#ive watched a playthrough of the whole main story but ive avoided pretty much all dlc spoilers so there will still be new stuff for me to

[lord-shitbox]

oh okay wait gen q cus I've had a few ppl recommend hollow knight to me before but I've avoided it cus it's a platformer. as a fellow platformer... non-enjoyer?? what sets it apart from other platformers that makes it fun when a lot aren't??

um! honestly im not really sure... I quite like how the knight moves around and i got very used to it, I guess. my first playthrough frustrated me IMMENSELY but because it's one set world, when you've beat it all once you know how to get through everything and successive playthroughs are way easier.

It's a metroidvania so a lot of platforming challenges get easier if you fight an extra boss beforehand and such, and the platforming aspect of it isnt the main focus of the game so pretty much every challenge involves you weaving through obstacles to get to some shiny item and then hitting a switch that opens a bypass door or shuts all the obstacles off, so that challenge is done and gone for the rest of your time in that savefile. which is great imo. the world is 2d platforming but aside from the little challenges embedded into the world the platforming isnt meant to be super difficult

Also, if you fall into spikes or something the game usually sets you down on the platform right before that rather than all the way at the beginning of the challenge, unless you died and are coming back from a respawn point. sometimes the challenge is short enough that it doesnt do that but for the most part it does & i like that

from what i've heard from other players the big frustrating part of hk isn't the platforming but the bosses, because hk boss fights require you to memorize all their attack patterns & be able to dodge consistently throughout the whole fight. tanking does not work very well in hk. these things are the main focus of the game, i'd say— i recommend watching a boss fight playthrough to see if the combat style seems like something youd enjoy or not.

The game itself doesn't have cheats or accessibility features that make it easier to play, but ive heard there are infinite health & money mods if you're after story and soundtrack enjoyment alone ((hk has very good story and soundtrack imo!!))

Honestly with hollow knight i think i can attribute a lot of my enjoyment to sheer "got good" — i am one of the lucky ones who Figured it All Out and now theres one pesky little steam achievement in between me and perfect game status. but uh. i think hk is enough of a not-platformer for me to have enjoyed it !!

[dogcasino]

i'm so excited to stream my first time playing bugsnax for the duradash

[choices-and-voices]

hi sorry if this has already been asked somewhere but im was wondering if you had any tips on how to get the best experience without having to pay ?

Hi there! Don’t worry, this question hasn’t been asked before, and I am honestly super flattered that you value my opinion enough to ask it ☺️ I’m not sure how helpful my tips will be because I don’t exactly consider myself an expert in this, but here are some things that came to mind! I’ve gone into quite a bit of detail, but if you want a quicker overview, just stick to the bold headings. Also, if any of the people reading this have good tips of their own, please lmk! I’m always learning new things about how to do this too 💕

1. This one’s a bit obvious, but still – take the opportunities that the game gives you to earn free diamonds. That means watching the bonus ads every day (5 diamonds/day), playing through chapters as often as you can (including replaying old books if there are no new releases – 2 diamonds/chapter), and watching ads at the end of book chapters for an extra diamond. Obviously, all this is a bit of a balancing act – you want to be playing Choices often enough to build up your diamonds, but not so often that it takes over your life and makes you feel frustrated, because what’s the point of it if it’s not fun anymore, y’know? So I’ve always been careful not to overdo it. Even if all you do is watch the bonus ads every day, that’s 35 diamonds/week – basically, one big diamond scene a week – which is honestly not too shabby.

2. At any one time, only play 1-2 books that you’re really invested in, and try to supplement that with another 2-3 books that you’re not really invested in or are replaying just for diamonds. As tempting as it can be to rush through every good-looking book in the app all at once, that just leads to a situation where a) you’re trying to divide your free keys between waaay too many releases, and b) there are so many demands on you for diamonds, you never get to consistently spend them on anything. So I personally think it’s best to only read a couple of good books at once, and instead of marathoning them, break them up with chapters from less-good books – this builds up your diamond stash for spending on the good books. Which leads into my next point:

3. Don’t zip through books too fast – even if most of the chapters are already released, spreading them out helps you earn more diamonds for them in the meantime. I’m really lucky to have been playing Choices for so long that almost all the books were presented to me in weekly release format – if I downloaded the app for the first time today, and saw all the fully-released books on there, I feel like I would be way too overwhelmed to play. So I reckon that, even if a book isn’t technically a weekly release for you, make it a weekly release! You might decide to play all the books you’re really invested in on a particular day when you have more free time – say, a Sunday. Then, you have Monday-Saturday every week to earn diamonds for those books, and something to look forward to at the end of it all. As for what you do with those diamonds:

4. Be smart about what you spend diamonds on. There are a couple of different components to this tip – it involves things like a) figuring out which types of purchases are worth diamonds in general, b) figuring out which types of purchases you want to prioritise in certain books, and c) planning ahead before you start playing a book chapter about where you might want to spend diamonds. To address each of those things one-by-one:

