#I will draw tricky and Jeb next! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

cosmica-galaxy · 2 years ago

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The baby posts were adorable af! The thought makes my heart all warm and mushy like oatmeal. Now I gotta wonder what a Jeb or Phobos dad would be like. Hell, what would a Player/Tricky hybrid look like?? That one’s a little scary.

ANSWERING BOTH OF THESE! I MADE MORE MADCOM PAPA FLUFF FOR ALL YOU! HEHEHEHAHAHAHAH!

HAHAHAA! I cannot be stopped! MORE MADCOM ASKS!!

Tw: Pregnancy and non-descriptive birth mention, but more cavity-inducing papa grunts!

+Reader has fem bits but are gender neutral +Set in Salty’s Self Aware AU PART 2 HAS SHERIFF AND TRICKY! Thank Jebus I got two asks asking for the same stuff!!

– JEB –

The moment that his player comes forward to tell him that they were carrying his child, Jeb pretty much experiences a temporary blue screen in his mind. After a few moments of him blankly staring ahead, he comes alive and finds himself so elated that he picks up his player and spins them around in a fit of elated joy. He was going to have a demi-god for a child, how could he NOT be happy? Not only that, but it was a product of their shared love for one another, so Jeb couldn’t be any more excited.

In the first trimester, Jeb works overtime to make a safe haven for you to carry his child safely to term. He gathers up any materials he can, such as blankets, medical supplies, and various utilities that he can use to help you throughout your pregnancy. He also reassumes his ‘bodyguard’ instincts from the early days of him protecting the Sheriff from Hank, making sure to watch over you whenever he could and dealing with anyone that dared come too close for his personal comfort.

He also begins to reread up on his studies from long ago and to apply much more modern knowledge to childcare. His player had to help him understand human anatomy at times, but he was more than willing to learn if it meant that his child would be brought into the world of Nevada healthy and safe.

In the midterm, Jeb grows more anxious and excited as you have to help him relax and calm down on more than one occasion. Mostly because his repressed emotions have begun to emerge and they slightly get away from him from time to time. Your cuddles and loving kisses always calm him down and he lays next to you for hours on end like a loyal guardian, even after you’ve fallen asleep and the nighttime part of Nevada comes around.

Jeb even takes up ‘childproofing’ most of the new living space and gathering furnishing materials in his spare time. He’s not an overly handiworker-type of grunt, but he is determined to give his offspring the best crib in all of Nevada. Days of work went into carving up a wooden crib for his child. Designed with angel wings on the corners and halo-esque designs carved into the wood that gave the side of the crib a similarity to stained glass windows one would find in a place of worship.

Needless to say, you were pretty impressed with his work, even more so when you discover that he wasn’t really a handy grunt or an artist. You give Jeb a kiss of approval to make sure he understood your appreciation for his effort.

By the late trimester, Jeb becomes borderline obsessed with protection and nesting. The crib’s room is decorated with little carved figurines and lots of white sheets and items, to which Jeb claims was just to make the room ‘feel holier’. As his player could only snicker in response and encourage his creativity by making glowing sheets and a ‘onsie robe’ from their own iridescent strings.

Eventually, the room is covered with white and color with a few shiny objects and precious polished metals that Jeb had found while he was scouting around for items. It reminded you of a holy-themed magpie's nest for obvious reasons, but you could only give Jeb a loving kiss on his lips while you stand and look on in satisfaction of what will become your child’s bedroom.

Pretty soon, the due date begins to arrive.

Jeb is no longer leaving his players side as they need more and more help as their birthday draws closer and closer. Jeb is stressed out and nervous, and he makes sure that you’re cared for and doted on the most in this stage. He even gives you periodic massages along your back and hips to help you with your growing discomfort and pain.

You both prepare for the arrival by gathering up materials and items that would be used to help you deliver his child as Jeb also works on a medical station that would deliver his child safely.

Then suddenly, it happens.

Right before dawn, his player lets out a loud cry of pain that shocks Jeb out of his deep sleep. Jeb springs to life as he picks up his player effortlessly and goes to the makeshift medbay to lay you on a stretcher he stole from an abandoned hospital. His emotions run high as he prepares and follows your strained instructions on what he should do.

