#Ben and Ed

[satoshi-mochida]

Some indie game recommendations from ones I’ve played or know enough about them to suggest them to others(mostly in no particular order), Part 9

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Sea of Stars

En Garde!

Pony Island

Ben and Ed

Bokura

Layers of Fear series

before the green moon

Corn Kidz 64

Turbo Dismount

BABBDI

Itorah

The Vagrant/Sword of the Vagrant

Subway Midnight

Let's Find Larry

Hylics series

Eve of Souls: Static Pod

Perfect Gold

One Finger Death Punch series

Speedrunners

Happy Wheels

Home Safety Hotline

Neverending Nightmares

Black Snow(Half-Life 2 mod)

We Were Here series

Black Heaven

Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia

Kerbal Space Program series

Cavern of Dreams

Pseudoregalia

Alisa

[treeparkinglot]

Ben and his creativity to Ed's skull face.

[icelordofwinter]

…

alright which one of you was gonna tell me that one game from 2015 about a zombie named ed trying to save his friend named Ben was a fucking arg and had deep lore and shit and that there is some creepy shit and NO ONE IS TRYING TO FIND OUT WHATS GOING ON?!

like who the fuck is Benedict WHATS HAPPENING?! IS NO ONE CONFUSED OF WHATS GOING ON?? IM I THE ONLY ONE?! LIKE I THOUGHT THIS WAS JUST A SILLY WEIRD GAME THAT I USED TO WATCH MARKPILER WHEN I WAS YOUNGER?! THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN THERE IS SOME CRAZY ARG SHIT?!

[the-witchs-cafe]

[syrupspinner]

i just defeated Ben and Ed

dead game, am i right?

ill come out and say that, for better or worse, the most notable thing about this game is how much it shows its age.

so, indie games have always been innately countercultural in my opinion. people make indie games because theyre inspired to do something the AAA industry lacks, and a lot of the indie games that pop off into popularity do so because they offer something that mainstream gaming cant. in the current zeitgeist, we can see that best by comparing the innate simplicity and modest of indie games compared to sony's big 10-years-in-the-oven blockbuster. thats not to say indie games dont have work put into them, id never say that the year after pizza tower and sea of stars game out, but those are video games for gamers, not cinematic experiences for the general public

all this is to paint a picture of the mid-aughts, where gamers were freaking the fuck out about their hobby being made casual. the industry didnt want to cater to the same closed circle of hardcore dedication forever, and wanted to follow the wii's success by making gaming something everyone can enjoy. in other words, less call of duty, more wii sports. also unignorable is super meat boy hitting the shelves in 2010. i bought a copy from walmart as a kid (a physical disc that made me download steam to play it) and was shocked by the difficulty and the humour trying way too hard to be offensive. woah, an aborted fetus is the bad guy, youre just like the kid in my class whos mean to girls for attention. either way, it was a runaway success, and set the standard for indies to be rude & tough even if they werent directly inspired

so, ben and ed happens. an unflinchingly difficult platformer that has a meanspirited and gross edge to it. and yeah, this sure reads like someone wanted to make a difficult game all right. it's not I Am Bread levels of fuck-you-just-because, but it still feels like it cares more about being hard than being fair

like, the penultimate level has buzzsaws swinging back and forth across a pit of acid that the platforms dunk you into sometimes. add some laser sharks and we have an avgn bit. but it doesnt feel like ive been given a fun challenge here, just something hard for the sake of saying "look at me i did a tough thing" to all my friends. it doesnt feel intrinsically rewarding to overcome, because the difficulty is cheap

also, in the very same level, you can press tab and ragdoll under everything for like... two minutes straight. thats not hard, dude.

my final conclusion is that this game feels like its chasing trends from the time and doesnt hold up as a result. maybe itd feel less like that if the game didnt have the same "look at me im so dark and yucky" vibe that every newgrounds game had? like, the premise of kidnapping a zombie and making them play wipeout is already bleak enough, you dont have to make the antagonist jontron with acne and litter the game with ads for meat-flavoured dentists or whatever the fuck.

to close this off, i think this whole thing can be summarized by saying if you know about this game in the current year, at least if youre anything like me, you probably know about markiplier losing his shit

whats at the end? ...a facebook link, to a page trying to kickstart an ARG that fizzled out due to lack of interest and seemed to just be a roundabout reference to a creepypasta from almost 15 years ago.

alright

[cybersp4ced]

cy: couldnt sleep because saw ben and ed video

also cy: must watch more ben and ed video

[doyouknowthisgame]

[i-like-eyes]

hi please ask me about my very sane crossover teen au i may have been developing for 2 years

[tinydancerfreelancersblog]

*Edit* *Snape Voice* We're on Like Number 394

*Second edit* *We were on Like Number 394

[berrybloss]

READY FOR NEXT GAME?

[10bendog]

Today marks 21 years since the CN City era and exactly 1 year since I started making CN CIty art. So, to celebrate both occasions and to sort of conclude this chapter of my art, I've created my largest piece to date!

Come! It's a party downtown, and you're invited! "This is Cartoon Network."

I want to thank everyone who's seen my art and interacted with it, liked it, shared it, etc. for the past year. It all means a lot to me! 🖤🤍 I might not be posting as much CN City from now on, but I will continue to post general Cartoon Network art indefinitely, some of which will be part of new projects. As always, here's the full renders of all 36 characters in this piece. No points for guessing why I stopped on this particular number, lol.

But wait, there's more!

I decided to make a list of all the CN characters to illustrate just how many of them I've drawn for the past year. This encompasses all the CN City art, the CN City adjacent art, like the Villains Bar, etc., all FusionLore thumbnails I've done so far and the last triple art style challenge piece, because all 3 of its characters didn't appear in any of the other drawings.

This all comes to a grand total of 48 CN cartoons + FusionFall + (not shown) 8 Disney and 10 Nick shows represented, among which there's 213 different characters that made an appearance (counting the Ben 10 variants of characters + Ben's aliens separately).

[the-classic-dreamer]

Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion 2 👊

[mybellabellabella]

Writing isn’t enough.

I need to be a film director, screen play writer, collect the original cast of Gotham and have them perform the plot of my fanfic.

[goryhorroor]

childhood shows + favorites

[vroomvroomwee]

The way Ed tries to kill Hornigold, over and over and over, but fails every time is so much more tragic when you realise Hornigold is basically the voice in his head telling him he's worthless, unlovable, evil. The voice telling him to die.

And he tries so hard to get rid of it, to get rid of the voice, but loses the fight again and again. And if it weren't Stede fucking Bonnet, the complete opposite of Hornigold, the one who showed him love and fun and joy and happiness, that voice would have won.

[cybersp4ced]

the comments on the bennnnnnn fb oh my god ppl are so done but im intrigued guys ... <-wont sleep tonight again