#i mostly manage the main stuff but the optional puzzles are that level where I can understand what I don’t understand

[shitboy96]

Tunic (game) is soooo goood!! Much better than I anticipated! Particularly with the level of puzzle design

[19thperson]

19th's Steam Next Fest Impressions Oct 2024 Edition - Day 4

Day 1/Day 2/Day 3

KiNoKoe: Tree's Voice

A Japanese salaryman , after seeing a strange light in a public park, discovers strange and subtle symbols woven into the surrounding tree's bark. After visiting a shrine, he discovers that these symbols are a language, and the messages he decodes sends him on a trip across Japan.

It's got the relaxing vibe down, but the main problem is lack of puzzle variety. So far it's just been simple blackout puzzles, simple Witness-style line mazes, and laser redirection puzzles. Nothing actually puzzling yet. Even the tree langauge decoding is something done for you once you have enough symbols, so there's no conlang learning.

While the exploration is fun, your player character moves too slow. There's busses to fast travel with but the demo blocks them off for a good portion of the demo.

Keep Driving

A game about being a reckless teenager in the mid-90's and going on road-trips.

This game is mostly about managing resources: time, money, your car's durability, your gas, trunk space, your energy, etc. The game feels simple until it extremely isn't.

Once you set a route, you'll come across road events. while some are harmless or beneficial, such as getting a hitchhiker, most are hazards. When this happens, you're presented with a set of symbols, each a threat that will ding a different resource. You have skills that will remove threats, but each has their limits. It can cost a resource, it can have limited uses, it can only do a certain configuration of symbols (i.e. two energy drains side-by-side) and you feel both lucky and clever when you're able to clear them all in a turn. The game adds a nice gambling feature with the option to speed past obstacles. Can I clear this or do I cut my losses?

I only did two runs. The first I learned how easy it is to completely fuck yourself over (don't drink and drive kids, even if one of your hitchhikers gives you a quest to do so) and the 2nd one ended in a softlock on the map screen.

While I love the game's musical styling, it needs more songs. Hopefully the full release has a more varied soundtrack.

Mousebusters

You move into a new apartment, dirt cheap due to rumors of it being haunted. The next day, you wake up and discover you've been turned into a mouse. Another mouse comes up and tells you that you can turn back to human if you clear the apartment of the ghosts driving each inhabitant crazy.

You only have 1 "mission" in the demo, but I can imagine they will follow a similar structure. Since you're a mouse, you have to stealth around the tenants and find some way to move them away from the ghosts they can't see. Then you do a simple shooting minigame to get rid of them. The shooting minigame feels…prefunctory, and the first set of puzzles were kind of pathetically easy. But I can see them possibly scaling up.

Unfortunately we get very little of the game getting Extra Weird that we see in the trailer. But I'm expecting that to be latter half stuff. The Pixel art is beautiful, but that's to be expected from Odencat.

Rogue Flight

Star-Fox esque rail shooter with excellent presentation. After a rogue AI system decimates human civilization, desperate survivors stage a last ditch attack on its main core in space.

Impressed with the number of systems on display and how they interact with each other. The game has a chaining system, and aside from points, you get resources like lock-on missiles from maintaining a long chain. Said missiles can be used to easily start or bridge chains together, creating a self propelling system. You can hold back to vacuum up power ups without leaving your flight path, but it both leaves you vulnerable and could kill your chain. The "drift" system feels great, where you slow-mo and whip your ship around, treating it's rockets like a "whip" across the screen.

My main issue is difficulty. Of course, it's only first level, but right now it feels too easy. As in I was able to complete "extreme" difficulty on first try. And that's due to a single decision:

Instead of lives, you heave a singular health bar. Which, fine. 6 of one half a dozen of another. But maintaining a 4+ chain refills your health over time. I never felt in danger because I was constantly covering up my mistakes. I only felt the heat at the boss, due to being unable to maintain the chain there. That being said the trailer makes it look like later areas will have more pressure so, here's hoping.

Bugaboo Pocket

Pet raising game about bugs. Feed them, play minigames to earn food and decorations for them, try to raise for specific traits, pet them, so on and so forth.

I like the melancholy vibe of the whole project. You're an etymologist who was hired by a company "asking her to revitalize an already dead ecosystem." There was a massive fire caused by the company that she feels partially responsible for, since she didn't raise alarms about some bad practices.

Most importantly, it's not if your pet dies, but when. Your care can only take them so far.

There are even different systems to handle the dead: a collect-them-all system for pinning them and a system for maintaining a garden using their bodies as fertilizer.

That isn't to say this is all bummers. I can tell this is setup for a redemption story as the ecosystem is restored. But considering how often cozy games make the mistake of just staying in the heartfelt zone, this contrast feels refreshing.

My main problem is that the demo doesn't give you enough to do, so there's periods of just… sitting and waiting, doing the same mini-game over and over or petting the same bug over and over. But I assume that aspect improves once you're raising multiple bugs at once.

[yippee-was-taken]

Week 1/4 Puzzle Game Godot Project

I've gotten enough done with development that I feel confident to show this,

This is a game I've been working on and I hope to have it be releasable by the end of the month. It's a puzzle game based on making long chains of patterned beads. I'm planning to make it playable on web browsers. I'm hoping to have a minimum viable product ready by the end of next week. I'm hoping for weekly progress reports. I really need to get someone who can make better art assets for me. While I like how it's been playing so far, I don't want my game to look like this.

I've only done two other projects before this, one was following a tutorial and the other was a purely for fun personal rpg system. This is the first one I feel like I actually want to show and eventually release.

Accomplishments this week

---------------------------------------------

This week I managed to work on basic piece movement, establishing the grid and getting pieces of same times to become chunks that can connect with other chunks of comparable type into chains.

Once those feel secure with how the game manages those two, I'll work on getting them to clear, from there I can make the fail state and scoring system.

PROGRESS

-------------------------------------------------

Movement: Mostly finished, I might add flipping pieces later, but that'll be later down the line [Mostly Finished.]

Making Chunks: Since there are no pointer variables I had to learn about get/set variables from child nodes. I think the end result works pretty well. [Finished hopefully.]

Making Chains from Chunks: I'm not confident on how much they work yet but that might just be paranoia [Finished hopefully.]

Clearing Chains: I have two debates going into this.

Will they clear through a sporadic new piece like in Puzzle Fighter or should the player be able to break them on command like in Poochi Nya. Both would have their own balancing to do.

They'll clear at an order but at what order, I have an idea but I'll have to flesh it out soon.

Overall this one [Currently doing]

Winning and Losing: What's the score formula, how much to increase level and where can't the pieces fall?

This is also where I make the grid taller, because I'm really feeling how short it is. [Planning]

UI: Adding things like the score display, next piece display and making the connection display look nicer. Saving space for potentially other things in the UI [Planning]

Main Menu + Scene Manager: Did this in previous project to switch between scenes and stuff [Reusing old code]

Options: I've made an options menu for audio and controls before so this one shouldn't be too hard. [Reusing old code]

Make it work on browser: Not sure where this will go at all [uhh...]

I accidentally posted this trying to add a line break, rip

[maskeraith]

big eldar scrolls on line post about what i thought about it

may have some spoilers for the morrowind storyline and sidequests idk also I am inevitably gonna compare it to ffxiv a lot as it’s the only other mmorpg I’ve played good luck

Writing this after finishing writing the rest wow this got too long there is a tldr though haha

so the first thing I will say is that eso’s overworld exploration and sidequesting blows ffxiv away completely, there is so much to do and fun to be had in eso simply by exploring around! the enemies feel cool to fight, there are delves and solo dungeons to just stumble across with quests in there, skill points just lying around if you look hard enough, gathering spots that you can just gather from without having to be a specific profession or something, WORLD bosses that you need a group to battle just OUT there it’s really cool! Ffxiv does have some really beautiful environments but in terms of actual stuff to do, there’s literally just fates and they’re pretty shit to be honest, and i guess the sightseeing log??

and sidequests! all my time in the game was spent in the morrowind area (vvardenfall I think? my eso lore is zero watch out) and every sidequest I did had a really engaging storyline. They do mostly amount to fetch quests and slay monster quests in terms of gameplay with some puzzle moments sometimes, but the storylines were captivating enough to justify most of what you had to do. compared to ffxiv which is BLOATED with boring fetch quests with uninteresting storylines eso has it figured out. the characters you meet and their dialogue is great and sometimes you can even make choices which affect the final outcome of the quest which is always fun (your character having the personality of a brick aside). I actually think I enjoyed certain sidequests more than the main story of morrowind they’re that involved

Also there are world events but I didn’t really get into them, there was like a huge tornado which spawned some enemies that give you massive exp, but my horsey was too slow and I only got there at the tail end because they’re great for farming so every player in the world goes there and kills them instantly they seem cool though

in terms of lore, I’m not someone who is super interested in the lore of the elder scrolls universe but I found myself learning a whole lot of very crazy stuff from the friends I was playing with who DO know all about it, and I will say that if the lore of the elder scrolls universe interests you in any way you’ll love this game! so I learned that there are Eras in this universe, and eso takes place in the second era I believe. The other main series games all take place in the third or fourth I think, so eso is able to like set the groundwork for those games and explain the history behind stuff going on in all the main games, which I think is a really good idea, perfect for fans of the lore and stuff. Like I remember the funny talking dog from skyrim and he’s like the primary antagonist of the morrowind main story like woah

The combat is where I think the game started to fall off for me, again with the ffxiv comparison but it just wasn’t reaching levels nearly as interesting as the combat in that game for me.

Firstly, there’s no tab targetting (unless there’s a setting in the menu somewhere i missed?) you actually aim all your attacks, single target, aoe, whatever. for me this made it harder to be able to gain a situational awareness, and I have to keep my camera aimed at the boss and I’m not able to move it around to see if there was anything else going on. I do see how aiming your attacks could actually make the game more appealing to some people, though, as it does give a sense that you are more actively participating in the battle and not just standing there pressing buttons, but for me this sort of thing doesn’t make any difference

The second thing was the amount of abilities you have at any one time - you have 10 abilities and 2 ultimates slotted at any one time. Five and one ult are active at a time, and you have to swap weapons (it’s as easy as the press of a button) to switch to your second bar with the other 5 and 1 ult. This does make the game a lot more accessible I think, but it also means the stuff you get to do is just gonna be a lot more straightforward and spammy compared to the interesting and involved rotations you get in ffxiv. as a tank, I set myself up to put three dots and a debuff on the enemy and then spam my one damaging attack, until I had to reapply the stuff again, and that was basically it. I had some tank cooldowns too like a shield, heal, a grab and so on. I did look up the Most Complicated Rotation to see how hard it could get, which seemed to be stamina nightblade, and even that has “Ability x11″ or something in its rotation

Simple rotations would be fine for me if the bosses themselves were more difficult or complicated to compensate, but honestly nothing was any more difficult or involved than ffxiv. On youtube I’ve watched like 5 dungeons and a trial on the hardest Veteran difficulty, and the dungeons don’t look like anything more than what you would get in other mmos. The trials looks like really great content honestly, but there’s no party finder for them as far as I know so you have to manually gather 11 other people which is never something I enjoy trying to do in multiplayer games lol

i also didn’t super appreciate that the game wanted to like hide a bunch of info from me by default? like a few hours in I complained that it was impossible to know when my dots and self buffs ran out because all I had was like little particle effects on the enemy/myself to go off, and my friends were like “oh yeah you need to turn on these tooltips in the options” like huh?? I need to know this stuff come on

There is some really cool stuff in the combat though! Every player has like a basic bash attack, which can interrupt certain attacks, and then a basic heavy attack, which can knock down staggered enemies (they get staggered if you interrupt them) so there is more to do than just your abilities.

One thing I will mention though, is that I think a huge part of the combat is resource management - you spend stamina/mana on your abilities and if you’re not careful it’s easy to run out. As a tank, blocking takes up stamina, and sometimes I would not manage it correctly and run out and be unable to use my anything for a bit. You get it back by doing heavy attacks (contrary to every game ever) and other like passives unique to whatever build you might have going on. A lot of the game’s difficulty in harder content might come from this, but I didn’t get that deep into any of that sort of thing

I think the way you pick your abilities is really cool - you level up a whole bunch of different skill trees at a time, and you can slot any ability from any tree at any time (other than weapon skills specifically, you must be weilding that weapon) into your 10 slots. Your class has three unique trees, then there’s like a tree for every weapon type, for mage and fighter’s guild, this weird guild called the undaunted, werewolf and vampire, probably more I forgot about. All of them have 5 skills that you unlock as you level that tree, and all of those skills can be morphed into one of two “strong” versions of that skill once you level that specific skill. So there is a huge amount of player choice in how you build your character! I remember getting loads of advice from my friends but also just thinking to myself “but this skill though...” (i am so sorry). There are loads of passives too but they’re kind of lame and you just sort of put your excess skill points in them to make yourself passively stronger. I am sure there are Optimal builds, but playing casually you can literally just do anything

I do think levelling them can sometimes be a pain though because like, if you want the fifth ability in Skill Tree 1 but you don’t really use any of the first four, well actually you do have to start using a bunch of those skills you don’t want because you gain more exp for that skill tree the more of its skills you use, sort of a minor thing I guess

Finally I will talk about how I really do not like the execution of the loot system... So you get armour sets in this game and if you wear 5 of them you get a very significant passive, like whenever you crit you summon a big ghoul to shoot acid, or all of your aoe abilities also taunt. I think this is a super cool idea in theory, and it allows for even further personal customisation of the kind of character you want to play. However..

So the max level is 50, but the real max level is like 180 or something because at 50, you continue to level up but each level just gives you a point to put into these big huge bonus passive skill trees which continue to increase your stats up to the 180th point or something like that. In eso, though, you can go anywhere and do anything and all the enemies are scaled to you. But, it’s actually that you are scaled to the enemies - while below level 50, you get an invisible buff that makes you as strong as a level 50 character. This means that every level you gain, you actually get slightly weaker, if you’re not updating your armour.

Armour drops at whatever level you are, up to the cap of 180 where you are the strongest you can be. So ultimately what this means is every piece of armour you get up until you reach the level cap will quickly become obsolete. Every time I collected 5 pieces of a set and got a cool passive, all I could think was “this will be fun for about 4 levels” because I knew I’d need to swap it all out for stronger stuff. Essentially I felt locked out of seriously farming for the gear sets I wanted until I reached Max Max level, which made everything I collected seem pretty pointless to me.

Also, always being as strong as a level 50 character did kind of make it feel like I wasn’t really levelling up at all? It’s why I broke my rule of “I will get to level 50 before stopping” because I actually was level 50 all along, I got all the abilities from my skill trees that I wanted and ran a bunch of dungeons with them and I was in the 30s, but there were no other skills I could really see myself swapping out so I was essentially “max level”, as far as I was concerned.

so yeah tl;dr these are my two main opinions:

This game is an awesome time running around and exploring the environment, doing quests and running dungeons! If you’re a fan of the elder scrolls world and lore it is absolutely a must play!

