#I had a blast with this one! Having fun with the layout was...well...fun!

[quiet-cabin]

Omamori PostMortem!

Here it is folks! The final Omamori devlog 🥹. In it we'll be taking a look at how everything began, some of the ups and downs we had along the way, including some looks at behind the scenes work, and finally, what's next for the studio!

I'm going to try something a little different here. Normally I link back to the devlog on itch so you can read it there, but I'm wondering if people might be more inclined to read the full thing if they don't have to leave to another tab lol (Although I also worry that tumblr just isn't really great for really long post reading..) But! I shall put the choice in your hands. Here's the link to it on itch.io! Or you can click the read more below to see it here!

I'd be really interested to know what Y'ALL are interested in seeing next 👀

Hello everyone!!

It’s been one month since Omamori released which sounds incredibly fake but here we are! As of posting this, Omamori is sitting at 454 downloads!! Which is really, REALLY exciting and so much more than I ever thought to hope for. Thank you so much!

Today we’re going to be talking a little bit about the process, how things went, what we learned, and what’s next! This is going to be a bit of a longer post but some of you have been with us since the very beginning, and it might be nice to look back, and some of you are new, and have no idea how it all went!

HOW IT STARTED

(The original mock up I made to help Rob visualize what I was thinking for the main menu screen.)

In the beginning of April 2023 I started telling Rob about a 'totally not real' idea I had for a serirei dating sim. It was very much in the 'haha jk wouldn't that be fun, but it'll totally never happen' category. Then I thought, since it won't ever happen, it could be fun to do a little mock-up. Just a fake screenshot of a character and some dialogue. Then I thought, maybe I could try to animate it to show some additional dialogue. THEN I thought, well if I'm going to do all of that, I might as well just put together a slice in a game engine and just do a screen recording.

So I sat down and installed an entire game engine, learned how to navigate its interface and how to use its visual scripting language, how to create & use variables so that you could enter your character name, how to put in a dialogue choice screen, even made a tiny pixel art takoyaki... all to create a 20 second screen recording of a game that was totally not going to exist.

Totally.

I even shared it on Tumblr! It uh, as of typing this, still only has 3 notes lol. You can see the original post here, but here's a screenshot of it.

I won't lie, it was actually really disheartening to see basically no engagement with it. I know there wasn't much info on the concept itself, since the game wasn't going to be real (I thought), and maybe that would have helped, but it definitely did a blow to the ol' self esteem. (Although I can say, looking at it now, I really like this! I'm really insecure about my visual art and style, but y'know what, this is pretty cool! )

I didn't let that deter me though. I was really excited about this game and the story, and at the end of the day, it was a silly little project with my silly little blorbos. So I kept thinking about it and poking the idea and pretty soon the fixation was churning full blast. I was developing the plot, I had snippets of dialogue in mind, I was thinking about GUI elements. And all the while I was yelling all of this at Rob. Eventually I worked up the courage to ask him if he wanted to do the art, only to discover he was working up the nerve to ask if he could help out! After that, it was just a lot of excited yelling about this project.

Looking back at this original mock-up, I think it's really great to see how Rob took my original concepts for layout and design and breathed some actual life into them. At some point I'd done some additional iterations on the dialogue boxes:

And from there we got:

Which ultimately gave us:

HOW IT WENT

There were definitely some ups and down on this, for sure. Getting the demo out was a huge accomplishment and we were both eager to just keep working on it. In fact, the original plan, after releasing the demo October 2023, had been to release the full game by the coming March, for Serizawa's birthday. Ambitious? Without a doubt lol. Obviously that didn't happen, and our next hope was to release it for Reigen's birthday 2024. This way it'd be full circle. Then we hoped to release it for Valentine's day maybe. (This is why we didn't announce a release date until it was well and truly DONE.)

Some of you may remember that Rob injured his hand in early 2024 and so we took quite a bit of time off to let him heal. We're not about that crunch life. Even if this wasn't entirely a passion project, there's absolutely no reason to crunch. So we took a step back so he could heal up. While that was happening.. we had the Great Engine Switch.

The demo for Omamori was originally made in GDevelop. An open-source, no-code engine. And it worked great for the demo! But once I started adding in features that people would come to expect in a visual novel, like saving and loading, or a history of the text, things got a little more complicated. It reached a point where I was essentially building a visual novel engine within the Gdevelop engine. Which, while incredibly fascinating and a great mental challenge, wasn't exactly the best use of my time. Not when there are engines specifically made for creating visual novels, like Ren'py. Which has things like saving & loading, dialogue history, text size options and dyslexic font options, all ready to go out of the box. So, I changed engines.

Changing engines was a long process, partly because it took me some time to finally come to terms with the fact that I just needed to do it, and partly because while some things did come out of the box, I did still have to re-do other things all over again, like entering all of the dialogue and choice options for the prologue and part of chapter one that was used for the demo. I was also learning a whole new engine, which isn't no-code (although it IS really streamlined), and I had to find my way around.

We had a lot of plans for some things that ultimately had to get cut. Early on we planned to have more splash screen images for pivotal moments, which would also be accessible from a Gallery page on the main menu. We even toyed with the idea of reaching out to other artists in the community to see if they would be interested in doing guest art to be featured in the gallery! But as we made progress we had to decide what was essential to the game, to telling the story, and what was a Nice To Have. Learning how to nip that scope creep early is an essential skill in gamedev!

Still, all things considered, as a team of two people we made an entire game in only two years, even with the obstacles we faced. And I think that's pretty damn impressive.

Q&A

What was your favorite part?

ROB:

Getting to work on a passion project with Jace! Getting to see this through to the end with them was very rewarding. Like, did you know you can just make cool things with your friends?? It's awesome and makes for a unique blend of cheerleading, flexing, and teamwork. Definitely recommended.

For the art, I got a kick out of trying to develop a visual identity that was as much our own game as it was a Mob Psycho fangame. The first season opening sequence was my main touchpoint. This poster was a source of inspiration too, notably for the paper cut out look for the sprites. It was fun and a nice way to appreciate the series from a different perspective.

JACE:

This is actually a tough one lol! Part of what I love about being an indie dev are all the different roles you play. Jumping from writing to programming to creating mockups to resource sourcing for background music or sound effects, I think that's the part I enjoy most. It's hard to get bored when you're wearing so many hats and that really appeals to me.

If I had to pick a favorite part, I would say sharing the original drafts of the script with Rob and getting to see his reactions to Reigen's impressive levels of fumbling was a lot of fun. Also, figuring out a piece of code that had me stumped for days is nothing short of euphoric.

What was the most challenging?

ROB:

Mostly mental hurdles. Like, accepting that “good enough” IS actually good enough was sometimes a challenge. On top of wanting to tweak old sprites (we started this two years ago after all!) I had wanted to make more splash art and character poses, and add silly details like giving the face on Reigen’s pj outfit different expressions. But as it turns out, if you want to finish something then at some point you have to stop working on it. Great lessons for battling perfectionism.

JACE:

Changing engines and learning an entire new one was definitely a challenge. I'd dabbled with Ren'py before so I wasn't completely in the dark, but I hadn't done more than dialogue and some choices. With this I had to learn how to navigate Ren'py's screen language so I could build my own screens, I had to learn how to create and manipulate variables in the engine, I watched a LOT of youtube tutorials and got real familiar with the Ren'py subreddit lol.

Something that was really, really challenging for me was learning, and re-learning, how to start. I would work on the game for weeks and be doing great, really have a nice groove, and then Life would happen and  I wouldn't touch it for a little while and suddenly the thought of opening up the code was terrifying. I was convinced I couldn't do it, I had no idea what I was doing, and that I was going to get stuck. And it got harder and harder to just start. Even when all signs pointed to that I maybe DO know what I'm doing!

What helped a lot was that I kept a mini-devlog. Every day that I did gamedev work I journaled about what I worked on, how long I spent on it, and what my next steps were. This helped in SO many ways. For one, it was just really nice to see a calendar view of my productivity. Time is fake and its easy for me to think I haven't been productive "enough". Then I look at my calendar and see this:

Not every month looked like this of course. There's a couple where it's pretty damn barren. But that's where the other data points came to help. It was really helpful to see how long I worked on something as well.  For example:

It took me literally twenty minutes to create all of the idle and hover images for the icons on the corkboard. I remember I did this quickly before running out to work. And this became a point of constant reference for me. Every time I felt myself getting caught in the swirl of, I can't do this, opening the engine feels scary and overwhelming, or I only have .. two hours... three hours... before I have to go to work or go to an appointment or go to bed, what could I get done in that time, I would think of how much I got done in just twenty minutes. Because ultimately, any time spent on the project is productive! But having these little reminders helped a lot. And each mini devlog also had a section for my reflections and what I hoped to work on next. So if it was a few days, or a month or two, before I was able to get back to it, I could reread the most recent devlog to see what Past Me was planning to do!

What might you do differently?

ROB:

Oh man. Organization. I frequently moved the working files between tablet and desktop and ended up with duplicates all over the place. It was a pain after we came back from that long break for my hand injury because I had different expressions and sprites spread over a mess of nearly identical files.

The worst part is this was not the first or last time this happened. Why? Don't live like me.

