#please play Evoland 2 okay

[quibbs126]

*sigh* I tried to use a Cookie Run gacha maker thing to make it look all nice, but I just couldn’t get it to work, both on my iPad and my computer. But regardless, I thought I’d make this look as nice as I could

So some time ago, I decided I wanted to try and make the Evoland 2 characters in the Cookie Run style, and I wanted to start with my favorite character, Menos

This is him (also note, while this is from the art book, some of the information here is inaccurate, mostly the first paragraph. The second paragraph’s accurate though. I suspect there were some story changes after the artbook was finished)

I’m gonna be fully transparent with y’all, I did this so I could try and attract my Cookie Run audience and maybe get them interested like “oh hey these designs are neat, what game are they from?” and maybe then lure them into playing Evoland 2. Listen, it’s my favorite game, and there is like, no audience for it. There is BARELY any content for this game on here and I am DESPERATE. I need people to play it, it’s a good game, and I need people to talk to about this game, but I can’t because no one’s played it or heard of it, and the things about the game I want to talk about and discuss are things that are major spoilers for the game, so I can’t talk about them. It’s a rough existence

*ahem* sorry, I got carried away. I’ll shill more for the game later, but let me just explain this

I made him a porcelain berry, aka Amur peppervine, since they have bright blues and purples like him. I went with Peppervine since it sounded tougher than Porcelain Berry. Also peppers tend to be associated with fire in Cookie Run, and he does have sort of fire based powers. Well really it’s just a ground pound with fire at the end. It’s useful though

I think I’m gonna make all the Demons berries/fruits (I say fruits because there’s already Cherry and Plum), mostly since they’re the best substitute for their bright colors. Also Menos is a Demon. But they don’t like, come from the underworld or anything, they just exist in the world. Honestly they’re pretty chill people, way more than the humans

Porcelain berries:

I mainly used Capsaicin and Purple Yam as my references, given the similar body shapes and Capsaicin’s horns

I was also planning to make his eye outline black, with the main color being yellow and the slits black, since some people make the black outline black sclera, but it just didn’t look right, so I made it white instead and did all the other things

I had so much trouble with the chain around his neck, since he doesn’t have an official reference, and all official art I can find changes it slightly. It’s pretty annoying. I just ended up sticking with the one in the promo art

Menos looks weird without his nose and ears

Now let me just ramble about Menos

I love this dude so much. Like, he’s just an endearing character, and in my opinion, way better than Fina (green haired girl). Fina can be a bit of a brat sometimes and while yeah, I get that she’s the youngest and I think a teenager, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get on my nerves. Anyways, Fina aside, Menos on the other hand is very polite. He always calls Fina “Miss Fina” and does the same with Velvet, and for Kuro, well I suppose first I need to give context. So you first meet Menos in this gladiatorial arena that we just stumble into while escaping prison (and that he’s being forced to participate in by the way), and because we don’t want to give ourselves away, we give ourselves a fake name out of the options presented to us. I personally always go with Mega Clink because of the Evoland 1 reference (the Evoland 1 protagonist is Clink). And see, Menos will always call you by that name you pick, no matter what. Other party members say our name, but he’s just adamant to call you that. I don’t know why he does it, but he does it with complete seriousness and I just find it funny.

But honestly, when I first played the game, I had an obsession with this guy. What first got me to pay attention to this guy is when you escape the arena and collect gravity, you fall into a pit and Menos laments the fact that he will now never see his son again. When he said that, I was like “you have a son? I will help you, I must reunite you two” and that’s where it began. Then we get to where we’re going and meet his son, but then [EVOLAND 2 SPOILERS] happens and I’m like “No! Menos no!” And after that point I was determined to reunite him with his family once again and save his people and just let him be happy because honestly? The demons, nor Menos, do not deserve what happens to them in the story. Like, Menos is not a bad guy by any means, his only flaw is that he can get irrational when it comes to the things he cares about, like saving his people, which honestly I can understand. He’s incredibly polite and understanding towards us when we meet, especially considering the fact that his people are in a war against humans and he was just captured by humans and forced to fight in their gladiatorial arena. And if he does get mad at Fina because of her beliefs about Demons (she’s grown up being told they’re the enemy), he’ll calm down and apologize for it. I mean I guess it makes sense, considering he’s the oldest of the group and by proxy probably the most mature, but still

There’s a point in the game where you get separated from Menos, and when I had been released from the story to go on whatever path (there were multiple paths to go) to continue, I immediately went “I’M COMING FOR YOU MENOS!” and veered straight to where I knew he was. He was my hyperfixation character

Anyways, sorry I’ve rambled, but I hope you at least like this art. And please check out Evoland 2. Please. It’s an RPG you can find on Steam, Switch, or PS4. You don’t need to play the first game to understand this one, they’re two completely separate games that just both use the motif of evolving game aesthetics, Evoland 2 using it for time travel. But even then, the first game’s like 2 hours long, 4 to 100% it. Evoland 2’s more around 17 hours to finish, 20 to 100%. I need people to talk to about this game please

Oh yeah also, here’s a simpler version of the drawing I did

[novelmonger]