The process was long and difficult with you two being the only ones around, but eventually Jeb finishes the delivery process and cleans the young one off. His player becomes exhausted as they slump against the cot to catch their breath while he swaddles up the little arrival and then…there’s stillness.

There was only the sound of your labored breathing while he sits in the quiet room looking at the bundle in his arms from behind his shades. The little one makes a couple of quiet squeaks as they wiggle in his arms and let out a kitten-like sneeze as they open their eyes.

Surprisingly, their eyes looked just like his…and an even more shocking turn of events, an iridescent halo suddenly developed around their head after a few minutes of being awake. It startled Jeb, but enthralled him at the same time. He holds his child close as the infant lets out a few squeaks and painful yanks on his beard, making Jeb wince and pull back a bit giving his young one a soft glare before chuckling in response. The child even let out a giggle of their own.

Then, the emotions hit Jeb all at once and the ex-AAHW member blinks in a repeated fashion until something wet drips past his eyes. He doesn’t even mind the small hands that come up to investigate his dripping tears as the new father merely holds them close to his body. Relief and happiness fills his S3LF as he nuzzles the glittering infant as close to himself as possible.

Jebus wept. But not from sorrow.

As a father, Jebus desires to raise his child to become the ‘true savior’ of Nevada. Since his departure from the AAHW, Jeb has tried to live a more peaceful life, but Hank and their group tends to make that…difficult. But his child is far stronger and has higher-god blood in them, so he tries his best to be a great role model for his child and guide them through Nevada the best he can.

Jebus is an honored parent of a demi-god that wants his kid to succeed and be just as righteous, if not more so, than he could ever be. While hopefully saving Nevada from The Madness in the process.

– PHOBOS –

When you told Phobos that you were pregnant, you should have really expected that he would be the type to go full ham about you carrying his holy offspring. Phobos was beyond elated, he was pretty much ascending inside of his own body when he processed the news that he was going to have a child. He had pulled you close and nuzzled you in the way you liked while he rambled about making a new wing on the science tower that would house all of his youngling’s rooms.

During the first trimester, Phobos begins construction on the new wing of the science tower. This didn’t surprise you in the slightest, as Phobos was always the type to go above and beyond to ‘please his godly lover’ and as your loyalist acolyte (and chosen child-bearer; his words not yours), you being pleased with your environment came before all else. Even the project.

So he started from the ground up with units to build more onto the building that houses you both, he started the project with the bedroom. Phobos is relentless in his desire for absolute perfection when it comes to you and your developing young. The poor workers are strained to their limits while he makes the room as perfect as he can. Not only that, but he was also making it as ‘holy’ and needlessly extravagant at the same time.

The floors of the room were made from a polished rare white stone, the pillars of the room had to have unique carvings on them, and the doors were made from the darkest refined wood that they could find. All the patterns worked in harmony and even had a style that was similar to Chinese Imperial architecture from your world. Which made sense, since Phobos was a self-deemed ‘emperor’ of Nexus City.

The crib itself was made with precious metals and has a long canopy that was strung above it by one of your iridescent strings, which was requested by the worker that hung the canopy up.

The room was also given a bookshelf, chairs, a changing station, a vanity, and a large walk-in closet. Each piece of furnishing was also overly decorated and painstakingly carved with unique designs that each depicted the player in their holy visage and a god-like Phobos as well. You really felt bad for the workers that put all that effort in, so you would bring them refreshments and sweets as a gratuitous gift to them when Phobos wasn’t around. Since you worried that he would execute the poor workers if he saw them ‘tainting’ you with their presence. This made you rather popular with the workers and some would even visit the altar that was dedicated to you Phobos had set up to leave you gifts.

During the midterm of your pregnancy, Phobos is pretty much obsessed with making sure that you’re protected at all cost and that the wing of the science tower continues its construction. After the bedroom was done, the construction moved to making the child demi-god a playroom, an entertainment center, a living area, their own personal kitchen (cause like hell Phobos would prepare their food in the cafeteria of the science tower), a schooling room, and a luxurious bathroom. He still wasn’t done with the plans for the tower, but you constantly had to remind him that your child was merely an infant and what he was doing was enough.

