After a long break, I’m back in No Man’s Sky. Not that I didn’t do some “work”, or more accurately fucking around, in the game in the meantime. In fact, I’ve built several new homes in the game in my search for a decent climate that I still haven’t found.
But the Hello Games guys have been far busier. Check out the update with its far more impressive space stations. I like the vaulted ceiling here or whatever you call it, looks like a space cathedral.
I think I prefer this pink world more, though. They really expanded these stations and made them a little more distinctive, which I appreciate.
There’s some trading to be done here, especially since I now have unlimited money thanks to even more illegal addons to my suit that give me far more money than I should be getting for scanning rocks and plants on new planets. I’m convinced this all plays into an in-game interstellar MLM or crypto scheme somehow. Maybe that’s one of the quests I need to unlock. Either way, something’s not right.
But there’s only so much time I can spend on these stations, hanging around in the seating areas and wishing I had some fucking coffee to order. I guess I have to make my own coffee. Time to explore again.
This is some Lovecraft bullshit, I hate it. I’d rather live on the neon volcano planet than here.
My primary goal at this point, having totally forgotten the mainline quest or any of the other goals I had a month or two ago, was to find a planet that 1) was hospitable to my kind of life, 2) had abundant resources, which my current temperate planet base was lacking in, and 3) didn’t look like a portal into a nightmare world of radiation and toxicity with monster plants and eyeball creatures rolling around.
I found a barren wasteland covered in creepy as fuck leather ball sacs sitting on leg-like struts — that was out. Then I found an ice world, and I was desperate enough to try to settle on it. Plenty of resources were around, at least, making the extreme temperature more worthwhile to brave (though it will still kill you if you’re not careful.)
These strangely humanoid uranium and gold balls might also want to kill me, so I killed them first and extracted all their resources. Not sure I like the implications of the quotes there.
After looting the land and scanning everything in sight as usual, I found a clearing in a nice wooded mountaintop and built a base there. Behold, the tour of my new homes that I’d never be able to afford in real life despite all my working (and fuck Dave Ramsey, just incidentally.)
I am a little proud of the design on the right, even if it is pretty simple.
This is a pretty inviting base for a forbidding environment like this. You know that feeling when you’re inside with the fire going while it’s freezing outside?
Just like this. Though the hospital bed isn’t all that inviting.
I might have missed my calling as an interior designer. I have some sense for what feels good to me in a living space, anyway, even if I can’t achieve it in real life yet. If I ever build a house (this is in the pure fucking fantasy category) I will have this kind of bedroom with a far more massive bathroom attached. Just imagine a large brightly lit tiled room with a giant hot tub and TV like in Scarface.
Here’s still another design I tried out to see if I could have a base perched on a small island or even rock like this, and it turns out I can — utility/storage room on the lower floor, living quarters on the upper with a nice glass ceiling and balcony wrapping around almost the whole thing. This reminds me of Gehn’s hideout in Riven, especially considering the fucked up red ocean and many islands around. People knock the Myst series these days a lot, and while it did have its serious limitations, I still think the first two at least were interesting and had a nice scope.
Here’s a house in a far more pleasant place, in Windows XP Bliss land. The house looks a little stupid and boxy, but I like the setting, so it’s all right. Though this place strangely feels more lonely than the last. That annoying fucking message down there in the bottom right doesn’t help. There’s probably a way to get rid of that, but I just try to ignore it.
Speaking of lonely, I also thought I’d build a base on one of those ocean planets with just a few islands around. You don’t get more isolated than that. I tried to build a tall tower on this flat island with no other features, but it turned out to be a total mess:
It’s a good thing nobody else is on this planet, because this certainly violates the universal building code if one ever existed.
I tried to make this structure as inviting as possible anyway. The inside is of no interest at all, just some empty rooms to connect these outer balconies with awnings (purely decorative and nonfunctional — they don’t do anything to keep the burning rain off, because of course this god damned planet has that too.)
112-degree weather is horrible. Even a normal summer here on Earth is bad enough, and God knows what’s to come. But at least it’s pleasant here at night if it’s not raining, so to add to that feel, I built a fifth-story bar area here overlooking the sea. There’s a rooftop bar back in my college town I liked, not for its drinks (their collection sucked) but for the view and atmosphere. I think they survived off of that atmosphere, and the scenery there wasn’t as nice.
In case the dangerously stupid architecture wasn’t obvious from the other screenshot, here’s a better one. That tower at the top looks ready to topple over at any moment.
Of all the places I’ve seen in No Man’s Sky so far, this is the one I’d like to visit most, burning rain aside. I like this janky fucked up tower I built here with nothing useful in it: it’s a horrible waste of space and material, but it’s my house now, and not even those asshole NPC pirates know where I am here since they haven’t attacked me like they have on other planets. I also like the solitude out here, just like a Baker or a Jarvis Island, tiny guano mine islands in the Pacific that people tried and failed to live on back in the 40s. I named the island St. Helena after Napoleon’s South Atlantic-bound prison; I bet the French emperor wished he could have ended his life in a structure as equally cool and probably about to collapse as this.
As I travel, I keep coming across existing structures, many of which are locked and guarded by those fucking sentinel robot shits that attach to your ass every time you make a step in the wrong direction. I was happy to blow up one of them recently with a new weapon attachment, but then the sentinel defense squad showed up within 5.98 seconds to destroy me and cut my engines so I couldn’t escape.
Luckily, a few of these facilities are open, sometimes with NPC workers hanging around inside to talk to and sometimes not. I prefer when they’re not around since they tend to get in the way and even get pissed off and ask me to leave, imagine that. The above structure was seemingly abandoned, however, so I felt free to move in, placing a new base computer and effectively taking the place over from whoever owned it last.
It’s fully furnished! Also nice of them to leave their nanites behind for me to steal.
This place may have been abandoned because of the planet’s hostile environment. It’s not the weather this time, but something far less predictable and more difficult to deal with: the wildlife. After first landing on this planet and doing some scouting and scanning, I had to flee to this site to escape predators out to kill me. My suit upgrades have made it a lot easier to flee like the coward I am with my speed and boost capabilities, but an astronaut who flees from every potential danger is at least more alive than a dead one. The better part of valor is discretion.
But it was also here that I finally learned about an entire aspect of the game I’d been ignoring until now. While standing on top of my ship to protect myself from a tusked and extremely pissed off animal, I found the “feed animal” option. I quickly made some animal food pellets and fed one to the angry predator, who instantly calmed down and became ready to submit to my authority. A far cheaper price for its loyalty than I was expecting, but I’m not complaining.
This Tai-Tai is now my companion, and I have no idea what to do with it. I guess it’s a she, since I soon learned it’s able to lay eggs, but then I think that might be true of every animal in this game, so maybe that’s not a relevant point. I’m just happy it’s not trying to kill me anymore. Even better, it’s prepared to defend me from other predators, though it can also be too zealous in its defense by going more on the offensive when I don’t want to draw attention to myself. Still better to have around than not, and I can summon and put away my friend at will (though where it’s going when I put it away, I have no idea. Maybe the pokeball is implied here.)
After a while, Tai-Tai laid an egg and immediately got weirdly possessive, but not in the way I would have expected.
I appreciate that you’re not trying to kill me anymore, but this is a little too far in the other direction. Don’t need my combined pet/security system killing any other animal helpers I might recruit out of jealousy. Maybe I should keep them separate in the future just in case.
I didn’t exactly ignore the egg as its parent suggested — I put it in storage. I’ll hatch it in good time, though I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it otherwise. The potential animal companions in this game are interesting, especially the truly bizarre ones, but I think there might be a lot more depth to the breeding system than I’m willing to get into. Much like with the Chao Garden in Sonic Adventure 2, I can appreciate the depth of a game mechanic while also mostly ignoring it.
It’s a good thing No Man’s Sky is so hands-off in that sense. There’s also a cooking system full of recipes that I’m sure can get you all kinds of benefits, and while I did try it out a little bit, I didn’t get too in-depth with it either.
I’m not bothering to make any more food for this Cronus guy since his judgments seem to be so wildly randomized anyway. Get your own cocoa, asshole.
I didn’t expect to write so soon after my last post, but I think I had a lot built up here, and that along with one sleepless night. Things aren’t going so well for me right now, though that has less to do with my material wellbeing, which I could easily deal with on its own, but more with my general mental state. That’s to say that if I were someone else in my situation, I’d probably be just fine, but since I am unfortunately myself, I’m not.
As a totally unrelated aside, there was a notorious preacher some years back who would take a camera crew and try to convert people on the street by asking if they were good people, then advancing the argument that they could only truly be good and get their souls saved if they joined his church or sect or whatever. I wasn’t interested in the preacher’s argument, which I’ve heard a thousand times in similar form — the only reason I know him is because I once received one of his fake million-dollar bills featuring a tract that failed to turn me from my infidel ways. No, I was far more focused on the interviewees’ responses that they were in fact good people.
I don’t believe I’m naturally a “good person”, whatever that is — I’m actually selfish and want to be totally left alone, which probably isn’t good — but I try to be as good as possible and to act against that selfish nature, which causes me some discomfort even if I have some understanding of my own faults. More than anything else, I don’t understand the supreme confidence some people seem to have in their own goodness, especially when so much historical evidence suggests that true goodness is rare when doing the right thing means taking a serious personal risk. Self-reflection is hard, but that’s the only real way to improve moral character, sort of like exercise for the soul. (Edit: I stand by all this, but after thinking about it a minute more, most likely a lot of those people on the street just didn’t want to be bothered by some asshole and basically gave him a “yeah, sure, whatever” kind of answer hoping he’d go away. I probably would have myself in that situation instead of going on a long philosophical bullshit argument, which might be more fun but also a lot more time-wasting.)
