#except game dev updates

[bwobgames]

Yet another uncolored Beeb doodle dump

[thekenikaridevblog]

Finally I get to use this gif properly

Anyways! Like before, this progression chart post thing will be exclusively of day 3, the day before the trial, and that's where all my dev efforts will be directed towards. The full chapter 1 is more than half finished, now we just need the final home stretch and you'll finally be able to see this gay tragedy I've been cooking

Hope you guys will stick along for the ride :D

Background edits (there won't be any new backgrounds per se, but the old ones will get a lot of variations that will require more or less work, so imma keep track of that) (4/7)

Backgrounds (0/1) (edit: whoops I forgot there is a new background lol)

Tilesets (0/0)

New character sprites (0.5/1) (the number could easily go up, don't take the 1 for granted)

Special character sprite bundle thing (2/8)

Pixel character sprites (0/1)

CGs (0/17 at least) (idk the count might be off. These things tend to go way out of proportion)

Dialogue (0.5%)

Free time events (0/3) (0%)

Music (0/?)

[turnedpalefromlackofsun]

Based Welt

[callilouv]

yipee season of strike controversy solved ty devs >:)

[shiniestcrow]

...

[onrainynights]

something really interesting is that since I've started learning programming, I've begun to look at video games differently. I still enjoy them, and they're still a huge passion of mine. I still watch other people play games. but now, I find myself analyzing games beyond artistic merit or how fun they are. now I look at a game mechanic and try to figure out how it was made, how I would recreate it or if I *could* recreate it with what I've learned so far/the game engine I've been using. I don't intend to copy these games, it's just a thought exercise that I can't seem to help but engage in. it's like my brain is rewiring slowly and there's nothing I can do to stop it except give up learning. honestly, I love it. I feel like I'm learning a useful skill for the first time since I started composing music (which is, coincidentally, something that will be useful for game development) in 2021. before that, the last time I felt this way was when I was conversational in Japanese in early 2020 (which sadly I did not keep up with studying after lockdown) I'm starting to feel like I could turn this little hobby into a career with a hundred more hours of practice and a little bit of luck. and that's more than I can say for anything else in my life, so really I guess I'm lucky that youtube last month decided to recommend me the video that eventually led me to finally, after years of wishing I could, just sit down and start learning how to make games. anyway this is a long post and I don't think anyone will ever read it. the point is I forgot how incredible it feels to learn, really learn something I *want* to learn without the pressure of a deadline or a grade, to learn for the sake of learning and developing a new skill, and I wonder if this is what people who get phds instead of dropping out of college feel like

[the-fandom-crossroads]

Folks talking about Game Devs dropping Unity or how it won't hurt small indie devs with under 200,000. Are missing the point.

Some of these Unity games can't change to another engine because they have years of code piled on top of each other at this point. aka POKEMON GO. They'd basically have to rebuild the game from scratch.

Not to mention Unity is mostly used by phone app games or Indie's that are lucky enough to get picked up by console. Indie games on Mobile easily pass 200,000 downloads. Temple Run 1 and 2 are in Unity, Crossy Road, Angry birds 1 and 2, and Hearthstone. All of these past 200,000 downloads years ago but aren't bringing in money now except hearthstone.

The Developers will do what happened to the first Angry birds app. They'll take it down, build it in a new engine for "HD", and add a shit ton of micro transactions. We are about to lose countless original versions of the OG pre lootbox mobile games.

