#OFF and it's fangames are awesome

[doughguts-art]

Its been a while! Hope your doing good!

Anyways i was always curious what inspired your artstyle, and why did you buy Bandit?

Oh and here are some pictures of my cat Freya

I'm doing well! Thank you for your questions, and your cat is super adorable!!

Style inspiration is difficult to pin down as I'm not quite sure how to define my own style lol. That being said, sirfluff and portablebread have been really big influences, since I really admire their work. I usually point to them with how I draw eyes and sharp teeth. For OFF related stuff specifically, big inspo is Xintestsu, love his stuff and CONFINIUM is freaking goals.

As for the Bandit question, that has a simple answer with a complex explanation:

I bought Bandit because I really like elsens and he was an elsen. I did not know his history in the fandom when I expressed my interest to purchase him, as I was a fan of OFF for just about a year at that point and wasn't aware of the greater fandom/fangames. I really like elsens, and had (still have) a horde of them for personal stories and drawing, so when I saw another cool elsen that seemed to be up for sale, I jumped at the chance to get him. I got him, and THEN played the games/discovered who I exactly got. It wasn't any motivation of "ooh famous elsen! gimme!", really it was just luck and the creator (Driftstar)'s willingness to sell that allowed me to come into ownership of the 'famous' elsen lol. Louis on the other hand was a fully knowledgeable purchase, because I was interested in keeping the two together. In my viewing of the fandom, they've always been associated closely with eachother. They were the only identifiable elsens* that specifically showed up in UNKNOWN. As Driftstar had created Louis, and Louis was removed from Hugginverse canon in 2019 along with Bandit and Charlotte, he was no longer in use (since Drift has pretty much distanced himself from fandom spaces). I recently recognized that, and asked Drift if he'd be willing to sell Louis too. He was kind enough to accept my offer, and that's how I came into Louis' ownership as well. I am excited to continue to develop both of them further!

Hope this was informative, let me know if you have any questions / want any clarifications. I know Louis wasn't a part of the initial ask, but I felt it was an important addition to explain how I got him as well (since, they're linked in other ways anyway haha).

*(aka different facesprites, Ryker and Todd are other named elsens that showed up in later Hugginverse titles, but they did not have unique facesprites)

didn't just want to send out a huge block of text without an image, so here's a drawing Driftstar created of the two dudes

[16thetower]

Nule from the most badass awesome game FLOWER

[princesstarfire1234]

Saw a post on here not too long ago about certain IDW guys in a Decepticon-win scenario and one of the guys on there were the Scavengers and I'm just like... how WOULD that actually work like its intriguing but I genuinely have zero clue how that would go, they're like of those tf things that can only really be done properly in a post-war thing yknow?

[triglycercule]

eusgahhhhh goddddd the lazy urge to just beg the internet to mansplain killer's lore to me in baby talk so i can finally GET IT and then the other less appealing urge to actually do an analysis on him so i can form my own opinion and observations. fucj

[supersecretnerd]

Ok so these designs are cute as hell, the Internet is just mean

I have too many thoughts about a game I still need to watch

[doughguts-art]

OHHH HOHOHO BOYYYY really great animation! The extra squint of the eye at the end where the smile deepens is a nice lil note. This is so nicely smooth! I love it

Pentel the Butcher

[catmask]

genuine question – and i hope it doesn't come as weird – but how do get into...pokemon? </3

pokemon universe feels so big and there are so many games and i really like their designs – both for pokemons and trainers – making ocs in this setting would be so cool but i have no idea how to. begin!

could you give some advice?

ps leaving compliments for your comic and art in general!! i really like how your pieces are so colorful! gives the vibes of some small but cozy and fun town in a videogame..

no worries!! it seriously depends on what you are interested in - gamewise, region wise, and story wise.

heres what i can say. if you like typical top-down style pixel art rpg games where you solve tile puzzles and build a little team of monsters, any of the games before x and y is a good choice. platinum is a great introduction to the series because it doesn't baby you but is still decently difficult, heartgold/soulsilver are the 'coziest' games imo but may spoil you because of how much content there is, black/white and black/white 2 are the most story-driven of the games and bw2 is probably the longest play of all the games. emerald is also great, but its genuinely a hard game even as someone whos been a fan of the series for years. i would say to start with hgss because they're my favorites, but they're so good it might raise the bar too high for all the other games pixel-art games.

if you prefer 3D graphics, but still like the 'run around catching guys and solving tile puzzles', i think sun and moon are the best of the 3D games! the story is engaging and a little more modernized so that there are actual cut scenes, i think the pokemon available are cute and the region is really pretty. i thikn after that, x and y is pretty cute! the story is less strong in comparison to sun/moon. importantly; every game in the 3D era has a new type that was not present in the pixel art era - the fairy type, so if you want to learn the MODERN type chart and balances, the 3D games are where you'd need to start.

finally, if you're not a fan of the 'catch pokemon run around region' type games, pokemon has a LOT of really awesome spin off games. my favorites are as follows...

pokemon mystery dungeon explorers of sky. its the strongest story the pokemon company has ever written, and im a big fan of the mystery dungeon style gameplay.

pokemon ranger (any ranger game!) the story and graphics are cute, and it focuses on rescuing/rehabilitating pokemon more than capturing them. really lovely expansion of the pokemon universe.

pokemon go, because its free! so if you dont want to download a rom, or sink money into a new franchise, its an easy way to get into it.

pokemon snap - this was actually my very first pokemon game i ever played! (never owned it though heha) but there was just a remake for the switch, if you've got a switch that is. the game focuses on photographing pokemon in their natural habitat, and its really quite cute. slow paced and fun if you're not sure about battling yet.

finally... if you weren't looking to get into games at all, pokemon art + fan creations are personally my favorite things in the entire fandom! artists and writers and fangame devs are the people who hold this fandom up, engaging with their creations is a great and typically free way to involve yourself... im sorry this is so long, i hope this helps!! and ppl are free to add on to this hehe

[acerikus]

G o d. All gekkos' outertale posting makes me wanna talk more in depth about the characterisation and plot issues in this game and why they bother me...

