#many of my most played games aren't on steam but still

[kommunisti]

when i got bg3 i played like a 100 hours within the two first weeks and at that point it surpassed every other game in my library in game time except the top 3 and i was like hmm, it will get past skyrim (140h) but dunno if it can become my most played game. fastforward to today

[the-fandom-is-now-my-life]

I apologize in advance, but the brainworms did a heckin screech and I felt the need to share the chaos.

Imagine, if you will, that our Creator let's it slip that they've interacted with other worlds before reaching Teyvat. (Played other video games) Imagine having to explain that in these other worlds, they may or may not have been interested in the denizens of those realms...sometimes in the romantic sense, which led to wedding bells and/or children.

Cue the uproar from the Genshin cast. The Creator, Blessed Maker of All...you have courted others? Have been married?? You have had children??? Their image of you being pure and untouchable, blown apart into tiny little pieces of confetti. 🎉

Though many loathe to admit it, they are curious...who are these people, what are they like? Is there a common factor in your selection of spouses? You would only pick the very best of a realm to choose as a potential partner, surely another being of creation...or perhaps a demigod?

It leads to the proverbial red string board getting made, the Archons trying to find out who is your most likely pick from their regions. It's all for your safety, your Benevolence! If you insist on having a partner, they must find the perfect match for you! You deserve only the best of the best, after all.

Bonus points if the Creator was a fan of games like the Harvest Moon/Rune Factory series. They're gonna need to make a list of all their partners, there are so many options to choose from. >>_>>

I'll admit I never played any of those games so I skimmed through the harvest moon wiki and chose one of the bachelors and chose some other game characters lol. Plus a game for all of you, guess the characters.

Though I do think that the reader having children before causes a bit of whiplash because it's totally unexpected, mostly because there were no records of you taking spouses or kids, even knowing you ‘have’ (play) other worlds is a surprise that causes a bit of a crisis. Either way here are some head cannons.

“I must admit, your grace is awfully attached to Qiqi” Zhongli hums as he blows on his white tea, a small cloud of steam leaving.

Qiqi doesn't pay him much mind, her head coddled under your chin like a little puppy, between her hands there is a small bird plushie “Well, I must admit she does kind of remind me of one of my little ones” Your hand softly pats her head, a few strands of hair moving as you do.

He stills as you spoke, eyes fixated on his cup “your… little ones?”

“Mhm?” Without looking up from the braid you were giving to the little girl you just nod “yep, she is quite soft spoken like Milenoe”

“... I wasn't aware your grace had sired children” there was never any mentions about holy spawns or spouses taken by you in any manuscript he got his hands on.

“Well, I never chose a couple from this world, so there wouldn't be any descendants” the comment slips airly from your lips as Qiqi slides off your lap towards baizhu who had finished checking the books from your bookshelf. “Do you want to see her? She started elementary school a few weeks ago” without waiting for an answer a screen appears displaying a tall man with black hair and horns standing regally behind you and a child with emerald eyes and horns.

“She looks rather shy”

You hum nodding “she is as shy as her father when he was her age. There aren't many children her age she can play with so she was pretty lonely her first 50 years”

“50 years?”

“her dad is a slow maturing species” so it should be 10 times the life expectancy than humans. Not that long for him but certainly longer than usual.

•°•°•

“It's a wonder to see how you manage to get Klee to change her mind about going fish blasting,” albedo scribbles some data half mindedly as he watches you hover next to Klee, who showed you a new drawings every few minutes “she is so stubborn even with Alice”

“Well I do have experience with headstrong children, Pardine is as focused on her goal as her father” one of your hands fall on her blonde hair, bright but still darker than Pardine’s almost champagne blonde and her red eyes polar opposite to her icy ones, a carbon copy to her dad. Even if your genetics rarely showed up on any of your kids it was uncanny how similar she looked to her dad and aunts “but I will admit she does annoy many guards asking to train her”

Albedo just laughs it off, listing the few loose characteristics of one of her spouses. Venti has been annoying him about his nation almost getting no information so he hopes a few spare tidbits and Klee’s rough drawing of a blond blue eyed man with a big shield works for whatever weird thing the archons have going on.

•°•°•

“Your Grace has married before?!” Ayaka gasps as you take a stroll around the nature surrounding her home. Her hand had swiftly unfolded her fan in front of her face.

“Mhm, I don't know why people get so surprised, after all it would be weirder if I spent so much time somewhere but took no lovers” you laugh at her slightly seeing her slightly flustered “it's almost a tradition at this point, to wed someone from each world. Want to see some family portraits?” She nods fervently looking at the tablet like thing that appeared on your hands, first a white haired cowboy like man is kneeling on the ground holding a baby by the armpits surrounded by three wolves ,seemingly playing with an older child, by the time the next imagine passes Ayaka is almost hanging by your shoulder, asking things about the siblings and begging to see more photos of your babies.

“And who did you take from teyvat?” Ayaka looks up sweetly at you, she has always held you in high regard and now that you are in Inazuma she can't help but get giddy thinking about how you decided to spend the stay in her state and most of your time with her.

Feigning surprise you tap your chin with your index finger “now that I think about it I didn't choose anyone yet... maybe it's about time”

“Then that means you could pick my brother!” She wraps her hand around your own, smiling as if she got the best idea ever “I could even call you older sibling!... If you wanted so of course”

“Big brother you remember how you told me you would find me a proper bachelor”

“If this is about wanting me to rush it won't work”

“It's not about it, I found you someone”

“Fine, as you please, need I remind you my standards are quite high”

“It's their grace!... Why are you choking on your tea!?”

•°•°•

“There isn't one damned coincidence…” Raiden slaps her head against the table with the rough drawings and some information about them “a king, a captain, a cowboy, a damned sorcerer…”

“Maybe there isn't supposed to be a coincidence” Nahida guesses “maybe they just look for someone who catches their eye”

“It doesn't help out as much as you think it does” the tsaritsa crosses her legs and leans against the back of the chair “if we are doing people with very clear characteristics maybe Ajax could fit nicely? Redheads aren't very common”

“Mhm, maybe but don't they have a liking for smart men? Then Alhaitham would be closer to their past couples”

“Well if we are going by that logic they should like the geo archon, as one of them has dragonic features” the tsaritsa side eyes Zhongli from the other side of the table.

Sighing deeply Furina, who came in place of Neuvillette, chimes in “It is their decision who they want to marry and even if they wanted to!”

"obviously you would be so calm, after all they are very close with your iudex. Don't get so cocky, I heard the commissioner Ayato is interested in the idea"

[texasthoughtsaboutnothing]

Walpurgisnacht and how it ties it all together

So what is Walpurgisnacht?

Walpurgisnacht is a once a season fanservice event. It's a story thing with light character development. It's a banner with functionally an entire new rarity of ID. It's a game mode meant to demonstrate the power of those new IDs. It is a massive money maker for the company. And I believe it is kinda sorta the thing endgame players will align their behavior around.

That's a big claim at the end there, but I'll try to explain.

The key thing to focus on is the banner and the units that come with it. Walpurgis IDs are unique in that they are only available to purchase during a Walpurgisnacht, with the banner IDs being completely unpurchasable the first time they show up. Yes, you need to win the latest hype units from the Gacha or wait 4 months to buy them. These IDs are powerful, and, as this is a fanservice event tend to be referencing some of the coolest shit in PM's universe.

Needless to say demand is high while "supply" is dictated by a 1.5% drop chance or a 200 pull pity. This is pretty normal for a gacha, but a radical departure for Limbus, and it has some serious consequences on how we think about resources.

So in my last post I went over how Limbus' gacha after a certain point isn't worth it, and it ends up being mathematically better to convert premium currency to stamina to just grind out the units you want. There are several extremally important caveats to that statement, and the biggest one is Walpurgisnacht. I want to address that point here.

You want pulls for this, because you can't buy the unit until months after its arrived and you'll probably want it now. This changes how you might think about refreshing stamina, because you want to stockpile currency for a big pull session every 4 months. Counterintuitively, you want a lot of shards if you're new to buy the old Walpurgisnacht stuff, as unless the game powercreeps to hell and back a lot of these will be good forever (Regret Meursault EGO fundamentally changes how we think about his IDs and gameplay in perpetuity).

If we math it out (and use vague estimates so this doesn't become a wall of numbers), you can get 100 pulls from purely weekly Lunacy gains between Walpurgisnachts, but that number decreases for every refresh you do. if you refresh once every day, you're down to 85 pulls, and further down to 26 pulls if you double refresh. Ouch. However. there are other sources of pulls than just the 750 a week, and they add up substantially.

All of which is to say it's probably better to only do a single refresh to save pulls for Walpurgis, but if you do double refresh you will still have the ability to pull on this and maybe get the Banner ID.

But there's one other aspect to Walpurgis that has been met with some apprehension by the community, but makes me wonder at PMs intentions for the late game experience.

Gacha Announcers.

So Limbus has a system for Combat Announcers, There's no gameplay advantage for this, it's just to have your favorite characters comment on how bad you're playing, a nice little bonus reward that's easy to do if the VA is in the studio.

Walpurgisnacht slightly changed that, in that it added 2 Announcers to the Walpurgis gacha pool, Malkuth and Pierre/Jack. Malkuth is a major character from both Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina and a fan favorite; the response to her being available was... significant. Pierre/Jack are also here. The Announcers are very rare (1.3%), and cannot be purchased, but are Pitiable (Malkuth most of all, heyyo). They take their rarity from the filler pulls, so nothing is actually lost as far as odds goes.

A big sticking point is you can roll dupe Announcers as they aren't removed from the pool like EGO, and many are upset they might not get Malkuth and instead the other guys. Undeniably that sucks, it's probably rare to save up 200 pulls for the pity and it might feel like a waste. But this decision also propelled Limbus on Steam's top 10 seller charts for the day, so PM rang in the new year with a smashing success of sales. It's also unclear if we can purchase the Announcers later, so that also is driving some fomo.

So that might seem bad, but one interesting thing is that dupe announcers give a lot of thread, 50 crates worth. Thread is the primary currency for upgrades and at endgame you want thousands of the stuff.