Sorry, now I’m the one preaching. I have to get some self-flagellation in every so often, and where better than in these NMS posts where I mostly go on about personal stuff. Until next time.
Playing No Man’s Sky has fit into my negative mindset lately. Every time I look out from the hole I’m in right now, something happens that drives me back in. I’m as functional as ever, and none of this is anything new to me, but it takes its toll over time when life feels so pointless.
NMS also feels pointless to me in some sense, at least in the way I’m playing it. I’m just exploring these almost entirely empty worlds, most of which aren’t suitable for human (?) life and some of which are downright hostile to it.
Some planets are borderline-livable, but not the ones that have radioactive rainfall.
As I begin hopping from system to system with my now abundant supply of antimatter for warp travel, I continue to find planets that are harsh and unforgiving in their own unique ways. Some are extremely radioactive, like the one pictured above, and this one below:
And with predatory animals as a bonus!
Some have such a high toxicity that taking my helmet off for an instant would likely kill me on the spot (if I could take it off, which I can’t anyway.)
Even if the toxicity weren’t over 100 of whatever unit this is supposed to be, I don’t think I’d want to live on the horrific pustule planet anyway.
Some are just too cold or too hot to deal with for more than a few minutes without constantly refreshing my life support systems — not such a problem considering how much sodium I have laying around now, but these planets also feature extreme snowstorms and heatwaves that kill within 90 seconds and cloud my vision enough that my only options are to flee back to my ship or dig a hole and wait the deadly weather out.
I still put a base down at this already existing but abandoned facility. Whoever built this isn’t using it anymore anyway.
But NMS carries one positive to it that life doesn’t: I can keep searching and at least have some hope that I’ll find something interesting or stimulating (and being able to quit and reload after getting caught in a boiling thunderstorm and dying also helps.) This game seems to contain a lot of mysteries under the surface that I might have just seen the tip of so far. Whether solving these mysteries will lead me to something worthwhile or just another fucking Sentinel attack, I have no idea.
I was hopeful for a fun stream at least, but nothing. Time to move on.
Even if this game doesn’t have much of a point to it for me, though, that’s not necessarily a negative. Its biggest draw so far has been and continues to be its exploration aspect. I’ve seen enough planets now that I can break them down into maybe ten or twelve general types, and while most of these aren’t very friendly, even those can be interesting to explore.
Around this time, I started thinking about the realism of NMS. I’m absolutely not the type who demands realism in my games. On the contrary — I love some series that barely have any realism to their styles and settings at all (see Disgaea, though I still haven’t played the latest sequels, should really check out 7 at least.) But since I’ve been into space exploration since I was a kid, I can’t help but compare what I’ve seen of this fictional procedurally-generated galaxy to what we know of our real one. No gas giants at all in NMS, for example, where there are plenty in the real galaxy — four out of eight* of the planets in our solar system alone are gas giants, and our system is not unusual in that sense. The planets are also weirdly clumped together in a way that makes travel by sight alone easy but doesn’t feel realistic in the slightest.
I’m willing to accept this pink world covered in giant roses, but not that
But then some of these changes make sense. Why waste time with planets that wouldn’t have anything to explore anyway, seeing as it’s impossible to land on a gas giant that has no surface and would crush any ship that descended deep enough into its atmosphere. A few of these planets also have moons, and while I’m not sure whether these actually orbit their planets or whether the planets even orbit their stars, again, I guess it doesn’t matter much unless you’re really in this game for the hardcore science, in which case you’ll probably want a different game.
NMS does get across just how hostile to life a lot of real-life space is, though, even if the hazards here aren’t necessarily what you’d experience if you somehow managed to get out beyond the solar system and explore the stars around us. But whether it’s realistic or not and whether that even matters, I’m making some progress in the game. Progress towards what, again, I’m not sure, beyond maybe just unlocking more technologies and building tools. Maybe that’s the whole point.
Or maybe the point is expanding and improving my base, which I’ve done here. It’s looking more and more like a drab government agency headquarters, just the style I’m going for.
But look, there’s still plenty of crafting to be done. NMS is chock fucking full of crafting. I’ve given some of my thoughts on the prevalence of crafting in games, and I still think the only series I’ve played that truly gets it right is Atelier. But I also accept that a lot of people will never go for Atelier, either because it’s mostly turn-based RPG or because of all the frilly aesthetics. A shame considering that it has just the kinds of strong female leads doing it for themselves that a lot of people have been asking for in a game series. If that sounds good to you, try the series out(though maybe not the gacha game Atelier Resleriana they just released on Steam. I downloaded it because it was free anyway, but I might have a few words about that one sometime soon.)
Shooting asteroids to mine for silver, gold, and fuel for my cruise control pulse engine. This is slow going, and I’m sure there are some improvements I can make to my ship with the funds I have now to speed up that process.
That said, I don’t mind the crafting in NMS so much, since resource extraction is such an important part of the game already. You can hardly call the mechanic tacked on when it’s so integral to the game as it is with Minecraft. My problem might just be the blank-slate protagonist, who probably works great in a multiplayer setting but can’t possibly interest me at all in singleplayer mode, not where there’s such an apparently bare-bones story to follow — where all the crafting in Atelier has a story-related purpose or else contributes to combat effectiveness, here it just feels like I’m stockpiling stuff for my own personal reasons that I haven’t discovered yet. Though to be fair, I’m not following the plot the game keeps shoving me towards that closely at this point.
Why is honey in quotes? I don’t like that.
Having gathering a lot of junk I’m not sure what to do with, I resummon the space anomaly station, the only really friendly place in the galaxy I’ve found so far, and try to sell or trade some of it. Luck for me there’s a station resident who’s interested in edible products alone and pays me in nanites, the amount depending on how impressed he was by my submission.
Giving him berries I found from a strange uncharted planet that may very well be deadly. Cronus must have an iron stomach and the best immune system in the galaxy.
I unload both these mysterious berries and a stock of feline livers I got from big aggressive cats I killed in self-defense, then meet this lizard guy who also has complaints about the Sentinels being absolute assholes. Why they’re such assholes is still a question I need an answer to, but unfortunately my new friend is vague about his troubles.
You and me both.
And I’m done for now. I guess I’ve dumped on No Man’s Sky a bit in this post, but I feel my complaints are pretty minor in comparison to what Hello Games have pulled off here. Chalk the especially negative tone up to my attitude right now, which has everything to do with me and nothing to do with the game itself. Until next time, whatever and whenever that is.
* I know, Pluto. The reasoning behind its “demotion” was bullshit, but it’s also a rock without feelings that can’t possibly care how we classify it, so I don’t think that makes much of a difference in the first place. Pluto and its fellow outer solar system bodies, whatever they’re called now, still hold plenty to explore assuming we have any hope of ever getting out that far.
Man, I have a huge pile of games on itch.io I haven’t played. That pile might stand as tall as a modest house if they were all in physical form. I love those big donation packages they’ve put together, but it does feel like a waste sometimes to leave 99% of that crap untouched.
So let’s touch some games. Unlike most of the itch.io games I look at in my free game posts, these aren’t free, though they also tend to be pretty cheap. No theming this time either, because I can’t be bothered, but I can tell you one of them is extremely 18+. See if you can guess which one from the title!
Man, tic tac toe is a bad game. If you play it properly, it ends in a draw every time — the game is just too simple to be interesting. That said, it’s probably a decent start for kids just learning the concept of a game with rules, and it also seems like a game some birds could find interesting. So I appreciate that Tic Tac Crow is a tic tac toe game with only birds. You play as a bird and fly to a flat green field every day to play tic tac toe on tree stumps with sparrows, crows, and various other friends.
Some of the birds seem to be stronger opponents than others. I’ve heard crows are unusually smart and can solve complex puzzles, so maybe it’s natural that a crow would pick up a game like this. I didn’t play long enough to notice any definite patterns because tic tac toe is boring as hell, but I did enjoy watching two birds squabble over a stump as they pecked and scratched Xs and Os. Nice bird sounds and animations too.
I get the feeling that’s the real point of Tic Tac Crow anyway — not to play tic tac toe, but rather to relax and watch some birds do slightly more human-like things than usual. There’s even a nice end-of-day list of events when you leave the field, including some ominous entries like “Oliver stared at you intensely” or something like that, and I’m wondering now if there’s some kind of murder plot or the creation of a portal into Hell if you play long enough.
Sander, you’re creeping me out. Don’t look at me like that.
Well shit, I just gave it away, didn’t I. Too bad, since that was a puzzle. Coco Nutshake is a rhythm game (requiring only the use of the mouse hand) in which you visit a beachside coconut milk stand. Only the milk doesn’t come from the coconut: it comes from the proprietor in the most literal sense. The game features three stages: in the first you smack her coconut bikini top off for some reason, in the second you dispense the product with your own hands, and in the third and most annoying, you shake your drink until it’s ready, and all are scored by how close you kept to the rhythm the game demands.
I know this game is very lewd and objectifying and so on, but what the hell. I swore to promote the lewd arts, or at least the quality ones, and this is a quality one as far as small indie games go. The pixel artstyle is nice and unique, the animation is fluid (most obvious in the second stage), the BGM is a lot better than you’d expect out of a vertical semi-h-game, and the censor bar over the lady’s eyes somehow makes it all the more appealing. Don’t ask me why, because I couldn’t tell you. Though I still don’t think I’d drink a breast milk cocktail, even ignoring the obvious public health concerns.
She needs to do her best to hide her self-serve milking operation from the state health department.
