonitions about where you’re supposed to look and, as your lab tech helpfully informs you, “the system will choose which tool you need for you, so don’t worry about that!” Well, Christ kill me, thank God YOU know between the three fucking tools I have, one of which is an everything sensor and one of which is just a fucking camera which I’m supposed to use, God knows I wouldn’t have liked to have solved that mystery myself. It’s a shame because some of the crime scenes are quite intricate and yes, I would have liked to have put together myself that “wait a minute there’s a handprint in the paint here that matches the killer but the UV light shows an old blood spatter on the wall right above where he’d be sitting to make it, THAT MUST MEAN-” but nope. No you just have a premonition of the guy getting clobbered over the back of the head because the game is so terrified you won’t be able to put two and two together that it points out both the twos and hands you a multiplication table and nudges you and looks meaningfully at four every few minutes if you hesitate.

Anyway, that’s all the whingeing about the gameplay out of the way, because the rest of it is just delightful. Condemned is the rare first person game that focuses almost solely on melee combat and the almost unheard of one that does it well. In fact, it is the only example I can think of that’s not shit. Weapons all have individual stats to do with their heft and how far they can reach and how much of a man’s skull you can cave in at once with it and you have to choose between the plank with nails sticking out of it you can swing three times a second but you have to beat a man so badly with it it’s tiring just to watch and the sledgehammer, which demands a two weeks’ notice in writing if you’re planning on hitting someone with it, but will basically render every living thing in its considerable swing arc sent to the fucking Shadow Realm upon impact.

Something about the sound effects and the way the weapons in this game control really gets under my skin, I was killed by a 300-pound Subway-dwelling crazy survivalist wielding the aforementioned sledgehammer, and when I went down, I was sure I was familiar with the sound effect that played when it struck my skull, a sort of distant, muffled ringing of bone hitting metal. Wait a minute, I thought, I know I’ve experienced this in real life, how did they get this sound effect? Did they kill a man with a hammer to get this sound effect? Was I killed with a hammer in a past life? Killing people is equally fucking unpleasant as even the most vicious and inhuman looking ones don’t go down easily, and you can see them spit gobs of broken teeth and blood and god knows what, hear the lovingly researched impact noises, and almost feel the impact as you necessitate years of reconstructive facial surgery with one swing of your mighty chunk of concrete attached to a rebar. Then some of them have the gall to shakily get to their knees, not quite dead, trying to mumble something and you’re required to hit them AGAIN, which is always harrowing. To quote another underappreciated piece of media about the joys of gruesome murder: Why won’t you just die?! This is hard enough for me!!

The guns you do get are absolute balls, generally having about three bullets in them, you can’t reload them even if you find the exact same type of gun later, you can’t hold them in your inventory, and if you want an aiming reticle you have to actively turn it on in the options menu, and you can almost hear the game laughing at you for being such a shameless pussy.

Well, you now might be thinking to yourself, cheers for making the effort, but I’m not an insane person and therefore do not think the idea of a brutally beating people to death simulator sounds very enticing, but that’s the thing, it’s not really supposed to be. It does have a strangely addictive quality after a while, but for the most part it’s panicky and harrowing and grotesque and you really don’t want to do it but you have no choice, which is absolutely the best kind of survival horror. See, the combat in survival horror is always a bit of a sticking point, isn’t it? Because if you give the player too much firepower it just becomes an action game with spooky set pieces, but if you give them none at all, as is chic today, you better have loads of other surprises in store buddy boy, because the sheen on that trend has died and now you’re just likely to get slapped with the dreaded WALKING SIMULATOR sticker.

No, the best kind of combat for a horror feel is exactly the kind Condemned delivers, so of course they never FUCKING did it again. You leave every fight low on supplies, exhausted, badly wounded, and a bit sick at what you just reduced a human being’s skull to. Too often, the combat in games is, even that word “combat” it’s clean, it’s cold, it’s detached, it’s a very unique euphemism for butchering God knows how many people. I play this little game in my head when I go through games sometimes trying to keep track of how many unique, thinking, feeling entities I’ve just reduced to a mess for the janitor to mop up, and I always lose track around the third level. Condemned isn’t like that. Its violence is violence: horrible, awful, terrifying violence, and it doesn’t let you forget it. 

