#sims resource go to hell

[hellasaiko]

website: pwease turn off adblocker.......we rely on ads to run the site!!!!! 😔🥺

website, a minefield of pop-ups and spammy ads upon refresh (you cannot see content unless you click the really small x): give us money. kill your self

[justalittlesolarpunk]

I’ve teased it. You’ve waited. I’ve procrastinated. You’ve probably forgotten all about it.

But now, finally, I’m here with my solarpunk resources masterpost!

YouTube Channels:

Andrewism

The Solarpunk Scene

Solarpunk Life

Solarpunk Station

Our Changing Climate

Podcasts:

The Joy Report

How To Save A Planet

Demand Utopia

Solarpunk Presents

Outrage and Optimisim

From What If To What Next

Solarpunk Now

Idealistically

The Extinction Rebellion Podcast

The Landworkers' Radio

Wilder

What Could Possibly Go Right?

Frontiers of Commoning

The War on Cars

The Rewild Podcast

Solacene

Imagining Tomorrow

Live Like The World Is Dying

Books (Fiction):

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness The Dispossessed The Word for World is Forest

Becky Chambers: A Psalm for the Wild-Built A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

Phoebe Wagner: When We Hold Each Other Up

Phoebe Wagner, Bronte Christopher Wieland: Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

Brenda J. Pierson, Claudie Arsenault: Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology

Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro: Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World

Justine Norton-Kertson: Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology

Sim Kern: The Free People’s Village

Ruthanna Emrys: A Half-Built Garden

Sarina Ulibarri: Glass & Gardens

Books (Non-fiction):

Murray Bookchin: The Ecology of Freedom

George Monbiot: Feral

Miles Olson: Unlearn, Rewild

Mark Shepard: Restoration Agriculture

Kristin Ohlson: The Soil Will Save Us

Rowan Hooper: How To Spend A Trillion Dollars

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing: The Mushroom At The End of The World

Kimberly Nicholas: Under The Sky We Make

Robin Wall Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass

David Miller: Solved

Ayana Johnson, Katharine Wilkinson: All We Can Save

Jonathan Safran Foer: We Are The Weather

Colin Tudge: Six Steps Back To The Land

Edward Wilson: Half-Earth

Natalie Fee: How To Save The World For Free

Kaden Hogan: Humans of Climate Change

Rebecca Huntley: How To Talk About Climate Change In A Way That Makes A Difference

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac: The Future We Choose

Jonathon Porritt: Hope In Hell

Paul Hawken: Regeneration

Mark Maslin: How To Save Our Planet

Katherine Hayhoe: Saving Us

Jimmy Dunson: Building Power While The Lights Are Out

Paul Raekstad, Sofa Saio Gradin: Prefigurative Politics

Andreas Malm: How To Blow Up A Pipeline

Phoebe Wagner, Bronte Christopher Wieland: Almanac For The Anthropocene

Chris Turner: How To Be A Climate Optimist

William MacAskill: What We Owe To The Future

Mikaela Loach: It's Not That Radical

Miles Richardson: Reconnection

David Harvey: Spaces of Hope Rebel Cities

Eric Holthaus: The Future Earth

Zahra Biabani: Climate Optimism

David Ehrenfeld: Becoming Good Ancestors

Stephen Gliessman: Agroecology

Chris Carlsson: Nowtopia

Jon Alexander: Citizens

Leah Thomas: The Intersectional Environmentalist

Greta Thunberg: The Climate Book

Jen Bendell, Rupert Read: Deep Adaptation

Seth Godin: The Carbon Almanac

Jane Goodall: The Book of Hope

Vandana Shiva: Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture

Amitav Ghosh: The Great Derangement

Minouche Shafik: What We Owe To Each Other

Dieter Helm: Net Zero

Chris Goodall: What We Need To Do Now

Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Stephanie Foote: The Cambridge Companion To The Environmental Humanities

Bella Lack: The Children of The Anthropocene

Hannah Ritchie: Not The End of The World

Chris Turner: How To Be A Climate Optimist

Kim Stanley Robinson: Ministry For The Future

Fiona Mathews, Tim Kendall: Black Ops & Beaver Bombing

Jeff Goodell: The Water Will Come

Lynne Jones: Sorry For The Inconvenience But This Is An Emergency

Helen Crist: Abundant Earth

Sam Bentley: Good News, Planet Earth!

Timothy Beal: When Time Is Short

Andrew Boyd: I Want A Better Catastrophe

Kristen R. Ghodsee: Everyday Utopia

Elizabeth Cripps: What Climate Justice Means & Why We Should Care

Kylie Flanagan: Climate Resilience

Chris Johnstone, Joanna Macy: Active Hope

Mark Engler: This is an Uprising

Anne Therese Gennari: The Climate Optimist Handbook

Magazines:

Solarpunk Magazine

Positive News

Resurgence & Ecologist

Ethical Consumer

Films (Fiction):

How To Blow Up A Pipeline

The End We Start From

Woman At War

Black Panther

Star Trek

Tomorrowland

Films (Documentary):

2040: How We Can Save The Planet

The People vs Big Oil

Wild Isles

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind

Generation Green New Deal

Planet Earth III

Video Games:

Terra Nil

Animal Crossing

Gilded Shadows

Anno 2070

Stardew Valley

RPGs:

Solarpunk Futures

Perfect Storm

Fully Automated

Advocacy Groups:

A22 Network

Extinction Rebellion

Greenpeace

Friends of The Earth

Green New Deal Rising

Apps:

Ethy

Sojo

BackMarket

Depop

Vinted

Olio

Buy Nothing

Too Good To Go

Websites:

European Co-housing

UK Co-housing

US Co-housing

Brought By Bike (connects you with zero-carbon delivery goods)

ClimateBase (find a sustainable career)

Environmentjob (ditto)

Businesses (🤢):

Ethical Superstore

Hodmedods

Fairtransport/Sail Cargo Alliance

Let me know if you think there’s anything I’ve missed!

[riverlinden]

one of those child-raising sim games except the kid is disabled as hell. can't finish their classes. has to cancel the dates you schedule for them. gets bullied.

if you drive them hard, their grades go up a little, but their epilogue career options get substantially worse. the wiki does not tell you this.

if you're really, really supportive of them, even after they sink a profitable marriage you were trying to set up for them, the kid transitions partway through the game instead of just writing you a post-game letter about their transition.

the secret best-place finish is actually getting invited to your kid's wedding. to earn their trust enough for this, you have to deliberately leave gaps in the kid's school schedule every year for the whole game and ignore all the obvious farming optimizations for resources and skill points. and you have to not talk them into going to prom.

[stemmmm]

Close to a year and four rewrites later, I present to you...

Stem's Thoughts on the Game Design of Harvest Moon on SNES

I’m not going to lie, if you don’t like farming sims, you won’t like this one. At their core, every farming sim (at least in the rpg genre) is nearly identical, and that’s because of this game. In a way, I might dare to say that Harvest Moon for the SNES is the perfect farming sim because it has every one of the usual elements in their most simplified form and it just works straight from the get-go. It works so well in fact, that after this game came out in 1996, four more entries to the series were released before the year 2000.

If you are someone who does like farming sims, I can’t recommend this game enough. It’s simple and to the point, with a fast pace and enough random events and points of intrigue that the game kept me relatively engaged for my whole playthrough.

Also, by nature of this being the first game and therefore hard to cover concisely and by nature of taking so long to write this... it's long as hell! Enjoy! :) <3

I can’t say my appreciation of this game doesn’t come with a few caveats. I’ve intermittently played HM games all my life, starting with the GameBoy port (GB1) all the way to Pioneers of Olive Town, so while I don’t know exactly how the series has evolved, I’ve seen it at some of its earliest and at its latest. My vague childhood memories of GB1 (a game I didn’t own and didn’t play much of) were that it was pretty sparse and bland, so knowing that this original game was allegedly the same thing but with a little more content, I was expecting the bare minimum. I was prepared to never even be able to leave my farm, but the first thing the game did was shuttle me off to the nearby town and blocked the exit until I talked to everyone there. 

(Maps of the town, mountain, and farm via The Spriters Resource)

You learn everything you need to know about the game right here at the beginning; Firstly, that this town is small as all hell and has hardly anyone in it aside from the five girls you can marry and their immediate family members. The next thing you’ll learn is that there’s a fence on your farm, and you need to be taking care of that. Of the few repetitive lines of dialogue any given person in town has to share with you on any given day, a fair amount are devoted to reminding you to fix your fence, to make sure it’s in good repair. There was just a big storm so watch out! Remember to check it every day! Are you chopping enough wood? Because you’ll need it for that fence!