This creates this image to me of what an endgame player looks like, and I wonder if it's intentional. They have all or most of the game's available IDs and are now just spending Lunacy to stamina refresh to grind more boxes or thread or exp or w/e. That person now gets a second Thread bomb from Walpurgis separate from the seasonal turnover Thread bomb, which is the primary restriction of end game. I'm probably reaching here, but there's a logic to this that makes sense to me.

That's about all for Walpurgisnacht, but there's a couple other things I think are neat.

One, the game becoming one where you hoard gacha currency for a big dump to hit pity every 4 months is hilariously normal for this genre, albeit we actually get all the units.

Second, community engagement spikes with this as we get classic gacha posts like:

"Hey I just got every relevant unit in a single 10 pull, how wacky is that?" "150 pulls and nothing, it's so fucking over" "Can I get this unit in 3 single pulls? If not game sucks and devs are @%$#." "I STOLE MY MOM'S CREDIT CARD WE ARE SO FUCKING BACK"

Classic.

That's all folks, play Limbus Company.

[overtheimaginationwall]

Favorite boss(es) in No Straight Roads?

Least favorite?

(Sincere apologies. I've been holding this one for more than a year in my box, so I hope you don't mind a really late reply ^^")

(Also Happy 3rd Anniversary, NSR!! 🎉)

I will tell ya honestly - they all are my favourites!

Tho if to be more specific I decided to set them up by TOP.

1. Sayu

Oh Sayu, my beloved <3

The Best Virtual Idol and The Reason I bought this game in the first place!

Her music and style of battle was the most fun and dancy! I still vibe to it to this day-

Sooo many references to Internet Culture and Digital Art fills my heart with warmth and gives me determination just like her song itself as well!

Funny Useless Fact: She is the only boss I've beaten on Rank B on my first blind playthrough!

2. DK West

He's OUR MAN, He's THE BEST!

My second favorite and at the same time the hardest for me to beat.

I personally didn't adore RAP genre at first and never seen anyone preform it as an actual entertaining battle until he showed up...

HOLLY MOLLY DESPITE ME BREAKING MY THUMBS WHILE GOING THROUGH THE PAINFUL DODGE GAME - HIM AND ZUKE RAPPING FELT LIKE I'M WATCHING DISNEY-

LIKE-

I STILL HAVE IDEA IN MY HEAD TO MAKE A SORT OF ANIMATIC WITH "FIRST ENCOUNTER" ALONE!!

Anyway, despite damaged fingers - 10/10, would fight again!

Funny Useless Fact: When I was drawing him for the first time I listened to his theme on loop for 4 days straight in order not to get myself distracted or lose motivation, so I finish the piece.

3. Yinu

Oh, sweet child...

I love Yinu and her theme lots even if I'm not that big of a fan of Classical Music. And her backstory...Gosh! It made me cry a lot.

And I'm still feel ashamed of breaking the piano ;;-;;

Love the pace of how music goes with the fight and it feels even better when you get into actual rhythm. There were issues that gladly wore off thanks to practice and fighting this boss over and over.

Tho those slamming cords haunt me whenever I listen to the song off-battle-

Funny Useless Fact: I didn't like her Mother at first but when I read more about her and relationship with Yinu my opinion completely changed. And this is why I would nominate No Straight Roads for The Best Storytelling and Character Design.

4. EVE

Two-faced, tall woman.

Used to be one of my favorites but due to some circumstances I can't look at her the same way I used to but I still adore her as a boss!

I honestly love her style of the fight and music that changes depending on who you play.

Tho fighting her is literally like eating a lemon but eventually you kinda just accept your fate and roll with weird artistic antics happening around you.

And EVE herself as a character is so fascinating. Like this is the moment where I started to see that these aren't just bosses, they are actually characters that tie this little but complex story together bit by bit. And this is why I would nominate No Straight Roads for The Best Storytelling and Character Design AGAIN!

Funny Useless Fact: EVE was supposed to be a next character to have a complete and detailed art of but due to my forgetfulness, difficulties with her design (and many other things) - it was never finished but I hope to get that dusty sketch out of WIP folder someday.

5. Tatiana

The Bitch. The Boss.

I don't really like her music and rhythm but I can forgive that since it is kind of fitting for conflict between her and the BBJ.

She tries to hide her true image throughout the story and the fight but ultimately crumbles cause escaping from the past isn't the best option to improve.

I love her design and personality and I wish there were more villains like her. Strict, simple, stoic and yet well-written.

Funny Useless Fact: I've never drawn Tatiana until NSR announced their release on Steam with addition of Fanat Graffiti Contest that I certainly didn't want to miss out on. It was difficult but I did it and ngl, I am still proud of the results.

6. DJ Subatomic Supernova & 1010/Neon J

I can't really say anything much about both of them. Sorry, guys...

Their designs and personalities are fun and well-made but due to one of them being the first you fight as "tutorial" and the other appears only at the end of a fight. (1010 band doesn't count as an actual boss to me more like a part of it) They didn't struck me much as the others did...

I will say this thou: their backstories are interesting. One is an academy astrology teacher with a goal of achieving the stars and other is a war veteran who just wanted everyone to live in peace and he himself despite everything never stopped his passion for doll-making and making people happy.

Just simply, beautiful...

Cool Science Fact: Their VAs are GOLD!

[yoshihashismattebum]

8, 14, 22 for the end of year asks, please!

8. Game of the year?

I've actually not played that many games this year! Though to be fair, even in years when I do play a lot of games, I'm a dabbler: I only tend to play a game for about two weeks at a time before I move on to something else, which sometimes makes it hard to pick a favourite. I think this year the running theme was 'games that I recognise aren't particularly good but I enjoyed them anyway'.

The first one that springs to mind is House Flipper. On the surface it looks like every other janky simulator game, but there's something about it that's oddly compelling. All the little tasks feel very satisfying to perform, and being able to choose the decor scratches the same interior design itch as the Sims for me.

I also played quite a bit of Fallout 4, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's a good game. The writing in it is generally dreadful imo, and the world mostly feels like a missed opportunity. Plus, like most Bethesda games, it has the breadth of an ocean but the depth of a puddle. But hey, sometimes it's fun to splash around in a puddle!

As usual, I've also played a lot of trashy wrestling games, mainly WWE 2K23 and Wrestling Empire. I would particularly recommend the latter despite it being a bizarre, janky mess a lot of the time. Something about it is oddly compelling, and it runs equally well on phones and PC, which makes it perfect to pick up for 15 minutes at a time. Plus the matches can be really good! The system of move counters is particularly impressive.

One of my aims for next year is definitely to play games a bit more intentionally and less mindlessly. It would be good to work through some of my huge Steam library backlog!

14. Favorite book you read this year?

Again, it's been a lean year for me this year in terms of books, but I'm coming out of a multi-year slump where I barely read anything at all, so I'm at fine with that.

The only print book I read this year, and thus my favourite by default, was The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers. Fortunately I thought it was great! It's the fourth in her 'Wayfarer' series, which is probably my favourite series of books of all time. I think this one was maybe the weakest of the four for me, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd highly, highly recommend the series to anyone who wants something warm and light but also thought-provoking (themes of personhood, identity, community etc). Even if you're not typically a SF fan, I think you'd get something out of them.

I did listen to a few audiobooks as well though! The highlight was probably Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey, the second in the Expanse series (yet more SF). Having enjoyed the TV show, I was quite disappointed by the first book, but this second one was lightyears better imo, so I'm glad I persevered. It's where the series really starts to get into the political intrigue that I loved in the show.

22. Favorite place you visited this year?

I answered this one already in a previous post, but I think I can come up with another answer! 2024 was the year I finally made it to Warhammer World! If you're a massive nerd like me, it really is paradise. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to see some cool fantasy and SF dioramas, even if you don't have any interest in or knowledge of Warhammer. I was blown away by the scale and detail of some of them. Seriously impressive stuff, and it helped to get me back into the hobby! RIP my money...

[zee-reviews]

Cavern of Dreams (Steam)

First time?: Yes

[Note: this review will be as spoiler-free as possible, though some minor things from later in the game may be brought up in passing.]

If you're not aware of what Cavern of Dreams is, it's an N64-inspired exploration platformer by Bynine Studio. I've been following the creator on Tumblr for a while and this game has been on my radar since it released, and now that I've finally played it, I can honestly say I enjoyed it a LOT.

The plot of the game is that you are a young dragon named Fynn, and you are trying to rescue your siblings (who are eggs) from a bat artist named Luna. The cavern's guardian, Sage, helps you out by watching over your rescued siblings in the hub world, and giving you new powers when you reach certain milestones.

One of the game's defining traits is that there is no true "combat", to speak of. There are hazards, and you have attacks that interact with the environment, but there's no enemies or bosses to defeat, and no health or lives system. This works out well, as the focus of this style of game is exploration and platforming, so the experience doesn't feel lacking for the omission.

The movement in the game is somewhat unique, as Fynn doesn't quite have the jumping prowess that a Mario or a Banjo would have. However, he does have a roll ability that allows him to go very fast and even ramp off of sloped surfaces like Sonic. The roll controls similar to the roll in Yooka-Laylee, or the Spongeball in Battle for Bikini Bottom; it can be a little tricky to control, but you can carry the momentum into your standard run when you need more precise movement at higher speeds.

Fynn does get more abilities later on, such as a tail whip to slap objects, a glide, a bubble projectile, and perhaps most usefully, a bounce ability that can not only attack the ground, but also gives you more height than your standard jump. The sense of progression you get with each new ability is very satisfying, and towards the end of the game, you'll find the movement to be very complex and rewarding.

Now for the aesthetics. This game was designed primarily by a visual artist, and my god does it show. The game is GORGEOUS, and does a great job at paying tribute to the bold colors and lighting of games like Banjo-Kazooie or Spyro while also having a unique artstyle of its own. Different areas can have different moods; a wooded lake area in a cozy autumn sunset, the metallic interior of a sentient airship, the creepy black-and-white basement illuminated only by the occassional lightning strike, and so much more. I have so many screenshots just of areas I thought looked visually interesting.

