#like I remember the testfire

[druvjelly]

Ayo since the splatfest is this weekend.

No harassment, obviously.

Don’t treat this like Eurovision. Stop saying X team did X and yidi yada and it was all rigged BLEH.

View it as a fun event. Not the FIFA World Cup. You lose? Hey that’s nice. Post your little meme. You win? That’s really cool! Celebrate a little.

Destroy all the back liners if on enemy team.

It’s a video game, calm down if you lose. It isn’t the end of the world (unless you’re in a bet where you have the destroy the wlrld).

Uhhhh, ligma balls?

[maverickflare]

heres my admission. ive not participated in any 100x battles this splatfest. ive been inlike a singular 10x battle. i haveno idea where the 10x battles have been ive just not been getting them. i have a singular festival shell. i have no idea why this has been happening to me.

[silvergarnet12]

Splatoon was the first Nintendo game to push me out of my comfort zone of single player games, and with the closure of it's servers I wanted to draw a tribute to a game that really means a lot to me.

Some long rambles about the game under the cut.

When I first played the Global Testfire I was 15, and the only mutliplayer games I played were with friends in the same room.

Splatoon was also the first shooter I ever picked up, as I always liked bright colours over more realistic graphics in my games, and back then the only shooters I knew about were Halo(and that was only really a name to me!) and the CoD games.

Any worries I had about being bad quickly vanished as the sheer vibe of chaotic fun the game had, particularly when no one had played it before, got rid of any worries, and all I remember is having fun. And choosing to play as the guy instead of the girl for the first time, solely becuase I wanted a ponytail like in real life(I would continue to use the guy through the series as a tradition, a contrast to what I saw most people online doing).

When the game came out I binged the single player, and vividly remember the first time I fought DJ Octavio, and the first time I heard Calamari Inkantation. If ever a game was to convince me that a song could irreversibly change your life, it was Splatoon. Because to teenage me, in that moment, with Calamari Inkantation playing in the background while I fought an octupus DJ, it did.

It gave me terminal brainworms for this series. And here I am, 8 yrs later. Older and more tired, been through some shit, had some good times, tried, succeeded and failed in things throughout the years.

I've always been grateful that they made the decision for the player character from 1 to return, everytime they've shown up it's felt a bit like seeing an old friend, especially since as the games time skips have always had them close to my age(which probably helped my attachement back in the first game). So hi Three, can't believe we both probably pay taxes now.

I have the original two Inkling Amiibos, in a collection that is slowly building, I'm still attached to Marie, and yes I was on her team for the Final Splatfest.

I cried when it was over, just like I did in 2's Final Fest(I was team chaos, two for two baby!) and will probably do so for 3's as well. Something about this series just makes me super attached to it's world and characters.

So booyah Splatoon, my final online game of yours was well and truly years ago, but I replayed story mode to share you with a friend recently, and I think I'll refight Octavio tonight in honour of the good times.

You encouraged me to try out games I wouldn't have otherwise(hello Overwatch and Deep Rock Galactic), and outlasted one of the other major games of my teenage years(...Overwatch 1 I miss you). So thank you for that.

I'll miss Squid Jump, Inkstrike, the og kit for the NZap 89(why does it's new one not vibe with me ;-;), the Squid Sister's broadcasts and the more saturated colours. At least I can always return to the Plaza in 3, and that Spyke isn't dead like I was concerned he was when 3 released, and see the Squid Sisters perform during Splatfests again.

I have so much more to say in my heart about you but no more ways to word it.

You've been a fantastic game, and will always be a treasured experience that I am grateful to have been a apart of from the very beginning.

Now bring back Moray Towers in 3 damn it! It's in 2 but I DON'T WANT TO LOSE MY FAVOURITE STAGE IF IT"S NOT IN 4.

[gushersgauntlet]

since splatoon 1 is wrapping up today (officially. bless the people who make fan servers) I'd like to give my appreciation to the game that started it all. it changed my life in so many ways I never expected, back when my older sister pre-purchased the game for me as I booted up the global testfire in 2015 (the testfire that ran for an extra hour cause of connection errors lol). Splatoon 1 let me make so many close friends, reconnect with other friends, and had me meet the love of my life <3

At age 16 I was very socially isolated. I went through the toughest period of my life thus far and ended a 2 year toxic relationship in which my ex was maybe the only person i talked to on a regular basis. I made the Grii and Tenta ask blog shortly after ending things

Their relationship was an idealized version of what I wanted, and at the time, I didn't know I was a lesbian ! Took me another year to figure that out LOL but because of them I was able to meet the people that helped me pull through tough times !!

I also appreciate how LGBT supportive the community is <3 I still remember when gay marriage was federally legalized in the US and the splatoon 1 plaza was celebrating

anyway, splatoon means a lot to me! I'm so happy this series grew up alongside with me 🥺

[beebfreeb]

I've been working on adding a new section to my website (it is No Pickles themed) and I've got 60 or so new assets to draw... Very scary.

(Long ramble about my website and what I want to do in addition to/after I've finished DIDL)

I have really been wanting to put non-DIDL stuff on my website, I just, erm. All the things that I want to be able to show off are NOT in the state for it yet... Everything is far too underdeveloped for my standards, and a lot of the ideas I have are out of scope of my current skills and would take quite a bit of time and effort that I have been trying to funnel into Daisy. Despite it all.

While hopping around between projects and hastily slapping on new parts is fun and easy, actually sitting down and trimming it into a neat and tidy shape is a different matter.

I want a secondary project to work on so baddd. Yet my options...

Airship: Solid character designs and personalities, 1st half completely outlined, 2nd half fearfully untouched. Unsure on the actual website presentation.

TerriByte: My special little babygirl since middle school but developmentally in the pits of hell. I am unsure of what I want for nearly every aspect of it. Might end it making it entirely text-based.

Criatron: Project dedicated to making an absurd amount of character designs but I want it to be a browser game and I don't understand JS in the slightest.

TMMM: Will be an RPGmaker game but in it's current state it is absolutely overambitious and bloated and needs severe trimming. Also making games is hard and requires a lot of skills I don't have and some I don't think I'll be able to pick up (music, namely).

