#Uri strange men series

[nervousnighttragdies]

On today’s episode on A trying not to out themselves as neurodivergent. Guess who totally isn’t recreating all the stages from their favorite video game in Minecraft. And no I have not just completed the first floor of the hotel area.

[pinkseas]

hello to the Maybe Three People In This Tag if i wrote a sophie-centric fic taking place during the hanged man would you be interested or consider reading it be honest <- already wrote it just deciding whether or not to even make a promo post bc i have NO idea how active/dead the fandom is right now

[nagihonos]

love getting a video essay about an rpgmaker horror game "no one remembers" recommended to me. like you fool. you idiot. you misunderstand how mentally ill 14 year old me was. i was playing games off the rpgmaker website with like 2 stars and no reviews. of course i remember this game 😑

[sur1muk1]

Feel a lot better after last week tbh. Still sad but I feel okay enough to post. Replaying the strange men series (mostly the crooked man because I love Duke) and feel like i should draw Keith. I don't actually hate him i just think he's a douche. HOWEVER he had good motives and great character writing so I forgive him for that. Good character, mild dislike for him tho

[thetrueoverlordbear]

Hi I replayed The Boogie Man recently and your voice as Brendon was pretty entertaining. It's been a while since the game has been out. Will you guys have something happening for the anniversary of the game? And if you don't mind me asking, do any of the voice actors/actresses still keep in touch with Uri like for any possible future games?

Hey there, thanks very much for the support! Unfortunately, I haven't gotten wind of any anniversary activities, assuming there are any. I haven't been keeping up with my castmates as much as I used to either, and I assume we're all doing our own things. I have noticed that vgperson has released translations of the Insanity remake and PEDESTAL, though, both of which I thought wouldn't get translated. And I gotta say, this Ask reminded me to catch up on those, so hey, thanks very much again, hahaha~ X"D

[shslargue]

you're a demon child, will

[aseriesofunfortunatejan]

sorry keith i'm apparently taking a stance against your game by owning games 1,2 and 4 in the series. and not yours. number 3

jokes aside playism promo on steam means rpgmaker promos!!! (yume nikki and ib are also on sale!!!!) check it out

the story behind me not owning the boogie man is just. a long time ago a guy decided to buy me the first two when i'd already recently replayed the free versions with my ex so. that was not the best timing. but i was still happy to have supported the series because i love it so much. and just now i had to buy the hanged man because i have so much love for will, and i was so pleasantly surprised when it came out and WAS GOOD. tbh the boogie man IS my least favourite but i'll probably buy it eventually whenever i decide to rererereplay the series

[lilydalexf]

🌲👽 X-Files Survival/Wilderness Fic Recs

Here are some very good X-Files survival or wilderness fics. Because @thatsaprettycoolposter and @pookie-mulder asked! This list does not include post-colonization fics, which are also all survival fics of a sort. Enjoy!

Alligator Moon by jordan big monster in swamp attacks FBI agents

Antidote by Rachel Howard and Karen Rasch Strange doings in a tiny western town bring Mulder and Scully out to investigate. Once there, they uncover a deadly experiment that may cost both of them their lives.

Backtracking by Kel and Scetti What do Charlie Scully, the Alien Bounty Hunter, and Jesse "the Body" Ventura all have in common? Last April you could have found all three of them in Minnesota.

By the Wind Grieved by Karen Rasch Months have passed and Mulder is back. But things are not as they once were. He doesn’t know who he is or what Scully and he are to each other. Together they must reclaim the past before their enemies take away their future.

A Cabin in the Woods by @leiascully Mulder and Scully, on the run, stay for a while in a cabin in the mountains in Montana. A series of interlacing vignettes.

a cabin in the woods by @monikafilefan Being stuck in this rustic cabin, clearly left to age among the wilderness had Scully feeling wild herself, and it felt as if their bodies danced to an ancient song among the elements.

Camping by Amperage and Livengoo Fox Mulder and Dana Scully have survived abductions, serial killers, mutants and aliens but the Partner Cooperation Program Wilderness Encounter may finally do them in. After poison ivy and catfish, who wouldn’t long for a nice, safe killer mutant?

A Change of Seasons by Jo-Ann Lassiter A search for a mythical beast in the woods of Pennsylvania takes an alarming turn for the worse when Mulder's minor in ury escalates into a life-threatening disease.

Changing Tides by QofMush Who says change is all bad?

