Another year, another roundup. Every year I try to make a roundup, as I have done back in 2017, 2018 and 2019. These things seem to get longer by the year, so let's see if I can get it longer once again! Surely by inflating the mount of media to cover I can squeeze in more things to say! Two more sections, says I! Look forward to it!
Work and Life and Stuff
Last year I talked about my new job! Oh, Mania, you were so green and fresh and young. That was all before 2020 came. Well, 2020 did happen, and I still have my job! Hooray! Come the end of January, this'll be the longest I've held a job in my career thus far, how exciting!!
What else is there to discuss? What's that? "Corona"? Is that some kind of disease that affects people who aren't hermits? Don't be silly. Let's talk about something more important. Much more important.
Videogames 3: The Threequel
Oh yeah, now THIS is the good stuff. I played a LOT of games this year! Some big, some small, quite a few coming from that Racial Justice Bundle that Itch.io had earlier this year. I still have some games left from that to get to, in fact. So, let's talk about some videogames. Ohyes.
I wrote a blog about this! Go read that instead, I went into quite a lot of detail and I had fun writing it.
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| Me writing the Telepath Tactics blog |
I will miss the old character portraits though. I still don't get why people didn't like those, they were great.
I suppose if I had to say one thing it's that the tone of the game can still sometimes be puerile and edgy, though I actually think it handles that stuff way better than the older games. It seems much more aware of itself and it has various content filters that let you turn down stuff like excessive cleavage and whatnot. It's still a EBF game at heart, but it's really good at being an EBF game.
The game also has various ways you can alter a run, such as modes with randomized weapon locations, or revised enemy layouts, weapon statistics and weather conditions, a bunch of ways to adjust the difficulty beyond the regular easy/normal/hard selection... I definitely want to give this game a second run eventually using a bunch of these altered conditions.
Another thing the hack does it make every character's special abilities useful. Relm's Sketch, Strag's Blue Magic, Edgar's Tools, Gau's Rages, Cyan's Bushido, they all feel good to use, are meaningfully distinct and all worth using. A vast improvement over the base game.
I'm just waiting for Twooka-Laylee: Revenge of the Snowplow, featuring Syrus Truesdale from the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX anime.
Spyro Reignited Trilogy
Mega Quest meanwhile is a more typical mod, adding new items, new enemies and entirely new episodes. This is for when you want more than just new items to play around with, but entirely new episode gimmicks and whatnot. The mod is currently in development following a game update which made old mods incompatible, but it sounds like when it'll be back, it'll be back better than ever. I look forward to it! I actually recorded a playlist of boss battles from the mod.
GNOG
FUCK DSOD.
MARDEK (Magic and Physical runs)
It's a very minimalist game, there's no narrative going on here and the visuals are all just squares and bars and other such shapes. It feels appropriately relaxing, but it can also get quite difficult. Some puzzles had me stumped, but the solution was never too far-fetched. It's a good, decent puzzle game.
There's a lot of changes, which makes sense since it was basically rebuilt from the ground up. But I'd say that 90% of the changes are for the better, the most clear ones being that the game runs much smoother than it used to and the controls are simply much better. The game even lets you turn on a mode that changes a bunch of stuff like unlimited tries per stage and automatic rubies pickups. There's even some extra modes for beating the game, oh my~
Bob's Burgers
Ace Attorney Season 2
Duck Tales (Season 3)
Death Note
This awful, horrible, no-good gremlin man exists only to fuck shit up and get under everybody's nerves and he's great. He laughs constantly, he oozes with misanthropy and he's utterly ruthless when he needs to be. When he enters the show, it gets good. Rather than an ineffectual league of henchmen, he just sic his three overly loyal sons at the party and they all have these unique relations with members of the core cast and it's great, and then Vetrix himself has a whole lot of beef with the main villain of the first half of ZEXAL and it's great too. Everything with the Arclights is just great, really.
That all said... It just doesn't quite stick the landing. Vetrix isn't the main bad guy after all, the real bad guy is the rather generic and boring Doctor Faker, who spent all season just sitting back and not doing much of anything. They pull some twists with his motivation, but it just doesn't work. Vetrix was just a way better antagonist, who was actively working towards his goals and getting his hands dirty if he needed to, rather than scheming vaguely in some dark room somewhere far away from everybody else.
Wait, I meant Vector. But Girag is also good.
Vector is this season's Vetrix: Always working towards his own agenda and a perpetual pain in the ass for the whole rest of the cast. Where Vetrix always seemed to have everything under control despite seeming like he'd just a wacky manchild, Vector is an overconfident absolute troll who clearly is willing to bite off more than he can chew, but wow does he ever chew the scenery. Gorgeous.
The premise is simple enough, a webcomic where it's the lowly Goblins who get to be the lead actors and take fate in their own hands and maybe become heroes?! Maybe. I'm not 100% whether this comic knows what it's about, at first the goal seemed to be for the Goblins to get class levels to be strong enough to fend off low-level adventurers, but along the way they got this Axe from Hell, and now they're gonna go to Hell, literally, to put it back and maybe the FATE OF THE WORLD hangs in the balance?
Well. I will at least try to play many videogames and watch many shows and read many webcomics for 2021. If I also either release a quest or a blog, I could even have four categories for this blog again! Let's see if I can manage!!
Epic Battle Fantasy 5
Ahh, Epic Battle Fantasy. If you into Flash RPGs, you've played at least one Epic Battle Fantasy game. If you liked any of those at all, you'll be happy to know EBF5 is by far the best and most polished EBF experience thus far. It truly just feels like a joy to play it. It looks better, it plays better, it has the interesting battles in the series, the best plot and characters, just great music, the most amount of content. It's just great. A real Grade-A turn based classic JRPG. I absolutely recommend this and can't really think of any real flaws on the top of my head.
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| You can play as No Legs! And beat up fascists!! |
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| It's no monster... It's a god! |
So, Matt Roszak... Epic Battle Fantasy 6 when?!?!?!
Final Fantasy 6: Brave New World
No, it's not the dystopian Aldous Huxley novel, the one that apparently got everything much more right than 1984, it's a Final Fantasy 6 romhack!
I have tried several times, it has to be four times I think, to play through FF6, but every time my runs just stranded somewhere. I got to the World of Ruin once, I got to the MAgitek Facility once... But it just never stuck with me! I always wanted to say I beat FF6 though, it feels like a landmark title, something that should be right up my alley, but it just didn't GEL with me. The system felt entirely too open, so much choice paralysis, totally broken and the way the ATB worked was a confusing mess where it was so hard to tell who goes when...
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| Vore |
This mod totally changes that! I really got into the game, developing my party, planning things out. I really love how they altered the Esper system and how every character now has a personalized selection between 2 to 8 Espers that dictate what sorts of spells they can learn and what types o builds you can lean into. Every character feels meaningfully distinct and every stat is actually worthwhile, there's a lot of interesting teambuilding choices to make and the game is hard enough for them to matter but not so hard to be punishing towards builds that aren't optimal. I should know, I beat the game! And of course it also helps that it's built on top of FF6, with a great soundtrack, an amazing antagonist, good setpieces and whatnot.
If you're a fan of FF6 or had a hard time getting into FF6, check this mod out! It really changed my opinion on the game, and it felt engaging all the way to the very final boss. That final battle with Kefka in particular was just immaculate, a moment of complete concentration, where every single action had to be carefully weighed lest utter ruin befall the party. Just beautiful.
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| Kefka, you gorgeous, mean sonovabitch. |
Alien Squatter
I also wrote a blog about this game! Go read it!! Surely this image will convince you to read it!
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| #Goals |
Superliminal
Super Duper High School Level Liminal is a weird, quirky and interesting first person puzzle game with non-euclidean spaces. The core gimmick of the game is that your perception can alter reality, any time you pick up and drop an object, its size is dictated by your field of view, meaning you're freely able to adjust the size of objects. There's also a lot of plain good visual trickery going on.