a) Figure out which types of purchases are worth diamonds in general. Off the top of my head, there are 6 main types of diamond purchases in Choices: ‘friendly’ scenes with LIs (12-25 diamonds), ‘steamy’ scenes with LIs (25-30 diamonds), scenes with your whole friendship group, collectible items (e.g. the tapestry pieces in Bloodbound, the clues in Veil of Secrets, etc.), outfits, and pets. Your mileage may vary a lot on which of these are most important to you, so take my opinions with a grain of salt. But my general advice would be to i) prioritise group scenes above LI scenes, ii) prioritise ‘friendly’ LI scenes above ‘steamy’ LI scenes, iii) avoid collectibles, and iv) go for outfits and pets only if you really like the look of them. This advice is based on the fact that, firstly, I think you get a better experience of immersion in a book if you know a bit about all the characters around MC, rather than just about one LI; secondly, ‘friendly’ LI scenes tend to tell you more about the LI than ‘steamy’ scenes, which are often 80-90% copied-and-pasted erotica despite being more expensive; thirdly, collectibles are a massive drain on diamond stores, and almost always unlock quite short, generic scenes that it’s easy to find on Tumblr or YouTube; and fourthly, both outfits and pets don’t do much except appear in the story at key moments, which can be a really nice touch but is still only needed in moderation. Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, and you might find that those exceptions are sometimes book-specific. Which leads me to Part B of this point:

b) Figure out which types of purchases you want to prioritise in certain books. It’s all well and good for me to say that group scenes are usually better than LI scenes, but when I’m playing a book with an amazing LI but a pretty meh supporting cast (*cough cough* Myra Dixon carries Baby Bump on her shoulders *cough cough*), I obviously may need to adjust my spending habits slightly. Moreover, by focusing all your diamond spending on just one main thing per book – like Myra’s romance in Baby Bump, or the party’s side-quests in Blades of Light and Shadow, or the posse in Queen B – I think you end up with a much better playing experience, because you feel like you’re seeing at least one facet of the story in-depth instead of getting a patchy surface view of lots of different facets. For the most part, the purchases you prioritise in a book can mostly depend on personal taste, but there are a few books where some background knowledge might be helpful in the decision. Four things that I think are worth flagging are that i) the ‘competition books’ (America’s Most Eligible, Queen B, Hot Couture) do require regular outfit purchases to win, although winning isn’t that much better an experience than being runner-up; ii) Veil of Secrets and Nightbound are two books where it’s worth saving 30-35 diamonds for the final chapter, because your MC is forced to leave the small-town setting if you don’t; iii) Across the Void is a book that frequently invites you to spend diamonds to save characters’ lives, but their death arcs are honestly much better-written and more sensible than their survival arcs; and iv) the It Lives series is the only one where characters can die due to an accumulation of choices you make throughout the story, so maybe it’s worth keeping some diamonds in reserve for that one. Which just leaves us with one more sub-point:

c) Plan ahead before you start playing a book chapter about where you might want to spend diamonds. I want to take this opportunity to thank whichever people in the fandom maintain the Choices wiki, because oh my gosh, they are lifesavers. For the last year or so, my response whenever a new Choices chapter is released has been to wait a few hours, Google ‘[book name] choices’, open the wiki result, and skim through to check how many diamond choices are available & how much they cost. Because all the wiki includes are the possible responses to every choice presented – it doesn’t even state the wording of the choice itself – this is a relatively spoiler-free technique that helps a lot with big picture planning. For example, you might decide not to buy an early group scene because there’s a nicer-sounding LI scene later on, and come to think of it, you should replay a few more chapters of another book first to save up the diamonds for that scene. If you don’t mind encountering just a few more spoilers before you play the chapter, you can also scout out its diamond scenes in more detail by searching the relevant book or character tags on Tumblr, or by looking for a chapter stream on YouTube. You may decide that you don’t need to buy a diamond scene if you’ve already seen it played through by someone else, or alternatively, you may decide whether or not to buy a diamond scene based on how good it looks in an existing playthrough – in either case, these techniques can help you thoughtfully ration out the diamonds you have, instead of being caught off-guard whenever a diamond choice comes up.

5. On the subject of the Choices wiki, it’s also a great way to maximise your success in books without using diamonds. Whenever there’s a ‘right’ option to a choice that gives you a better outcome later in the chapter, that’s indicated in the wiki. So with a bit of pre-reading of the wiki before you play the chapter, and/or with the wiki open on a separate screen as you play, you can get the best outcome without having to buy that outfit or bonus scene that promised you ‘an advantage.’ Obviously, your mileage may vary on whether this method is actually worth it, or whether it takes all the fun out of Choices by ‘cheating’ at the gaming aspect. I personally view Choices as more of an interactive story app than a game I’m trying to beat, so I have no issue with this method, but opinions may differ and that’s okay.

6. If you’re really feeling like a lack of diamonds is limiting your playing experience, it may be best to start out with ‘cheaper’ books until you have more diamonds stored up. In this case, I’m using ‘cheaper’ to mean books where there are fewer diamond scenes, where diamond scenes are less expensive, and/or where diamond scenes don’t play as big a role in the plot. It can be hard to identify which books fit this bill, but as a general rule, it’s more likely to be the earlier-released ones or less-popular ones. Some which I’d recommend are the first few books of the Freshman series, the #LoveHacks series, the High School Story series, the Perfect Match series, Most Wanted, The Heist: Monaco, Wishful Thinking, Bachelorette Party, and The Royal Masquerade.

7. Finally, a really quick tip for making the most out of free keys – keys are used up as soon as you start a book chapter, and refresh ~every 3 hours. This means that, even if you don’t have time to play chapters every 3 hours, you should try to open the app roughly that often and just click to unlock a chapter. When you finally have time to play, you’ll have a whole lot of chapters ready to go plus another two refreshed keys, and you can power through them at whatever speed you need to fit in them into your break time or to earn diamonds for an upcoming release. Once again, this is a tip that may need to be practised in moderation, because you don’t want to be constantly interrupting your life to load up an app on your phone. But even if you just log in and unlock chapters every 6 hours, or every 12 hours, that’s still 2-4 extra chapters ready for you at the end of the day plus your two free keys.

I think that’s about all for my tips! Thanks for reading, and I hope it helped at least a bit ❤️