NightDuck
223 Reviews liked by NightDuck
The captivation of the early Steam indie landscape can never be understated. Before the arrival of Steam Greenlight, the walled garden meant a very select few titles graced the storefront now resplendent with asset flips and low-grade eroge. Renowned games like Project Zomboid didn’t even appear on the store at that time — it and other indie darlings relied on Google Checkout and Desura for distribution. So limited was the indie space on Steam that days, weeks could go by without a new title. In looking for what underground, offbeat goodness was permitted, users invariably came across AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, the first title alphabetically on the store. In Dejobaan Games founder Ichiro Lambe’s words:
“A name should be interesting, memorable, and descriptive — a game about jumping off of a perfectly good building in a flimsy wingsuit should be exciting. We had plenty of other ideas. The working title was Low Altitude, and we considered a bunch of others:
Screaming and Falling
AaaAaaAaa!
Deploy Parachute for Hot Chicks
Jumping to Earth From Tall Buildings
Bridge. Antenna. Span. Earth.
Falling Toward Earth
Your Personal Crater
Free Fall
Don't Forget Your Parachute
Remember Your Parachute
Spicy Mountain Lion
Freedom, Free-Fall, Freedom
I Fell From a Building
A few of those were obviously thrown in as jokes. "Deploy Parachute for Hot Chicks" was a dig at the industry's obsession with boobs. Spicy Mountain Lion was my personal favorite non sequitur. But when our PR/Marketing dude, Leo saw the list, he poked his finger at "AaaAaaAaa!," and refused to let me adjourn the meeting until I agreed to go with that.”
Though also available from Direct2Drive, GamersGate, Impulse, and WildTangent, the one-two punch of Steam's self-imposed exclusivity coupled with an ostentatious title made AaaAaaAaa! an enticing proposition for a couple years. Its inclusion in The Potato Sack on April 1, 2011 made it (relatively) explode in notoriety over a year after its initial launch. A crucial part of the associated Portal 2 ARG, many players, myself included, snatched up the game at its steep -75% discount and got to work inflating the player count, seeking clues, and nabbing potatoes for the ultimate goal of releasing Portal 2 early. Ten days after The Potato Sack launched, player numbers remained as high as 4,253, a number which would never be even approached again. By June 27, 2011, concurrent players topped out at 624. A year later, only 13. Since mid-2014, AaaAaaAaa! has failed to reach double digits. It has become a footnote of a footnote, a stepping-stone towards the contemporary AA indie zeitgeist of Game Pass and publishers and safety.
AaaAaaAaa! is reckless, an emblem of a sliver of a fraction of time wherein indies were starting to get the recognition they deserved. The polish of contemporary indies is absurd, their development cycles arduous, their teams an enormity, publishing rights are snatched in an instant. [Finji co-owner Rebekah Saltsman in 2021 stated “Five years ago, I’m like, ‘Oh, I can make a game for a million dollars.’ And that was crazy then. And [now] I’m like, ‘I can’t make this for under four [million].”](https://www.inverse.com/input/gaming/tunic-publisher-says-indie-game-production-is-absurdly-expensive) By contrast, Dejobaan’s marketing budget for AaaAaaAaa! was $0. With assets that seemingly fell out of a wallet containing lint and a single fly, AaaAaaAaa! and its ilk prided themselves not on their graphical fidelity or scale, but singular ideas explored maximally within small packages. AaaAaaAaa! isn’t bursting at the seams with content, but it didn’t need to. Like Zineth or Voxeltron or Darwinia, the aim was to present something new that hadn’t been explored within the games space as a sort of proof of concept, an offer of what games can accomplish.
As an in-effect sacrificial lamb then, AaaAaaAaa! is easy to dismiss as unimportant, as belonging to its position as a footnote’s footnote, but in revisiting it (having realised the kids of today know nothing of this time beyond its winners, its Super Meat Boy and Minecraft and Limbo) I was surprised at how enjoyable it remains. The gameplay is little more than falling while grazing obstacles and responding to simple button prompts. It isn’t good to look at. Yet it kicks ass in all the right ways. This first-person adaptation of BASE jumping evokes concepts of bullet hell with its tight navigation of enclosed spaces, of racing games in its sheer velocity, of arcade high-score chasing as you go for one more kiss, one more score plate. It oozes with risk’s rewards. It is drenched in text as an accessory, taking its overlong title and applying it to every facet of the UI and gameplay experience. It contains small nothingburgers of video chaos as if it is some valid reward in its own right. Image macros bespeckle gray slabs of polygonery. It is balloonshop’s Oreo, sounding not even half good but it is good, really Most importantly, it doesn’t wear out its welcome in the slightest, being just long enough to explore itself fully without the pressures of content bloat on the player. It would be reiterated upon with its semi-sequel AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome semi-reconstructed with its long abandoned half brother 1... 2... 3... KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby), mobilised with AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (Force = Mass x Acceleration) and is apparently being revitalised with the upcoming AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (if it ever releases).
