#but maybe if i finish the single player game i will have learned a lot and not forgotten everything

[theskyexists]

God I want to make that multiplayer game but it is ten times the time and effort and skill of this single player game

Dbjdbdwhy can't. I remove a poll accidentally added on mobile

[juyeonszn]

JE NE SAIS QUOI

PAIRING jacob bae x f!reader

WORD COUNT 7.33k

GENRES smut ﹒fluff ﹒itty bitty angst

WARNINGS 18+ MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, mature language, strangers to ?? to lovers, volleyball team captain!jacob (ohhhh ive been waiting for this one..), lots of 97 liner cameos, jacob is an honorary tbz frat member but isn’t actually a member lol, reader is down bad for him, mentions of alcohol, volleyball terms that i learned from haikyuu 😭, an annoying ex girlfriend, AURKAY here we go: bathroom sex, wall sex, bathroom sink counter sex, and mirror sex all in one, doggy style and also missionary? i guess?, NO FOREPLAY BUT FUCK IT WE FALL LIKE SOLDIERS FOR REAL, marking-ish, unprotected sex, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, and everyone’s favorite! creampie!, a cutesy ending

SUMMARY jacob thought the concept of fraternities was stupid. so stupid that despite every single one of his friends being in one, he still refused to join. however, after meeting you at one of the tbz parties, he’s starting to think maybe they’re not that horrible.

MORE HELLAURRRR ok i know this is 45 mins overdue but i barely finished this last night and i worked at 5 am this morning so 😭 ANYWAYYY this fic is actually my favorite so far… idk i just have this natural writing affinity when it comes to jacob which u can tell by the length…. if u enjoyed pls reblog! and don’t forget to check out the other fics in the series!

PERM TAGLIST @winterchimez @maessseongs @itsbeeble @zzoguri @deoboyznet @cloverdaisies @vernyangel @ericlvr

TAGLIST @millksea

SERIES MASTERLIST

“And there’s another point for the IST U Bears. Wow these boys are on fire tonight.”

The announcer’s voice booms throughout the gymnasium, intertwining with the cheers of the crowd. They all sound like the buzzing of a bee in Jacob’s ears, but that’s a good thing. It pricks at his skin, lighting it on fire and getting his morale going.

The team just needed one more point and they would win this set, sending them on their way to the championship game. This would be the first time in IST history that their boys’ volleyball team would make it this far, and that was all thanks to Jacob becoming captain for his senior year.

Their coach calls for a quick time out, giving Jacob a moment of reprieve before his final serve of the game. He wipes away the sweat on his forehead, shaking the front of his jersey to air it out and cool him down a little. The team’s manager passes him a water bottle. He loves the adrenaline rush that courses through his veins when he’s on the court. It’s unlike any other feeling he’s ever felt in his life.

“Alright, Bae. You’ve got this, right?” Jacob’s coach gives him a pointed look.

“Of course, Coach. There’s no way in hell that we’re losing this game tonight.” He gives him a firm nod, lips curled into a confident smile. There wasn’t a chance that Jacob Bae would go down without a fight. He was securing that championship seat whether anyone liked it or not.

The team heads back out and a referee hands Jacob the volleyball. He blows a raspberry, twirling the ball on his fingertips while waiting for the whistle. As soon as he hears it, he takes a couple steps back. A breeze cuts through his hair when he runs, executing his infamous jump serve with practiced ease. The ball flies past the players of the other team, hitting the court just in front of the line.

His teammates are yelling and throttling his body around before he even realizes that they’ve won. Some of them are riling up the crowd, others are on their knees crying tears of joy. He was anticipating this outcome, but for some reason he’s still shell shocked. Everything around him is static and white noise.

“Holy shit, Jacob. I can’t believe you did that,” Kim Mingyu, the team’s star middle blocker, slaps him on the back. He’s also drenched in sweat, patting his face with a towel.

“You and me both, to be completely honest.” Jacob laughs a bit, collecting his things so he can head to the locker room.

He’s slightly grateful that tonight’s game ended a little early, giving him enough time to get ready before the Tau Beta Zeta party. He wasn’t even that big of a party person. He only went to provide moral support for his friends who happened to all be in the fraternity. Most people would even go as far as assuming he was also in it considering how often he was spotted at that house, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. He actually thought fraternities were dumb. In his eyes, they held no purpose.

A bunch of guys living together under the guise of brotherhood when in reality they spent most of their time partying was just stupid. You could do that without the fancy titles or the expected respect from fellow students. He loved his friends, truly, but he didn’t understand the hype.

Jacob showers quickly and changes into a hoodie and some baggy jeans. He ruffles his hair in front of a mirror, grabbing his backpack and swinging it over his shoulder. As he’s preparing to leave, someone calls out to him.

“Yo, Cobie! Are you going to the TBZ party?”

He spins around to find the source, learning it belongs to Jeong Jaehyun. The setter nods, pulling his hood over his head. “Like I always do. Why?”

“I heard through the grapevine that Haeun was going with some friends. I just thought I’d warn you,” he squeezes the shoulder that isn’t hoisting his backpack. “I figured you’d want to take things chill this next week with the championship game on Friday.”

Jacob hums in response and Jaehyun takes that as his cue to be on his way. Of course this would be his luck. Just as he thinks life is getting easier for him, something has to come and throw a curveball at him. This something happened to be his ex-girlfriend, who’d done nothing but terrorize Jacob while they were together. Imagine the most toxic, vile person in the world, then dress her in Jimmy Choo sandals and a designer handbag. That was Haeun.

The only logical reason for her to attend the TBZ party was because his friends were still trying to rack up their numbers. He wouldn’t put it past them if that meant acquiring any and every student on campus. After tonight they would find out who won the stupid competition between them and the KAT sorority, hopefully putting a pin in their godforsaken rivalry once and for all. The winner determined if he was even going to the big end of semester party or not.

Jacob sighs, heading out so he can help out his friends in any way he can. Now that he’s been cursed with the knowledge that he might run into his ex, he’s half tempted to just ditch the whole thing. (He won’t, but the idea is flirting with him.) They’ve been broken up for well over a year now, but somehow she always manages to worm her way back and make him miserable. Quite frankly, he’s tired of it.

When Jacob arrives at the Tau Beta Zeta house, his friends are all over the place. Sangyeon is typing away on his phone, pacing back and forth in the living room. The action from the calm and collected fraternity president makes him kind of nervous. He escapes into the kitchen where Sunwoo and Eric are putting away all of the alcohol. Kevin and Chanhee are complaining about God knows what to each other, and he can faintly hear Hyunjae and Haknyeon upstairs. His juniors start clapping and hollering as soon as they see him enter.

“Woah woah woah, we’ve got a celebrity on our hands guys.” Eric jokes, dapping up the older male.

“Congrats, Cobie,” Sunwoo joins in, fist bumping his senior and handing him a beer bottle. “Do you think you’re gonna win next week?”

“I sure hope so,” Jacob snorts, uncapping the bottle with the opener on the fridge. “I didn’t bring us all this way for nothing.”

Nothing super eventful happens after that, just the guys setting up for the party. They’re projecting that this is the one that secures their victory for the competition. Jacob really couldn’t care less, sitting himself on the couch and scrolling through his phone as he nurses his beer. They all maneuver around him, setting up speakers here, lights there. It’s all pointless in his eyes.

When the party has finally started and the house is packed with partygoers, Jacob hasn’t budged from his spot. The only reason he has a fresh beer is because Eric grabbed one for him in passing. This was what he subjected himself to for hours on end every Friday night. His ass cemented to one of the sofas in the living room and his phone being his main source of entertainment.

It’s as you’re exiting the kitchen with your friends that you notice him. You laugh into your drink at the boredom written all over his face. His extremely handsome face. His hair falls into his eyes and slightly obstructs his vision, but that just accelerates the beating of your heart. You don’t know what it is, but there’s something about him that makes you want to learn his name and everything there is about him.

“Y/N, have you found a nice boy to give you a fun time before hell week?” Haeun asks you, running perfectly manicured fingernails through her hair. “That’s the whole point of being here, isn’t it?”

You didn’t want to tag along, honestly. You were content with staying in tonight and studying for your A&PII exam. You only agreed to get Haeun off your back, because you were well aware of how annoying she could get when she didn’t get what she wanted. She gave the KAT sorority president a run for her money sometimes.

“Uh, no. I’ll just see where the night takes me,” you shrug, keeping a poker face so she doesn’t see who you’re already ogling.

Knowing her, she would make it difficult for you. She would torture you and tease you relentlessly because that was just who she was. Haeun wasn’t satisfied unless she felt good about herself. You didn’t know why you were still friends with her. Maybe it was because she was one of the first people who sought you out after your transfer to IST. Maybe it was because you were afraid of being blacklisted by practically every other student if you dropped her. Her power was insane.

“Boring,” she drags out the vowels, rolling her eyes. “I’m gonna see if Cha Eunwoo is here yet.”

You watch as she disappears into the sardine-packed house, looking for the senior. Your other friend, Minjee, just sighs once the dictator is out of earshot— which isn’t even that far considering how loud the music is. She turns to you with a weak smile.

“Don’t let her ruin anything for you. Just go enjoy yourself before she does.”

You don’t need to be told a second time, chugging the contents of your red solo cup for some liquid courage. Your mission was simple; be ten times more fun than the party itself. That would surely catch Couch Boy’s attention. It wasn’t like the Tau Beta Zeta guys didn’t put all their effort into throwing the craziest parties at the school, but clearly this dude wasn’t for it.

Your feet carry you over to the living room, your teeth chewing on your lip nervously. You’d never hit on someone before, let alone at a party. The scariest part was the potential rejection in front of hundreds of your peers. But it was okay! You could do this. You think.

“Hi.”

The word leaves your mouth without your brain even registering it, eyes wide like you’d just done something wrong. He looks up from his phone, mirroring your expression. His tongue darts out to swipe across his bottom lip and then he’s scooting over to make room for you.

“Hi,” he says after a few seconds.

“I’m Y/n,” you extend your hand awkwardly, but he takes it, shaking it with a firm grip that has you crossing your legs. “I— uh— this is kinda weird, but um— I saw you from over there and thought you were cute.”

You swallow thickly, tucking some hair behind your ear. How did Haeun do this on the regular? He smiles at your fumbling and oh God, you think you might pass out from how attractive he is. You don’t have much alcohol in your system and you’re starting to regret how sober you are.

“I’m Jacob,” he rests an arm on the back of the couch. “Thanks for coming up to me. I would’ve missed your pretty face otherwise.”

Is he flirting with you? Holy shit, he’s flirting with you.

“Do you come to Tau Beta Zeta parties often?” You ask to continue the conversation. He nods.

“I practically live here,” Jacob laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners. “How about you, Y/N? What are you studying?”

Oh, so he was one of the members. You wouldn’t have guessed with how disinterested he seemed at his own party. It takes you a moment to realize he’s shifted the focus onto you, scanning your features for a response. You purse your lips.

