feenick - Tumblr blog

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Podarge for patreon !

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I've had these three around for a decade now

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bunny lamia

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Kleine playing a DS

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Requested by @veryspicyhoney

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now for the ultimate test. go to this website. set it to randomly generate ONE pokemon. all generations. all types. whatever it generates? thats you as a pokemon forever. what you get is what you get. NO RE ROLLING. now. who are you? i got goomy :^)

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Been a minute since I've put anything up here

have a door

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when i comm/skeb people i try to draw out my ideas since i'm bad at describing things. anyway here's an idea

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random character design sketch

depression sketch

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💙💜

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oh shit rpg maker xp is completely free to own this week on steam??

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8 of them.

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birthday doodle for my friend on twitter/discord/other places

white woman mage wednesday

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Mohs FalseSkies for patreon !

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a while ago my friend [@/feenick] played a game, ASTLIBRA ～生きた証～ Revision. he graciously streamed it when i asked him to and it has been dinging around in my brain ever since, both because it was an absolutely incredible, baffling, ridiculous piece of media and also cause it felt like couch gaming. i've been trying to collect my thoughts on it because i feel so fondly on it even from just watching i gotta get out OUT somewhere

Astlibra Revision is a 2d action game that reads to me like if Maplestory and Cave Story had a flash game baby. It originated as a freeware game by a solo dev [KEIZO] updated as chapters were finished across 15 years, with the proper collected release having a once-over by an additional art team including Vanillaware's Shigatake. And boy does it show in all manner of fantastic and terrible ways. Astlibra Revision is one of the most indulgent games I've seen in my life, and probably in existence.

Do you remember being a kid and playing make-believe on the playground, with powers and actions wholesale ripped off from whatever cartoons you were watching on saturday mornings? Do you remember being a tween and crafting elaborate adventures to your ipod playlists, full of twists and stake inflation powered solely by rule of cool and only sort of ripped off from whatever media you were into? I could go on with these anecdotes of varying specificity, but what I'm getting at is Astlibra is a product of a person knowing what they're into, and going as hard in the paint as physically possible with it.

There's standard fantasy, talking animals, magic, monsters, overdesigned dragons, photorealistic ocean life. There's sci-fi, mechs, modern apocalyptic hellscapes, laboratories full of bioengeneered horrors of flesh. There's time travel. There's hot blooded swordsmen with headbands. There's dubstep. There's an uncomfortable amount of big bouncy buxom boobies abound. The game's visual style takes some getting used to, with janky puppetry of what feels like a lot of generic assets alongside collaged backgrounds, and a selection of royalty-free soundtracks of any conceivable genre that lend themselves better to this wack dishwater setting than one would think. The story and characters aren't groundbreaking or even particularly well developed, but is lovingly crafted and you can't help but get attached to at least one character as things unfold. Many sequences play to their cliches very boldly, and some are far too horny for their own good.

[Seriously what is going on with some of these designs.]

Its because of this relentless conceptual hedonism that the charm manages to outweigh the shortcomings; I can't help but respect it. In particular, the commitment to the protagonist clearly being his own character with a semblance of a personality and motives, yet the game doesn't even dignify him with a name, a face, or proper dialogue, is one of the funniest things I've seen in a story in quite some time. And I haven't even gotten to what truly spoke to me about this game!

[My first impression of the game was this chapter, more specifically this absolutely bizarre track used for it. The TTS throws me off so much.]

At first blush, Astlibra looks and feels very cheap, like "Vanillaware at home", or like a parody game made up for a bit in an anime. When I asked my friend to stream, I almost tuned out early on because I hated the sfx choices and the visuals weren't quite hitting. But as I watched more, I found myself deeply impressed by the mechanical progression. The indulgence is not skin deep here; there's an old-fashioned sense of game design that's fallen out of favour in the last 10-20 years or so that Astlibra has as the backbone of its experience: grind.

Now, that content approach hasn't completely vanished for what it's worth, but where Astlibra differs from more modern incarnations of grind is that its worthwhile every step of the way. Sure, it leads to a lot of repetition and backtracking which gives it a dated feeling. But for player sensibilities like mine, who dont mind if not outright enjoy grind and seeing number go up, its very clear that developer KEIZO loves and knows enough of these grinds to craft a progression centered around it that feels rewarding.

[I hate this thing as much as I do any Behemoth-coded creature.]

It's a highly specific and nostalgic itch it scratches, but the interplay of levels, skill points, weapon mastery, and rare enemy drops all having direct and tangible benefits is a smorgasboard for players like me who appreciate when games reward mastering its systems on its terms. The cherry on top is how stats gained from basic levelling and the activation of passive skills can be reallocated freely, so there's no hard commitment to builds and more than enough ways to end up as overpowered as a spiky haired teenager with a big sword [or hammer, or staff] would be after killing scores of gods, demon kings, and aliens.

Another aspect that surprised me was the summon system, both in its activation being specific button combinations and with the sheer variety on offer. Notably, certain combinations of passive skills make it so nearly every summon is viable even well into endgame depending on your playstyle. My friend was one to spend half the fights in menus, changing up summons, passives, and equipment constantly; frankly it was a little intimidating to watch! But its that kind of granular crunchiness that makes the grind worth it and then some, and has me seriously considering playing the game myself one of these days to see what kind of playstyle I'd develop from it.

[Many of the replen items are lovingly detailed pastries, but in practice we went through a lot of those hairy ballsack fruits.]

Astlibra is not a game that "respects your time" as is the permeating modern trend - but rather greatly appeals to the type who love to sink their teeth into systems and gameplay functions and crave a grind worth the time and effort. It helps that there's a fantastic 2d action game attached to it.

It is definitely not for everyone; between the old-fashioned jank, the sprawling "anime" story, and the tasteless ecchi in certain parts [really, at a point between chapter 4 and noticing nearly every woman-shaped enemy and summon had jiggle physics despite being 2d rigged sprites it constantly flipped between being endearing in a guilty-pleasure way and extremely offputting depending on where it cropped up], it takes a very specific taste or a very generous tolerance to reccomend.

[By the time we got here, this game having every aesthetic ever had long solidified itself as a charm point.]

Primarily, the game is for developer KEIZO that they've shared with the world, even with it's amateur shortcomings its an incredible passion project wrapped up in a time capsule from the 00s that I've really come to adore. And if you've ever at all imagined a guy running and jumping along telephone poles while you stared out the window on road trips, you'd probably appreciate seeing something tangible born from that same unchecked imagination.

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Hy [dragon outfit flavored]

Happy 2024!

[feenick]

too busy being invested in 8+ year old video games to care about anything new that’s being announced