My only criticisms of the game are nitpicks, really. For one, the sound design could be underwhelming at times. According to the credits, many of the sounds were grunts made by the people working on the game, or were sourced from freesounds. Nothing was egreiously out-of-place or anything, and it is a passion project by a very small group, so it's easily forgiven.

The only other thing is that I had my camera set to inverted, but the camera in first-person mode was non-inverted, and it would throw off my muscle memory when switching. Though, there aren't a lot of times where you need to switch to first-person mode, so it was never that big of a deal.

This isn't a particularly long game, it's maybe 2/3rds the length of a game like Banjo-Kazooie, but there's still a lot here to enjoy, especially considering the game is only $13 on Steam (even less if you get it in a bundle). I would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who's even a little interested.

[lady-hammerlock]

So back in the day... (a quick search informs me it was 1994) there was a little point and click adventure game called Beneath a Steel Sky. I wasn't a gamer at the time so I didn't play it then, but I did play it later and fall in love with it. I bonded with a previous romantic partner over it, we commissioned art of it, and I bought and played it again when it was re-released for Android/iOS.

It has only recently come to my attention that a sequel, Beyond a Steel Sky, was released in 2020. How I didn't find out about it over the last four years is a fucking mystery but it probably has something to do with how fucked the last few years have been, both on a global and personal scale.

Why should you care?

Because Beyond A Steel Sky is beautiful. I know I have a lot of followers that appreciate a good story-based game, and if you miss the old style of point and click then this does a wonderful job without having quite as much trial and error or wonky logic as a lot of old point and clicks.

It also has the following:

- The setting is a part post-apocalyptic, part dystopian Australia, with a lot of Australian in-jokes for the Aussies and an interesting setting for everyone else.

- Positive representation for plus-sized women and women of colour, most notably Australian First Nations.

- A great sense of humour, both in terms of how you solve problems and just general dialogue.

- The ability to cause absolute chaos and fuck around beyond what is just required of you to progress the story.

- A surprisingly deep and thought-provoking story (I should warn that the first game was light-hearted until about 80% of the way through when it suddenly became much more dark and horrific. The sequel does something similar but is a bit more gradual about it.)

- A great dynamic between the two main characters. Is it a romance? A bromance? Whatever you decide it is wonderfully complex, incredibly codependent, and both heart-warming and heartbreaking at the same time. It should be noted that it is not quite canon, and it is definitely not going to be to everyone's taste considering it is Human/AI and considering some of the things that go down in both games, but I am shipping it so hard right now and absolutely fascinated by the possibilities.

- Neil Newbon. He plays a baddie and is as fabulous as always.

- A robot that writes poetry. And has some of the best lines in the game. I just love Tarquin okay?

- Joey. I know I already listed his dynamic with Foster above, but he is such peak blorbo to me right now that he is his own entry. I mean look at him in one of his many bodies here. Don't you just wanna hug it?

Friend shaped.

To be fair the games aren't perfect. I think you can still play Beneath on GOG, but it is definitely a product of it's time. The character animation in Beyond isn't great, but the art style is cartoony enough that it isn't too distracting.

Now, for the reasons I'm making this post. Obviously I want more people to find and fall in love with these games. If you're into them already, great! Come scream about them with me. If not, the sequel is on sale on both Steam and Playstation at the moment for only a few dollars.

I am also opening up fic requests specifically for Steel Sky right now because there are 0 fics on A03 at the moment. 0. I need to change that. Anything Foster/Joey will be an immediate yes (even if it's Savior Joey) but I will be open to other prompts as well.

[vikintor]

Notes about my character design: confessions, how and why Githyanki influences my work, personal experiences, silly ideas, My games, and more I guess

If you don't follow me and just found this I have something to say first: Be welcome, hope this text doest sound pretentious, I'm Vikintor, I made some obscure games (Teocida, Tamashii and Estigma), they're available on Steam and consoles as well.

You might notice that my "original" character designs are being heavily influenced by the Githyanki these days, especially their "classic" designs from Fiend Folio to "Rise of the Githyanki" published in Polyhedron and "Knights of the lich-Queen" in Dungeon Magazine, and of course, mixed a little with what I call "modern" design (I also like how the Githzerai give me Jedi vibes, yes, Jedi from Star Wars). The less human it looks while maintaining some human proportions, the better. And that's why I love the old "classic" alienish designs the most.

Why D&D Gith's?

Confession time; I never really cared that much about Dungeons & Dragons before I discovered the Githyanki, and they're the only race in D&D that I actually care about, especially for the storytelling and roleplay possibilities based on their lore. As someone who favorite character designs ranges from D'vorah from Mortal Kombat, Undyne from Undertale, to Lilith from Diablo, liking the look of the classic Gith was easy for me, and boe they are rad.

Quick context on who they are (you can skip if you know them or don't care):

Githianky are a D&D race know as humanoid creatures (mostly gray, green and yellow skin toned) with a rigid militaristic background. Raised to serve their Lich-Queen and destined to die for her (and by her, but some don't know that part). They were slaves of an illithid empire in the past and after being led to freendom by Gith (A woman named Gith, there's no Gith races before her), their race was splited in two; The Githyanki believes they are the real children of Gith and the Githzerai believes the Githyanki still slaves, not from illithid but the queen. plus: Githianky live in cities build on the corpses of fallen deities (that's metal).

Most of the Githyanki are considered evil, as some go on raid campaigns to steal from another planes (they love precious stones and gold, and they can be seem as pirates, but instead of ships they ride red dragons thanks to a pact made with Tiamat). Their complexity creates a bunch of What-If scenarios that I'm interested in: like; did you know that religion is forbidden to the Githyanki (Only Lich-Queen Clerics are permitted), but many of them secretly worship other gods. And how crime and punishment works on their society (kinda don't works at all, so a lot of them are afraid to look for justice), and how Githyanki monks exists in their society but faces prejudice (Githaynki monks are often seem as Githzerai spies), And you have stories about the Gith rebels that believes the Githyanki and Githzerai can be unified as only "children of Gith", as the same time their leader is way too controvertial and self-centered, and how some of these rebels befriend humans (which is a taboo), or how their society hates every non-Githyanki but are polite and refined among their own kind, which is often confusing and complex as they are known for their aggressive propaganda among themselves and how they kill each other during their insane militaristic raising. They also often do parties, play and write songs and have fun, there's also half-Githyanki/half-dragons superwarriors created in a secret experiment led by the Lich-queen (those don't care about the Githyanki society and aren't friendly to them), and them you still have the Githzerai (neutral Gith monks that despise the Lich-Queen and have their own society and traditions) and the Githvy (rogue Gith's that aren't Githyanki or Githzeray, who often tries to live among other races).

Ahh?

Of course I don't know everything about them and maybe there is some misinterpretation on my part, some of the content was created over the years and unfortunately most of it was never published or translated into my idiom, so I have to translate it myself, but I'm not writing this to convince people to like them as much as I do. I'm sharing this to bring out what and how it inspired me.

So, what this have to do with me?

As someone who likes weird ambiguous characters and enjoys fantasizing with what-if scenarios; discovering that lore on D&D made me realize how much prejudice I had with D&D. If you say to me "This rpg race is totally evil or totally good" I can only answer: "Impossible. Individual characters are more complex than that, I want to explore the exceptions". If all are evil, I want some trying to discover what means to be good, and want some to fail miserable, and want some to learn something from that experience, if they're all serious, I want some to be silly and weird.

I'm far from a real writer (whatever that means), but I like fantasizing about atypical situations and writing about them, which is why I wrote neutral demon-like creatures for Tamashii and Teocida in the first place, even when I still lacked more maturity for that. I'm also interested in these exceptions in rpg lore and improving those aspects as I write about them, which is why D&D Githyanki inspired my current design.

But how it inspired me:

Just like many fantasy stories were created during sessions of tabletop RPG campaigns, I became interested in Gith-exclusive games thanks to discovering content like Fiend Folio and "Rise of the Githyanki" and "Knights of the Lich-Queen" (both Gith centred games focused on Gith players, with few exceptions), which is why I became way more obsessed with them. And damm, a videogame like BG3 having Githianky as a playable race is everything I hoped for (I'm not interested in BG4 if there's not a single playable Gith race. I just want to keep creating weird Gith girl characters and make them break things and form a band named Githgang), but I'm not here to talk about BG3, sorry.

So Gith's was my first inspiration to write my own RPG races with their own language, traditions, dogma, taboos, and designs. I think about how something like this could happen in the universe I've been working on since Tamashii. But I'm not going for something complex, but rather thinking about characters that I would create for my Gith campaigns could be another type of character if I create them in another position, another world with different laws, instead of just roleplaying as Githanky forever.

As I can't write Githyanki characters without it being some sort of fanfic (my fault for not going for something more common like wizards, orcs and gnomes), I still at least being inspired by them.

After reading a bunch to roleplay as Gith characters or just to fantasize about it, their personalities, and how they react to the world still something that is organically created while I'm assuming that character and playing around, this doesn't need to be bound to a specific lore. I'm being redundant at this point, but you get the idea, that's how the brazilian character Ozob was created in the 90's (He was a character created during a Cyberpunk tabletop RPG session, and then became an original character with books and merchandize in Brazil until CD Projekt Red got the rights to put him in the Cyberpunk 2077 for real)

Therefore, I can say that part of what may come in the future is the result of my experiences and inspirations with D&D mixed with all my other inspirations, such as H.R Giger, biomechanical horror, Screaming Mad George's style body horror, esoteric/exoteric references, industrial music and atmospheric, creepypasta, etc. It might be weird, or not, maybe a little silly or edgy as always, but I don't know what to do besides accepting the results, keep moving forward, and have fun in the process.

The first character as an Avatar:

"Astral of Latanael" still a working name for the first character I made inspired by Gith. The draft for her is: She is a Mhold'eze, a zombie-like servant bonded to her preceptor, a necromancer who serves as her mentor. Mhold'ezes inherit part of their master's powers and are often used as an extension of their master's will where they cannot be present, always receiving an important task, or mission as soon as they are born (like Feucirl and Pleroma of Teocida, except that Pleroma is not a necromancer). This is the first draft of the original character that I'm using as an avatar, but I do plan to work more on this silly lady and Latanael (her Necromancer) to include them in my game, or games, or more than that. It depends of what I decided.