I still won’t post semi-h stuff here, though I will gladly write about it. But if you want the whole game or at least a nice animated gif of the action, visit the maker’s itch.io page. Coco Nutshake is truly high-quality smut, the best kind. It’s just a trifle, sure, but some of those trifles can provide a satisfying experience in a very short time (placeholder joke here that I’m not good enough to actually replace with anything.)
Yeah, the heart is part of the title. And this is an actually free game, but I had Melissa ♥ just sitting around waiting for a post that never came, so I put it here.
Oh no, she’s cute and she’s just like me! These dating-sim-writing bastards really know how to pull you in.
Melissa ♥ takes place in my own childhood of the early 90s, only instead of playing Oregon Trail on those Apple IIes, the kids were playing short romance visual novels. I know they existed at the time, but not in the West and sure as hell not at any of my schools. But lucky you, you get to play Date Night in the school’s computer lab, with the promise of a date and possibly a smooch, and I guess who doesn’t want that from a person they’re attracted to. Even if it’s a fake person on the other side of a computer screen.
Sadly for you, Melissa is aware of the truth and of her status as a game character inside a game. After a date in which you can either totally agree with all her tastes and be a fellow artist who loves cats or whatever, or be a sports-loving meathead on the other end of the spectrum, Melissa tells you she knows she’s just a character but is sick of meeting players, then getting abandoned by them after delivering the promised after-date kiss. She’s also taken control of the computer’s immediate surroundings somehow, and that doesn’t end very well for the player character.
Usually this refers to more than just a kiss, but this game is PG aside from the especially bloody bad endings.
Melissa ♥ echoes another, much longer and more involved dating sim VN that you probably know already. But it’s a nice ten minutes, and the maker is planning on creating a trilogy of these games and putting them up on Steam, so this version of the game might turn out to be more of a demo. If you’re into horror and old computer graphics, check it out anyway.
That’s all I’ve got for now from itch.io, but maybe I’ll dig through it again sometime soon. Until then.
Since I have less and less free time. And yet the sales don’t end, and what am I supposed to do? As much as I hate Valve and want to avoid Steam (and I do whenever there’s another option, often itch.io for the indie games even when it means having to spend a few more dollars) sometimes it is the only option. But still, fuck Valve.
So here’s some sadly low-effort work this month, when a lot of other people are writing daily posts for the Blaugust posting challenge/festival. Go check it out — I took part last year and it was enjoyable, but work and life are so thoroughly draining/killing me now that I just can’t do it this time. Instead, here’s my first post of the month, a look at several games I recently bought and had the chance to play at least slightly.
Disco Elysium
Given that I’ve always heard good things about this game, I was looking forward to finally trying it out. I didn’t know much of anything about Disco Elysium going in, which seems like exactly the kind of game you wouldn’t want spoilers in (at least my impression from what I have heard.) And just a couple of hours in right now, all I can say is that it’s strange and intriguing.
After establishing my character’s strengths and weaknesses, I woke up in a dirty hotel room, hungover and in my underwear. This start to the protagonist’s day brought back so many unpleasant memories that I had to go through my own brain loading process for a minute before realizing that Disco Elysium is a classic point-and-click adventure game, only with a lot of tweaks that make it interesting, most of which I’m sure I haven’t seen yet.
I went with Sensitive because it sounded the most fun to me, but I wonder if I basically picked hard mode. But then every version of this game seems like it will probably be hard mode.
My version of the protagonist being charismatic but constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown only seemed to increase the game’s unpredictability, as I talked to either a voice in my head or a demon while looking in the bathroom mirror before gathering what clothes I could find (missing one shoe and my tie, but good enough) and leaving to do some detective work. Sure, I couldn’t remember my name, my profession, or why I was here, but I was at least able to pretend enough to my partner that he only thinks I’m an idiot, which I can probably deal with.
An idiot, but not a racist at least. Though it’s interesting that you can apparently make your character into a total asshole as well.
No big surprise, maybe, but I like Disco Elysium so far. Normally the protagonist’s hopeless situation might be a little stressful to cope with, but the guy is so completely far gone that that situation becomes absurd and fun to play along with. Even if most of my dice rolls to determine the outcomes of my actions so far have been miserable failures. This game doesn’t mess around. I’m fully prepared to die in some profoundly stupid way and will probably test out every possible way I can put the protagonist in unnecessary danger just to see what happens.
Hypnospace Outlaw
Another acclaimed unusual indie game, Hypnospace Outlaw entirely takes place in Hypnospace, a late 90s internet service that you jack into while you’re sleeping. Because fuck getting any rest at all: you need to be productive even during REM. Even more shockingly, my character apparently signed up as a volunteer mod to help flag violations of Hypnospace law on other users’ homepages (no abusive language/harassment, no use of copyrighted characters, etc.) So instead of actually sleeping, you get to spend your time digging around this primitive internet-style platform and reading about how some kid broke up with his girlfriend because he has his eye on a different girl in his band club.
For the kids who weren’t around then: yes, we had these bullshit shock ads back in the 90s too. Some things never change.
I’ve gotten through what I think is the first chapter of the game, and it is certainly something. Hypnospace Outlaw really does get the look and feel of the very early consumer internet down, when people started flooding it in the mid-90s with Geocities and Angelfire pages about their dogs and hobbies, and even with the dancing hamster gifs and embedded music files that were so common back then.
Vintage internet. For the real experience, go to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and find some late 90s versions of existing websites — even the corporate sites back then looked like shit.
However, I have a problem with this game. Though it’s not a problem with the game itself, to be fair, but with me: it feels like work. The player character is quite literally working for the Hypnospace admins, and not even for real money but rather for Disney fun buck-style platform-only currency. I already can’t relate — I would never volunteer to be a moderator, and for as much time as I spend online, I certainly wouldn’t implant a chip into my head to navigate a separate internet that you can only access while asleep. I know this may come as a shock, but I need my four or five hours of sleep so I can at least pretend to be a functional adult, and I feel using this sleep internet thing would be a detriment to me even aside from the potential for brain damage.
Imagine working as an internet copyright snitch and not even getting paid. If you’re going to be a corporate bootlicker, at least have the dignity to demand real money for it.
All that said, the premise of Hypnospace Outlaw is interesting, and there seems to be a lot more under the surface that I haven’t found yet, so I will probably keep playing to see what else I can find. It is at least funny to visit users’ pages after you’ve issued citations against them and read their complaints. Power is addictive, isn’t it?
Idol Manager
And speaking of games that feel like work, here’s Idol Manager, an idol management simulation just as the title states. After being given a brand new idol company to build from the ground up by a shady businessman with possibly questionable ethics, I got to hiring three idols and put them on a regimen of training and performing that is sure to wear them out to the point they all have mental breakdowns.
I’m kidding; of course I’ll do my best to avoid that. Can’t squeeze money out of these girls if they’re burned out, after all! And Natsuki here is a real catch despite her low stamina.
Idol Manager seems to be a pretty comprehensive simulation, coming from my clueless perspective as someone who’s barely familiar with idol stuff outside of the more idol-ish aspects of the VTuber world. Most of the game takes place on a SimTower-style 2D building screen, where you’re able to place offices and specialized facilities staffed by voice and dance coaches and staffers who work to get your idols promotional opportunities like photoshoots and variety show guest spots.
But of course the hole goes deeper than that. There looks to be a lot of opportunity for scandal in Idol Manager, with its social sim element that let you take the idols out for coffee, gossip with them, and even make advances on them. This last option seems both wildly unethical and extremely unwise, but I can’t promise my curiosity won’t get the better of me at some point.
I got Sunshower from a Taeko Ohnuki album I like, thought it would make for an even better idol group name than an album title. They only have about 60 fans as of this writing, but with Kira’s attitude, Sunshower is definitely on its way to the Budokan or wherever it is the big idol groups perform.
But once again, hell if Idol Manager doesn’t feel like work. At least I can’t complain too much about that this time, since I couldn’t have expected much else from a game titled Idol Manager, but unwinding with a game like this after my actual work can feel a little strange for that reason. Then again, I’ve always enjoyed sim games that involve at least moderate micromanagement — as long as the payoff makes the more tedious aspects of the game worth playing. I’m still not sure whether that will be true of Idol Manager, but the promise of a massive scandal is admittedly enticing.
Points for those who can correctly guess where I got our first song’s title from (hint, not the Bananarama song that comes up first in the Google search, though that song might be the ultimate origin of the title.)
Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly
And finally, a game that I’m already pretty comfortable with since I’ve played the first in the series. Coffee Talk was a nice drink-brewing social sim/VN in the vein of VA-11 Hall-A, and while I preferred the latter’s futuristic dingy dive bar and its bitter, jaded protagonist Jill Stingray (speaking of a character I could relate to, sadly) I enjoyed Coffee Talk almost as much. And much to their credit, unlike Sukeban, Coffee Talk developer Toge Productions actually put out a sequel instead of maintaining a “coming soon” page for it for four years straight or however long it’s been.
Rejoining old patrons and meeting new ones at your nighttime hours-only Seattle coffee shop.
If you want more background on Coffee Talk, you can find it in my review above. Aside from the addition of a couple of new ingredients and an item safekeeping/delivery mechanic that will certainly see some use in the course of the story, Hibiscus & Butterfly feels very much like the first game, which is good, because I liked the first game. Not sure if I’ll even have much more to say about this second episode that I didn’t say about the first, but if I do, you can be sure I’ll make a post.
I’m usually just a black coffee type, but I can appreciate the artistry.
That’s all for now. I have quite a few more games in the backlog, including a couple that I should really finally finish, but I’ll just keep playing whatever happens to grab me. Until next time, happy Sunday — I’ll do my best to enjoy the rest of my meager free time until tomorrow.
