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ubtendo · 4 months ago

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Top 10 childhood videogames?

Wait, that's such a fun question, but I'm blanking on games I played in my childhood because I played so many😭

This list could have been a lot more obscure, but I tried to keep it more basic

Uhh and if anyone wants the reasoning for any game, I'm talking a bit about them under the cut

1. Tomodachi Life

One of my first actual games that I got to choose for my self and I still love it to this day. I mean if you haven't been struggling with the question "who in this ship could be a woman" because you made your favourite ship into miis with the plan on them marrying , but they are both guys and there is no option for a gay relationship, than have you even lived. I remember I got this game on my 10th birthday and I keept running back inside our house to charge my nintendo because I wouldn't stop playing for one second. Even now I still boot it up on my birthday first thing in the morning to see the mii version of my friends, family and favourite characters sing happy birthday to me.

2. Dragon Quest Monsters Joker

Hands down, if tomodachi life didn't exist, then this would have been my all time favourite game. I'm so surprised that I never see people talk about this game. If you like pokemon, then you will also like this. I watched my mom play it when I was really little, then we lost the game and my brother re-bought it a few years back, but decided he doesn't want to play it anymore pretty early on, so he gave the game to me. I only beat the final boss this year and my main complaint about this game is that lvl. grinding is PAINFULLY SLOW but I'm nothing if not patient so I got through the fight eventually.

3. Pokemon Alpha Sapphire

My first pokemon game and the one I replayed the most. If they never made a new pokemon game you would still find me playing this. I made so many memories in this game, I can't even begin to tell you any because I wouldn't stop. This holds a very special place in my heart.

4. Miitopia

Well when I first heard that there was a sort of successor / spin of of tomodachi life, I was set. I got it as soon as our store had it, and after losing all my games (story for an other day, sort of embarrassing, don't ask) I bought it again and I got my friends to play it as well and I was so happy. I remember that I was sitting in our garden and fighting the final boss only fo find out that that wasn't the final boss, I was so devastated but also so happy that the game wasn't over yet. What can I say, I'm just a simple RPG lover.

5. Animal Crossing New Leaf

In my opinion, a way better game than new horizon. I mean yeah, horizon got a lot of great features but it doesn't hold the candle to new leaf. This game just has such a sommer night vibe to me, but that might be because I keep staying up late to catch beatles all night on the island. Also THE MUSIC DON'T EVEN LET ME GET STARTED

6. New Style Boutique

I'm pretty sure I didn't buy this game myself, and it would feel weird for my parents to have bought it for me because I was a sort of tomboy-ish girl back then, but I played this game so much, and honestly I sometimes so today as well. Ok, maybe I only ever wore the bunny handbag and got the space buns hairstyle but I lived for that. I have the other 2 3ds games and the original ds game as well, but I haven't played much of them.

7. Go Vacation

Ok now we get a bit more obscure. Specially the wii version. I mentioned this before, but I loved the diving minigame and I spent hours underwater just doing that. Mainly I just loved running around the resorts and doing whatever. Me and my brother also sometimes raced down from the peak of the mountain in the snow resort and we placed bets on who would win. Fun game even tho I don't remember any other minigame except diving.

8. Cooking Academy

So my mom gave me her old laptop when I was idk seven? And she still had this game so she gave that to me as well. And I might or might have not burnt every dish that went into the oven. Honestly my cooking skills haven't improved since then, so I guess I'm just very consistent.

9. GTA 2

Ok so I actually never really played that game myself and I only watched my brother play on our uncle's old windows 98 PC. The funny thing is tho is, we were really young, like REALLY YOUNG. I'm pretty sure we never played the story and we just drove with the cars and tried to steal the police cars everytime and hunt down the hot dog car. Real nostalgic to me even tho I wouldn't play it myself even nowadays.

10. Sims 2

Again, my mom gave it to me with her PC. Sims 3 was already long out and I played that as well, but I remember this one much more. Maybe because my version had some weird graphic glitches where all the walls and the whole overworld looked like a red and black checkers board that would make your eyes bleed. Sims in general I remember very fondly because of my mama

#phew very long post #hi to everyone who read through that #should I tag each game?#tomodachi life #dragon quest monsters joker #pokemon alpha sapphire #animal crossing new leaf #miitopia #new style boutique #go vacation #cooking academy #gta 2 #sims 2 #video games #not art #ask answered

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tippenfunkaport · 2 years ago

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Inspired by a recent poll, could you tell us a bit more about the software you use for writing and the advantages with it?

Thanks so much!

Can I keep this short is the question...

So, for anyone who didn’t see the post this is referring to, I mentioned on another post that the writing software I use is...

4TheWords for drafting (brainstorming, first draft, etc)

Scrivener for all subsequent stages (editing, formatting, etc)

ProWritingAid for a final look before I submit / post

Longer version (and, like, I could talk about this all day so feel free to ask follow ups but I will try to contain myself)

4TheWords is a fantasy RPG-ish writing game where the words you write defeat monsters, earn loot, complete quests, etc. I have been playing it for five years ish and the game-ification just works really well for my brain. Earning silly little prizes and moving the game plot along keeps me motivated to keep writing when otherwise I would be a useless slug so I do most of my early stage writing on there like drafting, brainstorming, journaling, etc. It is silly but I love it and it basically saved my writing life when I was in a huge slump so they have my undying devotion. The company is also the kind you feel very good about supporting and they are HUGELY queer friendly with a big yearly Pride event with many of the main in-game characters being queer and/or trans. (The closest the game has to main characters are a lesbian couple that just got married as part of the Valentine's Day event last month!)

It costs money but a) there is a 30 day free trial of you want to check it out and b) there is a community pool if you cannot afford the fee as well as frequent sales/deals. (If anyone wants to try it out, feel free to use my referral code when you sign up because then you’ll get some extra crystals and I can send you a welcome present of some loot! If the image link above is annoying, dm me and I will give you it via text for copy and paste.)

Scrivener is very robust writing software that I use for fiction, non-fiction and scriptwriting. I only rarely use it for first drafts (bc I use 4TW for that) but I do almost all my editing / rewriting / formatting / publishing in it. I have been using it for probably about a decade and am still finding new tools and features I didn’t realize it had. I absolutely swear by it. The learning curve can be steep but luckily it’s one of the most popular writing programs in the world so there are a TON of great tutorials out there. (My advice? Just watch a video of something like the top 5-10 features and then play around and look up stuff as you have questions instead of trying to do the whole long tutorial it comes with.)

Disclaimer that I only own the desktop version. There are mobile versions that are a separate purchase from the desktop version but I don't use them.

Biggest selling points of Scrivener to me are:

while many writing services have a monthly fee, Scrivener is purchased exactly once and you can use it for life on your laptop and desktop AND you can get 50% off that one time price with a NaNoWriMo winner code (this alone is enough to buy my loyalty for life)

it’s incredibly versatile for both plotting and publishing and works really for my writing process (which is, admittedly, chaotic and weird) and has near infinite customization. It's esp great for making story bibles, organizing research, and plotting out larger works with lots of cross references and chapters you need to rearrange

as a script writer, Scrivener only cost me a one time fee of $35 and includes all updates and bug fixes until the next major version (which happens like once a decade). FinalDraft is $250 and that only includes the current version (which changes about once a year) to do the same thing. That’s a no brainer to me.

ProWritingAid is editing software. Like Grammarly but MUCH more robust with a lot more reports you can run. It’s not replacement for a human editor (AI editing can only do so much) but I like it as a second pair of eyes before I post or submit something because it does catch a lot of the basics and makes me feel a little better about sending something out. There is a limited free version and the full version can be pricey if you pay the monthly fee but I bided my time until the lifetime subscription went on sale for 50% off and paid once and now I have it to use for life.

There. That was almost short, right?

