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gale-gentlepenguin · 4 years

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Gale’s Pick: Miraculous Ranking (as of Season 3)

Rules:

1. The miraculous will be taken at their maximum potential. That means the user can use the special power as many times as they desire and what we know about those powers currently. (Example: I can't assume Chat noir will be able to throw his cataclysm like Chat Blanc, I only know he can destroy something he touches with it.

2. This list does not take into account the Kwami themselves. Their personality and abilities hold no bearing on the rankings.

3. The miraculous ranking will only be including its potential by itself. Not with fusions, power ups, just the bare essentials.

4. I will be ranking this based on Combat usage, practical usage, creative possibilities, and overall effectiveness

5. This is Opinion based and I would love to hear your logic on whether you think certain miraculous should be ranked higher or not.

_______________________________________________________________________

13. The Mouse

It is a super situational miraculous. Its ability “Multitude” is a good ability when paired with other miraculous, but by itself, it sort of lacks in everything except stealth. It does allow for you to be in multiple places at once, but it isn't helpful when you are smaller then an actual mouse. Its not gonna win any fights, In a fight, it isn't gonna help the user out as anything more then a distraction.

12. The Fox

Now I know a lot of people will be shocked to see this one so low. But really, while its a cool ability, Illusions are kind of useless outside of distraction and deception. If used right it can cause your opponents some trouble and I do think it has a lot of creative usage and practical usage. But the problems set in when the user actually is aware that they are illusions. Now a clever person might be able to use the fact that their opponent knows they are illusions to their advantage... but that is also situational. Also, the weapon is a flute. It is one of the lamer weapons to use, little range, and needed for the power use, so if someone knocks the flute away, the illusion power is useless.

11. The Monkey

So how did the monkey’s situational power up beat out the fox? Simple, its power is useful in besting other miraculous wielders and super powered individuals. Uproar is the power to mess up powers, your unique abilities become useless against this mad monkey. In terms of a fight, its like being an equalizer. Though the problem is, its kind of unpredictable. its effects change depending on who is hit and the power’s effect is only temporary, so if you use it, the user should act fast. Also, while the weapon is cool,, the miraculous is probably really easy to snatch off of his head.

10. The Butterfly.

Yes, I am putting the main villain’s miraculous down here. My reasoning, its highly conditional.

1. You need a consenting individual, usually one with negative emotions, or a willingness to do the user’s bidding.

2. The person with the akuma usually influences the power. Hawkmoth’s influence on their power set is confusing and its unknown. But it leans more towards the user’s mental state.

3. Hawkmoth can only control the akumatized victim somewhat. Again, this varies.

4. Only one akuma can be created at a time without power ups or boosts.

5. There is a range on how far the akuma is that Hawkmoth can't influence it.

6. If that akuma is out of range, it can't be called back and a new akuma can't be made.

Now the butterfly miraculous does have some cool bonus abilities. Such as feeling other’s emotions from a stupidly far distance. If the akuma isn't purified it can multiply. It can boost the powers of other miraculous, and even make an akuma that has the power to boost its own power but again... that varies.

The butterfly is sort of like the king of conditional powers. It can be useful but it also can be limiting.

9. The Bee

How did I put the bee Miraculous this high up? Simple, stunning an opponent is crazy OP and its pretty much a one hit KO on most foes. Sure the user has to touch them, but at max potential, the attempts are unlimited and all the user needs it one opening and it is over. It is definitely more reliable in a fight and honestly in general.

8. The Turtle

Some say the best defense is a good offense, I say the best defense is a f***ing force field. The applications of Shelter are phenomonial. The shield is able to take a good amount of damage, Fu’s shield was able to hold out a long time even with attacks from Hawkmoth, Mayura and a sentimonster. Its a great stalling tool and great for protecting others as well as yourself. Plus the shield means you can Captain America all deadbeat fathers. And if Rising of the Shield hero has taught me anything, a good shield can do wonders.

7.The Dragon

I was actually surprised by how low I had this on the list. A miraculous that allows the user 3 different elemental abilities. Control of Wind, Lighting, and Water. How can I put this so low? Well the truth is, even though this is totally awesome and versatile. The other miraculous on this list are also stupid overpowered. But despite that, this is likely the best ranged power that is used.

6. The Horse

Transport is an amazing ability. Its fun with portals. Late for school? Portal. Need to avoid an attack? Portal? Want to send a weapon somewhere far away? Portal? Throw your enemies into the sun? Portal. Transport is crazy over powered, The only drawback being that the user has to jump into the portal to actually utilize it. So if someone sees a portal, they know something can happen.

5. The Black Cat

The cat miraculous is the best Offensive Miraculous. It’s weapon, the ever extending staff has crazy range, has a tracker, and can split into two weapons for duel wielding make it great to have. And its power Cataclysm can destroy ANYTHING it touches. While at first glance this seems lacking, imagine unlimited destructive attacks, not only that, it acts as the user’s protection from having the miraculous snatched, and it works on anything. Except sentibeasts, it just makes those go haywire. If you want the best example of how powerful and dangerous this power is, look at plagg. A cataclysm can level a city if not controlled. Chat noir has brought down things as large as the Eiffel Tower. And with unlimited cataclysms, One touch and the opponent is done FOREVER. It doesn't matter their ability if their dead. Also on a lesser note, Night vision and the ability to purr.

4. The Peacock.

The power to create Sentimonsters. Beings that can demonstrate sentience if not controlled by someone. The peacock seems to have the ability to make amok for people if they are willing to accept it or even themselves. The peacock has every advantage the Butterfly has, and more. It even gives the Peacock user free reign on what the amok is, Nathalie was able to make an exact replica of Ladybug with her own version of lucky charm. Meaning a peacock can make an evil version of pretty much any hero to an extent, though the amount of concentration needed is up for debate, which could be limiting. But a bonus is that if the Sentimonster acts up, she can remove the amok. The only downside is that whoever has the item controls the sentimonster, and that can be turned against the user. But outside of that the weaknesses are pretty limited when it isn't corrupted.

3. The Ladybug

At first Glance it doesn't make much sense that Ladybug would be so much higher on the list, but the thing is, the Ladybug is crazy powerful, able to undo ALL damage done with miraculous healing. Able to summon an item that is guaranteed to help them in some compactly, and with unlimited summoning, can be used to handle ANY situation.

Plus, her weapon, the Yo-yo is also just as versatile as the Black cat staff.

The only downside is that the Lucky charm needs to be figured out, in a hypothetical situation, with enough time and preparation, the lucky charm can helpfully beat any foe. But the key word is Preparation. Also there are some shortcomings of the Lucky charm.

1. It randomly give charms that are useful in an situation father in advance. (like the key in season 3)

2. It is not prepared for unknown elements. Like in season 2 finale, it summoned a miracle box, likely to get Hawkmoth’s miraculous, but the Lucky charm wasn't expecting Mayura so the item was useless.

3. If the user is not creative enough to know how to use the lucky charm, its pretty much useless.

But outside of that, at its max potential it is one of the most overpowered Miraculous.

2. The Snake

Anyone that has played undertale can tell you how OP save points are. Second chance is insanely broken. The user can memorize what their opponent’s attack patterns and counter. They can do this as many times as they want within a 5 minute interval. Its a redo button and there is pretty much no limit to it at its max potential. Even with the limited 5 minutes before retransformation, it can be abused. In a one on one match, it is pretty much invincible. The only caveat is that the use nerds to slide the bracelet back to go back to the save point. So if the opponent wants to win, they have to incapacitate the snake user. Outside of that, Fu himself talks about how dangerous this miraculous is, and it is completely understandable.

1. The Bunny

Time travel in this universe is completely OP. Since the ML universe doesn't run on Multiverse theory, Time is delicate and can be changed easily. Bunnyx has the power to alter time in anyway she wants. Rabbit hole not only sends her to any time she thinks off, it takes her to the Burrow which allows her to view MULTIPLE periods of time and look at them like she is watching a movie, she can rewind and fast forward to find key events. Bunnyx could go back in time and simply take the miraculous away before the user even transforms. Heck, the bunny miraculous allows the user to do pretty much ANYTHING. Trap your opponents in the Dino age? Stop them from being born? Travel forward in time and find the cure for cancer? Bunnyx also has Pockets, she can HIDE HER MIRACULOUS!?

Seriously, The snake miraculous can have all the save points in the world, but it can't counter someone jumping through time.

Ladybug’s lucky charm won't work if isnt expecting a f***ing dinosaur to pop out of nowhere after its summoned.

The point is, Time travel is the best power and thus the bunny miraculous is dangerously OP and the best miraculous

#ml #miraculous ladybug #ladybug #bunnyx #chat noir #ryuuko #multimouse #king monkey #pegasus #queen bee #miraculous #Miraculous rankings

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satoshi-mochida · 4 years

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Tobyfox has provided a status update on the second chapter and beyond of Undertale sequel Deltarune in celebration of Undertale‘s fifth anniversary today.

First, here are the latest screenshots from Deltarune‘s second chapter:

Get the full update below.

Introduction

Hi everyone.

If you’re reading this, you must have been sticking around for about five years.*

I want to express my gratitude for everyone that has supported and encouraged me over this time.

Thank you.

I’ve said it many many times before, but I didn’t expect the simple game I made to receive so much attention. Because of that, many interesting things have happened, and now I can even spend my time making another game.

It seems both of us received a lot of happiness from this occurrence.

If it’s okay, I would like to keep striving to do things that make both of us happy.

Let me know what you think about that.

*Since the Undertale demo released in 2013, the game has really existed for 7 years. It’s already been more than 25% of my life…

Deltarune

I will make another.

I am making a game called “Deltarune.” It is the second game in the Undertale series.

The game will be released in many “Chapters,” the first of which I released two years ago on Halloween. Since that time, I’ve been working hard to figure out the rest of the game.

However, it’s a game that’s much harder to make than Undertale.

Graphics are more complicated and several times more involved.

Systems are more complicated.

Exposes the weak points of my creative and artistic ability.

Plot is much harder to tie together (more characters, more important locations).

Significantly more content than Undertale in one playthrough (especially cutscenes).

I have only made one game ever.

Unlike Undertale, this is the type of game that would normally have many designers working on each aspect of the game.

A story writer, a composer, an audio director, a map designer, a battle designer, a minigame designer, and an overall director. Instead, all of those roles end up handled by me.

The good news is that a few months ago, I completed a significant milestone regarding the game’s design. I completed readable outlines for every chapter in the game, including first-pass dialogue for almost all the cutscenes, examples of the music, etc.

Although certain details are still hazy, the flow of the game and all major events and battles that take place are now clear.

In summary, I largely spent the past two years writing, composing, designing, and drawing. However, that’s not the whole story.

We had actually attempted to develop the game since the time too. Development started around March 2019 and a 99% work was spent on investigating engines alternate to GameMaker, which I used for Chapter 1.

Without getting into the details, I decided a few months ago to go back to GameMaker after all. It still felt like the best fit for the project. So using Chapter 1 as a base, we’ve started creating Chapter 2 since May 2020.

A lot of progress has been made since that time. I believe we can complete this chapter, content-wise, before the end of the year (not accounting for translation, bugtesting, and porting).

I feel very confident. And the strange thing is, even though we ended up using the original engine, I don’t regret the lost time, either. Not only was I still busy designing the game, but during that long period, I was able to think of many ideas that make the game’s story and characters better.

I’m glad that I’m making the Deltarune that I have now and that we are making healthy progress.

Deltarune Status Estimate

■ Chapter 2 (04.15.20 – 08.13.20)

Phase 1: Design

Main Design: 100% (dialogue, etc.)

Initial Setup: 100% (stuff involved setting up people to make the game, adding debug tools, documentation, etc.)

Phase 2: Implementation (05.01.20 ~ 08.13.20)

Art: 90%

Cutscenes: 80% (90% are started, needs 2nd pass)

Bullet Patterns: 70% (enemies are mostly completed, bosses are about 40% done, needs 2nd pass)

Non-Bullet Battle Elements: 30% (Some ACTs are done and enemies are fightable, but interactive ACTs need to be completed and polished and the bosses aren’t programmed outside of bullet patterns)

Audio: 80%

Maps: ??% most are started or placeholder, most need 2nd pass. NPC interactions are completed in all spots where written.

Other: 65%

Phase 3: Finishing

Balancing: 0%

Bugfixing: 0%

Translation: 0%

Porting: 0%

(Honestly, a lot of stuff FEELS like 80% to me, but the truth is that what’s there is quite rough now. Polish ends up taking a lot of time, so the real actual time value may be around 50% done…? We’ll see what happens. It’ll be a lesson for everybody.)

