#game design review
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Gotta ramble a bit about Dredge because it's got that Good Game Design.
For one thing I saw it classified as a horror game, but it also felt fundamentally at odds with my (very limited) experience of horror as a genre? Primarily, that it kept control very squarely in the player's hands, including control of pacing and encounters. I mean honestly that's rare enough in a lot of games generally, but I'd probably most categorize Dredge as a creepy-themed puzzle game more than anything else, and not just for the cargo/fishing mechanics. The entire game is very deliberately structured so the only time pressure is solving how far you can go in a single day cycle and ideally making sure you end the day on the same square as the fishmonger or merchant (or not having fish in your cargo that day). You get a heads up that the night is when the scary shit happens and your main four zones are where some big bad lives and if you observe their patterns and ask the locals, even those don't tend to jump scare you? Fundamentally the game feels surprisingly and entirely safe, which is not the vibe I would classify as horror.
The fishing/dredging mechanic is a very solid foundation and has some nice little variety to it, just a good timing test to break up the more mystery and exploration sections. Good visual interest, crunchy sound, just very good detail focus on the design.
I think I only looked up two things during the entire game (where the last stone tablet was, and how to find the catfish), which is also astonishingly rare for pretty much any game nowadays that I'm getting at least mostly completionist on. The low-hanging comparisons are pulling up an icon map to find all the damn korok seeds, but even say, Fenyx Rising - I had to look up how to catch and ride a horse because some specific input just wasn't intuitive. Dredge did a very good job at not using text heavy tutorials for game functions and still very clearly and easily getting the point across. In large part by gating progress in a way that allows the player full access to the game's entire core mechanics from very nearly the beginning, and offers clear ways to progress further that don't feel too much like grinding given the available space to explore. To look back at those examples, BOTW/TOTK and Fenyx all lock very basic movement mechanics (among lots of other skills) behind lengthy tutorial areas. It's genuinely difficult to open up the entire core gameplay from the start and not have players feel overwhelmed, and I don't think Dredge accomplished such a thing by just being simpler (I wouldn't necessarily say that it is much simpler either, just... economical about it's constituent parts?)
Good map density too, in terms of fish locations and populating the in-between islands with things to discover and revisit. BOTW (lesser extent in TOTK but still there) and AC Valhalla both suffer from having maps a little too big for their contents in places, just in terms of how far you can run across barren fields between fixed map markers with nothing else to really do except maybe collect a few low-level creature loot bits if you're lucky. Even when I'm crossing the map with purpose in Dredge, there's still nice opportunities to get distracted and find more stuff that's going to be useful, though not at such density that it's no longer interesting to find the specific things I need.
#dredge game#game design review#rambling#got jumpscared more by those fucking trees in totk than in this supposed horror game#which is more to my taste anyway
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Thinking very hard about nine sols. I have like. 2 other AUs also on the mind as well
But for now it really fascinated me how both yi and ji have immortality but are at different stages in their life and handle it differently, so I played around with what would happen if their ages were swapped such that Yi lived through history and became the Kunlun Immortal, and Ji joined the Council as a young Sol.
Yi / Ji Ageswap/Roleswap AU
Though they’ve swapped positions in time, I wanted to keep their powers and personalities mostly the same. Yi’s aged up design is based on his statue outside of the Four Seasons Pavilion. I’m still thinking through whether or not Yi would still propose the Eternal Cauldron Project with the experience of having lived through history, and I think so. I think living even longer and having to watch more people he loves die before him would make him even more strongly attached to the idea of immortality and longevity, and ensuring the survival of as many solarians as possible so that he doesn’t end up alone on Penglai in the end. I don’t think Ji would be able to kill him because it seems like Ji and Yi’s immortalities differ— Yi can always regenerate as long as the Fusang is healthy, while Ji, as shown in the game, can die if he takes too much damage.
I have a lot more thoughts in this au so I might do a few more doodles at some point but just this for now!
#nine sols#九日#nine sols yi#nine sols ji#ageswap au#roleswap au#the designs and story of this game really makes the mind go brrrrrr#I really want to see more people talk about the story and the themes of this game they’re so good#every review I see keeps just talking about the gameplay
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The 1980 Dallas RPG was a Soap Opera Wargame?
In 1980, SPI, a company known for its wargames did a strange thing and published an RPG based on the Dallas tv show. If you don't know anything about the tv show, don't worry, I will protect you. It's too late for me though. You go on ahead. Basically, it was a hit TV show of big money family feuding. Imagine Succession but it was written in the 1980s and instead of TV news, it was an oil company. Unlike the show, the RPG wasn't a hit. The art director of the game famously wrote that they printed 80,000 copies and that was 79,999 more than people wanted. That one person seemed to be this person's grandma who bought it for him to save his soul from D&D/Satan.