Wizards: Mostly solid character designs. Vague plot (I know what kicks everything off, I know how I want things to end, I don't know how to get from A to B), I have very strong visuals for how I want the webpage to be designed but lack the skills to execute it (Would have to get good at 3d modeling)

Amalgam: Specifically made with web stuff and multimedia in mind but doesn't have a singular plot as much as a bunch of tangentially related things are happening at once as experienced through wiki-like deepdives and websurfing.

There are other things as well that I don't have quite the same passion for at the moment.

If I could add a second readmore for plot/project summaries I would.

Like, I'm almost tempted to make a summary of everything and my pros and cons of working on it. Make it a PDF. Start polling people on it because of how indecisive I am. But I am also very firm in my Augh I want some of this to be a SURPRISE + I avoid putting anything on the internet if I would be very upset by people doing bad faith internet things to it.

Oh wait wait talking to myself in a Tumblr post has made me remember my plan from last February. TESTFIRE CATALOG! And by that I mean making a bunch of proof of concept demo pages and seeing which ones I like working on the most, and maybe which ones people are most interested in.

There are still a ton of new skills I will have to learn however. I wish I had infinite time and money. Oh well the time will pass anyway.

[cartayama]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPLATOON 3!!

i love the splatoon series with all my heart. ive been playing the series since day one, back when i was nine hears old. this series is almost half my age! i don't know how i first heard about splatoon, but when i did i'd look for every crumb of info and gameplay i could find on it. i'd watch gamexplain videos talking about the campaign, i'd find footage of splatoon booths set up at places like e3, i was absolutely ravenous, for anything splatoon. i even got the inkling boy and girl amiibo when they came out! this series is very likely my number one favorite franchise of all time, and i don't know if that'll ever change. when i heard about the global testfire i was ecstatic, and had a blast! same thing with splatoon 2, i partook in the global testfire/splatfest, my parents got me the game on day one, and i put maybe 100 hours or more into it, it would've been more if not for nintendo implementing paid online around that time, too!

i remember imprinting on agent three, seeing myself in them. i remember callie and marie, the squid sisters! i remember that crazy coot captain cuttlefish telling this young 'un about the octarians, and being so entrances by the vibe of octo valley from the first moment i stepped foot in there. i remember the art style being so *perfect* across the entire game. i remember when nintendo announced acto expansion in the same nintendo direct as smash ultimate i think, and my splatoon mania being instilled once again. i remember playing one of my favorite chunks of game in my life with octo expansion. i remember completing every level cause i loved it so much. i remember seeing *my old self*. seeing three. again. after what was 3 and a half years or so by then. i remember the insanity that was the final segment of octo expansion, fighting myself and the splattack (octo) theme. i remember fly octo fly, a song that makes me tear up without fail even today. i remember tartar. i remember inner agent three and their crushing moveset. i was a few weeks late to splatoon 3, which makes me kind of sad, but this game has forgiven me. it's made me realize how important splatoon is to me as a person, and ive given back to it by dumping more hours into it than i have the last three installments in the splatoon series combined, and im here to stay! i LOVE you splatoon, and i LOVE you splatoon 3!

[aggressive-almond-cookie]

I’ve been feeling a little weird lately and seeking comfort, so I decided to go replay splat2′s story mode.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, maybe briefly, but I didn’t play much of splat2 when it was active. I played a little bit of 1 when it came out, enough to fall in love with the concept but also enough to know it was for people much more mechanically skilled than me (a person who favored slow-paced sim games, turn-based RPGs, and point-and-click grindfests). I watched my housemate play 2 a bit but I couldn’t justify the purchase myself for something I figured I would terrible at. (I remember watching them play salmon run, and asking ‘wow, there’s a PvM co-op mode now?’ and thinking for a moment that maybe that would be less intimidating to learn, and then I saw a steel eel for the first time which was HORRIFIC, then watched them get completely swamped with with bosses and wipe, and decided .. no maybe not).

It was Splat3′s testfire, that I just so happened to hear about happening in a friends discord server, that happened to hit me at exactly the right time. I finally had a better job, was well on my way to healing from the trauma of my 11 years of working retail, and going through a bit of an inner renaissance, particularly getting in touch (possibly for the first time as an adult) with the true concept of play, the idea that playing didn’t have to have high stakes, that you don’t play to get a good grade in playing, you can just play to have fun and experience the thrill of intense situations in a setting where no actual danger is present.

I fell in love so quickly. I played the testfire every moment that I could and felt like I was finally, finally getting to enjoy this. In retrospect I was so bad at it-- I could barely swim up walls and I couldn’t even figure out how to use my special for the first several hours of gameplay and after trying out tons of weapons found that I was having the most luck using rollers and running over people (lol). But my skill level, for once, was something I wasn’t giving a single brain cell to worry about. I was just enjoying myself, celebrating every tiny victory and laughing at how many times I would just run off the map because I had so little spatial awareness. I won a 100x, I experienced my first squidparty, I did tricolors on attacking and felt intensely bonded with the random strangers I got partnered with. I was experiencing so many wonderful new things all at once and was absolutely euphoric.

And once the testfire was over, the emptiness it left behind left me so restless I thought I might start climbing walls. So to tide me over between then and release, I borrowed my housemate’s copy of splat2, figuring I could at least attempt story mode and learn the basics.

It was hard. Like really, really hard. I don’t... play these kinds of games. I could barely control where I was walking, I absolutely could not aim, I had zero confidence in jumping and missed even easy jumps routinely. I made it through by sheer stubbornness and force of will, running over and over through the same levels until I got lucky enough to get through them. Many levels I finished with a time of over half an hour, one at least 40 minutes, and that’s after lord knows how many failures. The last two kettles in the last zone nearly broke me. I actually cried tears of relief when I finally finished Platform Madhouse, shaking from the tension of making my final moves with the greatest precision and calculation that my clumsy and inexperienced hands could.

But... I did it, you know? And in doing so, I managed to prove to myself that I could do it-- that these kinds of games actually weren’t impossible for me, and that maybe, maybe I could overcome whatever other challenges awaited me in 3 and beyond, too.

