Compared to previous Art Academy games, which teach you more classical practices and tries to emulate traditional art, this game (and probably also the Disney one) focuses more on character art, which is def more alurring for all the DeviantArt kids it marketed itself to

That's me, I'm DeviantArt kids, I bought the Wii U game first and got grumpy none of the lessons were helping me draw My Little Pony OCs better so picked this one physically for like 50 BRL

Lots of neat things to it, they actually give you sort of a second layer(exclusive for lineart), there's cute illustrations based on dex descriptions (many I think are the only time they were officially visualized?), and one of the funniest and most genius way to make players not feel bad their art isn't exactly like the lesson's example

I picked this one up at around 2018/2019(?) because I wanted to see what a game in the AC setting without the real-time clock would look like and ended up becoming Lottie's first fan ever

it's one of those games with a design philosophy that just hopes you go along with, that you just intrinsically want to do and look an try all the things it has to offer. Animal Crossing always has been this type of game, but Happy Home Designer is a different breed of it

You can beat Happy Home Designer, there is a end goal (building a town) which accomplishing makes the credits start rolling, but also the villagers will never ever be anything but happy with what house you make, and that's where the game hopes you play along and make something cool out of the prompts and tools it gives you

And I had a very nice time with it! I would still open the game to make one or two new houses months after beating it, and lately I've been wanting to get a way to do the special villager requests, this game kinda filled New Leaf's void of giving them some more personality and lore

I remember being upset that this wasn't gonna release on WiiWare, lol

Every Sonic fan seems to have one or more game that they talk in this specific kind of reverence, as if its existence is this romantic tragedy. And apparent-f'ing-ly this is that game for me???

The game we know as "Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I" was at first all but a humble little iPhone game meant to cash in in the app store craze, seemingly built from the rush games' engine, borrowing its aesthetics from the series first few outings, no different from what other companies were doing with their IPs

Then some executive (likely from SOA) saw it while in development and thought that actually, this is exactly it, this is what we should hype up, expand and market as the Next Big Thing, the thing that would improve the IP's reputation

"Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II" is then a game made with everyone involved trying to just figure out what make out of this, attempting to make something out of such a thoughtless idea, attempting to make a new exciting game while handcuffed to this extremely limiting vison made out of the title that came before it. And despite its best attempts, it's been fated to only ever be looked back on when lumped with its predecessor

I had a nice time with Episode 2, the way you can exploit the team-up moves to bypass challenges has that "metal blade" fun to it and most act gimmicks being designed around it means they never get as bad as the ones in Episode 1 (though also not as interesting). White Park is my favorite zone aesthetically, it feels the most like a new take on ideas done before rather than a imitation, design-wise none frustrated or bothered me (that was the 7th special stage's job) but if I were to point out which stood out positively, the most I could say is like, Oil Desert

This is also one of those few 2.5D games that makes some use of the fact they have a whole Z-axis to play with for stage platforms, hazards and bosses, only a bit, and never as cool as what gens did, bit it still was a nice sight when it happened. I hope Superstars gets to do more stuff like that

halfway through playing I kinda just started imagining a world where it was very popular for sonic fangames to be "episode-sized", as in four zones, plus maybe final stage, all neatly wrapped as one story (not the three acts though)

honestly I kinda wish that was an actual thing, instead of a sea of demos for cancelled projects trying to be that team's vision for a Mania successor, we'd get a bunch of bite-sized classic games. I mean, most projects don't really go past one or two zones either, but if it goes past that and they still never finish it, it tends to stop at around four or five...

anyway this game is basically a small trimmed down Rush/Advance title vaguely resembling what people old enough to have a iPhone in 2008 would think the series to be (lame), I like how it plays with the homing attack, encouraging you to not always go with the first thing it targets to

I loved the story modes in the Touhou fighting games with how the Spell Cards turned each fighter into a full-on boss fight, when I heard about what this game was going to be I was super excited and playing it was a joy

It really is those story mode modes converted into a actual boss rush, it doesn't try to be like a per-establish genre of game beyond the elements they already were borrowing, it just, takes the essence of a fighting game, and makes it work as a single player action game

You still get multiple characters, each with a moveset that's easy to memorize, something like to a copy ability in Kirby, except that the extent of how their moves and stats change to one another makes them all feel so different that it demands you to change your playstyle and how you fight bosses. It's the fighting game essence, but with more approachable learning curve

