#also introducing this feature to new players hits different

[bogleech]

Ok but I have seen you talk about this so many times, even referencing it in your old cartoons, so I gotta ask - when and how did you fall in love with neopets, like that?

Wait, is it that obscure now? I didn't know a single person from its inception to roughly 2010 who didn't have a neopets account. It was the single biggest gaming-esque name on the internet for years. Celebrities casually mentioned playing it, it got mainstream marketing tie-ins, it had plush toys people waited in line to buy up and a TCG made by the same company as Magic the Gathering. It's not that I especially "fell in love with neopets" like it's a niche thing but that there was a time it was almost outselling Pokemon, so it's just another huge cultural phenomenon that was a big part of everyone's lives during my teens to twenties, and hits my special interest in creature design since it has THOUSANDS (beyond the pets alone) ranging in quality from extremely creative to just plain heinous. I personally only got invested in it when they introduced the mutant pets, though, because it started out having almost like a "rule" against making any pets that were "ugly." They'd joke about it as a prank for instance, and originally only featured the mutants as part of a storyline they never intended players to actually adopt. They even had a fake alternate version of the site with fake "adoptions coming soon" and somehow didn't anticipate the userbase genuinely wanting the slime creatures.

The Chia and Aisha were my favorites but mainly the chia because that kind of "scuzzy" creature was already my own design aesthetic, polar opposite of the site's established style and reminded me of if Jeff Goldblum got fused with a tardigrade instead of a fly:

Is that just me? I feel like the tardigrade similarity jumps right out but I think it was an accident and they were possibly actually thinking of the rotting giant from Nausicaa:

The fact that they intended its design to be unlovably ugly and were surprised anyone wanted it only made it more sympathetic. Eventually they made mutants available and I got fully invested into playing, at the time having to spend hours a day on their little flash games until I could afford a mutant after months of labor. But then a couple of years later they just abruptly decided they really didn't feel like having its design around anymore and "updated" it, which back then was automatic for all pets owned by all players with no going back:

It had unfortunately been fairly common that they'd just completely, totally redo a pet like this with no warning and no user poll to make sure it's what anyone wanted. You just had to pray they never did it to your favorites.

All the other mutants in that earlier image would also get completely changed or never released at all. They still kept some of the other "gross" mutants and would make even grosser, so that wasn't even part of the reasoning. Just the random whims of mad gods I guess. I think what killed the game for a lot of people was actually when they did this to basically everyone at once, standardizing almost all the pet artwork so they could wear clothes in their new dressup system. It wasn't as drastic as replacing a sludge guy with some kind of hairy leaf guy but it did eliminate hundreds of technically unique designs from the site, and I found someone else's examples they put together so I thankfully don't have to do it myself:

If anyone's not familiar enough with neopets or didn't figure that out from the last paragraph, the ones on the right are just recolors of the same exact art as all members of their species with added accessories (now wearable items) Players used to work hard to get pets they wanted based on their unique poses and personality, but you could only keep the original art for a small number of these. The customization feature kind of attracted a different new fandom, from what people say, but it never approached a fraction the site's peak, which is probably how the brand wound up getting sold to some NFT bros who aren't even involved in the site itself and supposedly never even spoken to its remaining staff outside some business emails? This is unrelated to the brief period it was bought by scientologists and the siterunners had to fight back against their propaganda leaking into it. I really didn't expect to turn this response into a mini article, I should really just make a thing on bogleech.com about it sometime. Some of my tumblr mutuals to this day are people I met through the neopets fandom and probably have equally lengthy memories/complaints.

[thydungeongal]

sorry if this is a question you've gotten before, but i'm thinking of looking into rolemaster, and i wanted to know if there was an edition you think is "best" (or if there even are major differences between editions?)

I've gotten this question many times but I never get tired of answering it :)

Broadly speaking, there are currently three major versions of Rolemaster out there. The third one, Rolemaster Unified, was supposed to be the one to unify players of the first two under one banner. Comic unrelated.

Here's a quick overview of the three currently available versions:

Rolemaster 2e/Classic: Rolemaster's 2nd edition is basically original flavor Rolemaster, and it is the one I grew up with (and happens to be my favorite). It is arguably the simplest of the three versions of Rolemaster: at its core it's very much a D&D style fantasy adventure game and the deep world simulation only started creeping in via later releases. It was reissued in the early 2000s under the name Rolemaster Classic which features improved layout and organization, new presentation, and some quality of life fixes added in via optional rules snuck in from the various companions.

Rolemaster Standard System/Fantasy Roleplaying: In the 90s Rolemaster was due for an update and the designers decided to take a look at some of the lessons learned during the run of Rolemaster 2e and apply those to the system. What they ended up with was a version of Rolemaster at its most world simulationy. Rolemaster Standard System (later reissued as Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying) is actually streamlined in places and also introduced a lot of depth into the system when it comes to non-combat and non-dungeon gaming activities, but it is also the most front-loaded in terms of math. It is a fantastic piece of game design in my opinion, but also a game where the character sheet has a separate workbook for doing the character creation bits that you then transport to your main character sheet.

Rolemaster Unified: The currently supported version and I do think there is a lot to love about it. It is also the first time Rolemaster has explicitly gone for a toolkit approach, with the game coming out with explicit rules for creating new content, including rules for creating new playable races! The core set of books isn't finished yet, since we are still waiting for the Creature Law books, but the playtest rules are still out there for free. The aforementioned toolkit nature is the main differentiating factor of Unified, in other ways it feels very much like a "greatest hits" of Rolemaster. It hasn't quite grabbed me like the other two, but it's still a fine game and the one most likely to find you other people to play with in the future.

Obligatory mention of Lightmaster (a free d20-based clone of Rolemaster 2e) and Against the Darkmaster (an extremely good modern indie fantasy RPG inspired by the design of Rolemaster).

[arimiadev]

Developer Interview — Making A Date with Death

6 months ago, a brand new self-insert romance visual novel hit the market called A Date with Death, created by visual novel veterans Two and a Half Studios. Coming off of the success of The Divine Speaker, they dived into the chat sim space in visual novels with a huge splash. A Date with Death is currently sitting at over 5,000 positive reviews on Steam with a Kickstarter for an after story launching this week.

Read the interview on my blog or read it below.

Arimia: Hi Gabby, thanks for sitting down to talk about A Date with Death! Both of us have been into visual novels for quite a while, but what got you into them?

Gabby: I feel like my introduction to visual novels was probably similar to a lot of people my age…. and that was being on Tumblr too much and being introduced to Dramatical Murder much too young, and installing the fantranslation for myself and all of my friends, hahaha. From there I played the rest of the N+C games, and then moved to things like No Thank You! since it had a translation. After that I moved further to Japanese games that didn’t have a translation. These were 95% BL as well – I’ve played one or two otome games in my time but never really been super into them.

Actually, when I first got into development, I hadn’t played any Western visual novels yet. It was only after I started in game development that I tried more indie visual novels in general.

As for my favorite VNs, I have a few favorites! My first favorite and it’ll always have my heart is Lamento. It was kind of the culmination of a lot of different things I love in media, and I still love the game. There’s another untranslated game I really like called Pigeon Blood. I actually helped with some editing of translations for some of the routes a looong, long time ago. A more recent favorite, and probably my favorite overall, is MAMIYA! MAMIYA is a Japanese indie visual novel by KENKOULAND which I will happily shill over my own games (LOL) about a group of people at the “end of the world”. The way the story is presented, I don’t think I’ve ever played anything like it, and I found it very inspiring. I was lucky enough to work with the creator Kokoroten on an animation for my own game Dreambound, which was fantastic.

Arimia: Would you believe I’ve never played DMMD? Definitely cut from the same cloth though about being exposed from too much Tumblr time and hearing about all of these Japanese VNs that would never get localized over here, but now Fate/Stay Night is coming to Steam in a few months…. the visual novel landscape has changed so much.

You’ve worked on several boys love and girls love titles before A Date With Death that are more in the fantasy historical realm – how did you come up with the idea for ADWD?

Gabby: Well, we’d actually been wanting to try something more modern for awhile now, despite our love for fantasy settings, and we only happened across a screenshot from another developer’s chat sim and I kind of fell in love with the format. I’ve been really wanting to try my hand at something “cozy”, and though A Date with Death doesn’t really sound cozy on the box, we have a lot of features that I think set well with that crowd. I’m a very big fan of the informal aspect of the writing. I think even in my more serious games, I always lean into humor a little bit and I really enjoy writing banter, so the chat sim format was perfect for that.

(I styled my MC after my character Rose. he’d probably wind up in a shady chatroom like this)

Arimia: Having played some of A Date with Death, I can definitely see how it’s more “cozy” than some of your other games, and I think a lot of the player reactions I’ve seen have shown that too. The overall scope of the game is also on the smaller side, despite the player customization. How did you go about deciding the size of the game? Were there any parts/features you wanted to include but didn’t?

Gabby: Actually, the size is a lot BIGGER than we originally planned. Being our first free to play game, it’s always a little bit of a risk to put a lot of money into something when visual novel development is your livelihood, and obviously with a free game there’s no guarantee of a return. We originally planned for each “day” of the game to be only around 2000 words, for a grand total of 14,000 words for the game. Very short and sweet. Over the development we realized we had a lot more words than originally planned that we wanted to tell, and part of that is owing to just how many choices and options there are. There’s some conversations in the game which people are honestly surprised about because they’ve never managed to get them on any of their playthroughs. The game actually ended up being around 60,000 words, and this should be near doubled when Beyond the Bet releases.

We also included a lot of other things that weren’t originally planned when we concepted the game. We knew we wanted character creation and some degree of room decorating, but we also added a lot of small missable content – like interacting with your pet, watering your plant, reading books on your bookcase, minigames and websites on your computer, eavesdropping on your neighbor… the one thing we had originally planned but cut was voice acting. It’s something we really wanted to do, and we wrote Casper’s character with a very talented voice actor in mind, but it was a bit too much of a risk with the price of it and the unknown of releasing a free game but still making money on it. We don’t believe in having people work for us for free, even on free projects or jam games, so it wasn’t something we were prepared to have someone do for free even though I’m certain we could have.

Luckily, in the end we decided to hold a Kickstarter for the project, and that allows us the possibility of adding voice acting if it goes well!