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| Can you spot the visual trickery?! Can you?!?! |
I actually replayed this game much later this year, with developer commentary on. I love it when games have a mode like that! Though I realize it doesn't work as well for all types of games, it works very well for games like Superliminal and Portal.
I'd honestly like for these to be more games like this, there's Antechamber as well. I'm sure there are probably more, so if you know of any, do tell me!
Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair
Ah, the sequel to the, in my view, much-too-maligned Yooka Laylee. This one's not a 3D platformer, but a 2.5D platformer. Gameplay is divided into a large number of thematic stages, each with two different permutations. The two permutations concept is executed very well in the game, every single stage has an altered form which takes the same basic stage but adjusts it in some form to make the gameplay feel entirely different. A stage could be frozen, or completely overrun by enemies, or upside down, it's different every time!
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| The game still has cursed tongue action! Yesss!! |
The game also has worldmap exploration between stages, and honestly I adore the worldmap exploration.
That all said... I never beat this game. The titular impossible lair lives up to its name. The game's sudden shift from a checkpoint-heavy, infinite-lives gameplay to a limited amount of attempts at the Impossible Lair before getting kicked out really took the winds out of my sails. Shame, as I'd enjoyed the game up to that point.
Honestly, I might've liked the original game more, but that's not meant to be a dig at this game, I really did earnestly enjoy both these games, I just liked the first one more! I do wonder what could be next for the series...
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| Don't give me those eyes, Laylee. |
Spyro Reignited Trilogy
From one 3D mascot platformer to another! The Spyro Remaster was something people were anticipating since they remastered Crash Bandicoot. Having played the original trilogy, I was looking forward to it myself!
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| Gnorcs are cute. Gnorcs > Rhynocs. |
And it's... Good. It's good. It is pretty clear from playing that every subsequent title is less polished than the last, but that's also kinda balanced by the first game being the weakest of the original series, even if it's one I did feel the most strongly about. It had its own kind of solitary charm which wasn't as prevalent in the more densely populated sequels.
Honestly it's a mostly faithful adaptation. Some changes are for the better, others for the worse. I'm glad I played it and had fun with it. If you enjoyed the original, chances are you'll enjoy this too. I think I got something out of playing it I wouldn't have gotten out of just replaying the originals.
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| Remake Sheila is still a mistake though. |
Oh, but also they kept the limited lives system, which sucks and is annoying when it does come up. It only came up during the infamous Tree Tops level, but it was tedious to backtrack when running out of lives and the fact it only mattered in one stage also shows how largely pointless the lives system is.
On the other hand, there's a lot of hot dragon daddies in the first game now. Oh, and there's GLORIOUS DUTCH VOICE ACTING YEEEES.
Griftlands
Do you like Slay the Spire? Because Griftlands is very similar to Slay the Spire.
Griftlands is a roguelike deckbuilder game, with the big point of distinction being that instead of making a combat deck, you're actually building both a combat AND a negotiation deck! Playing one of three distinct campaigns, Sal, Rook or Smith has to perform a random assortment of missions for various NPCs and along the way make friends or enemies while both negotiating and fighting their way through any hurdles that may arise.
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| Honestly the flavour for negotiations is great. |
Relative to Slay the Spire, Griftlands easily wins out in terms of presentation and worldbuilding. The setting of Havaria feels fleshed out and the writing is generally witty and clever. I find myself always eager when I find new dialogue because the player characters are all so charming in their own way.
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| >:V |
Much as I like those aspects of the game, I must admit the gameplay doesn't feel quite as tight as that in Slay the Spire. Having three characters with distinct card sets divided into both battle and negotiation cards means there's six whole suits of cards and while it's entirely expected for some cards to be ahead of or behind the curve, Griftlands is still in early access and some of the balancing is quite rough. This is most obvious with Smith, whose campaign is still in development.
I also do feel that Negotiations generally start to feel samey, quicker than the combat does anyway. There's less variation between types of enemies in negotiations, usually all members of one faction have the same negotiation style whereas different enemy types in the same faction do have distinct combat styles. Negotiations also always take the form of 1-vs-1 negotiations, unlike combat where you can have up to 4-vs-4 brawls. More variety in negotiations would be greatly appreciated.
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| Me begging for more negotiation types |
I still find Griftlands to be a game I keep returning to, and I hope that with further development the game will be even better. It can only get better, right? I eagerly await the modding scene too. There already is a mod called "The Democratic Race" which focuses entirely on the negotiation system and makes it a lot more varied and complex, exactly what I wanted!
Dicey Dungeons: MegaQuest and MoreFluff
Speaking of mods... Dicey Dungeons has mods. Let's talk about two of them.
More Fluff is a mod that simply adds a truckload of new items to the game, but otherwise leaves the game unchanged. This mod is highly recommended if runs of the game start feeling samey due to the limited itempool in the base game. With over 1000 new items, runs are much more varied than they used to be, especially in every sixth episode in which the most types of items spawn and a lot of new starting loadouts were added which use modded items, or simply new permutations of base game items.
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| Ah yes, the Pee Gun. The classic. |
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| Rammy is cute :3 |
I think this is one of the games which was gifted to me by a good friend who won some keys. I think. Or maybe he bought a bundle.
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| NANI |
GNOG is... weird. It's like a puzzlebox game, a very colourful puzzlebox game. With no dialogue, or any instructions, really. You solve a variety of themed buzzleboxes, each different from the rest. It's cute, it's charming. It's neat. Not something I'd buy, but something that's nice to pick up for free.
Pikuniku
Another game from that bundle, Pikuniku is a small little 2D platformer. I again do not have too much to say about it. It's cute, it's charming, it's not very long. It's something to keep yourself busy for a day. Neat.
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| How about a Pepsi? |
A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build
PUZZLES. Puzzles. This is another game from that bundle, a game somewhat like Sokoban, where you have to assemble snowmen.
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| Spoilers: You solve puzzles |
I actually quite got into this one, I think the mechanics for building the snowman work quite well. Rolling balls through the snow increases the size of snowballs and you need to stack the snowballs in the order from largest to smallest from bottom to the top. Again, a neat game. Nice freebie.
Flat Heroes
This one is quite unlike the other games from the bundle! This is a very high-pace game, where you play as a square that bounces, dashes and jumps around to avoid a flurry of obstacles in over 300 unique stages, with 10 boss battles tossed in as well.
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| Fuck this boss in particular |
It's energetic, it's frenetic, and it also has co-op! The co-op is especially fun, but the game's also still really good to play solo. Definitely something for people who are a glutton for difficult but rewarding gameplay where you will die a lot but dying is also really quick and you immediately jump back into the game.
Octopath Traveler
Full disclosure, I haven't beaten this game. I got about halfway through it, beating everybody's second chapter and... I'm just really not feeling it. Eh.
I much preferred the combat system of the Bravely series, this doesn't feel nearly as compelling as that one did. The ability to brave to make actions stronger doesn't compare to being able to brave to chin together multiple actions. I also just don't care much for the assortment of jobs, or... The characters and plot in general. Eh.
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| JACKANAPES |
Most characters and plots are just kinda boring, plodding and not interesting. I'd make an exception for the Dancer, and that's mostly just for how unexpectedly edgy it is compared to the more generic and trite other plots. I'll also give some credit to the Thief plot, the protag is kind of an angsty git, but in a fun way. Eh.
I'm sorry Octopath. I want to like you! But I just don't. You're too slow, too tedious. It's all just setting up for that one big turn, and honestly? EBF5 did it way better, and is much cheaper. And also looks better. Yeah, I don't care too much for the game's pixelated artstyle, it's generic. Music's good, but then I'd say most games on this list have some good themes. Eh.