We are also about to lose some of the biggest Indie games of the last decade. Among Us, Plague Inc., 7 Days to die, the original Slenderman game and it's sequel, I am Bread, Ori and the Blind Forest, Dream Daddy, Overcooked 1 & 2, Pathfinder online, Cup Head, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Oxygen Not Included, Bloons Tower Defense 6, Beat Saber, Subnautica, The Stanley Parable, Untitled Goose Game, Power Washing Simulator, Fall Guys, Inscryption, Phasmophobia

And the big one FUCKING HOLLOW KNIGHT. Silk song has already been pushed back out of this year specifically because it's being made by a team of like 3 people. It is so close to being finished and now they are being told they have to start over from scratch basically. Hollow Knight got over 200,000 downloads from being on playstation and was eventually put on Playstations subscription service. Every cent they made from hollow knight has gone back into making silk song. Which might now be delayed by multiple years and oh they are going to have to use some of that funds to pay unity now. Or find a way to get out of a contract with playstation. Because folks will keep downloading Hollow Knight for free and Unity will send the Hollow Knight team the bill.

oh and there's one more teeny tiny game made in Unity that you guys might not want to suddenly disappear. One with almost 3 years of monthly code updates, one with 139 million downloads to date, and 4.8 million monthly users.

Genshin. Guys Genshin Impact is made completely in Unity and that's not a game that can have it's code just copy and pasted to another engine.

[prokopetz]

Is Heart Forth Alicia still in development?

As far as I know, the answer is yes. The author is still doing weekly development streams every Tuesday like clockwork (with the exception of the last couple of weeks due to a Christmas break), and the most recent Kickstarter update this past November – i.e, about five weeks ago, at the time of this posting – claimed the game's main path is feature-complete except for the final boss and ending cutscenes (though no completion estimate was given for non-main-path stuff like optional areas and side quests). Between the livestreams, teasers, and playable backer demos, the preponderance of evidence is that progress is continuous, and the only reason it's taking so long is because the dev is being absurdly meticulous about practically everything.

(Incidentally, since the game was first announced via the author's now-defunct personal blog on December 21st, 2006, it has now officially been in development for so long that if it was a person it would be allowed to drive.)

[felassan]

Cliff notes on the new info on Dragon Age: The Veilguard in today’s issue of Game Informer (magazine hub link):

Edit/update: I tidied up this post. ^^

---

In CC you can customize things like shoulder width, chest size, glute size, hip width, how bloodshot your eyes are, nose crookedness, and more

There are hundreds of sliders for body proportions

CC detail: “Features like skin hue, tone, melanin”

There is nudity in DA:TV, “which I learned firsthand while customizing my Rook” in CC

Rook’s backstory also affects “reputation standing”, along with the other previously-known things like in-game dialogue etc

Lords of Fortune are pirate-themed, “piratic”

Rook ascends because of competency, not because of a magical McGuffin, contrasting with the 'destiny-has-chosen you’ angle DA:I has for the Inquisitor

Rook is here because they chose to be, “and that speaks to the kind of character that we’ve built. Someone needs to stop this, and Rook says, ‘I guess that’s me'”

The 4 voices we can choose for Rook each have a pitch shifter in CC

The game starts inside the bar (as previously detailed in other coverage)

In some dialogue wheels there is a “romantically inclined ‘emotional’ response” option. These are the replies that will build relationships with characters, romantic and platonic alike, but you can ignore them if you want to. Giving a companion the cold shoulder might nudge them into another companion’s embrace however

Bellara’s surname is Lutara

In the streets of Minrathous (in the opening segment of the game), there is a wide, winding pathway with a pub which has a dozen NPCs in it (is this The Swan tavern?)

The devs used the DA:TV CC to make each in-world NPC, except for specific characters like companions

There is smart use of verticality, scaling and wayfinding in the gameplay

If you play as e.g. a qunari Rook, the camera adjusts to ensure larger characters like them loom over those below. The camera also adjusts appropriately for dwarves to demonstrate their smaller stature

Neve Gallus is described as being capable

The Venatori Cultists we fight in the opening segment of the game are seizing the chaos caused by the demons unleashed by Solas’ ritual to try and take the opportunity to take over the city

As you traverse deeper and deeper into Solas’ hideout, more of his murals appear on the walls, and things 'get more elven'. Rhodes says “this is because you’re symbolically going back in time, as Minrathous is a city built by mages on the bones of what was originally the home of the elves”