The graphics also add a lot to the horror if you can get past the dated polygonal weird-ass xbox 360 at launch faces and cutscenes, which is actually pretty easy once you get used to it. The level and character design is fantastic, and really adds a lot to the whole feel of the game. Everywhere you look is dark and labyrinthine, crumbling with rebars jutting out and exposed paneling and plumbing beneath holes rotted in the walls and grime and blood and god knows what just staining everything. This game is really nihilistic in tone, and you get the sense just from the graphics that you’re somewhere nobody gives a shit about, in a part of a city that’s just been left to die and rot. One almost gets the feeling moving around the fourth or fifth condemned (ohhhhh I see what they did there) building that the whole city is just a ghost town full of nobody but violent lunatics, and also that if you keep playing for too long you might get hepatitis just from exposure.

Plot-wise, I could fill another twenty paragraphs with petty gripes. It’s a bit Kill List which i’m sure is a reference you all understand in that it starts as a crime thriller about catching a serial murderer and ends in some bizarre insane bullshit halfway between Hereditary and Hellraiser, and leads you into it gently enough that you never really notice a sudden lurch.

You play as Ethan Thomas, a very boring and generic FBI Agent called in to investigate a serial killer case by two cops who are REMARKABLY blithe about murdering people, and it’s a bit jarring in today’s political climate. Though distrust, fear, and hatred of the police isn’t exactly new, and violence amongst police officers is brought up at one point, albeit in a loading screen, so honestly I can’t be arsed to speculate on what level of self-awareness we’re operating on here. Regardless, it’s bothersome.

“Oh yeah, this place is full of addicts, hopped up on something, I think, just shoot ‘em. What? Lost your gun, eh? That’s fine here’s a fire axe go nuts, kid, we’ll deal with the paperwork later”

Anyway, you are ambushed by a man you believe to be the killer for.......no real reason, really. He was spying on you checking out the crime scene, but we just established this place is full of squatters, what if one of the 8 people I murdered on the way into this ambush was the killer??? Case solved! 

Anyway, needless to say, without wishing to spoil, the dude IS the main antagonist the yellow eyes are a helpful giveaway, and he takes your gun and swiftly shoots Generic Beat Cop and Generic Dick with it, then throws you out a window, whereupon some other asshole whose main role in the game is to be enigmatic and plot-convenient, you know, one of THOSE characters, spirits you away from the scene, making it look like you just killed two cops and fled.

Now, in real life, as we all know, a cop can’t be indicted for murder even if 50 people saw him do it, but in this world, it means you have to go on the run from the FBI (not your lab tech, though, who is somehow assisting you from the lab and sending confidential data to your phone unnoticed??) while trying to solve the murder.

Meanwhile, in the background, in an “I’m sure this isn’t important and will in no way inform the last level of the game going batshit bonkers” kind of way, all of the people, including the cops, in certain dilapidated and neglected areas of the unnamed City City appear to be going what is medically known as balls-to-the-wall kill crazy, and birds are dropping dead from the sky by the thousands. Even you, protagonist, are prone to horrible screaming nightmare visions coming right the blazing blue fuck out of nowhere and that you never feel the need to comment on or go take a lie-down. I’m sure it’s nothing.

The voice acting is what you’d expect from this era of video games i.e. not good and the writing has an absolutely DESPICABLE habit of having characters tell Ethan things he should already god damned well know for the sake of gameplay or exposition, leading to my current theory that Agent Ethan Thomas has some kind of horrible head injury and can’t remember anything from over 2 minutes ago like Guy Pearce in that pretentious movie where he accidentally kills his wife and then runs around for two hours terrorizing random-ass people about it.

The game never full-on plays the AND THE MAN YOU’VE BEEN PLAYING AS WAS CRAZY THE WHOLE TIME card and leaves things a bit ambiguous, but after caving in the 15th vagrant’s head and the 7th vision you’ve had of being murdered by some Cenobite-looking motherfucker while conducting an unsanctioned investigation during a suspension prompted by you presumably murdering the shit out of two guys, you start to think this may not be standard FBI protocol. 

It’s all a bit hard to swallow is me point, a bit hard to sympathize, and a bit muddy if we’re supposed to or not. But you know what? It certainly isn’t boring, and I’d be lying if I told you it wasn’t effective. This game is now one of only two to have genuinely given me nightmares, and I think it’s rather telling that after I played the hallucination part I had the nightmare about, I was having genuine trouble remembering if something happened in my nightmare of it or in the actual version.

