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macgyvertape · 5 months ago

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Thoughts on TFS Campaign

please note spoilers for everything

Gameplay:

It only lasted for less than a day but the launch errors were so bad. Not just Battleye disconnects during fights, but Prismatic unlock being bugged, and completely missing cutscenes after missions. It was enough to ruin the experience so waiting to play it was absolutely worth it. I guess it's a sign of there being a lot more moving pieces on the backend than is apparent when things go smoothly.

I’m amazed at the shifting environment inside the Traveler and the dev work it took to do that. Not just creating new paths, but the environment terraforming as you run. The map design is amazing: it's a hill and it's a statue of a cat, its a tree but its also person shaped. Thrilled by how many creepy faces there are in the map, and how the horror and faces just ramp up as the zone continues. The highway where the underside was just hands was one of the more fucked up ones for me

I like that the game warns you if you leave the campaign to the Tower. Plus the “End Draws Near” buff was appropriately ominous

Also if there is “social” Tower what about “Legend” Tower, or “Grandmaster” Tower lol

Mission 3 where you’re locked in with a room of sword arm guys took some adjusting to. Really like how the shooty eye blast Orge fight was set up in mission 3. Good intro of mechanics, how it will absolutely fuck you up, then it comes together in the final fight where the different types of ads help the combat loop. I’m getting a lot of use from “gain armor charge from breaking shields”

The Dissent mission was the point where I couldn’t solo Legend campaign anymore. The Ogres were fine, but I don’t do great in small rooms with little cover and enemies that rush at you. It's noticeable where earlier missions have a much shorter repeat run back section when you die than this mission.

Final mission was rough due to a lot of mechanics and a long final fight with little room for error. I’m glad the random cool person I found for the previous mission was such a good sport since it took about an hour.

This is the most mechanics heavy expansion so far, they introduced each mechanic through earlier missions: blights, VotD style symbols tracking, VoG relic shield, RoN shoot the darkness seeds, kill 3 giant hive knights on a time limit like Shattered Throne. That’s just a lot of mechanics to juggle while dealing with prismatic shields and aggressive Dread enemies

Overall I enjoyed Legendary Campaign on my Warlock, haven’t finished it on the other classes. Outbreak Perfected fucking shredded especially combined with Chromatic Fire

The new Suspectrum Heavy LFR is way too visually similar to Taipan. Wish the icon was at least a different color. I do like the art on the new craftable campaign weapons.

I appreciate that with Ghost as the vendor I can easily swap ghost shells to see what the damage looks like on different ones. Like Sagira’s Shell (for the angst) or Last City Shell (Damaged).

There were so many post campaign story missions, I appreciate how they filled out narrative threads that didn’t fit in the base campaign but also all quests now can be right clicked to be launched

The post raid 12 person activity was great. I've been wanting a 12 player activity to be introduced ever since the time of 12 person raid bug, and it felt an appropriately “epic” scale with no raid context needed

It would be cool to see a flowchart of all the musical callbacks in TFS, I’m recognizing a lot even if I don’t know the track names

This expansion really felt cinematic, a grand finale. I love how many cutscenes both artistic and pre-rendered there were, capped off with the final post raid cutscene. My favorites were of course the ending cutscene but also the opening hawk covered in goo cutscene to set the tone

Story Thoughts under cut

Love the hawk being back and notes of Journey from the D2 base campaign

The guardian taking critical damage when Ghost gets possessed in Temptation really added to the feel. Glad to get one more story beat of Crow angst

Crow and Cayde going back and forth with banter makes it a lot more tolerable than just Cayde the funnyman. Also a fun bit of “3 sharpest hunters” when I played Hunter

Ikora’s reaction/processing of Cayde being “alive” had a lot more emotional impact for me than the Guardian reuniting with him. Of course Cayde did it in the most dramatic way possible

TARGE!!!! Excited to hear him in game. Love the visuals of the Witness smoke coming from the family house

I’m glad that Zavala’s character got so developed over the seasonal storylines, it makes the pathos of his encounter here so much stronger. He’s one of the big emotional anchors of the story and while Keith David does a great job filling in as Zavala it feels awkward considering out of game context to hear Zavala talk about dying and not making it back

The cynical part of me thought; ok narratively there’s been a moment to be sad about Cayde 6, sad about Zavala’s dead family, sad about Amanda. Are we going to get narratively sad about Rasputin? (edit: nope)

That Cayde came back from Crow’s wish was something I thought had been heavily hinted at?? Like it wasn’t a surprise to me.

It would be cool to see a flowchart of all the musical callbacks in TFS, I’m recognizing a lot even if I don’t know the track names

Holy shit mean Zavala, but I like how the Guardian then gets called out for listening on the radio unlike any other time they snoop in this or last expansions on deeply personal conversations

I’d like to wish a very happy Luzaku to all Hive/Guardian shippers

“I’m yours, and you’re mine” I love Ghost this expansion and how it really touches on the long partnership. Ghost is really only a character in the expansions and this expansion was great for that emotional arc

Liminality Strike crossed the line from Zavala reacting poorly in a moment of stress/grief to “Out of Character is serious business”. It was heavily foreshadowed before that Zavala isn’t doing well and something will happen to Zavala, by the end of the season I hope he gets some ending that has him at peace

“They’ll speak up if they have something to say, that’s what I do” Targe has been lore only so long, he’s even better than I thought with voice acting how he speaks with a kinda decisiveness.

Damn RIP Targe the game got me to fall in love with him in such a short time. Deeply hilarious IMO that then we got a lore page from Immaru

The statues that look like a sheet-ghost were always kinda creepy, but the ceremony where they were falling down dead and it looked much more like funeral shrouds for living beings made them soooooo much creepier

Keeping with the theme of OOC is Serious Business, it was noticeable when The Witness lost its cool and anger/aggravation was clear in its tone

The Iron Lord sigil and the axe in Temptation was the first reference to Crow being the last Iron Lord in a long time, very cool to then see him summon a flaming axe at the end.

Ikora was a supporting character this expansion, but the writing really showed how she is a necessary part of the Vanguard fireteam

Postgame:

Excited to see Micah-10 another favorite previously lore only character

Queens Part 1: Very in character of Savathun show up uninvited, to have her hostile forces with their own agenda at the precipice and almost end of all things. “My Guardian. My Friend” Transactional relationship for now until she decides she no longer owes us, the style of Hive violence as love. Fits right in with the Star Jasmine lore. I love her.

Queens Part 2: I was really smiling listening to Savathun and Mara go back and forth sniping at each other and being catty. I love when Mara isn’t nice!

Can’t believe the Mithrax missions introduced “escort NPCs and keep them alive” style missions. In aggravating tradition, player healing mechanisms do nothing. Just like the meme of “aren’t you tired of being nice” exciting seeing him lose his shit, yell ANSWER ME, then avenge his mother by dropping a Brig on the enemy guy

Caiatl quests: love when she fights alongside us, really enjoyed the furthering of her and Zavala’s relationship as leaders. Incredibly gallows humor that Zavala’s dead family farm is just a permanent part of the Pale Heart.

I really liked the Crow/Cayde camping quest, it felt very much like the Guardian was living through investigating and being with these characters vs drop in, fight, and leave. Sort of like how FF14 Shadowbringers had your character narratively go to the inn to rest.

SCUR-V and Halsiks my friends in the final mission!!! Loved seeing all of our allies fight alongside us, then seeing so many cameos from characters in the cutscenes

Guess the vanguard does make people shave their head lol, I will miss his old look as I loved the bird chaperon style hood with cape

Great way to end the expansion and this storyline of Destiny; Ghost and Guardian sitting together peacefully staring at the Traveler with riffs from Deep Stone Lullaby playing

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 spoilers #destiny 2 the final shape #destiny 2 the final shape spoilers #mac plays video games

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playingforever · 4 months ago

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'Togetherness'...

The sound work and composition of Little Nightmares is really wonderful. I love how often the pieces are paired with an equally atmospheric name; something that packs an extra punch when you dwell on it.

When I learned that the (main, standard) iteration of the music box's melody is called Togetherness, this really ruined me! What a sweet name... As a result, I'm vividly forced to think of the music box as a symbol of Mono and Six's relationship. Representative of the state of being together; togetherness... The track also bleeds into this lovely ambience that plays when Six and Mono are having their first key moments in the Hunter's cabin. Mono offering his hand... Six beckoning him towards her... all of this, is interconnected with the music box, its tune...

The music box is a leitmotif present in so much of the game. In the very title screen! It's also in Teeth & Leaves, which plays once Mono wakes up at the start. The sound is eerie, as if carried through the wind, whistling through the trees... Makes me really feel as though Mono wakes up with an imperative urge, pull, towards the cabin. The memory of the music box ringing in his ears...~

What I also love, is how the emotional weight of Togetherness then recontextualizes Six's Theme from the first game. Six's Theme now evokes her music box, and subsequently, her relationship with Mono.

Obviously, chronologically, the music box's melody was made to take after Six's theme — likely drawing inspirations from the second part specifically, with its twinkly, childish feeling celesta and rhodes — but I still love the power of association it creates retroactively. I'd say LN2 in general was Tarsier reverse engineering more fleshed out answers to questions presented by LN1. Subsequently, I like reflecting on what the devs were going for with their choices, knowing they were going to be fleshing out Six with them.

We knew we had a cool character in Six, but we weren't prepared for how iconic she would become for people who liked the game. Because Little Nightmares was about the world and the kids that go there, not one kid. […] It just felt very natural that this then took place before the first game. Like, "well, where's Six been before? And how was it for her? Was there anyone she met along this journey to the Maw?"

— from an interview with lead writer Dave Mervik.

I like knowing these were the questions they had at the start of making LN2... There wasn't a solid resolution for 'who Six was', yet. I imagine when they made her theme initially, it was as simple as trying to encapsulate something cute yet creepy. Childish humming. That suits her character at the time of inception.

... it's sweet though, to walk it back and make it a tune Six found comfort in. A melody she would sing to herself even when reduced, warped. Something from a cherished object– one that she'd cling desperately to, bringing her a sense of escapism from the terrible world outside the tower.

Knowing Monster Six's room is enshrined in toys and present boxes, knowing the Thin Man gave her all this, is the music box not simply a gift from Mono...? Doesn't the very sound of it make her think of him?? Isn't that, emblematic of Togetherness-!?!!?!?

Really, it only makes sense that Mono destroying this wounds her so terribly, and that it's the catalyst for their separation afterwards. T-T (I'd have to make a different post about Mono's motivation towards breaking it (though just know it's driven by ignorance and self-hatred. And perhaps a wildcard incel jealously.)) But ultimately I like that Six remains perpetually haunted by it now. She can't escape the music box; it's an integral part of her psyche. As much as Mono is feeling its presence all throughout his journey, drawing him towards her again and again.

Anyways this was just me celebrating how much I love the fact that LN2 envelops LN1's narrative into itself... even on this granular of a level. I feel like Mono is a metatextual inescapable force that has left his handprints all throughout Six's being. She can't be freed from him... But, it's sweet, because without her, he wouldn't exist. :'3

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masterchef901 · 1 year ago

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We're weird here, right? Yeah? Good. Let me tell you about the fucking MAGICAL narrative journey that is the CoD Zombies story. It's weird, it's jank as hell, and by the end it has me thinking seriously on the implicit meta-narrative to it. Also, the story ends like 4 separate times.

So we begin with CoD: World at War.

"Nazi Zombies", a minigame unlocked by beating the main story, where you get to feel more justified in sinking lead into a horde than possibly anywhere else in gaming, or life for that matter. Over the course of the original maps, the devs see positive fan response and put a little effort into it. We get perks, fancy technomagic laser guns and wonder-weapons, and even some characters and lore.

That lore, by the way, is "The nazis were experimenting on mysterious rocks that turned out to turn people into zombies. Then the zombies broke out. The end." Our heroes, meanwhile, are all simple as hell. A Japanese honor-obsessed samurai, a German mad scientist, a Russian whose only desire in life is vodka, and an ultra-macho rambo-esque American with an IQ only marginally higher than that of the zombies they'll be working together to slaughter. Basically, all stereotypes, but played for that over-the-top sort of comedy enough that I'll be generous and call them 'caricatures' instead. This group would eventually come to be called "Ultimis".

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Back by popular demand, is the Zombies mode, now no longer exclusive to the nazi brand of zombie, because the story's going international. This time, our heroes are going on a tour of WWII-era conspiracy theories. Ancient Vril mysticism, Shangri-La, nazi moon bases - basically the plot of Iron Sky 2. Simple, except not really, but definitely absurd in a fun, goofy way. Notably, the loading screens and advertising also framed these maps in a sort of "comic book"-y way, to help us understand the level of narrative consistency and complexity we'd be seeing here.

(Before continuing, by the way, we also have the absolute TREAT that is the map "Five". Seriously, go watch its opening cutscene, and then imagine those characters being your friendly voices for the duration of the game)

The critical thing here is that, while WaW had some "easter eggs", they were just cute little bits and bobs. "Interact with some rocks hidden around the map, play a song", stuff like that. But Black Ops easter eggs were something else entirely. Trying to explain these feels like explaining the conspiracy theories that inspired the maps. "Go stand on the floor panels to enter Eclipse mode. Then find the four wall-dials and set them to specific values. Now use the shrink ray on a specific rock, which you must then shoot around the map until it lands on the temple." Stuff like that. And even though nobody realized it until the end, they were all connected - if you do all the easter eggs leading up to it, then the Moon egg culminates in the mad scientist character taking over the zombie horde. And then you blow up the Earth.