What is this game though? Well, James F Dunnigan, founder of SPI and designer of legendary wargame, Panzerblitz, seems to have applied his analytical mind to the internecine squabbles of Dallas and decided that, if you think about it, petty family drama isn't so different from CIA covert ops. And he was right.
As you'd expect from a wargame, the rules are dry and clinical to a fault. You start by picking one of the 9 characters from the show - JR, Jock, Sue Ellen, Pam, etc. They all have stats like Persuasion, Coercion, Seduction. And these stats have attack/defend values. For example, JR has a Coercion of 24 because he's a real jerk. Sue Ellen has a Seduction resist of 18, but it's 20 against JR, because again, he seems to have been a real jerk. This game genuinely went out of its way to make sure you know JR's wife really really doesn't want to go near him.
Each character starts the session ("episode") with a secret story-based objective. Jock wants to run an angry former employee out of town, JR wants to cheat an Arab oil magnate out of 100 million dollars, Sue Ellen wants to do a favour for an old boyfriend. Yeah, what can I say? Some of these objectives feel more important than others. Regardless, you achieve these objectives by controlling 4 or more specific minor characters and organisations by the end of the game. For example, to enact his 100 million dollar plan, JR has to control the Ewing Oil Company, Mustafa Quattara, Professor Bayard, the reporter Mary Cleef, and so on. But characters' objective overlap so Pam also wants Mustafa Quattara and Jock also wants Professor Bayard. These conflicting goals means players need to scheme, negotiate and attack each other so they can win.
The sessions play out in five rounds. Each round, the GM sets the scene. Then, the players can negotiate and make deals. Then, we enter the conflict phase where each player makes three moves - either trying to gain control of uncontrolled NPCs, or attacking another player to steal an NPC from under them, or protecting their own NPCs. And the game throws in little curveballs every round: Oops, some of JR's drinking buddies are in town and he can't say no to them, so his character is out of this round. Hopefully the player has some NPCs that they can use to act instead. Oops, Mustafa Quattara is being chased by assassins. Whoever controls his card has to give it up as he disappears for a bit and comes back uncontrolled. The end result is somewhere in between Vampire the Masquerade (or rather, Undying) and Blood on the Clocktower.
Sure, the math is dense (you roll 2d6 under the difference between the attack value and the defense value, plus or minus any currency spent). Sure, it takes 9 players to really sing. Sure, multiple people can complete their objective so you need to track victory points separately to decide the real winner. Sure, you have to take the homophobia out of the Seduction rules. Sure, roleplaying is completely optional. Sure, sure, sure. The game is a mess. But it's a very playable mess. I'd go so far as to say it's an electric mess. It's shockingly (sorry) fun to play. I think the secret lies in a very clear agenda for the players, a tight boardgame-like action economy, a premise that supports hilarious degrees of pettiness, and an inter-personal experience that demands everyone pay attention to what their friends are doing.
So. Am I planning a full 9 person play-by-post game of this? Yes. Am I thinking of changing the setting and the math? Yes. Is that basically designing a new game? Yes. Should this game be labelled "Powered by Dallas" or, as one of my players suggested, "Hornswoggled by Dallas"? YES.
(This was first published in the Indie RPG Newsletter.)
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so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.
full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.
oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.
i'm starting off with the things i liked
the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.
combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less
the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.
your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.
the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.
speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.
bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.
varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.
the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).
rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.
and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately
the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.
tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???
there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.
i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.
that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.
for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol
in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.
the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.
this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.
when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.
morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.
dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.
on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.
really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.
for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.
rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.
speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.