It would be irresponsible to act like Superflight, Steep, Rush, and even Just Cause 3 haven’t trounced AaaAaaAaa! in nearly every regard with their years of hindsight to work off of, their immeasurable polish, and astounding budgets, but AaaAaaAaa! did it without a shred of shame, staying true to Dejobaan’s obtuse philosophies of making games that raise an eyebrow for their names, premises, and gameplay. It doesn’t blow my gourd, but it doesn’t need to. It’s fun, and it sits at the top of my Steam library for eternity. Jumping off of it into thousands of other games as I scroll and scroll seems fitting, somehow. It’s like Dejobaan knew they would be pioneers on an ever-growing mountain that forever shifts its form. It is a stratum fondly remembered.
“A name should be interesting, memorable, and descriptive — a game about jumping off of a perfectly good building in a flimsy wingsuit should be exciting. We had plenty of other ideas. The working title was Low Altitude, and we considered a bunch of others:
Screaming and Falling
AaaAaaAaa!
Deploy Parachute for Hot Chicks
Jumping to Earth From Tall Buildings
Bridge. Antenna. Span. Earth.
Falling Toward Earth
Your Personal Crater
Free Fall
Don't Forget Your Parachute
Remember Your Parachute
Spicy Mountain Lion
Freedom, Free-Fall, Freedom
I Fell From a Building
A few of those were obviously thrown in as jokes. "Deploy Parachute for Hot Chicks" was a dig at the industry's obsession with boobs. Spicy Mountain Lion was my personal favorite non sequitur. But when our PR/Marketing dude, Leo saw the list, he poked his finger at "AaaAaaAaa!," and refused to let me adjourn the meeting until I agreed to go with that.”
Though also available from Direct2Drive, GamersGate, Impulse, and WildTangent, the one-two punch of Steam's self-imposed exclusivity coupled with an ostentatious title made AaaAaaAaa! an enticing proposition for a couple years. Its inclusion in The Potato Sack on April 1, 2011 made it (relatively) explode in notoriety over a year after its initial launch. A crucial part of the associated Portal 2 ARG, many players, myself included, snatched up the game at its steep -75% discount and got to work inflating the player count, seeking clues, and nabbing potatoes for the ultimate goal of releasing Portal 2 early. Ten days after The Potato Sack launched, player numbers remained as high as 4,253, a number which would never be even approached again. By June 27, 2011, concurrent players topped out at 624. A year later, only 13. Since mid-2014, AaaAaaAaa! has failed to reach double digits. It has become a footnote of a footnote, a stepping-stone towards the contemporary AA indie zeitgeist of Game Pass and publishers and safety.
AaaAaaAaa! is reckless, an emblem of a sliver of a fraction of time wherein indies were starting to get the recognition they deserved. The polish of contemporary indies is absurd, their development cycles arduous, their teams an enormity, publishing rights are snatched in an instant. [Finji co-owner Rebekah Saltsman in 2021 stated “Five years ago, I’m like, ‘Oh, I can make a game for a million dollars.’ And that was crazy then. And [now] I’m like, ‘I can’t make this for under four [million].”](https://www.inverse.com/input/gaming/tunic-publisher-says-indie-game-production-is-absurdly-expensive) By contrast, Dejobaan’s marketing budget for AaaAaaAaa! was $0. With assets that seemingly fell out of a wallet containing lint and a single fly, AaaAaaAaa! and its ilk prided themselves not on their graphical fidelity or scale, but singular ideas explored maximally within small packages. AaaAaaAaa! isn’t bursting at the seams with content, but it didn’t need to. Like Zineth or Voxeltron or Darwinia, the aim was to present something new that hadn’t been explored within the games space as a sort of proof of concept, an offer of what games can accomplish.
As an in-effect sacrificial lamb then, AaaAaaAaa! is easy to dismiss as unimportant, as belonging to its position as a footnote’s footnote, but in revisiting it (having realised the kids of today know nothing of this time beyond its winners, its Super Meat Boy and Minecraft and Limbo) I was surprised at how enjoyable it remains. The gameplay is little more than falling while grazing obstacles and responding to simple button prompts. It isn’t good to look at. Yet it kicks ass in all the right ways. This first-person adaptation of BASE jumping evokes concepts of bullet hell with its tight navigation of enclosed spaces, of racing games in its sheer velocity, of arcade high-score chasing as you go for one more kiss, one more score plate. It oozes with risk’s rewards. It is drenched in text as an accessory, taking its overlong title and applying it to every facet of the UI and gameplay experience. It contains small nothingburgers of video chaos as if it is some valid reward in its own right. Image macros bespeckle gray slabs of polygonery. It is balloonshop’s Oreo, sounding not even half good but it is good, really Most importantly, it doesn’t wear out its welcome in the slightest, being just long enough to explore itself fully without the pressures of content bloat on the player. It would be reiterated upon with its semi-sequel AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome semi-reconstructed with its long abandoned half brother 1... 2... 3... KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby), mobilised with AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (Force = Mass x Acceleration) and is apparently being revitalised with the upcoming AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (if it ever releases).