#writing #writer #scrivener #4thewords #prowritingaid #writerscommunity #writblr #writbr #writers on tumblr #nanowrimo #asks #writing software

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poppopopopopi · 2 months ago

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Poppi's Top 10 Games of 2024

Honestly I'm gonna have a hard time listing only 10 games with how packed this year was with new and interesting ideas for game design. As usual they will be in no ranked order except the top 3. I will also list games I haven't played/only played a bit of but really enjoyed

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero

A genuine love letter to the tenkaichi series and to the franchise overall. Sparking Zero is absolutely incredible to play and genuinely makes me smile everytime I play it. I'm excited for the future of this game.

Astro Bot

So much innovation and creativity oozes out of every piece of this game. What an absolute joy to play. Also it gets bonus points for having a Tokyo Jungle AND Boku No Natsuyasumi cameo.

Dragon Quest Monsters 3

I love Dragon Quest...I love collecting funny lil guys and I love RPGs. A win win formula with so much time sunk into just making your lil guys perfect. What a GREAT game.

TLOZ: Echoes of Wisdom

It is IMPRESSIVE to me how Nintendo continue to innovate on a series this old. Continuing the trend of open ended exploration and approach to situations, Echoes of Wisdom adds a feature that makes everything you do something unique to your playthrough. Endlessly replayable because of this and genuinely one of the most impressive uses of a new and creative mechanic I've seen in a long time.

Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania

If the official game awards can add a DLC, So can I. What an absolute love letter to a series mostly abandoned by Konami. This DLC took me so much time to unlock and finish everything and I adored every second. The amount of references, playable characters, weapons, bosses, even the map design all show how much Poncle ADORE this franchise. What an incredible piece of content for an already incredible game.

Psychopomp Gold

I adore everything about Psychopomp Gold. The character designs, the visual design, the way everything feels so uncomfortable but so creative. It's a small but super interesting and unique game that has me remembering why I love this medium in the first place. I'm so sad I missed out on the plushie being sold :(.

Balatro

I had Stellar Blade on here before.......I played Balatro yesterday....yeah....I get it....Holy shit it's good.

Yeah this is a Flush and now I play EXODIA.

3. Crow Country

Survival Horror games have longed to capture the PS1 feel and usually failed to do so. Crow Country not only succeeds in this but also brings to it an incredible game with so much charm and passion put into it, you will want to replay it right after you finish it. A genuine masterpiece of a game that has me super excited for whatever this developer does next.

2. Webfishing

A small and cute game that is weirdly one of the most friendly queer safespaces I have ever found. Webfishing is a wonderful treat of a game that will have you meeting plenty of friendly faces all while you play as cute animals doing a bit of fishing. You can also spend all your money on lotto tokens and lose most of it doing so...

1.Sonic X Shadow Generations

As someone who adores Sonic and has even stuck through and enjoyed entries people consistently shat on. This game is everything to me. In an era where Sonic continuously gets better and better and is in such a huge spotlight, This is the gem that sits atop it all. Frontiers was incredible and is still my favourite Sonic game, but this...What an incredibly well made and genuine adoration to the history of the franchise this is. I'm so excited for the future of Sonic and I cannot wait for the third movie. I'm so happy.

Games I have played a bit of /want to play I think could have made a spot here below/Played but didn't make it

Ys X

Romancing Saga 2

Atlyss

Slitterhead

Visions of Mana

Balatro

Galaxy Burger

Papas Pizzeria Deluxe

Stellar Blade

Excited for 2025!! GIMME POKEMON LEGENDS ZA!!

#Poppis goty

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callmearcturus · 9 months ago

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Arc Plays Games: Nayuta no Kiseki

listen i just really like fan translated games, okay

so I've been playing what i think is a side-game to the Trails In the Sky sprawling megaseries of games, Nayuta no Kiseki. It's a PSP game that was translated by fans before an official translation came to the Switch. PSP/PS Vita and DS/3DS are my favorite game libraries right now by a whole lot.

And man I really liked this game.

It's an action RPG from the era before spectacle action became de riguer. It looks really lovely and painterly at 5x resolution on my Odin.

Basic pitch is this kid, Nayuta, is coming home for summer vacation from his time studying in university. He lives in a world that seems to be an actual Flat Earth and beyond the known boundaries is the literal End of the World, and it's vaguely common knowledge that the End is closer than its not, and a major apocalypse may happen.

The game establishes all that, then is like "here is your hometown on Remnant Island! gosh its so pretty and sunny!"

In the first hour of the game, Nayuta and his buddy Cygna stumble into another world that the locals call Terra but mythologically seems to be Lost Heaven to Nayuta's people. He misplaces his best friend Cygna but gains the fairy Noi, and Nayuta and Noi have to work together to save Terra and find Cygna.

The thing I enjoyed about the game was the gameplay loop, which is immaculately tuned. This is, to me, a Cozy Game, but I say that with the caveat that I'm allergic to what most ppl call Cozy Games these days.

The loop goes like this.

The areas of Terra are separated into medium-sized levels that take about 5 to 10 minutes to complete, tops. Each level, you run around swinging your sword, solving v basic puzzles, and using magic with Noi.

The tastiest part is that each level has a little objective for you to do to get star points that can be used back on Remnant Island. There's also money and museum items to locate.

When you collect a bunch of stuff, you go back to Remnant Island. You trade in your star points to the local swordmaster to unlock new abilities. You drop off your stuff at the local museum to get more money. And you spend money on new equipment.

You can also stop by your house to pick up lunchboxes from your older sister, and every meal is different and has special bonuses and buffs.

While at the Island, Nayuta has this job as a Handyman, so everyone on the island leaves request letters in his mailbox for him to do menial quests for them. Often, you have to help people around the island, but sometimes you need to use the other world to solve problems.

Example: the attendant at the blacksmithy wanted new fruit to make into alcohol, so she gave Nayuta a seed for a peach tree. Back in Terra, Nayuta can plant the seed then use plot magic to change the seasons and get the fully grown peach.

The game just feeds into itself really well. You get quests that lead you back to the battle stages that lead you to collect stuff that leads you back to the questgiver and helps you gear up better over time.

I've put about 17 hours in, I think? And at this point I'm happy setting it aside as not completed but done. I'm close to the ending of the game, but the plot is focusing more and more on characters that had not grabbed me in any way, so I'm having trouble staying invested in the story.

(This is another fairy creature, I love his design)

But if the game was just the main loop of island quests to battle arenas and back, I'd play it for another ten hours. It's good! Solidly 6 or 7 out of 10.

Now I want, like, the same game but better writing.

#arc plays games #anyway this game is very very easy to find if you know the site to look at #which i do so hmu

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yungvenuz · 1 year ago

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Game of the Year List 2023

Honorable Mentions: Touhou: Artificial Dream in Arcadia: I love the oddball mashup of shmup and dungeon crawler mechanics, but I ended up losing interest before the end of the game. In Stars and Time: Still playing this game. I like it so far, but I didn't want to rush it through to get it on this list. It'll go on next year's list if I like it enough. Stuffo the Puzzle Bot: Really great soundtrack. Still on regular rotation.

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10. Super Snail (IOS and Android)

This is a difficult inclusion. Super Snail is an Evil game. It's the most monetized game I've ever played. Every screen you can visit can trigger a special offer for a pile of goodies you don't need that you can buy with real money. It's a mobile gacha game, through and through, designed to eat up time and attention and offer back a distant illusion of progress that you could surely expedite, if you were just willing to kick in ten bucks for one of its dozens of customized season passes…. So, why is this game on this list?

Developer QCPlay was already on my radar from previous release Gumball and Dungeons, a similarly high effort mobile game (amusingly originally intended as a Dragon Quest game, until they failed to secure the license and were forced to sand all the iconic teardrops off their slimes and call them gumballs instead). Despite their willingness to indulge in all the awful trends of mobile game markets, these are real, proper game designers, who have buried a real, actual game under all of Super Snail's idle timers and base management bullshit.