■ Chapters 3 and Beyond

Phase 1: Design

Story and General Game Progression (first-pass): 100%

Cutscene Dialogue (first-pass, lacking cutscene instructions): 95%

Map Design (textual): 70% (varies per chapter, earlier chapters totally completed)

Map Design (drawn): 0% (this takes a lot of wrist energy so I don’t do it until we start programming)

Enemy Design (conceptual): 90% (all bosses are known)

Enemy Design (bullets / visual): 80% (varies per chapter, earlier chapters totally completed)

Music (concept): 95%

Music (completed): 50%

Visual Design:BG Concept (first-pass): 75%, Important Character, Bosses (first-pass): 100%

Phase 2

Sprite Art: 20%?

Other Content Creation: 0%

Phase 3

Release Readiness: 0%

(These numbers can be somewhat deceptive though. My true design style is to reach the moment where we have to make something, then suddenly think of something different at the last minute. This is always how it’s been with me and my work. It feels like no matter how much I plan, everything comes down to what I think of at the last second…)

Team and Disability

You may have noticed from my phrasing, but yes, there is a team helping me create the game. Other than me, there are about three active team members working day-to-day, with a few other people pitching in from time to time.

Their roles of the main members are overall content implementation and organization, bullet pattern implementation (part-time), and art (Temmie). Other than designing, I still have the role of system programmer.

I’m extremely grateful to have a team helping me carry out my design especially because of my disabilities, which have also made development more difficult.

Although I have long suffered from wrist and hand pain, about five months ago my wrist was the worst it’s ever been. I could not play the piano, use the mouse, and barely could use the keyboard. I navigated everything through voice to text.

Through weightlifting, exercise, and various equipment I have been able to somewhat increase the stamina of my wrist to an extent. Various solutions have included trackball mice for each hand, using voice to text whenever possible, using a foot pedal to click the mouse, etc.

Now I can use the mouse and keyboard for a certain amount each day provided I take frequent breaks. I wish I could work without stopping. Once the world situation improves I would really like to take physical therapy again and/or investigate surgery to repair my wrist.

Future Plans

Once we finish Chapter 2, I would like to use it as the base to create future chapters from. After gaining experience from this chapter, I think making future chapters will be easier.

Part of me wonders if we could make the game faster if we increased the size of the team and did something insane like create multiple chapters in parallel. However, another part of me understands that, adding more people doesn’t guarantee that the game will be created faster if it’s not done properly. I’m already just barely avoiding becoming a bottleneck on development even with a team of this size, due to my physical limitations.

To that end, I am interested in making a list of people that could potentially help me make the game. I’m not 100% sure if I’m going to ask anyone to help, but I think if I could find just 1 person that works well with me, it’s worth asking.

Chapter 2 is proceeding at a good pace, so if we do take anyone on, it will probably only be for Chapter 3 onward. So please understand that anything you send in may not have an immediate result.

People I Am Looking For

Feel free to send in your portfolio if you have the following qualifications:

Worked in the game industry before

Worked under NDA before

Have professional references

A degree of creativity while also being okay with just following directions

Fluent in English

People I Might Actually Use

Music Transcription / Basic Arrangement (Part-Time)

I usually start making songs by playing the piano and singing. An important step after this is to take this basic outline and transcribe it into melodies and chords. Though there are not too many remaining songs to transcribe, it would still help my wrist to have someone else start this process for me. Although I know many musicians, I’m sheepish to ask for help to them, because the main role is actually just to help me compose my own music…

Helpful qualities:

Good at transcription.

Can stand listening to me sing.

Optional: can use an old version of Fruity Loops.

Bullet Pattern Programming (Part-Time)

I’m looking for someone to help me program bullet patterns into the game. These people will work from text and visual designs to create fun battles that match the feeling of the game. I already have one person helping with this, but I think a second person would help a lot. You have to be able to use Gamemaker Studio 2 to manipulate objects on the screen / okay with using pre-existing scripts to accomplish this.

Helpful qualities:

Sense of fun and understanding of player perspective and gameplay balance. This aspect is [many times] more important than programming ability.

Reliable.

Able to make patterns based off of visual/text instructions.

Fine working with a poorly made battle system.

Able to sprite bullets.

Good visual / timing sense.

Minigame Programming (Part-Time)

There are a few minigames and small interactive events in the game, which appear in and outside of battles. These could take any kind of form… who knows what I’m thinking! Have you made a game before?

Helpful qualities:

Same sense of humor as me.

Some level of spriting ability is useful.

You have to have made a game that is fun.

Ability to work together with me.

Unlikely to Hire, But Send Me Your Information Just In Case

Cutscene Programming (Part-Time)

Besides the battles, the largest amount of content in the game is definitely the cut scenes. You will have to understand Gamemaker Studio 2, but the majority of the work is simply using a scripting system that I created to make characters move around the screen. The most important quality you can have here is not programming ability but the ability to efficiently use the system in order to create scenes with a good sense of humor, timing, and emotion.

I’d strongly prefer to hire someone I know to do this because it involves the story. So I most likely won’t hire anyone else.

Helpful qualities:

Can take text instructions and impart a proper sense of timing, humor, and weight to them.

Fine working with a custom scripting system (or smart enough to make something better that makes the game easier to make).

Art (Part-Time)

Sprite art—Temmie has already drawn a massive amount of art for the game, and continues to do so. And I actually already have a few other artists that have helped me that I’m more than happy to keep working with if things become more overwhelming. So currently I actually don’t need any more artists.

However, personally, I’d really like to build up a portfolio of available pixel artists and even concept artists. It’s not as if this is the only game I will make during my life. Anyone chosen for this game needs to be able to match the style of the game, but I’m interested in seeing people with different styles as well. Knowing that I have different options can open my mind up to different creative pathways.

Helpful qualities:

Can take bad looking sketches and turn them into art that looks good (magic).

Don’t mind if your work gets completely drawn over or thrown out.

Anyone that can draw cute or cool poses is good.

Uninterested in seeing people that have an art style outside of the scope of the game.

Write (Full-Time)

Someone needs to transform into a new wrist for me.

Helpful qualities:

Flexible.

Doesn’t hurt.

Musical sense.

That’s everyone I’m looking for. The only other kind of person I might hire would be a single jack-of-all-trades type that can do any sort of things such as cutscenes, bullets, or even system programming, with a good degree of visual flair. (But if you can do those sorts of things, aren’t you busy making your own game already!?)

Anyway, I’ll show you the e-mail now. Just make sure you read these rules first:

Don’t send in e-mails about anything else!

Don’t send to other team members, Fangamer, etc. about helping out!

Got it? Then please send your information to this e-mail address:

[email protected]

Since Fangamer will be sorting through the e-mails for me, we’ll stop taking e-mails at the end of September so they don’t get overwhelmed. Ultimately, I’m only looking for one or two people, and to make a list of the rest of the potentially helpful people in the world.

Undertale is available now for PlayStation 4, Switch, PS Vita, and PC via Steam and GOG. Deltarune Chapter 1 is availble for PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC via Deltarune.com.

#Deltarune Chapter 2 #Deltarune #Undertale #Tobyfox #RPG #Gematsu #long post

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zirkkun · 4 years

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The Butterfly Effect (Part 1)

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The Butterfly Effect (Undertale Fanfic - overall given a AO3 M rating) Prologue

+ sans x gender neutral reader (first person POV from reader)

+ 2701 words, english

+ fluff, explaining past experience; conflict with adapting to a new environment

+ takes place in the Underground; barrier is not broken

+ part of a series I’ve been passively writing, no idea when I’ll update. only have written the first two parts but have a vagueness of the whole story outlined

+ AO3 link

It wasn't a reality I ever expected for myself, but it was happening nonetheless. The very tip of a temperate finger, silky smooth without even the texture of a fingerprint to taint it, brushed against my cheek. A smile couldn't help but curl at the corner of my lips, mirroring the permanent, toothy smile plastered on the face across from me. A chuckle surfaced from the both of us the second I reacted to his motion; I leaned forward, pressing my forehead against his. The hand against my cheek slid to the back of my neck, the thin fingers fitting perfectly between the bumps of my spine, and pulled me just that little bit more forward to where the space between us was sealed, my lips pressed against his toothy grin. There were no opposing lips to lock mine to, but I no longer minded. That wasn't what mattered. Staying at his side, feeling the tender touch of his otherwise boney and rough fingers against my skin, and cuddling with his head cozily tucked under my chin as he held me close... Intimacy didn't have to be defined by following social norms.

But of course, leave it to me for being the one strange enough to date a skeleton monster before figuring this out. I guess some people just need to find out through extreme examples, myself apparently included.

Nevertheless, I didn't worry too much about it anymore. I used to be more self conscious about it, more hatefully self aware. But between him and his brother, not to mention their friends, I grew more accustomed to the idea of living with monsters no differently than I would any of my fellow human beings. Sure, it was a bit hard to stumble through this at first, but it's not like I was alone in adjusting to this new realization or lifestyle. I was alongside the monster friends I had made, who were adjusting to me living with them in this underground kingdom they called home.

I don't remember how I fell down here. It's been far too long by now. Maybe it was an attempted suicide? I'm not sure. My life outside of this place as a whole is just a blur, but I do remember I wasn't in a place of happiness. Angry about broken societal systems, feeling unable to adjust to the way the world was built just after I finally figured out how to work with my own self, and losing hope for the bright future I was once promised as a child. It would be no surprise if that's why I wanted to leave, why I came to the place where humans were rumored to never return from. And, frankly, I can see why. I don't want to leave this place. Here, I'm free of so many of my fears and worries. I'm free of hatred, debt, betrayal, and confinement. I could do and be how I wanted. The friends and family I've gained while living here are far closer to me than any of the humans I can even vaguely remember from on the Surface. But I didn't always feel this way; it took a certain skeleton to truly convince me to stay.

Until then, I'd been desperate to leave. Afraid of where I'd ended up. There was no one of familiarity around me -- not a single human being in sight for as far as I could see. Monsters of great variety were the only living creatures down here, ones that I couldn't have thought of even for the most obscure of fantasy novels. I was scared, despite the kindness I had received. My fear peaked when I met a murderous buttercup, but slowly began to dip when my life had been saved by a kindly woman with thick fur and the complexion of an anthropomorphic goat. But it never really went away until much farther down the line. Not even through many puzzles, dates, and playful japes did I even really teeter off the edge into security.

It had been blisteringly hot; used to the moderate temperatures from above, the volcanic heat of the lava pool city was not something I could handle well. With the lights of the bright resort coming into view is when I saw him waiting, his stained and tattered old jacket truly obvious amongst the glam and glitz of the Hollywood-like building behind him. His smile was the same as it always was -- while at that time, I hadn't known, but it was false, hiding a pain only he carried then. And yet, even then, when I saw it, the stress hanging in my heart was lifted for just a brief moment. He'd asked me back then if I wanted to get lunch with him, since he was on break. Having yet to develop any feelings, I agreed without much thought whatsoever. "Great, thanks for treating me," he had joked, earning a laugh from me.

We hadn't actually ordered anything. Rather, we just stood across from each other on opposite ends of one of the decorated tables, talking for quite a long time. He told me of the time where he started making jokes to a woman through the door to the Ruins, who I could only assume was none other than the woman who had helped me when I fell down here. But his tone had drifted off when he told this story; his eye contact was lost, that false smile ever so faltering to his thoughts. I hadn't even gotten the chance to ask what was wrong before he answered that question for himself. "Y'know, kid, what drives you to leave this place? You've already got so much down here... What else do'ya need other than some good friends, good food, and some bad laughs?"

I thought about it for a moment. I think he was going to brush aside the topic after my initial response of silence, but I had stopped him, interjecting with my own thoughts. "I don't know," I had answered truthfully. "I don't know what's driving me. I don't remember anything good from where I came from... All I know is that I'm scared, and I want to go back to where things are familiar."

He didn't know how to respond when I said that. That moment is probably the most shocked and unprepared for something I have ever seen him in my entire life. His smile's falseness revealed its truth, slipping away as he stared at me completely dumbfounded of the words that had fallen from my mouth. It was as if he had been hoping to hear someone say that for years. As if he had been begging for someone to answer his question. That broken false smile slowly turned itself into something more genuine as he continued our conversation. "C'mon, now. There's no reason to be scared. Sure, there's a lotta folks who keep ravin' about how your SOUL will free us, but at the same time, you don't have to step forward and tempt the king if you don't wanna." He had shrugged, hands still buried deep into his jacket pockets. "But, I'm not the one livin' your life. You do you. I ain't gonna tell you what you should or shouldn't do, not now."