That's right, they decide to just go flying beyond all chance of imagining this stuff was happening on the fringes of history, it was all-along the story of an apocalypse enacted by a mad scientist and his rival engineering events against him. The End. This was the BIG moment that grabbed the attention and imagination of me and others as a kid. It took Zombies from "neat" to "COOL", and, for better and worse, secured this storyline and style as the "zombies breadwinner" for several games to come.

Side note: I don't recall exactly when they did this, but at some point Treyarch's writers realized that it's maybe a bad look to have one of the playable characters be "'German scientist who helped create the Nazi Zombies", on account of, y'know, the fact that that makes him a nazi. So at some point they did that thing where they "soft-retcon" in some audio clarifying that actually while he was always a psychopath, he was only ever in it For The Science (tm) and it was actually his rival Dr. Maxis who signed his research team on with the reich.

I'm not sure if there's a term for this sort of the thing - when writers don't really retcon in the sense of overwriting previously established facts, but use "reveals" to try and overwrite the meaning of those previously established facts. Yes, technically that's what all good reveals do, but it's also obvious in times like these that there used to be a clear understanding of the lore on both the authors' and audience's parts, which the author has since decided they don't like and want to redo. "Oops, that previous evidence/event didn't count because of contrived circumstances you knew nothing about and could not possibly have guessed."

If I sound like I'm going off on a tangent, I want to be clear - firstly, this sort of practice always frustrates me, because it makes it clear that the author is readily willing to "cheat" in the game that is the communication of a narrative, and secondly because that's secretly what this whole mega-ramble is actually about.

Black Ops 2: We Care About The Lore Now

So, Treyarch wanted to do more Zombies, and they liked the vibe they had so far, so they decide to stay in the storyline that exploded earth. The characters - now a farm girl, a nerd, a hobo, and a schizophrenic guy, all American, all came off more annoying than the "comedic" take Treyarch wanted. This group would be dubbed "Victis", and not only were these characters poorly received, but the story itself would feel aimless. How do you one-up a grand master scheme and the apocalypse? What are our survivors even doing? Treyarch has our old mad scientist and his rival acting as voices in the Victis gang's collective head to try and vie for control of the zombies, and this story would ultimately culminate in one of them (based on player choices involving arcane steps punctuated by some oddly sexual ones) winning the power struggle, and either way, some type of "the world ends again", either with the mad scientist turning the world into his plaything, or (the canon ending) the rival scientist enacting some weird arcane collapse that will let him be with his daughter. Either way, we don't revisit this world again.

I specify world because the characters will return, and even in the same game, actually.

But first - in the middle of the Victis plotline we take a brief visit to Alcatraz for an unexpectedly great zombies experience that's entirely disconnected from either of the plotlines so far. I bring this up only for completeness sake, and for a point that'll hopefully become clearer later.

Anyway, we now return to our regularly scheduled zombie programming - by which I mean, a whole new experience, Origins, featuring "modernized", more tasteful renditions of our original Ultimis team. We're introduced now to a strong-but-disciplined American soldier, a now safely WWI-era not-quite-mad German Scientist, a world-weary Russian who uses alcohol to tastefully take the edge off, and a Japanese samurai warrior who's struggling with the decaying traditional idea of "honor" in a World-War 1 setting.

This "new" (yet chronologically older) variant of the team would be dubbed "Primis".

And this time the plot has them freeing the spirit of a young girl, Samantha, daughter of Science Rival Guy Dr. Maxis who we'd just seen end the world (twice) from some weird arcane trap on the battlefield "of the Great War" so she can go to a mysterious place called "Agartha". Also, the ending cutscene shows her and "Eddie" (who appears to be a child version of our playable german scientist) to be playing with dolls and action figures of the zombies and the playable characters - implying that in fact our whole storyline thus far was "just a game", and the shift of control over the zombie hordes in the first game to Edward Richtofen was in fact just "Eddie" taking his turn playing as the zombies.

It's easy to forget for those of us who've kept up with the story since this, but I cannot overstate how confusing this entire situation was to resolve from a lore perspective. Options were:

1: As implied in the cutscene, acktually "it was all just a game". The lore that players had worked hard to uncover was all, within its own canon, a game being played by children. This was wildly unpopular, but also quite possibly the authors' intended interpretation because in a very real sense, it all WAS a game, and the lore mostly WAS made-up by players out of scraps of lore they'd found.

2: Our four protagonists had acktually all met for the first time in WWI, then again incidentally wound up together again after un-developing as characters due to Magic Rock Exposure (tm) in WWII. Somehow the little girl freed in Origins and her dad whose brain got put in a drone during that process both get put back into their bodies, I guess.

3: It's all a parallel universe with its own separate continuity; the little girl and Eddie believe they're just playing games with toys when in reality they've been shipped off to copyright-safe-Heaven and "games with toys" is how they cope with the trauma of their zombie-filled lives.

BLACK OPS 3: MORE

So, Treyarch picks option 3. Makes sense, it keeps us gamers feeling like our investment was in something worthwhile and not arbitrarily patched together, while also allowing them some more narrative liberty. Easy, right?

WRONG

Rather than just roll with "We're doing zombies again in a newer, cleaner universe", they have to tie everything up ALL together. Our new plotline is that ACTHSDHALY the zombie-rocks came from a bunch of eldritch tentacle-creatures called Apothicons from super-hell. We meet Dr. Monty, who's basically like if Willy Wonka was actually secretly God who's trying to get the kids safe and sound up in heaven and the now eldritch-based zombies sealed back away.

We follow Team Primis as they go back into our first universe to harvest the souls of Team Ultimis (so, their own original souls) which will somehow allow them to go to I-can't-believe-it's-not-Heaven too. They go there, shit accidentally goes wrong when eldritch-satan breaks out, but the gang beats him up with guns and Monty is able to re-establish his perfect world.

Except, uh, he tried to delete the Primis crew while he was it it, but don't worry, that random moment in Alcatraz earlier was act[coughing fit]ally super-duper important and drinking the blood of those prisoners let out heroes survive! BUT ACTASKFHALY THIS WAS MONTY'S PLAN ALL ALONG and he teleports them back in time to fight in-

oh right so "the great war" from origins wasn't in reference to WWI, it was

actually

the site of The Great War between humanity and the apothicons, and Monty time-travels the crew back then to be the heroes of legend that set up Origins to happen, creating a time loop. Characters are, this whole time, saying "the paradox must be resolved" without ever explaining what it is.

But yeah anyway the whole ride this game leads to a big "it was all a time loop" cycle deal, and also the tone has slowly shifted from BO1 comic-style to something that feels more like an "Avengers"-style quiptacular with MORE budget, MORE stakes, MORE lore that actually isn't a good thing because the more lore they pile on the more twisted and absurd the story has to get and also it occurs to me that "going avengers" actually is kinda the natural conclusion to "being like comic books".

BLACK OPS 4: BUT WAIT THERE'S FOUR

So at this point, Treyarch and Activision in general are spending more focus on trying to figure out a new angle to Zombies, but nothing takes off. Infinity Ward's "Zombies in Spaceland" was a whiff, Cod:WW2's "reboot" of Nazi Zombies didn't stick, and their new "Chaos" storyline featuring mixed-religious lore was also met with lukewarm-to-poor response (sidenote here: now that we're in a proper era where it's common practice to ask "What if Ra punched Odin in the face while Ares watches" we really should establish a term for it, like "Mixed-Religious Combat" following the form of "Mixed Martial Arts).

SO They felt some pressure to go back once more to the cash cow what is their absolute mess of an "original" zombies story, now termed the "Aether" arc. They don't have many maps left to develop this but that doesn't stop them from opening the story again, and this time the writers have fucking HAD IT with this story so they decide it's time to fucking END it.

Here's your finale: Victis crew (the all-american team nobody liked) are back, slightly better written this time, on the map that had gone the longest without a remake (notably, in keeping with modern media practice, every zombies map from from the Ultimis-Primis plotline had been remade at least once by now), and they make a macguffin.

Then Primis Nikolai (the russian guy) uses it to wish a new, zombie-free universe into existence and sends the kids away into it.

Also he poisons and kills all of Ultimis and Primis. Then has the kids shoot him. THE ADULTS ARE ALL DEAD NOW AND THEY GOT BANISHED TO SUPERHELL WITH THEIR MULTIVERSE THE END. Nikolai gives us some lore mumbo jumbo about how the arcano-babble and the eldritch-babble had done some techno-babble that "bound the team's destiny forever to the apothicon menace", so that the only way a universe could ever be free of zombies would be for him and his friends to all die.

And the thing is, he's right. Because if you've followed this far, you're probably seeing a pattern: People like these characters, even in their worst-written moments, and Activision isn't going to just let that go unmilked. As long as there is any possible way for these characters to return, they'll be brought back and the lore is going to be held and gunpoint and forced to cook up a reason for them to be there shooting zombies. So the only possible way to let this tortured, tangled mess of a plot finally reach an actual ending is to kill its protagonists - and not just kill them, but write them off so conclusively that there's no chance of resurrection, no more alternate universes containing them, NOTHING. THEY ARE GONE. And true to the Homestuck-ass law that was inspired by this exact effect, the only way death can stick from a narrative sense is if everyone's death is either a Just end or a Heroic sacrifice to nobly ensure a better life For the Kids.

Samantha and Eddie (at this point nobody asks why Eddie even exists or what timeline these kids are from) are finally safe. The end.

COD COLD WAR THE STORY KEEPS GOING

As if to prove my point, Cold War Zombies picks up with a new set of protagonists... and an easter egg featuring the return of Samantha, now slightly more grown up, I guess, and also with superpowers? And then she flies around a bit, before finally heroically sacrificing herself out of the story for good. Eddie - now a full adult Edward Richtofen once more - is a "big reveal" in a cutscene afterwards, confirming that, in fact, there will be no peace fucking ever until every last character from this beautiful, twisted plot is gone.

EPILOGUE

And I want to be clear, it is beautiful. I wouldn't have followed it this far or spent two hours learning just how much I have to type about it if I didn't love every second of it, especially the seconds spent hating on it. I could, and probably eventually will write another essay at some point on how fucking much I love jank-ass "broken" things like this.

But for now, I hope y'all see my points here. It's this weird case you see happen every now and then where people just fall in love with their characters, and won't ever let go. Certainly doesn't help that the authors of those characters can't figure out how to write anyone else decently, but this is just one of many franchises I've seen where the unwillingness to let go of a fan-favorite leaves the plot tied in knots as it constantly has to try and present a NEW BIGGEST THREAT EVER that becomes a BIG DRAMATIC CONCLUSIVE FINALE that then needs even bigger contrivances to bring the favorites back.

It's done a fucking number on Halo's story, which is impressive because a lot of halo's core fans never even really consider that it has one. It's hard for me to talk about Halo here without thinking to myself "STOP TALKING ABOUT JOHN"

Same deal with Marvel, same with Homestuck, same deal in a lot of cases that I'm sure you're aware of too.

So as my closing thought and my reward to you for reading this far, here's some homework! What the fuck do you call these problems? What do you call it when lore starts to go sour because it's spent too long being about the same thing? What do you call it when fan demand forces writers to rethink their endings repeatedly? What do you call it when writers "cheat" their way around prior writing, re-contextualizing everything so much that it's hard to actually believe anything they say anymore and we're just left to sigh and feel odd relief when they say "Somehow Palpatine has returned" without further explanation because at least that means ONLY the ending of the original trilogy has its weight retroactively worsened?

#zombies #cod #call of duty #narrative analysis #overanalysis #idk #rule #i guess #ramble #rambles #E #this became about #media #like media in general I guess #thank you for reading

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comfiedev · 2 years ago

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my 5 year indie developer journey

Hey, I'm Samuli, also known as Comfie and I make indie games here in the mythical land of Finland. Uhhhh, indie games are cool, yeah, hot take.

I've made a lot of games over the years and, well, as you can imagine most of them are bad, lol, which is why most of them are not available for y'all to play. Still, on my Itch.IO page you can play all of the games that are there! Some are decent, at best, but some are actually quite fun.

I started my dev journey in 2017-2018 I believe, and it took me a while to get adjusted to the tools. I didn't have a lot of prior knowledge with computers so using these grand development tools seemed impossible, but I still managed to push through that and started to development my skills.

For the first few years I had no design knowledge or anything, all I knew was how to use the engine and how to scribble on my sprite editor, which meant that I developed my interest and passion for design later in my journey.

I tried really hard to find myself as a developer, especially at first, but at some point I just stopped caring, which actually helped me understand what I enjoy about creating games, which is kinda ironical and fun. Dunno, maybe the less you care the more you develop or something, please take that with a grain of salt lmfao.

In 2020 I started to hang out in online forums and chatrooms which changed my whole view on making games, prior to that I had no connections with anyone and did everything alone. I met a lot of cool people that helped me figure out development and shit, it was very cool, I really appreciate that, thank you, you know who you are. At the same time I was introduced to twitter which showed me a whole new side of indie development, for the first time I really felt like I wasn't alone doing this.