It would be irresponsible to act like Superflight, Steep, Rush, and even Just Cause 3 haven’t trounced AaaAaaAaa! in nearly every regard with their years of hindsight to work off of, their immeasurable polish, and astounding budgets, but AaaAaaAaa! did it without a shred of shame, staying true to Dejobaan’s obtuse philosophies of making games that raise an eyebrow for their names, premises, and gameplay. It doesn’t blow my gourd, but it doesn’t need to. It’s fun, and it sits at the top of my Steam library for eternity. Jumping off of it into thousands of other games as I scroll and scroll seems fitting, somehow. It’s like Dejobaan knew they would be pioneers on an ever-growing mountain that forever shifts its form. It is a stratum fondly remembered.
Atomic Heart
2023
another day volunteering at the russian-government funded bioshock museum. everyone keeps asking me if they can fuck the fridge. buddy, they wont even let me fuck it
Wild Hearts
2023
Fun ass time. Has some great ideas and improves on a lot of things that have bugged me about Monster Hunter for years. I can't truly recommend this to most people yet, the performance is just awful and there's a few balance issues. With future updates and patches this game has a lot of potential.
Drakengard 3
2013
the framerate was actually intentional in order to convey the inconsistent speeds at which taro’s brain operates
Number Munchers
1990
When I was a wee Vee, my favorite color was purple. These days I grew into a pink boy, but I think I have an idea for why it was originally my favorite. Back in Kindergarten we had our own folders that sat at our tables, we would open them to find little laminated pieces of paper in them with colors pertaining to what activities we would be doing for the day. Purple was the one I always hoped for, because it meant I would be computer labbing for about half an hour.
As you would imagine, Number Munchers was among the games I would play on my class's shitty Apple IIs. You're probably thinking, "wow what tomb did you recently crawl out of? You old Vee!!!! GO BACK TO YOUR SHUFFLE BOARD YA OLD LADY!!! State of your American education system using 20 year old PCs!!!" It's probably true we used Apple IIs due to low budget, but honestly Apple IIs survived for a while and I wanna say the ones we used were kinda nice looking, granted it's been too damn long for me to even recall the last time I actually ate breakfast, and please don't call me old, I am a healthy 21 year old thank you very much.
For the younger folk at large who make up 98% of this website, this is basically an arcade game akin to Pac-Man combined with the goal of educating the ins and outs of numbers such as multiples, equations, and prime numbers. This is handy for me, because newsflash! I'm not a very smart person, at least in the numbers sense. Wandering a 5x6 square grid you take your adorable green lad around the board munching the correct answers to what the game asks of you. An incorrect munch means a bad tummy ache and losing a life. In the meantime, these demented scary assholes named "Troggles" have their presence announced by the left side of the screen before wandering onto the board. You start with only one of these bozos pestering you, but eventually up to three start showing up. Careful around these guys, because they'll chomp and munch you real good....along with any other Troggle they happened to move into the same space with! Freaked the shit outta me seeing them cannibalize each other like that. These guys mean business. There's only one Muncher to eat and they know that! Munch or be Munched, that is the way.
Troggle Roll Call!
I never really liked the names for these guys, and honestly back then I doubt we would call them by their official titles. For now, starting from Reggie going clockwise towards the middle, I christen them...Norm Macdonald, Bert the Bashful, Scary Gary, Curious George, and finally Sneed the Shitheaded Nob. My favorite is Scary Gary, because he always gave me chills as he walked onto the screen and proceeded to eat Norm or Bert with his spooky teeth and unthinking stare. The Troggles are but a race of spherical Wile E. Coyotes, constantly out to eat the Muncher and utilizing ACME brand cartoon nonsense to trap the Muncher, complete with their traps backfiring on them during this game's cutscenes in-between sets of stages.
Apologies for boring y'all to death with the long-winded nostalgia review, but it surprised me how I enjoyed coming back to it despite the 20 years of additional knowledge I have attained since last I played, thinking I would treat this as trivial. I thought I was The Countess of Counting, but it seems I am in fact the Dairy Queen. Thank you Mr. Muncher for giving me that vibe check that I in fact suck eggs at multiplication tables.