Arimia: Yeah, it’s definitely a risk to spend so much time and effort on a free project, but I’m glad it worked out in the end. When announcing the game, what was your strategy? Did it differ any from how you announced and marketed your previous games?

Gabby: It was a little different! This is the first time we’ve had TikTok as one of our platforms when announcing a new project, and we knew we wanted to focus a lot of our attention there. Video content is very strong performing we’ve found, but it is definitely a skill in and of itself. We spent a lot of time honing down on our hook and how we could make people get it in a single line. On a platform like TikTok, you have a split second to catch someone’s attention.

We also had a much shorter amount of marketing time than our usual multi-year projects. We knew we wanted it out within a few months of announcing it, so we needed as much impact as possible in a short amount of time. We knew we wanted to get an animated opening since it can be a very powerful piece of marketing material, and I think that was a great idea and we’ll likely continue it going forward.

At the time of announcement, we had less than 10,000 followers on Twitter. Twitter is probably my favorite platform, but it was kind of falling off for us a little when we were ready to announce A Date with Death – but it just took off after we announced the game. We had a multi-month document with marketing beats and announcements we’d make over the few months we had, but with everything taking off much more than we expected we added to it a lot. I think you always have to be ready to adapt to change quickly in this field.

We actually never planned to market the game as “tease the babygirl”, but it’s something fans latched onto, and you can’t make that kind of marketing yourself, I think. We really leaned into our audience and what THEY thought of the game, and used that to our advantage in a way. I’m very thankful for whoever first asked if he was a babygirl.

Arimia: Twitter (was) probably my favorite platform too, mainly because it’s so easy to just make a quick post or update. TikTok has so much reach but it’s just so much easier to tweet a meme out somedays.

A little side question- with the name having the word “death” in it, were you worried about SEO / being censored on social media, or did it affect you? When I was creating Drops of Death years ago, I was worried social media platforms would suppress posts about it but ultimately went with it because it fit with the serial killer theme.

Gabby: Actually we weren’t too worried about that – we’ve definitely used words like death, kill, murderer, etc. in relation to our other games before and haven’t have much trouble. There ARE certain words especially on TikTok that it’s best to censor, but I haven’t had any problem using the name anywhere and we were prepared to risk it to use the name we wanted.

Arimia: It’s definitely a catchy name that summarizes the experience well. Back to the part where when people were first getting exposed to the concept and came up with Grim being a babygirl— how would you advise other devs to understand what keywords and pitches work better for their games?

Gabby: My first suggestion is to look at similar games to yours and the words they use. Look at the concept of your story and try to boil it down to a paragraph, then a sentence. Look at what makes your game unique, or how you can lean into what fans will get out of your work. Give your players elements that they can recognize instantly without a lengthy explanation.

“A romance chat sim where you flirt with and/or bully the Grim Reaper”

“Compete against the Grim Reaper to keep your soul… or die trying”

“Create your custom MC and flirt with the man trying to take your soul”

I use all of these in our marketing, because even though there’s a lot more to the game we’re not talking about, this is a hook that can capture someone’s attention straight away and then you can funnel them to your game.

Arimia: Getting hooks down can be such a difficult part but it’s so, so important. What do you think helped you most marketing-wise?

Gabby: It’s a tough question. We did a lot, and had huge amount of attention from all over the place and it just snowballed more, and more, and more. I think honestly what started the snowball was TikTok. Once we had one video go big, we were having multiple a week go 30k-400k views. We were getting 500-1300 wishlists per day for months. A lot of people joined our Discord from there and went to follow us on Twitter. TikTok is hard and the format is a lot to handle when you’re new to the platform, but it was absolutely worthwhile for us. Another thing I’ll quickly note – reuse your content. I just repost my TikToks to Insta Reels and they get a similar, if not more views, for no extra effort.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Two and a Half Studios (@twohalfstudios)

Arimia: Yeah, it’s wild how quickly TikTok can blow up for someone. I’ve had posts get 100k+ views and then a few posts later they’ll struggle to hit 1k.

Side note: Gabby has written about her experiences with TikTok on her blog. You can also read about my discussions on TikTok marketing for visual novels here.

What do you think was the least effective thing you did for marketing?

Gabby: I suppose Steam events this time around kind of paled in comparison to our own marketing efforts. They’re always worth doing though – any Steam events you can get into, participate in them! You’ll always see some kind of return. But for us, an event giving 200-300 wishlists was just a drop in the water. Not at all not worth doing, but certainly it wasn’t a huge focus for us this time around.

[A]ny Steam events you can get into, participate in them!

Apart from that, I posted also to some other social media sites like bluesky, but I didn’t find it very worthwhile and stopped rather quickly. There’s only so much time in a day, and as the only person handling all of the marketing, it just wasn’t worth it.

Arimia: For newbie devs, what would you recommend they focus on? TikTok, Twitter, or something else?

Gabby: I think TikTok is the easiest platform to hit it big on “fast”. I say “fast” because it’s not guaranteed that you’re going to hit it big, it really depends how well you adapt to the platform, but your content there has a chance of being seen, even without any followers at all. That’s probably why I recommend it as a platform for new and old visual novel devs alike.

I think you’ll also find that once you pick up the format, it can be pretty fun to make. I think platforms like Twitter are easier to use, but getting started on them is hard. VNs are so visual heavy so we already have so much content that works well on TikTok. Of course, there could be problems in the future with using TikTok in the US, so we’ll see how that goes.

It’s best to focus on a few places though, and not to put all of your eggs in one basket. When you’re putting your audience in places that can go away, it’s always a risk, so it’s good to spread them between places like TikTok, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

Arimia: Yeah, I think one thing devs forget is that these social media platforms are ran by big tech that don’t care about the little guys – if your account gets banned or falsely flagged, what are you going to do if you can’t get it back? Always best to have more than one site you’re posting on, but you don’t want to spread yourself too thin.

At what point in ADWD’s development cycle did you start marketing it? It was a pretty short development cycle to begin with.

Gabby: We started working on the concept of A Date with Death January of last year, and announced it on the 5th of July. This wasn’t really 6-7 months of dev time though – we were working on two of our other games at the time. By that point, we’d finished maybe half of the game and announced the game in time for the Steam Visual Novel Fest a month later.

This was actually pretty successful for us, and gave us a decent boost to start from. We then released the demo at the end of September in time for Steam Next Fest, which was a bit more meh for us despite going in with a high wishlist velocity. We then released the game at the start of December. But, like I said, we were working full time on Dreambound and The Divine Speaker: The Sun and the Moon, so I think we could have made it in much less time if we didn’t have other games on our plate.

My suggestion is to announce the game and start marketing early, but not so early you run out of content you can post. My strat is usually announce the game at the same time the Steam page is ready, so you can use the announcement to drive people straight to it. A trailer can be another marketing beat, and then lead up to the demo release. Going in with a solid marketing plan is a great idea, too.

Side note: despite the short amount of time to market the game, they were able to enter it into at least 2 different Steam-ran festivals! That’s a great boost to wishlists and they usually don’t require much work from yourself.

[A]nnounce the game and start marketing early, but not so early you run out of content you can post.

Arimia: Once you’ve worked on a few games it’s a lot easier to gauge when that sweet spot is, but when you haven’t it’s definitely hard to figure out. I usually go with how much progress I have towards something playable like a demo. When ADWD was ready to release, how did you reach out to press?

Gabby: Actually, I didn’t sent out any press releases for the full game! I can’t tell you exactly if this was a good thing or not – but the way I’ve done it for all of my other games is that I send out a press release and streamer keys for the demo only. Especially for A Date with Death, we already had a lot of press and streamer interest naturally, so we decided to use our time for other forms of marketing and polishing up the game instead.

For the demo though, we curated a list of ~70 people to send out early keys to. I think this is quite worthwhile in hyping up the demo release, and it’s quite easy these days with tools like sullygnome.

Arimia: What lessons learnt from your previous games did you bring with you when making ADWD?

Gabby: We’ve been very lucky to work with our amazing artist Fuyuure for over six years now, so we came in with a great team who worked incredibly well together. I think that was a big bonus – working on something like a big character creator can be a difficult task for many artists, because of the sheer amount of assets you need. So, I would say coming in with a talented team who were ready for their tasks was a massive boon.

I think working on so many games beforehand prepared us to make the game in the time we did. We usually work on bigger, multi-year projects, and this was our first proper commercial endeavor into a smaller game. Our experience helped us to pinpoint exactly what we would need, which is a lot less than our other projects. The game actually only has 5 CGs, which is less than usual for us, but I think we managed to do it in a way where it doesn’t feel lacking, either. Getting scope right is a difficult thing and it’s easy to want to include anything and everything, but we were very particular about what we wanted and how long it would take.

Arimia: I can definitely see how that helped – working with people you’re already comfortable with can alleviate a lot of stress. For the A Date with Death: Beyond the Bet Kickstarter, how did you prepare the marketing campaign for it? How long did that pre-planning take you?

Gabby: We really started planning the new DLC the day A Date with Death launched last December. We knew we wanted to make more content, and with Dreambound nearly complete it was a good time to start thinking of running a new campaign. I would say the preplanning took a couple of months – working on a good date, working with lots of artists on new merch, setting up the page, getting the page to our graphic designer to make some images up for it… running a Kickstarter is definitely a lot of work! Even organizing the tiers takes some time.

We prepared mostly by getting the prelaunch page up as early as possible and getting the word out on all of our socials – Twitter, Tumblr, TikTok, Reels, Steam itself, Discord, our email list, itch…. basically, did a big blast out everywhere and we had a huge amount of people come and prelaunch straight away. We also really enjoy doing countdown images the week before launching – it lets us work with a bunch of amazing artists, and we use the art for rewards during the campaign too (as prints). Being our third campaign, we came into it knowing what we had to do, which is a big timesaver. For new developers, I’ll say don’t sleep on the prelaunch time – it’s not a good idea to put up a Kickstarter and instantly launch it. You need to bring an audience with you and get as many pledges lined up on that first day as possible.

Honestly, the support so far has blown our mind. With a similar amount of prep, Dreambound launched with less than 300 followers on the page, but as of writing this we’re already over 4500 on A Date with Death.

[I]t’s not a good idea to put up a Kickstarter and instantly launch it. You need to bring an audience with you and get as many pledges lined up on that first day as possible.