Super Snail is constantly shifting, adding new layers of complexity and shaking up existing mechanics. It's the only gacha game I'm aware of in which your gacha machine can be stolen from you temporarily if you use it too much, forcing you to wait on spending tickets until the thief decides its rates are too shit to bother with and returns it to you. There's a dating sim mechanic in which various characters met in your travels (male, female, or both) will find out about your secret base and decide to mooch off you, which is some of the funniest writing in the game.

On that note, the writing is weirdly good for a game that's approximately 80% random pop culture references. The eight demon lords you've been tasked with defeating by the mysterious god "Earth's Will" all have detailed and consistent backstories. There are a few honest-to-god effective twists in the plot, and a lingering question about how shady the god you've signed your life to actually is.

A predatory mobile game shouldn't deserve one minute of my attention, let alone one of the coveted slots on my illustrious top ten list, but Super Snail spits in the face of all that, and god. I can't stop thinking about it, about how many interesting game design lessons are nestled within its strange and evil exterior. So, by compromise, it's grudgingly earned my #10. Just, for god's sake, if any of this backhanded review piques your interest, set a budget for yourself and don't exceed it for any reason.

9. BOSSGAME: The Final Boss is Your Heart (Steam)

BOSSGAME is an action rpg about two dirtbag lesbians, Sophie and Anna, trying to earn rent money by taking random mercenary work in the big city. The story is low pressure fun, with a little melodrama mixed in to spice things up. The plot is needs-suiting, even maybe good, but the reason this game is on the list is the gameplay.

BOSSGAME is really, really fun to play. It uses a combat system reminiscent of the Mario and Luigi rpgs in which both party members are controlled simultaneously. Enemies telegraph attacks that need to be blocked using the left or right side of the gamepad based on character, draining stamina. Attacking also drains stamina, so a careful balance of offense and defense needs to be maintained to survive. Most interestingly, there's no turns: enemies repeat attack patterns usually without waiting for a counterattack, so combat becomes a brain-bending routine of multitasking, with one character needing to block attacks while the other sneaks in some damage. A combo system encourages keeping up constant pressure, with the reward being increased progress toward a super attack that can briefly stun bosses and allow some easy hits before returning to defensive play. The end result is fast paced, engaging, and totally unique combat that was fun to learn for each of the dozens of boss fights in the game.

I'm glad this game ended up being good enough to recommend here, not just because I, too, am lesbian, but because I love designers that are willing to take a chance on unique control schemes. Part of the fun of playing BOSSGAME was getting to learn how to play without being able to rely on any of the muscle memory I've accrued over years of playing other action games. I only wish it weren't so short. Of all the games on this list, this is the one I would most want to see expanded into a full 40-60 hour RPG epic.

8. Slay the Princess (Steam)

A Myers-Briggs test for fetishes. Keep that in mind whenever anybody who tries to talk to you about their favorite "route". Great writing though

7. EDF 5 (Steam)

My official Multiplayer Game Experience of the Year. The EDF (EDF! EDF! EDF!) series is an alien invasion resistance simulator that exists somewhere between Dynasty Warriors and Monster Hunter in gameplay. I've known about the series for a long time, and I had assumed it was the kind of loud dumb fun that makes for punchy clips but wears out its welcome quickly. To be clear, it definitely is loud, and dumb, and fun, but it also has significantly more mechanical depth and complexity than I expected, which kept it fresh and engaging for as long as I played it.

Mechanics like building destruction and corpse hitboxes looks like they're just they're there for spectacle at first, but as levels progress and more and more aggressive enemy types are introduced, these seemingly incidental details take on more and more importance as you need to manage cover and enemy sight lines more effectively. This is the game's most potent tool, I think: everything that makes it great as a ridiculous carnage sandbox has been meticulously designed to also work in the higher difficulty levels to deliver a genuinely tense and highly mobile shooter.

6. Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengeance of the Slayers (Steam)

A boomer shooter in the same canon as Hypnospace Outlaw, partially developed by troubled teen ZANE_ROCKS_14 and polished up for release 22 years later. For an elaborate shitpost, it's very well made, but what most interests me about it is its contradictory nature. Outwardly, it's completely juvenile and silly about everything it does, filled with poop jokes and mouthy rats and evil stepdads. Underneath that, there's the deep melancholy of a 36 year old desperately trying to relive the last time in his life that he felt cool.

all the levels in the game faithfully recreate scenes of Zane's Idaho childhood, from ritzy suburban neighborhoods to car parks to the local fair, but they're all just a little bit too eerily empty for the settings they're trying to evoke. The protagonist's sincere love for his mother completely clashes with the badass attitude he brings to every other scene. Zane put his all into voice acting the protagonist's lines, while every other character sounds like they're reciting lines into their phone in a bathroom. The end result is a masterpiece in immersive game design, meticulously arranged to feel like it came from a very specific time and place in a fictional alternate universe. It's so effective that even the parts that don't work can be argued as a deliberate part of the overall period piece, like the confusingly short penultimate level or unnecessarily annoying final boss.

5. Cobalt Core (Steam)

A card battler built around spaceship combat. It should be immediately apparent to anybody who's played a lot of Slay-The-Spire-likes that Cobalt Core is on the easier side, but that's a deliberate choice here, in an effort to create an engaging narrative experience rather than a perfectly tuned progression treadmill. While Inscryption (another narrative card battler) managed its story by bringing the player away from the cards for cutscenes or escape room sequences, Cobalt Core delivers everything within its roguelike framework, even going as far as coming up with a time loop justification for why the player is repeating runs to progress the story.

In that regard it compares more closely to Hades than other card battlers, and I also think that's a good comparison because I really like the characters and character interactions in Cobalt Core. Each round starts with the selection of three of the (after finishing a short period of unlocks) 7 crewmates available to play with, and every combination of characters has interesting discussions and interactions between them. Characters also have lines to acknowledge specific artifacts, cards, or game states (like big damage or status effects) that offers a level of reactivity to make each run that much more unique. Also like Hades, there's a concrete ending sequence. Backstory for each crewmate is delivered piecemeal throughout the game, and while there aren't any earthshattering twists or revelations, the ending does a good job of tying everything together for a proper sendoff.

Shoutout to Riggs. Best possum in the galaxy.

!Great Soundtrack Alert!

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4. Going Down (2014 Doom wad) (Doomworld File Depot)

This year, I played MyHouse.wad. More and more people were talking about it, and I wanted to give it a try myself before someone randomly spoiled it for me. I didn't end up caring for it much! It did some interesting things, and it was definitely well made, but I'm not that interested in the creepypasta style it was going for.

It did pique my interest in the rich ecosystem of Doom modding that's been quietly trucking along for 30 years before myhouse ever released, though. A friend recommended Going Down, which I found to be terrific, and then I spent the rest of the year playing random wads (level packs) whenever I didn't have anything else to do. Doom has become invaluable to me as a podcast game, especially as I've only just been able to extract myself from Tactical Nexus's cunning grasp this year.