This was the first time in a long while that I felt wowed by game design rather than something like "good job, you got a A" or "oh I see what you did there"

they put the picross in the rempy

I like how the questions are genuinely something that a player (or at least I) could miss if they were just paying attention to the puzzles, with picross games I always get so focused on placing and marking based on the numbers that I’d only notice what the picture was once I finished it, so when Senna would ask me what was that you just did I was genuinely stumped on what to answer, it’s clever I think

The characters are cute, I like Senna, she deserves a nice and well-mannered pet cat I think

(played with the modern preset but movement settings changed to not include any additions from games past Galaxy, or Sunshine in this case)

Having stars not boot you out of a stage really changes how you go about clearing them, I was always thinking of what star I should get and in what order as I explored. It also makes the worlds feel even more like these bite-sized playgrounds as you go through

This is the ideal form of a QoL fork/mod/hack, every piece of constructive criticism you've ever heard towards Mario 64 is here and working just like you imagined them to, with some extras to add, all able to be ticked and customized into your most ideal version of the game, or something else if you're feeling funny

I picked up Enchanted Folk after seeing it on videos about Animal Crossing clones and being very interested on the features unique to it, plus it just looked well made

Gosh it was such a delight, I'd react to every new thing with "woah!" or "huh??', only accentuated by the fact I streamed it with the company of friends in the chat that were just as wowed by everything

You have all these features and QoL things that you'd only see in AC way later on such as tools not taking storage space, being able to see what haircut you can get, clothes and hair not being locked behind gender. And then there's ones unique to it, such as receiving items as rewards for giving fish/bugs to the museum equivalent, having a "magical trash" where discarded items go to, and CDs being able to just be bought at a store

while I didn't get far enough to romance anyone, all the ways you could interact with villagers and villagers interact with you would always lead to the funniest moments in a stream, it was either that or whatever happened during classes

Ironically I barely got to do Mystery Time, which was the thing that got me interested in the game. I had it happen once, enjoyed all the weird creatures showing up, and then the day after I met Krampus and he told me I was just average and left, I was demolished

If Star Allies was a showcase of how much modern Kirby had grown since RtDL through a new take on the standard Kirby story. This game is that again but through taking that Wii game and putting as much of the style, polish and charm present in their later titles without compromising the original game’s identity

It took a game whose my last experience with it felt exhausting and turned it into a much more fulfilling romp that made me discover and appreciate the merits it has over it’s successors; how Super Abilities never overstay their welcome, how the portal segments are some of the few modern instances of Kirby stages being exclusively designed after inhaling and spitting, or how the super inhale makes regular Kirby more versatile

And then there’s Magolor Epilogue, it’s concept alone is already the coolest thing (getting to see a cool event you previously only heard described), something straight out of a fan-comic, and then the execution is a experiment with one of the biggest hack-n’-slash element the series had yet to play with; the combo system makes the combat feels so much more involved, encouraging you to beat up as many little creatures as far beyond needed as you can in succession

Reading the new pause descriptions made realize how they just hit different compared to the gachapons’ description in Forgotten Land. Really this remake had a lot stuff I missed in FL, cool remixes, lore reveals that leaves you asking more questions, callbacks to previous games, so much of what I love about Kirby

I don’t think they’ll remake the 3DS games anytime within this decade so instead; Gosh could you imagine if the modern Kirby staff tried their hand at a Super Star-type game? Just a bunch of small separate stories like Magolor Epilogue that explore different parts Kirby’s world, each treated like their own games and experimenting with some unique gameplay element, that would be so exciting to see

My experience felt akin to a mix between the two All-Stars Racing Games, sorta like something in-between

You're back to just having the car but you still got the cooler drift and trick systems (shame about the boost stacking though), story mode missions are back to having one set but gradually increasing difficulty, except for race missions which lets you pick which give you no extra reward beyond intrinsic

I find it to have the best of both worlds. It gives me the lax vibes of playing the first game but with a some of the fun mechanics from Transformed.

I don't think the CPU teammates ever cost me a race and their aid was just that I'd get a cool line to get boost from and a place to dump all the items I had no use for. It's the Team Ultimate that breaks everything as the final lap just devolves into every team unloading their Ult with no way to dodge or block anyone, just luck

Still, of all the three games, this is the one I feel most inclined to go revisit and do a few races just for fun. The music may be a influence in that, I mean like, it got all the cool sonic musicians, and this was the first kart racer whose final lap version of tracks actually gets me pumped