Honestly it kinda gets me down on Bravely Default II as well, that one seems to take many cues from the combat system in Octopath rather than the system used in Bravely Default and Bravely Second... At least there are cute Goblins, but I bet like any terrible JRPG you for some reason cannot hug and befriend and make out with them...
YuGiOh Legacy of the Duelist
YUGIOOOOOOOOOOH!! Yes, YGO. YGO:LotD is a YGO simulator where you can both play through duels featured in the various animes, from Duel Monsters all the way up to the final season of VRAINS, as well as participate in online duels. The single player duels even let you play with decks based on the decks used by characters in the show. The playability of these decks varies greatly.
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| Without a doubt, the best deck in the game. |
The campaign being based on the animes is an idea I like, as well as the idea of using decks based on the decks used in the anime, but the implementation leaves much to be desired. The duels that were chosen seem random at best, the balance between duels where you play as the protagonist and other duels is way off, a lot of important and interesting duels get skipped while filler-y duels get included, and some of the duels are clearly favoring one side or have you play with or against decks that are just frustrating to pilot.
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| Don't you fucking dare cry, Yuya. |
The little cutscenes that surround the duels also vary in quality. Sometimes they do a decent job with conveying the banter and info from the anime, other times they totally drop the ball. The worst instance has to be Akiza's duel with Misty Tredwell, which has no explanation whatsoever!
The game also has online duels! Sadly, there's no real ranking system so you can get paired with anyone, whether they are playing a high-tier deck, a rogue deck or a crap deck. But hey, there's nothing stopping you from running degenerate decks yourself. How about FTKing your opponent?
YuGiOh Duel Links
ZEXAL'S COOL BUT WHERE THE FUCK IS MY BEST BOY VETRIX?! YOU BOXED HERALDIC BEASTS?
MOTHERFUCKERS.
MARDEK (Magic and Physical runs)
MARDEK!! Yes, it's MARDEK. Good old MARDEK. It's on Steam now! I beta tested the Steam version! So if you run into any bugs, well, oops!
I've played MARDEK so many times now already, I felt it was time for a different sort of challenge run than my previous no-reactions run. I settled on doing Magic-only and Physical-only runs! You can see a playlist of the Physical-only run here.
Honestly, MARDEK still holds up, but it's also kinda rough. You can really tell it's a work that gets better as it goes on, with its best aspects being the ending of chapter 3 and the build-up for it that was kinda smooched into the game at the last minute. Some of the character dialogue is good, some of it is cringy. A lot of the jokes genuinely hit, some are duds. But in the end? The game feels good to play. It really does.
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| Goznor... Home... |
I know MARDEK won't be completed, and after reading the notes about it? Well, I'm not even mad. The project sounds like it wouldn't have lived up to the hype, so maybe it's for the best that it ended up unfinished. Next time I'll play MARDEK, it'll likely be a modded version, since it seems there's some people making their modded enhancements of the game. But that's not going to be anytime soon. I want to wait just long enough for my replay to have that feeling of bittersweet sorrow when finishing it, knowing there'll never be more.
Ever thing to yourself "Gee, I wish I could date hot Goblin men at a beach party"? Of course you do. And that's why this is exactly the right game for you.
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| YES |
Featuring SIX Goblins to hang out with. SIX!! That's so many Goblins! All ready to hang out and... Maybe more?! Oh myyy.
Of course, we have to rank the Goblins. Of course we have to! It's imperative. It's crucial.
6. Rikkie: Beach ball engineer. Kinda starts off rocky, but isn't the designated jerk character, so it doesn't work quite as well.
5. Axel: Singing, precious bean. Competes with an even more precious bean, however.
4. Gideon: The most precious. Apparently a Gill Goblin, so probably mostly spends time underwater. Too pure to understand the concept of lust.
3. Rusty: The brooding Goblin with a sad past. Only talks in sign language. Very tender and sweet, when not being scary.
2. Myke: Ultimate dad and daddy. Responsible father and all-around great Goblin.
1. Copperwell: THE JERK. The biggest jerk. Total asshole. Problematic fave. 100% Best Goblin. Has a sad backstory. Too lusty to understand the concept of purity.
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| YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!! |
Alora Fane: Creation
Oh, AF:C. Maybe getting back into AF:C was a mistake. Making quests in this engine takes very long, yet it's impossible to share with people since the files aren't downloadable anywhere. What's the point of making things to an audience you can count on one hand? It's pointless.
Well, at least the Goblins are very cute. Extremely cute Goblins. Precious. Pure. Lovable. Cuddly. Hee.
I'll discuss the quests I made at the end of the blog.
Exit/Corners
Ah, Exit/Corners. If you've played the Zero Escape series and liked 999 in particular, I think this game should be right up your alley.
I've not actually played this game in 2020, I actually finished it earlier, but I simply neglected to discuss it in my other yearly blogs! Foolish of me, this game deserves more exposure!
Seriously, it's good! I'd rate this up there with 999, and that's no faint praise! I really enjoy the character and mystery writing here! The developer is also working on another project, which I look forward to.
AI: Somnium Files
AI: The Somnium Files is big and dumb and stupid and I love it. From the same creator as the Zero Escape series, it's totally unrelated to the other games. I'd say it's better than ZTD and VLR, but not quite at the level of 999.
The game gets good when it's good, and it sticks the landing, but some of the routes and some sequences drag on. It's especially bad if you do the routes in a specific order, the game lets you pick it, and it'd really be best to pick the route that gives the interesting path first. This same problem also happened in VLR and ZTD, but not quite so pronounced.
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| A+ for that smug grin |
Still, I like most of the characters. The main character sometimes goes into this typical, cringy "I'm a pervy anime protagonist!" shtick, and the other characters calling him out for it doesn't really change that the game keeps putting it in there over and over. But it's outweighed by the good stuff, I think. Just know that if it seems like the game doesn't focus much on the whole central mystery its opening seemed to build up to, it will eventually, you're just in the route where they don't do that for some reason.
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| AI approves of Aiba. |
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark
DO YOU LIKE FINAL FANTASY TACTICS? If you do, you'll like this. Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark feels like the lovechild between Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Tactics A2.
This game definitely scratches that itch for turn based tactics and in-depth job-based teambuilding. Especially when playing with the DLC that adds a few new jobs for humans and lets you also recruit the various types of monster enemies! The humans get a large array of full-blown jobs whereas monsters always have their innate toolkit and two from a large selection of subjobs of sort that round out their abilities. It was fun tinkering with both human and monster units, I'm impressed they were able to integrate them so well together!
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| KAWAS ARE PRECIOUS TURTLE GOBLINS AND THEY ARE ACTUALLY REALLY VIABLE |
What else is there to say? The game has a lot of difficulty customization options, I personally adjusted most to the maximum setting except for the enemy +X% stat increase slider and the permadeath slider, I kept those at the base 100% value and off respectively. The option to have enemy formations spawn with bigger formations and more difficult job combinations is particularly nice.
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| POGCHAMP REINER |
That said, while the gameplay is really good for most of the game, I did start to feel like I'd kinda finished the game when I finally settled on a roster of about 18 units with set jobs and such. At that point I still had some story and a bonus dungeon left, and much of the late parts of the game are dominated by specific types of enemies. Lots of demons and gunners near the end of the game.
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| To be fair, you can make a Cowboy Goblin. Sorta. |
The game's visual style seems to be controversial. I personally think it looks good, though I agree the human spritework in particular clashes with the rest of the game. Strange, since the spritework for the monsters is really great. I don't think the human faces and the animation of the sprites in particular catch the somewhat gritty feel the game's trying to go for? Hm.