Arimia: Even though I’ve helped run and advised several Kickstarters before, there’s always something I forget or push off until the last minute. Was there anything you learned from the Dreambound KS that you used/did differently for the ADWD KS?

Gabby: Oh, for sure. I learned a lot about my tiers and page organization from our past Kickstarters. We actually have a lot more tiers than usual on this Kickstarter and I don’t think we’d be able to manage that without our past experiences.

If I had to pick one thing from the Dreambound Kickstarter that I’ve changed for A Date with Death’s, we decided to have all of our stretch goals viewable from the get-go. I enjoyed the “unlocking” of stretch goals we had before, but with the amount of attention I think we’ll get, it’s just easier to lay everything out for everyone.

Arimia: Yeah, I imagine you’ll probably be hitting stretch goals pretty early on with how many people are excited for the KS. Aside from social media like TikTok and Twitter, how do you keep your audience interested?

Gabby: I think one of the things that mobile games have as an advantage is continuously adding more content and patches. That really keeps people interested and coming back to your game and characters. Obviously we don’t really have a big enough team or enough time to be adding more and more content, so keeping people interested can be quite tough. We were very conscious of this when deciding WHEN to hold a Kickstarter in the first place – if we wait too long, people will move on. It’s already been 6 months since the game released, after all.

There’s multiple ways we’ve kept people interested during these months. One is that we funneled a lot of people to our Patreon, where we have exclusive art every month from the game, as well as behind the scenes stuff about the new DLC. We then can tease these on social media too, and drip feeding content works pretty well to keep people interested.

Another is we now have near 8000 members in our Discord, and these people become some of your core audience. We encourage interaction with each other and the game by weekly game questions that players can answer. If you had enough time to organize it, I honestly think even doing daily questions would be a really great idea. Anything to kind of keep people chatting and thinking about the game.

Arimia: To wrap this up – what advice would you give to other visual novel devs?

Gabby: There’s so much I’d like to say, but I’ll just give a few pieces of advice that I think could help newer developers. Don’t think of marketing as a bad thing, or an annoying thing. I see a lot of new developers come in and say “I won’t market. I feel like a shill and my game will speak for itself”. I think this is a huge mistake, because people won’t play your game if they don’t know it exists. Marketing can be fun! Share your little stories with the world proudly, don’t feel bad about that.

If you want to do game dev as just a hobby, then that’s absolutely fine – but it’s totally possible to do this as a profession, too. My partner and I have been working on visual novels full time for over two years now. A lot of people tend to think that’s there’s no money in visual novels, but I would say that’s not true at all. It’s hard work – like all small businesses are – and not every game is going to be wildly profitable, but it’s totally possible with a good game and good marketing. Keep making the games you love, doing market research to see what other people love, and you might be able to find a good crossover.

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

And there you have it, some insight into the development and creation of A Date with Death! If you haven’t already, check the game out – the base game is completely free to play on Steam and itch.io. You can check out their social media here:

Twitter – TikTok – Tumblr

Support their Kickstarter!

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

Trouble's Brewing Remake: What's it about, and why is it happening?

//So, I think I kept everyone waiting for quite a while after I announced this, and I think it's finally time that I explain what's going to happen with this arc, and what it's all about.

//After some deep reflection and feedback, I realized there were areas that could be improved, and I’m really excited about the direction this rewrite is taking. I know some of you might have questions, so I wanted to address a few that might be on your mind. From what inspired the change, to how this will affect the story moving forward, and what new things you can expect, I’ll cover it all right here.

//No need for a long, drawn out explanation, so let's get started.

1 - Why is Trouble's Brewing being re-written?

//The simple answer is because it's easily the most outdated arc of the story.

//For those who haven't seen the beginning of this blog, this was before I came up with the structure that I currently have, and suffice to say, the plot of the first arc was rushed, and didn't really explain ANYTHING. It was just a quickly fumbled together introduction with no real characterization.

//Basically, all it was designed to do was drop Shuichi and his friends into the world, and it didn't have much of a story besides that.

//The reason why I'm rewriting Trouble's Brewing, and making it from scratch, is to take that plot, and actually make a full-length story arc for it, instead of a few quick posts that were hastily scrapped together, and uncomfortably bad compared to my current writing.

//Now, normally, I really hate the idea of going back and recreating work that I've already made, but in this case, I have more than one good reason for doing so. Considering he's still a key player in the story, it's also the first chance I have to actually use Kuripa's new sprites as part of the story, as well as to give a little more early characterization to some characters who severely needed it in preparation for future arcs.

2 - Will the new arc change the overall direction of the story?

//Yes, but not massively.

//The general plot of the arc will be the same. It will generally be set up to explain the world, the current state of the Future Foundation, as well as introduce the V3 kids into the fray, and the OC's like Kuripa.

//All this is is me taking that original story, and expanding it into something full fledged, like all the current arcs do.

3 - Are key characters being changed or removed?

//I'm sure a lot of people are wondering this, and the answer is yes.

//Because this takes place at the very beginning of the story, the following characters, who only appear in later arcs, will not be featured: Junko Chiaki Alter Ego Junko Kizakura Munakata Yukizome Kaede Ryoma Kirumi Angie Tenko Miu Kaito Kokichi Tsumugi Keebo Gonta Rantaro Kiyo Monaca Yuta Taichi Sora Mikako Teruya Setsuka Iroha Syobai Mikado Kanata Kanade Akane Taira Ando Hibiki Yamato Akeru Mikihiko Yosaku Kana Misako Kanjiro Seina Shozo Ryo Akira Narumi Misuzu Eloise Taulner Kibin Karma Matta Tsutsuji Ella Hanami Mii-Yu Mona Eden Maya Four Hunter Kouji Leona Oliver Yomi Yui Kanon Natsumi Kuroba Solana

//And a few other characters on top of that. Just...anybody who was not present prior to the first arc, so most of the V3 characters, sans Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko

//However there are also characters that will be coming back for the arc, namely Hajime, Yukari, and regular Himiko.

4 - How will the asks function? Will there be any for this arc?

//To make it easier on myself, no. But I will not be closing the box during the duration.

//Asks will be asked in the context of where the story is currently. Because it's a rewrite, I want Trouble's Brewing to be entirely story.

//After all, there's not much point in asking questions when most people already know the current plot developments. There isn't much potential for questions when the reset button gets hit.

5 - How different will the rewritten arc be from the original?

//As I said before, the basic plot is the same, but it's been expanded to include more character moments, story beats, and just...plot in general. Below, I've included some of the important considerations for those looking forward to it:

The main characters of the arc are the Branch 14 trio, i.e. Makoto, Mukuro, and Kuripa.

As teased in the title though, all the main protagonists (with the exception of Kaede, who is not present at this point in the story) will play significant roles in the plot, Shuichi especially.

Yukari Koime will be the main antagonist of the arc. The reason is because I feel that her introduction in Neo World was a bit too bare bones for how important she is throughout Phases 1 and 2, and I wanted more of a chance to have her be the main antagonist.

The big key difference of this arc, compared to the original, is that Maki and Himiko don't just show up as easily as Shuichi does. Like in the original Trouble's Brewing, Shuichi will appear through a wormhole and arrive on Jabberwock Island, but unlike their rushed arrival in the original arc, the main plot of this new arc will involve the Future Foundation tracking down and rescuing Maki and Himiko, to help reunite them with Shuichi. Effectively, it;'s something of a Saving Private Ryan kind of story.

6 - Will we see new scenes or characters?

//Yes, and yes.

//Although, for whatever new characters we DO add to this, don't expect them to stick around for the rest of the story. We need to kind of retain the canonicity, and it doesn't make sense for new characters to appear, and then not be present for the rest of the story.

//The new scenes are designed to better establish the current state of the world 8 years after DR3, and to establish the new characters, like Kuripa and Mukuro, although they don't have their current development, of course.

7 - Can we still access the original version?

//Yes, of course, it should hopefully still be up. But the whole premise of this is to improve the first part of the story, so hopefully, you won't need, nor want to after this.

8 - Will the themes or tone of the story change?

//I can't say for certain, but if they do, it'll likely be to better elaborate and improve upon the general themes of Survivor as a whole, so that new readers can get better acquainted with the premise.

//I think for now, that's it. If there are any other questions about this, please ask me, and I will answer as best I can.

[found-family-my-beloved]

Summary of Minecraft Live Mob Vote and 1.21(?) Update

Mob vote:

The armadillo won, so congrats to everyone who was hoping for that!

The crab came second and the penguin came third but from the mix of opinions I've seen it was likely a pretty close one!

Upcoming update:

Since previous years have focused so much on crafting elements, they wanted to turn their attention more towards adventuring this year. Much like last year though, they wanted to introduce the features coming up in the near future today and announce others as the next year continues.

It's also the 15th anniversary of Minecraft next year, so that's pretty exciting!

Trial Chambers are being introduced! They were described as multi-room structures that encourage combat and adventuring. Inside, there were corridors leading to chests and challenges. They're also randomly generated for ultimate replayability.

A new spawner's being introduced for these chambers called a Trial Spawner. These vary in mob and loot quantity depending on how many players are planning to fight, and have a cooldown period afterwards so you can keep using them rather than destroying them when you're done. It also looked like the floor surrounding them might be decorated differently depending on what mob is spawning!

Speaking of mobs, there's a new hostile one called The Breeze! It uses the wind to hit players but doesn't deal damage unless it collides directly with something. The team described it as "very playful in combat" and they can interact with trapdoors, so should definitely make the combat experience more interesting!

Along with the chambers come some new blocks! There are now new stone patterns, some new decorative copper blocks and copper bulb blocks, which will dim the more they oxidise! These blocks all appear to be present in the Trial Chambers.

Outside of all of this, they're also introducing automated Crafters and toggleable slots! This means you can make crafting recipes really easy to repeat and they can be shared amongst players. Enjoy, redstoners!

[gaymer-hag-stan]

Happy 28th anniversary to Tomb Raider!

On the 25th of October, twenty eight years ago, the original Tomb Raider game was released and the world was introduced to the most successful woman to ever hit video games.