I had let his words soak into my mind, deeply considering the suggestion he was ensuing. I couldn't help but wonder: what was normal life down here? I'd somehow managed, with my frail self-worth and lack of bravery, to befriend many of those who lived here. There was next to no one alive in the Underground who still wanted to hand my extracted SOUL to the king. With that knowledge, it clicked: it was safer for me here than it was anywhere else in this world. The moment this thought grazed my mind, I was already saying, "Do you know anywhere I could stay?"

I'd thought he was going to cry when I said that. I still don't know why it struck him the way it did, just my asking if he knew someone I could stay with. But regardless, he let me stay with him and his brother.

For a while, I lived on their couch. It wasn't particularly the most comfortable of living conditions -- the old, raggy, stained, and ripping couch was awful compared to my previous, yet very-below-average mattress -- but even so, the skeletons' cozy house eventually became my home. I even began calling it that only a few weeks into living here. Something about living here just clicked. Even when I woke up to aggravated yelling, one brother telling the other to get up and go to work, I couldn't help but just giggle and relax in the environment. They were a chaotic pair, those two, but they were inexplicably generous and beyond kind. I couldn't help but consider them as family in such short time. And, well, in the case of one... I couldn't help but fall in love.

I hadn't meant to. But that's always how it goes, isn't it? No one ever means to fall in love. At first, actually, I hated it. I hated myself for it. The mere sight of him made me paranoid. He became confused as to why I would suddenly reject every moment he was so much as in the same room as me, but I couldn't answer. How could I? I was still adapting to the life of merely living without the presence of humans -- my internal morals screamed at every turn that this was nothing but wrong and disgusting. No one wants to hear that about themselves. Not to mention, these monsters were still getting used to me, as well. To me, they were the weird ones, but to the greater society, I was the odd one out. The anomaly. Why should, by any means, should this guy accept my feelings, when there's thousands of people of his own kind surrounding him?

I hadn't meant to confess to him ever, truly. Had it not been for that one night where a dark dream swallowed my sanity whole, I don't think I would have ever said a word to him. But, as it is, no one ever chooses to have the dreams they do, either.

I had woken with a yelp and a jolt. The vague snowy light from the window above me still shimmered, despite the hour; adjusting to the time within an underground cave had been a bit of an interesting challenge. But I digress: at this point, such things no longer bothered me. Now, the only thing on my mind was a horrifying nightmare, one terrible fear looping its imagery before my internal eyes over and over again without fail. I hadn't wanted to go to him about this, but I was nearly weeping with fear. Had I been able to, I may have gone to his brother instead to talk to, but unfortunately, this was one of the many nights he opted against sleeping and instead decided to work overtime. I had no other choice, if I wanted to get this horror off my chest, than to speak to him directly.

I had taken a deep breath once I reached his door, my hand shakily gripping the handle. At this point, even though we had been living in the same house for over a month or so, I hadn't even been inside his room. I didn't know if I was welcome. That stress, on top of the fear cycling through my eyes, caused more and more tears to form. I refused to let them fall, wiping them against my shirt as I pushed through and opened the door, allowing myself in.

"Sans?"

The soft whisper of his name had left my lips, each sound struggling to hold together in a cohesive word. I had taken another step in, repeating his name, more softly the second time. The room had been pitch black, and there was barely even any sound to indicate someone might be living in there. Just when I had thought he was maybe too deep into his sleep to hear me, I had begun to turn around, only to register the sound of my name being sleepily strung together in a deep reply. Within that second alone, the dam holding back my tears broke loose; I hadn't wanted it to, but somehow, I had lost all control. I ran to the source of his voice, and without even so much as a thought or hesitation, threw my arms around his figure sitting at the edge of his mattress. He had laughed at first, until I let slip why I came to him in the first place.

"I'm so glad you're alive... I'm so glad I can hear your voice. I don't know what I would have done if that dream was real..."

His laughter fell silent. His body felt stiff in my grip, refusing to move or react for a very long time. Then, as if some instinct washed over him, his whole demeanor changed to hold me at his side and hush away my tears, assuring me he was alive and well with what seemed akin to the sound of desperation lacing his voice. His hands, however small and thin, were careful to caress me gently, reassuringly rubbing my back and softly stroking my hair. Such tender intimacy I had never felt before, and I wasn't so sure as to why I was feeling it now. The guilt of my feelings subsided for just a brief moment as I had nudged my nose into his collarbone.

"I love you, Sans. If you died... I don't know what I would do."

His actions didn't stop. Rather, the soft huff of a cheery chuckle was released as he pulled me closer, leaning in just next to my ear. "I love you, too," he whispered back to me. "Don't worry 'bout me dying on you. It won't happen. And I won't let you do go dyin' on me either, 'kay?"

I had laughed softly, joyfully accepting this response. After my tears began to cease, he still kept me close, and instead I fell asleep in his bed for the first time. In fact, from then onward, I never fell asleep on the couch again. Well, almost never.

His brother, while readily supporting us with open arms, couldn't bring himself to accept the idea of the two of us sharing a room for a fair amount of time. And just when he had started to grow accustomed to it, the two of us had to go and spoil it by... well, let's just say by being a bit too loud. His brother made me sleep on the couch that night. Needless to say, after that, anytime the two of us wanted to be a bit more intimate than usual, we didn't do it at home. Thankfully, his brother somehow wasn't concerned by us disappearing from the house every other night.

It took me, even still, quite a long time to adjust to the whole situation. It wasn't rainbows and sunshine after that. I still kept fighting myself against these feelings, despite being accepted and supported for the relationship I had involved myself in. That human societal morality still dug in my chest -- the society that I was no longer a part of. It was hard to convince myself that this was okay here. It was hard to convince myself that my actions were justified. It was hard to convince myself that everything was okay. It took a lot of bright smiles, soft cuddles, and genuine conversations to really allow myself to break through the old morals I no longer needed. It took me nearly six months to accept the fact that humans and monsters can live alongside each other without having to worry about their differences.

And now, I still remain here, right at his side. I could still feel the gentle touch of his fingertips against my skin as I drifted off to sleep by him for the thousandth time.

So I think you can imagine my fear when I woke up alone in a completely different house.

#undertale #undertale sans #undertale fanfiction #undertale fanfic #the butterfly effect #zircon writes #i do writing sometimes it's a thing #ill be posting both this and the next chapter btw

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happydoggowriter-blog · 4 years

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What the myth?! Part 1: A tiny suggestion for your new game plot.

What makes a good game? Well, there are so many factors, but, first of all, it’s the story.

Curiosity is one of the most important factors which defines a writer. You need to read everything; you need to be open in order to think of a fresh juicy story.

To be able to create something unique, you have to be a good thinker, generate tons of ideas, use your imagination to its maximal capacity. And, last but not least, you have to know how to find your own flow and inspiration at any time you need it.

So, where to get inspiration for your mindblowing stories, you may ask? One of the ways is to meet strange people you match on the Tinder app. The second way is safer, and you don’t even need to leave your room. So, what should I do to burst my inspiration right now, you ask? The secret is quite simple.

Reading myths and legends, of course!

My favorite myths are myths from Japan. They are quite fucked up, as all the myths in the world, but in a mild & unique way.

Here’s an example:

“The Japanese once believed in water demons Kappa, which looked like small naked men with a tortoise shell and a bowl filled with water in place of the head. They scoured the water in search of lost passengers and dragged them to the depths. There were only two ways you could avoid them: the first involved writing the name on the cucumber and throwing it into the water because kappa demons were very fond of cucumbers. The second way was to bow to the demons. The demon, in this case, had to bow in response and thereby empty his bowl-head. Without water, Kappa’s head was helpless.”

Let me break down the story and show you, how to make it into a game, using popular game genre: A Survival game.

For sure, you can make a survival game where you play against Kappa and avoiding to be drawn under the water. Instead of weapons, you can use cucumbers with your name written on them. The challenging part is that you need to find a knife or a pen first, otherwise, how are you going to put your name on the cucumber? A pen will be a commonly used tool and it will have a limited ink capacity, like patrons in a gun. To refill a pen, you’ll need to get close to the water and fish out an octopus (Why not, the story is pretty fucked up anyway!). 1 octopus = 1 full pen refill. To balance things out, a bigger name won’t need more ink, to avoid short names — “Easy-Win” situation (Spanish would die immediately in that game.) Also, you would need to think about the overall feel of the game (you may create a horror game or a chill game like Undertale.) Think about animation, music, UI, side quests, monetization… Maybe you could add some legendary cucumbers which will kill any Kappa who eats the cucumber or a bomb-cucumber which will explode after 5 seconds? Or an electric cucumber which will paralyze kappas on a range of 5 meters once it gets into the water? Or a golden pen that doesn’t need a refill at all? Your own imagination is the limit, dear friend!

Myths and fables are the oldest forms of storytelling. They are stories that have a meaning for a particular culture. They promote cultural rules, existing orders, and beliefs, making the life of a human being easier and manipulating the mind by telling a believable story. Joseph Campbell found, that all myths are basically the same story being told in an infinite variety of ways.

With that said, we can read myths from all over the world to understand the fears of a nation buried deep down in the roots of the culture. It can be used in localization purposes, to make your story more relatable for a particular culture.

A water demon from this Japanese myth sounds creepy enough to imagine it. But here’s another thought: Sometimes some cultural details are unrelatable. When I read about the story with cucumbers, I thought: “Seriously? That’s how you get rid of a demon??”. After this, I’m not horrified by the demon anymore. Now it feels strange and unrelatable. If this story would be written for a cat, it might have worked, because some cats are damn afraid of cucumbers for some reason. I see an only logical solution: maybe cucumbers were so rare in ancient Japan that the probability of getting rid of a Kappa demon was quite low.

Anyway, the whole idea of using a cucumber as a weapon is a mindfuck.

What’s also strange about South American mythology. Tapirs and anteaters are used as antagonists. Please, don’t cry.

Here’s a myth involving an evil anteater which I illustrated 3 years ago. Even then I imagined this as a great game idea. Oh my, as a newborn game designer, now I can fulfill my deepest dreams!

Myths still have a huge impact on society. Just compare Achilles to Superman. Both have a weakness. The heel was replaced by kryptonite; it’s that easy. Or compare the old greek Hercules to Hulk.

This brings to a thought that a good storyteller is a person who takes a story and can come up with his own at the end. This can be achieved through the fusion of the external information and imagination and experience of the storyteller. Tweak, fuse, cut, carve, deepen, elongate different parts of the story to change its taste.

Don’t you learn a recipe to make it the same over and over - learn to experiment and try different variations?

If you liked the post, follow me on twitter to see my game creation process. Also, check out my itch.io account <3

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anime-grimmy · 4 years

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Favourite Gaming Soundtracks of the 2010s

It’s the end of another decade and what a decade it’s been. So much has changed in “just” 10 years, so many cool things have happened, so many amazing games have been released. Since it’s the end of the year I thought I could talk about some things that are dear to my heart. I love music and with so many dope games came just as amazing soundtracks. So, I just wanna let out my thoughts for my favourites. This is not really ranked, but I’ll tell you which my favs are from my favs.

But first, some “honorable mentions” for soundtracks I really enjoy, even though I’ve never played these games.

- Dark Souls / Bloodborne Mystic and gritty, but strangely calming from time to time

- Hollow Knight It came coming on with YT Autoplay and to be honest, I can’t complain. All in all a great soundtrack

- Persona 5 Dude, talk about style. It’s not quite my type of game, but holy fuck, the music is my JAM

- God of War (2018) I DID play this game and I loved it, but the soundtrack didn’t really stick out to me THAT much. Some tracks are downright bone-chilling and epic, but it didn’t have such a big impact on me all in all.

Anyways, on with my list.

Pokemon Sword and Shield

I’m gonna start with a recent one since it’s still fresh in my mind.

I always liked the Pokemon Soundtracks. Though most of the time simplistic, some tracks just have such iconic melodies. However, from Sinnoh onwards, I started liking single tracks more than the soundtrack as a whole. For example. even though most people say Cynthia has the best Champion theme, I can agree an the melody being amazing, but for me, the theme is so loaded, I don’t like it (best Champion theme is still Lance). Alola, for me, started having an upcurve on the soundtrack. I liked it as a whole, though I can’t really remember what exactly stood out to me.