At the heart of Solas’ hideout is his personal eluvian

Demons are fully redesigned in this game, on their original premise as creatures of feeling that live and die off the emotions around them. “As such, they are just a floating nervous system, pushed into this world from the Fade, rapidly assembled into bodies out of whatever scraps they find”

In the opening, we stop Solas’ ritual and save the world. “For now” anyways. Rook passes out moments later and wakes up in a dream-like landscape to the voice of Solas. He explains that a few drops of Rook’s blood interacted with the ritual, connecting them to the Fade forever. (I guess this is why they said in the Discord Q&A on June 14th that Rook has good reasons to want to avoid blood magic)

He also says that he was attempting to move Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain (confirming who the two Evil Gods are) to a new prison, because the one he had previously constructed was failing. Unfortunately, Solas is trapped in the Fade by our doing, and the two gods are now free. “It’s up to Rook to stop them”, thus setting the stage for our adventure

Rook wakes up after this with Harding and Neve “in the lair of the Dread Wolf himself”, a special magical realm in the Fade called The Lighthouse. It’s a towering structure centered amongst various floating islands. This is where the team bonds, grows, and prepares for its adventures. It becomes more functional and homier as you do. “Already, though, it’s a beautifully distraught headquarters for the Veilguard, although they aren’t quite referring to themselves as that just yet”.

Because it was Solas’ home base, it's gaudy, with his fresco murals adorning various walls, greenery hanging from above, and hues of purple and touches of gold everywhere. Since it’s in the Fade, which is a realm of dreams that responds to your world state and emotion, the Lighthouse “reflects the chaos and disrepair of the Thedas you were in moments ago”

Clock symbols over dialogue icons signal optional dialogue options

At this point you can head over to Neve, engage in dialogue, and try and flirt with her

There is a dining hall in the Lighthouse. A plate, cutlery and a drinking chalice are at the end of a massive table. Matt Rhodes says that this is a funny and sad look at Solas’ isolated existence, and an example of the detail BioWare’s art team has put into DA:TV. “It’s like when you go to a friend’s house and see their bedroom for the first time; you get to learn more about them”

There is also a library, which is the central area of the The Lighthouse. It’s here that the party will often regroup and prepare for what’s next

The team decides that it must reach the ritual site back in Arlathan Forest. Corinne Busche said that the writer was "missing unique dialogue options here because I’m qunari; an elf would have more to say about the Fade due to their connection to it. The same goes for my backstory earlier in Minrathous. If I had picked the Shadow Dragons background, Neve would have recognized me immediately, with unique dialogue”

The team decide their next move. They go to Solas’ eluvian and back through to the ritual site in Arlathan Forest. However, it’s not fully functional without Solas, and while it returns them to the Forest, it’s not exactly where they want to go. Then a demon-infested suit of mechanized armor known as a Sentinel attacks them, and two NPCs appear to save you: the Veil Jumpers Strife and Irelin. Harding recognizes them, which you would expect if you read the comic Dragon Age: The Missing. They are experts in ancient elven magic. A cutscene ensues and we learn that Strife and Irelin need help finding Bellara Lutara. This cutscene is long and has multiple dialogue options.

“There’s a heavy emphasis on storytelling and dialogue, and it feels deep and meaty, like a good fantasy novel. BioWare doesn’t shy away from minutes-long cutscenes”

For Rook, this story is about what does it mean to be a leader? We define their leadership style with our choices. “From the sound of it, my team will react to my chosen leadership style in how my relationships play out.” This is demonstrated within the game’s dialogue and a special relationship meter on each character’s companion screen

Bellara is deep within Arlathan Forest, and following the events of the prologue, something is up here. Three rings of massive rocks fly through the air, protecting what appears to be a central fortress. Demon Sentinels plague the surrounding lands.