A British archaeologist and adventurer, Lara Croft became one of the most recognizable and influential characters in video game history. The original game was groundbreaking for its 3D graphics, which allowed players to explore vast, open environments, and for its mix of platforming, puzzle-solving, and combat. Players guided Lara as she explored ancient tombs, solved environmental puzzles, and battled both wildlife and human enemies in search of lost artifacts. The original game’s success led to a series of sequels, each expanding on the formula with new locations, enemies, and mechanics, though they largely followed the same structure of action-adventure gameplay.

Between 1997 and 2003, the series saw regular releases, with Core Design developing five mainline games. Tomb Raider II took the series to more varied locations, like Venice and Tibet, introducing new mechanics like vehicles. Tomb Raider III brought an expanded move set for Lara and more non-linear level design, while Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation focused heavily on Egyptian mythology, with a more dramatic story where Lara was presumed dead at the end. Tomb Raider: Chronicles followed, acting as a collection of flashback stories told by Lara's friends, after her supposed death. However, by this time, the series was beginning to show signs of fatigue, with critics citing repetitive gameplay and a lack of innovation.

In 2003, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness was released as the sixth main entry and represented a major shift for the series. This game had a darker tone, with more complex storytelling, focusing on murder mystery and conspiracies involving ancient powers. It also introduced RPG-like elements, where players could upgrade Lara's abilities. Unfortunately, the game was plagued by development issues, rushed production, and clunky controls, leading to a poor reception from both critics and fans. This was a low point for the series, and Core Design was eventually removed from the franchise.

After the failure of The Angel of Darkness, development of the series was handed over to Crystal Dynamics, a different studio, which soft rebooted the series with Tomb Raider: Legend in 2006. This introduced a new perspective for Lara Croft and the series as a whole. The gameplay was more fluid, with modernized controls, better graphics, and a more cinematic approach to storytelling. Legend was well-received, breathing new life into the franchise. This success was followed by Tomb Raider: Anniversary in 2007, a remake of the original game, which reimagined the classic experience using modern technology and the gameplay mechanics introduced in Legend.

In 2008, Tomb Raider: Underworld was released as a direct sequel to Legend, continuing the story and building on the gameplay mechanics of its predecessors. This game featured more expansive environments, underwater exploration, and advanced platforming mechanics, while also concluding the trilogy that began with Legend. However, despite these improvements, the series was beginning to face stiff competition from other action-adventure games like Uncharted, and it became clear that Tomb Raider needed another significant overhaul to stay relevant.

This overhaul came in 2013, when Crystal Dynamics fully rebooted the franchise with Tomb Raider, a reimagining of Lara Croft’s origin story. The 2013 game was a gritty, survival-focused adventure that depicted a young, inexperienced Lara as she became the hardened explorer fans knew from the earlier games. The reboot was heavily inspired by modern action-adventure games, incorporating a more emotional and character-driven narrative, with Lara growing from a scared young woman into a resourceful survivor. The game featured more realistic graphics, fluid combat, and an open-world design that emphasized exploration and crafting. The reboot was a huge success, both commercially and critically, and is credited with revitalizing the series for a new generation.

Following the success of the 2013 reboot, Crystal Dynamics released Rise of the Tomb Raider in 2015. This game expanded on the survival mechanics, exploration, and storytelling of the reboot, placing more emphasis on open-world exploration and crafting. Lara’s character development was deepened, as she now had to confront the legacy of her father’s obsession with immortality and lost secrets. Rise of the Tomb Raider was also praised for its stunning environments, ranging from the frozen wilderness of Siberia to ancient ruins hidden deep in forests.

In 2018, Shadow of the Tomb Raider was released as the final entry in the rebooted trilogy, developed by Eidos Montreal. This game explored darker themes, as Lara grappled with the consequences of her actions and faced the moral ambiguities of her quest for ancient relics. Set primarily in Central and South America, the game’s environments were rich with detail, and the puzzles were more intricate than in previous entries. While Shadow of the Tomb Raider was generally well-received, some critics noted that it didn’t innovate as much as its predecessors, though it still provided a satisfying conclusion to Lara’s character arc.

Beyond the mainline games, the Tomb Raider series has expanded into other media, including two film adaptations starring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, released in 2001 and 2003. These films helped solidify Lara’s status as a pop culture icon, though they were met with mixed critical reception. A more recent film adaptation, released in 2018 and starring Alicia Vikander, was based on the 2013 game and attempted to reboot the film series with a more grounded take on the character. There have also been comic book series, novels, and animated series that expand on Lara Croft’s adventures.

Throughout its long history, the Tomb Raider series has been known for its evolution in gameplay, its combination of exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat, and its focus on a strong, iconic female protagonist. The series has had its highs and lows, but it has remained a major force in the action-adventure genre, consistently influencing the direction of video games and maintaining a lasting legacy in popular culture.

With the Netflix series just out, the remasters of the last three CORE games on the horizon and the possibility of the LAU Trilogy following as well as a brand new game being currently in development, the future is looking bright for the series.

Over 100 million copies of the games have been sold worldwide.

[switch]

I’m familiar with metaphor refantazio and persona and some shin megami but not the turns or most of the other things so if you could cover that I’d be interested in hearing more

oh so the press turn system is the name for the turn-based mechanic introduced in SMT nocturne and featured in most mainline SMT games since then. these are the "press turn icons" in metaphor and in SMT V (upper right) respectively.

it's the system where the number of actions you can perform in your phase is determined by how many icons you have up there, usually one icon per unit in your team up to 4, but if you do things like hit a critical, hit an elemental weakness, or pass to another unit, the press turn icon you would have consumed becomes a smaller 'half press turn' icon that you can use one more time instead. so if you hit a crit four times in a row, you're rewarded with four extra actions (or you can lose them by missing or hitting a resistance. zero press turns ends your phase.) some bosses also have special skills that give them more press turn icons so they can take extra actions. persona, on the other hand, doesn't have press turns, it uses a similar but different system called One More.

anyway, press turn is actually my favorite turn-based RPG combat system, ever. i love it. SMT nocturne is hands down my favorite RPG ever made because of it. in conjunction with how necessary and rewarding it is to use buffs and debuffs in more difficult SMT games like nocturne (which by extension encourages you to find ways to get half press turns so you can have enough actions to both use buffs/debuffs and set up attacks in one phase), it's so engaging and dynamic and fun. the most recent SMT entry, V, really de-emphasized the utility of buffs and debuffs, and also for the first time ever added extremely punishing damage reduction onto your attacks if you're too far below an enemy's level, whereas in previous entries it was not only very possible but fun to beat enemies significantly above your level by controlling their press turn icons and their buffs/debuffs. metaphor refantazio appears to be largely walking both changes back, which i was rejoicing about.

so, metaphor refantazio has one 'archetype' (like a class or a persona? i still need to play the demo myself) you can spec into called faker, which lets you unlock a skill called faker's roguery that debuffs the enemy and then adds or removes press turn icons at random. so if you're unlucky it could remove all your turns and end your phase, or you could get lucky and go above the conventional 4 full press turn cap. i've personally seen 5 turns and heard reports of someone getting up to 6 or possibly 7 turns doing this.

so yeah as someone who loves the press turn system, anything that lets me interact with press turns in a funny new way gets me excited. previously in entries like SMT Nocturne, the only way to get a 5th press turn was as a permanent new game plus reward, but i like the sound of it being something you have to dynamically take a risk for way better.

another SMT spinoff on the ps2, digital devil saga 2, had an equippable item called the Variable Ring, which also randomized your number of press turns, but it was sadly capped somewhere around 4 or less icons and thus only good for challenge runs with less than 4 party members.

the "mot gaming" joke was also a reference to SMT Nocturne. Mot is a rather infamous boss battle who, if his AI isn't properly controlled by debuffing or using attacks he's weak to, can rarely enter a pattern of spamming a boss-exclusive skill (Beast Eye) that increases his own number of press turns, well beyond how frequently most bosses are supposed to use it, preventing his phase from actually ending and letting him buff himself or attack a frankly silly number of times in a row (the red icons in the upper right is his press turn count).

the idea of the player now being able to potentially get 5-6+ press turns made me think of him.

[takaraphoenix]

My Ranking of D20 Campaigns

So I actually managed to watch all of them (or all that are out so far; not counting the still ongoing Junior Year yet) and since I like making lists, I drafted this post early on to keep track of which I love the most and how that love changed whenever I started watching a new campaign.

A Starstruck Odyssey

The Seven

A Court of Fey and Flowers

The Unsleeping City: Chapter II

The Unsleeping City

Mice and Murder

Burrow’s End

Fantasy High: Sophomore Year

A Crown of Candy

Pirates of Leviathan

Escape From the Bloodkeep

Coffin Run

Dungeons and Drag Queens

Mentopolis

Misfits and Magic

Fantasy High

Ravening War

Tiny Heist

Neverafter

Shriek Week

This was actually really, really hard, because the recency bias usually has me go “this is SO SO GOOD”.

I started watching D20 back in April last year, Misfits and Magic was the first campaign I watched - and The Seven was, I think, maybe the fifth or so? And it was my number one for the longest time. I love the girls, both the characters and the players, I love the plot, I love everything about that campaign. It is so heart-wrecking with the emotions it goes through for them all.

But then I watched A Starstruck Odyssey and it just hit all the right spots - the found family crew of a spaceship having wacky space-adventures is just something I deeply, deeply love and these characters were so much fun - and has the benefit of being longer and giving me more to fall in love with, I suppose. Still though, the difference between first and second is very narrow.

And I consider 4 and 5 a tie, to be honest. The Unsleeping City is one story, to me, I know the seasons are very distinct, but the flow of it and also my love for both is near equal. This campaign has the highest concentration of favorite PCs for me, like, when I made a list of my favorite Intrepid Heroes characters, their TUC characters all came in as either first or second place. Sophia Lee is the best Emily character ever, I will fight for her.

I am so madly, deeply in love with A Court of Fey and Flowers, which features my favorite PC romance so far, plus an impeccable cousin dynamic between Lou and Emily, also... there’s no fighting. While most fights are somewhat entertaining in DnD, I still remain Just Not An Action Gal and could skip on those in favor of more roleplaying scenes of character development and relationship exploration. And this campaign absolutely hit that spot just right. Plus, the fantasy fairy setting, and Aabria’s wonderful storytelling (how is this woman so talented? She was my first introduction to DnD as a DM, and then I got to see her as a player in the Seven and Pirates of Leviathan and she makes such great choices as a player too).

