#it's a type of enemy design you'd expect from a 2000s game

[telekitnetic-art]

Indigenous person here, and I definitely agree that the "tribal cheese" and the mechanics surrounding it should be changed. I was really enjoying pizza tower and the fanart being made of it, but the stereotyped enemy made me cringe hard. also the fact that it was originally announced or created in 2019 as an enemy isn't really an excuse, because Indigenous people have been calling out bullshit stereotypes since the 90s. And the fact that it made it into a game released in 2023 is even more embarrassing to me. Like... no one saw the enemy labelled "tribal cheese" with the leaf/feather headband carrying a tomahawk and doing ""rain dances"" around a totem pole as potentially racist???

I've seen a couple people excuse it as "oh, the whole game is based on stereotypes, look at the main character" and like. you guys need to understand that the "mamma mia i cooka the pizza" trope is not on the same level of seriousness as racist tropes that have had a tangible impact on Indigenous people for decades.

I'm not a spokesperson for Every Single Indigenous person ever, so maybe other Indigenous people have different opinions on the "tribal cheese" enemy and how it should be handled/changed. This also isn't me saying "boycott the game/attack the creator" at all, or that anyone who plays it is a horrid person. But this is an issue that should be talked about, and this whole situation with the enemy stereotypes is really a "man, come on." moment to me.

So anyway -

The point is that Pizza Tower still has a racist, outdated stereotype of Indigenous people in the Oregano Desert level.

It even has a achievement for rain dancing around a totem pole (totem poles are a Pacific Northwest thing, not a Plains Tribe thing). They war cry at you and they throw tomahawks (because it's always tomahawks or spears).

Bellyache about the screencaps being 5 years old if you want, but the stereotype made it into the game, so he hasn't changed that much. He didn't change enough to have a shred of awareness about using a racist stereotype. And before anyone tries: that trope isn't a hallmark of Wario games or 90s animation, it's a hallmark of racism.

Even if he "doesn't" make bigoted jokes anymore (though I would consider the Tribe Cheese one such joke), he made an entire level based around that trope.

And like every other time there's an anti-Indigenous caricature in videogames or popular media, it doesn't get mentioned, or it gets glossed over because the creator went "Oopsie! That was cringe."

The exclusion of the Tribe Cheese from that salvo of screenshots undermines the entirety of it, because it's a solid example of him not having changed enough to be conscious beyond "that was unfunny," and everyone just focuses on what he said and when - without the connection to how that mindset still lingers in the final product of the game.

[raptorfae53]

Ãrohwan Trapinch, Vibrava and Flygon. (Bug - Dragon)

Far removed from its mainland relatives desert origins, this pokemon line is adapted for a life in the trees, sporting an extra set of arms,clever nimble claws and long prehensile tail,with their wings vestigial and osteoderm-like, rendering these pokemon flightless.

These pokemon sport voracious appetites and have made themselves an enemy of farmers since humans first arrived in Ãrohwa by devouring all manner of crops. With the advancement of technology in the aftermath of the great cataclysm however these pokemon have grown wary, with their numbers declining rapidly as a result of their former victims ire to the point they have been considered extinct a few times in the last century. (Every time a search is put out a few are found,with one particularly sparse search ending after a flygon,relaxing on a particularly brittle branch,fell out of a tree and onto a passing conservationist)

To those with the luck (or lack thereof) to be training an Ãrohwan Flygon, this food based motivation is everything to training one of these pokemon. Like many dragon types training can be long and drawn out, not helped by the self centered attitude most Ãrohwan Flygon have. Having experience with strong pokemon and having said strong pokemon on hand as well as instilling a rewards system for a job well done are known to work exponentially in training this evolutionary line, and if trained well can result in a strong battler and companion,just make sure you keep snacks on hand!

Design inspiration down below:

Flygon is a personal favourite pokemon of mine and it seems the eternal middle child of the 2000s pokemon games dragons. No fancy mega evolution/temporal variant like fellow hoennite (hoennese?) Dragons salamence and altaria and the misfortune of being the same type as garchomp with lesser stats,hence folks gravitating towards it or the plethora of other hoenn or sinnoh dragons (including a trio of actual gods) over it, so I felt it fair to throw the poor guy a bone as well as finally bestow upon it a regional variant with the bug typing people have been confused it didn't have since 2002 (something something antlions).

The main reasoning for said typing is one of its primary inspirations, the coconut rhinoceros beetle.

