#also gatekeeping the trevor art because its not good and he deserves a dramatic reveal not a halfassed sketch

[tree-of-olives]

Okay. Here it is. I’m here to tell you about my current, most beloved main source of brairot–Arcade Army!! (title subject to change probably but its what i’m going with for now) Rambling under the cut this was like 2 pages in google docs so.this is your warning😭

Okay so!! The project was first thought up around 2 years ago, but I just picked it up again pretty recently. And oh my god. It’s so fun to make but also it makes me feel physically and mentally ill having all these characters to myself.

The basic premise of Arcade Army is that there’s an arcade with a bunch of games in it (wow, shocker) and each game is a part of its own world. After the arcade itself closes for the night, the place operates in a wreck-it-ralph style where characters can leave their games, go to other ones, or spend time in the connection center, where the games are connected in districts based on their location in the arcade.

In order to tell the story I want to, I’ve been working on creating 12 different fictional arcade games, each with their own characters, worlds and game mechanics. And let me tell you. The amount of ocs I’ve been making.mindblowing. Even the ones that I scrapped ALONE are making me insane (i love them all dearly) Anyway, here’s some brief overviews of a few of the games and characters:

FASHIONMANIA FIGHT CLUB:

In the world the arcade resides in, there’s a popular web game called FashionMania where players compete to create the best outfits in online competition mode, and in story mode work to rise to the top of FashionMania Highschool’s fashion aesthetic-based social hierarchy. Due to the original game’s success, its developers decided the next move would be to create an arcade game with FashionMania’s characters, where main bosses and favorite side characters are opponents in a school-approved after school fight club. Players start by creating an outfit combo using one randomly selected item and 2 other alternating selections of items that they have to correctly time to get a perfect outfit match bonus (think about that one timing game in mario odyssey where you have to jump at the right time at the desert casino place.i cannot explain it better but its like that*). Once that’s done, it turns into a fighting game where they go against the various characters and attempt to rise to the top to be known as the best fighter in FashionMania history! (side note, all characters in both the original FashionMania and the arcade game have a unique animal motif, some more obvious than others)

(*like a slot machine. I meant a slot machine.)

KITTASTROPHE:

The final boss of the FashionMania arcade game, Kittastrophe–known as Katelyn in the original game, Kittastrophe being a title she uses only in the fight club–is the most powerful character of the most popular game in the arcade. Because of this, she co-leads the arcade with Newsflash. Despite being a bit arrogant at times, she takes her job as a leader very seriously and provides help to those who need it. Cat themed, but specific type of cat is undetermined rn

NEWSFLASH:

You know those games where a car is eternally going forward and has to alternate between 3 lanes and avoid things on the road? (like this:

) That’s the type of game Newsflash is!! The game itself is named after its antagonist, a former weatherman that gained the ability to change weather at his will and uses said power to make the player’s drive hell, placing tornados, lightning and hail on the three roads. His power makes him the most powerful person in all of the arcade, much more powerful than Kittastrophe (who he leads the arcade alongside, as mentioned before). Despite his seemingly “evil-for-fun” nature, he wants the best for the arcade, though he has fun playing more into his evil appearance for laughs (though not everyone believes/can tell those types of remarks are jokes, causing some to be intimidated by him). He’s also gay, specifically very gay for one guy in particular–Trevor.

^^ He hovers over the car like that.he’s giant in his game but he can change size when convenient (dont ask about his design yet ive been fighting to come up with something worthy.)

TREVIA:

A trivia game hosted by hit guy Trevor!!! Notably Trevor does not have a head (Or maybe it’s invisible? The world may never know) He wears a blue suit, a pink necktie in the shape of an upside down T (for trevor.because it’s funny. also notably an uppercase T because it is NOT a cross) and white gloves. He’s passionate about his gameshow and an enthusiastic host, but also paranoid and anxious about a lot of things. Unfortunately for Newsflash, Trevor falls into the category of being very afraid of him, and is completely oblivious to anything that could possibly be taken as flirting or even a friendly compliment due to his own overwhelming fear that Newsflash will suddenly decide he wants Trevor electrocuted mid-interaction. He is Bi however so Newsy has a chance!!maybe

(his game is shaped like one of these, except imagine the steering wheels are each 1 big buzzer button with 4 smaller buttons above them to pick abcd for the trivia)

Anyway! I have so much work to do with this but its so fun i do not care at all.this will take me years there is no chance it won’t but progress is progress and hopefully one day i’ll have all 12 worlds (plus the extra secret thing that explains the army part of the title) and all their characters made detailed and set in stone!! The plan is to make it a visual novel eventually (or an rpg if it takes another decade and i get too ambitious) that’ll come out in parts. The game will (hopefully!) include minigames based on the concepts i have for each of the arcade games (though with my very very basic coding knowledge that will be a learning curve in and of itself but hey!! That’s a future me problem)

So! My big main things to do list: 1, Create 30+ unique characters and determine their relationships with the other characters. 2, Design the locations and general “story”/world of each individual game. 3, Design the actual arcade cabinets (minor milestone but important.to me) and 4, tie it all together in story format!!

Also I’ll need to draw all the sprites and backgrounds and stuff but that’s wayy out there (and an intimidating task) so i will not be worrying about that right now! By the time im done with those other parts my art will probably improve enough to make basic sprites so.yeah. Or I’ll enlist people to help me which would probably be a better idea but again those are bitty details right now. Okay expect to either hear either nothing about this for months or ill never shut up about it.buhbye

(also thank you @nami-moittli for the encouragement and for inadvertently reminding me i made a doc last year with like 400 picrew links that i buried in my google drive, that will be very useful for my cause here :))

ohmy god i need to be able to draw decently so bad im going so insane over my oc project IM GOING TOEXPLODE

miight do an infodump type thing about it soon because.ough. oomf. mybrain is rocks in a tumbler slowly yet rapidly turning into incomprehensible mush