“Not really. I’m more of a homebody. I’m only here to let loose before finals. I actually just transferred to IST U this semester for the exceptional Pre-Med department. I’m still sorta navigating my way around and meeting people.”

So that’s why he’s never seen you on campus. You’re completely new to the school and you’re in a completely different department than he is. Nonetheless, you’re really cute and Jacob hasn’t put himself out there since breaking up with Haeun. He’s been so concentrated on maintaining his grades and putting in the work for volleyball, he hasn’t even had the time to. But now that finals and the championship game are all next week, he supposes he can allot some just this once…

“How are you liking it here so far?” He asks you genuinely. It winds you a little. You’ve never had someone actually care about what you had to say or show interest in you. Even at your old school, no one batted an eye at you. You doubt anyone knew you transferred.

“The campus itself is beautiful. It’s a lot bigger than my previous one. And so far, everyone’s been nothing but kind to me. I wish I would’ve gone with my gut and came here straight out of high school.” You pick at a thread on your skirt.

“We all live and we all learn, that’s a part of life,” Jacob shrugs, nudging your leg with his foot. “Would you like to grab another drink with me?”

“Yeah, that would be great, actually.” You both stand from the couch.

Since sitting with him, the party has grown in size. Fellow students filled every available corner of the house, nearly standing body to body in order to fit everyone in the building. The amount of attendees should be a fire hazard, honestly. Jacob laces your fingers together so he doesn’t lose you in the mass of people blocking the path to the kitchen. There’s a game of Rage Cage going on where there’s usually a round of beer pong and it looks like this one guy is about to die with how many empty cups are in front of him.

“What are you drinking?” Jacob turns to you once you’ve reached the alcohol table. You shake your head.

“Surprise me.”

“You’re playing Russian Roulette here, Y/N,” his lips curl up into a devious smile that most people would run away from, especially when it’s on the face of a stranger. “You’re really trusting me with your life right now.”

Luckily, you’ve always been into that type of thing. Nice guys who looked like they could give you an unforgettable night. And in the short period you’ve known Jacob, he appeared to be just that. All you can do is nip at your lower lip, the fleet of a smile gracing his sight.

He passes you a cup and gestures for you to taste his concoction. It burns the course of your throat, but doesn’t remind you of straight battery acid. You give him a thumbs up of approval and he cheers, fist bumping the air. You giggle at his reaction. Perhaps stepping out of your comfort zone was the best decision you’ve made all night. He knocks his own cup against yours and takes a swig, wincing.

“I might’ve made mine just a bit stronger than usual,” his voice is hoarse and you can’t help but laugh a little harder. “I put all of my expertise into yours.”

“It’s good to know you’re a gentleman and you’re not trying to get me drunk on purpose,” you tease, sipping at the beverage gingerly. “However, that does mean you’ll need to be flashier in your attempts to woo me. I have very high standards.”

Jacob’s smile widens, his teeth peeking from behind his lips. The expression makes you lightheaded. It should be a crime to look as good as he does, without even trying either. “I don’t know… All I’m hearing is that you want me to woo you…”

He’s caught you red-handed, but it isn’t like you were doing much to conceal that fact. You’d like to think you were being very obvious with your intentions on purpose. You glance up at him from the rim of your cup, your lower back leaning on the counter. “Maybe I do… Are you opposed to that, Jacob?”

He takes a step closer to you, and then another until he has you caged between him and the kitchen counter. Really, he couldn’t give any less of a fuck about the clusters of people nearby. When Jacob Bae had a goal in mind, he made damn sure to work for it. His volleyball career could attest to that. His drink slides across the surface, spilling a little on the back of his hand. He leans down to your ear. “Not at all. But I don’t think you’ll be able to handle what happens when I succeed.”

You feel your cheeks warm, your throat drying, and it’s not because of the effects from the alcohol you’ve just consumed. You’ve known this guy, what, thirty minutes max? And he was already figuring out exactly what it took to get your gears grinding? What a quick fucking leaner. He knows he’s won, too, if the way you’ve gone cotton-mouthed is anything to go by. The ghost of a grin brushes the shell of your ear and it requires the entirety of your strength not to pounce on this stranger in the middle of this goddamn party.

“Everybody who isn’t Tau Beta Zeta, get the fuck out! Someone called the cops!”

A record scratch-like halt puts a pin in the moment, forcing Jacob to step away from you with a groan. This would be just your luck, wouldn’t it? You found a ‘nice boy to give you a fun time before hell week’ and then this stupid party gets raided. It’s annoying, actually. Aggravating, even. Your lips unconsciously form pout out of disappointment and Jacob feels a piece of himself die along with it.

“Shit, you gotta get out of here before they show up and start dragging people out,” he runs a hand through his hair with a hiss.

If it had been a minute earlier, you would’ve fallen to your knees by now. Unfortunately, that was not the case. You needed to find Haeun and Minjee. You do a quick 180° in hopes of spotting either of them.

“Yeah, I need to find my—” You interrupt yourself when you see the former of the two stomping towards you with an indistinguishable look in her eye. “—Friends…”

“Let’s go, Y/N,” her tone is snappy and she glances over at Jacob for a brief moment. You don’t have time to realize what’s happening until her petite fingers are wrapping around your wrist, hauling you out of the kitchen. A yelp escapes your lips as you turn to wave to your… whatever he is to you now.

Initially, you assumed she was just ticked off by the whole cop call thing. At least, that made sense if she’d gotten anywhere with that Cha Eunwoo guy she had been talking about all day leading up to the party. But then Minjee’s driving you back your apartment and she’s whipping around in the passenger seat to give you the nastiest glare you’ve ever been on the receiving end of.

“What the hell is your problem?” She looks two seconds away from bursting a vein in her forehead.

“Wh— huh?” You’re thoroughly confused. What the fuck did you do to her?

“Why were you talking to Jacob Bae? You do know that’s my ex, right?” Her gaze has softened, but could still very much kill you if she wanted to. The wrath of Lee Haeun was more terrifying than that of any horror movie villain to ever exist.

No.

No no no no. The world stops on its axis and it’s like you’ve been told your favorite song was written about a used tissue. You don’t hear anything else she says, feeling like you just had ear muffs placed over your head. This isn’t fair. The universe officially hated you. You were number one on the list of people who deserved the worst possible fate, your name underlined twice with red ink and a star beside it.

You really didn’t have it in you to care about what Haeun thought. If this was the reason you were finally given to stop talking to her, then so be it. What you were worried about was Jacob hating you. He clearly saw that you were friends. Why would he want to pursue anything with one of his ex’s friends? Any sane person would avoid that situation if they could.

Despite not knowing that it was Jacob specifically, you knew the details of their breakup and why things ended so messily. It made sense that she was an authoritarian even in her relationships. That was just in her nature. If she didn’t control every aspect of her life, she would lose her mind. Normally you wouldn’t have batted an eye at that, not nearly enough energy in you to deal with that level of bossiness. But it was starting to bleed into your personal life. And that was a line you weren’t so willing to let her cross.

You could only pray that this was fixable.

Finals week passes by in a breeze, and before he knows it, Jacob is on the court for the championship game. There’s a different aura to him than there usually is when it comes to his volleyball games. He feels ten times more determined. (He would never admit to anyone that it’s because he’s hoping he’ll see you at the end of semester party tonight.)

He actually really enjoyed your presence and your personality. The rate at which his heart beat around you was something he hadn’t felt in a while and it was nice. He liked those little butterflies that came with the start of something new. He liked the jitters and the giggles and everything in between. It reminded him that there was still youth, there was still excitement in his life.

Sure, it was kind of weird that you were friends with his ex-girlfriend. The same ex-girlfriend that he couldn’t stand being in the same room as for more than five minutes at a time. But from your reaction to her dragging you away, Jacob thinks that you didn’t know about him and Haeun. If you did, you wouldn’t have gone up to him in the first place. Unless you knew and just didn’t care, then he didn’t care either. It’s not like he ever plans to allow Haeun to resurface and sink her nails back into him. That’s one mistake he’ll never make again.

Before he knows it, he’s swapping back into the game. He rolls his neck and pops his fingers, getting into position to receive this next serve. Even with this fire lit underneath him, both teams are neck and neck. With every point that IST scored, the opposing team would just catch back up without breaking a sweat. If Jacob wasn’t captain and wasn’t used to being so calm and collected during matches, he’d probably start getting as pissed as Kim Mingyu looks right now.

The referee blows his whistle and the ball is over the net. Jeon Jungkook, the team’s libero, dives for it, the volleyball bouncing off the back of his hand and back up into the air. It’s currently the fourth set and IST has two under their belt. They needed to win this one lest they wanted to go into the fifth. Everyone is on edge, but won’t stop at nothing that isn’t victory. Jacob shifts to set the ball to Jaehyun, who swings his arm back and spikes it to the other side of the court.

One of their players receives it with ease, and they’re back to square one. There’s that back and forth of both teams setting and spiking, only for the other to receive and send it back over. Jacob feels like this game is never gonna end, especially with how agile their libero is and how in tune he is with their setter. But then he makes eye contact with Lee Seokmin, an opposite hitter who’s proven time and time again that he’ll go wherever Jacob needs him to, do whatever Jacob wants him to. And that’s exactly what he does.

Mingyu bumps the ball towards the net and just when they think Jacob’s going to set it, he swaps places with Seokmin. The hitter gets beneath the volleyball and pushes it off the tip of his fingers, watching as Jacob perfectly times his jump to smack it with the palm of his hand. It’s something the two had only ever practiced a handful of times, but knew it would come in handy when everything was right. The entire interaction is flawless, and the captain’s spike lands, scoring that final point that IST needed to win the set and the game.

Just like the previous game, Jacob doesn’t even register the roaring cheers from everyone around him until they’re throwing him and Seokmin up like they themselves were volleyballs. The team is going insane, hyping up the crowd and running around the court like children. A sense of pride swells in Jacob’s chest, a crinkly-eyed smile nestling on his face like the fondness of a father.

They continue the joy-train all the way into the locker room. Jacob showers and throws on some gray cargo pants, pairing them with a black half-zip jacket. Most of the team was going to the end of semester party tonight, treating it as a post-celebratory reward for their big win. It was still so surreal for the captain. All of the pressure that had been riding on him the entire season, the strive for being someone bigger than himself. He’s grateful it paid off.

Meanwhile, you were damn near ripping your hair out, nerves eating away at the edges of your stomach like you were with the skin around your nails. After a taxing week of final exams and the anxiety of wanting to see Jacob Bae again to clear any bad air, you found yourself at the TBZ end of semester party along with Haeun and Minjee. You were thankful that your life was intact, Haeun’s irritation simmering into something a lot more bearable.

Though just a smidge pissed off that you didn’t do your research, she wasn’t as mad about the whole break of girl-code incident. She got off of your back a little too easily, though, so you were still waiting for another strike. You couldn’t help but feel as if she was planning another form of action.