Condemned is batshit crazy, hilariously easy to write off as “that game about killing hobos”, and very, very dated. But it is genuinely harrowing and unpleasant, and was clearly genuinely made by artists with the intent of saying.....errr i’m not exactly sure what, but SOMETHING! It’s about as far a cry as you can get from the Triple A crawling with microtransactions like your MCM is with crabs milk-you-for-money-until-your-udders-bleed look-at-how-shiny-we-are games, and even a lot of indie horror games who think it’s a measure of a masterpiece being able just to constantly trigger your fight-or-flight response again and again and again so you can make a hilarious Let’s Play out of it not to name any names Five Night’s at Freddy’s. It’s a relic of a different and i think a better time in gaming history, where big-name publishers were still taking chances and hadn’t quite yet worked out the formula for how to distill games into their most skeletal, malnourished, corporate, addictive, glorified gambling form.

Also it’s 3 dollars on Steam and you can finish it in like ffffffffucking...two days? So really why the fuck not. I have no idea how to assign numbers to things i’d probably give ir a 7 or 8 or 4 out of 5 stars but i’m bad at systems like that, just play it if you give a shit. If nothing else, a bunch of people snapping it up out of nowhere will really fuck with marketing, which is always a noble pursuit

[maepricot]

fall semester starts in a week, and so of course I’m tempted to begin a useless and time consuming personal project that will benefit no one but myself and is completely unnecessary.

and that is next time i play through Dragon Age and/or Mass Effect as a series, to record my gameplay so I can edit together videos because sometimes I want to experience the story, either for writing inspiration or just for fun, without having to boot up my PC or actually spend hours playing the entire game.

yes, I know that many wonderful people have already done this and uploaded their efforts onto the internet where I can peruse them for free with zero effort, but...I want them with my OCs and my story/dialogue choices because I’m a picky brat. 

also i got a nail stamping starter kit for “free” (cost of shipping), so I think I’m diving into experimenting with that later this evening. because I obviously needed another time/money pit of a hobby to get sucked into :)))

[ais-n]

So, I played Sims 4 Strangerville with Boyd and Hsin from ICoS earlier this month. It was so fun! My whole basis for the story was that this was post-Fade, but in an AU that’s pre-1/27. Or maybe it’s set between the last chapter and epilogue of Fade. Doesn’t matter, since it’s AU.

Boyd and Hsin move to this town in the middle of nowhere. They have enough money to build a place or buy a place that fits their needs. Hsin is content to spend his loner days in the house, away from people, but Boyd gets really curious about why people are acting so strange around this place. And what those floating pink spores are... And what that lab is on the edge of town....

I did a full play of the Strangerville mystery featuring Boyd as the lead, but I didn’t realize OBS wasn’t recording the game’s sound the whole time. I only realized after the entire thing was over, after hours of gameplay. 

These two videos show a clip from the original gameplay (WITHOUT sound) and a clip of me sending Boyd there after the whole gameplay was through (WITH sound) so you can get a small idea of the difference in the ambience.

I have an idea for how to go forward from now, not losing anything from the original gameplay but allowing for me to have Boyd go through the Strangerville mystery again, this time with sound. The idea is SOMETHING HAPPENS (no spoilers) and Boyd will end up redoing some of the adventure (this time with sound), only to have an extra little quest at the end. He won't remember having gone through any of this before. So he'll be confused why some random strangers seem so friendly to him....

I’m a bit tempted this time around to create some of the other characters too. Not sure yet if I will.

So the main question is whether there is value in sharing the full original gameplay WITHOUT any sound whatsoever (it’s hours of it; idk how long exactly but I basically did a full playthrough in one weekend) and then going into the sound storyline that builds on that silent storyline, OR just doing a short explanation of what happened in the version without sound and only sharing the version WITH sound. I think there’s value in the silent story but idk if it would be too boring.

This is assuming I ever end up sharing everything anyway.... but I just wanted to see if there’s any interest at all in the first place of sharing any of it (with or without sound) so I know if I should bother uploading everything to YouTube to share or just leave it on my computer if I ever want to rewatch on my own.

PS: Hsin barely does anything in the first gameplay. It was pretty funny; he just wanted to hang out at home the whole time. He has the loner trait which is why. He does show up quite a bit interacting with Boyd, he just doesn’t go outside much. In case that affects your view. Also, I gave Boyd the paranoid trait so he sometimes gets really OMG WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING which is fun.