In gameplay/combat, players complete every swing in real time. Special care was taken in development for animation swing-through and cancelling. We can dash, parry, charge moves, and a completely revamped healing system that allows us to use potions at our discretion by hitting right on the d-pad. You can combo attacks and even ‘bookmark’ combos with a quick dash, which means that you can pause a combo’s status with a dash to safety and continue the rest of the combo afterward

Abilities can be used to customize your kit. They can be used on the fly as long as you account for cooldowns

When you pause and pull up the ability Wheel, it highlights you and your companions’ skills. There you can choose abilities, queue them, target specific enemies, and strategize with synergies and combos

Each character plays the same in that you execute light and heavy attacks with the same buttons, use abilities with the same buttons, and interact with the combo wheel in the same way, regardless of which class you select

Sword and shield warriors can hip-fire or aim their shield and throw it like Captain America

Warriors can parry incoming attacks which can stagger enemies. Rogues have a larger parry window. The mage the writer played couldn’t parry at all. Instead they throw up a shield that blocks incoming attacks automatically, so long as you have the mana to maintain it

On the start/pause screen: it has the map, journal, character sheets, skill tree, and a library for lore information. You can use it to cross-compare equipment and equip new gear for Rook and their companions, build weapon loadouts for quick change-ups mid-combat, and customize you and your party’s abilities and builds via an easy-to-understand skill tree. There aren’t in-depth minutiae, just "real numbers". For example, an unlocked trait might increase damage by 25 percent against armor, but that’s as in-depth as the numbers get. Passive abilities unlock jump attacks and guarantee critical hit opportunities, while abilities add moves like a Wall of Fire to your arsenal if you’re a mage. As you spec out this skill tree, which is 100 percent bespoke to each class, you’ll work closer to unlocking a spec, complete with a unique ultimate ability

“Sentinels and legions of darkspawn”

Combat is flashy and quick, with different types of health bars. Greenish-blue represents a barrier, which is taken down most effectively with ranged attacks

The game is gorgeous, with sprinkles, droplets, and splashes of magic in each attack a mage unleashes

The game looks amazing on consoles both in fidelity and performance modes

The mission to find Bellara is called “In Entropy’s Grasp”. You find her. She is the first companion you recruit (as Neve auto-joins). If your background is Veil Jumper, you get unique dialogue here with Bellara. She explains that everyone there is all trapped in a Veil Bubble, and there’s no way out once you pass through it. Despite the dire situation, she is bubbly, witty, and charming. She is spunky and effervescent

Companions are the faces of their factions, and in this case with Bellara, their entire area of the world. She is our window into Arlathan Forest. She is described as a sweetheart and a nerd for ancient elven artifacts, which is why she’s dressed more like an academic than a combatant. Her special arm gauntlet is useful both for tinkering with her environment and taking down enemies. While Neve uses ice magic and can slow time with a special ability, Bellara specializes in electricity, and she can also use magic to heal you. Her electric magic is effective against Sentinels. “However, without Bellara, we could also equip a rune that converts my ice magic, for a brief duration, into electricity to counter the Sentinels”

If you don’t direct your companions in combat, they are fully independent and will attack on their own

You progress at this point through the Forest, encountering more and more darkspawn. Bellara says that they have never been this far before because the underground Deep Roads, which they usually escape from, aren’t nearby. However, with “blighted” (BLIGHTED!) elven gods roaming the world, and thanks to the Blight’s radiation-like spread, it’s a much bigger threat in DA:TV than any prior DA game

The Forest has elven ruins, dense greenery and disgusting Blight tentacles and pustules

The style of the game is more high fantasy than anything in the series thus far and almost reminiscent of the whimsy of Fable. Matt Rhodes says that this is the result of the game’s newfound dose of magic: “The use of magic has been an evolution as the series has gone on. It’s something we’ve been planning for a while because Solas has been planning all this for a while. In the past, you could hint at cooler magical things in the corner because you couldn’t actually go there, but now we actually can, and it’s fun to showcase that.” The Forest’s whimsy will starkly contrast to the game’s other areas. The devs promise some grim locations and even grimmer story moments because, without that contrast, everything falls flat. Corinne says it’s like a “thread of optimism” pulled through otherworldly chaos ravaging Thedas. At this point in the game, Bellara’s personality is that thread

We can advance our bonds with our companions on their own personal quests and by including them in our party on main quests. Every Relationship Level you rank up, shown on their character sheet, nets you a skill point to spend on them. “The choices you make, what you say to companions, how you help them, and more all matter to their development as characters and party members”. Each companion has access to 5 abilities.