You’d been at this party for at least an hour, and the attendance was double that of last week’s. They weren’t kidding when they said this was the party of all parties at IST University. You were starting to think that maybe Jacob really was going to avoid you like you were the Black Plague or equivalent. Why else would he not be at one of his own parties? Wasn’t it, like, a requirement for fraternity members to make an appearance at the things they hosted?

Being friends with Haeun really screwed everything up for you. Not only did you have to sleep with one eye open, but also keep your distance from just about every male on campus out of fear that she fucked with them, too. Why did it have to be Jacob Bae? Why couldn’t it have been someone more douchey, more up her alley? He was way too sweet, way too cute for someone of her kind. He deserved someone that could hand him the world. (Not that you were insinuating that it was you, but even you knew you were a better person than Lee Haeun.)

And as if a higher being truly existed, your prayers are answered in the form of Jacob Bae walking through the front door. A gaggle of partygoers surround him and the group of guys he’s with, including some of the fraternity brothers. You faintly hear whoops and hollers over the near deafening music, everyone patting them on their backs. Most of the attention is on Jacob and his gorgeous smile, though.

“IST U’s pride and joy! National volleyball champion, Jacob-fucking-Bae,” Lee Hyunjae wolf-whistles, shaking him around like he was maraca.

Jacob laughs, looking down at the floor to shy away from all of the eyes on him. He’s glad everybody is pleased with his accomplishment, but really all he wants to do is find you. He’s still not 100% sure you’re even here, but he has high hopes that maybe you were into him as much as he was with you. Now that he’s free of both volleyball and schoolwork for a while, he can take his time getting to know you better.

You psych yourself up to go over to him once his audience has parted and gone back to whatever it was they were doing prior to his arrival. A grimace consumes your features as you knock back the cup of jungle juice in your hand, blowing a raspberry. Minjee gives you a smile of encouragement, like she knows exactly what you’re about to do.

However, someone beats you to it. You watch with bated breath as Haeun flips her hair over her shoulder, her heels clicking on the wooden floor all the way up to Jacob. The sight of another girl talking to the guy you’re interested in has never made you as ill as it does right now, her glossy lips pouted and her hands clasped behind her back.

“Heard about the big win, Jakey,” she smiles almost evilly, calling him by a nickname that he hasn’t been called in months. “Wanna claim your prize?”

Jacob knows what she’s doing. It’s obvious. Haeun saw the two of you together last week and now she’s pretending that she gives a shit just so she can feel like she’s the one in control. He’s seen this scene too many times to fall for it. He pokes his cheek with his tongue, hands shoving into the front pocket of his jacket.

“Don’t you have someone else that you can bother, tonight? I’m spoken for.” He shrugs, stepping around her. Okay, so perhaps you’d only had one conversation together. That was enough for him. He doesn’t have to search far or wide for you, a grin replacing his deadpan once he sees your face. “Hi.”

“H-Hi,” your voice comes out unsteady. “I— uh— wh— well, I kinda thought you were avoiding me.”

His eyebrows quirks up. “Why would I do that?”

“Because I’m friends with your tyrant of an ex-girlfriend and I’m a horrible person for still wanting you,” you begin to ramble, playing with a strand of your hair. “And then you weren’t here.”

Jacob laughs, pushing your hand down and tucking the same piece behind your ear. “I don’t really care that you’re friends with Haeun. Honestly, no one’s ever *really friends with her. It’s hard to stand a person who’s that insufferable. And I’m on the volleyball team. Tonight was the championship game, which is why I was late.”

“So you don’t hate me and want me to die?”

“I could never.” He shakes his head, taking one of your hands into his.

“If that’s the case, then can you show me how to properly enjoy a frat party?” You trace patterns on his palm.

“I’ll be so real with you, Y/N, even *I don’t know how to do that,” he snorts. “I’m not a Tau Beta Zeta member, so I guess that explains it.”

“Woah what?” You gape at him. “This entire time I thought you were…”

“Nah, I’m just friends with all of the guys here. I might as well be, but I’m not. Frats are stupid to me,” Jacob leads you out of the living room and into the kitchen to get himself a drink. “Though, I don’t think they’re that bad anymore.”

As he’s reaching for an empty cup, a thought crosses your mind. It’s bold, but you don’t have the willpower to force it away. “You know, you didn’t get to show me what would happen if you succeeded in sweeping me off of my feet.”

He pauses what he’s doing, turning to glance at you over his shoulder with dark eyes. Are you saying what he thinks you’re saying?

“And something’s telling me you were extremely successful.”

*Fuck the drink, Jacob thinks to himself, dropping the cup in favor of whisking you away. He pulls you into the nearest empty room, which happens to be the downstairs bathroom. From one second to the next, you’re pinned to the door, both of your wrists firm in his grip. He’s so close that his nose nudges yours, lips only a hair’s breadth from your own.

“Should’ve known you were dangerous from the get go,” he breathes, the distance between you driving you crazy. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

A gasp escapes you, your eyelids fluttering shut. This was pure insanity. Before you can complain about the lack of contact, Jacob’s mouth is on yours, lips moving against yours so skillfully and so roughly. He takes your wrists into one hand, holding them above your head while the other slips beneath your top. His fingertips burn into your skin and you don’t hold back the whine that sneaks out from your chest.

You pull back for air, sighing when his kiss travels down your neck and focuses on your collarbone. It’s not enough, you need to feel him everywhere. Your pulse is racing and you’re sure he can feel it when he leaves a trail of nibbles and kisses along your jawline. They travel south, paving their path on what’s visible of your jugular and sternum.

There’s a haste of fingers roaming and lips exploring. This was uncharted territory for, seeing as you hadn’t been in a situation like this since moving schools. If there was anyone you wanted to get down and dirty with in the bathroom of a frat party, it was Jacob Bae. His free hand wanders under your skirt, a knuckle running along your clothed, but damp, slit. You both hiss.

“Already so wet for me?” He asks you smugly, the curve of his smile carved into the space where your ear meets your neck. You don’t have the patience to power through any teasing.

“Need you so bad, Jacob,” you don’t like the pitchiness of your voice, or how you’re pretty much begging right now. “Wanna skip the foreplay.”

Jacob grins almost wickedly, kissing the tip of your nose. “So ready and so eager for me. Your wish is my command, sweetheart.”

He doesn’t waste any time getting you out of your clothes, starting with your top and then shoving your skirt past your thighs. You kick it off and move to help him. His jacket comes off in one fluid motion, giving you the perfect display of his muscular back and toned abdomen. All of years of volleyball came to fruition in the form of his godlike sculpted body.

You drag a nail through the valley of his abs, unbuttoning his cargoes and palming him through his underwear. He curses under his breath, forehead falling to your shoulder. You may very well be the death of him, he decides. When he’s finally had enough, he swats your hand away, removing the briefs so he can give you what you so graciously asked for. He pumps his length a couple times before guiding the tip to your entrance.

Jacob hooks one of your legs around his waist, pushing your panties to the side so he can slip into you carefully. You don’t even stop the moan that breaches your vocal cords, back arching off of the door and your chest pushing into his. The stretch burns slightly, but not nearly enough to interrupt the pleasure coursing throughout your body. There’s a fire in the pit of your stomach that he fans the flames of the deeper he sinks into you, lips imprinted into the skin of your neck.

His fingers burn the skin of your thigh where he holds it up, slowly pressing his cock into cunt and sliding out as soon as he bottoms out. You’re dizzy, so dizzy that stars have begun to form behind your eyelids and he’s only just started. He rocks into you at a meticulous pace, the blunt nails of his other hand digging into your hip to keep himself composed.

He wants to take his time with you first. He wants you to feel every ridge and vein of his cock as your walls squeeze him in. He wants the feeling of the two of you connected to be engraved into your brain, a memory that nothing could erase even if it tried. Your head knocks against the door when you crane it to give him more access to the column of your throat, whining when he sucks marks into the surface.

“F-Fuck, Jacob,” you whimper. “Feel— god— feel so, so stuffed.”

You practically hiccup your words, overstimulated with everything that’s going on at once. It’s too much. The way he nips at your skin. The way he groans every time you clench around him. The way he’s *buried into you like you were the only source of warmth he’ll ever get. It’s too much, but it feels fucking fantastic.

“Yeah, baby? Am I fucking you good? Giving it to you like no one else can?” He exerts himself, his lips slipping on the thin sheen of sweat coating your bodies. All you can do is moan again, bucking your hips into his to minimize the gap between you as much as physically possible.

His cock is just the right balance of girth and length, filling you up and hitting the spots you need him to. Your sanity falls through the cracks with every click of his hips into yours. He *is fucking you good. He *is giving it to you like no one else can. It didn’t even take him long to figure out what you liked, using that knowledge to his advantage so he could ravage you.

You’re too lost in the pleasure to notice the coil in your stomach curling to the point of snapping. With each ram of his dick in your pussy, he winds you up more and more until it breaks in half. You see nothing but white for a few seconds, spots of various colors bleeding into it. A sound so far away from you bursts out from its home in the back of your throat. Your orgasm coaxes out his, painting your walls with milky ropes and a moan of his own.

The two of you pant breathlessly, lips brushing as you attempt to calm down. Jacob pinches your side, kissing you once before pulling out and letting go of your hip. “Do you have the energy to give me one more? I don’t think I’m finished with you just yet.”

You let out a guttural groan, nodding and colliding your mouths in another desperate kiss. Your fingers run through the strands of his hair, tugging at the nape of his neck as he transfers you to sink. He spins you around, bending you over the counter and pecking your shoulder as he eases his cock back into the velvet of your pussy.

You’re both still sensitive, sighing at the feeling of a second intrusion. He grips your hip and presses down on your lower back just as he speeds up the pacing of his thrusts. Instinctively, you hike up a knee onto the counter, wanting him even deeper and even harder than previously. Heat pools in that same spot at the base of your abdomen, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes.

“Look in the mirror, sweetheart,” he grunts, throwing his head back and tightening his grasp on your waist. “Want you to watch me fuck you stupid.”

You wail, eyes heavy lidded as you witness Jacob plowing into you from behind. It hurts, the fact that you can’t even convey into sounds how amazing it feels. They’re all trapped in your chest and throat, begging to be set free. You wish they could bounce off of the walls, reverberating in your ears. Your cheeks are wet from the tears that have spilled over. You look like a mess with your makeup smeared and your face puffy. Anyone who saw you after this would know exactly what went down in this bathroom.

Jacob doesn’t slow his assault, instead hovering over and trapping you beneath his broad frame. He drills into you deeper, harder, faster— and oh god you don’t want him to stop. You think he’s making good on his word, fucking you so insanely stupid that not a single thought occupies your mind. All there is, is Jacob Bae and the deliciousness of his cock wedging itself further into your cunt like he wants to live there.

“You’re taking me so well, baby. So so well,” he coos, your back curving into his chest.

Your elbows might give out from supporting your weight and now Jacob’s too, especially with how empty your head is. You don’t really have the consciousness to keep yourself up. It’s at the point where the mirror has started to fog, a blurry image of him abusing your pussy in your line of sight.

