#and now MULTIPLE games are playing into the chapter-based system

[nebuladreamz]

Thinking about how if i ever had the opportunity to make. a mascot horror game or story that i'd have it take place right before the eventual Big Fall of the establishment

[Big ramble under the cut lmao]

Something something reuse how I thought for Security Breach we'd play as Vanessa and the five nights formula was doing the shift but slowly discovering through each shift that Some Shit is happening and she has to stop it (directly before we found out Vanessa was Vanny/Vanessa was the security guard's name)

LIKE!!! I fucking adore how a couple of standout mascot horror games have been [primarily Indigo Park, I'm willing to give it a shot and it's deadass because of Rambley and his role as an AI assistant], but a lot of what I've seen personally (stares at. Fucking. Garten of Banban), it's a lot of post fall. Always investigating or going through the abandoned place where shit's gone wrong (thank you BATIM for starting the chapter-based formula -bangs head-)

But like. I've always thought about what it would be like for a mascot horror game to take place before the fall, or even during it depending on the execution.

Before the fall, you're either a kid who's a regular at the establishment (daycare, amusement park, whatever) or even an employee working there-

(or even MORE interestingly, if we go with a chapter-based thing or even similar to FNAF in terms of there's a set thing for whatever, the POV keeps changing between different people- wait I'm cooking. i'll get back to that later actually)

-And slowly as it all develops, you watch as everything begins to just. Fall apart. Employees leaving, the place coming down into disrepair, something's up with the main mascots of the place but you don't know what (at least in universe, we all know this formula as players)

Actually, coming back to the changing POVs, you can even draw in inspiration from DBH (I only watched gameplay back then oops) where the perspective changes between different people. A child enjoying their day, a first time employee, a long time employee, a parent of a child. Hell, depending on things, you could even have a moment where (depending on the location) you play as a fucking burglar looking to steal shit (before getting. Fucking bass boosted)

And eventually there'd come the inevitable end where it all closes down, leaving whatever living mascots inside to rot (insert Abandoned by Disney line here /j)

LIKE!!! I want to see people expand on the formula!! I want to see people fuck around and find out!!!

Honest to god, I might take this and run with it myself cause now I'M getting ideas.

[rimeiii]

I return to WHB Tumblr to see how the game us doing and I see the fandom in shambles, damn. And after scrolling through the tag for a bit, I have...questions.

Yo how big is WHB now even? I stopped playing shortly after they introduced the paywalled Gabriel and that's one of the things I've seen several people complain about...

Like I understand the rest of the complaints - it's mostly the same complaints I've been having about the game prior to me quitting. Multiple decisions that seem to reinforce the idea that this game is heading down the P2W path, very anti-F2P practices in general, outrageous prices for the paid Nightmare Pass, no pity system on launch, the disaster that was the implementation of the Solomon's Seals gacha, the many bugs on launch especially, the small amount of farmable premium currency, and the list goes on...the pancake shop rework not only seems to be in line with the trajectory PB seems to be taking in terms of game decisions, but is also the straw that broke the camel's back for a lot of players.

But, uh, storage? Wasn't it like 2 GB tops on launch? That was reasonable I think, because Arknights was around that size on launch and back then, there was so little additional content. Only JP dubbing, no L2D E2 art or skins (the only L2D we had back then was Closure, the SHOPKEEP), 5 story chapters (which translated to 92 stages, in which around half have a Challenge Mode variant and with a large majority being unique maps), and no additional game modes.

For additional context, currently Arknights is ~6-7 GB on a fresh account with all language dubbing, and it gets bloated if you don't delete unused event data (it's ~9.7 GB for me and I have Arknights on my current phone ever since Near Light first hit Global, so just over 2 years now). Keep in mind Arknights is close to 4.5 years old in Global, and CN just celebrated their 5th anniversary a few months back.

Talking about storage, I don't think comparing WHB to older games and non-tower defense is fair either, since:

Older games in general are much easier on your device in terms of storage to content ratio and performance, mostly due to device limitations of the past requiring less sophisticated game mechanics and the devs sticking to these simpler mechanics even as time passes and technology gets more advanced. Gentle reminder that FGO is ~7 years old in NA, ~9 years old in JP, and ALSO doesn't download everything initially - afaik there's an option for that in the settings menu which bumps the total size up significantly (the wiki lists it as around 9-10 GB total).

Different genres and graphics mean different storage requirements. Anything 3D or open world will almost always have higher storage requirements compared to anything else. Path to Nowhere is around the same size as Arknights despite being younger due to the former using 3D models for their battle sprites, compared to the 2D chibis Arknights uses. Love and Deepspace, a ~5 months game, is huge because of how they do the cutscenes AND the stage-based action gameplay, but Wuthering Waves is closing the gap on size quickly despite being only ~1.5 months because it's an open world action RPG.

What I will say, though, is that WHB is not optimized well. Now I may be very unfair by comparing WHB to Punishing: Gray Raven, a game by the optimization gods known as Kurogames (people ran the PC PGR client on 2GB RAM laptops and my 4GB RAM laptop can run WuWa despite it using UE4 - an engine notorious for chugging on low end devices - albeit with lag spikes in the open world map), but when a 2D tower defense game fails to run as smoothly as a 3D action game with stylish and fast-paced combat, then we have a problem. For context, my 4GB RAM phone only has minor lag when I use a skill that has a lot of visual effects like Lee Hyperreal's Hypermatrix, but back when I played WHB I still experienced lag spikes when deploying units.

Again this all boils down to PB just not being used to the game format. Which is all well and good, Arknights was a huge departure from Girls Frontline too - a good portion of Arknights' devs worked on Girls Frontline before splitting off to work on Arknights. But what made Arknights succeed is how accessible and F2P friendly the game was, with smooth and solid gameplay as well as an engaging plot that discusses themes such as racism, discrimination, and the fragility of hope.

Of course you can argue that Arknights is a tower defense first, visual novel second. Unlike WHB, which is an otome game first, tower defense second. And I would agree, but only to a certain extent. Once you step into the realm of having Actual Combat Gameplay Elements then I believe it's your duty to make progression as reasonable as possible. Including a power gate is fine, but nothing too excessive - and certainly do not hold any significantly strong unit behind a paywall.

Because fun fact - in Arknights' entire runtime, there were only a handful of completely paywalled content:

Player icons from promotional packs for large events, particularly the Ambience Synesthesia concerts

Character skins from promotional packs, like the Exusiai and Guard Ch'en skins during the anime release

Purestream, a B4 Therapist Medic who was released as a WWF collab, where all sales from her $1 pack were donated to the WWF. Even then, she eventually became available for everyone, as she was later added to the Recruitment pool (use a resource obtained from Dailies for a chance to get units, some unique to the pool like Purestream). She was a decent healer, and her Module made her a good budget medic. Even then you're more likely using the Medics you've already built by then - for B4 budget options, Perfumer is usually better for multi-target healing and a party HP regen passive, while Sussurro is your go-to for strong single-target healing.

And guess what? None of these had any direct impact on gameplay during their paywalled period. Purestream wasn't even a B5 or B6 unit, yo. There are many better options for healers. I STILL USE THE B3 ANSEL AND HIBISCUS IN INTEGRATED STRATEGIES.

I'm just...PB's choices baffle me, and I do wish they can improve not just on the game performance standpoint, but in how they treat their playerbase in terms of in-game purchases. I hope I made that abundantly clear...

[blubberquark]

2023 Game Of The Year: Storyteller (plus DLC)

I played Storyteller after the DLC came out, and Storyteller (with the DLC) became my game of the year.

Unfortunately, I can't really explain why without spoiling some puzzles. I will not try not to spoil any solutions in the screenshots (except one), but I will have to spoil the game mechanics.

What is Storyteller

Storyteller is a game where you arrange comic book panels and characters to tell a story based on a prompt. It doesn't require any dexterity, only deduction. You drag and drop comic book panels into slots, drag and drop character into panels to arrange them, or drag populated panels and characters around.

The challenge is to understand how the characters and panels work, what the prompt wants you to do, and how to do that. Early on, the game is mostly about figuring out the rules governing the characters and panels. It slowly shifts towards more "thinky" problems, where the challenge lies not in understanding how the game works, or what the goal is, but how to fit the required story beats into a limited number of panels.

Depending on the outcome of a panel, you may see little icons, speech bubbles, or thought bubbles that describe whether an action failed or succeeded, and how the characters think or feel about that. Sometimes the outcome of a panel is communicated in a much more direct way, and acted out by the characters.

Screenshot from second chapter puzzle "A Heartbreak is Healed"

Screenshot from first chapter puzzle "Heartbreak with a Happy Ending": At this point you are still learning the game mechanics like placing panels and characters

Screenshot from "Everyone Rejects Edgar": More thinky puzzle than recreation of a storytelling cliché, and an opportunity to apply what you know. The characters except for Edgar are interchangeable. You can have them fall in love with any other, or reject Edgar in any order.

Screenshot from later puzzle "Everyone Sits on the Throne": A thinky puzzle in the same vein as "Everyone Rejects Edgar". This time, there are important differences between the initial states of characters. You cannot make them sit on the throne in any order.

The panels can be thought of as story beats, sometimes as scenes/places, as in "A and B meet in the kitchen", and sometimes as actions/verbs, as in "A and B kiss". They aren't verbs in the sense that you can just put Alice and Bob in the kissing panel and they always kiss. They only kiss if they love each other, or at least if they don't hate each other. All you can do with the characters as the player is to put them in situations. You can drag the "horse" character into the "watering hole" panel, but you can't make it drink. I mean, probably you could, you might, but would be the puzzle.

