UrLocalBanktoad and Nerdietalk have already gone through the trouble of accounting most of the experience of the Mod in its glory and attempt so you can read their entries on the subject for that. Between the both of them, you'll find a sympathetic and sentimental portrait of the mods goals with some reservations made for the lack of tutorialization on certain aspects (for instance the lack of explanation on superguard being added or the tranferrence of badges you cant hold to the shop). I'm particularly moved by Nerdietalk's sentimentality as an experience of want from limitations. Only being able to play something like this for a couple hours between hotels, never being able to sit down and carve through it until years later.

I have to admit that my experience was somewhat similar, but mainly for TTYD. I would play through a decent portion of it at family that babysat me going through dysfunction where I had a moment to play through it quietly as the divorce was proceeding. I suppose they left the console and games behind for a bit during the initial move. It wasn't until I was about 15 or so that I had been able to sit down with the gamecube during winter and play through it more properly. I had a similar experience with Windwaker, I always had an opportunity to play the stealth section at the fortress on various friends master disc over the years but couldn't sit down properly with it until I was also a teen during a stormy winter. Yet, due to the torments of my growing up I can't suture my childhood to myself. For instance I would have to nap on the sofa waiting for my family to pick me up from the babysitter, and I would have to hear a terrifying cry and anguish as those 2 children I played with were lashed by a belt under inquiry of who wrote my name on the wall. Neither of them admitted to doing it, as their cries turned to sobs. Moments like this of such extreme violence and terror were peppered throughout my upbringing. For instance another game I remember being enamored by was Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights, but the person I got to play it with most was my middle school tormentor, who saw me as a dart board for their own mad sadism. So my experiences with enjoying the game were bullioned by a sense of queasy unease. I feel like I have incomplete data always, have to reexperience things again, in reference. I can't take my childhood joy for granted, it may have been a ruse, a mirage of entertainment. For instance, is Luigi's Mansion a game I would have always enjoyed or is it just a hackneyed Resident Evil? I could never have played Resident Evil before Luigi's Mansion in the way other kids might have, because my parent's were strict about following the entertainment ratings, despite my common protests. I think they really were afraid I may have become catalyzed to violence in a post-columbine environment. Nonetheless, my sense of the arts always felt like they were being held back from full potential.

As a result of this upbringing, I feel constantly that I need more data to be sure, and while this has always been itching at the back of my mind this specific sensation has actually gotten a little extreme over the past year or so as a result of losing contact with most of my gaming peers. I have to do more of the investigation myself to make sure I 'get it right'.
For instance, I could have played through and written about my love of TTYD a long time ago if I didn't have this sort of hangup, but I have already reason to suspect Mario as a false idol of my gaming childhood due to both the hidden-in-plain-sight artificiality of the main character (A 'blue collar' monarchist italian in the 21st century? Come on...) and more evidently the endless subjugation by the corportate empire of Nintendo, which takes particular ire to piracy, a much needed device in order for lots of folks to remember the history. This reservation may seem extreme, but it was ultimately warranted.

See, TTYD mod changed the gameplay of Paper Mario, but didn't touch the pacing and the story much at all. From that story I found out a dirty secret. TTYD is just a soft reboot of most of the beats from Paper Mario! The first party member is a Goomba that gives you explanation of the world around you. Each chapter is split by an intermission scene of peach messing about in Bowser's domain to meddle his plans. There's even the whole matter of having to collect star crystals. TTYD is just a facelift for the gamecube of a game that came out only 5 years prior to the point that it riddles holes through the whole of that game. Common parlance would refer to this as a 'lazy reboot' and while I wouldn't go that far it is massively disappointing. In part because the story of the first game wasn't more than your typical neocolonial hero's journey tale in which you're affronted with a roster of 7 characters over the course of your journey who have about 1 or 2 dynamic arcs to speak of between all of them. That is to say almost the whole journey is on autopilot. Even throughout the story mario is already known as a celebrity and people expect him to fix their problems. None of the other characters besides mario really matter. Bowser's whole plan is so clearly telegraphed as hubris from the very beginning, and every single boss seems to work for them. There's one particularly damning scene where Mario finds the lost shaman sibling Merlumina trapped in ice towards the end of his journey, and as Merlumina begins to tell her backstory Mario falls asleep thus completely abridging the moment and withering any sense of stakes. The player has long ago already been tunnel visioned, the plot doesn't need to do anything to satisfy anymore. To make it worse, this tired trope was already done once before by mario towards another shaman.