Now Sword and Shield. Dudes, keep going on that route, your OST is amazing. I’ll be honest, the BEST thing of this game is the soundtrack. All have this kinda sporty/cheery sound and even though, let’s say, the normal battle theme isn’t that of a banger, the number of amazing single themes is just so high. Bede’s theme is basically the only thing I like about him, Marnie’s has such a cool tune (and all the metal covers on YT, BRO) and even if many people don’t like Hop’s theme, I really dig it. Some parts remind me of Mirror B.s theme, I dunno why.

And then you have my fav tracks, Rose’s Final Fantasy theme, Toby’s amazing Battle Tower theme AND THE GYM BATTLE MUSIC. I really didn’t like the gym leader theme at first but while playing the game, after each gym leader, it got me more and more stoked when the battle began.

All in all, Pokemon Sword and Shield has an overall enjoyable soundtrack. Filled with bangers, for me it made the game itself so much better.

Animal Crossing

Though I haven’t played the game in a long time, I still listen to the music.

Animal Crossing is just laid out to be this chill and calming ensemble of melodies. And it works. When I’m stressed or have to work on stuff I don’t want to, I usually just put on Animal Crossing music. It calms me and just gives me this warm and fuzzy feeling. It also helps when I have problems sleeping.

A soundtrack to just lie back, close your eyes and just enjoy life.

Legend of Zelda – Breath of the Wild

Continuing with calm music, let’s talk about my favourite Switch title.

This game often gets flag for “having no music” or too little of it. I know where you’re coming from, but I just think the limited use of the soundtrack makes you appreciate it even more. The moments when the music is used is carefully chosen and that makes it special. Be it the few piano notes that play while the day goes on, the little notification that you’ve entered a new area, the unexpected high energy when you’re fighting (most of all bosses) or the indescribable fear you feel when a Guardian spots you.

There are a few favourite moments I have of the game.

First is the start, when you first leave the cave, run out and this vast landscape opens before you. Just those few piano notes made me all excited for this new adventure. Like dawn is breaking.

The first time I rode on a horse over this wide field and suddenly, the music starts swelling. It was almost magical, the music rising just like my excitement.

The last thing I love is the difference between being in villages and outside. When I noticed that you always have some kind of melody playing when you’re in a settlement it dawned on me how quiet it was outside of them. I love this contrast between being alone in the wilderness with all the quiet and the sudden swell in music when you’re with other people.

This OST amazes me with how much emotion it can convey with often just the smallest amount of notes. An amazing soundtrack for just as an amazing game.

Super Mario Odyssey

So, last Nintendo game on this list, I swear.

This one is a small surprise, but at the same time, it really isn’t. I’ve never really been a fan of the main Mario games, they just aren’t really my thing. (the spin-offs are my jam). However, I’ve always enjoyed Mario’s music. The upbeat tunes really get stuck in your head and the melodies are always so recognizable. Heck, my favourite OST was from Super Mario Sunshine back in the day!

With Odyssey, I really enjoyed both the game and the soundtrack aspect. The worlds are colourful and the gameplay is super fun. Combine that with the stellar soundtrack and the game was such a fun experience, it’s definitely in my top 10. But what I really enjoyed is the diversity of the track. When you listen to the soundtrack on Youtube and you just click on two different parts of the video, I can guarantee that they’ll probably sound completely different but at the same time somehow coherent. The best tracks, in my opinion, are the upbeat ones for sure. The feeling of excitement and adventure just swells so much it’s amazing.

Then you’ve got “Jump up Superstar”. I fucking love this song. It’s so much fun, has such a great tune which gets stuck in your head and the lyrics are so easy to sing along. All things I love in a song. I actually listened to the song on repeat before I even got the game and I couldn’t wait to get to New Donk City to LIVE the song. And I wasn’t disappointed, it was one if not the best moments in the game.

Great game, great soundtrack, 100% fun.

Bravely Default / Bravely Second

(technically on a Nintendo Console, but whatev) I’m just gonna lump this two together, since BS’s the sequel.

Now, JRPGs aren’t really my thing. They often take too long for my tastes, I can’t for the life of me concentrate on the story and characters and after some time they just get stale for me. But now and then, I pick up a series I actually finish and that was Bravely Default and Second. I think I just have such a huge soft spot for the series cause of the art style/atmosphere and the fact that I played 8 hours straight of BD on a flight from Canada home.

I haven’t played the games in forever but when I think about what I like about them, there are 3 things I always think about: characters, art style and soundtrack. The songs might sound generic to most, but to me, with my little knowledge of JRPGs, find them quiet unique. It does at some points remind me of Final Fantasy but I think something just makes the tracks just sound like Bravely, though I can’t put my finger on it.

I don’t know the names of the themes, but even now there are just certain tracks which I link to a certain reaction. Like “oh no, not them again” or “Now shit is getting down”. Or every time the main theme plays, I get absolutely pumped.

Haven’t played the games in forever, but the soundtrack’s still in my mind.

Kingdom Hearts

From one RPG to the next, here’s a very special soundtrack. Kingdom Hearts is a franchise near and dear to my heart. It’s one of the first, if not THE first, RPG I ever played. I just get so nostalgic with this game. I can just remember watching my brother playing KH2, seeing two characters from my favourite franchise run around with this spiky haired boy with this stupidly big key. So much stuff happened I didn’t even understand back then, but just seeing these animated characters laugh and cry and go on this grand adventure, little me was mesmerized.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t too happy with KH3. I’ve waited so long for it, just like hundreds of other people, but the end product just, I dunno, lacked the heart it used to. One thing however didn’t, the soundtrack. As sad I was to not enjoy the game as a whole as much as I wanted to, the soundtrack became one of my instant favourites. It sounds grandiose and has so much emotion. Each track sounds amazing but the OST really shines in its more calm and beautiful themes and its epic ones.

My favourite songs are the serene ones, however. “Sincerely Beloved” and the other Utada songs are some of my favourite songs ever and I can’t tell you how close I came to crying with the Sea Salt Icecream Trios themes. Heck, I played Xion’s theme back in the day on the piano and I still can play it now.

As much as KH has gone down in heart, the soundtrack stands up there as one of the best, much thanks to Utada Hikaru as well. It will always be important to me and just reminds me of my childhood. Some very fond memories.

Undertale

Well, let’s get outta the nostalgia feel and turn it up a bit!

Ah, Toby Fox, you madlad. Creating such a great game and subverting so many expectations. Undertale really had a big impact on the gaming scene but for me, the soundtrack really lasted. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the characters and story very much, but I still listen to the soundtrack regularly.

Undertale’s OST is comprised of sad, melancholic, upbeat and downright hype tunes. It has a wide spectrum but Toby Fox really does know how to push Leitmotif. All themes kind of flow great into each other but still manage to stand out and are recognizable. Each character theme fits the character perfectly and I love how their themes usually have some melodies/instruments from the area they’re in. And speaking of areas, as much as I love the character themes I just might prefer the atmosphere tracks even more. I mean, “Snowdin” just sounds like this super laid back, cute little town, “Home” is such a calming song and “It’s raining somewhere else” has such mystique. And, of course, the fact that the tracks have character/plot relevance is just amazing.

Not to mention, Toby Fox created one of the best Meme songs in existence.

Love the game, love the soundtrack even more and I’ll listen to “Death by Glamour” til I die.

Horizon Zero Dawn

I’m so happy I picked up this game. I never bought it cos A, I feel overwhelmed by open world games, and B, it COSTS SO MUCH. But I found it for half the prise and I bought it right before exam week. I know, smart move.

But anyways, the soundtrack. There aren’t any tracks that really stand out to me but I just like it as a whole. It’s such an atmospheric OST and when listening to it as BG music you just HEAR where you are, which tribe you’re in, what you probably did in the game when it played.

And that’s actually a big factor. All in all, I don’t think it’s such a special OST. It sounds great, most tracks are solid, but what really makes it shine is how much it enhances the experience of the game. The gameplay and story are great, but the OST just makes everything so much better, with setting the tone and atmosphere and all that.

I could go on and on about this game, but the soundtrack can be shaved down to a few words. Solid, great and atmospheric.

Monster Hunter World / Iceborne

So, I’ll drop this to second to last because I already made a super long analysis of the soundtrack. I’ll link it here.

https://anime-grimmy.tumblr.com/post/188601659768/some-monster-hunter-ramblings-possible-spoilers

But to put it simply, this is probably my favourite soundtrack at the moment. I just haven’t experienced so many emotions while listening to an OST since a certain game that’s next on the list. I still can’t listen to “Succession of Light” without almost crying (who am I kidding, I cry every time). I dunno why, but so many tracks make me feel such a barrage of emotions, be it excitement for adventure, hype for the hunt or just simply a childlike wonder.

Simply a great soundtrack that will be on top for a long time.

Okami

Technically a game from 2006, but the PS4 version came out like 2017 and I REALLY WANNA TALK ABOUT THIS GAME.

This is my absolute favourite game of all time. Since I played it first when I was about 9 years old, I just really loved this game. I replayed it more times than I can count and dude, I speedrun this game in record time.

For people who don’t know this game, you play as the Sun God Amaterasu, who has been summoned in the body of a white wolf. You job is to banish the evil from Nippon. To say this game awakened my fondness of Japanese culture is, well, spot on. I’ve played this game before I even knew what anime was. The atmosphere, style, themes and mostly the music mesmerized me. It was all so, well, foreign. Even nowadays it stands out from anything else I’ve played.

But on to the OST. Next to it being just amazing in general, it just is so Japanese and that’s what has always stuck out to me. I grew up with very traditional and classical music, back then I didn’t even listen to English/American music. So to hear these melodies and instruments that just sound so unfamiliar was very intriguing. And that just topped of the already amazing tracks. Okami does a great job of having super epic, exciting but also sombre and atmospheric music. It’s also very animated and comedic with it’s use of music. So, the mix of foreign sounds and great timing of amazing tracks just makes the experience all so much more memorable.

Even after 10+ years, Okami never gets boring and no matter how much I play it, the moment I face a boss and the epic music swells, or the moment a calm scene passes and the melody slows, my heart fills with emotion and I’m so glad I played it again.

Well, that’s that! I know it probably often sounds kind of sappy, but music is very special and important to me. If music doesn’t evoke emotions in me, I don’t care about it, even if it sounds great. For me it’s important that, when I listen to a soundtrack, I can remember the game or the scene it played in and the emotions I felt in that moment.

Soundtracks are supposed to make a emotional connection between you and the game and that’s why they are essential. At least that’s how I see it.

Anyways, if you made it this far, I bow my head to you. Thanks for reading and I hope you could somehow share my perspective of these games’ soundtrack. Feel free to tell me about your fav tracks!

It’s been a nice decade, enjoy the rest of 2019!

#favourite gaming soundtracks #2010s #pokemon #pokemon sword and shield #animal crossing #legend of zelda #mario oddesy #bravely default #undertale #kingdom hearts #monster hunter world #monster hunter iceborne #okami #horizon zero dawn #rambling

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jcmorrigan · 5 years

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While I'm horribly behind (Ch. 24 as of now), I've always been impressed with how much milage you've got with Taking Back the Crown, which is, of course, a super fun read. What's your writing process like for it? Do you use outlines, an idea folder, or some other method?

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING! :O I had no idea you were! That means sooooo much to me!

Okay. So there are a couple ways to approach this question re: outlining. If you mean overall, like how do I decide the story structure, it’s basically a process of “take the biggest fandoms I like the most and arrange them in an order that makes sense.” I tryyyyyy to leave room for newcomers (DanganRonpa came in late and I ended up having to shuffle things to get it a quick entrance the minute I realized how deep I was in with it), and I always keep in mind that I can just transport my favorite character in from something if I don’t want to use the whole fictional work’s setting and plot. For the first phase (chapters 1-84), I rounded up my biggest faves at the time to use for settings of storylets, and you’ll see those are the ones I listed in the fandom description on AO3: Kingdom Hearts, RWBY, Undertale, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Storm Hawks, The Neverending Story, Wakfu, Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Nancy Drew point-and-click computer games, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Okami. This was a combo of nostalgia fandoms with new loves. Tangled on its own was a later addition, as were the elements of DanganRonpa I managed to work in. Most of the non-main plots not involved with those fandoms were throw-it-ins. As for the second phase, I did largely the same thing, basically collecting fandoms I wanted to represent and ordering them. The difference is that the second phase is a LOT more planned out, since I wanted to include return trips to the most significant worlds as well as some places picked out based on who I wanted to recruit to either the Cinnamons, the WHAM ARMY, or Maleficent’s group (who I do refer to as the Overtakers outside of the fic). A big theme of this second phase is alliance/teamwork/reunion, so there are a lot of settings chosen based on who could be picked up from there and added to either team. I have DIGITAL SPREADSHEETS dedicated to ordering where I want to go and what I want to have accomplished at each storylet.