Screenshot from "Hatey Murders Father and Marries Mother": It's obviously an Oedipus reference. You see that Hatey doesn't want to murder his father or marry his mother in this constellation.

The game keeps track of the relationships between characters, beliefs of characters, and states of objects. That means (I made this example up in order to not spoil any puzzles) if Alice has been in the kitchen with the cookies, Alice believes there are cookies in the kitchen. If the Cookie Monster has been in the kitchen, there are no more cookies in the kitchen. Now Alice could tell Bob that there are cookies in the kitchen, and Bob could ge hungry and blame Alice for lying, or he could catch the Cookie Monster eating the last cookie. The possibilities for drama are there.

Characters have different initial states and motivations. For instance, the King and the Queen are initially married, and they both have the crown.

Screenshot from "Three Heads Roll": Only the Baron wants to kidnap the king.

If you're into that kind of thing, you can imagine Storyteller as a STRIPS-like planning system with a known or at least discoverable initial state, multiple goals (not just one goal state), panels as actions that take characters as parameters, and a lot of state that can be observed and deduced, but not directly manipulated.

If you're not, you can just play Storyteller as a game about telling stories based on a prompt.

Progression

After you start a new save file, the whole game is open to you. Puzzles or stories are grouped into chapters of four of five stories. Each chapter has a common theme, and a set of common characters and panels. Later chapters mix it up a bit, and introduce characters into different environments or combine characters from multiple stories or mythologies, whereas earlier chapters mostly introduce panels and characters so you can learn how they operate.

Like I said, the whole game is open to you from the start, so you are free to skip a puzzle if you are stuck, to revisit an older chapter, or to skip to the last chapter. It doesn't really matter, because you have to solve every puzzle in the game in order to get to the end.

The first chapter teaches the mechanics of dragging and dropping panels, dragging and dropping characters into panels, and dragging populated panels around to swap them. Then the next couple of chapters introduce different characters and settings. Usually the first story of a chapter only has a few new characters and panels with a rather obvious prompt, the second introduces more content and a slight variation, and the third and fourth have a slight twist.

The later chapters are more focused on actual puzzles.

Some puzzles have multiple solutions, and after solving it one way, you see two additional prompts. For example, the princess could kiss the frog and then the frog turns into a prince, or the princess could kiss the frog but the frog turns into another princess.

I skipped many of those variations on my first playthrough, and this way I blazed through about 40 puzzles without ever stopping and thinking or feeling overly challenged. I learned how most of the characters and panels work, and then I went back to solve all the variant prompts. Somebody I know played every level in order and solved the variant prompts right away. That makes for a more thinky experience earlier on. Either way works, and both are clearly intentionally permitted by the game design.

In the final chapters, Storyteller actually becomes thinky and difficult. This seems like a flaw in pacing, but it works out to the first 70% of the puzzles taking 30% of the time playing it, and the last 30% taking 70% of the time. Instead of treating Storyteller like a storytelling game, you must finally treat it like a puzzle game.

When you beat the base game, the DLC content is added. Levels in the previous chapters get an additional variant prompt, and a new character is introduced. This character acts completely different from all the previous characters, so you have to at first understand how it interacts with the panels from the base game. The variant prompts are harder than anything in the base game. For puzzle game aficionados, this is where it gets challenging for the first time. Here's a "metagaming" tip: None of the DLC variant prompts is solvable with the characters from the base game. Therefore your solution must incorporate the DLC, and it would be impossible to reproduce with base game content.

Screenshot from "Eve Dies Heartbroken Devil makes everyone miserable": You have to experiemnt to figure out how the devil interacts with the panels and characters.

Why It Works So Well

Storyteller is a bit on the easy side. So why does it work so well?

If you are an expert at puzzle games such as The Golem or Stephen's Sausage Roll, then maybe it won't work for you. But if you are looking for a puzzle game that is different, if you liked Splice or Cogs, then Storyteller could be the game for you. It's not a puzzle platformer, not a first person puzzle adventure like Obduction or Sensorium or Quern.

Storyteller is not a storytelling game in the vein of Facade, but it uses themes and literary allusion to keep you interested early on. The music sometimes feels more like a fun Easter egg, but never annoying.

Early prompts in the vein of "boy meets girl" soon turn into more complicated prompts, requiring some minimal lateral thinking to figure out what you need to do. Some of the prompts are literary or mythological allusions and references. That keeps levels interesting and varied even when the actual puzzle part is simple.

Screenshot from "Butler Gets Fired" and "Friedrich Takes Revenge": The puzzle part is quite easy, and there is little lateral thinking involved. The fun is mostly in re-enacting pop culture tropes.

Screenshot from the level selection: Every puzzle in every chapter is open from the start, but it's probably best to do them in order.

Many bad puzzle games get this wrong. You can never really solve a puzzle, because there is only one thing to do. You pick up a key, you open a lock, you see a button, you press it to open a door, you just do the next thing you can do over and over. Instead of puzzling, you just push every button and see what changes to know where to go next. It's fine if the puzzle mechanics are just an excuse to get the player to traverse a temple/dungeon back and forth, if you see the lock and the key and the puzzle mechanics are just there for flavour and motivation. It's no okay if your game is not an action adventure or a puzzle platformer, but an actual puzzle game.

Monument Valley is such a game that doesn't have any actual puzzles in it, you just walk from one place to the next. The game is carried by the interesting visuals and the novelty of the perspective mechanic. (If you are looking for something like Monument Valley but challenging, I could perhaps recommend Naya's Quest or Selene's Labyrinth.)

Early on, Storyteller has this flow of simple and easy puzzles (like Monument Valley), one solved after the other, and it gradually gets more difficult. The references to books and storytelling clichés aren't particularly deep or laugh-out-loud funny, but they make for the occasional chuckle. Sometimes part of the solution process is to realise that "boy meets girl" was last time, and this time you have to use "girl meets girl" to make the story fit the prompt with the characters you have at your disposal.

The variant prompts manage to side-step a problem I that stood out to me on my playthrough of Baba is You, and a problem I encountered designing my own puzzles. Sometimes there are two levels in a row, where one level has an "unintended" solution, and the next has the "intended" solution removed, so you have to find the second solution for the first level. If you manage to find the "unintended" solution the first time, the next level will be very confusing. Just this solution again? Wait, what was the other solution? Did the last level try to teach me something I missed? Should I go back again to find the other solution?

It was confusing to me anyway, a couple of times when I played Baba is You. The same idea is implemented in Storyteller in a much better way. Instead of having a modified copy of the same level right afterwards, Storyteller categorises solutions into "basic solution", "variant A" and "variant B". Even if you manage to find one variant with your first solution attempt, you immediately see both variant prompts, and there is always one more variant to try next. You never have to construct the same solution twice in a row. Sadly this elegant system cannot be applied to Baba is You.

Screenshot from "Tiny gets a kiss": Sorry for spoiling the solution. Even if you manage to have the prince save Tiny the first time around, you would still have to find a solution where Snowy is ungrateful, and Tiny gets a kiss.

Pre-History

I can't really talk about Storyteller without explaining why I was drawn to this game in the first place. I first heard about it in 2008, when it won the IGF. Back then it was more of a story sandbox in the vein of "Tale-Spin". That's the old story generation AI that produced the sentence "gravity drowned", if that means anything to you.

Screenshot: Storyteller prototype with old pixel art

About a hundred flash portals mirrored the initial Storyteller Flash prototype that won the IGF. The original is still here on Kongregate.

Back then, I wondered how a sand box such as storyteller could be turned into an actual game. It was a prototype and some mechanics, but not really a game. It looks like the developer wondered, too.

In the mean time, FRAMED had came out. Now FRAMED looks clearly inspired by Storyteller, because it also has a mechanic where you rearrange panels, but it's nothing like it. FRAMED is more like the Limbo to Storyteller's Braid. Ironically, FRAMED is "a game that tells you a story". Storyteller is an actual puzzle game.

It has been in development longer than Duke Nukem Forever, but even after all these years, Storyteller doesn't feel dated or superfluous. They finally found a winning formula.

Storyteller was developed by Daniel Benmergui and published by Annapurna Interactive. Get it on Steam here, or if you have a Netflix subscription and an iOS or Android device, the price of the mobile app is included in your monthly Netflix fee. Storyteller is also available for the Nintendo Switch. I would recommend playing it on a PC or tablet.

[sith-shenanigans]

Introduction and Masterpost

Hello! I’m Io (with an i, not an L), they/them, enthusiast of evil space wizards and other assorted terrible people everywhere. This is primarily a SWTOR blog, but I post about other fandoms occasionally, and have recently fallen down a terrible hyperfixation hole about Fallen London. I write longfic, on a somewhat inconsistent schedule; chronic illness makes it difficult to put out chapters consistently.

I don’t have a DNI, but I block bigots and anyone whose posts I’d prefer not to see. I don’t do shipping discourse, and I don’t necessarily care what you ship, but see the previous sentence; if it makes me uncomfortable, and there are definitely things that make me profoundly uncomfortable out there, I’ll probably block you. (This has much more to do with tone than content—I have triggers, I’m all for people experiencing unpleasant things in safe ways, but the moment it feels like they’re being written as good and sweet and normal I’m going to nope on out of there as fast as I can. For my own mental health, and because the alternative is me biting someone’s head off.)

