#sword and sworcery

[thatonecode]

i think part of it is like . the game is about something being Wrong . the game is filled with this quiet little dread that gets louder over time as you realize the ending of the story . and its so good because there is no twist ending . you start the game and you can see at the end of it you will be dead . and you play the game . and you die . theres no other way that it can go .

[je-lurk]

I love you the Scythian

I love you the woodsman known as Logfella

I love you Jim Gunthrie

I love you the Archetype (but just a little bit less than the others)

I love you the dark-haired girl known as Samae

I love you Dogfella

Fuck you the Gogolithic Mass (I still love you a bit)

I love you sylvans

I love you the three-eyed wolf

The Grizzled Boor my beloved (you’re still a weird koala in my heart of hearts)

I love you weird trippy mushrooms

I love you badass ghosts

I love you deers and rabbits that flee upon approach

I love you Moon Grotto

[ss-2dplatformer]

Research on World Design! (Mainly the setting, and I don't mean the one in the options menu)

The games that I am looking at are Sword and Sworcery, Terraria (specifically the use of Biomes), Dave the Diver (How the underwater exploration is done) and Eternal Castle (The limited colours and use of photos).

Sword and Sworcery:

The first thing I notice is how everything seems to be very low resolution with a low amount of colors used in each asset, yet it comes together perfectly in a way that is exciting and enjoyable to look at. The game is mostly point and click along side being a sidescroller which is quite interesting. Additionally, the combat seems basic but is quite intuitive with two buttons of to block, and to attack.

Terraria:

I love Terraria. I definetly will not be able to do it justice in this small paragraph but I shall try my best. The way Terraria's biomes are put together are quite well done. Before even starting a Terraria world, in the creation menu, you are greeted with options as to what world size you would like, and which world evil biome you want, though you can pick random. Whenever starting a new Terraria world, you will always spawn in the Forest biome. On one side of the world is the snow biome & dungeon, with the other side being the jungle biome. It always works like this, though the sides the biomes spawn on can change per world. The first biome you'll usually encounter when leaving the forest is often the desert biome, a barren sandy wasteland with nothing but cacti and vultures. Though, occasionally, you can find oasis variants of these biomes which have a water pool in the middle, surrounded by palm trees on both sides. This shows the player that even in the harshest of conditions (a desert), things can still survive and thrive as presented with the oasis. All of this combined shows that the world is an unexplored and tough place to get started in, with everything trying to kill you, but as you progress, it all slowly gets easier to deal with until you reach hardmode, then the progression seemingly resets with even tougher enemies for you to have to overpower. The setting is great, throwing you into an unexplored world teeming with treasures for you to find. From an underground mushroom biome, glowing blue with funky music to compliment it, giving off a true sense of mystery and curiosity. Then the deep red Crimson or dark purple Corruption biomes (The world evils I mentioned earlier) have music that is of intrigue but also a more sinister tone showcasing that these areas aren't going to be as friendly as the other places you may have explored.

That was long and I definetly did not do this game justice, even though I have like a bajillion hours on it on Steam- Additionally, I couldn't find a video that discusses this topic unfortunately.

Anyways:

Dave the Diver:

The way that underwater exploration in this game is done is very well crafted. Almost suffocating like while also making you want to explore more, going very deep. The environment is 3D but you play as a sidescroller. Due to the games environment being mostly underwater, the developers have been able to be very creative with what is down there, as anything seemingly alien like would work in this sort of setting.

[wicketcityart]

concept illustration for a comic inspired by the indie game sword & sworcery and the legend of zelda ☾

Instagram

[videogamepolls]

Requested by anon

[onthegreatsea]

people will continue to get older, so it is no good waiting until the universe recollapses to return to our youth

[mrmungrl1]

Dreamwalk

Who can guess my inspiration

[themoonatmingitaw]

I found your tumblr after coming across your Astarion Burn animatic (chills, fever, screaming, crying, I’m playing it on repeat forever). But I knew I needed to follow when I saw your blog name!

Sword & Sworcery is the greatest game ever and I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone else who’s ever heard of it before you.

Oh thank you! That game is a beautiful thing, isn't it? I still listen to the soundtrack regularly, I am glad you recognized it in my name!

I made some fanart of S&S also, but that was a LONG time ago. There were also some lovely pieces by other artists here on tumblr.

Also, thank you for your comment on my animatic, I am very happy you liked it! :)

[sergeanthatredbignaturals]

Be prepared for an influx of autismposting about games we played on our first i-Pad at like age 9

Because I’m gonna replay a bunch of em

I’m charging up our old i-Pad rn to play them on because they’re out of date on our current one

[biocrafthero]

Okay quick question. Has anyone else played this because it kinda rocks

[thatonecode]

what if i were to start s&s posting like it was mainstream . cant get over the scythian choosing to walk into martyrdom knowing it would kill her even before the beginning . full knowledge shes a game construct and she accepts her fate and spends the entire game believing in the players plan for her, knowing it will kill her . hell at the start of the game WE don't even know it will kill her . and how she never really becomes a character in her own right because she is so committed to her cause (us) that all her narration is done in second person . she doesnt do anything . WE freed the mass under the mountain and got the tome . its just . !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[je-lurk]

Quick Gogolithic Mass fanart

[lakesbian]

4, 6, 21, 22, 25 for alec!!