Customising your character’s skills and armour sets is a lot of fun, but I do think it comes at the expense of not having a really finely tuned, coherant combat style, it feels a lot like I’m Just Hitting All The Buttons.

The end lol

[maskedpeach]

RPG Maker Fever Hero & Issues

Warning: This article may contain spoilers and the content inappropriate for children…or may not contain.But get the children away from the screen just in case.

Five little authors went out to write. One little author has missed the deadline. Four little authors didn’t pay him much mind. Three authors are left since fourth drank the lye. Three little authors are bursting with confidence. One overworked himself and other two ignored his absence. Two little authors try to finish hard task. Teddy bear hugged one and one stands at last. One little author is left all alone. He hung himself on the chandelier and then there were none…Then who has finished this article? And why this teddy bear is giving me a weird look?

1. Walking on a Star Unknown

Walking on a Star Unknown is the latest game made by Segawa and most heartwarming out of her three games (while End Roll was more heartbreaking than heartwarming, and Farethere City is somewhere in-between). Game  tells a story of two alien siblings, whose ship has crashed on the unfamiliar planet, where they decide to participate in the cooking tournament to get their ship fixed. Gameplay is simple yet very fun - most of the time you gather ingredients, learn new recipes, do side-quests and make friends with the planet inhabitants. Game has memorable cast of characters with their own interesting stories and  bright and stylish visuals. As previous Segawa’s  games Star also has some disturbing themes and some areas are dark and creepy, but overall tone of the game is bright and optimistic.

2. Witch’s Heart

Actually I wrote the detailed review on this game few posts ago, but  I’m still including WH in the article for those who are lazy to read that enormous wall of a text. The most notable part of the game is its plot (which is interesting to follow and full of good twists) and memorable cast of well-developed characters. Along with it WH has  entertaining  gameplay (mini-games included), great presentation and catchy soundtrack. Overall it is one of the best games I’ve ever played, so if you like rpg-horrors I suggest to at least give it a try. Game is still unfinished, currently only one ending (out of four routes) is available, but even in the present state it means about 15-20 hours of gameplay.

3. The Mystery Files of Detective Inaba No. 1, 2, 3

Here goes a game trilogy about Sogo Inaba-a tsundere detective with adorable side and Nina Arimura – his energetic assistant, together they solve various cases, some of the cases are pretty normal, and others are somewhat paranormal. First game of the series is a detective with minor supernatural horror elements – some rpg-horror typical puzzles and minor chasing sequences included. Second game is purely realistic and much more simple gameplay-wise comparing to the first game. Stories in first two games resemble Agatha Christie’s detective  novels mixed with japanese psychological horrors. Third game of the series is closer to pure survival horror with minor detective elements and plays like many other rpg-horrors . To be honest, the third game is my personal favorite, since it is the most polished game out of three and the good conclusion for the Inaba and Arimura’s story. All three games are about 2 hours long and have great presentation (like quality art-style and great in-game music).

4. Asadoke no Majo

Asadoke no Majo starts with our protagonist  Yui arguing with her father and as a result running away from home to …another country, where resides their old family mansion along with dark family secret and a handsome guy managing the estate as a bonus. Game is about 2 hours long and has pretty simple puzzles, minor jumpscares and several chasing scenes (but a final chase is the only frustrating one). Despite being pretty typical rpg-horror Asadoke no Majo leaves very positive impression thanks to bright cast of characters (the Nogi guy here is something else), good story and atmosphere along with well-chosen soundtrack. Currently game is available in japanese and russian.

5. Hero & Daughter

H&D is a dungeon-crawler made by tachi (Headless Prisoner, Moonlight Ghost, Hello?Hell…o?), which mocking famous fantasy cliché “hero defeats a dark lord”.Our hero Ralph get his level reduced to 1 because of his arrogance, and with this permanent level 1 he is tasked to defeat the Demon Lord. Again. That’s where Ralph’s friend of the haremancer class comes to rescue. This guy can summon pretty girls (including heroines from previous tachi’s games like Erina and Akari) to help Ralph in his quest. H&D is fun and entertaining, battles are fast-pacing, dungeons are complex, visuals are nice, also game has enormous level-cap and loads of optional content and many playable characters. Plot may be simple, but H&D has good humor and characters ( even generic Ralph got a nice personality). If you like quality role-playing games I highly recommend to try it out

6. Ai korosu yori, Ai korosaretai

An ordinary (alright, maybe a bit eccentric) family moves into new house. Soon after that their daughter Lucy falls with high fever.When she gets better, she discovers that her parents are gone  and various weird phenomena is occurring in the house. To find the missing parents Lucy will have to search the house and learn about its history full of mysterious disappearances and tragic events. AiAi has very interesting story (good mix of horror and sci-fi) and entertaining gameplay with interesting puzzles and action cut-ins. Also beside proceeding the story you can also do some optional stuff  like gathering collectibles and later saving runaway cows. If you like quality horror-adventures I highly recommend to try this game out. AiAi is currently available in japanese and russian.

7. Escatpade

Here goes another quality game for those who is tired from horror and tragedy and wants something warm and relaxing. Escatpade  is about the girl who falls into the pit and finds herself in the weird place full of adorable talking cats. Game is nice and fun, have a bright, adorable designs and simple yet elegant puzzles. Also some items in the inventory can change appearance of our heroine (like clothes, glasses and stuffed kittycats).

8. Tower of Feles

ToF made by the author of Escatpade and also full of adorable cats. But unlike Escatparade this game is slightly more challenging. ToF is an action-puzzle where your objective is save your little sister from evil witch. In order to do so you have to climb on top of the tower, solving various puzzles and avoiding witch’s servants in the process. Every floor has a time limit, and if either time runs out or your health drops to zero you’ll have to start the floor over. Game is a bit tricky and very fun to play. If you have beaten Escatpade and want more cats and cuteness- Tower of Feles is what you need. 

9. Twilight Epic

Twilight Epic is a sequel to Amayado Bus Stop. This time the main character is Akane’s and Akari’s cousin Akino, who  receives a call from unknown girl, who tells him about certain “promise” and right after that he finds this girl’s dead body (or not quite dead). The boy decides to find out the truth and grown-up Chitose and Akari are helping him out. Game is far more simple than its predecessor-puzzles are mostly gone and chasing scenes are pretty straightforward, but still the game is very enjoyable, since story is good and heartwarming. Also game has quality art-style and skit system similar to one in Tales series. Twilight Epic is currently available in japanese and russian.

10. Peret em Heru: For the Prisoners

Peret em Heru is survival horror with rpg-elements about a group of tourists, lead by an archeologist, professor Tsuchida, exploring  ancient  ruins underneath the Great Pyramid of Giza. Needless to say, that these ruins are filled with deadly traps and Tsuchida’s intentions are far from mere scientific interest.  Gameplay resembles Sweet Home and Corpse Party –Rebuilt-, but more simple and straightforward – you play as one of the tourists,  fight monsters, grind levels,  and save your teammates from booby traps. Overall Peret em Heru is a nice game with stylish old-fashioned visuals and good music, game is about 3 hours long and have one ending, which varies depending on how many of your teammates have survived.

11. The Object

You awake in the dark room in the unknown place and find out that not only your memories are gone, but your head is gone as well. On top of that  you can attach literally anything to an empty place where your head once was. Now your goal is to regain the lost memories along with the head and leave the house. Game consists from exploration and simple yet elegant puzzles, which you solve by swapping  your heads. Game is pretty interesting and  has five endings , to get all of them  you’ll  need about 30 minutes.

12. Colors: Lost Memories

This time you play as a little girl who finds herself in the colorless world inhabited by talking animals. To get back home she must return this world its colors. Colors have stylish visuals highly reminiscent of old GBC games as well as unique puzzles based on using various colors you get during the game at the right places. First you can use only one color (for example red is needed to light or put out fire), later you will be able to activate up to three colors at the same time.Game is cute and fun to play, approximate time of the playthrough is one hour.

13. Nemoral

Nemoral is a short game about two cops who end up in the abandoned mansion while chasing the cult followers, assuming that they have something to do with the recent disappearances of children. And this mansion hides pretty dark secret about a project based on the famous fairy tale. Nemoral is quality action-horror, where both visuals and gameplay is somewhat resemble very first Resident Evil (in the good way of course). The only con of Nemoral is anti-climatic ending (game was made for the contest, and author was short on time). But even in present state the game is still enjoyable.

14. B*x. Colorful.

I’ve decided to unite both games in one mini-review, since they are both made by the same author and both are very short. B*x is about lonely girl in bunny outfit, who lives with her boyfriend, the only person who cares about her. But it seems like he’s hiding something from her. Game is about 30 minutes long and have few easy puzzles. Colorful is only 10 minutes long and have no puzzles at all, and more depressing than B*x. In Colorful you just listen to the story and watch pictures. Both games have very nice art style.

[marisaaa]

Layers

Robron week 2020 day 1 - first meeting

Aaron and Robert meet at a festival and fate just wants to bring them closer and closer together.

Ao3 link   

The first time in ages. Liam Gallagher was playing at Leeds festival and Aaron had actually managed to get tickets. Him and his group of friends were all going for all three days and it was finally here.

Aaron sat on the train surrounded by his mates and apparently everyone else who had managed to get festival tickets. The train was packed. Girls in tiny tops and tiny shorts, boys half-naked and carrying the weirdest things around.

A massive inflatable crocodile was wedged in between Aaron and Adam as they sat on the seat opposite his girlfriend, Victoria and her mate Amy. Amy definitely had a crush on Aaron. She kept winking at him and licking her lips – Victoria had obviously noticed too but wasn’t saying anything. Victoria and Adam both knew he was gay but obviously hadn’t passed the memo onto Amy who was still sat ogling at an uncomfortable Aaron.

“Oi, man.” Adam said excitedly next to him, “This is going to be the best weekend of our lives!” Aaron nodded, smiling and making a face at Victoria who just rolled her eyes. “In a few weeks you are gonna be back in a boring classroom learning about brains.” Adam snorted, “enjoy your freedom while it lasts.”

“It’s Psychology, Adam.” Aaron corrected him, “It’s not just about brains.”

Aaron had worked his butt off and had been accepted in the Royal Holloway College to study Psychology, it had been his dream. Finally he could leave the tiny Yorkshire village and do something for himself. Adam, however had flunked his exams and was set to working at the farm for the rest of his life. Not that he was complaining.

Victoria and Amy were a year below so they still had another year ahead of them to decide what they wanted to do – either stay working for their parents in the village or do something else.

“Well right now, I couldn’t care less,” Adam joked as the train slowed, “because we are here!”

Victoria and Amy wooped as they stood up and picked their stuff up from their feet, getting ready to leave the carriage.

-

“How long is this line?” Aaron moaned as he dropped the bag he was barely holding up, “I swear we’ve been waiting days.”

The queue into the festival itself was looped around the arena several times and they hadn’t even got to the point to collect their wristbands yet. His legs and shoulders were screaming for rest, but the line seemed to keep moving but still going absolutely nowhere – meaning he could not sit down for a second.

“Aaron if I hear another complaint leave your mouth, it will be last thing you ever complain about.” Victoria warned, giving him an evil look.

It was hot, sunny and they were all tired. None of them were going to get on when it was like this.

Suddenly, Victoria stood up straight and leaned over the temporary fencing to see someone ahead of them in the queue who were facing the opposite way.

“No way.” She said quietly, before shouting, “Robert!”

Aaron’s gaze shot up from where he was staring at the floor to a tall, blonde man with a smile on his face as he flirted with another girl.

He had heard of the infamous Robert Sugden. Victoria adored him but Andy an ongoing grudge, refusing to speak about him at most times. Robert had left the village with their mother after a nasty custody battle with their dad. Jack was given custody of Victoria but Andy and Robert were given their own choice, considering their age. Robert chose Sarah and Andy chose Jack - no surprises there.

Robert and Sarah moved away very soon after that – Victoria mentioned the south - and they’d barely been spoken about since. Aaron was only about 12 at the time so he had other things he thought would be better to do than worry about another family’s problems.

“Victoria?” Robert stared in disbelief, “What are you doing here?”

He apologised to the people in front of him as he pushed forward to lean over the barrier and give her a hug, “I would say you’ve grown but-”

Victoria jokingly punched him in the arm and smiled, “And you haven’t got any less annoying, I see.”

Robert scoffed and looked behind her, “These your friends?”

Victoria turned around and grabbed Adam by the arm, “This is my boyfriend, Adam.”

Robert reached his arm out to shake Adam’s hand, looking him up and down.

"It’s so good to finally meet you.” Adam told him as he shook his hand eagerly, Robert smiled and nodded before looking over at Aaron.

Butterflies immediately filled his stomach. He felt himself blush under the stare of such a beautiful person, his green eyes twinkling in the light. Even with green glitter and paint stuck in his hair he was still absolutely perfect.

Aaron quickly cleared his throat and stepped forward, bringing his hand out to shake Robert’s, suddenly self-conscious about his palms that were most likely very sweaty. “Aaron.” He introduced himself, not tearing his gaze away from Robert’s who looked like he couldn’t look away either.

Amy’s voice ruined the moment and Robert’s eyes moved away from Aaron’s, “I’m Amy.” She said sweetly, “Victoria’s best friend.”

Robert laughed and greeted her back before Victoria spoke again.

“We’re celebrating Aaron and Adam’s – well mostly Aaron’s – A level results.” She exclaimed, smiling widely. “Aaron’s been accepted into a London uni!”

Robert’s eyes were back on Aaron’s again and he felt himself go even redder as he looked down at his feet.

“Is that so?” Robert said smoothly, still staring at Aaron, his lips upturned in a smile.

Aaron looked back up at Robert and his heart started beating hard in his chest and he smiled back and nodded. God, his lips were beautiful.

Suddenly a shout behind him made Robert turn quickly and wave. “I’ve got to go, Vic.” He apologised, looking back at his sister, “I’ll try to find you though, once we’re in.”

They said their quick goodbyes and Robert turned and pushed through the crowd again as it moved against him.

Their gazes caught again as the line moved, and Aaron couldn’t help but notice the smile on Robert’s face as he looked away.

-

Liam was performing on the second night so the first day just consisted of them looking around at all the small performers and seeing the prices of food.

They’d set up their tents by the wall separating the park but not too far away from the main stage so they could still hear the music.

Adam already had the cans of beer out and Amy and Victoria were painting each other’s faces. Aaron sat back on his camp chair and listened to Adam rambling on about something irrelevant as he soaked in the rare sunshine and smelled the smoke of barbecues in the atmosphere.

-

It was dusk and the music from the live performance was dying down as people were sat around their small campsites.

“Okay, never have I ever...” Amy started, “kissed a member of the same sex.”