Or a “haul” as the kids say. Look, I have to make these lower-effort posts every so often; I just hope they’re entertaining or informative somehow. I think I picked up some interesting items, anyway, though you can be the judge — I might end up writing dedicated posts on a few if they’re suitable and I have something more to say about them than I’ve written here. Starting with:
Unofficial Hatsune Mix by Kei
I found this brick of a manga volume in a Goodwill of all places while looking for an old shitty bookcase to drag back to my apartment. I eventually did find such a bookcase — it was very cheap and came with a bonus spider pet inside, and also a rusty fucking nail sticking out in a spot I couldn’t see. I believe God was watching over me that day considering I didn’t cut myself on that thing and get tetanus.
I’m also thankful that I found this book, a complete 400-page+ manga about the singing android Hatsune Miku and her other Vocaloid friends just living their lives. From reading the first several chapters, it looks like it’s mostly going to be absurd comedy, which suits me perfectly. There’s some very nice art inside as well, with a few all-color pieces, and all by Kei — if the name doesn’t ring a bell, that’s Miku’s character designer and the guy who drew the original illustration on the Vocaloid 2 Character Vocal Series 01 box way back in 2006/7 or whenever that was.
The book itself is extremely used, with a massive crease on the back cover, but for five dollars from a Goodwill that’s okay with me. Anything to buy physical, especially if it’s cheap. And the insides are all there and accounted for as far as I can tell, and that’s what counts.
Girls und Panzer: This is the Real Anzio Battle!
Remember back in my Girls und Panzer review how I complained that Oarai’s match against the Italian-themed school Anzio got skipped over? Well here it is, the whole story behind the match in OVA form: one 40-minute episode on a single Blu-ray. The waste of disc space is astounding, and even more so since there’s an entirely different “OVA Collection” DVD/Blu-ray set, yet this OVA isn’t on it and has to be bought separately. Is it excusable or a cash grab?
I don’t know about that, but I’ve already watched those OVAs on a streaming service and this one on this ripoff disc, and I can say they’re both worthy additions to the series. But I might write an entire post about that very soon. It turns out that I have a lot of OVAs and spinoffs to catch up on, not a single one of which I’ve written about here. Yet — that’s going to be fixed soon. If I can actually write anything about them, anyway.
As for this Blu-ray itself, I can at least say that I got it for a low price. Fair enough considering that Anzio apparently isn’t available to stream (legally) anywhere at all, which is some real bullshit. Oh well — I don’t mind the cash grab as much when I consider that if this were an Aniplex production, I’d be paying at least fifty dollars. Now those are some fucking ripoff artists.
20 centimes (Haiti, 1895)
Yeah, I have yet another depressing nerd hobby: I collect old money. Not that much of it, really, but I pick up stuff on occasion that interests me. This particular coin was minted in Haiti in 1895, and for eight dollars it’s a good deal for me: I didn’t have any older coins from Haiti before this one, and it’s a nice .835 fine silver piece as well, if a small one. The reverse of the coin also has the fineness and weight stamped on it, a standard you can find on pretty much all coins from Latin America and some from the Caribbean (I don’t guess Haiti is part of Latin America because it was formed out of a French colony? Not sure about how the definitions work here.) Another interesting aspect of this coin is that it only has French inscriptions — modern Haitian money has both French and the French-derived Haitian Creole, now co-official languages.
I guess a coin doesn’t exactly fit the themes of the site, but I did buy it recently, so I’m putting it here anyway. Haiti has an interesting history that doesn’t get taught all that much up here in America as well. Maybe because we did plenty to fuck things up for them, and not too long after this very coin was minted? If you want to read a horrific story, go look up the fate of Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. Not a very nice man considering what he did to lead to his death, but even so, that’s rough. I also have a lot to say about Woodrow Wilson, and not much of it very nice, but that’s for a different time and place.
S&M Ecstasy by Michiking
Sorry about the censoring. If it annoys you, here’s the full cover in a nice resolution (and NSFW of course.) I’m just doing my best not to give Google, WordPress, or whoever the hell any more excuse to make my site adult-only or whatever else they might be planning on doing. Considering how often I type “fuck” here, I really can’t be too careful. Just look at what YouTube is doing to creators now.
But to get to the point, yeah, I bought a hentai manga. Officially translated into English and best of all decensored, so you don’t have to deal with those annoying censor lines (that you may well mentally erase anyway if you’re used to this kind of stuff.) Michiking’s art is very nice, and the stories — well, it’s porn. There’s not much to this stuff story-wise, but then that’s not probably what you’re looking for if you’re buying this. It’s not all S&M as the title suggests, either, though that is in there too if you’re into it.
More interesting to me is the market for physical hentai works here in the States. There are a few specialty publishers who put this stuff out, most prominent among them Fakku, who published this and many other of these manga volumes, and JAST, who also publish translated/decensored original doujin works. I’m not sure how many perverts with tastes similar to mine are around and what subset of us insist on buying physical when it’s at all feasible, but that might be a good business to get into if you don’t have any moral qualms with this kind of art. I certainly don’t, but then you knew that already.
Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy
A digital copy. No, I’m not that happy about it, but here’s a story you can probably relate to: I saw this for 50% off on the Playstation store, so what was I supposed to do? Now the problem is ever finding any time to play this thing. Maybe when AI takes all the jobs and our benevolent government passes laws creating a post-scarcity society utopia, then I can do this stuff full-time. And maybe I’ll grow wings and gain laser-eye powers too while I’m in fantasy land here.
Sorry, I’m in a lousy mood this morning as I write this last entry. But searching around for a usable Ryza 2 cover helped cheer me up — I couldn’t find any I liked that weren’t 300×300, but then I came across original Ryza artist and character designer Toridamono’s many Ryza 2-related pieces like the one on the left from his Twitter feed, and I guess no further comment is necessary.
That’s all for today. I hope to return with another post this weekend, but in the meantime, I hope we can all drag ourselves to the end of another fucking week. Until next time!
When you hear that a game has crafting in it, what do you immediately think of? Perhaps some thrown-together tacked-on gameplay mechanic like “put this piece of wood and this piece of metal together to make an axe” or “make this weed you found on the side of the road into a potion.” Crafting has a bit of a bad reputation as a gimmicky and unnecessary mechanic among gamers, at least here in the US — to the point that when I’ve tried to sell a few friends on the game series that’s the subject of this post, I’ve had to assure them that even though it’s full of crafting, it actually implements it really well. I swear. Just hear me out, please!
And yes: I’m talking about the Atelier series. Considering how many Atelier titles I reviewed last year — between those and the Blue Reflection games, officially noted as the “Year of Gust” on the site — this new deep reads post might not be such a surprise, even if I did keep you all waiting for a long time on it.
At first, I was planning to put this post off until I finished the Mysterious sub-series, since I’m almost halfway through that now-tetralogy at this point. But I felt like writing it now for various reasons, some of which have to do with opinions I’ve read about the Atelier series that I very much disagree with and that I’d like to offer counters to. Also, I think after having played almost eight Atelier games, I have a pretty good feel for what the series is about. Gust keeps releasing the damn things, too, at least once a year, so I don’t think I’ll ever truly be “caught up” anyway.
Another important note before I start: this post is not going to take on the entire series from start to finish. As with my Megami Tensei deep reads post series, I’m admitting upfront that I haven’t played most of its many titles. However, I have played a lot of the Atelier games since the major series overhaul that started with Atelier Rorona at the start of the series’ PS3 era. The series as a whole stretches all the way back to the 90s, starting on the PS1 with Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg in 1997. However, my understanding is that Rorona wasn’t quite a total change to the series but more of a return to the old alchemy-heavy style of the first games, a shift back away from the more standard JRPG gameplay of the PS2 Atelier Iris trilogy.1 So maybe a lot of what I write about these later games will apply at least generally to the earliest ones. I also have the excuse that a lot of those very oldest Atelier titles (Marie through Viorate I think, 1 through 5) were never localized, at least to my knowledge.
Anyway, enough with the apologies and explanations and on to something hopefully more interesting. First, a few questions that some new players might be asking themselves:
What’s all this about alchemy?
The typical Atelier game centers around usually one and occasionally two alchemists. Said alchemist protagonist(s) almost always happen to be girls (the one exception I’ve played being Logy from Escha & Logy — he’s one of the very few exceptions to that rule.) Though they come from different circumstances and sometimes even from entirely different worlds, these girls always have bright futures ahead of them, though that’s sometimes not apparent at the outset. However, all their various quests, goals, and ambitions can be achieved with the help of their families and friends and most uniquely with the help of alchemy, the practice of gathering and mixing all sorts of ingredients — plants, liquids, metals, minerals, and so on — to create the widest range of goods imaginable, from poisons to medicines, from explosives to apple pies.
The first time I ran into this alchemy concept as a game mechanic was in the also Gust-produced Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia. While the Ar tonelico games aren’t part of the Atelier series (though they arguably do have links to at least a few of the games) and are very different in both storytelling style and gameplay, they have item-crafting functionality in common with Atelier. The crafting system in Ar tonelico is called synthesis, and while it’s pretty simple and not at all essential to get down to actually beat the games, it does add some nice flavor, especially with the inclusion of sometimes strange and silly recipe notes from the characters making the items. Not quite simply “add wood to metal to make metal beating stick”, then, even if it isn’t all that complicated mechanically speaking.
Okay, I don’t have a screenshot of Ar tonelico synthesis, so instead here’s a conversation from Ar tonelico II. I think I have a thing for certain haughty girls who are really sweet on the inside, but that might be a subject for another post.