Anyway, that’s way too much backstory to say that going back through the splat2 levels again was something of both a surreal and comforting experience. I went through them all in the span of a day, during a workday even, just playing in short intervals during breaks and lunchtime. Those last two kettles (minus octavio) were still the most difficult, but they didn’t take more than a few tries. It was satisfying to gracefully sail through so many of the levels that I struggled so painfully with less than a year ago. I’d say my confidence in making jumps has absolutely improved the most and is the thing I think has had the greatest impact on my ability to navigate the game-world in general.

I’ve been finally playing octo expansion too. A bit late maybe, but I think I had just really overhyped the difficulty in my mind and intimidated myself out of it. As it turns out, the main story is still very accessible, even to lower skill levels. You don’t have to actually complete most of the levels (or even play them) and even the points you pay to play you can go into debt with, so there’s never any real danger. You can skip levels after failing them enough times, so I think the only way you can actually get stuck might be the final segments. Granted, I’m still putting off going to the P R O M I S E D   L A N D until I have a long stretch of time for it (This is the same reason I still haven’t done After Alterna >>.., I just.. don’t have the sheer continuous amount of time to sit down and grind it out. I wish I could save states in these games so I don’t have to lose progress if I need to task-switch), so I might take this back, but so far that’s my impression.

And it’s been really enjoyable. I was happy to find there’s a ‘Who Caused The Big Bang’-style level that takes seconds to complete to make it easy to farm points (I keep wanting to call them power eggs when they’re not, lol). The levels on average are definitely more challenging than Alterna, but there are certainly several that I’d consider less challenging than Those Aren’t Birds and Target Town, and there are even some that Alterna practically made copies of (the one where you cut a shape out of boxes, for example).

That said, there have only been a few levels that I might say I breezed through-- they’re pretty challenging, but they don’t feel un-doable, and it’s so satisfying when you do overcome the challenges. It’s giving me an honest confidence boost to watch myself successfully take out a octosniper (my most feared enemy in my early days) with a charger (probably the weapon class I am weakest in) while balancing on a rotating platform (which were my absolute worst nightmare my first time going through splat2′s story mode). There’s still several levels I have to clear and some I haven’t even unlocked, but since they’re not keeping me from finishing the main storyline, I feel like I can just complete them as I feel up to it and there’s no reason to rush or get frustrated.

I love the levels where you just... play anarchy modes against octolings. Especially the one where you play rainmaker on manta maria-- tetras is a weapon option for that one and it’s quickly becoming one of my comfort levels in addition to just being good practice for firing the rainmaker. And I just love the entire vibe of everything-- much like Alterna there’s so much to see if you stop and look around, so many childhood-items floating in the sky, mixed with the music that gives me those vaporwave-esque feelings of nostalgia mixed with melancholy mixed with a feeling that’s somehow equally comforting and unsettling. And all that woven into these... weirdly juxtaposed grimdark/horror elements expressed with clown-like lightheartedness. It’s just a masterpiece of a setting and I’m so so glad I got the nerve to play this.

Splat2 in general has just been kind of a fun thing to mess around in with friends when we feel like a change of pace. Sometimes we do salmon run which is kind of awful without egg throws or squid-rolls, but we’re so low-rank that it’s still just kind of a chill experience.

I wouldn’t say I’m on a break from Splat3 anarchy because I keep intending to play it, and I know I’ll have fun with it, but then I get set up and sit down to do it and end up playing octo expansion instead. I think I may have low-key intimidated myself out of getting back into anarchy since I fell out of practice when I was out of town again; it feels like it takes me so long to get back into the swing of it and I take my losses a bit harder than I should. I tell myself octo expansion is good practice, and that’s not entirely untrue, but deep down I do know that the only thing that’s going to get me over my hesitance to play anarchy is playing anarchy.

But I guess at least if I’m going to put off addressing something I’m intimidated by, I’m glad I’m doing so by addressing something else I was previously intimidated by.

I’m really looking forward to Side Order now, especially since now I have the confidence that I’ll actually get to enjoy it along with everyone else and not get bogged down or walled off by being unable to complete basic things. I just feel a lot more capable, and it’s nice.

[kevincow]

My top 10 games of 2022

1) Splatoon 3

I usually don't do well with online shooters. I tried the first two Splatoons and had to put them down because I just got too frustrated. After trying the Testfire and giving up after two matches, I thought this game would be the same, and didn't think I'd even get it.

But I did, for some reason. And somehow, it clicked with me this time. It quickly became my most played game of the year. I still have to put it down occasionally if I go on a particularly bad losing streak, but having Salmon Run always available helps keep me coming back even when I'm not feeling like PvP.

2) Pokemon Legends Arceus/Scarlet & Violet

I can't really justify giving Pokemon two spots here - especially games with such glaring flaws - but I also can't choose just one of them because they both have ways they're better than the other. The action RPG stuff in Legends was great, but so was the open world of S/V. Legends wasn't nearly as much of a technical disaster, but I thought S/V had a more interesting story and characters. Legends had cool boss fights, but S/V actually had a whole selection of new Pokemon and not just a handful of regional variants. The Pokedex in Legends was really interesting, but I also loved how S/V just gave you a bunch of objectives and let you loose to tackle them in whatever order you want.

Between the two, this is the freshest Pokemon's felt since I was a kid. The finally delivered the game that I imagined I was playing on my Game Boy in 1998.

3) Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope

If this was a less ambitious sequel, it probably still would've made my list. Just the first game again, with a different set of Rabbid-ized Mario characters and villains? Going by the first game's DK DLC, that would've been an easy recipe for success.

But they didn't do that. They went the extra mile. Completely reworked the battle system, ditching the grid and letting you run freely around the battlefield. Fleshed out the Mario + Rabbids world to really be its own thing - not just Rabbid versions of Mario characters in Rabbid versions of Mario worlds, but original characters and locations that capture the general vibe of both Mario and Rabbids.

This easily could've gone wrong, but they pulled it off. One of the 3 new characters, for example, is one of these original characters, and that easily could've left a bad taste in my mouth, made me say, "Man, I really wish we'd gotten Daisy or even Rabbid Daisy instead of this dumb original character." But I didn't, because Edge is great.

And on top of that, they addressed just about every complaint I had about the first game. There's more substantial side content. Worlds are more interesting to explore. Characters are more customizable. Your party isn't stuck with Mario in the lead and always forced to include a Rabbid. There's more incentive to experiment with your full party instead of sticking to the characters you feel comfortable with.

