They dared to change, just like Simon dared to rid himself of Dracula's affliction in the face of ridicule by his fellow townsfolk.

At the approach of midnight, I began my journey home, my boots trudging through the mud as I pumped my fists to the Dance of Monsters. The chill of the wind rustles through the trees as I keep myself at the ready, for any moment the skeleton or wolfman could walk out from the brush begging for death's sweet release by the hand of my mighty whip passed down to me by my ancestors. Upon entry to town the sunrise brings about temporary peace, wherein I decide to visit the local grocery and throw my bottled water at it's floor to reveal the garlic salesman hiding underneath the floorboards from minions of the Count who has decreed that garlic was illegal.

Perhaps I'm obsessed with the idea of pretending to be Simon, perhaps he really is just the world's biggest badass being able to beat Dracula by himself and then again later while he's dying of a curse placed on him by the same guy. You think I wouldn't want to role play as him?

A color palette of putrid dilapidation, reminiscent of Hammer horror films, a land that continues to be ravaged by monsters chaotically stalking about despite the Count's destruction. Simon himself now as pale as a ghost due to the curse that has been sapping away at him for the past seven years, a depressing tone for what should've been a peaceful reconstruction after our past victory. The last town in the game Ghulash is completely monochrome in color with only one person residing in it, showcasing the devastation that has expanded from Dracula's castle. The townsfolk talk in riddles and lies, done in either genuine good faith or as an act of sabotage to keep Simon from completing his quest for fear of Dracula's early return. The ringing of tears flowing from a ballroom mask echo across the land, a most legendary composition.

They say if you wish to follow up perfection, then you better hit strong, differently, or both.

As I have once said before, a game that becomes more enjoyable the more you replay is but a sign of perfection. For the original Castlevania it became more enjoyable as I grew quicker at conquering it from sheer skill, and for Simon's Quest it became more enjoyable as I grew more wary of it's tricks. Instead of a test of strength, it is a test of shrewdness and clever understanding. Whereas the original opted to try and beat you into the grave, Simon's Quest looks to baffle you with illusions and misdirection. Typos appaering, translations such as the Fist of the North Star reference getting turned into a weird shout out to the Galactic Empire's infamous space station, and signs of a rushed development seem to only help it, perhaps it is perfectly imperfect. A perfect sibling to what was a perfect game.

Maybe I am obsessed, maybe Dracula exists and he put a curse on me to forever defend Simon's Quest from the never ending ridicule that comes it's way thanks to videos that were made for humor back in the times of the ancients. Simon's last adventure now cursed to being used as the butt of a joke, and constantly used as a punching bag by armchair game designers. Those who hate are numerous, and me and my fellow Simon supporters are small in number, but we are steadfast and strong in our beliefs. We stand together in the face of hostility and look onward at the army in front of us, I unsheathe my whip, brandishing it in hand and turn to my allies with but two quiet words, "For Simon", I rush into the ensuing battle leading the charge into our forever war.

Our battle is never over, but despite our curse we forever fight to the bitter end just as a Belmont would.

The 2nd greatest cultural achievement of everyone's favorite apartheid state. If you make an unfun, obtuse game on purpose, it's still a pain to sit through, and I'm not sure if Armed & Delirious was trying to be bad in order to create a surreal atmosphere or if the developers were just that bad at their job.

Starting off with the game's most grave sin, the jokes don't land. I wasn't a fan of Psychonauts' "random and quirky" sense of humor, but this game seems like a mean spirited imitation of Psychonauts made by people who also didn't enjoy the game. Most of the humor comes from the nonsensical actions of the repulsive looking main character and her dementia-ridden worldview. Granny's character isn't defined enough to have decent jokes come from her bizarre reactions as some sort of psychotic break of character. Most of her bits involve "drinking" or referring to objects incorrectly, with random acts of violence sprinkled in. She's a Z-tier Peter Griffin, but the game also has too much restraint with what antics Granny will get up to, so her random outbursts come off as unsettling without the sort of shock that good Family Guy jokes have. This isn't an awful concept, you could either have her be a chaos demon interacting with the world like a violent, cruel Alzheimer's patient or have her be a sweet old woman, bumbling about a demented fever dream. They didn't bother to choose either.