Ok, just a quick look on how Astral looks right now, before I made more changes.

Congrats if you read until here, I'm surprised if you really read more than 1500 words of some weird dude talking about why silly D&D "pirates" inspired him to keep creating more silly weird angry girl characters.

[shwoo]

I thought since I like Bugsnax so much, I should probably play the developer's previous game, Octodad as well. And I did, like last August according to Steam. But now I've finally mustered up the energy to make a rambly post about what I thought! Sort of mustered up the energy. Just in time for Dadliest Catch's tenth anniversary in a couple of days (On the 30th of January).

Wait, it's been two days since I started this post. Um, just in time for Dadliest Catch's tenth anniversary.

I played the original 2010 game first, and I knew it was a student project, so I was surprised it had voice acting. Looks like the school also gave them a voice acting budget? That's cool. I was also surprised that a game from 2010 still worked fine, although it did crash the first time I tried to go into the kitchen. So I just did some kitchen chores in real life instead. Showed that… video… game.

The game will save if you save and quit, but not if it crashes, so I started quitting after every task, and then ended up having to do the basement and post-basement sequence like three or four times. At least once it was because Octodad got stuck on some geography. Luckily there is a checkpoint if you die there. I know this because I died repeatedly.

The original game was pretty fun, except for the bit where you have to stomp on all the spiders before they reach your daughter's bed and if you let too many through, the chef guy kills you. Which is just the usual game over, but it is funny that he apparently kills you for failing to protect your daughter properly. Anyway, the controls aren't really precise enough to aim your feet properly.

I did like the gameplay in the basement, though, even though it was a big jump in how precise you have to be. But it is a bit weird plot-wise, even with a game that's obviously not supposed to be that consistent. It seems like everything is wrapped up, and then you go through a random hallway of lasers, and chef guy is there and kills you if you walk into the lasers too many times? And then you get through it and the game just ends.

Another thing that surprised me in both games was how often they acknowledge that Octodad is an octopus. I was already familiar with the meme of people responding to Octodad pictures by asking why someone posted a picture of a perfectly normal dad, to the point of never even saying the word octopus, but in the they say it all the time in the game. He is an octopus in a suit, and he knows this. So does chef guy. A giant Pacific octopus, probably, but I found that subtitle in the game files and I'm not sure if it's in the game, because it would only be said if you get caught by the biologists, and doesn't make a lot of sense in context anyway. I should probably check at some point.

Anyway, I liked Dadliest Catch a lot. I've played through it three times now! I like the characters. Like the Bugsnax characters, they seem to have their own point of view and motivations, while still living in an absurd setting.

And I'll usually reference whatever I'm currently obsessing over when playing something else, but I really overdid it with this game, since they were made by most of the same people. Is the reason I like Scarlet specifically because, being a passionate journalist who believes in aliens and hates being lied to, she reminds me of one my seven favourite characters from Bugsnax? Maybe! Probably.

She's better at identifying parasites, though. But the Bugsnax journalist is better at identifying cephalods. Which was another time I was surprised to hear Octodad being referred to as an octopus, since I hadn't played the games when I saw the crossover April Fools trailer. They just came out and said it.

(Pulls down conspiracy chart) Now let me explain the minutae of why Filbuddy = ...Do Scarlet and Octodad have a ship name? If so, I hope it's Octoscar. Filbuddy with a bit of Snorplo with the "one of them is keeping huge secrets from the other because he's afraid of rejection but the other one is more upset about the secret-keeping than what the secret turns out to be" thing.

Gameplay wise, Octodad:Dadliest Catch is kind of... a little too short to really take advantage of its mechanics? But I hear when it came out, they apparently threw you into difficult stealth sections when most of the challenge beforehand was just getting him to go where you need him to. They left in some of the late game stealth sequences when they updated it, as an optional thing, and I did them on my second playthrough. It was pretty fun, now that I was more used to the controls. Trying to navigate the environments for all the ties was fun as well. He's pretty mobile for someone who shouldn't be able to walk on land at all.

I also liked the optional 2D platforming level you can find by flushing yourself down the toilet. I'd play a whole game like that, if the mechanics were introduced a bit more slowly. The last bit took a while to get through, though.

One of the biggest problems I had with the game was not being able to move the camera. It made it a bit hard to see things in detail, and I had more trouble than I should've with the ship level because I didn't realise a beam extended all the way to the middle of the ship, and I could walk on it. I thought I was meant to sneak past all the sailors.

I died there so many times.

Also, there are some jokes and stuff that you can't really see because they're too far from the camera. Like, early on Scarlet says that she send a picture to a tabloid or something that she says made the front page, and she suggests picking it up because she can't be seen reading it. And you can find it in the supermarket, but I couldn't get it close enough to the camera to see what the front page image was without going into the files.

Luckily, a lot of the files are just sitting there easily accessible, like with Bugsnax, so it was pretty easy to find. It's a picture of Octodad sitting and drinking coffee, with the headline "Alien Life Sighted?" There's a few lore kind of things that I don't think you can see in the game either, and it actually answered a few questions I had, about the aquarium especially. Also, I learned Sports Johnson's real name (Maxwell "Sports" Johnson), and what year the game takes place in (1971).

I have a lot of thoughts about the lore, and I think there's more going on, particularly with the aquarium, Octodad having human kids, and the Cod Wars setting in the flashback, but this isn't really the post for it. It's long enough already. Anyway, pretty fun game!

Also, you can see Octodad as a metaphor for disability in general, but he has a weird sleep schedule, basically can't function without coffee, is "usually so talkative", and is so scared of rejection that he never told his wife what species he was. Octodad: ADHD icon?

[fumifooms]

Bonbon is fucking me up

Fancy alt title: On coping, safety in the inanimate and helplessness against the animalistic

I don’t care about the storybook symbolism I’m here to talk about the experience of it all and how it’s so viscerally relatable. Watched the new Jacob Geller vid and I am in shambles (< how to say something that immediately ages your draft pfft…) I appreciate this game I appreciate it a lot

I recommend if you’re here but don’t know a thing about Bonbon you just go watch it, here’s a gameplay, it’s short. Or the Jacob Geller video segment at least 🙏 It does an amazing job at covering it.

Official game description:

Bonbon is a thirty-minute long, first-person domestic horror narrative about childhood events you are too young to understand. Playing as a young toddler, walking and carrying objects will be difficult. You will drop things, and you will fall over. Since your parents aren't there to pick you up, you'll be spending time with a large, overbearing and ambiguous visitor... a monstrous, hungry rat named Bonbon.

Official CW: Steam : The player character is a young child who is being traumatised by a giant humanoid rat who appears in the house one day. The traumatic events are symbolic and related to domestic issues. Physical violence is extremely mild, but some players might find the threatening atmosphere to be uncomfortable. // itch.io : Bonbon deals with grown-up themes and suggestions of child-abuse. There is no literal violence or onscreen abuse, it is entirely in the subtext.

If you play through it without knowing anything about it, you’ll have to piece things together to grasp the theme of domestic abuse, but the second you step into official descriptions, it is very straightforwardly about that. I mention this because the game also makes the rat monster, well, a literal rat— a pet rat that is shown in-game to be feral & average in the end credits and to have been adopted into the family from a newspaper rehoming ad. I’ve seen people argue without the extra context that the story has no "fancy" analogy and metaphor for the monster, that it’s pretty literal and is just about a kid’s fear of his own pet rat exaggerated. And, well………. 🧍

So warning for this specific post, we’ll be talking about domestic abuse and trauma, not any acts perse but moreso the feelings it makes you go through- what I think this game is interested in representing.

So I only looked at other non-youtube-comment reviews after writing most of this, but now that I have I do have many nifty little links and snippets to share as cherry on top. If you look on the game’s itch.io page you can find links to some other interesting reviews/analyses. In particular, this short quote by Adam Smith about the game represents well something that people keep bringing up about Bonbon, childhood anxiety :

"the confusion between what is real and what isn’t, and what is threatening and what is malign, rings true."

This reddit thread is another interesting analysis, particularly with the angle of sexual abuse but also goes into the meta mechanics & experience. Only setback is you must have a reddit account to read it. (I won’t be taking the same angle at all but it isn’t incompatible with my reading either, either way it’s very compelling and supported by concrete analysis so give it a look if that interests you.)

And yet even still with all these I wanted to make my own thematic analysis bc I need it and I have other & new things to say. Like how personal experiences have shaped others’ reviews, mine will have a specific angle influenced by my own as well. I don’t consider I was abused- but I was traumatized by a parent, so I do relate to the feelings evoked. Alcoholism, absentness and mild anger issues with an occasional threat of corporal punishment makes for a very fitting cocktail for Bonbon, I feel, but we’ll be getting into that.

The suspense, the fear lingering at the back of your mind that you’re trying to suppress because this is your daily. Domestic horror feels like a quite accurate term. Critiques of the game often agree on a central theme being agency and the lack thereof and that’s particularly interesting, but I want to give a look at the coping angle of the narrative specifically, moreso than the suffering & enduring reactive and active side of it that has been extensively covered.

No the rat man never stops feeling disturbing next question

Before truly getting into it I want to lay out the game’s plot and structure. It has 5 scenes. In the first scene you, the kid, are playing outside when your mom calls you inside, and you have to put away your toys. In scene 2, you play inside and your mom calls you to dinner, and you have to put away your toys. Scene 3, it’s your birthday and you eat cake. In scene 4 a radio with dad’s voice soothingly reads you a morbid tragic bedtime story. In scene 5, it’s night and you can’t sleep, you wander a bit before going back to bed. In scene 3 and 5 the parents are arguing as background noise (albeit very deliberate and purposeful one you’re meant to notice and pay attention to). Bonbon is in all of these scenes, and the aggression he shows/discomfort he causes escalates, until the game abruptly ends when he jumpscares you.