And I've already written enough, so I won't get into how great the music is. But it's great.

4) PowerWash Simulator

This would've probably made my list even if it'd just played the whole thing straight. Give me a bunch of dirty stuff, powerwasher go brrrrrr, 10/10.

That's all I thought this was for like half the game. Then I started actually paying attention to the text notifications that pop up. And wait, what, this game has a story? And it gets really weird?? And it actually has a really satisfying finale???

So yeah, this was my most played PC game of the year by far.

5) Sonic Frontiers

It's weird. As I was playing this, I felt like I constantly had complaints and frustrations. A lack of polish here, a questionable decision there.

But thinking about the game after the fact, I mostly remember how much fun I had. How great it felt to run around the open world. How the cyberspace level encouraged me to actually go for good times and collectibles in a way other Sonic games never have. How the combat is actually kinda okay. How epic the Super Sonic fights were.

I think this is the 3D Sonic I can praise with the fewest caveats. It's not just good for a Sonic game. It's not just good for its time. It's not good but way too short. It's just straight up good.

Please, Sonic Team, don't try to reinvent the series again next time. You have something good. Really good! Now for the next game, polish up this style and make it something GREAT.

6) Patrick's Parabox

I haven't had my brain destroyed by a puzzle game like this since Baba is You.

7) Kirby and the Forgotten Land

Kirby finally makes the jump to 3D, and it's… basically exactly what I imagined Kirby would be like in 3D. Basically a kid-friendly character action game. Baby's first Bayonetta. But more than that, this game just has passion and creativity that's been missing from the series for years. It's not just Return to Dream Land with a new gimmick. The levels don't feel like they were made in a level editor. Combat practically feels like baby's first Bayonetta. And they somehow took Needle, a power that I've always avoided, and made it my favorite one in the game.

8) Neon White

I don't know how to really explain why, but this looked like a game that would really frustrate me, so I avoided it for a while despite the praise. Something about having to discard weapons to use movement abilities while precisely aiming at enemies just sounded like it would get overwhelming. But the recent GMTK video on it made me give it a shot, and I was happy to find that the it isn't nearly as unforgiving as I worried.

It's a first-person platformer with an emphasis on speedrunning, encouraging you to replay every level at least a few times to get a Gold or Ace medal. It's fun and addictive, and it feels great to find a good shortcut that the game doesn't even tell you about. Though it starts to get less fun later in the game, as levels get longer. Doing a 30 second level a few times isn't bad, but doing a 2 minute level a few times? Eh…

The story, though… well, it's told almost entirely through really cringey visual novel sequences that go on for way too long. Thankfully the game lets you fast-forward them (but not outright skip, for some reason) - but then the game just feels like a level pack with no story. So you either let the dialogue waste your time so you actually know what's happening, or you play the game with no motivation or connection to the world. Just seems like a weird place to drop the ball in an otherwise masterfully designed game.

9) Marvel Snap

A collectible card game with bite-sized matches. An addictive game loop that encourages experimentation with new cards and new types of decks. Marvel characters, both popular and obscure. I don't really play mobile games and I've never really been into card games so this wasn't even on my radar, but I gave it a shot when I saw people talking about it, and it took over my life for a month.

10) The Last Clockwinder

I tried this game on a whim when looking at recent VR games and being a bit depressed that the space isn't as ambitious and experimental as it was when VR was new and exciting.

This is a VR game that feels ambitious and experimental, and actually has somewhat decent production values.

At its core, the game is like a Zachtronics assembly line puzzle game, but in a way that could only work in VR. You record yourself doing a short action - like picking a fruit and tossing it - and then a robot clone appears and repeats that action infinitely. Then you record yourself catching the fruit that was tossed and depositing it in a bucket to harvest it. Repeat until you have a room full of robots harvesting fruits. And if you want to challenge yourself, every room has efficiency goals, so you can try to produce more than X amount of fruit with fewer than Y amount of robots.

And a game that was just a series of levels like that would already be pretty cool. But Clockwinder goes beyond that. For one thing, your robots keep collecting fruit when you're in other levels, and harvested fruits are used to open new levels, where you can get more seeds, which you can use to speed up harvesting in another level - so it's got a bit of an idle game element. But it's also got kind of an adventure game thing going on. Rooms aren't entirely independent. You'll find a room that's askind for blue fruits but has no plants, and you have to find the room to grow blue plants before you can progress. You'll have multi-room puzzles where fruits collected in one room aren't immediately harvested, but instead sent to another level, where you have to complete another puzzle to actually harvest them.

This might all sound like a lot, but it's introduced gradually enough that it's not overwhelming. Tying it together is an actually okay story, told mostly through audio logs with voice acting and writing that surprisingly don't make me cringe and mash the Skip button, a rarity for VR games.

Honorable mentions:

Panic Porcupine: I feel weird mentioning this since I know the devs and playtested it, so I'm obviously really biased. But it's a game I've played a bit of here and there over the past few years, and I was happy that it finally came out, and I had a lot of fun with it.

Grapple Dog: Just a thoroughly solid platformer with fun grappling hook physics and a cute dog.

God of War Ragnarok: There was a time in my life when this would've probably topped my list. It's well-made, very polished, looks amazing, every character's performance is great, and overall I enjoyed it… but I dunno, it just didn't excite me. It made me say, "Yep, that was a pretty good game."

Stray: There are a lot of things I think this game could've done to better capture the premise of playing as a cat. But at the end of the day, Cyberpunk Cat Game was still plenty cute and charming.

Lunistice: A 3D platformer that's short and to the point with a price to match.

Tinykin: What if Pikmin, but a 3D platformer? A great premise, and an overall cute and charming game, but I just wish it had more substance. The strategy elements of Pikmin are almost entirely absent, the platforming is basic, there are no enemies or really any threats at all, the puzzles practically solve themselves… it's decently fun to explore the worlds, but it definitely feels like a game that could've been something more.

Melatonin: Rhythm Heaven, but it takes place in the dreams of a burnt-out Millennial. Fun, but it does make me realize how much of the appeal of Rhythm Heaven comes from that uniquely Nintendo charm.

Hell Pie: A 3D platformer with really cool and fun movement mechanics that might have placed in the top 10 if its aesthetics and sense of humor didn't disgust me. And I don't mean "disgust" as just an exaggeration for dislike, but it's a game full of gross-out humor, and it just doesn't land.

