#cavern of dreams
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Cavern of Dreams, my N64-style 3d platformer, is out on Switch now :) check it out here: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/cavern-of-dreams-switch/
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Fynn from Cavern of Dreams
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Can't believe I completely forgot about this, but I had this drawing of Sage and Fynn from @bynineb's Cavern of Dreams lying about for awhile and forgot to upload it here, h.
This game fuckin rocks by the way! the characters were adorable and it was real fun the whole way through.
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character doodles
#cavern of dreams#crosscode#ultrakill#v2 ultrakill#lea crosscode#fynn cavern of dreams#posts that make me say i love indie games
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I was a bit late in opening the voting for the Colouring Contest this month, so rather than share the results today I'll share my personal colouring of both the Fynn the dragon piece and the Star Spirits piece! :>
If you'd like to colour either of these, Fynn is already available for any free members alongside other pieces and the Star Spirits piece will open to the public once the contest finishes!
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I love little guys so much you dont understand
#rain world#pikmin#ratatan#patapon#minish cap#hollow knight#and potentially#bug fables#I have yet to play it!#also very excited for two indies coming out that i think fit the description of little guys:#cavern of dreams#the gecko gods#theres also specifics like. i love the deku in zelda games i want to be one
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buny stream, hop in
Took last week off from streaming due to illness, but I'm back now and ready to hop into Cavern of Dreams: another cute retro 3D platformer I've been meaning to check out for a while! Come tag along if you feel like it!
twitch_live
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I've been playing Cavern of Dreams and it's literally so fun I love it so much. It hits that sweet spot of like.... Spyro and Super Mario 64 gameplay and style that I think is incredibly charming. :] Fynn is literally so cute!!
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I'm really excited for @bynineb's upcoming game, Cavern of Dreams, and I love the protagonist so I just had to draw the little guy. I tried something a little different too - I tried to imitate those N64/PS1 box art renders where everything is smooth and shiny and the shading is black (though I was a little too scared to go all in with that part). I referenced Yoshi's Story, Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie, and Spyro specifically. It's not perfect but I made an attempt and it was really fun!
Please check out the game, it looks amazing!
#cavern of dreams#bynineb#the background is also the texture of banjo's bed from banjo-kazooie#just transformed a bit#fan art#i hope you don't mind the tag!#feel free to ask and i'll remove it#the game is exactly up my alley and is inspiring me to make stuff too#i hope i did the lil dragon justice!#logic art
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i am everything i need
stay away from me
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Fynn, from the game Cavern of Dreams.
I really recommend it! It's such a fun and cute little platformer, but without harsh punishments. Very respectful of your time.
More art on my dA :)
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Cavern of Dreams, my n64-style 3D platformer, is OUT NOW on Steam!! be a little dragon! gain cool powers! save your siblings and feed and take care of them! explore weird worlds!! help people out!! fly and swim and jump around!
check it out here!
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Master Recs: The "N64" Trilogy (2023)
Pseudoregalia
Let us muse over a very small, three-dimensional Metroidvania game stylistically fashioned after the Nintendo 64 era of graphical fidelity. It stars a deliciously polygonal rabbit-y, goat-y, cat-like girl.
Now, I am playing this on the fabled Steam Deck. It runs and controls smoothly on the platform but you might require to fiddle with the video settings as the default configuration is slightly blurry due to a very specific and fascinating reason.
It turns out Pseudoregalia vaunts a certain level of depth in its technical customization, one that's surprisingly fun to manipulate. There's an option to toggle on or off a retro graphical scale and character movement rate, which graciously emulate the old school console experience. You can also manually reduce or augment the maximum framerate for the whole game. You could theoretically play something that looks like a 30 fps 3D Platformer from 1997 or the most HD upscaled version thereof at 144 fps, or everything in between! The default, blurry configuration comes as a result of the aforementioned retro scaling clashing with the 4K resolution in full screen mode.
This is the first and last time in recorded human history that I will ever be this enamoured with "specs talk."
The point is, we have a darling gem with a cultivated aesthetic, a good level of polish: it will look "right" regardless of your favoured settings. I'm impressed by the extra layer of work placed in the subtle use of limited framerates for the character's movement.
Pseudoregalia captures the idea, the abstract concept and low-poly charm of a N64 title with a gameplay that recalls your memory of it, rather than the unwieldy reality. I say this as someone who doesn't have nostalgia for early 3D graphics: the game makes them look spiffy.