Mild fear, no alarm

Scene 1 and 2 especially are great at establishing normalcy. It feels like routine. The acts are mundane. This is your normal. There is nothing that feels special about today and seemingly nothing is out of place, even a giant rat man suddenly coming crashing in through the fence. No one comments on him, but you interact with him and talk to him. You already know his name, the way you know the name of all your toys, Bonbon.

A significant part of the gameplay is spent with toys, holding them up, manipulating them, playing with them and putting them away. Even in scene 5, toys are used in eerie ways to lure and scare.

Toys are obviously important to the child. They’re the only thing besides the environment and parents that they interact with at all, and the only thing they talk to besides Bonbon. They talk to the toys, saying "hello [toy name]!" almost like a ritual, compulsively, every time to every toy if you the player takes the time to. You certainly have the prompt to do so, and no reason to do or not do it. This ingrained habit shows that they humanize the toys to some degree, and supports that the child has an active imagination.

So, you’re putting your toys away when suddenly Bonbon appears, like I said crashing through the fence noisily. There is no more sudden movement or noise from him, and nothing indicates that this is strange or unusual. Eventually, you’ll have found all the toys you can in the backyard, but that doesn’t mean you found all the toys you need to put away. With nothing else to do, you wordlessly approach Bonbon, and only then does he do anything at all. He watches you, and he drops the last ball you need, it rolling closer to you. You have to approach and bend down to grab it. You do not know why or how Bonbon had the toy in the first place.

There are two levels with this as with any game, the character’s experience and the player’s experience. We have very little insight on the kid’s emotions through all of this, but player wise it’s clear and unanimouse- It’s disturbing. This scene is very powerful in showing how something as simple as help from someone you feel uncomfortable about— someone you’re not sure about— can be very, very intimidating. Uncanny, even. Both during and after, you’re unsure wether the help is genuine or if, like an animal it’ll turn around at the flip of a dime and rip you to shreds if you make one step out of line.

But no, (for now,) the rat helps, and this makes you tentatively decide it’s not all bad. You still feel a little uncomfortable. Bonbon is holding a toy, something that is safe and joyful, helping and giving it, after all. Still, the association between Bonbon and "safe" can’t be made, despite the signs pointing to him not being nefarious we always instinctively hang onto nitpicks of "so far" and "for now". You feel the wrongness, the distrust. Even though by the time the second scene rolls around, the association between Bonbon and "toy" has definitely been made.

You move on to the next scene still wondering if any consequence will come of the encounter. And scene 2 is very similar, almost a repeat in only a different setting. This time Bonbon enters the house and stands in the doorway to the room, almost fully filling it with his size. When he gives you the toy you’re looking for, it’s smaller than a ball and it doesn’t roll toward you. You have to pick it up, bending down right next to his feet, almost touching.

He didn’t hurt you last time, but (in the player at least) there’s something that screams at you to be careful, that that’s no reason it won’t hurt you this time. Still, you need its help, and still, it offers it.

The uncertainty. The threat of danger— though you constantly second guess yourself, should you be scared at all? Is there a threat, or only a possibility? Does that distinction matter? Is it your fault for being scared? And you don’t know, you don’t know if you truly should, there’s no way to know until it happens and that’s precisely the thing you’re stressed over and working so hard trying to avoid.

Has it not happened yet only because you tiptoed and walked on eggshells, or would it not have happened either way? The game in this case answers this in its last second of the last scene- and I argue that’s why that’s the end. That answer was given- the game is about this longheld feeling of anxiety and dread and discomfort, that you’re unsure of when the elastic will have been pulled too far causing it to snap. Then it answers this, and it ends just like that.  There’s no proper closure, about what happens afterwards to the kid or anyone else in the family, or even about the meaning of all the imagery and metaphors, but there is closure in one thing: you hadn’t imagined the threat. You were right to be scared all along.

This is the core of what the game was building up with the first two scenes : tension. A balloon swelling until it pops, more and more and more and you keep asking when will it pop.

It’s a never ending suspense, a jumpscare music starts but the jumpscare never happens, rationalizing everything and gaslighting yourself. A child, though, of course, thinks of these things much less clearly, all of this is much more subconscious. Feels things instead of understand them- which is why I think the game was so well thought and made, you’re a child and you don’t really know what’s going on —and you don’t have the tools to either—, everything feels vague and more importantly vaguely wrong. You can only feel. You have no proof and you understand nothing you can only feel. There are instincts but they’ve been dulled by normalization and habit.

Obviously, toys are the opposite of this anxiety. They’re predictable and safe because you know them and what they are and what they do, there is little to no hidden factor and they have no will or intent. The communication there is to be had with them at all is in very predictable standard sentences and onesided, "Hello, [name]!". There is no body language to analyze or keep track of and their faces if any are drawn and designed for a child’s, smiling and bright or teaching emotions through cartoonish exaggeration. A pet rat, or parents, by comparison, have subtle and complex body language, hard to read expressions- You never see your parents’ appearances at all, much less their faces, but what can you read in Bonbon’s face? You can’t read anything, it’s morbidly neutral, it’s not human in a way you can intuitively understand and that makes it feel more unpredictable and scarier. The inanimate is safe. Toys are humanized to some degree to make them warmer more fun company, but other living things are inversely objectified to attempt to make you more comfortable with them. Let’s move on and I’ll get back to this in scene 4.

Deep fear, mild alarm

Scene 3. It gets revealed it’s your birthday! There’s nothing that cements it for sure, but there’s no reason to disbelieve that all 5 scenes of the game are set in the same day. In which case, the mother’s unremarkable mundane behavior can speak even more interestingly about the theme of neglect.

You’ve been called to the table and mom lit up the candles on the cake and sings you happy birthday! You two are interrupted when the phone rings and mom steps away to answer it, breaking the happy mood. You hear a chair scraping on the floor and when the screen shows things again Bonbon is sitting next to you, huge and insistent on getting cake. You cut a slice, for yourself presumably but he asks for it and you give it. Asking for a slice, then another, then another until he pushes you over to eat all your cake and you still haven’t had any. And of course this happens during while you can hear fight on the phone between mom and dad. Mom seemingly blames the mess on you and sends you off to take a bath fondly.

This was the part that made me wonder what line the metaphor was toeing. The dad is busy on the phone, so Bonbon can’t just be dad when he’s physically there. My first impression was that the child brings their rat to the dining table to have company sometimes. Someone to share a cake with even perhaps. But not something they can hold back or make behave, so when they give it some cake it gets out of hand… We’ll come back on this but I think loneliness is an important and supported theme. Is it only the child’s trauma given form, that causes them to lash out and smash the cake or such? Is it the memories, that ruins the cake for them? The official description of the game makes it sound like Bonbon’s presence is only allowed because of the parents’ neglect, some visitor that appears when they’re not watching... This is all interesting to ponder, but ultimately this is the point where the line gets truly blurred, what makes me think that it’s nuanced and situational rather than a black or white answer.

The mom never comments on Bonbon, and Bonbon joins the table quickly only after mom goes away on the phone to talk to dad- Bonbon has inserted himself in the scene both figuratively because he called by phone and it’s distracting from the moment, from the birthday cake and from the child’s birthday, and literally (through Bonbon, perhaps just a personification of trauma) by seating himself at the table.

In this scene the child talks to Bonbon for the first and only time. "Hello, Bonbon!" they say, and after this they get the prompt to either give Bonbon a slice of cake each time they ask or say "No, Bonbon!", but even if you do he’ll only insist and ultimately push you out of the way. The theme of agency is of course central here, the sheer helplessness of it all. To add insult to injury mom comes back and makes light of the situation, dismissing it entirely.

Extra stuff you could read into is how sweets are unhealthy and potentially poisonous to rats. Bonbon in french means candy btw, if that’s anything at all. I also had in my notes written that there was smoke in the scene, interesting because it’s unecessary, helps atmosphere even though it’s illogical or such? Idiom reference, or reminds smoke detectors bc of kitchen for a metaphor? But was it puffs of breathing? The thing is that I physically cannot rewatch the cake scene so, sorry you only have my memory after five months from watching it lol.

Comfort

This is an interlude of sorts. The only thing that happens in this scene is you have to listen to a bedtime story while tucked in bed, one told by a radio at your bedside speaking with dad’s voice.

In meta, this has an effect on you, it slows the pace and the game’s story down. Maybe there’s lingering tension in you and you can’t relax all throughout it, because of what’s happened so far, but personally, I found myself getting sleepy, almost comfortable, soothed. Both are very interesting experiences. The story and scene lasts long minutes where you can’t move or do anything but listen, so it’ll have an effect on you in any case, even if it’s simply breaking tension through boredom, which could feasibly be an emotion experienced by the child as well. A tradition done out of routine, so the story can bore you to sleep lol. The former shows just how much the child’s home life puts one in a constant state of stress and tension, meanwhile the latter shows a potential reprieve from the tension and more importantly where the child would find it in.

I’ll be going forward with the latter. You, the player, get to be soothed with a bedtime story to the voice of daddy. The scene tells a story that can explain the symbolism and is ripe grounds for analysis, but it itself shows you another side to things. Daddy here, through the inanimate object that physically cannot be unpredictable, a recording of sometime nice, is soothing, a bedtime story, it’s a presence that lulls you to sleep with a kind soft voice.

By this point, it’s been cemented that the father is the unstable destabilizing element in the household/family dynamic. This was the scene I was most onterested in analyzing, because I think this goes back to the child’s liking of toys. Dare I say, their coping through toys. The radio shows distance, which both has positives and negatives. This reinforces to me the theme of neglect and loneliness— Daddy reads you a story but it’s through a radio, which supports the dad might be an absent father. Mechanically, you can never give an appearance to either mom or dad like I mentioned, they’re always offscreen or in black screen cutscenes. In this house it’s only you, Bonbon and the toys. The radio is there because dad couldn’t or wouldn’t be physically present to read it to the child, or because… The radio as mentioned is an object, something safe. The recording of daddy’s voice is unchanging and it stays soothing, predictably slow and soft. It could be argued that the radio isn’t even literal and it’s a way for the kid to pretend that the dad has no physical presence. Perhaps because like the end shows, physical consequences can and do happen. With scene 5 it’s arguably, but as of scene 4 with scene 3 we’ve only ever heard dad’s voice through an electronic. There is an association being made between dad and phones and radios, a faraway voice.

