#no i am not satisfied with because gameplay

[piracytheorist]

In Life, And in Death (1/11)

Fandom: Spy x Family Word count: 4.1k for this chapter | 32.4k in total Rating: T Warnings: Temporary character death, graphic violence, horror imagery, body horror, mild gore, whump, language Cover art by @buf309

Summary: Anya is kidnapped, and Twilight is thrown into the horrors of a mysterious, deadly village. Forced and then choosing to survive its trials - physical and mental - he's brought to figure out who he truly is. (A Resident Evil Village fusion)

AO3

~

Author's Note: Probably my most insane fanfic project yet. After I successfully probed SOMEONE, aka @spencer-is-someone, into watching a Resident Evil Village gameplay, they fell in love with Ethan Winters but felt he went through too much in the game, prompting the idea "What if Loid went through all that stuff instead". And well, 32 thousand words later, here I am, inflicting this literal horror upon y'all.

I made a post about it, and the absolutely wonderful @buf309 went and made this amazing cover art, and I literally couldn't be more thankful for that. I was so amazed when I saw the first draft sketch that I went like I'M GONNA WAIT TILL IT'S READY TO POST THE FIC. Seriously, words cannot describe how grateful I am, I sincerely hope the fic feels satisfying enough for the work you've done <3

If you know how the Resident Evil Village story goes, this is pretty much the same... yes, in all of its "parts-in-jars" glory (if you know you know, if you don't you will soon), just with Twilight taking the place of Ethan Winters. There will be a few changes from the original story to fit Twilight's character, some to facilitate the adaptation from game narrative to fanfic narrative, some to fit my own tastes, and an actually hopeful ending because we were all left heartbroken after the ending of RE Village so might as well pour some healing juice to put our hearts back together same way Ethan puts his limbs back together and hope for the best.

Do take note of the warnings, please. There is one part of the story I actually had chills while writing (yes, that part for those of you who know, it will be slightly changed but the essence will be the same) and it is based on the story of a horror/survival game, so make sure you're okay to read something as intense as this.

The story is written in full, though I'm still doing small bits of editing here and there. I don't have a posting schedule, but I'm thinking of updating twice a week, or once if I see the editing is taking longer. Chapter titles are taken from track titles of the game's original soundtrack.

So yeah, long intro over, take not of the warnings, I hope you enjoy if you read on!

~

Chapter 1: Bloodthirsty

~

“Anya, don’t sit so close to the TV,” Loid said, not looking up from the counter.

Unsurprisingly, there was no response. He wouldn’t doubt that she hadn’t even heard him, let alone acknowledged his request.

He picked up a handful of minced meat to mould into a burger steak, deciding to give her another reminder in two minutes from now. Yor had just left to walk Bond, so it was only his direction she had to follow – and she was starting to make clear whose directions she preferred to follow nowadays.

He placed the burger on the pan as his body tensed. A split second later, the door burst open.

He jumped through the opening between the kitchen and the living room, but even that seemed a pointless blessing as thick smoke quickly covered the apartment.

He rushed through it to grab Anya, who trembled against him, but he didn’t have the time to move away from the shots.

Two silenced shots, piercing through his clothes and reaching into the skin of his back.

No blood. But they were pinching his skin, and he immediately felt groggy…

He dropped to his side, unable to move as figures approached him. One of them took Anya.

“PAPA!” she screamed at him.

He feebly raised his hand. “Wait,” was the only thing he could say, before his hand dropped.

More figures approached him, and then his vision went dark.

~

Focus, Twilight.

Don’t open your eyes yet. Don’t alert the enemy yet.

He held his breath for a moment.

He was somewhere cold, outside.

He could feel something soft but freezing underneath him. Snow?

His hair didn’t feel wet, so he mustn’t have been lying there long.

It was quiet. He could only hear distant sounds of wind and crows flying somewhere close.

He couldn’t feel anyone’s presence, so he decided to open one single eye to check.

But then both his eyes shot wide open.

In front of him stood a magnificent gothic mansion. It could be a mansion, or it could be a damn castle. It was surrounded by a thick wall, like a fortress.

He sat up. He was indeed lying on the snow, but it was the least of his concerns right now.

He had apparently been placed on the castle’s garden. Right in the middle of the winter, it was only decorated by a few naked trees as well as three scarecrows.

Those didn’t seem to do their job well enough, he thought, as crows still flew around, some even sitting on them.

He got up, checking himself for injuries. He couldn’t feel any pain or any indication of pierced skin. How had they drugged him?

It was then he realized he was now wearing his jacket.

Had they dressed him for the cold? While taking off his apron and the gloves he wore while preparing food?

What the hell?

Where even was this place?

Why was he brought here?

Where was Anya?

His attention was drawn back to the apparently useless scarecrows, and a chill ran down his spine – unrelated to the cold – when he noticed something eerie about them.

Carefully, he took a few steps towards them.

His breath caught in his throat when he was close enough to notice.

Those weren’t plain scarecrows.

Those were actual, human bodies hanging on wooden crosses.

His breath finally came out shaky, forming a cloud.

What the hell was this place?

Unable to quell his curiosity, he stepped closer, trying to notice for any details on the bodies, in case he recognized them.

All three seemed to be men, of ages between thirty and fifty, and they couldn’t have been dead for longer than a week or so. The cold might have preserved their bodies, but exposure to the outside would do as much more damage.

He couldn’t recognize any of their faces – or what was left of them.

Well, he didn’t even know where he was, how far away from Berlint or even in Ostania for that matter.

He clenched his hands into fists and turned around, looking around the walls surrounding the castle.

There was a huge metal door blocking the path outside. No climbing the wall; it was too smooth and covered in even more slippery ice. Climbing the trees wouldn’t give him enough height to swing himself out.

Which meant, his only way of getting answers was through the castle.

He must have been placed there for a reason, after all, and if they’d wanted to kill him they would have already done so.

He reached the entrance, and the door swung open easily.

The entrance hall was as luxuriously decorated as the outside hinted at. A lush burgundy carpet went up the few steps, leading to a wall where a painting of three young women hung.

The door closed behind him, and he didn’t miss the definitive clang as metal bars started descending right in front of it.

He turned, and for a few seconds he weighed his options.

He could break the door quickly enough before the bars descended too low, and slip outside.

But then again, they obviously wanted him in there, and again, it didn’t seem that killing him was their priority.

He faced forward, ignoring the sound of the bars trapping him in there.

He might as well play their game.

He walked to the painting. Underneath it was an inscription that wrote “Bela, Daniela, and Cassandra.”

Which one was which?

The women on the painting didn’t seem too different from each other. The painting itself didn’t seem all too enlightening, either; it looked like any common Romantic-style oil painting.

Well, it wasn’t going to give him any answers, would it?

He turned around, walking down a corridor and out into another, larger hall. He noticed how warm the whole building was, despite the freezing weather outside and the apparently old construction of the place.

This hall had hanging, lit candles all over the walls, though they couldn’t be the source of the heating. The lighting was low, but lucky for him, he’d been trained enough in low lighting for that not to be an issue.

He jerked back at the sound of a swarm of flies coming his way, then he sensed someone’s presence.

Flies, he could handle.

But then the flies started gathering together, and within seconds they morphed into three women, dressed in black hooded cloaks.

“Wha—?” he whispered.

“Looking for Anya?” a voice said, and he assumed it’d come from one of the women. Who had just formed from flies.

The absurdity of his situation almost made him forget that she had just mentioned Anya.

Which meant they probably knew where she was.

However, he was too shocked by the sight that he couldn’t move when one of the women, all of whom were cackling, approached him and pushed him backwards.

She swung the scythe she held in her hand, and he pulled his legs away just before she could bury it in his calf.

“Oh, he’s feisty!” the woman said with a wide smile.

Her arm then almost zapped through the air, and his left leg was exploding in pain before he could even register the movement.

He yelped in pain as she leaned closer to him and took a long sniff.

Her mouth and jaw were covered in blood, though her blond hair looked pristine clean.

“Mmm, man-blood,” she said.

She then leaned back and started dragging him, by the scythe embedded in his leg, as he still lay helplessly on the ground.

She was too fast. He flailed around, trying to grab at anything they passed by to make her stop, even though that would mean the scythe would rip his entire leg open, but then another woman reached his other side and buried her scythe in his right leg.

He threw his head back, biting down another yell of pain.

Could he just have one moment?!

The women dragged him down another corridor and into what he quickly realized was a bedroom. They removed their scythes, and he quickly reached to assess the damage, when he heard the blond woman say “Mother, I bring you fresh prey,” as she pointed at him with her hand.

“You are so kind to me, daughters,” came a voice of a woman who sounded older than them.

Older, and bigger.

She was sitting on a massive chair, holding an equally massive glass of red wine. She took a sip from it, then stood up and turned to him, saying, “Now, lets take a look at him.”

He raised his head to look at her.

And then raised it higher.

She had the build of a muscular woman, with curves proportionate to her height, which must have been about three meters tall. She wore a black wide-brimmed hat over her chin-length black hair, and a long white dress that reached down to her feet, though she moved comfortably in it.

“Well, well. Loid Forger,” she said. “Came looking for your daughter, I presume?”

He sat there, frozen.

They knew who he was – or at least pretended to be? And they knew Anya was also taken?