You can play this super easily in-browser, so go and give it a try and either say "thank you Mr. Vee for the cute game" or "thanks for goddamn nothin'!!!! spits tongue out at you".
:P
As you would imagine, Number Munchers was among the games I would play on my class's shitty Apple IIs. You're probably thinking, "wow what tomb did you recently crawl out of? You old Vee!!!! GO BACK TO YOUR SHUFFLE BOARD YA OLD LADY!!! State of your American education system using 20 year old PCs!!!" It's probably true we used Apple IIs due to low budget, but honestly Apple IIs survived for a while and I wanna say the ones we used were kinda nice looking, granted it's been too damn long for me to even recall the last time I actually ate breakfast, and please don't call me old, I am a healthy 21 year old thank you very much.
For the younger folk at large who make up 98% of this website, this is basically an arcade game akin to Pac-Man combined with the goal of educating the ins and outs of numbers such as multiples, equations, and prime numbers. This is handy for me, because newsflash! I'm not a very smart person, at least in the numbers sense. Wandering a 5x6 square grid you take your adorable green lad around the board munching the correct answers to what the game asks of you. An incorrect munch means a bad tummy ache and losing a life. In the meantime, these demented scary assholes named "Troggles" have their presence announced by the left side of the screen before wandering onto the board. You start with only one of these bozos pestering you, but eventually up to three start showing up. Careful around these guys, because they'll chomp and munch you real good....along with any other Troggle they happened to move into the same space with! Freaked the shit outta me seeing them cannibalize each other like that. These guys mean business. There's only one Muncher to eat and they know that! Munch or be Munched, that is the way.
Troggle Roll Call!
I never really liked the names for these guys, and honestly back then I doubt we would call them by their official titles. For now, starting from Reggie going clockwise towards the middle, I christen them...Norm Macdonald, Bert the Bashful, Scary Gary, Curious George, and finally Sneed the Shitheaded Nob. My favorite is Scary Gary, because he always gave me chills as he walked onto the screen and proceeded to eat Norm or Bert with his spooky teeth and unthinking stare. The Troggles are but a race of spherical Wile E. Coyotes, constantly out to eat the Muncher and utilizing ACME brand cartoon nonsense to trap the Muncher, complete with their traps backfiring on them during this game's cutscenes in-between sets of stages.
Apologies for boring y'all to death with the long-winded nostalgia review, but it surprised me how I enjoyed coming back to it despite the 20 years of additional knowledge I have attained since last I played, thinking I would treat this as trivial. I thought I was The Countess of Counting, but it seems I am in fact the Dairy Queen. Thank you Mr. Muncher for giving me that vibe check that I in fact suck eggs at multiplication tables.
You can play this super easily in-browser, so go and give it a try and either say "thank you Mr. Vee for the cute game" or "thanks for goddamn nothin'!!!! spits tongue out at you".
:P
Hot Wheels Unleashed
2021
Ended up returning this. Gacha system feels bad and I haven't witness a racing AI that has felt this cheaty since The Crew.
Yakuza Kiwami
2016
the erasure of an era. whereas the original title thrives off of the glory of its 2000s commercialized suburbia, here we get…. yakuza 0’s kamurocho copied and pasted. even the gameplay is unfortunately a victim to this flagrant plagiarism. to give credit where credit is due, it’s still fun to play with the additions to 0’s combat, but sadly i can’t praise kiwami any more than that. bosses that were once quick and somewhat painless are now quadruple-health-bared damage tanks, with annoying health regeneration to boot. i would be more lenient if the special heat actions you can perform on the bosses were unique to each one, but nope. it’s the same moves every time. even more 0 pandering forces its way in with majima everywhere and the soundtrack. majima everywhere is a huge tonal disconnect from majima’s character narratively, because apparently we needed to cater to… actually i’m not even sure who would claim majima’s only defining characteristic to be his silliness. who is majima everywhere for exactly? also quite honestly him showing up at random times frequently ruined my pace, and it doesn’t help that you fight the same majima styles over and over. to add insult to injury i was flabbergasted that they locked an entire style behind this randomized time waster. last but not least is the soundtrack, which decided to inherit the techno-dubstep overlays of 0. the remixed tracks aren’t bad per se but they lack any distinctive personality that the original tracks had so much of.
what a strange game. kiwami is stuck between the crossroads of whether it wants to be its own thing, a sequel to 0, or retain the integrity of the original game. i don’t think there’s any malicious intent here, but what makes it worse is that this suppression of the original title was essentially done by accident. the laziness is rampant in how much is stolen from 0. i wouldn’t call it a bad game, however i would most certainly define it as a poor remake.
what a strange game. kiwami is stuck between the crossroads of whether it wants to be its own thing, a sequel to 0, or retain the integrity of the original game. i don’t think there’s any malicious intent here, but what makes it worse is that this suppression of the original title was essentially done by accident. the laziness is rampant in how much is stolen from 0. i wouldn’t call it a bad game, however i would most certainly define it as a poor remake.