This list was ridiculously hard to make, because I look at it and I see Mice and Murder only on 6th place even though that definitely was the campaign where I had the hardest time to stop watching, I pulled an all nighter to watch half of it because it had the greatest grip on me, but then I look at the ones I placed higher than it and I can’t find it in me to move any of them lower either.

Recency bias definitely made placing Burrow’s End very hard. Not to repeat myself, but I am madly, deeply in love with Aabria’s storytelling. Combined with talking animals, the family focus, Brennan playing a mom as a PC (moms are my favorite Brennan characters), I have a lot of love for this campaign and I hope so badly that we’ll get a second part.

And here’s the reason why I couldn’t count TUC as one. Because Fantasy High: Sophomore Year ranks so much higher than the first FH for me. This was such a fun, ridiculous story, and it introduced my two favorite NPCs of all campaigns; Ayda and Garthy. It set the bar for FH3 really high and I am looking at Brennan to keep up the great work.

A Crown of Candy is well-placed in the middle. I am not the biggest fan of tragedies and definitely not into character death, but the characters and the world, are so very compelling still, even if I prefer the ones that died over the replacement characters - and that’s what puts it in the middle. Good, but could have been better.

Pirates of Leviathan was short but the characters, the players. Aabria is so so so good in this, it kills me. And she’s not alone. Bob is one of the greatest PCs of Dimension 20, to me, and that is vastly due to Krystina’s talent.

Escape From the Bloodkeep is one of the most surprising campaigns for me. This is a LotR parody that turned out to be way too heartfelt and much more found family than expected and it is great.

And Coffin Run is honestly one of the funniest D20 campaigns and I am wildly in love with about every single decision Izzy Roland made in this campaign. I am also entirely and absolutely gay for every decision Erika Ishii made.

Dungeons and Drag Queens was a very... standard adventure, but the players were so much fun to see. This would honestly be such a good campaign to start your D20 journey with, because the way Brennan eases them in and explains everything is so wonderful, and the excitement and joy of everything new they’re trying is contagious.

Mentopolis was cute, though I’m not big on noir and detective stories so that factors into why it ranks relatively low for me, even though the players and the characters were amazing. Dan Fucks is brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

And though the very first campaign I watched, Misfits and Magic didn’t make it too high. Some of it is the bytaste of HP, which I have come to just... not be able to stand anymore even though I am well aware that it’s a parody of it, and the other factor is the length. It’s hard to compete with 10 to 12 episode campaigns, that had so much more time to flesh out dynamics, worlds and characters and make me fall in love with them all, and that’s not really a reflection of the quality of this campaign.

I remain not much of a fan of the first Fantasy High. Maybe because I watched The Seven before this so when I watched FH, it gave me more of a feeling of “why is there a prequel spin-off about Zelda’s boyfriend who never had a proper appearance anyway? My girls should have bigger roles in this??”, but I largely feel that FH1 was more set-up, and the Bad Kids and their story really took off for me in the sequel, which I greatly enjoyed.

While I enjoyed the characters and the players’ dynamic in Ravening War, I am just... I guess I’m generally not much into “and it’s all futile anyway because I know how the story continues and these guys are not in it”? Matter of taste, I guess, but if that has to compete with others, it will lose.

Honestly, I enjoyed Tiny Heist when I watched it and I don’t dislike it, but it’s just so short and didn’t have anything that incredibly stood out to me in a manner that gripped me, so it had a hard time competing with other campaigns that gave me something I deeply fell in love with. 

I don’t like Neverafter, it had some good characters in it but on the overall this absolutely did not vibe with me. Which is a huge disappointment for me as a lover of fairy tale crossovers, but the dark horror approach does not work for me at all.

The only thing that was easy was the bottom of this list, honestly. Shriek Week was, hands down, the only campaign I absolutely did not enjoy. The storytelling was a mess, even before watching the Adventuring Party for it, it was clear that the whole ~villain plot~ was improvised and I still wish it had just... not... been in there.

[cherrylng]

100 Albums To Understand Muse - Part 8 [STYLE Series #004 - Muse (August 2010)]

MEW Frengers (2003) World debut of the Danish band, boasting melancholic melodies, the transparent high tone voice of Jonas Biele and guitars that, like Muse, grew up on The Smashing Pumpkins and the Pixies. Their latest release, 'No More Stories…….' succeeds in building a dynamic world with a more progressive experimental spirit. -S

MILES DAVIS Pangaea (1975) A masterpiece of the so-called ‘electric period’ of the 1970s. If you think it's ‘jazz’, you'll be surprised. Basically, the cool and sophisticated worldview of this album is the opposite of that of the passionate Muse, but I think there are similarities in the ‘once in a lifetime’ energy that pervades the band's live performances. -M

MONIQUE HAAS Debussy : Suite Bergamasque / Deux Arabesques / Children's Corner (1995) Debussy is a composer that all piano players have a keen interest in. The images that emerge from his poetic melodies are simple, yet they have an impressionistic intensity that leaves a strong impression on the listener's heart. He is also one of Matthew's favourite composers. Enjoy the limpid sound with no ill effects. -M

MY BLOODY VALENTINE Loveless (1991) The second album from MBV, led by roaring guitar master Kevin Shields, and a milestone in shoegaze, still influencing everything from acoustic to neo-shoegaze. Whispering vocals float gently between walls of dissonant, layered guitar noise. It will leave the listener in a trance and lead them into a dreamlike world. -I

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE The Black Parade (2006) US alternative punk band that recognises a variety of influences from Queen to punk. The band made their breakthrough in Japan with this album. Muse toured the US with this album in 2007 as a frontliner. When Muse took the stage at Wembley Stadium in the UK a few months later, they fronted the band in return. -H

NED'S ATOMIC DUSTBIN God Fodder (1991) A prime example of the ‘gleeful rock��� that dominated the UK indie scene in the early 90s. The first album, featuring snarling twin basses, blistering fuzz guitars, danceable driving beats and sweet and sour melodies, was a #4 hit in the UK. In their heyday, the three Muse members were in secondary school and Matthew's first gig was with the Neds. -I

NEW ORDER Low-Life (1985) Formed by the remaining members of Joy Division after Ian Curtis (vo) committed suicide. The band's melodious bass was a distinctive feature, and it swallowed techno, disco and later house, and used synths extensively. The killer 80s synth-pop tune 2 shines with its piercing uppercut. -I

NINA SIMONE I Put A Spell On You (1965) A classic album from the Philips era by a singer-songwriter who transcended genres such as jazz-blues and R&B. Muse covered ‘Feeling Good’, a standard that has been taken up by many different faces, but Matthew was introduced to it by Nina's version. The title track featuring Screaming Jay Hawkins is also full of atmosphere. -S

Translator's Note: [presses on a single G5 piano key in a half note]

[demifiendrsa]

DC Studios | Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters

Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters:

Creature Commandos: An animated seven episode series, written by Gunn, that is already in production. Originally a team of classic monsters assembled to fight Nazis, this is a modern take on the concept. The voice actors have yet to be cast but the executives are looking to find people who can voice the animated characters and also portray the live-action versions when the anti-heroes to show up in movies and shows.

Waller: A spin-off of Gunn’s own HBO Max hit series, Peacemaker, Viola Davis will return as the ruthless and morally ambiguous head of a government task force. It is being written by Christal Henry (Watchmen) and Jeremy Carver, the creator of the Doom Patrol TV series.

Superman: Legacy: The movie featuring the Man of Steel that Gunn is writing and may direct, although no commitments on that end have been made. While the two previous titles are meant to be “aperatifs,” in Safran’s words, Superman is the true kick off for the duo’s DCU plans. “It’s not an origin story,” Safran said. “It focuses on Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing. He is the embodiment of truth justice and the American way. He is kindness in a world that thinks that kindness as old-fashioned.” A release date of July 11, 2025 has been penciled in.

Lanterns: Greg Berlanti’s long-in-the-works Green Lanterns TV series has been scrapped and the duo have parted ways with the longtime DC series steward. In its place will be a new take on the space cops with power rings. “Our vision for this is very much in the vein of True Detective,” Safran described. “It’s terrestrial-based.” It will feature prominent Lantern heroes Hal Jordan and John Stewart and is one of the most important shows they have in development. “This plays a really big role in leading into the main story we are telling across film and TV.”

The Authority: a movie based on a team of superheroes with rather extreme methods of protecting the planet that first originated in the late 1990s under an influential imprint known as Wildstorm, run by artist and now head of DC publishing, Jim Lee. “One of the things of the DCU is that it’s not just a story of heroes and villains,” said Gunn. “Not every film and TV show is going to be about good guy vs. bad guy, giant things from the sky comes and good guy wins. There are white hats, black hats and grey hats.” Added Safran: “They are kinda like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. They know that you want them on the wall. Or at least they believe that.”

Paradise Lost: The duo describe this HBO Max series as a Game of Thrones-style drama set on the all-female island that is Wonder Woman’s birthplace, Themyscira, filled with political intrigue and scheming between power players. It takes place before the events of the Wonder Woman films.

The Brave and the Bold: “This is the introduction of the DCU Batman,” said Gunn. “Of Bruce Wayne and also introduces our favorite Robin, Damian Wayne, who is a little son of a bitch.” The movie will take inspiration from the now-classic Batman run written by Grant Morrison that introduced Batman to a son he never knew existed: a murderous tween raised by assassins. “It’s a very strange father-and-son story.”

And, importantly, it will feature a Batman not played by Robert Pattinson…

Booster Gold: an HBO Max series based on a unique and lower-tiered hero created in 1986. Safran said of the series, “It’s about a loser from the future who uses basic future technology to come back to today and pretend to be a superhero.” Gunn described it as “imposter syndrome as superhero.”

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow: Taking its cues from the recent Tom King-written mini-series, this movie project promises to have a different take than what most think of when the idea of Superman’s cousin comes to mind. “We will see the difference between Superman, who was sent to Earth and raised by loving parents from the time he was an infant, versus Supergirl, raised on a rock, a chip off of Krypton, and who watched everyone around her die and be killed in terrible ways for the first 14 years of her life and then come to Earth. She is much more hardcore and not the Supergirl we’re used to.”

Swamp Thing: a horror film that promises to close out the first part of the first chapter.