Slowly I started to build a small following or something, a friendgroup of other devs that supported me and my work, which I love and appreciate from the bottom of my heart. From those chatrooms I met Temul, who was the first dev that I collaborated with. Our friendship was kinda odd because I had this whack-ass persona that I portrayed on those chatrooms which made for some hilarious interactions. We worked on a few projects, I still look at these times very fondly. We worked on a mini-game collection called the juicebox. Sadly most of our projects never got finished but I at least had a fun time, hope Temul feels the same way haha.

At around october of 2021 I participated in Ludum Dare 49, and made a game called Unsteady Bounce. The game feels like a monumental milestone on my journey, because it was the first game I made that used something else than janky pixelart as visuals. The game had this charcoal hand-drawn aesthetic and managed to score the 30th place in the graphics category!

After that I continued with the same aesthetic and took part in the Ludwig gamejam where I made Back to the Nest. Back to the Nest was a life changing experience because I met so many cool people through it and gained a lot of friends and peers. I honestly miss that time a lot, everyone was hanging out in this groupchat and supporting eachothers projects, it was great. I was also chosen as one of the winners of the jam, which led my game to be shown at Ludwig's stream, which was a big visibility boost. Back to the Nest remains as my most played game on Itch.IO with about 10,000 plays, which is mindblowing to me.

After these two projects I started working on my largest project to-date. Moonstuck, is a colorful precision flying game, with a lot of charm and really fucking steep difficulty curve, lol. I spent 6 months on this project and well, I'm slowly becoming more accepting of the project. When I finished it and was working on it I hated it. The game had a lot of flaws in design and in development. For example I handplaced 4000- outline objects which took me 2- months of work, it was not very pleasant nor fun. Still, I appreciate the project. I got to work with a cool composer, Jaden, thanks Jaden I really appreciate you! My good friend Z from one of the early chatrooms I was in also put the game on Steam for me, for free, I know, crazy. I owe Z a lot. With all of this Moonstuck has around 30 000-40 000 plays on Steam, which still blows my mind. Moonstuck was released in the summer of 2022.

After Moonstuck I worked on multiple smaller projects. I made 3 games with my close friend Sai. Those projects had their ups and downs but working with Sai has been a blast. I also worked with a few other friends HIS, Milkman and Frog, and we made this pretty cool Tron inspired game, tho I didn't amount a lot to this game. Still was fun! Maybe I'll be able to work with them again in the future.

At some point I was introduced to Paradise and met some pretty cool peers through it. I've gotten a lot of opportunities through it and I am forever grateful for the people that wanted to invite me there. I met a very quirky and cool friendo Plant through Paradise. Me and Plant have been working on a cyclical dynamic multi-layered shmup a of late. It should be out in december of 2022 or early next year. Also been finally working on a game with my friend Jasper, who does some crazy art n stuff, we've been talking for like a year about making a game together and it feels like it's finally actually happening! I also went to my first indie dev meetup event thing in November of this year, where I met cool peeps and I'm really grateful for that. I met Perttu, Pavla and Kai there, which was really cool, we are making a nuclear winter inspired topdown exploration game together, it's going to be a blast.

As you can probably read I've been collaborating with a lot of people lately, it has been so much fun but also draining for my social battery and things, so I've decided to tackle a few games alone after this. I enjoy working with people but also solo dev has its own quirks too.

That's pretty much everything for now. Today is 21/11/2022 and uh, I just condenced my whole dev journey into this small text, kinda crazy. Ok, that's all, thanks for reading, uhh bye.

Samuli

#Comfie #gamedev #indie games #indie #games #video games #pixel art #pixel #art

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sayonarawildhearts · 2 years ago

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OUTER WILDS CONCEPT ART COMPILATION

HEARTHIANS

Protagonist/Hatchling/Player

Erin Loelius - Concept Artist - Main Character Designs (suit)

Yoon - Concept Artist - Concept Art (riebeck + hatchling suits)

Sebastian Kings - Concept Artist - Supporting Characters (hearthian villagers + mica + player without spacesuit)

Travelers

Sebastian Kings - Concept Artist - Main Characters (chert + feldspar + gabbro suits)

Yoon - Concept Artist - Concept Art (riebeck + hatchling suits)

Alena Leontyeva - 3D Modeling Artist - Outer Wilds Characters (chert + feldspar models)

Fig Campaign - Who's That Hearthian? (12/2017 early hearthian models and mapping textures in-game)

Villagers

Erin Loelius - Concept Artist - NPC Designs (villagers)

Mia Bai - Concept Artist - Character Concept (hearthian villagers, such as porphy, hornfels, esker, galena + outer wilds ventures vest + nomai)

Sebastian Kings - Concept Artist - Supporting Characters (hearthian villagers + mica + player without spacesuit)

Mobius Digital - Studio - The Creepy Hearthians (1/2016 early alpha builds of the hearthians standing around)

Mobius Digital - Studio - April Playtests, April Concept Art (4/2016 playtesting notes, nomai tech notes, anglerfish sneak peek, hearthian villager concept art)

HEARTHIAN ARCHITECTURE

Walking Jay Art - Concept Artist - Concept Art (village home designs + nomai technology + timber hearth trees)

Leo Ogawa Lillrank - Concept Artist - Outer Wilds Environment Work (timber hearth outdoors + hearthian village house)

Sebastian Kings - Concept Artist - Environments (tutorial mining rig + observatory telescope)

Alena Leontyeva - 3D Modeling Artist - Hearthian Village (hearthian cabins in the village + player tools such as translator, signalscope, radio, little scout + props)

HEARTHIAN PROPS

Ship

Saiful Haque - Concept Artist - Outer Wilds (vehicle design + interior)

Dong Kyuni - Concept Artist - Hearthian Ship

Tools

Alena Leontyeva - 3D Modeling Artist - Hearthian Village (hearthian cabins in the village + player tools such as translator, signalscope, radio, little scout + props)

Misc

Sebastian Kings - Concept Artist - Props (model rocket + marshmallow stick + mission patch + hearthian villager props + observatory group photo)

NOMAI

Erin Loelius - Concept Artist - Numai (Nomai) Designs (suits)

Mia Bai - Concept Artist - Character Concept (hearthian villagers, such as porphy, hornfels, esker, galena + outer wilds ventures vest + nomai)

Fig Campaign - Introducing the Nomai (12/2015 early alpha development for the nomai)

NOMAIAN ARCHITECTURE

go look at the shit ian jacobson did in the misc category, there's some stuff with nomai shit there. like a lot.

NOMAIAN PROPS

Walking Jay Art - Concept Artist - Concept Art (village home designs + nomai technology + timber hearth trees)

CELESTIAL BODIES

Lara Colson - 3D Artist - Environments of Outer Wilds (theres too much shit for me to copy/paste it a million times. timber hearth + giant's deep + brittle hollow + dark bramble + ember twin)

Hourglass Twins

Saiful Haque - Concept Artist - Tower Twin (Ash Twin)

Eilish Labrechtsen - Environment Artist - Hourglass Twins : Caves + Rock Placement (+ trees + plants + cacti)

Timber Hearth

Eilish Labrechtsen - Environment Artist - Timber Hearth : Caves + Everest Geyser

Walking Jay Art - Concept Artist - Concept Art (village home designs + nomai technology + timber hearth trees)

Fig Update - Early Timber Hearth (12/2015 redesigning home planet)

Brittle Hollow

Eilish Labrechtsen - Environment Artist - Brittle Hollow and Hollow's Lantern (and White Hole Station) (+ trees + plants)

Giant's Deep

literally nothing just for giants deep lol it's scattered in other early concept art and compilations. sorry boss

Dark Bramble

Eilish Labrechtsen - Environment Artist - Dark Bramble

The Interloper

Eilish Labrechtsen - Environment Artist - The Interloper (+ ghost matter crystals)

Quantum Moon

Eilish Labrechtsen - Environment Artist - Quantum Moon (+ quantum rocks)

Eye of the Universe

Eilish Labrechtsen - Environment Artist - Eye of the Universe

[POST CONTINUED IN NEXT REBLOG]

#eff #outer wilds #echoes of the eye #concept art #outer wilds spoilers #eote spoilers #echoes of the eye spoilers #spoilers #whew! now that that's all out of the way. hi. it was a nightmare trying to reformat this to fit tumblr #i've dumped this link compilation into a handful of outer wilds / zine servers im in but i figured it would be nice to put on tumblr too <3 #txt #link #long post #like a really really long post #i hope this helps! i personally found it very useful for not only my own outer wilds fanwork but also just finding inspiration in general.#game dev is so so cool to me and the journey this one took is incredible

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ginazmemeoir · 2 years ago

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Garuda Tries his Hand at Snake BBQ but Ends up with A Quest

“How could you do this Garuda?” Vinata asked, fuming. Garuda stood before her, head bowed, but his eyes were clearly defiant.

Kadru and her children wanted to go to Ramaniyaka, the gods’ pleasure island, for a vacation. The island had recently been ceded to the nagas as a gift personally from Lord Indra, who was a close friend of Takshaka, Kadru’s son and the second king of the nagas. However, the island stood in the middle of the ocean, and was thus inaccessible. The entourage, along with Vinata and Garuda, were about to depart on a ship when Kadru decided to inflict another humiliation upon her sister and nephew – she ordered them to carry her and her children, on their backs respectively, and swim to Ramaniyaka.

Garuda thus begrudgingly bore his cousins on his back and flew, while Vinata swam with her sister on her shoulders. Trying to alleviate his mother’s pain, Garuda would occasionally flap his wings towards her, sending a cool breeze and pushing her forward. Upon reaching the island though, the nagas made another demand – they wanted to visit Lord Surya, the god of the sun, and personally thank him for having a safe trip. Garuda, seizing the opportunity, once again put them on his back and flew straight to the sun.

After a while however, the nagas started sweating profusely and ordered him to stop, to which he replied, “My lords, you were the ones who requested to visit Surya dev. It would be disrespectful for us to stop in our journey mid-way.” Carrying the screeching, shrieking nagas on his back, Garuda flew higher and higher towards the sun. Some jumped off his back into the ocean, while many were burnt to death altogether, unable to handle the sun’s heat. Hearing her children’s cry of distress, Kadru started praying to Indra, who mercifully sent forth the rains to stop Garuda’s ascent and revive the nagas. Upon his arrival thus, Vinata took good care to reprimand her son.

“Tell me again, what were you thinking huh?” Vinata said, pulling his ear.

“Enough maa!” Garuda shouted, and drew back from her.

“Why do you keep defending them? Why do you keep serving them? Look at me – I can grow as tall as a mountain! I have talons that can shred apart elephants, a beak which can break diamonds and wings which can raise a storm! I can break us out of here, we can live out our lives elsewhere, but all you do is insist on staying here in this hellhole with your cruel sister! Had that Indra not come to save them, I could have burnt them all to death! Then why, why are we still here mother?”

Vinata wasn’t surprised in the least with her son’s outburst. She had been asking that same question to herself for quite some time now. However, running away was the coward’s game.

“Because I have to expose Kadru to the world. I have to prove how despicable she is. We are not the ones at fault here, so why should we be the ones to run? We have to restore our honour Garuda and get our rightful justice, so until we can achieve that, we aren’t going anywhere. Now go and apologize to them.” She replied, in a tone that ended the possibility of further arguments.

Though Garuda was indeed as mighty as he proclaimed, he still wasn’t mighty enough to oppose his mother. Head held high, and palms joined in front, he approached his so-called kin. Kadru, sitting on a throne carved out of an emerald was staging an act, her fake wails audible from even a yojana.

“Forgive me devi, for accidentally causing harm to your children.”

“Oh shut it! Had you had your way, I would have lost all my children today!”

Drawing in a long breath, Garuda replied, “I apologize deeply devi. Is there anything I can do for you?”

Kadru’s eye gleamed with the possibilities of all she could make him do. Maybe she could make him clip his wings, or she could make him food for her children. But the humiliation would have to wait another day, for right now there was another loftier goal she had in mind – immortality. Though the nagas were allies of the gods, possessing powers of regeneration and healing, being charged with guarding the earth’s treasures and its fertility, they still hadn’t achieved god-like status. However, becoming immortal? Possessing the Amrit? Not only would that turn her children into gods, but they might even become stronger than them! Her children could then overpower them and even the heavens would be theirs!

Wiping off her fake tears, she said, “Bring the Amrit.”

Her words stunned the assembly, even her progeny. Garuda however, stood unmoved.

“You have hurt my children, and only the legendary nectar of immortality of the gods can cure them.”

“What will I get in return?”

Before Kadru could retort, it was her son, Takshaka, who spoke, “Name your price, and you shall have it.”

“I want freedom for my mother and myself. I want you to release my mother and I from the bounds of slavery you have imposed upon us.”

“Fine. Bring us the Amrit, and your mother and you can screw off to wherever you want.” Takshaka replied, dismissing him with a wave of his hand.

Bowing, Garuda took leave to seek his mother’s blessings. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be seeing her for a long time.