She walked closer to him, smiling as she put her hands on her hips. “For you to think you can waltz right in here—let’s see how special you are,” she nearly purred.

She threw her hands up in a sign for something, and two of the younger women said “Yes, mother,” as they grabbed his arms and pulled him up.

His first thought was that he was standing up surprisingly well for just having had two scythes ran through his legs.

His second thought was terror as one woman grabbed his hand, and the other produced a very sharp-looking knife.

Before he could jerk back, she sliced his palm open.

He bit back a grunt; it wasn’t a deep cut, but it would be annoying…

His last thought trailed off as the tall woman reached down, grabbed his hand, brought it to her lips… and started sucking.

Now he really was frozen in terror.

What the hell was this nightmare?

The woman pulled her head back, licking at her lips with a blood-soaked tongue.

She threw his hand away. “Hmm,” she said. “Still fresh, but only barely.”

He wrapped his hand into a fist, keeping it close to his chest.

“Then let’s devour his man-flesh quickly, mother!” one of the women said, handing a handkerchief to her.

“But I’m the one who captured him!” the blond woman protested.

“Now, now, daughters,” the tall woman said, patting at her lips with the handkerchief. “First, I must inform Mother Miranda. But later, well, there will be enough for everyone.” She threw the handkerchief aside, smiling down at him. “Put him up!”

The young women surrounded him, and though he struggled, they were too strong for him as they put heavy manacles on his wrists.

A thick build, but he could break out of them with little effort.

But then, they secured a chain to them, and the chain started going up. He was lifted off his feet, and started grunting as the full force of his weight fell on his wrists.

Don’t say anything. Don’t let them take a hold of any weaknesses.

He clenched his jaw, keeping his voice from making any sounds as they headed out of the room. The tall woman had to bend to get through that door, and one of the young women – the second one who had stabbed his leg – bent down and picked up the discarded handkerchief, smelling the blood on it and laughing, as she followed them.

Breathing hard, he looked up at the manacles.

The pain was intense but manageable, though he already felt the tingling of numbness in his fingers. By his calculations, he had about fifteen or so minutes before cut blood circulation would start causing permanent damage.

Escape, first. Then you can freak out.

He grabbed the chain and dragged his body up. Though his legs were still bleeding, he brought them up so he could hold the chain between his feet.

He was gasping by the time he managed that, but at least he had less pain on his hands and a better view of the manacles.

They were old and rusty, but seemed to have a fairly standard locking mechanism. Bringing his body closer, he fished the lockpick out from a hidden pocket of his jacket.

Biting his lip, he worked through the lock of the right manacle. Just as it opened, his feet slipped from the chain and dropped down, causing all of his weight to drop onto his injured left hand.

The pain knocked the air out of his lungs.

Think! Think! Pull yourself together!

Taking in a laboured breath, he looked back up.

The lockpick had slipped from his hand and was now too far down for him to get it. His right hand was free, but he didn’t have any other options left.

Reaching up, he wrapped his free hand around his left thumb, and with a sharp pull, he dislocated it.

As his other hand was coated in blood from the cut, his wrist slipped through the manacle as soon as his thumb wasn’t in the way.

He dropped to the ground clumsily, not managing to balance his landing.

Wheezing, he looked at his left hand.

Bleeding, and a dislocated thumb.

He gave himself ten seconds.

Ten seconds to wonder where the hell he had gotten himself into, what that tall woman even was, standing at three meters tall and drinking blood, and what her “daughters” were, emerging from flies and also participating in… blood drinking? Cannibalism?

Ten seconds, and he was back to himself.

Focus, Twilight.

He looked at his legs – they were still bleeding, but he felt confident he could stand on them. Though those scythes looked sharp, they must have split a tendon or two apart.

At the corner of the room stood a vanity table, and on top of it, along with various cosmetics, lay a small green bottle with a cross on the label.

He stood up carefully, glad that his legs weren’t trembling. He picked up the bottle, carefully reading the label.

Medical alcohol.

Not one to trust this place that much, he opened the lid, and sure enough, it smelled like ethyl alcohol.

He sat down with a grunt, pulling his right trouser up. He didn’t have any clean gauze, so his only option was to pour liquid right over the wound.

He braced himself for the sting of pain, but instead, the liquid brought a cool, numbing sensation.

And then, right in front of his eyes, his wound closed then disappeared completely.

He stared at it.

Ten more seconds.

What the hell.

He looked at the bottle again. Medical alcohol, it said. It smelled like it too.

He looked back at his leg, raising his other trouser where the other wound still stood.

What the hell?!

Uncertain, he poured a little less liquid over that wound.

The wound immediately stopped bleeding as new skin seemed to form, though it didn’t heal completely.

He let out a breath. If he were honest with himself, this wasn’t really the weirdest thing to happen in the last few minutes, was it?

He turned to his mangled hand. Just how much could that liquid heal?

He poured an equal dosage to it, and was still surprised to see his thumb painlessly slide into its place, as well as the cut close completely.

Well, at least it could be useful.

He didn’t have time to worry over the supernatural. He had to get out of there, and find out where Anya was.

He took the path of unlocked doors, as he didn’t want to waste time and noise trying to break the lock of every locked door he found. Breaking the windows wouldn’t lead him anywhere – each one was sealed shut, and though he wasn’t averse to turning into a hooligan for the sake of escaping, the entire castle seemed to be surrounded by that wall.

He needed to get to a higher floor, but the safest and most silent path led him to the basement, where he found himself walking along piles and piles of dead bodies.

He had to hold his breath as he passed them by; apparently the occupants of the castle had the habit of feasting on the blood of humans, and did it so often that the amount of bodies was too big to act as decoration for their garden.

It was all men, however. As young as twenty-three, from what he could gather with a quick look.

The fly-women seemed to be confident enough in their hunting that they didn’t take away the handgun from one of the more fresh bodies. Twilight couldn’t tell if that was a police officer, a soldier, or a man aware of what he’d been dealing with, but it didn’t matter to him. He undid the holster, as gently as he could out of respect of the deceased man, and he put it on under his jacket.

He checked the magazine. Ten bullets out of sixteen.

He looked at the man. Had he shot those first six bullets right before he was killed?

The man had a shoulder bag on him, and inside was a box of bullets, a total of forty. He slid that too over his own shoulder.

He kept the safety on the gun on, but held it in his hand. He picked up a hunting knife from one of the other bodies and walked on.

As the bodies thinned out, he found a lone skeletal figure draped in a plain canvas cloak. The limbs stood out, bare, emaciated, and rotting. While other bodies were in a similar state of decomposition, they were fully clothed, at most with a few rips in their clothes. This one was the only one so bare.

And it was holding a scythe in its hand, old and rusty in comparison to the women’s scythes, but still sharp enough to do harm.

He approached it carefully, keeping both hands on the gun.

He thanked his training for that, as the figure moved when he passed right by it.

He yelped in shock, moving away from it and raising his gun at it.

“Stop!” he said. “Don’t move!”

The creature, whatever that was, didn’t seem like it listened let alone register his words. It stood up, hunched over, then lunged at him with the scythe.

Not finding any alternatives, he shot right at its head.

The creature jerked back as a screech left its mouth.

Twilight held his breath.

His blood froze when he saw it still stand on its legs and try to swing at him again.

He shot again. He was perfectly certain the bullet got through its head.

Yet the creature moved again.

And he shot again.

Only now did the creature finally drop to its knees, but it was still screeching and growling.

Desperate, Twilight took the knife and drove it through the creature’s skull, three times, until he felt it stop moving.

It collapsed on the floor.

Hell knew if it would rise again. It was supposed to be dead already, wasn’t it?

He turned around and ran.

There were more creatures on the way. Some he slashed at with the knife, some he shot at, some he simply ran away from. A few managed to nick him with their scythes, and if he were honest, he was more worried about infections than the injuries themselves.

As he found a quiet corner, he pulled out the alcohol – or whatever that was. It seemed to work on the nicks too, making them close quickly and painlessly.

He supported himself on the wall, forcing his breath to calm down.

He had to get out. Now.

Holding the gun tight to his hand, he moved to leave, but then a buzzing and a voice sounded from behind him.

“Hmm. Warm, bright, red blood.”

He didn’t turn to look at her. He knew it was the blond woman.

He made a run for it as flies swarmed around him, until he found a staircase going up, reaching into what looked like a kitchen area.

“Where are you going, little one?”

The woman appeared right in front of him, cutting off his path. She was smiling at him, surrounded by flies, her face still stained with blood.

“I just want to find Anya,” he managed.

“Aw,” she said. She then pushed him back and he fell on the ground. She lay over him, reaching at his neck and biting.

Yelling, he took the gun and fired twice at her stomach.

She reached up, laughing as fresh blood ran from her lips.

He shot at her head.

“Your bullets cannot harm m—”

Her voice cut off when another of his shots passed through her and hit the window behind her.

The glass cracked, and it quickly shattered as a cold gust of wind blew into the room.

The gust threw the woman’s hood off her head. Twilight tightened his hold on the gun when he spotted a massive, fleshy scar on her temple, a bald spot from her long hair.

The woman shrieked, then growled. Her skin, already pale as it was, seemed to start cracking and turn grey. She looked at her hands, still gasping in pain, and then turned to him, yelling, “You stupid man-thing!”