Phobos is stubborn though, but a good few kisses and affectionate strokes is enough to make your ‘loyalist acolyte’ melt under your touch in response. You manage to get him to relax for a while as you both lay together, his hands on your belly and him whispering sweet sayings into your ear as you stay wrapped up in his crimson cape. Then, he gasps when he feels the child press back into his hands. His cycloptic eye seemingly sparkling as you let out a couple of giggles and a long sigh when he cuddles up closer to your belly to talk to the little one within. Listening to him say how he was so excited to meet his little godling and how much he loved them was enough to make you blush brightly in response.

In the late trimester of you carrying his child, Phobos is strict with his staff and he begins to prepare for the arrival of your little one. Making a closet worth of clothes, high quality blankets for the crib, having a cleaning staff go through the new wing of the science tower daily, and preparing a special medical wing for you to give birth in. Phobos also has to work on his ‘lesser important’ project in the meantime, so you are left in your shared room alone most of the time with assistants helping you throughout the day.

Then, the due date arrives.

Phobos is in the lower levels of the science towers scolding a lot of incompetent grunts from messing up some ‘simple’ engineering work when he suddenly gets a call on his comm from the medical wing.

The moment he is given the news that his player has gone into labor, he leaves the other grunts behind and races to the medical wing. When he arrives, the grunts that were walking through the medical district of the tower part like the red sea to allow Phobos through without a hassle. He gets to the private section of the wing to find his player in the middle of labor.

He rushes to his players side while the trained medical team works on preparing to deliver his godling. He allows you to grip his hand throughout the process, which nearly brings a tear to his eye from how hard you were crushing it. Then, the process passes and the medical team clean up his little one while you release his hand from your deathgrip.

With his player resting on the medical cot, Phobos is handed a little swaddled bundle of grunt in a satin cloth while the medical staff clear out of there to give the pair a moment of peace. Phobos is in awe as he looks at the little glittering grunt in his arms in silence as they slowly awaken to see the world for the first time.

Their eyes are colorful like the players and they were sporting a rather unique mark around their head. There was a bright small crimson circle that was placed in the middle of their forehead, along with crimson markings that gave the illusion that the little one was wearing a royal circlet. Phobos holds up his hand as he gently rubs the child’s face in a gentle and loving manner, almost as if he couldn’t believe his little god was finally here after months of waiting.

He cuddles them and holds them close to his body as the youngling hiccups and stretches out their little limbs, making cute little straining noises before letting out a small yawn. Phobos could feel his ego pretty much becoming even BIGGER as his heart melts and palpitates in his chest. What a perfect little royal.

“My little god…it’s nice to finally meet you.” Phobos mutters just above a whisper as he nuzzles his child in a loving manner.

As a father, Phobos couldn’t be more protective and proud. He bred with the most powerful being in Nevada and was ‘chosen to rear their young’ (again, his words, not yours.) as a god among the masses, Phobos is the most egotistical he has ever been.

But now, he has a child to absolutely spoil rotten and dote on while he works on his other project. Though, you’re the parent that keeps a tighter leash on your child and you also perform disciplinary actions against them. Less they become a spoiled brat because of Phobos’s constant doting.

You also might have to keep a watch on Phobos too, because he’s already talking about having another little god.

#self aware m:pn au #self aware au #madness combat self aware au #madcom self aware au #human!reader x madcom #madcom x reader #madness combat x reader #madcom fanfic #my writing #cosmica-galaxy #haxorus imp #I HAD TO BREAK THIS INTO TWO PARTS MY WRITING IS TOO POWERFUL!!#yandere madness combat #y/n x madness combat #papa!grunts au

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huebris808 · 3 years ago

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Dr. Hofnarr’s Horrible, No-Good, Very Weird 15 Years Of Being Dead.

a tribute to fanon interpretations/character study(?) that was going to be a bonus chapter in a post-canon/au comedy fic im working on! might come back to expand on this when i do start posting it (or if mpn gives him more background story lore that i’ll have to work with aoAHGHOAUGH)

happy madness day! :o)

“Where should I begin… Perhaps at the very beginning? OH! Christoff and I first met years before our Nexus days! Back in our freshman years of college, to be precise! You know, I was actually a theater major before switching to- ... A-Aah, too far back. Much too far... Let’s start from the point where the notes I supplied to you ended then, shall we? After our dissension...”

.. “Good luck, old friend...” ..