He knows you’re on the brink of an orgasm, your walls spasming slightly in warning. He pulls out enough to flip you onto your back, pushing in and resuming where he left off. His thumb sneaks down to your clit, rubbing in precise circles with precise pressure. Despite there being no mirror covered in steam in the shape of your bodies in front of you, your vision is still hazy. You can barely see the expressions Jacob makes, his brows knitting together and lower lip between his teeth.

You pull him down to connect your mouths, whining into him as he continues to fuck into you like there wasn’t a whole party still going on on the side of the door. Your knees are folded to your chest, allowing his cock to kiss all the way inside of you. “I’m— fuck— so close, Cobie.”

“C’mon, baby, you can cum for me,” he goads, applying more pressure to the shape he’s drawing on your clit.

One particularly timed thrust and the bumping of his pelvic bone on the sensitive bundle of nerves tips you off of your peak. Your climax washes over you, tidal waves of pleasure cresting at full force. You moan loudly, the rippling of your walls triggering Jacob’s own release.

He pulls out gently, for the final time. His chest rises and falls rapidly, in sync with yours. You’re both exhausted, spent from going at it like jackrabbits— as if you’d never get the chance to do it again. You meet eyes and then burst into laughter, your hands coming up to cup his cheeks.

“That was… Wow…” You breathe, moving some of his hair from obstructing his eyesight.

“I always follow through with my promises, you know,” he wraps his arms around your waist. “So, what do I get now that I’ve wooed you?”

You press the hints of a kiss to his lips. “An exclusive all-access pass to me, my phone number, and the rights to ask me out on a date whenever you please.”

Jacob smiles that crinkle eye smile of his, knowing full well that he plans on cashing all three of those right now. He may have not been the biggest fan of fraternities or their parties, but he sure as hell loved them at this moment in time.

He thinks he was a winner in more ways than one that night.

© juyeonszn. do not steal, claim, or repost.

[gamebunny-advance]

Overlays + Logo Experiments 2023 (Kuneho sa Kahon)

This is some old work that I did last year.

I'm not gonna call this stuff "scrapped," because I may still use them someday, it's just that I don't know if or when I'm gonna start streaming again.

I forgot how long ago I actually made these, but I do know that it was during a time when I actually sucked it up and sat down with Inkscape for a while. I've probably forgotten everything I learned since then, but I remember it not being as difficult as I thought it was going to be, so picking it back up again probably won't take too long.

Anyway, the actual notes...

I made 2 versions of the "Game" overlay, 16:9 and 4:3 to accommodate more gaming eras (the games shown are just placeholders). I'd like to have a dual screen overlay too, but it might have to be less "showy" to give the game enough room to actually be seen.~

It's mostly inspired by things like the Windows XP music player, just pinkified to match Kun3h0's aesthetic.

The message box is of course lightly tamagotchi inspired and is supposed to match with Kun3h0's GAB. (Well actually, I designed these overlays first, so it's the GAB that takes after the overlay, even using the same background image for her tummy screen).

There isn't a proper overlay for art streams yet. I'm always accidentally grabbing the edges of my workspace and resizing it, so I don't think a boxed overlay would work that well for it. Maybe just a border and a place to put the alerts would be fine, but I don't really have any ideas for it~

They aren't quite "finished" yet. There are supposed to be icons in the trio of hot pink buttons, but my placeholder ideas for them didn't look great.

(Icons originally from Icons8)

The idea was to bring in some more of that tamagotchi influence by having "care icons" that would allude to some of the features of Kun3h0's game, but I just don't think the icons I chose really work. Plus, I think they're just busy. I should probably just throw some hearts in there and call it a day~

Next are the logos. I actually really like the first one, but it's a little hard to work with.

All the empty space above the title next to the ears creates, well, an empty space when the logo is at the top edge of anything. It's just very ugly to me, but there's not much I could think to do about it.

So, I made the next iteration. It's a lot more rectangular, so it's easier to place in scenes, but I think the layering of the letters is a little off. I love the idea for it, but it's just short of being great. With a few more tweaks, I think it could really work.

But you know, I feel like the problem that almost all my logos have is that they're all bulky. There are just a lot of words in there since I include the English translation, but I figure that maybe I might be able to just condense everything into a single icon: like maybe the GAB Micro is enough of a symbol on its own to work? Maybe throw a couple of K's onto the screen, but otherwise I don't think I actually need much more than that. So, maybe I'll work on something like that soon.

The last thing is just some vector art tests I did. I tried remaking this faux vector art from a while ago. It was just a way to try and get used to the program. I also tried to remake my pictogram 1010s, to varying success.

[sirenjose]

Your thoughts on the Identity Switch

Thanks to you…. I now really like Norton. I used to hate him because I have a vendetta against people taller than my 4’11 self but now I love him.

on another note, what are your thoughts on the Identity switch system? Looking more into Norton’s background specifically makes me wonder why Norton gets a hunter form. What does this represent? I know that there’s a lot of drugs involved but I always interpreted it as them unlocking a new personality or smth, one more attune to following the manor’s games and supervising it (hunter) and like the other just trying to leave (survivor). I’ve been so interested in Norton’s lore lately that now I’m in an existential rabbit hole in how survivors get hunter forms, why that is, and if it’s like some sort of curse or punishment. Why are these survivors getting hunter forms?

soooo many questions, IK. But like reading your theories and analysis at 3Am is my serotonin. As a new player purely interested in the game for its lore I am just excited to know more but can’t wrap my head around all these weird concepts cause, again, I’m new. Also if I spend the next hour reading more of your analysis I will not sleep so therefore I need to preface my curiosity with a timed endeavor. My question probably do3snt make sense but like uhhh yeaaaaa. You should totally make something on your thoughts on identity switch (especially for the survivors gone hunters) cause I am too far in deep into the Norton-Campbell-Fool’s-Gold-Alternate-personality rabbit hole.

I’ve never done the questioning thingy before so sorry if this is not how it works. G’day!

Ah, it makes me happy to think a nobody like me can turn your thinking around on someone. Especially Norton since he was 1 of the main reasons I got started with the lore at all. I'm someone who usually plays a game based on how interesting the story or characters are, so I was interested in learning about idv's lore soon after I joined (had to take quite awhile to figure out the basics of the game and what all the various buttons were, then take some more time to get used to it before I could even get started with the lore). Was the main reason why I went looking to join places like Discord or Reddit, just so I could find people talking about the story.

Started by just understanding what I could about what people said, but then I eventually moved on to trying to understand at least the basics of everyone's backstories (once again, took me awhile to do that ^_^; Especially as I joined before we were getting all that much story at all). While I was doin this, I heard a lot of people saying bad stuff about some character named Norton. Have to admit I didn't know who he was for quite awhile. Wasn't in my radar. Can't even say I cared much for him. But I eventually got to the point where I basically decided I wanted to see if I could determine if Norton really was that bad or not (maybe as a challenge to myself, maybe because I wanted to find out myself rather than just hearing other's opinions, or maybe because I failed to find anything really in-depth about him).

That analysis took a ridiculous amount of time. In part because I ask too many questions, because I'm a perfectionist and wanted to look at every bit of info on him and detail on him, but also somewhat because I ended up writing this like a persuasion piece, and felt the only way to do that was by going through everything to back up my conclusion (whatever my research turned up). Which was also why I analyzed every single essence he had a skin in, as well as any skins not in an essence, his accessories, emotes, etc... It was during that process I actually got attached to Norton. Probably because of how long I spent going through him (no one needs to know how long it took... only the immense joy and desire to collapse I had when I finally finished).

Since then, I've rewritten his analysis... 3 times now I think? Counting after hunter norton's release? Though I've taken down that 1st version due to issues, and haven't reposted my essence analyses as they're old (they were pretty much the 1st analyses I wrote, and I'd like to think I've improved since then) as well as because they're based on the 1st version of my norton analysis... and because they're probably a bit needlessly long and thus embarrassing... Maybe I'll repost them once I get around to rewriting them. I definitely will eventually at least for Soul Catcher's and Magic Item Keeper's essence because I have to say they took longer than almost any other part of that original (complete) norton analysis (i can never forget the trouble they caused me over how long it took to understand them).

ANYWAYS! Ignoring my stupid rambling because who cares about any of that.

I was going to include my answer to your question about Identity Switches but it’s starting to become a little silly in length ^_^; (seriously, for those who know me well enough, I have a bad habit of writing more than I initially intended to once I get started) so I’ll make that a separate post for you, and you can let me know if it answers your questions (once I post it). If not, feel free to ask any more of your questions.

Honestly, the lore is confusing even to those who aren’t new players, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you can’t wrap your head around a lot of this ^_^;

It’s hard for me to imagine my stuff is so good people are willing to read it, much less re-read it. Especially as I know people tend to prefer… shorter things, but I have tendency to be lengthy. I can’t help it though ;’) But thank you so much for the compliment.

And please, I’m still pretty new to Tumblr, so I’m still figuring all this out myself.

Anyways, don’t feel nervous talking to me or asking me any questions you have. I enjoy being helpful! So please, ask whatever you like. Or even if you don’t have a question, that’s ok too. I enjoy rambling about a subject I get started on, as long as the other person can bear with me ;’)

 It’s always nice to know people besides me, myself, and I are reading this stuff.

(Apologies for any errors or nonsense in this post, as I decided to write it without double checking it for errors cuz I felt like being lazy, and I'm still busy writing out my thoughts about Identity Switches for you)

[megaman-r]

Hello! Welcome to my rather extended effort to make a classic-style-ish Mega Man game. My name's Nevi, my main is @afniel, and I'm here to be everyone's problem. I used to be tracking progress for this on Twitter, but we all know how that went, so now I'm here instead.

First, the top 3 questions I tend to get:

What is this?

A fan game, created in the NES style. Well. Eventually it will be. Making a game is not a quick or easy task.

What's it about?

When I was young, I always thought it was boring of Capcom to not give Roll her own game. I got older and I still think that, but I've also thought other things along the way, like, why do these games always raise such alarming existential questions and then completely forget they happened? How long would it take to learn a functional amount of music theory? Is it Metool, Mettaur, or Metall? Whatever they're called, why aren't there a lot more of these little guys in the games?

Basically, I'm giving Roll the game I always thought she deserved.

Can I play it?

Currently, there's really nothing to play. I've got the basic engine functioning quite well and a good chunk of the visual assets finished to a working degree, but refining everything, getting the gameplay as tight as it needs to be, and making sure nobody's AI breaks or sucks is a pretty big job.

That all said, my first real roadmap goal is to have a single-stage playable demo. While I don't have any notion of a release date for that, I am working steadily towards it, so please stay tuned!

The rest of the FAQ is long and maybe less interesting, so I'll stash it under a cut to save you a little scrolling.

The Game Itself

Is it going to be girly?

Probably not as girly as you're imagining, if you're asking that. After all, there's still explosions, boss fights, insta-death spikes, a ton of weapons to choose from, and quite a lot of shooting. Just because the main character is in a dress won't change the core feel of the game, nor will it be easier than other MM games.