Alchemy in Atelier is a different matter. Starting with Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland in 2009, the series again placed a serious emphasis on item-crafting not simply as a helpful tool but as a necessary mechanic that’s also central to the plot. There’s no “fuck this crafting nonsense, let me go fight a dragon boss” option in these games for two major reasons: 1) your power in battle is directly tied to what sort of equipment and attack/defense items you’re using, almost all of which you’ll have to craft to get better than a garbage setup, and 2) the game, depending on which game you’re playing, won’t allow you to progress and might even give you a game over if you’re not keeping up with your alchemist duties and balancing those with your more typically JRPG-style map exploration, enemy-killing, and loot-finding ones.
The choice of the term alchemy for this system of crafting is interesting in itself. Before I’d even heard of the Atelier games, I knew alchemy as most of us do: that old scientifically dubious practice of turning base metals into gold. Historically, alchemy was more than just “turn this lump of iron into gold so I can get rich”, but that was naturally a lot of its appeal. Never mind that if any of these guys had ever found that secret iron/lead/whatever-to-gold recipe, the vast increase in the gold supply would have destroyed its value — they weren’t taking economics classes back in the 1300s. It’s certainly possible to turn one element into another by splitting atoms through nuclear fission and fusing atoms to create heavier elements through the far more energy-intensive nuclear fusion (also the process the Sun uses to convert hydrogen to helium.) But naturally, old-fashioned alchemists didn’t have such technology. They were making potions and probably dumping rat’s tails into them or some nonsense.
That was alchemy in our world: a bullshit science in the vein of astrology, or at least until physicists started shooting atoms at each other in the early 20th century. However, the line between alchemy on one hand and actual chemistry and medicine on the other was often blurred — alchemists could also act as legitimate medicine-makers considering their knowledge of plants with real healing properties and the like.
And there’s the possible connection to alchemy in the world of Atelier. Medicine is always one of the very first items you’re tasked with making, and it’s naturally in high demand and extremely useful in combat. The difference in Atelier is that even aside from the realistic medical benefits of herbs and so on, alchemy as a whole is entirely real and can be done with nothing more than a big pot and a stirring stick — as long as you have the learning and skill to master the recipes.
Speaking of recipes, in Atelier, baking is also an essential and extremely important aspect of the art of alchemy. I don’t think any “real” alchemists ever tried turning lead into a Mont Blanc. (Atelier Meruru DX)
No small feat in itself. Alchemists in Atelier are valued for their knowledge and skill (if not always for their wisdom — that one depends on the alchemist.) Training is intensive, and the few people with the aptitude for it spend lifetimes honing their crafts. While the techniques used in alchemy differ a little between each sub-series within the wider series, it seems to be the case that some kind of inherent skill is required before someone can even hope to start training. What that inherent quality is I can’t say, since the games I’ve played don’t really say themselves, but that’s not important: all you have to know is that your protagonist(s) have that skill along with the necessary motivation to practice and learn.
Another common thread that links all these games together is the player’s workshop, or atelier. These terms are pretty interchangeable, and though I haven’t seen it used, laboratory would also fit well. I’m not sure why the creators of the series landed on the term “atelier” specifically, but I like it — it adds to that old European feel a lot of the series has, with its Renaissance/early modern European-looking cities and towns and its characters with largely French and German-sounding family names.
Atelier is a French-to-English loanword, and here a French-to-Japanese one. In its original and English definitions, an atelier is specifically an artist’s workshop, referring to both the fine arts and more practical crafts like dress-making and architecture, something more like a studio than a lab. A search for “atelier” on Google, aside from references to the game series, brings up both art and fashion-related spots around my city. So unless アトリエ/atorie has a different meaning in Japanese, the use of “atelier” as an alchemy workshop is a little unusual here.
Then again, maybe it isn’t. Alchemy in the Atelier series seems to be just as much an art as a science, with alchemists adding their own personal touches to their work. And since you can craft armor, pendants and other jewelry with defensive attributes, and even dresses that fall into the armor category, I guess “atelier” really does fit. (Just don’t ask how such things are produced by mixing a boiling solution in a cauldron: that question was never meant to be answered.)
As for the proper pronunciation of Atelier: excuse me for being all proper, but it should be pronounced in English in the French way in my opinion. I’m not British, but I’m going with Cambridge in this case, and the other authorities agree. The Japanese title atorie might also be a clue — while Japanese can’t quite get the l sound down with the syllable リ (somewhere between li and ri) that エ at the end points to the original French pronunciation. But for fuck’s sake — even if you’re going to pronounce that r at the end out of habit or because saying a French word feels too fancypants for you, at least don’t call it an atleer.2
Your atelier can take various forms: most often it’s a dedicated workshop, but your alchemist girl might resort to dragging a cauldron into a corner of her family’s house or her room if she doesn’t have that option. You might even be doing alchemy out on the road in a makeshift tent workshop. But no matter what form it takes, when you’re in that atelier, you’ll have access to all the resources you’ve collected and been given in order to brew new potions and craft new items and armor.
The atelier isn’t just a workshop, however. Most of the Atelier games I’ve played turn the your workshop into a meeting place and sometimes a regular hangout spot depending on where it is. And in the cases they don’t, the practical effect is the same, because the alchemists always become pillars of their respective communities if they aren’t already. The powers of alchemy can be used for good or evil — you can synthesize some massively destructive items in your atelier, after all. But while disreputable alchemists aren’t entirely unheard of in the series, your protagonists are always the good sort. They differ in personality, sometimes wildly, but they all have a strong desire to help their friends and to be a positive force in the world as a whole.
Which brings me to the final question I’d like to address, and in an extremely long-winded way:
What’s the appeal?
I’ve gone on a lot about ateliers and alchemy and how to pronounce French loanwords, but here’s the key question. What’s the point of all this item synthesis and why should I care? And why are most of these alchemists wearing such frilly fucking dresses? Don’t those ribbons get in the way of the cauldron-stirring?
I can’t address the practicality of those frills and ribbons, but I can describe what I find to be the appeal of Atelier. I can only speak for myself, though I expect a lot of other fans will agree on these strengths of the series.
1) The art and aesthetic
Getting all fancy with “aesthetic” here, but there’s a good reason for it. Gust games are generally known for their excellent art design: between the Atelier, Blue Reflection, and EXA_PICO series, I doubt there’s a single title that doesn’t have at least pretty impressive art.
Atelier in particular stands out for its art and character designs, and all the more so because of the several artists who have worked on the series, bringing their own unique visions to it. In my Atelier reviews, I’ve noted the breakdown of the wider series into subseries, often into trilogies (that may later expand into tetralogies or more: see Atelier Lulua and Atelier Sophie 2) and each of these subseries to date has featured a different art director. Playing these games in roughly sort of chronological order as I’ve been from Rorona on, I’ve prepared to be at least a little let down by the new artistic direction in the following subseries, but that hasn’t happened yet with the very partial exception of the AtelierRyza series as far as I’ve played it. At worst, the art and general style might just not appeal to me quite as much, but I still end up pretty much liking it and feeling the new style suits the new general direction of the game.
Toridamono’s work is my least favorite out of the four Atelier subseries I’ve played, and he’s still a damn good artist whose work I like a lot, which should speak well for the rest of the series’ art. (Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout)
Among the three other art directors of the series I’ve played — Mel Kishida in the Arland series, and also responsible for the art of the Blue Reflection games, Hidari in the Dusk series, and Yuugen and Noco in the Mysterious series — I can’t even rank them against each other. If Toridamono’s just a notch below them according to my own tastes, the rest are on the same extremely high rung. If you’re imagining one of those tier rankings that have become so popular among streamers and VTubers these days, based on its art alone, Ryza is in the A rank and the rest are up in S.
But what is it about the art in these games that I find so striking? Part of it might be that old European feel most of the games have. Dusk is a little lighter on that feel, though there are still hints of it in especially in Atelier Ayesha, but generally the makers really seem to love the look of those 16th/17th century west European cities and towns. I might be completely off here, but as an American, I think we tend to have a love for that look too, maybe because it feels a bit exotic and also because we don’t have anything similar in our own country aside from the architecture that’s designed specifically to mimic those styles.
I believe this is part of the cover of the original Atelier Rorona for the PS3, the one you absolutely shouldn’t play because the Vita and DX PS4 remasters/remakes look far better. But damn if Mel Kishida’s art isn’t amazing anyway.
More important are the character designs, which are usually memorable and excellent. I’m no visual artist and I’ve never created a character design because I can’t draw worth a shit, but I know what I think is memorable and looks good and what doesn’t, and I haven’t played an Atelier game yet that failed to impress in that way. I’ll just say I own that Artworks of Arland artbook for a reason. I’d own artbooks of Hidari and Yuugen/Noco’s work too, but those don’t seem to exist or else I haven’t found them. I’ve posted examples of their work throughout, especially of Hidari’s, so here’s another CG I love from the Mysterious series:
Just ignore Sophie’s weird gold beret outfit. That one’s not her fault, anyway; it was a gift from another character with some pretty damn dubious tastes. But note the bottle hanging at her side — a nice touch that many of the alchemists’ outfits include considering how often they have to gather materials and work out in the field. (Atelier Sophie DX)
I haven’t seen another game series with such a strong emphasis on costume design, either. It’s most obvious in Atelier Sophie, which contains an entire side plot about Sophie wearing her grandmother’s old alchemist outfit from way back when she was out in the field to gain her courage or something (not the one above; it looks a lot better in my opinion) but this focus runs throughout the series. Of course, unusual costumes in JRPGs are naturally nothing new (see Final Fantasy) but that aspect of Atelier is also notable. Whether it’s a positive is up to you — I feel Ryza drops it a bit in favor of a somewhat more practical-looking “adventurer” look if that’s more to your taste — but I find it adds some great spice to the series.3
If only to see our characters running around in the field and into battle in this getup. Not exactly made for combat, though at least the knight in the front line is dressed for the occasion. (Atelier Sophie DX)
2) The slice-of-life relaxation
Plenty of JRPGs provide breaks to their players in the form of easygoing character interaction, but again, no series I’ve found places such an emphasis on that as Atelier. While you’ll certainly face plenty of challenges in the series, up to and including difficult bosses to fight and the occasional world-ending crisis, most of my experience with Atelier has been pretty relaxed. There are certain story beats I’d grown up to expect after playing other JRPG series as a kid: someone in your party will betray you at a key moment, your home base or town that seems safe will get attacked at some point and you’ll have to flee, your protagonist will probably end up romantically tied to another character, most likely the female lead. And of course, some godlike entity is almost certainly controlling the supposed ultimate bad guy from behind the scenes and you’ll have to beat it up to prevent all life from being destroyed. Some series put their own unique spins on these JRPG tropes (Megami Tensei for example), but they’re tropes for a reason.