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

animated undersiders dramedy cartoon please please pl

6. What's something you have in common with this character?

really, really, really likes aisha laborn

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

ice cream knave isn't really particularly in character because the basic premise means i had to make him less depressed and less repressed and so on so that he would actually get off his ass and transition and interact with the undersiders instead of just like. laying there corpseishly. so i'd say my least favorite thing about writing him is that being so inert he's de facto a background character means that it's v difficult to get an interesting fic out of focusing on him--it's critical that he's almost entirely numb and unchanging until he meets aisha. (which is a bitch to write for different reasons that are more of a Personal Skill Issue.)

as for favorite things to do when writing him. well aside from my amount of unfinished tossing jean-paul through the meat grinder for fun and enjoyment i think it is fun to make him silly with it....everyone always forgets that he's silly with it

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to this character? Something you don't like?

don't like: well folks i think i've talked about this enough we don't need to get into another rant about it right now!!!!! i do think if you separate him from aishie and make some other random girl he's never interacted with take her place of import in his life you should be saw trapped though.

do like: sword & sorcery (<- fics that make me misspell 'sorcery' as 'sworcery' 20000 times) is the only fic with alec in it on the planet that accurately captures his tendency to say incredibly weird and rude and offputting things by more or less complete accident because he has something wrong with him. its great. more of that please.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

first: uninteresting wildbow moment

now: Oh You Know

[wicketcityart]

creatures that live in my sketchbook .𖥔 ݁ ˖

[gaogaigoatgrrl]

btw, here's an updated list of ttrpg projects i either have on the backburner or am working on in some way:

wheel breaker

this is kinda my main project rn, it's a game about martial arts and intrigue in a fantasy setting largely derived from various buddhist concepts. it is metaphysically buddhist but politically anarchist, as a direct result of my efforts to work through various apparent contradictions at the intersection of those belief systems. hopefully these internal tensions will give it spice!

it's built on a chassis loosely resembling pbta (most of these systems are), but it also has a dice bank system lifted from the japanese game kamigakari, and it's a bit gamier. it largely runs on the conceit that combat and dialogue are extensions of each other

it's kinda my effort to take things i like about systems like exalted and streamline them into something more playable, but it's also kind of a release valve so i don't infodump about buddhist stuff all the time. i do infodump to my friends and partners about the game itself, though, so ymmv on the effectiveness of that

cassette

cassette is supposed to be a horror game, influenced by films like videodrome and tetsuo: the iron man

it's supposed to be focusing on body horror, psychological horror, transformation, madness, and postmodern anxieties, but i'm a little uncertain of what direction exactly to take it in, so i'm putting it on the backburner for now

mechanically a lot of my ideas for it stem from my dissatisfaction with sanity mechanics in other games. i think modeling a character's mental state can be a really cool thing to do but if you want to do it well you kinda have to build the whole system around that purpose, and as someone with various mental health issues, the whole concept of mental hit points that make you roll on a table of dsm entries when you take damage really rubs me the wrong way

iron oracle

this is a mecha game. player characters are pilots with psychic powers, i haven't figured out much about the lore yet but the more i think about it the more i think i kinda wanna make it the anti-lancer. defend your planet from being re-colonized by the now-unrecognizable space empire that left it to its own devices centuries ago

mechanically i think a lot of what i want to do with this system is... i look at lancer and icon, and the way those systems have two separate modes of play for narrative and combat, and i do think that's a really cool design innovation with lots of benefits but also i see it and i want to immediately fuck with it by blurring those lines. part of my mindset here is "there are distinct benefits to having two separate modes of play, how can i smash that wall while keeping the benefits?" it's a personal design challenge

devil hunter: summoning software survivor

this is a reboot of an old project i was working on for years, called sword-swingin sworcery. originally it was my attempt at making a character action game in ttrpg form, so its setting and lore were very devil may cry-influenced, which i eventually tried spicing up by adding some shin megami tensei. it was a bloated mess, but the setting concept is still one that i want to work with

mechanically, i'm drastically simplifying from the system i had before, but this is another experiment in having a narrative/combat divide while bridging the gap. player characters fight using summoned demons, so they effectively have entirely separate stats and mechanics for combat. but there's interplay with their narrative mechanics, since there are several resources in narrative play that can also be used in combat. it's also an experiment in designing a gamier combat system that heavily focuses on things like damage types!

hell city hustle: a delinquent rpg

this is my newest project. a while back i was thinking "what if i took the general framework for social/combat mechanics in wheel breaker and put them in a totally mundane modern setting?" and then i realized that this would pretty much just be a beat-em-up rpg and i got excited. i extrapolated from that and now i'm making a game about being delinquents in a city full of wacky themed gangs like in the warriors

mechanically this is keeping the dice bank system from wheel breaker but now they're called heat dice. the dev soundtrack is just "double dragon neon ost - glad i am" on loop

[onthegreatsea]

i rly hate how i cant play games i bought on windows xp on windows xp because steam stopped supporting windows xp. fuck drm.