So, without further ado: The Official Doom Wads of the Year Minilist:

10 Struggle: Antaresian Legacy - Most of the levels in this wad focus on low-pressure exploration, but my favorites were the wide-open chaotic battles. I especially like the capstone levels of the first two chapters (maps 11 and 20), which both feature massive arenas with hundreds of enemies active at once. 9 Ancient Aliens - A collab megawad with great aesthetic and theming. Level quality is inconsistent, which makes sense given how many authors were involved, but the best levels in the wad are excellent. 8 Dust Devil - A short campaign of two interconnected levels with a bunch of interesting custom content. The use of grenade launchers and shielded enemies was especially cool, and not something I expected the doom engine to be able to do. 7 Lullaby - A stylish single-map wad in a decidedly undoomlike blue dreamland. There's only five or so major setpiece encounters, but they're all very memorable. 6 Doom 2 - I love how experimental the design in Doom 2 is, especially given that the entire genre of fps was brand new at this point in history. there's abstract levels, puzzle levels, diagetic cityscapes, and more. It's easy to see its influence in every fps to ever follow in its wake. 5 Overboard - A newer wad by the same author of Going Down with a great gimmick- the first five levels are followed by a set of hard mode remixes that use the same maps with more aggressive enemy arrangements. I particularly liked the last map of hard mode, which is identical to its normal mode variant except that it spawns all 500 enemies in the moment the level starts instead of deploying in piecemeal waves as it does in the original. 4 The Thing You Can't Defeat - An experimental remix of the first chapter of Doom 1. Very interesting premise and punchline. If you liked MyHouse.wad, I'd highly recommend checking it out. 3 Tarnsman's Projectile Hell - This is the first touhou game I've played, technically. Deviously difficult design with an emphasis on long distance hitscan enemies that would be extremely annoying in the hands of a level designer any less obviously talented than Tarnsman. 2 Unloved - An ambitious continuous campaign that takes place in a Silent Hill-esque house with several portals to distorted nightmare realms. I like that small amounts of progress are made in each level at a time with frequent revisits to the main hub, and I love the dark atmosphere. Very creepy. Also insanely difficult. 1 Going Down - My favorite by a long shot. The amount of variety in level and encounter design is incredible on its own, but I particularly like the care that went into giving each level a unique identity that still makes sense in the context of the wad's premise (taking an elevator floor by floor down into the depths of hell). Every level is meticulously designed to use the entire space, usually multiple times as later encounters in each level usually reuse the same arenas with additional twists on the layout and enemy deployments.

3. Pizza Tower (Steam)

A fluid platformer heavily inspired by the Wario Land games. Its most notable design choice is the lack of fail state when exploring levels. There's no health bar, and falling into pits only resets the room, so there's no significant pressure until the timed escape sequence at the end of each level. That's not to say the game lacks challenge, though. Far from it- the challenge comes not from reaching the end of each room, but in doing so as efficiently as possible. Pizza Tower's principle antagonist is the 5 second combo timer in the top right, forcing a constant stream of action. Every level has just enough stuff in each room to allow a single combo to be carried from start to level finish, which confers the coveted P Rank medal on level completion.

Full P Rank completion is what I spent three months obsessively chasing at the start of this year. Movement in Pizza Tower is so fluid, and so satisfying to learn how to fully utilize, that I couldn't resist going for it. I got so far into it that after finishing the game, I went back in immediately for an optional challenge that requires full P rank completion of the game in less than 4 hours, which required being able to clear each level with perfect consistency.

!Great Soundtrack Alert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWoTeTZL-C8

2. Beton Brutal (Steam)

The trailer for Beton Brutal immediately spoke to me. I've been a fan of persistent-state platforming games for ages, and it's a sorely underserved genre (mostly lurking in MMOs and player-made levels for games like Mario Maker). I like the emphasis on meditative upward progress, and I especially like the increasing pressure that builds as each subsequent jump risks losing more progress than the previous. Beton Brutal's developer was able to deliver this perfectly while also maintaining a consistent and interesting visual style (a stark contrast to the dreadful nft tie-in climbing game Only Up, which also released this year).

For weeks, I opened Beton Brutal after work and played for thirty minutes to an hour, usually seeing some small amount of new progress before inevitably taking a long fall and rage quitting for the day. I don't think I can call this the hardest game I've ever played, given that there's an entire community of people that can complete the entire climb in less than ten minutes, but I do think I'm uniquely poorly suited for games like this, given the extreme precision required. Still, that made it all the more satisfying to finally complete the game after almost exactly 20 hours of effort.

Three months later the DLC "Beton Bath", with another 500 meter tower with new obstacles, mechanics, and visual aesthetic (themed after public pool equipment, which honestly looks great decorating the tower), released. This dlc had mixed reviews, but it cemented this game as a whole as a favorite for me. The new tower has a very different design approach, with more focus on interpreting strange geometry, seeking out aggressive shortcuts, and taking giant leaps of faith. The last 100 meters particularly impressed me, with numerous falls onto trampolines 80 meters below to stride the entire tower in one jump and reach new ladders, before climbing just a few meters higher and repeating the process back to the opposite side.

trying to settle on which screenshot to include with the entry was agonizing, so I'm going to post a bunch more here. I love how this game looks.

Don't worry about the vertigo meter in the bottom left. It's probably nothing to worry about.

Void Stranger (Steam)

Void Stranger is a tile-based puzzle game featuring a magic wand that can pick tiles up and place them elsewhere. Help the noble handmaiden Gray delve into the 256th floor of the mysterious Void to fulfill her heart's desire, learning more about her past by peeking into her memories as she rests at checkpoints along the way.

…But that's not sufficient to describe it, really. The best way I can come up with to describe what Void Stranger actually is, is as a seemingly normal block-pushing puzzle game that's had an entire additional Myst-like adventure game layered over it. The puzzle game is real, and it can be engaged with honestly from start to finish, but the true fun of the game (and several of its many, many possible endings) comes from interpreting obscure clues in the lore and interface to dive deeper.

The more that's learned, the easier it is to navigate the underlying puzzle game. Almost every object in the game has hidden mechanics related to it, opening up easier routes through initially difficult puzzles or allowing the use of shortcuts to skip floors entirely. Once these tricks are mastered, only thirty or so of the game's 256 floors even need to be visited to complete a run, and most of them can be cleared in seconds.

That's a good thing, too, because there's a lot of travel to specific floors needed to find all the secrets in the game. This is a game that thrives on friction in its play experience, which means it's definitely not going to be a game for everybody. If clues regarding certain shortcuts or secrets are missed, it can add a lot of unnecessary work to completing the game. But I personally love that kind of obscurity in games, and I really appreciate that the developer System Erasure (who made the similarly excellent ZeroRanger) was willing to take a chance on a niche-of-a-niche genre that could really speak to its core demographic: me specifically.

I'm not going to talk much about the plot, because most of it is deeply tangled with the Void Stranger's deepest secrets. That said, I appreciate that every route through the game, even the ones that don't engage with all the secret hunting, have been given fully fledged stories. Even the bad ending has a fucking awesome finale, to the extent that I would recommend seeking it out before engaging with the rest of the game's content (if you get offered a fruit, go ahead and eat it!)

Void Stranger is good enough to make it onto my top ten list of games of all time. I've put it at #6, just behind Iji and just ahead of Full Bore. Everything about it is fucking awesome. Check it out!

!Great Soundtrack Alert!

youtube

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cfrick · 1 year ago

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Horny game review #3: Lust Doll+. I did an informal summary in another post, but this is going to be my FULL ramble. Not very spoiler-free, but I do not recommend going into this game blind.

Quick summary if you didn't see my other ramble: Lust Doll+ is a scifi/fantasy RPG. You are a "doll" who wakes from a test tube in a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of monsters and furries (and also humans but who cares about those guys). It's a perfect mix of magic, tech, rpg tropes, and so much sex.

Okay so this game sucks. BAD. But sadly I'm obsessed (source: my 35+ hour main save file). Let me go over everything terrible first so you can understand my conflicted opinions.

First and most obvious issue: the art. Now look, this is a game made entirely by one guy, I get it, I'm not expecting AAA graphics here. It's a dinky top-down RPG and it's not even made in RPGmaker. But the overworld is literally just colored squares. And i don't mean like pixel art. It is just a gridmap. The vaguest suggestion of an environment. If you want to play this game, you gotta have a wildly vivid imagination like me cause it is 90% narration doing all the work. That last 10% is the character sprites, which are in a basic anime style with a noticeable lack of hands. All the characters look straight out of a How To Draw Anime book you'd find on clearance at Michaels. It is nothing to write home about. But hey I respect it! This game is updates twice a month! Whatever works!

Some of the questlines are also reminiscent of old confusing adventure games. You will absolutely find yourself lost on what to do next at some point. I always play with the wiki open on the side, it's very well-maintained. There is an NPC who will give subtle hints in-game for a small fee, but they're so well-hidden you'll need the wiki to find them anyways.

