#not worth the hype i think

[silkjade]

everything reminds me of him…. 😔

[crow-caller]

started playing fallen london cause of your blog and i absolutely love it! Thank u :)

Excellent!!! If I have any power, let it be used to get people to play fallen london and its related games (sunless seas, sunless skies = Survival exploration, mask of the rose = visual novel)

[sad-leon]

crawling out of the shadows with this as an offering

[artsymeeshee]

It’s been a while since I uploaded this post and I did want to post more parts to it but lately my motivation to draw has been lacking (might be a small burnout currently). But! I did want to give a small gist of what my ideas were for the after-events of the finale.

I mainly wanted to show my 6th point of Ford going in this weird bubble that Stan’s in and help him. There might be a small chance I’ll draw out other specific thoughts I have but I mainly wanted to draw the comic of them both together. There’s also another drawing I’m dying to show after Bill finally died lol but it’s something special that needs to wait.

[sasaranurude]

Okay. I've been playing Tokyo Debunker today, since the release happened to catch me on a day when all I'd planned to do was write fanfiction. I just finished reading the game story prologue (it was longer than expected!), so here's a review type post. If you're reading this post not having seen a single thing about this game: it's a story-based joseimuke gacha mobile game that just released globally today. It's about a girl who suddenly finds herself attending a magic school and mingling with elite, superhuman students known as ghouls. If you look in the tumblr tag for the game you'll see what appears to be a completely different game from 2019 or so: they retooled it completely midway through development, changing just about everything about it due to "escalating competition within the gaming industry."

I'll talk about how this looks like a blatant twst clone at the end.

Starting with the positive: The story is charming. I enjoyed it thoroughly the entire time and am excited to read more. The mix between visual novel segments and motion comics was really nice--it broke things up and added a lot of oomph to the action or atmospheric scenes that visual novels generally lack. I like the art in the comic parts a lot. the live2d in the visual novel parts is... passable. Tone-wise, I think the story was a little bit all over the place and would like to see more of the horror that it opened on, but I didn't mind the comedic direction it went in either. The translation is completely seamless. The characters so far all have unique voices and are just super fun and cute. Of the ones who've had larger roles in the story so far, there's not a single one I dislike. It's all fully voiced in Japanese and the acting is solid. (I don't recognize any voices, and can't seem to find any seiyuu credits, so it seems they're not big names, but they deliver nonetheless.) Kaito in particular I found I was laughing at his lines a ton, both the voicing and the writing.

He's looking for a girlfriend btw. Spreading the word.

The problem is like. The gameplay is the worst dark-pattern microtransaction-riddled bullshit I've ever seen. Hundred passive timers going at all times. Fifty different item-currencies. Trying to get you to spend absurd amounts of real world money at every turn. There's like five different indicators that take you to various real-money shop items that I don't know how to dismiss the indicator, I guess you just have to spend money, wtaf. Bajillion different interlocking systems mean you have zero sense of relative value of all the different item-currencies. I did over the course of the day get enough diamonds for one ten-pull, which I haven't used yet. Buying enough diamonds for a ten-pull costs a bit under $60 (presumably USD, but there's a chance the interface is automatically making that CAD for me--not gonna spend the money to check lmfao), with an SSR rate of 1%. BULLSHIIIIIT.

There's like a goddamn thousand-word essay explaining the dozen different types of character upgrades and equippables and equippables for the equippables!! Bad! Bad game design! That's just overcomplicating bullshit to trick people into thinking they're doing something other than clicking button to make number go up! That is not gameplay!

In terms of the actual gameplay, there is none. The battle system is full auto. There might be teambuilding, but from what I've seen so far, most of that consists of hoping you pull good cards from gacha and then clicking button to make number go up. There's occasional rhythm segments but there's no original music, it's just remixes of public domain classical music lmao. I'd describe the rhythm gameplay as "at least more engaging than twisted wonderland's," which is not a high bar

At least there's a cat in the rhythm bit.