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| My favourite class combination! |
Still, it's a great game overall! I thought the story was pretty good, kind of basic, but the writing was sufficiently witty. Nothing breathtaking quite like FFT, but then FFT didn't manage to stick the landing in the end, now did it? I definitely recommend this to anyone who has a hankering for a game like FFT or FFTA2.
Hypnospace Outlaw+
What a blast from the past, it's Hypnospace Outlaw! I played this one previously, but there was a big content update that warranted another try at the game. This time I even got a full 100% completion rate, hooray!!
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| DRIPP BOY!! |
So, does Hypnospace still hold up? Yes! I dare say the content update makes it even better, fleshing out some of the later parts of the game which always felt a bit unfinished in the original version. There's a lot of new pages and new music, and all of it fits in with the weird world of Hypnospace. It's still every bit as good as I remembered it to be.
Death and Taxes
Do you like Papers, Please? If you do, you might like this. Or, maybe not. Death and Taxes was one of the many games in the Racial Justice Bundle from itch.io, which really cranked up my amount of games played in 2020!
In Death and Taxes you spend every day deciding who lives and who dies. Sounds very dramatic, but the basic gameplay takes the form of getting paperwork assigned to your desk with instructions on how many people get to live and die. The choices you make will then influence your relationship with your boss, whose daily interviews are fully voices and I quite enjoyed, as well as the fate of the whole world.
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| Death is quite a looker ;o |
The way that work is that your choice of whether someone lives or dies will affect four different parameters: Ecology, Economy, Health and Peace. Often people's profiles contain clues on how Someone's continued life or their death might affect these parameters, whether some are random. And some people will affect these parameters more than others. In fact, one person's death might be enough to shape the outcome of an entire run...
That all said, I don't think the game's plot and atmosphere really catch the same level of immersion as Papers, Please did. In PP your role as a border guard in a sort of Eastern-Europe Pastiche in the Cold War era is pretty clear and understandable, whereas here you're just some supernatural paper pusher who was born just moments before the game begins and you never personally see any of the people you're judging. The most you're getting is a news ticker every day with some info on how your previous choices mattered and some ongoing stories with the people you're judging which are triggered by letting certain people live or die.
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| Yes, mom, I am awake. |
It's alright, it's decent, it's good for a run or three... But it's not at the same level of Papers, Please and it just feels so like it. I think this game could've used some more time in the oven, even though I did like the finished product and there are some good moment, it's never close to being as engrossing as Papers, Please could be.
Golf Peaks
Golf peaks is a relaxing little puzzle game where you have to put the ball into the hole using a preset number of actions, depicted on cards.
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| These levels get DEVIOUS |
It's a fun game, it doesn't overstay it welcome and it introduces new mechanics in every one of its worlds. Neat!
Last Word
This was one of the videogames from the big itch.io bundle, a game about the power of words set in an aristocratic manor. Combat takes the form of casual conversations and discourse, where it's all about building up and spending resources.
The choice to make the combat system focused around conversation something that also works its way into the game's setting is an interesting one. Words have actual power in this setting, beyond what they have in our world. It's not something I've seen before!
Overall I enjoyed it. The conversation system takes some getting used to, but I worked it out soon enough. And the plot's quite nice too, mostly being a mystery game. Again, a neat game!
Astrologaster
This is a weird one. This is a visual novel of sorts where you play as actual historical figure Simon Forman, an unlicensed doctor who uses astrology to diagnose and prescribe his patients, as well as give general life advice to his clients. Yeah, it's out there.
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| The best client. |
Every scene has a patient or client asking Simon Forman to do a reading of the stars, which take the form of a multiple choice question where your reading of the stars informs your answer. You'd have to use logic, common sense and real world historical knowledge to give the correct answers, though the correct answer isn't always the answer the client wants to hear, and your goal is to satisfy enough clients to get enough letters of recommendation to become an actual licensed doctor.
It's an interesting idea for a game, and it does feature various actual real historical figures. It honestly feels education and also fun... Is this... THE FABLED GOOD EDUTAINMENT GAME?! Yes! It is!
Speer
Speer is a simple 2D puzzle platformer where you use the titular Speer (Spear) to pierce objects and stick to walls as a platform.
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| This confirms it, Mania is always #420BlazingIt |
Uh, well, yes. There's not much else to say about this one! It's small, it's cute. It's good. Also quite difficult in later stages, some of these levels have tricky solutions combining snappy timing with puzzle-solving.
Ethereal
Ethereal is an interesting puzzle game whose main mechanic is difficult to describe, but feels very good to play. It's a game where you, as a square, can move horizontally freely, but can only move vertically by flipping through a single-tile wide wall. You use these movement options alongside various game mechanics to puzzle your way through the game.
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| So many bars to shift... |
Cardinal Chains
Ok this is the final puzzle game I've little to say about! Cardinal Chains is another crunchy puzzle game, where the goal is to make chains of numbers in ascending orders, marking every tile on the map without overlapping chains.
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| This shows it off, right? Right. Right? Right. |
One thing I do like is that the game intersperses its difficulty ramp with stages that are intentional breathers. It's a nice feeling to not have every subsequent level be a total stumper, it makes those levels that are extra difficult stand out all the more. It's a good design choice for a game like this that has a huge amount of levels.
WitchWay
I figured I'd end this section with the Bundle game I thought was the most polished: WitchWay! This is a very cute game, where you play a young li'l witch who has to delve her way out of a deep, deep well with the use of a magic wand that is able to control giant blocks. Usually in these games your ability to manipulate blocks as such is very limited, but the magic wand here gives a lot more freedom to manipulate the block from a distance and even while you're standing on top of one!
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| WitchWay? ThataWay! |
It's just a very charming game, it controls well, it's not too long, puzzles feel distinct and avoid being samey. There's various secrets to find, too, and a few collectibles. Just all around a good and endearing time. This one really stood out to me as something I'd like to see more of.
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| The game's also just very pretty and well-animated. Smooth. |
Shovel Knight: King of Cards
Man, King of Cards came out in December 2019? It feels much older than that... That's not to demean the game! I think this game is utterly brilliant. Just majestic, very befitting of the grandiose main character King Knight!
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| King Knight: Admitted Fairy |
The reason I put this here is that, well... It's just SO GOOD! It's such a good campaign, as became all the clearer to me by playing it without relying on the special subweapons or other gimmicks as part of a challenge run, and honestly? I grew to love King Knight's toolkit more than I had when I'd first played the game. He just feels great to control, and being forced to master these controls due to having nothing else to rely on really fortified my opinion on that.
DELTARUNE
HEY KID DO YOU LIKE UNDERTALE? DO YOU LIKE SANS? WELL LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT DELTARUNE.
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| GOOOOOD!! |
Deltarune is good. I replayed it this year, and it's still just real good. I really look forward to the game's full release, whenever that is.
Medabots Randomizer
Ah, Medabots. The GBA Medabots is a nostalgic game, one I've completed a few times too many. After a certain amount of time, you start to crave something new, something a bit more unhinged.
Introducing, the Medabots Randomizer.
The Randomizer puts a fresh new spin on the game, with various options to randomize the game's medals, the starting Medabot, and most important, the enemy lay-outs. This finally gives the game some more variety, since enemies will be using totally different configurations than they normally would. Of course, this isn't always exactly balanced... But that's all part of the fun! It also randomizes enemy portraits, which surprisingly reveals the game apparently has data for female Wheels and Multi-Legged Medabots, even though those don't actually exist in the game. It also seems every type of NPC has pre- and post-battle banter, even though a lot of them never Robattle. Interesting!
Sadly, the latter half of the game still starts to feel repetitive since the game keeps pulling from the same dataset of Robattlers, but you can always just re-randomize the ROM to get new and fresh opponents.
Pokémon Photonic Sun
I'd long intended to play one of the gen 7 games, and I've had my eyes on Photonic Sun and Penumbra Moon to do it. Made by the same creator as Eternal X and Wilting Y which I'd played in 2019, this is a similar difficulty ROMhack of Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.