JACE:

Well, if we're talking about Omamori specifically, knowing what I know now, I'd of course just start working in Ren'py from the start. I'd had the thought that I could learn one engine (to rule them all). Because I have ideas and plans for other games, and had hoped to find one engine that could do everything, and I wouldn't have to jump around, potentially learning a bunch of different coding languages. But, there's something to be said for using the right tool for the job, and in this case it was definitely Ren'py.

If we're talking about future projects and what I might do differently, that's a toughie. I think every project is going to require different set up and preparation. If I were to do another visual novel, I think I'd start tackling any special screens or gameplay mechanics as early as possible. Writing is one of my strengths and I know I can do that. And I'm familiar enough with the engine that I know entering in my writing and dialogue is pretty straightforward. But making those custom screens and troubleshooting them always takes much longer than I think it will.

In terms of organization, I have a Notion template I created for my game projects, and Omamori largely served as the trial run for what I would and wouldn't need. The mini devlog calendar is absolutely a keeper. But the way I organized the programming vs writing task lists definitely got reworked in the final month of Omamori, and I've already started updating my template and other already existing projects to reflect the new workflow!

I think with every new project I'm going to do things a little differently and, for me, that's part of the fun!

Do you think you'd work on a game again?

ROB:

Yes! I'm currently taking time off from commission work, but I really enjoy creative collaboration in general, so I would definitely work on a game again in the future.

JACE:

Oh honey, I already am 😏.

What's next for you?

ROB:

I’m looking forward to diving in to some original work this summer. Not sure where it will take me yet, but I've been itching to get back into making comics, so that might be next! If you'd like to keep up with my work, I update my Tumblr most frequently.

JACE:

I'm so glad you asked! While Rob moves toward exploring comics, Quiet Cabin is also going to shift gears. I'm going to focus on games with original characters and stories. I don't have any plans to make another fangame but I do have a LOT of other ideas! (Some of which were hinted at in Omamori 👀 .)

So what can you expect? Stylistically, I've always had a love for pixel art so there will be some of that going forward. Depending on the project I might seek out another artist to collaborate with for things like backgrounds or character sprites, especially if I do another visual novel. So if you're an artist and have read this far and would be interested in collaborating on a future project, definitely reach out! I have a lot of ideas, a lot of different vibes and genres, so don't worry if your style is different from what you see in Omamori! And who knows, I'm finally reaching a point where I'm happier with my artistic abilities so maybe for one of these projects I'll attempt the art myself!

As far as genres go, I've got more romance, some horror, some fantasy, maybe some monsters you can date.. 👀

I know we all came here for the blorbos but I truly hope you'll stick around for my next projects, I've already started writing one of them and I'm really excited about it!

Up-Coming Projects include (in no particular order):

Garage Sale Skull: A short, in-browser text game where you find a weird skull at a garage sale. It’s fine, it’s not real, it’s just some weird art project. …right? (Romance with a sprinkle of horror.)

Untitled Dating Sim(?): A visual novel dating sim. Maybe. The dating part is up in the air. It's VERY fresh conceptually and I'm still ironing things out so I don't want to say too much but I will say: time loops. Sorry. Wait. Maybe you didn't hear me. Time 👏🏾 Loop 👏🏾 Visual Novel👏🏾

Apartment 102 : There is something wrong with your apartment.. A very short top-down pixel horror game.

Reyna's Remedies: As a young potion and remedy maker, you open up a new shop on the side of a busy road in the kingdom. There's a lot going on, there's a monster in the Deep Woods, a monster the Princess went missing trying to hunt, there's a constant flow of adventurers in need of healing potions and everyday townspeople with mundane needs. With the help of your animal assistant, you have one month to raise enough money to secure another month of rent, to prove you can do this, and in the process help the different people that knock on your door. (A time & resource management game with an overarching plot. Queer romance with a bit of horror.)

My hope is to release Garage Sale Skull this summer. Untitled Dating Sim(?) is new and uncooked, but rattling around my head pretty loudly. Meanwhile Reyna's Remedies and Apt 102 are games I've been brainstorming on for literally years..  Either way, there are two more steam next fests this year and I'd really love to submit a demo for ✨ something ✨for at least one of them. We'll see!

Once a new project launches I will of course be posting devlogs here on its project page. I'll also be sharing quick updates & general gamedev thoughts on ko-fi, bsky, and tumblr. At the end of the day I'm still just one person, and I may forget to crosspost to a platform, but itch.io will always be the first place to get updates. I'm also considering making video devlogs in the future that will showcase more art and gameplay, especially as I shift toward games that have more action, so you can also follow the YouTube channel!

Again, I cannot thank everyone enough for their continued support and enthusiasm!! I'm really grateful to Rob for jumping into the abyss with me on this one. The game wouldn't be what it is without his help! All the cheerleading from followers as we worked on it and now, all of the comments about how the game has touched or inspired folks has been so, so amazing to hear. Thank you everyone!!

Finally, one last Ekubo for the road.

Thank you everyone, see you next time!

[universe-prime]

Are you in need of transport A.S.A.P?

Looking to deliver some goods across Cybertron faster than a turbo-fox chasing its own tail?

Tired of having to keep track of overbearing passports just for a single ride to the nearest colony??

Well look no further than Cybertron's finest—

The mighty Click-Clack and Co.~!!

I've been thrown back into my transformers love HARD and decided to revamp/create a bunch of ocs to cope with it lmao. Anyway, meet Click-Clack and(a small part) of his dandy crew~! Click-Clack(or just Clacker for short) specializes in delivering all manner of goods and services across the vast expanse of Cybertron in just a few days time. Whether it be weapons, medical supplies, building materials, or simply an independent company needing help traveling from point A to B, he doesn't really discriminate and just LOVES doing his duty as a gigantic mailman train

To really put Clacker into perspective, I put him beside a few iconic bots from tfa...👀💦

And as an added fun bonus, I even made a map of his internal layout when he's in train mode(which is pretty much his default tbh)

But what's a train without his helpful crew, ey? This is only a small part of it, my pal @simplych4i has ocs that cover a good majority, but I can at least give a quick overview on my own fellas!!

Needlepoint

The one and only medic! If there's an incident or injury, she'll take care of you with a patient servo and a caring spark

She was assigned to Clacker due to a recent scandal that ruined her career. Her patients mysteriously wound up dead or missing memories while under her care, and enough of these reports piled up to the point where her license was revoked and no respectful hospital would ever hire her again

Overall she's a doting maternal figure to the crew and, although a bit quiet and reserved, she's always happy to lend a shoulder to cry on or a listening audial fin

Rocket

Self proclaimed demolitions expert and part-time mechanic! Should the train ever be attacked by Decepticon's raiding it for it's cargo, or any other outside threat, she's there on the front lines ready to blast them back to the hole they crawled out of

Former Elite Guard, Rocket was quickly demoted and shunned from her station due to her "sudden" fatuation with explosives and anything that could cause them. After a near-death experience that nearly extinguished her spark, she went off on a personal mission to recreate the enlightening blast that started it all in the hopes of "seeing utopia" once again....whatever that means

Nowadays, Rocket is just as explosive as her passion. Loud-mouthed and unafraid to speak her mind, she's always ready to slam a fist into anyone who crosses her path while also gleefully spreading a few headaches across her fellow crewmates

Tag

And lastly, our head of navigation! Despite their age, Tag has a natural gift for plotting out routes, understanding complicated maps, and making sure that there's always a backup route should the current one ever be interrupted

(Former)delivery mailbot by day, graffiti street artist by night, Tag often explored the seediest parts of Cybertron along their route and saw injustice firsthand. Using their artistic talent and the access they had to private letters, they'd anonymously paint rebellious ideology and personal defamation against elites as a way of speaking out. Tag's artistic trail was eventually traced back to them, and they were swiftly demoted to a spot on the Click-Clack

Tag is overall what you might expect from a young bot who was practically raised in the underbelly of Cybertron. Cute and sweet one minute, then cutthroat and petty the next, Tag is just a bundle of energy constantly looking to prove themself alongside the much older "adult" bots of the crew they're with. They can't quite grasp why everyone insists on protecting them so much, but slowly Tag has learned to accept this ragtag group of weirdos and ex-convicts as their true family

[phoenix-downer]

Leftover sales are open for @twosidesfanzine! Check out the store for a variety of bundle and à la carte options featuring SoKai and Rokunami.

I wrote this diary entry from Kairi’s POV about she, Sora, Roxas, and Naminé visiting New Orleans and meeting Tiana and Naveen. It was fun making a callback to some sketches Nomura made that were in one of the ultimanias as well.

A big thank you to @valiantmade and @amyhayanora for making the graphics, @scoobysnack1107 for doing the layout, and @true-intha-blu for creating the pumpkin chicken étouffée recipe ❤️ I was also inspired by the art spread by Miyanko for the world visit 🎺🐊

Text of the diary entry below the cut:

Dear Diary,

Today Sora, Roxas, Naminé and I visited a new world and met the most amazing people! It’s called New Orleans, and our new friend Tiana runs a beautiful restaurant, Tiana’s Palace, with her husband Naveen. They even have a trumpet-playing alligator named Louis for live entertainment! Naminé had a lot of fun sketching that, especially when Roxas got recruited to perform with him. Who knew Roxas could sing so well? And of course dinner was to die for: a delicious pumpkin chicken étoufée.

Afterwards, Tiana taught us how to make the perfect roux. It’s her family’s secret recipe, and she uses it in a bunch of her restaurant’s dishes. I got distracted and nearly burnt the flour, but Sora came to the rescue and we got things back on track. He’s gotten really good at cooking. That Little Chef has really helped him a lot. I remember when he couldn’t even help me make soup and choked on chicken bones. That dork, he’s come such a long way.