His mind finally picked up the pace. The cold made her weak?

He stood up, raising his gun at her.

“How dare you bare your teeth at us!” she shouted, then lunged at him with her scythe.

He managed to block her attack, pushing her back, and he shot at her face.

She groaned, still standing, but she said, “What? My body—it’s breaking…”

He kept his gun up. “Just let me go,” he said.

A wild rumble came from her mouth as she turned to attack him again. She reached him, and he could only block her at the last moment, his arms taking the full blow of her scythe. “Give up!” she said, reaching back for another swing of her weapon.

He shot twice at her head, and she yelled again.

The flies seemed to drop in numbers, and her skin cracked more and more. He barely managed to avoid two more of her attacks, and then she fell on him, ready to bite his head off, he supposed in the split second it took him to kick her off of him.

He shot two more times.

“This can’t be,” she said, weakly now, her body swaying.

“Let me go!” he repeated, taking two steps back.

She screamed and reached back with her scythe, and he shot again.

And then a sizzling sound came from her body, as she started swinging wildly, not reaching anything. She groaned and groaned, and her body transformed.

It seemed to calcify into gravel, as she slowly stopped moving, her hand still up in a pose of attack.

And then it broke down.

Whatever it was, it cracked into small pieces, and what started as the form of a woman was now a pile of something on the ground.

Breathing hard, he leaned his back on the wall behind him and slid down to the floor.

His hands were trembling, his feet felt like water.

What the hell was all that?

Were was he?

Why was he brought here?

And where was Anya?

What were those creatures…?

He closed his eyes. Ten seconds. Just ten seconds to freak out.

He just had to get out. Find Anya and…

He opened his eyes, his throat tensing.

Did he really have to find her?

As far as he was concerned, right now she was a liability to him. He had to prioritize his safety first.

It wasn’t like there were piles of bodies of dead girls around, was it?

Letting out a deep sigh, he stood back up. The woman had managed to hurt him a little, but the healing liquid was in short supply and he could handle those injuries up to a point.

The woman. Who was now a pile of ash.

Calm down, Twilight. Get yourself in order and find a way out.

The castle proved massive, and he couldn’t find any viable exit paths even as he seemed to reach what looked like hallways reaching into bedrooms.

Then, a mournful scream sounded from a floor below.

“What have you done to my daughter?!”

His blood chilled. If the “daughter” had been that vicious, he didn’t want to face whatever her mother had in store for him.

[sandra-vu]

The Sims 3 MODS LIST

this is basically a list of everything i have in my game right now (minus custom content). i'm very satisfied with this setup and i hope you can find something you'll find useful. everything is sorted in alpabetical order, because i love alphabetical order lol read mod descriptions before downloading and don't forget to thank the creators for their hard work! :)

ESSENTIAL / PERFORMANCE / SETTINGS x Add Any Lot Size x Catalog search x Gameplay Core Mod (tweaked to my liking, might show you my settings sometime if you'd like) x Interact on sloped terrain x New CAS and CAP animation options (posehum_posepets version) x No Camera Fade for Sims x No Foot Tapping While Waiting For Clear Route! x No Route Fail Tantrum Animations! x NRaas (Error trap, Go here, Master controller, Overwatch, Register) x Pregnancy Progress Controller (No Non Pregnant version) x Reduce/Remove Lag caused by Houseboats x Remove stencils/overlays from Build/Buy/CAS objects x Shimrod's Camera Lowlevel (edited by BrntWaffles) (Drift version) x Smooth patch

TWEAKS / FIXES x Anach tweaks (bouncer bribe x10, burglar tweaks, celebrity difficulty, celeb sue paparazzi, club closing times (5 am), donation amount, higher bills, longer eating, no auto pet wake up, party tweaks, wash hands chance) x Annoyances disabler x Cross eye fix x No "Mod scripts found" x No auto venue placement (reupload found here) x No build sparkles x No gloves w outerwear x No intro x Pick up toddler fix x Pigtail glitch fix x Random sim fixes x Set hour cheat x Slower cars, taxis, and bikes x Toddler routing fix

GAMEPLAY x 75% Chance per day elder will die x Acne & Skincare (tweaked – only teens) x Adults can play peekaboo and hug toddlers x Almost all TheSweetSimmer's mods (family gameplay must haves!) x Auto lights overhaul x Burglar hate x Burglars steal simoleons too x Cancel time off x Children can series (almost all of them) x Easy variety attraction x Energy drinks V2 x Faster gardening 50% x Fridge mod (no fridge shopping) x Get drunk x Hang out interaction (2t3) (all ages) x Layoff mod x Let me take a selfie x Lot population (reduced) x Meals anytime + some desserts x No autonomous homework x No imaginary friends x No mutated hair or eyes x No social groups (uni only) x Random genetics x Retirement home & elder care x Shorter Uni (3 credit hours) x Sims can skate on smaller ponds x Skating is fun x Take practice shots (photography) x Tooth fairy mod x User-directed scolding + other punishment tweaks x Wider TV viewing angle x Yoga mod

SLIDERS x AWT - Hat sliders x OEM – Eyeball size

DEFAULT REPLACEMENTS (MISC) x Apple Sauce Baby food (4t3) x Better ingredient thumbnails x Clean UI (BETA) x Facial Expressions (ALT) (TSM to TS3) x Fish mod x HD thought bubbles x Loading Screen Overhaul x Modern cursors x Modern map tags x Nectar glass replacer x New dishes (BOWL & MUG) (4t3) x TV Channels (4t3) x Walk cycle edits

DEFAULT REPLACEMENTS (CAS) x 2t3 plantsim body vines x Beards and eyebrows x Beetle eyes for cats and dogs x Beetle eyes for horses x Beetle eyes for humans (i also use these contacts for occults) x Blush baby skin (infant) x CAS background (steel blue) x ChazyBazzy hair defaults (pretty and still very maxis match textures, EA meshes) x Eye colors (presets) x Eyeball replacements – PU-CU / TU-EU x Freckles and moles x - x Makeup replacements x Skin - Satellites (DEF & NON-DEF)

DEFAULT REPLACEMENTS (ENVIRONMENT) x Better sun x Moon x Perfect Day – RH water with Gelina’s lighting tweaks x Reworked & Improved EA Lights x Skyrim Star Field (1024x1024) x Windows Lite Overrides

[ongeloof]

Caleb myth caleb myth!!! 🚨🚨 I instantly thought of you when I saw it lol, how are we feeling about it? I for one am VERY intrigued about what this myth will show us and what new sides of our beloved apple boy we'll be seeing

Thank you so much for this sweet ask!

I’m glad to hear you’re intrigued about the myth and what we’ll learn. I’m really excited— we had to wait 6 months for sylus’s myth, and about as long for a proper kiss?? And we’re only two months in and being rewarded with Caleb myth AND epic earth destroying kiss already, it’s fantastic. And I love the cyborg, mecha themes, caleb’s humanity all but erased (by his creators?) the fallen sinner/cruel god undercurrents of that are fantastic. And i love how central gravity and resonance are to their story—calebmc are literally capable of destroying the world together, and caleb’s utter disregard for anything but her is so villainously delicious.

So i’ve had this theory for awhile that caleb can manipulate space and time because of the role of gravity in the theory of relativity, like he can bend it or move through it, and so he has seen parallel or future universes where the worst always happens to mc, which is why he’s so batshit protective of her, and I’m really hoping the myth is a future or parallel timeline that he is trying to prevent in the current timeline, so being able to see if this is true or not in the upcoming myth makes me really happy.

I also love that in the other localizations he is still mc’s sibling, they’re from the same source, they’re twins and meant to be paired. being torn apart left them both broken, and they can only function properly when together. I love Caleb’s continued nihilism in the preview, his sociopathic indifference to the lives of everyone (including his own) except mc’s—the ‘embrace annihilation’ is so deliciously bleak, I love it. And the kiss is so gorgeous, how passionate and hungry it is as the world is destroyed behind them. Epic!!

And because i love caleb and sylus and have a hard time thinking about one without the other, this myth just drives home to me how similar caleb and sylus are. Sylus struggles with his humanity, caleb barely clings to his, their capacity for flight and falling, their rejection of a cruel, imperfect world, their inherent violence and willingness to use it, and their utter devotion to and willingness to sacrifice themselves and worlds for mc. But Sylus approaches battle from outside, an actual alien waging war against the powers that be as a marching conqueror—always honest, never wearing a mask, and caleb, ultimate social chameleon, wages his battle from the inside, undercover, cloaked in lies and deceit. Some people have said that the parallels between them are just lazy writing, recycling themes and characteristics, but there are only so many dark romance tropes, and i think the writers have chosen the most interesting, most epic ones for both sylus and caleb, and given them variations on those themes that satisfy different needs and moods.

Anyway, super excited to see caleb’s myth and then get sylus’s birthday so soon after, a lot to look forward to in terms of gameplay and enjoying the stories about our wholesome apple boy and beloved dragon!

[thydungeongal]

Hey there! I just say your post about dungeon crawlers. I was curious about your second bullet point, "Dungeon-crawling challenge games actually kind of own if you're willing to engage with them on their own terms! There's a lot of potential for cool gameplay if you let go of silly reductive notions like "roleplaying" being just being when you play-act your character or social interaction!" I was curious if you'd mind telling me more about how you feel roleplay should be handled in these types of games. I am genuinely interested to hear your thoughts. :)

Okay, first of all, I have a very broad and admittedly circular definition of role-playing (in the context of role-playing game): role-playing is when you're playing a role-playing game.