Games that seemed pretty cool but I didn't play enough to place them:

Sports Story: I liked Golf Story but never beat it. This game is also fun, but it came out so late in the year and I've been playing so many other games that I'm not very far yet.

Ragnarock: A VR rhythm game about vikings racing longboats. The music selection really makes you FEEL like a viking drummer.

What the Bat?: What the Golf?, but in VR, and everything is baseball because your hands are bats. I've only played a bit, but I loved What the Golf, and this game has also made me laugh a bunch.

[steellotus54]

This is how you do a pinned post right?

Hiya! I'm Marisa, but you can call me Mari. I've been lurking about for a while now, and I figure it's time I changed that!

Literally everything is below the cut, on account of there being so much text.

My Tags

Whoops, I left this empty on purpose! I’ll add tags here as they become necessary, so check back every once in a while.

What I do (and want to do)

Worldbuilding (Been doing it in some form in my spare time for as long as I can remember. No idea how good any of it is, but I’ll occasionally post about it nonetheless - I love talking about the stuff I make.)

Pixel art (I've lost track of how long I've been doing it for, but nevertheless I'd like to think I'm at least decent at it.)

Game Development (I have too many ideas and must make them. With Godot, of course.)

Make music (Of the chiptune variety specifically. I got famistudio a while ago and I have no clue what I’m doing. I’ll figure something out though.)

Stuff I Like (in no particular order)

Splatoon Franchise (I'm a series vet, played since the first game's testfire!)

Celeste (One of, if not the best example(s) of video games as an art form. I can and will die on this hill.)

Terraria and Minecraft (I'm a sucker for sandboxes where you can build shit. Granted, I'm mediocre at actually doing so, but what can I say.)

Mindustry (The best game you can play on a phone. And it's on steam + itch. And it has official mod support on all platforms. And it's still receiving content updates. And- Dies)

Ultrakill (Sensory overload: the shooter, but it’s fun so I don’t care.)

Octopath Traveler 2 (I'm Very Normal about Castti. I'm totally not obsessed with her what could you possibly be talking about.)

No Man’s Sky

Noita

Slime Rancher

Cult of the Lamb

Electronic and Chiptune music (I fucking love this stuff and I cannot explain why for the life of me.)

Where to find me (and not find me)

You can find me on bluesky (where I post my art) and youtube (where I rarely post video devlogs and whatever else comes to mind). Relevantly, you will not find me on tiktok or instagram - I choose not to use either of these platforms for a variety of reasons, and I will not expound upon them.

Boundaries

This list is not a DNI. It describes how I will act or respond regarding certain situations or kinds of people, because that’s how boundaries actually work. Also note that this list is here for transparencies sake and is non-exhaustive. I can and will make liberal use of the block button for reasons not listed.

I block TERFs, radfems, and bigots of any other variety on sight. This blog is a trans-friendly space, and I will NOT tolerate bigotry when I see it. This is your first and only warning.

Additionally, fuck JK Rowling. If you interact with JK Rowling's works, you’ll get blocked.

While we’re on the subject, don’t refer to me with traditionally masculine terms (dude, bro, and the like) or he/him pronouns - I don’t care what your reasoning is. If you do it once unintentionally as a force of habit I won’t be particularly aggravated, but repeat occurrences will result in a block.

I don't mess with gacha games (or any others that are microtransaction-heavy for that matter) as I believe them to be predatory and unethical. If you recommend that I (or anyone else) play any gacha game(s) on my posts, you get blocked.

I'm here to have a nice fun time, NOT to have arguments with randos. Try and pick a fight with me, and you’ll get blocked. What constitutes 'picking a fight' will be determined at my discretion. Quote: "I am not interested in discourse. I am right."

If I didn't put something here and/or you want clarification about something, I encourage you to ask, but I request that you respect my decision to not disclose information about myself. To state this more clearly: Do not pressure me to post (or otherwise make public) information about myself. If you do, I WILL block you immediately. This extends to non-personal information of any variety. Who I am offline is none of your business, end of story.

Don’t ask me for donations or to boost a donation post. I understand that finances are tough for a lot of you, but I don’t have the money to spare, nor is this the correct blog to be asking for this kind of assistance from. These requests will be deleted when they are received. I will block you if this occurs more than once.

Last, but certainly not least: If your blog is untitled and/or lacks a profile picture, I will block you if you follow me. You look like a bot in that instance. I shouldn’t have to explain this.

That just about covers everything! I hope you find my little corner on this hellsite at least somewhat enjoyable to pass through. May good fortune find y'all!

[calliecuttlefishtormentnexus]

Goodbye Splatoon 1 :(

lengthy emotional ramble under the cut

Genuinely one of the only games that I think qualifies as life-changing for me. I was so hyped for splatoon back when I was 13, and I played the very first testfire, I played before ranked, and then I just kept playing. I remember replaying the final boss fight like 20 times just to hear Calimari Inkantation, I remember refreshing fanfiction.net every day looking for splatoon fanfics, the game just captivated me in a way nothing else had.

And I've loved Splat 2 and 3, I think 3 is the best in the series so far, but there's no matching the nostalgia of the first. It was a game that got me to know my first close friend, and the franchise through the years has helped me so much. Salmon Run in splatoon 3 is my go-to destressing activity and has brought me down from panicking spirals. Shooting for X rank in splatoon 2 and finally getting there gave me an achievement I was proud of when I didn't have much of those in real life. I've met some great people recently through splatoon fanfics, and I wouldn't have those friends if I never played splatoon 1.

But above all of that, I have splatoon to thank for making me realize I was trans. When I first got the game, it said gender could be changed at any time, and the default was the female inkling, and those two things combined were enough for 13 year old egg me to dare to choose the girl avatar "just to see what it's like," and I proceeded to never change it for the entirety of the game's lifespan. Splatoon was a place for me to try exploring The Gender a bit even if I didn't know it, and it was the first game where I really did that. It was a place where I could try outfits that weren't my constant grey sweatpants and hoodie, it was a game that let me actually have color in my life with it's undiluted charm and brightness, and I really needed that. I actually came out to my best friend while we were playing splatoon, and they did the same to me.