As for a more chapter-by-chapter/quest-by-quest basis, I use a combo of digital spreadsheets and a physical paper notebook. Only recently, I picked up the practice of using a spreadsheet to map out the scenes that I want to happen in the plot I’m currently in/about to start and divide what events need to go in which chapters. From there, when I’m about to start a new chapter, I take inventory of everything that needs to happen and write down brief one-line scene summaries (using characters’ initials and in-jokes so I can keep it to one line; I just flipped open my notebook and you’ll see such nonsense as “KS is fine” and “Hourglass time”). I jot them down as I think of them until I’ve listed everything that needs to happen in this chapter and then write numbers beside them to order how the scenes need to go in the chapter. You’re far enough where I started getting to REALLY juggling plots - when I order scenes, I try to alternate them so there aren’t too many of the same team or the same world in a row. I realize I could probably use a digital spreadsheet for this too to save on paper, and maybe in the future when this notebook runs out, but for now this is way more convenient and natural-feeling for me.

I try to have things planned as concretely as I can, but sometimes I realize I have to completely make a U-turn to either include something that needs to go in NOW (see: DANGANRONPA GETS SHOEHORNED IN IMMEDIATELY AFTER I FINISH THE TRILOGY) or restructure something entirely because it turns out a plot I was going for won’t work. I’d give examples, but you’re not that far, and I don’t want to spoil things.

Digital spreadsheets are also a good place to tally team rosters I want for missions, side slice-of-life skits I want to use eventually but don’t know where just yet, and inspo music to listen to while writing (I promise you there is pretty much no time during TBTC where I’m not listening to mood music while writing a corresponding scene, and if anyone asked, I could probably pick out either the music piece I would use if I were writing that part now or possibly THE EXACT MUSIC PIECE I USED TO WRITE THAT BIT). Is it product placement if I say that I use Microsoft Excel? It seriously has every spreadsheet feature I could ask for when it comes to plotting stories, and I’ve tried other spreadsheet programs (that shall not be named) and they’re good for other stuff but not this.

Anyway, thank you for giving me a chance to infodump/ramble about TBTC and I hope this answered your question!

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nameless-articles · 5 years

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A Delayed Topic: Budgets in Video Games

I’m naked in my Japan dorm eating Pocky, yet I’m disappointed in myself. Not because of my current activities, but because in waiting (really working on other projects) to write my article on mid-tier budgets I missed the boat before other big-name video game people sailed off on it. Nonetheless, it’s a topic I’ve had on my mind for a while now, and to scrap the project just because some other people have tackled it would be silly. So without further ado, I present to you my thoughts and hope for video game budgets going forward (though of course whatever I have to say will have little influence on what publishers do).

A while ago, my brother and I got into a heated discussion over the price of video games. He believes sixty dollars is too high a price for a newly released game, while (though of course I’d much rather pay less) I find it to be a fair price. However, for any readers ready to judge my spending habits, I should remark that I only buy perhaps one or two new games a year (in actuality, I haven’t bought a newly-released game in 2018). It takes a game a fair amount of effort to win me over enough to drop money on launch; the best way for a game to earn goodwill is to be created by a developer that has a good track record. While some people find this habit (that of buying games from trusted developers) as a risk not worth taking, I have only been truly upset over maybe one new game purchase in my life (that honor goes to Mass Effect 3). In my experience, that game has stopped me from not only waiting to buy future Bioware titles but has stopped me from buying them altogether. In the long run, I believe the customers’ (not as individuals but as a collective) happiness will determine whether a developer will succeed or fail. That being said, it isn’t stopping publishers from doing everything in their power to fight that reality. There’s only so much we can say about predatory practices in video games. At their core, these practices are forced into a game with little consideration for how it affects the mechanics or overall flow: The majority of modern AAA games are designed to make money, nothing else.

The question is not “does the price of the game reflect its quality?” Video games are art, and, with no malice, if a painting can sell for millions I don’t see why video games can’t do the same. That might seem like I’m arguing against my point, but I’m not. For us to consider games a form of art, we need to reconsider how we view the cost of that art, and the cost of art is not solely determined by the work put into producing it.

Take Battlefront II for example, by technical merits it is quite the achievement and all the detail packed into it must have taken the developers countless time to create, yet I wouldn’t consider paying over ten dollars for it because, as a customer, the experience on offer is not one I value greatly. On the other hand, if the asking price for Drakengard 3 had been eighty dollars, I would’ve at least considered it. I don’t believe this is how most people think of games, despite having often heard claims that people would’ve spent two hundred dollars on Skyrim if they could (although given the recent controversies concerning Fallout 76 that might’ve been a bad idea, too). Most people make such claims with one particular game when they have become infatuated with it (someone might make that argument for me), but I think the scope of this lens should be broadened to every game we consider purchasing.

Of course, we need to consider the mass-marketed and laborious nature of video games. Visual art like painting and photography can afford to have higher prices precisely because they are limited in quantity. In addition, video games take countless hours from multiple people through different departments, and they all need to be compensated somehow. No developer should expect to work for free (that said, practices like crunch time which recently got brought up again for Red Dead Redemption 2 still occur), and I am all for making sure they get their fair share.

However, a significant chunk of a big games budget is spent on marketing the game, with less than a majority fraction going to actual development, and this trend is only growing. While I understand the importance of giving your game a good amount of coverage, the fact that more money is spent letting people know a game exists rather than ensuring the quality is a recipe for mediocrity, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. I want to give the video game industry the benefit of the doubt and believe the goal is to create a product worthy of the consumer’s money, but trends like massive marketing budgets and locking in game items on the grounds of player choice speaks more to the capitalist perversion of the craft. It might sound like I’m taking video games too seriously, but I believe we are seeing a shift in the industry that is going to change the way video games take risks, and I would argue in a manner that is ultimately limiting the artistic possibilities of the medium.

With budgets as inflated as they are, these projects can’t fail. I don’t mean fail the way publishers mean fail, wherein they expected a decent game to become the next Call of Duty or where only a couple million sales means the investors didn’t make the massive profits they expected (though still made a profit). Big budget games are less likely to try out new and experimental ideas because more often than naught consumers want something they know rather than new mechanics or odd stories. While this has always been the case to some degree, games like Metal Gear Solid 2 are less likely to be created today than they were two console generations ago. Ironically enough, Death Stranding is looking to be such an experience and the only reason it’s able to do this is because the game is being designed as a console exclusive, which Sony banks on selling more consoles than actual units (in the sense that the game might sell a couple million but many of those buyers will probably get one of their consoles just to play it). Games like Bloodborne are meant to give people a reason to own a console by pushing that system as the only means to get such an experience (in some sense it matters less how that game sells). Of course, Sony is expecting a Hideo Kojima exclusive to sell very well, but they are still taking a huge risk by giving him a good amount of money considering the kind of experience it seems to be (at this point, a story-based open world exploration (admittedly this is not the most unique general premise but the story seems to suggest otherwise)). We could never expect a publisher like EA or Ubisoft to take such a risk, though to give them credit they do bankroll much smaller games that tend to mechanically and narratively experiment more than the Battlefields and the Assassin’s Creeds that give EA the profits to test things out on a smaller scale.

It might sound like I’m giving these larger publishers some slack, but I think this approach is still rather tamed and limiting the possibilities video games have. I don’t see this setup of high-budget-destined-for-profit games to pay for the experimental smaller games as giving the most variety of gameplay and narratives. I think it’s better than only big budget games, but these other projects tend to be closer to indie games, which, though they have their place in video games, have to be limited in scope and technical prowess in order to exist. For example, Undertale is an amazing game that I’m glad exists, but imagine what Toby Fox could do if he had a couple million to spend rather than fifty thousand. These are the experiences lacking in the industry, multi-million dollar budgets with the heart and mindset of an independent project. This isn’t to say such experiences don’t exist at all, but that I believe they offer the best compromise between publisher greed and developer freedom. While this might have already been expected, I’m going to talk about how Drakengard 3 is close to an example of such a product.

While full of plenty of flaws and lackluster gameplay elements, the entirety of the Drakengard/Nier series is enjoyed on a cult level because it offers something that is hard to find in other games: that is, a balls to the wall crazy story that, for the sake of the memes, really makes you think. I find the lore of the series interesting, but I mainly play them because they offer stories that for once give me a chance to reflect on my own perspective and have me consider why I believe what I believe. Yes, games like that exist elsewhere, but there is a specific type of craziness and intrigue that comes with these games that I have yet to see replicated in other series (by all means, feel free to mention some). Back to Drakengard 3 in particular, I’ve already talked about why I believe the final boss is one of the best moments I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing. Such an ending risks alienating countless players, and it’s the kind of choice you’d probably never see attempted in today’s AAA titles because it’s far too risky. However, you’d also never find it in an entirely independent project, because they lack the funds to even try and attempt an ending of that scope. For that reason, I believe the AA (a couple million, maybe ten or twenty million at most), offer the best space for games that want to push the artistic bounds of the video game medium.

One argument to be made against this proposal is the fear that such games won’t have the level of polish present in higher budget titles. While this can be true, it doesn’t account for what the reality was two generations ago. Games like Metal Gear Solid 2 and Silent Hill 2 (it just seems like the second game is always the best of a series) were expensive in their day, but even their budgets look small in comparison to what’s being spent on games today. While the graphical prowess of AAA games has increased vastly since then, do modern games come across as mechanically or narratively more engaging than two generations ago? I tend to think not, though games like Nier: Automata give me hope that interesting narratives can still be constructed and built upon in a world of higher budgets. Nier is by no means a high budget game, but it costs more than anything an independent studio is able to muster, while at the same time turning a profit for their publisher and bringing their developer from the brink of death. All while giving players an enjoyable and engaging game.

There’s been the idea floating around that games need to cost more than $60. The rising costs of video games is the main culprit, proponents of an increased price say, however I want to lay blame on the consumer for a moment. Gamers appreciate flashy graphics, and these graphics don’t come cheap. It makes sense for publishers to make certain elements of a game top priority if players demonstrate that these features are the sort of things they want to see. Most consumers want more of the same, yet love to complain that every game is trying to be the next [insert current leading genre here]. Players flock to these games, at least enough to allow publishers and developers to make a quick buck off of making such a game.

More than any other artistic medium, video games are highly iterative, which can be to its advantage at times. However, as a result trends take awhile before they die, and in that time there will be countless games of a popular genre that take up time, money, and space from games that are doing different things. Consider how many forgotten first person shooters existed last generation, consider how many forgotten open world games exist this generation. Now imagine the countless battle royal games that are either out or coming out in the future. All of those games devote resources away from a potentially game-changing project. I’m losing focus a little bit, but it’s worth remembering that the problem is not merely concerned with budgets.

In order to give players what they want, publishers and developers have to find monetization methods to make these games and make a profit for their investors, for whom (unfortunately) the creation of big budget games is often times merely a profit-driven endeavor. Money has always driven the creation of art, and only recently crowdfunding and other supportive methods have taken off. However, the vast majority of the population isn’t rich enough to support multiple games with thousands of dollars like some of these investors can, so until then this method of game production will persist. Since players are (rightfully) against a flat price increase of video games, we’ve seen growing use of microtransactions and lootbox systems that, as anyone should know, do not justify the cost of what they give but rather subsidize the other costs of the game. Players buy these microtransactions, and in some cases the overall amount spent on in-game microtransactions have earned a company more money than other games or even the game its sold within. Publishers know this, which perpetuates the cycle of spending more money on marketing to ensure they can get enough whales that will sink a ton of money into the game so they can make their profit regardless.

The saddest part about the current situation is that it might not even be enough to “vote with your wallet” as is often repeated, because most players don’t engage with these monetization practices, but those who do engage in such a way that it’s worth it for the company to alienate a vocal minority of their players in favor of exploit the small amount of players who will pay to play. A complete boycott of these games might not be enough to convince publishers to change their monetization methods. At this point, they know how much money they can make through the nickle-and-dime processes that even if games had a higher starting price it would hardly incentivize them to drop it altogether. Given the number of deluxe and super deluxe editions many games release with which only give access to maybe a few other missions and cosmetics for a quarter of the cost of the real game, some might argue is already the case.