Native to mainland Asia but introduced to much of the Pacific including Samoa and Tonga where parts of Ãrohwa are based upon. This beetle has been a scourge of these islands crop plantations since it arrived, munching through palm plantations with reckless abandon, free from predators such as shrews and click beetles since the beginning of the 20th century, a voracious creature befitting a dragon.

The other inspiration for this regional form are mekosuchine crocodilians .

You're first reaction to that information was probably what on earth a mekosuchine is?

Simply put mekosuchines were a family of crocodilians found in Australia and the Pacific until as recent as 3000 years ago (with a specimen belonging to the family found in the same St Bathans assemblage as the inspiration for an earlier 'mon koikekkai,hence the inclusion in a NZ based region) that encompassed a wide range of niches both semi aquatic like you'd expect a crocodile to do, and terrestrial, with the genus the family is named for, mekosuchus itself speculated by some to be arboreal:

Anyways I hope you like the first of the regional variants I've thought up for this region because these three won't be the first or last, unlike some (paldea), see you soon with some more art!

[clownkiwi]

Psychonauts First Impressions

I've had to write my thoughts on this game on a separate post because this game is like. Immediately interesting from the get-go, and I need to type my thoughts down on this.

So Psychonauts is a game, and easily the most stand out-ish from the get-go. Especially in terms of when this was released.

Because, if I'll be entirely honest, in terms of 3D platformers, I think the best years for them - their peak - had to be like. From 1996-2007. That's when they largely started to leave their mark on gaming, that's when a lot of prolific and famous series started or were shaped, and that's when alot of underrated series had their spotlight. Psychonauts definitley has to be not only one of the most underrated at the time of release, but probably one of the most unfortunate in leaving a mark at that time.

Not to say it wasn't executed well, I just mean that it had to be extremely subversive at the time for a 3D platformer; and I don't mean subversive as in "this bad media is subversive Because it's bad" or like. In the Conker's Bad Fur Day subversive, where it has a cute and charming exterior, but an edgy and raunchy tone when you first boot it up.

Psychonauts is subversive in terms of the development of the 3D platformer genre at that time, within the decade of the release of Mario 64. And you could easily tell with their tutorial levels, because they're very interesting to compare.

Mario 64's first world is a battlefield! Bob-omb Battlefield! Yea, didn't notice that an actual war was being fought in this level the whole time, right? Well, it's because it was executed with an overall lighter and positive tone than what you'd expect. And if I'll be entirely honest, Mario games don't need to have a dark or serious tone. Not to say that they can (& when they do, it comes across well), but Mario is designed for kids to play as their first video game, and you don't necessarily want to scare them right out of the gate.

But Psychonauts first world tutorial is also a battlefield; but like, an actual one. One that you'd expect from the tone the game sets up with the intro cutscene. You're running around on an actual war, kids are dying in front of your eyes (but really, they're just kicked out of the coach's mind), and it's really dark and violent. Mario 64 had walking bombs that were enemies, Psychonauts had landmines instead as obstacles. And it is that dark because you're in the mind of a traumatized boot boy

The both of these games start out on very similarily themed levels, battlefield; but what sets them apart is tone, the decade inbetween them being made (1996 to 2005), and the maturity of the intended audience who probably played Mario 64 when they were kids. But now that they're alot older, probably in high school or college, they see this new weird game on Xbox that starts out in an actual battlefield and not. A colorful mountain with walking bombs & cannons firing giant bubbles.

Psychonauts immediately set itself apart from how it subverted my expectations, at least, and I'm very interested to see where this game will go. I've heard that overall, it does keep up with this tone as you go further and deeper in the game. But it's also a product of it's time.

Both in the sense of how it subverted the audience's expectations, but also in how. Dated some parts of the game is. Ignoring the half an hour it took to properly set this game up for stream & get running last night, this game was certainly made with mid-2000's sensibilities. A marginalized character says a slur a couple times, they use an outdated stereotype as a currency, and from taking a look at this game on doesthedogdie.com, it uh. Can get pretty intense. Not too extreme like other games, but pretty intense for it's intended audience.

I'd even say it's a game that's very well deserving of it's T for Teen rating, it's something I wouldn't let like. A five year old play, without fear of scarring them.

Either way, I'm very surprised this game didn't initially do well financially when it was released. It's such a unique game that, as far as I know currently, seems very interested in exploring darker subjects maturely in nuanced ways other games of its type haven't at that point (I wouldn't consider Conker's Bad Fur Day mature, you fight a literal pile of shit as a boss fight. That really doesn't scream mature and nuanced for me)

So, yea. Call me excited for this game, I can't wait to see what the rest of it has in store for me. It definitely left a really good first impression on me last night.