the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything
#datv#datv spoilers#dragon age: the veilguard#oh wow i hit a limit typing this#anyway to tie this up a bit: the good and bad to the environmental design being that well-known architecture like minrathous and dwarven#ruins look fire and remind me a lot of the previous games#but newly added locations are very... generic... very bland#i was very excited for rivain. i thought we'd get to see ships. not a bunch of ruins and a fighting pit and that's it#and why did i say to ignore a certain guy's review? bro because he was complaining about taash being ace and that taking up their screentim#and them being too up in your face about their identity. he did all this while she/her'ing them constantly#but my man they're trans. nb. not ace.#y'all need to be careful about bad reviews. they're coming from people who are upset about gender identity being handled as a topic in this#game. meanwhile they have no clue what they're even talking about. i don't think matty knows the difference between ace and trans#and neither do the hundreds of people who are one star rating this game currently#i liked this game. it's not top tier. it's not something i'll sink hours and hours and hours of my life into#it has tonal issues and it's moving away from what made dragon age stand out for me#but i do think that it's a genuinely fun play and people who are very invested in dragon age will squeeze joy out of it wherever they can#i had a hard time warming up to the new characters (taash and lucanis being the exception because they have an older bioware air about them#but solas's and varric's story (and don't get me wrong that's what veilguard is about) is GOOD. that is how bioware used to be.#and i wish they'd given us that energy all over the game. that direness. that grit. serious and mature writing.#that consistency is lacking#and whether you're gonna enjoy this game or not is entirely dependant on what you came here for and how well the game delivers on it#i think their weakest points are ironically the thing they advertised the most: the new companions and their writing#you won't find nuanced and good enemies here (i already reblogged something about this. you can go scroll around a bit and catch up on that#really the only thing that had me super invested and emotional was the main quest.#so make of that what you will. ultimately i was more frustrated with the game than i got enjoyment out of it. i was close to just put it#aside for now... until i went to minrathous to end ghila'nain's and elgar'nan's ritual. that all blew me away. still on a high off of it.#anyway yeah that review got cut short by the character limit maybe i'll add more to it tomorrow but rn... i am heading to bed#thanks for coming to my ted talk. also i'm sorry. zevran REALLY isn't in this.#dragon age
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Look, there's so much that I love about certain otome but I really don't finish every route every time ?? But 7'scarlet, Steam Prison, and Norn9 all got completed! So they get the rec spots!
Honorable mentions: Nightshade (ninja otome, same artist as Norn9 thus I love it even if I haven't completed every route - Switch) Period Cube (I also fully complete it and the art is very nice imo and I enjoyed it a lot but it has really bad reviews from like. everywhere I see. but here's my shill of appreciation anyway - PS Vita) Sweet Fuse (it's just really fun to yell at men for being sexist - PSP)
But genuinely, there's a lot out there! Do the research on the game before you buy them! Not all otome are for everyone.
#moe talks a lot#why the hell am i spending so much time on these answers for otome just wondering#im asking myself this constantly while drawing them#also i am a hino defender and i want to throw hands with every single reviewer for the game (that ive read)#he deserves so much more appreciation IMO but i also dont wanna fight with people about it#everyones gonna like different dudes its fine just dont call him boring ill cry#im currently playing 9 RIP that someone bought for me and its also enjoyable but i havent done AS MUCH as id like to properly rec it#but well see because oh baby those character designs#ive already adopted like .... three characters#one isnt even an LI i just have adopted her as my daughter#wait whats that me adopting a side character while calling myself a freak for side characters? no way!#you have to understand first and foremost..... i am a huge fan of supporting casts#if i told you that the local cop has a beef with a 12 year old in 7scarlet is that anything?#i actually JUST googled bc I have been talking about the kid a lot tonight and i kept saying hes 12#and im like i actually dunno how old he is#oh my god hes actually 12 how do i do it gang
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Any Requests?
Hey everyone! I have a full list of 150 games to review. I plan on reviewing the core system mechanics first before reviewing individual games. However, I wanted to ask, is there a game you want me to review first? Please know that I will not review Dungeons and Dragons 5e or Pathfinder 2e. There are plenty of other places to see reviews or learn about those games. If I know what people want to hear about first then I can plan games to learn the system. Feel free to send me an ask about this! Also please reblog!
#suggestions#game reviews#ttrpg review#tabletop#ttrpg#game design#roleplaying games#tabletop rpgs#ttrpg community#dming#dnd#pathfinder#role playing games#powered by the apocalypse#pbta
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Anything to say about your experience? Any moment you found particularly memorable?