For my own part, I often write about dark subjects (especially in regards to my SWTOR OCs), and this blog may contain untagged discussion of fictional slavery, speciesism, systemic child abuse, state violence, toxic and abusive relationships, and similar topics. Mentions of sexual assault are generally tagged as “sexual assault cw.” I try to tag discussion of parental or school-based child abuse as “child abuse cw,” as well as in-depth descriptions of it in general, but I can’t 100% guarantee it. I try to remember to tag what friends ask me to tag, but if we don’t know each other well, I may not be able to manage it.

For neurodivergence reasons, I find it extremely difficult to describe images most of the time, but I’m trying to include alt text on screenshots of tags more consistently, and I’m attempting to tag my own posts with undescribed images as “undescribed.” (This includes most of my Fallen London posting, because there’s just enough formatting to poke me in the “cannot easily transcribe visuals to text” issue.)

Liminality/Discontent (SWTOR):

Liminality Main Cast:

[placeholder]

Discontent Main Cast:

[placeholder]

Sunlight (SWTOR):

[placeholder]

Other/Miscellaneous (SWTOR):

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Fallen London:

Amias Arling, the Calescent Inquisitive. Heart’s Desire. A former freelance detective with a few unfortunate soft spots, who came to the Neath for a case and ended up framed for something their target did. Extremely clever and extremely driven, but embodies the maxim that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Practically allergic to the direct route, unless it seems like no one would ever expect it. And even then, they’d rather take a convoluted way around.

SWTOR:

Liminality/Discontent, a sometimes-AU SWTOR novelization in multiple parts. Has a heavy focus on the implications that the game didn’t go into, the politics of the galaxy, and the pressure the protagonists go through.

like a moth to you, sunlight, a collaboration with my sibling @azems-familiar. Not very much is written on it, because collaboration is hard even when both people involved aren’t chronically ill (and our hyperfixations are largely elsewhere right now), but we love our terrible children anyway.

Liminality/Discontent:

The Dead Star; The Ruin, a prologue of a sort. As yet unpublished. Also works as a standalone work.

Anamnesis, a KOTOR novelization with a certain amount of playing with the format. A tragedy, if a bittersweet one, and a case study in why villains with good motivations are still villains. On hiatus.

Liminality, my pride and joy and occasional mortal enemy. The first and primary of two SWTOR base game novelizations, covering the Sith Inquisitor, Smuggler, Sith Warrior, and Jedi Consular storylines. It deals heavily with loss and family—the latter both by blood and by choice, and sometimes unexpectedly uncovered. It’s also about history, about the boundaries between past and future and life and death—and the things that survive when someone is gone. The galaxy is full of dangerous secrets, and cycles that seem inexorable; in the end, though, what matters most are the choices you make and why.

Discontent, the fic I will someday definitely write. Covers the Jedi Knight, Imperial Agent, Bounty Hunter, and Republic Trooper. It’s about war, mostly, and cleaning up other people’s messes. Nobody gets to step off a battlefield as the same person who walked onto it, if they make it off at all, but there are reasons to keep trying—even if only some of them are good ones. And somebody has to be the one to chase down the conspiracies in the dark.

Sacrifice, as yet not even started, which will cover the portion of the game running from the end of the class stories to Ziost. There’s a fourth fic for the Alliance era, tentatively titled Conviction, but there’s less in my head about how that one’s going to go.

Sunlight:

still my heart is heavy (with the hate of some other man’s beliefs), about spies and loyalty and people making slightly better decisions than they could have. Written primarily by @azems-familiar, who Illami belongs to. (I helped write Ardun.)

Other/Miscellaneous (SWTOR):

your last serving daughter, a collaboration with @reconstructionlegacy. Our silly little AU about Empire and the people who wish they didn’t live in it. Also infrequently updated due to the trials of life and coauthorship.

Fallen London:

None, yet, but it will happen. I can feel it.

The organizational banners used can be found here.

[professional-sephiroth-scrungler]

This is probably an old topic this point but im thinking about it and feel violent to whatever lol

I’m glad that they remade Crisis Core so that new fans or people who never played the original CC got to experience it with fresh paint. But MY GOD there are a couple gripes i have with Reunion which have mounted a bit more with Ever Crisis.

1. Personal Gripe. Idk if everyone has this issue or if the game has been updated to include this or not since but when i was playing, I had to stop at multiple points and take a break because motion blur makes me genuinely nauseous. And at the time, there was no way that i could find to turn it off. I tried modding it out myself and it didn’t work. I want to 100% the missions but i don’t know if i can because after 10 minutes, I feel like death. But i like the combat system better than the og so hhhhh idk

2. This is not a criticism of the voice actors at all. I’ve gotten used to the voices and I genuinely believe they are doing wonderfully as the characters now. My criticism is at the directors of the english dub of Reunion. The original Crisis Core’s english script can already feel clunky at times. The writing and story as a whole was clunky to begin with. But it really feels like the english voice directors sometimes gave the worst directions and said “Yes! Thats the one!” to the worst takes that sucked any life and personality the OG game cast had given those same lines.

3. I love the shiny, new graphics and animations. And i think there are a few new missions and some quality of life things and it being retranslated. Other than that, i don’t think there is anything new at all. I am certain Square knows that Crisis Core’s story is clunky, sometimes cheesy, probably rushed, and not well written at times. And they did NOTHING to fix it. They didn’t add a couple new chapters to clear anything up. They didn’t add any new dialogue or something to make the relationship and dynamic of the First trio more clear. They didn’t clean up the writing of Sephiroth’s downfall into madness. For the love of everything they could’ve done some justice to a character based off a real person at least in looks and cleaned Genesis’s story and writing. No. Instead…

4. IT LOOKS LIKE THEY’RE PUTTING ALL THAT CHARACTERIZATION AND CHARACTER DYNAMIC AND CLEAN UP IN THE FUCKING GACHA GAME THAT THEY UPDATE SO GOD DAMN INCONSISTENTLY IT MAKES ME WONDER IF THERE’S LIKE 2 PEOPLE WORKING ON EVER CRISIS. ARE THE PEOPLE AT SQUARE OKAY??? IDK BUT AAAAAA I HATE WHEN COMPANIES DO THIIIIIIS

Anyways, I hope you’re all having a wonderful night.

[eddsworld-the-masquerade]

Spent last few days working on the script for Chapter 6 (which I'm now editing so, highlights coming soon). In the meantime, here's a sort of masterpost of things concerning possible game mechanics for future VN builds

First things first, the visual novel will be kinetic. Meaning, no choices or story branches. Linear story telling. Perhaps a bit unusual when VN killer feature is the ability to choose your own path...but, I recognize writing multiple stories within one would be too taxing for me and I probably won't be good at it. Plus, some of the classics when it comes to VNs are kinetic, and people love them for their stories and characters.

However, it won't be just a book with pictures and music either. Some of the mechanics I'd like to try and implement to richen the gaming experience are:

Turn based, RPG-style battles.

I'm taking most inspiration from the first Darkest Dungeon game (and bits of Star Rail here and there), so the concept I imagined so far is rather similar.

You'll be able to play a party ranging from one to four characters (the main ones), each with their unique role and skillset: Tord, a tank/damage dealer hybrid; Edd, a buffer (but like, the OP one); Tom, a debuffer, multiple target specializing on DOTs (damage over time); Matt, sustain/damage dealer hybrid.

Each will have: a basic attack, and around 2 skills that require spending blood (action points). They will also have something similar to DD's sanity meter, that could build over time spent in unnecessary/avoidable battles, or by specific enemy attacks. If it goes up high enough, the character ends up "malfunctioning" in ways specific to them and their playstyle.

There will be ways to lower this "sanity meter" down to normal. As well as ways to acquire passive buffs, by finding items at specific locations. Probably no leveling system, but I'll try to research the possibility of it in renpy along with other things.

I'd like to have these battles happen in one chapter. So like, you go one chapter with some number of battles, then next one is "resting time" (no battles), then next chapter has battles again. And it will have at least two boss fights. Could make it three, if I'll find who could fit that additional boss role XP

Some other game mechanics for when there are no battles:

Random events. Bits of character interaction that aren't essential to main story but could give additional depth to them and the world around. Kind of my way of giving additional replayable content without the need to write branching story arcs XD

Mini games. Little puzzles to better relate to the character experience. Sort of, experience what they are experiencing in the moment. Chapter 3 already has one in the script, I'll search for other opportunities to insert them.

Unlockable character stories. A suggestion from Nina, to have the backstories I write for the antagonists as unlockable content after beating the game. Kind of like a Gallery, except instead of images you get additional game content XD Perhaps some could get unlocked by completing some sort of in-game challenge, like acquiring a certain number of buff items.

[triangle-strategy-notes]

All the chapter scripts for Triangle Strategy are now up on the wiki! The scripts should contain essentially all of the text from the game, with the exception of some UI and other not-dialogue things.

Long-winded list + rambling about what I still need to clean up under the cut:

I haven't touched the mid-battle dialogue yet for the most part. It's all pasted in every chapter, but I've pretty much just slapped a "This dialogue is triggered if [condition unknown]" label on all of the lines and called it a day.

The dialogue for each side story is only included in the data once, so if one side story is included in multiple different route paths, there's a decent chance I missed that. Once I get the basic script down, I'll go back and take a closer look to make sure I have the side stories duplicated where they need to be.