Also, a thing being girly isn't bad anyway. It's just a style.

What makes this different from any other MM game/fangame?

Fair question! I'm going to be a little secretive about it though and just say 'choice.' It's a thing that the MM series isn't known for giving players, outside of what order you want to explode the robot masters. I think it could be more interesting than that.

That said, the mainline classic MM games don't have a whole lot to distinguish them from each other, and they're still fun and each one of them is someone's all-time fav game, so even if it just ends up being Another MM Game, that's still not a bad crowd to be in.

Are we fighting Dr. Wily? What's the plot?

:)

Some of that will come with the eventual demo release. The rest will be on full release. I don't want to spoil it up front, you know?

You will get to see some familiar faces for sure, I'll say that much.

Will this game be accessible?

I want it to be! I think games in general have a lot of work to do to become more accessible to disabled gamers, and as a disabled gamer, I want to try and do my due diligence in that.

It is playable on both keyboard (not comfortable) and controller (a lot more comfortable), and while the controls are fairly simple, there is already a fully-functional option to switch between classic MM style down+jump to slide, and MMX style dedicated single button slide.

Remapping buttons is somewhat beyond the scope of the engine I'm using, which is unfortunate, and all the more reason for me to learn something more flexible like Godot.

I'm trying to choose palettes for things that should be eyestrain-friendly. Flashing will be kept to a minimum in the default game mode, and I plan on having a sensory-friendly mode with no flashing whatsoever and certain other effects lessened/changed/removed. Of course, I can't guarantee that certain patterns won't affect sensitive people regardless, but I'm going to give it a good try.

Depending on how easy the game engine makes sensory-friendly mode, it may end up being a separate download version, but I hope not, that's just not as good.

Alternate difficulty modes are also something I want to do! I just haven't looked at implementation yet, but it should be pretty easy.

Game Development Stuff

What are you using to make MMR?

The engine itself is in Pixel Game Maker, which is kind of an underdog DIY game engine and if I'd really been thinking I'd probably have started it in Godot or something, but I'm already here and honestly, I like how it works, so I'm keeping it. The assets are entirely made in Aseprite, and the music is entirely Famitracker, with a little use of Audacity to make sure tracks loop properly and to get things into the right format.

Very few visual assets are taken from the games directly, mostly some enemies and most of the sound effects (because those are not something I want to try to recreate using only Famitracker—I only have so many hours in a day).

How NES-like are we talking, here?

I'm aiming for NES-like in the way that Sonic Mania aimed for Genesis/Master System-like: the style matches, the limitations are mostly observed, but certain limitations are disregarded when it would be extremely awesome to do so.

Some examples: I'm very fastidious about color palettes per tile and per minor enemy sprite; I'm less fastidious about color palettes onscreen at a time and color palettes per boss sprite. I'm not trying to replicate the sprites-per-scanline flicker. Number of frames per animation isn't something I'm really considering as long as it looks visually appropriate. I'm sticking with 2A03 music, except for where I mean business, and then I may whip out the VRC6 channels instead.

So no, this wouldn't run verbatim on an actual NES, even if you recoded it in 6503 Assembly, but you would be able to get quite close.

How did you learn to make pixel art?

Well, when I was a wee little neurodivergent child, one of my favorite hobbies was making tiles and characters in MS Paint and building big collages out of them. I made a lot of beehives, for some reason...

Then I became a medium-sized neurodivergent teenager, got really into RPG Maker 2000, and the sprites and tiles were not to my liking, so I started editing them and eventually making my own from scratch.

I'm now a fairly normal-sized neurodivergent adult, and making pictures out of little dots is still a lot of fun, especially with a harshly constrained palette. Doing NES-like graphics just kind of comes naturally after all that.

How did you learn to make music?

Honestly? I just began throwing myself at it. My first attempts were unabashedly bad. When things didn't make sense and I couldn't get them to sound right, which was all the time, I looked them up. Starting with general chord theory was what really made it begin to click. The first thing I composed and kept was the Lagoon Stage music, and not coincidentally it's been through the most refactors as well. Coming from an art background where I'm very used to the Ugly Painting Stage of any given piece has definitely helped with patience, too. The important thing is to just keep beating your head against it. It's frustrating, but you only learn to make music by making music.

Every track on the OST represents about two days of feverishly slamming notes together for four-six hours a day, preceded by one-four whole months of tapping and humming random things until one of them ignites something in my brain that goes, "Oh, I know how the rest of this should go!"

How did you learn to code?

Well, honestly, I didn't; PGM is a visual scripting engine, so everything pretty much looks like flowcharts, and the number of functions is kind of constrained. Every object in the game is a state machine, so that's pretty much the paradigm I understand. I could not code my way out of a paper sack in any actual language.

That being said, I do understand the core concepts of what programming is, and most of that I learned by watching Retro Game Mechanics Explained on YouTube until I suddenly understood what 6502 Assembly was all about and everything else just kind of made sense. I don't know either! It's a little weird. But it did work, so I can't complain.

Is this related to [Other Fan Project]?

Nope, it's not part of or related to any other fanworks. I'm a solo dev working on just this one project right now. (However, if you're making a classic or MMX-style game and need pixel art assets, I'm open to talk about that! Please note though that I do not work for free.)

Your robot master has the same name/concept as [Other Fan Character].

Sorry if that's the case! There are so many really stellar MM fan characters out there that a little name/concept-sharing is basically unavoidable. No infringement is intended, no profit will be made from this game, and I'm uninvolved enough with the general fandom at large that I can pretty confidently say I didn't even know about your character. Take it as a case of Great Minds Think Alike, if it happens.

Do you have anywhere else I can keep up with this?

I sure do! I've got a Discord specifically for it where I toss a lot of WIP sprites and such, and that's where eventual playtesting will happen too if you're into that sort of thing, and a Trello that I don't always remember to update, but it exists at least!

Mega Man R Secret Gamedev Clubhouse Discord

Trello Roadmap (when I remember to update it...)

What's the pixel art in your banner?

That was just me greebling at random for practice and funsies. The full image isn't used anywhere as-is, but I did end up using some parts of it in the tiles.

[facet-project]

pre-blog catchup diary

*disclaimer: this is ALL pre-alpha art. these screenshots are BEFORE visual development started. it's ugly. it's supposed to be. i was focused on programming and didn't want aesthetics to get in the way. pretend in your heart that this is all beautiful pixel art

anyway go below the readmore for details!!

i started working on this game in october 2023!! i had been learning gdscript before that, a little bit, but i hadn't fully committed to this project until then. pictured below is. the First build of the game vs the most current build. we've come so far.

the prototype was just a one-week build of the farming sim. so i could test how the time mechanic worked (time only moves when you do an action, you're not on a constant ticking clock)(this makes it much easier to strategize what you'll do in a day and letting the player go at their own pace, making the game feel more relaxed)(you can also... undo actions... which was just me testing out the code in this version but in the full version... will have different Implications)

i am all by my lonesome on this project. mechanically at least. my brother, girlfriend, dad, and my best friends are constantly helping me test things and i bounce ideas off of them all the time. it helps that my brother is a master GM and writer and my girlfriend is a software developer. and i lean very heavily on my dad for music/soundscape assistance. so yes, solodev, but also i am not an island

so the prototype was made when i was still learning gdscript past the phase of "tutorials for babies that produce a single number-go-up game" which is. hard!! since this is a much more complex project. it's easy to make anything in isolation, it's harder to figure out how to make new systems weave into a bigger project! fucking hell i didn't even know about custom resources!!!!

the prototype went off with FLYING COLORS though. girlfriend and brother played it over the weekend i gave it to them and it worked, it made sense, and watching the two of them test out the mechanics gave me some very good ideas for future builds. also nothing crashed and gf couldn't find any crazy exploits! (however pictured below is the incredibly fucked up floating rabbit glitch that i couldn't fix)

i finished it in june and took a break in july. august will be the first proper devlog for this! i'm excited to have a little dev journal around! i probably will only post consistently about once a month, with maybe some little posts here and there about characters or concept art i'm excited for

so what's next?

TIME TO GO BUILD ALPHA, BABY!!!!

which sounds exciting but i'm basically. starting from scratch again. new, fresh godot file. so it feels like i'm not very far in, even though i have an entire working prototype on my desktop.

and.... geez.... gotta actually make the pixel art and implement it into a working file???? so that it doesn't look like dogshit???? that would be nice. i didn't want to do it for prototyping/pre-alpha because i really wanted to make sure i had the capacity to code the game before putting my heart and soul into the art. and now i'm very certain i do?? it's not hard, it just takes time. and the time will pass anyway!!

i have two campaigns planned for the game, one that's smaller and one that's larger. the bigger one is the typical make your own character farming simulator, played straight in the setting. but i'm working on the smaller one first! you play as a specific character for the first year of the story. not all of the game mechanics are turned on for this mode, and it's more story-oriented than the straight Farming Simulator, so i think it's a good place to put development energy into. get it all ironed out. make it make sense before blowing it up on a larger scale. and it's more contained to test in which is a bonus

anyway. i'm going to post build updates on this on the last day of every month. and!! i'm not going to say a Lot about how the game works quite yet but the askbox is open. i don't think anyone will ask anything cause this is still in really early stages but it's there if you want it i guess

[jamie101]

My Favourite Single Player Video Games I Played in 2023

(Inspired by @a-shrieking-cloud-of-bats' post)

Disclaimer: most of these games are relatively well-known/popular, and at least a few didn't come out this year, but these are all games I played this year that had a lasting impact on me.

In no particular order:

Dredge

I was interested in this from the initial trailer, and the final game definitely delivered. You play as the new fisherman of a tiny island town, making ends meet while uncovering uncanny secrets beneath the waves. The gameplay is fun and involved (a mixture of time and inventory management) but easy enough to master. The main elements that have stayed with me are the visual style and score/sound design, both of which really lift the game's atmosphere - it's almost relaxing at times, but never quiiiiite loses that edge of unease.

Book of Hours

I was (am) a big fan of Cultist Simulator, so Book of Hours was one of my most anticipated titles this year. The fantastic tone and writing of CS is still present, really putting these games in a league of their own. The gameplay is still faithful to the first game's style and mechanics, but also branches out in a lot of fun ways - the far more detailed and lively board of Hush House and the nearby village add a much more solid setting. One small issue I take is that the systems and learning curve for BoH are just as complex and involved as CS, but without as much ability to start over and apply new knowledge - BoH is designed to be a single longer playthrough rather than multiple "runs", which might mean you find yourself a good number of hours deep before realising you've been engaging with the mechanics wrong the entire time. This is partly why I'm still to complete the game; I do still look forward to doing so eventually, though.

Darkest Dungeon II

Darkest Dungeon is one of my favourite games of all time. I've played the sequel ever since it first entered early access in 2022, and while I understand why a significant number of DD1 fans seemingly weren't too fond of it (the overarching gameplay is fairly different from the first game, taking a much more roguelite form reminiscent of Slay the Spire) I got on with it well, even moreso since the game's full v1.0 release this year - the progress and updates made throughout early access were really encouraging to see, and the finished game is a very worthy sequel that also works as a standalone title. The transition from static 2D sprites to fully animated 3D models, while maintaining the iconic and unique artstyle of Darkest Dungeon, is also really impressive.