She's easily the best part of the game, the rest of the characters are annoying and shallow, and the game lacks the wit to have them be interesting foils to Granny. Her family's characterization is equally unfocused and crude. Their main characteristics consist of "torture animals" and "are horny in a particularly greasy way". This doesn't make them stand out among the rest of the game's cast, as there are plenty of other NPCs who either hate animals or express their desire to bust to the player. The main antagonist feels detached from the game's events outside of specific plot dumps that go on for entirely way too long and kill whatever piss-poor pacing the game already had. The plot dumps are especially infuriating because the game lacks any consistent internal logical, which the game could have used to bounce off of and make a fucking joke.

The rest of the game's humor is dependent on how funny you find the unintuitive adventure game design and the solutions to puzzles that you wouldn't be able to find out the solution to without obscene pixel hunting/trial and error. Everything downstream from that is irrelevant, because it poisons the experience so fully that the rest of the game's faults don't look as bad. Granny, despite being able to do flips and other acrobatics in cut-scenes, apparently can't lift her hands above her head in almost all other situations and the player needs, on average, three to six different objects unrelated to a given puzzle in order to trigger a given plot flag. Inventory management is done with a visual basic window that's either way too small to read what the item is, or requires the player to resize the window every time you want to dig for the shovel so you can unlock a pizza or whatever stupid bullshit this game's on at that given time. There is zero deviation from the given path either, you have to perform these arcane steps in the exact order the game wants you to, even if """logically""" out of sequence actions should get you to the same destination. If you do know a puzzle's solution (you're following a guide for every step), context sensitive actions are entirely too picky and you'll have to attempt most actions multiple times for them to register. It's one thing to watch a longplay of this game, I did that years ago, but the actual process of having to disk swap constantly and mash on the same background object over and over again in the exact order to go to another disk swap sequence solidified just how wretched this game is to play on a moment to moment basis.

The presentation is awful, but not in similarly interesting ways. The game's early 3D models are ugly, but less in a "they were dealing with strict hardware limitations" sense, and more "the art direction in this game was bad, whoever worked on this game was a bad artist" ugly. The settings aren't strange enough to come off as totally alien or unsettling, if anything the worlds feel stock and forgettable outside of their use of weird camera angles. The characters fare slightly better, not in the sense that they had good direction, but in the sense that they're so revolting that they stick out in your mind (like the 3'9 Vectorman baby). I swear to god, there are renders of specific characters that look off model, like they outsourced animation for their own 3D rigs. The audio was poorly mixed, with important lines of dialogue being very hard to hear. Sound effects layer on top of each other at times, and I would have loved to mute the game but the game has no subtitle options. The music's my second favorite part of the game, because most of it sounds like it was pulled off of a royalty free music CD and is bland, but inoffensive unlike almost everything else in this game.

Most really bad games I've played haven't left me with any negative feelings towards the staff that worked on it. Dual Heroes is a game that's as bad as Armed & Delirious, but that's just an incompetent mess made by a team that primarily worked on RPGs and Bomberman ports, I hope everyone at Produce landed on their feet. The artistic choices that the staff at Makh-Shevet made reflect poorly on them as people, but not even in an interestingly offensive way, in the same way that David Cage's worldview poisons his games. This is a mean, ugly and unfunny game that compares poorly to its regional peers (which were also morally repugnant, being IDF flight sims), and it's for the best that the company folded shortly after this game's failure.