[inkedmyths]

Sell me on monster hunter, go

OHHHH YOU'RE GONNA REGRET ASKING THIS ARE YOU READY

Concept is very simple: Kill hig monster before it kills you (hence the name)

Onto the selling points

Monster Design

The monster design is widely regarded as some of the best out there. In a series dedicated to fighting monsters, it has to be, and it doesn't disappoint. It ranges from dinosaurs, to wyverns, to dragons, to things that don't fit into any of these categories! The designs also generally have a basis in some concept of biology, taking notes from real life creatures and using fantasy concepts to create creatures that feel almost believable.

A few monsters found in Rise, for your consideration: Aknosom, Rathalos, Zinogre, and Magnamalo

These are just a sampler, from some of the Early stuff in base Rise. There's quite a few things you can fight, and the DLC features some of my absolute favorite monsters ever: Gore Magala and Malzeno

Gameplay

Rise admittedly works a bit differently from classic MonHun, but the base concepts are still there.

In this game, it's all about hitting the monster and trying not to get hit. You have to memorize attack patterns, dodge them at the right time, figure out where to get the best damage in. You're opponent doesn't have a health bar; rather, you have to try and determine how close you are to winning based on the monster's behavior. It gets slower, shows signs of damage, will often run off to rest when near death.

There's also not a standard player leveling system. Instead, you upgrade your gear, and get better at playing. In order to get new gear, you have to kill monsers, and use their parts to make new weapons and armor. The armor design is also very neat, and occasionally very very silly.

Speaking of weapons, there are 14 different different weapon types, one for everyone. I prefer the fast paced and acrobatic Dual Blades, while my mom prefers the heavy hitting and complex Charge Blade. Theres simple, theres complicated, there's close combat, and ranged. Whatever floats your boat!

Rise's special mechanic that sets it apart is Wirebugs. Think of them as a gear piece that lets you grapple hook in midair, and perform all kinds of fancy moves. They take some getting used to, but once you master them, you'll be virtually unstoppable.

Pets

One of Monster Hunter's longtime traditions are Palicoes! They are little cat friends that help you fight in combat, and can also act as support. Very cute and useful.

Rise is also the first game to introduce Palamutes! If you're more of a dog person, congrats, you can have a dog that will help you in combat. They have different uses than Palicoes, so mix and match as needed

Music

THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST UNDERRATED PARTS OF THE SERIES I SWEAR

I could talk about about the soundtrack for days and days. Some tracks are better than others, of course, but they're generally very good at creating a good atmosphere

For your perusal:

Proof of a Hero, the Main Theme of the series. Often played in the final phase of major boss fights (The version I have linked is the original, and doesn't actually play in Rise. Rise has it's own version, as does the DLC, Sunbreak, which has my favorite version)

Spark of Blue, Zinogre's theme (a personal favorite)

Barbarous Beast, Magnamalo's Theme

Brilliance Eclipsed, Gore Magala's Theme

Scarlet Feast, Malzeno's Theme

The soundtrack is really fun, and Rise puts a fun twist on several tracks

Co-Op Play

You can play alone, but it's really fun to play with friends. Nothing like watching your buddy get smacked across the map and dying. Up to four friends can play together, and you can tackle everything in the game alongside them

Okay I have to pay attention to stream now but this is my sales pitch hope you enjoyed

[ensuf]

Jigsaw in Fortnite: Exploring the Potential of a "Saw" Crossover Event

Fortnite has a long-standing reputation for bringing in iconic crossover events with a mix of characters, from beloved superheroes to fearsome villains. The thought of Jigsaw, the sinister mastermind from the Saw horror franchise, entering the Fortnite world is an intriguing one for fans. Known for his twisted games and psychological traps, Jigsaw could bring a unique horror element to Fortnite's Halloween-themed events or add some new depth to Fortnite's evolving lore and challenges.

In this article, we’ll dive into how Jigsaw and Saw could fit within the Fortnite universe, from potential skins and cosmetics to limited-time modes and challenges inspired by his terrifying traps. We'll also explore how Epic Games could integrate Jigsaw’s iconic symbols and twisted moral lessons to give players a thrilling experience.

Who Is Jigsaw, and Why Would He Be an Interesting Fortnite Addition?

Jigsaw, whose real name is John Kramer, is a complex villain from the Saw franchise, which began in 2004. Rather than directly killing his victims, Jigsaw creates deadly traps and psychological tests, pushing people to confront their flaws and make harrowing decisions. His methods are disturbing and morally twisted, making him one of the most terrifying horror characters to hit the big screen. But beneath the horror lies a deeper motive: he believes his "games" teach people to appreciate life by overcoming life-threatening challenges.

Why Jigsaw Fits the Fortnite Crossover Universe:

Unique Horror Element: Fortnite has included horror crossovers before, like the Resident Evil and Walking Dead events, but Jigsaw brings a psychological aspect of horror that is rare in Fortnite. His inclusion could appeal to fans who enjoy intense, mind-bending experiences.

Puzzle-Based Challenges: Jigsaw's traps often involve puzzles and tests of willpower, which could be incorporated into Fortnite gameplay as challenging, interactive missions that players must complete to earn rewards.

Halloween Event Tie-In: Halloween-themed events in Fortnite are always highly anticipated, and Jigsaw’s addition would fit perfectly within the spooky season, allowing Epic Games to introduce horror-inspired skins, emotes, and items.

Creative New Gameplay Dynamics: With Fortnite’s focus on building, survival, and battle royale elements, a character like Jigsaw could introduce puzzle mechanics and in-game survival tests that go beyond simple combat, creating new gameplay layers for players.

How Jigsaw Could Be Introduced in Fortnite

A. Jigsaw Skin and Item Shop Bundle

Epic Games would likely bring Jigsaw into Fortnite as part of an exclusive Item Shop bundle. This bundle could feature not only the iconic Jigsaw puppet, known as Billy, but also other chilling cosmetics inspired by the Saw movies. Here’s what the bundle might include:

Jigsaw Skin (Billy the Puppet): The primary skin would be Billy the Puppet, Jigsaw’s creepy puppet used as a messenger in the films. Dressed in a black tuxedo with a red bow tie and his signature white face, red cheeks, and spiraled eyes, Billy is instantly recognizable and would be the perfect face for the skin.

Alternate Jigsaw Styles: Fortnite might offer a version where players could play as John Kramer himself or as a stylized “masked” version with horror-themed effects. Other options could include different variations of Billy’s face with increasing levels of wear, cracks, or even glowing red eyes.

Back Bling: A fitting back bling could be a small tricycle, referencing Billy's iconic method of entering the scenes in the movies. Another idea could be a miniature “trap” device, symbolizing the twisted games Jigsaw forces his victims to play.

B. Emotes and Scary Animations

Jigsaw’s presence wouldn’t be complete without some frightening, unique emotes and animations. Here are some ideas for emotes that would capture the character’s creepy aura:

“I Want to Play a Game” Emote: This emote could feature Billy saying his infamous line in a chilling voice while pointing menacingly. Adding suspenseful music or sound effects would add an extra layer of horror.

Tricycle Ride Emote: A funny but dark addition, this emote could show the character riding a small tricycle, referencing Billy’s unsettling appearance on the tricycle in the films.

Maniacal Laugh: Since Billy's presence is often eerie and menacing, an emote where the character laughs darkly would suit his personality and give players a chance to taunt opponents in a memorable way.

C. Saw-Inspired Harvesting Tools

To complement the skin, Fortnite could include some eerie harvesting tools that fit the Saw theme:

Bone Saw Tool: This tool could look like a surgical saw or bone saw, dripping with virtual blood effects when swung. It would suit Billy’s twisted theme and could feature horrifying sound effects upon impact.

Trap Hammer: Another harvesting tool could resemble a hammer or wrench, referencing the various mechanical traps Jigsaw constructs. Each swing could produce a metallic “clang,” adding an intimidating sound.

D. Death Trap-Themed Glider

Fortnite’s gliders are always inventive, and a glider inspired by Jigsaw could bring some fear factor to every descent:

Trap Door Glider: This glider could resemble one of Jigsaw's iconic traps, with spikes, chains, or saw blades incorporated into the design. Players would descend with eerie sounds and animations of chains moving and gears clicking.

Billy’s Tricycle Glider: Another fun but terrifying option would be a glider in the shape of Billy’s tricycle, with a ghostly apparition of Billy steering it down to the ground. The glider could trail red and black smoke for an extra creepy effect.

Special Event Mode: "Jigsaw’s Games"

For Jigsaw’s introduction, Fortnite could host a limited-time mode where players have to navigate traps and solve puzzles inspired by the Saw franchise. Here are some ideas for how this event might play out:

A. Escape the Maze LTM

In this LTM, players would spawn in a large maze filled with booby traps, obstacles, and puzzles designed by Jigsaw. The objective would be to escape the maze before time runs out or other players find you.

Traps and Puzzles: Players would encounter classic traps like spiked walls, floors that fall away, or doors that only open after solving a riddle. These could require teamwork or quick thinking to avoid being “eliminated” by the environment.

Timed Survival: Players could be given a time limit for each section of the maze, requiring them to move quickly to avoid Jigsaw’s traps. Once they complete one stage, they’d move to another section until they find an escape route.

Survival Items: Instead of traditional weapons, players could find items like trap disablers or decoys to distract opponents, adding to the survival challenge.

B. Solo Player “Survival Trials”

This solo mode would place players in one-on-one challenges where they must complete puzzles and avoid traps set by Jigsaw.

Randomized Trap Rooms: Each room could feature a different trial or puzzle, such as shooting specific targets, moving through an obstacle course, or finding hidden keys to escape.

Risk-Reward Challenges: Players could choose whether to take on riskier challenges for higher rewards, like powerful weapons or items that could give them a competitive edge in later parts of the game.

C. Jigsaw’s Henchmen

To add another layer of difficulty, this event could introduce Jigsaw’s henchmen patrolling certain areas. These NPCs would function as mini-bosses that players must either avoid or defeat. Taking down henchmen could reward players with keys, health items, or other tools to assist in their escape.

Possible Saw-Themed Challenges and Rewards

Beyond the LTM, Jigsaw’s introduction to Fortnite could include event-specific challenges that offer rewards upon completion. These challenges could focus on surviving Jigsaw’s traps, completing time-based tasks, or solving in-game puzzles. Here are some potential challenges and rewards:

A. Survive the Trial Challenge

Players would need to complete a series of trials or puzzles without being eliminated by traps. Each successful trial would unlock themed items, such as spray paints, back bling, or unique banners inspired by the Saw franchise.