You’ll barely find any of the above in Atelier. Hardly any betrayal, much less of the dramatic “top 10 anime betrayal” kind complete with the speech trying to justify the traitor’s backstabbing. Very little romance, outside of some yuri-flavored teasing that never ends up going anywhere (by far most common in the Arland subseries) and an option to get Escha and Logy into an implied romantic relationship in their game that’s otherwise not at all central to the story.
I don’t blame Logy for dating his coworker, hard to resist a girl who can put away cake like this. And yes, Escha is as she looks: another cute cinnamon roll-esque character. I think I have a thing for them too as long as they’re not overdone. (Atelier Escha & Logy DX)
And while Atelier does feature crises, these aren’t always the world-ending kind. The crisis in question is usually a lot more personal than you’d expect: for a few examples, the protagonist trying to track down her missing adventurer mother (Atelier Totori), working to convince her father to let her become an alchemist (Atelier Meruru), or making a trek across the world to sit for an alchemist certification exam (Atelier Firis). A couple of other games do feature potentially world-ending threats, most especially the Dusk subseries (Ayesha, Escha & Logy, and Shallie), which centers around an ongoing catastrophic environmental decay (what an idea — I just can’t imagine that happening in real life, can you?)
But even the Dusk trilogy contains plenty of relaxation and slice-of-life messing around. This is such a staple of Atelier that it would be impossible to imagine the series without it. While exploration and combat are certainly important elements to every Atelier game I’ve played so far, they aren’t the central elements — they take place alongside a lot of necessary work in the atelier.
The combat is fine if you’re all right with turn-based systems, and it does feature some big changes from game to game, most notably in the Ryza series that shifts to a more action-based battle mechanic. I just don’t find the combat a particular strength of Atelier, though a few games do interesting things with it. (Atelier Ayesha DX, with admittedly one of the less interesting battle systems.)
And while your alchemist protagonist is brewing her potions and baking her pies in that cauldron, she’ll receive visits from friends and the few townspeople who are important enough side characters to get character portraits. Building relationships with your party members is a must, but even the shopkeepers in most Atelier titles have roles to play beyond the typical “Hi ___, look at the new wares I have for sale” fare — they’re very often interesting characters in their own rights, and some of them might even join your party.
That’s no mistake: typically the protagonist herself is a shopkeeper, at least of a sort. As the local alchemist, and sometimes the only one in town, part of your task as the player is to fulfill the requests of customers, some of whom are shopkeepers themselves who might go on to sell your wares at a higher price. Everyone benefits from the arrangement: you gather the materials and either sell them or more often use them to synthesize a product that only you can create, and the shopkeeper provides a wider market for the salve, cake, dress, or whatever else it is you’ve made. It’s a small-scale economy at work — not a very complicated one, but then it doesn’t need to be. There’s plenty of complication for you to deal with elsewhere, as we’ll soon see.
Pamela’s shop is the most popular among the town’s men — they all hang out there so much that their wives start complaining about it. Maybe you can see why? That’s right: it’s all the amazing perfume she sells that Rorona synthesized for her. (Atelier Rorona Plus)
All these relationships your protagonist(s) build with their families, friends, and townspeople — even with the odd ghost they might meet during their explorations — these all contribute to the generally relaxed feel of the series as a whole. Because of my near-oppressive work schedule (though a typical one for my profession, sadly) I’ve had to drop every other JRPG for the foreseeable future. Even my beloved Megami Tensei has fallen by the wayside. But Atelier is somehow still keeping me in its grip, and I think its strong relaxed slice-of-life aspect is part of the reason why it’s managed to draw me back in.
3) The alchemy
Alchemy. (Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream)
There’s a good reason I decided to make this edition of my deep reads a series instead of a single post: this fucking alchemy system deserves its own post. Let me correct that: systems, because there’s well more than one. The fact that I’ve spent so many hours crafting items in Atelier where I’ve groaned at two minutes of crafting a sword in some other game and asked why I had to bother — that still escapes me, but I’d like to figure out just why the hell that’s the case, and I’d like to get to it in the next post in this set.
I’m prepared to be totally wrong about at least half of what I end up writing about alchemy in these games, because there are actual experts out there and I’m not one of them. But I’ve gotten used to being wrong about things, so it’s no problem for me. Until next time!
1I really don’t know how I missed out on Atelier Iris back in the day considering I was pretty big into JRPGs at the time. Their exclusion from this post series feels like a serious gap, but it’s not one I can do anything about. The same goes for the Mana Khemia games, which despite their titles are canonically part of the Atelier series.
2And here’s part of why I think barely any fans lament the loss of the English dubs for these games following Atelier Firis. Though the fact that most of us are probably weebs who default to the Japanese voiceovers also has something to do with it. And no, I don’t blame the VAs at all: I blame the localizers who should have been in charge of giving them proper direction, or maybe Gust if they didn’t allocate a sufficient localization budget to bother with that. I hope those VAs are finding plenty of work elsewhere, anyway. I think Crunchyroll is dubbing a lot of anime these days.
3This raises an interesting question about the target audience for such games. There are male characters in the Atelier games too — lean pretty boys, muscular tough guys, and a few in between or miscellaneous types, and often with their own interesting designs. But the focus seems to be far more on the ladies, and combined with the very flowery aesthetic I wonder if Atelier has a larger female player base than other RPG series might.
Then again, there’s such a strong emphasis on the ladies that I also suspect the series might be aimed specifically at guys. As I noted at the start of my Disgaea deep reads series way back, Marl Kingdom seems to have had a similar issue with being considering “for girls” when it was localized, possibly with an eye to capture more of a female player base. But I also think the market has changed a lot since then. Then again, I’m no marketing expert or video game historian, so I’ll leave those questions to them.
Okay, it’s not actually a “review” this time. But then Conway’s Game of Life isn’t quite a “game” in the regular sense.
The subject of today’s post, sort of. And yes, that is Anime Pin-Up Beauties ’99 lower in the menu. When you see a gem like that on the Internet Archive you have to get it, you know.
Strangely enough I’ve already written about this thing on the site without realizing it. Three years plus ago, I reviewed the entire Windows Entertainment Pack, a set of early 90s games and programs contained on four different releases. One of these was a game titled LifeGenesis, which I tried out again after reinstalling my virtual machine with Windows 95:
WHAT the fuck is going on
When I played LifeGenesis, I didn’t really understand what I was looking at and assumed it was a broken two-player Go or Reversi spinoff of some kind. Granted, it was represented as a two-player game that I thought would be set up as player vs. computer like most of the other such games in these packs, but that doesn’t change the fact that I just didn’t get what was going on and didn’t read the game’s documentation, which actually explains what it is: a very limited Windows-based version of Conway’s Game of Life, a sort of program (or cellular automaton as he called it) created by mathematician John Conway in 1970. I’d explain the rules, but better to let the man himself do that:
The gist is that on a potentially infinite grid, you can place “live” cells as you would pieces on a board, and their status changes based on their position and their neighbors. Since the game continues tracking these changes from step to step, you’ll end up with a morphing pattern that might either die out completely, get frozen in a certain position, or bloom out into a progressively larger pattern.
Throwing down random clumps of blocks like I did the first time I played LifeGenesis can be pretty amusing for a few minutes, but the most interesting patterns to me are the symmetrical kind, easily produced by a symmetrical starting pattern of live cells. While some of these patterns die out or freeze in place after several rounds, others have surprising properties. Take a row of 10 live cells, which you might not expect anything interesting from: you’ll end up with a changing pattern going through several cycles that repeat infinitely:
Part of the repeating pattern
There’s a lot more you can do with the Game of Life, but LifeGenesis, as interesting as it must have been to people who knew about this in the early 90s, is unfortunately restricted with a finite game board. This board is meant to be used in matches against other human opponents I guess, even if there is a difficulty option featured (though the computer opponent still seems to be absent, so I have no idea what you’d do with this game’s difficulty setting.)
Today, there’s a far easier and better way to play Conway’s Game of Life than running LifeGenesis on a virtual machine: you can instead visit this site and run patterns on an effectively infinite grid, meaning you can get far more interesting and complex results than you would otherwise on that restricted game board.