Aaron downed the last of the beer in his can and finished with a refreshed sigh as he threw the empty can on the ground. Adam and Victoria burst into fits of laughter and Aaron smirked at them. Amy looked puzzled.

“Am I missing something?” she asked them, looking towards Victoria.

Victoria made eye contact with Aaron and he nodded, “Aaron’s gay, you div.” she told her with a laugh.

Amy’s head turned sharply to face him and he pretended to bow his head.

“Oh my god, I’m an idiot!” she exclaimed, burying her face in her hands.

Aaron leaned over and patted her shoulder, “Don’t worry, Amy.” He reassured her, “You’re not the only one. I can’t help I’m so irresistible.”

Adam snorted and sprayed the beer that was in his mouth all over the grass in front of them, earning him a disgusted response from the girls.

“Okay, my turn.” Aaron steered the conversation back. “Never have I ever-“

But someone behind Victoria’s head stole his focus. Robert was walking over to them, his muscly arms were flexing underneath a white shirt as he carried a bag over his shoulder, the glitter still evident on his face was glimmering in the small light of the fires.

“We’re waiting.” Amy’s voice appeared.

Aaron just gestured towards the man striding over and all their heads turned. Victoria stood up as he got to where they were sat.

“Victoria, guys.” He greeted them with a smile, glancing over at Aaron again, making his stomach do somersaults.

“Rob, how has your day been?” she asked, resting her hands on her hips.

Robert sighed, “Could’ve gone better. My mate and his girlfriend had a row.” He explained, “thought it would be better to leave them to their awkwardness for tonight.”

Victoria frowned, “Oh, that’s a shame. Where will you be sleeping?”

He shrugged and gestured towards their tents, “I was hoping you had room for a stowaway?”

Aaron gulped. Robert staying with them? He didn’t know how to feel. Before anyone could react, Victoria took his back of his shoulder and told him he was welcome.

“Hang on, which tent is he going to sleep in?” Adam asked, pointing to the three tents lined up next to them.

“Well he can share Aaron’s, can’t he?” Victoria answered.

All eyes were on him now. One pair of green eyes included a small smirk, too. They made eye contact and Aaron’s breath hitched. It was really the only option for them to share. Adam and Victoria were using the same tent and Amy and Aaron had brought their own.

“Yeah- yeah sure.” Aaron stuttered nervously as the small smirk turned into a grin.

“All sorted then!” Victoria said happily as she pulled Robert’s camp chair out from the side of his bag.

-

The tent felt a lot smaller with an added body. Robert’s presence was massively affecting Aaron. He didn’t even have much stuff it was just… the feeling of him laying right next to him made Aaron much more nervous than he should.

Aaron was laying on his back in his sleeping bag as he watched Robert add another jumper to his layers of clothes, underneath a sleeping bag and blanket.

“Do you have enough clothes?” Aaron teased jokingly, causing Robert to turn around mid-change.

“These are my night clothes.” Robert explained, “the rest are at my tent.”

Aaron nodded in understanding and Robert turned to face him once he’d gotten his jumper on. Their faces were very close and Aaron could almost feel Robert’s breath on his face, making his own breathing falter.

“So… are you here with anyone?” Aaron asked quickly, trying to break the tension, “Not here here but like- at the festival.”

Robert shook his head, not looking away from Aaron’s eyes. Aaron smiled a bit at that but tried to play it off cool. “Just me and my mate wanted to have a catch up. Didn’t realise his girlfriend was part of the plan.” Robert explained.

Aaron sniggered. “Guess they come as a package deal.”

“I guess they do.” He whispered.

Another silence fell over them and Aaron awkwardly bit the inside of his lip. “What about Amy? Do you think she’s-”

“I don’t want to talk about girls.” Robert interrupted him.

“Well, what do you want to do?” Aaron retorted, watching as Robert’s gaze moved from his eyes to his lips. Aaron absent mindedly licked his lips ever so quickly before Robert surged forward, crashing their mouths together.

The air was kicked out of Aaron’s lungs as he realised what was happening. Robert Sugden was kissing him. Robert let out the smallest moan as he pushed on his lips more before pulling back.

Their eyes met again but this time, Robert’s looked more fearful. As if he were worried about what Aaron would think.

“Why did you stop?” Aaron whispered, looking back and forth between Robert’s pink lips and his eyes.

Apparently, that was all the information Robert needed as he let out a shaky breath and propped himself up on his elbow so he was hovering above Aaron, both of them smiling into another kiss.

Robert’s mouth parted slightly and Aaron felt his tongue across the tops of his lips as he deepened the kiss and brought his hand up to clasp the back of Robert’s head, gliding his fingers through his soft hair.

Aaron felt with his other hand around to where Robert’s jumper sat on his hip, trying to feel for the skin there. Damn, the layers.

Robert pulled back, his eyes still shut, “Layers.” He whispered, stifling a small laugh.

Aaron nodded in response and moved his hand onto Robert’s waist, above his jumper before pulling Robert back down to kiss him again.

-

It was cold. Aaron’s feet were turning into ice cubes by the second and the air gaps in his sleeping bag were just voids of below zero temperatures.

Shivering, he turned around to see Robert, curled up next to him, a jumper folded underneath his head as he breathed deeply.

Aaron shakily brought his hand out from his sleeping bag and shook Robert awake, watching as his eyes fluttered open and his legs started to stretch inside his sleeping bag.

“Robert?” he whispered, “Robert, do you have another jumper?”

Robert took a deep breath in as he lifted his head and threw the pillow that was underneath it on top of Aaron.

“What about a pillow?” Aaron asked, unfolding the jumper.

Robert smiled and opened his eyes wider, “I have you for that, don’t I?”

Aaron chuckled and quickly put the jumper on over his head, fidgeting as he got himself fully inside his sleeping bag again. He could feel Robert’s eyes on him as he settled onto his back.

Robert shifted and placed his head comfortably onto Aaron’s chest, letting out a contented sigh as he did so. Aaron weaved his arm out from underneath Robert and the sleeping bag to wrap it around Robert’s sleeping form, squeezing him gently as he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

-

He awoke to birds chirping and people talking what seemed like right outside his tent. Aaron looked around and saw he was alone inside the tent and any evidence of another person being there had disappeared.

Looking at his watch, Aaron saw it was 6am. Way too early – but he could hear Adam and Victoria’s voices outside so he knew he wouldn’t get away with sleeping any longer.

He slowly got up and ducked out of the tent to see Adam and Victoria sat on their camp chairs, both holding a bowl of what looked like porridge.

“Good morning, my man!” Adam greeting a little too loudly for this early in the morning, “Would you like some slop made by the missus herself?”

Victoria gave him a playful slap on the knee and stood up to spoon a serving of the liquid into a bowl and handed it to Aaron as he brought out his own camp chair.

“Thanks.” He said as he sat down, grunting at the pain in his back.

“How did you sleep?” Victoria asked, crossing one leg over the other as she sat back down in her small chair.

“Yeah, fine.” Aaron answered, playing with the mixture in his bowl.

“I’m guessing Robert didn’t wake you when he left, then?” Adam said through a mouthful of porridge, “Disappeared without a trace.”

“He hasn’t disappeared, Adam.” Victoria corrected, “I said he’s probably just gone back to his mates.”

Aaron hoped it wasn’t because of him. Maybe he’d woken up a lot more sober and realised that their activities last night was a mistake and he didn’t want to face them sober.

At least Adam and Victoria weren’t aware of what happened.

-

The rest of the festival was great. They saw a load of great artists perform, got drunk in the daytime and danced until they got warnings from the guards.

Robert hadn’t been seen again the rest of the weekend. Aaron knew it was by a massive chance that they would bump into him again, given the sheer amount of people at the festival but it didn’t stop his heart from lurching every time he saw a tall blonde man across the crowds.

One month later

Aaron knocked on the door of the small terraced house as he watched the taxi drive off. He was starting uni in a few days and had found a great deal on a room share in the outskirts of London- saving him from having to pay for accommodation in the university itself.

He saw movement on the other side of the blurred window and a lock clicked open as a guy with messy brown hair opened the door and looked at him with a puzzled face.

“I’m – um – I’m here about the room share?” Aaron nervously asked, worried for a second that he’d got the wrong house.

The man’s face suddenly changed into understanding and he stepped back, opening the door wider to let Aaron in.

“Of course!” he exclaimed as Aaron walked further in, “Completely slipped my mind that it was today.”

He shut the door behind Aaron and helped pick up his bags.

“I’m Max, by the way.” He introduced himself as he awkwardly held the bags in the small hallway, “My room’s the one next to yours.”

“Aaron.” He replied, smiling and looking at the decorated walls.

“I’ll show you to your room then!” Max said eagerly as he stood on the first step and made his way slowly up the stairs, hitting the bags on the banister as he went.

Aaron could hear voices downstairs in the kitchen as he nervously followed Max up the stairs but was intrigued when he could hear the faint sounds of an Oasis song coming from behind a shut door.

Max stopped at the shut door and dropped the bags.

“I love this song.” Aaron told him as Max lifted his hand to turn the handle. He looked up and smiled.

“Oh nice, gives you something for you two to bond over.” He said as he opened the door and stepped into the room, “Rob, meet Aaron.” He called.

Aaron stepped into the small room behind him, nervously smiling but as soon as he saw the man sat at the desk, his face fell and the butterflies in his stomach fluttered out of their cage.

Robert spun around on his chair and his eyes were wide, but a smile was very much evident on his face. “A- Aaron?” he asked in disbelief.

“Robert.” Aaron breathed out, his heart hammering in his chest.

[0poole]

Bloons

Honestly the entire Bloons series has been some of my favorite flash/other-than-flash games out there, and I feel like it’s worth bringing it up since I just crossed the 365 day threshold for BTD6. Maybe in the past, but nowadays I definitely don’t feel like I ever play a game daily for a year straight. Chances are it was a little desperate when I first started playing, but as of now literally every single day I open the game up and play the daily challenge just for the sake of it. Plus, since the chest technically resets every 9 hours or so instead of 24, I could’ve cheesed it a bit, but I didn’t. That’s a pure 365 days of playing the game.

And even apart from that, the entire Bloons series has been in my mind since the first one and my middle/elementary school Coolmath Games days. Even though the puzzle, pure form of Bloons wasn’t as much in my interest, the staying power of the Tower Defense version is crazy. Flash Tower Defense games are plenty, and yet the one with the stupid monkeys throwing darts at balloons was the best.

I went back semi-recently and played a round of each BTD, and I gotta say, it was fun seeing where everything came from. 1 is absolute garbage, forcing you to just spam Super Monkeys if you want to get anywhere, but a good starting point obviously. I honestly know nothing about the people creating these games, but obviously it wasn’t made by a AAA crew, so you can’t expect everything to be put in place in the first iteration. 2 and 3 feel much better, but obviously not much after being so used to the modern stuff, and 4 and 5 are the ones that really shine the most, apart from 6 obviously.

I definitely was one of the types of people who initially reacted poorly to the artstyle change of 5 and 6, but I’ve definitely turned over. I don’t know if the whole BTD community rioted at that point, but I at least was like “ew, they’re cute now” when I first saw it. Thankfully I turned over, and realized the current designs are the absolute best out of the entire franchise. Also, I love their cuteness, as I love cuteness in general, so basically just call it character growth. Even though 2D art always is more interesting for games than 3D in general, the entire art direction of 6 is genuinely really good, being so bright and cartoony (at least before the fifth stages of upgrades) really fits the cartoony idea of monkeys popping bloons. 5, and the entire franchise before it, really is proof enough how horrible a pure top-down perspective is. On the title screen, you can see what the monkeys are supposed to look like, but in-game they literally look like weird blobby scorpions. Even though in the back of my mind I knew what they were supposed to look like, the pure top-down perspective completely ruined the image. Not to mention the OG designs for the monkeys was really weird and bad anyway. Even if you wanted a goofy fat kind of monkey, there are a million better ways to achieve that than how it used to be. Again, of course, they weren’t exactly AAA game-level quality, so you can’t expect such perfect character design.

But, oh my god. One of the things about this game that must’ve kept me through 6 was the character designs. If you know anything about me, it’s that I love a good character design, and 6 is full of them. It’s so interesting to see how they extrapolate the main concepts of each tower into their three different paths. The generic Superman-based monkey can turn into a Batman-based monkey, a Terminator-based monkey, and a fucking ancient god of the sun. The seemingly chill Druid can smite people with the power of Zeus, become the much more expected forest-based type, but also turn into this completely out-there being of pure wrath. I could go on and on about that, but needless to say for so many of them look and are designed so great. I think the tower with the coolest level 5s of the game is the Ninja. It’s hard to explain, but they all just look really cool while also not deviating too much from the cartoony-cute art style. I think my all-time favorite level 5 is the top path of the Wizard, mostly just because he looks really cool, but also because the parts of the path before it show him aging and growing out his beard. I also have to say the 2-0-3/4 Wizard also looks exactly my style, with the dark purply-ness and gold rims. Also, if you haven’t noticed, the Magic monkeys are my favorite type, and not just because their signature color is purple. That’s part of it though. Magic is also just cool in general. My main RPG-class of choice is almost always a mage/wizard.

Also, the heroes are also really fun. As someone who often creates species of aliens/monsters, I always feel like I want to create a dedicated character out of them no matter what, so I feel like the heroes are basically just that. And, of course they have good designs too, and of course as you can probably guess my favorite is Adora, basically being the same thing as the 5-0-0 Wizard with the Sun God aesthetic. Since she has her own stage and a special interaction with the True Sun God/Vengeful Monkey, I think she’s a pretty big deal anyway. I will say that I highly slept on Gwen, but then for Easter they gave her the Harlegwen skin and I fell in love. It’s insanely good stuff. Apart from looks, it does feel nice to have some sort of interchangeable tower that you basically just place and forget about, aside from using their powers. Plus, it makes a really easy type of thing to periodically add to the game to keep things fresh, even with the skins in general. It definitely is much better than the stuff they had in 5, where you had to use Monkey Money to buy each one, and you could only use them once per stage. Obviously 6 has the extra powers to help you out, but they feel much more optional and cheaper than the heroes of 5. Since I barely buy anything with Monkey Money to begin with, and since I’ve obviously had 365 chest openings, and AND since I barely use them to begin with, I’m completely stocked up. I only ever use the farmer and sometimes the tech bot if I get lazy. I did use the portable lake I got from my 365th chest opening after I got it, just for the sake of celebration. That’s literally how my mind goes.