I shall be honest, this is normally not the sort of title I would enjoy playing, as precise platforming and traversal puzzles are my nemesis. I mentioned afore the level of polish, which is generally consistent, but some of the movement upgrades you get (such as the jump/wall kick) can be rather finicky to master. In that sense, be wary that the game does not openly provide you with tutorials for the moves that require more finesse, choosing instead to hide an additional set of instructions in the inventory descriptions. It's "old school", you see.
Older versions were bereft of maps thus making exploration a burden for those like me who are directionally challenged - both in games and in real life.
Regardless, I kept getting drawn by its world, its somber atmosphere, its tight gameplay and especially its protagonist, Sybil.
An appealing design for your avatars goes a long way in ensuring an emotional connection to them and Sybil just so happens to have one of the most striking and instantly recognizable appearances I can fathom. It's a pleasure to look at her go! Furthermore, I would posit that she has a lot in common with my precious videogame fluffy boy, Klonoa - and I do I mean, a lot. I will not elaborate. If you get it, you get it.
In conclusion, Pseudoregalia is an impressively put together jam. It's easy to pick up yet punishing to handle, it's fun and fascinating in spite of its more irritating aspects. The best overall critique I can give it is that it made me want to keep trying, and trying, and trying, until I eventually became good enough to complete it several times and even beat the insanely hard Time Attacks.
In short: game is good. Play it.
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Corn Kidz 64
If I had a nickel for every time a throwback 3D Platform game starring a cute goat-like creature managed to grab my attention, I would have a whopping three nickels! Anyway, here is Corn Kidz 64, an artistically verosimile homage to the Rareware games you probably remember.
Deliciously stylized polygons welcome both you and I into a quirky mindscape. You play as a rude little prick named Seve who's having a vivid nachos related dream but has to contend with various bollocks - as it's often the case.
If you are even marginally familiar with all the Kanjo-Bazooies and Konkey Dongs out there then you will recognize its sphere of influences right away. It's a proper tribute to that era of gaming up to the inclusion of the "correct" low video resolution settings and insane completion requirements. There is much puzzling and platforming to be had, tactical traversal and secrets-within-secrets to bamboozle and titillate your gamer's lizard brain. Genre freaks will feel very welcome here.
I will say that I find the character design especially pleasing. Aesthetically, I would place it somewhere in between Rayman. Belgian comic book artist André Franquin and web strips from twenty years ago or more. It's expressive, to say the least.
As a sign of good will from the game's part, this is the track that greets you as you plunge into the realm of your dreams of childhood:
Corn Kidz 64 is a short, fun experience, bedazzled by tight controls, surreal atmosphere and "Early Internet" humour. It does not overstate its welcome and only occasionally gets immensely frustrating. Its dedication to the N64 ethos is both a boon and a detriment, in that sense. Let me put it this way: I shall not be doing a 110% completion run any time soon.
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Cavern of Dreams
As a direct result of me wanting more, here is Cavern of Dreams. Yet another N64 aesthetically driven title that came out last year but was promptly overshadowed by Funny Goat Game and Sexy Goat Game - as far as my own pop cultural myopia is concerned, that is.
It is a small yet multilayered Collect-A-Thon with an emphasis on exploration rather than combat or complex platforming. There is no health bar and there are no traditional enemies. There is a handful of puzzles here and there, some of which might be legitimate head scratchers. The dragon baby is cute.
I do have a couple of gripes with this one.
Playing this game is, in a word, annoying. It is bothersome how weighted and limited the movement is, it is fastidious how the character collision is in relation to the environment, it is aggravating how it all affects the gameplay in small yet noticeable ways.
Here's an example: you can use the traditional ground pound to gain extra height. However, in order to do so, you have to keep pressing the attack button while in midair. The problem with that is the game still registers it as an attack when you do so. As such, if you happen to be hugging a wall, atop a small ledge, this action will inevitably cause your character to hit said wall and propel you backwards, resulting in you falling to your doom. This happened constantly.
Generally speaking, the control scheme doesn't feel ideally tailored to an experience that requires precise platforming. A repeated offender would be grabbing onto climbable ropes. Which is to say, sometimes it just doesn't happen. You'll float towards a rope and, if the collision isn't pixel-perfect, you will miss it entirely. Also, Baby is unable to jump above once he climbs all the way to the top, half the time. The later levels are worse in that regard as they need some amount of skill.
Speaking of which, something that will always make me consider quitting a game in a fit of rage is being sucked down a drain that expels me into a different area, forcing me to walk all the way back to where I was before. Once again, annoying is the word.
All that said, the saving grace of Cavern of Dreams lies in the exquisitely crafted, imaginative stages that compose the dreamlike tapestry of the game's aesthetics: living airborne vessels, desolate ice kingdoms, nightmarish art galleries that twist and distort your senses.