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elfyourmother · 4 years ago

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so my journey to FFXIV.

i’m so damn old and seasoned with MMOs i literally was playing their free, text-based fan homebrewed precursors on fucking telnet as a kid in the pre-web internet era so I was never scared of them, I just avoided them for the longest out of saltiness that all of my MUD and MUSH friends were quitting our games for them and the MU* scene was slowly dying because of it (Everquest and Ultima Online were the culprits when they were new). It took me a weirdly long time to get into them, given the circles I ran in.

but I played a bunch of them, UO, City of Heroes/Villains, etc. I got FFXI around the time Wings of the Goddess came out because my gf at the time played it heavily, and I decided to give it a shot because of her and wanting to see a Final Fantasy take on the genre, even though up to that point I was one of those “I don’t count the MMO as a real Final Fantasy game” FF fans. Unfortunately I ended up hating it because it was so intensely unfriendly to newbies and solo players, it was a horrible grindfest where just traveling somewhere took insane amounts of real world time, plus you leave town and get killed by level 4 rabbits and leveling involved mindless grinding in parties, meanwhile my gf’s linkshell (XI version of a Free Company) was horribly cliquish and basically ignored me unless she was logged on. WoW I had avoided because I was a diehard Warcraft RTS fan terrified of what an MMO would do to my favorite strategy games (LMAO oh my god the hilarity in hindsight), but I finally quit XI and jumped to WoW because my bf at the time finally talked me into it when Burning Crusade came out. Now BC’s story essentially mangled my favorite characters from Warcraft 3 beyond all recognition but mechanically the game was really fun to play even if my bf was a dick and made me play Alliance despite me wanting to be Horde really badly, I had a great guild, and so I just ignored the story bits I hated and wrote fix it fic. Wrath was absolutely fantastic as an Arthas stan but unfortunately the game dropped off a cliff after that and never recovered, the gameplay started getting terrible to the point it couldn’t make up for the lackluster and bad story decisions and continued derailment of my faves, the playerbase got even worse, and the devs/writers were even worse than the fans.

probably the nail in the coffin was cross server zones destroying any semblance of server culture. Proudmoore was my home server and it was an oasis away from the toxic shit the WoW community was infamous for, because the players fought hard to make it a haven for LGBT players (we had a massive pride parade every year in game, Horde + Alliance together, with zero trolling). It had a very heavy international contingent because before Blizzard opened Oceanic servers, all the Aussies and Kiwis decided to make it their home. But it was a haven because we policed ourselves. The gays ran that fucking server and anyone coming to start shit got run out of town on a rail. Even our trade chat trolls didn’t tolerate bigotry lol. People learned real quick that troublemakers weren’t wanted, they couldn’t even switch factions to run because we all exchanged notes. People stood up for each other and even though it wasn’t perfect by any means it was like an entirely different game than on other servers. It was very XIV-esque in that respect.

My little guild was run by a lesbian couple and was 90% queer/trans and a handful of cool allies and half of us were some kinda poc, we had people literally from all over the world including a really sweet Japanese girl I used to run dungeons with in the middle of the night when I had insomnia and no one else was on bc of the time difference lol. But this great server community of that got fucked up when Blizzard instituted cross realm zones, trying to make the world seem more active, when all it did was destroy our server community with an influx of the toxic people in our battlegroup (like a data center) that we came to Proudmoore to avoid. trade chat became a cesspool like it was on every other server. Slurs became a way of life when they never had before. Like every day I was reporting people for harassment, specifically homophobia and racism. One of my 2 mains was a male Blood Elf Paladin and towards the end of my regular WoW playing, almost every god damn day I would log on to tank daily heroics with him I got called the F slur. I was constantly reporting Hunters with gorilla pets named after Black people (usually Obama or Oprah). so my little bubble was gone and the story and the game hit new lows and i was done.

the irony of me quitting WoW for another Final Fantasy MMO is not lost on me either. the funny thing is I totally ignored XIV at launch because I had such a wretched experience with XI and saw the races all being the XI ones just with different names and dismissed teh whole thing as Vana’diel 2.0 and figured it would be just as bad, then heard the reports of how atrocious 1.0 was and felt vindicated in ignoring it. I was really disillusioned with WoW by then, but was kinda feeling stuck in sunk cost fallacies, still subbed out of nostalgia and doing stuff with Dandy once in a while. “WoW sucks but the only thing that would ever make me leave it for good is an Ivalice MMO” were my exact words, ask Dandy lmao

meanwhile I’d picked up Final Fantasy Record Keeper on mobile, and started posting in the Reddit sub for it, and when there was an XIV collab to celebrate Heavensward’s release that added Alphinaud and Minfilia as units along with some really powerful gear for them,I pulled on the banner even though I knew dick all about XIV just for the OP loot and ended up with a completely decked out Alphinaud. They didn’t do XIV events too often for whatever reason in FFRK but hilariously I somehow always ended up with all the best loot for XIV characters and so ended up using those units a lot--Y’shtola was my best healer for a long time--and every time there was an event somebody would make lore threads on the sub explaining different things and raving about how amazing it got after the revamp and HW. it also helped that the music on every FFXIV event slapped so hard. so I got really curious and when the game went on Playstation Store holiday sale one year I picked it up finally, mainly to find out what the deal was with this Alphinaud kid. the rest is history.

the ironic thing is FFXIV has the total opposite thing from WoW where a single player game franchise I loved was totally ruined by an MMORPG version of it. WoW destroyed the Warcraft RTS series and dragged its bloody corpse through the streets but FFXIV saved Final Fantasy to me, no joke. i was absolutely done with FF after XIII was so wretched, i never even got the sequels and ignored XV on principle (tfoh with no female characters), and then DA:O had come out to take my gaming attention. but years later with Bioware shitting the bed so hard, and WoW having been dead to me for ages, I was really ripe to “come home” to FF tbh. so in hindsight it really shouldn’t be a surprise it got me by the tits so bad. it’s the only example I can think of where an MMO installment in a franchise is better than the most recent single player ones

even my least favorite XIV story arc (Stormblood) was light years more enjoyable than XIII and I think we all about the mess that was XV. it says something to me that they gave Yoshi-P the keys to XVI. Personally I think Ishikawa should just be put in charge of writing all Final Fantasy everything until she gets tired, if it wouldn’t burn her out

#bisho plays ffxiv #sorta

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iaintyourbro · 4 years ago

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What I consider a bad writing when it comes to the devs is Aerith fell in love with Cloud??? What did she fell in love with in a short period of time exactly!! Cloud wasn't himself ?? And he wasn't in a position to play at romance with her .Like just because Cloud is the protagonist she fell for him ?? I just don't get it she loved Zack deeply and a guy who she knows nothing about in just a short time she fell for him 🙄 like wow this is what a call a bad writing THIS and the LTD ugh

Hey Anon.

I don’t think it was bad writing on the devs part. Also a lot of things that show up online are players saying it, not the devs. The Aerith not loving Zack and loving Cloud thing is one of those things that gets spread around the internet. There are non-canon sources that are used for a lot of these things too.

I think they purposely made things vague. I don’t think Aerith fell madly in love with Cloud, either, but I think she developed feelings for him initially because he reminded her of Zack and then as they journeyed she realized he wasn’t “him” and wanted to get to know him since she started to like him. Love is a word thrown around that I think is too strong here. Interest, attraction, infatuation may be more appropriate.

And in Aerith’s case, she was in denial about Zack. So that’s why she acts like she does in the OG park scene. Like oh well, it wasn’t serious, haha I totally don’t miss him and worry he may have died or something. It’s easier to think he ran off with another woman than he’s dead. Which is permanent.. And then it’s option to find out later that she actually was in love with him. They just get that out right away in Remake and it’s not optional to find out.

In game, Aerith never comes out and says she’s in love with Cloud. She says she wants to get to know the real him (in a vague way). There are other post-game materials that make it seem like she loved Cloud, but I believe when she’s thinking of it, Zack actually materializes and she realizes that she actually does love Zack, and her thought of loving Cloud was because he was acting like Zack. Most of the lines and things she does during Chapter 8 are call backs to Crisis Core and things Zack said. She’s messing with him - and it’s hilarious at times.

The whole love triangle was there to push the illusion aspect of the first part of the game where Cloud is assuming a false persona. They wanted the player to also get attached to Aerith, so they tried to get this to work. Personally I never saw a romantic connection between Cloud and Aerith, but I know many did, so that’s fine. It doesn’t really change the story much either way, since it ends the same either way.

It wasn’t meant to be obvious - they wanted the player to think about it. Okay, so we have a guy who we find out isn’t himself, they want you to think back about everything that happened before he gets his true self back and wonder what implications that has. How do people deal with death? Also the fact that death is permanent. You can’t revive people (like really dead people, not KO’d people).

Except most of the people who played FFVII when it first came out were young teens... who had no real good concept of life in general (though we all thought we did, because that’s what 13 year olds do). So we got stuck on certain concepts and assumed we were still supposed to make the choices.

You notice that there’s a lot of player choice early on while Cloud isn’t really Cloud. Then it stops when he’s back. Part of the illusion - you are SOLDIER Cloud. You are the one making decisions for him. Once you go through the Lifestream (and even before that, really) that’s done. You no longer can make choices for him that are story impacting. Choices on who to bring in battle don’t count for this... So who goes where in the final dungeon isn’t Cloud choosing who he’s in love with.

Cloud tells us who he’s in love with. If you think about it, the writing is actually genius, especially if it works that you think you love Aerith. They completely shatters the illusion on you and it starts in the Northern Crater before Cloud gives Sephiroth the Black Materia.

And you start going down the WTF IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW! path. I know I did. Not because of romance, but because you’re playing as a guy who you think is just a little goofy and has weird flashbacks, but he’s the protagonist so cool, but then they’re like “Yeah, he’s not really him btw, oh and he’s gonna cause Meteor to be summoned.”

THE MAIN CHARACTER! THE HERO! THE PROTAGONIST! is the one being controlled to help ruin the world.

Then you think he’s dead. And you’re left in a daze, much like Tifa is when she first wakes up. You find out more about what happened when Tifa ran in to him in Sector 7 at first. You find out she has a hard time dealing with confrontation and dealing with how to handle many situations. She wakes up after a few days and you’re faced with execution and you’re still like W T F IS GOING ON!?

THEN the Lifestream happens. It’s a wild ride. You’re like okay, so he is actually in love with the girl he made the promise to. If you’re not familiar with the childhood friend romance trope (I wasn’t), then this may or may not surprise you.

I think the best reveal in the game is when you find out Cloud was the Shinra grunt that was with you during the flashback. That blew my mind the first time and I think I went back in to my daze of WTF IS GOING ON again. I still get chills when he takes his helmet off and the Main Theme plays. Ugh. So good.

So I think it’s genius. However, I think the audience was too young and not used to this type of story where they make you believe it’s up to you, but TWIST it’s not. They never get over the first part. They miss the point of her death, they miss the point of the persona illusion shattering. And by not used to, I mainly speak for western audiences.

I do think that things early on feel forced with trying to get you the like Aerith - but they don’t have much time. Also, many things are left out in these games, especially around this time. Xenogears suffered majorly for this in the second part of the game. They removed a lot of playable time and instead you read story. I enjoyed it - it really does make the story feel more filled out BUT it’s a video game, not a book, so a lot of people were mad about it.

They cut, change, and do things to get these games released on time or to fix ratings problems. The localization of FFVII was awful - it’s one of the big topic on how badly the game was translated and there are ones that directly helped to start the LTD. I don’t think that’s a thing anymore as much as it was back then. They took their time on FFVII Remake and it shows. They really fleshed things out for me, especially with Avalanche, Tifa and Aerith’s friendship, and how Cloud really is with Tifa - something that was very hard to convey in the OG since most of his stuff is shown through facial expressions and how he says things (voice acting).

Like the above screenshot is probably what made most people start going down the Horny Jail - Cloti Wing path. That scene was intense. They would have never been able to get that across in OG.

Unless they had a text box pop up that said “Cloud and Tifa roll off the train together and look at each other longingly for a moment and you totally could show this picture to somebody who’s never played this game and they’d think they about to get down.”

#ff7 #final fantasy 7 #cloti #cloud strife #ff7 story #the illusion of cloud strife #ff7r #final fantasy 7 spoilers #ff7 spoilers #ff7r spoilers

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theaspers · 4 years ago

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Zara! I just got back from a short trip. In a perpetual state of i want to do fuck all 😑 but I really should focus n do things. How are u? Anything random u want to share? My face n upper body r quite sunburnt lol so I've been a hermit trying to recover 😂 thanks for the well wishes on the job hunting. My mood on that journey is like ⬆️↗️➡️↘️⬇️↙️⬅️↖️🤣

I revisited hades after u replied! N spoilers: I got past elysium n then died to the Chambers (items got so expensive n it's multiple pathways to find cerb's treat lol n the poison...) butttttt I came back like next run n got hades to like 1/3 of his health and then died!!!! I'm pretty chuffed tho. I know now heueueue. And I MET THAN! GORGEOUS SOFT DEATH BOI. His voice man 🥰 BTW r zag n than half brothers that share hades as their father? But he cute that ain't no lie. I um am assuming u finished at least one complete run so I hope I ain't spoiling anything? I'm really sorry if I did. Third fury sister met too heueu.