Why did I bother writing all this if the outlook appears black. I’m certain no developer will ever read this, and given my general reach on this site is minimal at best, it’s very unlikely that this will get any traction that leads to some grander change. Still, I find it important for people to see and understand why games are monetized the way they do, and in this instance the burden is on the consumer to inform publishers the kinds of experiences we want to see. I’m fully aware that what I want from video games is not what other people want to see; if it was, then there would be no reason for me to make this post. But I do find the experiences I want lacking, and I believe more AA budgets will give the best range for those types of experiences that will push gaming in a new direction. It is not the Red Dead Redemption 2’s of the industry that will revolutionize gaming, but the smaller, humbler experiences that will shape the artistic future of games to come.

There is still much room for video games to develop as a medium. Whether it’s in traditionally controlled games or virtual reality experiences, there is still plenty for us to learn and develop how the immense amount of player-controlled interactions influence the final product. Expensive-to-make games cannot afford to fully explore these bounds, making them the least opportune avenue to expand, reshape, or break how we understand player interactivity in an artistic sense. While there are developers who do push bounds on higher budgets, most do nothing that hasn’t already been done (sometimes even better) by a project on a lower budget. I guess what I really want to say is that I want something to challenge me and my understanding of player agency as much as the Drakenier series, and I doubt it will be something that cost over fifty million that will change that.

P.S. I understand that what I seek for the future of games, whether narratively or mechanically, is not necessarily the priority of other players, let alone publishers and developers. Perhaps in the future I’ll go more into what I look for in video games, and why I enjoy playing the games that I do.

#video games #budgets #criticism #lootbox #microtransactions #essay

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elkian · 6 years

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Mirroring Canon scenes in Fic

This is something that can make a major impact - for good or ill - on a fic, and I’ve been wanting to touch on it.

What does that mean? A lot of Fanfiction is Alternate Universe stuff, either by a lot or by a little. Many writers like to add a scene as done in the original Canon in that AU.

The problem is that sometimes the scene is implemented... imperfectly, shall we say, or even seems completely irrelevant.

First example: An Undertale Fic (that I won’t link here bc I’d rather you judge it on its own merits than my personal critique) that, like many Undertale Fics, had Frisk enter the Underground with a guardian/parental figure in tow instead of alone.

In the Fic, many Canon events were mirrored or referenced pretty well! However, there was a scene where Undyne made her comment, as seen in her Pacifist cooking scene, about the protagonist (in this case, the parent/guardian) being a nice dork like Asgore.

The problem here was that this was essentially her first meeting with the parental figure, rather than a later meeting with Frisk, and said parental figure was actually pretty mad at her for, you know, threatening their child. Tl, dr: Because the scene lacked the Canonic buildup and background, it stood out and broke suspension of disbelief.

And the thing is? This Fic, overall, is a GREAT Fic. It’s one of my favorite Undertale Fics! But that particular scene not only didn’t work, it threw me off and made it hard to pay attention to the rest of the chapter.

Second example: I fell into the Foodieverse rabbit hole (it’s better than it sounds). One Fic (spoilers) has Obadiah Stane betraying Tony for money, much like in IM1.

However, the method and backstory have been adjusted to fit the Foodie Universe. Tony’s father owned a pizza chain that sucked Tony’s soul until he broke away to for his own restaurant. Tony’s father left a trust and shares to any of Tony’s children, which in this AU Tony has a son.

Stane’s actions and motivations mirror the salient points from Iron Man 1, but are adapted to fit into the relevant universe, making for an extremely suspenseful and intriguing Fic.

The point is NOT “Don’t mirror canon”. The point is that mirroring Canon works best when adapted to fit the universe you’re building!

I think a lot of people either get worried about Fandom response, or don’t think about how things work out, and forget to reflect the differences between Canon and Ficverse when doing this.

Think about whether the characters in this Alternate setting would have the same responses; alter the stimulus to better fit what you already have set up - heck, even referencing that the Canon event won’t/can’t occur in the AU because of how it’s different can be fun!

#elk text #30th #October #2018 #October 30th 2018 #gl

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feralphoenix · 6 years

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on chara & frisk as rpg player & protagonist allegory

this is something that i talked about on twitter last week and think is worth writing about in a little more depth here, so:

last week toby made some tweets about moon: remix rpg adventure and ways that its concepts helped inspire undertale despite that he'd never played it himself. there's a lot that you could talk about/analyze about the comparisons between those games, which i'll leave to someone who is familiar with or has actually played moon (i have not). the tl;dr version as relevant to what i want to talk about is that moon is a game that's designed to make rpg players think about rpg mechanics and conventions in a different light, i.e. "actually this thing i thought was ubiquitous and had accepted as normal is kinda screwed up upon second examination".

there's a lot of ways in which undertale does this with rpg mechanics and conventions, obviously, but i want to talk about chara and frisk because.............. i always want to talk about chara and frisk.

the more i think about it, the more convinced i become that the game mechanics relationship between chara and frisk is supposed to be a metaphor for the relationship between a game player and a traditional "silent" protagonist (or a protagonist with choosable dialogue).

rpg protagonists, even silent ones, usually have some form of canon character settings and personality. but because of the game structure, you are able to make them act in ways that completely contradict that canon personality. when you do this, you as the player are overwriting their personality, either with your own or at your whims.

wrt player-and-protagonist separation, @inverts once used link from the zelda series as an example, and he's a really good one so i'm going to borrow their comparison here. link has a canon identity and personality and he usually has a big world-saving goal. but whoever's holding the controller can ignore the fact that link is supposed to be a kind, brave young man with a strong sense of justice, and have him fritter away his time on minigames and attacking chickens instead of going to defeat ganondorf and save zelda. breath of the wild is a stellar example here because of its mind-boggling array of available distractions from the main quest. jokes about link faffing about still regularly cross my dashboard and twitter timeline. (case in point.)

many essayists have already pointed out that chara seems to operate like a typical rpg player or protagonist; i like to link to @gaytreasure's essay where they propose chara as morally gray/not good at empathy and misunderstanding the genre they're in, parsing monsters as the "good guys" they need to save, humans as the "bad guys" that must be destroyed, and themself as the main character who's supposed to fix everything a lot because it's good. to that i'd also like to add @lexyeevee‘s writeup here (cw for mention of pet death) where she points out that chara's behavior in returning to the surface while bodysharing with asriel, and specifically bringing their own corpse along, is very rpg player-ish: they are definitely out there to do some murders but they specifically wait for the enemy to attack first before they try to respond with lethal force.

if chara is an rpg player, then that makes frisk the character they're playing as. what happens to a silent main character when their player insists on playing them in a way that's completely out of character for them? the answer that undertale poses is grim: frisk fucks off in no mercy because this isn't something that they would do, because there's no room or leeway for them to exist in light of what you're having chara do with their body right now. chara's narration switches to first-person to reflect this, and flowey identifies that chara has "stolen" their body and soul.

on the other hand, the good ending for frisk is the one where the game acknowledges that they and chara are two separate people. the other characters learn their name, and they get to leave the underground in the land of happily ever after, where finished stories get to rest.

you, the player of undertale, the person sitting at the computer or console, are playing as chara, the protagonist of undertale. chara, meanwhile, is "playing as"/guiding frisk, the main character of undertale. frisk is chara's interface to the world of undertale, whereas chara is ours; frisk is just an npc to us.

this relationship is complicated by the fact that chara is a traditional rpg player/protagonist who has just been confronted with the total failure of Normal RPG Logic and is questioning everything they thought they knew, and is therefore following your instructions in hope that you'll give them answers. your play style therefore goes on to affect what chara learns from this experience and whether frisk is allowed to exist at all.

we don't get much input from frisk wrt their thoughts on this complex dynamic and their overall situation. we do get to hear a LOT from chara, though: on what they, as an rpg protagonist, think of us, their player (their "partner" whom they rely on and will listen to for the most part but will not hesitate to dunk on under very specific circumstances; they have a few more servile lines for dataminers that could be genuine or sarcastic).

we also know how they, as an rpg PLAYER, feel about their journey in either ultimate ending: in the no mercy speech they explain how you've taught them that their purpose is to gain power. in the oft-overlooked post-pacifist conversation with flowey, we learn from him that chara worries for and loves the game's cast (one of the first things flowey does is reassure us and chara that everyone is okay), and that chara progressed through the game wanting to keep the underground safe from flowey's control (which is a story objective that a lot of players forget about).

(flowey also brings up that chara's power is now the only thing that can endanger the happy ending, and because he too understands game player mentality, expresses that it wouldn't surprise him if we have already gotten the happy ending and true reset before. wanting to relive an emotional journey and see a happy ending over and over is pretty common rpg player behavior, too.)

BASICALLY THIS IS JUST A REALLY COOL REALLY MESSED-UP CONCEPT AND I LOVE HOW TOBY EMPLOYED IT??? UNDERTALE IS A GOOD GAME AND I LOVE THAT IT INVITES YOU TO THINK ABOUT YOUR GAMING HABITS IN NEW WAYS NO MATTER WHAT THOSE HABITS ARE

#undertale #undertale spoilers #chara (undertale)#frisk (undertale)#flowey #essay #long post under cut -

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capitainecorbeau · 6 years

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So I just finished watching through a subtitled version of Dai Gyakuten Saiban and here’s some random disorganized thoughts because I’m really excited about it ! Oh, and spoilers !

-I really, really like Shu Takumi’s writing and storytelling over Takeshi Yamazaki’s. I can’t exactly put my finger over why yet (and it frustrates me), but it justs... I dunno, I connect to it a lot more ? I think it’s because the way he writes friendships feels very sweet and genuine. And I’m a sucker for good friendships. But I’m going to dig around more, because I really want to put words on why dai gyakuten saiban put a huge smile on my face while the games directed by Yamazaki kept rubbing me the wrong way.

-The animations and character design. Holy. SHIT. There is so mich attention to detail, they really took full advantage of the fact that the sprites are in 3D and they don’t have to draw every single pose. Every character feels distinct and unique, with their own little habits, gestures, and such. Like, they’re immediately recognizable just by the poses they strike. I had stars in my eyes every time, it was amazing ! Like, the example that stuck with me the most was actually Ryuunosuke’s (the protagonists) animations during his first trial. He’s unbelievably nervous, and they found so many fun ways to show it ! His eyes dart around wildly, he raises his hand before speaking, when he hits his desk he quickly looks at his hands like “oh shit ! that made more noise than expected !”. And you really see him change as the game progresses, you see him become more confident, less painfully strained, and he even starts imitating a certain someone (and, because the animations are unique to each character, it’s pretty obvious, even though nobody mentions it ! Show don’t tell done right !!).

-By the way, a quick aside, but they really did a great job portraying extreme nervousness ? Like, it’s not just the character going “I’m nervous” and maybe fumbling his words a few times, no, you see in his posture that he’s so tense it’s almost painful, he gets completely and utterly tongue-tied, or is barely comprehensible, is very easily startled, hyper aware of himself and what he’s doing/saying... They did a great job portraying how frustrating nervousness and anxiety can be. that’s the kind of attention to detail I love !

-Susato. SUSATO. i love her. I love how brave and confident she is, how clever, and I love her sens of humor (which involves a lot of slightly condescending concern). Honestly, I kinda wish she was the protagonist ? Like, don’t get me wrong, I really liked the actual protagonist, but it would’ve made just as much sense if it had been her, and it would’ve been very interesting !

-Sherlock Holmes is in this game and I think it’s my favourite portrayal of him ever. Honestly, when I first heard he was in the game I was very afraid he was going to be the classic “I can be a prick all I want because I’m a genius” trop that I despise, but I was wrong. Oh so wrong. Sherlock Holmes is a huge, massive dork. Legit almost every time he was on screen I was cryng with laughter. He’s cheerfully weird (he pops up in the background in ridiculous positions, sings his own theme song, is a huge dramaqueen, a lowkey troll), it’s like Papyrus from Undertale became a detective. And what I love is that he’s not infaillible ? Like, he gets stuff wrong. Often. he’s very quick-thinking and can deduce things in a blink, but he doesn’t really thinks things through and ends up completely off the mark. But when people correct him ? He welcomes it, is very happy when people offer to help, and once pushed in the right direction, he gets things right very quickly. I’ve seen people say that he pretends to get stuff wrong so Ryuunosuke can figure things out for himself, but I don’t really like that interpretation, personnally. Clever people get stuff wrong, and it doesn’t make them less clever. Honestly, having a character deduce things easily but getting stuff wrong is such a better way to show they’re smart than having them always guess everything right on the first try. Also, that way, we don’t get those weird parallel universes where only one person is ever capable of deductive reasoning (looking at you, AAI). Honestly, Holmes in DGS kinda reminded me of Basil from The Great Mouse Detective, only friendlier. I like interpretations that focus on making him a person rather than THE GOD OF DEDUCING AND SMARTNESS BETTTER THAT EVERYONE ELSE.