Hi-Fi Rush
2023
From self-aware yet high-spirited attitude to the soundtrack curated by a person with the deepest 2004 taste palette, this is such a refreshing 2000s piece. It's so impressive how the commitment to the beat isn't just an enhancement to presentation — it's your guide in combat, the one that trains you to discern visual and audio cues, restricts button mashing, makes long strings of attacks a commitment; in other words, it teaches you how to play a spectacle action game! And for the price of admission there's a lot of game here, by no means it's less substantial than Bayonettas and Devil May Cries of the world. Simply a tremendous surprise.
And to all people saying Tango finally made a good game: maybe it's time to recognize that Tango was always good.
And to all people saying Tango finally made a good game: maybe it's time to recognize that Tango was always good.
Hi-Fi Rush
2023
Playing Hi-Fi Rush feels like reading the first volume of a comic about a brand new superhero, unburdened by expectations.
There's such an obvious, whole-hearted commitment to creating a world that runs on music that I found myself bobbing my head and tapping my foot to literally nothing an hour after I put this one down. Rhythm is so thoroughly baked into this game's DNA that, after a certain point, it becomes more difficult to do things off beat than on it. It's got charm and earnestness that quiets my impulse to nitpick. Everything is music in some way, and every element snaps into place on a beat - UI elements, footsteps, enemy attacks, YOUR attacks, item pickups. Cohesive and confident enough that I would almost believe it if you told me it was somehow an influence on every rhythm genre hybrid that came before it. Feels like a game from 3 hardware generations ago, and I mean that in the best way possible.
There's such an obvious, whole-hearted commitment to creating a world that runs on music that I found myself bobbing my head and tapping my foot to literally nothing an hour after I put this one down. Rhythm is so thoroughly baked into this game's DNA that, after a certain point, it becomes more difficult to do things off beat than on it. It's got charm and earnestness that quiets my impulse to nitpick. Everything is music in some way, and every element snaps into place on a beat - UI elements, footsteps, enemy attacks, YOUR attacks, item pickups. Cohesive and confident enough that I would almost believe it if you told me it was somehow an influence on every rhythm genre hybrid that came before it. Feels like a game from 3 hardware generations ago, and I mean that in the best way possible.
Dead Space
2023
This review was written before the game released
Bold of EA to, after completely gutting Dead Space to turn it into a garbled action mess of predatory bullshit and then completely gutting the studio behind it after jobbing them onto a shitty battlefield spin-off, come back and act like I should give a shit that they are propping up it's corpse because horror is noticeably profitable now
Honestly, go fuck yourself
Honestly, go fuck yourself
i wrote up like this whole thing the other day but it was really cringey so i deleted 😭
ive been playing this for a year now with some healthy breaks in between (im still in the middle of version 3 and theres a lot of side content i have not gotten to from version 2) but i think i can safely say this has just barely succeeded dragon quest 7 as my favorite dq experience ever :')
really really great story and characters (some of my favorite in the series), also personally great way for me to force my experience w japanese into practice instead of study
games like this rlly arent made anymore and if square enix ever localized this (wont happen bc it would be the single largest undertaking in video game localization history for a franchise that is niche everywhere outside of japan) it would be fucked so hard with monetization so id honestly just keep playing on jp servers. hopefully they decide to adapt version 3 into the offline game as well and localize that so the trilogy can be completed and english-only players can experience one of the dragon quest franchise's best adventures
great game, great english speaking community, great story, 10/10 reminded me why i love mmos and community rpgs and dragon quest as a whole. i wanna say more but this game is dense as fuck and i dont wanna be cringey<3
heres to 250+ more hours and more years of play !!
ive been playing this for a year now with some healthy breaks in between (im still in the middle of version 3 and theres a lot of side content i have not gotten to from version 2) but i think i can safely say this has just barely succeeded dragon quest 7 as my favorite dq experience ever :')
really really great story and characters (some of my favorite in the series), also personally great way for me to force my experience w japanese into practice instead of study
games like this rlly arent made anymore and if square enix ever localized this (wont happen bc it would be the single largest undertaking in video game localization history for a franchise that is niche everywhere outside of japan) it would be fucked so hard with monetization so id honestly just keep playing on jp servers. hopefully they decide to adapt version 3 into the offline game as well and localize that so the trilogy can be completed and english-only players can experience one of the dragon quest franchise's best adventures
great game, great english speaking community, great story, 10/10 reminded me why i love mmos and community rpgs and dragon quest as a whole. i wanna say more but this game is dense as fuck and i dont wanna be cringey<3
heres to 250+ more hours and more years of play !!