The Case of the Golden Idol

I've been aware of this game ever since watching a stream of the first couple chapters a year or so ago, but was inspired to pick it up myself after the announcement of a sequel at this year's Game Awards (maybe one of the few games announced there I'm genuinely excited for). I don't scratch my puzzle game itch enough, and Golden Idol has made me keen to seek out more - solving a series of interlinked "mysteries" via observation of the environment and participants to obtain words and clues which you then piece together on a separate screen. I got through the game and both DLCs in around 3-4 days, but consider that time very well spent based on the number of genuine "eureka" moments I experienced alone.

Other Games I Played and Enjoyed: Return of the Obra Dinn, Receiver, The Binding of Isaac (Rebirth/Afterbirth/Repentance)

Multiplayer Games I Enjoyed/Am Currently Enjoying: Lethal Company, Party Animals

If you've read this far, thanks very much! This is mostly a personal record to look back on, but please feel free to pass on any recommendations or let me know what your top games were this year.

And With That, the Game of the Year 2023 (and Every Year Hereafter) is: OUTER WILDS

[just-a-carrot]

Carrot! I’m in existential identity crisis, and have no idea what i want to study in future, considering that i’m supposed to apply for university in a few month. I was thinking a lot about choosing programming study program, and i wanted to ask you, how did you get started coding novels? Can you tell me some advices about where to start, video lessons, how to understand code, some programs to use? Any of that would be really helpful! Thank you!!

Oh, gosh! I'm so sorry that you're going through such a tough and confusing time. I was similar when I was in school and ended up changing majors multiple times and even going back to get a second BA (and also even now the work I do has nothing to do with what I got my degrees in... lol). It feels so impossible trying to figuring out what you want to do in life (and it can change so often...) 💦

Mmmm. I didn't have much coding knowledge at all before I started working on OW. (I also don't think it requires much knowledge just to start doing simple stuff in it—and I still don't think I have much knowledge even now LOL). I remember it felt really overwhelming and confusing at first, so I kinda took it slow and did a lot of my initial attempts in steps?? And from there slowly started to get more familiar with it and learn more and more. Let me try to explain:

The first thing I did before coding anything was write the script. I had about half of Arc 1 finished before I even thought about making it into a game, so I just had it written in my writing software.

I decided to see how it would look in a very simple VN format using Ren'Py. To learn how to start using Ren'Py, I played through the tutorial game included in Ren'Py that teaches you a lot of the basic functions. I remember this was really overwhelming because it teaches you quite a lot of things quite quickly—and when you don't know anything at all, it's so much to take in. So I tried to start simply using ONLY THE VERY BASIC STUFF:

My initial prototype only included text, backgrounds, music, and sound effects. So I only focused on the code required for those things, so basically, the code for displaying an image (defining it using image then showing it using show), for showing text on the screen (I just defined a single "actor" with basic formatting and used that for all the text), and for playing music and sound effects (the play music and play sound commands).

By only focusing on these bits, I was able to simplify it enough that I could understand it. And so then I began copy-pasting my script in line by line while creating basic BGs using royalty free photos, finding royalty free sound effects, and adding the music (I already had a collection of royalty free music I'd found for the game).

As I worked on it, I got more familiar with it and began to understand how different bits of it worked, learning new things such as pauses, screen shakes, etc., that I could also add in. Whenever there was something I didn't know how to do (for instance, zooming/cropping an image, creating variables for keeping track of player choices, etc., I would just look up on Google and could usually find something in the LemmaSoft forums).

Once this initial prototype was made and I was loving how it looked, I decided to go all-in on the game and actually start creating art for it! This was when I started drawing the character sprites, CGs, etc. Because I already was familiar with the basic coding stuff, it wasn't hard for me to then apply what I knew to making the sprites and CGs appear on screen (since it's all just using the image and show commands, and maybe moving them around using stuff like ease).

Only once I had made a lot of progress on art and more writing and scripting did I even think about tackling things like the GUI, since that requires some more advanced coding stuff. I remember the video tutorial I used to start figuring out how to do the title screen for instance was this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zq3V28qp2w&ab_channel=ZeilLearnings

That took me pretty much to the release of Arc 1! Then as I kept working on subsequent arcs, I kept getting even more familiar with things, and would also try out new things I could do to create various scene effects.

Then when Spooktober came around for some reason I decided to try a ton of different things and really go wild. I definitely learned the most during that month LOL However, it was all built on skills I'd slooooooowly been building basically throughout the course of the whole year. Even doing research itself is a skill tbh. Like being able to figure out kind of in your head what you need to do something to locate what it is you don't know, then knowing how to research that thing and parse out the solution so it will work in your version of the code, etc. And I was only comfortable handling that for more advanced stuff because I'd done it so many times before just figuring out more simple stuff.

Tbh tho literally none of what I have in any of my games is very advanced, it's all just a ton of things moving on the screen in different ways and at different times

Hmmm I have no idea if that long rambly thing I just wrote is very helpful LOL Those were all the resources I used tho: the tutorial game in Ren'Py, that video I shared for the title screen, tons and tons of Google searches and the LemmaSoft forums.

But I really feel like the biggest thing that helped and made things manageable for me was breaking it down. Like, I don't know if I would have managed it if I'd tried to start right away with art and sprites and do everything all at once. I needed to start with that very simple prototype with only a few necessary commands so I could get familiar with it first, and only after that, start working on art and add it in. Breaking it down into small simple pieces really helped my brain so much! (And also was more motivating, as I could create the prototype quite quickly and already get really excited by how it looked even with just BGs and music, which inspired and motivated me to keep working. Whereas if I'd had to wait and take all the energy to draw all the art first, too, I might have gotten overwhelmed and demotivated.)

Those are all the things I PERSONALLY did to learn how to code my game. However, since I began, even more resources have become available that will probably help even more and be a lot more accessible. The biggest one I can think of is Vimi's YouTube channel, which has a ton of very basic tutorials for getting started in Ren'Py and just a ton of stuff about making and coding VNs in general. I feel like this could be super helpful for you!! https://www.youtube.com/@vimi

There are also other programs for creating visual novels, for instance, Naninovel allows you to create VNs in Unity, though since Unity uses C#, you will need to learn some of that I think?? Ren'Py uses Python, though for basic scripting it's not really actual Python and more just very basic Ren'Py script or something. You will need Python though to get into some of the more advanced stuff you can do with the GUI and menus and such though (or if you want to do anything much more advanced like add mini games).

I hope this helps you at least a bit! But if you have any questions about anything specific, don't hesitate to ask!!!

[anam3ii]

-1bitHeart-

Nov, 28,2023,

Hi, I'm new here. I've been wanting to create a blog for a long time now. I wasn't sure how to start a blog, what exactly should I share. I meaan...I have a lot to share but I was thinking to my self..should I just be consistent and stick to one thing or would it be ok to do a little bit of everthing?? Well I guess we'll see since I'm kinda..winging it. lol

Today I'd like to share with you what I've been up to recently. I decided to give youtube a try. I love to game and thought why not..it might be fun. I recently finished a game and posted the short series. I still have a lot to learn about editing so it's not great to be honest but the good thing is I've learned a lot for my first time.Oh yes..from the many mistakes. It was not so fun starting over a lot, I'll tell you that ,yet I hope the next series is much better and maybe I'll even have some commentary.

The game I recently completed and posted on youtube is called 1bitHeart. It is created by, not a very well known, developer Miwashiba. This Japanese dev is from Fukuoka and has illustrated and created various cute and interesting RPG games. Miwashiba is known for creating their own pixel adventure games Alicemare, LiEat series,1bitHeart and the sequel 1BeatHeart.I just found out, while doing some research, that pool of creativity has not run dry just yet. In fact,there is a game in production right now by the name of The Faceless Double. You can find all of the games on steam; all but one,1BeatHeart.The game is available and you can find it here on this link.I have yet to give the game a try but so far the big difference I see between them is the more dull or muted colors and maybe less cuteness? It doesn't seem to be going on steam anytime soon so I'm a little hesitant to give it a go.

So far, all of the games that are available on steam are also published under the same publisher, PLAYISM. They publish a variety of genres. From story-focused games to Horror to strategy etc.

Now, I'll be honest, I didn't dive too much into the dev or the publisher so sorry I have no idea if there is any juicy gossip lol. I do though, want to tell you a little bit more about the game,1bitHeart. As far as I know, the game was released on steam back in 2017. The game is set in Japan, in the near future, where technology has progressed to the point that I'd say it's somewhat similar to now in our lives; it is used pretty much everyday, everywhere. It dominates the lives of everyone.

In the game, we play a young guy by the name of Nanashi, who spends most of his time indoors. He is very intelligent but a bit socially awkward. He meets a young girl by the name of Misane. While out making friends and solving mysteries, he learns of a frightening plot to take control of people via hacking. Together they set out to stop the people behind this evil plot.

I have yet to play the other games myself but I can tell you that this game, compared to the others, it's a 2D side scroller instead of using the top down perspective the others used.This allows for larger side view portraits of the game's many characters which lets the game to emphasize Miwashiba's incredible skill at designing cute characters and more detailed during dialogue. The game doesn't have turn based battles like LiEat, according to some other reviews, and also isn't solely based on exploration like Alicemare.The game has it's own systems. The hints being one, that helped me, which you get to chose to have them on or off in the very beginning. When you come across hackers and they attempt to hack the player, you defend yourself by directional inputs; which are basic. Still, the game is fun when you have to play detective and have the subsequent confrontations. You also progress the story by solving the various cases through the chapters during which you need to gather information and evidence.

Stardew Valley is a game I have played, but not finished but I can tell you that in the same way that you are able to give gifts to the characters that hang around the town in 1bitHeart you do the same. You'll trigger scenes once you become better friends with them but you are not able to romance any of the characters like in SV. This leads to one of the most impressive parts: there are actually about 48 characters in all that are spread across the town. Each with their own story, personality and style. The end goal, depending on what end you want, is of course, for these characters to become the main character's friend. You can see the amount of love and effort that was put into the game. In a review I read that the backgrounds during character's dialogue could use a little work. They probably could but I think it was done that way so the characters and their dialogue was the main focus.

Like I mentioned earlier, you need to give gifts to the characters in order to be friends but you need money or bits to buy gifts. You get bits by playing tetris-type minigames but it'll take A LOT of grinding=time to get enough bits to befriend everyone. Fortunately, the dev was aware of this flaw, as there is a secret in the game to acquire endless bits=endless gifts.

Honestly, I enjoyed the soundtrack. It's ok. One of my favorites its the opening theme.

The biggest gripe I have with the game is that I didn't see the option for borderless windowed or something to prevent the game from minimizing. The game would minimize each and every time I clicked out of the game. It was very frustrating and annoying. Honestly, it's one of the reasons why I'm hesitant to play them to record them.