-Friendships. So many friendships. You can really feel that these characters care for each other and I love stuff like that. Ryuunosuke loves his friends so much and frankly, same.

-You know this game is very human ? Like, there’s a lot of grey morality, and good people doing misguided or plain wrong stuff, with reasons that make sense for them. Actually, there aren’t a lot of classic villains in this game. They tried some different stuff than usual and it turned out pretty cool ! And it kinda takes you offguard, because the first case is a textbook ace attorney case. the other... not so much.

-They kept the multiple-witness wross-examinations from Prof Layton vs Ace Attorney and I am so happy they did ! It makes the game’s world feel a lot more alive and real, with people existing even though you’re not focusing directly on them.

-On less starry-eyed notes, I really wish there were more women. And more women over the ripe age of 25. That’s a problem in every AA game, and I wish they got better about it.

-Also the prosecutor really, really grated on me. He’s extrememly abrasive, and, moreover racist (most of the english characters lowkey are, but he is really overt and blatant about it), but is never really called out on that because he has an excuse (which is actually also racist). It was to the point where I cringed everytime he opened his mouth.

Overall, I really, really liked it, and I wish I could’ve played it myself. I don’t completely get why it wasn’t localized, and I wish they’d do it eventually... though it seems hardly likely. Anyway, I’m starting the second one now !

#babbles #game babbles #dai gyakuten saiban #honestly this made me just as happy as the first trilogy did

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mrslittletall · 6 years

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So, let’s talk about Bravely Second. There will be a few spoilers, so be warned. I want to start with the main cast. We have two new characters and two characters from the previous game. First we have our new main character Yew. And I must admit. I like Yew. He has lots of personality. Yew is the leader of the Crystal Guard, an organization who serves the Crystalism and is currently protecting the pope. Of course he fails horribly at the start of the game. Poor guy also kinda getting betrayed by his own comrades 30 minutes into the game... But I like Yew, cause he isn’t a shining hero. He is only a 16 year old shy Teenager who has to fill out his high position because of family heirloom. Yew is afraid of heighst and ghosts and pretty insecure about everything. He shows lots of guilt because of the betrayal of his comrades and tries hard to find his place in the world. I really like this guy. The next newcomer is Magnolia. I was kinda expecting her to be the princess of the moon, she turned out to be something different, but stills end up being from the moon (that is pretty obvious). She has her own mission and joins Yew on his quest cause it shares the same goal. Sadly, Magnolia falls a bit flat. She could be a very interesting and unique character with some good angst material, but she is mainly viewed as a love interest for Yew, which is a shame. Really. Let’s get to Edea, who make a reapperance. Edea hasn’t changed much from BD, instead that she eats even MORE. It honestly gets a bit overboard with her appetite in this game. But Edea is pretty well written and plays a huge role in the sidequests I am going to take later about. Then Tiz, who sports a pretty cool new look. Tbh, in BD Tiz as a main character was a bit pointless. And lots of other people are thinking so too. So BS did the right thing with Tiz and made him into the big brother for the team. That is the perfect role for Tiz and he is playing the role very good. Unfortunately means that he isn’t going through character development. Ok, now let’s talk about Yew’s journal. Yew is carrying a journal around with him, which is used as encyclopedia. He lists everything he finds and lists every monster he fights. With the monsters comes the fun part... the more monsters you fight, the more infos Yew will add to the journal. At around chapter 2, the rest of the cast wants to fill things to the monsters too, so everyone is using a different coloured pen (Yew = black, Edea = red, Magnolia = blue, Tiz = green). And it is getting really interesting when a fifth purple colour is showing up. Who is the man with the purple man? The characters are also noticing the purple pen. Revealing this character would be a huuuge spoiler, so I will be silent for now. Now let’s talk about side quest. The side quests feature the asterisk holders of the previous game. Basically you are getting introduced to a new character with a horrible pun for a name and have to help them out of a dilemma. Each decision is backed up by one of two asterisk holders, normally leading to fight one of them and get their asterisks. Nicely done. Even if the side quests don’t tie into the overall story, they help getting some insights into the asterisk holders. Edea is usually the one to make the decision, so it also develops her character bit for bit. Let’s see.... Now I want to talk about one of the new asterisks. The wizard job. Magic was BD’s weak point. No magic job could compare with the other things. The wizard helps out with this. In the beginning, the job seems kinda weak, but level it to Level 1 and you get soul magic. Soul magic kinda enhances your magic spells and you can do it with every. single. spell. in the game. For example, you can cast wall with a summon and everytime that character is getting physical damage the summon gets activated as counter (without using up MP). You have a spell that guarantees a first hit, a spell that multiplies damage and hits every similar type of enemy on the screen and my favourite, the rain spell. It hits four random targets, but if only one target is on the screen, all are hitting this target, basically making four times the damage. So, what do I want to talk about for a finish? How about chomp craft. This is in idle game. Really true. And I was like “What? In a 3DS game?” Basically your characters are making plushies and you can give them items to increase speed or price of the plushies. It was really fun to do this 10 to 15 minutes right before bed. You also unlock the music of the game and it was pretty epic to make plushies to boss battle theme. This text is long enough, so I leave it there. I truly enjoyed the game. Also had one of the best final boss battles I’ve seen since Undertale. Definitely a rec.

#bravely second #bravely second spoilers #bravely default #long post #my thougts about bravely second

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vivaciouswordsmith · 7 years

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On Dream Daddy being “too short”

I just finished playing Dream Daddy last night, and I have...incredibly strong feelings about the whole “it’s too short” thing being bandied about right now. I have a lot to say, so, if you’re interested in my take on this...

Here’s the thing: simply put, length in hours is not a good way to judge whether or not a game is good or not. For several reasons. All of which I will try to cover in due time.

First off, there’s a stark and radical difference between a game’s length and the game’s experience. Think of something like Skyrim, for example. I’ve sunk over five hundred hours into Skyrim at this point, but my most memorable experiences come from back when I was still figuring the game out. Yeah, it’s still fun, but some of the gild has worn off by now. Mods inject some freshness, but otherwise it has largely faded as the novelty’s worn off.

More to the point, however, is my next, well, point: time is more a factor in a strong gameplay experience, and Dream Daddy is all about a narrative experience. I can play Skyrim, or MineCraft, or even something like Bejeweled for hundreds upon hundreds of hours because those games revolve around gameplay and not so much around story.

To elaborate, Skyrim is a vast game that can take ages to get through. There’s tons of content. However, its story definitely leaves something to be desired, not to mention the fact there’s no reason to complete the main questline. You’re not going to get punished for wandering through the woods picking flowers, even if you spend a hundred in-game days doing it, so there’s no pressure to save the world. There are people who, to this day, have never even gotten close to defeating Alduin, because they exhausted the game’s capacity and grew bored with it without touching the main quest.

Same goes for MineCraft. The only way I can really enjoy MineCraft now is by playing mods like Sky Factory or Pixelmon (RIP). It’s not that MineCraft isn’t fun. Far from it. It’s definitely an “easy to learn, hard to master” sort of thing, and opens up more and more as you progress. But it definitely gets old fast. I’ve never managed to play vanilla MineCraft to the point of defeating the Ender Dragon or the Wither, just because, again, there’s no real reason to, and you won’t get punished if you don’t.

(And don’t even get me started on the fiasco that was No Man’s Sky. That, in my opinion, is the prime example of what happens when a game’s length is more important than its experience.)

Dream Daddy is more or less a visual novel. That means it doesn’t have any really new or interesting gameplay to offer. Thus, it rests fully on being a solid narrative experience. And that’s much, much harder to pull off well. Good gameplay needs tens or hundreds of hours to really be fully explored, but a story, if not done well, can get old much faster than that. Any storyteller worth their salt knows that the worst thing they can do is make their viewer/reader think they’re wasting their time

A good narrative experience actually benefits from being shorter and more concise. Some of the best narrative-driven games out there are only a few hours long. One of my personal favorites, Spec Ops: the Line only took me six or seven hours to finish, and that was only because some of the gameplay sections really ramped up the difficulty near the end. Also, the Stanley Parable, a game that, like Dream Daddy, rests almost completely on its narrative, can be almost fully explored within a handful of hours. Pony Island has good gameplay and a good story, and is only two hours long. Same goes for Undertale. If they were any longer than ten hours, they’d be overstaying their welcome.

That is how I feel about Dream Daddy. Yeah, it definitely has places it could be expanded upon, but mostly, it’s a solid story, with excellent, likable characters that you quickly get invested in, and much more depth than your average dating sim. Unlike something like, say, HuniePop, I actually felt compelled to seek out and befriend/date every dad because I got invested in their personal struggles. I ended up sinking twelve hours into the game just so I could know the ending of every story. The fact that it didn’t take that long to complete didn’t bother me at all. Their stories were short and sweet, and I’d play them all again.

Something else to consider is not everyone can devote the same amount of time to games. A kid on summer vacation (or an unemployed schlub like me) can afford to spend a weekend hunting down every last secret in a sixty hour open world game, but someone who works forty or more hours a week can’t spare a lot of time to games like that. For someone with not a lot of time on their hands, a short, decent experience is way more valuable in that it can be finished faster.

I’ll wrap this whole diatribe up with a simile. A good gameplay experience is like a full three-course meal, while a good narrative experience is like a piece of chocolate cake. By the end of the three courses, you’re full and content, but you probably didn’t clean all your plates entirely, and maybe you liked something somebody else didn’t, and it takes a long time to get through all three. A piece of chocolate cake might not last as long, but if it’s fluffy with creamy frosting and a lava center...you’re gonna remember it for a while. You might think you want a second piece of cake, but you’ll probably regret it if you eat another.

Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense.

TL:DR - Dream Daddy may have its flaws, but being too short isn’t one I’d value too strongly. It has a great story, great characters, and is overall very lighthearted and cute. Definitely worth checking out.

#dream daddy #rant #gaming #games #story #i'm a writer #so story really matters to me okay #and I think this story is really good #also the artists deserve serious kudos cause wow I love how this game looks #double thumbs up #also hugo's the best #just saying

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7goodangel · 7 years

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Discussion on Recent Post on PJ

AKA Answering Ask Time

Ah man sorry for just suddenly disappearing like that guys. Just I had to take a sudden break from tumblr. Anyway – I got several asks over the hours I was not on there... though I did turn it off at one point due to some hate being sent to me, which I will address below. I decided to go ahead and answer all of the asks that are surrounding the situation that happened and the events that happened due to it in this post. Any other questions that are specifically asking about something else (though mentioning a bit of what happened Monday) I’ll answer on their own and appropriately tag them, since I know a few of you were wondering about PJ a bit.

Anyway! On with the show! I hope that with this I can clear up a bit of things as well as give my thoughts on what you have to say about it! And I’ll be going in a random order with the asks… so bear with me! ^^

First, let’s do the not so great ones. Exactly – what happened with these:

Ok… so by now I believe all of you know that Rouge was joking about all of that. Guess I can kinda claim these anon(s) as the first ‘hate-like’ messages I’ve received on Tumblr. Honestly I was expecting hate much sooner than this o-o But you guys can relax – the AUs that Rouge has are not being altered or going anywhere! Though just so you know – it was inappropriate to send hate about this when the problem stemmed more from the fandom and not me.

And to the next… time to do some clearing up ones:

Yeah @lesmolghost … I thought so too. But then I discovered Amino and OH BOY… I’ll talk more about that with the next Anon answer…

First – there have been a small amount of people who have been breaking my rules. There has been and probably is sin of PJ floating around on the internet when I asked people to not do it. I’m glad that most do not do this and some even ask the ones who have sinned to take it down on my behalf.

Second - as in how some of my friends would word this: “Show me a body”. This means ‘show me the proof’. I didn’t say that I hated the AUs or want them all to disappear. Goodness! I love all of the AU ideas you all make! Like dang, I am super surprised at that! I was more stating that I just really wanted people to understand who canon PJ is and not argue about it since people have been pretty hostile and even arguing with me on that an alternate version of PJ is canon. It’s fine if you like an alternate interpretation more, it’s fine if you hate PJ all together, it’s all fine – I just want to reestablish the foundation and then release y’all back to doing what you do best – creating stories and ideas!

A big part of me is keeping as much creative freedom to everyone as possible. I am a huge advocate of this idea. I hate limiting people – and my friends can back me up on that. (Honestly, it would kinda make me a hypocrite by having a character design based on two AU Sanses then saying no one can do AUs of that character o-o)

I say that Sam from @askinfresh did a great job of explaining this here: http://askinfresh.tumblr.com/post/158373656135/hi-7goodangel-i-am-here-to-ask-you-about

Plus… gonna mention Amino again – Just… if you have some free time to kill… humor yourself and look up either “Paper Jam”, “Paperjam”, or “Jammy” over on the Undertale Amino and… I think you’ll see where I’m coming from with at least being kinda…ticked about this.