6 does have the slight tinge of a mobile game artstyle, but in this case it’s really just better. I’m not into mobile games, and especially not the generic artstyle they have, but it is really pleasing to look at anyway. It did chase me off before I converted, though. That, and the fact you had to buy it now. Like a true gamer, I was put off by the fact that something that was once expected to be free now has to be paid for. But, then, I realized that the entire franchise has provided much more than 10$ worth of entertainment to me throughout time, so it was extremely fair to pay that. It is still kinda weird how 5 has to be paid for for mobile, when it is just free online, though. However, unlike a true gamer I think the microtransactions of the game are extremely fair. Considering they just give you things that you don’t need, and can get for free otherwise, I think it’s completely fine to have them. It sounds bad on the surface to have to pay for the game and have there still be microtransactions in it, but since they’re completely optional there’s no good reason to hate it. I think people assume that means that you have to pay for the game, and pay extra for different major parts of the game, and that sours their opinion on everything. Gamers are a strange, irrationally angry breed. I do hate using my phone for pretty much anything, though, so once I bought 6 on Steam I haven’t played it on my phone since. It’s just so much better in every single way...

I bought the game around the time of one of my family’s semi-annual trips to England because I thought it’d help when we were traveling between wi-fi spots, and it really did wonders for me then. Probably looked like some asshole teen to strangers who don’t know I barely ever use my phone for anything, since I was playing it so much. My sister even saw me playing it and bought it for herself, although I don’t know how much she’s played since then. 

For the sake of stats, I have 235 hours played of it on Steam alone, and in game I’m level 115. My most complete map is Monkey Meadow with all medals except CHIMPS, which I put the effort in because it’s the default map, and definitely not because it’s an easy/good map because it’s just kinda bad compared to so many other ones. My Dart monkey has a total of 4 million XP, and the only towers that haven’t crossed a million are the Ice, Heli, Alchemist, Druid, and Spike factory monkeys/tower. I think the farthest I’ve actually gotten round-wise is 200 once or twice, but I don’t remember if I’ve actually beaten that level and continued on or lost there. I think I might’ve gotten past it once, but just sort of lost interest in micro-managing my powers and let myself lose. I probably got there once after that and lost on it. As someone who didn’t look up the optimal strategies for things until very recently, I think that’s pretty good. It definitely feels like the kind of game where if you know the best strategies, you can literally just replicate that over and over and win really easily, but that just sounds kinda boring. Since I pretty much only do daily challenges nowadays, it forces me to use a limited amount of towers, so I either go much farther because it forces me to build up less towers more, or it makes sure I can’t even pass round 90 because it just was made to get you to round 40 and that’s it. When I have the full range of towers to use, I feel like I try to get the instant satisfaction of getting a new tower to increase DPS instead of making the few towers I have/need reach their full potential, which seems to be the better option. I also don’t really sell anything when I don’t have a limited number of monkeys to place, which I think is also a good strategy if you can eliminate the major money loss in it, since it can give you a massive boost in cash to get you the better upgrades quicker. I may or may not try to learn the strategies to wipe the rest of the game clean eventually, but right now I’m fine with just doing the dailies.

But yeah, that’s like the whole thing with Bloons Tower Defense and me. Something something reject modernity, embrace monke, or whatever the kids these days are saying.

I will say that if I didn’t have so many OCs to work with and could just pump out animated shorts on the reg, I’d love to do some sort of Bloons shorts. They’d all lean into the ridiculousness of it all. Like, the first one could do the 2001 thing with the monkeys learning to use sticks, and as the main one is bashing the ground with one or whatever and throws it up, an ancient, leathery patchwork bloon flies overhead and accidentally bumps the stick such that it lands back on the main monkey’s head, knocking him out. Cue the monkeys around him to go berserk and start throwing other sticks at the ancient bloon, and once they pop it using a sharp stick, they realize what they must do. Cue a long montage of the different stages of war and invention using the monkeys finding better ways to fend off the bloons, with the whole idea being that the monkeys are getting irrationally angry at the bloons, who are just sort of around and not actually sentient, even though they assume they’re malicious because of their history and upbringing. Absolutely no political message in there whatsoever. Just comedy.

Other short ideas could include, for the start of the modern time story, it could be the backstory of some sort of chiseled veteran main character, which would involve a bloon floating into his town, and from the people’s panic someone knocks over a lamp post that sets his town ablaze, only for him and his people to blame the carnage on the bloon, causing his classic edgy character motives for fighting against the bloons. Another, much more golden idea, would be an interrogation scene, where a bunch of monkeys capture a bunch of bloons for interrogation purposes. They’d obviously do the whole “Silent treatment, eh? Well, we have ways of making you talk...” thing, except the “way to make them talk�� is to strap them to a wall with one dart guy on one side to systematically pop them to try and extract info. But, of course, it would look and play out exactly like the classic Bloons puzzle game. That’d be the fun part. If not that, then it could be like the classic carnival game that likely inspired the idea of using darts to pop balloons. I really just think this weird world of monkeys and bloons is perfect for some good comedic content. Watching the monkeys severely overreact to the bloons sounds extremely fun, and I’d love to see someone do something with it some day.

[incorrect-kotor-quotes]

Thank you for all the effort you put into those posts. It's cool that you do all that just to make the blog funnier for us.

You’re welcome, but don’t worry, it’s not a chore for me. Actually, I’ve come up with plenty of other funny moments you might like just from playing the game.

Stuff I’ve discovered in KotOR:

The Republic prisoners in the Korriban academy can’t technically be freed, but I found a way. I repeatedly challenged one, used stasis field on him, then brought out the next, finally freezing all three and bolting outside their range of awareness. Then after I’d massacred all of the academy’s faculty and student body, they were the only ones left and the academy was sealed. Korriban belongs to them now. It’s a moral victory, okay?

Remember the water compartment puzzle in the Sith’s Manaan base? I was able to arrange things to draw one of the Dark Jedi inside one of the chambers, use stasis on him, then seal him inside. It doesn’t drown him, much to my disappointment.

Once, I tried to complete Lashowe’s holocron sidequest without killing her by turning her hostile and then avoiding her to see what would happen. She will hunt you to the ends of the fucking earth, and, astonishingly, got the drop on me once and killed me, something no one except Malak could come close to doing at that level.

Not too weird, but if you go to Kashyyyk last, you can tell Jolee you’re Revan right away, and…he just doesn’t give a shit and tells you to shut up. The Rakata computer immediately recognizes you, so you don’t have to answer questions about how you’d solve the prisoner’s dilemma or exploit cracking the enigma code.

If you pick up the Rakatan mind prison on Korriban but don’t deliver it, it’ll still be there when you wind up on their homeworld. Try to open it, and you’ll get a message saying you have more important things to worry about right now. As far as I’ve found, you can’t talk to any of the locals about it, though I still need to try this after opening it.

If you’re wearing Sand People clothing and approach them, the Czerka miners will turn hostile and attack you. Switching outfits does nothing to calm them down. You have to kill them. Also, they aren’t carrying anything good.

You can avoid fighting those annoying Rakatan droids in the Dantooine ruins by running past them to the consoles and completing the tests before they have time to kill you. When you return to the center of the room and open the main door, the droids automatically explode.

The wraids cycle their spawn point between three spots in the Dune Sea. You can grind for XP by killing one group, going to the spot the next group will spawn, returning to the Ebon Hawk to restore your health and Force Power, then transiting back. You can target the damn things before their textures have even rendered. Surprise, motherfuckers.

You can leave Zaalbar on Kashyyyk. You’re only there to get the Star Map, and while the planet’s quest can be resolved there, the two goals don’t depend on each other. If you romanced Carth, the cutscene where the crew leave Lehon ends right after Mission says “Get a room” because he’s not there to say his line. No one will comment on his absence, and he’ll be missing from the final cutscene. I guess Revan and Carth refused to get a room and Mission had deal with it.

If you find Sasha and don’t take her back to Dantooine, she won’t be present for the Leviathan encounter, with Zaalbar informing you she apparently fled the ship immediately beforehand. If Zaalbar is gone, Sasha will vanish with no explanation. 

Rakatan warriors will attack gizka, who will in turn attack them with their tongues, doing one point of damage with each hit. Gizka are invincible, and will eventually kill the warriors. Sadly, I have not been able to engineer a gizka/rancor battle. Yet.

Remember the “Down you go” incident where Carth tries to shoot Malak? Before the cutscene, I removed every firearm from the collective inventory and stuck them all in a crate to see what he’d attack with. The guy pulled a rifle out of nowhere and completed the event anyway.

Did the same thing with Bastila’s lightsaber, taking it from her to fight Malak. She still has it in the cutscene…even when Revan is visibly holding it. Since I still had it, I later used her old weapon to fight her on the Star Forge because SYMBOLISM.

During the Undercity encounter with Candy on Taris, I kited a horde of rakghouls towards him just to see what would happen. Though he has a health bar and takes damage, he turns out to be invincible after a point. Despite my best efforts, he remains the only non-droid companion you can’t directly kill.

One time, the Calo Nord encounter happened at the Krayt Dragon cave, but I found some bug where he didn’t attack me immediately, so I slowly snuck everyone around him and his posse. Then later I had to go back to the cave to get Bastila’s dad’s holocron, and Darth Bandon was there, talking about how Calo Nord was dead. While Calo Nord was standing visible in the background.

With the right cloaking device and a high enough stealth skill (Mission’s in this case) you can enter the Sith base on Manaan, walk past every enemy, and get the data file from the captured probe droid without anyone noticing. Then that desk jockey will trigger a scripted event no matter what you do. Because stealth is useless and the game will punish you for being stupid enough to put points into it.

If, for some bizarre reason, you put some of Jolee’s skill points towards security, when he fails to pick a lock he will let out and annoyed “phooey!”. Canderous gives a bewildered “crap…” when he fails. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone else in Star Wars ever say “crap”. The others just give normal disappointed expressions of failure.

I attempted to fight Calo Nord in the Lower City cantina. Y’know, when he’s invincible and is a one-hit kill. I tried every type of weapon I could (mostly by leaving mines everywhere) but couldn’t hurt him. However, I was able to survive the encounter by turning on solo mode, splitting up my party, and keeping them in stealth mode so he couldn’t kill all of us, then sneaking out of the bar. My original plan was to avoid the cantina until I had Bastila, then grind Rakghouls for experience and try difference Force powers on him, but you can’t do the encounter at that point.

If you go for maximum light side points and then join Bastila, taking certain dialogue options before fighting Jolee and Juhani mitigates how many dark side points you get. You can also get some points back by avoiding an encounter with a few Sith in the temple until after Bastila is with you, and tell them you’re loyal to the Jedi, putting the Dark Lord of the Sith in the grey. This actually turned out to be a bad idea, because then you can’t get the special robes on the Star Forge. I somehow wound up with the light side version, which I couldn’t put on because I wasn’t light enough. Don’t half-ass your evil, kids.

I successfully exploited every mechanic I could think of to rig the game so that I could return to the dark side without Mission dying. She’s still safe, standing on that beach.

I almost managed to do the same thing with Juhani and Jolee, unfortunately the console to turn off the disruptor field that keeps the Hawk grounded absolutely cannot be used unless they’re both dead. It was actually pretty easy, I just had Revan and Bastila use stasis on them repeatedly as I inched Bastila toward the exit and out of combat while Revan turned on a stealth field generator and went for the console. Once you’re out of sight, Juhani and Jolee lose interest and won’t attack again unless provoked. I only needed to get the stupid thing to work, then I could walk out, but it just kept making that damn beeping noises. SO. CLOSE. Guess I can’t wriggle out of all the consequences of my actions.

“So, uh, are we cool? Are we all cool? Can I leave now?”

I took on the Star Forge solo. Despite everyone’s complaints about respawning enemies, they aren’t infinite, and I eventually carved my way through everyone. Kept a tally, too: 22 Sith Troopers, 47 Dark Jedi and Sith Apprentices. Revan is supposed to be unstoppable, and I made damn sure my build reflected that. Nobody took more than two hits. Including Bastila in between her recharges. It’s actually a little easier in some respects, since I had master speed and could sprint away from enemies (and, more importantly, towards the Star Forge robes) without worrying about my party getting massacred. Also, during the cutscene before fighting Bastila, since there’s space in the script for her to put stasis on my absent party members, she just stands around awkwardly for a few seconds instead, like she wasn’t expecting you to come alone.

Then I fought Darth Malak in my underwear because at that point why the fuck not. Brianna may have been more right than she realized when comparing that battle to Echani sparring.

[loftyloftyloftyloftylofty]

Prototype of Cat Story’s second minigame is coming along a lot slower than I thought it would.

This looks incredibly simple, but I probably spent 14 hours making that road look like a road instead of a bunch of jagged lines.

Here’s a brief glimpse of what it looked like in various stages of construction:

I also wanted to take an opportunity with this post to sort of explain what I’m doing with these minigames, why they’re in the game, and how I feel they affect the scope of Cat Story!

Cat Story is a whole lot more than just the first game I’m going to be putting on Steam; it’s a commentary on life and mentality and motivation, it’s a tribute to the games I enjoyed the most, and it’s a portfolio of my programming skills.

Cat Story’s a 2D platformer. This approach to creating a video game presents a lot of interesting challenges and has a few important restrictions. I’m not going to get into the pros and cons of building a platformer in this post, but Cat Story’s minigames present unique opportunities to not be bound by the rules of the platformer genre. I like to take these opportunities once in awhile because they allow me to (figuratively) get up, stretch, and get a little exercise when it comes to coding.

From the perspective of the programmer, these minigames are a way for me to shift my focus out of tinkering on Cat Story’s 27,000 line engine and work on a smaller, more manageable project while still making Cat Story a better game. These minigames add some replayability to the game while giving me an awesome avenue to explore in terms of adding history and lore to the game’s world (without shoving it down the player’s throat through endless dialog). 

From the perspective of the player, these minigames are a break from all the running, jumping, and blasting that make up most of Cat Story’s experience. They’re an invitation to come up for air, and the enclosed style of the game’s save points really lends itself to the idea of, “This is a place where it is appropriate to take a break and go do something else.”

I think that it’s really important to maintain a balanced flow of gameplay while you’re working through an area, and feel as though certain types of puzzles could represent a really huge break in the flow of Cat Story’s gameplay. When I start getting ideas about mixing up the gameplay a little bit and experimenting with new things, part of that thought process is whether or not it would be better to keep Cat Story’s core gameplay mostly unaffected and compartmentalize this new, cool idea into a minigame. Some ideas make it past the minigame filter - but that’s super spoilers so we won’t go into those.

As a lore mechanism, minigames are awesome. I can show the player small glimpses of environments that they may or may not end up visiting to prepare them for massive changes in scenery, I can allude to events that happened in the game universe, and I can introduce opportunities to expand on things in the future. Developer and publisher names for these video games are a pretty neat example:

...and this certainly isn’t the first time I’ve used company names to add depth to the game world. (Shoutouts to everyone that helped me with these billboards - I still have them and plan on using them!)

The characters appreciate the break from all the running and jumping, too.

I’d like to change gears from lore for a moment to talk about some of the other ways that these minigames affect the player at the metagame level.