As said, it's circular, but ultimately, throughout my years of playing role-playing games I've found that all other definitions are unsatisfying. To conclude that role-playing is the parts where the mechanics aren't used (the roll-playing and role-playing dichotomy) implies that mechanics are somehow inherently contrary to a good role-playing game experience, which is simply untrue, because good mechanics can actually enhance the narrative! Saying that only the social parts of play are role-playing undermines the fact that players will be still making decisions for their characters in various other situations where the personal and emotional stakes can be even greater than in social situations!

Ultimately, role-playing games as a medium are defined by the possibility space, and specifically that possibility space being near infinite. There's an old line I keep bringing up from some painfully twee eighties RPG ad which goes like "Role-playing games are like board games but you can move outside the board!" and ultimately that is the thing that defines a role-playing game. It's a game where the players collaborate in a shared fictional space to produce cool little narratives although sometimes the cool little narratives aren't the point but it's literally like a lil challenge that the players try to overcome by interfacing with the fiction and engaging with the mechanics.

To tie this into dungeon crawlers: even a traditional dungeon crawler is ultimately a role-playing game because it has the players engaging, via their characters, with the shared fiction, sometimes mediated by the rules. A lot of people assume that a dungeon crawler must mean that the gameplay is nothing but a meat grinder, but this is actually ahistorical and not actually reflective of how old-school dungeon crawling RPGs play out!

Even the most basic dungeon is still a location in the setting it's part of, so there is plenty of narrative content to be found there. The characters might just be motivated by greed, but there is plenty of narratively satisfying content that can happen in the pursuit of that goal once one accepts that there need not be a linear narrative where the characters must hit certain story beats, but the story itself can just be "the characters went into a place, explored, interacted with the locals, found out some secrets about the dungeon, fought some monsters." That is still role-playing.

None of this is to say that the play-acting part of play (which I sometimes call characterization) is in any way bad: in fact, it can very much enhance the gameplay. But that is in and of itself not the end-all-be-all of role-playing!

Anyway role-playing is so much more than describing your cool elf kissing other cool elves, it can also be your cool elf finding a cool sword in a dungeon and giving it a name. Dungeon crawlers kick ass because the GM can craft a whole narrative about how the dungeon used to be and then reveal it slowly to the players through their characters finding fantasy audiologs and that is already narratively satisfying in and of itself!

[hungriesttable]

one of my favorite things about Dante Limbus Company is that they achieve a level of what I will call “sogginess” rarely seen in the wild (source material), more commonly seen in captivity (fanfiction)…

The insecurity. The inability to understand that they have a positive impact on others without being told outright. The sad, resigned self-deprecation. “I know it’s the same tired old face for you…but here I am” when you re-select them as an announcer (a line which you are literally incapable of seeing during gameplay). The “you guys only love me for my clock 😞” mentality.

Dante wouldn’t ask, “would you still love me if I were a worm?”, because they’d be afraid of a resounding NO.

Not to say Dante doesn’t have their satisfying moments of asserting themselves as manager, but man. What a creature

[official-megumin]

I love atlyss so much.

I have said it before and I'll say it again. I am not a furry. So normally games like atlyss stay kinda off my radar.

But like, booba. I also heard the gameplay was great, so I figured I'd give it a go.

ANd just, the gameplay, the visuals, the sounds. It's all so wonderful.

The gameplay is snappy as satisfying, the artstyle is delightful to look at even if you don't care about big boobs and fat asses.

The game plays it's low poly style to its strengths. Everything is as detailed as it needs to be and the OST of the game plays into the sort of dream-like atmosphere the rough textures and low poly end up producing.

And it just fits the lore of the world. The world is surreal and supposed to be somewhat beyond reality.

I can't believe I came just to be able to play as a wide hipped animal girl, and I stayed because hopw incredibly loveable the world kissef is making has turned out.

here is the soundtrack on youtube btw

[ohcorny]

deeply curious about your opinion on mouthwashing

it's an unnecessary part of oral hygiene. brushing your teeth and especially flossing are more important.

anyway. spoilers in this post for the game.

i'm going to co-opt lee's post about it to save myself rewriting the opinions we share but he hits the nail on the head about the gameplay. i didn't play it myself, just watched a streamer go through the whole thing, but all the game-ass-game elements felt completely tacked on. especially given there isn't one until like.... an hour in? up until the maze (or at least that's when the thought occurred to me, idr if there was anything before it) the game was just go to place, talk to character, get object, receive story progression.

and i thought that was fine up to that moment. tell me a claustrophobic story! but as soon as it added Horror Gameplay it was like the developers went 'fuck shit we need to add a challenge or it's not a real horror game'. and i never changed my opinion on that as there were more of those sections added.

because the game just keeps going. i remember when we get to the big reveal about what Really happened i looked at the timestamp on the VOD i was watching and there was somehow an hour left. and i was just ??? why??? the game just becomes a showcase of 'look at our cool scary visuals! look at our metaphors!' without anything left to actually say about them. we know what happened. there's nothing to reveal or unpack that we couldn't have done earlier in the story, when people were alive, when it mattered. we just forgot to put a game in our game until the last minute.

but the thing that really annoys me, and this i'll put under a read more because it's Actual actual spoilers

how fucking dare they make the whole crux of the issue be that jimmy sexually assaulted anya and got her pregnant, and then do nothing with that in the post-reveal nightmare sequences. we spend so much time on swansea and curly and all anya gets is a womb with a cartoon horse ultrasound. are you fucking kidding me

like the most charitable explanation i can conceive for that is jimmy only cares about what the men around him think, so we only spend time with them in his nightmare world, but like. i am simply not satisfied with that reading. i do in fact need it underlined if that is the intent. somebody, anybody, saying 'why are you apologizing to me'. anybody caring about anya at all.

if you're going to keep flashing the message of 'take responsibility' i would like at least some gesture toward what he really, actually needs to take responsibility for

[tagamantra]

Turning The Wheel

For SUNDANG RPG, I wanted to write a different kind of turn-based system. I stand on the shoulders of giants: PbtA’s Conversation-As-Procedure and “No Combat Minigame.” My goal was to make a battle system that had the free flowing, no-minigame feel of a PbtA/FitD game, but had a bit more structure to satisfy the action-heads.

One of the bigger inspirations for revolutionizing the turn-system is my obsession with The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2, two seminal Silat films that have some of the best action sequences and choreographies in all of cinema. To me, it stands among Police Story 2 and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as the current peak of cinematic action.

A few things to lay down to help center the thought-processes I had:

I am of a theater-academic background. My fascination and hyperfixation on RPGs stems wholly from the Role-Playing aspect. My friend group loves to extract stories and narratives from gameplay loops, but we want to Role-Play In A World first and foremost.

Therefore, I value the Role-Playing Experience above everything else. This is no doubt colored and informed by what RPGs I began with: Vampire: The Masquerade and Mage: the Ascension. RPGs are world-portals to me, ways to experience, interact, and interrogate realities.

I don’t consider Mechanics to be separate from the “Fiction”. I might even deem a game’s rules to be the “Infrafiction,” the Fiction underneath everything else that arises from a game. The Fiction that demands to be told. The specter that suffuses every rules interaction.

Tangent: This idea was first spurred on because of idle daydreams while playing and finishing my current run of Final Fantasy XII. For those that don’t know, Final Fantasy XII has the ADB or Active Dimension Battle System (which is funny because ADB is also the acronym for Asia Development Bank, one of the major enemies of National Industrialization in the Philippines). ADB is the evolution of the popular ATB battle system or the Active Time Battle System. It’s called ADB because you aren’t squared off into a different screen when you enter combat. Instead, you go into combat as you’re exploring the world. Combat and Dungeon segregation barriers are effectively destroyed. This is actually one of the reasons why I love FFXII so much, and so much of what FFXII worked is what I also love from its CRPG contemporaries such as Star Wars: The Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Origins. (It’s also very similar to the Combat System found in Xenoblade!)

So for SUNDANG, I had the following goals for combat and turn “order”:

Non-Minigame Combat, or Nondivided Combat Mechanics from the rest of the world/Conversation, taking inspiration from ADB.

No “Turns” just continuous “Action.”

Never-Not-Your-Turn vibe.

Skill-Based Combat.

Brutal, dangerous combat. Skull-cracking, bone-twisting, blood-drawing. Thrilling in the sense that a Horror movie is. A horror movie with wuxia protagonists.

The Action

Action Economy is when, on your turn, you have a number of “Actions” that you can do, and you cannot do anything beyond the number of actions (of course you can do anything which you can justify as an action). This will define not just how your character moves in combat, but how they think of themselves throughout their progression. The most common form of Action Economy is “Move + Action” as seen in most d20 games, especially D&D 5e.

One of the very first things that I’ve had to unattach myself from is the Action Economy. One thing I noticed while developing SUNDANG was that every aspect of the game mechanics felt like it had to justify itself within the Action Economy. This was problematic to me for 2 aspects:

It centered combat completely. Since Action Economy only really mattered in combat, every little trinket that I had to write suddenly had to have some sort of interaction that could be done when you pressed the “Interact” action during combat.