Now the actual complaints. The content of the game. This game has a huge list of kinks and fetishes it covers, I won't even try listing them all, it's got TONS (but no robots 😔). And a good amount of those are optional content! The game has a whole menu called The Sanctum you can access at any time to turn kinks on and off as you please! That's a big plus, I love that part! But there's still plenty you can't avoid.

Due to how gameplay works, noncon is entirely unavoidable. It's a battle fuck game. Do not even touch this game if you can't handle things being done to you or doing things to other people without consent. That's the whole point. There's no safeword (except for a small section of the game where you can engage in actual safe bdsm scenes. that part has a safeword).

There's also a lot of racism?? Like just the most fetishy representation you can imagine. There's two whole questlines late-game that are kinda uncomfortable, and one NPC early on that is required to interact with for a quest. If you're looking for games with good representation, this is NOT it. Not even close. And I'm still gonna talk good about this game, I'm sorry, but my standards are SO low for these games. I'm just glad I finally found a free porn game with ZERO incest or underage stuff. That part is truly miraculous.

Another essential warning: don't bother with the "trap/femboy" setting. It is as bad as it sounds. It affects one very minor character who is not worth the effort to find, the story literally forces you to be transphobic to them, it is so bad. The futa setting, on the other hand, has tons of content, and it's not the worst out there? Like it's for sure not good trans rep, or trans rep at all, i promise you none of the characters in this game identify as trans except for one confirmed nb shopkeep, but hey. It's something! I'll go into this in full, but so much of the game is so casual about gender and sexuality, those few weird sections really stand out. Good news is, these scenes can at least be turned off in the menu if they make you uncomfortable.

Okay. That's all the big negatives. Now let's talk good.

This game is like the undertale of porn rpgs. Every encounter has two options: fighting and fucking. The battle system is built upon these two bars, a classic HP meter, and a pink lust meter. Certain actions will do physical damage, lust damage, or a mix of both ;) As the pink bar fills, you'll get stat debuffs, and once it's full, you are forced to surrender out of desperation and left at the mercy of your opponent. And yes, all enemies have this too. I have found one enemy in the whole game you can't at least try to fuck your way past. Most have multiple options for "finishing" scenes if you win, and usually one "defeat" scene if they take you out. Also (pretty far into the game) there's a competitive sex minigame. Check out The Island it's very fun.

[a meme i made upon first finding the island]

Beyond battle sex, there's also sooo many options for casual sex with the many NPCs. The game will ask what sort of genders you're interested in, but look, if you're exclusively into dating men? Do not expect much. There is One properly romancable man and he cums on sight (Also the way his storyline currently ends he might not be a man?) So many romancable women tho! And some male enemies you can fuck in the battle system! And everyone is very bisexual!

Since we're covering sexuality, let's talk the player character's gender options. There's four pronoun options (he, she, they, and it) and So. Much. Body. Customization. They will let you do Anything. AND, throughout the game, there's tons of options to switch things up! As someone who plays porn games like a completionist, the fact that I can have boobs, a vagina, and a dick, all at the same time, allowing me to access Every Sex Scene in one save file is just perfect. There's even exclusive "both" sex scenes, and characters are very cool about it like its no big deal. And, only occasional pronoun fuckups in narration! With all the text in this game, I'm not surprised some things slip through. Other than that, character customization is pretty good, for human and nonhuman options. Not the most extensive furry options I've seen, and someone on the wiki keeps complaining about the lack of ferret options, but still plenty you can do. There's also tattoo and piercing options once you're in the game!

Clothing options are honestly disappointing in my opinion, and also the weapon options, which is weird for an rpg. I wound up just grinding my strength stat real high so i can take everything out with my bare hands. It looks better aesthetically and saves my ass if i forget to equip something (its very easy to forget to equip something).

I'm gonna add a section here to just mention all the stupid facts and tips I have. There's a whole pregnancy mechanic (optional), that goes all the way through giving birth, but since the dev hasn't added a way to settle down and raise children yet, your baby just gets put into adoption and everyone pretends it never happened. There's a quest where you have to find cowfolk throughout the world and recruit them to your farm to produce more milk (good health item + money source). Customize your character's default expression, it's a really minor thing but it adds a lot of personality. You can get arrested if you jack off in public bathrooms too much, and i recommend you don't do that, the cop character sucks and you should avoid her as much as possible, acab. If you take a very specific amount of steps before going to sleep, you will have The Dream and unlock your Hidden Desire, which allows some bonus (very silly) interactions with NPCs. The Mpreg status effect was recently renamed to Ass Pregnant, because it can happen to anyone, regardless of gender. Diversity Win.

You will surely hear more about this game from me. But that us all for now. Fanart was posted separate because I wrote a Lot, but thanks for reading anyways :]

#cfr talks games #cfr talks ick #lust doll plus #if i tried to tag every weird kink i mention in this post. this would be a dictionary just Beware.#i like including images in my textposts cause they pop up in the notifications.#now i get to see the competative sex meme everytime someone likes this post

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veebs-hates-video-games · 1 year ago

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Ok I should probably do the Harvestella thing before I get too far distant from it and forget everything. 13 Sentinels has consumed my brain over the past week, so let's do this before I lose what's left of Harvestella.

I know it got kind of mediocre reviews and a bunch of people were underwhelmed by it, but I actually thought it was pretty great. From what I've seen it failed to find the right audience, probably because the very little promotion it got made it look like a farming sim with kind of a Final Fantasy-style story tacked on, and people who expected that from it were disappointed. When it did manage to find the people who were into what it actually is (85% JRPG with like 15% farming sim layered on top) a lot of them loved it though.

It's kind of a weird game, because the farming stuff is simplified somewhat from games where that's the primary focus, and some of the RPG stuff is also not done quite as well or as in depth as in a pure RPG (mainly the combat), but if the combination works for you like it does for me it really does have a lot going for it.

I'm someone who loves the idea of farming games but can never really get into them and stick with them long term, whether it's Harvest Moon or Rune Factory or Stardew Valley or whatever else. I had the best luck with SDV, but after about 10 hours I just couldn't get myself to keep going, and most other stuff in the genre I don't even last that long. It's streamlined enough in this and has enough other stuff to balance it out that I actually enjoyed that part of the game this time though, so that was nice for a change.

The big surprise was the story and characters and world though. I played the demo almost a year ago and could tell that it was going to have Typical Final Fantasy-style Nonsense (affectionate) (not to be confused with most recent actual mainline Final Fantasy games, which for me keep turning out to be Typical Final Fantasy-style Nonsense (derogatory)), but I didn't expect it would do that stuff as well as it ultimately did.

The initial premise of the game is pretty straightforward, but the world turns out to be a lot more interesting than it seems at first as more gets revealed about it throughout the game, and there are a bunch of interesting characters who get their own storylines and develop pretty well through them too. It gets increasingly serious sci-fi story in the latter half of the game, but earlier on there are lots of fun and simple bits that establish various characters and the world and why you should care about it in the first place.

Interestingly in those earlier parts, and kind of in side quests in general, there's a lot more focus on the kinds of stuff you'd expect to see in Games for Girls™ that you don't usually see quite as much of in big RPGs. There are a whole bunch of side quests and storylines focusing on people's interpersonal relationships and families, and multiple things get resolved through getting people to actually communicate or listening to children and taking them seriously as people. I think that's kinda great and that more games should include stuff like that more.

Exploring for more materials and ingredients or to do story or side quest missions is fun and satisfying enough. I normally hate stamina systems and being time limited, but if you eat literally any food at all you get free stamina regen for a while so that's not a problem, and there are like eight billion fast travel checkpoints and various shortcuts that you can unlock all over the world, so it doesn't feel like you have to constantly redo stuff after running out of time. You just go home at the end of the day and can pick up right where you left off usually (after tending to your farm stuff in the morning, of course).