played october 18th (finished oct 19th) for rpgmaker october

14ch eternal gomez, 14ch for short, is another rly profilic creator im checking out. i sampled this, its sequel, and n also played games in the 14/? series--which are 3 games titled 14/?, 14/??, and 14/???, and they arent on backloggd atm--plus a knytt stories level they did that i HAD to check out (which is really good n shockingly expansive!!). and they still have a bunch of games in between all of these that i didnt check out. the games i bring up and the rest, or at least most of them, can be found on their website here and here, if you are interested.

i went for neftelia 1 over its sequel mostly bc i didnt want to futz w whatever that arcade world puzzle was in 2 much more than i did, but i also just find the first game more charming in its blockier n chunkier visual mess, n i like the soundtrack more. yume nikki has been held up as the common reference pt for abstract dialogueless rpgmaker et al exploration games ad nauseum, but i bring it up bc despite certain remsemblances that neftelia has to it, 14ch is i think a good example of someone finding their own identity n goals outside of those expectations. not only for superficial gameplay differences found in neftelia, like effects being replaced w weird little movies to find and watch all over the world, but for how much further these games go to experiment w space in rpgmaker. largely in the sense of changing up the logic btwn each "room", in ways that make the game often conditionally modify rules it had set w/o ever feeling incoherent w itself--mazes may have specific things to figure out abt them beyond "look for the path out", there's an occasional switch to a sidescroller angle, the largest map in neft 1 has a gimmick unique to it, things like that. maybe something to be said for exploring the potential that lies within the transition btwn rooms too, but that may be easier to speak on in other games; neft 1 is not as willing to disorient and let you play around w the environment as its sequel, and neither are as single-mindedly and consistently honed on these ideas as the 14/ games' randomized set of rooms. but, not counting a very annoying feature where id accidentally press shift and be forced to reset at the hub (note: do not ever press the shift keys ever until you want to go back to the hub and/or need to save, fortunately neft 2 fixes this by making you have to hold shift), i really liked this for just how early on 14ch's unique expressions n intents came thru w/o overextending itself too much, even in this rough n not yet deepened form.

quick aside abt the 14/ games: 14/? is very good n has some nice surprises in store, ?? is a step down i didnt love as much, ??? is maybe the most striking distillation of their style to date and is so fucking cool. i would play these in release order though personally

played oct 27th for rpgmaker october

stalled on saying anything abt this bc it amts to a lot of tiring adjectives i could use to communicate how dark fantasy computer rpg this feels while being v adventure game made in rpgmaker w only the lightest rpg elements. like barely even a battle system, just bump into an enemy and get a prompt with the math of your damage trade + maybe a status effect occasionally, and that's it. "arcane" is one id use, classic game basically drops you into things to figure out its interactions on your own, without any clear goals dictated to you. you just run out of reasons to live (literally as items that function as a measure of the time you have left in your run) as days go by, floundering around to understand this world youre in. my first run obviously didnt go well but i was rly taken w how the game instills its grim atmosphere thru that. i think its worth doing at least one run blind, taking setbacks as they come.

the 2nd run, one where i followed the devs walkthrough pretty closely, was v revealing for just how much shit is in this game that almost doesnt want to be found. a couple parts of this game had me yelling but what i have been thinking abt more is how they were buried; classic game isnt like a confessional, nor does it have shock content or anything explicitly fucked up or sinister like that, but there is something rly intoxicatingly perverse abt unravelling its secrets. that christian fearfulness or idk how to describe it that as you immerse yourself further into its esoterica, you bring yourself closer to the devil. i think its rly immense for this engine that kinda leans towards the cartoonish. like there's space funeral for comparison, which i thought this would be more patterned after based off the ascii character sprites n occasionally goofy sfx juxtaposed against drearily detailed environs n glowing pentagrams, the go-to example for halloweeny satanism "corroding" rpgmaker, but that game was simply using it for go to hell zx spectrum styled silly kitsch. classic game is not overly serious all the time but its harder to laugh its invocations off. entire game feels like an expansion on the mephistopheles quest in demon's souls, painstaking completionism + cryptic directions followed just to summon your own oblivion for you to see more clearly for yourself.