The first years on the run from Nexus was stressful to say the least. Hofnarr and Christoff had split up to better their chances of survival. He knew the process would be grueling, having talked to Christoff almost every night about it to calm his nerves. While he played calm for the cameras, Hofnarr truly wished he could have held him close one last time. No communications. No physical contact. Day after day, month after month, nothing. He would be separated from his husband for a very long time…

It wasn’t all bad after a while. He had a comfortable new apartment, went under a new alias, and his questionable new job paid him enough to buy food. His apartment even had cable! He could watch marathons of Slaughter Time whenever he got home! In hindsight, he wondered if that had an effect on his mental state at the time...

Hofnarr had taken the last of his S3LF regulator with him, having shipped them out to an undisclosed location prior to dissension. Dissonance exposure did a number on him and his research team, leaving them to track their “normality” through daily blood tests and injections. While they met their fates early on, Hofnarr had gotten lucky. That is, until the doses began to run out.

Stressful as it was, he knew what he had to do. Hofnarr rushed back to what remained of the labs, knowing it had been abandoned by now. It was ironic, he and Christoff’s work, the work that was turned against them, was the one thing keeping him alive. For days, he worked to make more doses from the materials he brought with him. But there was only so much he could do with limited supplies… Hofnarr made many attempts to prolong the inevitable, lowering his dosage amount, injecting it weekly rather than daily, but he eventually ran dry.

Refusing to turn to darker alternatives, he felt the only thing he could do at this point is record his final findings through video logs.

“It was… interesting revisiting the footage, to put it nicely. Christoff had actually kept the video files on a drive after he originally found all my things in the lab! I barely remembered what happened back then, so I rewatched them out of curiosity.”

On the first night, Hofnarr recorded a message for Christoff. One filled with sorrow, but also with gratitude. For the time that they spent together. How special he made him feel. All the memories they made together...

On the next, he recorded a log detailing his findings during Project Nexus. The effects of dissonance, the Other Place, what it did to him and his colleagues, everything and anything he could.

The next, he reported on the progression of his symptoms. Fever, brain fog, insomnia, joint pain. He felt like his organs were melting, his skin bursting at the seams.

The next night he saw something and remembered. Scars. The scars on his head. That week he was in the staff hospital. He thought it was a dream but the scars were there. Phobos. Director Phobos brought him somewhere that week. He knew he felt off when he woke up in the office that night. He knew something was off when Christoff asked him where he was. He thought he passed out from over-working. That bastard Phobos. Nausea was replaced with rage as he began to scream, his throat becoming raw. What did he put in him? What the hell did he put inside him!?

On the last recorded log, he was face-down on the ground. Groaning as his body occasionally convulsed. Until the video feed eventually cut off.

His body would lay there dormant, dead, for fifteen years.

But to Hofnarr, he felt like he was dreaming.

.. “LET’S GIVE IT UP FOR OUR NEXT CONTESTANT!” ..

“Huh?” The doctor sat up and looked around, the area around him pitch black. Wasn’t he sleeping just a moment ago? He got up and took a step forward in the seemingly endless void. “H-Hello? Who’s out there?”

“AWW, DON’T BE SHY NOW! ESTEEMED AUDIENCE, A BIG ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR OUR GUEST; THE UNFORTUNATE DOCTOR HOFNARR!”

A light shined down on him from above. A crowd seemingly began to cheer all around him. He was in the center of what looked like a talk show set. Hofnarr awkwardly scratched the corner of his face. “‘Unfortunate’? W-What do you mean? W-Who are you?”

“FIGHT FIRST, ASK QUESTIONS LATER!” The voice above him called out again. “AFTER ALL, IT’S…!” Hofnarr drowned out the noise while trying to think. It sounded familiar. Like it came from…

Hofnarr’s thoughts were cut short. He looked down at his torso. Terror set in as he recognized an entire stop sign had been lodged through his chest.

“DON’T GET COLD FEET NOW! THE SHOW’S ONLY JUST BEGUN!”

The words echoed in Hofnarr’s mind as he frantically tried to pull it out, his vision growing muddled, his hands slipping with blood until…

He blinked.

No stage. No sound. No pain.

Nothing around except for a single white door in front of him.

He stood up again, cautiously reaching for the doorknob.

When he entered he seemed to be in a vintage styled home. It was a kitchen with checkerboard flooring, a table with two chairs, and cheerful music playing through a small radio. It smelled of pastry and medical equipment. Suddenly, there was a knock coming from the door. A familiar voice called from behind it.