(Hey! I am not a dork!)

You’re my dork :3

(That’s better 😉)

I sensed something special about Tiana too. She has a heart of pure light. I think she must be one of the New Seven Hearts. I definitely want to come back and visit her sometime.

I’m having a blast on this journey. Each day is a new adventure. I’ll write more tomorrow!

Kairi

[bearyzdiary]

aa !! i'm so glad to have found someone who writes cry of fear x readers!! could i request simon with a reader who doesnt usually show emotion, but one night just has a meltdown while theyre hanging out?

have a great day/night!! :D

Life is tough

Simon x reader!

This diary entry contains: Mental breakdownsl Established relationship|Simon is such a sweet heart in this| may be short idk

HIII IM SORRY FOR JUST POOFING OUT OF THIN AIR FOR A BIT BUT!! Im back and im supposed to be getting a new laptop today so thats fun!

I really hope you do enjoy this🥳

You and Simon were alike in so many ways.Maybe it was the fact the both of you guys had a hard time opening up and communicating.Unlike Simon who had a therapist and tried to talk to people you kept yourself all shut it.

You hated crying around people and you weren’t a big fan of smiling as much.People never understood you like Simon did because Simon was understanding and didnt push you to show emotions like other people.

that was all until one night when you went to hang out with simon.You had been on edge all day.It started with your teacher putting you on blast in front of the class for slacking off,Then at lunch you spilled milk on yourself which did end up starting to smell forcing you to haunt down simon to borrow his hoodie for the rest of the day.

on the train ride to his house you nearly tripped in front of a group of college kids who tried to hold in their laughter.You felt embarrassed as you sat down in the seat in the far back.

You just wanted to go ghost and not speak to anyone besides simon and close friends.Once you arrived at his house you stared at the house as kids played in the streets and colored on the sidewalk.

you felt so out of place in a way.So gloomy stuck in a colorful place.you push open the gate before walking up the steps.The sound of the steps must have alerted his mother as she came rushing to open the door and greet you.

"(Y/N)! it's so sweet to see you after all this time"She said while pulling you in for a hug.The smell of her perfume filled your nose as you hugged her back.

"Simon is in his room,He seemed so excited to spend some time with you im truly happy he found you"She said as allowed you in.You nodded as you made your way through the familar house layout.

Coming up to the door you knew belonged to simon,You knocked a couple of times before hearing the sound of a window opening,coughing and something being sprayed.

his bedroom door swung open as he smiled slightly.No words were exchanged as you shuffled into his room.He closed the door before looking at you with a worried expression.

"Did something happen?You look upset"He asked while sitting on his bed.You felt hot tears fill your eyes slowly at the question.Simon took noticed and open his arms slightly.You walked over before plopping into his arms and letting out a chocked sob.

"I try so hard simon and it's like nobody understands besides you.I keep messing up while trying to be good at things and it's eating at me slowly"You ranted as tears fell from your eyes.

Simon rubbed your back as he nodded before placing a gentle kiss on your forehead."I know it may seem hard and trust me i know but something i learned is that you have to learn how to well do things on your own without trying to be good for other people"He explained.

You sniffled as it went quiet besides the sounds of the kitchen sink being faintly heard and kids screaming at each other.After a bit of crying in his arms,Simon placed you in his bed before laying next to you.

"Your very speical and you shouldnt be so worried about how people think of you.Just know i think your a cool person even if you barely show your emotions"He explained while pulling the blankets over you the both of you.

"I had something's planned for us but they can wait you clearly need a nap"Simon said while holding you close and closing his eyes.You slowly copied his movement as you felt safer in his arms.

for once you were glad you showed some emotion to simon because now you know you can rely on him to comfort you.

[dingo-ate-my-hot-lettuce-crazy]

Rearview - Chapter 1 - Fragments

Summary: You accept Cas' offer to stop by the party for a few, and you and his friend hit it off more than you expected to. Although, Cinderella has to leave abruptly, after someone wicked notice's your presence.

Pairings: Dean x Reader, Cas x Reader!Platonic, DeanxJo!FWB

Characters: Dean, Cas, Charlie, Jo, others

Word Count: 5.3K

Warnings: drugs/alcohol, cursing, anthropology hate-joke directed at cas (i dont hate anthropologists or people majoring in it I SWEAR), frat guy mention, probable inaccurate college major descriptions, cas slander (all jokes), jo the ho,

Author's Note: this is my first time ever writing a LONG ass series like this, so you can be brutal, i'll only cry

Song: OMG (feat. will.i.am) by USHER, will.i.am, Feel So Close by Calvin Harris, The Weekend by Michael Gray, any 2000's-2010's radio hits work

Series Masterlist - Chapter 2

You didn’t even need to know the apartment number, all five of your senses are activated when you hit the floor it’s on. You wonder how the neighbors allow it, or if they are at the party as well. Finding the source of the overstimulation, you twist the knob and step into the room with caution. You almost have to squint through the haze of tacky multi-colored lights bouncing from one corner to the next, and the slight fog of something you were sure was not just tobacco. 

Great, my hair will smell for a week after tonight.

You’re no stranger to marijuana or even a couple of pills, but the fun died when it was a catalyst for this past summer's events- part of the reason you moved in with Jo and Charlie. Addiction wasn't a problem for you, though. The fear keeps any desire at bay. You've made a silent vow to never do any of that again. But for now, drinking is on the table. Funny- because that's often where you end up while having a few.

Basic radio-play from the 2000s blasted through synchronized speakers in each room, bass overpowering most of the lyrics and other elements. You take a surprised notice at just how many people are able to squeeze into this apartment space. Granted, it's bigger and has a slightly more open layout than the one you're sharing with the girls now, but even so, you're sure there are over fifty people here. You respectfully squeeze by some of the groups lingering by the front rooms, apologizing if heads are turned to you trying to maneuver around them. From the entrance was the kitchen and living space, where your eyes found Cas', thankfully. He was listening to a couple of other guys fraternize, or chuckle that frat-guy-chuckle, or just exuberate that frat energy, as they continue to frat.

 Okay, I need to relax- I can't be tired of everyone yet.

Cas' absent-minded nodding towards the guys transforms into a pleased smile as he meets your gaze. He stands up a bit straighter, beckoning you over with the flex of his fingers. A mix of a grin and smirk rests on your face, at Cas' welcoming reaction. He steps aside from the disfigured circle to give you a quick hug, saying your name, "I didn't think you were coming."

You shrug, as he lets go of you, both of you still grinning a bit, "I don't like to be predictable."

Cas scoffs with platonic affection- you’re glad to see him let loose some. He had been overly concerned with you since helping you move out. It only tacked onto your list of things to feel guilty about; abruptly moving into your friends' apartment, the emotional tolls of friends after the events of this summer. This guilt shit is starting to be a buzzkill. You push it to the back of your mind and try to keep the small smile plastered as Cas turns his body to one of the members of the outer social circle. Cas waves his hand, getting his friend's attention. You inwardly raise an eyebrow, trying to look at this guy's features with this awkward lighting in the kitchen, as he nods his head once to Cas in acknowledgment. He steps over to us with a red solo cup in hand, eyebrows raised, as he claps Cas on the back lightly. "What's up?"

Oh, interesting.

If you have to guess, he is most likely your age or slightly older. He carries a natural confidence, maybe too confident. Maybe slightly cocky, but it works for him. He can get away with it. His dirty blond hair frames the top half of his face. Very Prince Charming. 

Cas points to you, as he speaks to his buddy, "This is," he says your name, "You remember that I said I was inviting her?"

His green eyes are captivating and full of life as he directs his gaze to you. His face brightened at your mention, which felt like a crime the way it flustered you. His lightly freckled face and symmetrical features almost distract you from his voice laced with charm. You know he is talking to you but it just goes in one ear and out the other as you find your way to the present again. "Dean-" He extends a hand which you gladly take and match his grip. At least I didn’t miss the important part.

"Nice to meet you, Dean." You smile, and for once it seems to come naturally. "I take it you go to school here, too?"

"I do, yeah," He dips his head. "I'll be graduating this year."

"That's great! What's your major?"

"Automotive Engineering."

Dean replies with a precise inflection, almost like he regrets it. 

You nod, slightly impressed, "Oh wow, so like mechanics and such?"

Dean raises his lips into a wider smile, expecting to have to explain, "Short answer, yes, and long answer is that there's a focus on fixing and improving cars, but there's design work, as well. It's a lot of electrical and mechanical work tossed into one. Lots of computer work."

You dare take in every word he says like it is holy, because it sure sounds it coming from that mouth.

Woah, chill.

"Well, at least it's not Anthropology."

Maybe if you poke fun at Cas, he won't hear your thoughts. Dean gives a quick huff of laughter, eyes widening as he's taken aback by surprise at your immediate play toward Cas. He looks to Cas, who is blinking for a comical beat, and then turns his head to you with a tight-lipped smile. "I don't understand your gripe with my major."

"Explain your major to me." You prompt knowingly.

Cas huffs, knowing where this is headed but elaborates anyway, "Anthropology has to deal with observing humanity and trying to understand humans from a sociocultural standpoint."

I look to Dean with conviction, "He wants to professionally people-watch."