(readmore bc holy fuck this got long, it's probably like 5k words. It's also pretty much all salt, categorised by character)

Toriel

Why. Why is she like this. Kinda feels like the creator of the game hates her and if they don't, they have a weird way of showing it. She's treated as overdramatic and unjustified in her anger at asgore despite the fact that he DID declare war on humanity and he DID willingly let the people believe he was killing human children to harvest their souls. Even if he didn't do it for real in this game, she has every right to be angry and to not trust him, and it CERTAINLY doesn't make her undeserving to be a mother or whatever. Idk about you, but I don't think wanting kids to stay away from a man yelling about wanting to kill every child that crosses him makes you a bad parent, even if it turns out he didn't really hurt anyone y'know?

They also REALLY zoned in on 'mother' with her in a way that doesn't really make sense here. I could maybe see her feeling guilty for making a snap judgement but how would that call her motherhood into question?

Sans saying isolation messed with her makes no sense too!!!! The outerlands or whatever they called the ruins isn't sealed off in this game, other monsters seem way less intimidated by her in this game than in undertale (she has friends! She knows sans by name and goes to napstablook's shows and even has their phone number!), and we outright get told she takes the taxi to get her groceries... Meaning she headed off to the rest of the outpost and probably does that often enough.

All things considered, Toriel seems fairly well adjusted in outertale, at least by outertale standards. Kinda then makes it feel like everyone's just trying to convince her she's hysterical and that... Sucks.

Also the fact that they added an ending where you stay with her and framed it as a bad ending that doomed everyone is... Really mean? It sucked ass I'm sorry :/

Sans

... Why is he like this. This take on Sans is absolutely infuriating tbh. The only positive I really have here is that his puns are kinda good, I've seen fangames that fuck up this element massively and it was kinda fun to see his interactions in starton.

Okay, back to salt. His whole 'i became a sentry to help humans' thing is trash. He didn't care about that in ut! He didn't care about that at all! The only reason he looks out for frisk is because he made a promise to toriel, and he hates breaking promises. He didn't want to let down his friend.

...Huh. realising this is yet another case of Toriel disrespect somehow. Yet another thing they took from her, that they then just... Handed over to sans instead. :/

His lack of backstory. Look, I get wanting something silly, but they took almost everything that makes sans interesting away. Not hyperfocusing on sans like certain aus do is nice, but it feels like in a lot of situations in this game they overcompensated by a long shot.

No mysterious past/origins. We know he worked with alphys I guess but???? Honestly I have a LOT to rant about for that part so I'll leave it for twinkly's section. And yet despite all this, Sans inexplicably bleeds in tpe when not even undertale has that happen? Make up your mind!

His role in non Asriel chaotic also... Sucks ass. I'm in a pretty awesome corner of the fandom in terms of the people I follow and the takes I see as a result, so if I'm honest, when I saw all those posts about 2024 fanon sans being indifferent to his brother's murder, I kinda just figured they were vaguing about this game. You're telling me that sans of all people just shrugs off you killing everyone and complains a little bit before letting you pass?! He should know alphys already ran off. He should know the only person left to stop you is asgore, and that it's obvious he won't. Part of this could be connected to how frisk is written perhaps, and much like the twinkly situation, I'll have much more to say on that further down.

I understand the creator didn't wanna have a sans fight in their game - however, if that's the case... Maybe come up with a reason for him to NOT show up in the last corridor, then? Have him busy helping with evacuations or something, or already dead like in the first chaotic ending... This was just sloppy.

Papyrus

Honestly he wasn't... Terrible. The phonecalls were fun even if most were cheap references (though they can be fun in fangames sometimes so I'm not mad at this lol). Him being extremely talented at making spaghetti is just one symptom of one of this game's biggest flaws, however. I really don't like how nobody's really allowed to be bad at anything or have any real struggles in this game - especially when spaghetti in undertale is used to demonstrate his relationship with undyne and the similar wavelength they're on when humans aren't involved. She's the one who started teaching him to cook it, it's deeply intertwined with his desire to be a royal guard, and it's something they suck at together. Him just inexplicably being good at it is... Weird, and feels really disconnected from their friendship and her reluctance to let him in the guard yknow?

Also: his boss final phase. Having the dog NOT take his special attack away this time was really funny admittedly but... Idk? Not only is the fight really unfair for pacifist/neutral and those who aren't as good at the game (ut never gets this hard outside of geno), it feels way too on the nose in terms of insisting he's strong and has powerful attacks. Undertale didn't need to overcompensate to get across that papyrus is strong and disciplined and the way you have to infer that in undertale is way cooler. I might just be nitpicking with this point tbh but it's whatever. Letting myself be a hater for once.

And don't get me started on him getting together with Mettaton. It seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere, the idea that they were already friends in this was glossed over really quickly and no time was really put into developing the relationship save for papyrus commenting on finding him attractive every few minutes.

Gotta be honest, I've never been a fan of this ship nor understood its popularity. Papyrus very briefly mentions thinking he's attractive in undertale, but it doesn't really go anywhere and I'm not even sure mettaton knows he exists. It feels like it was just kinda added because it's a popular ship and that's it, not sure it really contributes much to either of their arcs. It was a light-hearted celebrity crush in canon and never really tried to be more.

Oh, oops. Had more to say here than I thought.

Undyne

Not much to say here... I think she was okay, there's nothing super bad with her. I do think the way gerson kinda downplays her/lacks faith in her in the chaotic route kinda sucks and I think choosing to make her non-undying chaotic bossfight harder sure was A Choice, but it's whatever. Undying was weirdly easy in a way that didn't do her much justice. Honestly they didn't do enough with her for me to have a wall of complaints and I can't tell if that's a good thing or not. Her relationship with alphys didn't really amount to much and her lack of understanding of human culture doesn't really hit as hard when she's just talking about random sci-fi things that we have no way of knowing are real or not in this game's idea of the 2600s ourselves, y'know? Her love of anime (that she mistakenly thinks is human history) is pretty absent here except to validate her relationship with alphys in a very shallow way.