Each companion has issues, problems, and personal quests to complete. “Bellara has her own story arc that runs parallel to and informs the story path you’re on” (They’ve said that all of the companions have this too in previous promo material)

You progress deeper into the forest and Bellara spots a floating fortress and thinks that the artifact needed to destroy the Veil Bubble is in there. To reach it, we must remove the floating rock rings, and Bellara’s unique ability, Tinker, can do just that by interacting with a piece of ancient elven technology nearby. Rook can acquire abilities like Tinker later to complete such tasks in instances where Bellara, for example, isn’t in the party

Bellara has to activate three of these in the Forest to reach the castle. Each one you activate brings forth a bunch of Sentinels, demons, and darkspawn to defeat

You can create Arcane Bombs on enemies. It does high damage after being hit by a heavy attack

It sounds like mage characters can charge heavy attacks on their magical staffs. “then switch to magical daggers in a second loadout accessed with a quick tap of down on the d-pad to unleash some quick attacks”

Some enemies are “Frenzied”, meaning that they hit harder, move faster, and have more health

After a few more combat sections, including against a Frenzied sentinel, we reach the center of the temple. In there is an artifact called the Nadas Dirthalen. Bellara knows that this means “the inevitability of knowledge”. Before we can progress, a darkspawn ogre boss attacks, hitting hard with unblockable, red-coded attacks and a massive shield that you need to take down first. It is weak to fire

After defeating it (it’s a climactic arena fight), Bellara uses a special crystal to power the artifact and remove it from the pedestal, which destroys the Veil Bubble. Then, the Nadas Dirthalen comes alive as an Archive Spirit, but because the crystal used to power it breaks, we learn little about this spirit before it disappears. Bellara thinks that she can fix it (fixing broken stuff is her thing), so the group heads back to the Veil Jumper camp. The writer’s demo then ended.

The design of the game is not open world. The devs describe it as a “hub-and-spoke” design where the needs of the story are served by the level design. A version of DA:I’s Crossroads return (the network of teleporting eluvians) and this is how players will traverse across northern Thedas. “Instead of a connected open world, players will travel from eluvian to eluvian to different stretches of this part of the continent”. e.g. Minrathous, tropical beaches, Arlathan Forest, “to grim and gothic areas and elsewhere”. Some of these areas are large and full of secrets and treasures. Others are smaller and more focused on linear storytelling. Arlathan Forest is an example of this, but it still has optional paths and offshoots to explore for loot, healing potion refreshes, and other things.

Each location has a minimap, though linear levels like In Entropy’s Grasp won’t have the 'fog of war' that disappears as you explore like in some of the game’s bigger locations

The game has the largest number of diverse biomes in DA history

The Thedas of DA:TV “lives in the uncertainty”. “the mystery of its narrative”, “the implications of its lore”

The writer is surprised by BioWare’s command over the notoriously difficult Frostbite engine, and by how much narrative thought the dev team poured into these characters, even for BioWare.

---

[source: the Game Informer pages from Issue 367 - the cover story from June 18th (link), two]

[bonus-links]

Hi and congratulations on the update!! I wanted to say thank you for putting out the update that more or less "ends" grandma's birthday on my own birthday! <3 Always love the director's commentaries too, that note about the irony of the god's flood and the Gerudo drought was so amazing

omg happy birthday!! thank you so much!!

and yeah idk if that’s a parallel the devs intended to draw or if it’s something they stumbled into, but it’s been on my mind. I also find it significant that what IS saved is the castle with no one inside (except nohansen I guess). And ALSO that the sea the flood creates is dead. man. wtf

anyway I am a big fan of gods that are neutral beings capable of both great kindness and great spite and cruelty. I think it’s interesting to explore the gap between what the games tell us and the implications of the actions it actually presents. that’s kind of one of my motivation w the comic lolol

[brittle-doughie]

Let’s Get Rolling! | Looking into the Lights, Camera, Action! Event for CROB!