Dean turns the corner of his lips down in thought, leaning to Cas, "She's gotta bit of a point there, bud."

Cas incredulously darts his eyes between you and Dean, mouth partially agape as he searches for a defense that they can't use against him. He comes up empty before swiveling his body towards you, "You don't have a drink yet?" Then to Dean, "She doesn't have a drink yet," He backs away from them, slowly ducking from the conversation, "I'll go get you a drink."

You smirk, eyes moving to the floor, burning a hole in it because if you look at Dean you think you might embarrass yourself. Alas, you lift your head anyway, conversation bouncing right back in its place as Dean points his solo cup to you, "You didn't say what your major was."

"You didn't ask." You cock your head slightly, in playful accusation.

He purses his lips playfully, licking them before he drawls, "What's your major, sweetheart."

You shudder internally, desperately remaining collected. "Education with a focus on English. I'm working on becoming a high school teacher."

He hesitates, running his teeth over his lips- I should probably stop looking at his lips. "Didn't think I'd see a teacher at a party."

You narrow your eyes with fake offense, "What's that supposed to mean?"

The same stupid smile he won't wipe off seems to only get brighter the more you talk to him, he shakes his head, "I mean, a future teacher in an apartment full of alcohol and kids doing God-knows-what. Seems a little..."

"Oxymoronic?" You finish for him.

Dean searches your face, and you swear you can see the gears turning in his head at the word. "I think so."

You actually let out a laugh at that, not faking anything, it just springs out from your stomach.

"So. Why do you want to teach a bunch of hormonal teens?" Dean queried, intrigued.

"The salary, obviously." You deadpan.

Dean hums, leaning back on his feet, "Right. Like how I chose automotive engineering for the easy classes."

"Not because you would get a bunch of girls?"

His smile widens, almost upset that he didn’t come up with that first, "I like the way you think."

You flash your eyes up with a devilish innocence, a smirk unraveling on your face.

He shakes his head, his grin softening into something deeper, "No, really. What makes you wanna be a teacher?"

You let the silence stretch for a beat, gathering your thoughts like fragile threads, piecing them together.

"Believe it or not, I hated school. Always did. I was a good student...well-behaved, for the most part. But, I did the absolute bare minimum. I just was never engaged in anything, and I was just bored out of my skull. My parents would tell me that everyone hates it, and to get used to it, but...I was so miserable. In high school, my parents divorced and so, I was just utterly checked out. I stopped trying, and none of my teachers did all that much."

You pause, a soft grin opening on your face, "Except my sophomore year English teacher. One day, after class, he asked me to stay behind. And, of course, I was ready for the same, droning speech that I had heard about fifteen other times from every other teacher about missing assignments or failing grades, but instead... he asked about what music I listened to, what movies I watched, and what I did outside of school. And, God, we were talking for like an hour after class ended, and... I don't know. I just felt like he really listened. The next class, he started connecting the books we read to the things we'd talked about. If we were studying a novel, he’d bring up a character or a theme he knew I’d relate to. If there was an essay, he’d tell me to write about something I was passionate about. He didn't put these restraints on learning, and he taught us, not what he had to learn but what we wanted to. It made the whole damn class realize that we loved to learn...we just didn't like school. I guess... I want to be that. I want to connect with students the way he did with me, otherwise, I'd probably be a dropout by now."

Dean's gaze flickered with a sense of awe, and you just realized how long you must've rambled for.

Your brows draw together with self-consciousness. "Sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"No, no..." Dean softly interrupted, "People don't always choose the route they're passionate about. It's nice to see a change in pace, y'know?"

You cock your head, an innocent deduction vocalizing itself before you have the chance to filter it, “You’re not passionate about your major.”

He flashes his eyebrows up, his mouth opening, but no sound comes out. He lets out a huff of air that forms a smirk, “I am. I like my major, but, uh, sometimes I feel like I have other callings. I just grew up around cars, so I figured I wouldn’t be wasting my time.” He shrugs in resignation.

“Why not pursue your other callings?”

“My dad owns a mechanics shop, well… the building anyway. When I was four, uh- my dad had to take care of me and my little brother, so we shut down. He wants me to get it back up and running again. He's basically guaranteeing that he's giving it to me after I graduate.”

“But you don’t necessarily want it?” You coax out of him, tilting your head empathically.

He huffs again, shaking his head, “It’s more of an obligation. He…” Dean bites his cheek for a moment, wondering if he’s sharing too much but opts to continue anyway, he found it easy to share with you, “He gave it up for me. And my brother. And, I want to do this for him. I owe it to him.”

You nod, a brief, almost imperceptible nod, as you drown in his gaze and his genuine talk. For once, it wasn’t just something shallow, but it certainly makes you wonder about his family life. 

“And your mom? What does she do for work?” You query.

Dean swallows and licks his lips. Time heals all wounds apparently, but still, it’s not an easy thing to talk about, nonetheless know what kind of reaction to expect every time. 

Cas comes back- thank whoever- with three solo cups, about halfway full, with what looks like punch, which you assume is spiked. Dean tosses his old cup away, and thanks Cas as he reaches for the new one. Cas reads you as he passes you your own.

“D’you get lost over there, Cas?” You play at him, and he barely even looks at you as he brings the cup in your hands to your mouth and essentially forces you to take a sip or two. It makes you smile a bit, and you can see Cas trying to fight his own mouth from doing the same.

"So how do you guys know each other?" You beg the question, taking a sip of the punch with your own free will this time.

Cas lets out a light chuckle, "Freshman year, I took my Continental to Singer's Auto-"

You gasp adoringly, "Oh, Betty..."

"Betty?" Dean practically grimaces.

"Cas' car." You answer lovingly.

Dean snickers at Cas, "You named your car Betty?"

Cas glowers defensively, "I didn't, she did."

"You name your cars too?" Dean's face lights up to you.

"I do." 

Cas clears his throat, continuing, "I took my Continental-"

"Betty," Dean mockingly coos, tilting his head to the side the same way you did.

Unimpressed, Cas glares at Dean, "...to Singer's Auto while Dean was under an apprenticeship. The following week, he had been a customer at Silver & Flames, and I served him, which I thought was a humorous coincidence. Then we were in the same aisle at the library somehow two days after. I figured he was obsessed with me after our first interaction, so I introduced myself." Cas is evidently proud of that little spin at the end.

Dean sarcastically frowns, "You left out the part where you asked me to dinner."

Cas sighs with faux anger, "Beers and Doritos at my dorm after a football game is not a dinner."

Dean turns his head to you, winking, "He was totally trying to take advantage of me."

You giggle, enjoying their banter.

Out of nowhere, your name is squealed from somewhere nearby, and before you can gauge where it came from, it comes close to knocking you to the ground as it envelopes you in a hug from behind. "You came!"

"Hey, Charlie-" You grunt, concern and amusement mixing in your compromised vocal cords at her squeezing. "Having a good time?"

She's still attached to you, as she bubbles, "Yes! My D&D group finally found a time to meet up in person this time because this year a lot of our classes are actually pretty synched up on the times- Woohoo! And, with our new campaign, we're testing out a new theme which is gonna be sooo exciting- oh, and these drinks? Totally reminds me of the saloon-type things that we role-play with too, especially for my character that I made-"

You interrupt her, "What did you have to drink, babe?"

Charlie lets go, holding onto your shoulder still, evidently buzzing, "Like two or three somethings- I don't know but th'punch is great!"

Your eyes widen as you look from your punch cup to Dean, and you quickly dump the rest of it into the sink that's about two feet to your right. And Dean's standing there, desperately trying to wipe his concealed laugh off with his hand as he holds it to his mouth, turning his head slightly so he doesn't falter.

Cas just puzzles at all of the new lingo from Charlie while watching the interaction from the outside, but he isn't safe for very long. "Charlie, you remember Cas, right?" You point to him.

Charlie drunkenly squints her eyes a bit, and exaggeratingly gasps, "Oh yeah, Casss!" She moves over a bit to attack him with a hug.

His posture sways, as he takes a step back to balance himself, taken aback by her physical affection, but nonetheless, he awkwardly pats her back. She was off him as fast as she jumped him.

"I r'member you from this summer. It was so cool when you were all Terminator when Nick came banging on her door," Charlie points to you, "and you jus' stood there like a brick wall with the meanest little Cas face-"

You freeze, eyes blown wide and inhaling sharply at the unexpected reference to Nick, pulling Charlie back gently so she wouldn't fall, failing to ignore Dean's slightly furrowed brows at the story, "Woah- ha, Charlie, I think they're playing Kingdom Hearts in the living room!" You divert her attention, pointing elsewhere.

Charlie's face lights up at the mention, "They're playing Kingdom Hearts? Oh my god- I gotta go!" She cheers, and practically stumbles away to go towards the living room.

You glance at Cas, who glances at you, unsure of what to say at Charlie's uncensored blabber. Luckily, Dean speaks up first, mostly unaware, "She seems fun."

You let out a bit of an embarrassed chuckle, "God love her, she's my best friend."

Cas searches the room for her, piping up, "I'm going to make sure she stays away from the punch."

Dean fixes his gaze on you, "She an avid partier?"

"No. Not at all- I think she's just...indulging." You reason.

"And you?"

"And I, what?"

He flashes his teeth, "Are you an avid partier? Or, just indulging."