The Ghost Family

Hoo boy... Was gonna make this the mettaton section, but I wanted to talk about napstablook at the same time, so I'm just gonna lump them all together.

What. What the hell was this plotline.

It feels like they tried to go for 'smalltime farmer chases passion for stardom after feeling unfulfilled at home' and as I've seen someone else say, 'shy business owner struggles to talk to their cousin outside of work'. This would've been fine tbh, but... There's a lot of things in the execution of this that kinda grossed me out if I'm honest. I don't think they were intentional, but I think it could've been thought through a lot better to avoid some unfortunate implications - or even lean into them in a respectful way.

Firstly, the ghost family intervention was pretty long, awkward, and didn't feel like it really added much - especially when most people playing would already know mettaton's backstory anyway (and his house is still accessible like in undertale!!!!! What was the point?)

Mettaton airing out his family issues on live TV feels very ooc - he keeps that stuff very close to his chest and I doubt he'd like it getting out. Him entertaining any of that out in the open seems... Weird.

Speaking of the intervention, his cousins' treatment of him was horrifying! Part of it seems intentional and it's nice that there's at least one part in the game where characters are allowed to have flaws and do bad things but... There's also elements that feel like you're meant to agree with them? Their insistence that mettaton just come home and everything they did in the past with constantly badgering him to come and help out on the farm were rightfully treated as something that hurt mettaton's feelings and that gave napstablook and the others pause. That's (mostly, we'll come back to it later) fine. He called them out for it and they reflected on it, cool. The way his ghost form was utilised makes me extremely uncomfortable, however.

Napstablook talks about hearing 'the real [mettaton]' in the recording, right to his face, 'the real mettaton' in this scenario alluding to his ghost form. Considering mettaton is a trans allegory, this feels... Kinda gross? In a similar vein, when passing mettaton's quiz barriers, one of the questions is 'what is mettaton's true identity' and you have the option to deadname him (using a name papyrus literally just made up in undertale rather than having any kind of creativity ofc) Alphys' reaction is simply to ask how you know that which... Doesn't feel great. The correct answer is 'mettaton' ofc thankfully, but everything around this particular plot point feels weird. Maybe don't do that w the most prevalent trans allegory character..?

And ofc, they keep insisting he just come home, go back to working on the farm, go back to his family... Idk, gives me vibes of someone abandoning their shitty transphobic family and then insisting they want to see 'the real [deadname] again' and for them to abandon their new life and just go back to the way things were before. Not good.

All of this would still be okay for the most part since the ghost family are painted as being unfair to mettaton... But in true pacifist, he goes back to helping out with the farm anyway and talks about how he thinks he was probably just being dramatic after all, and how 'blooky didn't do anything that bad'

... What?

It takes me right back to Toriel's treatment. Napstablook, Maddie and lurksalot gave no real thought to mettaton's feelings, made it all about them and showed pretty much no support for his transition nor his career! Fuck those guys! It's funny - mettaton is pretty consistently a pompous asshole (affectionate) in undertale but here, I think all his feelings towards his family were COMPLETELY valid. Mettaton outertale didn't do anything wrong.

Lurksalot didn't feel like they contributed much to the story either, save to be yet another character treating mettaton like shit with zero consequences nor narrative judgement. They just made every ghost family event even more drawn out.

And then ofc!!!! Mettaton and Alphys' friendship is so bland in this game! They're two people who kinda know each other and she says some nice things about him in a letter in chaotic but that's about it. Their friendship and the subsequent conflict frisk's arrival brings to it in undertale is the heart of hotland and the core, but here it's just replaced with unnecessary, hard to watch, boring family drama. The two of them have no issues to work out. She doesn't ask too much of him. There's no funny quips and barely any chemistry at all. God forbid either of them have any real flaws.

One last thing: I'm glad maddie gets her mew mew body, it's nice. Wish it was an on-screen moment or something alluded to more though. Some of that time dragging out the family drama could've been used on that instead, y'know? Especially with napstablook getting the mew mew doll... Genuinely thought they were gonna show it to her when they first got hold of it, rather than dragging Frisk into their intervention. She should've gotten to be more mad, too. Kinda a big part of her identity.

Oh, and mettaton's no-asriel chaotic fight was bullshit. It was a nice spamton reference and the first phase was cool, but the second was utter bullshit and dragged out the fight way too long. Attacking him after snapping all the wires should've killed him im sorry. It's even more of a shame bc I genuinely really liked this game's mettaton neo fight - it was fun and creative and felt possible.

Holding myself back from adding any more to this bc I could go on and on, ugh.

Alphys

Alphys. For a game that tries to make her the star of it, it's actually kinda impressive how much they managed to take away from her and just how uninteresting she is in this game.

At the surface level she's awesome, powerful, and the star of the show. In my first playthrough I was actually pretty happy to see her thriving like this! The more routes I played and the more I thought about it though they just kinda... Declawed her. Took away all her flaws. Made her 'perfect' in a way that I don't think works at all.

The amalgamates never happened. None of her experiments went wrong. She never hid away from her mistakes, or lied to anyone (save for keeping Asgore's secret, which she has no negative feelings about), nor did she over engineer any situations to make herself seem cooler. She doesn't argue with Mettaton! She's confident and assertive! She's Asgore's right hand woman and next in line for the throne! And ofc, the badass final boss! What's not to love?

...But none of this is Alphys, is it?

Her anxiety isnt just because of the determination experiments, it's pretty clear she's always been a pretty shy and nervous person. In fact, based on her entries they were one of the things she was more confident in before it all went wrong. People are hard, but she knows science, y'know?

She doesn't get to be flawed or interesting - despite her presence, she's just a generic cool scientist who's suave with the ladies, I guess..?

She isn't particularly dorky, shes overly confident, she has zero issues to work through. Her relationship with undyne is perfect (derogatory) and her infodumping about anime just before the archive feels very forced, like they remembered last minute that she does that and thought it should be included somehow.