Minigames in Cat Story do have rewards that can be collected. Completing a game will reward the player with a data disc - in addition to unlocking the minigame from the main menu, these discs have other uses outside of the terminal (like Steam Achievements).

All of these minigames feed into a much larger minigame though that’s much more intimately woven into the game’s plot. You’re exploring. You’re finding these drill pods. You’re accessing the terminals and using the computer system. You’re ferreting around in files, reading diaries, digging up passwords and access codes, turning equipment on and off, opening doors, making the story move forward - there’s a LOT of stuff to do from these terminals, and that’s the real minigame - the metaminigame, if you will. All of the terminal stuff is also 100% optional.

Some people are going to play Cat Story and never touch the terminals. Other people aren’t going to be able to use the terminals because they have no idea how to operate a command line interface. Unfortunate, but true. I’ve done what I can (within my restrictions as an ALPIX Content Curator) to make the process forgiving.

I don’t want to spoil too much, but I’d like to make it very clear that every single detail and quirk that you see inside a terminal is 100% intentional. These terminals are important to me. 

So, these minigames take time. They’re more assets, they’re more programming, they’re more music, they’re more scripting, they’re more dialog. These changes to Cat Story’s scope are pretty profound if you consider the idea that there’s a lot of save terminals planned.

Because of the way these minigames work, and because of the way I want to use them, this is one of the areas in Cat Story where I’m simply not able to support mods as effectively as I’d like to. In a way, I think that helps to give the minigames a certain kind of charm, though I don’t expect everyone to agree with me on that.

A final point that I want to touch on before I wrap up this post is that I’m using Cat Story’s minigames as a way to pay tribute to some of the games I played growing up. To put this in perspective - my parents split up when I was young. Video games were a constant. They provided the escape and the moral compass. I will probably never meet the people responsible for the games that taught me to be the hero, or the games that taught me to be the problem solver, or the games that let me explore for hours, or the games that rewarded me for doing the right thing, but- if you ever do end up reading this, thank you.

It is very important to never forget where we came from, and to never lose sight of where we’re trying to go. I hope that in the future, Cat Story will be appreciated for more than just running and jumping and some cute characters.

Anyway, that’s my update for this weekend! 

Cheers nerds, I’ll see you again soon.

[gotinterest]

Okay, so I don't wanna make this sound like a loaded question, or to make an argument, but what do you think is missing from the Sw/Sh to make it a full game? It has a curry dex to add fill in, the wild area, bike races if you care about that thing, raids etc. The post game could've used a little something else, for sure. But I feel like (not you in particular) this is just a trend people have really latched onto. Compared to previous games, what is missing to make this a full experience?

The thing about SWSH is that the dev team had to transition from a handheld system and graphics to a completely different console and they weren’t given extra time to do that so the dev team had to cut corners in certain places, or cut down the scope of certain things just to get the game out on time, and not really do as much in it.

Everything is smaller with less to do. The routes are much MUCH shorter than they were in previous games. And the towns don’t really have much else in them besides houses, a gym, and a Pokemon center.

For example, in gen 3 you had:

-a completely optional and entirely separate competition structure that was based around pageants for your pokemon

-multiple separate pokemon fanclubs, with different things to DO in those fanclubs (remember the one club where you could change what people thought was hip and cool?)

-a huge department store

-collecting the shells for bells and things

-collecting ash to make glass items

-a casino where you could play minigames

-diving underwater to look in caves, as well as surfing around everywhere

-the weather lab

-the haunted tower that had all the graves

-secret bases!!!!

-the flower shop

-the power plant

-The mystery house

-an art museum

-a maritime museum!

- PC box customization

-hell you could even battle the roaming news crew and give them an interview that you would then see on tv later- compare that to the news crew in SWSH where they just battle you and that’s it.

Compare that to SWSH: 

-no minigames beyond the three things you can do in the camp (make curry, play with ball, play with stick thing) and the racing game which is just “eh”

-The only independent, unique, structures outside of the towns are the two daycare places and the Professor’s house. Almost all of the “unique” buildings in the towns are plot related and don’t have anything to do after the plot has used them. There aren’t fan clubs, or multiple labs, or museums, or accessible observatories, or a etc. You can’t even physically go into a lot of the stores.

-you can’t customize your camp beyond changing the color of your tent.

-The routes themselves aren’t particularly fun or interesting. They take you from place “a” to place “b” and give you some Pokemon to battle against and that’s pretty much it. They don’t really have much extra to do or see along them. The routes also aren’t interwoven or connected to each other really.

-Spikemuth doesn’t even have any buildings you can go into! Just the Pokemon center!

-The most fun, creative extra thing you can do is make your league card and put on different outfits. Which is fun! I just wish we had more stuff like that.

Most of the previous Pokemon games felt like they took place in a world people actually lived in, whereas Galar feels paper thin and devoid of anything that doesn’t have directly to do with the main plotline. 

Where’s the fanclubs that have NPCs with dialogue that changes as you progress through the story and win battles? Why can’t I ride the big, prominently displayed, ferris wheel in Wyndon? Why don’t the kiosks and little stores in the bigger train stations offer anything besides just a person to talk to and the same store you can find in a pokemon center? Why is the fossil person just a random scientist standing in the middle of nowhere; why doesn’t she have a lab? Why does the vault only have a bunch of tapestries, when we could have a whole big museum dedicated to Galarian history that could then flesh out the region’s history more and you could stick around and look at other things after it’s importance to the main quest has been fulfilled? 

Why is there no power plant? No graveyard? Why can’t I go in the hot springs in that one town? Why can’t I go in the lighthouse? Why can’t I explore any of the ancient structures in the wild area?  Where are all the extra puzzles and challenges that have nothing to do with the main story? Why can’t I even go into one of the daycare centers? There is a big mansion in Hammerlock, why can’t I explore it? HELL Hammerlock is a fucking CASTLE and I can’t explore it! Most parts of the city are completely inaccessible! 

The game is all about becoming a famous trainer. So why can’t I manage a social media account like Raihan and post pictures on Pokegram or whatever and interact with my fanbase? Why can’t I give interviews that I can then watch on the TVs? Why are there no commentators or “sports anchor” types to interact with or do stuff with? Why can’t I do photoshoots with my pokemon for magazines or whatever?

All of this is the sort of stuff I would have been able to do if SWSH had followed the design philosophy of the previous games, and had the time to actually develop it.

The main quest is also very short and underdeveloped. It basically just is the gym challenge. Almost all of the exploration and fact finding and big confrontations happen off-screen and are handled by either Leon or Sophia. 

Imagine if you actually had to deal with some of the Dynamax pokemon that randomly started showing up and causing trouble? Imagine if you, Marnie, and Hop ended up investigating Rose while trying to stay in the gym challenge? Like Sophia realized something was going on and had to turn to you guys to actually sneak around places because you were gym challengers and had access to places most people didn’t. 

Imagine if the big conflict actually had something to DO WITH the gym challenge, considering the fact that the gym challenge takes up the main portion of the story? Like maybe Rose was using the gym challenge dynamax battles to harvest energy? Or he was using the challengers and their Pokemon for some nefarious purpose? Until literally the end of the game you don’t really have to diverge from the gym challenge to go deal with something somewhere else. And the post-game doesn’t take you to any new locations, either.

I don’t even care about the fact that not all the Pokemon are in the game. There are so many pokemon, not all of them need to be in every game. I can see people being upset about not being able to transfer their old pokemon to their newer games, but other than that those complaints are lost on me. I just wish the level of detail and the density of the content and activities was the same or greater in the $60 SWSH game as it was in the previous $40 Pokemon games. 

Sorry this got so long, lol. I actually like SWSH a lot more than many other people do (mostly because I have an undying love for Hop, who is my favorite Pokemon rival of all time), it’s just there is no denying the fact that it could have done with another year or two of development.

[entergamingxp]

Desperados 3 Review — I’m Your Huckleberry

June 12, 2020 11:00 AM EST

Desperados 3 brings the goods in this reimagining of the classic tactics series.

Desperados 3 is a stealth tactics game featuring a memorable cast of Wild West characters. It’s also an oddly titled prequel to a series that started in 2001. It’s also an example of how effective “less-is-more” storytelling can be, even in a genre that usually puts the narrative on the backburner. Most importantly, Desperados 3 is freaking awesome.

Mimimi Games reinvention of a series that was last seen in 2007 is nothing short of spectacular. The way it mixes diverse, lovable characters, gameplay that feels like a top-notch puzzle game, and one of my favorite mechanics in tactics games is astounding. If you’re looking to get into stealth-based tactics games, Desperados 3 is a game you have to check out.

Let’s first talk about the different characters at your disposal. I think most people have probably played or watched someone play an XCOM at this point. Firaxis Games’ 2012 reboot quickly took the world by storm, and rightfully so. That game is a masterclass in turn-based tactics design. But, one of the biggest joys was making the fully customizable troops into your friends and making up your own story.

Desperados 3 is very much not like XCOM in that regard. This game has named characters with their own skills and personalities. That doesn’t make it better or worse, just different. Personally, I loved getting to know each of the five characters in Desperados. Not only are you slowly mastering their skillset, but you’re also learning what makes them tick.

“Most importantly, Desperados 3 is freaking awesome.”

The main protagonist of the tale is John Cooper. He’s the face of the franchise and wields dual pistols and his trusty knife. Of the five, his skillset is the most “basic,” making him the kind of everyman you can slot into just about any situation.

Joining him on his journey is one Doc McCoy. This hard-boiled doctor also happens to be an expert marksman. His silenced pistol is both the quietest gun and the one with the longest reach. So, if you need to pick off a foe from afar, he’s your man. His medical bag can also be used as a trap that stuns curious guards for a short time.

Next up is Kate O’Hara. This beautiful lady uses both her charm and nearly silent Derringer to murder her foes. She can also disguise herself and then use her feminine wiles to hold a bandit’s attention, while a teammate sneaks by. In my tabletop role-playing group, I usually end up playing a femme fatale, so Kate quickly became my favorite. Her moveset is just so different from the norm, and she really helps in a pinch as the ultimate support character.

Hector was probably my least used character, though I still adore that lovable goof. His two big calls to fame are his bear trap and his shotgun. If you want to methodically thin out a herd of guards without getting spotting, that bear trap will do the job. And, when things get truly hairy, his shotgun makes people die real good.

The final member of your squad is Isabelle. I mentioned above that Kate has a unique skill set, but hers is really nothing compared to Isabelle. She uses voodoo magic to mind control enemies. You can also blow dart two bandits and then anything that happens to one will happen to the other. This allows you to set up some devilishly fun kills.

As you might imagine, the real fun of the gameplay comes from mixing each character’s skills together. So maybe you chain dart two guys with Isabelle, while you’re distracting another with Kate. Then, to keep you safe from a fourth patrolling guard, you kill the darted duo with Doc McCoy. Those kinds of combinations happen all the time in Desperados 3.

And Mimimi Games know this is where the good stuff happens, too. Because of this, they’ve put in a mechanic they call “Showdown” mode to facilitate some inventive and rad gameplay moments. Basically, whenever you want, you can enter a Showdown, and the whole game stops. This lets you queue up actions for every character in your party.

Say you need to get through an area and there are six enemies in your path. There’s no way to pick them off one at a time because all of their vision cones overlap. If you were to sneak in and knife one guy, his partner would see you and all hell would break loose. While you can manage a few big firefights in Desperados 3, stealth is almost always the best option.

These enemies aren’t pushovers, after all. I mean, you’d hardly call the basic fodder Einsteins, but some of the tougher enemies will give you fits. For instance, Kate’s charm doesn’t work on most of the higher level enemies (or any of the women). And the toughest enemy – the “Long Coat” – will take multiple hits to take down by anyone besides Hector. You’ll need to learn how each enemy interacts with your character’s skills if you don’t want everything to go sideways.

When that happens, it’s time for a good old-fashioned Showdown. By using Showdown mode, you can get all five characters to murder a different person at once. If you plan it correctly, everyone dies in climatic bang and you’re free to continue your business.

It’s both extremely useful and incredibly cinematic. It’s a little like the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral scene in Tombstone, except all the bad guys die at once. So, maybe this band of ne’er-do-wells is more effective than those iconic cowboys? Please, no one tell Kurt Russell I said that.

“At one point I murdered three men in slow-mo with a cannon. How can you not love that?”

You might be thinking, “Well, I have five characters to fight with, surely most of these battles are going to become too easy with Showdown mode, right?” And you’d probably be right, but Mimimi Games made such a smart decision by almost never allowing you to fight with a full party.

Each mission forces you into new combinations of characters as members of the team rotate in and out due to lore reasons. In one mission you’re walking the streets of New Orleans with the unlikely trio of Doc McCoy, Kate, and Isabelle. It’s like the Wild West version of Charlie’s Angels and you get to play as Bosley. Or maybe that was just me.

In the next, you might be trying to stop a train with Hector and Kate. You’re constantly kept on your toes up through the final mission. And that finale is an explosion of carnage that ends in one of the more satisfying conclusions I can remember in video games.

At the top, I mentioned that tactics games don’t often seem to place too much emphasis on their story. XCOM, for instance, lets you make your story, which is unquestionably fun, but at the end of the day, the actual narrative is pretty basic.

Before you get too excited, I’ll say that Desperados 3 isn’t breaking new ground in video games or anything. However, it’s very effective in how it tells its tale. Be warned, I’m going to go into some very minor spoilers in the next four paragraphs, so if you want to go in completely blind, just skip down.

Desperados 3’s story is almost like someone took that mostly throwaway sequence at the end of the first Red Dead Redemption where you play as Jack, turned it into a full video game, and then made it good. Listen, I love the first RDR, but Jack Marston is one of my least favorite controllable characters ever. If I ever have to hear his whiny voice yell “Work ya damn nag!” again, I’m not sure what I’ll do.

That said, Jack Marston and John Cooper share somewhat similar redemption quests. Desperados 3 kicks off with John joining his father James (are all video game cowboys required to have a first name that starts with “J”?) on a bounty hunt for a notorious criminal called Frank. Things happen that I won’t get into and James dies. In the present, John is on a mission to track Frank down and kill him for what he did.

Now, on the surface, that’s a fine story. You can spin that yarn and spin it well. Certainly, in the early-goings, I wasn’t thinking this story would hit that hard for me. However, Mimimi does a few things with the narrative that I want to call out. First, they deliver a twist about halfway through that is one of those things I probably should’ve seen coming, but didn’t. And it floored me because it instantly recontextualizes one of the game’s key relationships in a meaningful way.

The other thing is that your first encounter with Frank sets up the idea that anything can happen with one bullet. It might not land for everyone, but the way they wrap that into the final confrontation was phenomenal. It puts this neat little bow on everything and lets the game finish with a satisfying bang. Pun firmly intended.

Usually, at this point in a review, I would tell you some of the problems with the game. Here’s the problem: I can’t really think of many. Sure, the missions are kind of long, but it’s so easy to quickly save and hop out if you need to stop playing.

“And that finale is an explosion of carnage that ends in one of the more satisfying conclusions I can remember in video games.”

I do wonder if the quicksave and quick load functions will feel as snappy on PS4 and Xbox One. But on PC, it feels nearly instantaneous. The game encourages save-scumming, which leads to you finding inventive solutions to its many puzzles. It feels less like save-scumming and that thing your grandma does when she’s solving a puzzle with you on a Sunday. She has her little area that she’s super focused on and will try and retry every puzzle on that table until she finds the one that fits.

You’re not failing, you’re learning!

See, I try to find something bad to say and it just turns into a positive! I haven’t even talked about how great the pre-mission cutscenes are. Nor did I talk about how hilarious some of the environmental kills are. At one point I murdered three men in slow-mo with a cannon. How can you not love that?

“It is, without question, one of the best games I’ve played all year.”

I haven’t mentioned the post-game screen that shows you watch a sped-up replay of the mission. It’s not a feature you need, but rewatching my playthrough at hyperspeed is always a treat. Heck, I also didn’t even tell you about all the extra challenges you unlock once you beat a mission. If you wanted to, you could dive deep into Desperados 3 and play this game for hundreds of hours.

I mean, I’m sitting here at three in the morning finishing up this review so it can get edited before the embargo and all I can think about is hopping back in. Who even needs sleep? I’ll just dream about vision cones and Hector’s luscious head of hair anyways.

I will say, I’m far from the biggest tactics fan out there. I’ve played a fair number of them and ranked Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden as my Game of the Year in 2018. I might’ve lost a few people with that last sentence who think Red Dead Redemption 2 or God of War should hold that crown.

However, it’s important to remember that it’s okay for you to be wrong. It happens to everybody. Maybe you mistake great production values for a great game. Or maybe you love playing objectively bad gameplay because you like well-acted stories. I don’t pretend to know you. I just know your opinion is the wrong one.

Joking aside, I would definitely consider myself a relatively casual tactics fan. So, I would hesitate to say Desperados 3 pushes the genre forward because I honestly don’t know if it does. That said, everything it does, it does incredibly well. Whether you’re looking to hop into stealth tactics for the first time or you’re an old pro, I would wholeheartedly recommend you check out Desperados 3. It is, without question, one of the best games I’ve played all year.

June 12, 2020 11:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/desperados-3-review-im-your-huckleberry/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=desperados-3-review-im-your-huckleberry

[recentanimenews]

Monkey Mayhem Awaits in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD!

  One of the stickier questions when it comes to videogames is imagining what classic games we enjoyed on older platforms would be like if they were updated for today’s controls and hardware. While new titles are always amazing and exciting, sometimes it can be nostalgic to think back to titles we wasted afternoons and weekends with when we were younger, games that were revolutionary at the time, but quietly faded into obscurity after numerous sequels and iterations made them commonplace or lackluster. Sadly, Super Monkey Ball is one such series, having been dormant for quite a while, with the main characters AiAi and MeeMee appearing as cameos in other games such as Yakuza more than in their own whimsical games. Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz was the last “regular” installment in the series, coming out for the Vita in 2012, and titles that followed it fell more into the category of spin-off than they did mainline titles.

    The announcement of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD lit a bit of a fire in me: would we finally see some new Monkey Ball action on modern consoles? What would it even play like? Unfortunately, Banana Blitz HD is not a brand new Monkey Ball game, but itself an update to an even older title, a 13 year old Wii title of the same name that introduced motion controls to the series. Dreams of a new Monkey Ball thwarted, I was still curious to check out Banana Blitz HD, because I never played the Wii version (I wasn't too into motion controls at the time). Craving some classic monkey steering magic, I put in the code provided to us by our good pals over at SEGA and took the monkeys out for a spin on my Switch to see what sorts of adventures awaited.  

    If you’re new to Super Monkey Ball, it’s basically a combination of obstacle course navigation and mini-golf, as you’re steering your chosen monkey (who all have various stat differences which affect how fast they are, how well they jump, and other control related functions) through increasingly wild stages. The goal of every stage is simple: get to the goal and roll through it. The challenge of the game comes from managing your speed and the various challenges that the courses will provide, constantly finding new ways to push you over the board edge or rebounding wildly off an obstacle and plummeting to your doom. The controls are arcade heyday simple: you steer with the left analog stick, and you can also jump with the face buttons, and that’s it; the game has no other mysterious controls or combinations you need to know.

  In practice, this is fantastic, but this is one of the first places where the revamp from the Wii to non-motion controls rears its ugly head: you can’t change or steer the camera in any way, and the right analog stick is right there. While camera controls might have been difficult on a motion oriented controller, on regular inputs, the inability to move the camera in any way occasionally made parts of the game extremely frustrating, especially during boss battles. Otherwise, the controls of the game work quite fine, and the analog controls of steering your monkeys works like a dream, with tight controls which really matter in various sections of the game.

    Players will find themselves tasked with completing a 100 stage campaign to get back the precious bananas from a nefarious gorilla pirate and his cohorts. That’s about all the story you need (let’s be honest; no one came here for a story) as you embark on completing the various worlds of the game, each introducing new challenges and stage types to confound you. Overall, the 100 levels of the game are stellar, and the game plays great, even in the most challenging aspects of navigating the stages. You’re tasked with puzzling them out, figuring out the best paths, speeds, and ways to overcome the various obstacles you’ll find in order to get to the goal in time. In-between regular stages that have you focused on going from the start to the goal, you’ll also find one bonus stage per world that asks you to collect a target number of bananas within a time limit, and the final stage of every world is a boss battle, requiring you to find ways to hit the boss’s weak points and defeat them.

  At this point, I think it is only fair to be totally honest: I would have loved his game wholeheartedly if these boss fights were NOT in the game. Everything else about Banana Blitz HD is fantastic: the worlds are fun, the stages are challenging, and the music, while not groundbreaking, is fitting and fun. The boss battles, however, are an absolute chore. They are a literal speedbump that doesn’t just stop your momentum, but also destroys the front end of your car. Each boss has a different gimmick, and I found them to become more and more of a burden as the game went on, causing me to put the game down for lack of desire to try and get past them after a few attempts. This really took me out of the game, as I had been enjoying the game through the first world and even second world without much of an issue, but the third world’s boss was the first major roadblock I hit that just drained my energy to continue with the game for a while. When I finally came back to it, I have to admit that throwing myself at the bosses over and over again just stunted my enjoyment of the game; for every 9 stages of madcap fun rolling around and clearing goals, I was forced to sit through 1 extremely bad boss fight that felt like taking a bite out of broccoli dipped in medicine.

    Sadly, this is compounded further by the medal mechanic that the game has. In order to challenge players, each world has a medal they can attempt to receive if they complete every stage in a world without continuing. This means that if you absolutely nail all of the stages in a given world, you’ll end up wasting all of that progress with a bad run in with a boss, which then will force you to do the entire world all over again to try again. If you’re a completionist, this somewhat annoying wrinkle may challenge you in a way that isn’t fun, and I have to say for me it was a drag. If you play through without caring about the medal on your first attempt, then you probably won’t care too much, but it still means that you’ll likely have to come back and do the entire world all over again, hinging everything not on your mastery of the courses, but frankly on dumb luck against the bosses, whose gimmicky battles tend to involve a lot of unfortunate and unforced ring outs that can’t be avoided.

  That, perhaps, is the biggest bummer in the game: the bosses aren’t challenging in the sense that they are an obstacle to overcome, they’re instead frustrating and somewhat unworkable messes that ask the game to handle things it wasn't meant to handle. The boss of the third world, for example, would consistently send me flying out of the ring at the slightest bump during his spin, or trap me underneath him until I would finally be flung out in any direction from the built up momentum the game seemed to assign me. The second boss, who asks you to reflect back missiles at him, would consistently get me trapped in the explosions that damaged him, sending me flying too; in one particularly frustrating incident, I reflected back what would have been the fatal rocket at him, only to get ringed out at the same time, forcing me to redo the entire world over again.

    Aside from the campaign, there are some multiplayer minigames to play. Anyone who played the original Banana Blitz Wii release might remember that this game originally had 50 minigames, but the HD version only has 10, mostly due to the fact that the other 40 games required motion controls. In my opinion, I’m not sure if this is a loss or not; while the games aren’t available, I can’t say I ever really enjoyed many motion based games on the Wii, and so these games being nixed from this release doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the game much.

  Instead, I will say that the 10 games presented here are fun little diversions, but that’s about all they offer: diversion. You can’t play them online, and require another person to be in the room with you to play multiplayer. Again, this isn’t really a deal breaker, but I would say that the multiplayer options aren’t very robust; they are basically a bonus for the main campaign, which is the major buying point for the overall package. While I had fun playing the multiplayer and minigames with my partner, I certainly wouldn’t break out Banana Blitz HD just to play them again.

    Overall, I think I’m split on Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD. I enjoy the overall gameplay in the 100 stages, and just wish the boss battles weren’t there. But the stuff that is there is fun and fast, allowing you to get a taste of the original magic that is Monkey Ball. Perhaps Banana Blitz HD will be a sign that SEGA is interested in starting up new Monkey Ball projects, so I hope that they will consider doing so; seeing one that takes advantage of modern controls and systems would be absolutely amazing. Until then, I’ll certainly consider playing parts of Banana Blitz HD again when the nostalgia for monkey magic strikes, but I can’t say this is the Monkey Ball game I want; it’s just the one I have right now.

  REVIEW ROUNDUP:

+ Fun racing and puzzle solving mix of Monkey Ball magic. + Game runs and looks great on modern hardware with no slowdown or framerate issues. +/- Controls are good, although limited; a camera control would have been a godsend. - Boss fights are an absolute drag and takes the fun out of the campaign experience.

  Are you a Monkey Ball maniac? Did you play the original Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz? Let us know what you think of the game in the comments!

    ----

Nicole is a features writer and editor for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[videoghoul]

The November Report: Game Completions 1

I beat a lot more games this November than I usually do in a month! I think mostly because I took initiative to start working through my steam library (and I sorted a lot of my shorter games into priority completions).

Mass Effect 1! I installed Mass Effect 1 in early October feeling like I could knock it out in 2-3 weeks if I played regularly. It was longer than I remembered, mostly through my own fault in doing all of the assignments and trying to get a perfect paragon save file for ME2. The combat is a little dated and the difficulty settings aren’t as perfectly tuned as ME2, but Mass Effect is still one of the best sci-fi video games ever made.

Broken Age! I had a good time with Broken Age, spending about 13 hours doing everything there is to do in this game. It’s an adventure puzzler with a really nice art style and an interesting story about how the lives of a baker girl in a fantasy land and the young pilot of a futuristic spaceship intertwine. The story itself is fairly short, enough so that there’s an achievement for speedrunning the game in under an hour, but you can spend a LONG time interacting with everything and everyone in the environment.

Another World! I accidentally beat this game in one sitting. While Broken Age is “short” if you know exactly what to do, Another World is short because of hardware limitations. It’s a SNES-Genesis era adventure title by Eric Chahi of “Heart of Darkness” fame and consists mostly of art-panels that the main character runs, jumps, crouches, and shoots through puzzles in. It took about an hour and 40 minutes to do everything there is to do and, while frustrating at points, it’s definitely a fun little Sci-Fantasy adventure.

SUPERHOT! I was crazy about this game a year or two ago and beat the main “campaign” but while going through the optional challenges I got to 23/25 levels without dying before getting blindsided by a bullet and losing. I got really frustrated and put off finishing it for a year. I came back and managed to get through everything in the challenge menu as well as all of the secret achievements. SUPERHOT tells a cryptic and mostly hidden story focused around mind control, bodyswapping, hackers, and control. While I don’t fully understand it, I think it’s definitely worth delving into all of the hidden story and fan theories. Gameplay is fun if a little frustrating at times due to some minor hitbox issues. Highly recommend~

Thomas Was Alone is a 3-4 hour experience that made me care more about the story arcs and feelings of colored boxes than a combined 440 hours in Destiny 1 and 2 did for their trio of main NPCs. It’s a short little platformer puzzler where each colored box has its own strength and you have to use them together to solve different puzzles. There’s only one collectible item (which I’m very thankful for in that it doesn’t force you to go out of your way or do any insane challenge to find) that shows up every few levels.  While the gameplay isn’t anything incredibly special the story, characterization, and soundtrack is where Thomas really shines. Grab it for 5 bucks if you’ve got the time and pocket change for it!

Sinless. I don’t know if I like Sinless. It’s advertised as a Cyberpunk-Adventure-RPG but it only uses the surface of those elements. It’s “cyberpunk” in that there’s a vaguely mentioned disparity between the upper, middle, and lower areas of the city but it doesn’t really experiment or do anything interesting with that. It’s an adventure game in that you get items and use them to go from area to area but I can’t remember a “puzzle” I had to solve that really engaged me. Most of the puzzles were just going from area to area looking for the most obvious thing to interact with. It’s an RPG in that you.. play a role in a game I guess? But I never felt like my own character because the framing of all the plot revolves around stuff that was already set in stone for my character. The old New Vegas vs. Fallout 3 problem, I’m more immersed having my backstory be whatever I want and just being allowed to go do what I want as opposed to being tied down to character that I’m told is important to me but I have almost no interaction with. Also it got a little silly seeing as all media apparently stopped in 2015 and the game is set in like 2200 and people still talk about Dark Souls, Mirrors Edge, and Attack on Titan.

I’m going to end this off for now but I’ll be back to talk about the other 6 games i beat this month!

[irregularwebcomic]

[Irregular Webcomic! #3740](http://ift.tt/2xOfMa6)

I looked up the phrase "sonny Jim" to make sure it would be understood widely enough... and I discovered that some people seem to think the phrase is "sunny Jim". And "Sunny Jim" is a mascot for Force brand wheat flakes breakfast cereal, first marketed in the USA in 1901, and currently still available only in the UK. There was also a Sunny Jim brand of peanut butter sold in the Seattle area of the USA. I don't know what, if anything, either of these have to do with the idiomatic phrase though. For some reason when I think of the phrase being used in conversation - like the mystery wizard is using it here in this comic - I always hear it in the voice of Billy Connolly. Great. Now I'm imagining that new wizard character in the comic as Billy Connolly. ... Which is not a bad thing, now I think about it.

My favourite part of English lessons back in school was the creative writing. While I now better appreciate all the other things my English teachers tried to teach me (grammar, literature and poetry analysis, literary themes and devices), writing my own stuff has evolved into a significant part of what I do. Obviously, I'm writing these words you're reading right now, as well as the comics they are attached to. A few of the main things I've written have interesting connections:

Comics: Irregular Webcomic! obviously. But I also write one-off gag comics for Lightning Made of Owls (which could use more contributors, hint hint) and The Dinosaur Whiteboard. And there's the now completed Star Trek parody comics in Planet of Hats.

Roleplaying game adventures: I've previously covered a bit about my history with roleplaying games and the various philosophies of roleplaying games. Over my years of involvement in the hobby, I've written many adventures, mostly for my gaming group, but also for professional publication. Two adventures I've written are available, Dino Park, a GURPS adventure on my own website, and Singapore Sling, a Transhuman Space adventure published by Steve Jackson Games (which has received some pretty good reviews).[1]

Comics about roleplaying game adventures: Most obviously this is Darths & Droids, which is entirely predicated on this concept. But it also includes some parts of Irregular Webcomic! Specifically, the Fantasy and Space themes are very much based on actual roleplaying game campaigns I ran with groups of friends, adapted as comics.

Despite the connections, writing comics (both gag and story-based) is very different from writing roleplaying game adventures. In fact any sort of traditional linear story writing is very different from writing RPG adventures. Firstly, there's the audience. The audience for a comic or piece of fiction writing is largely a group of people who you will never know or hear from (assuming you have managed to cultivate some sort of audience for your work). For every reader who writes me an email or posts on my forums about one of my comics, there are perhaps a hundred or a thousand who are completely anonymous and unknown to me. If you're a big-time author of truly popular works, this is even more the case - there are millions of readers you can never know anything about. So feedback, although it can exist, is limited and from only a very small portion of your readership. What this means, effectively, is that you can write whatever pleases you the most. If you want huge commercial success, you might think about what large populations of people tend to enjoy and deliberately pander to that, but for small-time writers, it's basically a labour of love, and so you have to write what pleases you or you'd give it up. The audience for an RPG adventure that you write is much more immediate and intimate. Most adventures that ever get written will only ever be experienced by your own circle of gaming friends. The interactions with your adventure will generate a good time for everyone... or not. In this case, you know your audience. You should provide something for the player who loves combat, something for the trickster to do, something to tickle the fancy of the one who likes solving puzzles, and some interesting characters for the roleplayer to interact with. If your entire group leans one way or another in playing style, you should bend with the breeze. Offering up a killer dungeon full of traps will delight one playing group, but annoy and bore another to tears. And the feedback is immediate, and from everyone experiencing your adventure. Trust me, you'll know if they're enjoying themselves, or if they're not. Writing an RPG adventure is more of a responsibility than writing a comic or work of linear fiction is. Even if you are unusual and your adventure is published widely, the people who buy/download it aren't just going to read it and decide for themselves what they think. They will run it as a game with their friends, recreating that intimate experience of a small group of people interacting with the components of the adventure. So your responsibility becomes one of making sure that the Game Master (GM) who runs your adventure isn't left flat-footed by lack of details or gaping plot holes in your adventure. A second difference between fiction/comics and RPG adventures is perhaps the most obvious one at first: plot linearity. Traditional stories are linear; they begin, they draw the reader through a sequence of events, and they end. Even if the sequence of events is presented as flashbacks or otherwise out of in-story chronological order, they are designed to be read in a real world chronological order that unfolds the story in the way that the writer decides. A writer can guarantee that the reader will experience the story in the sequence intended. So you can reveal things, and then later on you can count on the fact that the reader has already been exposed to those things. This is how you develop the plot. In an PRG adventure, things can get a lot less predictable. RPG player characters (PCs), played by players, often decide to do things that might not progress the adventure in the way that the GM or the adventure writer intended. An ideal RPG world is one in which the characters may choose to do anything, and nobody knows what they will do until they do it. Adventure writers use a variety of tools to deal with this unpredictability. One tool is known pejoratively as railroading. This is when as the adventure designer you enforce a linear plot on the characters, using various tricks to ensure that in many cases they actually have no choice in what to do or where to go. Examples include literal blocks to wayward travel, such as roads being impassable or having uncrossable rivers, oceans, or mountains funnel the characters to a particular location. There are also circumstantial blocks, such as law enforcement or capturing the characters and simply taking them to the next adventure location. And then there are situations where the PCs' decisions actually make no difference; for example after recovering the lost Soul Gem, they can either hand it over to their patron wizard, or he'll steal it from them (with no chance for them to stop him). Railroading is an unsatisfactory and frustrating method for most players, so a good adventure will use more subtle tools to control the plot and keep things limited to the scenario at hand. This often involves not so much writing a plot as such, but rather writing locations and characters and events, without necessarily linking them into a strict narrative sequence. Providing a variety of accessible locations gives the PCs the choice to explore whichever ones they find interesting, in whatever order they wish. They can interact with whatever non-player characters (NPCs) are found along the way, learning information from them or possibly having hostile encounters. These can then provide clues to what locations or people might be interesting to explore next - in this way leading the PCs in the general direction of the adventure climax, but without pulling them directly there. Events provide a chronological backdrop that supplies additional atmosphere, and in some cases a limited timeline for the players to achieve their goals. NPCs who the PCs don't interact with should have their own goals and tasks, that they complete on their way to whatever it is they are doing. For example, in a murder mystery adventure, the killer will be running around in the background, perhaps killing a new victim every 24 hours unless the PCs track him down and interfere. Or the volcano looming over the village may start smoking, signalling an imminent eruption, and the PCs have to decide how long they can spare to explore the ancient ruins before getting the heck out of there. So a well-designed adventure is (usually) not linear at some level. There may be a progression from clues, to a map, to a dungeon, to a final boss encounter in the deepest level, but at each stage there should be plenty of options. Even the classic dungeon adventure is wide open in the sense that there is a map (i.e. a series of connected locations) to explore, and the PCs decide what door or corridor to take next - no two parties will explore in exactly the same sequence. And characters are interesting too. In a linear story, you only ever reveal exactly as much about a character as you require for the plot. In an RPG adventure, characters need enough background defined for the GM to be able to roleplay them convincingly - but how much of that background is revealed depends on the actions of the PCs and their level of interest in conversing and digging deeper. All these notes about locations, characters, and events come down to the level of author control. Writing a story, you have complete control over these things and how they develop. Writing an adventure, you merely set the stage, and what happens on that stage depends on your players. Given this difference, there are some things which work fine in a story, but are problematic in an adventure. In a story, you can make a fight as dangerous as you like, or a trap as devious and deadly as you like, because you control the outcome and can always write a way for the hero to prevail. In an adventure design, you simply can't throw a full-grown dragon at a group of low level characters (or a 14-year-old wizard), because they will almost certainly be wiped out. You can't design a trap so deadly that only someone as sharp as Batman can escape alive, because I guarantee you that any given group of PCs is not as sharp as Batman.[2] You have to tailor the challenges to the expected levels of skill of the PCs. On the other hand, you can do things in a game adventure that don't make sense in a story. A classic example is wandering monsters, or unplanned encounters. Sometimes you just want to liven the game up a bit, or impress on the players that loitering in some area and making a lot of noise while doing so isn't a great idea. So you set up a random encounter table, let the GM roll the dice, and hey presto, a pack of wolves attacks the camp during the night, or a group of goblins leaps out of the dungeon shadows. This provides a change of pace in an adventure, from exploration mode to combat mode, and makes the game more interesting. In a tightly plotted story, encounters like this need to mean something. They establish something about the heroes, or they provide clues to the background plot, or they are directly related to the story. If you throw in lots of seemingly random encounters with no linking structure in a story, the reader will get lost and wonder what it all means. This applies even in a comic strip: The Fantasy gang encountering the wizard bandit didn't happen because of a random die roll. It happened because I had a series of jokes I wanted to tell about meeting a wizard bandit. Which brings me to the Fantasy and Space theme comics, which were originally based heavily on two RPG campaigns that I ran. The main characters (except for Dwalin) are all direct ports of PCs with the same names, originally created by friends of mine. This defined their personalities for me, and made it easy to write the initial series of comics. Despite the characters being based on the games, none of their comic adventures are directly based off the RPG adventures I ran. Both themes began as one-shot character-based gags, and only developed into story arcs later. When I decided to take them in this direction, I invented situations and plot elements that would lead to humour, without referring back to actual events in the original games. I suppose I could have based the story arcs in the comics on the original game adventures... I think the main reason I never did is because that would be too constraining. It was easier to go off on a completely separate story arc that I could invent as needed, without trying to copy a pre-existing story. But the characters are very similar to their gaming counterparts. I find this helps me to write the strips, because I have a strong gut feel for what motivates each character and how they would behave in different situations, based on my experiences playing the games with my friends. So the characters have ported very easily to the comics. Given that depth of characterisation innate to their existence, I believe they perform better and more consistently as comic characters than some of the examples of wholly original characters that I developed within the comic alone. They entered the comic much more fully developed and have probably undergone less character evolution than some others. (One example I can think of is Professor Jones in the Cliffhangers theme, who only acquired his distinctive love of food well into the story.) To write a character, it pays to know the character. When portraying a character, some actors use the technique of method acting, getting into the mindset and mannerisms of the character, almost becoming the character. When writing the Fantasy and Space themes, I often use a similar approach, getting into the mindset of the characters, to figure out what they would do. This is even more the case in Darths & Droids, which I write with a group of my friends. During writing sessions, we are constantly asking each other, "What would Pete say?" or "What would Sally do?" to inspire dialogue, and also checking that dialogue we've written matches our expectations of the characters. Bringing this all together, Darths & Droids is a story about a roleplaying game. So the writing techniques discussed above have to be merged to create a blend that both reads coherently as a story, while also being plausible as the product of people playing a game. This creates an interesting tension, and one we are always striving to balance. We have two types of characters in our story: the players who interact with one another at a "real world" level, and the NPCs in the game who they interact with at the "game level". We have written detailed backgrounds and motivations and plans for the in-game NPCs, which then become the foils against which the players act. Determining what an NPC character in the game does is based on the plotting of the Star Wars films which we follow, but also on their scripted plans. So they are developed essentially like game NPCs, to be reactive scenery or obstacles, ready for the players to interact with. On the other hand, we have detailed notes on the personalities of the players, what's going on in their real lives, and how they relate to one another. Determining what they do is much more a case of getting inside their heads in the method acting sense and asking ourselves what "would this person do in this situation?", as described above. We wanted some interesting dynamics, so there are conflicts and personality clashes in the group, but we didn't want to make it a bad game experience with people not having fun, so the conflicts are not all-consuming, and at the highest level they all actually enjoy getting together to play the game. The major conflicts in a story-telling sense actually arise at the in-game level, with various NPCs as antagonists and villains. In summary, writing comics or other linear stories shares some things in common with writing RPG adventures, while differing in other aspects. The greatest similarity in my experience is that characters need to be fleshed out. You need to know what their personalities are and what drives them, so that readers or RPG players can relate to them. The greatest difference is that a story has to be carefully plotted, and then presented in a sequence that reveals things to the reader to build drama (or humour); whereas an RPG adventure benefits from less plotting. Instead, the RPG adventure writer needs to concentrate on locations and events, setting the scenery for the players to interact with. There can be a plot in the background - whatever it is that the adversaries are up to - but it's up to the players to discover it and interfere with it. I guess if there's a piece of advice here for all writers, it's this: Make your characters detailed and believable!

Note: This annotation was inspired by reader Tommi H., who requested an essay on the differences and similarities between writing comics and RPG adventures as part of his Patreon supporter reward. If you'd like me to write an extended annotation on any topic you care to name, or if you just want to show some support for the comics and other creative work I share, please consider becoming a patron.

[1] Another three adventures I wrote were published in Steve Jackson Games' Pyramid magazine in its second incarnation as a weekly online web-zine, but I'm not sure if or how they can be accessed for reading. Getting a current subscription to the magazine used to include full archive access, but I'm not sure if that's still the case now that it's moved to its third incarnation as a monthly PDF magazine. The adventures are (links are to previews of the first few paragraphs):

The Last Stone Age Adventure: The Hidden Valley of the Kulku

Campaign in a Box: Situation Conspiracy

Iron Ref: Cliffhangers: The Musical Clue

[2] More like as sharp as a bowling ball.

[stompsite]

indie bundle cruft death match volume two: the revenge of the revenge

this is how it works: I install a bunch of bundle games on my computer, and then I play them until I decide whether they stay or whether they go. Hopefully you get some entertainment out of the process.

Let’s get started.

BRIDGE IT (Plus): This is a game where you make bridges. It follows the same mechanics as the last bridge building game I tested. Like... basically, just a different art style, otherwise apparently the same game. I couldn’t even finish the tutorial because every time I clicked the “simulate” button that you need to click to continue the game, the program switched to my desktop as if I had clicked my clock instead. No thanks. GOODBYE.

BRIDGE PROJECT: Virtually the same game, based on the tutorial, as this and the other bridge game. Same fundamental “make a bridge by snapping things on a grid and then running cars across it” gameplay. Not funny like those gifs I see of other, funnier bridge building games. Weird how this is the only game made by this dev, and the other game was the only game made by that dev. My working theory is that there is a small industry of devs who make a bridge game, die, and then try to remake the bridge game, thinking they’ll get it right this time.

They never do, because it’s a game about building bridges.

I didn’t take a screenshot of this one because it looked just like the other one. PASS.

AGENT AWESOME: This game’s sense of humor is “let’s be as referential as humanly possible.” Like, maybe it gets really good later, but the poor initial showing combined with a weird “sort of real time, sort of turn-based, there’s not a lot to it” gameplay isn’t really interesting to me. It’s got a 70% positive rating on Steam, though. If it’s your thing, it’s your thing. It’s not mine. ADIOS.

A FISTFUL OF GUN: I’m a sucker for Westerns, and I’m intrigued by twin-stick shooters, though I don’t like many of them. Turns out I like A Fistful of Gun. A lot. Super cool aesthetic, neat weapons. Biggest issue I had was that I didn’t really understand the controls; the game kinda explains them, but its super minimal UI doesn’t do a great job making things clear.

My Big Game Design Belief is that a game’s controls should be invisible. The barrier between thought and action should be as minimal as possible. I like this game, but I definitely wish I understood how things worked early on. There are a ton of little tweaks that, I think, would have made this game a lot better.

But you know what? I had so much fun I played it for like 30 minutes, and I’m gonna keep playing more. IT LIVES.

A GAME OF DWARVES: Alphabetically, this game was sorted under G, but it was installed in the folder, and I saw it, staring at me, brightly, against a sea of uninstalled titles. I couldn’t resist installing it. Then I ran the game, and I was told “fatal error! this application must exit immediately.” I couldn’t use a mouse to click “okay.” I had to jam “enter.”

I looked on the Steam community discussions for answers, and found this thread, which indicates that the developers went out of business and would not continue supporting the game.

I did eventually get the game to work. What I played was pretty interesting, as management sims go, but I mean... look at that screenshot. The colors don’t blend well, the repeated tiles are a bit too much, the dwarf faces look... not great. That and the fiddly controls made me question if I really wanted to play it. I almost said yes. We PARTED WAYS.

RELIC HUNTERS ZERO: It’s a fun little twin-stick. Free. Not sure why, they probably could’ve made money on this. There’s nothing making me go “wow, this is special,” but it does seem, from what I played, like an exemplary example of the form. BACKLOG.

TUMBLESTONE: Okay, I’m breaking from the norm. I jumped on my Xbox while I was cleaning the apartment in preparation for a move, and I played a couple games there to see if I’d keep them around, or download something else. Tumblestone is a puzzle game. You have to ‘shoot’ three cubes from the bottom of the puzzle space, but you can only eliminate the cubes if they are of the same color. It was fun, but I didn’t see myself sticking with it. I forgot to take a screenshot. BEGONE.

KILLER INSTINCT KOLLECTION: This Xbox title is a fighting game. I still don’t find myself enjoying fighting games. I MOVED ON.

NO TIME TO EXPLAIN: Another Xbox game, this is a platformer that did not feel particularly great to play, but that’s true of all platformers and me. I’m just not that into the genre. IT’S NOT YOU. IT’S ME.

SUPER MEGA BASEBALL: EXTRA INNINGS is an Xbox game about baseball, but it kept throwing menus like this at me, and I don’t swing that way. Get it? A baseball pun. I didn’t play very long because I just wasn’t having a lot of fun, and I get the impression this is best played with friends. None of my friends like baseball. We’re strictly curler fans where I come from. STEE-RIKE.

Right. Back to the PC.

AI: RAMPAGE might be a good game, but I’m a very picky person when it comes to controls. This is a top-down game where forward movement is wherever your cursor is aiming. Also, the main menu is literally just every option available--settings, levels, you name it. One single massive screen. I tried to take a screenshot, but it came out black. NOT MY THING.

AIRSTRIKE HD appears to be a phone game (imagine how big that pause button in the lower right of the screenshot is on a 27″ monitor) made in unity where you fly back and forth dropping bombs on a civilian populace. You might drop them on more deserving folks than civilians later in the game, but I was so busy not having fun that I didn’t stick around to try out. There aren’t enough steam reviews to give the game a proper score, but most of them are negative. CRASH AND BURN. 

ARMORED FIST 3 is presumably a sequel to Armored Fist 2 and its maximum resolution is 640x480. I picked this one up because it was cheaper to buy the Novalogic complete bundle on sale with the money I’d earned from selling trading cards than it was to buy all the Delta Force games that I wanted. The controls are strange; I’m suspicious of games that tell you to use the arrow keys, but when it asked me to switch to F9 to change my camera, then didn’t tell me how to switch back, I knew we wouldn’t be getting along. Why this tank simulator from 1999 doesn’t use more modern controls or resolutions, I’m not sure. The reviews are “mostly positive” right now on Steam, but I don’t think I can enjoy this. TANKS FOR THE MEMORIES.

AVENCAST, according to Wikipedia, was made by a developer that “had little or no formal education in game development field.” It took them four years to make, and they initially set out to create a Diablo clone. This game does not really control like Diablo at all. It also spends a great deal of time in menus like the above. Too many words, not enough “go do stuff.”

It’s not a bad game, though. Like, there’s nothing here that makes me go “ugh, wow, this is terrible.” It just doesn’t pique my curiosity. It doesn’t make me want more. The controls aren’t terrible, but they aren’t great either. The premise isn’t that interesting--it literally starts out by telling you that this is the story of the greatest mage ever, or something like that, effectively killing the stakes--it just kind of feels old and uninteresting to me.

This is coming from someone who likes the Gothic games. What I’m saying is, your mileage may vary, and I almost kept Avencast around, until I decided that, quite frankly, I probably won’t be spending much time with it. Besides, mages are so much less interesting than rogues.

AX:EL’s menus make no sense. No, really, look at this. What does it mean? What does any of it mean? There is a ship, but what kind of game is it? I have no idea. The tooltips aren’t that helpful. One button says something like “patrol,” and if you hover over it, the tooltip says “patrol mode.”

Anyways, turns out there’s a campaign in here, if you dig long enough. Briefly, I suspected this was some kind of multiplayer only game. It is not. There is a campaign. It involves dogfighting. Turns out this is basically an Ace Combat style game, which is neat, but it is easy, there’s no tutorial, and the assets look like something I could make, and I’m not an artist at all.

AX:EL wasn’t unfun from what I played, but it puts up so many barriers to the gameplay that it can be needlessly frustrating. SEE YOU, SPACE COWBOY.

BLOODSPORTS.TV sounded cool until it asked me if I had ever played in the “top down hero game” category or somethin like that. I tentatively clicked yes. IT’S A MOBA.

BLOOP RELOADED is just Bloop with nicer graphics. And writing like the above. You drag lines between things and make liquids go down those lines into the things. The end. Quoth the raven, NEVERMORE.

CALIFORNIUM: Imagine PKD’s walking simulator. Mysterious enough to keep me going. Has people to interact with, to a small degree. Would I like a game that actually has mechanical depth and complexity? Sure. But... I’m gonna finish Californium. THIS IS GOOD STUFF.

CHRONICLES OF MYSTERY: THE SCORPIO RITUAL has nothing to do with the Xbox One X. It is a point and click game. I’ve never seen the appeal of these games. You just click on stuff until people do what you want them to, or you do weird things to solve puzzles. Old Man Murray explained this at length so I don’t have to.

I love when Steam’s game description character limit gets overrun. INTO THE FLAMES.

DEFENDERS OF ARDANIA gave me a black screen and wouldn’t quit when I tried to alt tab or anything. I tried lookin for solutions, but found none. I CAST YOU OUT.

20 games. 3 survived. 17 were condemned to purgatory.

[gavinbowman]

With the Switch arriving, I’ve been trying to clear out some of my in-progress games to make room for zelda. And also because it sucks when you’ve been playing a few different things and taken an extended break and feel kind of detached from them. I didn’t want to abandon them or leave them hanging for months. So here’s a round up of my recent plays.

Fire Emblem Heroes - iOS Played all the current content, countless hours

This was a good one for me when I was waiting around for baby stuff, I could pay attention to other things and even play one handed. I’m conflicted on it, because I had a lot of fun with it, it didn’t cost me anything, and yet I find myself at the end wishing I’d bought Fire Emblem Fates for the 3DS and played that instead. But a lot of the time I spent playing this I probably didn’t have my 3DS handy, so it’s probably moot.

This is a F2P game, but it’s crazy generous. There’s a lot of content to play through, and you get a lot of free premium currency just for playing each day and for completing the content and the various quests. The main use for the premium currency is the gatcha “spins” to get new characters. 4 and 5 star characters have additional moves and skills that are helpful when you get to the higher end content, and you have to get lucky with a summoning to get them. There is a path to upgrade lower level characters, but it requires a lot of a very scarce currency.

I would have liked to have been able to buy a round of character summons for a reasonable fee... that probably would have wound up costing me a lot though. As it is, it costs about $13 for a set. And you can get a set most days you play if you’re playing the earlier content and charging through it at a fair clip. It gets much harder to save up for a set of characters towards the end, the challenge gets higher faster than your characters level up, and you tend to get stuck with a fixed roster of valid characters because leveling up a second set to the point where they’re useful is a big time investment.

There’s two areas where I really enjoyed the game the most. Leveling from 1->20ish, either in missions while I had them available, or in the duels or training rooms. You gain skills and your character grows regularly, it’s a rewarding time. The second was in the high level maps, either the main story or bonus/special content. It was fun trying to find a way to beat the scenario with what I had. And it wasn’t possible to just grind up a couple of levels and stomp all over it, and it wasn’t trivial to try to bring in a ringer who would be better suited to the map. That was some fun stuff.

Although I’m done with the game, I’m not really done with it, I’m still playing the various challenge stuff and popping in for rewards, I’m still excited when I get saved up for a round of summons... but it’s definitely on the down low unless there’s a significant amount of new content. I’m excited to see how the new inherit ability feature works in the coming update, I imagine it’ll require some scarce currencies, for fear of being over used, but it could definitely open up new strategies and options.

Super Mario Run - iOS Finished main game to purple level and bonus levels

This was a fun one for me. It was great having a one handed mario game, great having mario on my phone, and I liked the game plenty. Sure, it’s not as good as a full mario game. And I could see why some people would complain about the amount of content available. If you don’t make any effort to play for the coin challenges, you’d probably blitz through it in 1-2 hours.

I played a bit of the toad rally thing early on so I could unlock the extra characters. It was sort of fun, but it definitely lacked something and the economy was all over the place. I’m sure it was the beginnings of a f2p concept that just didn’t come together or got shifted over to a premium feature early on. Although rally tickets are kind of scarce to begin with, once you play a little bit, they become too plentiful if anything, I usually had the maximum amount, and had bonuses in my kingdom that would more than restock any amount I could use. I think they rebalanced it,  but early on I felt like the amount of toads you’d lose when you lost was way too high, it was hard for me to build up a little stockpile of any without grinding on similar levels I knew well enough to win most of the time.

Anyway, was good fun for what it was, I have no regrets about buying it or spending time playing it. I’m not doing the black coin challenges though, those feel way too much like work.

Mighty Switch Force - 3DS Finished main story & bonus levels - ~7hrs

I kinda fucking hate this game. Bear with me. It’s good, I had fun with it. But fuck, my lasting association with it is not pleasant. It’s one of those games where the initial impression is really strong, and the core mechanics feel great and are interesting, but as you progress through the game it goes in a direction that just makes each level progressively less fun. The fun chunky run and jump and shooty stuff gives way to levels that feel more like puzzle based versions of donkey kong country barrel sequences. It’s still kind of fun for the most part, but there’s a lot of stuff where you’re just killed and then have to remember the sequence next time... it just doesn’t feel as fun as the early levels promised. It’s mostly still okay though, because the levels are maybe 3-5 minutes long (target times, not counting multiple retries and longer times to grok the lay of the level at first), and if they’re big levels, there’s a lot of boosty things to cover large distances quickly. And then you get to the last level. And then it goes from fun shooty platformer that gradually changed into less fun puzzle and timing based platformer, into full on rhythm action puzzle platformer. And the level length increases. And the difficulty increases. So you’re stuck playing with this new mechanic in the hardest and longest level of the game. It left a really bad taste for me anyway. After I finished it, I played the first of the bonus levels, and it was like the early levels, so that left me feeling a bit better about it. And then I played the 2nd one and it moved significantly towards the puzzle things I hadn’t really enjoyed. And yeah, the 5 bonus levels basically play like a greatest hits accelerated evolution of the game mechanics from fun -> fuck you. So yeah, I kept playing the bonus levels so I could hopefully leave the game with a more positive impression, but instead they made me relive the whole journey of gradual disapproval all over again in a condensed way. 

The ironic thing is, I can totally imagine being in the design meetings that made the game this way and totally approving of all the choices, because they increase the depth and variety and force the player’s mastery, and therefore presumably sense of achievement, to improve to progress, and yet here I am hating it all. Was interesting for me anyway. The main thing I’d definitely change is the rhythm action bit on the last level. I get why it feels good and import though. Maybe put it on a shorter level. Or increase health drops, or just save it for a post game challenge room kinda deal or something. Even if the bonus level version of the rhythm mechanic was the final level, I’d have been less down on it, because it’s a shorter level. It’s still hard and frustrating, but in a more manageable quantity. Anyway. Good game. I kinda hate it.

Megaman X - SNES via Wii U VC Finished main story ~12hrs

Really bummed that I had to take a break from this at the point where I did, I was some random distance into sigma’s fortress when I stopped and I forgot what all the weapons and upgrades did by the time I started back.

I was playing this to get a good sense of where things went in this franchise, I really enjoyed Megaman 2 recently, and this felt like the obvious one to play next. I love most of the changes and evolutions. The bigger spaces worked out nice. I don’t know if the slowdown is all just preserved from the original, but damn, that was intense.

Main differences I noticed, side upgrades were handed out as more of a big deal, rather than just a random bonus after some of the levels. There were more permanent upgrades. The main upgrades from the bosses were a lot more effectively balanced. There was way more of a sense of an order to the boss fights, I bounced out of 3 or 4 before I actually managed to complete one and start to make progress. I liked that. Mid level checkpoints were less well placed than the NES game. There were a few places where I could have really done with not having to play some stupid challenging section again before the next stupid challenging section. I confess I used save states to make it though this game. I doubt I could have done it today otherwise, not without a major time investment. At that point I’d probably have been better off watching a speed run on youtube.

Oh, and I really liked the way the energy tank mechanic worked here, once I realized how to use it. It’s basically like finding zelda bottles, except they automatically fill up when you collect excess energy, and they don’t kick in automatically when you’re about to die, you have to watch your energy and use them yourself. I thought it was great.

I guess “now fight all the bosses again” is an established megaman trope... and I actually was okay with how it was implemented here. Checkpoints were a bit more frequent than I remember from megaman 2, and the bosses were spread out over a few tiny levels rather than just all packed into a room.

The final boss was very challenging, again I doubt I could have made it through this game today without save states, at least not with any hair still intact and without it consuming my life for months on end.

My ideal Megaman so far would definitely fall somewhere between this and the NES versions... but after having to drop this mid-way, I’d probably have to play both again to settle on exactly where.

Land’s End - Gear VR Played story mode - Maybe 1hr actual game time? Hard to say because of all the time I spent updating my android phone, or charging it, or waiting for it to cool down enough so I could keep playing, or taking a break because my head hurt. Even if it was around or under 1hr, it was enough.

I’ve been trying to play this one for ages. Since the Gear VR was the only VR headset in the house. It’s probably fair to say that I’ve had a samsung phone and a headset sitting on or around my desk for over a year because I wanted to play this.

And it’s fun, I liked it a lot. It’s a shame it hasn’t been reworked for higher end headsets... but I can understand why it hasn’t. It’s fully designed around gazing, there’s no other inputs, so once you put it on a higher end device with more complex input systems, it’s going to feel a bit restrictive. It’s not like it wouldn’t still be fun, but you’d have that weird feeling of having a controller or hands of some kind that don’t do anything.

But it looks lovely, and it’s a shame that experiencing it on the Gear VR with it’s low res screen and no head tracking etc is the only way to enjoy it. The puzzles are fun, if it’s not pushing the limits of the device it looks like it should be (great design, it’s low poly and low detail and it really nails the aesthetic). There’s a great sense of space and discovery as the levels open up around you, or when you enter some space that you didn’t see a few steps earlier and there’s a whole new room or area.

It’s very short. But that’s good. You get to enjoy something wonderful, but you don’t have to spend a lot of time using the Gear VR to do it. I need to spend more time playing VR games this year. I bought the PSVR specifically with the hope of doing that, but it hasn’t panned out so much so far. I really want to play more of Eagle Flight, I love what I’ve played so far.

Anyway, that’s me all caught up. Sorry to spam 5 games into one post, I’m not sure I even played 5 games last year... but I’m hoping this will free me up to play more zelda and start some new stuff.