Toukiden 2
2016
Probably my favorite game in the 'hunting' genre. It brought several fresh ideas to the genre as well as refining what the first Toukiden had brought in.
Holy Ghost Story
2022
This review contains spoilers
In the closing moments of 2022, a ping on discord alerts me that the game I spent most of my Christmas break from work finishing up has been added to IGDB, just in time for me to mark it as my GOTY for 2022. It is of course, not actually that, but something about the misplaced arrogance of doing that, ironically or otherwise, really tickles me. I giggle about it to myself for the rest of a party in a far nicer house than I have scarcely been in for my entire life that puts me on edge about it the entire time I am there.
But, of course, in order to mark it as GOTY, I have to mark it as played. And the easiest way to do that is to give it a star rating, which, of course, was 5 stars, on the urging of a voice in my head telling me that if I'm not going to give the game 5 stars, who will?
In a turn that feels immensely humbling, others have in fact rate it 5 stars. Which I am grateful and mortified about, but also thankful because it lifts from me the burden of having to mark this as 5 stars.
I don't know if other people feel the same about this, but I find it extremely difficult to look at something I've made holistically. I was there for every step of the sausage being made, after all, so maybe it's just natural that I all I see are a thousand tiny pieces, a jigsaw that has no clear overall shape. What this means is that when I look at Holy Ghost Story, I can see lines, scenes, moments and beats, but the whole picture is unclear to me. I think it's a real weakness of my writing, getting lost in the weeds and losing sight of the larger whole. Which is probably why this is twice as long as I planned it to be and has some scenes that an editor probably would have cut, but which I retained because I liked the way the light caught them, irrespective of their place in the wider thing.
Unlike some of the other entries in this mini genre, which comprises some of my favorite pieces on this site, I don't know if I have anything enormously interesting or cool to say about holy ghost story. As something that was originally planned to be a short and sweet project I could cobble together for Halloween, it ending up two months late and maybe twice as long as I intended does feel like something of a failure. Truthfully, I don't know how I feel about this and it's likely that I won't for a while, and if my track record with this sort of thing is any indication I'll probably come down pretty hard against it.
But right now, all I have are the pieces, and I can still pick them up and turn them over in my hands. I know I like reading about game development and the way these things come into life, so in lieu of any actual insightful thoughts or analyses, here are just some little tidbits from the time I spent making this game.
(spoilers, obvs)
- The whole thing was inspired by a riff I had with two of my friends about ghosts whose Unfinished Businesses were incredibly mundane. The ideas I had ballooned out during a visit to the Tate Modern the next day, and then contracted in again while I tried to siphon out the actual core of the story.
- The original title, inspired by one of the pieces in the Tate I saw, was "...almost religious awe..." but ultimately I could not resist the gag of evoking The Holy Ghost. Sorry, big man.
- I wanted to avoid any explicit queer/trans themes for this. A lot of my creative and critical work exists in this space, and I kind of wanted to avoid it for this. Not because I have anything against such works - far from it - but just because I wanted to go out of my comfort zone a little, into the moderately different comfort zone that is Catholic Guilt.
- Embarrassingly, the logo/cover art was partially inspired by the HD Remaster OPs for Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, specifically the bits naming the various Gundams. I'm so sorry.
- This was originally going to be made in Visual Novel Maker, something which appealed to me because of my past work in RPGMaker. However, while RPGMaker as a toolset has it's ups and downs, I think VNM is something of a disaster, with an incredibly clunky interface that is catastrophically less intuitive than the python-based Ren'Py, which is where this ended up.
- Following on from above, the entire script was written in a word document before Ren'Py was opened even once. I future, I think I will play around much more with visuals and music as I am writing rather than writing everything and then making visuals and sounds around that, but I do think inputting the final script manually was good, because it allowed me to do some final last-minute editing and drafting that ended up with some of my favorite lines.
- Originally, the POV character, or "genius", was a much more passive person, who spoke in the present tense, and had almost no internal monologue or interiority. However, through successive drafts, more of a character started to creep in as I started to move the didactic qualities of the script into Genius as a character. I have mixed feelings about how Siobhan is presented but I do feel good about where Genius ended up, this kind of unpleasant, unempathetic, well-meaning but patronizing figure. Despite them being almost completely absent in the original outline, I think the story ended up being as much about them as it did about Siobhan, which I do like, even if it did take perhaps too many drafts to reach that point.
- Accordingly, the scene with Genius by themselves was a late addition that didn't get as much redrafting as the rest of it. I think it's better with than without, but I also side-eye it even more than I do the rest of it.