PPS: for anyone like wtf is ICoS or who needs the link to the series because you lost it, it’s here: http://aisylum.com/icos 

[operationrainfall]

Title Vectronom Developer Ludopium Publisher ARTE France Release Date May 29th, 2019 Genre Rhythm, Music, Puzzle Platform PC, Switch Age Rating E for Everyone Official Website

If you’ve ever wondered what an EDM soundtrack would look like if it were visualized in the form of colorful vector images, then wonder no more. Vectronom is a rhythmic puzzle game where players are tasked with guiding a cube through mazes of changing obstacles while matching their movements to the beat of EDM which plays in the background. At first glance, this may seem like an easy and basic rhythm game, but after about two minutes of playtime, you’ll begin to see how wrong that initial assumption is. This title comes to us from an indie studio out of Germany- Ludopium. It was published by ARTE in late May and is currently available for PC, Mac, and the Nintendo Switch. For the purposes of this review, I’ve taken a look at the Steam version.

I generally structure my reviews by discussing gameplay, visuals, and sounds in three distinct paragraphs. In the case of Vectronom however, I don’t feel like that structure makes sense. All three of those above categories work in tandem here to create a rather hypnotic experience for the player. To examine them one at a time just doesn’t feel right. Rather, let’s start by discussing how you progress through the game. The entirety of Vectronom’s gameplay is centered around traversing obstacle courses while keeping in beat with the music. These obstacle courses are made up of entirely of vector shapes. Obstacles include spiky prisms and pitfalls that often appear out of nowhere. Each course is a bit different, but each new course tends to build off of the preceding one. Once you complete four or five courses, you will essentially complete one level. There are ten levels in all plus one bonus mini level at the end. Sounds easy enough, right?

Fear not, for there is a great deal of challenge involved. This challenge becomes apparent once you begin controlling your cube. The controls themselves are pretty responsive, but I found controlling the cube to be very challenging. This was because I needed to time my movements perfectly with the beat of the music while also trying to memorize patterns for how stages would change with the music. When I say change, I mean that for each beat in a stage’s song, spikes may appear in certain areas, certain parts of the ground might disappear, and other parts of the ground might reappear. For many stages, the designs will change entirely whenever the beat changes. It would be easy enough to sit back and memorize the patterns that these changes follow since they are not done at random, but half of your end score is determined by how accurately you are able to match your movements to the beat. Your brain has to keep track of both each beat and memorize the stage’s patterns at the same time.

Additionally, the controls themselves are meant to add to the level of difficulty. All levels are presented from a top-down isometric view and you are able to move diagonally up, diagonally down, diagonally left, and diagonally right. You will of course be using the WASD keys, so it may take a moment to get used to this control scheme when you first begin playing. I often found it tempting to just move asynchronously from the beat of the music, but this of course would’ve lowered my score and I actually ended up making more mistakes that way.

Speaking of the music, let’s tackle the sound design’s score now. As I alluded to above, Vectronom is backed with an upbeat EDM soundtrack with each stage’s track building off of the previous one in some way. While none of them stood out to me as overly memorable after the fact, they were all very entrancing and I feel as though this was very intentional. Once again, playing this title is meant to be a hypnotic experience and the music certainly lends itself well to that. Since it’s paramount to listen carefully and follow along with the beat to progress through each level, it’s definitely nice that the music is not only well-paced but enjoyable to listen to as well.

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Perhaps I should have called this out earlier, but one thing to note for players with epilepsy is that the visuals in Vectronom include constantly flashing colors. Static backgrounds can be toggled at any time though if you select that option from within the accessibility tools list in the options menu. In fact, there are actually a surprising number of accessibility options available for those who need to fine tune the game to suit their needs. For those with deuteranopia, protanopia, or tritanopia (forms of color blindness), there are options for adjusting the colors accordingly to compensate. Additionally, there is a grayscale option which can be selected. While perhaps not a true accessibility option, you can also adjust the margin of error for player input from extremely tight to ludicrously loose. I thought that the color settings were a very thoughtful addition and I actually tried them out myself just to see what the experience would be like.

Clocking in at just over 3 hours for a full playthrough (for this reviewer), Vectronom is certainly not a very long game. It is a very engrossing title though and I feel that given the hypnotic, relaxing nature of its levels, it has a relatively high replay value. You can also revisit levels that you were previously unable to obtain the highest scores in and replay them. This is the type of game that you put on when you have a great deal of outside stressors to worry about and just want something to get lost in. There’s no story, no characters, and no great prize at the end of your tale. There’s just you, your cube, and a bumpin’ EDM soundtrack to become entranced in. It may have been relatively short, but for the time that I spent with this one I couldn’t find any glaring flaws. Combined with a relatively low price point of $9.99 USD, I’d say this one’s worth your time if you’re looking for something to play around with in your down time.

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  A review copy was provided by the publisher.

REVIEW: Vectronom Title Vectronom