Splatoon pushed the first domino for me to become who I wanted to be, it helped me through so much, it's given me a constant hobby I can always come back to and know I'll enjoy. And now the game that started all of that is gone. With other important games I can always revisit them, but Splatoon 1 will just be in my memories now. In a way it already was, but it feels more final. It feels like selling a childhood toy at a yard sale, I'm never going to get it back.

I'll miss you, Splatoon. Thank you for all you helped me with, thank you for all the great friends I've made because of funny squid game, thank you for giving me something so wonderful that I can be nostalgic to the point of tears for it.

[astridrobo]

kid icarus uprising would not work as a Switch port

or: kid icarus uprising had a perfect control scheme and reviewers were just whiners: a defense of non-dual-analogue controls. (this is my first longform tumblr post, please be nice)

i am one hundred percent serious. the touchscreen controls are pretty much irreplaceable in how it plays and the entire game would need a redesign from the ground up to account for the dual-stick port people seem to want for a re-release or port. it would be like if a third Sin & Punishment came out without IR controls, a damning demonstration of why dual analog is not an all-purpose control scheme.

to lean further into this example, Treasure initially balanced Star Successor around GameCube controls only for playtesters to fucking breeze through it with the Wii Remote (source 1). the game had to be rebalanced for the amount of precision and quick reaction the IR controls allow for. the way the touchscreen moves the cursor in Uprising is the same deal with a further complication: the ground sections.

on the ground, you flick the screen and the momentum carries the camera in the turning, but because of that you also still control the cursor 100% independent of the camera in a way dual-stick just doesn't let you do. it is fundamental to how good Uprising feels to play. it is Sin & Punishment as a third-person combination shooter/hack and slash. earlier examples of similar controls existed like Metroid Prime Hunters and Moon (both on the original DS) but the addition of momentum and the ability to flick the screen to change camera direction is a groundbreaking shift in third-person shooter controls. it's hard to go back to another one without noticing how much less precise it feels than Uprising.

one more example. remember the Splatoon Global Testfire and how reviewers initially hated the gyro controls (sources 2 and 3)? look at Splatoon now. nearly everyone loves the gyro controls because it's a step up in accuracy and responsiveness that dual-stick just cannot provide. i fully believe Kid Icarus Uprising, given successors, would have been the same deal; criticized for its innovative control scheme at first, but eventually praised for pushing the industry forward with an improvement on traditional control schemes.

what i'm getting at here is that a modern port of Kid Icarus Uprising would have to be majorly reworked to even balance properly for dual-stick controls (essentially the reverse of the Sin & Punishment Star Successor situation). i don't know how it would be reworked exactly or if it would play nearly as well as its original version, but it is a game that deserves far more credit than it gets for its control scheme.

final note: as much as i love Uprising's control scheme, some criticisms of it are absolutely valid. it's not exactly the best for ergonomics and dual-stick should absolutely be an option in whatever upcoming remake, reimagining or port may or may not happen. that said, i believe the control scheme gets a lot of undue hate and not enough recognition for the ways which it innovates with game control, and is unfairly maligned as being limited by the touchscreen instead of praised for the ways which it uses the touchscreen to try something new and promising.

sources:

1: https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/sinandpunishment/0/4/

2: https://www.tucsonlocalmedia.com/blogs/article_dca6177e-ffd8-11e4-a74e-bf31262a0b60.html

3: https://chic-pixel.com/2015/05/splatoon-global-testfire-impressions/

further reading/viewing:

Nerrel's "Motion Control and the Rejection of Progress" https://youtu.be/binPB4YbWmM

this hilarious in hindsight old gamespot review of Alien Resurrection (PS1), paragraph three https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/alien-resurrection-review/1900-2637344/

[zaptap]

ive made a few of these bingo sheets and theyre fun so i decided to make one not just for e3 but also JUST for splatoon 3 (not just for e3 but for like the whole lifetime of the game). also heres my updated list of characters id like to see in smash, ordered generally by which id like more and/or think are the most realistic

since min min got in i took out helix, and since i couldnt decide whether to add in waluigi or madeline i added another row (realistically i dont think any indies are getting in but i threw some in anyway). also i was like “oh yeah maybe theyd put in a gen viii pokemon” so i threw in hatterene since thats one of my favorites.

also as for waluigi (and shovel knight for that matter) i think it would be nice to see an assist trophy get in just to break that rule. also i remember being super surprised he wasnt in brawl (back then i thought he and wario were equally important) and even though that was based on a wrong impression ive still felt like he should be in there ever since

notes about the bingos under the cut

really is about time for those n64 games, especially now that mario is dead so theyre free to release sm64 on it. game boy games would be nice sometime too

would also make sense to include banjo-kazooie in that, nintendos had a good relationship with microsoft lately and the total absence of anything banjo-kazooie on the switch is odd since it’s a dlc character (every other one has a game on switch they can use for cross-marketing, even if joker’s took a while) and i think the best explanation for that would be that theyre holding off for the nso n64 app (this is easiest from a technical standpoint because all they have to do is make a deal to use the roms)

when are they putting octolings in mk8d

xenoblade chronicles x is one of the only wii u games left that they could port (aside from ones that wouldnt make much sense like splatoon and ssb4) so i guess that might as well happen sometime. also monolith soft might be doing something else besides helping with splatoon 3

im not ready for metroid prime 4 (im over halfway through mp2 and therefore the trilogy as a whole) but it’s been a while, they might show it and it could even come out this year

hal apparently recently hinted at a new kirby game or something

the upgraded switch is obviously going to be called the Nintendo Switch ͥ  since they already did the ds lite so theyre clearly naming everything in the family after the ds family, theres absolutely no flaw in this logic. idk if theyre showing it, but unlike 2019 they didnt say they werent showing new hardware (just that they were showing software, which could be taken as denying rumors, but they sometimes specify when certain things arent being shown)

metroid prime trilogy also might come this year. would make sense to release it before mp4 since not everyone is going to buy a wii u to get it (and at this point that doesnt get nintendo any money since they stopped making them)

where is detective pikachu 2. i hope it has the blue pikachu from that first tease they gave us in like 2014 (2013? that was a loooong time ago idk)

they said this was MOSTLY 2021 so i am absolutely getting my hopes up for splatoon 2