Lololol I'm not really shitting on luci's yukata haha. Tbh I've been into kpop n Korean shows for yearsssss so I feel like nothing really fazes me too much? It's funny seeing ppl shit on Satan so much but I'm like honestly it doesn't hurt my eyes that badly. N his Pepsi yukata looks pre good. Not the worst by a looooooongggg shot. I hope the devs fix up the wonkiness of obey me cuz otherwise they will keep losing players n awesome content creators. V understandable tho. That's also why I probably won't play om and genshin cuz gacha, too stressful n it's kinda nice just evolving the charas by headcanons n imagination alone. The lore is v noice tho. Have u read the genshin manga?

Hahaha it's a good thing I thought of u. The fic does have some grammatical errors (I went back to read it again hehe) but it's just so soft n realistic to me that I thought u might like it. Probably ooc for Thea tho sorry. It's alright if u never get to it or don't like it!

Aww my ask got ate up huh. I sent it in the morning after u recommended achilles to me. It just said that the song is so fucking good. So cathartic n would've been such a help several yrs ago when I was going thru some shit. I love the lyrics, the sound...it's very soothing n I love it a lot. I hope to find more English songs that have such beautiful n haunting lyrics. I'm trying not to make the ask too long so I've dumbed the original ask down a lot. It's going to be long anyways 🙃

I asked about any personal hcs u wanted to share? Mine were that I would call Lucifer: Luce Luce or Luci haha. N I would greet him by saying Luci....fer after making eye contact with his brothers above his shoulder but he would be glaring at me anyways. Ever perceptive Luci. I would like to mess around Belphie by calling him Moo Moo 🤭 I hc that once close, I would go around the dining table every morning n give each bro some individual loving. Some nuzzles, cheek kiss ya know n get to Belphie like wut up moo moo? Lplolol thanks for letting me ramble haha this is sort of embarrassing. Can u tell my love language is physical touch 💖

Haha no worries about ur messy blog tho. I love the stuff u reblog. Some legit quality content n it's so amusing seeing the juxtaposition between the sfw n the NSFW. Ur duality zara never fails to make me laugh. If u want u can guess my height. What vibes do I give off? I have a feeling my answer will make u v happy ☺️ ALSO DUDE UR FIRST LANG AIN'T ENGLISH? WAT IS THIS BLASPHEMY? THAT'S SO FUCKIN IMPRESSIVE. KUDOS TO U SON. Wow. damn. U. R. So. Cool. 🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️ Ahem finally much love to Luci anon. Better reinstate their rightful emojis hehe. Thanks for letting me visit again 💙 - (not a) worker lurker

long answer so under a cut hehe.

hey there!! sorry i took so long to reply shsjs but anw hope you’ve been doing well. i have been doing alright too? i guess? lol i have no idea. i’m simply just vibing. i hope the sunburn’s not bothering u as much anymore though! and still wishing you lots of luck on the job hunting front!

oooh, glad to hear that you’ve made some progress on hades! you’re not spoiling anything at all so don’t worry hehe. i wish you luck on your future runs, you can do it!! (side note: those stupid rats. i swear. i hate them so much 😭) AHH THAN!! isn’t he just so precious? 🥺 like i realise he is death but he’s so. soft 🥺 and no!! afaik they’re not related lol i think nyx might have just. made him and hypnos? they grew up together tho, i think. oooh, love the fury sisters. they’re very interesting hehe. definitely missed playing the game but i’m still not in the mood to play it unfortunately. i miss zag tho. and hypnos. ugh one day i’ll pick it back up again 🥺😭

shdjd same tho. and ur right. after seeing all the kpop idol outfits, nothing fazes me anymore. plus i don’t think their outfits are the worst thing ever tbh :’) ugh, i agree. the main route itself is getting harder to play and the non-stop events are tiring. i want to hope that they slow down a lil bit but idk. kinda doubt they will. and the obm gacha rate is terrible but at the end of the day, it is gacha, right? :’) genshin is horrible gacha wise but there’s always a lot to do, and places to explore. plus they’re still updating the game so i’m sure it’ll remain relevant for a little while longer. i haven’t read the manga fully but i have seen bits and pieces, and some screenshots. diluc and kaeya look amazing in them 😭

oof yeah, i still love listening to achilles come down. it’s so good!! definitely very cathartic. i’m glad you enjoy it too. 🥰

ahaha, ngl i just always call him luci tbh. i know he probably doesn’t like it. but like lucifer is just a mouthful to say sometimes hehe i just know he’ll get his revenge on u for calling him that tho. belphie moo moo shdjd that’s kinda cute?? hmm. i don’t think i have nicknames for them tbh? :0 just kinda. shorten their names lol. and there’s nothing wrong with having physical touch as ur love language!! hehe i think that’s cute. i’m sure they enjoy the show of affection anw. i think i would just be way too shy to do anything like that tho :’)

ik people tell me they enjoy the messiness but sometimes i scroll through and get so embarrassed 😭 like i would like to not be perceived, please and thank u. but i’m glad that u enjoy my blog, regardless 😭 your height? :0 oof that’s a bit tough. you don’t radiate short ppl energy. wanna say ur probably average height shdkd and no, that’s definitely not me projecting my own height onto other people :’)

yeah, english isn’t my first language shdjd 😭 but i have been speaking/learning it for a while now. doesn’t matter tho, i still makes mistakes occasionally ahdjd but i’ve stopped caring lolol luci anon has yet to pop up again but it’s okay hehe they’ll get back their rights eventually hehe oh, and thank you for dropping by!! much love 💖💖💖

#oof this was long shdjd #but thank u tho for the ask. always nice catching up w u #answered #lurker anon #long post

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thesims4blogger · 4 years ago

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SimGurus Talk The Sims 4 Star Wars Journey to Batuu Game Pack

SimGurus took to Twitter to respond to questions regarding the upcoming Sims 4 Game Pack, Star Wars Journey to Batuu.

Me. I decided it was a good idea and I'm super excited about it! We are working on multiple projects at any given time and this is the one we are sharing right now.

— Lyndsay Pearson (@SimGuruLyndsay) September 1, 2020

We make a lot of different themes to support different ways to play The Sims. I understand this pack may not be for you but we work on many different things at the same time and though this may not address the feedback directly it does not mean we are ignoring the feedback.

— Lyndsay Pearson (@SimGuruLyndsay) September 1, 2020

Totally see your POV. I don't think The Sims has to be ONLY one or the other though. Part of life can be raising toddlers and part of life can be taking my sim family on an adventure.

— Lyndsay Pearson (@SimGuruLyndsay) September 1, 2020

That’s a good question! We have an incredible design team that explores lots of different pack and update ideas. Those ideas are then pitched and we have a process by which we decide what does/does not go forward. Many factors weigh in to that process but as EP, I’m responsible.

— Lyndsay Pearson (@SimGuruLyndsay) September 2, 2020

I mean, she certainly didn't twist our arm (the dev team) to make this. WE LOVE THIS PACK! Super proud of the end result and can't wait to see what players come up with!

— Dave Miotke (@SimGuruNinja) September 1, 2020

But are debug items named? Or just thrown under debug “no name” as usual? You know there is mod which is fixing this naming “bug” already 🌚 pic.twitter.com/uhKMO605px

— 🥦foxy_simsy🐙 (@FoxySimsy) September 1, 2020

Well... Star Wars Journey to Batuu DOES have a new picnic table so brace yourself. 🤣

— Dave Miotke (@SimGuruNinja) September 3, 2020

quietly whispers.... more BB and CAS in this pack than any other gamepack. Debug is pretty fun.

— Dave Miotke (@SimGuruNinja) September 3, 2020

Sabacc is played on the new table and it can be enjoyed at home or on Batuu.

— Dave Miotke (@SimGuruNinja) September 3, 2020

The sounds are really cool too. In fact, overall the audio in this pack is out of... control. (see how I held my self back from the really bad "outta this world" dad joke? this is a big growth day for me)

— Dave Miotke (@SimGuruNinja) September 3, 2020

That's it for now guys!

#the sims 4 #ts4 #sims 4 #star wars journey to batuu #game pack

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eri-blogs-life · 4 years ago

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There was, of course, a fair amount of controversy around the time of Pokemon Sword/Shield’s release regarding Dexit, among other issues. When they first came out, I played Shield version, and had an okay time. Now, having put some space between the game’s release and the present, I decided to pick back up and try playing Sword version to see if my feelings changed any. Was it more than just okay? Or worse than I’d thought before?

I have a lot of notes on thoughts I had during this adventure, and I’m going to try to structure these thoughts in some way but idk how exactly. Some are fairly minor thoughts, but some are definitely going to require a more in-depth writeup. Also, for context, I only played through the base game, not the DLC. I probably will play through again to try out the DLC but I didn’t want to buy the DLC just yet.

Why Can’t Pokemon Follow You Anymore? AKA Iteration vs Innovation

Pokemon has a problem with getting any better as a series. Especially in the last few versions, we’ve really seen this coming to light - while early on, updates to graphics and gameplay (like the physical/special split) made each new generation feel like an evolution of the previous one’s gameplay, somewhere around gen 6 it really started to show that the series isn’t focused on evolution quite so much anymore. Sure, there’s still been some updates to mechanics and some graphical updates, but those have all been minor since, or completely dropped after that generation.

Mega Evolution, Z-Moves, and now Dynamaxing are all part of this problem. They are cool new ideas that add to the mechanics of the pokemon games, but are ultimately dropped in the next generation. They are gimmicks, meant to drive sales and engagement with any particular game in the series, but which don’t serve to elevate the series as a whole particularly well.

Generally speaking, it feels like the direction the Pokemon developers want to go with the games is more in coming up with some cool gimmick as a temporary measure rather than creating new core growth to the series that could be iterated upon in future versions to create better games with each new one. While Gold and Silver definitely felt like an evolution of Red and Blue, and Ruby and Sapphire yet again an evolution of Gold and Silver, with the games slowly becoming more advanced and better with each generation, I can’t really say that I feel like SwSh is any better than Sun/Moon, or Sun/Moon is really any better than X/Y. They are different, and have some small new iterations to the previous formula, but they don’t feel all that much better, just different.

Grinding bosses, AKA Diagetic Fail States

Diagesis is always a fun topic to talk about in video games. I was watching a video the other day about Sekiro and how it uses a lot of similar gameplay structures to other FromSoft games, like a diagetic fail state - when you die in Sekiro, that’s a part of the story. You don’t game over. There is no way to get a game over in a FromSoft game, as your character can never truly die.

Pokemon is definitely neat in how it is a series that has also always had a diagetic fail state - when you die, you retreat to the last pokemon center you were at, keeping any experience gained but losing your physical progress towards your next destination. However, each time you faint while traveling down a new route, you make the progress a little easier for yourself the next time, by both gaining experience for your team and defeating some of the trainers along the path.

However, this diagetic fail state doesn’t always make sense in Pokemon’s design, and I think the Championship in SwSh really brings that to the forefront. If your team faints while fighting a gym leader or while fighting in the championship or against the Champion, you don’t fail your gym challenge. You just retreat and come back to try again. This isn’t acknowledged in any way in-game. Leon has the same dialogue no matter how many times you fight him. Every time you fight him is the first time you fight him, no matter how many times you’ve been knocked out and had to retreat to the pokemon center. It creates a significant divide in the experience the game’s mechanics are giving you and the story they are trying to tell.

In the story, after helping stop the Darkest Day, you challenge the League Champion and claim your spot as the new champion. But in the gameplay, you have infinite tries to bash your head against the wall that is Leon, and the Championship will never end unless you end it.

I think the diagetic fail state pokemon normally has, wherein when you faint you go back to the last pokemon center, makes a lot of sense both mechanically and in terms of the world of pokemon. The world of pokemon is built in no small part to support this diagetic fail state. However, there are certain events, like fights with Team Leaders, Legendary Pokemon, or the Champion, where that diagetic fail state is incomplete.

How could pokemon fix this? I think the big thing would be to have two sets of dialogue for at least major antagonists, like the Team Leaders or the Champion, where they give you one set of dialogue the first time you fight them and a different set on future fights, if you lost the previous fight. And changing any cutscenes surrounding fights with Legendaries, like the fight against Eternatus in SwSh, to have different dialogue if you lost the fight at least once, could help explain why the legendary hasn’t already gone and done their nasty world-ending attack that the story often seems to set them up to be going through with.

It’s not a perfect solution, I think, but that seems like the simplest solution to resolve this weird discrepancy between the fail state that exists in gameplay and that which exists in story, one admitting the player failed but giving them a chance to try again, and the other simply pretending that the player didn’t even fight the legendary that would cause massive global destruction if it wasn’t defeated then and there.

The Legendary Problem, AKA Story-Driven vs Player-Driven Game Design

Speaking of legendaries... What even is a Legendary Pokemon? Mewtwo, Ho-oh, Lugia, Groudon, Kyogre, Palkia, Dialga, the three dogs, the three birds, the three regis. These are all legendaries. They are powerful and rare pokemon that exist in their particular game/region. But their existence and their purpose has steadily changed over time.

Early on, legendaries were truly that - legendary. To own a mewtwo in red and blue was one hell of a feat, because it took a lot of work to find it and a lot of work to catch it (unless you used a master ball). But things started changing around Crystal version, but especially in Ruby and Sapphire. Legendaries became less of a rare thing that was out there somewhere, as some kind of legend, and became more integral into the stories of pokemon, and representative in some way of the story that the developers were trying to tell. Groudon isn’t really all that legendary, as you’re guaranteed to encounter them in the normal course of gameplay of R/S, but it’s important that Groudon be encountered in the story because Ruby and Sapphire is a set of games all about environmentalism, and Groudon and Kyogre serve as metaphors for the natural balance of our environment.