You take a breath, leaning your arm against your body, your empty cup sits at your lower thigh, as you find the right words, "I'm not here to get crazy. Cas, Charlie, and my other roommate Jo...they were begging me to not recluse this year."

Dean's eyebrows lower, his pretty eyes concentrated, "Jo Harvelle?"

You nod once, "Yeah, you know her?"

He pauses, rubbing his jawline, before conceding with a flustered grin, "Yeah, I've met her a few times."

It takes you a moment to let that sink in, by what he meant by that.

Oh.

Oh.

Fuck.

Of course. Of course, they knew each other. Who did Jo not "know" by now.

It doesn't matter, why would it? You just met him, and you aren't looking for anything. Right?

Right.

Except it only matters a little, because you just gave him half of your life story and you kind of want to give him the rest of it.

You do your best to conceal the slight bitterness at the idea, unsure of what to say. "Oh, okay."

He smirks, unable to read you, "What?"

You lift your shoulders slightly, "Nothing, I've just never seen you walk of shame out of our apartment." You snort, unable to help yourself. But, it is true. You don't recall ever seeing him, and you would frequently hang out at Jo and Charlie's place before you moved in. You would remember a face like that.

He isn't fazed by the hostility of the comment, just a bit curious, "And...you've seen a lot of guys in there come and go?"

Well, shit. You didn't want to gossip. You bring a hand to your neck, guiltily leaving him unanswered, which was an answer in itself. You blow out an exhale, staying neutral, "It's not my business. I just live there."

"Right, right." He understands what it means.

The beat of awkward silence was somehow louder than the blaring music still playing. You dip your head for a moment, glancing around the room before gesturing to the living room. "I'm gonna check on the girls real quick, make sure Charlie isn't flat on her face or anything."

Dean looks like he doesn't know how to recover either, "Yeah, sure- uh, I'll be here."

You excuse yourself, and peer around the visible corners of the joint, scouting for the girls. A couple steps further in you see Charlie having the time of her life, controller in hand with a swarm of people cheering her on at Mario Kart. You smile to yourself, and search the room for Jo, ambling towards a couple of smaller groups of people, to find that she's in the corner, seductively leaning her back against a door frame as she talks to two guys who seem very interested in whatever she has to say. They respond eagerly it seems, and she bats her eyes as she dunks her cherry into her coke and wraps her lips around it.

She's just fine.

Walking back to the kitchen area, your eyes fall on someone making direct eye contact with you. It takes you a moment, as you halt in your footsteps, and your stomach does a flip.

It was one of Nick's friends- Chuck.

Chuck was a solid piece of shit. Anytime Nick had his cult over, most of them would pretend you weren't there, but a few, Chuck included, would hit on you even if it was in front of Nick. He would make you deeply uncomfortable, squirming on the couch trying to get away from him as he laughed, or the others did. And Nick never really did much to stop it, or would blame you for it if he did say anything. "Shouldn'ta been wearin' a skirt then."

Chuck leans over to some other guys he was with, keeping his cold eyes locked on you as he grabs their attention.

Your blood runs cold, darting away quickly, you weave through the crowd as your heart starts to pound in your chest. You knew this was a bad idea, you knew you could never really escape this- God, how foolish you were. The front door only seems to get further and further away, as your breathing picks up. Your hand slips on the knob before being able to press down and rush out. All you can do is just start to walk back home. You turn your head behind you, checking for anyone that follows, and you start to tell yourself to relax, as the door remains shut.

You shake in the elevator, wringing your hands as you try to calm yourself. The light flashes red as the door opens as you hover close to the exit, and he's right there.

Nick.

Your hand flies to your chest, snapping your eyelids shut momentarily.

"I'm so sorry, Miss- didn't mean to scare you!" The middle-aged gentleman in a white dress shirt and black slacks apologizes as he takes a cautious step into the elevator.

"Oh, my mistake. You're alright..." You timidly bow your head after blinking Nick away, leaving the elevator with the somewhat confused man, bracing a hand on the door as you attempt to make your way to the street.

The wind nips at your face, not sharp enough to be uncomfortable but enough to ground you. You keep up the fast-paced strides back home, appreciating the closeness in proximity it was from Cas' complex.

THE PARTY

Oblivious, Cas returns out from the restroom at the party still, double-taking at the sudden line that has formed outside of it. He peers around the room, finding Dean. He's wallflowering by the kitchen, swirling his cup before he lifts his head up to see Cas as he walks back over to him, looking around. "Where is she?"

Dean's eyebrows raise, his lips jut out as he glances around, "She said she was checking on the girls."

Cas' face falls slightly, "I didn't see her around."

High-heeled combat boots clunk over to the two, making their heads turn to Jo, a bit of a curious look on her face.

"Hey, Cas. Where's, uh," Jo says your name.

"I have no idea, she said she was looking for you and Charlie." Cas shrugs, still searching for her, even going to lengths to stand on the balls of his feet to look over the crowd.

"Oh, okay." She doesn't give it much attention. "Maybe I'll see you later, Dean?"

Dean tilts his head to Jo, his face subtly pinched, "Uh, yeah... later, I guess."

She tries the "hate to see 'em leave, love to watch ‘em walk away" exit, but Dean's a little less focused on her. He directs himself back to Cas rather easily and watches him pull out his phone. "Did she text you or somethin'?"

Cas sighs worriedly, "No. Not yet, I just texted her." He puts his ringer on and keeps his phone in his front jacket pocket. He narrows his eyes at Dean in a questioning manner, "Are you and Jo..."

He darts his eyes from one side of the room over to Cas, "Are we what?"

Cas pushes, "You know...benefiting from each other?"

"Oh, yeah. I guess," He relents, noncommittally. "Why?"

"Nothing. I just didn't know if you guys were planning to become anything more. She seems to have an interest in you…from that little pass a moment ago." Cas has always seen an extra gleam in Jo's eyes when she was standing next to Dean. She tries harder around him, he noticed. At social functions, she would act as if they were more than just their agreement. She would interlock an arm with him, and force a bit more of a romantic chemistry rather than just the sexual one. To be honest, Dean didn’t even really see much in her, but she was different from his ex. And he was satisfied with that. She made him forget for a while, which was all he really wanted from their situation.

"Nahh," He rasps. "I don't see it going anywhere. It's just a casual thing- and it’s mutual, so."

"Was merely wondering. I know it's been a while since Lisa, but-"

"Woah, dude- let's not." Dean holds his palm up, "This is a party, alright? We can talk women, but just... not past women."

"Right." Cas' lips tighten into a thin line. He unconsciously begins to look around for her again, and his eyes land on Chuck, who is discretely edging his way to the door. Now he understands why you disappeared. Damn it.

"I'll be back." He says to Dean, who has no time to answer as Cas stomps off.

Chuck's hand is on the knob and opens it about three inches before it slams shut in front of him. Cas towers above him, "Hey, man. Where’re you headed?"

Chuck snaps his head to Cas, shrugging with shifty eyes, “I was just heading out, I got somewhere to be, man.”

"Do you." Cas challenges.

"Yeah. I do." He tries again to open the door, but Cas doesn't budge.

"I'd be careful if I were you. You remember what I did to your friend." Cas threatens, glaring intensely. He knows he can't hold him here, but he can at least attempt to put the fear of God in him.

Chuck scoffs, but he doesn't quite come off as the tough shit he thinks he is, "I'm not fuckin' scared of you."

"That's your first mistake. If there's a second, it'll be too late for you." He warns, eyes staring daggers into Chuck's as he slides his hand off the door.

Chuck does his best to remain stoic, as he takes off with haste out of the door. Cas stands idle and pounds the frame faintly with anxious frustration. He whips out his cell, thumbing through his contacts for her. He clicks the call icon for her contact, bringing the phone to his ear. It rings four times before her voice picks up, “Hey-”

Cas says her name with an urgency, “Where are you?”

“Yeah, Cas, I’m sorry. I was just about to call or text, I’m home now. I was just starting to get a bit congested.” She sighs into the phone.

Cas breathes out an exhale of relief, “No, that’s…that’s perfectly fine. You showed up, didn’t you? All I asked for.” 

“Yeah…yeah, I mean, it was fun. Your friend’s nice.” 

“Yes, Dean is good company.” Cas nods into the phone, now reminded that he should go back to find him.

“Well, maybe we can meet up sometime this week after class? I feel bad for taking off early.” She amends.

He sighs, locating Dean by the kitchen still, holding his forearm out in confusion as he watches Cas walk back over to him, “That sounds great. Don’t feel bad, though. I’ll see you next week.”

She says a quick goodbye before Cas hangs up. Dean gives Cas a look, pressing him to explain, “What’s going on?”

“She, uh, had to go take care of something.” Cas frowns a bit.

“Oh, alright.” Dean seems to match Cas’ disappointment, adding. “She’s cute.”

Cas wears an amused grin, “You think she’s cute?”

Dean turns pink slightly, clearing his throat, “Well- I mean, ‘cute’ in like, a ‘college-girl’ kinda way. Like, a normal…way. Y’know, cute for a future-teacher-kinda-way…”

“I see.” Cas tries to contain his snigger.

A break of quiet between the boys breeds a bit of awkwardness before Dean pipes up “And you guys aren’t…benefiting or anything?”

Cas doesn’t hold back that time, a chuckle leaves his throat, “No, we aren’t. There’s no romantic inclination there either.” He thinks to himself for a moment. “I’ve grown rather protective over her, but I don’t view our relationship in that sense.”