There are also a few scenes that were in the script and that I can remember playing through, but they didn't seem to actually be in the chapter the datamining said they would be in, so I need to track down where they actually go.

Event descriptions are mostly all there, but there were a few places I need to go back and check.

There are a lot of little general things I might have missed (things like conditionals that didn't show up in the ids I was looking at, so they flew under my radar).

Question-answer associations are likely mixed up in a lot of places. I touched on it in a previous post, but this is due to the fact that when Serenoa is answering a question, there's no real id that's used to indicate what dialogue follows a specific answer. So I've mostly just gone off of what sounds right for the time being. But if you're dying for a not-tldr explanation (and of course you're dying for a not-tldr explanation!!!!):

The way I've been "datamining" a lot of this isn't actually datamining so much as it is sort of......... making educated guesses based on the developer's variable naming system. Like for example, a specific piece of dialogue might be named:

MS01_X01_A1_0010_F_FRE_0070

And what I did was sort of reverse-figure-out what those ids indicated. I figured out that MS stands for "Main Story," 01 is the chapter number, X indicates that it's part 2 (if there ARE two parts, otherwise it's just the whole chapter), A1 is a reference to the location (Wolffort Demense), 0010 I think is technically some sort of scene id, but I haven't been able to crack what exactly the value indicates. "F" is the gender, "FRE" indicates that Frederica is the speaker, and "0070" is some other numbers that I did actually figure out what they meant but it's not relevant to datamining (it's a counter for how many times a specific character has spoken in a scene, which was probably useful for making sure each dialogue line got a unique id but it's not super useful in any other sense). (Also my little brother was actually the one to figure that out for me so shout out to him!!!)

There are variants on this with other information included, such as:

MS02_X02_RESEARCH_01_DRAMA_M_ELA_S01_0020

Which is a line of Erador's dialogue with roughly this interpretation:

MS: Main Story

02: Chapter 2

X: Main Chapter Content

RESEARCH: Comes from Exploration phase

01: Version 1

DRAMA: This happens during the exploration phase (as opposed to before or after it)

M: Male

ELA: Erador is the speaker

S01: Scenario ID 1 (usually means this is the dialogue that displays the first time you speak to him, vs. any time afterward)

0020: speaker count again

With questions specifically (like Benedict asking, "What do you think the purpose of the tourney is, my lord?"), those lines of dialogue usually get the label S03. That "S03" label is applied to all parts of the question-related conversation, including: the question itself (e.g. "What do you think the purpose of the tourney is, my lord?"), Serenoa's answers ("I think it's to show off our military might", "I think it's to make friends," etc.), and any NPC response that follows (e.g. Benedict saying, "Not quite, my lord. You see, it's actually..."). As far as I can tell, there's no way to tell what answer goes with what NPC response. It would PROBABLY be in the code somewhere, but while variable names are really easy to see, the actual code is a lot harder to break into and would require likely learning a new coding language and other stuff I simply don't feel like doing.

So thus I'm just guessing a lot of times. For a fair amount of it, it's pretty easy to tell what response goes with what question, but whenever it's ambiguous, it's entirely possible I mixed up the placement of a few lines here and there.

[fayesdiary]

actually now that you've finished AM and re: Paired Endings, did you get the paired endings you wanted? I remember when I went in blind and didn't know how the hidden support points system worked in regards to paired endings, I ended up with exactly no paired endings I was expecting or hoping to get, and a few people I knew playing the game at the same time as me ran into the same "wait, how does this work" conundrum bc we all went and got everyone to A or A+ supports with everyone else and therefore had a roulette wheel of paired endings.

also just in general, how did you enjoy AM?

I barely knew paired endings were a thing so I wasn't aiming for any one in particular (although I'm upset by the Felix/Ingrid one. I'm sorry Ingrid, you deserved better).

That said, having paired endings almost hidden from the player if you don't know (I'm guessing it's a selection of the A/A+ support pairs, but if you have multiple it selects one based on which has the highest support points) is... really weird. Why not just have S supports at that point and give the player the active choice of which paired ending they want?

As for Azure Moon itself, I quite enjoyed it! Dimitri's journey is the good shit, his relationship with Edelgard is just tragic and overall it's a really nice personal narrative.

But for the larger narrative, well... I have questions. And they are not the good kind.

Let's start with the smaller things first - Sothis.

Why is she even in the game?

I'm saying this as a huge fan of her- I adore her, I think she's so much fun. That said, if she's barely going to have screentime in White Clouds and is completely absent in Part 2, why even pretend she's going to be a primary character if she barely features in it?

I enjoyed Ch9 and 10 with her because she finally had her time to shine, taking initiative, coaxing Byleth into investigating a bit more and being a little gremlin when she convinces them to eavesdrop on Rhea. She finally has the presence she should have always had, but then she merges with Byleth and... that's it.

Poor Rhea is in an even worse situation in Azure Moon, being completely absent in Part 2. They tell you she has been secretly been imprisoned in Enbarr all this time but they never tell you why (my guess is it has something to do with Edelgard's monster form?), and then when you beat the game... Nothing.

Just a small line telling you she has retired and moved to Zanado.

The poor woman feels like a complete afterthought in this route.

Speaking of things feeling like an afterthought in Azure Moon, the Dark Snakes (the personal name I'm going with for Those who slither in the dark because I hate that name so goddamn much).

In White Clouds? Hyped up as a major antagonist.

In Azure Moon Part 2? Nowhere to be seen properly.

You only get Cornelia and Volkhard who have been very blatantly replaced with members of the cult, and yet no one seems to notice.

Dimitri will say straight to your face Cordelia's whole demeanor changed around a decade prior but never think "hmm, this sounds familiar", despite him mentioning Kronya a few chapters prior.

They appear in the final chapter but only as an extra boss you can stomp to get rid of a bunch of soldiers, and again - barely acknowledged. The rest of them flee when you kill their leader so the Snakes are still around scheming, but this is never addressed in Azure Moon, not even in the endings.

And I am not accepting "it will be explained in the other routes" as an excuse, because if you're going to treat every route as its own game, then the narrative of every single route has to stand on its own.

As it stands, the Snakes in AM only exist to make Edelgard look better by comparison in White Clouds and are almost completely ignored in Part 2.

And speaking of Edelgard - we need to talk about the whole deal with Fòdlan's unification.

This game is... weirdly fascinated with the idea. I can understand why Edelgard views it as an ideal - of course the future Emperor of an Empire would have an imperialist mindset.

The problem is that several other characters and the narrative itself portrays it a good thing, when if you think of it for a few minutes... It's not. The mere existence of the Kingdom and Alliance as well as two of the major wars in Fòdlan being for their indipendence proves that.

And look - Fòdlan has many, many problems. Rampant racism and xenophobia, class inequality exacerbated by Crests, you name it. But it being united under a single banner, especially if by force, does nothing to solve any of the issues and arguably makes them worse.

Hell, as fucked as the status quo at the start of the game is, at least there was a clear harmony between the four powers, and Fòdlan had been at a state of relative peace for almost a millennia until Edie did her, um, thing.

Shamir has a line where she mentions Fòdlan will probably split again eventually, and she's right - it's increasingly clear that Fòdlan being governed by a single power does not work.

Also I know I barely know Claude at this point especially because he's deliberately written as hard to read but I'm sorry- him just giving the Alliance to Dimitri is bullshit. Both because of what it represents, both because I don't buy it at all he would just do this (especially with Verdant Wind existing), and especially because you really want me to believe every single noble would be ok with rejoining under the Kingdom they declared indipendence from two centuries ago?

So the narrative ends up saying "oh it's not that Edie's ideals of a unified Fòdlan are fundamentally wrong- no, it's her methods and the fact that she wants to destroy the Church". And the cynical side me is thinking that in the large scale of things, the main difference between the routes is choosing which war criminal gets to govern the whole continent.

So while overall I enjoyed Azure Moon, I can't help but notice so many warning signs for things to come.

[midautumngame]

What is Early Access?

Early Access allows you to play games that are currently in-development. These are games that will evolve as you play them, as you give feedback, and as the developers update and add content.

Why Early Access?

Early Access allows devs to have the feedback and support to reach bigger goals that they might not be able to achieve otherwise in a realistic timeframe and with a realistic workload. One example of a successful Early Access game was Supergiant's Hades, which allowed them to add a variety of content, including enemies, weapons, boss battles and narrative while maintaining balance and interest in the end product.

How does Early Access help Midautumn?

We're a small team making a big and messy game that we really want to resonate with people. The best thing we can do to achieve that is bring players into the fold as early and often as we can. Early access is our way of allowing the game's community to grow along with us and be a part of Midautumn's development journey. With your help, we'll have the best chance at setting correct priorities, making necessary adjustments & tweaks, and most importantly making the game as impactful as we know it can be.

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

We're setting out to make Midautumn as expansive and as rich as we can, so many features are still to be implemented. Right now our roadmap includes the following:

Content updates (new abilities, items, enemies etc.)

Additional Dungeon Biomes

The rest of the game's narrative

More bosses

Changes and improvements to some of the existing systems

Improved optimization and stability

And much more!

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

The basic gameplay loop, including combat system, dungeon crawling, and character development, is mostly completed. The current game version includes:

The game's first chapter, which includes over 200 unique narrative events

3-7 hours of narrative content (per one playthrough)

3 bosses +

multiple miniboss that can be discovered by progressing the narrative

The game's starting dungeon biome - The Earthen Ruins,

16 base dungeon enemies

Permanent Ability Upgrades

Shops

Temporary Dungeon Items

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

We expect to release the game in late 2024 approximately Full 5 Biomes done, implemented, and refined including the narrative, characters, enemies, etc.