Much like my previous run of Renegade Platinum, I decided to do a monotype run. Since the game's set in the 3DS era, a monotype Fairy team was absolutely possible, and the hack's Pokémon changes let me assemble quite a powerful team indeed. You can see the playlist of the hack's boss battles here.
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| The Squad© |
It was a neat ROMhack overall. Sadly the capabilities are limited due to the early stage 3DS romhacking is at, the game couldn't add custom events or change the battle style, meaning the game is sadly inundated with Single Battles, but aside from that the enemy team compositions are pretty good all-around. Nothing stood out as particularly unfair, and the totem battles were quite a challenge too, up until the point I got Curse on my Mimikyu, anyway.
Regency Solitaire
Oh no! We have to help matchmake Bella with dashing darling Worthington before she's wed off to that blundering, blustering beast of a brute Mr. Bleakley! Oh, Eric, you foolish stooge!
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| PoV: You arrive at a ball without your deck. |
What? You've no idea what I'm saying? You're busy on the internet? Poppycock, my dear! This is Regenecy England! Quickly fetch your Solitaire deck, there are matters to attend to, balls to prepare!
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| Grandpa... I will win using your special deck! |
This is quite unlike the games I typically play, but it was fun in its own way. The story is deliciously cheesy and the artwork is nice enough to look at. It certainly catches the flavour it's trying to go for. The gameplay itself can be surprisingly challenging too when playing on the game's hard mode, while the default normal mode offers a light and casual challenge.
Heroland
Well, it figures at least one of these many games would disappoint.
Heroland is a weird game where instead of playing as a group of ragtag heroes, you are a tour supervisor in a theme park where guests can pretend to be heroes. Heroes will act independently and every once in a while you can give them a command or feed them an item. It... Doesn't feel satisfying, honestly. It feels like you're just playing a babysitter, which is just not a fun gameplay loop at all. It's not helped by how sluggish and slow everything feels, I don't get why they went for an ATB system where everything feels chaotic and hard to keep track of despite the sluggishness, why not just a plain turn-based system?
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| Heckin'. |
It's not really helped by the game kinda just dumping you into the plot and making the first mandatory guest an annoying git who insists he's the hero. I can only assume the game's going to have an entirely too long arc where he learns to truly act like a regent should, or something. Why should I care about any of this? It's all just a theme park or whatever, the only reason the protagonist is stuck there is because he was conned into it by being made to break some supposedly priceless artifact he has to pay off. Meh.
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Oh hey, it's that adventure game with everybody's favourite gay couple, Sam and Max! Yes, the crazy Dog and Rabbity-Thing duo's original game release was something I'd intended to get to eventually ever since finishing the three Telltale Sam & Max Seasons, and it didn't disappoint. There's a lot that feels different, there's a lot more screens and a lot less hotspot density per screen for example, and the tone is quite a lot less raunchy than the Telltale games, but the Sam & Max spirit shines through as brightly as ever, no doubt due to Steve Purcell's involvement with the project.
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| WHEE |
I'd be lying if I said there were no puzzles that were pretty trial-and-error, try-everything-on-everything or some cases of pixel hunting, but I was able to solve most of the game on my own, only needing a guide twice or so. Overall though? A good game. A classic, even!
Axe Cop
Axe Cop. THE Official Hamster Republic Role Playing Game Creation Engine release of 2020. You might have heard of Axe Cop before, it was kinda big some years ago as that comic written by a 5-year old and illustrated by his much older brother. There was an animated series too, and all that.
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| It's out there. |
If you've seen my playlist then you'd know the game's a pretty traditional turn-based JRPG. You recruit party members as the plot advances, choose which stats to upgrade when they level up, beat enemies to earn exp. It's all fairly typical fare, though with Axe Cop flavour oozing from every orifice.
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| Taste the flavour. Hmm yes. |
The Axe Cop license is the game's biggest draw, the game was clearly a passion project for Red Triangle Games, there's references to every part of Axe Cop, from start to end, and the plot even manages to put its own spin on the setting, something that caught me off-guard as I'd been expecting it to be a simple retelling of the events of the comic.
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| Cluck, cluck, motherfucker |
The game does suffer a bit from having too many random battles in some areas, with no dedicated flee option in combat. It's a good idea to build the party around being able to swiftly tackle these normal battles, as the regular boss battles aren't exceptionally hard and should be able to be beaten regardless of your stat investments and team composition.
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| Ok maybe not this boss. This boss is HARD. |
The game's still getting some updates now and again, so I'll try to record anything else that does still come up. I'm not quite done with Axe Cop just yet, not until Axe Cop itself is entirely done.
Tenderfoot Tactics
What if you took a Turn Based Tactics game and added Goblins? You'd have a much better Turn Based Tactics game, of course. Add in deterministic battle mechanics as well and it's sounding like I might be talking about Telepath Tactics. Yet these two games almost couldn't be more different!
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| #420BlazeIt |
Tenderfoot Tactics is very unusual in its structure. The game basically drops you in the world, makes you visit a nearby tower for a tutorial, and then you're basically free to go wherever. Sadly, most of the world map is just empty. There's a few towering spirits here and there to talk and fight with, there's some towns with NPCs to interact with and there's various dungeons which can unlock new classes or drop powerful items. But it's very undirectional. The game doesn't even show you where you are in its various maps, you're meant to figure out where you are by cross-referencing your surroundings with the map. Easy enough when near water, difficult when you're in a giant landmass.
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| Gobbo Squad |
It's so different from how most tactics games structure their narrative. Tenderfoot Tactics barely has a narrative or characters, if there are then I must've missed them. It's really weird. Most of the lore is glimpsed from the short conversations between NPCs and descriptions of items, which seem to imply that at some point Goblins might've been slaves to Elves, but Elves don't seem to exist anymore? It's hard to know. I can't help but feel like I might've missed things, but I'm also not sure where to look since the game isn't going to just show me on the map where I missed a plot thread or anything.
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| Wholesome Gobbos :3 |
There also seems to be a mechanic of liberating towns from the encroaching fog, but every time you lose a battle or use a rest spot (which basically just alters your respawn location) the fog comes back again, so I accidentally just kept having all the towns perpetually invaded by fog... I also notices the giant spirits who you could talk with just disappeared at some point? Where did they go? Why did they leave?! The game does a poor job explaining a lot of these things, but also maybe they just don't matter? Weird.
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| Oh my god, shoes. |
So most of the game's just walking around and getting into random battles on the world map which take place in a randomly generated battlefield which roughly corresponds to the surroundings in the world map. These battles usually pit the player team of 6 Goblins against a larger number of enemies, the enemies scale with the party size and strenght. Then there's the special, bigger battles. These are either multiple back-to-back battles, or battles where enemies spawn in waves.
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| Uwao, gameplay!! |
The back-to-back battles are interesting and fun, sometimes they even force you to use a smaller team which can really change up the optimal strategies. The wave battles are incredibly annoying though, once all enemies are defeated a new wave of enemies will spawn after a few turns, and once they do spawn they often get a whole bunch of turns in a row to easily just kill one or two of my Goblins. The indicator for where the wave spawns is also incredibly difficult to understand, I wish they'd just highlight the tiles they'd spawn in instead...
I think the combat mechanics are particularly novel, the game doesn't bother having a huge amount of stats and whatnot to keep track off, equipment can only give HP, Power or give special traits to your skills, and skills are diversified by their power, range, AoE and special traits. It's also all 100% deterministic, there's no random critical hits, no random status ailments.
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| The terrain manipulation aspect is interesting. |
That said, I actually beat the game with only the basic jobs you start the game with. Three Goblins doing ranged attacks, two acting as frontline defenders and one acting as healer and support. Some combinations of items and skills are particularly powerful, the most obvious being ones that hit all targets within Line of Sight, which is very exploitable.