The mechanic of the kid saying "hello, [name]!" is very associated with toys, and then we say that to Bonbon in scene 3… Daddy is the radio, the mother never gets any metaphorical or warped form like that, and then there’s Bonbon. This in good part is what makes me think that Bonbon is somewhat considered like a toy too by the child, but unlike inanimate objects they have a will of their own. I think this mechanic is also meant to portray loneliness like I mentioned, that the kid always talks to the toys, always plays with toys, etc. It’s not "stop playing with your friends and come home", it’s the kid sitting on the floor with toys and playing away, and then Bonbon. The kid had the rat to stave through the loneliness I think, and visually/behaviorally it disturbed them even though it got categorized as a toy and then it also grew an association with father.

We’re building a dichotomy here. There is helpfulness and aggression. There is object = predictably safe and Bonbon the pet rat = unpredictably unsafe. And we’re coming closer to me saying it plainly, but I think Bonbon the humanoid rat monster is at once both the child’s literal pet rat, fused with the father, a way to visualize him that puts distance between him and the child, or the child and their parental trauma. I think the father’s bad is being absorbed by the child’s boogeyman vision of Bonbon, and I think the good and comfortable is associated with the radio, is relegated to that visual representation again. The good ol’ coping mechanism of compartmentalization. How to reconcile scene 3 with scene 4, if both Bonbon and the radio are the father? Which part of him is more important, which vision of dad should you go with? The one that’s scary or the one that’s soothing?

Bonbon is great I feel at showcasing what it feels like to be traumatized by the threat of danger but not it being fulfilled perse. Or yes it being fulfilled but- it’s about being scared in your daily life by someone. That suspense I spoke of. Bonbon is a coping mechanism, but in the pet rat becoming associated with the thing it’s helping the kid cope with, it becomes a source of dread also. If Bonbon is dad when he’s mean, then dad’s nice voice on the radio— dad when he’s not physically present- can be comforting instead of scary, because that wasn’t dad it was Bonbon. Personally of course this effect, the need to compartmentalize and dehumanize, reminds me of alcoholism, because when drunk it can truly feel like they become an animal- unpredictable, with baser instincts, more impulsive and primal and messy. Their patterns of behavior are all thrown off so in turn you recognize them less and that’s viscerally scary. If you can’t predict them and you can’t recognize them then it makes them something unknown that’s in your range and could do anything to you- if your brain is to be believed.

To summarize the story that gets told roughly, our poor protagonist gets tricked into doing a bunch of things by a rat guy he thinks is his ally to the rat’s benefit and the trickery is only revealed at the end, upon which the rat villain wins and the protagonist loses. The story reflects well the outline of the game, the first scenes compared to the ending, Bonbon revealing himself to not be as much of an ally as we’d like to think. It also reinforces this sense of helplessness, being at the mercy of others, and the theme of trust.

There are a lot of associations in the game, rat and dad, rat and distrust— which is perhaps why these three got tangled together in the first place. The story’s scenes evoke routine, so presumably this isn’t the first time they hear this storybook, so then just how formative was the story for them? Do they listen to it every night And then, my main argument, other associations: Toys and bonbon, toys and safety— If Bonbon, a pet, is a toy but he’s also a rat, then what is he? Safe or untrustworthy? Again the confusion from these contradictory associations could have been what kickstarted this analogical hot pot.

Bonbon as a pet being halfway between toy and unpredictable animal. Pets as more property than separate living being. Something that is not allowed to hurt you, but can sometimes surprise you with shows of agency and aggression if you neglect its warnings. Because pets are infamously easy to neglect and commonly mistreated, they’re often seen as possessions. Or yes, just toys for their kids, fish and small rodents especially. How many afternoons has the child spent inside, in the room of the end credits, with Bonbon in its cage as their only company… If the parents tend to neglect the child, who’s taking care of Bonbon? Bonbon might be our protagonist’s only friend-adjacent being. Like with toys conversations are also onesided with animals, and there’s also how a pet is a bit like the responsibilities of having a child, sometimes a violent one especially when starved or mistreated. There’s lot of things pulling them in different directions with Bonbon. So then we’re left with a mix of contradictory concepts and feelings, somethings that triggers your fight or flight but is too confusing to settle on anything, instead just leaving you restless yet used to it.

Associations like that a subconscious thing, human pattern recognition is a strong and instinctive thing. That his dad taught him that rats are to be distrusted and that he then visualizes him as a rat… I don’t think it was a conscious thing —and in many ways it’s a coincidence that both the pet they got and the story character were rats— but it could have become a subconscious way to rationalize both the fear the child feels (because they were taught rats are to be mistrusted so they’re validated in disliking and fearing it, not the way kids’ fear of their parents often get socially invalidated), to deflect and to warn themselves. They’re trying to rationalize and normalize it, has done so, but a part of their brain keeps begging them to be careful, to not trust it, to keep a distance and keep safe from it.

Deep fear, no alarm

So, final scene. You wake up in the middle of the night and hear your parents arguing, leaving the bed to take an eerie trip through darkned halls where supernatural things happen.

And something that interests me about the game is how the child never speaks up about their experiences with Bonbon right. Their mom cares, why not try to tell her, or get her help if they’re scared? But, why would you seek out help from mom or anyone in the first place? It’s scary, but it’s your normal. It’s normal so it’s nothing you can or should get help for. It’s just a natural part of life to endure, just a silly fear you’re unsure if you should have. What would asking for help or crying about it help, change, at all?

So after this then you get back to bed, still wondering, when will it snap? When will it snap? You hear an argument that you can’t tell the words of, but it’s dad and he’s arguing. The argument stops and now the silence is complete. But the angry one hasn’t stopped existing, he had to either go silent or go somewhere. Which is it, where is he? There’s a fear as you face away from the door. If you turn over, will that fear be confirmed or undermined?

The game abruptly ends on a jumpscare that occurs when the player character is in bed. Bed, the place that should be your safest, in your room. The same bed in which daddy radio nicely reads you a story, the same bed where Bonbon will get you. The framing feels like where a game would cut off and say "game over", what regardless of game over animation is usually synonymous with ‘death’. You as a player have to push a button to roll over, that triggers the jumpscare and thus progresses through the game. But this scene removes the artifice of agency that was present in previous scenes and Bonbon directly attacks the child player character at their most vulnerable moment, no matter how soon or late you push that button. Placed in the narrative’s broader context, it reads as an escalation of the abuse and as confirmation that the player character was always already powerless—the exchanges and negotiations of prior scenes were facades, and the abuser was never going to let the child assert themselves in any meaningful way. On a meta level, the game being a linear narrative (as opposed to offering the player meaningful choices that might affect the game’s outcome) reinforces this lack of agency communicated by the story and gameplay mechanics.  I was really intrigued by how well the interactive aspects of the gameplay contributed to tensions surrounding power and autonomy. I can’t not see it as being about the visceral experience of child abuse from a child’s perspective and logic, and I think it evokes those feelings so well without ever becoming so literal as to be triggering (for me), which was very welcome.

Making my research on this game’s reception like a scholar by reading Manlybadasshero’s comment section I saw many different theories and appreciative or unappreciative comments, and I have to say I think going "it strictly symbolizes the father or this specific trouble" or inversely "there’s nothing deeper to it" misses the purpose of ambiguity. In ambiguity there is the possibility of letting every individual in the audience come up with their own most satisfying conclusion yes- hence me being able to relate so much despite having never had a pet rat— but there is also an implicit nuance to be had, that things aren’t clear cut, and coping mechanisms or trauma or discomfort is something we can feel and visualize in big or subtle ways. The game is great at capturing a feeling, and I think that above piecing the lore is what’s important to experience with it. Of course, the game works to convey the experience of child abuse in general, and the game’s mechanics here articulate a vulnerability and sense of entrapment well regardless of whether they evoke that specific concept for a particular player.

Someone said that it should’ve been a short story instead of a game and, disagree. I think having it as a game instead of a short written story is good, because one the sound design is great, two the visuals are disturbing and the atmosphere– everything greatly enhances the whole thing. And most of all, as always, agency is the crux of games. Again it enhances the powerlessness here ironically, that you can do nothing, and it isn’t unrealistic, not when you’re a child in a home situation like that. And even as you the player are the one choosing when to roll over in that bed sealing your fate, you know it had only ever been a question of time.

Conclusion

The scenes can be referred to by time of day (afternoon, dinnertime, evening, nighttime) but also by room (backyard, living room, dining room, bedroom). By being a domestic horror slice of life story with a sense of routine we can assume these are snippets that embody the rooms for the child, the kitchen is for tense meals shared, the bedroom is for comfort and terror alike. I think it’s an interesting angle to ponder it from that I won’t go over more extensively since this is already so so long.

My thesis in the grand scheme of this is that Bonbon, the rat monster and not just the feral pet tat, is for the child that middleground between toy (predictable, safe) and animal (unpredictable, unsafe). It uses that complex ~harder to deal with and wrap your head around~ dynamic between material possession that’s also a living thing to show a child trying to cope with a relationship they don’t know how to understand or process. An attempt to make it more digestible, but mostly more stomachable I think. An attempt that fails, but an attempt nonetheless.

The unknown is scary, because then you don’t know wether you are safe or unsafe, and that uncertainty and confusion can be even more unsettling than knowing for certain that the enemy is hostile or aggressive. A nice video on the topic. This in good part is what can make us more afraid of animals, or people we can’t read well, etc etc.

I said that my own experience growing up was that I was under the occasional threat of corporal punishment, but the truth of the matter is— once you teach your child to be scared of you physically hurting them, the threat doesn’t feel occasional, it feels constantly lingering. On an edge, teetering, just waiting to be pushed and then you’re in danger again.