#game development#indiegamedev#solodev#irredeamable#indie games#fantasy#indiedev#fantasy world#game design#character design#feedback#gamedev#review#indie game dev#indie game#indie dev#game dev#please
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halOPE
#seriously good game. there will b spoilers in the tags cuz im gonna talk abt it#so to start off the charactee design in both appearance and like personality is phenomenal#im so interested in every single character i interacted with!!!!#and the art is sooooo pretty and the music is sooo good#the game inspires so much art from me. this is not the last art of halope u will be seeing from me#ive only gotten one ending so far. idk how to present what ending i got cuz idk how the others r different but hope (me?) killed Mother and#saved regret and got the eye in my stomach instead of the hole. and the hopeful workd didnt happen#i do have some light criticisms but i plan on writing an indepth itch io review so. those can go there along with other details i loved#my art#halope#halope fanart#eye contact
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SCOTT CAWTHON'S THE DESOLATE HOPE'S CHARACTER DESIGNS ARE REALLY GOOD: A BRIEF CONTEMPLATION
PREFACE: i was going to make this all properly punctuated and grammatically correct but in the heat of passion i forgot to do so and i am NOT going through to fix it now. whatever left my mouth when i wrote this approximately twelve hours ago is exactly what you're getting pal
first, coffee:
his simplicity is breathtaking. coffee (that's his name) is often framed against cluttered environments, creating a super sublime vibe akin to watching a tiny spaceship meander through the endless void of space. according to the game's lore, coffee's AI is much simpler than most - which is communicated brilliantly through his design, especially when compared to his complex coevals!
the liquid physics of his pot's coffee are really fun, as is his silly little bouncy antenna. the slight motion blur on his walk animations adds so much to his overall vibe. i really like his robot eyelashes, too! what a cutie 10/10
(look at him! tiny! so simple and out of place!)
(especially when compared to some of the game's other characters. is that visual communication or WHAT?)
(speaking of other characters........)
most of this game's other character designs are so visually detailed it's genuinely nauseating when they move sometimes (this is a good thing). lots of lasers and wires and metal with really delicious texturing. these designs are what stuck most with me after playing this game, and they're still some of my favorites out of any media i've ever consumed!
the enemy NPCs, the ones you actually fight, are supposed to be your character's limited AI's attempts at interpreting a mutating supervirus. i'm obsessed with the concept of subjective visual interpretation in video games, i think it's the most intruiging thing in the world, and GOD do the designs we see deliver! say what you will about scott cawthon but he sure knows how to make a death robot!!! sorry but fnaf animatronics do not hold a candle to the desolate series. PULSAR could beat freddy's mammalian ass
while visually striking, the awesomeness doesn't end there - all of these bots have such incredibly distinct personalities and thought processes, and YOU as the player get to explore them! the main four tertiary characters are these ginormous computers almost appearing overgrown with their own wiring, rotting away in their little rooms - canonically no longer able to move as they once did. how cool is that? rotting megacomputers, damned by their own machinery and its unavoidable obsoleteness? the memory of human fallibility embedded in their every bolt and screw?? and BECAUSE they've all got such distinct personalities and motivations, you can't help but feel so so sorry for the poor bastards. the game does let you bring them gifts which is swell :)
they're all hot too which is an automatic 99999/10 from me
#I'd let mirad the desolate hope shut down MY simulation if you know what i'm sayin#been wanting to talk about one of my favorite games ever for a LOOOONG time#shout out to j-dawg for introducing me to it#the desolate hope#the desolate room#scott cawthon#fnaf#character design reviews
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GREEN MILK | #008 | save vs despair — mörk borg: a holistic retrospective
:// A little over a month & 14,000 edited & well-considered words later, SAVE VS DESPAIR is complete to read in its entirety.
If you have any interest in TTRPGs or ever wondered what Mörk Borg's whole deal is – this is for you.
I approached it as a writing exercise & design analysis to understand what's so special about this game and art object, and I'm really proud of both this piece and what I learned for my own practice.
If you're invested in the TTRPG scene I'd appreciate it if you shared this with anyone who might enjoy it.
Our artform deserves as much high-quality analysis as we can cultivate, and the fact that I stumbled into writing what is currently the most thorough analysis I could find (which still has huge gaps in its perspective & approach) of one of the most successful games to emerge from the scene in recent years indicates that there is a need to encourage more writing like this.
In a perpetually collapsing digital infrastructure where so much of our design writing is ephemeral and lost to time (I've heard ancient tales of The Forge & Google+ eras, Discord is an unreferencable void & I really hope someone wiser than me is archiving all these podcasts) I hope that longer form writing might represent an opportunity for the ideas we have now to still be accessible (in one form or another) in years to come.
—
Too much patting myself on the back? Maybe.
But it's good writing and I think you'll get something out of it.
Personally I learned that cross posting on multiple platforms is exactly as fun as it sounds (I thought the whole point of starting a newsletter was to avoid this crap in the first place) and by the end of the month I just wasn't posting the illustrations I was making or sharing the last 2 (?) individual parts here as they went up after burning myself out on instagram.