And like, ok, I gotta remark on how derivative it is. Like I mentioned in my post earlier, this game is unabashedly aping twisted wonderland's setting and aesthetic. (That said, most of the stuff it steals from twst is magic school stuff that twst also basically stole from Harry Potter, so...?) However, it isn't exactly like twst: in this one, the characters say fuck a lot and bleed all over the place and do violence. Basically, the tone is a fair bit more adult than twst's kid-friendly vibe. (Not, like, adult adult, and I probably wouldn't even call it dark--it's still rated Teen lol. Just more adult than twst.)

Rather than just being students at magic school, the ghouls also go out into the mundane world to go on missions where they fight and investigate monsters and cryptids. Honestly, the magic school setting feels pretty tacked-on. The things that are enjoyable about this would've been just as enjoyable in about any other setting--you can tell this whole aspect was a late trend-chasing addition, lmao. So, yeah, it's blatantly copying twst to try to steal some players, but... Eh, I found myself not caring that much. Someone more (or less) into twst than me may find it grating.

Character-wise, eh, sure, yeah, they're a bit derivative in that aspect too, but it's a joseimuke game, the characters are always derivative. Thus far the writing & execution has been solid enough that I didn't care if they were tropey. If I were to compare it to something else, I'd say the relationship between the protagonist and the ghouls feels more like that of the sage and wizards in mahoyaku than anything from twst. There's some mystery in exactly what "ghouls" are and their place in this world that has me intrigued and wanting to know more about this setting and how each of the characters feels about it. I have a bad habit of getting my hopes up for stories that put big ideas on the table and then being disappointed when they don't follow through in a way that lives up to my expectations, though.

So, my final verdict: I kind of just hope someone uploads all the story segments right onto youtube so nobody has to deal with the dogshit predatory game to get the genuinely decent story lol. Give it a play just for the story if you have faith in your ability to resist dark patterns. Avoid at all costs if you know you're vulnerable to gacha, microtransactions, or timesinks.

[raddest-laddest]

i had a very whimsical and magical night

[apnourry]

There's a lot more on the back lol

[divorcedwife]

want to meet whatever evil advisor told drake he should pick a fight with kendrick lamar like this

[whereismyhat5678]

I'M SORRY BUT THE BRAZIL DRAWING MADE ME THINK THAT WOULD BE ONE HELL OF A STUDIO GHIBLI STORY-

Just this bat gal who's lonely randomly finds a human gal trying to find her family heirloom (her hat) so the two try make friends and go on vacation where they both meet two few strange fellows (cough cough ijusthavefun and i) and the group have small adventures while trying to find the human girls family heirloom-

Had to do something for this 🥹

Y’ALL GONNA HELP ME FIND MY HAT THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! 😭💗😭💗😭💗

(Seriously you guys are everything 💗💗💗💗 Wanna show some appreciation and also cuz- YOUR SONA’S ARE SO FUN TO DRAW 💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥)

Come ere’ guys!

@moon9931 @noodletime @ijusthavefun

ALSO CUZ GENUINELY THAT AS A GHIBLI MOVIE????? AAAGGGGH THAT’S SO CUUUTE!!!!! 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

[k-martins]

Or better! A panel with a tiger and wolf ready to devour the prey that is now Sukuna!

[moonlube]

i think this is the first time (or at least the first time i remember) where my distancing from a thing is not because i organically moved on but because the company that runs the thing has just made decisions that are too intolerable.

[mikimeiko]

The Morning Show | Season 1 (2019), Jay Carson

[neptunesenceladus]

guess what i found out at work ..

yj98 is being reprinted as an omnibus and it’s coming next month

[lovelyleech]

Someday I'll make setting people actually like and find worth engaging in even if its just going Cool! Once and never again but until that day I'm just kind of stuck getting really sad when I think of something cool enough that I get confident sharing it and then its just. Crickets.

[anthro-cat]

thank you friends who go wild over my art, you are so appreciated

[dolokhoded]

my favorite thing the chosen has brought to this world is the opprotunity to watch sexually repressed christians try to pretend they dont want to fuck simon peter.