Dean listens to Cas and brings the cup of punch to his lips. Mulling over his words, “Yeah, I gotcha.”

“That does entail that she’s single.”

Dean twists his face as he almost coughs the punch up, “Woah, man. I didn’t say anything about…”

Cas tilts his head, “I can tell you’re at least interested.”

Dean exhales, convincing himself that it’s nothing more than interest, “I mean, I hardly know her, Cas…”

“I can still tell when you’re interested in someone.” Cas remarks. 

Dean crosses his arms defensively, scoffing at his friend, “Whatever, man.”

“I am talking women with you, Dean-”

“Yes, you certainly are.” He takes a sip of his drink.

“But I’m not talking…you-know-who. So, I find this acceptable.”

“Is this some kind of social experiment for your major?”

Still ignoring his protests, Cas continues, “And I figure, I know you both rather well and I find that you are fairly compatible. You share some interests, and conversations seem to flow well, and you both have a similar, dry humor. And given two bumpy roads for romantic connections-”

“I take offense to that.”

“I’m sure you both would enjoy each other’s humble company, having some experience in relationships in general. And if nothing becomes of it, and you hate her, then I’ll take an F for my grade.”

Dean snaps an excited finger to Cas, “It is a social experiment!”

Cas gives him a pointed look, “I just want the two of you, as individuals, to forget about the past.”

“I get it, Cas. I do, I really do. But, you don’t throw shattered glass together and hope the cracks are fixed.”

“No. In fact, it’s how you create mosaics.” 

“Mosaics- the hell is that?” Dean blinks.

“A mosaic is made of small, fragmented glass or tile that creates a work of art when placed together."

“So, two broken halves make a whole, right?” Dean mockingly reiterates.

“Precisely.”

“We gotta get you away from Lifetime TV.”

Cas relents, shaking his head, “Just- don’t shut it down so fast. I know her, and… she could use someone like you, Dean. And, you could use someone like her. A lot of people could.”

Dean soaks in Cas’ words instead of joking again. He chews his lip for a moment, opening his mouth partially. Bringing the last of his drink to his mouth, he considers it. He really does.

A/N: Sorry if this is slow and dragged out slightly, im kind of just throwing this out to the wind- please let me know what you think!

[raeloganthesonic06fangirl]

Hiii so like,

In search of some really old mephiles stuff from years and years ago for fun, I found this really old Mephiles fan website called "The Mephiles Domain" which started in 2007 and which hasn't been updated since 2012. So, it was active for at least 5 years?

There was a youtube channel linked to it so I checked that out to see some really old videos and I noticed your name there and I swear I saw it some where before and yeah, you left a note on my Mephiles back posture theory a while back which is cool.

So, im just here wondering if you know anything about this website. It seems long abandoned now, i assume it was used as like a forum board or something. It seems like a lot of stuff here has been lost over time or deleted.

I also find the layout very pretty with all the colours and it gives off that early internet vibe.

It feels like a discovered a gem finding this but it also feels like I missed out on something lmao.

Oh and, in search of any other older mephiles related websites i found this really simple one with not much on it but i'll take anything I can find. I noticed your name again.

I read the theory and I think its interesting. But I think Mephiles is just at multiple places at once and is aware of that. Omnipotent god type thing idk.

But yeah, it was really cool finding all this stuff!!! :D

Wondering if theres anything else i can find.

Oh man, what a blast to the past, that was well over a decade and a half ago. I think we just sort of dissolved after a good strong half a decade of activity, and the site itself went defunct after we all just ran out of content to make. This was long before we even got a whiff of Mephiles making a comeback in the last few years, so it just naturally fizzled out. 😅😅😅

It was mostly just a forum where we would share headcanons, speculations, observations, fanfiction and picture edits that all centered around Mephiles, hoping to show that the character had enough of a fanbase that maybe Sega would consider giving him an encore with a better role, since back then, ALL we had was Sonic 06, a tease in the Archie comics, and hopeful thinking that the Time Eater was actually a form of Mephiles ((that was also one of my theories that I posted a little before Ian Flynn made a similar thought, so safe to say that recent developments of having Mephiles injected into the modern Generations canon fulfilled that idea for us...))

It was just a fan site that centered around Mephiles in particular, with a niche circle of fans that saw potential in the character as something other than a one-off villain. Sometimes there's was someone uploading thier texture mods for the games to replace Shadow with Mephiles, and sometimes it was someone making a figure mod. Sometimes we put a funny caption on a screenshot, or have a video contest.

One of the relics that still remains is this one entry I made for an AMV contest on the site, which ended up winning, because I decided instead of going for a full song with a serious attempt, I decided to go the AMV Hell route and make it a compilation of dumb vignettes that were meant to be funny. Aaaaahhh, good times. 😆

But yeah, it was mostly a fan forum site that was similar to The Sonic Factory ((which seems to be defunct now too)), but specifically about Mephiles as the main focus, with occasional news about other Sonic related subjects. I was also part of the admins for both sites, too, at some point.

I also still managed to salvage a few of my site icons and signatures from both TMD and TSF way back then, so there's also these:

[noodle-anime]

just! finished saiyuki og series!!! discovered the first resurrected edition volume recently and it has been. well. it's been a journey lol

oooooooooh boy there sure was some Anatomy and Proportions happening in the first volume but it was super fun to see the art style progress actually. it encouraged me to notice more complex poses and things in the later volumes, and when there was an occasional repeat panel like Sanzo and Goku's first look it was very cool to see the difference in quality.

i have a coupla favorite panels/spreads and generally tried to pay a little more attention to how things are precisely laid out and it was a fun aspect of reading. i want to do some actual breakdowns now, maybe compare early and later layouts.

also! i discovered and watched zeroin! my first intro to saiyuki was discovering reload blast forever ago. the art style in zeroin and the fact that there's a whole set of characters i'd never heard of before made it feel like an au or semi-canonical anime movie, sorta, but i enjoyed it So much and there are some specific notes on sanzo characterization that i want to dig into

sanzo is my fave and the kami-sama arc was So Very Good in that respect but it also grew my love for gojyo three sizes.

the way that they all react when gojyo leaves cracks me up so much. they're So Offended. something so funny and also so tasty that they will not under any circumstances admit out loud that they care about gojyo and miss him so instead they're like we are going to Hurt Him (because he hurt us) for Disrupting Our Daily Routine (he's a fundamental part of our lives) and FORCING us to turn this car around (he left with the full knowledge and expectation that they would follow through with actually continuing to pursue this Very Important job like they always said they would)

mmmmm gojyo's savior complex mmmm it's good.

got blasted by the idea of gojyo and hakkai starting an orphanage when they're done with the mission. hakkai was a teacher and still models himself as a "childcare professional"/co-parent to goku and gojyo wants to save somebody So Badly. also good luck resocializing goku to not be killing people/fighting for his life every other day for Two Entire Formative Teenage Years, helping kids and not having it backfire spectacularly in his face would be good for him

i just read the fourth volume so that's most of what i've got on my mind, i know i have More thoughts from the other volumes

besides the fact that sanzo's joints are gonna/have gotta be So Fucked Up. he really is a grandpa. poor guy.

feels good to nail some characterization aspects like genjyo "i'm a coldhearted bastard and you'd better stay out of my way" (developed coping mechanisms to deal with the traumatic loss of a parent and people repeatedly Attacking Him at an early age) sanzo, cho "yes i'm the wife/mother, please excuse these skeletons, the cleaver is only for special occasions" hakkai, sha "i'm the only one here who understands how to be a normal person" (he does not but he does have the highest emotional intelligence) gojyo, and son "i'm a teenager" (he's a teenager, also growing up with the aforementioned trio as parental/familial figures and starting to come into his own!!) goku

not a single one of these men has had a normal relationship or even prolonged interaction with a woman

i had no idea there was a whole brainwashing segment with kougaiji?? and i really want to see more of lirin, there are fun parallels there to explore that i really wanna dig into

i had no idea to what level sanzo was a bastard gremlin with a gun who just Happens to also be the highest of high priests before and now that i do it delights me. the very hypocrisy of his acceptance in his position disgusts him because He Is Not Priest Material but also it's what his dad wanted for him so fuck everybody who tries to take that from him. in any other situation he'd be the shady penniless vagabond gun for hire but koumyou happened. and now we all get to enjoy it.

[tacoma-narrows]

Six Flags Great America! - 5/4/24

Finally decided to put together my post from going to Great America about two weeks ago lol. Sorry it took so long! With moving back home after college, I kept getting distracted by other things haha.

Here are some of my fav pictures I got! In-depth thoughts about each coaster I rode are below them!

So I went with a friend from college and rode about half of all the major coasters there (7 out of their total of 15) since lines were pretty long all day. American Eagle, Whizzer and Sprocket Rockets were closed all day (this was only the third weekend of the season so it was to be expected - you know how it is with Six Flags lmao), and then everything else we didn't get to ride was either a kiddy coaster (Little Dipper) or has a clone somewhere else that I've ridden before (Batman the Ride, Joker, Flash: Vertical Velocity, Superman Ultimate Flight). So not super bummed about missing any of those. Getting on American Eagle and Whizzer would've been fun since those are both classics, and even with clones, a credit is still a credit lol. My friend and I are hoping to go back when we come back to school in August, so we'll hopefully be able to ride what we missed then.