The weakest part of the game is probably the combat though. It's...fine? I guess? It's both too simple and too complex at the same time. Like there's not a lot of incentive to do anything but spam basic attacks against trash mobs, and in boss fights there's not much reason to do any more than that other than use your skills when they're off cooldown. But there are like 37 different damage types that your different attacks can deal, and different enemies are weak against different flavors, and against bosses you can get a "break" that causes them to take more damage if you use the right kind(s) against them enough.

There's potential there for something interesting, but it's terrible at telling you what type of damage you're doing or what kind you should be doing, there are way too many different kinds with no meaningful difference between them other than visual effects, and I'm not going to memorize what every stupid attack in the game does when I can't even see the little symbols on the break gauge that represent different types or remember what each one means anyway.

Also you don't get a block or a dodge (certain jobs do sort of get a dash ability, but it's not great), so a lot of the time against a lot of kinds of enemies your options are basically limited to just take damage and deal with it, which I'm gonna be honest is stupid and not fun. Yes it does incentivize you to cook food/throw stuff in the juicer and use those things to heal yourself, but it's just annoying going into the menu to use them, and it's not particularly satisfying cheesing boss fights by drinking 14 glasses of juice instead of like...actually using the combat mechanics the game provides you?

If you can get past that most other stuff is pretty enjoyable though. I liked the art style more than most of Squenix's big main games these days like what I've seen of FF16, and there's some unreasonably great music in it. Like they did not have to go this hard in 5/8 or whatever in the farming game about farming, but I'm glad they did because it's kind of amazing. Thank you Go Shiina for your excellent work.

So yeah, definitely not a game for everyone if you're not into the kinda weird combination of things it tries to do and (mostly) succeeds at, but if it is your kind of thing it's a surprisingly fun world and collection of characters and unexpectedly well done story. Like I liked the storytelling more than in probably 90% of Final Fantasy games I've played (which I know isn't saying that much because I perpetually complain about them, but still).

It's a game about running your own farm but also hope and the absence of it and what it means to be human, and I thought that was pretty neat.

#harvestella

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strangecloud · 1 year ago

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I am going to do a top 10 favorite video games list for no particular reason

Hello, hey. So these are games that I've greatly enjoyed past and present and appeal to my particular interests and tastes. I like games to tell stories. I don't mean a written narrative with a beginning, middle and end. What I like is what some would call "emergent storytelling", which is a pretentious name but explains adequately how I enjoy my games to be played. I want to come out of a session of a game with a memorable story to tell, or even just remember to myself.

Anyway, here's the list.

10. Minecraft

Minecraft is a modern classic and the reason it's low on the list is because I enjoy it in theory way more than I do in practice. It's probably the platonic ideal of a sandbox game, full of interactible objects that can be refined into new items and materials for crafting, building, and generally just doing whatever you feel like.

And that freedom is what I enjoy about it. In the wacky block-world of Minecraft, you're able to do whatever you want. Build structures, focus solely on crafting the biggest sharpest sword ever, or just get a fishing rod and chill.

What I don't like so much is that singleplayer and the vast majority of public multiplayer servers are really bad at using this freedom to its fullest potential. There's so many possible interactions between entities and players and yet the pubs I've visited focus solely on adding artficial structure to the game, which I find uninteresting. If anyone can recommend a good Minecraft server free of unpleasant externalities, drop it on the comments or reblogs please.

9. Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is Minecraft's unhinged grandpa. I believe it has been directly cited as an inspiration for Minecraft way back in the day. It has gained some popularity over the years but I'd wager as lot of people would dismiss it as some nerd game for gatekeeping losers, but there's a genuinely cool core inside it that is the reason everyone likes it so much.

The beating heart of Dwarf Fortress is its world generation. As a traditional roguelike (as in, a game like Rogue), Dwarf Fortress will generate a whole world to your desired specifications not unlike Minecraft. Very unlike Minecraft, however, it will populate the world with factions of historical figures, beasts and other entities and then simulate the history of this realm for as long as you'd like.

This is the part that the brothers Adams, the game's creators, focus the most on, and is the reason the game has earned a spot in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

As a player, you get to influence this world by either controlling a colony of Dwarves, playing as a custom Adventurer and questing about the land, or just reading the Legends entries to find out what has happened in the vast history you created.

The gripes I have with it are that Adventure mode, my favorite part of the game, isn't very deep or fleshed out currently. The game also suffers from a hellish type of maximalism that makes it almost impenetrable without some sort of guidance and in some cases, external software. Still, it is a crowning achievement in game design and development and is one of the best games of all time, no doubt.

8. Fallout New Vegas

This is a cult classic game developed by Obsidian software under contract for Bethesda. As I understand it, Obsidian included some of the original staff of Black Isle and Interplay who worked on the OG Fallout games, which were isometric turn-based RPGs.

This is the most accessible and faithful Fallout game one can play in current year. The essence of Fallout, for me, has always been a laser focus on the player character. You never get to control your party members, though you can indirectly suggest commands that they will try their best to follow, often unsuccessfully. The game is about the dude or gal you make and play as: you get to customize how they look, what their physical and mental attributes are, and you have minute control over them down to the very words they speak, to the detriment of pretty much everything else.

Complementing that is the setting. West Coast Fallout is the most enthralling setting I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing in any medium, and it's a great playground to put your character designs to the test. You really have to commit to your character and see things from their perspective, and the world is reactive enough to reward you for doing so. OG Fallout and New Vegas are some of the smartest written games in the market and anyone who loves stories should give them a try.

7. PAYDAY 2

As much as I like stories and emergent gameplay, sometimes I'm in the mood to unwind by listening to some bopping music and clicking on bad men with guns. PAYDAY 2 is a co-op shooter in the vein of Left 4 Dead, only instead of shooting crazed zombies you get to shoot crazed cops.

Despite being co-op, most of my hours on it have been spent solo and I wouldn't have it any other way. The game is full of customization options and progression systems to make the arguably repetitive gameplay loop very addicting, and the shooting and movement mechanics put a lot of games to shame to this very day.

There's no shame in enjoying a good old heist and shootout every now and then. I'm not above that.

6. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly

Anomaly for me is the perfect STALKER game. In case you are not aware, STALKER is a series revolving around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, or simply "Zone" for short, in some kind of alternate reality where the incident at Chernobyl was either caused by or resulted in supernatural happenings, known as Anomalies.

As far as I remember, the mainline STALKER games never captured my imagination too much because of their linear progression. STALKER Anomaly remedies this by opening up the world of both Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Skies and levying the complete potential of the A-Life system.

It reminds me a lot of Dwarf Fortress, in that it is a sandbox game with a deep simulation layer and emergent actors going about their day dynamically in a scale as large as could be reasonably expected of video game software. It doesn't fall into the trap that so many survival games do where the survival challenge takes place in an empty lifeless world that is very, very boring. The world of STALKER Anomaly is full of life, conflict, humor and terror.

5. XCOM 2

I have a complicated relationship with XCOM 2. It's easily my favorite XCOM game due to the sheer level of character customization, from picking how your dudes look to giving them names and bios and then getting to watch them die horribly on the hands of some alien monster. This contrast is very deliberate: the game wants you to get attached to your soldiers to raise the stakes and generate tension.

The strategy is great, with deep combat that is rewarding to learn and a less deep but serviceable micromanaging minigame aboard your base of operations. The thing I don't like about this game is that the high difficulty and the punishing nature of failure make it a very stressful game to play.

When things are going your way, it provides the highest highs. When your squad gets wiped and takes your precious soldiers with it, you're dragged to the lowest lows. It's an intense experience but by no means a boring one.

4. Wildermyth

Wildermyth is the most slept-on game I've ever seen on the market. The best way I can describe it is it's a fantasy-themed strategy RPG with a choose-your-own-adventure storytelling format, but that description doesn't really do it justice.