B. Find Jigsaw’s Mark

In this challenge, players could be tasked with finding and interacting with “Jigsaw symbols” hidden across the map. This scavenger hunt would encourage exploration and offer rewards like a Jigsaw-themed pickaxe or emote.

C. Complete the Puzzle Box

Players could encounter Puzzle Boxes scattered around the map, which they would need to solve by interacting with the right items or completing mini-games. Successfully solving all Puzzle Boxes could reward players with an exclusive, rare item like a Saw music pack or Jigsaw’s laughing emote.

Potential Impact of Jigsaw's Crossover on Fortnite

The arrival of Jigsaw would bring a darker tone to Fortnite, particularly around Halloween or during the annual Fortnitemares event. Here’s how this crossover could influence the game and its player community:

1. Enhanced Halloween Atmosphere

Adding Jigsaw would deepen Fortnite’s horror vibes during Halloween events, attracting fans of horror movies and creating excitement within the community. This darker tone would also attract older players or fans of classic horror franchises.

2. Appeal to New Audiences

The Saw franchise has a devoted following, and a Fortnite crossover could attract fans who haven’t yet explored the game. By offering exclusive Jigsaw-themed rewards, Fortnite could engage a new demographic and expand its player base.

3. Engaging Challenges and New Game Mechanics

A crossover with Jigsaw could introduce puzzles, psychological challenges, and environmental traps, adding fresh gameplay dynamics. These challenges would offer Fortnite players a different kind of test, one that rewards strategic thinking and problem-solving skills.

Conclusion

A Saw crossover with Fortnite, bringing Jigsaw and his terrifying puzzles to the island, would be an exhilarating and unique addition to the game’s roster of crossovers. From an exclusive Jigsaw skin and chilling emotes to themed LTMs and puzzle-based challenges, the potential for a successful Halloween event is immense.

[blacktowbarony]

Tool Tactics

Knave 2e is a classless game with no skills or abilities. Everything is diegetic - if one of your two careers was that you were a sailor, it's safe to assume you're good at sea stuff, ropes, etc.

I like to distance myself from the 5e playstyle, but I gotta admit, feats and classes are a guilty pleasure. It's not great when your entire character sheet is full of abilities you need to navigate (and it's good to avoid the pitfall of if you DON'T have the lockpick feat, you CAN'T attempt lockpicking). But just a little something you can pop off is fun. I imagined these like commander abilities in wargaming, which are always limited. When to use it as a limited resource is a tactical decision, which is what games are all about.

So this is my attempt to make the Knave-iest feats I could. I tied them to tools, because I wanted the focus to stay on inventory management and the idea that you have practiced with a particular tool. It's also quite interesting if something threatens to take away the item you need to use your tool tactic. I have a player that's specialising in the Rations tool tactic and he's just become a total glutton, he bought a whole cartful of rations to start on this next quest. The quest of which the first stage is travelling through a swamp.

These would also be an elegant way to introduce races into Knave. Dwarves might pick a weapons tactic (especially axes), elves an esoteric one, halflings a tools one.

Oh, and there's a THIRD feature these are replacing: weapon qualities. I'm kinda fascinated by how different medieval weapons have different uses in (and out of) warfare, and this is my way to bring some of that to the table without going all Gygax on this (i.e. making this game a simulation with rules for absolutely everything).

Oh and a FOURTH thing these are a stand-in for: BX utility spells that don't have a parallel in Knave. Wizards need to do things like identify magic items, resist elements, or have a reliable attacks. This brings some of those back.

Anyway, first off some thoughts about how I went about writing these, and would go about writing more. Then d20 Tool Tactics.

Tool Tactics

At character creation, choose one Tool Tactic that you can use once per day, if you have the tool. Add the tool to your inventory if you don’t have it.

Gain a new Tool Tactic when you Level Up. Take the same Tool Tactic again to get more uses per day.

Custom Tool Tactics

Working with the GM, you can create a custom Tool Tactic if you wish. The GM writes the final draft of the Tool Tactic, and has licence to tweak it between sessions if it’s too strong or weak.

Guidelines for writing a good tool tactic:

Require an item.

Always gives a positive benefit when used. No chance of total failure.

Not be something that can be naturally attempted, e.g. blinding someone with pocket sand. A good Tool Tactic allows you to break the rules of the game system in some way.

Create, not eliminate, opportunities for creative problem solving.

You might decide to tweak an existing Tool Tactic. (e.g., Fire is Alive could work for poison damage instead)

d20 Tool Tactics

Weapon

1. Axes are Tools. Quickly smash open a wooden door, treasure chest, or intricate mechanism with an axe. Decrease damage suffered from the immediate consequences by 5.

2. Blunt Trauma Knockout. When you or an ally kills a nearby foe, use this tactic to rush in with a club or staff to render them safely unconscious for d6×10 minutes, instead of dead.

3. Bows are for Hunting. After rolling a ranged weapon attack*, hit or miss: add +5 to hit and +d6 damage. (*bows, crossbows, slings)

4. Flails Swing Back Around. After rolling a chain weapon attack*, hit or miss: add +5 to hit and +d6 damage. (*flails, whips, nunchucks)

5. Maces Crack Armour. When your mace or warhammer hits a foe protected by rigid plating* reduce their AC by d6, to a minimum of 12. (*knights, robots, giant crabs)

6. Polearms Hold the Line. After hitting an enemy with a polearm, use this tactic to keep that enemy at bay. On its next turn it has -5 to hit with all melee attacks.

7. Shield Wall. Use your shield to reduce the damage of an attack you take by d6. Doesn't work against area affects  (splashes, explosions, dragon breath).

8. Swords are Heroic. Make 2 bonus attacks with a sword, targeting two different enemies.

Tools

9. Backpacks are Spacious. Flashback to a memory of the last time you went shopping. You can buy one item from d100 Tools (Knave p. 39), adding it to your inventory as if you are just now remembering your purchase.

10. Boots Fare Well. During overland travel, scout ahead in sturdy footwear, returning in 4 hours with news of the hex ahead and d6 rations.

11. Breakfast is Vital. Eat a ration for breakfast to give yourself +d4 HP for the day.

12. Cloaks Break your Shape. Whilst sitting still wrapped in a cape of a colour matching your environment, fool d6 pairs of eyes into mistaking you for inanimate scenery.

13. Herbs Ease the Pain. Use a healing kit stocked with bandages, splints, and medicinal herbs to heal someone for d6 HP and restore consciousness.

14. Knives are for Sneakin'. Produce a knife you've had hidden upon your person this whole time. Its first attack roll has +d6 to hit.

15. Music Soothes. d6 HD worth of creatures listening to you play a musical instrument have their strongest emotions dulled for 10 minutes.

16. Ropes Hold Fast. If you take damage from falling a dangerous height, use a rope to somehow reduce the damage to just d6, even if there are spikes at the bottom.

Esoteric

17. Fire is Alive, and it Can be Bargained With. Wielding a burning torch, gain resistance to fire for 10 minutes. Mundane fire: 0 damage. Magical fire: -5 damage.

18. Hag Stones Reveal Magic. Look through a stone with a natural-formed hole in it to identify magical items, reveal hidden curses, or see the invisible for 10 minutes.

19. Wands are for Wizard Duels. With a reactionary flick of a wand, nullify an incoming unfriendly spell. You must declare this before the spell takes effect or rolls to save against it are made. If the spell's level is equal or exceeds your INT, win an INT contest against the caster to nullify.

20. Wands Cast Magic Missile. Range 120', auto-hit, d6 damage.

[mailperson]

Okay I’ve gotten far enough into darkest dungeon 2 to give an evaluated appraisal.

The Good:

-The 3D models are more expressive than screenshots would make you think. Enemy variety is also broader.

-Small quality of life features the first game lacked. The ability to see turn order and look up what terms and symbols mean is a good addition.

-The routes are surprisingly interesting to look at and the soundtrack remains as decent as the first game in some ways.

-Combat has more depth to it by a big margin, and on that note relationships are a fantastic way to explore combat roles that can vary by runs.

-A run through a route will nearly always be more varied than standard quests in the first game.

The Bad

-What constitutes a run is extremely confusing at the beginning. It is deeply unclear what the main game consists of and what counts as being in a run vs. between them until you’ve done two to three routes.

-Healing is arbitrarily limited by thresholds and cooldowns to where inevitably most runs just wind up being a balancing act of barely if at all keeping heroes off death’s door until you hit the inn. Healing as the stagecoach travels is a half-baked mechanic that I feel just shouldn’t exist at all in favor of freer use healing moves.

-The inability to flee from fights or abandon quests until reaching the inn does nothing for the game. There is no real benefit to changing this, it’s just an irritating hurdle. Even the ability to abandon mid-route for a cost while maintaining hero memories is better than just losing the memories.

-This game is obsessed with being as convoluted as possible to obfuscate simple mechanics. There is no reason every single combat mechanic has to be represented by one of dozens of different yet often similar-looking icon symbols when words do just fine. If I have to pull up the tutorial glossary every five minutes then it’s not saving anyone time.

-Despite the mechanical additions being good there is, in general, WAY too much tutorializing. Rather than throw every single mechanic at the player from the start, mechanics should have gradually been introduced as fights and routes become more difficult and complex. Even despite the million and one tutorial windows, some tooltips and descriptions are still way too vague to grasp without prior experience.

-At times way more RNG dependent than the first game, absolutely to its detriment. Strategy goes out the window if you cannot reliably keep your party alive and within reasonable stress thresholds.

-Every single run having your heroes starting at what is functionally level zero feels awful. Hero move upgrades should’ve been a permanent feature at the altar of hope. On that note, some features at the altar of hope feel like such minor upgrades that they should’ve been relegated to upgrades purchased at the inn during a run.

-Hero backstory memories are a clumsy form of progression. In my opinion they should not be scenarios you can fail. Being a location that exists in the middle of routes rather than an altar of hope feature feels unpleasant too, too much of an oppurtunity to miss them.

Overall: Very mixed feelings on this game. I couldn’t confidently call it bad, and I do respect the clear intent to try something different and new compared to the first game. Overall it just feels a little clumsy and that some core foundations of the game aren’t strong enough to be core foundations.

