#pixel pizzaz

[j-fashion-wearer-otd]

Today's J-fashion wearer is Pixel Pizzaz from My Little Pony Equestria Girls! She wears j-punk with some gurokawa elements!

[bananagory]

practicing perspective?? me?? wow

[aca-4]

I can’t believe we only ever saw these two in the background! Their designs are so cool, I just had to draw them!

----

MLP:EQG and its characters belong to Hasbro

[fuzzychildchopshop]

Pixel Pizzaz by Wicked-RED-Art

[aleisters]

i've been watching a youtuber playing gabriel knight: sins of the father and i was curious about the games as a whole so i was looking them up. and found out there was a remake. and oh god, remakes were a mistake.

noooo!!! NOOOOOOO

[rinoaskyes]

Tokyo Game Dungeon

I love going to all kinds of game exhibitions but ones that are focused on indie games will always have a special place in my heart. There's something so human and endearing about getting to meet developers and getting to try games that were made literally by those two hands. No well-oiled production timelines, no marketing pizzaz, just a person (or a couple of people) tinkering away at home on a dream.

Tokyo Game Dungeon by Iwasaki is one of a few regular events that happen in, well, Tokyo. It's only been running since 2022 but has already attracted a formidable number of fans from both the development side and the gamers keen to support the independent scene.

Unlike what its name might indicate, there are no shackles or prison cells at Tokyo Game Dungeon. It's actually very brightly lit, fairly quiet and located (at least in the April 2024 edition) in a fancy building in the Hamamatsucho area. I think the name might be inspired by dungeon crawler games, as you can kind of explore the entire area in a similar way to find new games. But it could also be a ruse to attract basement dwellers to come outside and touch grass!! Be warned, gamers.

What's also really cool about their website is you can actually look back at every past exhibit to see which games were present. It's a nice way to archive the indie scene here. There are also three mascots that I don't really know much about but they are very cute. I love this series of promotional artwork that's like 'Amazing place!' 'Large table!', 'Indie spirit!'. What more could you want from a game exhibition!

I got there around 1 pm and the event went from 12 - 5 pm. There were two levels and they were huge. At the front of the entrance were large tables with pamphlets and flyers relating to all of the games available on that day as well as a map. Attendees get given mini maps also. These are super useful because once you get into trying games, they all start to blend into one. I found circling the games that I've tried/want to try was really useful to aid my failing memory.

Anyway enough stalling, here are some of the games that caught by eye!

Inverted Angel by SCIKA

This is a 2D adventure (visual novel) game about an unknown women who shows up in front of your house claiming to be your girlfriend. Use dialogue to uncover the truth. The art is super, super cute.

Elfie by Sol's Atelier

This is tamagochi, mini games and narrative all rolled into one. Elfie is a small round elephant and also your new roommate. You get to play mini games like vacuuming peanuts in space and making peanut butter (Elfie likes peanuts). My friend Philippe is the solo dev behind this so definitely check it out!

CASSETTE BOY by Wonderland Kazakiri inc.

"All you see is all there is" - Cassette Boy is a seemingly 2D world that asks a lot of philosophical questions while also hiding some very complex dimensions beyond what you can see at a glance (it is actually 3D). You have to turn and twist the map to change your perspective and solve puzzles.

Buzz or Die by Mukanshin Games

The queue to play this demo was unreal. Buzz or Die is a narrative adventure game about death row inmates competing for viewer ratings on a game show. If you win you survive and get money, if you lose, you die. Huge Danganronpa vibes, very excited for this.

ELEMASTA by Team ELEMASTA

This is an open world RPG with stunning pixel art inspired by retro games. Truthfully I didn't get to play this but I thought it was too beautiful to not include. I believe it's a game about meeting characters, collecting over 3,000 types of weapons and armor and defeating enemies. Fairly standard high fantasy but I am in love with the art.

P4ST3L by UsaginO

P4ST3L (very hard to type) is an FPS horror game set in a liminal space with a female protagonist and some creepy creatures. UsaginO also has a YouTube channel that acts like a devlog.

I want to shoutout the girl who was manning the booth for her insanely high energy. She was very cool. Apparently she voiced the Pomeranian in UsaginO's previous game (I can't find it online) and she also sings at the end of P4ST3L so you should definitely play it and complete it so you can hear her melodious voice!!

Holo Yeet by Fried Rice Productions

Is still a work in progress according to the developer but it's a game about yeeting Hololive characters. You play as Mori Calliope and in the demo, I got to yeet Watson Amelia. I hope the Hololivers pick this one up!

MotionRec by HANDSUM

I cannot shut up about MotionRec, ever since I first saw Shoma present it at Tokyo Indies last year. It's pixel platforming with a record and rewind function that allows you to overcome obstacles your little dude character normally cannot. It's truly been a pleasure to watch this game grow over time. It's latest version has a lot of cool design features and the levels look really fleshed out too!