Circumnavigation by Suzanne Schramm Sometimes you don't know where you're going until you get there.

Coming Back by Karen Rasch Mulder gets a call from Mrs. Scully, who fears for Dana's safety. Following her instructions, he tracks his partner to a cabin in the mountains where he finds that she does indeed need his help. Memories of her time away have come back with a vengeance. (Sequel: The Calm After The Storm)

Dark Water by Suzanne Schramm Prehistoric insects. Mothmen. Now it’s a publicity-shy tribe of murderers. Just another nice trip to the forest with Mulder.

Falling Snow by Snark Mulder, Scully and a mysterious woman from Mulder's past crash in the snowy landscape of the Colorado winter.

Frozen by @dashakay The end of a case, and a stay in a log cabin during a blizzard, lead Scully to take the biggest risk of her life.

Last Chance Falls by @slippinmickeys A man. A women. A forest. A hit squad. An adventure.

The Lost by Wintersong Mulder and Scully are trapped in the remote wilderness and the art of surviving was not what they expected.

Old Growth Forest by Andrea Mulder and Scully investigate the disappearances of homeless people in Madison, Wisconsin and seemingly end up suffering the same fate.

A Path of Salt by Analise Mulder ditches Scully yet again to help an old friend in the Park Service. But Scully has never been one to sit and wait.

Tam Lin by Pequod When your local young men disappear, only to turn up dead a year later, sometimes it helps to have friends in high places. Myth and murder combine in a remote Scottish village, and Mulder and Scully investigate. The Fairy Queen is out to revenge the loss of her most prized knight, Tam Lin. Mulder believes but Scully’s not so sure, until Mulder takes a walk in the woods.

Tempest by Missy Pennington Mulder and Scully survive a plane crash to find themselves injured and stranded in the Appalachian wilderness. (Sequels: Distance, Wild Places, and Escape Me Never)

Untitled by @o6666666 Prompt: Mulder takes Scully camping and they make love for the second time ever under the stars.

Waiting in Motion by mountainphile After leaving the hot spring (in "Miraculous Manifestation"), Scully and Mulder take an unexpected detour on the way home. Dark secrets emerge when they seek shelter in a raging storm...and an intriguing X-file rears its head... (Sequel: Signs of Life)

Way Through the Woods by Pellinor and Rebecca Rusnak Three months ago, someone noticed something unusual about Scully. Now, in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable, Mulder has disappeared, and Scully’s only chance of finding him include an unlikely ally and an untrustworthy informant. As they make their way through the woods, can Mulder and Scully find each other, or is the future lost?

[vgperson]

What Did I Do In 2023?

Whatever I wanted, mostly.

----

As I mentioned last year, my site now has an RSS feed with basically everything I've done back to 2020, so this will mainly be going over the same stuff from that, just with added context.

In January, I finally sat down and properly realized an idea for a short story I'd had sitting around for a while: From the Sidelines, about a fantasy RPG expedition going sideways. I remain very proud of it in both concept and execution, and hope people read it.

In February, Your Turn To Die was released on Steam Early Access, receiving character profiles and some bonus mini-episodes, adding two more later in the year.

After finishing From the Sidelines, I carried that momentum to revisit my Ut0p1a story series about funny computer animals. I'd always meant to continue it - and conclude it - but hadn't been satisfied with the ideas I had for it until totally rethinking them this year. In March, I posted the remaining stories one after another: Right to Code and Left to Code. I'm very proud of these as well. Also in March, Kenshi Yonezu released LADY. (Video, interview)

In April, Uri released the Data Book of the Strange Men Series, a big collection of the writing she's done on the games in the series, with a lot of new parts as well, all translated by me.

Then in May... uh, well, let's see. In April, Capcom released the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection. I always adored the Battle Network games, and was initially excited that they finally did the thing... but by the time it came out, I was pretty disappointed by how, while you certainly couldn't call them low-effort ports, the effort didn't extend everywhere I thought it should, with the biggest offenders being the total absence of any "convenience features" except Buster Max Mode, the bad font, and the almost entirely untouched translations.

So, I ended up deciding I might as well just replay the originals, and that was a fun time (aside from the parts that were bad). Doing this, I couldn't help but notice how... turbulent the translations were, even if I'd always known they were less than ideal. I mean, the first two games just used periods for ellipses despite the tight character limits, then in BN3 they had an ellipsis character... but it's center-aligned, Japanese-style? Aside from the intro, which has normal ones? Gosh, somebody should fix that - it's simple enough to find and edit in YY-CHR. "JapanMan" is silly, too - I wonder if anybody made a patch for that? Wait, what do you mean there's just a tool to extract and insert text in all the Battle Network games including the Legacy Collection???