Depicting what she'd be like in a scenario where the determination experiments never happened is a fun and interesting idea! But deltarune demonstrates how to do that well, and I think they completely missed the mark. The way she talks, her body language, the way she acts around others in general... These things are universal constants and yet in outertale, she's basically a different person entirely.

Outertale alphys isn't allowed to lie (save to cover for asgore Secretly Being A Good Person), she isn't allowed to miscalculate, she isn't allowed to mis-speak or make mistakes or do anything she'd regret. She feels like an alphys written by someone who hates her in canon and thinks all her flaws make her terrible and unlikable. I doubt this is the case since I don't think a person like that would've given her such prevalence, but that's the level of love and attention I feel was given to her writing here. It makes me sad.

And, of course... The DT experiments and her fight.

... Why did she have vials of determination if all the humans are alive? Did she take it from them? If so, was this before or after they went into stasis? We know she's not been the royal scientist for long in relation to how long humans have been falling, so did ROMAN take the determination? How much of this did she even DO?

Why did she and sans even DO anything with determination? It... Doesn't really make sense.

Speaking of determination, why did she melt at the end of her fight? I'd assume she's injected herself with determination as one of the vials in her lab is mentioned to be partially used, but I'm pretty sure it's also like this on pacifist. Was that overlooked? Are we just meant to assume it's MORE depleted? Does she just have natural determination now because She's So Cool And Badass? This isn't even really a complaint about the fight, more just how poorly that part of her lab is handled lmao

But getting into her fight... Idk, it didn't really feel like her. A lot of it was just random bullshit that was hard for the sake of being hard, that didn't really seem to be tied to her identity very well at all. People complain a lot about the Zenith Martlet fight in undertale yellow but that's done far better than this, imo. It clearly reflects martlet's character, personality and canonical bullet patterns (we see Alphys' in ut tpe!), there's a genuine feeling of progression in the fight and the act you're given to help with the fight feels more effective - you can still damage her on her turn, so taking a turn to heal act doesn't feel like a waste. The Asriel acts though... They just don't last long enough to feel that worth it? Sure they're okay, but in general, you get a lot less time to breathe. Martlet's fight lets you retry from phase 2 if you die. Sans' in undertale gives you as many turns as you need to heal while he's sparing you. Alphys' fight just feels like it's made to feel un-fun and painful throughout in a way that just isn't worth it, and doesn't really feel like it fits her personality either, y'know? The fight was just a slog and like many others, I had zero motivation to finish it legit. I don't think it helps that the undyne and mettaton fights in this route are fairly easy and simple in comparison.

Tldr: they took away everything that makes alphys endearing, fun and interesting. This isn't alphys at all.

Asgore

A huge chunk of this essay accidentally got deleted, including my first attempt at writing this section. In it, I mentioned that the Asgore apologism went way too far.

This time though, I don't think I'd even call it that. Reflecting on it, it feels less like an attempt to defend him and more like a way to hate on and spite Toriel.

Seriously. So much of his character basically just feels like someone going 'fuck you toriel. I'm giving EVERYTHING to asgore.'

It's... Really weird?

Asgore having a way out of killing humans is an interesting concept! Outertale takes place 500 years in the future compared to undertale, so the idea that they have the resources and technology to do that is kinda cool and in theory, exploring this idea sounds really fun. In practice though, it feels like it was mostly done to make Toriel out to be an asshole for no reason and to laugh at her for ever assuming he would've really killed anyone (despite... Y'know. Telling everyone that's what he was doing.)

He just. Completely moved on from Toriel without a second thought seemingly, and doesn't even look that affected by seeing her turn up again - meanwhile SHE'S got crumpled up tea recipes in the trash and all the Sad Divorced Energy - it doesn't really fit either of them! Toriel wasn't really given a reason to miss him like that, and I think even if he DID fully move on, he'd be way happier to see her than that.

All his leading statements on how she must feel in LV1 pacifist sucked ass also, especially with the way she kinda just agreed that yeah, she feels like shit for not trusting that he'd suddenly do a 180 and not hurt anyone (AGAIN. AFTER HE CONTINUED TO LET EVERYONE BELIEVE THIS) and that she must feel unworthy of being a mother. She hadn't even said half of this in front of him yet! He put words in her mouth! That in itself would be fine (social blunders are pretty normal for asgore after all) but it... Wasn't treated like that. It was handled as if this was a sweet and compassionate thing for him to say which... Yikes.

And ofc he gets to adopt frisk, and monster kid, and get to have Asriel live with him! His fatherhood is never called to question in undertale, but ofc Toriel's motherhood has to be here. Hell, despite their divorced status, if you talk to gerson in tpe it's highly implied frisk asks if asgore would start aging again if he became their dad! Idk, all of this part just reeked of Toriel hate and nothing more. Asgore is just yet another character to get sanded down and de-clawed and it sucks. So much of what makes him interesting is his mistakes and flaws and how they impact him, y'know?

Twinkly

I wanna start this by saying I don't think his writing is too bad. It's not amazing by any means but by outertale standards, he's one of the better written characters. That being said, Flowey is my favourite character of all time so I'm still gonna be critical.

So they did save the goat. Save the goat aus really aren't my thing nowadays - I feel like so often people act like he's a separate person to Flowey entirely and act like the alarm clock app dialogue doesn't exist. Asriel didn't end the story as a doomed tragedy fated to fade away! Flowey ended the story as someone who finally got closure on the loss of his best friend, and can finally learn to move on, even if it takes him a while to adjust. I don't think he needs to be a goat again for that.

That being said, I know these kinda aus are a big wish fulfilment thing for a lot of the fandom that aren't even necessarily something people want to be canon as much as they just wanna explore the idea and see him truly happy, so I won't judge that element too harshly. People are allowed to have fun, and I think save the goat can be fine if it respects him as flowey rather than separating them.