I’m being dramatic of course, you aren’t reminded about it that much, though the thin variation of dialogue means it comes up a lot. The emphasis on your fence does exist, and it isn’t for nothing: while it doesn’t matter as much if all you do is grow crops– if you keep animals, the game tells you that the ideal thing to do for yours and the animal’s happiness is to put the animals outside to graze. Animal feed bought from the livestock shop will keep them fed, but it's nothing compared to fresh grass grown on your farm. You can’t even buy animals without a certain amount of grass planted! And sure, you can cut the grass to store for later, but it’s at its best straight out of the ground. However, the way the game is programmed, the animals only eat when the day rolls over, so putting animals outside for the day and taking them in at night isn’t an option, and on top of that, there’s things that come out at night that can hurt your animals. This is where your fence comes in.

The Utility of Fences

At the entrance to your farm is a cluster of buildings: your house, a small lumber shed, a barn, coop, and silo, a tool shed, and an old, dried up well. Just barely surrounding all of these is a little wooden fence that looks more like a row of upright logs than anything else. Despite this farm having presumably been abandoned, the fence is in perfect repair. You’ll quickly discover that the fence as it is won’t work out; there’s hardly space to plant anything within it, and with the well dried up, you’re forced to hop it to get to a water source to fill up your watering can. It’s pretty clear that you’ll need to expand your fence, and it’s easy to do with all of the tree stumps littering the massive field that it’s blocking off. 

On top of needing to expand the range of your fence, the individual planks eventually will rot away and leave useless stumps. They show up more frequently after rain or a large storm. The posts don’t rot away completely so they have to be manually removed, but replacing them is as simple as smashing the old post with a hammer or ax and popping a new post in its place. It becomes a very natural part of your daily routine to run a lap around the farm’s perimeter before you go to bed to make sure everything looks safe and secure. It’s a good way to ensure your animals are put away and debris is cleared out, too! It slotted very nicely into my daily schedule until a certain point.

With how much time you have to spend hopping over the logs to get to the rest of the area too large to fence in, you might be tempted to leave one out of place for easier traversal. When night comes, it’s clear why that would be a mistake. Sometimes when you go to bed, you’ll hear your dog barking. It’s a small detail, one that took me a long time to notice because I didn’t always play with the sound on. There are wild dogs that prowl around the wilderness surrounding your farm, and only at night do they dare to come close. Your dog, if left outside, isn't able to do anything other than warn you of their presence if they show up. There’s nothing to notice during the daytime if it happens, unless you happened to leave one of your animals outside. There was one night that I left my chickens outside, having thought my fence was in perfect order and repair. I went to bed and heard the dog barking, followed by a horrible crunch. When I went out in the morning, I saw where my chicken had been before, it had been replaced by a pile of feathers. On the north side of my farm was a rotted fence post I’d failed to fix. 

The Reality of Fences

After losing my chicken, a cluster of pixels on my screen it may have been, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my animals outside. I didn’t want to take a risk again, the sound and sight of feathers was upsetting enough. On a more logical note, the chickens didn’t even lay eggs if left outside so there was no value in it. Cows were a pain to put back inside the barn too, because of some silliness with the game’s collision. As much of a disappointment as it was to not have my animals roam around, it was just easier. At the time, I was focusing on upgrading my house anyways, so I didn’t have time to take care of my animals outside where time would pass when I could use that time gathering wood, and everything I had was being saved up for the house so I didn’t have any extra materials to repair my fence with. My fence was all rotting away. Because it was inconvenient for getting to my crops, I started smashing all the old posts as they went, too. That’s when I noticed something: the wild dog wasn’t coming anymore.

I didn’t pay much attention to it until I was looking up a completely different mechanic and discovered a forum explaining how the fences were broken. Rotted posts attracted the wild dog, they said. It didn’t matter if you had gaps in your fence, or even a fence at all–in fact no fence was the best kind to have because the mere existence of posts that could rot was a liability. 

I was hesitant at first to test this concept, after all there wasn’t much I could gain from it. My chickens wouldn’t lay outside, and my cows would be too challenging to get back in if the forecast called for rain. The thing that got me to finally try it was when I was trying to hatch more chickens. My coop felt like a nightmare to navigate due to its current population. I wanted less animals inside that I had to feed, so I threw a couple chicks outside–they weren’t laying yet anyways. Lo and behold, the dog didn’t come. More days passed and more animals were left outside, and it never came. My fence had rotted until there was nothing left at all. No dogs could ever come to my farm again. And I realized that the game’s own insistence on its mechanics was all a lie.

How You’re Told To Play - How The Game Lies

Of course, my animals didn’t stay outside. For a minute it was fun having a crowd of cows milling about while I tended to my crops, but letting them wander free and uninhibited made it impossible to find and milk all of them without any trouble, and there were the rainy days to watch out for. After the novelty wore off, they went back inside and stayed there. The thing is, that didn’t make a single bit of difference in how much they liked me compared to how they were living in the barn. On top of that, they didn’t seem to care whether I was feeding them grass or store-bought food either, though I mostly stuck to the grasses since they were cheaper and easier to get. Nothing about how I was told to care for animals really mattered past feeding them every day, petting it and maybe brushing it, if it was a cow.

It gets worse. The most basic aspect of the game is the fact that time passes. The story takes place over 2 and a half years, running through each day until the end, and these days last from 6AM to 6PM according to the game’s own internal time setting. After 6PM, all of the shops aside from the bar will close and you lose the ability to sell anything as you’re told it would rot in the shipping bin overnight, so there’s nothing to do but sleep until the next day. Issue with this is that when the days stop at 6PM… they just stop. Time doesn’t flow anymore. The game doesn’t give you any kind of clock to know the exact time it is until after you’ve upgraded your house, so all you have to go by before that is the color of the environment and whether or not your character has played an animation to eat something (you’re automatically fed when you wake up, at noon, and at night). I discovered this because I was curious if I could actually see the wild dog by staying out, and left the game running for probably 20 minutes in real life only for nothing to happen. Because of the time freeze, the time after 6PM actually becomes really valuable for farm logistics. You can’t sell anything, no, but you can pull up all the weeds on the farm, water your crops, fix your fences, feed and care for animals if you hadn’t already, and harvest wood for fences and house upgrades which would have taken a lot of valuable time to get during shipping-hours. The only thing that gets in the way of doing all that is you running out of energy.

Your energy is what allows you to use your farming equipment like your ax or watering can. Running out of it doesn’t mean you fall unconscious or anything, but your character will play an animation of them stumbling over and will fail to use any tools. The most obvious fix to this is to simply go to bed, as sleeping gives you a full recharge. You can also, however, recharge it by going to the hot spring on the mountain, or by eating food bought at the restaurant in town or foraged for in the forest. You can’t tell easily how much is refilled, as there’s no visual indicator like a health bar, but you’re able to eat more than once, and jumping into the hot spring seems to count whether you did it or not more than how much time you spend in there, so you can hop in and out a couple of times and call it good. 

Individually, time freezing at 6PM and energy being endlessly replenishable aren’t bad things. Even together, they’re not the worst. Having free time to focus on profitless chores is nice, and I think it’s important to be able to replenish your energy in case you have a limited amount of time to do things like for example, cut all of your grass before winter kills it. What makes an exploit out of these is the fact that the resources in the forest will never run out. Every time you re-enter the forest, all forage items and tree stumps are respawned. The infinite amount of forage makes for infinite energy refills, and could also make for an incredible money exploit if you didn’t have a very limited amount of time to ship things. You don’t have a limited amount of time to cut up tree stumps though. If you wanted to, you could run up to the forest after 6PM, chop every stump, then simply reload the area, and everything’s back. You can get all of the wood you would ever need to fully upgrade your house in one night. It’s a bit of a grind to do all at once, but it’s a grind you’d be doing over time anyways. It’s not the worst exploit in the world, since you still need money to pay for the house upgrade, but arguably because of how you have to focus your energy elsewhere for most of the game, the wood is the harder thing to get. Additionally, when the game has very little to do in both fall and winter due to the lack of crops, this exploit takes away just about any reason to play those two seasons other than to take care of animals. It’s an optional exploit of course–as all exploits are–but once you learn about it, it’s hard to resist the desire to get the grind out of the way all at once and mess up the pacing of the game.

The Charm of the Game

Learning that the fences were completely broken as a mechanic was a huge disappointment for me. From the moment I got a grasp on how the game was supposed to work, I wanted to eventually surround my whole field with fencing and keep my animals outside so I would have some life on my farm while I worked. I didn’t just want this, I was excited for it! This was something I’d never done in a farming sim that didn’t already manage putting animals in and out for you like Stardew Valley or newer Story of Seasons games do. My routine is always the same: I go into the barn and coop to tend to each of my animals, I take care of my crops outside, then run straight to town to talk to everyone, and go to bed. The change in routine that would come from taking care of the animals outside and patrolling the fence every night felt fresh to me. It made me feel that even though this was the first game of its kind, it was different and required new things of me. But in the end, I played it exactly the same.