The use of colour hues, sounds and deliberately non-contiguous spaces create this palpable atmosphere of both wonder and anxiety. A welcoming world may turn weird and alienating. A dream may turn into a nightmare.
There is a depth beneath the surface presentation that is absolutely worth experiencing. I really wanted to like this game but, alas, I'm left with mostly mixed feelings. Regardless, it's an adorable title with some tinges of darkness and it might just be for you!
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As a conclusive note, I find myself enthralled by the subtle similarities these games share as well as their abundant differences. All of them are stylistically reminiscent of a specific bygone era whilst being perfectly distinct in presentation, and they all are about Dreams...
They are about exploring dreamscapes, lands where subconscious thoughts and memories materialize in daunting vistas of a forlorn past, comically bizarre hyper-realities from an active imagination or an infant's idea of the world around itself.
Pondering about the familiarity of it all fills me both with comfort and melancholy: the parallelism of Dream, Childhood and Gaming. The distant memories of youth in correlation to the experience of videogame escapism are akin to a dream from which we are expected to wake... Well, now I just want to gush about Klonoa again!
In fact, I would go as far as to say that Corn Kidz 64's "plot resolution" feels like a direct parody of Door to Phantomile's ending, and it gets funnier the more I think about it.
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A/N:
Thank you for reading.
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#twitter#corn kidz 64#pseudoregalia#cavern of dreams#dreasm#klonoa#platforming#3d#n64#steam#review#master recs
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Cavern of Dreams (Steam)
First time?: Yes
[Note: this review will be as spoiler-free as possible, though some minor things from later in the game may be brought up in passing.]
If you're not aware of what Cavern of Dreams is, it's an N64-inspired exploration platformer by Bynine Studio. I've been following the creator on Tumblr for a while and this game has been on my radar since it released, and now that I've finally played it, I can honestly say I enjoyed it a LOT.
The plot of the game is that you are a young dragon named Fynn, and you are trying to rescue your siblings (who are eggs) from a bat artist named Luna. The cavern's guardian, Sage, helps you out by watching over your rescued siblings in the hub world, and giving you new powers when you reach certain milestones.
One of the game's defining traits is that there is no true "combat", to speak of. There are hazards, and you have attacks that interact with the environment, but there's no enemies or bosses to defeat, and no health or lives system. This works out well, as the focus of this style of game is exploration and platforming, so the experience doesn't feel lacking for the omission.
The movement in the game is somewhat unique, as Fynn doesn't quite have the jumping prowess that a Mario or a Banjo would have. However, he does have a roll ability that allows him to go very fast and even ramp off of sloped surfaces like Sonic. The roll controls similar to the roll in Yooka-Laylee, or the Spongeball in Battle for Bikini Bottom; it can be a little tricky to control, but you can carry the momentum into your standard run when you need more precise movement at higher speeds.
Fynn does get more abilities later on, such as a tail whip to slap objects, a glide, a bubble projectile, and perhaps most usefully, a bounce ability that can not only attack the ground, but also gives you more height than your standard jump. The sense of progression you get with each new ability is very satisfying, and towards the end of the game, you'll find the movement to be very complex and rewarding.
Now for the aesthetics. This game was designed primarily by a visual artist, and my god does it show. The game is GORGEOUS, and does a great job at paying tribute to the bold colors and lighting of games like Banjo-Kazooie or Spyro while also having a unique artstyle of its own. Different areas can have different moods; a wooded lake area in a cozy autumn sunset, the metallic interior of a sentient airship, the creepy black-and-white basement illuminated only by the occassional lightning strike, and so much more. I have so many screenshots just of areas I thought looked visually interesting.
My only criticisms of the game are nitpicks, really. For one, the sound design could be underwhelming at times. According to the credits, many of the sounds were grunts made by the people working on the game, or were sourced from freesounds. Nothing was egreiously out-of-place or anything, and it is a passion project by a very small group, so it's easily forgiven.
The only other thing is that I had my camera set to inverted, but the camera in first-person mode was non-inverted, and it would throw off my muscle memory when switching. Though, there aren't a lot of times where you need to switch to first-person mode, so it was never that big of a deal.
This isn't a particularly long game, it's maybe 2/3rds the length of a game like Banjo-Kazooie, but there's still a lot here to enjoy, especially considering the game is only $13 on Steam (even less if you get it in a bundle). I would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who's even a little interested.
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It’s time for another 🎨Colouring Page! And a reminder that last month's contest's submissions will close on Jan 22nd, 2024 and voting will close on Jan 25th!
The page is of Fynn from Cavern of Dreams! :D The best little dragon for the Year of the Dragon!
If you’d like to colour this check out my Patreon!
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