I wonder if streaming would be easier in this case?? I don't want to totally give up.Anyway..If you made it this far, THANK YOU for taking the time to read my blog today. Let me know what your thoughts are...til next time!

-A

[callioclops]

Callie's Guide to Improving at Roguelikes (and other games in general)

Note: This is a post from my Cohost about 6 months ago, but since that's shutting down I decided to bring this one over here since I still really like it and stand by everything it says

Following on from my roguelike post I've also been made aware that a lot of people struggle with roguelikes from a mental standpoint. Losing in any game you've invested time into is rough, and it can lead to a lot of blame being thrown either consciously or subconsciously. You might blame your teammates in a team game, you might blame luck or randomness in a single-player game, or worst of all you might blame yourself. So I figured I'd give my advice for getting better at a game - or most skill heavy activities honestly - and accepting a loss as a step forward rather than back.

Part 1: Admitting you suck

Now I don't mean this to be harsh. You might be quite good at a game, you might just be starting out and have no idea what you're doing. But regardless, you've hit a roadblock where you aren't seeing improvement and it's frustrating. The first step to getting out of this is identifying that you can do better. This is the step that involves not blaming yourself or others for a loss. If you're blaming others you're denying you need to improve, and often when you blame yourself you're denying that you can improve. Both of these will absolutely destroy your motivation.

Part 2: Identifying why you suck

Next you need to figure out something to focus on. If you just lost a game, think about what happened. What led to that loss? Are you holding onto your resources too much as a last resort and never using them? Are you having trouble with aiming or any other mechanic of the game? If you start seeing the same kinds of losses multiple times that's generally a good place to start. I wouldn't recommend going off of one loss for this step, we all have off days and sometimes you flub something you're usually really good at, and that's okay.

Part 3: Experimentation/Research

Now you have a narrower focus to start working on, but you might not know how to improve. Knowing what you did wrong and knowing how to do it right are two completely separate things, and this can often be the most frustrating step of all. There's two ways you can go about circumventing this hurdle. a) You can try different styles/methods of doing this thing to see if any of them feel better to you, or b) You can ask someone you trust/respect that's better at the game. This can be a friend, a streamer, or a youtuber, honestly the roguelike community is really friendly and will be happy to give you advice if you ask in a stream chat or comments section. If you don't feel comfortable asking someone directly however, a wiki can sometimes provide decent advice as well, though it may require more knowledge of the game or be more generic than you would get from another person.

Part 4: Trust the process

Even once you know what to do and how to do it, executing can be difficult. You will still be failing it for a time after this, maybe more than usual as you're focussing on this specific point and some of your other, more competent skills are dragging since they're on autopilot. What I would advise you to do is pay attention to the improvement you've made on your focus. While you may not be good enough at it to win a run, you can at least identify where it's helped you during the run. If you can't identify that, it's possible that it didn't help that run and that's okay. The options there are a) The skill you're developing wasn't relevant for that particular run, or b) You made a mistake. And I want to stress how much it doesn't matter if it was b. Even when you've mastered a skill, it will still be b. A mistake isn't something you can stop from happening, you can just make it happen less often.

Part 5: Repeat (if you feel like it)

Learning and improving doesn't have a finish line. It isn't a sprint, it's a cycle. You can choose to exit the cycle at any time and that's okay, if you're happy with your current skill level and don't feel a desire to improve, then perfect. That's the goal of these steps. To help you get to a point where you feel confident in your own ability. That point will vary from person to person. For me, learning and improving is part of the fun of roguelikes. For someone else, they might just want to be able to beat a certain difficulty and then they're fine to leave it there. There aren't any wrong answers on where to stop.

And there we go, my 5 step process to improving at video games! I can't guarantee this will work for everyone, but it's worked for me so I figured I may as well share it for people who aren't sure where to start.

[super-kristuff]

Frontline Factory - Postmortem

I made a game for GMTK gamejam! I waited this long to post anything mostly because I was absolutely drained by the end of the 96 hours. This ended up being my lowest rated GMTK submission at #4312 out of 7,639; however, I feel like this is my greatest game yet. I feel like the game received the rating it did because of a tricky control scheme, poor tutorialization, and a punishing learning curve. I think the most interesting part is that elements 1 and 3 were actually somewhat deliberate on my part.

So, the original plan was to have the game be a top-down puzzle game like Overcooked. I wanted the player to be hastily running around with robot parts in hand and the element of scale to be enforced by the size of the robots the player had to make and the complexity of the builds. Obviously this was somewhat large in scope, but I felt getting the game to a playable state would be achievable.

Pretty quickly in development, I realized it would be faster to test features with a click and drag system. I justified that the player would be able to grab and drop in a similar manner, but I never got around to that. I decided that the player could just be a crane floating on the screen, and the drag and drop could be the primary mode of interfacing with the robots.

This wasn't super outlandish considering Last Call BBS and Mech Builder were both big inspirations for this project; however, I think the deviation from keyboard to keyboard AND mouse is a huge reason why players found my game to be confusing. I really wanted to challenge myself and build something more than just another 2D platformer, and I really think that I accomplished that goal. I'm not really sure how to describe the genre of my game, and that weird exploratory space is something I've been building towards for the longest time.

HOWEVER, I think by accomplishing this goal, my game is now outside the standards of videogame literacy. Everybody has some experience with a 2D platformer, but unless a player has played Last Call BBS or Mech Builder, it is safe to say that this would be a new experience. This isn't exactly a negative, but it does mean that I couldn't lean on players 'figuring it out', and I really needed to have any kind of tutorial at all.

Playing a lot of games during the gamejam, it's kind of embarrassing that I didn't have any kind of tutorialization in game. I wrote all the instructions on the floor of the main level, and even hid some behind the robot thinking "they'll have to move the robot now!". In retrospect, having some picture instructions on a dedicated page from the main menu would have been much more helpful and just as easy to implement.

I saw a shocking number of games with opening cutscenes, and I feel like I could have maybe pulled that off? It would have been a crunch from time pressures, but I don't think it would have been impossible to do something simple. Optimally, I think making an introductory level or two, where the player just needed to connect a single piece or submit an already completed robot, could have helped break down the complexity to a digestible amount.

Finally, I think my original motives of an Overcooked style game amplified my mistakes from lack of instruction. I added a timer and a bit of screen shake to make the player feel like they were under a bit of pressure, and I think this clashed horribly with the confusing atmosphere I had created. When I finally had the chance to pass the game to my little brother for playtesting (a couple days after submission), it took him two or three game-overs just to finish reading the instructions.

This was actually a concern of mine during development, but because I was able to beat the game in half the time, I assumed most players would have a bit of challenge to beat it within the time. I actually still feel like the amount of time is fair if only I had a better system in place for player instruction.

The timer also clashed horribly with my brother's prefered gaming setup: a school issued chromebook. The game is basically unplayable with any kind of touchpad, fullstop. I've always had a wireless mouse for my laptop, so I didn't even consider the play experience without it. Which, was a huge blunder on my part.

I think that about sums up my thoughts on the game. I was thinking about maybe expanding the game into something more akin to the original vision, but I thought that making this postmortem would not only be easier but also help to sort out my thoughts. I honestly feel like the amount of polish I've accomplished with this game is unparalleled by any other game I've made up to this point.

In conclusion, I think Frontline Factory is a game that lost its original intent somewhere along development. I think a lot of reasonable microscopic choices led to a lot of macroscopic consequences. I'm extremely happy with how well the game turned out, and I'm impressed with how much I've learned.

This is kind of a lot, so I don't expect anyone to have read the full thing, but thanks if you did.

[bainhardt]

Curse Crackers really fun

gotta find more games like this and Gravity Circuit, love me some tight movement control retro style platformers or whatever

guess I'll just crosspost my Steam review here for posterity

Curse Crackers is so much fun. This is one of those games where you wish you could find excuses to keep playing even after you're finished. It's a good game. I say buy it, especially if it's on sale. The rest of this is just going to be me running my mouth.

The core gameplay is simply a delight. I love "get to the end of the level" platformers and this one is fun nearly at all times. All the different ways of jumping around are fun, bouncing off enemies or your buddy Chime is fun, finding secret items and hidden doors is fun. Even dying can be pretty fun because respawning is quick and painless and gets you right back to stubbornly trying that specific way you want to clear the screen again until it works (maybe that's just me). This is also one of my favorite character concepts I've played in a platformer. An acrobat with a persistent-projectile-platform-throwable-thing you can use in so many ways is just plain cool and a joy to fiddle around with and figure out as you play the game. You can dunk Chime into fatal pitfalls so he'll bounce back up to save you, and pulling it off in moments of clutch feels incredible.

Having hidden Roses to collect or Medals earned by beating stages with special conditions are natural choices; they keep you playing or even re-playing stages, and they're uniform across all stages, so it's always easy to check what you've done. The game also offering a small sampling of unlockable upgrade-type items makes sense, giving you new abilities to toy around with in a limited capacity. Some of them are endgame locked because they break the movement wide open, but that's fun in its own way. Some of them (Food) are contextual, but then afterwards become purchasable-consumables to bring along to stages as you please, which I think is strange. If they're single-use, I'm just never going to use them. All upgrade items are quest locked, which means whether or not you even notice they exist will depend on how much side content you check out.

There's a lot of other stuff in this game outside the stage-based main game and it's all... fine? But I think some of it distracts from the focus of the experience, and there's virtually no synthesis of these elements. There's a world map (fairly normal admittedly), side areas that aren't stages, side quests, and TONS of NPCs and dialogue. Some of the collectibles are straight-up books you can read in a library. Many are not uniformly distributed between stages - Swords, Tablet Pieces, Lost NPCs, and postgame Spirits all join the Books comprising a dizzying array of hidden goods. There is an admittedly cute in-game way of checking collectible progress, but it costs money, and I think it wouldn't have been too much to ask for some kind of stage checklist in the menu if they were going to be this random. I played all of the stages first, then went back to do most of the quests and talk to everyone. I ran all over doing fetch quests for people, revisiting almost every stage multiple times, learning who all the characters are and a lot about them and the world of the game...

But after all's said and done I still don't understand WHY this is all done this way. NPCs never show up in the stages or anything, and while a couple quests culminate in special extra stages, that's about it. All of this side content does not truly "matter" to the main game whatsoever and feels like a different game alongside it. I ended up playing all of this content and unlocking all achievements because the core game is so fun, but it felt like a mountain of extra effort. That's not to say any of this fluff couldn't be of interest to some players out there, and it is impressive in its sheer scope. But for me, it has absolutely nothing to do with why this game is fun. Personally, getting to play more stages no questions asked would have been good enough.

I'll say it again for good measure: it's a fun game. If you like unique platformers, buy it.

[foxoftheninetails]

Have to brag just a teensy bit.

Streamed DMC4 tonight, and got through half the game in 3 hours. Didn't die once, boss fights I remember from 10 years ago being hard were a cake walk. I was calm, cool, collected.

