#there could be a minigame where you use all the materials you collect to create little art pieces

[veveisveryuncool]

kirby side game where it's like star allies but for all the side characters kinda like yoshi's wooly world. prince fluff and elline and claycia and drawcia and gryll and keeby and. idk maybe his warp star too. they all go on a big arts-and-crafts themed adventure yayy. and depending on which friend you choose the material the world is made of changes.

[suzuran777]

Analyzing some of the very first BL visual novels

First of all, I've talked about most of these topics during my Citrus con panel on Augustus 24th, so for those who missed it or who wanted a list of all the visual novels mentioned during the panel, those are also mentioned in this blog post! Japanese BL visual novels have been something I’ve been interested in since 2010-2011, and even these days many people in English speaking fanbases are familiar with games like DRAMAtical Murder and the other Nitro + Chiral titles. I've played many older titles which I've previously reviewed on this blog, and in this post I will be looking at some of the very first BL visual novels and how the industry has changed throughout the years.

Before the very first "official" BL visual novels were released, some visual novels already existed in which a male protagonist had romantic or sexual scenes together with one of the other male characters. Some examples of this are games like Sotsugyou Ryokou (1996) and Ko-Ko-Ro (1998). Most of the other love interests in these games were girls, so they were not promoted as “boys’ love” games.

The oldest visual novel I could find that was promoted as a game which focuses on love between boys, is a game called Sei Valentine Gakuen, released by a company called B.M. in early 1999. This is a game in which you can name the protagonist, and none of the characters are voiced. While checking their old website through Waybackmachine, it seemed like the game had a lot of game-breaking bugs which they attempted to patch out, however the website quickly shut down within what seems like only a year (or maybe a few years) after its release date. Since there's not a lot of information about this game available online, I was surprised that someone bought the game second-hand and made a youtube video about it, so I recommend checking that out! You can watch it here. Despite being promoted as a game that focuses on love between boys it seems like there’s not really romance in the game, so I am curious why they marketed the game in this way.

Next is a game called BOYxBOY, released a few months after Sei Valentine Gakuen in April 1999. This is one of the games I actually got to play myself, and I was surprised to see this game was released by King Records (the record label) as I didn’t know they used to publish games, let alone BL games. The protagonist has a face and a name this time, but even though all the other characters are voiced, they decided to leave the main character unvoiced for some reason. This game does have romance elements, like confession scenes, but it's still quite minimal. There’s only one character who actually gets a kiss scene for example. This game did get a fandisc a year later, but it seems to be more of a collection of extra materials and minigames rather than something that really adds something to the story of the game.

Another BL visual novel that was released around this time in July 1999 is a game called Graduation (or Sotsugyou) by Joinac, which as the title suggests, focuses on the protagonist spending time with people at his school right before his graduation. This one actually got translated, so it's probably the first BL visual novel to ever get an (official) English translation. Unlike most other games from this time, this one can still be easily accessed too, as a digital version is available for purchase on DLsite.

Entering the 2000s, game developer AliceSoft created their own BL game brand called AliceBlue and released their first BL game called Kakurezuki in 2000. Even though AliceSoft released 18+ rated titles in the past, this first BL title was actually also all-ages. Some reviews mentioned that they don’t really consider the game BL at all, pointing out the lack of romance, and I can definitely see where they’re coming from. Pretty much all the other games I mentioned so far take place in a modern-day school setting, however this game is more of a historical fantasy game (although the plot still only focuses on the protagonist and his daily interactions with those around him).

A lot of the games during this time period still highly resembled the typical dating sim-style game, which was quite popular in the mid/late 1990s. This kind of gameplay means that usually, the player decides what the character is going to do that day, for example, what subjects he takes in school, which club he joins and which locations he visits. In games like Kakurezuki, it’s a bit different you decide what magic skills you want to strengthen that day. This kind of gameplay kind of limits what kind of story the writers can explore, as the plot mostly focuses on the main character’s everyday life and their interactions with other characters, and eventually also became something that’s not commonly used in BL visual novels anymore.

Later that year, in August 2000, one of the most well-known early BL visual novels was released. This was Sukisho (short for Suki na Mono wa Suki Dakara Shouganai) by Platinum Label. The company promoted this game as the “first 18+ boys love game” though Graduation also seems to be rated 18+ on DLsite. Sukisho gained a big fanbase, as many fans really liked the art (drawn by Tsutae Yuzu) and the characters. Even though the plot still focused on boys going to school, some characters do have a darker backstory. The company even created official forums where fans could discuss the plot of the game and fan theories. Some other boards also encouraged fan meetups at local conventions in Japan. It ended up getting 3 different sequels, a PlayStation 2 port, an anime adaptation, and various drama CDs and novels. These days a lot of BL visual novels get drama CDs, but back then this game really got a lot of extra content compared to other games. Like many others, I personally discovered this game through the anime many years ago, but I played the visual novel later as it has also been fan translated and was quite accessible back then.

Another visual novel that stood out, and which also got an anime adaptation, is Angel's Feather (2003). Unlike the rather confusing anime plot, which adds a new character that isn’t in the game, I think the plot of the visual novel is actually much better. Initially it does seem like another game about high school boys, but in reality it’s more of an RPG game that focuses on the characters learning more about the world they’re living in, and their own magic abilities. I think just like Sukisho’s artstyle, compared to many other games that were released at the time, the art of this game quite unique. The artist is Yamamoto Kazue, who worked on many visual novels, and is still active nowadays. This game also got a sequel and drama CDs, but sadly the third game they were working on was never released. The studio was also working on a completely new game called White Shadow, however this one also remains unreleased to this day. If you want to read a little bit more information about this game and other unreleased titles, I wrote a blog post about that too here!

The inclusion of RPG elements I briefly mentioned just now in visual novels was not something only Angel’s Feather did. For example, some of these other screenshots are from Ouji-sama Lv1, Teikoku Sensenki, and Apocripha/0. The gameplay varied from a simple battle system to complicated dungeons and hard to beat enemies, depending on the game. One downside of this is that it’s quite a time-consuming process if you want to see all kinds of different endings, as these parts of the game were usually unskippable. Gradually, this is also something that slowly became less common in BL visual novels.

Generally, a lot of older games were quite difficult to replay as most games only had a limited number of save slots, and sometimes there would be no preview images next to the save files either, so it was quite difficult to remember which save file you were supposed to load. Some of the oldest BL visual novels also don’t have a skip button, which means you have to play through all of the dialogue again if you want to see a different ending. The pictures below are my screenshots from Angel's Feather and Kannagi no Tori, a game that was released in 2001. Luckily both of these games do have a skip button, but there were never enough save slots!

Other than changes in gameplay and artstyles, something that has also changed quite a lot are the dynamics between characters in adult scenes. In most BL visual novels, the protagonist is either a top or a bottom, and this doesn’t really change throughout the whole game. For example, if the official website mentions that the protag is a bottom, that means he’s a bottom with every single one of the love interests. Something I noticed while playing older games is that this order wasn’t always fixed. In games like Laughter Land and Kannagi no Tori for example, the game would often let the player decide. A game that was released a bit later which also has this option is PIL/SLASH’s game Shingakkou -Noli me tangere. In every route, no matter what character, you make the decision. I think it’s kind of fun when the game gives you choices like this, although I’m not sure if they will ever bring it back.

Terminology and target audience When I talk about these games I use “BL game” and “BL visual novel” as these are easily understood when communicating with an English-speaking audience. However in Japanese these games are usually only called “BL game” or "AVG" which just stands for adventure game. In the early 2000s some official websites around this time would refer to these BL visual novels as ''boys games'' to distinguish them from a genre called “girl’s games” or galge, which are games that would typically target a male audience. Even though the term “yaoi” was becoming less common, some developers would also call them “yaoi games” on their website, as you can see in some of the screenshots below . It’s not like the term “visual novel” is something completely unknown to them, but it’s also not a term I ever see them using to promote their games.

As for the target audience, similar to a lot of BL manga, the target audience for many of these BL visual novels was also women. A lot of websites stated that these were games “made by girls for girls”. However, it’s better to not generalize the whole genre as something exclusively targeted towards women, as some games like Hotaru (released by Tarutaru in December 2000) and its sequels were specifically advertised as games "made by gay men for gay men". One of the games I mentioned earlier, Graduation, was also made by a doujin group that calls themselves the Gay Artist Support, and like the name suggests, they support gay artists and alleys. Therefore it can be concluded that even during this time period, it wasn't just women creating and reading BL.

Marketing and sales Some might be wondering; how did people discover these games back then? Around the year 2001, multiple websites were created by fans that kept track of new BL game developers, as well as any updates provided by the companies that were already established back then. A lot of these websites also gave fans the option to chat with each other in their forums. Some examples of these websites are BOY'S STREET and Boyslove Kenkyuujo (which translates to BoysLove research institute). They kept track of both commercial and doujin game releases. Companies and doujin creators would both sell their games at events like Comiket, Super Comic City and J-Garden too, where they would promote their games and chat with fans. Their games would also be sold at stores like Animate and Toranoana, which is not too different than how creators sell their BL games nowadays, as both of these stores still exist. A lot of BL game creators in the early 2000s were quite close to each other and collaborated. For example, some doujin groups like Anubis Label, Ritz, Moon Parrot and more created their own magazine called B-GAME, which featured information about their new doujin games, corporate games, survey results, game reviews and more. The picture below (on the right) is a picture I found on the website of doujin group Moon Parrot, promoting and selling their game Kuro no Tsuki at Super Comic City. Of course official BL game magazines also existed, but I think I will make a separate blog post about that (update: you can read it here!).

Well-known developers throughout the years Next I made a list of some BL game creators that established their brands in the early or mid 2000s, and who continue to be active nowadays. I will mention some newer games as well. There's way too many BL visual novels to include all of them, so I apologize if I missed some that were quite influential!

Langmaor/Tennenouji: The first game Langmaor released was a game called Enzai in 2002, illustrated by Yura. This game focuses on a boy whose name is Guys, who gets sent to prison as a result of a false accusation. In one interview, Yura mentioned that she was almost afraid that the plot of the game would be “too dark”, as the main character experiences a lot of abuse, but she concluded that at least the game would be unique. In 2004 Langmaor released Teikoku Sensenki, and a year later they released Zettai Fukujuu Meirei (or more well-known as Absolute Obedience). This game had a kind of unique system which focused on not one, but two protagonists. The final game this brand released was a game called Laughter Land (2006. The illustrations of this game were drawn by Yuzuki Ichi who had previously worked on Kannagi no Tori. Yura was also part of doujin group called Tennenouj, which already released their first BL game in 2000 called Sei Crain Gakuen, a BL game that you could play by opening HTML files in your browser. They released their second BL game in 2006, which was Miracle No-ton, a game about a notebook that could grand the protagonist’s wishes (horny wishes only though!). In 2009, Luckydog1 was released, which ended up becoming one of the most popular and well-known games in Japanese speaking BL visual novel fanbases. The game is about the protagonist Giancarlo, who’s a low-ranking member of the mafia and currently in prison, who receives the task to free 4 important members of the mafia from prison. Some BL gamemagazines like Cool-B have an annual popularity poll, and for years, LuckyDog 1 and its characters ended up in first place. On BL information websites like ChilChil it continues to be the highest rated BL visual novel to this day. Two years ago, Tennenouji also released the game Friendly Lab, of which the mobile version is still being updated, so even nowadays they are still very active.

Nitro + CHiRAL: Or just called “NITRO CHiRal” these days. They released their first game, Togainu no Chi, in 2005. In the early interviews the director stated that they wanted to create something different, as a lot of visual novels around this time focused on schoolboys and modern-day settings. So instead, they wrote a story that takes place in a futuristic version of Japan, devastated by a Third World War. Only a year later in 2006, they released their second game, Lamento -BEYOND THE VOID- which also takes place in a fictional world. Even though the characters look similar to humans, they call themselves Ribika and have cat-like characteristics. The characters in this game are struggling to survive, as a mysterious force called “The Void” is slowly destroying their world. Because of their unique stories and beautiful illustrations, Nitro Chiral quickly gained a big fanbase in Japan too. In some articles published in Cool-B magazine, they mentioned that they were taking even bigger risks with their next game, as the plot would be anything but happy. This was about their third game, sweet pool. Despite that, I think fans already expected dark and serious stories from the company, so it was still well-received. Before releasing DRAMAtical Murder, they released two more visual novels called Itsuwari no Alkanet and World’s end Nightmare, though these were only available on Chiral Mobile, an app that could only be downloaded on certain Japanese phones. These days these games are considered lost media, but I wrote a blog post about what I could find about them some years ago. Afterwards they released their more well-known games DRAMAtical Murder in 2012 and Slow Damage in 2021.

Pil/Slash: This is a BL visual novel developer that is well known for writing dark stories, with themes like abuse, noncon, physical and emotional torture. Though of course this is not too uncommon in BL visual novels, as all of the developers I’ve previously mentioned include themes like that in their games too.Their first game, Masquerade ~Jigoku Gakuen SO/DO/MU~, was released in 2006, followed by Koibito Yuugi a year later. In 2011, one of their most well-known titles, Shingakkou –Noli me tangere- was released. This game is about protagonist Michael who’s enrolled in a seminary. However, his school life is anything but peaceful, as his family gets murdered and he also discovers a secret society of devil worshippers in his very own school. At the moment this is the second highest rated BL game on ChilChil, after Luckydog1. After this they released Pigeon Blood in 2014, which was also a horror-themed game, and Paradise a few years later, which was quite popular in Japan too. In 2021 they released their newest game, Dystopia no Ou. This game focuses on protagonist Kiriku who dreams about becoming a rock star. Initially, this seems quite different than PIL/SLASH's previous games, but I promise the story still gets pretty dark. The writer credited for Paradise and Dystopia no Ou is Kyuuyouzawa Lychee, who's also the creator of doujin game group LOVE&DESTROY and games like CAGE OPEN and CAGE CLOSE.

Spray: This company’s first game was Saikyou Darling, released in 2001, but I think they are probably more well-known for their Gakuen Heaven series. The first Gakuen Heaven game was released in 2002, but since then they have released a few newer versions of the game, console versions and a second game. This is another one of these games that people might know because it has an anime and manga series. Spray has released quite a few different games like Soshite Bokura Wa, Piyotan, STEAL! and more recently Tsumi naru Rasen no Ori, but I think other than Gakuen Heaven their most well-known title is probably Kichiku Megane, released in 2007. This game focuses on protagonist Katsuya, a salesman who seems to be failing at everything in life. Just before he’s fired from his job, he receives a mysterious pair of glasses from someone. Whenever he wears these glasses, his personality completely changes. He suddenly becomes very skilled at everything, but also very sadistic. In recent years fans have started organizing fan events for this game at local conventions again, so it’s interesting to see how popular it still is.

Holicworks: Also known as LoveDelivery, as that’s the name they used to release some of their very first games, like Tsukigami (2007) and Beniiro Tenjou Ayakashi (2008). Their most well-known title Taisho Mebiusline, released in 2012. This game is a historical fantasy game which takes place during the end of the Taisho period, in 1923. The protagonist, Kyouichirou, moves to Tokyo in order to go to university. However, he runs into trouble soon after his arrival, as the Imperial Military becomes interested in his ability to see spirits. The writer of this game, Nakajo Rosa, is often praised for the historical research she did in order to write this game. The story covers all kinds of political issues, international affairs and military activity, and combines it with religious themes such as Shintoism. This also means that even for Japanese speakers, the game can be a bit difficult to read, as it tends to use difficult words and kanji. However, I think with a bit of research it’s not impossible. They also released games like Tokyo Onmyouji, Tokyo 24ku, and more recently Tokyo Satsujinki Gakkou no Kaidan, though the only game that has an English translation is Tokyo Onmyouji, which takes place in a more modern-day setting, but still focuses on supernatural themes like ghosts and spirits.

Karin Entertainment: Another developer that has been around for a long time, who released their first BL game series called Bois in 2002. Afterwards in 2004, they released the game Animamundi Owarinaki Yami no Butou~ (Animamundi: Dark Alchemist), which I’m not sure if I should be calling BL game as there are also a few female love interests. The games they released after this aren’t BL games, but instead they created a new branch called Karin Chatnoir Omega, which released the game Omertà ~Chinmoku no Okite~ in 2011. In this game the mafia controls the government, and the protagonist J.J. is a hitman who’s taking all kinds of assassination jobs. In 2016 they also released the game Omega Vampire, which is the first omegaverse BL visual novel.

Parade: This is a game developer known for creating games in which the protagonist is exclusively a top, or seme, which is also something that was not super common in the past. In a lot of other games almost all of the love interests are younger guys, so I think it was interesting to see at least two of the other main characters in NO THANK YOU!!! were over the age of 35. Even though most Parade games have a lot of 18+ content, like NO THANK YOU!!! and their second game Room No. 9, one should not underestimate the plot, as the writing is really good. My favorite game is probably their latest game, which is Lkyt., a historical fantasy game and my personal favorite.

CORE: This is the BL branch of a company called Orbit, and their most well-known game is Messiah, which was released in 2006. Though their first game was a game called Ever Loyalty in 2001, followed by Fanatica in 2004. Most of CORE's games only have 1 or 2 characters the protagonist can end up together with, although sometimes other characters in the game also have their own bad endings. In Fanatica, the protagonist only has one true love interest, but a lot of the other main characters are also paired up with each other, so even if they don't have their own route, you do get to see different scenes with them. Even though CORE released their last game in 2008, which is the Messiah fandisc Messiah ~ Paranoia Paradox. It was announced that they are actually working on a new BL project called Tokyo Gentou/Tokyo Phantasmagoria, under the new name Procyon.

Adelta: Not really 2000s as their first game was released quite some time later, but I think still important because they've gotten quite popular in recent years. This is a doujin game group created by Kurosawa Rinko. The first games this group worked on were Cocoon and Cocoon Black Noise, released in 2014. The game they’re probably most known for is Koshotengai no Hashihime (Hashihime of the old Book Town). This game is quite well known for its references to literature and real writers, and the story also takes place during the Taisho period. Originally it was advertised as a time-loop murder mystery. In 2020 Uuultra C was released, which is a completely different kind of game that takes place during the Showa period and focuses on heroes you’d typically see in a Super Sentai Series, or Tokusatsu movies in which the characters fight kaiju. Adelta is currently working on their newest game, Ooe.

Conclusion Of course there are many more BL visual novels which left a big impact on people, even less serious games like Gakuen Handsome which still get referenced a lot to this day. Another well-known title is Mada Koubou's Hadaka Shitsuji, which was mostly created by artist and writer Togo Mito. It kind of difficult to determine how many BL visual novels currently exist, but BL information website ChilChil currently lists 345 titles in this database. This does however include fandiscs and games that aren't technically BL games, and also doesn't include all doujin games ever released.

The early 2000s was a good time for BL visual novel fans and a lot of developers were making BL games back then, which also meant that there would be many new games to play. These days the number of active developers has significantly decreased, so most of the time you get about 1 or 2 big releases every year. Of course, there are still doujin groups and individual creators who make their own games, but the number of commercial releases is pretty small nowadays.

Some games that were released earlier this year however, are Tokyo Satsujinki Gakkou no Kaidan and Haiiro no Arcadia. I am personally also looking forward to the release of Adelta's new game Ooe, and Procyon's Tokyo Gentou/Tokyo Phantasmagoria, so I recommend checking those out when they're released!

[hylaversicolor]

ok sea of darkness review

great vibes and ambience. unfortunately the world felt too empty. not the setting as a whole (the emptiness added to the vibes) but the ship especially felt like, for as beautiful as it was, there was nothing in the rooms except for places for you to stand and do sudoku. like there were a lot of locations to visit, but not a lot to do as far as exploring and snooping and like. being a detective. i think ran was the first game to really have this problem but this is a more general problem with the later nd games as a whole. e.g. in trt you dust for fingerprints and unlock a security system with a 4 digit code. if trt had been made in 2013-2015 you would have had to recreate the fibonacci sequence with music notes or something in order to achieve the same effect. like why to unlock soren’s tablet did we have to create volcanic winter with pictograms? isn’t the point of a password to be able to quickly and easily access the info on your tablet rather than ruminating over a puzzle, regardless of how fun and cute it is?? volcanic winter should have been a minigame that you could access Inside soren’s tablet, kind of like finger tips for typing, and maybe soren is obsessed w it and makes nancy play and beat him bc he’s bored and lonely and THEN we get to develop soren’s character while integrating the puzzle into the gameplay idk. also why did we have to play 2048 to turn on the lighthouse, that seems like another thing that you would want to do pretty much instantaneously lol. the game throwing in a little meta joke about how unnecessarily complicated it was didn’t make it better. it would have been really cool to actually have nancy go in and collect materials to improvise lighting the lighthouse from scratch, maybe using refraction or fire starting or something (probably impossible w real physics but whatever nancy operated a jetpack in hau who cares). then you get the sense of urgency of running around grabbing items that you’ve seen before but only now have put together how to combine them to solve a puzzle, rather than just sudoku variant #6049283. i’m biased bc i love mechanical puzzles tho.

i actually did like a lot of the puzzles but a lot of them felt like they should have been bonus puzzles, e.g. i liked that the dinner serving puzzle was optional, it felt like a combination of saw bento and ice cooking but less stressful. for some of the nd games i can understand having puzzles (like cur where it’s multiple generations of genuine eccentrics purposefully creating puzzles to stump their descendants as part of an initiation ritual) but there was absolutely Nothing in lawrence’s character that indicated that he would create something like this for his descendants to solve (i had the same problem with gth). only sort of related but oh my GOD why did magnus have his stuffed animals like that. towards endgame it really did feel like sudoku after sudoku after sudoku for no reason. and again - i enjoyed the puzzles! i like doing puzzles!! the one puzzle that i REALLY loved was the bilge puzzle with the numbers. it felt like classic nd and was quite hard and the sense of urgency was there. but i’d argue having So Many puzzles dragged the plot to a dead standstill and pulled the focus away from the characters.

speaking of, the characters were fine to great. the culprit was too obvious and there was very little mystery around their motivation for me. gunnar was the best character. elisabet was just kind of there and felt like kyler reskinned and done slightly better. soren was fun. dagny was fine but why did the devs put a big chunk of her backstory dialogue over the heater puzzle, like stop talking i’m trying to concentrate lol. there also wasn’t a whole lot of intrigue wrt the characters. people were surprisingly up front with their motivations (esp dagny) which was fine but i felt like the character twists came too late or not at all. you sort of just got what everybody was about from the moment go and there was no need to delve any deeper. again except for gunnar, whose character revelation was really nice and really beautifully acted.

also there wasn’t really a greater theme connecting all the characters. gth for all its flaws did this really well. in sea they tried to do something like “we all treated [culprit] badly because we’re a small town and we should do better” but we didn’t Really get to see that in action. especially from magnus who outright says this but we never really get to see that in writing throughout the game so it kind of comes out of nowhere from him (unless i’m missing something). also magnus was kind of a joke character w his limericks and his obsession w the ship but again when we met him we didn’t really get any of that. i didn’t buy his and elisabet’s connection or relationship and when they got back together at the end i was like oh. uhh..okay. again inconsistent characterization a la thornton hall for the purpose of cramming puzzles into every last nook and cranny of the game

dagny’s lesbianism was like. nothing. i had heard she was a canon lesbian before playing so i was kind of excited to see what HeR would do with it and when i got to it i was so disappointed but i can’t really put my finger on why. i guess it’s not that it was stated nonchalantly but that it’s completely superfluous to the plot whereas they had PLENTY of chances over their entire catalogue of games to change any number of straight romances into gay ones WHILE tying into character themes and beats but they didn’t (colton comes to mind in particular, maybe deirdre too). however i respect that it made a bunch of people on the nd forums very mad. that made me like it a little more lol

they did a good job with the setting but i wanted them to take it even further. there was a little bit of viking and volcano stuff right at the beginning but it didn't really go anywhere. also so sad we didn't get a nancy drew hot springs epsiode :(

anyway despite all that i really loved the game. it was a solid 7 or 8 out of 10 for me. i’ve said this multiple times but the thing that really sells a game for me is the ambience and sea had that in droves. i am personally not a big fan of the puzzles being almost completely divorced from the story but i respect that that’s some people’s thing. i will probably play it again but boy did the matchy puzzles get old by the end

[gamer2002]

Danganronpa - Review2002

Danganronpa is a mystery VN, where 15 high schoolers are trapped in a murder school, and in order to get out one has to kill another and frame somebody else for it. Observed and manipulated by the headmaster of the school, a sadistic robot-bear called Monokuma, our main character, Makoto, has to survive and not lose his hope. Because there is a lot of despair. And hope. Despair. Hope. Despair. Light. Darkness. Kingdom Hearts.

But we’ll talk about that later.

Despite all the murder thingy, the game is just an edgy shonen and is very animu. It’s not a bad thing, because it’s entertaining, and that’s what matters the most. Characters are mostly simplistic, often stereotypical, but are distinguish and memorable (aside from meh protag). What is good about the cast is how the group dynamics changes with each case. Thanks to that, the characters seem more alive, and the surrounding drama seems more impactful. And sometimes the drama is really good, though it’s dragged down by the meme writing. But about that later.

The trials, where we try to figure out the killer’s identities, are good gameplay-wise. Aside from the rhythm minigame. I get the creators wanted to demonstrate losing arguments by lack of confidence, but, until half of the game, that minigame had nothing to do with logic or deduction. Every other minigame was good or ok, though.

Comparing to Ace Attorney, the trials were more dynamic, with constant new arguments and questions. It helps that the equivalent of AA’s testimonies is briefer (as it’s on a time limit). Not to mention, the filled with moving camera direction really made non-animated and non-moving characters feel alive. The music was ok – it serves its purpose, but it isn’t memorable.

The gameplay between trials was ok. Investigations didn’t drag too long. The free time did sometimes, but that’s because I was collecting more coins than it was necessary. The coins are spent for presents, which we can give to other characters, in return for learning more about them and gaining upgrades for the trials. But, to be frank, some upgrades were “turn off the setting we put to make the gameplay purposefully shittier”.  

It’s an entertaining game with some good ideas, which earns 7/10 in my book. But there are reasons why this game doesn’t earn any higher, which I’m going to elaborate on. The subject is Kingdom Hearts Meme Writing, Monokuma being a letdown villain, the big revelation being a lot of nothing, and how the writers could’ve made the Hope vs Despair nonsense actually work. The last two are impossible to write about without spoilers, but I can explain the first two without them.

Despair. Despair. Despair. Despair. Do you get it? I hope.

I know this is a shonen, regardless how edgy it is, and the writers were pretty self-aware of this. But the despair/hope meme drags down the writing. Monokuma goes on and on about how he will turn all the hope into despair, and this is just as ridiculous as a talking cartoon bear that kills a man by literally blasting him into space can be. It’s a meme writing. A ham-fisted, forced meme writing.

Other examples of meme writing is Kingdom Hearts, with its light and darkness, or Ace Attorney, with its truth. We all roll our eyes over that. Characters are bringing up some concept in a melodramatic way, repeatably, with a ridiculous zeal that doesn’t just seem alien, but straight out autistic. But it’s okay, all those titles, including Ronpa, are still shonens. Kingdom Hearts is a battle shonen where you fight against forces of evil alongside Donald Duck. You can turn your brain off and enjoy yourself, no biggie. But turning your brain off is a bit harder in, you know, a murder mystery.

Yeah, Ace Attorney is murder mystery as well, and yet I give it a pass. That’s because “truth” is just an ideal of idealistic characters. Phoenix, Edgeworth, and the rest, are melodramatically motivating themselves by simplistically expressing their ideal. And  melodrama is part of a wrestling, and logic wrestling is what Ace Attorney boils down to. So, why this isn’t the same in this logic wrestling game?

The problem with hope/despair is that those are not just some concepts or ideals, but those are emotions. Emotions that the writing does attempt to make you feel, sometimes pretty successfully. Case 4 is an example of a beautifully set up tragedy, it’s the game’s emotional peak. The reveal is shocking and sad, and the dramatic confession is filled with genuine emotion. And then the confession has the word “despair” in it, and my brain is immediately going back to Monokuma and his antics. Good thing that the official translation team has realized that they would have killed the mood sooner, if they had included that word in an earlier appearing evidence. Same thing happens whenever the word “hope” appears – it just makes us recall the memes.

In my AI: Somnium Files I’ve explained to you the need of being explicit about what is supposed to make the player feel emotions. But you can’t be ham-fisted about what the player is supposed to feel. Turning hope and despair into KH’s equivalent of light and darkness is turning them into a material for jokes. It is a repeatable telling us what to feel, and that simply can’t work. If the game didn’t do that, a lot of good moments wouldn’t be dragged down by being a reference to something we joke about.

Monokuma is just the biggest kid tier villain

There are spoiler reasons why Monokuma fails at being a villain, but I’ll mention them in spoiler section about improving the whole hope vs despair conflict. But the basic problem with Monokuma is spoiler-free, because it all boils down to the game’s initial setup.

Generally, Monokuma is a recurring type of villain that mixes nihilism, cartoonish silliness and cruel sadism into one, disturbing package. Other examples of such villains is the Joker, or Killer the Butcher from Zambot 3. When you look at Monokuma alone, he is (aside from spoiler reasons) a good example of such a villain. He is over the top, entertaining, scheming, memorable, gets all the attention in every scene he is in, and is constantly disturbing. All his bases are covered, so all is good, right? But only when you look at Monokuma alone.

Character in a story isn’t just some element you can look at alone, it’s an element you see among all the others. Great villain needs a great hero. Great hero needs a great villain. If one is unimpressive, the other can’t impress us with their triumphs.

The reason why the Joker is a great villain is because he is a challenge for the goddamn Batman, creating a clash of an unstoppable force against an unmovable object. Killer the Butcher’s enemies are kids piloting alien giant robot with superior firepower. What makes the Bucher a good villain is that, regardless of his lost battles, he still succeeds at causing significant collateral damage, which constantly contributes to his stated goal of slowly killing all humans. And Butcher doesn’t just rely on his show reaching logical conclusions about consequences of battles between giant robots, the entire arc before heroes directly attacking his HQ is about him using a weapon they can’t fight with a giant robot – kidnapped people turned into living human bombs. The amount of sacrifices, losses and traumas that kids from a 70s (!) super robot show have to go through is why Killer the Butcher is an impressive villain you love to hate.

But Monokuma isn’t an unstoppable force going against an unmovable object. Neither he is battling heroes that are capable of beating him in a direct confrontation, forcing him to rely on different forms of accomplishing his goals. He targets fifteen uninformed kids, with like three giving him a reason to worry, and puts them in a situation where they can’t initially defy him at all. It’s not a spoiler to say that the kids initially can’t find any clues that would’ve allowed them to free themselves from Monokuma. Their exploration of the school is limited, and next areas are unlocked only after class trials. Meaning, Monokuma limits kids’ ability to gather information required to beat him, until the next killing occurs. If the kids don’t kill anybody, they can only hope to (hah) apathetically accept their imprisonment by Monokuma.

To sum it up, all that Monokuma accomplishes is making some confused kids kill one another, when they are in a situation where it’s their only option to free themselves. Wow, what an impressive villain, doing whatever he wants with helpless children and driving them to murder.

It doesn’t help that the actual conclusion of the conflict with Monokuma is underwhelming, and all his actions only make us respect him less as a villain. But more about that later, in the spoiler section. But not immediately, because first we need to focus on the game’s disappointing big revelation.

Who cares that the world is over?

All attempts to escape the murder school were pointless – the world has already ended! Play the laugh track.

To give the writers credit, Genocide Jill’s explanation of that was funny and played out as a dark joke. And that’s the only way this revelation could be played out.

When it comes for the twist being a twist, it’s okeyish. The twist itself isn’t hard to guess, by the end of the first trial, and it’s almost given away by the third one. On the other side, there are photos of kids that died in previous chapters, and you could wonder if they aren’t going to reveal that everybody lives and this all was a simulation, or something. It can be easily guessed, but there is room for speculation, and you may not know which route the writers will go. Even if those routes are “predictable” and “a disappointing backpedal”.

But even if you end up being surprised… it’s an emotional bunch of nothing. Makoto gets his answer to what could’ve happened to his family, and he still doesn’t even realize it. That’s how the writing poorly handled one way it could’ve made us care about end of the world – through Makoto’s reaction to it.

Makoto is such an uninteresting, purposefully average, and ultimately unimpressive main character. We know he has family, parents, and a younger sister, but one picture of them is all we got. We don’t know the dynamics of their relationship, and we don’t know why Makoto loves them. Just saying “they are his family” isn’t enough. When Superman and his family are written well, we know why Clark Kent cares deeply about them – Ma Kent is such a great mother, Pa Kent is such a great father, and each scene with them demonstrates it.

Through the game, Makoto could’ve flashbacks to his family, as an ongoing C plot. That way we would’ve been shown why Makoto cares about them, why he wants to make sure they are safe, why he could feel tempted about escaping via murder (leading to him rejecting that idea because his family wouldn’t want it that way). And then boom – yes, the world has ended, and they are probably dead.

But Makoto never ever connects the state of the world to the state of his family. And that’s a big mistake, because that was a way to spice up the ultimate clash between Hope and Despair.

How to argue that Despair can be better than Hope

Before I focus on the topic, let me first expand on the topic of Monokuma being a disappointing villain, by telling you why Junko is a disappointing villain.

Junko just pulls everything out of her ass. Ok, she happens to have a super soldier sister, who was capable of killing Academy’s entire adult staff, letting her to take over the school. This part is acceptable by shonen standards. It was the Acadamy that was responsible for sealing the building and setting its defense, ok. But then everything else is an unexplained bullshit. Endless Monokumas? She has them because the writer says so. Ability to take away memories? She has them because the writer says so. Hijacking all TV channels? Performing ridiculously complex executions? Securing supplies to the Academy in a post-apo setting? She can because the writers says so.

She simply isn’t a formidable villain. She is nothing more than a bored girl, that could’ve been successful as a normal person, but the entire universe decided to grant her everything to let her play a supervillain. She doesn’t accomplish any impressive feat by herself. Even taking over of the Academy was solely thanks to her sister. With her granted unfair total advantage over the cast, there was no other way for her to lose than keeping screwing herself. She can’t even gain respect as a formidable opponent from sticking to her rules, because she not only purposefully handicaps the most competent person in the cast, but also keeps breaking her own rules.

The second aspect of a good villain is understandability. And Junko is a stupid incomprehensible mess. She always feels despair, and that somehow makes her constantly bored. But she wants to prove that’s better than hope. For some reason, she is a sadist. She is also happy about facing ultimate despair in form of her own death, but she didn’t yearn to that enough to off herself before all her plans. Nothing adds up, and she just does whatever crazy shit the writers needs her to do at the current moment. This is the aspect where she just sucks as a Joker-type villain. Such villains, when done well, aren’t just twisted, wrong, crazy edgemasters. When done well, they are also, despite everything, still somehow understandable. That’s what makes them actually shocking. It isn’t just shocking that they do horrible things, it is shocking that they can argue that everything they do serves a purpose and is consistent with a coherent belief.

Joker (when written well) and Killer the Butcher do have nihilistic philosophy that is wrong and twisted, but does have some shocking points. Joker believes that normal life is pointless, because one bad day can drive you mad, so it’s better to embrace awfulness of the world as your entertainment. And this philosophy is consistent with him wanting to commit macabre crimes. Killer the Butcher believes that humans are ungrateful bastards and will even treat their saviors like crap. And this philosophy is consistent with him wanting to kill all humans. Even if you don’t agree with their believes (I hope), you understand why somebody with such believes would be doing what they are doing. This understandability is what elevates banal conflict against a bad guy that does a bad thing that has to be stopped, into a conflict against a personified idea. Batman doesn’t just fight the Joker, he fights a nihilistic view of a pointless mad world. Zambot 3 kids don’t just fight Killer the Butcher, they fight view of humans as unworthy of living and being saved. That is why those conflicts aren’t banal.

Meanwhile, Junko makes a big promise for a Hope vs Despair conflict, arguing that the latter is better than former, but...

What is “despair” anyway? Is it to give up from stuff like escaping the school, and accepting whatever you end up having, however shitty it is? But what does it have with Junko’s boredom and embracing her own death? What is the point of the over-the-top executions? Junko is gleefully sadistic, what about despair makes you sadistic? Did she want the cast and her viewers to embrace sadism as well?  How’s that better than hope? It’s incomprehensible, and fails to make any point. The blame lies pretty much on the out-of-place sadism that exists just to make Junko an edgelady.

Danganronpa is a murder mystery. And despite being an over-the-top shonen, it does focus, decently, on motives for committing murders. Every single killer in this game is understandable. Their actions were wrong, but you understand why they did everything they did. There is just a sole exception to this rule – the games’ main villain.

During the final confrontation, Junko was arguing that futile hopes of previous murderers drove them to committing murder. That alone does make a good point. Then she offered everyone safe peaceful life, if they acknowledged her belief and abandoned all hope. Ok, that’s a good dilemma. Surprising that with such a good prepared dilemma Junko bothered to handicap and eliminate Kyoko, when she could just guide the cast towards Junko and this dilemma faster. Still, Junko does make a point about despair being better than hope, and does make the cast face a dilemma, in a way that is consistent with her belief. But then she adds she wants to punish someone for lulz, and that person has to be our bland player character.  

And how killing Makoto proves that despair is better than hope? It was a yet another act of Junko’s pointless sadism, which only made it more difficult for other characters to agree with her. Anyway, Junko is ultimately unimpressive, because she loses to Makoto just saying “let’s have some hope, guys”. All that buildup of understandable motives of past killers lead to a rather banal final conflict with a completely banal resolution.

Things would be different, if Junko didn’t forget about Makoto’s family and did bring them up during the final argument. I still think that trying to kill Makoto was counterproductive, but I understand the need of putting MC’s life at stake. But Junko could single out Makoto for execution because he was pushing for the idea of everyone leaving the school, despite the revelation about state of the world, and she could accuse him for selfishly risking lives of others, just for a hope of reunion with his own family. Imagine that being the payoff of flashbacks to Makoto’s family and his wish to reunite with them. Sure, here, Makoto has proved he wouldn’t directly murder anybody over it, but would he willingly disregard safety of others? He can’t really refute that, without giving up on leaving the school.

And that’s how Junko could undermine Makoto and make her point. Living trapped in the school and abandoning all hope for the outside world was bad, but it could be worse. At least it was safe, peaceful, and they had food plus entertainment. Looking for anything better outside was risky. Hoping for anything better was risky. Hope was bad. The state of despair, where you no longer hope for anything better than what you have, was good. Unable to accept this Makoto was spreading ideas that were dangerous for the well-being of others. How Makoto, willing to selfishly drag everyone else into a dangerous hell-word and risk their lives, was that much different from every other killer? Sure, they killed others directly, but at least none of their victims had a slow and painful death. Makoto was willing to potentially doom others to that. And this is why he had to be put down, like all the other killers had to be, regardless of their understandable motives. In the current state of the world, any reckless hope is a dangerous thought crime.

Here, the final debate could be more complex. Makoto could’ve pointed out that, even if he could be accused for having a selfish hope, it was the same with others. Everyone else wanted their situation to improve, and giving that up for hollow safety wouldn’t do. Hope is better than despair, freedom is better than safety. The future of post-apo is libertarian, and if we can’t live with the freedom to pursue our hopes, then we won’t live at all. No more lockdowns!

You don’t have to agree with such a statement, but at least it is some statement. Here, we have a clash of hope that accepts the risk against despair that is unwilling to accept any risks. Unlike what we got, where despair is somehow tied to sadism, and hope simply rides on the power of friendship.

[clarste]

(not same anon, but still Cannonball) More broadly, would you want the amount of luck to increase or decrease? Level difference matter more or less? Characters more balance or less? Redesigned many abilities or just leave them be? My impression is that you dislike the long cooldown of trump cards and the huge advantage of dueling over everything else, right?

...Why would I want less character balance? Well, I guess in a certain sense there’s a theory that “balance = homogeneity = boring” but honestly I would say that the power level floor needs to go up a little. The powerful characters are in about the right place for fun, but the weaker characters just feel a little pointless.

Specifically, it seems to me that the relevance of plus and minus tiles, and therefore abilities that interact with them, have been greatly overestimated by the designers. For example in the latest banner, they’re advertising Letty as a character who would be dominant on Total Assets maps because she gets +1 to her movement rolls in that ruleset (sometimes) and also her trump card penalizes all other players for landing on plus or minus tiles. Except... by the time you can actually use her trump card, plus and minus tiles are already chump change and you either aim for a better kind of tile (like battles, shops, or properties) or just land on a plus/minus tile and simply don’t care about it effect one way or another.

Essentially, no one makes a significant amount of money from Plus tiles alone, you get from either battles or property, so anything that interacts with Plus tiles is inherently bad because you want to avoid them anyway if you can. This is a general game design problem, not just a problem with a specific character's ability. Properties and battles are vastly more profitable than Plus tiles so you just don’t care. But if they weren’t that powerful, the game would slow down so much that it’d be less fun. What’s the solution to that? I dunno, I’m not a game designer, but I feel like it’d have to be complicated.

That said, I have noticed that the relative power of Plus tiles compared to Properties has gone up a little as you play on higher level maps, so maybe there is some point around which this is balanced, but I don’t know what that is, and either way it means their game has a problem with scaling.

One simple makeshift solution I could suggest is just to lower the initial cooldown on weaker abilities while leaving more powerful abilities as they are. For example, Futo and Alice currently have abilities that buff the effects for landing on Plus or Minus tiles, respectfully. But Alice’s ability has the same cooldown as Marisa’s “steal someone’s property from across the map” ability. Why? It is incredibly weak. Heck, if it had no cooldown at all I probably still wouldn’t use it very often since you can only use 1 card a turn. So you might as well make it available at the beginning of the match, right? It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a simple change to make.

Battles have a similar problem though. Anything that affects battles, or characters who might be balanced around having higher battle stats but weaker out of battle stats, is currently meaningless because battles are trivial. But if they weren’t trivial, then they’d be a slog that greatly interrupts the pacing of the board game with an incredibly long and in-depth minigame. And that’s a bad thing too. They’re trapped between a rock and hard place by their own competing design goals.

Characters who are balanced around their battle stats are especially stupid a the moment, by the way. A lot of characters are simply worse out of battle in every way.

As for dueling, I don’t think characters oriented towards dueling is inherently a bad idea, they just need to buff the effects of the other out-of-battle stats. Essentially they need to create a decisive rather than marginal advantage, that can make or break a turn. For example, if it was possible to stack enough Discount to buy something significant on turn one. Perhaps balance all maps (rather than some maps) around properties not being affordable with your starting cash, and make stacking Discount a strategy that would let you buy one. Same with earnings. Like, double or even triple the bonuses. I mean, why not? If you’re creating dueling beasts who get 3-4 more dice than everyone else, why not give us a shopping beast who gets half-off? Heck, even 100% off? That wouldn’t even be all that OP with the current game rules. Albeit I guess you’d need to prevent them from making a profit by buying talismans and reselling them immediately, that would be a little silly. The opportunity cost is that you’re not optimized to win duels, so your opponents can just steal your stuff that you got for free.

I guess CB not being especially relevant, even in “collect as much CB as possible” mode, is also a fundamental game design flaw. Although there’s sort of a dumb emergent strategy where you just farm CB in Delivery mode to get more rewards at the end, which is super tedious but also the most efficient way to get XP and materials.

Levels mattering is fine. Eventually everyone will be max level anyway, and leveling up is fun. It’d be a problem if levels meant nothing whatsoever. Maybe add some kind of level normalization to PvP, like in Pokemon.

Luck is... fine. I don’t feel like it’s a huge problem, because systems are in place designed to mitigate it. The Duel stat, for example, is designed to mitigate the effects of luck in duels. And I like that, fundamentally. Maps are also usually designed with there being tons of different paths of different lengths, so you aren’t too punished for your movement dice rolls. Usually. Not all maps are created equal, and there are certainly some I like more than others. Anyway, you can also mitigate luck by getting to a shop tile and buying movement talismans (mostly Nitori). It’s absolutely not just a “roll and hope I win” game, it’s a strategic game about making the most of the rolls you’re given.

[fernandoball98]

Techz APK Minecraft 2022 for Android Free Download

Although the frame rate can drop at times, Minecraft is generally good. Everything will go smoothly for a few minutes, but then it will become choppy again. My high-end device cannot handle this game. When playing Asphalt I never experience frame drops. Those games are much more demanding. This one should be easy to handle if that's the case. It should be mobile-friendly. Otherwise, I really like it. The rust and frame drops are terrific.

You can play it in so many different ways, for example. Red stoners, builders, miners, terraformers, hermits, explorers, farmers, painters, and many others are all available. There are also many fun minigames like Spleen, bed wars, tent run, build battle, Minecraft prisons, sky block, hunger games, and many more. There are also creative modes, survival modes, and adventure modes (for explorers). Two bosses must also be beaten.

Now you can try Minecraft for free! Moreover, I think you could add fireflies to the jars and matches you can add them to, and make fishbowls that fish can live in, and after some time, the screen will shake randomly, but other than that, this is a great game! Amazing! What a great job you did! Thanks, Mojang!

What is Minecraft Apk?

Minecraft is one of the most popular games. It is loved by players. It is bought by many people. The game is free, however. You can download Minecraft for free. By clicking the download option, you can download Minecraft for free. The Minecraft PC app can also be downloaded. That game is the most popular app in the world. It is played by everyone. Minecraft games, however, require a subscription. This prevents some players from playing them.

Using blocks, the player can create a shelter, his own settlement, fight monsters, explore mines, tame animals, etc. There are five different game modes: survival, creative, adventure, hardcore, and observation. A variety of worlds can be generated (regular, super-flat, custom, big blocks, stretched, and debug mode).

Enjoy playing alone in a world full of possibilities. Prepare yourself for the horrors that await you as you explore the caves. The only way to get your hands on the gems needed for your equipment is to be brave.

In Minecraft, daily crafting is the norm. Build armor and swords, tools for mining and building materials, and even a portal to hell. Additionally, you can play with friends and take part in all game events, which will help you learn a lot about new and interesting content.

Features:

Exploration of a vast open-world: Minecraft's world is more than four times bigger than Earth's. In essence, it's endless there are no boundaries in Minecraft. There are plenty of places There are plenty of places There are plenty of places to explore in this world, including forests, dungeons, and deserts. There is no restriction on where you can build and how deep you can dig to collect resources. Get materials for buildings, armor, and weapons by chopping trees, digging for ore, and crafting weapons.

This is the last mode: There are survival and creative modes in Minecraft. We recommend starting in Survival Mode since it is the most basic mode. Making things in this mode will require gathering resources, and staying alive will entail eating. It is important to be prepared to fight enemies at night and in dungeons below you.

The next game mode is Creative Mode: You will have unlimited resources at your disposal, and you will not have to eat to stay alive when playing this mode. This will let you build epic structures that are massive and grandiose. Even though this mode isn't challenging, you can focus on unleashing your imagination. Building a castle or a town is an example of a large project that should be planned in advance.

Children will enjoy this activity: People of all ages and demographics can play Minecraft, although children are the most likely to enjoy it. Children can use the game to explore their creativity and develop a love of building things and exploring possibilities. Bringing young people's imaginations to life is likely to have a positive effect on them.

Invite friends to join you: Play Minecraft with someone you know. Adding friends to your profile is also possible. The best part is being able to play with someone you know. For most Minecrafters, it is their favorite part of the game. Friends can play Minecraft together using this feature.

You can choose from a variety of servers: The Minecraft game offers a variety of servers. On these servers, other players can play together. Before using the server, however, check the ping time. With a high ping rate, this game cannot be played uninterrupted. You should lower your ping before playing.

Adjust the settings accordingly: Many Minecraft users customize their apps. Users can adjust the game settings using this app. This includes adjusting the sensitivity of the game, the camera angle, and more. The user can tailor their gaming experience this way. "Play your Minecraft game now."

Create your own avatar: You can customize your avatar in the Minecraft game. This is a very impressive feature. By customizing your avatar, you can make it look exactly the way you want it to. You can choose from a variety of options. It will cost you some money to customize your avatar like a hero.

Marketplace: Minecraft has many options to choose from. These items are your favorites. To purchase them, you need coins. Coins are the most important part of the game. Purchasing coins is the only way to get them.

Key Features:

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To make this possible, the following steps are largely the same. Open the menu, settings, and security, and search for unknown sources so that your phone can install applications from sources other than Google Play Store, and ApkBoat.com. You can go to "Download" in your browser and tap once on the downloaded file. Then install and launch it on your phone. There you will have to wait for some time to load the content. Then tap on the button to run it, this option is available in the security settings of your Android mobile phone.

What are the Pros and Cons of installing the Techz APK Minecraft apk file on your Android phone?

Pros:

APK files are popular for many reasons. The main reason is that new apps have been leaked in advance and are available for download as APK files. This means that users can get official access to new apps before they are available on the official Play Store.

It may be that no application is available in the user's country and therefore cannot be downloaded from the Play Facial Play Store. To access the number of restricted or restricted applications in some areas, users can download the APK file from other sources. For example, the IQ option, an application for a reliable trading online trading platform, is not available for download in some countries. Users in these countries can download the app's IQ Option APK file directly from the IQ Option official website.

APK files allow users to bypass the carrier to get the latest Google updates. It may take some time for some Google updates to be published and available on-air versions. Users can avoid the wait by downloading the APK file directly.

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While APK files are easy to install, they may not always be useful or secure. Users should be careful when downloading APK files as it may be a stolen or illegal application.

There are various APK services available on the Internet that allow users, to download pirated copies directly from their websites. However, it is an illegal activity that users should avoid. Therefore, proper research must be done before downloading any third-party APK files to avoid future legal issues.

APK files are available from many sources on the Internet. However, not all of these can be considered reliable. Some APK files contain malicious software that intentionally infects a user's device. Doing so could compromise the security of the phone and lead to the theft of personal information.

There have also been cases where hackers use APK files, modify them and allow additional applications. Users can accidentally leak sensitive personal information from the device to hackers.

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Reviews:

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[loadmaple347]

Alien Storm Crack

Pick a war any war, and you can pretty much guarantee that it has been done to death on PC already. Well, OK then, the number of games featuring the Tet Offensive or Rorke’s Drift have been pretty thin on the ground, and despite the potential carnage, Passchendaele hasn’t seen much in the way of in-game footage, but generally, wherever there is war, us PC gamers are willing to fight. Just so long as the odds are stacked heavily in our favour.

Commodore 64 Crack: Alien Storm 1581 by Master. About this site: CSDb (Commodore 64 Scene Database) is a website which goal is to gather as much information and material about the scene around the commodore 64 computer - the worlds most popular home computer throughout time. The titles include: Shadow Dancer, Space Harrier, Cyber Police ESWAT, Congo Bongo, Alien Storm, Crack Down and Bonanza Bros. These SEGA titles will be added to the growing list officially licensed games that will be available in the iiRcade game store at launch, with plans for more games to be added both before and after launch. Exciting games on iiRcade iiRcade Store Launching Soon. Over 200+ Games Available at Launch iiRcade DEMO - Quick Sample of Some Games That You Can Play on iiRcade Backed by major gaming studios to indie developers, our collection of games is expanding fast. The final batch of games for Sega's upcoming Astro City Mini console have just been revealed in a livestream, taking the total number of known games up to 36.It was also revealed that the system.

So it’s a little strange when you consider that the Gulf War has taken so long to reach our monitors. If there is one thing you can guarantee in a war action game it’s a high ratio body count and they don’t come any higher than the six week Desert Storm operation - according to 'official’ figures Iraqi forces managed to kill about 150 of the Coalition forces, with a few more notched up by the US. However, according to US Central Command, 100,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed, while close to half a million others were either wounded, taken prisoner or were courting execution for desertion. Shocking figures indeed, but no more impressive than your typical PC game. Serious Sam can take out 100,000 screaming headless zombies in the time it takes George Bush Sr to call his boy and say: 'You go get ’em, son.'

Hot Potato

Of course, the main reason we haven’t had a Gulf War action game until now is because it was and still remains a contentious war, one that whether it was necessary or not, certainly gave EastEnders a battle in the ratings war. Still, wars are soon forgotten, and when Conflict: Desert Storm was conceived (the game, not the TV show), the world’s peacekeeping armies had moved through Somalia, the Balkans and East Timor. The time seemed right. Then came September 11, Operation Enduring Freedom, and George Bush’s thinly veiled desire to finish what his father had started in Iraq.

Consequently, Conflict: Desert Storm has become something of an interactive hot potato. Publisher SCi is of course no stranger to controversy after three Carmageddon titles, although they’re at pains to express the game has 'nothing to do whatsoever with September 11 or the war in Afghanistan'.

Friendly Fire

The game we are concerned with today is far less controversial than you might I imagine, considering current events.