But enough about what we didn't ride, onto what we DID ride! (This will be in the order we rode them throughout the day, plus what number they are in my credits list)

Maxx Force - Credit #162! This was easily my favorite coaster in the park! I am a huge sucker for launch coasters, especially ones with powerful launches. With Maxx Force now having one of, debatably the, fastest accelerating launch on any coaster in the world, that did not disappoint! The funky inversions were a lot of fun and I really liked the high speed heartline roll in the middle. Of course the one downside to Maxx Force is that it's a very short ride in duration, in addition to the brakes kicking in while you're still going through the final element. But overall, it was still an absolute blast of a ride and I definitely wanna ride it again next time I'm at the park!

Raging Bull - Credit #163! I knew this B&M Hyper has gotten mixed reviews in the past, so I knew going in it wasn't going to be the best Hyper out there. I did really enjoy it's more unconventional layout for its model and the focus more on lateral and positive forces throughout the layout, and it was pretty smooth all the way through. What did disappoint me a bit though was the airtime. Like I said, I knew not to expect the 5+ second floater airtime hills you get on other Hypers like Diamondback or Candymonium, but I had heard that in the back row, the main first drop off of the pre-drop had some crazy ejector air in the back row. We rode in the back row and there was definitely some air, but not the crazy throw-you-out-of-your-seat type air that I was expecting. There were a few other good pops throughout the layout, but like I said, I liked it's focus on laterals and positives more. Definitely solid all around.

Viper - Credit #164! Viper I was slightly underwhelmed with. Going in, I had heard that Viper is one of the more underrated coasters in the park, both from other enthusiasts and locals who visit the park regularly. It was definitely smooth for a wooden coaster, it had clearly been well taken care of and looked to have gotten some recent re-tracking, which was very welcome. It also had some good laterals going around some of its turns, but similar to Raging Bull, I found it to be kinda lacking in the airtime department. Again there were some good floater hills here and there but not every hill hit like it should I felt like. This is one I wanna give another shake next time I'm there to see if I just missed something.

Demon - Credit #165! Demon was, not my favorite I'll say. Like it wasn't awful, I've certainly ridden worse Arrow loopers but this one was kinda middle of the road. I didn't think it rode as smoothly or had as much hangtime as the other Demon at California's Great America did. I liked the theming that this one had around it though, much like it's sibling in California. The rock work around the lift and corkscrews and the tunnel you fly through after going through the loops were both pretty cool. Other than that though, I wasn't huge on this one.

X-Flight - Credit #166! Opposite of Viper, X-Flight was better than I had expected! I had heard going in that it was the weakest Wing Coaster in the US, so I wasn't really expecting much, but really ended up enjoying it! We rode in the back row on the right side, so we really got whipped through some of the elements, especially the first wing over drop. I sat on the outside seat, so it was a little rattly there but that's to be expected with B&M Wings lol, and it wasn't really that bad. There were a lot of positive Gs that were a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the hangtime on the first drop and the final in-line twist through the tower (which was also a really cool visual moment both on and off the ride). Of the three Wing Coasters I've ridden, I put it in the middle. I liked it more than Wild Eagle at Dollywood, but not as much as GateKeeper at Cedar Point.

Goliath - Credit #167! Goliath was the longest line we waited in throughout the day at over 90 mins, but I would say it was worth it! I knew this was one of the shortest RMCs in duration, so that wasn't an issue for me but I really enjoyed the elements here. Great first drop and some really strong airtime moments. Both inversions were awesome too! The dive loop was really weird in a cool way, since I turned my head up while we were upside down to look through the structure as we dove down, which was a wild moment. And then the HUGE stall under the lift was soo cool as well. I'd only done prolonged stalls on Jersey Devil and Wildcat's Revenge (the one on Steel Vengeance is really quick and snappy unlike the ones mentioned here), but this one was just so big and so long that it was just a crazy moment. Easy number 2 in the park after Maxx Force for me!

Dark Knight - Credit #168! The last coaster we rode was Dark Knight, the indoor Wild Mouse. I know there are better coasters we could have ridden like Batman or Superman, but at this point, it was about 4 o'clock and we just wanted to get out of the heat and sun for awhile, so we chose to wait in the indoor queue of the Dark Knight lol. I knew what to expect since I had done the one at Great Adventure before, but I think this one was a bit better. The trims didn't seem to be hitting at all on the switchbacks, or if they were, they weren't hitting very hard. So lots of laterals all over, and it looked like more of the theming elements were either on or working than on Great Adventure's (at least from when I rode that one back in like 2018 lol). So it was fun, but in the end it was still just a Wild Mouse in a box lmao.

So that's my recap of my day at Six Flags Great America! I had a great time, at least until it started POURING as we were heading out at about 6 lmao. I'm definitely looking forward to going back, hopefully in August like I said. It definitely had similar bones to California's Great America, but I liked the charm of CGA a bit more, although Six Flags Great America has way more coasters lol. If you've been to SFGAm, let me know what you think of their rides or how your thoughts compare to mine! I'd love to know!

Here's all of the coasters I rode at the park from most to least favorite, along with where they landed in my overall credits ranking (plus which coasters are before and after them on my list for frame of reference):

Maxx Force (#20, between Phantom's Revenge at Kennywood and Thunder Striker at Carowinds)

Goliath (#30, between Volcano the Blast Coaster [formerly] at Kings Dominion and Candymonium at Hersheypark)

X-Flight (#46, between Magnum XL-200 at Cedar Point and Nitro at Six Flags Great Adventure)

Raging Bull (#50, between Great Bear at Hersheypark and Impulse at Knoebels)

Viper (#65, between Flight of Fear at Kings Dominion and Comet at Hersheypark)

Demon (#101, between Iron Dragon and Wild Mouse, both at Cedar Point)

Dark Knight (#113, between Racer at Kennywood and Dark Knight at Six Flags Great Adventure)

[bagog]

N7 Month, 2023 - Day 30: Last Stand

It's been real fun everybody, thanks for reading, and let me know what your favorites were!

Mshenko museum piece for the finale.

++

By mid-morning, the Alliance Military History museum was as busy as it was going to get for the day. Shepard and Kaidan, both clad in non-descript hoodies, dark glasses over their eyes, had been slowly making their way around the Shepard exhibit in the Reaper War wing of the museum. They’d avoided one exhibit in particular so far, but at last they had worked their way all the way around and only had one thing left.

There was an eye-catching sign that read ‘Last Stand’ and on a smaller sign below: “Experience the final three minutes of the Reaper war with Commander Shepard.” There were two entrances spaced wide apart, but it was clear that one was an entrance and the other an exit from the ‘Last Stand’ experience. Above the entrance was a bold ’21:13:43’ and above the exit was ’21:14:55.’ It evoked a popular symbol after the war had ended. A lot of people had a tattoo of the time—to the second—when the Crucible wave hit where they were hiding or fighting. The second the war ended.

“We don’t have to do this one,” Kaidan said, glancing at Shepard over the rim of his glasses.

“We’ve seen everything else.” Shepard’s brow was furrowed, “Might as well top-off the experience.” He turned and gave Kaidan a reassuring smile.

“I’m just saying,” Kaidan shrugged, “There’s not any three minutes of London that I’d like to relive, much less whatever three minutes they’ve picked out here.”

“What do you mean?”

“’21:13:43,’” Kaidan pointed to the exit, “That’s not London Local Time for the wave. It’s a good twelve minutes earlier.”

“Oh, Shepard nodded slowly, “the run-up to the transport beam.”

“Definitely not a moment I’d like to remember,” Kaidan said carefully, checking Shepard’s expression. Shepard had an excuse if he wanted it.

“Let’s have a look.” Shepard took a quick breath, then offered Kaidan a smile. Their audio queued when they cross the entrance threshold.

“These are some of the final moments of the Reaper War, and three minutes that would determine the fate of the galaxy. Constructed with data directly taken from a FOB monitoring Shepard’s position.”  

The audio continued to set the scene: Hammer Squad, Thannix Missiles, heroic names—Shepard nudged Kaidan when ‘Spectre Kaidan Alenko’ was mentioned—and the transport conduit. The exhibit itself was a dark tunnel, on either side a gigantic holographic layout of the broken London street that served as the run-up to the transport conduit. The conduit was represented by a holo near the exit, and where Shepard and Kaidan entered represented 550 meters south: where Hammer Team made their final charge. The audio would trip at key moments as patrons made their way through the hall. By this time, there was another group just ahead of them, but it was dark enough where they felt comfortable taking off the sunglasses.

Shepard was represented on the holo by a yellow ball with a pinging halo emitting from it. As they approached, it began to move toward the transport beam, dodging blasts and avoiding rubble the holo hadn’t rendered, resulting in a somewhat comical display. The audio was aware:

“Forty-five seconds. Commander Shepard runs straight at the beam, or as straight as the situation allowed. Harbinger began repelling the advancing forces, indiscriminately targeting both individual soldiers on the ground and also the ground and air vehicles. You can see Shepard zig-zagging back and forth, likely avoiding rubble or attempting to make himself a more difficult target.”

“Why do you think it’s only me up there? They should have data for every marine out there that day?”

“It’s your exhibit,” Kaidan offered lamely. “Plus, I don’t think seeing all those little… flickering lights go out would be a very stirring exhibit.” Shepard nodded gravely.

The yellow ball raced down the hill in real time, and after forty five seconds, stopped abruptly. It then went backwards.