Actually it's sort of interesting in the sense that I can't point to an earlier title in which there was enough of a characterized egomania to Mario. Sure, even in the original game back in 1985, the various instances of him wearing a hat with his own name, and the fact that all the nintendo sports titles had his name bolted to the front implied such a character flaw, but it was always the implied text, never made explicit. This game makes it explicit by going so autopilot in this way. It begins to articulate a hero worship mario, one haunted by narcissus. It should come as no surprise then that one of the last enemies Mario fights in this game is the Duplighost, copying the image of him and his partner. This is utilized to quiz mario about his own team, but even in the fights they curiously never copy him. As if to say that his image is so sacred and pristine that it can't be copied. A damning implication of where his character was heading.

Despite all of what I've said about the character of Mario, Paper Mario is not a soulless exeperience. Taken as a series of standalone chapters it has a neat saturday morning cartoon sense to it. A lot of the locations are well realized and surreal with puzzles that test you without deeply irritating you. There will be at least 1 area you go through in this game that is totally iconic. For me that was the Chapter 6 flower fields chapter. In which you had to resolve through the flaws and dramas of the various plants in order to make the sun happy and plant a seed towards the clouds. It was an iconic back and forth throughout the level. It's far from the only chapter I thought worked great as a setpiece. In fact this game strives in general at setpiece designs, with a special focus on the character animations and large areas to make each world feel well realized. The mod helps here to, I won't find the replayability that others suggest, but by choosing a higher difficulty I felt well tested by the final bosses in each chapter. Yet the game ultimately felt asthmatic due to its main character having such an apparent case of main character syndrome. As a result of this contrast I felt completely spent by the end of my journey with the game, I was basically running away from every fight or using the final star power to end them early in chapter 8. The game felt like a party that was going on for too long by that point.

You know what game feels unpolluted in comparison? Super Mario RPG. There are many reasons as to why but one worth bringing up here is that it showed me a version of Mario that was authentically endearing. Rather than the blissful automaton I grew up with, Mario in that game was stressed and frantically pantomime to others in order to catch them up to speed. He was in a hurry, but constantly trying to help those along the way. The world didn't so readily revolve around him and there was a gung ho chutzpah in all his actions. He didn't have somebody explaining everything the world either. It just existed as a mystery, and he had to work with his companions regardless of their pre-established character. All of the self confidence the companions in Paper Mario is under duress there, and they aren't doled out nearly as quickly. I think this is a result of the fact that Mario as a Nintendo franchise was not yet sitting on its laurels truly by this point. The reason I enjoy Super Mario RPG (although admittedly I haven't finished it yet) is the same reason I enjoy Mario 64. There's a haptic cartoon bellowing feedback to the character in these earlier titles. It feels like I'm embodying somebody who is actually intent on achieving his goals. One of my favourite examples of this is how if you hit the lava in 64, he would scream and you can hover him towards land again desperately before he dies and if you caught him from this situation he would cover his ass say ow and run around for a bit. I love this because in the later games you would die on contact or not be able to even imagine bouncing back out of the lava most of the time and it wouldn't be as loud. In this one he is being tested to his limits and you have to work with him to get him to the end.

I think there's literally only 1 explanation I can give for why I feel ok being this mean towards the game. The thespianism of the game adjusted with a mostly silent protagonist would have worked miles better if it was Kirby at the wheel. In literally all ways Kirby and his world would have been more appropriate for this affair, but because of commercial uncertainty Miyamoto would never have signed off on that. There's lost potential there. Even one of the main writers on Paper Mario, Kensuke Tanabe, had a huge hand in a lot of the Kirby games prior to this point. Which may explain why a lot of the game feels 'Kirby-esque' in retrospect. The fixation on gormet food and endless appetite. The beautiful animations and startling encounters. The breakneck pace of going from place to place. Yet instead Kirby is articulated as an imaginary 'villian' to mario's success....

The complaint I made earlier about Mario falling asleep during the shamans story has duplicated through this process of close analysis. See, in that same chapter, one focused so studiously on 'mirroring' and the ominous crystal castle to be explored within, there's a new enemy that mario fights called the Duplighost. A enemy who needs to take a while to copy the abilities and face of the opponent before they fight them. But curiously, Mario is never copied directly in combat. Mario is never made to fight mario, he is only made to either discern mirror versions of his substitutes. His own image is too pristine and immune to have that happen. In order for Mario to succeed, Kirby needed to be ostracized as inferior. In order for Mario to succeed, Mario needed to be glorified. These two actions weld together as one, they are inseperable. He needed to be a walking statue of his own righteousness, and needed an identifiable mimicry with which to beat down via his hammer. A weary paladin who's unbridled righteousness is forced to make all before him conform to his whims. Sculpting only further his own fatigue. No problem for good old mario though. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

If that's the case then allow me to pull those nails back out and try to hang paintings. I will continue the journey of this nervous exploration, so I can try to fill in the blanks of the story that much more.