It required “mechanization.” One of the major ideas I had for SUNDANG was to provide a mechanical base that centered on the gamization of the “fluff” without the designer having had a hand in it. If something said “This is a mallet, useful for evening out dinks and repairing machineries” it should be able to be used for that without having to interact with a subsystem. Through this, we annihilate barriers between “fluff” and mechanics, creating a more “immersive” world-space that is more conducive to Role-Playing.

While nothing is wrong with something requiring mechanization, I want it to be as invisible as possible, hence why the mechanical base of SUNDANG is built for such an experience: at creating an immersive interactive world.

One of my problems with Action Economy is that combat becomes about Action Economy. This is a problem that you can see so deeply within some of my favorite games: Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, and Final Fantasy XII all have Speed Stats that are affected by Weight, etc. Since having more “turns” is infinitely valuable in a game about getting more chances to reduce an opponent’s HP to 0, Speed-generating strats dominated those games’ upper mechanical ceiling.

While I think that’s cool, it’s not what I wanted to do with SUNDANG. It makes strange mechanical repercussions, dominations of certain strategies and therefore a larger gap between what is used and what is not used. I don’t want to make a game where you have to “solve” it through buildcrafting. I wanted to make a game where you can express yourself in.

So, away with the Action Economy. What do you do on the turn now?

The Turn

“On your turn, you can do X and Y.” This is the basic assumption in most RPGs. In OSR and NSR games this is the common assumption as well. Move + Action is elegant, simple, and gets things moving along. It gets the system out of the way so people can keep focusing on the fiction.

More importantly, the Turn splits combat into every acting character within the current situation, context, or scene. Gives everyone a chance to act. Pins everything down into spacetime.

For SUNDANG, this was not the vibe I wanted to give off. It felt too spartan, in a way. I wanted people to be constantly moving, constantly turning. More importantly, as the RPG is a player-facing medium, I want there to be the vibe of “never-not-your-turn.” This is a problem I face with much of my past RPGs and with other combat-heavy RPGs.

You take your turn and then you sit back and wait for your next one. If you’re invested in the game, you watch as the situation and gamestate changes. If not, you wait until someone calls you out and then you ask what has happened and what has changed. In all honesty, my position is that this is not a bad game design quirk. In fact, if you design around it, it could be a good quirk. Being able to do something while it’s not your turn helps a lot with Attention Deficiencies, for example.

But this isn’t something I wanted to do with SUNDANG. I wanted it to be Never-Not-Your-Turn.

So I stole a bit from Fire Emblem. There, in Fire Emblem, a “Turn” isn’t a single character’s turn to move, but rather, an advancement of the combat time-space. You often have objectives where you have to “Rout Enemy In 40 Turns” or something along those lines.

So I revolutionized how I thought about Turns. What if Turns weren’t each individual being’s turn, but an entire group of people’s turns? Now this is phase-based or side-based initiative, common (and good! I actually love side-based initiative) in OSR games. It’s very wargame-y and, honestly, conducive to strategy. But that’s not what I wanted to do here.

So I turned the Wheel again. What if Turns were chunks of time in a combat? What if turns were just Rounds? Often, the existence of a combat minigame is so that people can “zoom-in” into the action, because this is a matter of life or death! You can get killed here! Hence why we zoom in, stop time, focus on the details because the details means the difference between kill or be killed.

So I focused on that aspect.

Turn The Wheel

In PbtA, one of the major schools of RPG Design that I profess to have arisen from, combat doesn’t have a “Turn System” or a “Combat System.” Instead, it flows naturally from the conversation. It is contiguous to the rest of the system, not requiring special attention. What you can do in normal roleplaying, you can do in combat! That’s what that meant. When you sequester combat away into a new set of rules, you implicitly change the game unless you explicitly design for it to be a microcosm of the game’s already existing rules. Due to this change, I believe the mindset then becomes that you have to play the game according to this new set of rules unless you’re particularly good at improv-ing or are some form of designer/GM yourself.

I wanted that. So SUNDANG’s “turn system” has no Action Economy, no Initiative, no Reaction (no Reactionaries!) When you want to do something, do it. But it will most likely require a roll, and it will change the state of the situation.Everything has an equal amount of appropriate consequences. This is already how PbtA “combat” goes, since it’s not separate from the Conversation, the combat is also a conversation. You do something, the world does something, you react to that, then the world reacts to that, and so on.

I therefore fused the “Turns as divisions of action space-time” and “Combat-as-Conversation.”

A lot of this clicked after listening to a Robert Kurvitz interview about how he wanted to do Skill-Based Combat Scenes. Which aligned with what I wanted to do. Check it out!

For arguments of space, such as movement rates, the normal movement rate is 5 tails (roughly, 25 feet) per second. One can then infer how much a character can move in a single Turn through that as well as the modifying, environmental factors (harsh terrain, labyrinths, and so on). This allows it to be played on a Grid with the Grid as a space-representer, with shifting distance-scales for each grid square. The more interesting consequence is that, when you move, what about the world that's actively trying against you? That will then necessitate a Check, making even movement volatile and situation-changing. 

Turn-Based Combat: Never-Not-Your-Turn

First off the bat, this conception of Turn-Based Combat arises also from Clocks and Skill Challenges. The difference is largely the Presentation, mentality, and structure.

Additionally, SUNDANG’s Skill System is integral to this conception of combat. SUNDANG is a 24-Skill System inspired by the likes of Artesia: Adventures in the Known World and Runequest, where the majority of the Skills are not even combat-focused Skills, which color a player’s expectations for how combat could go (why be chained to the 3-4 Combat Skills when you can potentially agitate your Creativity to try and use the rest of them?)

So in SUNDANG, Turn-Based Combat is as follows:

If you enter into a situation wherein life-or-death is in the details, set up a 4-, 6-, or 8-segmented circle, known as The Wheel. Segment it according to the time you have left.

Find something within the world to be the temporal anchor, the World-Time. It could be the moving train, the skyskiff (that you might or might not be on at that moment!) plummeting into city streets, the wheels of a horse-carriage heading into a crash, the juggernaut battering ram barreling through enemy trenches. You can use this to lengthen the timescale of a battle. A day-long duel between two masters might have the Sun as their World-Time.

Turn 1 begins when you point at one segment and say it does. During a Turn, all the relevant PCs must do something.When they do something, the world then does something back. As always, this is just the conversation. When a PC goes and swordstrikes a pirate captain, the pirate captain will probably swordstrike back (dealing damage if that’s the PC’s consequence or threatening damage if not). Keep the conversation going.

When all the PCs have done something, mark out that segment of the Wheel. Turn to the next one adjacent to it, and say “Turn 2.” This is called Turning The Wheel. When you Turn The Wheel, before the PCs do anything, describe how the temporal anchor moves forward in time, and ascertain the consequences of that happening:

The skyskiff breaks through the high-rises. (Now there are potential people watching, now there are potential casualties, and so on.)

The horse carriage bumps against a tree and barrels closer to the cliff. (The carriage might have chunks broken off, some combatants might be knocked off, and so on.)

The Sun begins to sink into the horizon. (Dark becomes to impair vision, a nocturnal sea predator might breach soon, and so on.)

The juggernaut battering ram flies over enemy heads and moves closer to the city walls (there might be some warriors firing projectiles at you now, and so on.)

Finally, when all the segments are filled, a Revolution happens. Something Big. Throw away that Wheel. The situation changes. It has to. That’s the only real thing in this world.

The skyskiff crashes into the city plaza.

The horse carriage flies off the cliff.

The Sun sinks completely into the sea, ushering darkness.

The battering ram slams into the city walls and breaks it open.

Often, this change in situation ends Violence. You have to deal with the consequences now. In SUNDANG, you get XP for surviving Violence, not winning it. But SUNDANG is also a wuxia-western-silat game of wandering justicemakers and hotshot swordsmen. If this happens, set up another Wheel and choose another world-time.

You somehow survive the crash, and now must fight in the city plaza amongst hundreds of watchers.

The horse carriage plummets into a jade jungle, and you must fight upon its descending carcass.

The Moon rises now, as the fight continues on.

The King’s Man-At-Arms now charge toward the juggernaut to swarm and destroy it, with you still inside it.

The Violence continues. Deal with the consequences of your actions. Look forward to another Revolution.

If this piqued your interest, SUNDANG is currently out on my Patreon and I'm running pseudo-playtests of it on the Patreon Discord!

[satoshi-mochida]

No Sleep For Kaname Date - From AI: The Somnium Files announced for Switch, PC - Gematsu

Spike Chunsoft has announced No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: The Somnium Files, a new entry in the AI: The Somnium Files series. It will launch for Switch and PC via Steam on July 25, 2025 worldwide with English and Japanese voice-overs, and English, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese text.

Here is an overview of the game, via Spike Chunsoft:

About

The player takes on the role of Kaname Date, the protagonist, and once again teams up with the AI-Ball, Aiba, to tackle a mysterious case and rescue Iris, an internet idol who has been forced to take part in a dangerous escape game. No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: The Somnium Files introduces a new gameplay element: “Escape.” As with previous games, in “Investigation,” players will examine crime scenes and listen to testimonies. In “Somnium,” players enter the dream worlds of suspects and key witnesses. In the new “Escape” sections, players will solve puzzles to break out locked rooms. By moving between these three sections, players can obtain the necessary clues to solve the case. The game’s director Kazuya Yamada (Spike Chunsoft) is writing the scenario, with Kotaro Uchikoshi, the previous scenario writer, overseeing as the series director. Yusuke Kozaki returns as character designer, and Keisuke Ito continues as the music composer.