Harvest Moon is still very different from all of the games that followed it, though. In many ways, it’s because it has less “stuff” in it– both in terms of items and things you have to do. But I wouldn’t say that it feels incomplete. Harvest Moon runs over the course of 2 and a half years before your work is evaluated. Until that happens, you have the ability to farm four different crops, you can raise both cows and chickens, you can upgrade your house to have more features, upgrade your working tools, build relationships with the townspeople to a small extent, go to town festivals that happen each year, and you can get married to one of the five girls living in town with whom you can have up to two children. Everything that you would come to expect as a fan of games like this is already here from the very first iteration. The most notable lack this game has, and one that seems to be completely unique to this game, is that there aren’t any crops in the fall or winter, which means that unless you have animals, there’s a whole half of the year that you don’t have anything to do. The game is clearly aware of this though, because in an average playthrough, this is where you’ll start to run into the story events.

There isn’t much of an overarching story in the game, past the general concept that you’ve run away from home to work on an abandoned farm. The conclusion rests on how good of a job you actually do. In between those two points are smaller events, usually tied to when you get tool upgrades or special ones for each of the romantic interests. The first event you’re likely to run into happens on the very last day of summer, where one of the woodsmen comes to your house in the morning to ask if you’re okay because he heard a huge crash at night and you should check your farm. What I found was that a tree in my field had fallen over, and its remaining stump had a big empty hole in it. When I inspected the stump, I was suddenly underground in a cave filled with loud and industrious music, and I was faced with two, little green people–Harvest Sprites, though I don’t know if they’re called that yet here. One asked me if my scythe worked well, and when I said yes, told me that they had made it and that I should check my shed tomorrow for a better one. Other tool upgrades are obtained in similar fashion; one comes from feeding a starving sprite a mushroom and another comes from another hole in the farm opening up to reveal another part of the cave system that has a couple of hints on how to unlock other things. 

The events for romantic interests happen at less scripted times, as they’re tied to how strong your relationship is with each girl. Each girl only has one event, and it only triggers when your relationship is high enough that you would ask her to marry you. The events usually take up a whole day, and don’t necessarily add much to each character. Ellen’s revolves around how she’s no good at keeping pets– something established on your second day at the farm when you get your dog from her, Eve’s hammers in her fraught relationship with her grandpa, and Ann’s is about losing the chicken weathervane, or “weathercock” which sits on the roof of her workshop and goes missing every time there’s a storm. Conversely, Nina and Maria’s scenes bring up entirely new events that bring up a number of questions while providing no answers. Nina disappears while looking for a medicinal plant because her mother is apparently sick, and Maria vanishes for days until you find her hiding away with the woodsmen for some reason. All of these events, whether they share new information or not, manage to add some greatly appreciated depth to each character by giving them more room to speak and be sincere than their short and repetitive day-to-day dialogues do.

The dialogue in this game is simple, to the point, and sparse– probably because there was only so much memory that could be reserved for approximately 15 people who all have multiple lines of dialogue, and only so much money to pay someone to write more. There is simple dialogue that doesn’t tell you much more than “hello, how are you” would, more dialogue that I’d label as tutorial text, and a few lines that I truthfully couldn’t understand well because of the sub-par translation this game received for english. The dialogue that exists to inform the world really manages to create a unique vibe though. Nina’s dialogue, almost always about plants, goes into forays about how they’re creatures with wills to live, too. Ellen’s uncle who runs the ranch shop tells you that it’s much better to feed your animals fresh grass if you try to buy any from his store, and if you decline to purchase he laughs as if he’s won something. There’s even dialogue referencing the silent player! Multiple lines exist to comment on him not paying attention, and inspection prompts have people telling you not to touch something rather than being an item description. It was the last thing I expected, to get the same level of personality out of the main character as I did from each of the girls, albeit very subtly. He went from a kind of nothing, self-insert into being what I perceive to be a hyperactive boy, akin to a border collie who was let out into a field of sheep for the first time–the exact kind of person crazy enough to take on an abandoned farm and succeed.

It’s these short little character details that bring life into the game. Each day, you’ll really only see one line of dialogue from each character, be it new or old, with that dialogue usually only changing if there’s a change in season or festival coming up. The repetitive, pretty mindless routine of the game can turn into a sort of meditation if you let it, where you spend your time working thinking about the folks in town and what they had to say to you the previous day. The developers took this concept in stride and gave the side characters loads of dialogue about life, about God and religion, and about… very basic morals, but morals nonetheless. It’s a children’s game after all. When you take the thoughts, questions and prompts the characters give you back to the farm to do your long and tedious routine, you have to ask yourself– what are you working so hard for? For the feeling of accomplishment? Recognition from your peers? For the sake of some higher power, if you worship one? For me personally, it was to write this essay, but it was also for a good grade on the high score screen at the end, so to be honest a lot of this stuff was lost on me until just now when I was reviewing the game to get screenshots.

Setting The Standard - Why You Should Play HM SNES

You may read all of this and still think, well, it doesn’t sound like the game has much in it. And you would be right, it’s a very small game, but it’s also extremely quick. On average, my days only lasted about three minutes of real life time. Everything flew by, and I think I finished the game in 20 hours or less. I barely got a chance to notice that there wasn’t much going on because every second of my day was spent busy doing something, and when I wasn’t busy, the break was appreciated. I didn’t start to run out of things to do until I was finished with the second year, and when I looked up what I needed to do to get a decent ending, I was already most of the way there. It was easy to push through those last two seasons to get to the end, and it was so, so worth it. 

As I mentioned earlier, the game ends with a high score screen, meaning it has to track all of your accomplishments. These include, but are not limited to: the number of things you ship, number of each crop you grow, number of animals you have and how much they like you, how upgraded your house is, who you married, how much all of the girls in town like you if you didn't get married, how many kids you have (which basically equates to how long you were married), your happiness score (increased by going to festivals and decreased by having animals die), and how many times you’ve pet your dog. In addition to these being tallied up and presented to you, you get special cutscenes not just for each one of these accomplishments, but additional ones for if you managed to do even better! I got a cutscene for having a cow, followed by one for having lots of cows, followed by yet another for having cows that loved me! Watching them play one after the other felt like taking a victory lap even without getting the best possible result. Seeing all of my numbers come up at the end made me want to try again to actually get those other cutscenes, not to get to see them, they’re so easy to find on Youtube, but because the game made it feel like an accomplishment! If I weren’t following this game up by immediately playing its GameBoy port, I absolutely would have started a new file right away. I’ve been playing the Harvest Moon series since I was a little kid and this was the first time I’d actually managed to beat one of these games. I struggle to think the finale of any game following this will feel as good as this one did.

I started writing this whole thing about the fences because it was an easy and silly entry point to get into my core issue with the game, and so I could have an opportunity to dig into game mechanics and the way the knowledge you have of them will completely alter your playstyle, because that’s all fun and interesting for me to talk about. Another reason why I focused on that was because it was near impossible for me to pick any kind of focus point when talking about this game. After all, I’m trying to study a whole series of games that spans multiple decades, and this is not only the first game in that series, but a game that created the whole genre of farming sims and defined that genre so thoroughly that you can see its DNA in every single game that followed.

 I didn’t expect much to come out of my experience with this game. My expectations for it before I even picked it up were that it was going to be basically featureless, as informed by my experience with one of the first games I ever played as a child, Harvest Moon GB, which I will get into next. This game was not that at all. I think that everything it did manage to get working right came together just about perfectly. Harvest Moon is exactly what it wanted to be, and where it wasn’t, it lied about how it worked to try and make you play the correct way anyways. When I believed that lie, my time playing was even more enjoyable. Maybe if farming worked just a little bit more like how you’re told it’s supposed to, and if there was just a little bit more story, those would cover the things I felt wanting for the most. But maybe a little flexibility and ambiguity is a good thing. Maybe actually maintaining a fence is just too hard, and maybe if the girls were more fleshed out, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy filling in their gaps in my head.

There are many more things I could say and wanted to say about this game, but this has grown far too long already so I'm cutting myself off here. I'm sure my later entries aren't going to get near this length. If you managed to get to this point, thank you so much for reading!

[morrigan-sims]

simblr game: Freeze!🧊✋️ Stop there and show simblr the most recently saved household within your gallery and, if you like, tell us all about them while your at it! 🤗🤍

ahhhh, hi!!!! Thanks so much for the ask! And for giving me the opportunity to talk about this boy.

His name is Orion, he's ~18 in this picture, and he's the 2nd worst thing that's ever happened to Carrion.