Again, I went straight for the symmetrical patterns, trying out various starting positions. Most of these didn’t produce very interesting results, but a few turned out some beautiful patterns like the one above, just the 59th round (iteration? I want to use that word but I don’t know if it’s correct here) out from a pretty simple cross-shaped starting pattern. Some of these results look strangely human-created even, like these pixel art ghosts from earlier in the very same pattern progression:
A symmetrical starting pattern will always result in symmetrical results as you’d expect, but the true chaos begins when you go asymmetrical. Again, most of the patterns I placed down fizzled out pretty quickly or resulted in a few fixed live cell patterns (the 2×2 square, for example) or infinitely alternating or “spinning” ones (the 3×3 line.) A few were far more interesting, producing increasingly growing explosions of live cells that create fixed patterns and destroy them again as they keep growing and reacting to their surroundings.
Here’s a pattern that I thought was about to settle down — almost everything on the screen above is a static pattern that resulted from a pretty small and simple starting position (though one I don’t remember, honestly.) Everything except this bit:
That five-cell pattern is known as a “Glider” because unlike nearly every other pattern, it endlessly glides across the grid while maintaining its form, going through a few repeating cycles. This particular glider is headed “northwest”, or towards the upper left corner of the grid, about to run into the static six-cell pattern above it. The result:
Another explosion that “invaded” those static patterns down below and kept the game going. This is one of the interesting things about the Game of Life. From what I can gather, its outcomes can all be mapped out since it follows just a few strict rules, but for a human watching these changes play out, it all really feels chaotic, in a few situations like the above like anything might happen..
Of course, far smarter people than me have done far more interesting things with the Game of Life than I could have imagined without finding them on YouTube:
I’m not a huge fan of that overused dramatic backing track, but man these are impressive. This “game” has been around for over fifty years now, so it’s no wonder people with more mathematical minds have been coming up with such incredibly elaborate and massive patterns.
That brings me to the last point about Conway’s Game of Life and maybe the most interesting: the fact that Mr. Conway himself didn’t seem to think much of it. To Conway, the Game of Life was sort of a trifle, something to play with, that he sent to a friend to write about in a Scientific American column. After it exploded in popularity, he knew he’d be remembered by most people for this trifle, which wasn’t all that impressive to him and was greatly overshadowed by his other work as a mathematician.
Yet he also came to terms with that, and for good reason: looking through conversations about his game, I’ve found a lot of people citing it as the reason they got interested in programming. I can understand why, even if I’m a humanities major and not at all into math beyond some of the interesting concepts I’ve stumbled upon along with the other non-mathematician masses like the Mandelbrot Set. Part of the appeal of both of these concepts to me, and I think to a lot of people, is how they show complexity, and even infinite complexity, can be revealed by something so seemingly simple as John Conway’s game with just a couple of rules or Benoit Mandelbrot’s equation.
Or maybe I just like the nice patterns. I don’t think I have anything at all to add to the talk about the Game of Life, not coming from my professional background that has nothing to do with math beyond estimating potential damages and worrying about project budgets in dollar amounts.
Anyway, this is just something I’ve been messing around with lately. I hope my recent less regular posts have been interesting — I’ll be getting back to the more standard kind soon, unless I come up with more to ramble about. Until then!
Last post I wrote about my probably unhealthy coffee-drinking habits, so I may as well have a look at a game all about coffee, coffee-adjacent drinks, and the people they bring together in a small independent coffee shop in alternate fantasy universe Seattle. Coffee Talk, released on Steam in 2020, is a visual novel with a drink-mixing minigame attached in which you play a barista and coffee shop owner, serving a diverse mix of the city’s residents — humans, elves, succubi, fairies, werewolves and so on.
Latte art? I’m a coffee guy, not a damn artist. But maybe all baristas are expected to also be artists in Seattle? I’ve never been there.
As the sort-of blank slate player character, your job is to talk to patrons, both regulars and newcomers, and fill their drink orders. You’ll have an increasing stock of ingredients to choose from as the game continues, allowing you to mix dozens of different drinks for your customers.
Pictured: constant regular patron Freya, a woman after my own heart — not a long-lived heart with all the triple espressos I drink though.
Drink-making is an important part of Coffee Talk and provides the only traditional “game” element with a little extra challenge — while some of the orders your patrons make will be straightforward, others will make vague orders or just ask for whatever. You’re free to serve whatever drink you think best, but the drinks you serve at certain points will affect the course of the story. To add to the challenge, you’ll start with a blank drink reference list that fills out as you make each drink, meaning you can’t easily refer to it for clues if you haven’t made a particular order yet (or just look it up online, of course.)
Don’t give this guy milk unless you just want to be a jerk
The visual novel part of Coffee Talk is its central element, however — you’ll be spending almost all your time in this game making and listening to conversation over coffee (and tea, hot chocolate, etc.) Coffee Talk features a cast of about ten or a dozen recurring patrons, each with their own stories and challenges that they might bring up while sitting at your counter. While it might seem like a linear story at first, this game does have different endings to achieve, based not on dialogue options (the traditional branching-path VN style) but on whether you serve the right drinks to your customers and friends at the critical moments. It should be pretty obvious when these moments arise, even if the drink you have to serve at that time isn’t.
Things get heavy on occasion. I wonder how often real-life baristas see such scenes. I’ve never worked behind a counter myself, though I did unfortunately suffer through a “scene” at a sort of small bar/restaurant once that was considerably worse than this one.
Anyone who’s read this site for very long might know one of my favorite indie games is VA-11 Hall-A. If you’ve played VA-11 Hall-A yourself or have seen a playthrough of it, all of the above should sound very familiar to you, because Coffee Talk clearly took serious influence from that game — the drink-mixing, the strong social/visual novel elements, and the way the drinks you serve at certain points affects the story. One of the main reasons I picked up Coffee Talk, in fact, was because it reminded me so much of that old favorite. Also because I was getting tired of the endless “where the fuck is it” Atlus-style wait for the long-announced sequel N1RV Ann-A (still “coming soon”, haaah.)
However, it would be a mistake to think of Coffee Talk as simply a copy of VA-11 Hall-A. It’s similar in its structure and mechanics, but it has a different flavor and stands well on its own. The most obvious difference is the setting: where VA-11 Hall-A was set in a dive bar built mostly to serve alcohol, in Coffee Talk you’re running a coffee shop. That’s not a small difference, either, since for better or worse you can’t get anyone drunk and running their mouths in this game like you can in VA-11 Hall-A. That doesn’t mean your drinks don’t have significant effects on your patrons, both energizing and calming — they just won’t be getting boozed up.
Somehow alcohol was not involved with creating this situation
The broader settings of the games are also very different, with Coffee Talk set in a real-world American city known for being a unique sort of place (in a similar way to Portland and Austin, so maybe not actually “unique” but you get the idea — it’s an artsy city.) Both games deal with some pretty serious social issues through their conversations, though again somewhat different ones — you can really tell the fictional Glitch City of VA-11 Hall-A has the sorts of issues thought up more by guys from a place like Venezuela as its developers were, with the talk of government corruption and currency hyperinflation.
I can relate more personally to the complaints about insane drug prices and instability of freelancer life in Coffee Talk, though having lived in an “open corruption/government actually giving no fucks” sort of country before I understand those complaints as well, even if I’ve always had the extreme and undeserved luxury of an American passport.
Either way, I won’t accuse anyone of complaining about “first world problems” if their issues are serious and not just “I got the wrong drink order” or something that inconsequential. I always thought that criticism was bullshit when used as a blanket statement. Family problems, for example, exist everywhere — you can’t get away from them.
Both games took on their more serious subjects without coming off as preachy to me or laying it on too thick as well, which I always appreciate. I don’t like having my nice relaxing coffee or booze game interrupted by a sermon or a TED Talk jammed in out of nowhere, but when the points are made naturally in the course of an interesting story I’m all for it. That’s proper storytelling. Even if you can probably guess the politics of the people who made Coffee Talk (but then it may also help that I’m on board with them myself — and even then most of the serious talk here is more about personal/social matters than really political ones.)
A vampire has a serious conversation with a succubus about relationships while a fairy does her best to sit between them and not feel awkward, life in 2020 if COVID hadn’t happened. It’s important to note that Coffee Talk was released in January of 2020. Maybe the sequel can be set entirely on Teams or Discord; imagine how fucking miserable that would be.
That said, I ended up connecting with VA-11 Hall-A a little more than with Coffee Talk. Both are skillfully and thoughtfully put together, with some interesting characters and side stories, and I’d recommend either one almost completely, only with the exception that VA-11 Hall-A does get a lot more graphically into sex talk for those who aren’t as comfortable with such subjects or just don’t want to get into them in a “comfy game” like this one. There’s no Dorothy here to spice things up in that direction.
I didn’t mind that talk, however. I also preferred the setting and general feel of VA-11 Hall-A to Coffee Talk, though that’s a totally subjective matter. If I had the choice myself, I’d go to the cyberpunk dive bar tended by an embittered lady like Jill than this nighttime-only coffee shop in Seattle, though I’d be happy with either. I feel the same about the soundtrack — the music in Coffee Talk can be flipped through and played like in VA-11 Hall-A, and this soundtrack perfectly fits the setting: lo-fi beats to caffeinate to, with a lot of electric piano, always a plus for me. Again, I just slightly prefer the soundtrack to VA-11 Hall-A, but switch the soundtracks and each would totally clash with the other game’s atmosphere.
I’ve never had coffee with a churro in it, but I have to try a Spanish Sahara now. Coffee Talk introduced me to a lot of new coffee and tea drinks I’d like to try out when I get the time and freedom to do that.
Finally, I preferred Jill as the player character and protagonist of VA-11 Hall-A over the blank slate (though not silent) protagonist of Coffee Talk. This is still another totally subjective preference, since I can’t say one is better than the other or would be more effective for this sort of game. If I couldn’t have related so much to Jill’s troubles, I probably wouldn’t even be saying this, and I honestly wish I couldn’t relate to her on that level. There is more to the player character of Coffee Talk than “our friendly barista” however, which is what I thought I was for a while — I won’t spoil anything more here, though.