Thus began a journey that sort of occupied the rest of my year. First I did the BN3 Translation Revision, trying not to worry too much about cross-referencing the Japanese text unless something seemed wrong, so that I didn't spend too long on the project. Then I began to consider BN2, with its unfortunate "foreigner" text that would need some more significant reworking. I established more convenient tools for comparing with the Japanese script, and thus did a much more thorough job with it, releasing the BN2 Translation Revision in June (AKA Princess Pride Month).

Finally, after giving myself time to recover and actually finish replaying the series, I knew what I had to do to close things out. With the BN4 Translation Revision, you can finally play Battle Network 4 with a translation that isn't such a mess. Whether you'd want to is for you to decide, though if you can get over the structure, I don't think it's the worst game in the series by any means. (Oh, and in December I also updated the BN3 Revision to 1.1, doing a thorough pass with the methods I'd honed. But I think I'm pretty much good on MMBN translations now.)

Anyway, backtracking to other things that happened during my Battle Network haze... June had Kenshi Yonezu's Moongazing (video, interview), and July had Globe (video, interview, interview).

Last but not least, released in November, I translated Refind Self: The Personality Test Game, a short game from Lizardry (creator of 7 Days to End with You) with a fun concept.

----

Obviously I was right to have said "no promises" last year. But really, Your Turn To Die should get its final part on Steam sometime next year, maybe even early-ish in it. That's certainly the goal.

I'm also hoping to buckle down and finish one of my own games, but as usual, who knows how that'll pan out. Letting my whims carry me this year let me finally finish From the Sidelines and Ut0p1a, which was great, and it also led me down a Battle Network rabbit hole, which was... fine, but definitely for a narrower audience. I'd always like to get back to more free game translations and the like, too, but it takes effort to find things I'd want to translate. For now, I think my increasing desire to be able to let loose some of these original games I've been planning, and the stories in them, might come out on top.

[helenabaring]

【Three Person Collab】

I did a three person collab with Biwa and analoguri! We drew and coloured each other's illustrations of the Strange Men Series protagonists and did a final illustration of Keith ourselves. ✨

Thank you so much, Biwa and Uri, for doing this with me!

※Please do not crop, edit, use or re-upload/reprint my illustrations anywhere without my permission. Thank you!

[kirvia]

Hey, do you have any rpg maker horror game recommendations?

here is my veryveryvery subjective list of rpgmaker games that i personally played thru. i probably forgot some sorry

(edit: just gonna use this as a masterlist of stuff that i went through)

playing through and/or on the to play list

forest of drizzling rain remake

lisa trilogy

in stars and time by insertdisc5

faves ever

OFF(!!!), mad father (original not the remake), ib, witch's house (read the light novel)

love these

wadanohara, omori, zeno, cat in the box, hylics, elevator hitch, any of the yume nikki stuff (my favorite is yume 2kki online)

like these too

to the moon, cold front, end roll, shtdn, hello charlotte, the gray garden, eloquent countenance, flesh, blood, and concrete, tide up, 8:11, oneshot

just silly

ao oni, superassfuck rpg, misao, too impatient

trashy but i like them but i wouldn't recc these to most people

yanderella, mogeko castle, corpse party

neutral/no strong opinions/mixed feelings; someone will probably find more merit out of these stories than me LOL I know i'm in the minority for my thoughts on certain titles here.

uri's games (mermaid swamp, strange men series, etc.), hello hello world, escaped chasm, angels of death, dreaming mary, grave of traumarei, underworld capital incident, hello...? hello?, alice mare, ayakashi akashi, faust's alptraum, pocket mirror

I did not like these.

savior of the abyss, alone, ann, the dark side of red riding hood

liked a lot but i'm waiting till it's released on steam to finish it

your turn to die

hiatus/dropped but I hear these are worth completing; i just experienced complications on my end

yuppie psycho, witch's heart, dweller's empty path

emphasis on Subjective please don't kill me </3 there are some other games in the #game recc tag that i've made that you should check out!