[more details under the cut, because I talk too much. fair warning, it's really long.]

tl;dr: This kid used to be friends with Carrion before he was Carrion, and is (accidentally) the reason Carrion has his monster transformations in the first place. Carrion got mad at him and punched him but accidentally transformed mid-swing. After that he was left for dead, and to this day does not know whether or not Orion survived. I don't know either and left it up to the DM.

I sometimes re-write scenes from my dnd games in full prose form, and I also sometimes write little "vignettes" of moments from the characters' pasts, also in full prose. So far the only two who have gotten that kind of treatment are Rook and Carrion, but I hope to do it with others eventually.

So anyways, I've had in my head for months the idea to write out a prose vignette of the backstory behind Carrion's name. But the idea was always very vague: Reverence attacks one of his fellow paladins and is left for dead because of it. (Hence the line, "Soon you'll be nothing but carrion" that struck me like a bolt of lightning.)

Talking with the DM of Carrion's game (hiiii Izzy 💖💖💖) a couple of weeks ago gave me a better idea of where I wanted the vignette to go (a tragedy of misunderstandings / no one wanted to hurt anyone / the path to hell is paved with good intentions). And then exactly one week ago (down to the minutes, actually. I was writing between 7-8:30pm) I actually sat down and wrote the damn thing.

And because it's me, it turned out sadder than I expected it to. (And the concept on its own was already sad enough.) Orion here is a BIG part of that. He originally wrote himself into the story as a bit of a plot device. A young, freshly knighted paladin who wasn't allowed to go on the mission that got them the Delirium shard. So he begged the older paladin stationed on guard with him (Reverence, aka Carrion) to let him have a peek. Reverence relents, Orion opens the chest, and Carrion transforms. It only lasts a few seconds though, before he's back in his normal body.

Now, as far as the paladins know, any transformations are permanent, and essentially result in your death. So they try desperately for WEEKS to find someone who can "cure" him. Unfortunately they're wrong, and the ticking clock they're all imagining doesn't actually exist. But they exhaust all of their resources and options in an attempt to help one of their own.

Now, Reverence has been confronted with the fact that he's going to die at any moment (or so he thinks), and so he's understandably in a bit of a shitty mood. He keeps his distance from the other paladins when they camp, but is eventually approached by one of his friends, a guy named Beren. (I have a sim of Beren, too. I'll add his pic at the bottom of this post.) Reverence and Beren talk, and they're having two very different conversations. Rev assumes that Beren was sent to watch him because he's dangerous now, meanwhile Beren volunteered to hang out with and keep an eye on his friend who recently got bad news.

Things get a little tense, and Orion (who has also volunteered to hang out with Rev, but had gone to get food for the three of them) walks in at just the wrong moment. He assumes Reverence is threatening Beren, and draws his sword. The combo of the reminder of how this started and a fear instinct, on top of the already heightened emotions and stress he's feeling, makes Reverence snap, throwing a punch at Orion.

Not having control of things, he transforms mid-swing, and by the time he realizes what's happened and that he might actually truly hurt Orion, it's too late. Orion goes down, and Reverence is tackled by the rest of the paladins.

After that, he wakes up in chains hearing Beren try and persuade Theodore (the leader of the paladins and Reverence's mentor) that he should have killed Rev while he was unconscious. Rev tries to ask about Orion, but gets no straight answer.

Because Theodore is too selfish to do the (based on their knowledge) "right" thing and give Reverence a quick death, they leave him bound on a ledge about 40ft down a cliff. The last thing Reverence hears as the paladins walk away is Theodore saying to Beren "Put Reverence out of your mind. Soon he'll be nothing but carrion."

When he survives, he takes that name and plots to kill Theodore, not knowing or understanding that Theodore did what he did out of love, and also has regretted it every day since -- to the point that he literally lost his divine magic over it.

Now, here's the kicker. I never specified if Orion lived or died. And I told the DM that it was her choice. So we'll see what happens. Both options are thoroughly upsetting for Carrion, so I'm happy with either.

As promised, here's a pic of Beren.

He's trans and does woodcarving, and neither of those things are relevant to his role in the story, or even mentioned, but I know them about him anyways.

[historybunnny]

𝟏𝟖𝟗𝟎'𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤

⤷ 𝐨𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐫 𝐛𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐞 ⚓

Oscar is our first heir for this legacy and since he's still just a tot, many of his outfit choices are still chosen by his parents and guardians. However, he seems to have picked up on his parents preferred color palette of black and grey, with some added blues, greens and browns. All of his clothing is made of sturdy fabric and ready for rough housing and playing tough.

In appearance, we can already see that his nose is quite prominent and his eyes a beautiful grey-blue hue, taking after his mother, Winifred, while his hair a striking black to contrast. Still quite young, he hasn't quite lost his chubbiness from being a baby or grown in all his teeth, but you best believe he is ready to take on whatever adventures await him each and every day.

Also, I wanted to mention that I've actually messed up Ozzy's aging for how I intend to progress my Sims ages going forward. So it will probably seem like Ozzy is stuck in toddler-hell for a lot longer than he should be but we're just going to go with it at this point because I had already styled his looks!

Please see my resource page for details on his skin details, nose mask, etc! All other CC links are located beneath the cut 🖤

everyday: hair, hat, outfit, socks, shoes

everyday ii: hair, hat (tzr warning), outfit, socks, shoes

work / chores: hair, hat (tzr warning), outfit, socks, boots

evening wear: hair, hat, outfit, socks, shoes

sunday best: hair, hat, outfit, socks, shoes

sleepwear: hair, nightcap, onsie, socks

play: hair, hat, outfit, socks, shoes

swimwear: hair, hat, swimsuit

autumn: hair, bonnet, outfit, socks, boots

winter: hair, bonnet, outfit, mittens, socks, boots

spring: hair, hat, outfit, socks, shoes*

summer: hair, hat, outfit, socks, shoes*

* cannot find anymore, but if you message me and ask for my discord, i can send it to you as a package file over discord!

[illeaadante]

How I think Vulcans react to games

Vulcans definitely play games, because rest and relaxation are necessary to maintain cognitive function and games offer a way to do that as well as socialize and strengthen bonds between individuals. Multitasking is only logical. However, there are distinct preferences:

Chess - 2d or 3d doesn't matter, this is the introductory game for vulcan children because it has rigid rules and memorizable strategies and patterns. TBH I think vulcans stop playing chess with each other when the child completes all of the strategies and they only bring out the board again if they need something mindless to do with their hands OR they are playing against a non-vulcan. The non-vulcan basically never wins, but it's more interesting to play against someone who hasn't memorized all of the gambits.

Poker/any gambling card game - like that one other post said, Vulcans descend on poker like a pack of hyena. Competitive applied statistics and emotional suppression? That is their whole deal. Ignoring the illogic of actually gambling, Vulcans clean up any casino.

Tetris - oh you know that vulcans love tetris. The satisfaction of clearing lines and putting blocks in perfect order? Catnip. Vulcatnip.

Tetris 99 - tetris with a side of competition? Hell, yes. Vulcans playing tetris 99 is like when all of those old people were absolutely schooling twitch streamers when the game first came out.

Bejeweled/match 3 - I think vulcans would find it as soothing as a lot of humans do.

Tower defense - an extension of their preference for chess. Now, instead of one opponent with the same pieces, it's ever increasing waves of enemies.

Resource management games - any of them. I feel that that is another extension of chess preference and Vulcans can absolutely clean up at tournaments.

Fighting games - this ones a bit tricky and there's a lot of variation. Some vulcans would definitely be on the 'no items, final destination' side of the argument while others would insist it is illogical to turn items off because you should use everything available to you. Some vulcans prefer simpler fighting games with what they perceive as more logical movesets while others prefer the flexibility and complexity of the more out there games. Also yes, i know vulcans are pacifists, but claiming that playing a game goes against a person's pacifism is illogical.

Team Shooters - imagine going up against a team of Vulcans in CoD or Overwatch. Imagine it. Hilarious and terrifying. They do worse against the casual gamers than the pros just because the casuals are more likely to fuck up in illogical ways.

Then there are the games that I think don't exist in the Vulcan zeitgeist, or only for anthropologists and freaks:

RPGs - specifically single player RPGs, like dating sims. Dating sims would exist on vulcan purely for anthropological reasons, but other RPGs wouldn't catch on at all. They just don't get why someone would pretend to be a character for the purposes of entertaining oneself. Tabletop RPGs are just like doing theater, but with more math, so they can understand that a bit. I can see some Vulcans agreeing to play MMORPGs to make their non-vulcan friends happy, but it's never a big thing in Vulcan culture.

puzzle games - you would think, just as a knee-jerk reaction, that vulcans would love puzzle games. You would be very wrong. Most Humans find the logic in puzzle games lacking, it would be torture to a vulcan.

Hidden object games - this one is polarizing. I'm sure that some Vulcans are VERY good at hidden object games and find the removal of those objects satisfying, but I'm just as sure that other Vulcans find the placement of those objects in the first place illogical enough to be rage-quit inducing... if vulcans were prone to rage-quitting, of course.

Point and Click Adventure games - like puzzle games, but even worse. Vulcan Guantanamo Bay is being forced to play Room Escape games for a week.

[yourbigendergremlet]

Gender affirming care: at least an argument to give to religious people

Like even if trans people are commiting sin, isnt your job as a christian to show compassion towards ALL people? If they are going to commut a sin either way, either altering your body (which im pretty sure was never mentiones as a sim) or suicide, then the best you can do as a christian is to help save their lives, show your love for your neighbour by not driving them to death by limiting their resources?

Maybe the reason there is a strong divide between the lgbt+ community and the religious community is because they see the religious people as those who don't care for them or want to help them, just take away what makes them happy, maybe, if they see the compassion and love that christians are meant to show to all people (and not meaning in the "i love you but i dont support you" way) then maybe, at least some, wont be so closed off to religion????

And while forgiveness is an act of compassion, do you really forgive them if you try to take away a recourse that can keep them alive? Or are you just saying you forgive them without actually meaning it because that is what your religious text told you that you should say and you don't really mean it? (Trust me, there is a HUGE difference between saying something like that and actually meaning it)

At least if they live, even while or post transition, at least they are alive and if they want to they can repent and confess to have their sins forgiven, but if they comit suicide and die, then by the belief, its too late for them and they will be condemmed to hell

Like yeah, trans affiimg care is saving their lives, but it can also give them a chance at saving their soul too

Like is this a silly thing for me to think? Even if the trans person's end goal is never gonna be to become religious, at least a religious person's role is to give them a chance????? Or at least keep them alive????????

[cityof2morrow]

CDK: Cubic Dynamics Kitbash - BACKSTORY

Published: 9-14-2024 | Updated: N/A

SUMMARY The Cubic Dynamics Kitbash (CDK) Series is game-ready and will be released over the coming weeks! It includes over 250 items to set up offices, corporations, and other public services. Classic CC gems have been updated with fresh, retro-futuristic detail alongside dozens of new career-themed objects. Simmers in need of “white-collar” environments for their build-a-city challenges (BACC) and/or integrated economy saves will appreciate this collection.

The CDK series includes furniture and a variety of props you’ll need to create functional workplaces. Food, retail, and leisure don’t need to be the only reasons to send sims downtown – time to get to work! Get started with the Company Expo (Simmons, 2024) set, which contains the meshes you’ll need, and browse the series for more! See the #co2cdkseries and #ofbprops tags on this site.

DETAILS (aka THE BACKSTORY) What began as a handful of items for a bank lot grew into the CDK series over nearly two years. I had mods for a fully functional financial operation but lacked CC to simulate the depths of corporate clownery I wanted to . . . sims buzzing about the machine like good little cogs. A binding contract here, a little interest charge there, another meeting that could’ve (and should’ve) been an email, “fill out this form and we’ll get back to you in 3-5 business days!” I knew I wasn’t going to stop at the bank either. My doctors, writers, politicians, and other professionals needed places to do business as well. So, I started with the furniture. I wanted objects that looked timeless (“retro”) but modern (“fit for a futurist”). Pieces needed to be interchangeable (as cogs in the machine often are) and look like they were mass-produced specifically for the corporate world. This called for décor that was uniform (repeating metal, glass, wood, and upholstery), utilitarian (“comfortable enough for the job at hand”), yet unique (“enough to make rank and role clear”). The result was several themed rooms built on the lore and look of the Cubic Dynamics collection (EA/Maxis, 2008). Conformity. Productivity. Efficiency. All the hallmarks of white-collar hell. I added a few supporting sets here and there – wherever it seemed like a good fit. Once I had the right look and feel, I moved on to gameplay. GAMEPLAY and PREFORMANCE A handful of objects have been (re)made to give those simlish practitioners, pencil-pushers, and bureaucrats something to do. These are based on my own gameplay needs, as well as suggestions from folks with similar playstyles like @ChocolateCitySim, @Rachums, @Gayars, and @Yessu. They range from printers to job boards to loan contracts. I recommend using them alongside other mods to give your sims lots of things to do in the workplace. You’ll find them under the #ofbprops tag.

The CDK series is mostly low-poly and uses the repository technique to save game resources. Some high-poly objects are included but they can be easily discarded  – they’re not required and there are dozens of others to choose from – office chairs tend to be higher in poly count in general. There are some items (and thumbnails!*!) I wish I could perfect , but why let “perfect” win over “well done?”

[dizzyrobinsims]

Community grumbles

So before I go on my mini rant- there is a ton of lovely people and aspects of the sims 4 community, I just...

*lets out a VERY annoyed huff after having to jump through several hoops to find an old Sims 4 cc I had on my old computer that is crucial for one of my characters I'm re-creating*

One of the things I dislike about Sims 4 culture is the "I'm just going to delete all my old stuff" thing that's grown. Whether it's because they quit sims and delete their blog, or start monetizing and delete their old free stuff (because it's 'not as good' or 'not their style' or not wanting free stuff out there)... I hate it. And it's WAY more common than it used to be. (in part because the move to communal forums or sites like modthesims to individual blogs).

Will I pester people over it? Hell no. Because yeah, they can do what they want with their CC, they made it. I'm not gonna kool-aid man into their inbox saying they can't do that or they are bad for doing it. Ew. I'm an adult.

But even if it's a broken janky mess, or not as good as your new stuff, I guarantee you somebody loved it and even if it's for their own use they probably went searching and bent over backwards to fix it so they can keep using it, or loving it just as-is. Because I've done it! Multiple times! I get the impulse because MAN I want to redo some stuff myself, but there is love and work in it that other people adore I promise you.

And for the people who leave sims and delete everything... I'm gonna be real I find it petty. Often it's because of drama, but the people who participate in drama is such a small part of the community and you are removing awesome resources for *everyone*. Even those people who loved your stuff and piled you with praises. Plus on a "personal views about creative hobbies" level; I think it's far more beneficial to the community and creativity in general to make stuff free use if you aren't involved in it anymore.

People who delete old stuff because it's free and they want to monetize everything can step on a lego tho. I'm sorry but even on a business level that's dumb because you're deleting free advertising? Or a record of your growth and ability?

Anyway I'm an old Sims 2 player grumbling about changes and just glad I found the damn outfit I needed and don't have to wait until my old computer is fixed.

[hymnism]

release the list

i feel like i should mention these are all games ive personally played so if any of these make you go "why isn't [GAME] on here it's probably cuz i personally haven't played it. anyway

(obligatory mention to hades/disco elysium/omori since they're some of my favorite indie games but im sure everyone already knows about them. they are lovely games and you should play them 👍)

also ill use 🔸️ to indicate games that are still in early access so be warned that these games will probably be incomplete/buggy (but still worth playing imo)

darkest dungeon ($25) - turn based roguelike where you recruit mercenaries and send them on dungeon explorations and make sure they don't die of stress or starvation alongside the regular monster attacks. notoriously difficult. imagine bloodborne but turn based

ftl: faster than light ($10)- real time roguelike where you control a small crew and pilot a spaceship on the run from a rebel fleet. manage power and weapons on your own ship while targeting critical systems on the enemy

loop hero ($15)- a roguelike where your character will automatically walk in a loop while you use cards to add terrain with different effects such as spawning monsters to give you loot or increasing your healing. very unique with a beautiful pixel artstyle and banger soundtrack

moonlighter ($20)- a roguelike rpg where you go dungeon diving and try to bring back as much loot as you can so that you can sell it in your shop

🔸️shadows of doubt ($20)- a first person sandbox detective simulator where each case is procedurally generated. randomly generates a town with npcs that all have names and addresses and relationships. put together clues from a crime scene and try to catch a killer before they strike again. work odd jobs between cases to keep yourself fed and housed

ultrakill ($25) fast paced first person shooter with a style system ala devil may cry. you play as a robot fighting through the layers of hell. mankind is dead. blood is fuel. hell is full

crypt of the necrodancer ($15)- a rhythm based roguelike dungeon crawler where you and your enemies are only allowed to move on beat. banger soundtrack goes without saying

everhood ($10)- a rhythm based rpg where you play as a red doll who had their arm stolen and is trying to get it back. battles involve moving between 5 lanes to avoid enemy attacks. if you like undertale you'll like this

spiritfarer ($30)- management and adventure game where you play as a spiritfarer who needs to care for spirits on her boat before leading them into the afterlife. incredibly charming and touching game. you will cry

let's school ($20)- management sim where you build and manage a school and help students graduate by setting up different courses. addicting and has a very cute artstyle

let's build a zoo ($20)- management sim where you. well where you build a zoo. a very silly game that includes a morality system where you can choose to be eco friendly and help repopulate endangered species or you can exploit your animals for their meat and produce. also has an animal splicing mechanic. haven't you ever wanted to make a giraffe with a duck head

🔸️the wandering village ($25)- a city builder with the twist that you live on the back of a giant wandering beast named onbu. you help care for onbu as he wanders though different biomes that force you to adjust your resource production as some things become unavailable (such as water in a desert)

frostpunk ($30) a survival city builder where you build around a central core and try to prevent everyone from freezing to death in progressively colder temperatures

monster sanctuary ($20)- a metroidvania style creature collector with a unique combo meter that will continue to build and increase your damage based on the number of "hits" you can perform (healing buffs and shields also count as hits) and each monster has different skill trees that you can upgrade and customize

coral island ($30)- farming life sim with a unique underwater area where you can live and farm and raise aquatic plants and animals. you work to help restore the island after and oil spill ruined the surrounding ocean. i should mention that although this game is technically not in early access it is still unfinished and missing large chunks of gameplay/interactions/story. however there is still a healthy amount of content and is still a fun game as it is

apico ($20)- a beekeeping sim where you keep bees to make and sell honey while also breeding and releasing them to help restore their numbers in the wild

spirittea ($20)- a management and life sim where you manage a bathhouse for ghosts and help the townsfolk who think they're haunted (they're right). basically a cross between stardew valley and spirited away

🔸️cloud meadow ($20)- this is a porn game ⚠️ a farming sim where instead of regular animals you have anthro characters and you can breed them yourself or with each other and have them help in combat or on your farm. very cute artstyle and amazing animation work

[oddygaul]

Zenless Zone Zero

Well, I’ve been playing the shit out of this game, so fair warning, there will be significant brainrot ahead.

Overall, I really dig it. I’m a huge mark for character action games, and well-done life sims tend to suck me in; Zenless Zone Zero is nailing both those aspects pretty damn well. In fact, it’s nailing them well enough that… how do I put this… it starts to slip into the territory of being A Good Game Generally, rather than just a gacha. And while this is a big accomplishment for ZZZ, this also puts it into direct conversation with other full-price games, resulting in its gacha elements causing more friction than Honkai Star Rail’s ever did*.

*I’ll be comparing this to HSR a lot, because I play way too much of both and they’re made by the same developer. I recognize that it is pretty odd and potentially even problematic to A / B compare them when I could be looking at the game through the lens of, you know, Gaming At Large. But hey, that’s why this is a subjective journal and not a holistic review blog! It is what it is.

So, the aesthetic of this game fuckin rules - it’s like, late 90s to early 2000s VHS-core. The main characters run a Blockbuster, for Christ’s sake. Presentation-wise (and systems-wise, and, hell, music-wise), ZZZ is obviously borrowing a lot from the Persona series, but like… great? I’d love it if more things cribbed that style and made it their own, from the confidant hangouts, to the small but comfy explorable areas, to the dynamic menus with edgy character poses. The character design itself is all superb, all the way down to the crowd NPCs - some the shopkeepers here have cooler designs than the main characters of some other games. Even aside from the designs, ZZZ is doing a lot with lighting and color desaturation that really lends it its own unique vibe. They actually have a cohesive artstyle in here! wild.

The presentation of the story is also killer. Sure, a decent chunk of the conversations are just models lip-flapping at each other - although they at least emote and pose a bit here, unlike the Star Rail dialogue scenes with their demure princess waves. In the main story, though, we get not only a heap of fairly lengthy cutscenes, but also this really cool comic panel-style presentation.

I feel like there was a bit of a trend in the PS3/360 era of games to present a game’s story in this comic panel / storyboard style. I understood the motivation: games increasingly demanded a more involved, consistent storytelling approach, rather than the ‘One big rendered cutscene at the beginning and end’ they used to get away with, and the generation’s increased visual fidelity meant that doing even basic, in-engine cutscenes took a lot more resources to make something half-decent. In Spyro the Dragon on PS1 you could get away with a fun little 15-second gag with a barely animated polygonal yeti or whatever; in the PS3 era, you were going up against tryhards like Metal Gear Solid 4. Amidst this landscape, the pitch of having your illustrators pretty up some storyboards and put them in the game sounds like it’d save a lot of work - plus, consoles were finally outputting a high enough resolution that this sort of flat image wouldn’t be compressed to hell.

Thing is, I always kinda hated that approach. In some cases, I think that’s the popular opinion - I fuckin love Bayonetta, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone defend its weird slideshow cutscenes. Even in games where the execution is perfectly fine, though, it rubbed me the wrong way. I think of Infamous - objectively, the art’s solid and fits the tone of the game, and the motion graphics aim to capture some of the dynamism typical cutscenes would provide. Despite all that, it still feels cheap to me - all of the panning, effects, and graphic imagery feel like they’re trying to polish up something that inherently doesn’t fit.

In ZZZ, though, I’m loving every one I come across. It’s obviously still done for efficiency reasons - there’s already a handful of characters that exist only in these panel scenes, saving the team the effort of having to model and rig them. But the freedom this allows for staging and storytelling is huge; the characters are more expressive here than anywhere else in the game, and we’re able to see situations with huge crowds and new locales much more often than would be possible in typical cinematics. And the illustrations are genuinely good, too - full of character, cool poses and creative compositions/angles.

if everything actually had to be modeled, there's no way we would've gotten Legally Blonde Nicole

Plus, the cutscenes are constant, and boy do I love the animation here. It feels so rare nowadays for a high-budget game to do stylized 3D animation of this ilk. Your biggest budget games are all going for the cinematic look, and pushing realism as much as they can - and while I know an immense amount of work and craft goes into animating something like The Last of Us, boy, I just could not care less about something so lacking in flair*. Even bigger properties that use a stylized artstyle these days, like Breath of the Wild, still tend to lean towards fairly naturalistic animation. Zenless Zone Zero’s cutscenes, on the other hand, spin and stretch motherfuckers around like we’re back on the PS2, are filled with forced perspective, and I am absolutely living for it. It’s not even reserved only for bombastic action scenes, either - we get honest to god character acting-focused conversation cutscenes.

*Seriously, take me back to the Naughty Dog that animated Jak & Daxter. Jak’s hero animation is top tier to this day

Of course, the combat animation slaps too; each of the playable agents is absolutely dripping with character. Even characters whose designs initially left me cold won me over once I saw the amount of care put into their movement and combo strings. It’s honestly shocking to me that this is the same studio that made Genshin Impact, a game I dropped after about 2 hours because of how lifeless all the animation felt*. Unique run cycles for every character, actual non-human designs, the flourishes everyone has when stopping mid-combo to snap them back to idle, the absolute synergistic audiovisual bliss of the parry… it’s really impressive stuff from a young team.

*Same studio in name only, totally different team, I know, but still

Mechanically, I have some mixed feelings about the combat as a whole. Zenless Zone Zero is, without a doubt, aiming to present complexity and depth as a team battler - that is to say, it’s more about team synergy, tag combos, and knowing who to use when, rather than soloing as any particular character. Nonetheless, I really would’ve appreciated individual characters having a bit more depth to their movesets; a jump, a launcher, cancels, anything. As outstanding as all the animation work is, there’s some characters that only have a normal attack string on square and one special attack on triangle. Like, sub-Dynasty Warriors level of complexity here. It’s rough.

This is where ZZZ’s gacha nature gets a bit ugly: so far, more complex kits and skill expression are mostly locked behind rarity, which is kind of scummy. In Star Rail, for the most part, 4-star characters are defined as such due to their numbers: they still have mechanics and complexity, they just aren’t tuned as high as the limited characters. Hell, in some cases they have more complexity. Ruan Mei is an almost incomparably stronger unit than Asta, but Ruan Mei’s play pattern is fucking boring: you use skill every three turns when it runs out. Asta, meanwhile, basically has her own risk & reward minigame that demands more thoughtful SP management.

In ZZZ, on the other hand, the lower-rank characters straight up have less going on in their kits. Nicole has like… one tech, sorta. Anby has one single animation cancel to chain her normal into her special quicker. Lucy’s only skill expression is choosing whether to tap special or hold special. Meanwhile, Zhu Yuan, a limited character, has a normal string that bounces between melee and ranged attacks, can be dodge-canceled at any point in the combo to branch into variations of the string, and a hold-normal attack string that’s completely different and has the same branching dodge-cancel tech.