Story

A day after The New Cyclops Serial Killings was resolved, internet idol Iris Sagan (known as “A-set”) is abducted by a UFO and forced to participate in a perilous escape game called The Third Eye Game. Meanwhile, in another part of the city, a mysterious device is discovered. It resembles a coffin, and attached to it is a note that reads: “Psync me.” Relying on a tenuous line of communication with the missing Iris, one man rises once again, determined to track down the UFO that should not even exist. Together with his partner, the AI-Ball Aiba, he sets out on a quest. That man…is Special Agent Kaname Date.

Staff

Producer: Yasu Iizuka

Director and Scenario Writer: Kazuya Yamada

Series Director / Scenario Supervisor: Kotaro Uchikoshi

Character Designer: Yusuke Kozaki

Music Composer: Keisuke Ito

Special Messages from Kotaro Uchikoshi and Kazuya Yamada

Associate Scenario Director Kotaro Uchikoshi: “For this title, I’m serving as the ‘scenario advisor’ from the perspective of overseeing the entire series. From the beginning, I trusted the development staff, but I was filled with awe at the quality, which far exceeded my expectations. The core element of this game, the ‘escape game,’ is not just a collection of puzzles; it has been intricately woven with a deep thematic significance, and its difficulty is perfectly balanced…! I believe both core and casual players will definitely enjoy it. This game is a heartfelt anthem of love created by the staff who love the AI series, for all the fans who also love the AI series.”

Director and Scenario Writer Kazuya Yamada: “I am Kazuya Yamada, the director and scenario writer for this project. We’ve been able to bring this title to you thanks to all of you who said, ‘I want to see Date as the protagonist once again.’ Thank you so much. As we considered how to make this title as satisfying as possible, we ended up cramming so much into it that it caused a lot of trouble for the development team. However, because of that, we believe we’ve created a title that everyone will enjoy. So please look forward to it.”

Watch the announcement trailer below. View the first screenshots at the gallery.

Nintendo Direct: March 27, 2025

English

Japanese

[dreamsy990]

SPONTANEOUS MINI REVIEW BECAUSE I REALIZED THAT I HAVENT FUCKING TALKED ABOUT FRAGMENTARY PASSAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok so. i actually really liked this one!

so uh. if you witnessed that incredibly long thread i made yelling about kh3 you will know that i. am not a fan of the look of modern kh. i think its kind of uninteresting compared to the delightfully cartoony style and just generally i dont like more realistic looks to games that already had a unique visual identity.

so im here to say that i think it works for 0.2! im a good way through kh3 and i dont think it works well there and ill get to that when i eventually review that game but. in 0.2 i think the new style fits the more dark tone very nicely, and the enviornments are absolutely gorgeous. like i came out of ddd thinking absolutely nothing could top symphony of sorcery in terms of world design and was proven wrong. the realm of darkness is my new favorite kh "world". for my mutuals who havent played kh, look at this!!! its absolutely gorgeous

and the environments are actually my favorite thing about this game. besides being beautiful, theyre also delightfully trippy and unsettling. theres a section where you have to climb up a seemingly never ending staircase, and every time you reach what you think is the top you hear aquas worst thoughts. a lot of the areas are twisted, destroyed versions of worlds seen in bbs. its very dark (fitting, for the realm of darkness) and honestly its a treat to just walk around admiring the view. the visual storytelling is as good as kh ever gets.

i briefly mentioned aquas thoughts a minute ago so ill bring them up again, her commentary adds a lot to the desolate atmosphere, and this game really feels like a character study. it shows her desperation, her worst thoughts, her hope despite everything, and its just genuinely good. i havent been able to say that about khs character writing since like. days. its GOOD.

i am. not a fan of bbs' writing. i think its got a good underlying concept with absolutely terrible execution, and it makes me wonder at times if the things i like about it were intentional or not. but this game takes the best written character of bbs and gives her more depth than they ever could before. i can say with confidence that aqua is one of the best characters in the series, and a lot of it is because of this game.

the tone here is very gloomy, but thats not really a complaint because the game is so short. the depressing atmosphere isnt too much to bear because youre barely in it for more than 2 hours. and i think that run time is EXACTLY long enough. it goes for exactly as long as it needs to tell the story and still give a moment to breathe.

as for gameplay. im not the biggest fan of the updated system. i like to think im open to change with kh's combat. i think the command deck has potential and the card system in com was fun and i actually liked days' panel system. but something about the way this new version of the system feels to play is just. unsatisfying. hits dont feel like they have any weight to me, and spells feel inconsequential despite being more grandiose than ever. its just not as good as it was before, and like its a sort of half assed replacement of reaction commands. the way they incorporated style changes into it was okay, but again its not as satisfying as it was in bbs. but maybe it was just satisfying in bbs because the rest of the combat there sucked

tldr, the things i care about in a game (writing and visuals) were fucking spectacular, but the gameplay definitely had room to improve. also if i ever have to fight a darkside again ill throw up and cry! 8/10, though im tempted to raise it to a 9 for the environments alone

[sloshr]

After watching through Side Order... I have a Few Thoughts.

[Spoilers ahead]

My Review of the Side Order DLC - Its little more than Gameplay.

Initial Opinion

- - - - - - - - - -

Overall; I like the gameplay mechanics initially, but the story absolutely feels lacking to me, imo. It feels like they were really banking on Side Order being Hard but... multiple of my friends finished it on their 2nd or 3rd run through the Spire.

That in itself isnt a problem! But... everyone felt sort of unsatisfied? There were no developments in the story, as we, Agent 8, were just assigned the task to Get to The Top of the Spire -> The Player Does That -> You beat a Boss -> Credits Roll (?)

On my watchthrough I literally said Please Say Sike 😭 because, dont take this poorly, but they were advertising Side Order as;

• Difficult (stated Multiple Times in basically every Trailer)

• Story Driven (You Uncover things as You Climb)

• Character and Lore Intensive (as shown by the trailers with all the concept art as well as promo art)

I dont feel like it was wrong to expect more based on how it was advertised.

But... if you complete the DLC in 1-2 runs, which is Very Much Possible, no buildup happens at all. The story was banking on the player struggling, and putting all the content behind repeat runs, which falls through and Doesnt really work/feel satisfying if the main goal is achieved in such a short time. I Feel like anyone who regularly plays Salmon Run will likely have a similar experience. And I feel kind of cheated? Because what we got was something that was Tell Not Show rather than the Show, Not Tell formula. And in my opinion, it really doesn't work as well at all. It puts all the major lore that the game has set up behind repetetive climbs (which never change btw, despite each climb being generated differently, its the same after a while) and you get about 1 Sentence of Exposition, with a Modlog from Marina if you are Lucky.

Side Order was (to me), after watching it all;

• Not Difficult, But Repetetive Gameplay (This easily runs people down, which would be fine if the tower had more than 1 setup or phase)

• Inital Story Setup with no complexities or stages. You climb the first Tower, Save Marina, Climb the Second Tower, Beat Order, and the credits Roll. In its most complex, you could fit what Side Order's Story is in 2-3 Sentences. Rather than Lore being revealed During the story, it feels Pushed to the Side as all of it is either in Text the player may never see (different climbs) or care to read (Marina's Mod Log)

• Use of Character Drops with no explaination / mention (The Agent 4 Boss, Anyone?) (This felt very Bait-y, with No Payoff)

Rating

- - - - -

If I had to give Side Order a Rating

4/10. At Best.

I am a bit disappointed with this as I feel like I was promised more, Storywise, and honestly a bit gameplay wise. I think it fails where other DLC has succeeded Due to being Built in such a way where anything engaging is stuck behind barely changing gameplay. It is not built in a way where the experience cant fail to show you whats important to the characters and the worldbuilding. It relies too much on telling you whats happening rather than the world showing you. Its too Simple, and It Doesnt Work, personally, in a series that contains Octo Expansion.

Which is Sad to me!! It had so much wasted potential and I really hope this isn't the last we're going to see of the concept, we get to see ideas actually built into the story, and... maybe find Agent 4.

Conclusion

- - - - - - - -

Tldr; Side Order had a good concept, but failed in execution for being simple and gameplay dependent, which was ultimately disappointing due to it being advertised as something more for all involved.

It was an alright attempt. The experience will just be known to me as... well. Baby's First Rouge-like. Nothing worldbreaking.

(PS, this isnt meant to be mean spirited or overly critical, I just love the Splatoon Series so I give it Tough Love. This is just my personal view on the DLC)

Thank you for Reading! Feel free to share or add any thoughts!

[hellslayersomething]

I feel like I should write out some proper thoughts about my opinions on Veilguard, or at least an outline for the much longer essay that is currently calcifying in my heart. It's a mixed bag of a reaction, and I'm not going to compliment sandwiching any of it--this is all just stream of consciousness, so I'm probably going to snag on the negative and spiral down that pretty quickly. Spoilers, obviously:

I liked the battle system. For the first time in a DA game, it actually felt satisfying to play and had its own identity. I do wish the Pokemon element aspect was a little better balanced among the companions, but overall it was great.