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| Fair and Balanced |
So, what did I think? Honestly, I did enjoy it. But I feel like I could've enjoyed it a lot more? I spent a lot of time dicking around unsure what to do early in the game, and at some point I basically said "screw it, I'm going to finish the game now" and it kinda just let me. It feels very experimental, and some of those experiments paid off whereas others did not.
Honestly, the fact I've had so much to say about this one relative to others says a lot, I think. There's a lot of good ideas here, but it doesn't always gel with me. That doesn't mean it's bad by any stretch, but it's not for everyone due to its unorthodox structure within the genre.
Zelda CD-i remastered
Time for the best game of the year. I am nothing if not an ardent CD-i Zelda apologist, so finding out that someone remastered these games using the original art assets but a new engine? That was just moment of pure, divine euphoria. I had been hoping to have an excuse to pick up these two games again at some point, and this was the best possible excuse.
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| El Classico |
Honestly, what more is there to say?! What a beautiful world we live in. Here, have some more screenshots. You know you want them.
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| Lady, I'm scared of you. |
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| Pogtorok |
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| [chiptuned sounds of Mania squeeing] |
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| >:] |
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| Undignified! |
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| 👄 |
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| Comfy levels: Me, playing Zelda CD-i |
Bug Fables
Whew, ok, this is the final game on the list. And what a game to end it on. Bug Fables is basically the Paper Mario game fans of PM64 and PM:TTYD were clamoring for ever since the series changed course. It wears its inspiration on its sleeve, but it also continually strives to not only emulate but also improve on its predecessor.
And it totally nails it. It gets it RIGHT. It knows what it's doing and does it well. And I can respect that in a game. A clear vision with a proper execution. Beautiful.
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| Me, 2019, Colorized. |
As is typical for these games, the game does start off a bit slow, but as the game continues more and more options and builds and side content opens up and the game just keeps getting better. Especially during chapter 4 it feels like suddenly you can do so many new things, and I love those genuine feelings of exploration.
Also, I just adore the world they crafted here. They really do properly treat it as a world inhabited by high-sentience bugs, it's not just a gimmick like the paper theming in Paper Mario, it's something that's actually baked into every aspect of the setting and drives aspects of the plot and whatnot. Plus, there's just a lot of cute bugs in game.
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| ALSO THERE IS A CARD GAME |
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| THEY EVEN HAVE A YUGI BUG. YEEEES. |
Media Funfest
Hm, it does seem I've been following less shows than last year! I really ought to get back to watching more of those, I'm currently not really following any shows... I do plan to watch JoJo 5 eventually, I guess, but that's probably going to be some months from now.
Now in its 11th season, I will confidently say that Bob's Burgers has still got it. This show just keeps trucking on, being good and wholesome and just so charming. Ah. What a good show. Peak comfort watching.
Ace Attorney Season 2
Oh, right, I did watch this. Hm. Honestly, this is a step up from the first season. That's not to say that they come even close to surpassing the actual show, of course. But covering one game instead of two games in a single season certainly gave them more breathing room. That said...
THEY BUTCHERED 3-3. THEY TOTALLY BUTCHERED RECIPE TO TURNABOUT. Uuuugh. Why did they include a whole FILLER ARC, but also rush through actual content from the game itself?! Just to suck off Edgeworth?! Stupid!
Duck Tales (Season 3)
Ah, Duck Tales. Recently news came out that the show won't be renewed for a fourth season. A shame, since it seems the showrunners had ideas enough to make a fourth season. I can only hope the season 3 conclusion feels satisfying.
My expectation? Well, season 3 so far has been building up to what could very well be an exciting conclusion. I wasn't sure whether S.H.U.S.H. would hold their own as antagonists at first, but a focus episode on its main leader was promising.
As for the episodes themselves, it's about on par with the previous seasons I'd say. Some real good ones, others are kinda meh. My favourite had to be the one where Donald got everybody stuck in a sitcom reality, that was a real trippy one.
Death Note
Ah, Death Note. Classic anime, right? I'm glad this one was suggested to me, it was fun watching this one. This one really starts off strong, a lot of intrigue and all that. I do think it loses some of that when Misa becomes part of the core cast, and of course the second part of the series also drops off, but I still really enjoyed watching this show. The dubbing was also really good.
And then there's the movie. Let's not talk about the movie. It's a silly movie.
JoJo 4
Ah, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It felt good to get back to this after taking a break after the third part. Part 4 really blows it out of the park, it's easily my favourite of the series thus far. Just a real fun cast and good antagonists. They also really upped the utter absurdity of the stands in this one, especially near the end of the part.
YuGiOh ZEXAL
Oh boy. The big one. Yu-Gi-Oh ZEXAL. I took my sweet time with this one, taking frequent breaks. But in the end, I think this was a good show.
Now that's not to say it's always good, this is definitely a show that gets better as it keeps going. ZEXAL can be divided into roughly into six chunks, much like GX was divided into four seasons.
Pre-World Duel Carnival
This is the typical sort of first arc that YGO sequels these days have, introducing the friend squad, the rivals and offering only minor glimpses at best into the villains. The show doesn't really put a good foot forward here, Yuma starts of being pretty insufferable and doesn't have Jaden's dub-induced sass to cover up for it. The obligatory female lead basically just exists to dispense lines such as "YUMA!!!" and "Yuma...". Bronk doesn't really fill much of a niche at all, Caswell's kinda just there, and Flip is like putting Weevil in Yugi's friend group, a terrible idea. But there is a spark of hope...
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| CATHY CATHERINE |
Cathy Catherine is best girl. Too bad she doesn't really do much other than play second fiddle to Tori, despite being much better on account of making many terrible cat puns, and being an inexplicable catgirl for no reason.
Really though, this one was pretty hard to get through, I think Astral did a lot of carrying here, his frequent observations were a nice recurring gag. There's also some early set-up for Shark and Kite, the two rivals of ZEXAL, though they get better later on.
World Duel Carnival Preliminaries
THIS IS WHERE THE SHOW GETS GOOD. WHY? THIS GUY.
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| VETRIIIIIIIIIX |
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| VETRICES |
Oh, right, there's also Anna. She's introduced here. She's good. Aside from that, though, there's a lot of skippable stuff here, just a whole lot of throwaway, forgettable duels. The duel writing really starts to show its hand here, most characters only use their main deck to turbo out their boss monster and protect/revive it with spells and traps. It's a big step down from the more dynamic duels in GX, sadly.
World Duel Carnival Finals
The culmination of the first half of the show. I'd say most everybody performs their roles well here, or at least the characters that matter do. Vetrix and his family all perform well and get good conclusions. The main trio of Yuma, Shark and Kite finally get their big team-up, even secondary characters like Dextra and Nistro get some moments to shine here. And we finally get to see Vetrix duel and completely dunk on some enemies, and it's glorious.
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| Damn bro, you got the whole squad laughing |
Barian Invasion
The second half of ZEXAL is off to a slow start, there's a lot of episodes here that are just variations of "Girag possesses someone to duel Yuma", which honestly gets really dull. This would've been a good time to show off Yuma's friends dueling and holding their ground, they've barely done anything which is a massive downgrade from the friendsquads in GX and 5Ds.
Once things het going though, things get going. ZEXAL's second half cuts out all the excess fat and pretty much every episode from that point on will either advance the plot or at least have interesting team-ups. Vetrix and Faker make way for the Barians, who all get some development in their own right and have neat designs as well. But there's one Barian who stole my heart.
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| Chonky |
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| Vactor makes so many great poses and faces |
Mythirian Number Hunt
This is the part where all the Barians get their backstory fleshed out, and the whole conflict between Yuma and Astral on the side of Astral World against the Barians of Barian World is made more complex than the Good vs Evil it seemed to be at first, especially with some revelations regarding a certain core cast member. Mostly this is just set-up for the final and best arc of the series...