So the movie nerd, Popcorn Cookie, isn’t going to the Chocolate Factory with that golden ticket, but to see the filming site for what Butter Squid Cookie has got cooking up.

Only issue is that the actress is unable to make it to the set, leaving the stunt double, Choco Bar Cookie, to get the lead role! So for the event itself, it’s essentially the exact same event we’ve had for the last few updates, get and do favors as well as combine items for hard mode.

So the special draw event returns from the Wish Camp update, except this time there’s also a surprise exchange shop that allows you to get outfits or designs that you missed in past updates!

Choco Bar Cookie herself is pretty cute, would definitely add her to my wife collection and if her base design isn’t sitting well with you, hopefully her skin more then makes up for it because oh my lord-

Shine Muscat, Habanero, and Blue Slushy Cookie also get skins too. With Popcorn Cookie getting a fabulous skin in part 2!

Buttercream Choco Cookie has finally returned by the Buddy event! Bring your buddies to play the mode to obtain him!

In the Romance stage, who is this lady we’re chasing and how did I get the devs to put her in my game. In the Zombie stage, we meet some familiar walkers, where have I seen them before…?

Overall, they were not lying when they said that this would help a substantial update, there are so many things to look forward to that it might leave you overwhelmed! MicMac has addressed the event repetition in the official discord, hopefully, we can see a return to varied event modes some day.

———————————————————————

Busy chasing your co-star through the stage, following after the one you love was the pinnacle of romantic excitement in the eyes of Butter Squid Cookie!

“Come follow, my love! Have a little encouragement from me!”

She blew you a kiss in the form of a small heart that floated towards you. You went to get it promptly, feeling more encouraged to follow your heart that had your co-star in it! (In the premise of the movie of course)

Butter Squid Cookie was pleased with the results he was seeing so far, such warm love between two cookies that was sure to bring a tear to the eyes of audiences! He had to give you credit, for someone unfamiliar with acting, you were a natural!

But now time for the big moment! You were now supposed to catch your co-star and give each other the declaration of love and then a kiss!

Choco Bar Cookie got a little nervous with that plan, was it really necessary? The kiss part? Why not just a hug, you know? That would get the message across just fine. There was no need to be all theatrical all the time, you know?

Butter Squid saw her suggestion as nonsense, a kiss was the only way to execute the romantic tension flawlessly!

You told your co-star that she made your heart flutter, that no other cookie made you feel this way, that you wanted to spend your life with her.

Your co-star blushed heavily from your words, that was some pretty good on command blushing!

“Oh, my Y/N Cookie! My heart can’t stand being apart from you either! Please, let me be the cookie you love now and forever!”

The two of you leaned in, getting closer and closer, you see her eyes twinkle as she closed them, readying her lips as you did the same…

Before a director chair is thrown between you two!

Scaring you both faraway from each other. Butter Squid looked at Choco Bar with shock as she breathed heavy, having just thrown that chair a second ago.

“Sorry. My hands slipped.”

[s3znl-gr3znl]

Theory that Helldivers 2 actually had a Director much like Left for Dead games do, except the devs are actively managing games with a set amount of resources and Bot Drops and thats why higher difficulties are just like that.

UPDATE:

I made this post earlier tonight and now apparently this comds out!?!?!?@!?

[askagamedev]

I'm willing to accept that AAA games should often be sold at a higher price to help deal balance the increasing cost of development. Do you think that companies would do better to raise prices quickly and wait out the sticker-shock or to try and raise prices very slowly to attract less attention?