That said, considering the length of the game, they needed way more enemy diversity, especially with the bosses. Eventually I was just fighting dragons, and every dragon had essentially the same moveset, one of those moves being "the dragon trips over her own dick and face-plants on top of Rook", which sure doesn't make the fights feel epic. Even very unique characters, like the Gloom Howler, were just reskinned basic demons when it came time to fight them.

The decision to tie companion approval to companion levels was a mistake. A massive and extremely obvious mistake. No wonder there are no disagreements or tension among the group--the game can't let you lose affinity with your team members, because then it would have to account for you leveling them down. The gameplay design here strangled the narrative design in its crib.

Speaking of narrative design: while I appreciate that the modular approach to companion arcs was experimental, it was extremely weird of them to take that approach in the only DA game where all companions are required. The story doesn't have to be written to account for the fact that you might not recruit some of them or they might die early--so why didn't they write one story about Rook and their seven friends instead of one story about Rook and also there are seven smaller, unrelated stories of extremely varying quality shoved in next to it?

The hyperfixation on the companion quests paired with their complete compartmentalization from each other means that each companion basically has nothing going on outside of their own quest and very few opportunities to engage with other characters' quests.

I was so starved for conflict in this game that I went from Solas-neutral to Solas-positive because he was the only character who the game allowed to be a bitch to me, and I respect him for that.

I do like all the horrid little sons the game gives me. I think I would appreciate them more if there was anything bad or tense happening in the story on a personal level that required some comic relief, but I am a sucker for a funky little guy none the less, and Manfred, Assan, and Spite are the perfect trifecta of funky little guys, as far as I'm concerned.

"We're only going to do character cameos if it's important to the plot." *does what they did with Isabela* Okay, devs.

"We aren't importing player choices but we won't override your decisions either." *several codex entries overriding player decisions later* Okay, devs.

I like the companions, generally. I see their potential. Fanfic will do right by them. Harding, in my mind, is the weakest of the bunch, just truly having no personality to speak of and talking like she was written by a Boomer who thinks that Millennials are still teenagers. (Everyone responsible for her uttering the phrase "Awkward..." like she's a character in 2011 quirky girl sitcom should be tried at the fucking Hague, istg.) And while I like Bellara, it was extremely frustrating to have a character that's just "Merrill, again, but with the edges sanded off". Taash and Emmerich are also glaringly the last additions in the writing process, each belonging to one of the two most underbaked factions and neither of them being tied to any of the game's few "big choices". There's promise in this cast, but I don't think any of them came close to realizing their potential.

Davrin and Emmerich's companion quests felt appropriately scoped to the size of the questlines, had good emotionality, good antagonists, and expanded on the lore of Thedas in ways we hadn't seen yet.

Lucanis's companion quest had potential, but it was too unfocused with three antagonists, too much attention to the boring Venatori shit, and not enough examination on Illario's motives or Lucanis's relationships with either Spite or Illario.

Harding's companion quest was fine, I guess (the people are starving for dwarf lore), but Harding could have been swapped out with literally any other dwarven character who wasn't Sandal and nothing would have been different. (Also weird that the whole quest was basically about Sandal while simultaneously fully removing Sandal from the narrative.)

Bellara and Neve's companion quests were just nothing. Just a whole lot of nothing. And Neve's also suffered from what I like to call "machete editing", where it is glaring obviously where things were cut, changed, moved around, and added at the last minute.

I say, from the bottom of my non-binary heart: Taash's companion quest is total ass. Real nice of Mae to come out of hiding and risk being found and executed by the Venatori to give Taash a Queer Theory 101 class, though, I fucking guess.

Is Lucanis's romance bugged? Apparently I'm not the only one who had that thought while I was playing it, so now I'm wondering. Like, there's no way they made it Like That on purpose, right?

Why and how are the Venatori still a force in Thedas, never mind a force with numbers so great (in spite of lacking a central leader) that they were able to simultaneously occupy the two largest cities in Thedas?

They literally didn't even try with the Antaam. The Venatori are at least theoretically still working to try to restore Tevinter to its former imperial might. The Antaam are just invading countries for literally no reason except ill-defined power grabs. Given the racial coding of Qunari, this writing choice sure is...something. (And that something is racist.)

That said, the revelation that the Butcher did a military tour in Europe and fell in love with the culture and just wants to drink wine and visit art museums now is fucking hilarious.

What the absolute FUCK did they do the Crows. I like the Crow characters from Tevinter Nights/the comics, and Zevran is my favorite character in the whole damn franchise, but they completely whitewashed both TN's mafia take on them and their original portrayal in DA:O. But it also doesn't really retcon anything, making it instead seem like the human trafficking and torture and sexual abuse that Zevran suffered at the Crows' hands A) only happened to him individually, and B) are fine, actually??? Even the very few times that characters express reservations about working with Lucanis because he's an assassin, if you play as a Crow, those concerns get immediately backpedaled, so the Crows end up being so ironed out that the game doesn't even let characters say of the Crows, "Murder is bad," lest it hurt a Crow Rook's feelings. That is how conflict-averse the writing is.

So I guess everyone in southern Thedas is...dead now? Several characters survived long enough to get a mention from the Inquisitor, but by the end, it sounds like Orlais, Ferelden, and most of the Free Marches are pretty much donezo. When Epler said the events in southern Thedas didn't matter, I didn't expect that to mean they were going to nuke the damn place. Even having generally enjoyed VG (in spite of all my criticisms here) that, uh...doesn't leave me enthused about the future of the franchise, ngl.

The layoffs of several writers (and other Bioware employees) before the game's release was obviously heinous. But after that secret ending, I'm now of the mind that of the writers that remain, at least a few of them need to be demoted. Like literally what the fuck was that. That was the dumbest plot point to ever appear in a Dragon Age game, and that is a high bar to clear. If you're not going to acknowledge our past choices, then keep Loghain's name out of your fucking mouths.

[yuespropagandablog]

Hello esteemed mutual. If you are reading this, then that means my propaganda is working. But you might still have questions, so I am here to answer them.

What is Dredge?

Dredge is a game by Black Salt Games about fishing! Yes, you've heard it: fishing in games CAN be fun! Fun fact, I mistakenly believed this game originated on Tumblr. Long story.

You play as a fisherman who starts working as a local angler. It seems like a total normal job at first, but the townspeople warn him about the dangers at sea. Weird fishes are reeled in and a strange fog has settled over the sea. The fisherman slowly starts to lose his mind, especially at night. Rocks appear out of nowhere, ghost ships are sailing around, and weirdly enough, sea monsters start attacking him.

Are they really there, or is it just his paranoia? Whatever it is, the consequences are real. So did you get attacked, or did you lose your mind and damage your boat yourself?

Amidst all of this, the fisherman meets a Collector, who asks him to dredge up relics all around the archipelago. The fisherman agrees to this and explores more lavish places, meets new people, and finds bottled letters that tell a story.

Have a trailer:

And a cool animated one:

So, what do you do?

You fish.

And dredge shit up.

Okay, of course there's more to this. There's a nice and satisfying gameplay loop. You fish and sell your catch for money. You also dredge up treasures and materials. With all of this, you can upgrade your boat, because your boat is your main 'hub' so to speak, and space is essential. All fish have a different lay-out that you need to puzzle on a grid. But of course, you also need some cargo spots for your equipments. Better rods, better engines and better lights help your travels a lot. Your engines make your boat go faster, and light helps combating paranoia. And not all rods can fish up every type of fish, so you are constantly trying to improve your vessel in order to make the most out of it.

There is the main story where you help the Collector, but there are also a lot of sidequests called pursuits, that can be found by talking to NPCs who are scattered around the archipelago.

And there's of course the horror of it all. The more paranoid your fisherman becomes, the weirder the game. I have managed to deal with most of it, but that also meant I possibly missed out on some fucked up stuff. Now that I have actually finished the game, I might continue just to see how paranoid this man can be. (Is this torture?)

Paranoia gravely impacts your playthrough and it leads to a broken ship and lost cargo, which is why it's best to avoid it and sail during the day, but now that I don't need to hold on to my fish and material to sell/use, the loss of it isn't as severe so I am ready to get mauled, I guess.

I must say that a lot of stuff is easy to miss, especially if you only do the main quest and go to the spots marked on your map. I highly recommend taking your time and exploring.

Also, the art style is popping.

Where can I play this?

Thank you Wikipedia for listing it: Windows, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Android, iOS and macOS. I played it on Switch, and it runs smoothly. Although I did have some audio glitches late game, but I actually don't know if those are glitches, or if it was an effect of the paranoia.

Are there content warnings?

Well. It's a horror game. It's "light" horror, so to speak. It's not gruesome or gore-y and there are no extreme jumpscares, but the paranoia hits. That's the point. It is not a relaxing game and I question my decision to play this in bed in the dark, because you really do not see shit during nighttime.

You can actually turn this off by enabling "passive mode". This gets rid of the monsters (and I think paranoia), so you will just have a relaxing fishing and exploration game, and you know, that sounds cool too. Might try that as well, now that I have beat the game, but as I said, I gotta up the paranoia first.

Is there DLC?

Yes, there are three DLCs: the Blackstone Key, the Pale Reach and the Iron Rig.