Barian Emperor Onslaught
This is where everything and everyone comes together for just a whole streak of back-to-back great duels. Everything from the duel between Kite and Heartland to the final episode is just *chef's kiss*. This is YGO at its peak, culminating in a duel between Yuma and Astral that was just so incredibly hype. Yuma started off being probably the most annoying and incompetent protagonist, but this late in the series he's honestly great, he's a very clearly defined character who just wants to make friends and wishes he wouldn't have to have all these do-or-die duels. The poor boy deserves a break and goes through so much before he finally gets one.
This is where everything and everyone comes together for just a whole streak of back-to-back great duels. Everything from the duel between Kite and Heartland to the final episode is just *chef's kiss*. This is YGO at its peak, culminating in a duel between Yuma and Astral that was just so incredibly hype. Yuma started off being probably the most annoying and incompetent protagonist, but this late in the series he's honestly great, he's a very clearly defined character who just wants to make friends and wishes he wouldn't have to have all these do-or-die duels. The poor boy deserves a break and goes through so much before he finally gets one.
They even have Yuma do the facial distortion! Yes, some good old classic YGO facial distortion!
They even bring back Vetrix! He doesn't do much, but he's there! Great!
All in all, I am glad I watched ZEXAL. It took its sweet time to get going, but once it gets going there's no stopping. YGO shows have a problem with not being consistently good, but thankfully ZEXAL's a show that just kept getting better and better.
Webcomics
Oh yes. We're going there. This is something I'd planned to blog about in more detail earlier this year, but I didn't really get around to that. Instead, I'll briefly talk about them a bit here. Good? Good.
Order of the Stick
Man, I've been following this comic for years now. Like, over half a decade. I know I got into it back when the Order was still in the desert, and now we're a over a whole book's worth further. And there's probably still a lot left!
I really can't sing this comic's praises enough, it starts off pretty shallow with a gag-of-the-day style, but it quickly gets better and better once the actual plot threads are established. The humourous tone never goes away, either. The comic is still regularly funny, but it's also just got tight character arcs and interesting narrative developments. It also just looks very good, it uses its stick figure style very well, though this is something you couldn't tell from the first few pages alone.
I really look forward to seeing the conclusion to this one. I'm sure it will only contain good things for Best Boy Redcloak, Savior Of Goblinkind And Just An All-Around Swell & Unproblematic Figure. Ah, Redcloak. Redcloak, Redcloak, Redcloak. I just hate loving to hate you. But lovingly.
Goblins
Oh boy, this hot mess. This hot mess which I adore. This brutal, needlessly dark and edgy hot mess. A beautiful hot mess. Yes! I put this one off for years, but eventually it had to catch up with me. I had to know. I had to read, NO, experience the sensorium that is... Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes.
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| Crying Is Not Enough |
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| Don't worry, the Goblins are EXTREMELY competent |
But there's also actual adventurer group, they're doing stuff too and get a lot of screentime! And they split up and join together, and meet new people, and people die brutally and get horribly maimed, and there's also ANOTHER Goblin who is just very sad and angsty and he kills a bunch of Goblins gruesomely and hasn't been relevant for like, six years? Maybe more?!
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| TMW you realize you're irrevelant |
Did I mention gruesomeness yet? The comic never really shows any detailed gore, but, whew, it does not shy away from depicting some pretty gruesome deaths or mutilations. Especially of Goblins. It's GREAT. It's amazing. There's not actually been much of that recently, hopefully there'll be more soon though.
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| Me when said gruesomeness happens |
Anyway, Big Ears is best boy and is A Gay Male Goblin, so he's clearly the ultimate pinnacle of ultimacy. Best character, 10/10, and has a totally ironic name in light of recent events.
ANYWAY FOR REAL: WANNA SEE MY ALBUM OF GOBLIN TORTURE? This is the true test of whether you think I'm exaggerating or not!
Ok now for something that doesn't contain Goblins. Heresy, I know, but this one seems to have flown under the radar. It's a webcomic adaptation of Eearthbound, which is currently up to the battle with the Diamond Dog, the final of the Your Sanctuary bosses.
Honestly it's just a good adaptation of the original, though as is usual it's hard to tell from the start. This one's also been running for a long time, I'm reasonably confident I first found out about this a decade ago. It's come quite a long way since then, and if Moonside was any indication, the confrontations with Ness's Nightmare and Gigyas are going to be amazing.
One point of criticism has to go to Tony's character, who was flanderized into Jeff's annoying and clingy wanna-be boyfriend. Thankfully he gets much better in his later appearances since the author realized it's a very poor way to adapt the character, but it's still a pretty bad stain on an otherwise uplifting webcomic.
Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa: Quests
Abandon all hope, ye who enter. The time for penance has come. The door of destiny has opened. Gaze into the abyss, a hole where my heart once was. The end times are upon us.
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| gob gob |
EVIL Quest
Ah, EVIL Quest. I covered this one in a video. This one is interesting due to how long it took to make, I started making this one in 2013 and only worked on it very intermittently. Finishing the foundations I set in 2013 all the way in 2020 was fun, and it also helped that the quest had a very simple premise to work off of: You're an evil overlord lording over your evil castle. Except of course you're playing as a total goof and none of the minions seem to be particularly evil. Most of them are Goblins, even, and we all know Goblins are pure and sweet souls. I didn't say gentle, because Ogres are the gentle ones.
The best part has to be all the Goblin Guards, I stuck as many as I could in here, all with delightful Goblin-y dialogue. I'm also very fond of the elongated Zero Escape joke at 49:35, I think I emulated the writing of that series well enough. That one was pure joy to write.
I suppose there's the ending too. That's a weird one. Throughout the whole development of the quest I'd genuinely not had an idea of how to end it, I figured out soon enough to let each henchman give the player an item and use that as a way to ensure the player can't immediately end the quest, but the actual events once those items are gathered? That was one I came up with while taking a lunch break walk at work. Honestly, it's such a whiplash, it's pretty great. And then it's almost immediately completely undermined and deflated. Amazing.
As for the characters in the quest... Despite the ending, I did find the goofy version of Wile E. Vile amusing to write for. I imagine that if somehow despite everything I do at some point make the Sorrowlad Gallery Quest, he'd be in it.
Destiny of Lumiluxissime
Ah, the epic conclusion(?) for the Lumiluxissime and Denarius saga. Finally we get a glimpse into the horribly stifling homelife of Lumiluxissime, learn entirely too much information about Denarius's brother, get some resolution for the age-old Denarius-vs-Mania conflict, a redeemed Princess Poole and we finally discover why Lumiluxissime chose to be with Denarius in the first place.
There is a lot I like in this quest. I think pretty much everybody's on-point here, everybody with the exception of... The main antagonist. Oops! I honestly bit off more than I could chew here, I'd long had this idea that the antagonist of the sequel to Honeymoon Quest should have a sort of inverse thinking, where they thought Lumilixissime wasn't good enough for Denarius instead of vice-versa, while also being Lumiluxissime's boss despite being a Goblin.
The results in this quest are... Very mixed. I rewrote a lot of the dialogues with Antoninianus and I'm still not really satisfied with them! The blatant overtones going on between Antoninianus and Denarius don't help things either, I'm juggling way too many ideas and concepts. Antoninianus should've just been some pretty generic paladin leader guy, it turns out in the end there's a sort of man-behind-the-man anyway. Then I could've saved Antoninianus for another quest. Ah well.
I do like the rest of the quest though! I really like the writing for the other NPCs, and Denarius's increasing anxiety and paranoia. There's a lot of good examination dialogues too, a return to form after various quests without those.