As with most PC games it offers a S more sanitised version of history based loosely on actual operations. Those of you expecting the Cold War realism of Operation Flashpoint may be a little disappointed. Desert Storm is an action game through and through, one that measures health out of a hundred, where you play the good guys, kill the bad guys and get to run across lots of sand. Burning oil fields, friendly fire, Gulf War Syndrome and NBC suits are all off the menu.

'It’s a game not a simulation,' says Jim Bambra, MD of Pivotal Games. 'We’ve drawn extensively on events in the Gulf War, but we’re not creating a soldier sim. Instead, we've gone for a fun-based game that allows you to take a few hits before being knocked out.'Certainly the PC could do with some light relief. Action games with a contemporary setting have exclusively been aimed more towards the hardcore, while the more arcade-like Delta Force series hasn’t delivered all it could have done. I for one am relieved, although since we saw more of Kate Adie than anyone else on the battlefield, it will be strange reliving the conflict without reporters bringing up the rear.

'Actually, during the Kuwait City mission a news helicopter buzzes you,' says Jim. 'You can see the cameraman filming you as you fight your way across the highway. Later, at the end of the game, the media are interviewing one of the characters you’ve rescued earlier on in the game.'

Sure enough, as I played through beta code a couple of days later, a helicopter flew over my squad. Needless to say they never filed their next report. You can’t have nosy media types exposing the cream of Britain’s fighting few, after all.

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Who Dares Wins

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Yes, you read that right; Britain’s fighting few. In what is something of a first, certainly in living memory, Desert Storm allows you to play either as Delta Force or the SAS. Of course the game isn’t much different whichever nationality you choose to control, but having led hundreds of virtual American soldiers to their doom, it makes a refreshing change to be able to do the same to your own countrymen.

'The most obvious difference is the character uniforms and voices,' adds Jim, 'but each set of characters has different levels of specialist skills. All the SAS guys have one skill level as a medic, while only one of the Delta Force characters has medic skill, but he starts at level 3.'It would be interesting to see how Delta Force and the SAS would square up to each other in the game, but in reality, the way the skills have been handed out to the troops is pretty realistic. For example the SAS are very adept at everything; each soldier is familiar with most weapons and can patch up a wounded colleague. US special forces on the other hand are much more specialised to the point where a medic wouldn’t only be able to perform minor surgery, he could offer counselling as well.

'We’ve used Cameron Spence as our military adviser,' adds Jim. 'Cameron is the author of Sabre Squadron and an exSAS trooper who fought behind enemy lines in the Gulf War. It’s been great having him on the team as he has first-hand knowledge of the weapons, tactics, and the environment in which the game is based.'Well that’s alright then.

Storm Troopers

Setting the game behind enemy lines makes a lot of sense, especially since the actual ground war in the desert only lasted a couple of days. By the time the tanks rolled across the Saudi border, the job of the special forces was all but done. For them the conflict lasted for weeks rather than hours and was rather more taxing than taking thousands of prisoners.

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'The mission objectives are varied,' says Jim. 'From blowing up bridges, rescuing prisoners of war from Baghdad, escorting the Emir of Kuwait to safety, all the way up to full-blown military attacks on enemy positions. In 'Cavalry Charge’ you have to take out mobile anti-aircraft defences and then call in the A10 Tankbusters to take out the emplaced enemy armour. Plus, we have classic Scud hunting missions, and wetop it all off with a deep insertion into Iraq to take out a high-ranking Iraqi general in his heavily guarded fortress.' To help you in your mission of course are the members of your highly-trained squad. Up to four soldiers will be in action at any one time and like Red Storm’s recent Ghost Recon, switching between your troops and issuing commands on the fly is a thankfully simple affair.

'The order system is very elegant,' says Jim. 'It’s all done in the game world with no recourse to planning maps or complex in-game editors. You can tell the other men to follow you, go to any position you can see in the game world, get them to crouch, crawl, fire at will or set up ambushes.'

'Each character complements the others,' he adds. 'Success depends on using the characters as a team with the sniper and heavy weapons guys being used to cover the others as they advance. Once the front guys are in position, the heavy weapons and sniper guy can be quickly called up or moved into new positions using the order system.'

A Real Hummer

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It wouldn’t be much of a game without an array of real-world weaponry, most of which we’re all well acquainted with through Counter-Strike and other games and mods; M16 with M203 grenade launcher, Barrett Light 50, M60, AK-47, MP5 - the lot. Moreover there are mines, grenades, mounted machine guns, Stinger missiles and the option to call in artillery or air strikes. Best of all your specialists can hop into Humvees and M2 APCs and drive around. Of course the Iraqis have hardware of their own, so racing through the desert isn’t something you do too often.

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While the version of the game we played had very impressive team Al, that of the enemy was rather static. They throw grenades, run from yours and even try to outflank you, but finding cover seems something of a problem. Of course we have a few months to go until release, by which time we will have played the multiplayer side of things (you can join up as Russian Spetsnaz or Iraqi Republican Guard). Maybe Pivotal will even sneak in a Sadam Vs Bush minigame. Controversial certainly, but it would be fun.

Desert Siege

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While there is a place for a game like Desert Storm, its biggest problem is its release so soon after the Ghost Recon add-on Desert Siege. Despite being set in near-future East Africa, Desert Siege is a fantastic expansion to a great game. Desert Storm itself shares many similarities with Ghost Recon' the four-man squad, the environment and the realtime tactics. Desert Storm certainly has its work cut out and worryingly Pivotal doesn’t seem to have played it. Leaving aside Ghost Recon, there are many other realistic shooters out there or on the way -Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Raven Shield are two that spring to mind -prompting us to fear that Desert Storm may be a game too far.

'If shooters don’t evolve, then yes, PC gamers will get sick of them,' says Jim. 'But Conflict: Desert Storm is primarily a third-person game, not a first-person shooter. This makes it play very differently from other FPSs. It’s also very tactical with each of the characters performing a different role, and to succeed, you have to use the characters as a team. With Conflict: Desert Storm we’re offering something very different.'

Whether it’ll be different enough, we’ll have to wait and see. One thing’s for sure, with so many realistic teambased games setting themselves in fictional conflicts, the fact that Desert Storm has a very real setting will be a big draw. For me, until we get to go over the top and across the bog of the Somme, the desert will do just fine.

How Real Is Conflict Desert Storm?

Just how real is Conflict: Desert Storm compared to the real war in the desert? Well it’s certainly the case that we’d rather play Desert Storm than have been in Desert Storm. While in the game you have to worry about being shot in the face by an Iraqi bullet, in reality, as a Brit, you had a greater chance of being shot in the back by an American one. Then of course there was the extreme heat, the dust and lack of water. The only extremes you face in front of a PC are tiredness, obesity and incontinence. Just be glad Conflict: Desert Storm is a game. If you want the real experience, put on a gimp suit, turn up the central heating, set your PC in front of a treadmill and gaffer tape mobile phones to your ears to simulate the effect of being in constant contact with depleted uranium. If you don’t expire with ten minutes, you surely will within ten years.

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reggie posted a review

[keegames]

AAA Value vs. Focused Design, or The 3D Sonic Problem

I’ll not mince words: I’m a Sonic fan. Ever since I borrowed the Sonic & Knuckles Collection for our old PCs, I’ve loved what the hedgehog has brought to gaming. As it stands, however, Sonic has had a rocky history with his 3D games. Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Sonic Heroes, Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sonic Unleashed, Colors, Generations, Lost World… even the best of these games have had glaring flaws, and the worst have been some of the most infamously bad games in gaming history. Still, you can always catch me anticipating the next adventure from the blue blur, as even his worst games provide ample material to analyze.

While I could write entire chapters on what works and what doesn’t in nearly all of these games from a design standpoint, I’ll instead cut to the chase and focus on the core problem that has plagued Sonic ever since his jump to 3D in 1999 (and, perhaps, even longer than that). Many of the series’s issues can be connected to a trend that goes far beyond Sonic or even SEGA.

Size, Replayability, and Value

When you look at modern big-budget single-player-only video games, one thing you might notice is that they’re all HUGE. Maybe they’re a 100-hour RPG, or maybe they’re a massive open world with tons of collectibles or side quests. Maybe they’re both! Whatever the case, single-player games have gotten bigger over the years. There always has to be more to do. This isn’t new, of course. Ever since the 16-bit era, the “game you can beat in an afternoon” has fallen by the wayside. It’s not shocking; games are expensive, after all. Games like Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past offered hours upon hours of gameplay before you would ever see the credits. The switch of games to 3D continued this trend; first time players will spend an incredibly long time getting the 70 Power Stars needed to reach Super Mario 64’s ending, much less nabbing all 120.

This transition to “bigger games” was, necessarily, a rejection of arcade design. Arcade games have to let more players play them in a short period of time, which is why many of them are difficult to learn or play, and also short to complete once learned. Arcade games derive their replay value from being difficult to master. This is also where the concept of “high scores” comes from; what better way to make players want to play again than clearly numerically rating their performance? Console games, however, did not have such design goals. Once a player purchased a console game, there was no more money involved, and a single copy was generally played for a long time by one or a few people. Innovations like the ability to save progress were also introduced to the design space, and data space became larger. Developers could now make every hour of a player’s time with the game different content, rather than expecting them to play the same thing over and over again.

However, with what was gained, something was, too, lost. The idea of playing the same content to improve your performance was lessened in importance. Scoring systems became irrelevant, and eventually disappeared altogether from many games. Many games nowadays don’t give any importance to a player’s performance at all beyond the basic level needed to complete the game. Gaming as a whole has a decidedly different mindset, thanks to this transition.

A Team Lost In Time

So, how does all this relate to Sonic? Let’s look at the original Sonic the Hedgehog, released in 1991. Sonic the Hedgehog has no save system, and it has 18 levels, each of which takes between 2 and 4 minutes to complete once a player can do so without dying. Super Mario World, a game with 72 levels with similar lengths of time taken to beat them, was released earlier. Sonic levels, however, offer something different. Most Super Mario World levels offer either a single path or a path that branches in a single spot, with the second path reached by performing a specific task. Many of Sonic the Hedgehog’s levels, however, have many different paths stacked on top of each other. Reaching them tends to require careful understanding of both the levels and of Sonic’s unique physics. Green Hill Zone, specifically, was designed with lots of ways to complete it, because the designers knew that it would be played every single time a player turned on the game. The series continued to build on its formula in its sequels, and even though a save feature was added in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, the game didn’t come close to the size of some of the bigger games of the time without “locking on” with Sonic & Knuckles, which essentially combined two games into one continuous experience.

After the Genesis, Sonic Team took a break from Sonic, but their two Saturn games help our perspective on the current situation of the franchise. NiGHTS into Dreams… and Burning Rangers were both very short games in a gaming landscape increasingly intolerant of short games. In order to give those games replay value, Sonic Team introduced an innovation that would enter the Sonic series with Sonic Adventure 2: a grading system. Both games expected you to go back to them and improve at each individual stage until you could get an A rank on them all. While both of these games are cult classics, neither gained large popularity. So, with the Dreamcast, Sonic Team finally made the jump into modern game design.

Sonic Adventure was, for the time, a big game. With six separate stories, fully voiced, lengthy cutscenes, hub worlds, minigames, and a virtual pet system, Sonic Adventure had all the trappings of a modern console game. However, it wasn’t all good. The characters that weren’t Sonic tended to just use shorter versions of his levels for the most part, and much of their gameplay was half-baked. While the game’s sequel technically had every character’s every level be unique, many of them reused assets, and the flawed non-Sonic gameplay continued to put a damper on the game. As the Sonic series continued, the 3D games tried various ways to make them proper modern games in length, all of which ended up flawed. Even Sonic Colors, which had a singular gameplay style and was generally well-received, ended up reusing lots of level geometry with small alterations and additions in the form of easily repeatable objects like boxes and platforms. I think that Sonic Team could make a short 3D Sonic game where the replay value is focused on the ranking system and it would be of high-quality, but their need to live up to modern console game design standards inevitably hurts everything they produce.

It’s Not Their Fault (Entirely)

While there are definitely questionable decisions going into every 3D Sonic game, the crux of the matter is that the need for “big” games is killing the concept of shorter games that beg to be replayed, at least at the budget and price point of modern AAA video games. The concept of “content” is valued to an insane degree, and I think that that might be hurting the variety of games that get made. We’ve created a culture where seeing the credits or reaching “100% complete” is the end of a player’s experience with a single-player game, no matter what. A player is only expected to go back to a game until all of its content is exhausted, at which point it’s tossed aside for the next game. The drive of the industry towards “bigger and better” has conditioned consumers towards treating games as singular experiences. Consumers then feed this treatment back into the industry, demanding that games be bigger in a single playthrough instead of deeper in multiple. It’s possible that these desires have even contributed to the terrible working conditions in the gaming industry, where people have to work awful crunch hours to put together the gigantic AAA games that gamers and publishers demand.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of mastering something. A short game that encourages its players to master it causes said players to learn said game inside and out. It lets them get closer to the game, and to its developers. There’s an experience in plumbing the depths of a game that you don’t get from just playing once. I think it’s a worthwhile feeling for developers to chase, and it’s something that gets lost in our 80-hour open world single-completionist AAA game mindset.