The Blackstone Key doesn't add anything to gameplay, so I recommend skipping it. Sometimes it's even included in the base game, or so I heard. I dunno, man, I don't have it and I don't see the appeal. Spend those 5 bucks on a fancy tea, or something.

The Pale Reach and the Iron Rig are two story DLCs. It adds new pursuits, new locations and new fishes. I played them after I finished the base game, because I didn't buy them when I bought the base game, since I have been bummed by DLCs in the past, where I would buy a game + DLC and then regret the DLC. I may have shot myself in the foot here, since I think these DLCs would've been way better if I had played them while playing the base game, since playing them afterwards makes these DLCs very easy and very open-ended (since their conclusion lies in the base game's ending). Still, I enjoyed them and I think the Iron Rig is the better one of the two.

So I think I recommend them if you play them during your first playthrough, but I also think the base game in itself is a satisfying game that doesn't necessarily need more.

Have some trailers:

Can we play together?

Nope. It's a soloplayer game!

Are there German characters in Dredge?

Not that I know of. It's never really said where this archipelago lies. Is there German localisation? Maybe then you can pretend it's in Germany!

[mail-me-a-snail]

I got pacific drive and I have no idea what I am doing. Any tips?

hi there !! welcome to the zones :^) i have. way too many hours on this game so here's my advice!

stock up on repair items before you make a drive! if you're just starting out, i recommend 2 repair putties, an extra scrapper, and a prybar. you will be encountering many, many locked doors so the prybar will come in handy

you'll also need a battery jumper kit, depending on how far you are into the game currently

if you throw flares at the tourists, there's a chance they'll drop resources, some more valuable than others. just be sure to step away because they Do explode

the same goes for the bunnies; use your scrapper on them and they could give you anything from plain scrap to cosmetic items

invest in your garage; there are a Lot of handy upgrades that you can get that'll make your early game less of a headache. you can get crafting recipes for stronger parts for your car, such as ones that will withstand radiation better, for example

and trust me. you're gonna need those

when out on a drive, don't collect just One of the stable energy cores on a map; if you can, collect all of them. you can fill up your stable energy core (the machine on your passenger seat) up to 4 units, which is the currency that the garage upgrade station uses. most upgrades use 1-2 units of that energy, depending on the usefulness and complexity of the upgrade!

this will destabilize the area faster and you will have to leave earlier, however, so you can do this last after you harvest all the resources you can find

every map/drive point has the same exact road layout every time, with just the structures randomly generated each time you visit. it's good to familiarize yourself with the layout so that you won't be lost when the time comes to skidaddle and head back to the garage

always go to the gas stations if you see a marker on a map for one. there is a high chance you will find a vending machine that'll give you a random cosmetic item for your car. plus, they're an endless supply of fuel

scan EVERYTHING. scanning certain things—ESPECIALLY anomalies—lets you unlock recipes

this is less gameplay and more lore specific, but keep flipping thru the radio stations until you reach broadcasts with the name ???. listen to em. that's all :-)

and my most important tip: EXPLORE. if you see something interesting outside your window, park and go check! there is no harm to exploring!

i love this game honestly. it has one of the most satisfying gameplay loops in any game ive ever played; each stop feels so fresh that resource harvesting is barely a slog. anyhoo if you have any questions or want me to elaborate on anything i said here id be more than happy to talk about it :-)

[hulloitsdani]

Fighting for your life with heroes against brand new ones that sweep your team. Henrietta lore? That power she must keep in check? Summoner just won't die. Only in some timelines. and badly. Sharena. Ragnorok?!?! Loki's shenanigans.

Thank you stranger! In no particular order, let’s go through these

First off, OH I LOVEEEEEE BEING IMMEDIATELY PROVEN WRONG ABOUT LOKI. FINALLY. THANK FUCK. The validation I felt when the question of her motives was IMMEDIATELY brought up this book. I don’t care that my read was wrong— what I truly wanted more than anything was something of more substance to read into. As for actual predictions, my bets are that her aims are on bringing about Ragnorok and the end of the gods. For fun. As a treat. For the silly.

As for the actual state of the game, idk man, I play this game weird. I’m both free to play and entirely causal, so it’s entirely up to luck if I ever have any relevant units. In my many years of playing this game, I have never managed to +10 merge a unit that wasn’t a grail unit. So I don’t tend to play game modes where that matters much, with the exception of aether raids sometimes. I like clearing the challenge maps and making the story mode levels really difficult by using strictly Askr trio.

For events outside of that, I have a lot of fun using about one team per six months and trying to creatively use them and their base skills to solve whatever new bullshit is added. The game is clearly not built for you to do that, but I like the challenge it poses. I got really lucky on the CYL7 banner and got all four of the guys from that event. Brave Robin, Corrin, Soren and Gullvieg was my go to team for wayyyy longer than it should have, especially with zero changes to their kits and no merges. Hell I didn’t even have dragon flowers on half of them because Askr Trio building has long stolen most of flower supply. But god was it fun. I know how that group of units play off each other like the back of my hand. And considering how most people tend to just be frustrated with this game’s gameplay, it feels like I must be doing something right. I am constantly broke tho, so rip.

On the lore side, Henriette and Gustav are such a fascinating two for one package for me. Marketable plushies often bought together please don’t separate. The :) to his >:(. They’re both are great rulers and loving partners, but fumbled a bit in their parenting in ways that make total sense. For you see, I am a firm believer that everyone walks out of their childhood at least a little fucked up. Even the best parents are still human. And I adore Askr’s royal family unit, because it digs into that idea! Henriette and Gustav weren’t abusive or harboring malicious intent, but they were neglectful and lacking in ways that cannot be denied. Which is extremely cool! More of this please and thank you.

Looping back to the quote in question, to be perfectly honest, I would be pleasantly surprised if we ever got answers for her day of devotion alt voice lines. However, Gustav having a wife with the power to kill him easily would be so fucking funny. Like father, like son. If your romantically coded life partner can’t theoretically ensure your body is never found, what’s even the point. She doesn’t even need to be secretly divine or anything— I would be satisfied with her being something as simple as an abnormally strong mage. She can accidentally fold people like an omelet if she’s not being careful. Which, now that I’m putting that into writing, might contribute to her relationship with her kids.

Speaking of, Sharena!!! My best friend Sharena!!! I’ve got a multitude of thoughts cooking for her, but currently the one at the forefront is making home girl jacked as hell. Not joking. Dead ass. We all know the role she plays on a personality level— she’s the heart. The emotional glue that keeps these loner trickster types together and in check. But considering that this is the theater of war and everyone else has a role to play, I think it could be interesting if she was the beefiest fighter in the Askr trio. She’s able to dedicate the time fully to that craft, you know? She’s not balancing the responsibilities that arise from being the Order’s commander, tactician, or right hand man/history buff. Not to mention she was trained to fight by Bruno, who presumably played the role of group muscle before her. Therefore, when it comes to feats of physical strength, Sharena should be the Order’s go-to lady! I think it would be neat! She deserves the ability to easily carry her commanding officer and beat Alfonse’s nerdy ass in an arm wrestle.

Last but certainly not least, summoner bad ends! What could possibly go wrong? A lot, apparently. And it happens much more often than you’d expect.

See, I don’t think it’s that the summoner cannot die. Polar opposite, if anything. Each success is built upon the littered corpses of millions of failures. This idea loops back to the alternate version of Askr the group finds in book 3. In order to defeat Hel, they must loot the corpse of a dead world. By its very nature, not every summoner has an alternate corpse to loot. At least half of all realities where the summoner exists results in death and ruin by book 3 ALONE. This is saying nothing of all the dangerous odds they must beat from then to book 9. Just pulling one example off the dome, in order to defeat Gullveig, they had to die a truly eldritch and inconceivable amount of times. But we the audience don’t bear witness to that. We get to see the one world with the one summoner who is hitting those fraction of a fraction odds. The universe’s luckiest bastard. Others are not so lucky.

[spiribia]

rewrote this post 3 times. a common critique of fallout 4 is that it assumes your character is morally good-aligned by default, moreso than its predecessors. on reflection i suppose it's actually not uncommon for even a game with gleefully violent gameplay or evil options to have a narrative baseline where the player character will still condemn scripted instances of violence, and i don't always consider it hypocritical. i guess the conflict for me in fo4 is more how they pose this morality - they have this great 'noble' ideal of sweeping through the wasteland cleaning out the brutishly violent groups that currently cover it to make room for settlers. this ideal is foisted onto your player character through fo4's big new headliner feature of settlement building. i think it's funny for the game to pose you as some figure that wants to reduce violence to an extent which not only justifies you in slaughtering every raider you see on sight because of their presumed association to a violent lifestyle but makes you a Good person for This extreme gorey bloodshed which the developers on purpose put in to be satisfying for the player and meanwhile you can bribe and blackmail people but the game always considers you above those people that you are justified in purging in masses from the wasteland. it wants you to live out a fantasy of being a scrappy survivor in the inhospitable dog-eat-dog post apocalypse cobbling together improvised weapons out of nails and duct tape and making selfish choices for your benefit but it doesn't actually want to let you join a gang. that is, until the paid DLC which hilariously responds to player feedback on character morality in the base game by forcing you to be a raider. does any of this make sense. i am sorry