So with that in mind:

@annaskeleton – That is totally fine with liking how she interprets him! And it’s totally fine to have him in your AU however you imagine him to be like in there! ^^

Though if you want to know more about PJ, I have the tag “paperjaminfo” for any miscellaneous information on PJ as well his main bio on my main tumblr, my RP blog of PJ, and even on a wikia!

https://7goodangel.tumblr.com/pjbiodatru1

But yeah – As long as you mention that your PJ or any of your interpretations of characters are not to canon within an AU – go forth and make some universes!!!

So don’t be sorry about making an AU! Be proud! I can’t wait to see more of it! ^^

And also:

Yep @iludahirihiri! I am the creator of PJ! ^^ And I would refer to the items above for more info on Paper Jam! These links are on my tumblr page as well! If on mobile, click “Nav for Mobile” and it should take you to the page where all my pages are at!

Now… while the top was a little more neutral or kinda negative… I want to say that majority of the response to what I had to say was positive and overall… I was dumbfounded of how many nice messages I got... I’m gonna try my best now to respond to each one that I was sent here:

First some anons – though I see one is @artisticcopykat ^^

But just… I was shocked to find people who never knew about how PJ really is… people who knew canon PJ for a while, and people who don’t even like any PJ at all – just coming together and saying nice messages. Like gosh… I say that there is a huge chunk of the UT fandom that is toxic… but you guys? You guys show that with every con, there is a pro. Just man… seeing support from all angles is just… amazing. YOU ALL ROCK!!!

Thank you @sparklyracer44. I can see by the amount of people liking the post and for the ones that reblogged it either as is or added their two cents to it (no matter if you agreed or not! Still appreciate ya adding your thoughts to the conversation!). Again, I didn’t really see that extremely happening on Tumblr – it was happening on other sites I’m either not on as much or not at all. Again – to reiterate – I just want people to understand how PJ is truly. Not to convince everyone to like him or to force everyone to use that version only.

And @aimeetheshrimp, that’s exactly how I think on that too! Jammy is like an entire entity separate from PJ and that’s the same with all versions of PJ. I think if people thought of Jammy and PJ as two separate beings – then a lot of air would clear up! Again – love Jammy too! I really thought about the situation of Jammy’s Love and in his own universe – how he acts makes sense. But yeah – not canon, but still interesting to read and individual AU!

Strangly enough @trusting-my-insanity…

OmniPJ hasn’t gotten that much hate as I expected…

However, while I have not received any major hate directly due to the ship, there have been people on different platforms that have given disrespect and hate to the creator of Omni, @cereusblue.

One time that I witnessed this was when Blue got an ask about how someone mentioned about how popular FreshPaper is and Blue responded “Too bad it’ll never be canon”. (Ya know… to be truthful yet funny!) But then… another person replied to that saying “What did you say you piece of shit?” (sorry for no censors but yeah o-o)

There has also been times that people that have thrown shade onto OmniPJ ship on more than one occasion. As well as directly disrespecting Blue with anything regarding to Omni. Which leads me to AMINO HELLO ONCE AGAIN. As one example, someone straight up told her that they will not change the title of their favorite from “PJ x PJ” to “PJ x Omni” due to using an OmniPJ picture… and both I and Blue explained it to them!

Yeah… just wow Amino.

And for a more recent example of someone disrespecting Blue, here is a link to a recent post of hers: http://cereusblue.tumblr.com/post/158449708763/this-is-why-i-hate-amino-fucking-spare-me-this

Some just see Omni as another PJ and that is just another topic of ranting and pointing out… =_=

But yeah… I didn’t just want respect for PJ and myself – I want respect for ALL creators and their content.

@awesome-moni-sama, thank you for the nice message! I do hope that people that haven’t looked at his bio and do things with AU PJs take a look at it and at least get an understanding on who is truthfully! But gosh… still thank you and your friend!!! ^^

I agree with you @bloo-the-dragon, that’s how it’s like for most fandoms, just Undertale has really gotten that B A D.

All I want and wish is that this could be a lesson for all artists to understand the risks of posting an original character connected to a huge fandom, as well and more so for people who see artist’s content and want to go and do things with their OCs. We are all so supportive of one another, and want to show our favorite characters to others. We just need to make sure we all respect the artists and writers and creators. We all need to double check our information. We are in the age of individual research! If you can access Tumblr, you can also take the initiative to go and look up characters and make sure you know who created them. Sometimes the artist is just as popular as the OC, and sometimes they are not that well known. All artists no matter how big or small deserve the same respect across the board.

But to really end on a positive note – I want to thank everyone again… and also:

Thank you so much for the support!!! I cannot believe I am under 200 away from 5000… o-o

Gosh I thought I was gonna loose followers due to what I said…but you all proved me wrong! Thank you. And though I am unable to do a lot of drawings due to school, I am so thankful that you are all patient with me!

I’m gonna announce that I do have two comics planned! Of course Mediplane… but I only have arc 1 fully thought out and needing to go through some editing (if I find time), so I want to work on one that is shorter! Which the temporary title is “Witch and Siren”, being about…of course… a witch and a siren and how they interact with one another! More info will be shown of that once I am out of school! Which all I need to do is pass these last few classes, take an exit exam…and I’ll be complete with my masters!

So I hope to go ahead and post some more sketches I’ve done and reblog some amazing art for the time being! Thank you for being so patient again!

#7rambles #Thanks for taking the time to read all of this!#Now it should be more to regular posts and reblogs!

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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Game Design Deep Dive is an ongoing Gamasutra series with the goal of shedding light on specific design features or mechanics within a video game, in order to show how seemingly simple, fundamental design decisions aren't really that simple at all.

Check out earlier installments, including the action-based RPG battles in Undertale, using a real human skull for the audio of Inside, and the realistic chat system of Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n.

I am an independent game designer and game developer. I developed and wrote Reigns, the swipe your own adventure game published by Devolver Digital. I started making games 3 years ago, this is my second professional life.

The first thing decided with Mieko, the artist of Reigns, was the game’s core mechanic: use a swiping interaction (very much like Tinder) to play a King taking binary decisions about his Kingdom, through a deck of cards representing your different advisors.

Each of your decisions has impacts on your Kingdom and your objective is to stay on the throne as long as possible. Things generally go awry pretty quickly and you end up dying in gruesome and colorful ways.

Initially, Reigns was very much like a very lean management sim: you had to balance the 4 pillars of your power (church, people, army and money) and the questions asked by the advisors were randomly selected.

That initial mechanic worked very well on an emotional and physical level. Like Tinder, it’s a toy (as a very smart person told me one day), but a toy with surprising depth. As soon as we weighted the decisions of the player with consequences on the 4 dimensions of power, we gave a lot of meaning to very simple swiping gestures.

That was fun for 10 minutes. And that, believe me, was a great start. We just needed to hook the players for the following 2 hours.

We discovered that the players were very quickly making up stories with the bundle of 50 cards we initially had in the game. They were creating meaning between events that I didn’t actually link in the game like a famine and a wedding proposal.

We decided to build upon this, enrich the stories the players were creating by challenging their expectations within these first 10 minutes.

To do this, we turned the random selection of cards into a probabilistic system. That’s a rather complex expression for something that’s actually quite simple that I will try to explain here.

Imagine a bag with the interesting ability to expand and shrink in order to fit the contents you put in it. By default, that bag contains all the cards available in the game. When I’m about to select the next card shown to the player, I start by removing from the bag every card that doesn’t fit the state of the Kingdom.

I have many variations of this, but for example, if a range of cards are related to the presence of a queen but you’re not married yet, I remove those. If a card is only triggered if the church is strong but you have a weak church, I remove it too. I also remove all the cards that have been played too recently.

This creates a bag of cards that’s very different each time each time the player is about to see a new card. The final touch is to associate every remaining card in the bag with a size. The « larger » the card, the more space it will occupy in the bag.

You end up with a bag of mixed cards, large ones that take a lot of space and smaller ones. I then select one card randomly from the bag and display it to the player.

The fact that some cards are larger than others creates interesting possibilities. The probability a larger card ends up being the one that is selected is greater than the probability of a smaller one. But if the larger cards are not in the bag because they have been removed at the previous step, the overall probability of the smaller cards to be picked up increase a lot.

That’s why the ability of the bag to shrink and expand is important. If you start a war with your neighbor, the 10 or so cards related to that specific event are large and will take a lot of space in the bag, more than cards not associated with any particular condition, like the jester cards. That maximizes the probability to pick a war card during the reigns where you suffer the war and minimizes the probability to pick a jester card.

Once the war is over, the war cards are removed from the bag so the system has a lot more chance to select jester cards again because their probability to be picked up increases.

Some events, like the dungeon or the duels will lock the game in a smaller sub-system, where the bag will be very small, containing just a couple of cards. This sub-system could also just be a single card, creating linear paths (like the devil’s encounters).

The versatility of that probabilistic system was essential to build the game. I really considered it as a tool or a grammar to push the game in wacky and unexpected ways rather than a closed system that needed a defined amount of content to be “perfect”.

I don’t mind Reigns' imperfections, they’re essential to the game and its weird tone. We were always careful to build everything around the core gameplay loop, the “playfulness” and the tone of the game, but we didn’t put any specific limit to the number of things we wanted to put in the game to surprise our players (and mess with them a bit).

Writing Reigns was really a process similar to an exploration. You pack your things as tightly as possible and hope for the best. I started by writing regular “one-shot” cards, then I tried range of cards to build mini-storylines triggered over a short period of times, then add-ons, like new characters and events permanently adding new cards to the deck, then the devil’s storyline, and a lot of wandering around the core gameplay designed to bring the player in unexpected places and situations.

For example (spoilers), there's running blind in a forest, picking magic mushrooms, deciphering your advisor's question when plagued with old age, dealing with the infernal money of slavery, gambling with the Jester, being “apparently” in love, entering the “pungeon”, dating a pigeon…

Through this system, we managed to intertwine narratives with unexpected depth, between very broad thematic cards, subsets of storylines around specific events developed in some Reigns but not others and a hidden meta-game triggered over centuries.

In that, Reigns is following (very humbly and scantily) the quality-based narrative approach mastered by Failbetter Games. Our qualities are what I call the global game state against which the bag of available cards is recompiled every time the player swipes.

In the end, the core loop, the Reign, mixes a new selection of cards each time, ranging from purely random choice to very authored paths triggered by previous choices. This mix has a very interesting consequence. As soon as the player discovers that some cards take into account his or her previous choices, potentially every card becomes meaningful, because it’s very difficult to discern the more randomly picked cards from the authored one.

Even with a minority of cards taking into account your previous choices, the whole game becomes authored in weird and unexpected ways, encouraging the players to make up their own stories. Who is to say that the discovery of the blue mushroom is not a consequence of recruiting the witch? Or maybe is it a consequence of the plague?

I couldn’t say.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

Check out earlier installments, including the action-based RPG battles in Undertale, using a real human skull for the audio of Inside, and the realistic chat system of Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n.

That was fun for 10 minutes. And that, believe me, was a great start. We just needed to hook the players for the following 2 hours.

We decided to build upon this, enrich the stories the players were creating by challenging their expectations within these first 10 minutes.

To do this, we turned the random selection of cards into a probabilistic system. That’s a rather complex expression for something that’s actually quite simple that I will try to explain here.

You end up with a bag of mixed cards, large ones that take a lot of space and smaller ones. I then select one card randomly from the bag and display it to the player.

Once the war is over, the war cards are removed from the bag so the system has a lot more chance to select jester cards again because their probability to be picked up increases.

I couldn’t say.

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

Check out earlier installments, including the action-based RPG battles in Undertale, using a real human skull for the audio of Inside, and the realistic chat system of Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n.

That was fun for 10 minutes. And that, believe me, was a great start. We just needed to hook the players for the following 2 hours.

We decided to build upon this, enrich the stories the players were creating by challenging their expectations within these first 10 minutes.

To do this, we turned the random selection of cards into a probabilistic system. That’s a rather complex expression for something that’s actually quite simple that I will try to explain here.

You end up with a bag of mixed cards, large ones that take a lot of space and smaller ones. I then select one card randomly from the bag and display it to the player.

Once the war is over, the war cards are removed from the bag so the system has a lot more chance to select jester cards again because their probability to be picked up increases.

I couldn’t say.

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes