#and the frog npcs are cute

[s30620]

Chapter 142: That's Enough of Sweets!

Haven't seen Vamola in a few chapters and she's already talking in complete sentences 🥹 I'm so proud of her. I also thought Turbo Granny and Mai's interactions are funny. Vamola and Rin are like parents reprimanding their children lol.

We also see Momo and Unji in the part of the game that's like a village in an RPG. I like that they match each other's energy, their personalities are quite similar. If you're chill with them, they're chill with you.

[kuhulua]

THEY'RE SO CUTE

[sharkylad]

SPIRITFARER MID GAME SPOILERS

GO PLAY THIS GAME AND DONT READ IF YOURE INTERESTED IN THIS CUTE ASS GAME

You can hug the NPCs with some gorgeous animations, what more do you want.

ATUL

ATULLLLLL!!!!!

ATULLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!

HE JUST UP AND LEFT IM NOT OKAY

I THOUGHT- I THOUGHT ID GET TO THE END OF HIS QUEST, AND HE'D BE LIKE "I think I'm ready" CAUSE HE GOT TO SPEND A LITTLE MORE TIME WITH FAMILY, AND ID JUST NEVER TAKE HIM, BUT HE JUST DID IT HIMSELF!!!! IM NOT OKAY!!!!!!!!

I was yapping to my girlfriend how he was my favorite, and I love having him on my boat, how I don't wanna let him go.

And I really just liked progressing his quests and appealing to him, so I was just doing progress as normal-

I did have a feeling the party would be the last quest of his- BUT,, I DIDNT THINK HE'D DISSAPEAR IN THE NIGHT,,, I THOUGHT ID BE ABLE TO TAKE HIM TO THE EVERDOOR,,,,

I genuinely went through the 5 stages of grief man.

Stage 0: Doubt. After I made him his chicken I was getting emotional over how much I like having this guy around. And sometime around the dinner, before it or after I can't tell for sure, I was thinking "What if he just dissappear. What I don't get to see him again or hug him" LITTLE DID I KNOW-

Stage 1: Denial. Astrid was the one who broke the news to me. I saw the spirit flower icon pop up, and I genuinely just thought the game was fucking with me. I went in his room and my heart sank. Picked up his flower cause I was still thinking "No way the game let's me pick this up, no way this is actually for real"

Stage 2: Bargaining. I went outside, tried to walk with the other Spirits, none of them mentioned anything. I was at a bus stop, and because Alex is my goat, I've kept the music on- but in a last ditch attempt to maybe help me feel better- I asked him to turn it off. It didn't work.

Stage 3: Anger. I went into a group chat with my besties, and I started just screaming about how insane this was and my devastation, the vigor was a lot.

Stage 4: Depression. In the following hours it was all I could think about and it slowly wore of its energy, but not the sadness with it.

Stage 5: Acceptance. The next day on my way to work and back, I'd just listen to Thunder Harvest, and it would come with such a bittersweet feeling. I'd just think about his little flute playing dance and my heart would warm.

This silly fuckin Frog Guy caused me to go through genuine grief, what did they put into this game-

Stella didn't get to say goodbye either,,, oughhhh...

I read that Atul was based after one of the Dev's uncles, who also suddenly dissapeared. Maybe that's why it feels so genuine.

At least Atul got to feel like he was amongst family...

It really got to me that this cheerful sweet guy, someone who brings others up and is filled with so much love is someone who went the way he did.

There's so many interpretations to his disappearance. I've seen people interprate it as him leaving himself to the Everdoor, to spare you the trip (WHICH HURTS ME GREATLY... CAUSE IMAGINE HES SO FILLED WITH LOVE, BUT DIDNT WANT TO SHOW THIS VULNERABLE SIDE OR HIM... AND JUST... SPARED STELLA THE HARD WORK-)

But I've also seen people read it as him finally being at peace with his life and regrets. And that's what someone needs in order to pass on. And I find that sweet... I hope that's the case. He deserves to be at peace with his life and choices and where he is. I can only hope he was happy in his last moments.

While the grief hit me hard- I am just floored with the great execution of this idea. This is the first time a game mechanic not being what it's supposed to got to me to such a deep level.

It allowed me to expirience such a visceral human emotion that simply would not work if I sent him to the Everdoor. The unability to say goodbye is so heartbreaking and something I think is important to expirience.

[shrimpbat]

it's been a long time since I've asked sth like this but can I have cute IU facts? i love the IU guys........

Yes you can!! :D I love writing stuff like this it fuels me.

Amara feels bad when Bonnie's scared of her. She loves cat wife and when cat wife is scared of her, her heart aches.

Don't worry though cat wife warms up to her over time and accepts the fact that "yes this is in fact a demon from hell".

Mason's believed to be the more "masculine" one of him and Jamie and is scared of nothing. No, this boy squeals if he sees Jeff the Killer.

Funnily enough Jamie can stomach horror movies more than Mason can. Mason hides in Jamie's shoulder.

Everyone in IU loves Nellie-Bell. Everyone shall love the Nellie.

Carly's a gamer and tries teaching Lucille how to play a fps. Lucille cries because she accidentally clipped an NPC frog. Carly hugs Lucille.

Marsha and Lavane share a braincell because the two of them can sit in a bean bag and just watch a 2 hour crazy frog video.

Amara's very protective of Mania, and was actually very suspicious of his and Vex's relationship. Amara then realizes she's also dating an Earthling and comes to terms with her brother's man.

Mania also finds Vex doing the most basic shit really attractive. Vex washing dishes? Vex turning on the TV? Vex putting on his glasses? Vex sitting in a chair with a shitty posture? Mania loves it.

[celestiamour]

‧₊˚✧ ❛[ silly block game ]❜

ft. lucy pevensie, edmund pevensie, susan pevensie, peter pevensie (seperate) x gn! reader — the chronicles of narnia

╰₊✧ playing minecraft with the pevensie siblings┊1.5k words

setting: modern au, no mentions of narnia contains: fluff & crack, modern alternate universe, they are children in the image but ages are unspecified (so it could be romantic or platonic), mentions of in-game player & pet deaths,

➤ author's note: i had a dream that peter died in my arms while we were playing minecraft and decided to write cute headcanons when i woke up like a loser

━━━ .°˖✧ lucy pevensie ˚₊ ⊹

╰₊✧ favorite biome - cherry grove, favorite mob - frogs, favorite flower - lily of the valley, favorite wood - birch, favorite block - moss

╰₊✧ she takes her time when it comes to completing the game and may take forever to get to the end dimension, prefering to play on peaceful mode so that she can focus on exploring and creating with keep inventory on since she doesn’t want to stress out about playing, enjoying everything it has to offer and will continuously pause on making progress to admire the scenery (but sometimes she turns it on easy mode to give her a little challenge when caving). oddly enough, even if the difficulty was on hard mode, she never seems to encounter any hostile mobs and they all decide to attack you instead while mining. it’s not an uncommon occurrence for her to tell you that she found her eighth patch of diamonds only for you to scream in response because you found a zombie spawner. she’ll manage to make it out of a pillager outpost without losing so much as half a heart while you’re looking like a pincushion, how does she do it?

╰₊✧ more of a farmer player who is mesmerized by all the different types of flowers and will have a goal of harvesting all of them to make colorful fields that stretch on for longer than your render distance will allow you to see. she’s most excited about updates that have new plants, wood types, and animals, keeping pets of all kinds even if they aren’t meant to be domesticated! her base is practically a zoo and is always full of life just like she is, yet it still naturally blends in with the area so well that it seems naturally generated at first glance. on a creepier note, the more hidden areas might have a skull or two placed to fit an overgrown and abandoned aesthetic, but at least it’s pretty with all of the spore blossoms!

╰₊✧ lucy hates villager trading farms with a passion, finding them too inhumane despite the fact that the villagers are npcs without sentience of any sort. it breaks her heart to see them in such cramped living conditions whose only purpose is for trade, so she’ll work on freeing them while you’re offline. she’ll spend hours upon hours gathering materials in secret to build a nicer village than the one they formally resided in before dismantling your system, with a good amount of iron golems to protect them from hostile mobs since she didn’t want to restrict them by building a fence or walls. (don’t worry, all of them are named and she’s kept a book on all of their trades so that you can keep track! the hard part is only tracking them down, but the big village is a thousand times better than the ugly trading hall you had before).

━━━ .°˖✧ edmund pevensie ˚₊ ⊹

╰₊✧ favorite biome - ice spikes, favorite mob - horses, favorite flower - torchflower, favorite wood - dark oak, favorite block - prismarine

╰₊✧ he enjoys speedrunning, the only thing standing between him and being on the leaderboard is minor slip-ups that cost the entire game. he tends to get too cocky, especially once he’s gathered all he needed from the nether fortress and prematurely celebrates before a blaze knocks him off the edge, so you bet that you’re going to hear him come up with the most creative insults you would ever hear over the discord call (not including swears because he will be scolded for his language by someone in his house). his best record of beating the game is around forty minutes, nothing to gawk at, but something that he’s very proud of after all of his practice.

╰₊✧ if it’s not a world dedicated to that, where he doesn’t need to build a base, then he’ll place down all of the essentials and call it a day without a roof over his head. it’s not like he can actually get wet from the rain or sunburn from the sun, so he doesn’t bother and just lives like that until you persuade him to at least dig out a hole in a mountain to keep away from night-time mobs and expand whenever needed. his scattered chests are a mess, by the way, you can’t find anything while he just spam clicks and glazes over the screen to find something in his strange little system. he insists that he knows where everything is and that organization isn’t needed.

╰₊✧ also a total prankster, but will never blow up builds or destroy anything of yours because he knows how much time you put into it for a minute of amusement. he likes watching where you log out and trapping you in that spot with obsidian, something that you can easily get out of with a pick but is still annoying enough for him to get a kick out of it. once he wasn’t sure where the exact spot was, so he spent an entire real-life night meticulously encasing the area in glass and then flooding every block of air with water. he wondered multiple times if the effort was worth it in the process, but he cried tears of laughter when you couldn’t get out at all since you drowned before you could break the glass and then swim out. it was an endless cycle of “died by drowning” until you offered him a chest of iron blocks for your freedom.

━━━ .°˖✧ susan pevensie ˚₊ ⊹

╰₊✧ favorite biome - mountains, favorite mob - foxes, favorite flower - rose bushes, favorite wood - mangrove, favorite block - quartz

╰₊✧ has mixed feelings on redstone, something that makes so much yet so little sense. it’s something that she likes to think that she mastered quickly, but you can always hear her muttering under her breath about how an entire contraption broke because of something dumb like the repeater being a tick off. she always covers up these machines with big, elaborate builds in a unique gothic style that you’ve only seen from her— although most of these builds are hollow since she doesn’t know how to design the interior, leaving entire towns empty until she lets you fill them up with various shops and villagers to make it feel more lived-in.

╰₊✧ refuses to throw anything away and maybe has a bit of a hoarding tendency, you cannot convince her to toss so much as a rotten potato into the lava because she “might need it in the future” even though it’s the most worthless item in the game. her storage system is immense and conscientiously organized with item frames and color signs while practically overflowing, but she has copious amounts of everything and is very generous when it comes to sharing as long as you ask beforehand! (as a result, her least favorite mobs are creepers because she needs to sort out the damaged chests before everything disappears, a complete nightmare)

╰₊✧ has god-like accuracy with any projectiles and has mending on her bow because she hates how expensive it is to get a new one with maxed-out enchantments and argues about how it’s so much better than infinity once she made the switch. you need an inventory slot with at least one arrow anyway, so why can’t you just have the full stack when you can always pick up more by killing skeletons? it may be a bit pretentious of her, but she might mock you that you just have a skill issue when she sees you being a bad shot before giving you some tips on how to improve.

━━━ .°˖✧ peter pevensie ˚₊ ⊹

╰₊✧ favorite biome - fields, favorite mob - dogs/wolves, favorite flower - oxeye daisy, favorite wood - spruce, favorite block - diamond ore

╰₊✧ from “the sky’s the limit” to “whatever floats your goat,” the game isn’t done until he’s gotten all of the achievements no matter how stupid they may be! he’s pretty serious about completing, but once he’s finished, you can see him start goofing off and being more ridiculous. unlike his brother who plays the pranks, he tends to be the victim of them and can’t get revenge at all because his traps are a bit obvious (lucy always helps him out in that department). on the other hand, he’s great at pvp and fighting mobs, best with a sword, and likes to start raids to fight for fun with the “hero of the village” effect being a massive ego boost as well.

╰₊✧ his builds are pretty boring and cramped since he never upgrades it as needed, his house is really just a box made out of planks from the surrounding area. he didn’t think that you could create anything pleasing to the eye in a game where everything is made from cubes, so you’ll need to open his eyes to the fact that he can construct whatever he wants and how the only limit is his creativity. he won’t advance any further than using two different types of woods and including cobblestone, it simply isn’t his strong suit and he would much rather spend his time exploring and slaying his enemies instead.

╰₊✧ he has so many dogs, it’s not even funny, you need to turn down the volume for passive mobs whenever you’re at his base because they are barking nonstop. it’s not intentional either, he just somehow constantly forgets that feeding them makes them breed and can’t ever resist not giving them some steak when they tilt their heads at him. he gave up on naming all of them since he didn’t have enough tags and dying all of their collars after building a separate home for them, but the original ones that he tamed in the wild remain in his bedroom. despite the number of dogs, he refuses to take any of them on adventures with them because he will cry when unnamed number two hundred-something dies after sniffing lava and holds a funeral with a proper burial place.

[goodartitude]

my DnD character Iris (the one with glasses) learned a lot about themselves during the last session teehee

Cin (the one with two buns) belongs to @ivypond11 and Kor (the demifury) is an NPC created by our wonderful DM @reyna-is-epic <33

taglist:

@dodelidoo @calamity-unlocked @turn-the-frickin-frogs-gay @arcadiii @bardicspiration @mood-owl @kaseyskat @maritasdump @eeveearoace @cute-as-buttons @beneaththeiceandsnow @reyraccoon @hachidementa @hey-its-puddlesock @watermelon-converse @bookmermaidcats @linkcalm @ivypond11 @chaoticcerise @nexstage @darcysd20 @gaynessisintheair @bloop-arts @banyanas @impact801 @prism-empurress

[skeletwinsauaskbox]

If Lento and Presto had a Minecraft World...

(I want to play Minecraft so bad omg)

Presto would build a giant statue of himself and live in his head. This is inspired by the giant Thumper I built for my sister that she lived in because she loved bunnies when she was little, and her Thumper from Bambi plush was her favourite.

Lento would live in a small house. It's a bit ugly, but it gets the job done. Eventually, Presto upgrades his house to make it look more like a cute little cottage. Lento is grateful.

Lento and Presto would go on a lot of quests together and make up challenges for themselves to keep themselves entertained. They defeated the Ender Dragon, the Wither, and got murdered by the Warden 17 times combined (Presto died 13 times, Lento died 4 times).

Lento would make the dumbest structures for the sake of it. On the other hand, he loves to experiment with different game mechanics. So his general structures are a mix of stupid stuff and stupidly brilliant stuff.

Presto is the type to go to a village and instead of destroying it or whatever, he sets out to improve it and give the villagers new shops, hotels, a whole theme park, entertainment... And then he's disappointed when they don't actually use it because, well, NPCs and all.

Lento definitely tricked Presto into trying to sleep in the Nether. Twice. And once in the End.

Presto makes puzzles and would love to experiment with redstone. He makes the coolest redstone contraptions ever.

Lento would get as many pets as possible, including the untameable ones. He has an army of dogs, cats, horses axolotls, pandas, fish, frogs, foxes, all the farm animals... He's looking to increase his ever-growing collection.

Presto screams whenever a creeper explodes.

Lento made Presto a secret treasure vault in the Nether so Presto can store all his stuff.

Lento also made his very own man-made lush cave. It's where his axolotls live. He also made a fairy tale forest around it. Oh, and it's near his cottage.

Presto created a whole castle between the village and Lento's forest. The two are planning on making a whole kingdom together.

[justaragdollysblog]

May I request fluffy abstragedy ✨✨🍭

Carnival Cuties

Hey!!! sorry this took so long to write 💔💔💔

Synopsis: Gangle and Zooble, with the others, take to the carnival for a day of digital recreation.

————————————————————————

The sun was high in the sky as Gangle and Zooble strode through the Digital Carnival. There was a pleasant breeze in the air, and jaunty music played faintly in the background.

Zooble, apathetic and indifferent, was admittedly glad they had a free day. They had been meaning to be alone with Gangle somewhere other than their rooms.

They had gotten together a few weeks ago, after another late night comfort session. Gangle blurted it out through sobs, and Zooble almost thought they didn’t hear her right. They’d been inseparable ever since.

Zooble glanced over at the pile of ribbons, and her comedy mask remained firmly in place. Her ribbons wrapped gently around Zooble’s arm part of the day.

The carnival was pretty big, and where there weren’t rides, there were games. Rigged and annoying carnival games. Zooble inwardly sighed a bit when Gangle spotted a plushie and her mask lit up.

“Zooble! Look at that plush!” Gangle pointed a ribbon hand over at it. It was a frog plush with big eyes and a ribbon around its neck (?). Zooble looked over at their girlfriend with humor in their eyes. “You want that plush?”

“Yes! It’s so cute!” She giggled, inching towards the stand. “Come on! Let’s go let’s go let’s go!” She laughed.

“Okay, okay.” Zooble acquiesced. There was a lighthearted tone that they didn’t think was possible in this place. The two approached the stand.

The faceless mannequin npc pointed to a sign that stated the rules of the game. Ring toss. Throw the ring around the furthest bottle and get a prize.

Zooble stretched their mismatched arms and grabbed a ring. After a deep breath to focus, Zooble turned their hand, aimed for the back,

and missed pretty bad.

Zooble’s antennae twitched, a sign they were annoyed. They groaned a bit and grabbed another ring. Okay, maybe their aim was off. Turn to the left and-

missed again.

Zooble glared at the childish game, balling their fists. “$&@;!” They cussed. Zooble wasn’t about to give up. They saw how happy Gangle looked about that plush. Zooble held out their hand for another ring.

Gangle stood a bit to the side, giggling a little. Zooble typically didn’t care enough to try about a lot of things at the circus. And, as annoying and frustrating this situation was, Gangle admitted it was kinda sweet to be this worked up over her.

Gangle was snapped out of her thoughts when Zooble stomped their foot. “What do you mean I missed?! That clearly touched it!”

Gangle was just worried now. She put a ribbon hand on Zooble’s shoulder. They seemed to simmer a bit. “Zooble, it’s okay! I can just ask Caine for another plush.”

Zooble looked over, frustration and desperation clear in their eyes. “But you don’t even ask for much! And I thought I could win this stupid game, because Jax has been breaking your mask so much lately, and-“

Zooble’s ranting was cut off when Gangle very gently hugged them. Zooble faltered for a second, and then hugged back just as gently. They closed their eyes and just enjoyed the contact.

“You don’t have to prove anything to me. I’m happy, and not just because of my mask. I’m happy because I get to date you.” Gangle explained softly, ribbon hands wrapped around Zooble’s torso.

Zooble wished they could hug tightly, but due to their respective anatomy, it wouldn’t help at all. Zooble had an emotional tone to their voice when they spoke again.

“You deserve to be happy, Gangle. You make me happy too.” Zooble sniffled somehow, and the two finally broke apart. Gangle wrapped her arm around Zooble’s limb again.

“Come on, I think there’s no line for the ferris wheel.” Gangle smiled. They didn’t need to get frustrated again at the game.

Zooble had a smile that reached their eyes.

“Okay.”

—————————————————————

Ahhh sorry this took a bit! I hope you like it!!!

reblogs are appreciated! see u guys next time!

[faejilly]

So a couple people have actually enabled me re: yelling about and trying to organize my thoughts on my assorted SDV mods, so let's see how it goes? idk

First, for anyone reading this who has not done the SDV modding thing yet, you need SMAPI, Content Patcher, and Generic Mod Config Menu, and some of the mods I use have other utility mod requirements but I don't want to go clicking through every one to double check and really, they're very good at making them obvious on Nexus if you follow any of my links, and I'll be happy to answer any questions on this absurdly long and rambling thing that failed entirely to just be a list.

Sorry?

Big/Overview & Game-Wide Mods

As mentioned before, my preferred recolor is Vibrant Pastoral, but there are several out there, most of them are pretty compatible with other mods and have been updated for 1.6 if they're still on Nexus at all, and I have no real horse in this race in terms of suggesting mine in particular, I just like it. (Options for bushes and water and grass, oh my! It's really very pretty, did I say that already?)

Diverse Stardew Valley

So you can just use this as a seasonal outfit mod (they'll dress for rain and snow, the LI squad has pajamas, there's varied beachwear, etc.) and there are some fun 'global' options that put mermaid pendants on portraits of married people (including your spouse and several rival hearts/additional NPC options as well if you play with any of those mods), and make the Flower Queen more dynamic, and you can absolutely leave it at that and leave all the characters at "vanilla" if you want. (Or with very minor tweaking to make sprites and character portraits match, that kind of thing.)

BUT, they have various different options for ethnicity/religion/disability/etc. for pretty much everyone in town and Krobus has cute little accessories he wears and Maru & Sebastian look so good and they're my favorite nerds, so! (They both have a couple options but I like these. I do also usually give Sebastian piercings, but I didn't have a good shot of that in the same style as Maru's preview there, and it looked weird having a different sort of image.)

Also I chose variants where both Haley & Kent are HoH and I imagine them both together somewhere turning off their hearing aids and ignoring all the awful loud Hearing Folks In Town, because they're both actually kind of terrible at Being Friendly (if for different reasons) and it makes me happy to know they've got company when they don't want To People.

Also Linus can have a service dog! Her name is Marigold! She's such a good girl!

UI Info Suite 2

IT SHOWS YOU EVERYTHING! Range displays for sprinklers and scarecrows and bee houses and mushroom logs and mossy seeds and and and... There's hover text on machines & crops & tappers; icons over animals that need petting or item collecting; calendar & help wanted board in your player menu; reminder icons under the HUD-clock for b-days, trader visits, tools, weather, queen of sauce, luck level; plus inventory icons on hover for museum/shipping/bundle collections; and you can turn any of it on or off whenever you want.

NPC Map Locations

There's supposed to be a map function in ⬆️ but it doesn't work as well imo.

CJB Cheats Menu & CJB Item Spawner

These are full on "cheating" if you care about OG game balance or whatever, but if you're aiming for an achievement that isn't fun for you, or hate the casino but want the damn rarecrow or top hat, or you're trying to get All Eight Frog Egg Trinket Colors for your froggie-sanctuary-loving-spouse, (just me?), or just want to force something to grow or a machine to finish or for friendship decay to disappear, these will do it. Go wild. Make time stop in dungeons so you can make it to floor 100 in a day! Catch your fish perfectly! Give yourself a fish you forgot to catch last season! Kill things in one hit! Warp anywhere any time! Give yourself all the loot you need! (Or clothes you want!) Pause while decorating until everything's PERFECT! Make your ridiculous OP farm fun again as you force your way to perfection!

Or whatever.

I legit have to uninstall these sometimes because I hit them up too much and get invested in an end goal rather than enjoying playing? But I have used both of them, they're great, especially if your brain is even slightly less dysfunctional than mine is at the moment.

Forage Fantasy

So the blurb for this makes you think it's just about tappers & mushrooms (which I enjoy a lot, so that's very good!) but ALSO the Survival Burger is still an early level forage recipe that can now be either crafted or cooked out of seasonal forage so you can 1: make it immediately and have food before you have a kitchen or money, especially if you've had good luck trash diving for bread, (otherwise you do have to buy bread from Gus but at least it's cheaper) and 2: there are four different recipes since the ingredients are seasonal but they're still all survival burgers and stack nicely in your inventory or fridge and idk that's delightful for me. (Also if you cook it you make two and if you craft it you make one which is such a well-done little balance thing.)

Also it has an option to make fiddlehead fern a regular forage item so there are four summer forage items for the community bundle & seed recipe, which makes everything balance nicely in my brain and I like it so much.

OmniTool

Have you ever been hitting rocks in the mine and then scroll the wrong way or hit the wrong button and try to hit the Something that is attacking you with ore, or your fishing rod, or something else useless? (Do you, like me, hate that all your tools that might be handy take up almost an entire row of your backpack slots even though you have Chests Anywhere and can just move things so it doesn't matter?) This thing lets you combine the ones you want, then auto senses the tile you're clicking on and picks the right tool out of your stack. (You can adjust which tools it works with and which click it's looking for in the config, too.)

It does not understand that I need the pickaxe for moving certain decorations or clearing out dig spots so they don't show up on my farm computer as empty tilled soil, and I don't put my fishing rod in there because then it sometimes tries to fish when I'm panning & vice versa, and you have to click *next* to trees you want to scythe for moss or else it will hit them with the axe, and I know all these things and still hit the wrong thing all the time? AND YET, it's still pretty neat! And I hit monsters on purpose way more often! And my toolbar looks so clean and open. 😅

Which leads us nicely into:

I HATE INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

(My very favorite inventory mod ever was 'Less Annoying Flowers' which was not updated for 1.6. Someone else loved it and made a 'Custom Flower Colors' which lets you pick the colors instead of just choosing from some defaults, but since that's literally all it does it is smaller in scope than the rest of these and I put it at the end in my random tweaks list.)

Chests Anywhere

You can access all of them from anywhere with a touch of a button! Or possibly you can limit that to the ones in your area. You can make them inaccessible in dungeons if you want for the proper crawl feel; very versatile in terms of how much inventory you want to deal with and when and where.

Convenient Inventory

Auto-stack! (Distance can be global if you have Chests Anywhere!) Mark something your favorite so you can't stack/drop/ship/trash it by accident! It will let you pick up everything except one of an inventory item too, so you don't have to figure out a count but still have something to auto-stack back to.

Workbench Helper

Does for crafting what mini-fridges did for cooking, basically, as this lets you pull from chests that aren't touching the workbench. You can set it to require that the chests chain to touch the workbench, pick a specific distance, or set it to anything in the area/room you put the workbench in.

Big Fridges

Exactly what it says on the tin. Your initial fridges in both the Farmhouse and Ginger Island kitchen have 70 spaces. (Much like a Big Chest vs a Regular Chest.) You can buy more Big Fridges from Robin and place them on top of a mini-fridge if you already have them (again like the big chests) so you don't have to manually move inventory around.

And it's got a color picker, so my blue and white fridges match my floor there in the corner! I'm love them! Even if I'm too lazy to get a daytime screenshot so they show up better.

ON FINDING THE STORY

So I don't actually have any real expansion mods, I can easily take an entire in-game day just wandering around my farm checking on my trees and ponds and critters, with maybe a quick visit up the mountain or through the forest or over to the saloon to say hi to people, so I don't think I could manage more maps or people or whatever without always feeling like I was neglecting something else?

But I do like getting the most out of what's there already.

So I have Event Lookup to make sure I mostly don't miss heart events, and Platonic Relationships so no one thinks I'm going out with them but I can still get them to 10 Hearts and my relationship screen looks nice. (This one doesn't edit the 8 or 10 heart scenes, it just lets you see them, so be aware that they'll be romantic for the length of the cutscene. To avoid that you need Platonic Partners and Friendships, too.)

I then keep going with Fourteen Heart Events For All because a lot of those are actually very community rather than romance focused so I think they just mostly edited them to trigger outside the farmhouse and some other minor tweaks? And everyone deserves to get a nice dinner from Harvey and go to Haley's cakewalk and cheer on Elliot's book tour, and yk I should probably not list all twelve of them that'll get really long? (SAM & VINCENT THO. So adorable.) It has an optional alternate Alex 14-heart event, which works very well with Sports Room Event Overhaul so what used to be Alex's 14-heart event becomes explicitly more of a group-at-the-tavern thing, which is just so nice y'all. So nice.

And finally, Cooperative Egg Hunt so I don't feel bad about stealing eggs from little kids (and Abigail).

There's a very long list of dialogue & NPC mini-expansion mods that I've checked out that claim they work together well, and are reasonably compatible with DSV, and look like they'd add to that community vibe that makes SDV fun for me, (a couple of which I tried pre-1.6 a few years ago and liked even), but I got pretty far in this game before I dove back into using mods beyond the big three of DSV, UI Suite, and Chests Anywhere, so I think they'll wait for the next save and maybe another post if I'm feeling ambitious.

ANIMALS & ARTISAN GOODS

There are so many awesome animal add-on mods (I find them more interesting than just the crop ones, especially since they've mostly all got really well done animal noises which are delightful) but I'm not using any this time! (It's so weird?) Partly because I did in fact try Frog Friends and they were adorable and I loved the ribbits in the farm background noises, but there are fourteen of them which meant my grass got eaten so fast and I needed the Terrarium so as not to take up more than one whole coop just with frogs and I dunno, it didn't vibe with the rest of my farm, plus a lot of the animal mods legit give me too much stuff it makes me twitchy? I could just trash the excess loot, but idk, brains are weird y'all. tone it down for me, mod makers, I'm a weirdo 😅😅😅

I do have a couple of adjustments that I do like however.

Animal Multiproduce (yes, this gives me more stuff in direct contradiction to my previous post. no it does not trigger the twitchy however so WHATEVER, I LIKE IT. basically it just means you don't lose out on base animal product on the day rabbits or ducks give you their special animal product)

Autonomals (animals move more & further from their coops/barns because they don't freeze when you leave the farm)

Better Honey Mead (Specialty honey turns into specialty mead)

Better Truffles (Icons so you can find them in the grass! Also pigs can dig in the grass so blanket your animal yard in greenery to keep everyone else happy and still get truffles)

Blue Eggs and Golden Mayo (BLUE EGGS FROM BLUE CHICKENS Y'ALL. They make blue mayonnaise and will hatch more blue chickens, it's great. Also ostrich mayo instead of ostrich eggs making lots of normal mayo, much like the duck mayo situation. I have not gotten to golden chickens, but they're supposed to work like the blue ones)

Like a Duck to Water THEY SWIM! It's Great! (You will have to block off the pond or give up on fencing them in tho.)

Milkable Sheep Milk alternates with wool. Very straightforward.

Now I just need to learn how to mod and give goats a secondary product so they balance out with all my other barn critters? I mean they can irl be combed out for fiber a la mohair or whatever, but that makes them basically just sheep again. Maybe they find wild seeds or trash or something, since they eat all the junk that isn't grass, too? oh no, now I'm thinking about it too much, #help

And while I'm not using it right now, I can absolutely recommend Animal Squeeze Through if you need more room in your barn or just want to put ostriches in your coop with the other birds because birds.

Sebastian-Specific-And-Other-Mini-Tangents:

Sebastian's Garage

His bike on his spouse patio is no longer just sitting in the weather. That's it. It's lovely. It has like three different roof color options & seasonal variation too.

Lively Frog Sanctuary

I'm just gonna post the before and after pic from the mod page:

see?

(as a side note, I do wish his Solarian table was proper furniture you could put somewhere else in the house, instead of just being replaced by his terrarium. I think I saw a mod that moved it to the Community Center but I can't remember which one? gosh, now I'm gonna have to try and find it again)

Playable Piano

So I was always a little sad that Sebastian seemed invested in playing the keyboard in like, two scenes & dialogue lines in reaction to Sam, but doesn't actually have a piano, unlike Abigail and her drums, so I got him one and also a mod so I can play it.

Guess which one I got? 😅😅😅

(it takes so much coal to get there y'all. so much.)

Add Berry Seasons to Calendar adds a reminder for shell season in the summer, too!

Crop Transplant Mod

Decoration gone wrong or clicked the wrong square or just changed your mind? MOVE YOUR SEEDS OR CROPS OR TEA PLANTS (or even trees if you want to set it up like that in the config) with your garden pot.

Move Greenhouse Plot

The unrepaired greenhouse can be moved at Robin's just like any of your farm buildings. Very nice for getting set up how you like the first year.

Mx. Qi; technically this is New Mx. Qi since the original hadn't been updated for 1.6, but whatever.

Healthy Blobfish because he looks so much happier

Skull Cavern Elevator

I don't think this needs a blurb? You can set the spacing for where it shows up and charge a toll if you want to adjust how easy this makes skull diving. This is vital enough I probably should have mentioned it sooner, but it's also just one of the little tweaks ones, so whatever.

Seasonal Colored Seeds

Literally just changes the bag colors but it is a good aesthetic if you sort your chests by season, and it is easier to skim for whichever thing you're looking for if you just shove all your seeds together somewhere like I do.

Custom Flower Colors*

Makes all your flowers only one color! (Or you can pick a range from a default or choose your own, up to six per flower type, but I do this to save my chest-of-flowers from overflowing so I stick with ONE COLOR.)

*Alternatively, if you want to modify other farming mechanics (including improved Giant Crops rate, which I have never gotten before this save so I feel you) Farming Made Easy Suite includes flower colors amongst everything else. I haven't used that one, but I have previously used the Fishing and Combat Suites by the same person, and those are excellent.

Buy Tea Set At Winter Star just because I wanted it 😂Also it balances well with several other Winter Star mods that I used to use, some of which work better with things that haven't been updated to 1.6 so I decided not to figure out which ones I still wanted this time around.

Watering Grants XP and Crops Can Wither (what? I like consequences in small doses and also I need that sweet farming XP in Spring 1, what can I say.)

And finally! This has no effect on anything at all in any meaningful way because nothing bad happens if you don't do it, but I absolutely have Auto Fill Pet Bowl installed so they're just. Always nice and full of water.

I can absolutely do a post about the dialogue/NPC-expansion or farming/ranching mods I have previously used and/or am trying to organize for my next save, if anyone is interested in my weird rambling? lmk 💚

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: OPART

Debut: Frogger's Journey: The Forgotten Relic

Well, what do you Magnetic Know! This looks kind of like Magnetic Joe.

This is OPART, and it is the titular Forgotten Relic. But after playing the game, I remember it! Aw man! I guess that means I have no media literacy!

The GBA is home to many unique Frogger adventures that all use the classic tile-hopping gameplay, and expand it into entire adventures! I think they are very good, even if very short. The Forgotten Relic is longer than the others, but this is because it has a weird focus on story and a hub town and NPC interaction. Truly Frogger at his scrimblest.

And you know what's a very scrimblo thing to do? To have a little buddy accompany you as a worn accessory, providing you with new abilities! Frogger's sprite is cute in this game. It's his early-mid 2000s anthro design, squished to fit in one grid tile at a time, and crouched in real frog posture, despite the fact everyone around him (including other frogs) stands and walks on two legs. Frogger even does it himself in the cutscenes! It's like a gameplay/story distinction thing, except the gameplay and story are going on at the same time.

OPART has many abilities to unlock! These include the Super Jump, something Frogger can naturally do in many other games (especially this specific subseries), and I'm just going to stop pretending they were putting any effort into the Frogger canon.

Frogger's iconic (to me) tongue lash move from the first GBA game is also replaced with an OPART ability, which has it stretch some kind of Tentacle to grab things. It feels weird to not let a frog do a tongue lash. But it gives the weird visual of a robot (?) stretching and contorting itself strangely. Hooray! This thing is uncategorizable!

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry his feet are like that. Yeah, this is the Frogger Feet Game. Just don't look at them. Look at the orb! OPART doesn't really talk or anything, and I was honestly unsure whether I was supposed to interpret its lights as eyes, but it appears to be "alive", as it hovers independently on the game toever I MEAN the game over screen. When Frogger dies in water, it even gets X eyes. Oh no! It is Dead. But it's ok. Robots can't die, unless they're doing one of those Emotional Robot Sacrifice scenes. But come on, this is Frogger we're talking about and this thing has barely even given any indication that it's aware of Frogger's personhood! They're not going to do an emotional robot sacrifice scene.

...Oh! Okay. They did do one of those. I guess that makes this game kind of peak. Is it just me or does this image go hard? This thing is in the process of exploding and dying, and very much looks the part, all while it just stares forward with emotionless eyes. This could at LEAST be, like, the box art for some kind of futuristic falling block puzzle game that takes itself too seriously.

Anyway, OPART had to destroy itself to neutralize the Evil OPART that a rich weasel was trying to use for evil purposes. We never learn what OPART stands for. We do learn that OPARTs are what allowed the citizens of Atlantis to breathe underwater, and Frogger frees Atlantis by beating up a jellyfish. Frogger can also buy a sofa in this game. What a game! I like the orb. Thank you.

[raish-ryeson-robinson-i]

You ever wanted to turn Terraria into Touhou?

If so, Here's a list of Mods/Resource Packs from the collection of mine to help you fulfill that.

(Put the cut because it's a long list.)

Mods (TModLoader):

Gensokyo - A medium sized content mod that brings in 21 Bosses (Split into 7 Tiers), a Miniboss, a Town NPC, 22 new enemies, 22 new music tracks, 47 vanity sets, and 180+ items. This mod has a wiki.

Kourindou - A mod that adds in several Fumos into the game. Fully compatible with Gensokyo so that the bosses drop their respective Fumos.

Touhou Little Friends ~ Adventure with Cute Partners - Adds in several characters as pets and Light Pets. Bosses have a 30% chance to drop them (I got 4 at once from a single boss), certain enemies can drop them at a 5% chance, some can be crafted. Additionally, You can buy them from the Mysterious Gap for 2 Gold Coins a piece.

Touhou NPC - Brings in several characters as NPC's.

Junko and Friends - Adds some Touhou stuff, but not just Touhou stuff.

Resource packs (Vanilla/TModLoader, though I wouldn't recommend using a ton on TModLoader)

Yukari Yakumo as Lunatic Cultist - Replaces The Lunatic Cultist to be Yukari Yakumo. Other Lunatic Cultist attacks are also resprited to be Yukari themed.

TOUHOU WEAPONS: Reimu's Fantasy Heaven! - Replaces the Bat Scepter to the paper talismans that Reimu uses.

【Touhou】 Cirno - Replaces the Flickerwick Light Pet with Cirno.

Power and Point Pickups - Replaces Heart pickups as Power Boxes and Mana Stars as Point Boxes (Doesn't replace the Halloween or Christmas variants).

Yukkuri Reimu - Replaces the Vampire Frog to a Yukkuri Reimu.

Bunny with the Suit - Makes all the normal rabbits have suits.

Bunny with the Suit (Golden Variant) - Makes all Gold Rabbits have suits.

Bunny with the Suit (Pet Version) - Makes the Rabbit Pet have a suit.

【Touhou】 Moriya Suwako - Replaces the Little Plantero with Suwako Moriya.

Touhou music replacement - Replaces Terraria music with Touhou music. There are more out there, but this is the one I use.

Cirno Smokin' a Fat Blunt - Replaces the Baby Snowman to Cirno smoking a fat blunt.

Touhou Death Sound - Replaces the normal death sound with the Touhou one.

Mini-Hakkero [Touhou] - Replaces the Last Prism to the Mini-Hakkero,

Tsukasa Kudamaki from Touhou 18 - Replacesthe Spiffo Plush to Tsukasa Kudamaki.

Wakasagihime Pet (Project Touhou) - Replaces the baby Shark pet to Wakasagihime.

Yuuka Kazami replaces Dryad - Replaces the Dryad to Yuuka, and the Shimmered version as the Lotus Land Story version.

Cuter Giant Bow - Not exactly Touhou related, but it makes the Giant Bow more pleasing to look at.

Mokou cosplay - Replaces the Santa set with Fujiwara no Mokou's outfit.

Touhou Wings - Replaces Solar Wings with Flandre's Wings and Frozen Wings with Cirno's Wings.

[TOUHOU] Brain of Cthulhu to Flandre Scarlet - Replaces the Brain of Cthulhu with Flandre Scarlet.

【Touhou】 Izayoi Sakuya - Replaces the Tiny Deerclops with Sakuya Izayoi.

【東方】 TouHou Flandre Scarlet HD NPC - Replaces the Demolitionist with Flandre Scarlet.

Terraria Touhou Resource Pack (alpha) - Replaces various things as some Touhou Characters.

Hakurei Staff - Replaces the Mushroom Spear with Reimu's Gohei.

Mourningwood Mokou - Replaces the Mounringwood Miniboss with Fujiwara no Mokou.

Golem Kaguya Houraisan Head - Replaces Golem's head with Kaguya's head.

Touhou - Marisa Kirisame Hats - Replaces the Wizard Hat with Marisa's Hisoutensoku hat, the Wizard's Hat with the Windows games hat, and the Rune Hat with the PC-98 Hat.

Touhou Fumos replace Slime Pets - Replaces the Slime Prince with a Cirno Fumo and the Slime Princess with a Reimu Fumo.

Touhou HP and MP UI (and Nier?) - Changes the Look of the HP and Mana on Classic and elegant Style. Classic looks like the PC-98 games, Elegant looks like Post Touhou 13, Changes as well the Heart and Star items that recover Mana/HP. The air bar is changed for the blue stars and the Lava resistance bar is changed to the Red stars.

Patchouli Knowledge Set from Touhou Project - Changes Cenx's Dev Set to Patchouli Knowledge's clothing.

Touhou Luna nights max mana sound - Just replaces the max Mana sound to a sound from Luna Nights (I have not played Luna Nights, so I don't know what sound it is exactly.

Menacing Blizzard in a Bottle (Bottled Cirno) - Replaces Blizzard in a Bottle with Bottled Cirno.

Project Terra-Hou - Changes various things to be Touhou things.

TOUHOU WEAPONS: Yuyuko's Resurrection Butterfly! - Replaces the Sky Fracture into Yuyuko Saigyouji's fan.

Boss Health Bar - Based on the Touhou HP and MP UI pack, but for the Boss Health bar.

Better Wings - Makes some of the wings look better, references Cirno in the Frozen Wings and Flandre in the Festive Wings.

Touhou Weapons - Replaces a few Melee weapons with some of Remilia's attacks from Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and Hisoutensoku.

[journalsouppe]

Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Call!! I actually discovered ordering the game from the UK with shipping was actually cheaper than ordering the American version of the game, there were no major differences that I could tell as they still had the original English voice actors.

I enjoyed this game!! Not my top favorite installment but I still had a great time and loved the new characters. The puzzles were well designed and had nice scaled difficulty and the mini games were really neat too. The Eternal Diva references were so blatant lmfao but I’m excited for Miracle Mask! I was also super exhausted when writing the summary so sorry there’s so many errors and I use the word fun a million times ToT

The Descole and Tea sticker are from JordyDrawsMerch! All other stickers are from Daiso. Writing typed below!

Rating: 8.3

Played: Sp 2024

Port: DS on 3DS

Favorite? Y

Replayable? Y

Recommend? Y

Series: Professor Layton

Comments

Emmy and BABY LUKE!!

OH THANK GOD IT’S CHRISTOPHER ROBIN MILLER

Ngl im so excited to watch the anime, I love the animation sm

Oh Layton is not taking Claire’s death well at all

I love how animated the background now is!!

Beautiful music as always

Does Clark have the same VA as Dmitri lol

THE WORLD WILL END? Damn Luke

The specter looks like one of those little kingdom hearts guys

Luke’s been a LaytonMobile hater since day one lmao

Luke is especially funny in this game

Layton taking Luke to the black market is so wild

THE PUPPET PLAY IS ADORABLE

I’m going to fight aunt taffy

Ooo we get to play as Emmy

Holy shit Emmy

GIRL FROG

Emmy asking if Layton always pokes lamps he sees is making me think he physically touches everything the player taps

The convo with the meowing man???

CHELMEY AND BARTON

Based anti-cop npc

THE DYNAMITE WORKS LMAO

Is Hershel gonna get a cask of amantillado’d T^T

The canals are so pretty i like the design of misthallery

Oh i do not like the police chief

I LOVE YOU EMMYYY

Grosky is very funny

Omg the cliff death police cover up reminds me of killer frequency which i just watched a playthrough of

FUCK JAKES

Where’s phoenix when you need him

JAIL BREAK JAIL BREAK!!!

I love descole’s voice

YAAA LADDER VS STEP LADDER

NESSIE???

The story book stories and animations are so CUTE!!

I wonder if Naiya was added to the game to hit at the Eternal Diva

This kinda reminds me of a pokemon movie but I don’t remember which one it was

^^ it was pokemon heroes when latias and latios were caught ^^;

AN OCARINA!!!