And this is part of a greater discussion on the direction of the pokemon series as a whole. Over time, Pokemon has become less about the journey that you are on as a player, with your pokemon, and more about telling some kind of a greater story with the world as a whole, where the player character serves as a vehicle for the player to see the story that is going on.

Sure, Red and Blue had a world story, but in no small part it felt not like you were being funneled into partaking in a story, and more like you were building your adventure while you traveled. There was a sense of discovery in Red and Blue, like the region of Kanto had a lot of hidden away pockets of existence that just weren’t known to the populace as a whole. But by the time of the Galar region, even the wilderness is carefully curated and sanctioned off. The Wild Area exists as just a singular place, but it is full of bridges and other man-made structures clearly indicating that this place isn’t really wilderness.

And absolutely a part of this comes from me now being an adult and having played many pokemon games before. And certainly my nostalgia for the older games is playing a part in this reading, and I’d like to return to red and blue soon to see if this really holds up quite so well.

But overall, it feels like the direction that the pokemon franchise is taking in recent games strays further and further from the original intention of the pokemon franchise. The story is that the idea for pokemon was developed because the original creator missed his childhood adventures of going out into the woods and catching beetles, an experience one just couldn’t get while living in the city. Pokemon feels like it’s straying further and further away from that sense of a player-driven exploration-focused adventure, and more into a constructed narrative.

The Wild Area was a step in the right direction. And if I understand right, the DLC areas are in their entirety Wild Areas where you can just wander around freely encountering wild pokemon and trainers. With all hope, the developers are coming to a similar conclusion I have, that the core appeal of pokemon is in that sense of exploration, adventure, and finding new things.

(Though, to be fair, not everyone would think of that as the core appeal of pokemon, anyway! Different people are into different aspects of the series, and of games as a whole - some people are completionists, some are explorers, some appreciate a good story, and some are super-competitive. Everyone experiences games differently. And while the pokemon dev team has done has a lot to make things better for different styles of play, my hope is that they can give explorers like myself more to look forward to in future entries in the series.)

Other Notes

Alright, so that gets through all the big stuff. With that, let’s just talk quickly about some other little notes I had while I was playing!

There’s way too much dialogue, and it’s not very interesting.

Pokemon are definitely still very very cute and I love them and I love this franchise as a whole.

I loved when X/Y added fashion but really the clothes in Galar feels not great? There’s not a lot of options, and it’s mostly just the same couple of styles in different colors. So I was really unimpressed. I think the DLCs add a lot more clothing options, though? So that’ll be exciting to try out later on.

The whole thing with time freezing whenever you get on a ladder is still really really silly

The gym missions are real neat. They are definitely just kind of an expansion on the totem challenges from sun/moon, and I really like where they’re going with challenges that aren’t purely about fighting like older gyms were. (Look at me, talking about how this one innovation to the core gameplay is so great when I was just earlier complaining about their gimmicky way of not really innovating on the core gameplay. I don’t think this totally changes my opinion from earlier, but it does kind of. They are making changes, but just very slowly)

Why force players to wear the gym uniform during gym missions? Like, I worked so hard to buy my own fancy clothes and they won’t even let me show off my clothes to the whole of the Galar region during my fight against the champion. Horribly game design

Honestly, the whole dexit controversy. Like... I still don’t think the pokemon company were in the right, and they really should just delay main-series games until they are complete rather than trying to release on such a tight yearly schedule.

I miss Victory Road. Having to put all your skills and knowledge you’ve gained up to that point together for one final grueling challenge was just a really nice way to bring together the whole experience into a neat little package at the end. I guess since especially SwSh is more focused on the gym challenge and the spectacle of that rather than on giving you an exploratory adventure to go on, it kinda makes sense that instead we get a short linear route followed by a series of fighting your rivals and refighting some gym leaders before the Champion.

The Champion fight definitely feels way harder than any of the other fights. It’s got a decent bump in levels compared to the previous fight, and I think that’s... well, it’s kind of cool cause it does really make Leon feel impressive. But also like, at that point there aren’t any great places to just grind to catch up to him so I ended up grinding by just challenging him over and over until I happened to win one time, which largely happened by luck, not by my team’s strength or my stratetgies. Maybe the best way for this to have happened was having the player start to fight Leon, but then have that fight get interrupted after the first pokemon was knocked out, rather than interrupting the championship right before the fight with Leon. That way we could’ve seen Leon’s team in action and gotten a sense of how much stronger than the player he would’ve been at that point. Then, you could’ve gone out to train against the wilds and prepare yourself for your final battle.

But of course, following up on the last point and making this its own point, the only reason I did struggle at points was because I didn’t much take advantage of everything the game had to offer. I never once used a healing item in battle, I never used any rare candies nor did I ever dynamax any of my pokemon. I did use a couple of experience candies, but I only ever did three dynamax raids during the course of my game, so I didn’t have a ton of candies to use anyway. If I’d taken full advantage of everything Galar had to offer to buff up my pokemon, I would’ve absolutely bodied Leon. Instead it was a tough fight that was doable after a few tries and some luck.

Overall, I’d say Pokemon Sword and Shield are an okay time. The game didn’t excel relative to my last time I played Shield near when they came out, and it doesn’t excel compared to past games in the franchise. It’s also not particularly bad compared to my first time or past pokemon games, though it definitely has its fair share of problems.

And of course, let us not forget the greatest tragedy of Pokemon Sword and Shield:

The best pokemon in Galar, Snom and Frosmoth, just aren’t that strong.

EDIT: one last note, here’s my final team that took on Leon with me

Dirt, my Runerigus, was someone I caught to fight against the fighting gym, and became an integral part of the team ever since.

Clara, my octopus thingy whose species name I forget, is nicknamed after my character from a wrestling tabletop rpg my group recently played.

Charlene, my Dubwool, was the mascot of the team from the very beginning. I caught her as soon as I could and quickly put my starter into the box

Pepper, my Shiftry, was in its third stage evolution before I even fought the first gym. I’d caught him as a Seedot early on, and he evolved into a Nuzleaf on the route before the town with the first gym. And in the town with the first gym, you can find a Leaf Stone just sitting around, so I evolved him before we went in to face the gym

Cooper, my Obstagoon, was someone I always thought I’d end up replacing, but just kept sticking around and proving herself more and more useful. In the end, it was her with her moves of Night Slash, Thunderpunch, and Icepunch, that was able to tank and take out like three of Leon’s pokemon

:3, my frosmoth, was a late addition to the team but absolutely beloved. He may have been pretty weak overall, but he pulled out a couple of clutch victories and I couldn’t be prouder of his time with the team.

#eri blogs games #whew this is... a big one #a long post if you will #i had a lot of thoughts about my latest single-player gaming experience #pokemon #pokemon sword and shield

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scripting-life · 4 years ago

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FFVII: returning to my first love

*peeks out of the corner of my lurking spot*

Hello? Anybody out there? It’s only been, oh you know, four-ish years since the last time I’ve posted anything here. I apologize in advance for anybody who’s still following me from my Castle days. If you couldn’t tell from my extended absence, I’ve mostly moved on. Castle and Beckett were fantastic characters that let me to play with some deep-dive analyses, and Castle will always hold a special place in my heart as my comfort show and my first real and extended experience with online fandom. I’ll always be grateful to the community I’ve had the joy of interacting with (or, the community with which I’ve had the joy of interacting, as Castle would correct me my dangling preposition).

I honestly didn’t think I would ever have reason to come back to Tumblr after Castle ended. But the FF7 Remake has returned me to my very first love--when I was young and innocent and before I knew anything about OTPs or ship wars. I’ve been back lurking for several months now and seeing all the fanart/fanfics and fun theories and analyses has reignited my enthusiasm for the FF7 franchise. It’s also fun coming back to this franchise with a more mature understanding of the themes/concepts that completely flew over my head as a young preteen.

(This ended up being super long, so the rest is below the cut to spare everyone the pain of scrolling. Apparently, my rambling tendencies have not changed at all. lol.)

When FF7R was officially announced (five freaking years ago!), I was filled with apprehension. FF7 was my first taste of a “grown-up” game. I was 11 and played my brother’s copy of the OG on PC in 1-2 hours spurts on the weekends when I visited his apartment. It took me months, if not years, to finish the game (I ended up stealing his copy to play on our computer at home...lol), and I was so blown away by it. I remember the exact moment I finished it and how I was literally shaking as I watched the ending FMV.

Later, when I found out my brother had a copy of FF8 (my poor brother was so accommodating to his annoying little sister...haha), I was so excited to play, in large part because I thought it would continue the story of FF7. Young, naive me didn’t understand the numbering conventions of Final Fantasy titles. I was madly theorizing and breaking my brain trying to find connections between the two games’ plots and had literally played through more than half the game before I finally realized the storyline of FF8 had absolutely nothing to do with FF7. I was sorely disappointed, and I think that has somewhat tainted my appreciation of future titles. Not to say I haven’t enjoyed the subsequent FF titles, but I think a little part of me is always comparing them to that first experience of wonder and awe that I had with FF7.

I discovered fanfiction in my teens and starting writing FF7/Cloti fics in college. Aside from interacting with a few fic writers at the time, I was not involved in any online communities, so I kept myself pretty free of any ship war drama and the like. When I did research for my fics, I’d sometimes see shipping sites and theories where I didn’t always understand the logic of how certain conclusions were reached, but frankly, I didn’t much care and didn’t realize that Clerith vs. Cloti was such a touchy subject. I was peripherally aware that some sort great LTD war was waging, of course, but it didn’t really touch me. I stayed in my Cloti shipping/fic-writing lane and was probably a lot happier for it. And, to be honest, based on FFN’s listings for FF7, I felt like I always saw a bunch of Sephiroth/Cloud fics and thought that was just as popular as the more conventional ships.

Graduating college and entering “real life” pretty much ended my FF7 fanfic-writing journey. In the intervening years between college and the release of FF7R, I haven’t gone back to the OG too much. I’ve played almost all the Final Fantasy games since then, and I always enjoy getting my FF7 crew fix when I play the non-canon mobile games or the Kingdom Hearts franchise. But FF7 was a happy part of my teenage years, and I was content to think on it with sweet nostalgia.

Remakes, in recent experience (*cough cough* Disney, why?), have been hit or miss, with a lot of misses. It’s hard to strike a good balance between catering to nostalgia and delivering a fresh product, never mind the change in social mores through the decades. I was so afraid FF7R would screw up my memories, especially since I wasn’t the biggest fan of Advent Children. The graphics were great and the action scenes were fun, but the story felt like a let-down. Cloud, in particular, felt so different (and yes, moody) from where we left him after the OG. I understand now that a lot of his character motivation was better explained in the On The Way to a Smile novels, but back then, I just felt like AC came out of nowhere.

Btw, because I see this question a lot on other blogs when I’m lurking, I’ve ALWAYS thought that it was very clear in AC--even without reading anything else--that the reason for Cloud’s depression was due to guilt and not because he was pining for Aerith. The only reason I didn’t like his characterization in AC was because it felt like it came out of nowhere since AC is set 2 years after OG and by the end of the OG, he seemed to be in a pretty decent place mentally and emotionally. That being said, I can absolutely understand why some traumas resurface years after the originating incident and how times of peace might actually be worse because he is no longer solely focused on saving the world, but I was just surprised and a little bummed that this was the direction the devs chose to take AC at the time. Now that I’m older, I do better appreciate the complexities of Cloud’s mental state and the fact that they depicted a hero with lingering mental health issues is actually pretty awesome. I’m drawn to characters that have flaws--sometimes serious ones--but try their best anyway. Hence, why why Tifa Lockhart and Kate Beckett are some of my all-time favorites.

Anyhow, that didn’t stop me from pre-ordering FF7R, of course. I avoided reading any reviews as I didn’t want my first impressions to be swayed, and boy, was I happy that I went in mostly blind. That sense of awe really almost felt like playing the OG for the first time again, but somehow more. The combat system is incredibly fun and the world-building is nothing short of incredible. The variety and abundance of NPCs gives the game so much flavor and the locations have been rendered so well. As I’m going through areas like the Sector 7 train station and Wall Market and Aerith’s house, I can almost superimpose the layout from the OG in my head, but now it’s in 3D and so rich and full. It’s obvious that a lot of attention was paid to details, and I love all the head-nods and homages to the OG.

And oh, the characters!

This is the Cloud I’ve been wanting to see in glorious HD and the Cloud I remember from the original game: all awkward, dorky trying to be cool, socially inept, mentally unstable, abrasive-at-times, reluctant to act depending on who’s asking, wannabe hard-ass who’s actually a big softie inside Cloud. I remember reading an article a few years back about how the devs basically redid Cloud for the Remake because they wanted him to go back to his dorky roots--which ends up making him closest to his personality in the OG than his appearances in other franchises--and I was SOOOO incredibly happy to hear that. I was so sick of the way Cloud was constantly depicted as this cool, broody McBrood in his cameos when he was a pretty big dork in the OG. (Anybody remember him doing squats in the Highwind when Tifa says it’ll be lonely with just the two of them and Cloud responds that he’ll make enough noise to make up for it? Like I said: cute, but a dork.)