It’s one thing to lock raw damage and meta viability behind a gacha, but locking the characters that are mechanically more interesting to play straight up sucks. If I hadn’t been lucky enough on the standard banner to pull exactly the two characters I find the most mechanically satisfying, I don’t know that I’d still be playing - and this is the point where ZZZ begs comparison to other, non-live service character action games. Sure, it’s probably not fair to compare a random A-rank’s moveset to Devil May Cry V’s iteration of Dante, a feature-creeped nightmare of a kit 3 console generations in the making. But what about Sengoku Basara Sumeragi, my personal character-action GOAT? By all accounts a mid-budget title, yet it offers 40 full characters chock-full of more unique mechanics and animation cancels than you can shake a stick at.

Fuck, can we please get a new Sengoku Basara? Please? I’m desperate out here. I’ll take anything, y’all.

There’s also the inherent issue that plagues every action RPG (usually deftly avoided by the character action genre), which is the delicate balance of player success depending on the numbers vs actual mechanical skill - a balancing act made even more noticeable due to the gacha genre-standard of characters taking weeks of grinding to level up. This is a topic for another day, but suffice to say, a big part of the reason Honkai Star Rail works for me as a very pretty version of Cookie Clicker is because of the Autoplay option. In Zenless Zone Zero, if you’re not willing to grind out the same mob fight for a week or two, you’re gonna hit an endgame roadblock of doing chip damage to a boss you’ve mechanically mastered because you’re underleveled, and boy, that never feels good.

For all those issues stemming from the gacha, I will say, it’s great that the story missions let you use the characters that are actually supposed to be present for those missions, even if you don’t own them. Aside from how nice it is to have an opportunity to put the whole roster through their paces, it goes a long way for actually getting invested in the story. Honkai Star Rail’s storytelling is a hot mess for many reasons, but it’s always particularly jarring rolling up to a sidequest at like, a local theater troupe with a wanted space criminal, the sitting president of a completely different planet, a ten year old child, and a shirtless cyborg cowboy, none of whom have canonically met each other; ZZZ’s approach sidesteps this issue. The proxy angle even provides a pretty valid diegetic explanation for why agents that don’t know each other might be working together.

Now that we’ve sort of meandered back to the story after talking about animation led us on a long detour - the story is surprisingly solid. In particular, I really appreciate how straightforward the writing is. I don’t know if the issue lies with the original text or the localization, but Star Rail’s dialogue, even in simple missions, tends to be incredibly meandering and overstuffed; ZZZ is a lot better about letting all its characters talk like actual humans. It also helps that the plot so far is a lot more grounded, and spends more time focusing on each faction’s group dynamics rather than the overarching plot. These games live and die by their characters, so leaning into those strengths is a smart move.

Zenless Zone Zero is, unfortunately, fully in line with Hoyo’s weird conservative politics - in particular, 1.0 and 1.1 are absolutely stuffed full of copaganda. With how many safety regulation jokes they made at the construction company, I initially hoped they’d lampoon the police faction a bit, or make a commentary on how comically heavily armed New Eridu’s police force are. In a vacuum, Zhu Yuan shouting combat lines like “Stop resisting!” or “Freeze, hands up!” while blasting someone with her gigantic, ‘JUSTICE’-emblazoned rocket launcher shotgun feels like it ought to be satire. Every time we talk to the officers, though, it’s just line after line about their solemn duty to protect the people of the city, how essential and important they are for the community, and so on and so on.

This wholehearted embrace of the world’s current power structure is something Zenless Zone Zero approaches in nearly the exact same way as Star Rail. In both games, your playable character is someone that’s sort of operating outside the law - in Star Rail, as the maverick organization that is the Astral Express, while in ZZZ you work as an illegal proxy. Despite this setup, any time the protagonists come into contact with a governing body, they are no less than thrilled to help them enforce the will of the law.

In Star Rail, you aid the local governments (one of which is an undemocratic monarchy) in committing massive cover-ups to hide their failures from the populace not once but twice. In ZZZ, you aid the police to an obsequious degree - playing along with them to not arouse suspicion is one thing, but helping them organize a fucking community day on Sixth Street? Fuck that. Hell, said community day is even shown to initially be DOA because none of the local residents trust the police - and you best believe we get two full scenes of the MCs changing the resident’s minds, resulting in them spouting shit about “Oh, it was our fault for judging the police too harshly - they really do have our best interests at heart!”

is it tho

There’s an argument to be made that the N.E.P.S. are a little different, given that they exist in a post-apocalyptic world with monsters popping up every day - and ZZZ’s copaganda is certainly a little less flagrant than something like Spider-Man helping the NYPD install civilian surveillance networks in Insomniac’s Spider-Man. And, sure, perhaps this can help excuse why they post fully armored, rifle-wielding soldiers in the Lumina Square DMV, and provides some justification that their existence is more helpful than the real world’s civilian-murdering property guards.

Thing is, though, at every turn you’re hit with dialogue and situations which make it clear that, no, they’re the normal cops. Every other sidequest seems to involve calling the N.E.P.S. in on somebody or helping with an investigation, and for every time we see them handle ethereal activity, there’s two instances of them being called in for petty property theft or something similarly minor - even the playable character has heaps of dialogue choices threatening to call the police on someone*. Much like Star Rail’s reactionary politics were strangely at odds with the ‘blazing a new path’ ideals of the trailblaze, Zenless Zone Zero’s obsession with the police puts a damper on its underground, counterculture aesthetic.

*Including a case where both options threatened this, leaving me without a non-narc dialogue choice.

illustration by Lv01KOKUEN

And finally… I don’t know where to fit this in, so I guess it just goes in its own little section at the end here. Lots of people, myself included, have touched on the Persona inspirations - and they’re certainly significant. One thing I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention as a huge influence is Yasuhiro Nightow’s Kekkai Sensen / Blood Blockade Battlefront. From its sense of style to its worldbuilding, ZZZ damn near feels like fanfic to me. Hell, it’s right in the name - BBB? ZZZ? And this is on top of the dimensional crossover / big city vibe, the retro fashion, the different factions. Victoria Housekeeping might as well be Libra 2.0 - Von Lycaon is a damn near perfect 50/50 expy of Klaus and Stephen Starphase. And then Belle / Wise, who assist these powerful fighters in a noncombat role just like Leo, also turn out to have some sort of special magical eyes granted to them by untold powers from within the dimensional rift??

I’m here for it, don’t get me wrong - love Nightow. But that can’t be coincidence, right?

[blueeyedrat]

Steam Next Fest, summer 2025. It's the yearly "everyone announces a bunch of games" season, so there was plenty to try out. Further comments under the cut.

The Gecko Gods has been sitting on my Steam wishlist for years, so it was nice to finally get a demo. The visuals and audio are top-notch. The movement is nice and fluid, and even the small area covered by the demo gives you a big open space to get lost in, for better or worse. If you enjoy exploration for exploration's sake, you'll like this one a lot.

By contrast, Hirogami has only been on the Steam wishlist for about a week. There's some charm to this one, and the origami style is well-realized. I wish the demo had a little more to it, though — unless I missed something, there's only a single level to play. Looking forward to the rest of it, all the same.

And on the subject of demos I wish were longer: hey, Zachtronics is back! Sort of. Kaizen: A Factory Story seems like it'll have that same satisfying mechanical process as Infinifactory and Opus Magnum, but also it feels like the demo ends right before you get into the meat of it.

Assorted puzzle games: PANIK and One More Button have simple core concepts that look like they'll be expanded on in some interesting and/or mind-bending ways. A Little Perspective is Monument Valley sokoban, which works well enough as a selling point.

Puzzle-adjacent miscellany: A Week in the Life of Asocial Giraffe is a charming point-and-click adventure about avoiding conversations (mood), with some clever puzzles therein. The Trolley Solution is a comedic piece about stuff getting run over by trains — one particular segment in the demo runs a bit long for its own good, but otherwise I think its humor lands. Henry Halfhead is a cute sandbox about interacting with anything and everything in your path, Mario Odyssey-style. And as far as Dorfromantik-likes go, Isles & Tiles has a few neat ideas, like resource management and being able to configure your "deck" of tiles between rounds, but beyond that I don't know how much it'd hold my interest.

While we're on the topic, though, the Dorfromantik devs are making a new game and it was one of the highlights of the ones I tried this week: Star Birds is a charming logistics sim about hopping between asteroids and building supply lines. Similarly, ISLANDERS: New Shores is pretty much what you'd expect out of an ISLANDERS sequel, which is fine by me. Both games hit that satisfaction in placing all of your puzzle pieces just right, and are both games that I can see myself losing many hours to optimizing… or building complete nonsense. Either works, really.

MIO: Memories in Orbit is another one I'm torn on. It's another 'vania in the vein of Ori and Hollow Knight. The music and visuals are fantastic, and the movement feels pretty good. It reminds me of those other games at their best… but also at their worst. The combat eventually becomes fun, but in the early segments before you get any tools or upgrades, it's a pain. How the game handles checkpoints is my biggest gripe, particularly when a boss fight could take several attempts — even with all the locked doors and shortcuts opened, the runback gets tedious after the first few times. Even with those complaints, I still think there's a lot of potential here, and I hope it sticks the landing.