So, what's next for Denarius and Lumiluxissime?! I've had ideas float around in my head for a "Destiny of Antoninianus" quest, which interests me, but would require me to put decent effort into the writing. I imagine that one would mostly take place betwen Antoninianus and Denarius, with some breaks of banter between a terse Lumiluxissime and a quirky Bellestrella.
I also just can't get enough of Denarius and Lumiluxissime, so I feel like once I resolve their outstanding drama I'd like to include more of them as side characters in other quests. They seem important and notable enough to appear in the Gallery episode, the idea of having Denarius and Globin' interact honestly amuses me. It'd also be a good chance to get some more PG wholesomeness from them rather than the usual raunchiness.
And honestly the very final closing scene of Destiny of Lumiluxissime still gives me feelings. It's much less in-your-face than the usual way I do closing scenes and I like how it both keeps the door open on the characters while also serving as a good enough resolution: Even if things get rough with others, Denarius and Lumiluxissime still have each other to depend and rely on. How tender. How sweet.
AND THEN THEY FUCKED.
Art Quest: Van Gob
And now, for something completely diferent. This idea just came to me suddenly, what if I made a quest like that quest with the SAD DRAGON among all the MAD GOBLINS, but instead of some wimpy-ass Dragon, you were a chadly Goblin. Boom, instant gold.
Making a quest totally separated from the rest of my extremely loose continuity was fun, especially since most of the cast was Goblins speaking in a rather weird Goblin-y fashion. Clearly they're much more advanced than we are, since they realized pronouns are bad and that more syllables is always worse than less syllables. They're also better because they're Goblins which means they're cute. It also let me envision what that sort of Goblin community would even look and be like. Like having a base-8 counting system since Goblins seem to only have 8 fingers and toes, or seemingly not having a system to track time, or everybody having names that just describe their functions in society. It'd be fun to have them interact with someone from the outside and think all the things we find normal and usual to actually be bizarre.
I do like how very much unlike Sorrowlad, in Art Quest the main plot kicks off early. Writing the concluding segment here was a lot of fun, and I felt like it was reasonably built-up. There's nothing quite like kicking a Goblin when they feel at the top of the world, is there? That's how you show you like a fictional character, by making them suffer~
This quest also already sets up a lot of plot threads I was planning, though as with Sorrowlad there's some threads I only thought up while working on the second one. The first quest did nonetheless establish pretty much the entire core cast of the series, were I ever to finish it.
Art Quest: Shaman
This one certainly was interesting to make. Usually in my quests there's not that much discord between members of the player party, I think it mostly happened in Dutch Quest, but that was a gag quest anyway. Here there's constant bickering and whatnot between Van Gob and Shaman, though they do loosely reconcile in the end, I imagine there's still some lingering awkwardness. It should be clear from some lines of dialogue that Shaman knows more than she's letting in on.
Oh, right, I guess it's never really stated which Goblins are male or female. Well, as per the usual Mania Standard, every Goblin can be assumed to be a Gay Male Goblin unless proven otherwise. How does that make sense, surely that can't be a good reproductive strategy? Well, Goblins don't know either. It Just Works. Clearly we have much to learn from them.
I like a lot of the writing in this one, most of it came together swiftly enough, though the final segment did take a lot of writing effort. This one is certainly wordier than the previous one! I imagine a third quest, should one ever come, will not be as wordy or open as this one. It'll also pair Van Gob up with the Gobbo Guard, who is much more mellow than Shaman. I actually do have rough plans for the sequence of events in such a quest, should I ever make it. I also have a rough plan for the order the rest of the series would pan out in, up to and including the ending and answers to burning questions like what happened to Van Gob's mom.
But, well, we'll see if I ever get to that.
Tea Time
SUDDENLY... THE MAYOR.
This was a weird and sudden one. The idea just popped into my head: The Mayor and Ugh having some tea time and oops it's all romantic confessions. Is anyone even surprised at this point? Every work I make is heading towards a singularity, and that singularity is Gay Goblinfaces.
Anyway, this was fun to make. Ugh and The Mayor are fun characters to write, and it's neat to explore ideas that wouldn't really make sense for like the Sorrowlad main quests, it'd be kinda silly if he had to intervene to socially engineer a team time date or whatever. Though I could easily see Sorrowlad eventually grow to have a sort of protagonist problem where he starts thinking everything has to happen when he's around to witness and influence it.
This quest also contains a vague hint about something!!
I guess this does beg the question whether I'll ever continue the series properly? Honestly, I don't know. Don't count on it, I guess, unless I say so. The next quest for the series would be Kitty Sitting, which would mainly star Globin' as the playable character, followed by the much-fabled Gallery Quest which would introduce some new characters and really kick off the plot, of sorts. A lot of that stuff was planned between the creation of the first and second quests, and has undergone revisions in my head since. I still sometimes think up new ideas and think to myself "yes, that works much better!".
Creating Stress
Honestly, I'm not sure whether getting back into AF:C was good for me or not. I'm glad I got to make these four quests, but... It was a lot of time and effort making these, which turned into stress when I finally finish them and nothing really happens. There's a little satisfaction to be gained in playing them, but if there's no real audience for these creations then they might as well be worthless. Or even worse than worthless, since they cling to my mind like an anchor.
That's the reason I stopped making them after the second Art Quest, with the exception of Tea Time which I made in the span of a single evening. It's just not worth all the mental tax, too little benefits for all the costs. Maybe if the engine was actually public and I could easily share it with people, but no.
2021
Oh boy, I bet 2021 is going to be just peachy-keen! Yes, just an uneventful, fun romp for the whole family. Even little Jimmy.
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| Oh. |
Here's a list of things I could do in 2021, maybe.
THE LONGING: A strange real-time game where you play as a Gremlin-like figure and wait a lot. Seems cute, something I was gifted so I owe it to play through this one.
Axe Cop: There's still some content updates for this game, I plan to cover the boss battles in videos. We'll see if Best Fairy Ever will make mincemeat of them or not, oh yes we will.
Sam & Max Remaster: Season 1 was remastered! I played season 1 back in 2018, I believe? Feels so long ago... It's gotten a big visual tune-up, so I'm looking forward to stepping into the world of wacky zaniness again.
Heartbound: Is this one still in Early Access? I was gifted this game, when it's out of EA, I will play it. Looks very inspired by Earthbound and Undertale, I wonder how many games of that sort there will be the coming years!
Smile for Me: Another gifted game to play this year! I seem to have a habit where I am less likely to play games I was gifted or received for free, perhaps since I don't have the self-enforced need to justify my purchase through play?
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: I got this game in, uh, 2019? Or 2018? It was like 80% off or so. I should play this! I wanna kick some Goblins... Tenderly, of course. Loveingly.
Iconoclasts: Same story as the others here, I got this game but haven't played it yet. I should! I must!!
Those Homestuck Visual Novels: Maybe play these? These shouldn't run into the problem I had with Hiveswap. It has been a long time since I read Homestuck though... I'll give them a maybe.
JoJo Part 5: It's coming.
Dorohedoro: I've heard good things about this one. Not sure whether I'll watch this alone or not. We'll see.
Conclusion
Sheesh, this one turned out longer than last year's, which was already longer than all the yearly roundups before it... Well, I guess that's to be expected! Let's see if I can do the same next year.
I seemed to be so excited in last year's blog! Wowie! That feeling is not here right now, though. Did 2020 get to me and kill my inner child and replace it with morbid cynicism? Who knows! I still want to do these yearly roundups though, even if it's somewhat obligatory. It's good to have these things to look back on in years to come, I think. Nothing quite like admiring your own work, after all. Well, when you're Mania, anyway, and make incredible things. Too bad you can't all be Mania. Would be a better world if you all were.
Folks, be more like me next year. Do it for me sake. That's an order.