That’s another hint that you should check out Coffee Talk for yourself. I found it very relaxing, a nice break from my usual bullshit schedule. One playthrough only takes a few hours, so it’s not a massive time investment either like some VNs can be, though if you want to get multiple endings you’ll have to play through a few more times and make those very particular drinks at the right times to change the course of the plot.
It’s a good thing the quality of your latte art has no effect on the story. No amount of moe moe kyun can fix this.
Finally, if you do decide to go for CoffeeTalk, which again I do recommend, I also recommend you check it out on itch.io instead of Steam, because fuck Valve for their still extremely inconsistent (and if you really want to be uncharitable to them, and I don’t feel like being charitable, potentially xenophobic) attitude towards Japanese VNs. Though I still have a massive backlog of games on the platform to get through if I ever can, so I can’t say I’ll be “boycotting” them or anything. I’ve bought most of my VNs there, in fact — I’ll just be doing my best to untangle myself from Steam from now on, at least until there are serious changes at Valve.
Well here’s a nice surprise from itch.io, though not a surprise that I’m covering it. HoloCure is a Hololive fan game, what else, about a set of VTubers affiliated with the agency.
These multi-talented girls are usually only tasked with entertaining their fans on stream by playing games or singing or whatever, but one day a mysterious evil force makes said fans into drooling zombies who love their favorite VTubers blindly and go mad (is this some subtle commentary?) forming mobs that their favorites have to subdue. It’s a story worthy of the Beatles back when they made movies like A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, or maybe the Spice Girls’ Spice World. When was the last time you thought of that movie, if you’re even old enough to have been alive when it came out?
Which Spice Girl would Gura be, tell me in the comments after you smash like and subscribe and ring that bell
HoloCure is a takeoff of Vampire Survivors from what I hear. I haven’t played that one, so I don’t know how this game stacks up to it, but even if you’re new to this sort of game like I was, the mechanics are simple: just aim your automatic attacks at the enemies running towards you, collect the powerups and other drops they leave, and use them to upgrade existing skills and learn new ones.
Ina is somewhere in this mess. The tentacle is her main method of attack, which can be powered up as you defeat enemies/subdue fans. See also the huge miniboss at the bottom right — these guys will show up in fixed intervals to challenge you.
The current version of HoloCure has four sets of characters to play with, coming out to 20: all 11 ladies in the English-language branch (not counting the recently recruited guys in Tempus) and 9 in the Japanese branch — nowhere close to the total, so if like me you were hoping to play as Pekora, you’ll have to wait for a future potential update. But even so, there’s nice variety in the available characters’ styles, with some being slow and tanky and others being quick and agile, and still others I have no idea how to use because I’m terrible at them since their attacks require precision to pull off well.
Like Okayu, who chooses to throw rice balls at enemies that annoyingly arc in the air. The onigiri won’t help her against these shield walls of Mori fans.
I hadn’t played this game before the update just yesterday, but from the several hours I’ve played of it now (yes, this is what I’ve been doing since stopping work on Friday evening, no grass-touching for me) I could already tell a couple of things about independent developer Kay Yu, the first being that they’re clearly huge fans of Hololive and its streamers/characters/personalities, with a ton of references in the powerups and descriptions especially that all check out.
Like Plug Type Asacoco, which is exactly what it looks like. It’s not just the game being crass, this is a “real” product from a parody morning show created a year or two ago; here it’s just another weapon.
The second is that these creators care about making a quality game. The gameplay is smooth and the sprites look great (both VTuber and fan, and there are many fan/enemy types that correspond with the “fan names” and art depicting them. The music is catchy, and I’m pretty sure the few tracks in the game are based on a few of the girls’ original songs, though I couldn’t tell you which they were. (The opening/menu theme sounds a little like “Hare Hare Yukai” from Haruhi Suzumiya — hopefully a better fan can help me out here.)
All that leads me to a different question — can you enjoy HoloCure if you’re not a fan and know nothing about any of this Hololive or even VTuber bullshit? Obviously, you won’t get as much out of the game if you don’t pick up on or care about the references, and you certainly won’t get the inside jokes that come from well-known stream incidents like the Plug Type Asacoco above or Miko’s Elite Lava Bucket. HoloCure was made by fans, for fans, and also for the VTubers themselves, who have naturally been playing this on stream as well.
Kiara in the newly added Hololive HQ/office setting. This one feels a lot more challenging than the first stage’s open field since you can easily become trapped by enemies in here if you’re not careful.
Even so, I think a non-fan can still enjoy this game. It’s not just running around and killing/dodging enemies; there is a little skill involved at least mixed in with the RNG element of whether you’ll get good weapon and skill upgrades as you level up. I didn’t think I’d have that much fun with the game for its gameplay, but I have, and all the better that you can actually upgrade the characters as you progress by collecting coins and rolling to unlock new characters. In fact, the gacha element might make the game a little easier for non-fans, since they won’t be obsessively rolling to unlock best fox/cat friend Fubuki (who I still don’t have… damn. Soon, though.)
Pleading with the talent director A-chan won’t help. She won’t even look up from her screen; she’s just here to work.
So I’d say even if you know don’t or care a damn for Hololive or anything like it, you still might want to check this game out. It’s a free fan work and extremely high quality for that. And hell — I love itch.io, and I think indie gaming is the true future of the medium, but the fact is itch.io is filled with no/low-effort tossed-off crap that you have to dig through before finding the worthwhile games. The gems are there, but they can be hard to dig up, so any time I have one I’m likely to highlight it here.
And I barely even watch Hololive anymore, honestly. I am still waiting for an update that includes Pekora, but even more than that, I’d love to see a NijiCure. Maybe that’s just a dream. I certainly don’t have any of the skills necessary to putting a game like this together, but that’s a benefit to being the biggest: you generally get the most and best fan works (see also Touhou.) Though Nijisanji is huge in Japan too, and they’re catching up here as well, so maybe it’s just a matter of time.
Look out YAGOO, Anycolor is coming for Cover! Maybe this is why we keep getting denied that Pomu/Kiara collab, anyway — is HoloEN management afraid of attracting attention to the competition? The nice thing about smaller agencies is that they don’t seem to have such hangups with each other assuming that’s what’s going on here. (Edit 10/22/22: It happened! The barrier’s been broken. Took them long enough.)
A lot of the above is probably gibberish to anyone who’s not deep in the rabbithole like me, so I’ll shut up right now and just say that I had a good time with HoloCure and that you might too, even if you’re not in that hole. Just try not to get dragged into it yourself.
Sure, why not. There are always more free games on itch.io to check out. Digging through that site for the stuff that’s not trash and has some effort put into it can be fun when you’re in the mood, and while I’m not necessarily in the mood for digging today, I do have a couple I’d like to cover. No particular theme this time, either, aside from being a part of this month-long daily posting marathon.
Forget the theme: I wouldn’t be able to categorize some of the games I’ve found on itch.io anyway. Take this masterpiece for instance, in which a debtor agrees to jump down an infinitely long escalator for the insurance money. The object to this browser game is simple: fling poor Gris, the blue-haired bear girl on the title screen, down the escalator as far as possible. Gris somehow makes more money the farther she flies and has a real bounce to her, so be sure to keep up her momentum by tossing her with the mouse, and do your best to collect her marketable plushies that are floating above the escalator for some reason.
Gris Commits Insurance Fraud reminds me a lot of old Flash ragdoll physics games I used to play 15-20 years ago. Unfortunately ever since Adobe murdered Flash, you can’t play those games anymore without carrying out a troublesome workaround, so it’s up to the creator Amarillo and others like them to keep that tradition alive. I only found this game because Gris is the original character/mascot of Vertigris, an artist I follow who does a lot of semi-NSFW sort of pinup-esque work — highly recommended if you also like cute anime girls in lewd swimsuits (which is also featured on the loading screen, so it’s not exactly safe for work either unless your boss is really cool/cultured enough to also appreciate anime bear girl butt.)
Much like that drunk goose game I featured in the last one of these posts, Gris Commits Insurance Fraud is a nice diversion for a few minutes. Though I have to feel bad for Gris, even if she does seem pretty sturdy, maybe because she’s also a bear? If I could survive a thousand-plus meter flight down an escalator without serious injuries and make money for it, I’d try it out myself. Less painful than going to work.
Now for a vital question: just how uncoordinated am I? The answer is very, and this was answered by Pikwip, a mountain-climbing platformer featuring two controllable characters connected by a tether. The developer suggests playing co-op either locally or online, which seems like the kind of play the game is made for.
Or, if like me you have no one else to play with, you can try to play both characters at the same time using WASD and the arrow keys! I tried this and can confirm I suck at it. I had exactly the same experience with Knuckles’ Chaotix, which used a similar “two characters tied together” function only with the added typical 2D Sonic speed element.
Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how long Pikwip runs since I wasn’t able to get very far at all in it, but I still wanted to highlight this game since it does seem like it would be pretty fun to take on either with a partner or by yourself if you’re more coordinated than I am. There’s no apparent quit function, which is a pain, but other than that it seems like a pretty nice time.
That’s all I have today. I’d add more games in here, but of the two other ones I have in mind from itch.io at the moment, one cost a few dollars and is actually NSFW, and the other probably deserves its own post, so I don’t feel like mixing them in with these. And the free game front page on the site is no help because it’s at least 90% janky looking horror games that I have no interest in. Why are they all horror games? Do we really need more spooky walking simulators? I do have more games to dig through in the two bundles I bought one and two years ago, though, so maybe I should actually do that at some point.
Everything is bad for you 
