#ima ikenfell

[artseniccatnip]

played ikenfell i rly liked it, crossed it over with wandersong cause i DO WHAT I WANT!!!

bonus spoiler doodle under cut

canon lesbians <3

[asterfalls]

ima from ikenfell!

[dangerradio]

the party!

[athetos]

I love ikenfell I actually didn’t expect the game to be this long but I’m pleasantly surprised because I don’t want to say goodbye to these characters but also I keep hearing every characters voice as an owl house VA and it’s very cute. It turns out magical school media can be really fun when it’s not made by a transphobic and antisemitic cunt

[ikenposting]

Ima: Can I offer you a nice stick in this trying time?

[mctwilight-mcd]

A random thought popped into my head a couple of days ago.

“What was that one super fun 8-bit game I stopped playing a year ago because I got stuck at a boss fight?”

The answer…

Ikenfell!

When I say this game is amazing, like AHHHHHHHHHH!!!

It’s super accessible and inclusive and the characters are sooooo fun. It broke my little heart when Maritte had her little sad moment (not spoiling anything)

No spoilers from anyone plz because I just started chapter 8 and I definitely missed a few side quests along the way.

But anyways I’m playing it again and YOU ALL SHOULD TOO!!!

Also holy carp Ima’s theme (Paint the future) is such a bop and my fav battle music of all time ok byeeeeeeee.

[bugfragged]

Combining Pertisia's defense buff with Ima's regen buff makes it easy to survive long battles of attrition, even against a boss with three phases.

QUOTH THE RAVEN - Let's Play 「 Ikenfell 」 - 9

[tesl8n]

Finished Ikenfell tonight, which was a game I was looking forward to for literal years before it came out. It's combines tactics RPG elements with the timing minigames from the mario RPGs in a neat little package. It's also part of that genre of very self-effacedly queer indie games that've been coming out the past few years (stuff like undertale, stardew valley, hades, that kinda stuff). Tactics RPG with queer characters sounded right up my alley, so I was really excited for it to come out in switch.

It was definitely the best paced game I have ever played. Like, I have such a problem with dropping games when the gameplay sections between story beats gets too long, and there's a lot of games I really enjoyed that I just haven't finished because of it. Ikenfell was such a breath of fresh air there - the dungeons didn't get super long ever, the battles didn't get super slow, and there was never a point where I had to grind or be forced to engage with random encounters because I was too weak. I wish every game was like that, tbh.

The story is alright. It is *not* a particularly queer story - its themes aren't really about being gay or trans, it's not a romance or a bildungsroman, it just happens to have 3 sapphic women and 3 nonbinary characters in the party. Which is a kind of representation some people really want, though I'm not sure it's necessarily *my* preference. Instead, it's about a girl, Maritte, who comes to a wizard school in search of her sister, Safina, who has gone missing, only to find an apocalypse starting, seemingly at Safina's hand. So Maritte gathers all the people in Safina's orbit and follows the trail of destruction to find her.

It's central theme is about how lying and secrets hurt people - a lot of the problems in the story are cause by Safina lying to the people around her. And so, Maritte spends the story chasing after Safina, always one step behind, and finding out who she really is behind her mask, and the same for all the characters.

It’s like a 7/10 story, like, it’s alright, but nothing to write home about, I guess? At times, it suffered from passivity - the characters are never making choices, they’re always just following the one lead that they’ve got, one after another. But, there’s a few fun moments, a few cool twists, and I did enjoy it.

The characters are definitely the highlight of the story. They’re very dynamic, and the game works very hard to give everyone a character arc, and dynamics between most of the cast of 6.

I did enjoy the gameplay. I love tactics rpgs, that’s my favorite genre by far, and this one had a neat take on it. The board was small, something like 3*11, and it pushed very hard for you to work on positioning. Every characters attacks hit in specific spaces relative to where they stand, and one of the challenges was positioning yourself and your enemies in a way that let you get off your strongest attacks and your best buffs, while not being vulnerable to your opponents multi-target moves, or their strongest attacks. It made you learn each enemy’s moves, especially the bosses’, and also think about your characters’ attacks fit together.

One of the highlights of the system was a synergy I found between Ima and Gilda. Ima is a healer based around regen, and Gilda is an attacker based around moving around the board. So, Gilda has an attack lets her teleport and then immediately take another turn, which means that Ima’s regen healing goes off twice that turn, giving Gilda a big burst of healing. And, the two of them had complementary big attacks - both of their strongest attacks hit targets 3 away, but Gilda’s was one up, so if the two of them stood adjacent, they could both hit the same target. And, Ima’s healing required that zir target be adjacent, so that set zir up to kickstart Gilda’s healing again.

That synergy was the most fun thing I had with the game - it made me feel so powerful and clever for having found it, and it gave battles a fun flow, where I went back and forth between setting up buffs & doing big damage. There’s a few other synergies like that I found, or could see even if I didn’t piece them together.

But, it’s not like Slay the Spire, where the synergy system is obviously part of the game design. Here it feels like an emergent property of the design, which is cool, but there are limits to it. For instance, Petronella had a kit based around healing & poison, which felt like it could make an interesting combo - stall fights while poison picked enemies off. But, that combo is entirely contained within Petronalla - they have to do both the poison & the healing, and the action economy is not there for it. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a way to enable their kit to work. Gilda’s kit was similarly niche, but the synergy with Ima saved it and made her the best character in the game - I wish the same were true of all of the characters.

The timing mechanic sucked and was over centralizing and I hate it. It’s supposed to make enemy turns more engaging, rather than something you have to just sit through, but I suck at it and it’s not fun. Plus, it’s very centralizing - if you never hit it, fights are impossible, and if you always hit it, fights are too easy. I never find it more engaging, just more frustrating, in any game I’ve played with it. You can turn it off, but fights aren’t balanced around that, and it’s not the developers vision, so I didn’t.

So yeah, altogether a fun game that I’d recommend.

[rabbimite]

Some characters who canonly use neopronouns cause I can

Zayn Petrossian (Ze/Hir) from Another Life

Ima (Ze/Zir) from Ikenfell

Toni (Xe/Xem) from The Office Type

[captdedeyes]

Mystery-solving magician gang ✨

[fauna-paints]

Let’s paint the future real bright!

[lilywily143]

I drew more for the Ninjago x Ikenfell AU..

Again Spoilers for both franchises

I did explain why Kai would be Safina. But I need to add that Safina had sharp, straight up hair which really worked for the hair gelled Kai.

Wu would be the headmaster, Baudovinia Aeldra.

They are both elder guardians of multiple students. And B.A/Wu is trying to do the right thing, but not in the same way as who you play as. So they're assumed to be the bad one of the story until the very end.

Wu isn't really like that but, controversies around him go brrrrrr...

Cole would be Petronella is this Au as well.

Mostly since I thought it could be funny is Cole was the one character who doesn't get a love interest, even in the epilogue. Plus because neither of these characters like to get into trouble, but will do trouble if their friends are involved and to do something good.

Cough cough Fang Blade Trophy cough cough

Also, long black hair with a hair accessory to help keep the hair out of their head.

Now we have Ima and Scott.

I was thinking it should be Lloyd since Ima is part of the Safina friend group. But..

Ima is older than all of them. Zey are reluctant to help the friend group against the headmaster, but complies soon enough. (Scott against Ungami)

Also, in terms of zer design, since Ima has paint based powers and Scott's avatar has those blue triangles. I changed the triangles into paint splotchs, even thou Ima didn't have that in zer design.

Also, Ima has sphere earings and Scott had that lightning bolt on their cap, so I made the earrings lightning bolts.

So tldr for Ima/Scott, it was almost all for the design factor.

Now Zane is Rook.

Very formal and smart. Willing to get in trouble with Kai/Safina. K/S and Z/R got together, so opposite shippings a thing in this Au.

Also, Rook has really dark colored powers with flashs of white light involved. Thiught it may slightly fit with the both hero and villian moments Zane has during the series.

I will make more, i even know who I what Misako to be and I'm excited to draw her.

[ey-arts]

my 3 ikenfell pieces are now available as prints on my redbubble store! you can also get them in sticker or shirt form if you want :o https://www.redbubble.com/people/EY-Art/explore?asc=u&page=1&sortOrder=recent

[nerdpiggy]

ikenfell players: by the end of the game did you have a solid 3-person party that you never switched out? if so which 3? I'll go first, I had what i called the go-mode team which was Maritte, Gilda, and Nel. Maritte and Gilda would just ATTACK with no concern for their health and Nel would frantically heal them any chance they got

[athetos]

Finished ikenfell, what a fantastic game… the final bosses were Rad as hell, very “dark” and emotional. This game made me feel way more things than I was expecting! It goes in extremely cool directions, I definitely think the ultimate final boss is gonna stick with me for a long time, something about the music and the final phase in particular that guts me. The epilogue was also very sweet, sometimes those types of things come off as bland or unneeded but I think it was a smart decision to include, love the characters not shying around the word gay. My favorite characters are probably Rook and Ima but Maritte and Perty stole my heart too, I think they’re very cute. I like that the epilogue showed how much they’ve grown too in such a short passing of time! Anyway play this game

[lesbianamity]

i sure am drawing art for my favorite game ever...again...........