- My actual favorite thing in the game is Siobhan's name turning pink during the "flashback".
- Do you know how difficult it is to find public domain visual novel schoolgirl sprites that aren't very horny? Let me tell you: pretty fucking difficult!!
- ? speaking in a more formal tone was something inspired by Squigglydot's Post-Disclosure Devil's Night, and it's use of purple prose, to suggest my interpretation that ? was in some way separate from Genius without saying it outright.
- Let me tell you - it has been pretty nerve-wracking working on this while an emerging trend of people in my activity feed crept up of taking random itch.io games, writing a scathing dunk of them, and then others who, clearly, would not have liked said game, downloading and playing it anyway to get their own hilarious dunk in. Which is not to say that I don't think there aren't going to be people who find this to be nails on a chalkboard and will write a funny dunk review of this, but I do think the one thing that would make me regret having made this would be if it became something people crowded around to get the boot in.
- Kevin MacLeod is such a real one dude
- If I had to sum up the lessons I learned from this project, I would say that researching and testing out software with miniscule practice runs is essential even for a "small" project you undertake to "learn the basics" of software, and also that I think I need to divorce myself entirely from the prospect of "true" "solo" development. Anxiety prevented me from reaching out to talented artists and musicians I know about commissioning stuff that would have helped give the game an actual visual identity to call it's own, and I don't want that to happen next time. When I write that Siobhan scowled and yelled, I wish I could have properly conveyed how I wanted that to look.
I hope this has been interesting at all! My nerves and anxiousness around this title have yet to dissipate, so I likely won't be reading anything about it for at least a few days, but knowing that people took the time to check this out means more than I can say, both for the people who enjoyed it and the people it didn't. I'm really looking forward to reading people's thoughts once I feel able to do so without my nerves exploding at first brush.
Hopefully I'll see you again sometime in 2023, hopefully with a less played-out theme!
But, of course, in order to mark it as GOTY, I have to mark it as played. And the easiest way to do that is to give it a star rating, which, of course, was 5 stars, on the urging of a voice in my head telling me that if I'm not going to give the game 5 stars, who will?
In a turn that feels immensely humbling, others have in fact rate it 5 stars. Which I am grateful and mortified about, but also thankful because it lifts from me the burden of having to mark this as 5 stars.
I don't know if other people feel the same about this, but I find it extremely difficult to look at something I've made holistically. I was there for every step of the sausage being made, after all, so maybe it's just natural that I all I see are a thousand tiny pieces, a jigsaw that has no clear overall shape. What this means is that when I look at Holy Ghost Story, I can see lines, scenes, moments and beats, but the whole picture is unclear to me. I think it's a real weakness of my writing, getting lost in the weeds and losing sight of the larger whole. Which is probably why this is twice as long as I planned it to be and has some scenes that an editor probably would have cut, but which I retained because I liked the way the light caught them, irrespective of their place in the wider thing.
Unlike some of the other entries in this mini genre, which comprises some of my favorite pieces on this site, I don't know if I have anything enormously interesting or cool to say about holy ghost story. As something that was originally planned to be a short and sweet project I could cobble together for Halloween, it ending up two months late and maybe twice as long as I intended does feel like something of a failure. Truthfully, I don't know how I feel about this and it's likely that I won't for a while, and if my track record with this sort of thing is any indication I'll probably come down pretty hard against it.
But right now, all I have are the pieces, and I can still pick them up and turn them over in my hands. I know I like reading about game development and the way these things come into life, so in lieu of any actual insightful thoughts or analyses, here are just some little tidbits from the time I spent making this game.
(spoilers, obvs)
- The whole thing was inspired by a riff I had with two of my friends about ghosts whose Unfinished Businesses were incredibly mundane. The ideas I had ballooned out during a visit to the Tate Modern the next day, and then contracted in again while I tried to siphon out the actual core of the story.
- The original title, inspired by one of the pieces in the Tate I saw, was "...almost religious awe..." but ultimately I could not resist the gag of evoking The Holy Ghost. Sorry, big man.
- I wanted to avoid any explicit queer/trans themes for this. A lot of my creative and critical work exists in this space, and I kind of wanted to avoid it for this. Not because I have anything against such works - far from it - but just because I wanted to go out of my comfort zone a little, into the moderately different comfort zone that is Catholic Guilt.
- Embarrassingly, the logo/cover art was partially inspired by the HD Remaster OPs for Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, specifically the bits naming the various Gundams. I'm so sorry.
- This was originally going to be made in Visual Novel Maker, something which appealed to me because of my past work in RPGMaker. However, while RPGMaker as a toolset has it's ups and downs, I think VNM is something of a disaster, with an incredibly clunky interface that is catastrophically less intuitive than the python-based Ren'Py, which is where this ended up.