“I’m home, dear.” “J-Jeb?!”

Hofnarr rushed towards the front door. Christoff wasn’t trapped here too, was he? “Jeb! W-where are we!? What is this place? What happened to-”

As he opened the door, the clapping returned.

His husband was there, briefcase in hand, his face replaced with a black hole dripping with an unknown inky substance.

He slowly began to back away as “Jeb” moved closer.

The applause, the laughter, was deafening.

Before he could question or run away, Hofnarr was hit by something. His vision blurred, but refocused to be face-to-face with something. It seemed to be a shadow of himself. He tried to run again, but was pinned down by his doppelganger. The clone raised a clawed hand above him and then...

Like waking from a nightmare, Hofnarr quickly sat up once again. He gasped for air, dripping with cold sweat.

Was this really happening? Was it finally over? Was he free?

And then the spotlight focused on him again.

“It… got very surreal. Despite fight after fight, death after painful death... I would suddenly be somewhere else! There was a gameshow, our old apartment, a cat cafe, a... strip club of sorts, a tea room filled with these small armless doodles I used to draw on my research notes trying to offer me snacks… One time there was a sort of singing contest, but I won’t bore you with the details of that one. But when I wasn’t in those places, I felt like I was fighting for my life. It felt like an eternity! And the strangest part of it all? It… it became addicting.”

At first, he felt as if Hofnarr used all of his energy, physical and emotional, to fight back. It reminded him too much of his escape from Nexus. But as time went on, he focused less on escaping and more on surviving. The more he fought, the more he began to lose himself. He was anticipating what sudden whiplash of combat would be thrown at him next. He chuckled at the thought of what excitement would be heading his way. He wanted more. The fights became too slow. Too predictable. Too boring. He began toying with whatever was thrown at him. Turning his shadowy hunters into the hunted. Why let his audience watch the same old fights all the time?

Suddenly, the fighting stopped.

Why?

He was having fun, wasn’t he? He grew impatient.

“WHAT’S THE HOLD UP!” He yelled into the void, seething with anger. “AREN’T WE SUPPOSED TO BE FIGHTING? ISN’T THAT WHAT I’M HERE FOR?!”

He stomped his foot down, lodging something out of the ground.

The stop sign.

He looked over it curiously. How familiar…

Grabbing hold of it, quick flashes of memories appeared to him.

Nexus, the Science Tower, Phobos, the Other Place…

A man with long hair standing next to...

Hofnarr…

Who was that? Was that him?

No…

Only Tricky remained.

Footsteps echoed throughout the halls of the abandoned lab. Heels quickly clicking, cautiously stopping every so often. A lone Nexus Core agent entered through one of the doors.

Perfect timing.

“HAY! YOU THERE!!” A voice stuttered and glitched out, reverberating through the emptiness of the lab. The quickly soldier whipped their head around. “YEAH! YOU, STUPID. PLAY WITH ME!!”

“Who’s there?” The agent pointed their magnum towards the noise. “Show yourself!”

Gladly. The cackling figure emerged from the shadows, posing with a peace-sign, causing the agent to recoil. He grinned, slowly moving towards the cowering goon on the ground. They wouldn’t stand a chance.

“Who are you!?”

They couldn’t kill him.

“FIGHT FIRST. ASK QUESTIONS LATER! AFTER ALL…”

CAN’T KILL CLOWN.

“IT’S MURDER TIME!”

“My body had been there, regenerating and repeating the enmeshment process for years. And by the time I woke up, I was a completely different person. I became a creature of unfiltered impulse… A personification of chaos itself.”

The room grew silent before Hofnarr spoke up again.

“I-Is it horrible to say it was… kind of cool?” He said with a nervous chuckle, twiddling his fingers.

2BDamned was quiet for a moment. They recalled the many times they had to stitch their comrades back together due to Clown Moments. They placed their head in their palms and let out a sigh.