Maybe I’m unusual. Maybe replaying a single-player game to get better at it is an extremely niche desire. Maybe nobody else would see a $60 value in a short, polished action game with scoring and gameplay systems meant to encourage replaying for the many hours that other games take to complete once. But if the market’s there, then it might be really helpful for developers, publishers, and consumers alike to let these ideas into their hearts. The hard-working folks in the industry might be able to have more time to themselves, publishers might have to spend less, and consumers might develop deeper attachments to their games.

And maybe, just maybe, Sonic Team would be able to put out an unequivocally great 3D Sonic game.

[rtf393q-latina]

Journal 4

Commenting on Tumblr’s release of top discussed mobile games in 2018 on their platform, Polygon pointed out that 3 of the top 5 were from small studios, marketed to women, and were in the genre of choose-your-own-adventure visual novels. Tumblr’s own user base might skew toward female users, so it is important to be skeptical about what these findings say about culture at large. However, I am interested in this supposed recent rise in popularity of visual novels as a research topic for this class, so I thought trying out these top 3 games might be a good place to start. As an aside, I need to sort out how the different terms I’ve seen floating around these games (visual novel, chose your own adventure, dating sim or game, otome) relate to and differ from each other.

Top 3 visual novels on Tumblr in 2018. (source)

This week I played The Arcana (middle image above; story inspired by Tarot cards), which launched on Kickstarter in October 2016, and released in chapter increments beginning a few months later. Since April 2019, the game is currently releasing chapters for 3 new romance routes (now that the stories of the original 3 have ended). I played the prologue and began the romance route of the mysterious, emotionally unavailable character who I felt the prologue was most pushing you to be interested in. Once I moved past the prologue, I quickly found out that you can essentially only read 3 chapters every 3 hours. Perhaps this wasn’t an issue if you were following along as the game released. You could get excited and turn on the app once you saw an update notification. As a player arriving at this game several years later, hoping to get a general survey of the game over a condensed period of time, I felt viciously stymied and I never got very far romancing my brooding depressive nightmare boy. The overall problem was that I hadn’t found anything that hooked me into the story yet, making the waiting time turn into a total stopping point.

Arcana’s home screen, showing 6 different narrative paths. Minigames, features, and other monetizable parataxets available from the tabs at the bottom. (source)

Furthermore, the amount of paid options was egregious. Anytime someone dragged me somewhere, or I stumbled into a new room, yet again I would be forced to select (because I did not have enough coins, nor would I pay for more) some variant of, “oh never mind, I’m too tired,” as if I would ever willingly choose that option in a game…what I’m trying to say is, I believe they very purposefully made the free option seem as uninspiring as possible. It’s not really an option, it’s just a way to end the scene suddenly and rub in your face that you’re missing out on something. I am also not convinced that the paid options are just bonus material that’s not central to the story. It seemed like the most interesting potential plot developments had a paywall. What do you mean that after transporting unexpectedly through a magical fountain to see my romancee, all of a sudden I have to pay if I want to explore the mystical dream world he’s in with him instead of just going right back through the fountain to sleep? As a whole, playing this game was a very frustrating experience and the intrusion of monetization everywhere I turned made it unpleasant and deflating. How can you get excited when the game keeps trying to pry money from you?

Examples of in-game monetization. (source)

A question I should perhaps have led with is whether Arcana and other games of the visual novel variety would be considered games at all in the conceptions of the readings this week. I did wonder what Frasca would make of this game. Simulation is a part of the name (dating sim) and this genre encourages players to keep trying out different choices so that they can collect all of the different possible endings. (In addition to having different character romance paths, Arcana also has two different endings for each character. Also, each character has a gallery section with black squares to be filled in once you discover them in the story. Other similar features encourage you to play over and over.) This exploratory format, where the player is an author of what happens, seems as though it would appeal to Frasca’s ideas about the possibilities and specificity of games compared to representational media. On the other hand, visual novel is an alternate name for these games and they have the qualities Frasca associates with ludus: a 3-part story structure, an Aristotelian ending with closure, a world that has simple definitions of good/bad, winner/loser. Though I cannot comment on a full story arc in the Arcana, the game has a very clear goal of seeing the story play out to its end. Frasca does however admit that games might have a ludus structure.

In Grodal’s work, I found a very apt description of why Arcana did not interest me as a game. Grodal writes that third-person stories in video games often fail because “In films and novels (third) persons are infused with the life and agency by authors and characters, and most readers and viewers will attribute that life to the characters, not to the ‘storyteller.’ In the video game, it is the job of the player to create ‘life’ in the third person, and failure to do so will create feelings of a mechanical lifelessness, eventually perceived as due to the designer and his or her system” (152). Beyond not feeling like my choices had an impact on the story, I could not really insert myself or a character I gave life to much in the story, which did give me a feeling of mechanical lifelessness as I jumped through the hoops of the narrative. I think for this genre of games to work for you, you need to be imagining the character; I didn’t and the narrative felt blank and unfulfilling. Meanwhile, fan reddit and tumblr accounts often make fan art of their insert character. The Polygon review also claims that being able to control the personal pronouns in use and add a character name added a lot of enjoyment to the experience. But it’s just not something I invested in. I wanted to experience the story in a third-person way.

I’m not sure I agree completely that games best describe a first-person perspective and first-person emotions, as Grodal lays it out. Grodal links exploring, fighting, sex, eating, and laughing to first-person, active experiences, and other emotions stemming from empathy, like pity and admiration to third-person, passive experiences. This seems problematic to me because I enjoy reading novels and experiencing the emotions of the characters second-hand, an (active!) experience Grodal also recognizes in watching movies. While I do not have proof, it seems wrong to say that video games cannot also function in this mode.

Finally, Grodal suggests that emotions related to sex are ideally suited to video games whereas Juul argues that games resist complex themes like love, because you cannot really implement them in the rules of the game. He disparages the connection between simple mechanical tasks and the love story in Myst. Meanwhile, Grodal leans in to the aesthetic of repetition in video games, how they mirror the gritty, repeated, procedural actions of everyday life. Whereas I agree with Juul on the one hand, that dating simulations might be a rigid representation of romantic relationships, I do definitely agree on the other hand with Grodal that a relationship functions like a task that requires a repeated set of interactions, moving from unfamiliarity and challenge, to mastery, to automation. There’s something about how games represent relationships that really rings true to real life. Or rather, dating sims make sense in their representation of fiction through rules.

[mageinabarrel]

[SPOILERS] NieR: Automata Thoughts

 SPOILERS AFTER THE READ MORE LINK - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

So, I think the best way to tackle this game is just to go by ending/route. So I’ll talk about those, in order as I experienced them.

Route A: 

Highlight: This cannot continue. I tweeted about this at the time, but wow, this moment was absolutely visceral for me when I first experienced it. I was still getting used to the game’s controls (having never owned a console in my life until now and generally only playing turn-based combat JRPGs, this game was a stretch for me, especially early on), tense because I’d already been surprised by things chasing the machine, and completely enveloped in the atmosphere of the collected android corpses, the tunnel, and everything else. Then it was an insane rush of creepy repeated words, a cascade of enemies I wasn’t sure I’d be able to defeat, and then the incredibly disturbing conclusion to it all with the birth of Adam and Eve (right, that was them right?). I was shaking by the time it was done.

Ending: Again to repeat my Twitter thoughts, I was left a slight bit unsatisfied by this ending. With the C/D reveal that 2B was an execution type all along, I like it a little better, and I think the overall idea of it (especially the strange beauty of the blinking green machine eyes as 9S revived) was neat—but I still thought it was less moving than it could of been. That being said, I guess in the end it’s possibly my favorite ending?

Other thoughts on A: I probably had the most fun exploring the world this route! Although I got frustrated with the lack of a log that showed where you could obtain crafting materials, overall it was a pleasure exploring the beautiful world Platinum Games created. 2B was my favorite character to actually play as, as well, and some retrospect invested stuff like the YoRHa Betrayers quest with extra meaning, which was cool.

Route B:

Highlight: Adam’s taunting of 9S. The accusatory tone and the use of “you” (you the player or 9S, eh?) makes it more intense. That being said, having it delivered by text is... well. Not necessarily ideal!

Ending: When you gain control over 2B in the middle of the credits rolling was possibly the most exhilarating moment of the entire game for me. I was super excited, and felt like, “Oh, shit, here we go—for real now.” It was good.

Other thoughts on B: Probably my least favorite route to play through. I didn’t care much for 9S’s mechanics (that freaking hacking minigame, although I didn’t know about the lock-on function until almost the end of my full playthrough lol) & if I’m being honest I didn’t feel like going through all the same events as the A route really added all that much in the way of new perspectives on it all. At some points I really resented it, actually. Which... is honestly probably more of a reflection of my natural dislike of the “route” system than anything else—I greatly wished that my actions in A had had a concrete impact on the way B played out, but, well, that’s not the game this was. Oh, also I think I basically know the whole plot of NieR now?

Route C: 

Highlight: Walking out the door, refusing to cut off Pascal’s memory or kill him. His final, “How could you do this to me,” coupled with the immediate fade to black and switch to controlling 9S again gave the whole moment a feeling of, “I’ve done something I cannot undo.” And I felt pretty terrible! Even though I personally didn’t want to do either option and didn’t think A2 would be up for them either. But still, actually having to walk yourself out that door and listening to Pascal’s agony behind you... much more powerful than just selecting a “Refuse to help Pascal” choice out of three options.

Ending: Maybe I missed something along the way, but ??? A2′s final words about the world being beautiful came out of nowhere?? She sacrifices herself to save 9S because?? Surely I understand not killing him, as she obvious doesn’t care to kill her fellow androids, but as far as satisfying resolutions to her purposeless wanderings on Earth go, this was far from it. I felt like she was owed more than she got.

Other thoughts on C: I felt like A2 killing 2B should have been more moving that it was, but honestly I was more upset at the game for removing the option to play as her. And, you know, I was most invested in 2B as a character, so having to readjust my levels of caring for the characters was not a super fun experience. Otherwise, as you might expect, I enjoyed C (considering the A2 bits C and the 9S bits D) more than D because I liked playing as A2 – although her material felt somewhat directionless? Like the story didn’t know exactly what it was doing with her—something I suppose is borne out in the ending.

Route D:

Highlight: Devola/Popola’s backstory. As with the 9S/Adam conversation, displaying it in text was a bit eh of a choice for me, but I liked the material quite a lot.

Ending: So the choice you make whether to go with the ark or not doesn’t matter, huh? Anyways, can’t say I’m a huge fan of ‘everyone dies’ endings! It’s good A2 gets resolution in C, cause she gets jack squat in this one! 9S falls to nihilism and insanity... well... that’s fine I guess, but I guess I feel like there needed to be more for me to really be moved by it, my basic unfondness for the ending type aside.

Other thoughts on D: What was up with the Soul Box giving all the items (plus that weapon, Faith), though? An earlier Nier reference that I didn’t get? Lots of other questions, too? Devola and Popola made the Tower? It didn’t come from 9S after all? Or it did, as implied by the C ending? Idk...

Ending E:

Well, all games have to end, I suppose, and as far as “true endings” go this was a nice one. I suppose overall a 2-minute or whatever cut scene isn’t everything I wanted, but leave life after memory restoration up to the fan fiction, I guess! Yes I’m disgruntled. I’m sorry. It’s not enough for me! Although asking me questions like “is it all meaningless” in between deaths on the credits bullet hell is definitely enough to get me to stubbornly move through. Sorry to all the people who lost their data on my behalf.

—Overall Thoughts—

Needed more 2B, and if you think about this all from certain angles you might be a bit miffed that 2B got offed to let 9S’s story continue. Being less than happy with that decision from certain personal places, I’m certainly more sympathetic to that angle that, admittedly, I might be otherwise.

The hacking minigame was more frustrating than it should have been. It almost killed my Route D run for a week (thanks Twitter for getting me through that).

On the whole I felt like the game’s story delivery pacing was... hmm... not quite right? Like if I went off and did a bunch of sidequests and then came back to the story, it seemed really odd to just have it pick up again. But by the same token, just going from story point to story point felt like rushing through. The balance there could have been better. I like it best when quests just seemed to pop up in the middle of the main story and I could go off and do them, then resume what I was doing before.

2B’s swords were basically the only weapons I used for her and A2 all game lol.

I reconfigured my buttons after about the first 5 hours at it was sooo helpful. Quick summary:

X=light attack

Square=heavy attack/hack

Triangle=jump (duhhhh)

L1=lock-on

L2=pod function

R1=dodge

R2=pod fire

I think this is a good way to do things. Good set-up for me.

Overall, I was less enamoured by the game that I expected to be. I see the seeds of why people loved it, but to me it was not all delivered as effectively as it could have been. I might even say that the fact it was a game hampered my enjoyment of the story aspects (the final save delete option aside). I would watch an anime of this game and possibly enjoy it/find it more compelling than I did of it in game form. Anime is better than video games after all. It’s by no means a bad game and overall I enjoyed it (particularly the combat, especially during the mid-portion of the game when I’d just sort of got the hang of it but wasn’t perfect), but, I mean, if you don’t stun me into silence like Shining Force: Resurrection of Dark Dragon did, what’s even the point? (that’s a joke, although that game’s big reveal really did have a huge impact on me as a kid lol)

I suppose my thoughts on the game might evolve over time and as I read people’s essays/thoughts on it. But that’s my initial impression/experience of it.

Another thought that occurs to me just now is that some of the game’s questions about meaning and existence perhaps struck me as shallow and/or juvenile because they are such fixed, obvious quantities to me. Being a religious person I specially am, I don’t much struggle with such questions on a macro level. So interrogating them in this fictional context seemed a bit silly to me perhaps? Like the game was asking the wrong questions.