the two sinnoh games could likely be there

would be super cool if oddity came to switch. and almost as ironic as megalovania getting into smash

we havent seen the botw sequel for a couple years so we’re kind of due for an update on that

it’s ace attorney’s 20th anniversary this year so maybe theyre doing something. theyre already porting those games though so idk. maybe he’s getting in smash

whats with that watermelon mario render

i held off on watching a playthrough for ndrv3 on the off chance it came to switch and i could play a dangan ronpa game for real for once but it’s now been 4 years and we just passed the 10th anniversary of the series (albeit during a pandemic when i wouldnt expect them to have done anything) so it would be cool to see the series come to switch. i think if it still doesnt after this though i’ll just watch the playthrough, 4 years is long enough. amazed ive avoided spoilers this long, i still know next to nothing about the game

im about done with acnh but im still waiting on those splatoon items. and i ran out of storage in february so i need more of that too

nintendo did stuff for zelda’s 30th anniversary so i doubt theyre forgetting the 35th. maybe wwhd/tphd ports, idk

been a couple years since fire emblem, intelligent systems is probably up to something besides planning yet another paper mario spinoff

miyamoto forgot pikmin 4 in the oven 6 years ago and it got burnt to a crisp and thats why it hasnt come out yet because he had to start over

and splatoon

the inklings scared daft punk into quitting so now that theres no competition in the robot musician scene they should have a daft punk style group

i waited and waited and neither of my top two splatoon stages (flounder and d’alfonsino) came back in splatoon 2 so i hope just because splatoon 3 isnt in inkopolis doesnt mean they still wont return

would be sick as hell if there was a real hide and seek mode instead of just sticking to your own rules in private battles. havent played that since 2015 but it was super fun

show us the effects of the chaos world

i wanted mc craig to have a song in octo expansion and they didnt deliver. heres another chance

splatnet 3 baby

cant wait for nogami to do a funny 3 pose

abxy came back for splatoon 2.... am i gonna be that lucky again...?

salmon run doesnt make sense if youre friends with a smallfry but they could either change the story context (you just fight “evil” salmonids?) or replace it with an equally fun co-op mode

amiibo!!! i think i said this before but they should label them by weapons if these cephalopods dont have genders, would make more sense (the gendered ones had different weapons anyway)

returning characters!!!! would like to see everyone have a role of some kind

maybe #GearForAll wasnt successful in getting the emperor/spy/mecha gear, but perhaps theyll at least consider not making that stuff exclusive this time around

squid girl gear should be back. and they should call it a dress instead of a tunic because its a dress. and theres no gender now anyway

as ive said before... TRIPLIES!! you hold one in each hand and another in your mouth. and you can spin around like the tasmanian devil

remove splatfest tee annoyances: you should have a prompt at the end of a splatfest to pay to scrub your tee (to make sure you get the chunks) also it should be on a neutral brand so you dont end up with an overabundance of ink resistance up (or whatever else)

better online and cloud saves would certainly justify having a second splatoon game on the same console, as much as im loving that it exists

hopefully theres a global testfire again

sooner or later the workers will rise up and kill mr grizz

remember in splatoon 1 where if you had squid beatz (via the amiibo) you could “play” it in the lobby and change the music? then you were stuck listening to only bubble bath in splatoon 2? why did they take that option away they should bring it back

looking at those apartment buildings in the trailer i think it would be cool if you had your own room and could decorate it

an octavio redemption arc would be fun to see. in the manga he stole the zapfish because the octarians had an energy crisis, and in the end they worked out a deal to share the electricity

[mliter]

I wanna make a separate post for the Splatoon Global Testfire. This shit was another beast on it's own.

I believe this was announced during a Nintendo Direct...? I remember being very excited for it. I was a broke 13 year old with lots of time on his hands. I downloaded it and i can't remember if it was the very first one, or the second one, but one time the servers failed and nobody got to play for like, an hour. It was a disaster. Luckily Nintendo extended the play time for another hour to make up for it.

The game was setup like a demo. you had 4 weapons to choose from, and there was only the Saltspray Rig and the Walleye Warehouse to play in. There was no customization outside of picking your inkling's gender and skin color i think (?), so everyone was wearing the basic yellow tee and white shoes outfit.

But, at specific times, there were real life members of what was introduced as the "Squid Research Lab" that were participating. They wore a special outfit that can't be worn to this day. There was a very low chance of seeing one of them. I actually got to see one, but only for one match. I wish i took a screenshot. Everyone on my team targeted them, i imagine they didn't really have fun for that reason, lol.

There are people that didn't get to experience RAW Splatoon. A savage, lawless land. Everything (especially the rollers) were hilariously broken. On god. If you saw a roller and a roller saw you and you weren't shooting first? That was GGs man. The hitbox for that thing was immaculate. There was not a thing you could do if a roller caught you.

In the end, this was a fun event, and this is what made me a fan of Splatoon. Shoutouts to anyone else who got to experience it.

[lesbianoctoling]

This is kinda rambley but honestly? I don’t think Splat will be going anywhere anytime soon. Sure, weapon updates are supposedly done and Splatfests are almost over, but I reeallly doubt they’re just gonna stop there. It’s too early for a Splatoon 3, for one - the only reason we got 2 so fast was because the first game was SO experimental, I’m pretty sure 2 was in development for a good amount of time during 1′s life cycle. Then there’s the fact that the game makes nintendo a lot of darn money. The game itself, the merch, the competitive scene (they have a japanese esports team for goodness sake)...That’s a lot! While I don’t have a source, I swear I remember someone on the team saying they wanted Splatoon to be one of their top franchises alongside Mario, Pokemon and Zelda and they seem to have gotten there really fast. Thirdly, they only said weapon and map updates are done and splatfests will end soon. I was expecting them to kinda take back the weapon updates to be honest, because they did that in the first game’s era, but you never know about the map updates either (though don’t keep your hopes too high). Hell, they could even extend the splatfests for all we know (also don’t take my word for that haha). But there can be a lot more to the game than splatfests, weapons and maps. Who knows, maybe we’ll get a totally new kind of event in place of splatfests!

I’m pretty sure we might get a break for a while, to be honest - the Splatoon team shares a lot of members with the animal crossing team iirc and the next AC is supposed to come out this year.  