So for the sake of my poor microwaved brain, if any of this interests you:
#indie ttrpg#ttrpg#ttrpg recs#ttrpg design#ttrpg dev#indie rpg#mörk borg#mork borg#morktober#MÖRKTOBER#game analysis#game writing#ttrpg writing#ttrpg review#green milk#tabletop#rpg
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wont go too in-depth on my zelda thoughts for a while because i know a ton of people still havent finished but it's just so wild to me that instead of taking the easy way out and going "this type of ceiling is ascend-proof", they just made all the ceilings Really Tall
#this is a positive review btw. the number of things in this game that they had to design around is dizzying#and done by people with way more game design experience than me
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"@criticalrole's Daggerheart seems to have what it takes to grow a fanbase. It just needs to solve a few niggling issues with its own relationship to narrative mechanics first." - @levelonewonk
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The 'In Stars and Time' Experience So Far
Act 1: This story is utterly delightful! :D
Act 2: Oh. This bitch got hands.
Act 3: OH. THIS BITCH GOT H A N D S.
I am suddenly very afraid of what the rest of this game is going to do to me.
Thanks to @ampersandthewiz for forcing me to play, the sadist.
That being said, everyone go play it immediately its only like $20 go play now
#no spoilers pls#normally I don't care but amp is adamant about me going in blind#siffrin is peak character design tbh#I didn't even get to the combat or anything and I was already completely smitten with the game#characters are incredibly charming#it honestly feels like playing Undertale for the first time#Where I'm not even halfway through and I already know I'm playing game of the decade#in stars and time#isat#time loop#review
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What's going on with the Character Designs from Zero Escape: Virtues Last Reward???
My first and remaining impression is that these designs are all over the place. The only reason they have any sense of cohesion is because of…I don’t even know…the overall presence/weight of The Nonary Games story? Besides the artist’s style there is absolutely nothing tying these characters together visually — to each other, or to the general world of the Nonary Games. If these designs were presented to me without context I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about the game, let alone think they came from the same world. Costumes felt random, determined solely by the designer’s personal taste that loosely fulfilled some generic arc-type brief (i.e Alice is the “sexy one,” and K is the “robot,” Quark is the “kid” etc). Design choices offered no insight or legitimate tie-in to characterization, roles, or backstories. Adding a single line about “being a circus ringmaster” (that isn’t even true) to Dio’s dialogue does not justify his obvious visual gimmick that had nothing to do with his actual character. Luna felt like her outfit wanted to tie in visually with Dio’s but to no substantial avail. Alice (wtaf) and Clover’s “sexy” outfits have absolutely no believable tangibility to their jobs, and what the heck is on Quark’s head? That’s never actually explained. In almost every case, it felt like the designs were more interested in being individually jarring and “technically” strong (i.e use of silhouette and self-contained motifs) than harmonious to the game’s tone, genre, or story.
All that being said, I do acknowledge the presence of all the characters together in the promo art is certainly an effective one. Looking at the casts in the other two games (without having played them yet), it also seems like this is the style: a roster of disjointed visual archetypes. Even if that is the case, I can’t recommend this particular ensemble as a good example for cohesive cast design.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention how poorly Sigma’s name has aged (in this year of our Lord 2024).
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(I played Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward on the 3DS in its original 2012 iteration, in 2024. For the sake of prose, I will be referring to Virtue’s Last Reward interchangeably with The Nonary Games. Overall, I found the game more mentally pervasive than anticipated and I did enjoy it. However several elements felt frustrated in terms of presentation, visual design choices, and narrative pacing)
#character design#zero escape#virtue's last reward#VLR#the nonary games#3ds#ds#characters#review#opinion#oh great heavens#sigma#gyatt#flamingtunapictures#video games#gaming
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NEW GAME?? SINCE WHEN???
DON'T HIDE THAT SHIT IN THE TAGS EM COME ON 😟
i thought you guys WERE ON THE KNOW??? lmaoo SNOW DAY is apparently going to be in 3D and it looks so funny JSALSDA
#it's coming out 2024#I can play it on my switch >:)))!!!#or my pc depending if i see reviews on which is better#asks#was hoping the next game was a continuation of fractured in some way becasue they teased that ending aaa#or if they used the designs in phone destroyer here but i'm happy with anything !!!
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Jackalope Mail: The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts
I just released a review of The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts a book by Delyth Badder and Mark Norman full of ghost stories from my home country: Wales! I wrote about the book, how it is inspiring me as a game designer, and it ends with a sneak preview of my next game!
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