[operationrainfall]

Title Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes Developer Grasshopper Manufacture Inc. Publisher Grasshopper Manufacture Inc. Release Date January 18th, 2019 Genre Action Platform Nintendo Switch Age Rating M for Mature 17+ – Blood, Drug Reference, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Violence Official Website

Let me clarify something really quick. Travis Strikes Again is NOT No More Heroes 3. That was my initial assumption, and it’s important that those of you reading this understand the difference. See, Travis Strikes Again is a gaiden game, and that shows in many ways. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very much No More Heroes, and is pungent with that insane musk the series is known for. Suda51 has crafted an entry that often defies expectations and regularly defies logic. But in some ways, it’s very much the first of its kind. The question then, is if that’s a good thing? And more importantly, does Travis Strikes Again make up for the nine-year hiatus since the Wii?

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Travis Strikes Again starts with an epic cutscene that I’m sure most of you have already seen. Badman, the father of the murderous, bat-wielding Bad Girl, wants revenge on Travis for her death. He hunts him down, and finds Travis roughing it in his outdoor trailer. Banter is exchanged, winks are made at the audience, and then things get especially weird. Apparently, at some point Travis found a nigh impossible to locate game console called the Death Drive Mk II. Think the Virtual Boy combined with VR and you’re on the right track. Somehow the game machine suddenly comes to life and sucks both Travis and his assailant into a strange game world, and thus begins our story.

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In the first world, Electric Thunder Tiger II, Travis quickly finds out that the Death Drive games are all full of dangerous bugs, who are all out to kill you. The system itself was created by an ahead of her time genius, Dr. Juvenile. Not only does her system draw in the players, but there’s also a myth about the game cartridges, called Death Balls. By collecting six of them, the owner can have their dearest wish granted. If that sounds familiar, then just wait, cause Travis Strikes Again has a shit ton of references to popular culture, from anime to other video games and much more.

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While I was drawn in quickly by the opening sequence, once you beat the first world the plot meanders unexpectedly. Badman was initially hellbent on murdering Travis, but after they both come out of the game, it seems things have changed. The game doesn’t really address this change of heart, mind you, and you’ll see Badman wandering the trailer between stages. Though his presence does serve a functional purpose for co-op, his sudden lack of menace really hurts the urgency of the story. It wasn’t clear to me what exactly was happening, and it isn’t til much later that it seems apparent Travis and Badman are suddenly working together. It’s possible I missed something in the copious amount of dialogue in the game, but if not this sudden shift was puzzling. Thankfully, while the story in no way is actually about Travis vs Badman, the other tangents it goes on are pretty interesting by themselves.

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Each of the Death Ball titles is a reference to popular culture’s past. For example, Life is Destroy starts off with a bloody sequence that made me instantly think of Night Trap. Another, Golden Dragon GP, has vector graphics that strongly reminded me of Tron. They all have their own vibe, and that goes double for the epic Archive material about them. These materials are a nod to old Nintendo Power style magazine coverage, and feature commentary, art and even secrets that you can check out in each level. I was frankly stunned by how much work went into making a bunch of flavor text that the majority of gamers won’t even bother reading, though I’d say those gamers are missing out. The essential flavor of this game is one that embraces and parodies the video game phenomenon. I loved all the little nods to classics, both obvious and more esoteric.

My only real complaint is that the stages themselves don’t start offering really standout features until later in the game, about four stages in. Keeping in mind there are only six stages in the game, that was a bit of a letdown. Mostly because without unique aspects like Golden Dragon GP’s racing, stages mostly break down to ‘fight all the enemies, kill the boss, rinse and repeat.’ I guess part of my issue with the relative monotony of the experience is I have fond memories of the NES-styled minigames from No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. The amount of diversity in those was really great, and though they could get frustrating, I enjoyed their inclusion. Which brings us to the combat in Travis Strikes Again, and how different it feels from the rest of the series. Note that I didn’t say worse, but it is worth covering how significant a departure it is from the first two games.

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More Travis on Page 2 ->

While the first No More Heroes games were action adventure games more in the vein of Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, it would be easier to compare Travis Strikes Again to Gauntlet. You’ll wander forward, get gated in areas with enemies, and need to kill them to proceed. Don’t get me wrong, there are still recognizable features like how Travis “charges” his Beam Katana and flashy super attacks, but in every other way they are something different. For one thing, you have zero control over the camera now, and Suda likes to move it around to display the action in unique ways. Some stages will have a top-down view, others you’ll be able to see a more open area, and some function like 2D platformers. Another stark departure? There are no wrestling moves (well, almost), no blocking and no QTEs during regular combat.

Things have been stripped down in many ways, though perhaps not bad ones. Yes, I had fond nostalgic memories of the combat in the first games, but after watching them again, I realized something: there was a lot of unnecessary and frustrating elements to the combat before. I don’t miss playing around with the camera, I don’t miss blocking tons of attacks and I don’t miss the QTEs, but I do still wish there was a bit more nuance to combat here. You have a weak attack you can literally swing rapidly in succession, a heavy attack, jumping attacks, a dodge and that’s pretty much it. Beyond that, there is a feature where you fill up your katana charge meter and, when full, can unleash a massively powerful series of attacks, as well as skills. Skills are totally new to the series. As you progress, you’ll unlock skill chips, and can equip up to four to any of the directional buttons. By holding L and pressing a directional input, you’ll unleash the skill. There’s a wide range, from lightning blasts that stun foes to bombs that detonate after a set amount of time to a healing field and much, much more. Each of them has a cooldown until you can use them again, so it behooves you to use them sparingly and carefully.

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Point being, it probably doesn’t sound much like a No More Heroes game right now. And that’s both good and bad. While I did grow to enjoy the combat, it tends to get a little monotonous, at least for fighting regular enemies. The variety comes from the enemy diversity (there are a lot of different types) and playing around with your skill loadout. Another unique aspect is that Travis gains EXP and can use it to level up. Sadly, all that does is increase his ATK and HP. I really would have loved a skill tree or something similar. I also miss learning optional techniques in the first games. But having said that, there is one area where Travis Strikes Again truly feels like a Suda51 game: the epic boss fights. Though there are only six total, they each are dripping with style and creativity. From a teleporting serial killer to a old man in a wooden mech suit to a supernatural skeletal avenger, you won’t get bored with any of them. Best of all, they all battle very differently, which requires you to fight smart, pay attention to attack patterns and not rush in blindly. I tried hack-and-slash a couple times, and was always met with painful failure. While it goes double for the boss fights, all these tactics are also important for regular combat.

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You’d think this review was almost done, having covered the plot, style and combat, but there’s another area that I need to spend more time: the references. Earlier I talked about some of the popular culture nods, but I doubt you understand the extent of them yet. One example? Practically all of the T-shirts Travis can buy in this game are from indie games. Even some that aren’t out yet, like Wargroove. I had a blast rocking out with Bit. Trip. Runner, Hollow Knight and Dandara shirts, but there’s so many more. Despite having beaten the game, I still need more cash to purchase all of them, as there’s 60+. But that’s not all. Another area where you see Suda’s love for gaming is in the text-based interludes between stages. No, you didn’t hear me wrong. There are many sections where Travis rides on his Schpeltiger with his kitty Jeanne and searches for more Death Balls. These segments are completely linear, but god are they entertaining. All sorts of crazy cameos abound, such as Travis searching in a Romanian Castle for a certain Count, to characters popping in from The Sliver Case and The 25th Ward, to even more I’m afraid to ruin. Best of all, during these sections Jeanne is magically able to talk, and she’s one sassy feline, even for a fat cat. One of my favorite nods is whenever you boot up a Death Ball, and the Death Drive logo sounds, reminding me of Sega’s old tune. Point being, if you love fourth wall breaking shennanigans and referential nods to pop culture, Travis Strikes Again is chock full of it.

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As for the aesthetic design, for the most part I love it. There’s a purposefully grungy, old school vibe to the way every stage is presented. While it may seem primitive, I suspect it’s a completely intentional move on Suda’s part. After all, the Death Drive Mk II is supposed to be an old, esoteric game system, so why wouldn’t the stages on it look like old games? Having said that, there’s a lot of beautiful art in the game. While the bosses are all full of color and chaos, the enemies are also varied and strange. Going with the “death” theme, each of the bugs has a skull face, and their bodies can be wildly different. Some are humanoid, others have tentacles and some are gargantuan hulking beasts. I also loved the variety of art used in the game introductions, as well as the green-hued art in the Travis Strikes Again text segments. The one area I felt that the art fell short, however, was how small the character models generally were. Often that was due to the camera placement, but when comparing it to the older games, it was really striking. Musically, the game is a wonder. Each stage has their own tunes, and the sound effects are perfect. Travis grunts, swears and yells as he fights, which does a great job of conveying his intensity. While there is a bit less profanity than in previous games, there’s also less voiced dialogue. While unfortunate, again it makes sense given the focus of the game taking place in a old game system. After all, most older games didn’t have voice acting. Overall though, the art and music come together beautifully to represent this strange game.

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Most of my 14 or so hours with Travis Strikes Again were positive, but there are some areas I feel it could have improved. A more minor complaint is the load times. Frankly, they are way too long, lasting upwards of more than a minute. Another complaint regards the combat. Though it’s pretty simple, there is real satisfaction to be had when you’re going for a high score, since doing so requires smart dodging to retain your katana charge. The problem is that a couple of factors work against you: the camera placement and enemy aggression. If you take too much damage, you’ll lose your charge level, and many times I would get hit by a projectile from off screen doing just that. Later in the game, they introduce some rather aggressive foes, including one that fires a barrage of bullets at you. That same enemy also likes to rush you, pushing you into the corner, and attack you frenetically to keep you from responding. This made it very hard to retain my full katana charge for extended periods, and of course the game grades you on exactly that.

A similar complaint is that your chip attacks can be interrupted by enemies, and then you have to wait for them to recharge. This was beyond irritating, especially when the game gets super frantic later on (and I played on Mild). Also, apparently some skills don’t work on some enemies. Once I tried using my standby Wing Chip at a foe, which fires a paralyzing bolt of electricity, only for it to be unaffected. It would seem some foes have elemental protection to certain attacks, but given there’s no bestiary, I was never clear on that. And while this last one isn’t about something Travis Strikes Again does wrong, it is about something shockingly absent from the game: the gratuitous violence. I remember blood gushing, beheadings and all sorts of mayhem in the first games, but that’s barely present. Again, that may be an intentional thematic choice by Suda, but if so it was a bit perplexing.

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In the end, I did enjoy Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, but it felt like a placeholder until we get No More Heroes 3. It’s not all bad, and I did enjoy a lot of it, but when everything is coupled with a very perplexing ending, I wasn’t sure what to think. Thankfully, it’s pretty inexpensive at $29.99 for the digital version, and if you are a completionist, there’s a lot to do after you beat the game, such as finding secrets, buying T-shirts and getting better scores. I only managed to get one A in my time with the game, and many Cs and a couple Bs. If that wasn’t enough, a recent update added New Game+ and the Spicy difficulty, if you feel like a tough guy. And if you bought the physical version, you’ll be able to try out two DLC adventures in coming months (or pay for them individually digitally). Sure, the game didn’t go at all where I expected, and played rather differently from previous games, but it’s also a good reminder of the mad genius of Suda51. His capacity to constantly take risks and reinvent his games is impressive, even if it does occasionally provide mixed results. If nothing else, at least it seems likely we won’t have to wait too much longer for the next game…

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[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3.5″]

Review Copy Purchased by Author

REVIEW: Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes Title Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes

[animalafficionad-bot-blog]

Alchemy Reference

From the main

MINI GAME - ALCHEMY

RESIDENTS OF LEUDA AND ARCADIA may play this mini game (though materials may take more effort for Leudans to obtain, due to the lack of foraging).

SMALL CHEMISTRY SET: 5,000G - Can be used in all forms of living space. Inns, Apartments, Houses and anything above that.

MEDIUM CHEMISTRY SET: 10,000G - Can only be used from Apartments and up. More recipes are available with this upgrade.

LARGE CHEMISTRY SET: 20,000G - Can only be used in Homes/Houses and up. All recipes become available with this upgrade.

/choose fails, success, explodes, success, fails, success, fails, success, fails, success, fails, success, explodes, success, fails, success, fails, success, fails, success, fails, success, fails, success, fails, success,  fails, success, explodes, success, fails, success, fails, explodes, fails, success, fails, success, fails, explodes, fails, success, fails, success, fails, explodes, fails, success, fails, success

/choose fails, success, explodes, success, explodes, success, fails, success, success, success, success, success, explodes, success, fails, success, success, success, success, success, fails, success, success, success, fails, success,  fails, success, explodes, success, fails, success, explodes, success, fails, success, fails, success, fails, success, fails, success, fails, success, fails, explodes, success, success, fails, success

/choose fails, success, explodes, success, explodes, success, success, success, success, success, success, success, explodes, success, fails, success, success, success, success, success, fails, success, success, success, success, success,  fails, success, explodes, success, fails, success, explodes, success, success, success, fails, success, success, success, success, success, fails, success, success, explodes, success, success, fails, success

They may also gain EXPERIENCE POINTS for each potion they successfully create! Check the recipe list to see how much EXP each potion yields!

SUCCESS - Self explanatory. If you get this, that means you have successfully created the medicine/potion!