I WAS surprised by how comfortable and sweet and touchy (so very very touchy) the devs made him with Tifa from the beginning. That initial scene of Cloud being such a smooth operator giving Tifa the flower had my jaw-dropping and every single flirty interaction after that (and there are many) had my Cloti heart overflowing in shock and bliss. Throughout most of my years as a Cloti shipper, even though I believed Cloti was supported by canon and pretty clearly together, I was also under the impression--mistakenly or not--that Cloti was the minority ship. So for Square Enix to make it so blatantly obvious that Cloud is really into Tifa at such an early stage has been an unexpected gift.

Also, they’re just really hot together. (Clotiscrew tunnel--be still my heart!)

As for Tifa...oh, what wonderful character development we’ve already gotten for Tifa. Tifa has always been one of my all-time favorite characters ever since reading her character blurb in the OG game manual. Initially, as a child, it was because I saw so much of myself in her. She was outwardly bright and optimistic, but tended to hide all of her stronger feelings inside. She fought with her fists, and for someone who was a tomboy growing up who liked playing contact sports with the boys, I connected with her in a way that I had never been able to connect with other female protagonists who were primarily back-row specialists. (I also aspired to grow to her listed height of 5′4″, which alas, did not happen...lol).

I love how the Remake delves into more of Tifa’s moral conflict between the destruction that she causes as part of Avalanche and needing to do something to stop Shinra, and yes, even seeking revenge. They touched on this in the OG lightly, but the Remake really hammers it home. She’s perhaps the most conflicted character in terms of motivation in Part 1. That scene with the Shinra manager on the train is actually one of my favorite scenes of her because it highlights that tension. The elevator scene, if you opted for it instead of the stairs (or if you did one, saved, and reloaded to do the other one, like me), is also underrated in terms of how much it reveals about Tifa’s inner struggle.

On this point, I also appreciate that the Remake has the characters reflecting on the damage they’ve both indirectly and directly inflicted--the Avalanche team all do this to a certain degree. In particular, Jessie’s constant inability to figure out what she’d done wrong with the bomb to cause such a massive explosion and her remaining feelings of guilt during her death scene (”they were my victims” ouch!) were heart-breaking.

Aerith’s depiction was another pleasant surprise. I’ll be honest; I didn’t much like her in the OG. She was too pushy and willfully oblivious to the point of being mean at times. In the Remake, much of her sometimes too in-your-face playfulness was kept--perhaps still a little too much--but I appreciate the nuance that they gave her. The train graveyard scene tells the player that she didn’t have friends growing up, and I think that partially contributes to her lack of social tact at times. The other factor that gives her personality more nuance is the hint of special knowledge that affects how she interacts with the rest of the group. It gives her additional hidden motivation and adds to her mystery for new players while simultaneously pulling at the heartstrings for old players who get the impression that Aerith is somehow aware--to a certain, unknown extent--of her own fate.

I also appreciate that Aerith is more grounded as a real person than as some sort of revered being. I do blame AC for some of that. When you have the power to cure a fatal disease from the afterlife and send the dead back to life, it gets into some godlike territory. Maybe it’s a fair depiction of her powers as a Cetra, but I just get the feeling that Aerith herself wouldn’t really appreciate being made into this goddess-like figure. Remember that her character blurb in the original game manual implied that she was more interested in earthly things (i.e. the love triangle) than in exploring her own powers. I personally think that Aerith used the “love triangle” in the OG as a form of escapism from the weight of her burdens rather than genuine interest, and I just think she’d want to be thought of as a person rather than as a god. One of my favorite scenes for Aerith is when she and Cloud are traversing the rooftops and she slips on the ladder, letting out a simple, “Shit.” It humanizes her in a way that combats some of the ways she’s sort of been deified in the last 23 years. Also, Aerith wielding a folding chair like it’s WWE never fails to make me laugh. Overall, she just comes off as a more reasonably flawed and--as a result, to me--a more likeable character in the Remake, and I do very much like her now.

Barret is pretty much the exact larger than life character I imagined in my head, only somehow even better, and I really love how expressive and emotional his eyes and facial expressions are. His scenes with Marlene are truly the cutest thing ever. Red XIII is a big, furry ball of sass, and I need so much more of him in the coming parts (Cosmo Canyon still wrecks me to this day). The interactions between the Wedge, Biggs, and Jessie are incredible, and they really feel like people who’ve been friends and basically each other’s family for years. The Turks and Rufus are pretty much as cool as I imagined them in the OG.

There’s still so much more I haven’t even started touching on about the Remake, and I think that’s why I’m finally posting this now. I just can’t contain my love for this game any more, and I really really need a place to express myself. I don’t know if anybody is still reading, but I appreciate having the opportunity to finally gush about this game and franchise that I’ve loved so much for pretty much two-thirds of my life.

#ff7r #final fantasy 7: remake #cloti #cloud x tifa #cloud strife #tifa lockhart #final fantasy vii #final fantasy 7 #ff7 #aerith gainsborough #jessie rasberry #barret wallace #red xiii #for the love of the game #personal experience #not sure i'm ready to wade back into fandom life #but i really needed to gush #oh man i forgot to mention the cats #how could i forget the cats?!?!?

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edge-lorde · 5 years ago

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hp update: its ur favorite tumblr user back at it again with another great post. thats right, as promised here is a more in depth look at the recent dragon themed time sensitive event!

this event takes place in year 6. bill is graduated but has been coming back to the school periodically to teach us bootleg DADA just like harry did in the books. it is on one such occasion that bill lets it slip that his next job from gringotts involves him going to the dragon reserve that we know charlie will eventually work at. bill had not told charlie about this job prior to this discussion precisely because of what happens next, which is that charlie wants to go.

this brings me back to year 4 days with the first charlie focused sidequest, where we scrounged up money to by what may or may not have been a dragon egg (it was not) from a strange man who had been seen trying to approach other unaccompanied minors walking around hogsmeade. this pure of dragon centric heart, but dumb of dragon centric ass quality was what made me start liking charlies character in the game in the first place. he begins negging his older brother in a way that is very familiar to me as a younger sibling. i as the mc of course jump on the bandwagon with charlie immediately.

bill sounds very defeated in this part because he knows the negging wont end, and/or knows that he will eventually cave to charlies demands. “no you cant come.” he says with a sigh.

but well see about that, because charlie and i go ambush bill at work to ask again.

as stated previously bill works at gringotts bank, which is run by goblins. i already had access to the location diagon alley, but before this event gringotts itself was closed to me. newly unlocked, charlie and i walk inside. unlike the hogwarts kitchens, it does not feel like walking into hell for me to do this. unlike house elves which only have 1 basic model used for every elf except for the 1 named elf, there is some variety in the goblin designs. there appears to be one basic goblin face that i can tell, but its paired with several different outfits and hairstyles, giving them the illusion of originality typically spent on unnamed background characters. there are also 3 named goblin characters with all their own stuff.

the first is obviously griphook, the only real goblin character from the books. hes bills supervisor. in the books hes a pretty unlikable guy but here, though hes not nice exactly, he seems at least kind of chill. he doesnt kick charlie or me out for barging in and says its ok for us go on the mission with bill. its nice to see him unstressed.

the other 2 goblins are the perhaps, hopefully, cool ones. one is younger than the rest and has some friendly dialog with you and his other named goblin friend, who possibly exists so the first one has someone to banter with. they dont do anything else this event but gringotts stays open after the event is completed so hopefully they will come back again and get their own plotlines.

anyway, charlie and i harass bill at work for a bit. his boss comes in, hears our plea, and doesnt immediately tell us to leave. instead he tells us the rundown of bills mission: a long time ago a goblin boasted that he could craft a golden dragon egg that would be indistinguishable from the real thing. he did, and it was. so much so that a dragon destroyed his house and stole it, i think he died in the process.

“so,” says griphook, “that is why we must send you, 18 year old we just hired, to go to a remote location filled with dragons by yourself to rifle through their nests and bring back what is rightfully ours. no we dont know which dragon took the egg or even the type. yes you can bring your little brother and his friends.”

sounds legit. charlie and i convince bill to not only let us come with him, but also our other classmates from his DADA class due to scheduling mishaps. we go gather the rest of the class to tell them about this but only merula, penny, and barnaby show up and so only they get to go on the field trip, which is convenient because otherwise wed have half the school out there and that would be entirely too many characters for the devs to write at once.

we borrow the same tent the canon characters will eventually use in all their camping shenanigans in the book from hagrid and get to the dragon reserve via portkey. the reserve now appears on the stairs screen as a permanent new location, not a fleeting one as i once thought. theres dragons flying all around, majestic as hell.

its too late in the day to start searching so we set up camp and settle in, roast marshmallows, barnaby tells a story about a vampire broomstick. then we go inside the tent and play truth or dare. im asked to pick at one point which of my friends id most like to have with me if i were to get lost in the woods. i pick barnaby because hes the one who asked, but really id probably want merula there more. barnaby is supposed to be into dueling but ive never seen him in a real fight. ive seen merula take a Cruciatus curse and then get up and walk. pennys whole thing is potions too. i thought this choice would be relevant to something in the event but it was not.

in the truth or dare game, merula gets bill to tell some embarrassing stories about charlie as a kid. he talks about charlie putting wings on their rat and a dragon mask on their owl, pretending that they are real dragons. everyone laughs. this his a cord with charlie though and he storms out. we wrap up truth or dare and go to bed.

the next day we begin the search.charlie has not come back yet. we realize this and begin freaking out, start looking for him instead. we scare a mother dragon off its nest for unfathomable reasons. eventually we hear charlies voice coming from inside a cave. we go in, charlie is alive and uneaten, but has a broken leg. he ran off to find the egg by himself in order to prove himself as teen boys are wont to do. bill and i then realize the other 3 didnt follow us into the cave, and a big ol dragon walks in. i gotta fight it singlehandedly while bill heals charlie in the back.

the boss fight was actually pretty hard. it took me like 5-6 tries to beat the dang thing thing. much enjoyment many high stakes. i put a sleeping spell on it to stop its attack at the end, though i had the option to use the Cruciatus curse which seems a little intense, game. then the other 3 run in and are like cool your safe! sorry we couldnt help u fight the dragon, there was a dragon. im like “yes, understandable.”

bill had given up on finding the egg at this point, but then charlie finds it! its a gold egg. in retrospect this egg might have been the egg that will inspire the gold egg stealing challenge in hp book 4 but i forget if that was inspired by a story or not.

then we have a cool down level with bill and charlie, where they both apologize, and charlie says what he did was stupid, but i insist its wasnt stupid it was cool and good even though that is factually wrong because thats what i would say in real life regardless. bill and charlie promise to never speak of this trip again, especially not to their mom.

the last level is us going back to gringotts and regaling griphook with the tale of our journey, including the marshmallow and truth or dare bits. he says “great job, teens!” and then we all jump up in the air and the theme song plays as we freeze midair and the colors fade to black and white. we all learned some valuable dragon based lessons today friends. it took me 2 full hours to write this and i have to wake up at 6 tomorrow.

#hp #sirius business #hphm #harry potter hogwarts mystery #hogwats mystery #dragon #charlie weasley #bill weasley #penny haywood #merula snyde #barnaby lee #goblins #goblin #griphook #rambling #Thoughts

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justahockeylover · 5 years ago

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come to brazil - s.knight

authors note // okay so, ‘all my friends’ part two is still in the works, but i want to make it up to y’all with this goalie boy imagine! (not gonna lie, i might like spencer a lot little more than jack oop-) also, thank you so much for all the love on amf, it means so so much to me! this imagine is based off of this song, and it’s for all my foreign girls! i wasn’t born in america, so finding reader inserts for someone who looks like me is hard, so i’m making it easier for other gals like me :)

warning: underage drinking??

word count: 1477

The party was boring, then without warning

Saw something foreign walk through the door

You didn’t even want to come, but your newfound friend Alex said you just had to. Alex and you met in LA a month or two ago, while you were at UCLA filling some paperwork out for the new school year. Once he found out that you actually lived in Michigan, he decided that you and him just had to party together also. I mean, you are going to a school that’s basically known for their partying.

“So, whose party is this?”

You looked at Alex, who was focusing on the road while rolling his eyes.

“Y/N/N, I’ve told you a thousand times, it’s Jack’s party. He’s the one who got drafted first overall.”

Alex didn’t know (partly because he never asked), but you knew quite a lot about hockey. Obviously you knew who Jack was, but you let him think you didn’t just because it was a lot to explain.

The two of you finally made it to Jack’s house, and there were already tons of cars lined up out front. You suddenly got nervous, you had never met any of these people before. What if you made a bad first impression?

“Y/N, calm down,” he rested a hand on your shoulder, “everyone’s gonna love you, don’t worry about it.”

You nodded, getting out of the car and walking over to Alex’s side. Alex moved to cross the yard, you walking right next to his side, while saying hello to a majority of the people standing outside. He opened the door and let you in first, closing it behind the two of you.

“I’m going to go get a drink, you want anything?”

He spoke with a raised voice, the music making it hard to make conversation.

“Sure, I can just come with you though,” he gave you his hand so you didn’t get lost weaving through the large amount of teenagers.