[finnhc]

Sakura Valley Review~

So since I'm always trying to find new Minecraft servers to play and there's far too many to pick from so! I have decided to start making proper reviews for different servers. Now these reviews will look at multiple things such as their webstore for in-game things, ranks, unique features, builds, community etc.!

Now onto the review for Sakura Valley!

So upon spawning into Sakura Valley you are greeted to a rather large and gorgeous temple like building! The building itself i very colorful and welcoming!

Along with that is a lot of NPC's and text. Now there is nothing wrong with having a lot of NPC's or text to guide a player with all of it being so close together it can be a bit overwhelming to look at when you first join. A better option would be to make specific rooms or buildings for things like the leader boards and some of the NPC's to increase the desire to explore spawn while also not cluttering it with to many entities which can get laggy with some lower end computers.

Now one of the more unique ways they handle AFKing is by having an AFK pit where you can "Earn 5 coins every 15 minutes" So for those who might need to step away for a bit and forget to close their games and warp here and earn coins! which is honestly a great way to handle AFKing without the usual "Kicked for AFKing for to long"

Another great feature Sakura Valley has is custom items! They have unique and cute swords and objects that you can collect, some of which will yield some special effects like night vision!

They are all very colorful and bright, which helps make them eye catching and attract people to collect them, with that being said they are also very flat which can lose a bit of appeal since people want more 3D textured collectables or custom items since then they feel more "Minecrafty" I'd highly recommend switching from PNG to 3D using Blockbench along with using Optifines CIT (NBT data) feature so you can actually have custom items that you can place and sometimes if coded right you can interact with them!.

Now along with custom items it's important to have a way for players to trade with one another whether that be with an auction house /AH or with a physical shopping district! and luckily this server has both!

Which allows for a variety of trading options among players! Now although they aren't as active as on another servers they have really good infrastructure in place for when they do have more traffic. But is important to keep an eye on these markets in order to stop inflation! Once numbers start hitting 10k it can be very hard for servers to lower that to regular and fair rates!

Another thing this server does right is adding tool tips into the chat that rotate! This is a fantastic way to help introduce both new and old players to features! It especially helps when there is a lot of commands or features on servers that some get forgotten.

But now we need to talk about one of the most important elements of any server. Monetization it's something all servers must do in order to keep running, unlike what some may think. Running a server isn't free, you have to pay for the server host, plugins, devs, builders, artists all kinds of things in order to make a good running server.

So monetization is very important, but what is more important is how the monetization is implemented! If it's implemented wrong those who have the money to buy a rank or in game currency it can ruin the economy, fun and fairness of a server.

With that being said how does this server implement Monetization? Well it is average.

The Ranks which have around 5 different ones. Starting at a price point of 6.99$ USD and goes up to 65.99 USD. Which have your typical features like ./fly, backpacks, a custom kit, and more set home slots. Which is all fine they don't give any one player to huge of a disadvantage.

But that is just when you buy the ranks out right! But if buy lets say the first rank V.I.P at 6.99$ you can buy rank upgrades which are cheaper then buying them outright. The pricing for that starts at 6$ USD and ends at 25$ USD.

Next thing they sell after ranks are Coins which are priced at 5.50$ USD which isn't outrageous but selling any type of currency is a recipe for disaster, since that can easily kill a servers economy and make things feel rather unfair in game.

Along with that thought they also sell a Crate Key priced at 3$ USD which gives you 3! Ranks are a fine thing to sell but similarly with coins selling Crate Keys can also make the game feel unfair. It also promotes gambling like its a slot machine, it's one thing to have crate keys collectable in game or via voting but selling them is not favorable. It can cause quite a bit of toxicity with players and have them fighting with staff with accusations of rigging the Crates in order to make them buy more keys. So in conclusion it's best to just not sell them in the first place!

So in conclusion! Sakura Valley while still in its infantsy, it has a lot of room to grow and become a great Survival Server! It has a lot of positive things going for it and I think in the next year it'll grow into a rather great and strong community! But don't take my word for it! go play the server and see how you like it.

at Java Server Ip: 158.69.156.131:25565

Just know these reviews aren't personal or anything and don't take anything I have to say for law, its just my silly opinion! So with that being said don't send any hate towards the Owner, Staff or the server of any that I review! Lastly if there is a server you wish for me to review feel free to drop me an ask and I will try to review it as in depth as I can! Thank you for reading!~<3

[thebandcampdiaries]

Belgium-based rapper chizzyy has announced a new summer album.

The artist introduced his new work with a single, “One Time,” which is already available on streaming platforms.

July 2024 - chizzyy is a rap artist based in Belgium. He has recently announced an exciting new summer album, which is definitely going to be a new highlight in his discography. The new release appears very promising indeed - especially since the artist has dropped a new single titled “One Time,” which will be featured on this upcoming record along with other original songs. 

This new track follows chizzyy's previous album, “aura,” which was released earlier in 2024. “Aura” includes ten powerful songs and it is actually quite notable because of its unique creative vision. This record helped chizzyy solidify his sound, tapping into the modern rap scene for inspiration and adding a more dynamic and one-of-a-kind twist, making him stand out.

The single “One Time” is a perfect teaser for what fans can expect from the summer album overall. The production quality of the track is exceptionally high, with a balanced and detailed mix that provides a rich listening experience to the audience. The song’s impact is nothing short of immediate. It offers a powerful combination of punchy beats, direct lyrics, and melodies that capture the listener's attention right from the start. His flow is impressive, and his ability to explore different styles, even beyond purely rap, is truly inspiring and remarkable. In addition to that, this track stands out with its sonic variety and will undoubtedly keep the audience engaged due to its catchy yet unpredictable and creative arrangement style. In other words, It's always exciting to hear artists who push their ideas and set higher standards in their productions. This definitely seems to be one of those cases, as chizzyy's creativity is definitely paying off.

The new song showcases some of the best contemporary hip-hop stylistic tropes, no question about it. Yet, there is a lot more to it than just hard-hitting rap. The song immediately demonstrates the Belgian artist's skills as he sets out to embrace elements of today’s vibrant R&B scene and includes a variety of other musical influences, such as Jersey Club. This blend of genres makes chizzyy's music dynamic and versatile, appealing to a wide range of listeners. In addition, it also reveals his diverse international background, especially as someone who was born in Europe to Cuban parents!

Needless to say, chizzyy is not just an ordinary run-of-the-mill rapper; he is a versatile and ambitious artist who goes the extra mile to ensure that his music stands out in terms of artistry and production quality. His dedication to his craft is evident in “One Time,” and if this track is any indication, his upcoming album is set to be a standout project in the music industry.

The artist’s previous album, “aura,” was an important milestone in his career. It was released earlier this year and included ten tracks that showcased chizzyy’s unique style and ability to blend various musical elements seamlessly. The album received positive reviews and helped to further establish chizzyy as a significant player in the contemporary rap scene.

chizzyy's music is available on all major digital streaming platforms, making it very easy for fans to listen to his work and discover his latest single. and why not, even diving deeper into some of his earlier tracks, which are definitely worth listening to. His dedication to creating high-quality music is evident in every track he releases, and “One Time” is no exception. The song’s detailed production and impactful delivery make it a standout track, and it sets high expectations for the rest of the summer album.

The anticipation for chizzyy's new album is palpable among his fans and the music community. The release of “One Time” has only heightened this excitement, as listeners are eager to see what else the talented rapper has in store. With a reputation for producing bold and innovative music, chizzyy is poised to make a significant impact with his new album.

In conclusion, chizzyy is gearing up for a major summer release that promises to deliver high-quality, dynamic music. His new single, “One Time,” provides a glimpse into the exciting musical journey that awaits listeners. The artist’s commitment to excellence in both artistry and production is clear, and fans can look forward to an album that is both impactful and memorable. chizzyy's music, including his latest single, is available on the best digital streaming services, allowing fans to enjoy his work anytime, anywhere. Be sure to check out “One Time” and stay tuned for the full album release this summer. If you like the artist's original work, make sure to also check him out on Soundcloud (@lilcubaa1). His account is his home for unique remixes and other projects that might not always end up on streaming services.

We also had the chance to ask the artist a few questions: keep reading to learn more!

I love how you manage to render your tracks so personal and organic. Does the melody come first, or do you focus on the beat the most?   Answer:   I 90% of the time look for beats or just get a beat first then I mess around, finding the vibe & that's pretty much it. It's all about the feeling. Sometimes I have lyric ideas & save them then add them to a song if i need any extra lyrics for new ideas

Do you perform live? If so, do you feel more comfortable on a stage or within the walls of the recording studio?  

Answer:   I have never performed my music on stage & am pretty scared to do so if the time will ever come. I used to perfom Michael Jackson songs on stage as a toddler in between my father & his band's sets as like a filler but I'm beyond shy for anything near that now lol. But I'm sure I'll enjoy it because I've thought of it a couple times.

If you could only pick one song to make a “first impression” on a new listener, which song would you pick and why?  

Answer: That's a hard question because I also don't know so if I would ever want to recommend someone a different artist. I actually find first impressions very important. I would have to know their preferences first to recommend what they would potentially like more. Since I feel like I make a variety of sounds, I could recommend like a favorite of that particular sound & see from there. Also if I have covered or remixed an artist they enjoy, I can recommend that first since there's a small interest / connection there already. It depends.

What does it take to be “innovative” in music?  

Answer:   I feel like that's the only way to improve / grow. Anything classic or known is always a safe option & it's fun to do so but stepping out the comfort zone a little & trying something new could turn into the norm & have something fresh. It is a bummer that people don't dare to give something different a chance but it all takes time & patience.

Any upcoming release or tour your way?  

Answer:   Definitely no tour yet. My next release is my summer project which I hope I'm able to get out somewhere this month. For the rest of the year, I'm planning on a basic Hip-Hop / Rap type project, a pretty lyrical type one & for the end of the year (or even maybe top of next year because I want to take my time on it & make it very good), a project that can be played in the club / parties. Very small stuff every now & then as always but for the rest, trying to get exciting things done.  

Anywhere online where curious fans can listen to your music and find out more about you?  

Answer: I upload 'exclusive' tracks that I don't / legally cant upload on streaming services like covers or remixes. I'm not the most active on social media so not the most ideal to hear from me except just the music.