#This game is Weird

[ty-bayonet-betteridge]

the archangel gabriel: YOU ARE LESS THAN NOTHING. A MERE OBJECT

me, pumping my shotgun so that i can bathe in his blood: stop i can only get so erect

[goombasa]

Katrielle and the Millionaire's Conspiracy is Weird

I think every long-running series has attempted some level of spin-offs that are weirdly separate from the main series, if not just in genre, but in tone and focus.

The Professor Layton game Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionare's Conspiracy is weird in that it's not a spin-off, it's counted as a main entry in the series, despite feeling very disconnected to a lot of the other games in the series. Hershel Layton himself is even missing during the time that this game takes place.

Instead, the game stars Hershel Layton's daughter, Katrielle, who has opened up her own detective agency in the heart of London, going around and solving crimes around the city for whoever will hire her. The structure of the game is far different compared to other games of its series, sending you on a series of episodic cases, many of which are presented as very light-hearted affair. Even the most serious ones presented to you (such as episode 2's murder/suicide premise or Episode 11 featuring Katrielle being framed for murder) are either humorous misunderstanding or not nearly as bad as anyone was thinking, making anyone who actually does commit a crime relatively sympathetic, with nearly ever episode resolving in a fairly happy ending.

Comparing that to the structure and tone of the Layton games, it's a pretty stark contrast. The other games in the series were pretty much always one continuous story from beginning to end, and while none of the games ever got particularly gruesome, they didn't shy away from the more disturbing details of the cases, or the more disturbing actions of their villains, who were actually allowed to be villains.

The game is even set up to with two hooks for an overarching plot, but neither of them are explored at all during the game's runtime. They're both introduced in the opening scenes and then promptly dropped for the rest of the game. There's the mystery of the amnesiac talking dog, Sherl, who shows up on Kat's doorstep asking for her help in finding his identity, and there's also the fact that Katrielle doesn't know where her father is, acknowledging to several other characters that he is missing over the course of the game, but at no point are either of these points addressed. Yes, there's a hint or two dropped during the ending, or in Sherl's case, during a Case Coda (basically a short epilogue to whatever case you finished), but that's it, and it honestly makes the game feel like it lacks a cohesive direction. Honestly, with the way it was designed and released, it feels like it was going more for the mobile market than anything else. That kind of makes sense considering it was released on iOS and Android before 3DS, and found its way onto the switch three years later. It's structure just feels closer to a mobile game. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but it feels very different.

That's not even getting into the quality of the puzzles themselves. Most of them are fine. I love puzzles that allow you to freely manipulate objects and sort of work out bit by bit what the solution is. The other Layton games had their fair share of puzzles that operated on moon logic, but I swear about half the puzzles in this game are more like riddles that you can't really logic out the answer to because it requires you to think about details that the game doesn't give you, or hides behind the ‘hint coin’ system, where you can pay a single coin to unlock a hint for a puzzle, up to a maximum of four time, with the hints increasing in helpfulness for each spent coin, to the point where the final hint (referred to as the super hint) will basically spell out the solution for you, or give you the final steps to finishing it. However, especially with more word-oriented puzzles, or riddles, the hints feel like they're going out of their way to waste your hint points. I had several moments where the first and second hint were essentially just restating information given in the instructions.

Now, it's already been confirmed that we are getting a new, main Professor Layton game some time in 2025. From the original release of The Millionaire's Conspiracy, that will be the first new main game in the series in about 11 years. When that happens, I'm hoping that the game builds off of some of the questions posed from this game, as it does raise a few questions but shows no interest in actually answering them, while also not really being the best example of puzzles in the series. If I had to sum the game up, I would call it ‘cute.’ It feels like a game that was skewing for either a younger demographic, or a much larger demographic than the other games in terms of its tone and layout. Aside from the missing professor, acknowledged near the start of the game, this very much feels like a game that was meant to be a spinoff, but when they realized the gap in time between main entries, it got bumped up to a mainline entry. That's just speculation on my part, but it just feels so different. while it doesn't stray too far from the series' main gameplay, the overall feel is undeniably different, and I just find it interesting how the game tries to straddle that line between what we would consider a spinoff and a main series entry.

[cockmcstuffins]

for lack of artistic ability please have this instead displaying the bizarre experience i’ve been having with digimon world: next order for nintendo switch

[yevuul]

Playing modded Terraria with my friends has been a horrendous experience. Hell has been flooded with water as a consequence of a failed attempt to contain the crimson, I have six women following me at all times, everyone's weapons are so visually distracting that the Women are not distractions themselves, I have accidentally lured the Moon Lord into our base like seven times, and the single funniest incident so far is this:

[ktysh]

i don't understand!!! 😭

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[bat-in-the-machine]

repeatedly gestures at severed arm

I mean yeah it was almost immediately replaced with an energy construct but still

[ryuuna]

can persephone please catch a break cuz that’s twice now she hasn’t been able to raise her kids due to divine fuckery 🫠

[chez-cinnamon]

Ideas ideas ideas....

Thinking of adventures that could take place in my AU, a fancy ball adventure sounds perfect!!!!!!

There would be more but I had a busy and stressful day lol

[humming-fly]

The 2D vs 3D contrast of the sonic and shadow generation hubworlds cracks me up the more I think about it

Bonus:

[wickedwitchofthewesninski]

My canon: Neil is super weird, but in a way people don't expect and it catches them unaware. He will have a perfectly normal conversation with you and then you realise he doesn't ignore the first slice of bread of the loaf, uses it right after opening it to make a sandwich. He doesn't have a set way of replacing the toilet paper roll. He does sock-shoe-sock-shoe. He takes the peel of the banana off completely before eating it on the go. He unplugs the laptop yanking on the cable not the plug. He eats kiwis with the skin on like they're apples. He eats dry cereal then drinks a glass of milk.

Neil Josten is like an alien that has managed to blend in quite well with the humans but sometimes he does something that reminds you he's a martian

[mischievous-thunder]

The most flirtatious Logie Bear variant did use those words to mean whatever Wade wanted them to mean

[alltheshadesofamber]

AFTG is a very good example of narrator bias, because if we didn’t get a book from Jean and Jeremy’s POVs we would have no way of knowing the world does not actually in fact revolve around one Andrew Minyard

[shanklin]

Sentient Mystery Shack, who is really biased towards Stan, so when Ford tells Stan he has to give it back after the summer it’s on sight.

Ford keeps tripping over nothing, nothing is where it's supposed to be and somehow he keeps running into closets when he tries to go outside.

But the worst part, the WORST part is that Ford's lightbulb just won't. Work. No matter what he does it keeps flickering and exploding.

Ford is spiraling. 

There is no reason why it shoudln’t work. All his trial runs work perfectly. He’s already checked the Shacks wiring three times and relearned this dimensions science from the ground up. 

Nothing works.

The Rift? Bill? The impending apocalypse? Eating? Sleep? Who cares about that. 

WHY. WONT. THE. LIGHTBULB. WORK???

It doesn’t help that Stan keeps laughing at him.

“Then you do it!” Ford eventually snaps at Stan.

Stan shrugs and with a little song under his breath screws his own lightbulb in. It works perfectly.

Stanford screams.

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF Into the pit got William Afton a new hater..