Buy the game or play our free demo and be part of Midautumn's journey to success!

[tiffyfoundsomething]

I haven't had much to talk about lately as far as dolls or doll repair tools go because I've been busy with other things.

My S.O. has been playing Yakuza: Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, though, and I have some thoughts.

Which is on sale right now for $40 on Amazon:

He's been playing on PS5. Since he's the one playing, I can't give much of an opinion on the combat system or item storage, etc.

I can say there are a ton of mini- and sub- games that he's enjoyed like a bottomless dungeon, an Animal Crossing-like island resort to take care of, baseball, card games, a Pokemon spoof, a dating game, and more.

The game references and mimics many other classic video game genres.

-

Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth is the first in the Yakuza series that he's played (he didn't even know about the series; I did but only from other people), and it was also conveniently a perfect place to hop into the franchise because you get a quick rundown of the games that lead up to this point. Even having not played Like a Dragon, the first in the Yakuza series to feature Ichiban Kasuga as the lead and a whole new battle system (it's now turn-based RPG style) and most of the characters already being established, Infinite Wealth makes sure you know who everyone is and how they're tied to Kasuga and Kiryu.

The Yakuza series is well known and well loved, and despite some heavy, emotional story the series doesn't take itself too seriously.

-

LaDIW looks really great. There is some disparity in quality between cinemas, cut scenes, and game play but that's normal.

Characters have individual facial hairs. There is texture in the clothing. For the most part the movements are fluid and natural, though at times they are stiff and weird. In-game animation has gotten worse as the game has gone on but the cinemas are consistently high-quality. I wonder if they were in a crunch for some segments, or if they used a different, lower quality studio for those parts.

-

The opening chapter is tedious. Cinema after cinema, they're long, they're awkwardly written, they go on and on and on long after the points has been made much like this sentence. If you can get through that, the rest is much more enjoyable.

I have noticed the ending cinemas are similar to the beginning in that they are awkward, keep going past the point being made, etc. That is a bit frustrating.

The English voice acting is..... I wouldn't say it's great, but it's ok. Sometimes it's really obvious when one V.A. is doing multiple voices and that can disrupt immersion. Seunhee likes to hiss her S's at the end of sentences and that gets under my skin. That's just a me, thing, though.

-

The characters are dynamic, flawed, and very lovable. It's easy to feel like you're hanging out with a bunch of your friends, experiencing the same things they are, together.

There is a lot of melancholy in their individual stories. Illness, unrequited love (tons of unrequited love), taking responsibility, letting go of the things they want in order to help the people they love.

They are also mostly in their 40's which makes them a little easier for me to relate to.

I am old.

-

There is a bit of misogyny in the game.

The male characters have skin texture, scruff, wrinkles, eyebags, and flaws while the female characters are all flawless, smooth, and generally younger.

There are 3 playable women and 7 playable men.

Male characters get jobs like cowboy, chef, breakdancer, and surfer, while the female characters get jobs like maid, dominatrix, and idol singer. There is no overlap, men don't get to be maids and women don't get to be chefs, for example. The men also get a lot more jobs than the women do.

There is a lot of ~younger woman interested in oblivious older man~ going on, too.

Everyone is equally capable, though, and all of the characters are treated as equals by the other characters.

-

Without spoiling anything, some features and activities do become redundant due to how the game is set up (you'll see). Like you'll go to Location A and do something, then go to Location B and.... do it again.

-

All in all we've both really enjoyed it, and I'm dreading the game ending because we've enjoyed the experience so much.

[yandere-monoma]

WHOOO KYM 2 COMMENTARY while i stall on working on kym 7

lots to discuss about a chapter literally called 'the exposition' hjgkfsg. if you didnt know, the way ao3 multichap updates works is that you dont necessarily have to title a oneshot chapter but the second you update it, you really get shown the option to title your chapters. so it didnt actually occur to me that i needed names for each one until chapter 2. i believe originally i was going to use a similar system as kyd where every chapter title was a command a la homestuck. however, i wasn't really utilizing the commands in the same way, i didn't really end the previous chapter with one and the plan for the next chapter... technically involves a command but not one i wanted to spoil via the chapter title.

the current naming system came into existence probably 3/4s of the way or more into writing this chapter, once i made the realization that the fic was, in fact, going to be at least five chapters. at this point in time, the plan was the following: the introduction, the exposition, the climax, the ending, the epilogue. this changed even more as time went on and more chapter ideas rudely crammed themselves into my brain, though it helped the structure a lot, because giving me time to fill out the space between exposition and climax made my brain happy HJSKFG

so, moving on, the fun part about chap 2 is that it really establishes the 'narration' as its own living function, something that is vaguely independent of the story rather than just a tool to present the story with, that both voices the author's and the character's thoughts depending on who is grabbing for control. this isn't an aspect i planned when outlining the fic but it's definitely influenced by 1) how much fun i had reading the epilogues and subsequent epilogue flavored fics 2) my desire to find some way to one-up the first chapter despite the topic matter not being nearly as extreme 3) the impulse to add in another experimental element to the story, especially now that the more abstract and poetic style of the first chapter was being removed

it's also incredibly fun to play with, because every time i struggled with describing something or wondered how i could transition from one point to the other, i realized - oh! i can just make the narrator state that very thing. don't know how i'm gonna build up from the end of chap 1 to the narrative goal of chap 2 (rose's mkultra moment)??? let's just get that all out in the open, then! problem SOLVED

it ended up being a hugely fun choice that allowed me to inject some humor into what's otherwise just a big ole pile o' unrelenting angst. it also helped me take myself less seriously, which lent me even more creative freedom than usual, like. GOD. it really helped turn this piece into something so rewarding, it overwhelms me. goddamnit homestuck why do you have to be so good

i just rewatched butterfly effect recently, god. back to the future i've never seen though. time references haha get it cuz his aspect is still time-

speaking of time, this chapter was the first attempt to really try and describe a zeta kid's classpect without coming out and stating it. there's a few interpretations of different phenomena's in homestuck that point out the implication of classpect powers being active before reaching god tier, or even before entering the game (though, usually in a way that is incredibly weak, premature and subtle enough to be missed by the user). one of the strongest examples that i based this chapter on was something the epilogues described: the idea that rose's obsessive writing as a child was based on her light powers feeding her vague visions of her future character arcs and plotlines. i really loved that and wanted a similar sort of plight for dave. i'll go off about what his specific title is at the end of this chapter but it's really fun poking at it now and then

the multiple narrators? seriously??? bit was me realizing i had to add a Multiple Narrators tag on ao3 after this. at this point of writing, i had no idea if i would be visiting anyone else's pov besides dave's, though.

attempt at homestuckian humor GO

™️ jokes are so funny to me for no reason

wink wink hint hint this is one of dave's powers at work, actually!! so, dave egbert actually has a perfect memory. like, there is not a single thing he's ever forgotten in his life, if he's experienced it, he can recollect that knowledge. this power also extends to the imaginary, the subconscious, and the supernatural, ie: in the event that dave experiences any visions of the future, he will retain that information. likewise, he has memories of every dream and nightmare he's ever had. which is fun because considering he's a dersite and also a time player and also dave, he has a lot of them HAHA. more on that later

The two of you had hit it off instantly despite this, like you had known each other your entire lives, like any and every other relationship that had come before it had merely been a warm-up for the monumental connection that would spark instantly between you both. ... You’re pretty convinced she’s your soulmate. If not that, you’re at least assured by the fact that you’re absolutely head over heels in love with her.

sentences i had so much fun writing knowing how badly it's going to mess dave up to learn that they're actually related HA HA

Especially at the start, Rose was mysterious and she was hilarious and she was overwhelming, the brightest thing you’ve ever had the fortune of witnessing. 

get it because she's a hero of light get it she's the light of his life because shes a hero of light get it get it she's mysterious because her class mimics its opposite at the beginning of the story so everything about her pre-canon arc clings to void but she!! is bright! like light haha get i- 💥

see, reading sentences like this means i HAVE to at least write enough of their session to let dave both die and kill for his rose, like

also i need to write her killing and dying for him. well. killing for him. well.

killing.

perhaps just killing him. HAHAHA.

it is very fun to think about this because rose honestly just. does not talk about her relationship with dave much outside of mentioning that they're together. her narrative is so focused on the things that she wants the audience to focus on, so this was such a fun chapter to reveal the things she decided isn't important enough to ever let us in on.

like, she is so adamant that bro is the only important person in her life and the only person she loves, but she deeply cares about dave. she feels the same way, that they're connected in this way she can't pinpoint or name. and claiming him is exactly the right way to put it, because i don't think she knows how to acknowledge those emotions in herself, but she knows that she needs him with her always and wants him entrapped in a way where he can't get away from her.

i think rose is just incredibly attracted to what dave represents: safety, normalcy, the mundane, a reprieve from pain, but there are things about him that she just inherently gets. he's an outsider despite how much he attempts to fit in and i think there's something about that she relates to but also wants so badly to destroy and keep for herself.

also, this is a thing that belongs more in hcs than in kym specifically, especially because i imagine this taking place way earlier in their relationship, but bro absolutely knows about her relationship with dave. it isn't a secret. it's a thing that amuses him greatly. i actually imagine she shares a lot of details about him to bro, like allowing him this voyeuristic entertainment because dave isn't a threat to him, not really, and she shares every single one of her belongings with him.