And there’s a lot of compelling things you could assume about the father. The game gave me the impression that he was an absent one, because his presence was through a phone and a radio, plus he misses your birthday, parents are heard arguing in scene 5 at night but it could be argued that there’s no proof the dad was ever even around or in the house during the game. If he was home in scene 5, was it because he got home from work or whatever he was doing or was it because he wanted to come even if say, they were divorced and he had a restraining order on him? How closely is the rat meant to be dad being physically present? Because I can also see the narrative where it’s the latter, where Bonbon coming crashing through the fence is a way for a dad to steal little moments with the kid it was discouraged to see again. The coaxing undertone to the first scenes can also recall grooming specifically. In the first two scenes, the dad is cautiously on his best behavior to gain your trust and approval, in the third one where he argues with mom on the phone he loses his temper, perhaps because he wasn’t welcome to the birthday party he’s invading as Bonbon, in scene 4 you try to calm yourself with memories of a better moment but in scene 5 he’s home and bad things happen. It’s notable that he never talks to us, either because he never asks to like in scene 3 on the phone and the child’s just that unimportant to him in the grand scheme of arguing with mom, or mom won’t let him. Mom talks to us but dad never does, closest is a radio telling us a story, again through a filter, through the object, a step removed, through distance. You could also say that there’s a contrast between mom and dad-bonbon, mom giving you directives and orders in a way that feels very warm and fond, and dad talking very little to you at all, instead coaxing and leveraging gestures in a way that feels disturbing and wrong.

someone brought up "if you give a mouse a cookie", the story where a mouse just asks for a cookie but if your provide it then it asks for milk then if you provide it it asks for a straw etc etc, and I think that’s an interesting link to make with the theme of ceding ground to an abuser with trust or complacency. It’ll always take more and more. Most explicitly represented in the cake scene.

I went with inconsistency as my core analysis theme but there is an argument to be made for the level of Bonbon’s intentionality in its actions, wether its gestures are purposeful to gain trust before abusing it, or wether it is truly acting on impulse and whims at all times, wether it was truly well-meaning in helping you with your tasks in the moment and angrily hungry the next. Ultimately, it matters little, because your cake still got ruined and you still got… Well. There is a lot of elements that give the game a somewhat dreamlike atmosphere, the hazy lighting being one, your garbling voice when speaking to the toys, and so much more. In the end all we can do is theorize for the sake of theorizing, and try to cope with the reality of things as the game showed us.

[toadtaverngame]

Is Our Game Even Fun? [JULY DEVLOG]

After our famous Toad Tavern Jam at the beginning of June, we took a week off from the sheer exhaustion of working a whole weekend straight. We made so much progress, and hopes were very high, and right after that is when our social media started taking off.

During July we began to run into a problematic question, is the game actually fun?

At the rate we were going, we hoped to have a playable demo by now, but we kept on running into this rock wall. Various ideas went through our heads, the main one was putting out the game in a small closed playtesting round to get feedback from players. While still something we plan on doing, right now we just didn’t feel the game was quite ready for it. Then again, maybe this is how every developer feels.

The main problem is that the drink making in the game felt too repetitive. You select ingredients, you pour to the recipe’s specifications, you mix, and you have the drink. So we dug into our archives of ideas when the game first began (first time we tried making it was back in 2020, when we were a team of 5 people, and most if not all were in college). And by we, I mean Eryel and Victor. So they divided and conquered, making a series of small minigames the player will have to go through to make the perfect drink.

Currently that’s what the programmers are working on. While still in it’s barebones, I have high hopes this will increase the player experience over all. Our main goal for our demo is to have something tangible, but still of a good quality that lives up to the hype being drummed around our game.

QUESTIONS FROM OUR COMMUNITY

What platform will it be on?

While we’ve answered this in a previous video, there has been a massive influx of new people looking at our game through instagram specifically. Our first launch will be on steam, but we plan to port onto consoles later on. Honestly, my dream would be to port onto the switch. There’s also been a lot of people who have asked if it will be on mobile, which genuinely surprised me. So yes, while our main platform will be steam we’d want the game to be on different platforms for more people to play it.

Do you guys need any help?

We’ve gotten many people messaging us, emailing us and even commenting asking if we will be needing more help on the game. While we appreciate the influx of kind, talented folk who want to be a part of the game's development, for now we aren't accepting any more team members. But do not fret ! In the occasion that we do need more talent, whether it be music, programming, art, or anything else then we'll be letting you guys know there and on the other socials.

To be the first to receive devlogs, event announcements, playtesting signups and more subscribe to our newsletter !

[gaiahypothesims]

Get to Know Me- Sims Style

Thank you for tagging me @treason-and-plot

What’s your favorite Sims death?

Ugh man, I don't know. I don't let mine die a lot, but they do tend to die from random stupid things. Meteor death, while I was making scenes. Birthday cake fire/death from a gameplay.

Alpha CC or MaxisMatch?

Alpha. I like MM for TS4, but not so much for TS3.

Do you cheat your sims weight?

I haven't had to until recently. Laken ate a whole bunch of pie, autonomously!!! and then the next thing I knew he was all blown up and waddling around. The rest of them seem to have kept themselves in order. Its no good when taking pics of a scene and suddenly someone looks waayyyy different. Fucking Laken.

Do you move objects?

Oh absolutely. I don't think my game likes it. But its a necessary evil.

Favourite Mod?

All of NRAAS, and also all the new toddler interactions from MTS. Skins are a must for me, same with eyes. I don't like dead eyes.

First Expansion/Game Pack/Stuff Pack?

TS3- Generations or Seasons? I think. I had TS2 previously, but that was a lifetime ago and I don't remember what I did with that.

Do you pronounce live mode like aLIVE or LIVing

Live like aLIVE. What the heck man.

Who’s your favourite sim that you’ve made?

Oh lord. I have so many. I'll be the most apparent and say Jonah. Because he's just a whole legacy.

Have you made a simself?

Oh yeah. Just one though. Because I wanted to see if she'd get up to some shit. On brand as always, she does nothing. Just shows up here and there. Goes to work, goes home. No drama. Sigh. Lame old thing.

Which is your favorite EA hair color?

Oh man.. I don't know. Black? I usually change them. The brown is too green, the reds too orange... blonde too yellow.

Favorite EA hair?

Good question. Maybe this one? I don't use EA hairs for the most part. Jared got a makeover and doesn't use this one anymore, but it was one I've used before. There are some other ones that are decent but I don't have images.

Favorite life stage?

Young Adult, just because it encompasses a pretty huge frame of life. You can make them look 18 or 35+ in the same stage.

Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay?

I like building things, I just suck at it. I love the gameplay, but I also love making up a story as I go. So while I am mostly a story teller here, I do let gameplay dictate a lot of what goes on. High free will is always on.

Are you a CC creator?

In a way. I do have CC out there, but nothing fancy. Just make up and some paintings. I share a lot of my sims because I like making them.

Do you have any Simblr friends or a Sim Squad?

I would say that there are some older sim story tellers and such that have kept me going. There are ones that I think about a lot and would 100% credit me for keeping on, even when things aren't the same as they were before. I do it for you!

Do you have any sims merch?

Yeah for sure. Any dildo out there that you fancy is directly moulded after Jonah's dick. At least he'd say so.

Do you have a YouTube for sims?

HAH. I can't even imagine the torture of sitting through me 'playing'.

How has your “Sims style” changed throughout your years of playing?

I really used to be gameplay only. But In my mind I made up stories and dialogue as it happened and of course laughed at my own jokes and their antics. It wasn't until after TS4 came out and I really went hunting for stories that I started my own, not in TS4 because I couldnt "connect" with it.

What’s your origin id?

I don't know. I do have TS4, but I don't play it. I ended up having TS3, GEN, Seasons, ITF on there.... but then I re-bought it all on Steam way back because Origin is so shifty.

Who’s your favorite CC creator?

Oh man, so many and so niche. But generally Around the Sims is so solid and still converting and making things for TS3. They are the only person I've spent real $$ on.

How long have you had simblr?

I don't know. 6-7 years? Maybe more. I'm sure I could look it up, but... that would make me look back on my life.

How do you edit your pictures?

I used to take reg screens and then run them through Adobe Lightroom. But then I thought I would try gshade-reshade, hated it, then tried it again. I still don't love it, but it cuts down on editing time which means I can actually share/write whatnot. So I'm there now. Reshade.

What expansion/ gamepack is your favorite?

I love ITF... because its just... out there and every so often I love me some sci-fi. With that said I think the game isn't complete without Seasons and Generations. I'll be honest and say that I haven't explored the game to the fullest. I wish it would be "remastered" and more current to todays systems. It would be a whole ass banger if it could actually play on the system I have right now.

***I'm not nominating anyone because I'm so late to the game. Life is wild and crazy and I feel lucky that anyone remembers I'm still here. I love you all, and appreciate all the hearts and comments. I know I'm not as consistent or interactive as I used to be. Life has just... decided to make me work for it.

[thessalian]

Thess vs The Purpose of Demos

With it being Next Fest on Steam and everything, I got to thinking. Because, like, most AAA companies won't actually give you demos anymore. I think the last one I saw for any of the franchises I actually like was Mass Effect 3, and I would have bought that game anyway (though honestly, I would have bought it on the strength of the demo too, so hey).

So while I was walking out to the shops (taking a break in the weather that has been incredibly bipolar today - bright warm sunshine to torrential rain and thunderstorm with little in the way of transition), I got to thinking about how many games I've picked up on the strength of the demos alone the last few years. Now, I've played around 90 demos according to my looking over of my "Thess vs demos" tag (though I'm sure I'm missing a few), and a fair few of those I haven't got simply because they're not out yet. So ... here's the list of the ones that I have picked up, solely on the strength of the demos, either from memory or from my demo tag:

Dredge (pre-ordered, one of my favourites)

Wylde Flowers (played under a different name, again one of my favourites)

Spiritfarer (another favourite)

Grim Tides (bought both games in the series on the strength of the demo)

A Building Full Of Cats (Devcats is awesome, and I just keep adding their games onto my wishlist on the strength of that one demo)

Logic Town (I have over 200 hours on that damn game and it is my ultimate Zen)

I Was A Teenage Exocolonist

Growing Up

Witchy Life Story

PACK MY STUFF

Sapiens

My Dream Setup (think this one was a gift)

Lake (this one was definitely a gift)

Fabledom

Boxes

Interior Worlds

Locked Up

Book of Hours

Room of Depression

Cook Serve Forever

Fall of Porcupine

Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical

Harmony: The Fall of Reverie

Street of Secrets

Venba

House Flipper 2

Code Vein (gift; not my fault I can't play it due to janky keybinds)

WitchSpring R (was fine until they made it controller only post-demo)

So that's more than a quarter of the ones on the list. Of those, sixteen aren't even out yet, five of the ones I played were more up front about requiring a controller than the two at the bottom of my list of purchased games, three timed out before I got around to playing them, and at least thirty didn't make the wishlist at all, either because too janky, not my thing, or other priorities. The rest ... well, the rest and the "not out yet" is why my Steam wishlist is exactly 130 games big.