- Following on from above, the entire script was written in a word document before Ren'Py was opened even once. I future, I think I will play around much more with visuals and music as I am writing rather than writing everything and then making visuals and sounds around that, but I do think inputting the final script manually was good, because it allowed me to do some final last-minute editing and drafting that ended up with some of my favorite lines.
- Originally, the POV character, or "genius", was a much more passive person, who spoke in the present tense, and had almost no internal monologue or interiority. However, through successive drafts, more of a character started to creep in as I started to move the didactic qualities of the script into Genius as a character. I have mixed feelings about how Siobhan is presented but I do feel good about where Genius ended up, this kind of unpleasant, unempathetic, well-meaning but patronizing figure. Despite them being almost completely absent in the original outline, I think the story ended up being as much about them as it did about Siobhan, which I do like, even if it did take perhaps too many drafts to reach that point.
- Accordingly, the scene with Genius by themselves was a late addition that didn't get as much redrafting as the rest of it. I think it's better with than without, but I also side-eye it even more than I do the rest of it.
- My actual favorite thing in the game is Siobhan's name turning pink during the "flashback".
- Do you know how difficult it is to find public domain visual novel schoolgirl sprites that aren't very horny? Let me tell you: pretty fucking difficult!!
- ? speaking in a more formal tone was something inspired by Squigglydot's Post-Disclosure Devil's Night, and it's use of purple prose, to suggest my interpretation that ? was in some way separate from Genius without saying it outright.
- Let me tell you - it has been pretty nerve-wracking working on this while an emerging trend of people in my activity feed crept up of taking random itch.io games, writing a scathing dunk of them, and then others who, clearly, would not have liked said game, downloading and playing it anyway to get their own hilarious dunk in. Which is not to say that I don't think there aren't going to be people who find this to be nails on a chalkboard and will write a funny dunk review of this, but I do think the one thing that would make me regret having made this would be if it became something people crowded around to get the boot in.
- Kevin MacLeod is such a real one dude
- If I had to sum up the lessons I learned from this project, I would say that researching and testing out software with miniscule practice runs is essential even for a "small" project you undertake to "learn the basics" of software, and also that I think I need to divorce myself entirely from the prospect of "true" "solo" development. Anxiety prevented me from reaching out to talented artists and musicians I know about commissioning stuff that would have helped give the game an actual visual identity to call it's own, and I don't want that to happen next time. When I write that Siobhan scowled and yelled, I wish I could have properly conveyed how I wanted that to look.
I hope this has been interesting at all! My nerves and anxiousness around this title have yet to dissipate, so I likely won't be reading anything about it for at least a few days, but knowing that people took the time to check this out means more than I can say, both for the people who enjoyed it and the people it didn't. I'm really looking forward to reading people's thoughts once I feel able to do so without my nerves exploding at first brush.
Hopefully I'll see you again sometime in 2023, hopefully with a less played-out theme!
Pokémon Violet
2022
These are probably the best Pokemon games GF has made. The only argument otherwise is performance-based — which is a real problem, but, in the end, kinda just pales in comparison to how good these games are. Otherwise, the open world, the soundtrack, the way the story actually tries to do something climactic in its final act: Scarlet and Violet are masterpieces in the series held back only by bugs and an permanently chugging framerate.
Sonic Adventure 2
2012
In the year 2001, something new was birthed.
A good video game.
The apex of an era. Of a franchise. Of a hedgehog. Cowards will tell you the game "aged poorly" becauase they are fundamentally weak. It's only gotten better with age as we've through the era of Shadow the Hedgehog being a cool guy to the era of Shadow the Hedgehog being a cringe guy and now into the golden age of Shadow the Hedgehog being the Best Guy.
The masses will hate me because I tell the truth. They'll say shit like "all the levels that aren't Sonic and Shadow suck" because they have failed to reached the zen state of running around them like a maniac racking up points and getting it faster. I'm right and I won't be stopped from saying it any more. It's the best Sonic.
Chao are cute too tbh
A good video game.
The apex of an era. Of a franchise. Of a hedgehog. Cowards will tell you the game "aged poorly" becauase they are fundamentally weak. It's only gotten better with age as we've through the era of Shadow the Hedgehog being a cool guy to the era of Shadow the Hedgehog being a cringe guy and now into the golden age of Shadow the Hedgehog being the Best Guy.
The masses will hate me because I tell the truth. They'll say shit like "all the levels that aren't Sonic and Shadow suck" because they have failed to reached the zen state of running around them like a maniac racking up points and getting it faster. I'm right and I won't be stopped from saying it any more. It's the best Sonic.
Chao are cute too tbh