in a perfectly pornographic world the two of them would spitroast the fuck out of him but this is a partially pornographic world that involves a meaningful plotline or whatever 🙄 smh

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh

this part was incredibly hard to write. not because it was difficult or emotionally taxing but because i reached this unfortunate impasse i find myself at every now and then while writing a lot of darkfic where i struggle with... it's not exactly the impulse to project, necessarily, more just.... feeling forced through into inevitability of it? or maybe it's the reluctance to use personal experiences vs the knowledge that doing it can benefit your writing (but also can hamper it).

like, very hard to write about a self-destructive teenager with violent tendencies without being reminded of the time when you were a self-destructive teenager with violent tendencies.

that reluctance is born from a rant i'm definitely not gonna get into unprompted but i'll just say that it definitely complicated things HAHAHA. i've definitely gone through a 'i'm going through a psychotic break and i'm going to ramble out 7835963463 crazy things into this dm window because the person on the other side said i could' phase. i've definitely just. been insane and vomited so many words out and ngl for a second there in the final draft when i was feeling too lazy to get into Stream Of Consciousness mode i was very tempted to dig up an old vent post and copypaste those thoughts in for rose but ultimately i thought that was disingenuous and a betrayal of her character SO

a fun but unexpected surprise was rose sounding far more like herself during her drugged moments of honesty. it's especially fun because even in the future when she doesn't have access to any sort of drugs or contact with bro anymore, i don't think she'll sound this much like rose lalonde either. it's like in her desperate search to find more of her brother, she's really just found a core part of herself that she doesn't have access to in this universe

'Is there a mechanical soul within me?' there is and his name is hal hi hal

it is actually incredibly fun playing with typing quirk punctuation. it's actually a style i utilized a lot in chatroom roleplay groups yeaaaaaaaaaars after homestuck ended, very much inspired by tumblr ventblogging typing styles, crytyping and all that. the idea that someone's mental state can and should be reflected in their typing style, which is something you really only see in canon in a character like gamzee (i cant remember if other trolls drop the quirk in times of duress in canon??? i think karkat drops his as a joke about volume sometimes but that's it). i don't even know if it even really comes across as blatantly as it feels when i write it, but it's so fun to see the consistencies in a way a character types slowly but surely fall apart as they grow unstable

so the way this is designed, it's as if rose had a moment of finally being in touch with the core of herself, with what ultimately makes her rose (complete with proper punctuation), before slowly but surely lapsing back into ro-stri as she loses her punctuation piece by piece, and then ultimately devolving even more as she abandons her capitalization to type in a way that's reminiscent of dave but, more importantly, bro's typing quirk

'I think there are lives inside me/the life inside me is his' is so funny to look at in hindsight. this chapter was halfway finished before the pregnancy plot had even come into being, and this was only ever supposed to be a reference to the identity blurring she's experiencing, and this half-truth, half-delusion about being able to sense everything lil cal has injected into her and her brother. it is so STRANGE to reread it now knowing that it's become foreshadowing to her pregnancy, especially with that next sentiment following it:

'Sometimes I wish it was yours'. again, that idea of being soulmates, being connected with someone permanently. and, again, that idea of codependency, and rose being unable to express or understand love without that need to merge herself with the object of her affection. and again this was befORE the pregnancy plot was a thing so now every time i read this line i sit here hoping people dont interpret it as rose wanting dave's baby HGJFKGSGSG i swear im not into breeding i sWEAR

🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭😭😭😭

DAVE IS SO CUTE I ALWAYS DIE REREADING THAT PART HE'S SO CUUUTE

also i struggle so SO much writing comfort scenes especially dialogue meant to comfort someone but this came out so easily. perhaps because it's a futile attempt and i didn't have to worry about the recipient of that comfort actually feeling soothed...? hmmm!

i have nothing to add to the romantic cannibalism confession besides :3c

i don't actually reread this chapter all that often anymore so finding this paragraph was lovely damn shoutout to this sentence that made me choke on my water as i was reading it cuz i was so distracted by how much i didnt remember writing this that i forgot to swallow and my drink just slid down into my lugnshjskdfg

then it is a series of letters in a language you wonder if she’s made up, that is somehow so cohesive in its chaos that you start to doubt even that. 

more horrorterror references as if the literal last paragraph wasn't enough HAHA

a very fun part of designing and outlining the killswitch au is deciding who gets what plotline. for example, does rose strider get to go grimdark because she's rose? or does jade lalonde get to go grimdark because she's the lalonde with library access to the grimoire? unlike the characterization formula, there isn't an easy answer to this one. i'm mostly just going with what's more fun narratively and what makes a better and more cohesive storyline for the verse.

either way, though, ro-stri still has a connection with the horrorterrors, simply because she's a dersite and because i love a character that is so utterly doomed that every evil force on the face of the planet wants to take a turn on them. what's better than this... getting psychologically gangbanged by every demon in existence...

DID YOU KNOW I AM SO VERY FOND OF DAVE EGBERT AND HIS LOVELY PAPA WHO LOVES HIM SO MUCH

i am also so very fond of a dave egbert who cries alone in front of his computer cuz his girlfriend makes him so very sad every night like poor baby does Not Sleep and its so cute gjkgs

'its just prose' annoys the shit out of me to see because i wrote a similar line in a published piece of writing a couple of years ago so i can't reread this without being reminded of That hgjfkg

i will never write a strider rap i have the highest respect for any author who can but it'll never be me

their dynamic kills me HJKGFGKGS peak toxic romance right here god i wish i could write even more of it... i need to write more daverose so fucking bad....

a fun line because 1) i rly enjoy dave's half-forced half-genuine emotional voyeurism it's just a rly interesting aspect of his personality to write and 2) it's fun to have a moment with dave e's specific brand of humor since it's not as long-winded as a strider's would be

i rly forgot so much of this chapter HGFKGSGS oh dave... i love you... i love writing you so much...

stream-of-consciousness style writing is really fun like you get taken to so many unexpected places in the process. generally when i go SoC style i tend to have a few goals i want to land and this image, dave watching over rose in derse, was one of the big ones

ALSO THE IRONY OF DAVE CALLING HIMSELF HER PRINCE WHEN SHE IS ACTUALLY THE PRINCE OF THE SESSION HEHEHEHEHE

the lil cal staring contest is also another big one. it's just such a fun image to allude to like goddamnit i wish i could draw. it feels like an image that i can't even really describe properly what i want it to mean because it explains itself and there's not much minutia to pry free, it's just. them. rose inexplicably and perpetually being drowned in this cancerous evil at a rate that not even dave strider got to experience.

lmfao shout out to me explaining his memory power earlier forgetting that i explain it in the chapter HJSKFG

oh well NOW I GET TO ACTUALLY DISCUSS HIS CLASSPECT

so dave egbert issssss....

🥁 [drumroll] 🥁

the MAGE OF TIME!!!!

and changing classpects actually did something incredibly interesting to the story. killswitch never would have worked as a simple homestuck rewrite, because i dont think swapping the guardians is something that can ever be simple. so it didnt make sense to keep their classpects exactly the same, because they wouldn't have the same personalities or the same backgrounds to craft those personalities, or the same issues that were born of their uniquely shitty backgrounds. it also didnt feel as easy as making rose a knight of light and dave an heir of time, etc etc. like, while rose is not insecure in the classic way that knights should be (it can be argued that the 'i am my brother' facade can count towards knighthood... but her role in the story and what it will turn into once she joins the game definitely brands her a prince through and through)

through researching for killswitch i ended up coming to this conclusion about sburb and how i approach classpect and hs narratives in general:

and because of that, it was super easy to reassign everyone based on what they've been turned into through the switch in their roles.

it also made for another easy characterization formula: their aspect represents their 'nature' while their class represents their 'nurture'. so all the zeta kids still belong to the same aspect while their class changes rapidly, though how close or how far it is from their original class really depends on their character

anyway, mage of time is an incredibly fun role that actually breaks the rewrite narrative almost more than rose's classpect does. as the mage of time, dave actually steals the cryptic psychic role from jade and john harley (though, i do have thoughts on that matter, because there is still going to be a benefit for them from having access to prospit, and that plotline will still be involved in some capacity... probably).

and it's a very fun, partially accidental discovery within the au that the zeta kids are all... just a tad more prepared to enter sburb than their predecessors. rose is completely aware of the fact that she's training for something specific and dave... dave knows that the game is coming. he doesn't know the specifics, he doesn't know that it's sburb specifically that will bring them all together, but he knows there's an it, he knows the day he'll meet all his friends in person will be a day for the history books, and he knows that rose is in danger and that he'll be able to help her in a way no one else can.

some mage of time thoughts, many of which inspired and/or describe dave egbert's storyline:

source

source

source

the above was probably one of the first interpretations i read and really what solidified him as a mage, my initial thoughts to his classpect and how it interacts with rose's was the following:

and it's just so fun GOD rly hope i get to write in his perspective more in the future

haha yeah if we ever get to it yEAH if i ever get off my ass and actually finish writing this wholeass au which i nEVER WILL CUZ I DONT WANNA WRITE 500K WORDS GODDDD IM NEVER WRITING A HOMESTUCK AU AGAAAAIINNNN

[satoshi-mochida]

Tekken 8 launches January 26, 2024

Gematsu Source

Tekken 8 will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam on January 26, 2024, Bandai Namco announced as part of Gamescom 2023: Opening Night Live. Pre-orders are available now.