I really like that they allow Asriel to be fucked up and an asshole rather than him soft rebooting into some Sweet Perfect Little Prince once he returns to his old form, like so many other save the goat takes. Even in lv0's ending he struggles to bite back insults and mean comments aimed at Monster Kid which is... Admittedly kinda refreshing! There's definitely some flowey (or I guess in this case, twinkly) behaviour that still comes through here and I'm glad. This carried over to chaotic, too. While his characterisation wasn't perfect, this at least felt like twinkly obtaining a few form and continuing to play with the world, rather than your standard Asriel take. I also really liked that he remembers and acknowledges chaotic if done before pacifist, that was neat and adds to his character (as far as this game goes) I think.

However, onto the biggest, glaring issue I have with him.

Why. Why does he exist.

No, seriously.

In its attempt to make the world perfect, a world that blatantly only exists so the creator could make a save the goat ending, mind, there's no reason for the goat to need to be saved at all. Nor for him to exist after dying back when Chara lived with the dreemurrs.

Asgore isn't killing humans, so the souls don't need to be absorbed by anyone. Frisk can just enter the archive and lend their power to destroy the forcefield themselves, so there's no ultimatum like there is in undertale - there's no implied tradeoff of Frisk's life for the freedom of monsters without twinkly's intervention. In undertale, flowey's messing around opened up an ending that would've otherwise been impossible, something that worked for everyone.

Without him existing at all here, frisk could've broken the barrier just fine. All it really added to pacifist was a couple extra boss fights and asgore being dead for two minutes. And him being saved I guess but again, there's no real story justification for him being here EXCEPT to pat yourself on the back for saving him.

Why was he created? In undertale it's pretty clear - they wanted a vessel to hold all the souls in for now during the true lab experiments. He exists because Alphys selected the first flower to ever grow in the garden and injected it with determination that she extracted from the human souls.

... But all the humans are... Alive and well in outertale? They don't need a vessel to contain their souls. They don't need to extract any determination from anyone. Again, why do they HAVE vials of determination? And why did she inject one into a flower?

AND THAT'S THE OTHER BIG THING. It's established she and sans injected a starling flower for... Whatever reason. SO WHY THE HELL IS TWINKLY A CARTOON STAR?!

This point makes absolutely no sense at all. He looks absolutely nothing like a starling flower nor does he behave like a flower at all, which is confusing if that's what he started as. Honestly, I think it would've made more sense to just keep him as Flowey if they were gonna include him at all, and just have his appearance reflect a starling flower instead of a golden flower.

This applies to his fight too. Mechanically I think it's AWESOME, but the visuals are... Just very very boring. A huge part of why his fight in the original is so good it's the bizarre and chaotic nature of it, the horror elements, and the way so much of flowey's trauma in terms of how he was created and the things he finds scary was put on blast for all to see. The combination of mechanical and organic elements, all the plants and insects... Idk, just going 'hmm he's a star. Let's have him go through a star life cycle' is boring, there's no visual appeal.

If his creation is so vague and wishy washy, this would've been a great opportunity to flesh it out more. How was he created? What kinds of technology and machinery did alphys use to put all this together? How did she (or roman????? unclear) get the determination? What does twinkly remember?

That leads me onto a tangentially related topic - his trauma. I... Don't think this was shown very well. He talks a bit about BEING traumatised from the lab, but telling isn't the same as showing and canon flowey is terrible at hiding it, whereas I'd just as easily believe outertale Asriel made it up for sympathy points. He never really projects, he doesn't force anyone else to experience anything like he did, nothing like that. He's just a cocky asshole who likes killing, and who eventually decides to start being nice.

This game constantly seemed to be speedrunning ways to get him from being twinkly to being Asriel as quickly as possible in almost every single route which... Huh???? It's weird. Would've been nice to let him be a star more rather than just Asriel...

(final amendment bc I lost a huge chunk of this essay originally and had to rewrite it, and I'm realising I didn't manage to fit this in this time... How does a single monster soul let him get his Asriel form again? Sure he's still treated as if soulless and it doesn't make him a good person, but if he was 'so tired of being a star', why hadn't he tried doing this sooner? It makes no sense...)

For a game that exists to give him a good ending, it's so ironic how little he needs to exist at all in this world. Just goes to show what it looks like when you go too far with 'fixing' things or removing stuff you seem 'too problematic' for the sake of being wholesome or whatever.

Chara

Speaking of which... Look I'm just gonna say it. This version of Chara sucks so bad.

Chara is one of my favourite characters - they're really interesting, morally grey, and a fascinating way for undertale as a game to interface with us as players.

They're a child who likely saw the worst of humanity, then found themselves in a home with family who genuinely loved them once they fell down and met the monsters. Their intense saviour complex made them feel like the best way to help their family was to sacrifice their own life to get enough souls to break them free (and once they realised they had control, get payback against the humans while they were at it). They could be mean-spirited and a prankster. They valued efficiency HIGHLY. Their favourite number was nine because it's the limit, the absolute, a way to stop hurting and to stop others hurting.

And by doing geno, you can push this fixation on stats further. Max out all your stats. Gain power. Get stronger. Become invincible. Nobody can hurt any more if the world is gone. And ofc, they stand as the final arbiter of consequences for the player. Your punishment for killing everyone and for pushing them into believing it needs to be completed. Chara both IS is and is separate from us in a way that can't really be fully disentangled and it's really, really cool.

Anyway, enough gushing about undertale Chara. What's outertale Chara in comparison?

... Nothing.

They're nothing.

Outertale Chara narrates occasionally. They're a ghost that follows frisk around, but aren't confined to that, and have been actively wandering the underground since their death. They also still have a SOUL for some reason? This part doesn't really make sense at all.

Other than sacrificing themself and maybe wanting to take out a few humans after Asriel absorbs them, they don't do anything that could be considered bad ever. The most devious thing they ever do is snatch Asriel's diary to leave a silly comment in there when they first arrive at the outpost (sans does this with Toriel's phone in undertale tpe for comparison lmao). Despite what Asriel seems to believe, Chara is completely absent from the chaotic route - never getting corrupted, never caring about our stats, never wanting to hurt anyone, never even trying to make us face any consequences. They're just... Not here. For a character so prevalent in the murder based route of undertale this is fucking wild.