idk if my opinion of this game will soften over time but the way it explores that dark space btwn ancient lofi gamey abstraction n visually tactile depictions of cold ruined lands, how our imagination snakes its ways thru the machine and renders it accursed, really hit for me since playing a few weeks back. for the moment im calling it one of the best i played last month

forgot to log this, its sad that this couldnt have been finished :( even if its rpg stuff is a little simple n plodding and even if the tonal shift feels a little too awkward compared to vague story or darkipt's consistent ambiguity, it rly felt like brownsugar's most ambitious thing up to that point, their "big game", that makes me wish it could've been seen thru. its not as amazing as the two by this creator i brought up n even in its complete form idk if i wouldve changed my stance on that, but that special something they bring to their stuff is totally here. glad they tried to salvage it into something for us to get some glimpse of what they intended at least

-the use of comedy in parun’s work I find to both be rlly fascinating and disorienting. in both this and rekinder there will be very long monologue scenes that are disgustingly raw in their emotion, some of the best written stuff I’ve ever seen tbh and it’s almost always followed up by a punchline. I’m very into finding the connective tissue between diff generations and I think for zoomers and millennials it’s these attempts at kind of manipulative shows of emotion followed up by jokes to downplay their own emotional truths. everything is ironic and everything is a joke, it’s all one big performance for the person they’re trauma dumping on, you the audience. I don’t rlly feel like content warning this so I won’t go into specifics but I’ve had friends and loved ones tell me and show me fucked up shit and then play it off like they’re not hurting. I’m not saying any of this in a critical way, I do it, you do it and so did parun in all his work.
-the first creative effort my bf ever showed me was about a gay teenager and his relationship w his single dad and how bc the teenager didn’t feel at all connected or loved by his father he would do things to make his father hit him. it’s a fictional story but it was the first impression I ever had of my father in law, in the story the man was presented as cold and aloof, quiet but aggressive at a moments notice. the fictional description of this man ended up being pretty similar to the real life guy. and he’s a guy who’s been very sweet to me and who in his later life tried being closer to his family, a family which he’s readily welcomed me into when he didn’t need to, but we all end up paying for mistakes no matter how long ago we made them. him being kind of a shitty father long ago has followed him his whole life, it was the first thing I ever knew about the guy and no matter how close I am to him or how sweet he can be my mind always goes back to the story my bf showed me like six years ago.
-lots of interesting stuff here about how children grow up to be like their fathers and I think it largely rings true. think by the ending the themes of the story are just hammered in a bit too much, some stuff is a little too repetitive and unsubtle in a way that I never felt w rekinder. also I think this is like way more pessimistic and hateful in comp to rekinder, that game seemed hopeful that future generations will correct the mistakes of the past and lead better lives, it’s a very strange final game to make. in contrast this is very bleak and negative and seem to suggest future generations will actually make the exact same mistakes and go down the exact same routes. it’s two totally different explorations of the same themes. both r rlly good :-))
-gay in way that’s incredibly hard to describe?? gay in the way an image of a kid picking flowers during the baseball game is but also gay in the same way an image of like jeffrey dahmer or john wayne gacey is. idk if that makes complete sense tbh but what I’m trying to get at is how parun is often battling himself and conversing w himself here? presenting what seems like two totally different versions of who I can only assume is his self insert. how one version feeds into the other and how the other version is always present under the pretense? rlly genuinely hard to describe I’m sorry lmaoo
-think the usage of multimedia is genuinely fucking beautiful and funny and also disorienting and scary. idk any zoom in on the convenience store is kind of all of those at once. need more stuff that’s as experimental in form and medium as this is tbh so if anyone has any goods recs across all forms of media I would love to hear. have seen most of anno’s work and most of it does what I’m describing but specifically his and her circumstances and ritual, gemusetto’s first season does it. uhh twelve oz mouse too kind of
-literally was shocked at bit at the end w the spirits. rlly well done and I think what confirmed it to me as like a masterpiece.