The game is easy for me, making me look good.

Seems like a stupid thing. I used to be pretty good at video games, I could break them inside of a few hours. I tapered off playing pretty much everything except like Minecraft for the last few years.

In the last year, I have picked up rogue likes, FFXIV, Celeste, LttP. And while I can complete all of them, I never felt like I was good. I'm still inordinately proud of beating Celeste, something hundreds of thousands of people have done. I pick up GGSt, and I love it. I love playing as Elphelt, her personality and fight style work so well for me. But I'm not great, some nights I'm pretty good, some I'm absolute shit.

So playing DMC4 is a hell of a confidence boost. I'm not getting S rank finishes at the end of level, but I'm not complete trash. I'm torn between "They must have nerfed the difficulty on the Steam version" and "Maybe learning GGSt and how to not button mash and all that platforming and the literally thousands of hours of games in the last few months has actually sharpened my skills."

I'm going to take this win.

All of my friends are incredible gamers. They can pick up anything and be excellent in hours, they can break a game in the same span, they can analyze everything and tear opponents apart.

Meanwhile, I'm someone who's been playing since FF1 and Zelda 2, someone who's literally beaten OoT dozens of times, someone who could at one time take on 3 max level CPU players in Smash Bros and not lose a single life in a 99 life match up. I gave up a lot of playing for 10 years, and I'm so far behind games like Risk of Rain and Bastion are brand new to me. I lost my edge. I know the mechanics, but I'm slow.

Watching them play will always be humbling. Watching one speed run LttP in 2 hours when it takes me 7. Watching another play Bridgets arcade run perfectly the first time. Watching a third Black Mage 2.5 times the damage I can do as Samurai in the same fight. It's incredible.

And I have little doubt that if any of them picked it up, they'd smoke my stats. But tonight, I got to be good at the game. I got to infodump and be the expert and talk about how I've been playing this game forever.

It feels good. I love seeing my friends be the best, seeing their thousands of hours of dedication pay off. But tonight showed that maybe I can keep up.

[indigo474]

31:00~~2/10/24~~

I ran my 2nd 5 k today and managed to run 3 minutes and 26 seconds faster than last time.. l'm not even sure how that is possible.. it must be the hills. i am so proud of myself and again amazed. a tiny tiny voice tells me i could have done better.. maybe... Madison came wiht me for support. I saw people there alone so next time I wont bother her to come with me, unless she wants to of course. I wish i had someone to celebrate with. i'm thankful for Maddy.. I'm thankful for a lot but still wish i had someone. i thought a lot today about how my divorce was/is the single best thing that has ever happened to me. I thought about how i hate hate hate how people say ohh sorry for your divorce. I thought about how it would have been a shame for me to not be the person i am today and how much i have learned and grown and healed. i thought about how i wish i had left sooner .. i dont let myself go too fr down that trail. I left and thats all that matters.. all these great things. Me- i dont know if i will ever be use to this life and these feelings of happiness.. when i laugh, i laugh.. joy. i did not have that or feel that for a lot of years and the last thing i wanted was to really feel anything because none of it was any good and now.. now.. peace. Peace.. and love. Madison is sweet to me. she knows i eat an apple a day and when she shops she has been making sure to buy apples. when we lived in our apartment she would always make sure to leave the outside light on for me.. i hate walking up to a dark house.. ptsd from Chatham. If he turned the automatic light off i knew i was in trouble. sooo.. i guess i'll keep running..

I am not a game player. Its just not my natural state. Pam has issue. Deep seeded trauma from her childhood.. its so obvious to me. the way she talks and her need to be liked and seen as cool and the way she tries to manipulate the people around her. She's smart but not intelligent. So, whatever.. i'm not friends with any of them.. there's one supervisor i kind of like, she was my first supervisor when i started.. and she is weird. None of it matters. I'm working from home tomorrow. I didnt get nearly enough sleep last night. I didnt want to get out of bed this morning. i tried to be nice to my Mom this week, i was being kind and supportive and she can not accept love because she does not love herself . she hates herself and doesnt think she deserves kindness or love and that is not my problem. do i love myself enough to be able to receive love?

I spoke to my manager in regards to the very important meeting she missed. She claims to have wanted to be there but it was thrown together last minute and she was not made aware of the time. Drew was in charge of the timing. Drew is always in charge of the meeting times and he sucks at it. I pretty much said that to her but in a professional way. its taken a year but his scheduling skills infuriate me. people pretty much do what benefits them. Drew has a attitude about people leaving work at 5.. he feels we should all stay later. He is late to work everyday and it benefits him to stay later so misses the rush hour traffic. ive stayed late in the past to accommodate him. I'm not doing that anymore. I get to work early almost every day. I am not staying later than i have to. I feel like he doesnt value other peoples time. he's called me 2 x in 2 days while i wasn't work.. he called me today while i was in walmart talking nonsense.. i got a new rep who is a total idiot. he never should have made it out of training and Drew is acting like he's been on team for a long time and what am i going to do about him. He's been on my team for less than 20 hrs- he was on Drew's team for 90+ days- how and why did this guy become my problem when he has been a problem all along.

I'm going to read the Bhagavad Gita- maybe finish it. I have been sleeping a little too good.. through the night good. the funny thing about work is none of it matters.. we can all be replaced tomorrow and that place would still go on. I shouldn't let it stress me out. i woke up with my period today. silence is beautiful. You're doing a great job April.. keep going! Good night

.

[metalgearsolidexclamationpoint]

After 125 hours I consider myself well enough prepared to begin Horizon: Forbidden West: New Game +: Ultra Hard. I’ve got a little bit of the completionist in me, so one damn trophy still locked is going to torture me forever. Horizon: Zero Dawn, you ask? Well, at some point I guess I lost interest because I never even finished the DLC. So there: having 67% trophy completion or whatever is fine! But having 98% will kill me.

Truth be told, UH is not the last trophy on my list. I have yet to beat 2 Machine Strike players (why must games develop their own little versions of chess then demand I learn to play them?) or the Enduring (why must games develop their own little versions of melee combos then refuse to acknowledge the button presses?). I have also found only one Delvers’ Trove, killed zero enemies while gliding (another combat mechanism that doesn’t fucking work), and have two more colors and five more NG+ face paints to unlock (but that will take care of itself via UH). More than anything, this is a test: if UH is a colossal, impossible pain in the ass immediately, then it’s not worth it. Despite the aforementioned 125 hours, I do have a full-time job and a spouse and a dog and the responsibilities those entail. But if I simply need a little more combat strategy and patience for stealth mode, then I’ll go for it.

UH is always a strange beast. Sometimes it’s “enemies take less damage, you take more,” which is generally boring and not worth the time. Sometimes it’s “enemies take an incredible amount of damage and you can easily learn how to dodge/defend long enough to have the whole thing devolve into a tedious stalemate,” which is worse. Now that we are in the ninth generation of consoles, I expect cleverer AI to be the cornerstone of UH difficulty. But I also expect the game to acknowledge that, if I’ve put 125 hours of gameplay into it, and I’ve taken the time and effort to upgrade the legendary weapons it was already a time and effort commitment to acquire, then it shouldn’t be impossible. Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Dragon Age: Inquisition all have very fair UH equivalents — if you have put in the time, they’re truly not that hard. (They don’t have carry forward mechanisms the way Horizon does, so it’s more a matter of knowing how to optimize your play and immediately find or craft the best weapons for your playstyle rather than upgrade and stockpile.)

Took a break, ate some ice cream, walked the dog, and commenced UH; subsequently plowed through To the Brink, The Embassy, and half of Death's Door. So far it has not been so difficult it's put me off. In fact, I kind of like it. Got a bit of a rude awakening from some scroungers when I learned that shooting their resource pouch and their butt radar or whatever wasn't enough to immediately kill them like it is in Normal. Maybe I've never noticed their attack patterns before because I usually kill them too quickly, but they seemed to have more acrobatics and quicker recovery time when chaining attacks. The bristlebacks also seemed a little quicker and changed up their attacks more often. I know I've seen "charging with a giant log in their tusks" before, but I saw it several times in the few battles I fought in the first hour of UH.

The Embassy was much easier than I expected. The rebels seemed to circle on their mounts for a set period of time, and though I took potshots at them with my fire arrows, they didn't really retaliate. I've also enjoyed berserking machines so I can just hide and pick them off at my leisure. The duel with Grudda wasn't very hard -- I used the valor surge for super-powered melee combat -- although I did get thrown off the cliff, wasted a third of the valor surge trying to get back up while the game warned me I had left the quest area, and didn't manage to get off a single resonator blast either. Still, my OP valor surge did a lot of the heavy lifting (and knocked all his armor off), so I set him on fire a few times after that. Oh yeah, no health bars is killing me!

I'm currently strolling around the Latopolis facility, smug in the knowledge that I can just cruise underwater to avoid Specters for the whole mission… nursing some carpal tunnel…

[fmp-final]

Our Dreams Changes (Development)

Our Dreams has been in development for just under 18 months now, I’d always wanted it to become a big project, but when I first started working on it I had next to no experience. I started working on it properly sometime in spring 2022 when I decided to work on it for my first FMP and since then I have continued working on it for some other projects including this project an entire year later, obviously during all of this time a lot has changed, I have learnt a LOT more and the way I think about things or the things I want change.

This post will be going over how some of the ideas in Our Dreams have changed and ideas that are new or cancelled, it’ll also go into the physical changes the game has received whether it be coding, sprites or something else.

Below is the project proposal concept that I wrote back in early 2022 for Our Dreams:

“I am creating a heavily story based 2D Pixel art RPG Game that is set in a future dystopian world. I hope to create a world full of a variety of characters that feel somewhat human with a player that can explore it. I will include a dialogue system in which the player can make some choices, a few cutscenes that will play at certain points in the game made up of still images and a moderately sized world with hopefully 10-20 minutes of gameplay. I would like to try and implement a basic turn-based battle system in which several options can be taken each turn, another thing I’d like to try adding is a currency and shop system that allows the player to buy functioning items (maybe even some that work in battles), something that I may be able to do if I have spare time is make a few soundtracks that will play whilst in game. What I want to achieve when it comes to the player is that they can play a decently enjoyable game with a story full of twists and turns that will get them invested/make them want more, my reason behind this is I’ve enjoyed watching/playing story heavy shows/games and wish to make one of my own, overtime I have developed many ideas and characters and would like the opportunity for others to hear about them.”

Back when I made this proposal I was very much overestimating myself, I was able to finish the dialogue system and a single cutscene, but that was basically it, I spent a lot of time working on the battle system and in the end I quit working on it due to stress and because of all the time I wasted I wasn’t able to get anything else finished. Our Dreams was a mess by the end of the first FMP but luckily it slightly improved during later projects and this project has improved the game by a lot.

Over these projects I was able to actually learn coding instead of just watching tutorials, my sprite work also changed a lot as well with some of the main characters having tons of different sprites and I was eventually finally able to achieve my goal of making my own music.