FAILS - If you get this, you have failed to make what you were intending to make, and it becomes OBJECT X instead! If OBJECT X is actually what you were trying to make and you end up failing, it will become the more toxic OBJECT XX!

EXPLODES - You’ve neither failed or succeeded. Whatever concoction you were in the process of making just ends up blowing up in your face. Hopefully the fumes from whatever it is don’t end up affecting you somehow….

You can play this game on both islands.

You must buy a chemistry set from the Magnolia Clinic or Eveningwood Carpentry (Arcadia), or the Alpha Medical Center or Junk Shop (Leuda) before playing.

You won’t be able to do anything unless you have ingredients (most of them collected from foraging).

You can only create up to ten types of potions/medicines.

You are limited to the recipes you actually have the ingredients for.

Only ALCHEMISTS may gain experience from this minigame.

You have to use the Mini Games Chatroom (and screenshot the results) to collect your ten items.

You could choose to sell everything, or keep a few of them as gifts, ingredients, or rewards for requests!

Create a new text post with your results, what you kept and what you sold, and maybe a few paras of rp about your character’s experience if you want the post to count towards activity! This post must also be tagged #PI:ALCHEMY,#PI:MINIGAMES, #PI:MONEY, and #PI:INVENTORY!

RECIPE LIST & PRICES:

CLICK HERE for the recipe list!

RP OPTION:

You could make a thread about your potion making experiences if you want! Why not make an open where your character blows something up? Or accidentally drinks one of their potions?

If your character is lacking the ingredients for a potion they really want to make, why not post a request for that ingredient? Surely there are people out there willing to help.

If you do choose to make a chemistry related thread, just know that there are no deadlines to complete it.

And that’s about it! If you have any further questions, feel free to message the main or contact either one of the mods!

ALCHEMY RECIPE LIST

Below are the different types of potions you can create in the Alchemy minigame, as well as their price values, effects, and ingredients. You will not be able to create a potion unless you have the appropriate ingredients for it (which can mostly be found through foraging), as well as the proper level chemistry set (Small, Medium or Large).

You will be able to use these potions in other minigames, but know that you are limited to ONEpotion per minigame.

The price values listed next to each recipe is just there to let you know much you can sell it for, if you choose to sell it, that is. ;)

Also, those in the ALCHEMIST class will gain experience for successfully brewing potions! The values are as follows:

For every SMALL level potion you create, you get 25 EXP!

For every MEDIUM level potion you create, you get 50 EXP!

For every LARGE level potion you create, you get 100 EXP!

For every potion you fail to create, take the amount of EXP you would have usually earned and divide it by two. That is how much EXP you will earn from your failed attempt! Explosions yield no EXP.

SMALL RECIPES

Indigo Herb + Indigo Herb

Black Herb + Black Herb

Antidote Grass + Yellow Herb

Orange Herb + Toy Flower

Purple Herb

Apple

Orange

Green Herb + Toy Flower

Medicinal Herb + Green Herb

Sage + Elli Leaves

White Herb + Black Herb

Yellow Herb + Orange Herb

Indigo Herb + Black Herb

Poison Mushroom + Weed + Black Herb

Can Automatically be obtained through a “Fail!” result. However, if you were intentionally trying to make this recipe and end up with a “Fail!” result, you will end up with Object XX.

OBJECT XX: Has all of the above effects, with the addition of a Death Curse.

MEDIUM RECIPES

Coconut + Sage + Orange Herb

Red Herb + Pink Cat + Blue Magic Flower

Bird’s Feather + Wind Crystal + Chamomile

Pink Cat + Very Berry + Sage

Fugue Mushroom + Toadstool + Blackberry

Sage + Elli Leaves + Fugue Mushroom

Very Berry + Elli Leaves + Fugue Mushroom

Weed + Blue Herb + Black Herb

Medicinal Herb + Red Herb

Sage + Elli Leaves + Ether

Yellow Herb + Pink Cat + 4-Leaf Clover

Sage + Elli Leaves + Indigo Herb + Moondrop Flower

Medicinal Herb + White Herb

Red Herb + Green Herb + Yellow Herb + Blue Herb

Earth Crystal + Black Rock + Purple Herb

Wind Crystal + Green Herb + Bird’s Feather

Fire Crystal + Red Herb + Ruby

Water Crystal + Blue Herb + Ice

Sage + Lavender + Rosemary

Toadstool + Red Magic Flower + Toy Flower

Very Berry + Blue Magic Flower + Fugue Mushroom

HOLY: White Herb + Toy Flower + Light Crystal

DARK: Black Herb + Blackberry + Dark Crystal

Red Magic Flower + Blue Magic Flower + Indigo Herb

Indigo Herb + Blue Herb + Seaweed

Strawberry + Honey + Any Red Flower + Wine

LARGE RECIPES

Red Magic Flower + Toadstool + Blackberry

Plum + Coral Mushroom + Shimeji + Rosemary

Coconut + Black Herb + Bamboo Shoot + 4-Leaf Clover

Pom-Pom Grass + Magic Red Flower + Fugue Mushroom + Shimeji

Blackberry + Fugue Mushroom + Seaweed + Wolf’s Fang

Strawberry + Love Crystal + Love Potion + Red Rose + Wine

Chamomile + Aloe + Green Herb + Sage

White Herb + Black Herb + Chamomile + Shade Stone

Wind Crystal +  Bird’s Feather + Chamomile + Green Crystal Flower

Medicinal Herb + Elli Leaves

Water Crystal + Fire Crystal + Earth Crystal + Wind Crystal + Rune Crystal

Light Crystal + White Herb + Glitta Augite + Yellow Herb

Dark Crystal + Shade Stone + Black Herb + Indigo Herb

Sage + Elli Leaves + Hi-Ether

Cold Medicine + Roundoff + Para Gone + Antidote Potion + Medicinal Herb + Pontata Root

Weed + Toy Flower

Elli Leaves + Blueberry + Apricot + Emery Flower

Fugue Mushroom + Coral Mushroom + Poison Mushroom + Crystal Flower

Lamp Grass + Weed + Green Herb

Crystal Flower + Emery Flower + Ironleaf + Blue Rose

Dark Crystal + Tene’s Damnation + Poison Mushroom + Fugue Mushroom + Dark Bottle

Light Crystal + Lux’s Judgment + Fugue Mushroom + Bird’s Feather + Holy Bottle

Recovery Potion + Healing Potion + Mystery Potion + Magical Potion + Life Bottle

Antidote Herb + Green Herb + Medicinal Herb + Emery Flower + Crystal Flower + Lamp Grass + Fugue Mushroom

2 Antidote Herbs + 2 Green Herbs + 3 Medicinal Herbs + 2 Emery Flowers + 2 Crystal Flowers + 2 Lamp Grasses + 3 Fugue Mushrooms

MINI GAME - FORAGING

ONLY RESIDENTS OF ARCADIA may play this mini game (though if any Leudans are interested in foraging, they could always travel to Arcadia). No tool is required for this minigame.

/choose Small Rock, Rock, Black Rock, Small Branch, Branch, Black Branch, Honeycomb, Moondrop Flower, Toy Flower, Bamboo Shoot, Medicinal Herb, Black Herb, Orange Herb, Green Herb, Yellow Herb, Purple Herb, Mint, Chamomile, Rosemary, Sage, Glitta Augite, Blue Herb, Walnut, Very Berry, Raspberry, Blueberry, Golden Lumber, Antidote Herb, Wind Crystal, 4-Leaf Clover, Glass Stone, Poison Mushroom, Shiitake, Common Mushroom, Mushroom, Toadstool, Fugue Mushroom, Sea Urchin, Sakura Seashell, Seaweed, Wolf Fang, Insect Carapace, Root, Wooly Furball, Fur, Vine, Strong Vine, Arrowhead, Bird’s Feather, Magic Crystal, Rune Crystal

/choose Small Rock, 4-Leaf Clover, Black Rock, Small Branch, Branch, Black Branch, Red Magic Flower, Blue Magic Flower, Pink Cat, Moondrop Flower, Medicinal Herb, Green Herb, Orange Herb, Yellow Herb, Black Herb, Red Herb, Purple Herb, Mint, Chamomile, Weed, Walnut, Raspberry, Plum, Apricot, Glitta Augite, Fire Crystal, Golden Lumber, Antidote Herb, Brick, Glass Stone, Blackberry, Shiitake, Shimeji, Common Mushroom, Coral Mushroom, Poison Mushroom, Fugue Mushroom, Toadstool, Banana, Pineapple, Coconut, Oyster, Mussel, Sakura Seashell, Rune Crystal, Insect Carapace, Cheap Cloth, Root, Strong Vine, Magic Crystal

/choose Small Rock, Rock, Black Rock, Small Branch, Branch, Black Branch, Honeycomb, Red Magic Flower, Medicinal Herb, Black Herb, Green Herb, Yellow Herb, Red Herb, Blue Herb, Indigo Herb, Chestnut, Mint, Lavender, Rosemary, Weed, Cranberry, Blueberry, Earth Crystal, Golden Lumber, Antidote Herb, Glass Stone, Poison Mushroom, Coral Mushroom, Shimeji, Trumpet Mushroom, Common Mushroom, 4-Leaf Clover, Toadstool, Fugue Mushroom, Sakura Seashell, Seaweed, Wolf Fang, Pretty Carapace, Spore, Poison Powder, Glitta Augite, Vine, Strong Vine, Broken Box, Wind Crystal, Rune Crystal, Fire Crystal, Magic Crystal

/choose Small Rock, Rock, Black Rock, Small Branch, Branch, Black Branch, Elli Leaves, Medicinal Herb, White Herb, Black Herb, Indigo Herb, Green Herb, Red Herb, Purple Herb, Blue Herb, Lavender, Sage, Weed, Walnut, Cranberry, Blackberry, Glittering Stone, Golden Lumber, Antidote Herb, Brick, Glass Stone, Trumpet Mushroom, Poison Mushroom, 4-Leaf Clover, Mushroom, Fugue Mushroom, Toadstool, Sakura Seashell, Seaweed, Earth Crystal, Cheap Cloth, Hammer Piece, Rune Crystal, Water Crystal, Arrowhead, Broken Box, Blade Shard, Broken Hilt, Insect Carapace, Pretty Carapace, Glitta Augite, Insect Horn, Magic Crystal

You MUST be in Arcadia to play this game. Either from being a resident or visitor to the island.

You can only find ten items.

You have to use the Mini Games Chatroom (and screenshot the results) to collect your ten items.

You could choose to sell everything, or keep a few of them as gifts, ingredients, or rewards for requests!

Create a new text post with your results, what you kept and what you sold, and maybe a few paras of rp about your character’s experience if you want the post to count towards activity! This post must also be tagged #PI:FORAGING,#PI:MINIGAMES, #PI:MONEY and #PI:INVENTORY!

ITEM LIST & PRICES:

CLICK HERE for the foraging list!

FORAGING LIST

Scrap Metal: 10G

Small Rock: 5G

Rock: 50G

Black Rock: 200G

Small Branch: 5G

Branch: 50G

Black Branch: 200G

Copper Ore: 50G

Glass Stone: 200G

Glittering Stone: 300G

Golden Lumber: 10,000G

Brick: 50G

Honeycomb: 150G

Red Magic Flower: 550G

Blue Magic Flower: 420G

Moondrop Flower: 365G

Toy Flower: 275G

Pink Cat: 295G

Bamboo Shoot: 250G

Medicinal Herb: 250G

Antidote Herb: 250G

Green Herb: 230G

Red Herb: 250G

Orange Herb: 250G

Blue Herb: 260G

Indigo Grass: 270G

Yellow Herb: 240G

Purple Herb: 230G

Black Herb: 300G

White Herb: 350G

Lavender: 200G

Mint: 220G

Chamomile: 200G

Rosemary: 140G

Sage: 400G

Aloe: 400G

Weed: 5G

Elli Leaves: 500G

4-Leaf Clover: 5,000G

Walnut: 300G

Chestnut: 350G

Very Berry: 600G

Raspberry: 350G

Cranberry: 360G

Blackberry: 360G

Blueberry: 350G

Plum: 300G

Apricot: 300G

Banana: 550G

Coconut: 650G

Pineapple: 870G

Common Mushroom: 395G

Mushroom: 380G

Trumpet Mushroom: 440G

Coral Mushroom: 440G

Fugue Mushroom: 2,500G

Toadstool: 420G

Poison Mushroom: 520G

Shimeji: 410G

Shiitake: 480G

Seaweed: 495G

Sea Urchin: 350G

Sakura Seashell: 670G

Oyster: 360G

Mussel: 360G

Clam: 370G

Wolf Fang: 460G

Insect Jaw: 180G

Wind Crystal: 800G

Fire Crystal: 800G

Insect Carapace: 120G

Pretty Carapace: 630G

Cheap Cloth: 150G

Root: 140G

Spore: 110G

Poison Powder: 570G

Earth Crystal: 800G

Wooly Furball: 230G

Fur: 120G

Hammer Piece: 640G

Broken Hilt: 540G

Broken Box: 600G

Blade Shard: 245G

Arrowhead: 120G

Vine: 390G

Strong Vine: 560G

Old Bandage: 140G

Water Crystal: 800G

Bird’s Feather: 200G

Glitta Augite: 1,500G

Insect Horn: 200G

Rune Crystal: 5,000G

Magic Crystal: 3,500G