Reso-Seeker by R-ta Games

This is a Metroidvania game about exploring a resort hotel! I think the setting is really cool and leads to some interesting locations and puzzles to overcome when platforming. I've also seen R-ta exhibit at a few different places in the last few years so it was cool to get to try the latest demo. It's pretty hard!

マイクカート by 六方

It looks like a regular racing game until you realise there's a mic in front of you. You use a steering wheel controller to navigate but you need to keep talking for the car to keep moving. Someone playing before me was making vroom sounds but for some reason I ended up just chatting with the developers to power my car. I told them that this would be the perfect game for streamers because we don't shut up! I don't have any photos of this and they don't seem to have a Steam page so I'll link to the 4Gamer article here, please scroll down towards the end to see what it looks like.

Ninjam! by G-Blossom

Is like a very hyper-precise 4 player brawler. You're a ninja who needs to defeat other ninjas but you everyone only has one life so you need to be very very precise with when you decide to attack. It's an amazing party game, I hope they introduce more levels and items to keep the gameplay interesting!

As always, I wish I got to try out more games! But my social battery was rapidly draining. All in all I can't recommend Tokyo Game Dungeon any higher. Even if you're not part of the gaming scene, you could definitely treat this as a regular fair/expo to go with friends and just have a blast.

Jun Shen Chia if you made it this far, congrats! And to everyone else, thanks for reading.

[ponyaday]

7/18/22 - Pixel Pizzaz

[pcktknife]

I redrew this screencap some year or two ago and wanted to try it again! So here are these girls again!

original redraw

[robertsonskywa1]

I made a gift from Wubcake, she is a fan of Danganronpa

So I made a custom Pixel Pizzaz of Junko Enoshima. Same than the anime series into MLP EG version.

[glitzyglee]

Pixel Pizzaz and Violet Blurr

[j-fashion-wearer-otd]

have you ever done pixel pizzaz from equestria girls? she's adorable.

She has been added to the queue!

[redheaddraws]

Feel like ive neglected my tumblr for a bit. lol here is pixel pizzaz and violet blurr. the coolest equestria girls this side of the mirror. <3 

[sparksartdomain]

Pixel Pizzaz W.I.P.

[666-chan]

[prideponies]

Violet Blurr and Pixel Pizzaz from Equestria Girls are lesbians and in a relationship!

(Requested by Anonymous!)

[baphomet-media]

The Real Mountain Was the Friends We Made Along the Way - A Celeste Review

Genre: Adventure

Subgenre: 2D Platformer

Developer: Matt Makes Games

Publisher: Matt Makes Games

Platform(s): PC, Switch, PS4 (Reviewed on Switch)

Release Date: January 25th, 2018

Celeste is a game that completely took me by surprise. I first saw it while idly browsing through the Switch eShop back in 2018, and after checking out the trailer and seeing a bit of mention of it online, decided to give it a try. I was distinctly impressed by its tight controls, touching story, and wealth of challenging-but-fair gameplay. Now, a little over two years later, I decided to revisit the game and see if it still holds up.

Story

Celeste focuses on the story of Madeline, a young woman who decides to climb Celeste Mountain in an act of defiant self-exploration. Along the way, she’ll have to face her insecurities and anxiety head-on in the form of a ghostly doppelganger created from her negative emotions that seems to haunt her at every turn. Despite this, she is rarely alone, as she has the company of fellow climber Theo, a selfie-loving hipster; a kooky old woman who lives on the mountain; and more. Each character has their own troubles and reasons for being on the mountain, though Theo is vastly more fleshed-out than the other side characters.

While the story is never tear-jerking at any point, it definitely hits home with a young adult such as myself who is also dealing with similar insecurities as Madeline, and has a good message about learning to rely on those around you, and to accept yourself for good and bad. I really enjoyed that the game is not afraid to touch on very real aspects of mental illness in a way that neither glorifies nor diminishes it, and treats Madeline as a real person who is just doing her best to work though her issues, making both progress and mistakes along the way.

Gameplay

At its core, Celeste is a 2D platformer that focuses on challenging-but-fair levels. Each chapter of the game is its own level, broken down into rooms that you progress through in a roughly linear format (with minor sidetracking for collectables), ultimately trying to reach the end. Madeline has a number of standard platforming moves, including jumps and wall jumping, but with expanded mechanics such as the ability to climb walls and dash in midair. While these mechanics are very powerful in theory, they’re well limited. Madeline only has so much stamina for climbing, and when it runs out, she begins to slide down the wall. The dash mechanic is also limited to one use, which is recharged upon landing, hitting a spring or other object, or touching a crystal pickup. I really liked how well-balanced these mechanics felt, as even if you’re out of stamina, you can still wall jump to attempt to save yourself, and there are plenty of ways to replenish both stamina and dashes.