Creepy fucking factory music ToT

Oh dear. I seem to have stepped on a hexagonal spanner

Descole always serving massive cunt

Woah the golden garden is beautiful

Ohh so that’s why Luke was fork life certified in plvspw

ZAMN T^T

THE WAY THE SPRITES WALK KILLS ME LOL

I really like these little episodes from others POVS! ^_^

Summary

This was such a fun origin story for Luke and Layton. Very much a classic Layton game with world ending machinery and gorgeous environment design. I really liked both Emmy and Descole, there’s a more serious undertone than with Don Paolo as the main villain (even though I do love Don Paolo). Emmy is amazing!! I was afraid she would be sidelined like Flora was but I’m glad to she stands her ground and does what she wants to do. I alos like how we got to go on our own adventure as her to London, she’s a character that doesn’t need to rely on Hershel to solve everything. Meeting Luke was great, loved his blank stare. It was fun seeing his origins and how Clark and Hershel knew each other. I’m curious how the prequels will play into the New World of Steam, especially now that Luke’s family have stories and sprites (unlike in the original trilogy). Loved the ACAB story, v nice to play while I’m still so mad at what’s happening to university students currently. Descole was so fun, I am obsessed with his outfit and personality. Unfortunately I was spoiled on who he is but I’m very excited to learn more. I think similar to Ace Attorney, the fourth installment is that last game in the classic 2D style, which is sad but PLvsPW makes me very hopeful about 3D Layton. The overall story was fun, I really liked the sub plot about the Ravens - that was really fun (i was so tired writing this omfg). I wish we got a little more backstory on the rich guy who died, I feel like there’s more to the story. OO I loved the little episodes, especially the one about Chelmey. They added a lot of fun context and gave more life to the NPCs. Such a fun and classic Layton game, I can’t wait to play Miracle Mask! (And read the light novels). This wasn’t my favorite Layton game but I still really loved it and had a great time and loved the puzzles — that’s all I want from PL!

[3scythes]

Reasons to play Magical Delicacy:

You can pet pretty much every cat you see

You can turn into a cat

You can bake/cook for your npc friends

Accessibility features for both UI and gameplay!

Very cute cat people and frog people!

As far as I can tell there’s no time limit on completing quests/deliveries so you can take your sweet time

Pls I just need more people to play this game because it’s had me in a chokehold all weekend. Official website here.

[ellraiser]

Mudborne - Devlog #02

Hey everyone! Been awhile since I opened up Tumblr to write something - I've been trying not to add the pressure to make myself post every single month, as half the time I don't have much to say and the other half making it something I HAVE to do prevents it from being something I WANT to do But it's been a little while of working on Mudborne stuff in between all the final APICO update stuff, and I wanted to share where I've got to so far with your new fav frog game

Back To The Drawing Board

So if you haven't already seen, one of the main things I'm doing with Mudborne is updating the style and the art. The gamejam version was made in a week, and a lot of that was shameless art rips of APICO with some reskins - which was still cute but after working in the APICO "style" for nearly 5 years now I wanted something different. For that I'd already played with a few ideas:

The game is set in a pond, so I wanted it to be mostly water. This meant thinking about what the landmass or even buildings would be like - I've always found the land style I did for APICO really weird as it's severe top-down but all the sprites are like sortof side view? So I wanted to work with that in mind and have the land match that perspective more. I also really liked the idea of the stone slabs as the land instead of dirt, as it had a nicer overall vibe and helped the mud stand out from the "dirt" of the early ideas. I also wanted to have lots of plants and nature stuff that wasn't necessarily interacted with but added to the overall scene. One thing I really hated with APICO is it relied on the trees/shrubs for balance of the overall palette, so this time I wanted enough flora scattered across the waters to make it look pretty all the time not just before the player has a killing spree with their axe. What I ended up settling on after a few weeks was this:

As you can see it's mostly water, with some large stone slabs to act as "land" and break it up, and lots of green. I wanted a consistent darker outline for anything you can interact with, which then let me have a lot of "background" flora and scenery.

The stone slabs also felt like a perfect place for buildings - I'd tried an attempt at a few building designs, but overally didn't really like how they fit in with the world

Having the stone slabs as the buildings felt more natural and the little extra details of grates and drains and windows I think helps sell it more as lived in. Also by having a fixed "size" of the blocks in tiles, I could match that for the inside so all the spaces matched up when going in and out (and also means I'd be able to show "hidden" rooms while inside that give you a clue to how to get into them)

To finish it off, I worked on the menu designs to see how the UI would fit in - there's some similarities to APICO's basic UI style but I changed the colors a bit and added more space around all the elements. I also wanted some clearer slot stuff, so like mushrooms and their powder/magic mud to have a small icon for the mushroom, buckets to have a liquid icon - I'd made a few sprites in APICO that were far too similar, so I wanted to avoid that this time round.

I also wanted to keep the main UI as minimal as possible, just some indicators, a current quest log, and then the tooltips if hovering something - this means I've got some flexibility later to add some more stuff. Once I got this coded up I'd tweak a few things, including the design of the titular mud itself, but overall things pretty much match those final concept arts above.

===

Lost In A Dream

With that done I wanted to work on the next main part of the design - the dream world. In the gamejam when you dream you visit the big frog god and they tell you your progress, but what I actually want is a whole dream world that acts as an "opposite" to the waking world.

With APICO I always felt like the gameplay was fun but the NPCs and story and exploration was pretty non-existant. In Mudborne I wanted to expand that, have a similar "maths for fun" genetic puzzle to work on as the core game but then have a much richer world to explore.

With the dream world I could have things change between the worlds - new doors and rooms appearing, broken bridges now fixed, stone lilypads disappearing. By using the big froggy pools the player can switch between the two, and access new areas they couldn't before, along with new frogs or mushrooms or NPCs. This ends up with a sort of APICO x Metroidvania in a way, you find different mushrooms, create new frogs, and based on the frog genetics you can "unlock" these gates to get to new areas - some part of the main story, others optional to learn more about the secrets of the world, but the different frogs will gate your progress and exploration. It also gives me a lot of scope to do fun things with the differences between the two worlds, whether thats trees turning into jellyfish that float around, or NPCs being different and saying/selling different things.

It also has some importance within the story itself so I think it should end up as a nice mix of fun gameplay, cool vibes, and a nice story to tell.

===

Something Old Something New

With the overworld itself I'd done a lot of changes, looking at the gamejam you can see just how much differs, not just colors but the world objects too.

Some of the items I still liked, like the mushroom designs or the basic tools, some I think make for a fun "nod" to APICO, (like the frogspawn being the honeycomb sprite but modified), with the objects themselves though I wanted to try and match that new "perspective" shared by the stone buildings and the trees.

I also wanted to start using some more colors and have things less flat, so it was nice to finally move away from a lot of the stuff I'd drawn for APICO. When it came to the menus though, I still think the rough style of menus worked really well - it's been battle tested and I know what worked and didn't, but the UI has always been pretty solid. The main changes I did was update the spacing between elements to give the slots + UI inside menus more space, and then I wanted to change some of the border/header styles slightly and have the tiny lilypad icon in there too. To start with I just fleshed out a bunch of the machines I had in the gamejam plus a few extra ones (also yes thats a slightly different shade of brown to APICO, you have good eyes!)

I really liked some of the menus have these sort of "mini" interfaces inside that showed a bit more of what is going on in the overworld, so wanted to lean into that a bit with some of the other machines. I also still liked the idea of having some mechanism stuff - for APICO players I appreciate it's lost the charm, but anyone new to Mudborne thats never heard of ol' bee game can still appreciate it!

===

Maths For Fun

As I started implementing the mechanics some of the menus changed a bit - for the current "vertical slice" I'm making for pitches, the main machines I needed were: - Spawner (frog+frog = frogspawn) - Grinder (mushroom = powders) - Cauldron (mud+powders = magic mud) - Nursery (magic mud + frogspawn = tadpole) - Feeder (tadpole + bugs = frogs) - Bed (skip ahead time)

The main differences to the gamejam version is the extra step with mushrooms (so that you don't have to find + pick as many mushrooms as you'll get multiple powders from one), the cauldron accepting up to 3 powders that can be the same or different (so one magic mud can have 3 buffs), and the nursery having multiple layers (so you could do 3 different genetic changes or use a +1 mushroom 3 times for a +3 in one step) The nursery change is the most important here, as being able to do 3 buffs at the same time is important as it's part of the genetic puzzle I'll explain later - but it also removes some grindyness, instead of needing to do 3 cycles for a 4 trait to become a 7 trait using a +1 mushroom, you can do just 1.