Horizon Zero Dawn - I was so skeptical of this game at first. My brother recommended it to me, using the selling points of "strong female character," "open world," and "robot dinosaurs," which...made me wonder if he even knows me at all, because all of those make me not want to play a game ^^' (Aside: Why does everybody talk about robot dinosaurs when talking about Horizon Zero Dawn? There's only one or maybe two kinds of machines in the game that fit that description; most of the others are more like more familiar animals, like horses or big cats or something.) But I was able to get it for free, so I decided to go ahead and try it out. To my surprise, it actually ended up being really fun! I'm still not a huge fan of the characters or story itself, but the worldbuilding is phenomenal. I'm not normally a completionist, necessarily, but you can bet I went out of my way to find all the datapoints. And there's nothing like swinging onto a Strider and galloping from one end of the map to the other, watching the sun rise and set on that gorgeous scenery while beautiful atmospheric music plays.

The Cluefinders 4th Grade Adventures - Please tell me other people around here are familiar with the Cluefinders! This was one of my favorite games back in the day! You follow four kids, their talking dog, and their little flying robot computer thing as they go on adventures and solve mysteries. The animation/art style (not to mention the educational nature of the games) reminded me of Magic School Bus, which was probably part of why I was immediately receptive to it. The characters are all distinct and have great chemistry with each other, and in this one they get to go to Egypt and explore the pyramids, which was always a part of history that fascinated me as a kid. One thing I like about the Cluefinders games is that, unlike most Learning Company games that tend to focus on a single subject like math or reading, this one had a bit of everything. Did I use trial and error for the math levels I found hard? Sure, but I had fun doing it. The one downside, maybe, would be that it becomes very repetitive. You have to find a certain number of tablets or something, and to do that you have to keep going around to the same shopkeepers and doing the same tasks over and over again. But the satisfaction of finally getting to the end! The way the kids change in the final level! Also, I love the villain in this game. Sometimes, I will still quote him laughing evilly, coughing, and then saying, "I swallowed my mint." XD

Ib - Wat. How did this obscure Japanese RPG Maker horror game beat out games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Spider-Man? ._. Personally, I think both of those games are much better than Ib, but...okay! Don't get me wrong, I did really enjoy Ib. Probably the best RPG Maker game I've ever played. It did some really interesting things with the art - which is fitting, since it's set in a haunted art gallery. Very creepy game, to be sure.

Evoland 2 - Eyyy, somebody out there knows this game! XD Like its predecessor, this is an action/adventure game that parodies all sorts of classic video games and their tropes, but it's a much longer and more complex game than the first one, and the story is a lot more compelling. Added to Final Fantasy, Zelda, and Super Mario, I noticed some allusions to Chrono Trigger, Fire Emblem, and more. The really cool thing about this game is that it deals with time travel, so you can jump back and forth through time to figure out what you have to do to save the world from destruction. Also, to my surprise, the card minigame - something I almost always avoid when games have one - was actually really fun. I played it every chance I got.

Hob - This was such a cool little game. There are no words in it beyond the menu, so you have to figure out the story and how things work on your own. You play as...potentially the last of your kind, in a world that's being overcome by some sort of plague or poisonous growth that's making the inhabitants of the world violent. You're trying to restore the world to its peaceful, thriving state, and do so with the help of a giant robot. The only problem is, towards the beginning of your quest, you touch the poison and end up losing your arm. You get a replacement arm from the robot, and go through the rest of the game with this huge, lopsided arm. The aesthetic is very cool (lots of gears and stone overgrown with moss - made me think of Castle in the Sky), and there's just something about it that really encourages exploration.

Spider-Man - Okay, I haven't played any other Spider-Man games, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is the best one. At the very least, it made me want to play it, which is more than any of the others can say :P And actually, it only took one cinematic trailer to convince me, because I saw that they'd captured Peter's quippy personality, the set pieces looked really cool, and the fighting looked really fun. That's probably the greatest strength of this game. I haven't felt so cool when fighting in a video game since Prince of Persia! Every move feels so fluid and seamless and fast-paced, the little squigglies indicating Peter's spidey-senses are so naturally integrated into the HUD, there's a huge variety of approaches you can take so you can approach a fight however you like...it just really made me feel like a superhero. The story itself is kind of standard Spider-Man fare, but I appreciated that it's set a bit later in Peter's life and career - he's still young, but it's not right when he first gets his powers, so he's got some history and experience with a lot of supervillains already. I also really liked this version of MJ and Miles Morales. The game was so fun that I played through all of the DLC as well and got something like 97% completion (I didn't do all of the challenges, and I point-blank refused to do any of the Screwball challenges). Possibly my favorite thing about the game was just New York City itself. There's a surprising amount of detail for such a huge space, and it just feels like being in a big city, which I love.