I find bullet hells and Vampire Survivor-likes more enjoyable to watch than play — a little overwhelming for my tastes. So I'll probably have to give BALL x PIT a pass myself, but if you do like those sorts of games, this seems like a worthwhile entry to the genre. A bit of base building, a bit of Breakout, and a lot of bullets.

Flick Shot Rogues, on the other hand, is definitely up my alley. We need more carom-likes in games, and this one shows a lot of promise. All three characters in the demo are pretty different, so the five in the full game should be a lot of variety. One more gem from this particular Fest. (…also I should play Beast Breaker again one of these days.)

[mllemaenad]

I think I need a break from Fallout 76. I swore I was going to get through it, and Tessa and I have been making good progress. My biggest complaint up until now is that they won't let you have Sofia and Beckett active at camp at the same time. I'm sure this is a resourcing issue, but Fallout 76 is such a lonely game. I get that you're supposed to play with friends, but unless you have a dedicated role playing group (and while I am sure such things exist, I do not get the impression that they are the majority) that's companionship for the player, not the character. I think Tessa, who did a lot of her growing up in a vault, would love a tiny community of her own.

But I have just slogged through Steel Dawn, trying to justify to myself why Tessa, who loves books and writes poetry and runs down the road to help out Lane and his Responders with food runs or package deliveries every day, would even be there. That's immediately followed by Steel Reign and ... I just can't. Not right now. There is no option to tell the Brotherhood to go the fuck back to California and leave us alone.

The entire first part of the quest line was "these idiots mislaid a bunch of dangerous weapons and are now complaining about other people in the region having the dangerous weapons". You know who I don't think is qualified to have dangerous weapons? The Brotherhood of Steel.

While I appreciate that "dangerous super mutant attacks", which seem to be part two and presumably have something to do with the dodgy scientist guy who showed up earlier, constitute a serious problem ... I am struggling to believe that Tessa would work with them on it. They would also kill Grahm! And Gail! Those are her friends. There are so many other people who could help deal with this, but that's not how the story goes.

So I'm going to give Fallout: London a try. It seems to be the hot new thing at the moment, and I am curious. Mods can be something of a mixed bag, and I'm hesitant to be very critical even when I don't like them, because the labour involved in some of these things ... I can just about do some simple patching in xEdit. So, you know, not really my place to criticise. But I've been trying to mod Bethesda games since Morrowind, and the worst you can say is "Why the hell did I install this? Was I drunk?" and scour it from your game.

But I have (so far) enjoyed Sim Settlements 2 and Tales from the Commonwealth. I did not take to Depravity and Outcasts and Remnants, for several reasons although the ... thing ... with Preston was the last straw (Except that they allowed you to pause your search after going through Kellogg's flat. I do not want to install that mod again ... but I sometimes think ... just for that one feature ... Emily could have a bath and a nap before tearing off again.).

Thank heavens for Mod Organiser 2. I can swap this thing in and leave Emily's load order intact.

I have named my girl Hannah, and since the premise is that you wake up in a lab with no memory of who you are or how you got there, I am going to learn about her as I go.

Initial impressions:

Wait. Is that Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy performing unethical experiments? That's ... something. Tortured by no less than two Doctor Whos.

Radshrews are terrifying. Little mice creatures should not be this hard to deal with. Admittedly with Hannah's fists since the game seems to be allergic to starter weapons.

This is not quite fair, as some guy kindly handed her a pocket knife once she crawled out of the train crash. But we are now fighting raiders with a pocket knife, and it is only slightly easier to deal with.

While Churchill is adorable, and we are keeping him, I do question his previous human's judgement. Hannah is a lost amnesiac wearing the rags she picked off the last raider she killed and wielding a pocket knife she does not know how to use. What on earth made him think she could care for a dog?

Now we need to go talk to some people called "the Thamesfolk" so Hannah can stop taking 30% more damage (Why? Just why? She can be one-shot killed by a bloatfly looking at her funny). We are about to find out how London feels about mutants, I think!

[yooniesim]

So... did yall see that the new website for sims family trees, set to replace Plumtree, is gonna be fuckin subscription based? You have to pay just to have more than one tree and more importantly, to have shareable trees/links?? The entire thing anyone would want to use it for? I understand having a premium option to pay for server fees, but to this level is ridiculous. A shareable link to your one free tree shouldn't be behind a paywall at least. It's like a blatant cash grab to capitalize on a beloved resource to the community going down. Is there nothing this community won't monetize to hell and back?

[weaselishmcdiesel]

so how would you want to make a more unique fantasy farming game then? /gen

I need one thing clear and that's that im a huge slut for rune factory 4. If I could just make it again I would

and now, a cut because i ramble like hell and my thoughts are incoherent

i would bring back the beautiful illustrated backgrounds of RF, like we've seen from from harvest moon tale of two towns too! I've had enough of the pixel art style I feel like it just became the default of indie farming sims, a byproduct of making the game and not a conscious design choice.

I would rather a big overarching story (boom! thats where you lose some players who just want a mindless farming experience- which is fine if you want, but jesus why do you even buy new games if they're all the same thing) one that pushes the farmer to also become an adventurer, maybe discovering new items that can help with farming in a big exploreable world (not open world. sick of those lately too. looks at rf5). allow the npcs to explore this world too! i think there's a lot games can do to make the npcs feel more alive, get them OUT of their cage in the main town, give them days where they're busy outside mining themselves or farming or whatever (HM ToTT allows npcs to wander into the wild area btw). Add multiple dungeoonss. enough with just the one mineshaft- it doesn't even make sense how resources would replenish every day it's immersion breaking- maybe crank up what you can get in one day and then give it a recharge time.

Emphasize building relationships. Allow NPCs to go through character growth. I don't think it's a half-bad idea to give the protagonist a voice like in RF, this can only help build a huge story. Maybe you can *only* learn some farming techniques after becoming friends with the townsfolk-not like a tutorial, like actual game progression. Really force you to some people's friendship, not just chucking presents at them every day- maybe some characters just dislike you from the beginning, like doug from rf4 you simply CANT get a higher friendship with him until later in the game.

As for farming, I think there are a lot of directions to go in depending on the style of the game. I say this because so many games are so painfully generic fantasy world with a pastel color palette and no real thought put into genre or world building. Again, farming feels like the byproduct of just making the game- not something integral to the story being told. What if you made a dark farming game, something gritty, a world where no plants seem to grow besides really low yield disgusting crops- maybe you're forced to grow these for a pittance, but over time you learn ways to revitalize the plants, a new technique for planting, a rare seed that you need to guard with your life, SOMETHING besides "you just got a huge fuckass lot. as soon as you can clear you can use it. have fun" WHY so often do we see games where there's a town in poor shape, low on funds, and yet they have this huuuuuge farm just collecting dust? how come all it takes is a *single* farmer to fix it? maybe make the player character more special and unique, give a reason for being so beneficial (cough. earthmate runefactory. cough)

using magic to quicken the daily chores can be good like in sunhaven, i just fear it becomes overpowered kinda quickly. tamed monsters in rune factory as well (though im biased and will prefer monster friends to magic any day). Why not ask npcs to come help you? if youre close enough friends. maybe return the favor by helping them with their fields some days? Maybe different farmers grow different things sometimes, and if too many people are growing the same crop, the price lowers and you're encouraged to try something else. idk!! there's so many things you could do!!!

Maybe a creative exercise for this type of project would be to imagine an existing, non-farming game and put farming in it. What might it look like? Breath of the wild. Here's my spitballing. Maybe you just get a plot by your house in hateno or something. You can visit it at any time, crops grow in time with the day night cycle, and maybe the type of crop that you get can be influenced by fueling the ground with compost that you can make from items from your inventory. Maybe using monster parts gives you evil fucked up plants that double as explosives or poison bombs, or maybe using star fragments or dragon parts gives you some celestial and very fragile crop that's good for upgrading armor and less for eating. Splatoon 3- fuck it every game you win/lose effects the growth of the plant. too many loses in a row it dies or is a really bad quality. Lots of wins and it's extra juicy and eating it later could give a boost for the next plants you grow- or maybe you can bring these plants into games to use as a limited bomb- like fizzbombs in splatfest. are these games actually missing these farming elements? no theyd probably be worse with these additions lol but if i would be doing a lot more of this speculation if i were to make a game myself.

okay. anyway. thats all. i would want to do more thinking about the specifics of the game id want to make before i could give concrete answers. i fear all my suggestions so far have been too tame- but that's because im absolutely not in game dev mode atm. but maybe one day, or with the help of someone similarly creative and motivated.