“... You have the right to your own opinion.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BONUS: songs i was listening to on loop while working on this instead of doing my damned writing assignment. Enjoy

lady gaga ft. dorian electra - replay

vestik - tricky's vengeance ft. monocronic

#madness combat #Madness Project Nexus #Dr. Hofnarr #Tricky the Clown #MY WORKS #MY FIC #happy madness day these old dudes are gay. [Vine Boom] gay as hell. [Vine B

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epicmeetsfail · 5 years ago

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Unknown Pleasures: The most august https://ift.tt/2NbjYb9

A friend from the midlands once lamented that she’d always lived there. How absurd it was to live on an island, but directly in the middle of it. I can now say, having lived in two coastal cities, that living on the edge of it is very much the same, except that there are much better chip shops and the rain is more … oceany.

It is currently hacking it down out there and I don’t want to go home in it. Join me once more than, readers, for our regular round up of the best new games on Steam that you’ll never see on a billboard. It’s Unknown Pleasures.

Gazing wistfully into the deep this week: algorithmic therapy, Scandinavian body horror, and the ol’ rotate and thrust.

Apsulov: End of Gods £15.49 / €16.79 / $20

First person horror games are usually terrible, and in all the same ways. This is great news for me because I hate them anyway so it makes very little difference, but someone’s only gone and made one I like. Apsulov is gruesome. Its very first scene is horrible, with you (an Alice, it turns out, which explains the latent magic powers) operated on by some robotic apparatus at the whim of an unseen, intensely threatening entity that’s very quick to anger. Something’s wrong with your throat, so you’re all gurgly and choking and it’s horrible, but for once it doesn’t feel sadistic (obviously the villain is sadistic, but the game doesn’t feel so. It’s meant to be horrible, not pornographic).

You escape, of course, and flee a facility, dodging muttering, screaming shamblemen, pursued by your tormentor’s evil beast, and piecing together where and who you are. Scientists have opened a sinister gate or screaming obsidian hellcube or some other thing that only a colossal fool would open, and apparently the Norse gods are involved somehow. Creeping, rapidly growing tentacles are poking through, gigantic valkyrie shields line one lab, and since your captor drilled something into your head, you have the power to see magical sigils. You’re important somehow, but how it all ties together is a mystery. This is all excellently done, and I’m genuinely intrigued to find out more. Even the occasional jump scares didn’t feel cheap, nor the pillar of the horror – that’s the dread and revulsion, and secondary to that, the wider horror of what this event means for earth in general.

I’m impressed. Oh, but the bloody keypads are a joke. You have to ‘use’ them and then take your hand off the mouse and use the arrow keys to type the numbers in. Deus Ex let us use the number pad nineteen years ago, damn it. Come on.

Exception £11.39 / €12.49 / $15

This wasn’t the game that sparked it, but I’ve had a right moan about “the 80s aesthetic” in games this week. Did you know it’s possible to style your game after something that isn’t synthwave and neon? It’s true, I saw a game do it once.

Exception is enthralling, though, and its presentation is a large part of that. It’s a simple action platformer, with a plot about emptying a woman’s computer from a load of viruses that I skipped entirely thanks to built-in options that I respect mightily. You’re a wee robot who dashes about obstacle courses, wall jumping, slashing up hostile robots, and generally dashing to the exit. Several times each level, you’ll touch a waypoint that reorients the whole level, zooming out and rotating and setting you back along the same course but upside down or along a different axis. It’s very cool and the movement flows freely and comfortably, including your attacks.

The vast majority of enemies are easily done in without altering your path, and you’re periodically given new attacks and powers that I didn’t bother with at all (frankly they seemed more trouble than they were worth). Occasional bosses take half a dozen hits and attack in simple enough patterns that they don’t disrupt things too much either. Everything’s bright and fast and spectacular, and even now, at synthwave saturation point, the soundtrack is a perfect accompaniment that drives you on when the wrong beats would undermine the action.

Phantom Rose £11.39 / €12.49 / $15

It’s another one. It’s another bloody deckbuilding roguelike. You’re doing it on purpose aren’t you?

Phantom Rose does things a little bit differently to the many others in its class. Typically in a deckbuilder you’ll draw a handful of cards and choose which to play. Here, there’s some kind of initiative system going on behind the scenes too. In each round of a fight, you and your opponent will line up cards (5 altogether, giving an advantage to one or the other of you). Yours are randomly chosen from your hand, but you can replace some or all of them from another hand drawn at the bottom of the screen. When you’re satisfied, you start the turn and cards play out from left to right.