[kolegabezimienia]

☆ミCringetober Day 24☆ミ

I love The Crooked man and the Strange Men series sooo muuuuccchhh ヽ(*⌒▽⌒*)ﾉ

Idk what Uri put in these games but man,,, I've been hyperfixating on them since 2..? years now

I really want to talk about the series more, but I don't know how to formulate my thoughts in an intresting or understanable manner

(＞﹏＜)

[ariapmdeol]

rpgmaker creator guidelines

this is just a masterpost of guidelines for different devs! i'll include links to diff languages and translations. You should be able to click and go to the website. I've listed the work that they're best known for and their studio name. This list is incomplete. If you have any creator guidelines that you'd like me to link to, please let me know!

Witch's Heart - Blue★Star Entertainment/IZ ENG JP KR CN PORTUGUESE

Cell of Empireo - Sharktale Factory JP KR CN ENG

END ROLL - Segawa eng/jp more here in eng as well another eng

ZENO/SHTDN - Marutoku Base 丸得基地 JP KR Eng

Ib - Kouri eng JP JP2

The Witch's House - Fummy eng jp(free) jp(mv)

Mermaid Swamp/The Strange men series - Uri eng JP

[ruptinea]

girls I'm playing the strange men series by uri

[reaversanctuary]

me playing literally any pixelated horror rpg: yeah it's good it's good but is it as good as uri's 2015 "the boogie man" third installment in the strange men series? i don't think so-

[rpgsocialservices]

RPG Review: Mermaid Swamp

Mermaid Swamp is an rpg game made by prolific developer Uri, who also made the strange man series. The original was released in 2013, but I've only played the 2019 remake. From the color palette and atmosphere to the four different endings, this is easily one of my all time favorite rpgmaker games, and I'd like to go over why!

Plot: The game begins when four college kids-the archetypal two girls and two boys-get lost on a roadtrip in a rural mountain area. They find a manor house where the owner, an old man, gives them shelter for the night. The phones, of course, are out, but that is not discovered until things start to go bad. Which they do rather promptly, when the second girl has a nightmare and wakes up deathly ill. It's at this point that the gameplay really begins as we cycle through trying to escape, trying to figure out why this place is making people sick and driving them mad, and trying to do what it takes to keep everyone alive. The gradual unlocking of new map areas corresponds with the gradual unveiling of the family history of the place, and makes each new section feel like a well-earned advancement.

While the reveal for what exactly is up with this strange, semi-abandoned property can be seen coming from more than a mile away, I still think about it years after playing this game for the first time. There's an overbearing grotesqueness to the men's desire for those 'mermaids' and the way they didn't really see them as human. In equal measure, the women's struggles to escape the family and their cries for freedom from beyond the grave are striking and sobering.

The majority of the game and plot are wonderfully reminiscent of every campy teen slasher horror in a way that's derivative without being reductive. It doesn't certainly take itself too seriously, but it still maintains its unsettling atmosphere when it matters. Early on in the game, there are some frankly goofy scares, but this lighthearted 'funhouse' type scare vibe gets dampened and darker as the game progresses. This approach to storytelling works very well with this type of story, because the protagonists are stupid college kids who first pretend they aren't in over their head, then deal with their fear through humor and increasingly snappy attitudes, then finally are utterly serious when they have to face their final task head on (or when someone dies, depending on which route you do).

Characters: The four main characters are Rin, Seitaro, Yuka, and Yuuta. The dynamics between these four is quite fun in my opinion, and again is very reminiscent of the dynamics in teen slasher films. The character interactions between all four as a group and individually do a great job of showing how the dynamics between all the characters probably work in their normal lives, and give insights into each character as an individual. Additionally, the bad endings show what circumstances will push each character to their personal breaking point, and (what I appreciate most) show what their friends' reactions are to that. Each character is realistically flawed in individual ways, and in the case of Rin and Seitaro especially also showcase realistic individual strengths that work well in relation to the flaws already shown. On the whole, the character writing is one of the biggest draws of this game for me.

Game mechanics: The gameplay itself isn't anything unusual or special, but this can be a bonus since it allows you to jump right into playing when you're familiar with rpgmaker gameplay standards already. This is largely puzzle based with a number of chase sequences. The chases themselves are usually straightforward with a goal at the end, such as 'get to the hammer', rather than being one of the more convoluted types. This is a plus or minus depending on personal preference. The puzzle aren't overly difficult, but I do remember one or two that I had to work through. Again, whether this is good or not depends on personal preferences. At the least, the puzzles aren't hard enough to interfere with the flow of the game.

Misc.: I cannot overstate this; there's an Obama jump scare.