There’s also been some recent datamines and other, older datamines that haven’t been touched at all. Sure, more recent datamines might just be for the Springfest, but there’s always the chance that they might not be. And then there’s the older datamines that I feel we should keep an eye on. Because there’s been a lot of things they’ve shoved into the game in the past that have just sat there and then got forgotten, then ended up being an actual something (ex: back during the splatfest testfire there was a datamined octoling boy head, that was just at the time an orb with a single tentacle on top and no one knew what it was. it wasnt until OE was announced and we saw the octoboys that a lot of people realized.)

Stuff like unused game modes for one. I’m not sure about the 8ball ranked modes, since they could have very well been just something for testing the levels for OE, but there’s still stuff like rocket and I think another I can’t remember.

And if the game itself doesn’t get anything, there’s still the chance of spinoffs. I personally reeallly want the first game’s hero mode to be remastered and ported to the switch, but that’s just me lol

My point is! Don’t get all sad and stuff because things might slow down for a while. I’m positive there will be more to come, even if we have to wait a little while for it!

[insert-creative-name-94]

Do you have any tips for super duper new players?? Like, ones that just started playing like six hours ago?? Sorry if this is too rude

No no, it’s fine! You’re not rude at all! But yeah, as someone who’s been playing Splatoon since Splatoon 1 on Day 1 (a bit longer if you count the Testfires), I’ll help you out with some tips!

Now, these aren’t the be-all, end-all of what to do 100% of the time. These are just some things I’ve picked up from my experiences.

(Also, fair warning, this is a bit long).

First off, keep on inking the ground. Keyword: ground. The walls do not count towards the ink totals, so don’t worry about covering them all. Just ink them if they make way for a shortcut/access to a higher area.

Make sure you ink your spawn. It makes it much easier for you and your teammates to get back onto the field. Plus, it counts towards your ink totals as well.

Make sure you cover a lot of turf. Now I’m not saying that every little itty bitty spot must be covered, but if you open your map and there’s a significant amount of ground that isn’t covered, make sure you take care of that at some point. Because I can’t tell you how many battles I had where the enemy team lost because they didn’t ink their part of the stage that well.

When it comes to stages that are new to you/you don’t know well, I recommend using the Recon option to get a look around and get more familiar with the stage without the risk of enemy fire.

And don’t forget you can test out any weapon in the weapon test area. It’s a good way to check out how the weapon handles and everything.

Also, splatting the enemy helps, but remember in Turf War, the main goal is to cover more ground than the enemy team. So don’t go too crazy on trying to splat everyone.

Keep an eye on your map. Be sure to check it regularly to make sure someone isn’t trying to sneak around and cover your turf behind your backs.

Beacons, don’t place these on the spawn point. You can Super Jump back to it at any point, so putting a Beacon there is a waste.

Ink Armor, they don’t stack. Like, you don’t get double the amount of shields if two people used it at the same time. So if you have a weapon with Ink Armor and someone else used it, wait a bit before you use yours. That way you essentially get a longer shield time.

If you see a teammate far off in the stage, and there’s enemy ink approaching them, unless you have Stealth Jump or Splashdown (which you can activate in mid-Super Jump), don’t jump to them. Because more than likely you’ll both get splatted.

Tenta Missiles, what I usually tend to do is jump back to the Spawn Point and use it there. You get a better view and there’s no chance of you getting splatted.

Make sure you spread out. You get more turf covered faster, and less chance of a team whipeout if you’re all grouped together. If you’re going to group up at any point (in Turf War), it should be no more than two together at a time.

Well, those are some of the basics (sorry again that this is pretty long). But if there’s anything else you’d like to know that I didn’t mention here, go ahead and ask. I’ll be happy to help.

[sage-nebula]

Splatoon 2 Global Testfire - General Thoughts

I’ve only done one round of the Global Testfire so far, since I was at work for the one earlier in the day, but so far:

This isn’t something that can really be helped, given the set-up of the Switch, but I do think that Splatoon 2 is going to suffer from the lack of the Wii U’s gamepad, mainly in that having the map on a separate screen was a huge boon (to the point where I hadn’t even noticed how much I liked having it there until it was gone). I know that we can still access the map in-game by pressing X, and also that this is the way that most FPS games work, but as someone who isn’t really an FPS player, I’m not used to opening the map over the screen, much less having it open long enough to decide where to Superjump to without getting murdered. Plus, having the map on a separate screen means that I can’t really keep track of our progress throughout the battle (unless, again, I get used to flipping it open every few seconds), which is a bit annoying as well when I get to the end and see that oh, yeah, we got slaughtered.

The map is, as mentioned, set to X, which is what Jump (regular Jump) was set to in the first Splatoon. I had a couple deaths while playing due to trying to jump, accidentally opening the map instead, and then getting killed while I was trying to get the map to go away.

Motion controls are awful, as per usual, but that’s nothing new and they’re easily dealt with (just as they were in the first game, thankfully). However, the right analog stick is way too sensitive on the default setting. Thankfully you can adjust that as well, thank you Nintendo.

I noticed that they now have a “Color Lock” setting that makes it so that the colors are more easily distinguished. At first I was a bit confused as to why this was, and then I entered a match that had green and purple paint as the opposing colors. This was fine for me (though even for me they were a tad bit similar), but for color blind people it wouldn’t be, so it seems as if Nintendo has added a function to help them out. A+++, good job, Nintendo.

I do like the Splat Dualies (as I knew I would) and will probably main a variation, but I hated the Special associated with them in the Testfire. I don’t remember what it was called specifically, but it’s the one where you basically wear a jet pack and then go around firing slow moving shots. Thankfully, the variations of each weapon type always have different specials, so that won’t be an issue in the actual game itself.

The music was great. I especially love the new loss music. It’s far less obnoxious than the original. The “one minute remaining” music is a clear remix from the original and is also good.

I’m still curious as to who this kitten was when I thought Judd was the only non-marine life creature remaining.

All in all it really did feel like updated Splatoon, which is good, because the first Splatoon is so great that they didn’t need to radically change it too much. I’ll probably do another couple rounds of the Testfire tomorrow, but while I was already certain that I was going to be getting this game come summer, I’m extra certain now. I’m always down for some turf warring. ;)