The feeder expands the process to include bugs you find to feed the tadpoles - once they grow they'll appear in the overworld as actual frogs again to catch, but this time they might be some new species depending on the genetic modifications you made with the mud. I'm still playing with what the different bugs might do or how which bugs are decided as needed, but I think it gives me a lot of room to play with from a mechanics standpoint. The final "new" machine I needed was the actual teleportation pools - these would have the genetic "lock" that you need to make a frog to match.

The puzzle starts off simple enough, get a frog that matches the 7 traits the pool requires. Putting a frog in the pool starts the little coloured lines to "move" from left to right, stopping if the number the frog has doesn't match whats needed. Once you have a frog with all numbers matching, all the dots can join up, and the pool unlocks to be used to travel between worlds.

"That's easy" I hear you say, and yes! To start with this is easy enough, sure you might need to combine different mushrooms to counter certain modifications you don't want, but you can cycle frogs as much as you want to keep modifying until you get there. However this is me making a game so obviously I need to then show you something that makes you cry - which is when I introduce the concept of ancestors to the genetic locks

Instead of just looking at the traits of the frog, it also looks at the traits of the frog of the previous generation, and maybe even the generation before that! So starting from the first "column" you need to jump to the next one in a single frog cycle, using the right mushrooms to modify the numbers in one leap (ha). 

You then might need to do that again (and again) until you have a frog that has each previous generation matching whats expected. There'll be some tools to help you "predict" this, as well as lots of different mushrooms you'll find as you explore that do different things, +1, -1, *2 AND -1 etc. Planning this out is a nightmare as you can imagine...

Also having 7 traits each with 7 values means a lot of combinations (823543?!?), which means I can "hide" a lot of frogs to be discovered. For example go scroll back up and look at the "finished" concept art without UI for both the waking and dream world - notice that piller on the left? By travelling to the dream you can get the missing numbers that give you a trait "key" you could make to find a new frog.

In this way there can be a bunch of frogs you have to find to progress through the pools to new areas, some frogs you can get through experimenting (what if I do 777777?) and some found through clues in the world. 

===

What Next?

So right now I've planned out all the mechanics and I've been starting to implement them into a prototype of sorts (in my new favourite engine LÖVE) to make sure it all feels fun and has the right vibe, so lots of little bugs/critters roaming around, a cute day/night cycle, weather etc

I'm trying to spend more time on little details and effects in the world, all very small stuff but all adds up without the player realising, reflections or pollen or subtle movement. 

The goal is to then finish that as a vertical slice I can use to pitch to publishers, cos although APICO did well that was a couple years ago now, and outside of this final update I essentially have no releases until Mudborne is done so money is pretty tight :')

While doing that, I'll be continuing on with the game, starting with the first "training" area that will essentially become the demo. My plan is to release the demo later this year showing that first area, while I continue finishing the game to release in 2025 - right now the demo on Steam is still the gamejam version, which while it has some of the vibes it's not the full concept of what I want Mudborne to be, so I'd like to get that updated to really show people what they can have to look forward to.

I have a lot of the full game mapped out now, in terms of the story, areas, npc, general mechanics etc. I'm also literally mapping it out, each area on some graph paper, so will be interesting to see how closely I follow this for the demo + full game, esp. as I've already changed the houses (and is a nice analogue break for my poor eyes)

===

As I mentioned at the start, having to force a devlog every month didn't work great for me, I'd rather do larger devlogs now and again to catch you all up with what I've been doing over a couple of months otherwise it feels like I'm scraping the barrel some months when I've been busy on other stuff. I do share the odd video + sketch in Discord now and again, so if you want to come chat about it I'd love to see you there, but I'm committing to do devlogs when I can so you can keep up with everything <3 ~ Ell

[jrwiconfessions]

Comimg out as a prime defenders disliker for some reason??

Everything about the story is great, big fan of all the npcs, le frog is my babygirl, dakota is literally me irl, vyncents my little meow meow, william wisp is the realest, ashe is the light of my life, big fan of bizly’s dming, everything about it is GOOD but omg i can not power through any of the episodes for the life of me. I havent made it to the grayscale arc and atp im too afraid to LMAO?

Oh but also i think my dislike for prime defenders is just me hating ghostknife (dk why either). They push that so hard and it makes me UPSET. #hater #abolishghostkinfe #negativity idgaf if u put them into other ships blue raspberry is cute idk what any other ship names r lol polypd is cute everything else is cute,…..,..,.. but ghostknife on its own…….,.,,… idk…,,..

Anywayz i #heavilydislike pd for no reason in particular

-

[roamingtigress]

Yet more observations playing Dutch in Red Dead Online (I couldn't find something for today's Yeehawgust prompt so you'll be hearing another one of my hopefully coherent ramblings on the mustache):

-He doesn't just turn and run, he often does this over the shoulder and looks at you and does his kinda awkward u-turn thing before breaking into his run. You're a dude, not a deer, silly. It's a bit of breaking the fourth wall with eye contact, watch-my-back sort of thing which is cool. I feel he did do this in Storymode with Arthur but trying to remember what chapter/scene. It's actually a bit hard to 'steer' him into running because of this and he's been hit by a wagon.

-He can get SCRAPPY if there are players melee'ing nearby and if they happen to jump into him, he'll join in on them. While realistic It's EMBARASSING and I try to pull him out of it fast. Gets EXCITED and REACTIVE and SHOUTY in crowds. Maybe he just DOESN'T DO CROWDS. Much like me, so no judgement

-Seemingly random things will cause him to unholster; such as sudden swerving of the wagons. A wagon going by too fast. A passing NPC got startled by this and shot his hat off. It's a bit EMBARASSING around other players.

-He seems to have a limp? The left leg seems to have a tendency to just really swing over his right; really noticeable when watching him from behind (which I see most of him that way so it really sticks out to me), I have seen him do this in Storymode as well. I'm trying to get good shot at it.

-Most awkward parkour participant in the West. The grace of an elephant. I need to do a photoshoot of it and video if I can find a good, easy program for capturing the action. He lands like an octopus falling out of a tree.

-His coding seems that they've made him camp centric; his stamina/health will drain even when he's in the saddle and I feed him dozens of the stuff. Once I return him to camp for a bit, he'll be good to go after a refresh. If he's been away for camp for some time (or if I haven't used the Wilderness Camp), I'll be prompted to REST him.

-99.9% sure I caught him DOZING IN THE SADDLE until Sienna shook and woke him up. That was cute.

-HE PLAYS WITH THE REINS LIKE WE USED TO (OR STILL DO) WITH THE TELEPHONE CORD. You just know he twirls his hair like that too.

-Because he doesn't have a satchel, EVERYTHING GOES IN HIS PANTS or PANTS POCKET or GUN BELT. Imagine having 30 pieces of beef, 10 frogs, 10 squirrels idk how many fish, all in your pocket. Or pants. And Dutch wonders why wolves come out in droves when he steps out of camp.

Hosea has a different rein holding STYLE. Dutch holds his hands closer together on the reins, Hosea holds his hands out further.

I highly recommend the experience if you want to play a character that needs some maintenance and care and adult supervision, doesn't care about the waypoint to their destination but the journey, and don't mind being kept on their feet :) I love documenting and sharing these bits of detail and what he gets up to!