Bitter Companion

It's surprisingly less perverted than the title would lead you to believe. Basically its a short story about a cisgirl falling for a stealth transgirl on the bus after finding out shes a huge fan of her NSFW social media drawings. Eventually she is led back to her home and lewdness ensues. There's a lot of games that play into this more simple queer sexual romance, for instance Demon Dash (2022), Housewarming Gift (2018) both by Nadia Nova. Along with a lot of the releases by Aria such as Ignored and Humiliated by Gamer Girls (2022). The fundamental interaction here is where desire meets respect of the other.

I like to think of these types of games as fairly wholesome LGBT power fantasies, because everything is simplified down to just the erotic desire. Power fantasies are fine and compelling, and I think there can be a bit too much moralizing when it comes to this stuff. If it's not appealing to you specifically or making some shortcuts to keep the story simple and focused, suddenly its wildly offensive, perverted, or otherwise needlessly fetishistic. I condemn this way of thinking and would draw a direct line between this criticism and the conservatives that try to outlaw library books. We need wholesome desire for our bodies out in the world, and I don't think taking undue scrutiny to already obscure texts is that fair. Imagine if you went and wrote some smutty fanfiction, uploaded it, and then found out a lot of people were poking fun at it one day. In a lot of these cases people are not being mindful that teams dont make art like this, but a single person does. At some point so called constructive criticism runs closer to bullying than it does to being anything helpful. I think the difference here is that I've actually had some of the people's works I criticized reach out and thank me or give feedback to what I said and it grounded me to realizing that at the end of the day I'm paroling somebodies creative drive. Like sure, death of the author and all, but it's only fair that people are going to feel hurt. I've had some of my posts on here get reposted to twitter before by big accounts to be mocked (particularly the Vampire Suvivor post) and I have to be honest it kind of stings to just see a bunch of people tell you you're wasting your time and doing nothing.

With that all said though, this doesn't mean I or you have to force ourselves to enjoy these works. Whether it be because the prose isnt effective or it cut a corner you're not fond of (in this case talking smut on the bus is not something im into as I like to keep my bus travel quiet, and the power fantasy of the 1 date girlfriend is something thats a little too fast for my tastes). You can even express that if you want. You can say a work is a bit too fetishistic or plain etc, but at the end of the day its just a preference. You don't get any points for gloating over how bad it is and in general doing so for works this small makes one come off meanspirited and demotivating people from making games you might enjoy in the future. This is a pervasive way of speaking about works that I've seen on RYM and is slowly creeping its way onto here. Almost none of these games were constructed to sustain this kind of mockery. It's likely you could be contributing quite directly to somebodies despair.

There's one other sentiment I want to demystify because it frustrates me deeply. Many people that are trans and most that aren't are way too open with their use of the word chaser to describe something or someones behavior. Again, we trans people like to be desired, and this relegation of everyone wanting for us or writing about our bodies as chasers is harmful. A chaser is somebody who usually wants to meet us on the downlow away from a crowd, that see us mainly as a porn fetish (a ladyboy or a shemale), that are only interested in hitting and quitting. Chasers tend to have no interests in our kinks or getting to know us or seeing us as people. Alex Jones, who was found to be looking at trans porn is a chaser. The person who wrote this story is almost definitively not a chaser. On top of that, while trans people can be uncomfortably perverted they can't be chasers. Chasers are only a term that apply (for the most part) only to cis people, and so saying that a trans person for one reason or another is being a chaser is transphobic rhetoric and should not be done so wantonly. We have other terms to describe perverted behaviour we dont like: Leering, objectifying, etc. Accusing everyone and everything of being a chaser robs that notion of its actual meaning and function. Which if you don't know, is to keep us personally safe since chasers don't respect us and thus can't be trusted to have good motivations.

There's lots of art like this running around, and every time people crowd together to make fun of it, it creates a quicksand pit of resentment and discontent. Every time people do that for art like this, it makes the people that even brought it to attention not want to anymore. It hits our morale a bit. God forbid the people just want to make games to practice and have fun with their desires in the process. It's exactly this attitude why I have my comments turned off. I don't want to argue with the types of prudes that would've tried to hang DeSade.

Maudlin Clown Companion

Edit: After playing the game for about a week or two up to gold stake difficulty and unlocking all the cards and vouchers, I have decided it's mediocre and underwhelming. Most of the problem is found in a lack of options in the shop. The demo had us go to ante 5 with 2 options and this worked. The full release has us go to ante 10 with still only 2 options. It feels in retrospect outclassed even by it's biggest inspiration luck be a landlord. It also only has 1 song which gets extremely repetitive. Uncomfortably top close to the appeal of casino flow states in that sense. On top of this the alternative decks force play styles like flush builds or going for chips, unlike the first 2 decks, this makes most of the game a novelty. Longer thoughts from earlier on below but can't in good conscious reccomend this.