Wildermyth greatly rewards imagination and creativity. The main feature of the game is being able to import your custom heroes from previous campaigns into later ones as supporting party members or even main characters. And this isn't some token feature made for you to look at your dudes and say "Yeah that's them". The procedural nature of the storytelling means that your characters can interact. They can cause trouble and build relationships, get wounded and even die, all with explicit acknowledgement from the game.

It's a story generator that doesn't skip on telling the story. The little event popups are well written, with lots of attention to detail and variations depending on the relationships and personalities of the characters involved. It's a game I'd easily recommend to anyone who enjoys creating characters and stories or even just strategy games in general, although admittedly the depth of the combat is a bit on the lighter side.

3. Devil May Cry 3

DMC3 is the perfect action game. DMC5 comes close but 3 for me clutches it because it's a lot more focused. Over the years the series has added increasing complexity which raised the skill ceiling far above what most people could possibly ever reach. There is exactly one person on Youtube I'm aware of who can be said to have completely mastered these games and watching them play is a sight to behold. Look up donguri if you'd like to see what that looks like.

As for me, I prefer the simplicity of the third game. It doesn't give you so many options that not using them just feels like playing the game wrong, it wants you to get good on your own terms and greatly rewards your investment in mastering its combat. There's nothing quite like playing a game and just feeling how well you're doing, how easily you can breeze through previously hard challenges.

Few games have motivated me to try and completely master them, but DMC3 manages it and does so in a way that's entertaining and fun throughout.

2. Titanfall 2

Titanfall 2 is the DMC3 of multiplayer shooters. A lot of people dismissed Titanfall back when it first came out and those people are fools. These games are sick.

I know the selling point is piloting big robots but I can't stress enough that for me, that's secondary. It's all about the Pilot gameplay outside of the robot. The movement tech in this game is insane and the difference between how a seasoned player moves around is night and day compared to a new or inexperienced player.

I've seen a lot of people say that the purest skill based multiplayer shooter is Quake. Maybe that's true, but Quake is also a very static experience. Titanfall 2 proves that you can have highly skilled competition without skipping out on customization and self expression.

The satisfaction of mastering a game goes double when you're up against people who have the potential to be just as skilled as you are. It's the whole reason multiplayer games endure despite being sometimes more repetitive than their singleplayer counterparts. Competition is fun and motivates people to get even better and practice their game harder. It's a great feedback loop of deep enjoyment.

1. The Sims 4

So why would I put what is considered by many the worst Sims game at the top of this list? It's going against some pretty heavyweight games here. Well, hear me out.

I believe this is the pinnacle of life-sim "cozy" games. I never got into Animal Crossing because to me, the characters feel lifeless. The complaining about New Horizons' NPCs always rung a little hollow to me because in my opinion they feel exactly as boring as all the villagers in any other game.

Sims has always been more interesting to me in no small part due to customization of your characters, but also because they interact in ways that are fundamentally more interesting. They can fight, become friends with each other, engage in romances and these relationship stages can seamlessly progress from one to another.

It's like having your own little TV show that you can watch daily. And on top of that, Sims 4 in specific is the most stable version of the game by far.

Going back to Sims 2, it has eccentricities I don't really like. Aging is so fast, and time works in a bizarre way that takes me out of the experience, with only the playable household being able to age. Sims 3 doesn't run well no matter what I do to it, and it's not very friendly to rotational play, which is something I enjoy doing.

Sims 4 is arguably shallower than its counterparts but the fact that it's so frictionless is enough to put it head and shoulders above the rest. The graphics looking very nice doesn't hurt either. I've played it for over 1000 hours and I probably will continue to do so.

It's a very relaxing game that makes me feel at ease, as a very anxious person. I love it and I can't thanks Maxis enough for what they have created.

#video games #top 10 list #the sims 4 #devil may cry #titanfall 2 #xcom 2 #stalker anomaly #wildermyth #payday 2 #minecraft #dwarf fortress #fallout new vegas

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widgeykins · 8 months ago

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Hello! Welcome to Season 2 of Glyph RP's new fantasy based Campaign on the game Ark Survival Evolved. NEW SEASON LAUNCHED SATURDAY, MAY 11TH AT 1:00PM EST!

Looking for a new server to call home? Well Look no further! New to RP? No problem! This is a perfect server to start honing your newfound love. Enjoy a refreshing, immersive and unique experience that caters to almost all RP styles while allowing you to curate your character to your desires.

What do we bring to the table?

Ark is considered one of the best sandbox games full of so much potential. We wanted to tap into that potential and provide an experience to help you get away from it all. We realize that ARK is a game where people come to have fun after a long day of work/school so we drive to make it a fun experience for everyone. Our server is ultimately for an immersive experience full of RP potential and we heavily configured the server to do just that. Start off in a brand new world with so many potential avenues that are altered by your character's decisions. A world that is curated around our evolving storyline with plenty to explore and do.

That’s not all! Our server is heavily customized to make it very unique. Think of it as a new RPG game running inside of the ARK Game Engine. All creature spawns are custom. Resources spawns have been revamped. The ways to gain certain creatures has changed. There’s many world quests all throughout the world for you to complete to gain creatures or items. Not to mention custom spawn points, a fully fleshed out character customization method, starting questlines, reputation systems and more. Our goal here is to have a non-restrictive and fluid role-play experience for you. We provide you with additional avenues to take your character with guilds, magics, jobs and more without restricting you to template classes. All you have to do is pick out what you want to do!

There’s a reason why Glyph RP is now known to have such a high player retention rate. Our staff team works around the clock to make sure player engagement and character development stays top notch! We regularly hit the top 10 of ARK Servers in the world, consistently have a high population on every evening during Peak RP times and work to keep constant rotating content to keep you engaged every step of the way.

We appreciate your interest in our server! Hopefully this is a start to a wonderful friendship!

||For details about our server please visit https://glyphrp.com |||

Our Lore

Well, there's quite a good bit of lore as we're establishing a fantasy universe here at Glyph. However, take a look at the storyline of Atta and more here! https://glyphrp.com/lore

Server Info

Main Info

Server Name: Glyph RP: Campaign 3, Season 2: Paranoia Discord Link: https://discord.gg/glyphrp

Website Link: https://glyphrp.com/

Mod List:https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3212513557

The core mechanics that make ARK, well ARK. Plus a few features that are useful for core gameplay.

Rates and Misc

3x EXP

3x Harvesting

4x Taming - Immersive Taming

6x Breeding Interval, 16x Growth Rate, Imprint/Growth in Soul Traps

Map: Lost Island Official DLCz

Gamemode: PvP/PvE

Voice RP Friendly: Yes

Text RP Friendly: Yes

Fliers: Yes past month 1

Loot Crates: Obtained through treasure chests, events, dungeons, etc. Non-standard ark loot crates, overhauled to contain gold, kibble, trophies and other goodies.

Technology Level: Smithy Tier

Custom Character Creation

Custom world developed by our dev team

How to begin your journey!

First, read our website! It'll have all the information about our server https://glyphrp.com and then join our Discord! It will give you detailed information about our server, from plugins to server rules. You'll have to do a short application to get whitelisted. However it is our goal to get you in as quickly as possible. We understand your time is important to you and you just want to play ARK. So expect a whitelist notification very quickly. You'll be able to join immediately. No waiting till next restart here!

#ark survival evolved #Ark Roleplay #video game roleplay

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violetlunette · 6 months ago

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oooo 10 / 25 / 30 for the writer asks!!

Referring to this!

10: Top three favorite fic tropes

Hmm! So many… But the three that come to mind first are--

*Recently, I’ve been into the “rescue mission” trope. I love seeing the build up of emotions, the whump factors for the person needing rescuing, seeing the protectiveness of the rescuer, and the comfort that comes after. And the best part? The emotions are still there whether it's platonic or not!

(Just for fun, Lilia coming to save his boys!)

(Okay, that's more of an Ortho MAlleus thing, but I digress!)