I'm pretty sure that, as an industry, we've mostly already moved beyond that. Haven't you noticed just how many AAA game releases these days aren't about a single sale but live service? The live service model is the price increase. The cost of development for AAA fidelity games is mostly too high now to be profitable on their own. The only real exceptions are grandfathered franchises (e.g. Elder Scrolls) and first party prestige titles to help sell systems (e.g. God of War, Sony's Spider-Man). Even former mainstays like Nintendo titles and Grand Theft Auto have embraced paid DLC, ongoing content drops, and a live service model.

Everything else is basically a live service or approximates a live service (e.g. Call of Duty's annual release) with regular content updates alongside battle passes, cosmetics, and microtransactions. Lifetime spend on these games per average player is already much higher than anything we could feasibly ask for up front. Raising prices would hurt initial sales, which would also hurt long-term earnings through the forthcoming content updates. Instead, for the bump in initial sale we offer cheap plastic toys, other inexpensive pack-ins, and maybe an in-game cosmetic and call it a "collector's edition".

[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]

Got a burning question you want answered?

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr

Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[cerastes]

With the exception of Arknights what are your thoughts on gacha games?

I don't feel like I need to exclude Arknights from the statement, I can criticize things even if I like them.

In general, I don't like that their widely accepted and even defended business model is "Capitalize on FOMO, exploit gambling addictions, create dependent users". I also think that the use of the "game as a service" model, and one that needs to keep pumping content forever and can't risk to alienate the player, severely limits what can be done with the medium in terms of creativity, because you can't kill off playable characters nilly willy (I actually think Epic Seven was cooking with this, Epic Seven will kill off playable characters and remove them from the plot if it feels like it, or at least used to back when I played, don't know nowadays), relationships and dynamics with characters tend to be limited because otherwise your audience can feel like you are cucking them, and I wish I was kidding but just look at the absolute dumpster fire of a drama going on as we speak (22nd of January, 2024) in Girls' Frontline 2 over in China over one of the characters having interactions with a male NPC, and you can't ever bring a true sense of finality to any given arc because everything ends up having to be foreshadowing, set-up, build-up and so on and on and on. In many cases, you also have a mold cast of Must Have tropes in your playable cast: The Maid, The Idol, The One That Worships The Ground You Walk On, The Underage And Underclothed One, The Underage (But We Treat This One As A Precious Child!) One, Foxgirl, The Cold And Highly Analytical One (But Actually, Loves You), Chuuni, etc, so it feels like in every game I kinda already know at least a third of the cast minimum already and I'm kind of primed to not really want to know them, even though there's subversions I end up liking sometimes (Fenny from Snowbreak is an example of an Idol-type I ended up loving despite not liking Idol-types).

On the other hand, even with these negatives in mind, having a game that periodically updates and adds content, and that you can discreetly play pretty much everywhere on the go due to smartphones being their main 'console', games that foster community and something to talk about with your friends that also play and that will always have something new every couple of weeks, as well as inspire fanart, fanworks, analysis, and commentary, and that tend to be more risque and interesting with their designs is honestly good to have. I personally enjoy the community aspect of gacha games, I consider it one of the two most important aspects for me, because I know I can come here, for example, and see people talking about the story, the characters, the music, the gameplay, and more, every day, and the other important thing to me is how discreet they are, since I can just play a few maps or stages in my phone real fast midst a social situation at work, and then hop back in with a renewed social battery or when a topic I like comes up.

I fully get when people showcase their disdain for gacha, yeah, but if we really want to be nitpicky, the majority of the game industry is kind of a cesspool of toxicity, which is not to say "stop bashing gacha" and instead say "bash the whole thing if you're going to be bashing it anyway" (and we should! Game devs and other personnel in the industry have been crying for better conditions for years now!). Either way, if someone decides to sit at the gambling den, it becomes their responsibility. I want there to be more safeguards for people with actual addictions and to protect them, but with this in mind, if anyone still decides to sit at the den, it's assumed they are going to take responsibility for their actions and financial decisions.