Jak 3 - I won't deny this game has some issues, but I still really like it. There's some cool father-son relationship stuff. You get a much wider world to explore in the Wasteland, and some almost Shadow of the Colossus-esque battles against huge Metal Heads. The Haven City you grew to know and love in Jak II is barely recognizable because of the Metal Head invasion. You get some seriously cool upgrades, both to weaponry and to eco abilities. YOU GET TO PLAY AS DAXTER SOMETIMES. And I'm not sure exactly what they changed, but I thought the game was much more balanced, the difficulty of missions not fluctuating quite as much as in the previous game, even though it's still fairly open-ended. There's just something about the missions in Jak 3 that made me want to keep trying every time I died, whereas Jak II often got me frustrated and wanting to give up. (Not to mention that racing is actually fun in this one? Whaaaaat, that's possible? :O) I will forever be mad about the ending, though.

Magicka - Aw, I'm sad nobody voted for this one :( It's such a fun game! It parodies a lot of fantasy stories (and the first six chapter titles are parodies of Star Wars, e.g. "The Fancy Menace" XD) It allows up to four-player co-op, so you can join your friends to fight monsters and go face off the mysterious figure who is threatening the safety of the world. The spell system is really quick and easy to pick up and intuitive to use, and allows for some really cool customization. I think this game is best played with at least two players. I played it with my brother, which was super fun - I would hang back to give cover fire and support, and he would charge into the fray. Tons of fun.

Arbitrarily-Chosen Video Game Tournament Round 1.14

Welcome to the Arbitrarily-Chosen Video Game Tournament, where we will find out which of the games I've played is the best game of all time!

Why? Don't ask. Just vote and reblog!

[sleepdepravity]

me: oh yeah, we all have our edgelord phases, haha, i grew out of mine a long time ago though

me: *falls in love with a literal demon prince who is basically the last of his kind*

[miomediator]

Special HS related post- Games as aspects

Hey~ So there was WorstGirlEva on Twitter that offered once to recommend a game depending on your classpect.

https://twitter.com/WorstGirlEva/status/1268325235285045248

And it made me think about games I know (played, watched or not). So here’s a list of games listed by Sburb aspects. The games we get interested in do tell much about ourselves, and while writing this post I realised that mine were almost all Life-coded XD

You may disagree with some of my choices, and that’s okay! I’m not sure at 100% about my selection, and some games share several aspects.

Feel free to leave an ask or note to talk about the post :)

Hope (optimism, beliefs and ideas): Wandersong; Scribblenauts; Ookami (also Life-related)

Rage (pessimism, conviction in one truth and revolution): Detroit: Become Human (also Blood-related); We Happy Few; Mosaic (Hope/Rage duality, Doom and Blood)

Breath (detachment from reality, movement and individuality): Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker; Ori and the Blind Forest (Blood and Breath duality); A Short Hike

Blood (societal reality, bonds and unity): Life is Strange 2; Papers, Please (also Mind-related), Night in the Woods (also Doom-related)

Life (substantiality, power and possibilities) : Stardew Valley; the Pikmin series; Cities: Skylines

Doom (disease, technology and limits) : Don’t Starve; Final Fantasy VII (also Rage-related); the Resident Evil series

Light (information/words, victory and relevance): The Stanley Parable; Age of Empires series; Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom

Void (secrecy/code, misfortune and irrelevance),: Perception; Baba is You (Void and Light duality); Virtuaverse

Time (pace, mourning and destruction): Life is Strange; Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask; Evoland II

Space (setting, materiality and creation): the Portal series; Minecraft; Damari Katamari

Heart (the inner self, metaphysical realm and feelings): Ghost Trick (Heart /Mind duality, and Time related); Undertale; One-shot

Mind (the outer self, adaptability and logic): Professor Layton series; Beyond Two Souls (Heart and Mind duality); The Witness

[quibbs126]

Aight, so there’s this game, Evoland 2 (everyone should go play it, it’s a really good game) and I’m currently having a conundrum.

Okay, first let me give context. There’s this thing the game does where the names of things are 1 letter differences to something else

Examples include:

Smog = Smug

Mana = Maana

Super Mario = Super Morio

Vikings = Wikings

There are others, but those are the only ones I can think of right now. It’s so shameless I honestly I find it hilarious.

Anyways, another thing they do is have names be references to something else, usually with a theme going on, and sometimes they’ll mix it with the one letter difference

Nibiru Village = Nibiru, the Ancient One (Yugioh)* (Edit: apparently Nibiru is actually a reference to the Nibiru Cataclysm, some disaster people thought was going to happen in the early 21st century, according to Wikipedia)

Genova = Jenova (Final Fantasy 7)*

Ceres = Ceres, the Roman god of agriculture (there’s a good reason for it, but I won’t say here for spoilers)

Cherry & Plum = cherry plums

*I don’t know if this is their actual reference, but it’s the best I can find

Anyways, so then we come to a particular group of characters, and from what I can tell they all share a similar naming theme of mythical kings

First, we have King Arthus = King Arthur from Arthurian legend, king of the Round Table

Then, we have Menos, who after a while I realized = King Minos from Greek myth, who’s I believe the namesake and guardian of the Minotaur, if my cursory glances at Greek myth are to be believed 

Anyways, so here’s my problem: there’s a third member of this group and his name is Reno.

Only problem, I don’t know who he’s named after, and it’s really bugging me

Does anyone know any mythical kings one letter off from Reno? Please I need the answer