They all but vanish if you so much as say something slightly mean to someone, too! It's strange, makes no sense, and just like with sans, it feels like they overcompensated waaaaaaay too much for the people who insist they're evil. On top of that, if you do chaotic before lv0, they don't even remember chaotic happening! They'd may as well have just been a member of the ghost family who likes following Frisk around when they're especially nice. Like Asgore and alphys, they've been sanded down and de-clawed to be 'wholesome' and 'perfect', and it just results in a bland, boring character who loses anything that made them interesting, nuanced and fun.

'Chara wasn't the greatest person'... Why, though? They don't have enough substance in this game for that line to really have as much impact.

Frisk

I'm gonna be honest - I actually ADORED their frisk at first, and I think that's because I started with a neutral run and ended up drawing them a lot. They felt silly and mischievous and interesting, and this continued into chaotic. They seem pretty chill with what's going on but then take that even further by being hilariously affectionate with Asriel and still doing silly things like being up for picking up the electrodampening fluid or drinking directly out of the fountain. They felt like a funny little mini-kris (save for being okay with all the murder ofc).

Then uhhhhhhh... That's when I experienced the second chaotic ending, the one without Asriel, as well as lv0. I feel like they definitely DID try to lean on the Kris angle on purpose in terms of their feelings on being controlled and stuff but it???? Just doesn't work very well? There's no ambiguity to this version of frisk once you've seen all the routes. Just like EVERYONE ELSE, they're just a perfect little angel who would never do anything wrong and anything past lv0 is just the eeeeeevil player influence or whatever. Come on, we have deltarune for that kinda approach to control 😭 (though even then, Kris is a layered and interesting character who isn't goodness and innocence personalised, and that's why they're cool)

In undertale, we have no idea what frisk is like as a person. WOULD they spare everyone without our influence? Would they kill? Would they be a scared child lashing out in self defense? Would they run from everything, then give up and let themselves die permanently somewhere? We just don't know! We're not supposed to know! It feels like it went back to the very early fandom interpretation where frisk is Good And Sweet and Innocent while Chara is evil incarnate - except this time they're BOTH the former.

It's a contradiction too! Why in the Asriel chaotic route are they so down to follow him, and pet him, and hug him every chance they get if they don't like all the stuff we're making them so? The player has no influence over Twinkly. Every single thing he did, he chose to do, and yet even if the only time frisk has seen him was him destroying their mercy button and forcing them to kill for him, they seem to love him to pieces and go along with whatever he says happily. What.

I feel like they didn't know what to do with Frisk here at all and it shows.

Other characters

This has been ridiculously long, but to quickly go over non-major characters... They did very few things to make Roman seem interesting, the amount of stuff hes implied to have helped Asgore with just reduces even further any influence or impact alphys had, and (a smaller nitpick)... Why didn't he use times new roman as a font when we DID see him speak in the archive/on the signal stars? It's such a missed opportunity...

Burgerpants was fun... Kinda. Developing him like this feels like something that should've happened DURING the actual game rather than before it though because it made him feel like a whole other person entirely? The poisoned food was very funny though.

Why is Snowy now Stardrake when his dad hasn't changed at all and Crystal looks like any other snowdrake? That was bizarre.

I actually really liked the humans! Establishing them as actual characters was really fun, and I especially like justice. Justice, at least in my opinion, is probably the most interesting character in this whole game tbh - someone who tried to do good but ultimately caused more harm than good, while NOT downplaying it, showing the consequences directly, and showing them work to try to make things better. The way we don't grab their item like the others in the twinkly fight nor go through an area for them in the archive (and just talk to them instead) really adds to their intrigue - what are they like? Who did they know? Is there something they don't want us to see? How are they strong enough to not need us to grab their weapon at all to lend their help? I think it's get funny that the only character I'm fully praising is the clover-adjacent one. Justice outertale they could never make me hate you

(that being said... seeing the way this game is clearly just supposed to be a 'fix' for undertale does sour my thoughts on the humans a little. did they only do this bc they thought them NOT being full characters in ut was bad/a problem with it? 🥴 This applies to the additional monster kid story focus too).

Speaking of monster kid... Them being an orphan was clearly just a plot device to give asgore more kids and therefore feel like he won more than Toriel. Monster kid in undertale seems like they probably did have real and loving parents, and they have a sister too!!!! Would've been nice if they'd at least done something with their sister :(

This got... Way longer than I expected, so I'll stop here. But outertale definitely gave me an even bigger appreciation for other ut fangames. My gripes with deltatraveler section 3 feel much smaller in comparison now, if tsus misses the mark on Flowey later down the line they've at least already done most characters so much more justice, and it really puts into perspective all the heart and soul that went into kissy cutie, as well as its genuine love got the source material and characters.

Sorry outertale, you weren't for me. That being said, if anyone disagrees with any of this then that's fine! These are all just my opinions and feelings on it after going through all the routes and talking about it with friends. Media is always gonna resonate with different people in different ways and that's a good thing! If your perspective on any of this is different and if you had way more fun with it, I'm glad you did and I genuinely wish I could've felt the same. I feel like at the very least, making it has probably been a great learning experience for the devs and I really hope they carry on making games and improving their skills. Hope y'all are thriving and having fun regardless 💙

[franstastic-ideas]

Reasons Why Pokémon Colosseum Is Awesome:

- The protagonist is an ex-member of a villainous organization.

- Said protagonist’s first action in the game is to steal their secret weapon and blow up the hideout, all while wearing a chaotic grin.

- Due to the lack of wild Pokémon, you have a very limited pool of team members to choose from, forcing you to use Pokémon you wouldn’t normally and putting your battle skills to the test.

- All battles are, by Orre regional law*, Double Battles.

*It’s never actually explained why all the battles are Double Battles, but it was once a meme that it's law

- Your opponents also have an unpredictable team lineup. Even the grunts. Trainer class indicates nothing about what Pokémon they have.

- The villainous organization of the game, Team Cipher, their modus operandi is torturing Pokémon through artificial methods until they turn into soulless fighting machines, a process referred to as ‘shutting the door to their hearts’, becoming Shadow Pokémon.