*angst with a happy ending; something I picked up from old 80s movies that I used to watch with with my folks. (Fun fact: Indiana Jones and the Lost Arc was rated PG that means the face melting scene was deemed okay for kids as long as a parent was there.)

*Do AUs count? I’m counting them anyways. I love fantasy aus! Urban, supernatural, pirate--shut up they count!--fairytales, RPG—you name it! These have all the elements I like and situations/plots I love to place characters in. I love quests, the villain who knows how to villainize, the treasure, dragons, the mystery, the magic, and more.

25: Is writing the whole thing beforehand better or worse than writing it as you go?

Definitely the former for me! I tried the latter with my Runaway story and while writing as I went held a lot of perks, it also meant that scenes repeated themselves, there was plot holes, and out of no where solutions. I prefer having everything written so I can have a posting schedule, patch the plot holes, and make sure the characters aren’t repeating themselves.

The down side to doing that is occasionally I’ll spend a long time writing a story that ends up not getting the attention I want which is depressing as I used to write 25 chapters that often had had over 5000 words per chapter, so that was a kick in the gut.

(However, I should have known better as it was a rare pair fic.)

30: Describe a fic that almost happened, but then it didn't.

Again, so many! I have so many plot bunnies but not all of them grow so I have to shoot them otherwise they just take up room on my PC.

One story I had was for TWST where I did a version of Demon Slayer with Silver in the role of Tanjiro and Lilia as Nezuko. It was supposed to follow Silver’s journey to turn Lilia back to normal while feral dad protected his bby boy, even getting territorial.

(Lilia even though he didn't remember Silver)

I was also going to write a NajMalleus story that was Aladdin meets Cinderella, but then I learned that Najma was 14, so halted the presses on that.

(Shame, as I think having them as a couple would be interesting for all involved. Oh well!)

Thank you so much for the ask! I'm willing to do more of these if anyone wants to send more numbers!

#mine #twst #writing stuff #writing #ask game #tropes #twst silver #lilia vanrouge #twisted wonderland #silver twst #silver vanrouge #silver twisted wonderland #on writing #writing tropes #writing things

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sodapaladin · 1 year ago

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✨Top 10 Games of 2023✨

It’s time for my annual list. As usual, these are games I played this year, not that came out this year. So despite all the hits this year, don’t expect to see many of them!

10. Fire Emblem Engage

While I was wary of the new character designs and anniversary excuse-story, Engage turned out to be more enjoyable than I expected. Not my favorite Fire Emblem, but a good one nevertheless.

9. Paradise Killer

What *style*! I went and bought this game immediately after my friend showed me the song “Paradise (Stay Forever).” Going in blind was wild. I sure didn’t expect the protagonist to be part of an extra-dimensional cult. I love exploring the vaporwave island.

8. WarioWare: Move It!

A worthy successor to Smooth Moves. While the amount of extra context seems oddly lacking for a WarioWare game, I love all the creative uses for the joycons. With the major exception of Jimmy’s boss minigame, everything works shockingly well.

7. Super Mario RPG

I debated where to place this. On one hand, I don’t feel like the remake added too much. The QoL improvements are nice, but the SNES original is still perfectly playable. It’s also quite short for an RPG, and on the easy side. But it’s just so charming anyway.

6. Darkstalkers 3

AKA Vampire Savior, not to be confused with another game. On the quest to capture the magic Third Strike had for me, this comes pretty close. If only I could find online matches now.

5. Suika Game

I had to see what the hype’s about, and I understood. So simple and cute, yet challenging. A great way to kill a few minutes.

4. Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp

I held off on this for a while, since I have both original games, and it didn’t seem like much was changed. The QoL improvements have been nice, though, such as speeding up the CPU’s turns. Most importantly, it no longer cheats during Fog of War, so you can actually strategize as intended instead of cheesing certain maps.

3. It Takes Two

Playing this co-op game with my brother was a blast. Solving puzzles through teamwork is a satisfying joy, and I’d love to play again as the other character sometime.

2. Vampire Survivors

So addicting. It was hilarious to find out the dev works on slot machines. Now it’s quite clear that they know all the right bells and whistles to set that dopamine off.

1. Monster Girls and the Mysterious Adventure 2

It’s incredible when you can feel the amount of love poured into the development of a game. I picked up this solo-dev passion project thinking it’d be a cute little indie game. I didn’t expect it to be my favorite mystery dungeon experience.

Everything from the writing and QoL features show how clearly the dev loves this genre and wants to make the best version of it. The balance is wonky, some of the recruitment requirements are questionably difficult, and the English translation is extremely rough, but I can’t help but be charmed by the whole package anyway. I’ve put in around 50 hours getting to the “final” boss of the story, and there’s still a massive postgame dungeon. I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but for fans of mystery dungeon games, absolutely.

#goty

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reilleclan-blog · 10 months ago

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I FUCKING LOVR THIS PORSHE

Hello hi , so I was reminiscencing about 2020. My whole life (most of my life) I only played call of duty. There was story RPGs here and there but I'd always go back to call of duty. And during 2018-2019 I was really starting to hate the State of COD. I played COD since I was little. Playing against bots b/c I couldn't get xbox online. I played the hell out of ghosts, bo4, Cold War, bo2 a bit, in total I'd probably have 4k hours racking up all together definitely more. And it's not like I didn't like story games or RPGs I think a lot of them outgrew replayability for me. The walking dead, life is strange, Bully. Most of these series I watched others play I never had money like that. But when I started working I played the hell out of these games and then I went back to multiplayers. Fortnite, was something I heavily played and Bo4. (These games I played heavily in high school 2016)

Then as time went on I stopped having ppl to play with and a lot of these games franchises I had loved , I started to despise. I never thought a company would hate their communities as much as they do now. I was strictly console player so I never had a chance to "broaden my horizons" with games and/or everyone was playing the same shit. So when I started to hate these games I took a chance on a game called "Cyberpunk 2077" I had saw clips of the game way back when, and I didn't really know shit about it except it was an open world rpg and u can hack shit.

So yeah I just wanted a change in scenery with my games I'd play. So yeah Cyberpunk released and it was broken. I was unfortunately experiencing it on ps4 anddd yeah the game barely functioned. The areas barely loaded in, yeah it was pretty bad. But I still wanted to see what the game had to offer. So as they made updates I was thrown into this new world that had me interested every step of the way. I don't usually say this but I'd genuinely want to play cyberpunk for the first time again.

Fast forward to 2020 I didn't realize other titles had released during 2020 cause all I was doing was playing cyberpunk. I had got a pc before or after it released but yeah. I was enjoying a shit ton of cyberpunk and learning Valorant. But for the most part cyberpunk was ALL I played for 4years. And idk I just can't believe CP2077 had such a hold on me. I think that's how games should be, I think CP2077 has written the best story I've seen in a very long time. And the different playstyles ppl can have was endless. During those 2 years of playing CP2077 there was countless updates and me STILL discovering new dialogues and choices thru out the game. Side quests and all.

I never thought I'd be a Virtual Photographer but CP2077 even sparked that for me and it's just made me so happy. I hope other games can take a page from CDPR's book to make these fresh and interesting. That may be easier said than done and "subjective" but I think cp2077 will be a top tier ip that everyone is going to love like gta and something like Skyrim. I hope I live long enough for the sequel and the world doesn't drop marshal law before I get to experience it 😎

I've felt this way for a long time but a lot of RPGs don't feel necessarily "fun" most stuff just feels like chores in the game. They slap a $70 price tag on these games just for the game to be broken, cliche story writing, and just bland and done before. A lot of RPGs follow a formula and I just hope these triple A companies break out of their comfort zones and actually create something new or engaging. Ppl deserve new stuff. I'm tired of seeing "10/10s" on games just cause it's "expected" to be good (but when I play it it's mid ashell)

This is my opinion please do not harass me over something like a damn video game this is just my thoughts. And I know this is wild but ppl have different opinions, and I'm not a god damn hive mind ass

#virtual photography #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk 2077 photomode #black girl #black woman

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