The game will be available in the following editions:

-Standard Edition ($69.99)

Base game

Avatar costume: Paul Phoenix Set

Two Avatar skins: Tetsujin, Mokujin

-Deluxe Edition ($99.99)

Base game

Playable Character Year 1 Pass

Character costume: Gold Suit Pack

Avatar skin: Kinjin

Avatar costume: Paul Phoenix Set

Two Avatar skins: Tetsujin, Mokujin

-Ultimate Edition ($109.99)

Base game

Playable Character Year 1 Pass

Avatar costume: Classic Tekken Tee Set

Three Avatar skins: Kazuya, Jun, Jin

Character costume: Gold Suit Pack

Avatar skin: Kinjin

Avatar costume: Paul Phoenix Set

Two Avatar skins: Tetsujin, Mokujin

Here is an overview of the game, via Bandai Namco:

Get ready for the next chapter in the legendary fighting game franchise, Tekken 8.

32 Fighters for a New Generation

Completely redesigned character visuals. Elaborate, highly-detailed models built from the ground and high-fidelity graphics break the limits of new-generation hardware by adding a new weight and atmosphere to Tekken‘s signature battles. Vivid environments and destructible stages combine to create an overwhelming sense of immersion, creating the ultimate play experience.

New Game, New Rivalry

Fist meets fate in Tekken 8. Holding a record for the longest-running video game storyline, the Tekken series begins a new chapter as Tekken 8 continues the tragic saga of the Mishima and Kazama bloodlines, and their world-shaking father-and-son grudge matches starting from 6 months after the closure of the last match. The story of Jin Kazama’s growth and determination marks a new chapter in the timeless saga.

Thrilling Over-the-Top Battles Embodying Aggressiveness and Destruction

The new battle system, Heat, dials up the aggressive nature of battles, while maintaining the play feel and tactics unique to the Tekken series. The intensity of battles is greatly enhanced by the destructable stages. Unleashing super move-like Rage Arts is sure to enthrall both players and spectators alike. All of these hard-hitting mechanics come together to make Tekken 8 the most exciting installment in the series to date!

Enjoy Your Tekken Life!

In the new single-player mode Arcade Quest, craft your own unique avatar and embark on your new Tekken life. Battle your way through a variety of rivals across multiple arcades as the story unfolds, all while mastering the basics and practical skills in Tekken 8. Unlock a variety of customization items for characters and avatars as you progress.

And here are some additional details, via today’s press release:

Today’s reveal showcased Arcade Quest as a completely new mode coming to Tekken 8. Arcade Quest is a new single player mode that will prove the ultimate training ground, tapping into the franchise’s roots to introduce a new way to play and polish skills. In this mode, players can create and customize their own avatar and “visit” different arcades to participate in matches designed to improve their play and teach new techniques. As players progress through the story, they will continue to develop and grow stronger along with their avatar, honing their skills against tougher and tougher opponents in a story not too different from how some real players got into esports. Continuing the regular cadence of Tekken 8. character reveals, the trailer announced returning favorites joining the 32-character roster, with Kuma, Leo, Shaheen, Steve, Dragunov, and Yoshimitsu showcasing their updated looks and moves. All the characters in TEKKEN 8 will have deep customization choices, including completely new options, with the possibility to change colors as well as the size and position of accessories, letting players really show their style and bring personal flair to their favorite characters.

Watch a new trailer below. View a new screenshots at the gallery.

Release Date Trailer

English

Japanese

[pendinghope]

I feel like part of the reason I’m not enjoying Xenoblade 3 as much as Xenoblade chronicles 1 is that every character essentially has the same backstory. They’re all child soldiers. Which, is kinda boring. There’s no interesting dynamic of the meeting of different cultural views like there is in the first game. I highly enjoyed learning about the different ways of life, belief systems, and biases that the first game has. It also doesn’t help that the tutorial is multiple chapters long in 3. And even then you still get more and unlock important exploration abilities based on the heroes you meet far later than anticipated. The amount of times I have tried to jump on a zip line only to not have that ability, so all I can do is stare at a chest beyond my reach. I just feel like some parts of the game could be executed in a way that feels less of a slog. I have to say the more I play it it is a tad more enjoyable than when I started the game. However, it really doesn’t help that none of the characters have a differing backstory so far. Ah that’s enough of my ramblings for now. Have a wonderful day/night!

[mejomonster]

So far about halfway through ff7 rebirth. My biggest thoughts so far are:

While i get that FF7 Remake was trying to do something unique. And because of its choices it make Remake and Rebirth SEQUELS to the original ff7. The actual design of the game I really dislike, specifically how many hours long tine wasting dungeon areas there are. The plot changes? Fine. I know everyone just wanted a remaster, me included cause I just wanted pretty normal ps1 ff8 or ff9 or better proportion models with voices so Id hear cloud say mosey and ride a dolphin. I think making these new ones sequels does give them the freedom to say "well since its not the original plot, but a sequel, if you dont like changes then your original ff7 is still the original plot in the first timeline." And i honestly think it gave them the excuse to say Ever Crisis phone game is the actual ff7 original remaster (except its not, because its in installments, its too linited hardware wise to do the regular mini games, and its a lose lose for anyone who wanted just a plain remaster with voices... i guess theres always mods).

But anyway. The bulk of ff7 Remake is mostly like the ff7 original, just a sequel so its got a few wild changes pretty common to the ff7 expanded universe like Crisis Cores addition of Angeal and Genesis. The only sucky part of it to me is it felt like it needed to be a 20 hour game, not a 40 hour one. I did not need to be in midgar that long. More importantly the dungeons felt bloated. I think they were trying to prove they needed multiple games so they made Midgar too long, or thought ppl would be mad if it was a 20 hour game. I qouldnt have been mad. But because it does have bloated dungeon segments i may never play it again. Its redeeming feature is the chapter select at the end, so i can redo certain parts i liked and skip a ton of annoying time wasting chunks.

Is ff7 remake worth playing? Sure. Especially if you liked or played Crisis Core or Dirge of Cerberus and are used to the ff7 sequels kind of flavor. And if you loved ff7 original, it is cool seeing some moments re-realized and some expanded on in nice ways. But if you dont like feeling time wasted, it may irk you at some points. If pacing is as big a deal to you as it is for me, this may be a grating issue.

Ff7 Rebirth though? Im about halfway through and i love it. I get why this chunk took until ps5 to come out. I dont like that it took so long sure. But i get the GOAL they had with this game, and they met the goal. I see everything the gane team learned from making kingdom hearts active combat, from open world in ff15 and kingdom hearts, in perfecting active combat with a slowdown to select actions (kh never slows down). I see an open world vastly busy and realistic sized while small enough it feels comparable to other great open world playstation games, levels/cities being 1-2 hours long like typical worlds/levels/cities in other games. So in short: Rebirth is NOT bloated. Its paced MUCH better. Its the best attempt ive seen square enix do of open world (but naybe ff16 is better as i need to play that too). The chocobos, boat, airplane, climbing, grappling hook, all do aa much as the ff7 ps1 in terms of FULL open world exploration, except the world is way richer now and its as fluid as modern games (like ghost of tsushima, tomb raider, kh3) to explore. Knowing how much SE struggled to develop jumping or open world basic lol, this is eons more than theyve ever been able to do before. And Rebirth doesnt fucking glitch! I played Fallout 4 open world and would save in fear constabtly cause i could get stuck walking in the ground or risking trying to climb a hill. In Rebirth ive went right into all kinds of weird terrain with cloud and many vehicles and havent gotten stuck OR glitched once. The whole game hasnt glitched once. It plays phenomenal. So the whole combat system is great, modern while still having more turn based action control than Kingdom Hearts and ability to control each party member uniquely, its open world is well paced and rich and fun and easy to maneuver, AND the game kept and increased the mini games! And the side missions are all integrated into building party member relationships so even boring missions have some nice relationship building moments at least. Meaning you can do side stuff you like, skip others. The game is very fast paced if you stick to main story. And its fun to sink into the world and side stories if u go off playing around. Rebirth feels like a phenomenal execution so far of what they really WANTED a final fantasy 7 redone to be like. Its clear during Remake they didnt know how to do full open world yet (or just wanted to pad with dungeons so much it felt so closed and forced often, i just HATE Remakes pacing tbh). In Rebirth it feels great. Its fun just exploring the world i remember from ps1 tbh. To drive in the desert, fly by cosmo canyon on the chocobo, boat into the ocean and fuck around.

[chasing-daydreams]

People talk about a twst otome game but like, should it be a straight forward visual novel?

Because if it were to be a something like tokimeki memorial- oh you wont see me for MONTHS

HEAR ME OUT (discussing specific mechanic under the cut)

I just wanna preface that I've only played the girl's side games and thats what Im basing my ramblings off of.

I don't think the bomb mechanic of the games will work for a cast of 22 characters. Maybe if you hang out with them to a certain amount, they'll start getting crabby if you stop hanging out with them all of a sudden and they bombs affect the characters within their dorm. Maybe some overlap with clubs. For example you dont hangout with Kalim as much, making Lilia and Cater go :/ but Jamil would be so peeved now Kalim's moping to him about it, how dare you prefect >:[[

Maybe the stats instead of the usual style, intelligence, etc. are based off the traits of each of the dorms like strictness, perseverance, benevolence, mindfulness, tenacity, diligence, and nobility. And they correspond to each dorm ie. Riddle's route would need more strictness.