-  Team Cipher did this to not one, not two, but three(3) Legendary Pokémon.

- And YOU undo that damage and teach these Pokémon to love again!!

- By stealing them from their trainers with that thing the protagonist stole from their boss at the beginning of the game.

- Orre was the very first region to be based off somewhere outside of Japan: the state of Arizona.

- So there’s a wild west theme going on here, and it’s great. There’s even an incompetent deputy in one of the towns!

- The final boss of the game is a vile villain with good publicity, and the colosseum you battle in is filled with people actively cheering for you to lose.

- The villain is a twist villain too, it’s actually foreshadowed well (in my opinion), and can still hit you like a truck.

- Pokémon Colosseum sounds like a fangame or fanfiction, but it’s not, it’s real and it’s incredible.

[doughguts-art]

reblogging on my main account too because I just I love your art sm karintou-e and I am so happy you like Bandit!!

Cheese

[foodfightnovelization]

Foodfight! The (OFFICIAL) Video Game

Yes, you read the title right! No it's not the fangame I made a couple months ago, this is the real deal, the whole enchilada, the ACTUAL Foodfight! tie-in game! Shortly after ROTTEN: Behind The Foodfight was released, its creator Ziggy, myself, and everyone else in the Foodfight! community thought we'd found everything there was left to find. After all, we'd uncovered the workprint, the novelization, almost all the original footage, Ziggy had interviewed countless people who worked on the movie, some character models had even been found...so that was it, right? But as I hinted at in my last few posts, the Foodfight! story wasn't quite over yet.

Reese, a friend of Ziggy's, had reached out to one of the developers involved in the Foodfight! tie-in game that was set to be released alongside the movie, and shortly after ROTTEN came out, Ziggy also managed to get in touch with them. One thing led to another and we were sent a HUGE 10GB folder of art, documents, models, and footage related to the game. What you see above is a concept submission trailer created to show off the game and what it'd look like, similar to the pitch reel created for the movie itself. Needless to say, this blew our minds! If you've read my previous post on the subject, you'll know that up until now the only thing anyone had EVER seen of this game was a few seconds of grainy footage from E3 2006. To go from that to a whole stockpile of material from its development was INCREDIBLE! To learn more about how this found its way into our hands, I'll direct you to a blog post from Ziggy himself, explaining a little more about the game's developers (and relaying a truly hilarious story about Larry Kasanoff)

However, I want to talk more about the INCREDIBLE plethora of material included in the folder that was shared with us. Ziggy uploaded everything he was sent to archive.org, so I'll link it below if you'd like to peruse the files yourself, but keep reading if you want to know more about what's included!

Just to start off with, the footage from the above concept trailer and the assorted screenshots- doesn't it just look awesome? It's way more visually appealing than the finished movie ended up looking, for one thing, and it's seemingly inspired more by the early pre-motion capture footage than anything that came later on. It's also just mindblowing to finally see all this, to suddenly go from knowing basically nothing about the game to knowing so much about it! And best of all...doesn't this just look EXACTLY like a movie tie-in game from the mid 2000s? I mean, that shouldn't be too surprising, that's exactly what it is, but tie-in games of that era had a very specific look and feel and this just takes me right back to that. Remember the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory game where you're racing around on a trashcan lid, the Spider-Man game where you're running around Oscorp avoiding security robots, or the Incredibles game where you're rushing through a burning building fighting guys with flamethrowers? Doesn't this just look EXACTLY like one of those?

And you might be thinking "it's too bad we only have a few minutes of footage and some screenshots, I wish we could know even more about what the game would've been like". Well, your wish just came true! Buried deep in the files is a copy of the game's design documents, telling us EXACTLY how each level would've played out! (If you're struggling to find it, it's in AUDIO> Final Drop> FF> Docs) So not only do we get to see a ton of what the game would've looked like, we also get to see how the whole thing would've come together, with 26 action-packed levels consisting of a variety of different gameplay types. Looking at several other files, it seems like the number of levels may have been cut down to 15 later in development, but hey, it's fairly common for design docs to be more complex than the finished game. Regardless, reading about everything they had planned...this really is the ultimate stereotypical tie-in game. I mean, just look at some of these level descriptions! Isn't this every movie-based game you've ever played, all rolled into one? You can bet your boxtop if it had made it all the way through development, it'd easily have the honor of being one of the few tie-in games BETTER than the movie it was based off, although considering how the finished film turned out maybe that's not saying much.

Based on what the developers said in the article linked above, it's unclear exactly how much of the game was finished before it was cancelled, and unfortunately it's incredibly unlikely they'll ever be able to compile a build together to send our way. However, there's just SO much included in this folder it's hard to complain. Not only do we get basically a complete picture of how the game would've come together from all the documents, screenshots, audio, cutscenes and footage included, there are all kinds of additional files that are both interesting and incredibly useful.

Not only are there models and environments from the game itself (unfortunately the only character model included seems to be Dex), there are also models of the ENTIRE CAST taken directly from the earlier version of the movie! Every main character is here, from Dex to Sunshine to Mr Leonard, as well as a bunch of other models such as Dan's plane and cockpit. This is HUGE, and I can't wait to see what talented artists will do with all these resources. At the time I'm writing this, someone already ported several of the models into SFM (Source Filmmaker) and another made several animations in Blender!

I'm sure even more will happen soon, but right now this is pretty incredible. Who thought this would EVER happen? That one day we'd have models of every main character, a complete workprint of the movie from 2005, a tie-in novelization, footage of the long-sought after videogame, and so, so much more. In the span of less than a year, Foodfight! went from some of the most obscure lost media of all time to some of the most well-documented lost media of all time. We have so much there's no way I'd ever even be able to discuss it all, that's how far we've come in the past few months.