Each chapter of the game also introduces its own mechanical gimmicks that interact with Madeline’s core mechanics in some way. Most of these end up being variations of moving platforms, but there’s enough variety to keep things fresh. The game is also very good at teaching you not only how these gimmicks work, but how you’re expected to synergize them with your core movement.

The game even has advanced techniques for speedrunners and other expert players, such as what I refer to as the wavedash, where you dash diagonally down into the ground and jump a split second later to preserve the forward momentum of the dash, while keeping your dash charge from being on the ground. Advanced players will find all sorts of advanced tech and applications for them that will allow them to finesse their way through the game’s levels and find hidden skips.

The game also has a few optional collectibles. First are the strawberries, which are the main collectibles. There are around 20 strawberries per chapter, and most are either located in out-of-the-way challenge rooms, tricky locations on the main path, or hidden in secret holes in the map. One thing I liked about the strawberries is that it usually isn’t enough to just get to the strawberry, you also have to make your way back to solid ground afterward. You also aren’t pressured to collect them if you don’t want to, and the game even says on a loading screen that they’re purely optional and to only go for them if you want to. I found most strawberries to be fair enough to collect, though there were the odd one or two that were frustrating to find, as they required the player to spot tiny irregularities in the level design to investigate.

Aside from strawberries, each chapter also has a hidden Cassette Tape that unlocks a more difficult B-Side chapter that remixes the themes and gimmicks into a much harder version. The B-Sides were definitely more stressful at times, but felt really good to get through. If I were to do another playthrough, I’d probably want to revisit the B-Sides after doing all the main chapters, as the alternating spikes in difficulty made the difficulty curve more on the stressful side.

Lastly, each chapter has a Crystal Heart collectible that is usually extremely hidden, but allows unlocking end-game content. Like some of the strawberries, a few of the Crystal Hearts can be frustrating to find, and a few are further hidden behind puzzles that the player has to solve based on very limited information. I enjoy puzzles like this in games, though later on in the game they can start to border on obtuse.

Celeste also comes with an extremely well-developed Assist Mode that lets the player fully customize how the game runs, including slowing down the game, allowing infinite stamina or dashes, etc. Though I never used it, it’s not only a great tool for less experienced players to get through a challenging game, but it’s also useful for those who want to fully explore everything the game has to offer and test the limits of the engine. Unlike other games that rub their assist modes in the player’s face, Celeste never nags you about it, but always has the option ready in the pause menu should you need it. This allows the player to switch in and out of the mode at will without feeling like the game is forcing them to. Nintendo could really learn a lesson from Celeste.

There’s also a plethora of end-game content that I won’t go into here, but suffice to say that there is plenty to do in the game after the credits roll, including a free update to the game that added an additional postgame chapter.

My only real criticism of the game is that levels have an obnoxious tendency to block access to previous rooms without warning. This is particularly frustrating when you notice an alternate path or potential secret just as you go through a room transition and there’s no way back into the previous room. Though to be fair, once you’ve completed a chapter, you can start from any of the chapter’s main sections. Plus, the game tells you which collectibles you’re missing in each area, and once you’ve obtained a collectible, it’s immediately saved, so if you’re only missing a few strawberries, you can easily jump into the section where you’re missing them, grab them quickly, and then exit the level. Still, I think it would be worthwhile if the game had some way of letting players know that certain doors will lock behind them, or otherwise indicate that certain paths are one-way only.

Presentation

Celeste’s visuals use a pixel art aesthetic with tons of detail, making each room of each chapter a delight to the eyes. Each chapter is also visually distinct enough that you always feel like you’re seeing something new. One interesting point is that the game seems to be using a feature that can dynamically stretch and squish sprites without requiring the developers to draw individual frames for these transformations. This is a pretty ingenious idea, though I felt at times it was a bit too obvious, as some of the results could be a bit jagged or exaggerated. Still, it’s probably not something that the average player would notice or care about.

The game’s soundtrack tends to focus on relaxing background pieces that set the mood with lots of emotional piano parts, but also knows how to build up energy during high-tension sections or make the player feel triumphant. Additionally, each B-Side chapter has a remix of the chapter’s theme, which adds additional pizzaz to the soundtrack.

Conclusion

Celeste is an amazing game that bleeds charm and love from the developers, and will leave you feeling accomplished and hopeful. It has enough challenge for platforming veterans without being unfair or inaccessible to less experienced players. There’s something to love here for everyone, and I urge everyone who is even slightly interested in the game to give it a shot.

Score: 9 / 10