It makes me sad, honestly. AAA companies will do all the flashy marketing stuff and prevent any reviews from coming out until at least release day, pushing for hype-based pre-orders and refusing to let anyone know what they're actually getting. Meanwhile, here's me buying all manner of games I'd never have otherwise heard of, much less touched, based on Steam going, "LOOK! DEMOS FOR GAMES!" Half the time I wonder if it's that they have no faith in their product. Then I remember that it's more that they don't care; they just want as many people as possible to buy it immediately on release if not sooner. They're perfectly happy to put up any barriers they can to an informed purchase for ... just as a for-instance, people like me, who is literally unable to play certain games and really need to have any given game in my hands for at least a few minutes to figure out whether a game is one I can play or not.

But ... like ... take Veilguard, for instance. It doesn't look like one I can play. Watching the gameplay left me with a migraine that still hasn't 100% quit yet because of all of the camera movement, and the ARPG feel of the gameplay looks like something I might find it fairly painful to do - maybe even impossible, depending on the day. But if I could have it in my hands, see the accessibility options, find a playstyle I could work with, I would be a lot more inclined to buy it. Now I have people all over reassuring me that the accessibility options will surely be enough (even though they're actually refusing to talk about those in Q&As at the moment) and that of course I'll find a playstyle that's right for me ... and yet I have the memory of playing the closed beta of Secret World: Legends and being unable to play. Of getting Code Vein and finding that the limitations they set on changing keybinds means I can't use an entire ability suite. Of buying WitchSpring R and having to return it immediately upon starting the game because while the demo didn't require a controller, the finished game did. Getting Jedi: Fallen Order and discovering just how ARPG it is and how hard it is to find keybinds that work for me given my limitations. Of having a game I really want - actually owning it - and being unable to play because of things I didn't know before I bought the thing (or it was bought for me, which is somehow worse).

So ... yeah, I'm frustrated that the AAA gaming space would rather obfuscate with marketing hype instead of letting us make an informed decision, with the end result that I either avoid games for a long time (if not forever) ... or risk ending up with a new addition to the collection of very expensive games that I only find out after the fact that I cannot play.

...Basically, MORE DEMOS, PLEASE.

[kieuecaprie]

Been playing Helldivers 2 on my Steam Deck as of late in my ongoing campaign to spite my 2023 Steam Year in Review for deciding I played more on my PC than I did on my Deck despite having used my Deck a lot for non-steam games (which, to be fair, aren't counted by playtime, but there is a plugin for that!).

It's... passable, playable even, but it's been a bit of an uphill struggle to find a good point where it won't keel over and die if there's too many entities on the screen at once.

My best framerate recording in gameplay so far has been sitting around 50-54 during quiet moments with very little enemies roaming about. The worst I've found was a full lobby on Helldive difficulty, that made the Deck hit around 20-23. To be fair, I wasn't dissuaded by these low framerates since I could still perform reasonably well (hell, I was the last one to die in that previously mentioned game).

The Main Update Channel with the BIOS overclocking did nothing much to improve anything or grant any additional stability, my saviours had to come in the form of FSR and render scaling.

So my settings essentially boiled down to running at 1024x640 with Quality Render Scale with most settings cranked down to Low and Anti-Aliasing thrown out the window since it combined with HD2's FSR 1 (yes, FSR 1) to make the screen too blurry for me. I'll take the crunch over the vaseline filter anyday but that's just me. And I had to FORCE the game to take the resolution via the Steam settings because it would not scale down otherwise.

DirectX11 mode helped a little bit with gaining some much needed performance and the likelihood of me hitting 20-24 FPS has gone down a little bit but it still happens. I had to clear out the shader cache before using the fabled --use-d3d11 launch command too, thank goodness for Decky Plugins, am I right?

I will continue to do my neverending fight against the tyranny of the Low Framerate scum, praying that one day, the devs will reinforce those of us on our Decks with much needed ammunition to win this war.

There's also the whole config editing (someone helpfully has a guide for it, it can be found here) with some hidden options tucked away in there, I've tried to apply a little bit of it but I have yet to get enough conclusive data. It does seem to be worth using and perhaps applying both may be just what we need to keep the fight going on the go.

TL;DR - Is Helldivers 2 playable on Deck? Yeah, kinda. It's not going to hit 60 and it's not going to stay there even if you get to 60. Higher difficulties are going to tank it no matter what, so I wouldn't recommend it if you're sensitive to low framerates.

[sibyl-of-space]

This Tuesday I went back up to SF to attend a game dev networking Thing, and I also used the chance to visit some friends in the area and had some nice conversations with people. It's a pain in the ass to get there on public transit from where I am now but it was definitely a really fun trip and I'm really glad I went.

The event itself was nice - it was technically hosting some talks, but for about an hour and a half before the talks the space was open to meet other devs and share demos and such. Two people asked to check out the Amadeus demo and I got to a) show them the progress from the current published demo to the unpublished version I'm working on, and b) watch someone play it in person to remind myself of what a totally unbiased audience's first reaction is to it and its controls. It reminded me that while I've been revamping the point-and-click controls significantly, I need to make sure WASD is polished as well because many people prefer that scheme.

Anyway then I dipped when the talks started because I don't particularly find talks useful because I know what works for me and I don't listen to advice from people I don't know (and even sometimes from people I do know). Glad I went just for the schmoozing, though.

Spent the night with a friend who has worked in gamedev for ~8ish years now, and he is an incredibly valuable resource because he is REALLY good at giving advice/helpful feedback that recognizes "best practices" for him as someone working on a AAA team, and "best practices" for me as a solo dev of a visual novel, are completely different things. He is able to identify what values are actually worth me caring about at this point, and he also pointed out (I've very much given up on the industry completely) that once I make my own game, once I actually ship Amadeus on Steam, there are a lot of industry doors that will be open to me that aren't open yet. Many positions don't even look at you unless you've shipped a game on a major platform. So it was kind of good to hear that while I'm making this 10000% just for me on my terms, it actually could open doors much later down the line if I ever want it to.

Then I met with the professor who taught the course that got me on this path in the first place, by helping me recognize that I don't have to just be an audio person I CAN ACTUALLY BUILD THE GAME MYSELF. My final project for his class was the absolute shittiest jankiest prototype for what eventually became the Amadeus demo-- that class was HUGE for me. And my professor has given me a lot of great advice and help in Unity since then.

This meeting was interesting because I think it signified to me that, while he was the #1 most invaluable resource for me getting started in game dev, I think I've reached a point where I know what my goals are and I have the foundation to reach them, and I have somewhat found my niche and it's decidedly different from his. He definitely tried to give me advice about trying to navigate the current dumpster fire industry from the perspective of "someone who started a small studio and has done the pitching-to-publishers song and dance before" but, while he knows a LOT about the niche his own studio filled, I don't think he is equipped to understand whether the market for "4x3 SD visual novel directly inspired by a Japanese game from 2006 with a cult following" is a thing that exists. I kind of feel for him because his indie studio really tried to do everything "right" but he's having to dissolve it because the money is out and last year sucked ass. But that's exactly why I'm kind of ignoring his advice, because for me making Amadeus, it is literally not remotely about the money. I want to make this because I have a vision for a work of art that I want to bring into this world. If it never sells more than 10 copies, I'll be a bit disappointed, but I'll still consider the life I have lived as more fulfilling having made it. That's what's important to me.

I WILL burn out if I focus too hard about trying to make Amadeus into anything marketable and need it to sell X copies to be "worth it." If I continue as I have, "funding" Amadeus just by doing everything myself, creating a story I'm in love with and finishing it so I can share it with the world, then I am certain that I will finish.

It's been hard to maintain that laser focus in a world where it seems everyone wants to give me advice about how to monetize or make a career, but I KNOW that laser focus is NECESSARY to finish. I CANNOT care about the money if I want to make Amadeus what I want it to be. This game is so deeply personal to me in so many ways that I need it to be completely mine. If anything comes of it, if it sells any amount to any number of people beyond my circle of friends, it will be BECAUSE I made something incredibly authentic to my own vision and THAT is what appealed to people.

Anyway, after that conversation I met with a friend from music school, which was really wonderful because they were just excited about me making a project I'm excited about. We talked about art and passion projects and making silly things for fun. It was just nice to see them again, too.

I am extremely glad that I went, and now that I am back, I have a renewed vigor to finish Amadeus as I'd already planned on doing. Nothing is changed but everything is changed. I am bringing this game into the world and it's going to rule so hard.

[richardsondavis]

So they really went and did it. I heard stories before but this is ridiculous. Okay.

So I hear many are boycotting the game over at Steam. I say nah. Steam isn't their moneymaker now. It's their mobile game, Skullgirls Mobile.

Wonder how Annie, Umbrella and Black Dahlia got added cause of the money they got from the mobile game.

You see, this game isn't that popular in the west but here in the east, it damn is. Not as popular as League of Legends: Wild Rift or Mobile Legends but still have a dedicated player base.

This is their egg and their cream of the crop. It's a free to play game, has gacha elements and is very, very fun to play. They have events and stuff. And they had the same appeal as the PC game. I checked it over at my friend's place.

Y'all want to make them listen? Make them listen to where it would hurt them the most.

Cause it's clear they never gave a damn about the game before the EVO thing. They focused on the mobile game for the better part of several years. You got the PC players against them now but what about the mobile players, the casuals who're probably wholly ignorant of this debacle as they aren't in those spaces. How would they listen and take a stand?

Just a suggestion.