To raise certain stats, there's the usual classes of history, alchemy, and PE. History raises strictness, mindfulness, and nobility. Alchemy raises tenacity and diligence. PE raises perseverance and maybe diligence too. There'll also be other actions and events like help out in the kitchen based off of the master chef course (Crowley gived them a school given job i guess) that raises mindful and benevolence. And so on.

Money and Stress is still a stat bc we gotta keep it real, the amount of times the Ramshackle Duo is mentioned to be at the mercy of Crowley's stinginess.... how could it not. Stress is self explanatory.

I don't think the dress up mechanic could work but I think an alternative that's so much better would be items used to boost stats like textbooks (you cant buy multiple but one type and it raises that stat permanently). Maybe when you'll get to a point that you can purchase gifts for the cast as well.

Grim will hate this but... taking care of Grim mechanic. He'll function just fine on his own but taking care of him by like making sure he studies, goes to class, etc. It'll raise stats and will even net you attention from others.

Getting this type of game would also be a good way to get a timeline of events in between overblots. I know there are alt versions like the fairy gala if but maybe you choose which version you play through at the beginning for the game since fairy gala if is only really possible after chapter 6 but the original can take place whenever so it'll be a smooth.

I don't think it has to have a romantic end goal, you can stay friends with characters even if you hit that romance threshold. With the amount of characters too, if you do choose to romance multiple people... I'd like to think word 'round a place like NRC travels fast and a confrontation will happen soon.

thats kind of it for concepts I can think of. Maybe at the end of the year is the end card of how your life progresses in Twisted Wonderland, ie. you have high strictness and benevolence you stay at NRC and become staff etc. Think of the ending system of Princess Maker. The default is that you don't make it back home, but there are certain events you trigger to get the option to go back home. For all the yumes out there, there'll also be maybe a cg of your chosen love interest and a snippet of your life with them (LET ME BE DELUSIONAL)

[theresattrpgforthat]

THEME: Chrono Trigger / FFVI Solo

Absurdly specific ttrpg requests seem to be kind of my thing. (The downside is waiting three months for me to get around to answering them). After doing some research, this is what I came away with when it comes to similarities between Chrono Trigger and FFVI:

the games are about relationships between characters as much as they are about the goals those characters face.

the group is on a quest to save the world, even if their goal looks to be hopeless. There are themes of hope and choosing to persevere.

many of the characters have difficult backstories that include pain and loss

I went through over 2000 solo games in my catalogue and I can’t find anything that is close, but these games might be combined, tweaked, or experimented with in order to hit some of the themes.

Where the Butterflies Fall Into The Sea, by Mikaboshiigrim.

Where The Butterflies Fall Into The Sea is a GMless solo RPG based on the Carta and Guided By The Sun systems. In this game, you are a traveler, drawn to a distant shore by an irresistible desire to outrun the past and forge a new beginning. This is a game about exploration and self discovery, and as you uncover your characters past, you might just find a little something about yourself.

I think that this game could help tell a story similar to the journey Celes goes on after the end of the world in FFVI. You use a deck of cards to reflect on people and memories of your past, as you walk along a beach that has special significance for you. Once you reach a specific point of the game, you have finished your interpersonal journey, ready for a new chapter of your life.

The grief and loss that this game holds could also potentially be used alongside another game that focuses more on the heroic parts of the two video games inspiring this post. You could play a darker game where your character initially fails, and then play Where Butterflies Fall in order to track the character’s renewal, and then take them on to another game where they triumph over the cause of their regret and sorrows after all. You could even play the game multiple times to represent the inner journeys of various party members.

Realms: Etria, by Waufl.

Etria is a world forever changed by the Cataclysm. Once a popular space-travel destination, the minds and land of Etrians were wiped clean; little remains of the memories of the Before. People instead focus on the here and now, adventuring across the vast continent in search of technology no one knows how to use or make; they call it magi-tech.

Setting-wise, I think Realms: Etria has a lot of potential to resemble the worlds of Chrono Trigger or FFVI. There are six different Realms, some with emphasis on nature, others on technology, and others on magic. I think the biggest difference is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a looming, world-ending threat in any of the settings. If what you want is a big dramatic adventure with high stakes, then Realms might just provide you with a chance to build the world, before you switch to a game that tries to end it.

Burdened, by Zachary Matheson.

Burdened is a cozy TTRPG about exploration and self-care. You will take the role of a character who wanders the world carrying an emotional burden. As you play, your character’s burden will lessen as you connect with nature, relate to others, and care for yourself.

Burdened is exceptionally broad, and grants you a lot of leeway in terms of what it is that your character is struggling with. You use various polyhedral dice, all rolled at once, and gain a number of answers that you’ll have to combine in order to describe a single encounter. As you play, you become more resilient, and much of the process of lightening your burden involves reflecting on your situation and making connections with people around you. By itself I don’t think it reflects Chrono Trigger or FFVI, but it might be combined with a more strategic game to flesh out the members of the party.

Rosethorn Keep, by Charlotte Laskowski.

Rosethorn Keep is a solo TTRPG where you acquire companions and complete dungeons in order to upgrade your castle, under the looming threat of the Demon Lord. When your castle is built and your companions are ready, can you defeat him before he thrusts the world into darkness? 

Rosethorn Keep feels the closest to Chrono Trigger and FFVI in terms of art style, and also similar to those games, it consists of creating an adventuring party of various skilled individuals.

Most of the game is strategy-based, with little to no background information about the characters. You’ll move through events in order to gain more access to the castle, and build it up to help you in your final battle. The game feels more about preparing a base than unveiling backstories, although there might be details in the course of uncovering the castle that feels like unearthing history.

The Wizard and the Wanderer, by polyhedral mice.

At the centre of the maze, an enchanter hides his greatest treasure- his soul. He winds his way out of the maze leaving traps and monsters to protect it. Many years later, an adventurer comes across the maze and tries to make their way to what they assume must be priceless treasure.

A solo journaling game played forwards and backwards. As a wizard you document the protections you’re leaving behind to protect your soul, and then return many years later as a knight-errant to fight your way through to the center of the maze to treasure and virtue. 

The relationship between the Wizard and the Wanderer is separated by time, and they don’t really get a chance to interact with each-other, but they are connected by a dungeon. The details of the Wizard and the Wanderer are left open: what did the Wizard plan to do after sealing away their soul? What use might the Wanderer have for a soul? Is this game a prologue for the Wanderer’s befriending of the Wizard? The potential parallels between this game and the relationship between Magus and the rest of the party in Chrono Trigger is very very thin: but this game could potentially be re-worked so that it isn’t just the soul of the Wizard at the centre of the dungeon: it’s the Wizard himself.

Ruins of Dim Kalduhr, by Demon Toad Games.

The Ruins of Dim Kalduhr is a solo journal and map making RPG where you take on the role of a Time Wizard exploring the ancient forgotten city of Dim Kalduhr for a Catalyst. Through the use of magic, the Time Wizard can see the past in the current world. During your visit to these structures, you'll discover secrets and the ghostly denizens trapped in the past while searching for the Catalyst. 

I’m including this game mostly for the elements that tie different time periods together. This game is more about discovery than it is about victory over a great evil; this might be another great world-building game to partner with a game that’s more focused on challenge and strategy.

Pyres of a Cursed Kingdom, by Miracle M.

Pyres of a Cursed Kingdom is a solo journaling RPG where you play as a pilgrim on a journey to save her land from a soul-consuming eclipse. As you travel through the kingdom of Anathoria, you will meet mysterious characters, fight vicious foes, encounter eerie artifacts, face deadly environments and record everything in your journal.

The inspiration for this game comes from Dark Souls, Berserk, and Her Odyssey (by S. Kaiya J.) The biggest parallel I see in this game is the catastrophic threat looming above the kingdom, that you, the protagonist, is expected to face. The game uses a deck of cards to generate specific threats, artifacts and people, and three d10 that you will roll to determine whether or not you walk away from each encounter with a positive or negative result.

The jokers in the card deck represent the two pyres your character must light in order to save the world; after lighting the first pyre the game gets harder. Since this game depends on a single character rather than a party, I think the easiest way to hack the game was to replace the soul points track with something like friendship or teamwork. Gaining points would strengthen the party, while losing them would reflect the party’s fracturing.

Two Stand to Fall, by Amorphous.

You and your partner stand against a terrible Crisis. It shouldn’t have been anything new; the two of you had surpassed many hardships before, and forged a bond stronger than steel together. Together, you were supposed to be powerful.

But this time, things went horribly wrong. Even with your strengths combined, your last battle was certain to end in your defeat.

And so, your partner made the ultimate sacrifice: they sent you back to safety, while they stayed to fight the Crisis alone.

This is probably the most dramatic game on this list, with the most emotional buy-in. There is a Crisis that you will have to define, and a partner who sacrificed themself for you. This may reflect Leo and Chrono’s deaths in both of the fore-mentioned games, and similar to both of these games, you have a chance to reverse their death. As you play the game, you will describe the world you are in, and why your bond to this person is so important. The game is meant to be a single session, somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour. If you want a game that focuses in on a specific emotional theme about saving the world while saving a friend, this might be the game for you.

Absurdly specific recommendation request that may not have an answer:

Anyone have recs on a solo TTRPG with some strong Final Fantasy 6 or Chrono Trigger vibes? I've been thinking about both lately and itching to break out a solo tabletop game.