I've won 8 different times now over the course of about 25 hours with a few different starter decks. For a roguelite thats not too often but that on its own is not a knock. People will play Nethack for 100 hours without a single win. It's about what you do in a game that matters. The decision making and that overall goal. In a game like Astrea or Nethack these goals are discreet yet ambitious, killing a big heart after going through complicated dice or ascending after dealing with a litany of confusing combat engagements.

Balatro is about taking a 52 card poker deck and using the hands you're given to make points off a sheet to eventually win. When you do win the celebration is mild and unsatifying and it asks you if you want to play endless mode immediately. In one of the early dev builds there was a simple story where the joker that sets the game up and jeers you in the meantime, setting up some fairly simple motivational stakes to beat the asshole joker. That was removed from the finished build, leaving no core motivation to play besides winning for its own sake.

The game is a simple maths strategy game, after you beat a round you are entered into a shop with an option to choose between 2 different cards to buy in the shop and a few 'booster packs' below. All the sounds are satisfying but this is where the game runs into its main issue. The main cards, the jokers, only have 2 options to buy between and especially as you unlock more of the pool that pool becomes flooded with useless stuff. Tarot cards you cant use, planet cards that dont help, jokers with no multipliers, etc. This leads to the fundamental problem of the game: None of the runs feel special unless you have really curated your deck somehow or you have 'won' that particular round. You're just walking into a shop hoping it feeds you what you want (usually early on its mult jokers). If you can get out of the early game then you have plenty of time to decide in the midgame but often, you wont. I've often lost before the end of the first 'boss blind' or in other words the third 'fight'. You only have 2 options, buy from shop or skip a blind. Even if you skip a blind you have to play the next round which expects more points so it isnt usually reccomended. So the meta usually ends up being playing rounds and hoping the shop has useful things. There's a 5$ reroll button but usually it only makes sense to use that when you're desperate. Leaving you with only making a few choices until the mid to end game.

So eventually the game turns into an issue of restarting for a good opener, whether or not you restart you play the opener through. Because the combat engagements are so abstracted there's no feeling like in an ascii roguelike that an early failure is amusing in its own right. You don't fall off a horse and instantly die, or get consumed by a random slime because you forgot to equip your weapon, you just lose to a poker table screen. In my view the input variance was just made too high with a lack of stakes and a fairly simple opening meta to follow (play the first three rounds clean unless you see a multiplier joker).

Finally, the metaprogression unlocks just end up sullying the shop pool, so the game on a base level gets more difficult to play than you started only as a result of input varience increasing. In a world where games like Astrea, Wildfrost, Desktop Dungeons, Griftlands, and Cobalt Core exists, Balatro ends up feeling too simple and yet too high varience to be reccomendable. It's a time sink roguelite, something to toy around with in the background in hopes of a next win. The early game is very satisfying to play but as the shop pool clogs up and the hedonic treadmill hits in you can't help but think you should probably be doing something else. This focus on refining difficulty to this point along with high varience reminds me of how Binding of Isaac played out. At first it was narratively focused, a story of a traumatized kid running through the basement in tears, playing pretend. Eventually that game was turned into an RNG fiesta and made so difficult and took away most of the scaling options through variance that even for most players the ability to win became way too difficult. I feel like Balatro is learning the wrong lessons from late Isaac in this sense. Not every player needs a perfect narrative to anchor their play experience, but the difficulty spike with a lack of early game options just turns the whole game into a grinding treadmill. Mind you this is a criticism coming from somebody who has some of the rarest achievements in the game at the moment, including finding a legendary Joker, so I have actually played the game I'm not just trying to be difficult for no reason.

It's a shame because I was looking forward to balatro but I think while it will be a flash in the pan for a while it won't ultimately stand up to the test of time. Unlike something like Vampire Survivors its not egregious, because runs arent strictly stuck to a time limit you have to sit through, nor is it an eye sore, nor is it entirely without decision making. Yet, the difficulty being as high as it is, without any narrative amusement for failed runs, means that it becomes mind numbing repetition to play. You end up playing just to win to unlock the next meta progression unlock (which can all be unlocked from the menu anyway if you don't care about achievements thus nullifying any goal other than 'win'). The appeal of the game only lasts for the first dozen unlocks and first win and becomes more or less busywork after that point. I will probably get 100% but I'll remember my experiences with it in a year far less fondly than Colbalt Core and I think on some level a game you can feel happy reminiscing about matters a lot more.