Seriously, I've barely even scratched the surface of what's in this folder. There are 3D cutscenes from the game, 2D cutscenes, concept art for the planned toy line, footage of prototypes of those toys in action, MORE gameplay footage, previously unseen storyboards not included in the workprint, raw audio of Charlie Sheen's voice sessions from the movie, tons of songs from the game, the entire score from the movie, and that's STILL not everything! I mean, holy chips! I STRONGLY encourage you to download the folder for yourself and take a look...maybe you'll even find something I haven't yet?

I really think that with this folder now out in the public, this is as much closure on Foodfight! as we'll ever get. I know I always say that and then there's some amazing discovery a few months later, but this is just such a huge smorgasbord of material that I don't even think we can count Foodfight! as lost media anymore...okay, we haven't found absolutely everything so it's partially found media at best, but could you really ask for more than all this? We have countless models from the movie, design docs and footage from the planned tie-in game, early drafts of the script, we know EXACTLY what the movie and game were going to be like before everything collapsed... now, if you're so inclined you can take all that and make something out of all of it, but me? I'm pretty satisfied just having the knowledge. Knowing what could've been before it all fell apart, getting to see so much I never thought I'd get a chance to see... right now, I'd say my Foodfight! cravings have been satiated. Unless another monumental discovery is unearthed anytime soon (at this point I wouldn't be surprised), I think there's really not much more to say. If nothing comes up in a month or two, I'll make a post showing off my personal collection of Foodfight! merchandise, an epilogue to the past year I've spent obsessing over this movie. In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy the absolute treasure trove of Foodfight! material that's been discovered! Dig through it all! Make something out of it! There's so much in these files, you could create your OWN Foodfight!, with blackjack and hookers!

[relaxxattack]

what do you think of homestuck fangames that try to recreate sburb? [ie: genesis project, overseer project]

REALLY cool!!!!!! played the genesis project v recently actually and it was a little buggy but the vibes were awesome.

me and crow are now playing minestuck, we haven’t entered sburb yet but it’s very fun so far. in fact because we’re playing it we’ve been having lots of fun conversations about the logistics of such a game. land generation in particular seems like it would be really difficult to pull off if you wanted to actually generate unique lands for each person

im super interested in the idea of a game that assigns you a classpect based on your in-game actions, so we’ve been having lots of fun discussions about what patterns show up in the lives of different characters based on class/aspect and how a game would go about deciding that.

it’s really cool to imagine getting to play a game completely blind and have “sburb” itself classpect you as if it were destiny… lol

[kernom]

so an update on the fangamer merch…

holy hell this pin is so cool…

idk how i'm gonna have the radiance with me at all times to keep it glowing like this tho

speaking of pins, i couldn't find any evidence that they had securements on the back so i ordered the silver pin pack, but they already had rubber backings included 😅 guess i have back ups now?? (ft. sneaky peak at the PLUSHIES but they're out of frame!!)

i also got this cool af poster looking card of japanese pizza tower art! apparently it's a collection of things in there… this looks freakin awesome but i have no idea where to place it! <:S

HERE THEY ARE HOLY SHIT

my BIBISSS!!!!! the THEYYYYYYYYYYY, the

so pumped they're here now… ;sjfioa;jow;ejfio;dji

(peppino looks a bit off but he already has enough issues already-- i don't need to bully him further XD)

(the knight… so glad yuor home you scrunky eldritch bug(?) thing… the nail is super awesome that it can separate but i kind of worry in the future it could get lost somewhere… AH WELL)

unfortunately i can't add more videos on a post so i'm gonna keep another post -> for it as well as a bonus image :3c

[leoxtheman]

holy shit sonovan from NEW the OFF fangame by IV! :D

[flightyalrighty]

What are your thoughts on Sonic.exe? And the various spin-offs that came out of it?

I may lose some points with folks for this but, I'unno! He kinda just exists for me, to be honest! Just another little guy born (probably as a joke) at the very end of the "evil haunted video game" era of creepypastas -- The only couple of those that I enjoyed being Ben Drowned and everything with the Tails Doll. I'm just not too familiar with Sonic.exe outside of the original creepypasta and a little bit of that fangame that got made years ago.

He got popular right before a phase of my life where I'd taken a long break from all things Sonic (save for the comics). Sonic 4 happened, followed by Sonic Lost World, and I got kinda disheartened by the series, outside of what Archie was putting out at the time. I came back years later for Sonic Frontiers and Sonic Prime. Never dropped the comics though. Mourned Archie Sonic, and switched to IDW when that launched. Basically, Sonic.exe flew over my head.

When I was a kid looking for an "evil Sonic" to enjoy, the go-to was either Dark Sonic/Dark Super Sonic or Fleetway's take on Super Sonic (who I still would very much like to draw one of these days). My favorite of those two was Fleetway Super. Dude had an awesome design and was way more fleshed out as a concept. That being said, those two never really lost their popularity -- Fleetway Super Sonic especially. This is one hell of a tangent.

Finally, I just can't take Sonic.exe seriously. He was never meant to be taken seriously, anyway. Like I said, he was definitely for sure meant to be a satirical take on the haunted video game concept. Ain't thinking about him too much! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[lunasnickerdoodle]

Luna Rambles About RPG Maker: OFF (+a few fangames)

this game kicks ass!

off isnt the best game in the world, but it's been a major inspiration to me for a while now! something about it's bizzare, surreal writing and that smoky sketchy artstyle just. clicks with me yknow. however its gameplay sucks ass bc like its puzzle after puzzle and the combat is a prime example of why 2003 isnt good for actual rpgs.

as i mentioned in the title off has like. a ton of fangames!! my favorite by far is home, with sincere deceit as a close second. home takes everything i love about off, makes it even better AND gives me 4 gay cats as party members! i should also mention that the person behind OneShot worked on HOME so thats awesome!! also, rest in peace felix. your game was awesome and is one of the reasons i wanna make a game of my own.

sincere deceit is great too! its like if you took off's spookier elements and gave them like. a horse stimulant or something. it reminds.me heavily of silent hill, especially the segments where everything just turns fleshy and gross and the music starts to sound like satan's bathroom. oh and the gameplay has been massively overhauled from.off!! combat feels fun in it lol

off rating: 7/10

home rating: 9/10

sindec rating: 9/10