There’s a big focus on status effects and buffs like Vampiric Whatever, which gives a chance of restoring health when you attack, or focus, which helps you break through defences. It may get complicated later but was easy to grasp for at least the first two floors. Your path goes along a grid from top left to top right, always (until you reach a map edge) offering two options. I didn’t get the sense that these make a drastic difference in terms of risk or reward, with the exception of occasional “maid” rooms, where you fight a powerful monster to free an amine maid (fairly mild on the tacky anime bullshit meter) who’ll reward you with a special item.

I like that one of the attacks lets you hit a monster with their own attack rating instead of yours. That’s a fun trick. It moves at a brisk pace too, and I even appreciate the artwork. All that red and white and black makes for a bold style.

It feels a bit too easy to run out of good attacking cards. But that might come down to practicing more.

Rashlander £2.89 / €3.29 / $4

Rashlander is a modern form of one of those old 2D rotate and thrust gravity games, whose names, aside from Thrust and Gravity Power, escape me. You pilot a wee ship about a sometimes absurdly hazardous area, aiming to land it on a warp pad to move on to the next level. Gravity and inertia are important tools and potential threats, as there’s a basic Newtonian physics system, making navigation tricky and rewarding. Your default ship (more are unlockable, although they’re balanced so that each presents its own challenge) is fragile and lives are limited. In case that wasn’t cruel enough for you, fuel is also highly limited, and when you run out you explode.

It’s bloody hard. I’m a bit rubbish at it. Each warp pad also offers an upgrade, although some have a downside (one increases fuel capacity but scrambles in-game text, an inventive and somewhat maddening invention), and some are a mixed blessing as they change the way the ship handles, which means re-learning on the fly, potentially under dangerous circumstances. While it’s not a cruel game, it’s somewhat antagonistic, although more for comic effect than anything. Levels have hidden collectables and bonus landing pads if you fancy a challenge, but it’ll likely be a while before you’re good enough to risk those as a matter of course.

Eliza £11.39 / €12.49 / $15

The cult of the algorithm is one of the biggest and most insidious disasters of our already disaster-laden era. Eliza is an exploration of this, and of the mental health crisis, and of tech startup ‘culture’, and of counselling. It’s a visual novel in which you play as Evelyn, a new recruit for the eponymous business, which is a counselling service in which all the counselling is done by an AI. The humans like Evelyn are just there to put a face on it, to the extent that they’re not allowed to say anything but whatever script the algorithms produce, based on a vast bank of heuristic data and the patient’s verbal analysis, biological data like heart rate, perspiration and so on. They can’t even interpret.

I did a bit of basic counselling training a long time ago. It’s something I’ve long been interested in, and have experienced and contemplated from many angles. I was all set to loathe Eliza simply for suggesting the idea, fearing the HIGNFY effect, that some absolute piece will get wind of it and not realise what a godawful idea this is.

And yet.

Within the very first session I was haughtily telling the system off for being an atrocious counsellor – outright lying to a patient, for one – but then the next chapter (they’re comfortably short) kicked in. Evelyn meets with an old, estranged friend for lunch, and their shared past is hinted at. She goes to a conference in which a key speaker is a former colleague, who announces that he wants to go further than Eliza, and roll out technology that will directly interface with a patient’s brain. It’s a hybrid of electroconvulsive therapy, VR therapy, and everything else Eliza already does. He also openly criticises the incredible and shameful ignorance the tech people have of psychological research that isn’t jazzed up with some faddy nerd bullshit (I paraphrased). And I’m hooked.

Much as I see the obvious downsides of this system (and not even addressing the issue of putting this in the hands of a private business, let alone a heap of silicon valley jebs)… is it actually worse than what we have now? If not this, then what are we gonna do, magically summon the hundred thousand competent and willing and experienced counsellors and doctors and therapists we need to deal with the absolutely appalling state of mental health treatment in, let’s face it, most countries?

Eliza is obviously the pick of the week.

I tangent. Eliza touched on all of the issues in under an hour. The personal story of Evelyn, the problems she had in her hold job, her own mental health, the troubles faced by her patients, their concerns with the system, its sinister dystopian possibilities, and, despite my distaste, its potential benefits. That’s not just a good idea, that’s a good idea someone really cares about and understands, and has the talent to write.

August 16, 2019 at 12:29PM

#gaming

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