So all in all, yeah, predatory games that suffer in quality due to their own trappings, but also good sources of community, inspiration, and effective at being discreet games you can play anywhere and that get periodic updates (this isn't necessarily exclusive to gacha but it is an aspect of them that bears mentioning, which I point out since no doubt people will want to point out there's good non-gacha smartphone game options out there)

[bogleech]

Mortasheen

Given that I think your Mortasheen page has over 700 monsters while the latest Kickstarter update said you'd have 100 included, what should we think of those not included? Are they still 'canon' to the setting? Will the whole website page need to be revamped?

The book was never meant to be a one-off project but was always planned as the introduction to an entire tabletop gaming brand meant to keep adding content every year, at least in smaller batches. Like Pokemon the goal is to release playable monsters as "generations," and they'll always be a mix of old, new, or reinvented concepts, though @gutsygills who took over a lot of essential work doesn't want to leave a single one behind and stops me from completely scrapping any unless they truly just won't work. The Mortasheen archive on bogleech.com is just there for posterity now and might never be modified again, except to add links to where people will eventually be able to buy the books or visit a more dedicated official website. I guess you could say the release of the RPG will be a "reboot," especially since a lot of aspects of its world had to evolve a little to make more cohesive sense as a game setting. I'll still share my own new monster art and concepts as I go along but some will be book exclusives while some might get released with their gameplay stats for free, it'll vary with the monster. This is supposed to be basically my new job from here on out, it may be an independent project but it's being run as a serious business endeavor in partnership with the gameplay devs.

Here's one new monster I did for this first book though, its name is Pestode and it was designed to be the most basic common Wormbrain class monster, the Rattata of Wormbrains, just a large deadly parasitic worm whose "host" is reduced to barely more than a second skin it can contract into. Every monster also has a "retro sprite" from an imaginary nonexistent gameboy game and in many cases I'm using that to show a monster's other possible poses or configurations; Pestode can scrunch up like a frog if it wants

[lycankeyy]

Personal 🅱️ico ref time . Trivia/bonus stuff under the cut

Roughly 5'8"

Schizo-spec; psychotic symptoms mostly managed by meds, though he still gets auditory hallucinations, mostly hearing non-descript talking like it's coming from another room; he's working on the other stuff. Also has C-PTSD, chronic insomnia, and some obsessive-compulsive traits.

His favorite food is vanilla ice cream. He mostly views eating as a chore and does it out of necessity (when he remembers) more than anything, ice cream is the only thing he actually enjoys.

He's a mama's boy, but he doesn't talk about his family much outside of hating his dad and wishing he got more time to hang out with his cousin, so most people don't know this about him.

Don't worry about the scribbled out genderfluid flag he doesn't even know how it got there it doesn't mean anything (/j)

Pico is obsessed with the late 90s-early 2000s era internet and its culture. He DESPISES social media and thinks everyone should just run their own webpage; he has one of his own mostly for reviewing old flash games, occasionally dipping into modern small-team indie titles. He also keeps tabs on internet archival projects.

His favorite video game is some niche experimental psychological horror game he downloaded off itch.io that you haven't heard of and would otherwise be lost media in ten years. You watch him play it and it's Clearly a rage game but if you say anything he will spend the next 15 minutes explaining the lore he found on the creator's unoptimized-for-mobile, rarely updated dev blog.

Some of his favorite movies are Akira and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

He has personalized nicknames for all of his partners, but, with the exception of GF, only uses them when he thinks they're not paying attention. BF's is Encore, GF's is Cherry, and Darnell's is Sparky. He used to call Nene Cherub before they broke up.

His guns apparently also have names, but nobody has been able to get them out of him, not even Darnell. It's a frequent joke that if it was between saving his friends or his guns in a disaster, he would save the guns. Sometimes Nene doubts that he's joking.

He has a slight but noticable lisp.