While walking though, you came across the man himself, Jack. Alex left you to introduce yourself, asking what you wanted before going to get drinks for the two of you.

“I’m Y/N,” you extended your hand, expecting him to shake it. He surprised you by grabbing it and pulling you into a hug.

“Any friend of Turcs is a friend of mine, welcome to my party Y/N,” he let you go, smiling down at you.

“Thanks, Jack. It means a lot,” You smiled back at him, searching for Alex.

“You might have to wait a while before you get your drink, though,” he laughed, pointing to Alex, who was just getting started in a game of beer pong.

“Oh boy,” you smiled at him before excusing yourself to go get your drink, assuming Alex would be there for a while.

As you walked to the kitchen, you felt someone’s stare on you. You turned to scan the room, searching for whoever was looking at you, expecting to find Alex’s eyes, but you only met a pair of ocean blue eyes.

You easily recognized him as Spencer Knight, goalie for the U18 team this past season, not to mention a total cutie. To his left was a pretty blonde, talking his ear off, while his eyes were trained on you. He noticed you caught him and looked away, blushing. You giggled, continuing your journey to get a drink from the kitchen. You were pouring you drink when you heard footsteps behind you.

“Hey.”

You turned around, face to fact with Spencer, who was so much prettier up close.

“Oh hey, you’re… Spencer, right?”

He nodded, and went to pour his own drink, making conversation with you while doing so, “That’s me, and you’re…”

“I’m Y/N,” you smiled at him, and he did the same.

“So, who did you come with? I haven’t see you at one of Jack’s parties before,” he sipped his drink, making eye contact with you.

“Alex, actually. I met him in LA, and he wanted me to meet his friends,” you saw his face fall a little, “but we’re not together or anything, he just ran into me at a Starbucks one day. Literally I had coffee on my clothes for the rest of the day.”

Spencer laughed, the noise sounding like music to your ears, “Sounds like something Turcs would do. Go to Cali for dev camp and spill coffee on a pretty girl.”

You blushed, which wasn’t something that happened too often.

“Anyway, Alex was telling us that you’re actually (Asian/Hispanic/etc).”

You quickly nodded, “Yeah, all of my mom and/or dad’s side is from there.”

“That’s so cool. You know, I could tell that you were different from all the other girls here when I first saw you.”

You raised an eyebrow, “Oh yeah? How so?”

“Well first of all, your tan isn’t fake,” you shared a laugh, “not like that’s a bad thing, but it’s a nice change from the girls I usually talk to.”

“Oh? And you talk to a lot of other girls?”

You asked the question with raised eyebrows, curious to see what he says.

“Well, it’s more like they talk and I listen,” he shyly smiles, “I don’t talk much, so I just let them do most of the talking.”

You nodded, “I can see that. The blonde you were sitting next to doesn’t look so happy that you’re talking to me though.”

You tilted your head in the direction of the girl, Spencer’s eyes flashing to look at her for a second and then back at you.

“You’re not going to go back to her? I don’t think I’m that interesting,” you shrug your shoulders.

“Oh trust me, anything is more interesting than Miranda. She’s been telling me about how her parents won’t let her use their credit card to buy shoes anymore.”

“Yikes, that’s a tough situation. I’m so sorry for her.”

He laughed, smiling and tilting his head back. You swear he had the prettiest smile on the earth.

“Wanna go out back? It’s pretty nice outside.”

He held out his hand, as Alex had earlier, and you took it. You made it to the backyard after navigating your way through the crowd, finding it empty. He sits and a bench and you follow, sitting dangerously close to him so that your thighs touch.

He looks at you and smiles, before continuing the conversation, “So, I’m gonna guess that you don’t follow hockey, right?”

“I’ve played since I could walk, so I’ll let you guess,” you laughed at his confused expression.

“No way, Alex didn’t mention you played. And that’s usually the first thing he asks.”

Shrugging your shoulders, you replied, “Well, he forgot to ask me. But I’ve let him think I’m clueless this entire time. Only because I knew he would ask a ton of questions if he knew.”

“Yeah, he does that. But it’s cool that you’re so chill, even though you know who we are,” he rubs the back of his neck nervously, moving a little closer to you.

You move to lean your head on his shoulder, shivering slightly. He put his arm around your shoulders, attempting to warm you up a little.

“Spencer you might be a hockey superstar, but you’re still a regular person. And that comes first. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t matter. You deserve to be treated normally, just like everyone else in the world.”

He smiles at you, and you look at him with something you can only describe as heart-eyes.

“Listen Y/N, I really like you, and I just wanted to know if you’d want to go out sometime? It’s fine if you don’t, I just-“

You cut him off by answering, “I’d love to, Spence.”

“And I think that it’s really cool you’re foreign and I— Wait what? You said yes?”

He looked down at you, smiling. You swear you felt your heart speed up.

“Yeah, but I leave for LA in a week or two, so we’ll have to figure something out.”

He leans down to whisper in your ear, “Well, I just might come to LA then.”

You two look at each other, leaning in, but you hear Alex calling for you.

“Y/N come be my new partner for beer pong! Trevor sucks at it!”

You and Spencer laughed, before getting off the bench and walking back towards the house. He hands you his phone.

“Can I get your number? It might be easier than communicating through Turcs.”

You nod, taking the phone and typing your number in, putting your name as ‘foreign love <3’. You hand him his phone back, seeing him smile as he looks at it.

“Wanna come cheer me on? I think I’m pretty good at beer pong.”

He takes your hand and leads you back inside, smiling back at you.

And God, what you wouldn’t give to see that smile for the rest of your life.

second imagine: done ✔️

y’all i am trying so hard to finish the second part to ‘all my friends’ right now. it’s like 1700+ words, but i think i’ll just leave it like that. i’ve read imagines with 5000+ words, so that’s nothing. anyway, that should be put tomorrow!

#s.knight #spencer knight #florida panthers #ntdp imagine #ntdp

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rpgmgames · 6 years ago

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August’s Featured Game: Shroom Soup

DEVELOPER(S): Shroomy ENGINE: RPGMaker 2000 GENRE: Adventure, RPG, Psychological Horror WARNINGS: listed here (may contain spoilers) SUMMARY: You play as Arnika, a gloomy teenage girl. Perpetually tired, you live off excessive sleep, lime juice, and instant soup. You look into the vortex forming in your cup of said soup, this time mushroom flavour. Next thing you know, you are in an entirely different world where everything, from buildings to people, is being devoured by fungi. It seems like you have no choice but to walk on... Your journey involves exploration, puzzle-solving and battles.

Download the demo here!

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! Hello! I am Shroomy, and I still haven't figured out which one of my nicknames I should go by, but I use "uboaappears" for art and "toxic shroom swamp" for games. I have a bachelor's degree in biology since two weeks ago and like everything surreal, gory and gay. Nice to meet you. I have been in the community since about 2012, and that might be also when I first wanted to make a game - a Yume Nikki fangame, because YN brought me here. I messed around with the engine for a long time, and certain characters and ideas gradually mutated to whatever this is now.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Shroomy: It's about making a cup of instant soup and accidentally going on a very weird adventure. ...Okay, actually, it's a coming-of-age story with an emphasis on mental health, relationships, and toxic flesh-eating mushrooms. The idea came to me when I made myself an instant soup once. For some reason, I thought it would be cool if there was a portal into another world in the cup. That's how it started. (I was also into drawing mushrooms growing on people at the time, so that naturally made its way into my Awesome Game Idea.)

How long have you been working on your project? *Shroomy: ...A while. It's enough to say that I graduated from both high school and university with it. But to be honest, I didn't really do much with it until about two years ago. Right now I tend to think of the time before that as trial and error, playing around with ideas and learning to use the engine. I feel a little self-conscious about how long it took me to come up with a coherent story, but that might be a good thing. Since this is quite a personal game, it helped to grow as a person. I think it made for a more interesting and mature work than it would be otherwise.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Shroomy: I feel like I take little bits of inspirations from everything. But I'd say Yume Nikki and Re:Kinder were the biggest game influences. Maybe Hello Charlotte, too - the minimalistic world gave me some food for thought :> Design-wise, I think my current (character) style is a lovechild of Danganronpa, Killing Stalking and something else I am not sure about. Maybe just me.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Shroomy: I think the biggest challenges for me have always been centered around the lack of free time, the lack of energy or the lack of motivation. Some people manage to juggle life and gamedev, but I get exhausted really easily, so it's hard. This is an ongoing issue. I tend to try and free up a day just for relaxing and creative stuff. I've also started using the Forest app for focusing on things, and sometimes use it for gamedev as well. At the beginning I found it frustrating that my skills (in pixel art, for example) didn't match what I wanted to create. That one was improved by - you guessed it - making a lot of pixel art. Making and scrapping a bunch of tilesets for the game. It's as simple as practice and learning how to get the most out of your art program. (It also helps me to make a detailed sketch of a map before I start working, or at least brainstorm the main elements of it.) Another challenge was the incoherence of the story. Originally I wanted to make something really vague and open to interpretation, but... that actually didn't give me enough material to work with. In the end, I played around with the characters, tried to write them some backstories that no one was going to see, and somehow ended up with an actual plot..? Shocking, I know! And the final thing is putting gameplay into the game. To be honest, the puzzles in the demo were pretty random on my side, I just thought them up on the spot. In subsequent locations I tried to make them relevant to the game's themes and/or hint towards the story.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Shroomy: For one thing, the current project has a story and a plan, even if the story is presented in quite an obfuscated way. The original concept was not much more than an idea of a shroomy world. The characters also have a lot more depth and pain to them than they used to. The locations have changed a lot as well, to the point where most of the original ones don't exist anymore.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Shroomy: My team is mostly just me. At the beginning it was a young and naive me, and now we have a slightly older and better-at-art me. After I started my dev blog, I was contacted by Tommuel, who now helps me with sound design and music. And my old friend Robin has made a few NPC sprites for me, and might give a hand with more pixel art in the future. They're not really involved with other aspects of development, but I really appreciate their help anyway! I prefer to keep most of this game to myself - it feels too personal to share, plus I'm a bit of a perfectionist.

What is the best part of developing the game? *Shroomy: I would say it's putting my work out there and sharing it with the world. I'm also really proud of how much I've grown as an artist and writer through developing this. I got attached to this story and this world, with all of its fun, weird and sad details. It's also been really fun, amazing even, to get to know other devs and make friends through being part of this interesting and creative community. I owe some wonderful friendships to it.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Shroomy: I definitely play other games for inspiration, it helps me a lot. Though I try not to make things "just like" other games, but make it a transformative learning experience instead.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Shroomy: I feel like I have been through stages. At first I was Arnika, then Lina, now I feel like I'm turning into Arthur. I guess I put my traits into all of them. (Does that mean that Bernard is the next stage? I'm /so/ ready to transcend humanity, finally learn how to do maths and become everyone's favourite character.)

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Shroomy: I think the biggest mistake I made was jumping straight into making a game without thinking it through or considering the scope. In the end, the lack of planning set me back a lot. Admittedly, I was young and excitable, so I guess it was a learning experience? I didn't really know how to write stories or plan long-term projects, but over time, I somehow built up those skills. I think it's good to have a clear-ish idea of what you want to make before you start, and maybe start with something small. (So basically, do the opposite of what I did.)

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Shroomy: Aha. Actually, yes. I have accidentally started writing two sequels already. They will be small games focusing on other characters' perspectives (as opposed to Arnika). I'm not actually touching them yet though, only making some notes and writing scripts. Perhaps by the time the first game is released I'll have enough material to comfortably work on them.

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Shroomy: Fan reaction, I think? To be honest, I'm not really sure. I think I'll just be enjoying the incredible dopamine rush after finally setting this child of mine free to explore the world and infect people's brains with all the shroomy memes it contains. (Also will probably get off the internet for about a week from the anxiety.) Then maybe being free to work on other things, indeed. And posting spoilery concept art >:D

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Shroomy: I am a little worried about the reception of the game's subject matter. If you looked at the list of warnings, you might have an idea what I mean. Sometimes it feels dangerous to explore certain themes in your stories, because people misinterpret depicting something bad as promoting it, for example. But that's why that list exists. I'm just going to let people know straight away that I explore dark themes in this project and I'm not going to hold back on how I do it. Creativity should flow freely, I think. (I am also a little worried about the ratio of my free time vs. gamedev time and /when/ I will finally be able to release it, but... Thankfully, I'm the one in charge of that.)

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Shroomy: Take some time to make a plan for your project, start small, fail faster, and aim for something finished before you aim for perfect. Make a system for organising your files. Back up often, and on a different drive/cloud than your game is on, preferably several. Most of all, make something you would love to play! And don't be too hard on yourself.

Question from last month's featured dev @blackcrystalsrpg: What are your game dev pet peeves?? *Shroomy: I dislike the fact that sometimes I want to have made a game more than I want to make a game, but to have made a game you need to go and make the game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But there's no escape from fate, so... go, go and make that game happen!

We mods would like to thank Shroomy for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Shroom Soup if you haven’t already! See you next month!

- Mods Gold & Platinum

#rpgmaker #indie games #pixel games #rpg maker #rpg maker 2000 #shroom soup #gotm #game of the month #gotm august #august 2018 #august #2018 #interview #game making #game dev

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