“Forty-two seconds. That’s how long it took Shepard to call down the SSV Normandy and evacuate a number of marines wounded in the battle. You can see him take up a defensive position behind cover, then race forward—possibly supporting the weight of another wounded marine—when the Normandy arrives.”

Sure enough, the yellow ball ‘limped’ over to where a holographic Normandy had been generated. The ball stayed there, though, for another thirty seconds, nearly.

“Twenty-eight seconds. That’s how long Shepard lingered at the Normandy, likely ensuring as much time as possible for further evacuations. The Normandy’s cyber warfare suite was a surprise for Harbinger, and silenced, for a time, its blasts.”

They were catching up on the other group now, who were talking between themselves, bent over the holo with interest.

“Twenty-eight seconds,” one whispered to the other. “That’s forever in a battle like this, huh? Geez, makes you wonder what was going on.”

“Probably was just giving some orders or something,” said the other. “…I wonder if he thought about just… flying away?” They both chuckled, then grew quieter as they proceeded to hurry through the rest of the exhibit when Kaidan and Shepard got closer.

“I did,” Shepard whispered to Kaidan, pulling Kaidan’s hood just to the side so his lips could almost to the shell of Kaidan’s ear.

“Did what?” Kaidan turned. Shepard looked over his shoulder to see that the other patrons had drifted away.

“I did think about just getting on the Normandy, flying away,” he said, softly.

“No you didn’t,” Kaidan cracked a conspiratorial grin. “Not for long if at all, at any rate.”

“I did. I thought about leaving with you. Thought about it just long enough to make it hurt when I had to turn away.” Shepard touched Kaidan’s hand. “The exhibit doesn’t talk about it at all, but do you remember what you said during those ‘twenty-eight seconds?’”

Kaidan looked at Shepard warmly, looking through him, in some ways. “I, uh… I think I told you to let me finish the fight!” He laughed.

“You said ‘Don’t leave me behind,’” Shepard replied. He lifted Kaidan’s hand, softly ran his thumb over the man’s knuckles, his ring. “And I told you I loved you. And you said it back.”

“Yeah,” Kaidan said, voice thick. “Yeah I remember that.”

“It was the first time we’d said it to each other.” Shepard pointed at the yellow ball, lingering behind the Normandy hologram. “That’s what I remember about those twenty-eight seconds.”

“That’s sweet, Shepard,” Kaidan touched Shepard’s face, gave a little smile. “That little yellow dot is about to go through a whole lot of shit in the next 10 minutes.” Shepard nodded, aware even now of the various cybernetics implanted into his body after this battle. “I’m sorry you had to go through it alone.”

“You were waiting,” Shepard said, at last. “That’s what matters.” Kaidan looked over his shoulder once more before leaning in and kissing Shepard. Shepard leaned back with a wry smile, “I think I’ve had enough hero worship for one day, what do you say we get out of here?” Kaidan nodded and took his hand. They slipped their dark glasses on and strode out of the museum arm in arm.

[yumeka36]

Elden Ring Nightreign Network Test

I was one of the lucky people who got picked to participate in the network test for Elden Ring Nightreign that took place this past weekend. Wanted to share my thoughts on the game based on my experience with the network test (PS5 version).

I should preface by saying that I'm a big fan of FromSoft games, especially Elden Ring, Bloodborne, and the Dark Souls trilogy. However, I've never played a "rogue-like" game before, so having that in Nightreign was definitely out of my comfort zone. But I was able to adapt relatively quickly to the emphasis on fast-paced survival, plus RNG with weapon pulls, vs taking time to explore every nook and cranny and fight every boss/enemy (which is how I usually play FromSoft games).

I didn't play the very first network test session when there were apparently a lot of connection errors, but I did play the second one as my first experience. Since I'm very used to Elden Ring's combat style and enemy types, most of the game felt fairly familiar. The main thing I struggled with at the beginning was understanding how the night slowly creeps in and covers the land, gradually draining your HP if you're caught in it. I kept dying seemingly for no reason until I finally understood this mechanic. Even after I figured it out, I admit it's one of the things I didn't like, but I'm sure I'll get used to it in the official release. I know this is part of the fast-paced survival aspect of the game...but I've never been a fan of rushed, timed gameplay, so having to run away from a boss fight because the night is draining my HP was disruptive. Especially if you end up dying and spawn at a grace far away, then you're forced to book it to the night boss arena while wasting your heals since the night is draining your HP, leaving you with little healing left for the boss fight. Again, I know this is part of the survival aspect of the game and I'm sure I'll get used to it in time, especially when I start memorizing optimal routes to take for each expedition.

Other than that though, I really enjoyed the game! I love the boss fights and combat in Elden Ring, so experiencing that with some altered mechanics was a blast! It was fun finding different weapons and power-ups each time, making each expedition unique. It was a bit difficult in the first couple test sessions without multiplayer though, since coordinating with your team seems to be a core aspect of the game. But once they allowed multiplayer passwords again, I was able to get runs going with one of my friends, and that was really fun! Even though there was one extra person in our team that we couldn't communicate directly with, we still managed to do well. But despite this, unfortunately I never did make it to the final boss in any of my roughly 20 runs across all the network test sessions I had time to attend.

Which brings me to something I wanted to mention, though I believe it's an issue strictly with the network test and won't be relevant in the final game - from what I understood, there were two possible maps you could get in the network test, each with a different layout, enemies, and bosses. One map had the two demi-humans as the first night boss, and the DTS plus two cavalry boss as the second one. And the other map had Centipede Demon and Margit/Morgott as the two main bosses. I don't know if I just had terrible luck, but I would say at least 75% of my runs had the map with the demi-human duo boss...and I just found it much harder. Not only did I find the demi-human boss fight harder than Centipede, but that trio fight on day 2 was ridiculously hard. Even when my team was level 10+ and had good weapons, we still couldn't beat them. And not only that, but Margit seemed to always spawn as an extra boss in this map who pursues one of the players, making it even more difficult. So yeah, assuming these maps had equal odds of spawning and are supposed to be equal difficulty, not sure why I kept getting the seemingly harder one, lol.

One thing I would tell FromSoft to implement based on this network test is the ability to quit an expedition without penalty if your teammates disconnect. I'm not even sure what the "penalty" was since I was too afraid to quit out myself, but there were some annoying instances where my teammates would bail out right away, and if I tried to quit and start again, the game would tell me I would incur a penalty. So I was forced to wait until the night boss spawned, die to it, and then I could finally have a chance to try again. So yeah, being given the option to quit out of an expedition without penalty if your teammates disconnect would be nice.

Overall, I enjoyed Nightreign a lot! Playing the network test got me even more excited to get the real game and play with a full team of friends, plus get to experience each of the different starting classes. Already pre-ordered the collector's edition 😁

[mossy-green-aka-ferrythem]

So, I finished Spark 3!

Really a fantastic game! Pleasantly surprised in so many ways!

Interesting how the series progresses.

With Spark 1 being an interesting game with interesting ideas, executed in a way that I can't help but see as the game cheapening itself, with levels that stretch upwards of 10 minutes, far too long for any game that tries to have any sort of emphasis on speed. Well. Thing is, it's not terrible to have long levels in a game like this, you just have to execute it right, have the right variety, and then it feels satisfying, but on average, levels should be five minutes at most.

Spark 2 was. Interesting. To be honest I tried it but lost interest in it so quickly that I simply didn't finish it. It's an interesting game because it's Spark's first 3D game, and they bring a lot of interesting stuff to the table. The storytelling, while nice to have it emphasized, didn't really strike me as that effective, if I am honest. Story didn't capture me, and the 3D level design just had like, so much missing I felt. It bored me really. Some interesting ideas here and there, but overall, the levels made me wanna play a Sonic game instead.

Now we have Spark 3. This one is special. Now, it stands shoulder to shoulder with the best Sonic Games, and executes it's level ideas in a fascinating way. The levels are consistently a blast, and make use of such interesting layouts. Level after level, they continuously execute things in fascinating ways.

Storywise, it's alright, but the twist at the end was. Something. Indeed. (Spoilers under cut)

It's so silly to me that the twist was that they were in a matrix type simulation. It convolutes earlier plot points and just makes the entire thing so god damn confusing. I do like the sentiment it has at the end about friendship, but it's executed in a way that has me constantly asking the game "what the fuck is happening?" Like this ending just gives me so many questions about the events of the game. So the reason why levels are fun and exciting in the way they are is because it's in a simulation? Whatever happened to making a fun fantastical world in a platformer that one could suspend their disbelief for, due to the cartoonish nature of the entire thing? Ah well. It's silly. Either way, the level design throughout the game fucking rips, and it was an exciting game to play through and through, even though that conclusion leaves many loose ends, and just kinda feels dissatisfactory.

Also. I wasn't too fond of the combat in this game. It's fairly fun for what it's worth, but not worth the game having this much of an emphasis on it, if I am to be honest. Even still. It's a small emphasis, and it presents itself in an interesting and worthwhile way.

Anyways! Yeah! Spark 3! Excellent game overall! Stands shoulder to shoulder with Sonic's best games in a wonderful way! Some people would say it exceeds them, but I wouldn't say the same. I love Spark 3, and I love Sonic. Both have games that have issues, but still, a lot of things about the just make em so special.

Spark 3 is a wonderful game worth trying out! Inspirational to see an indie 3D platformer reach heights that rival those of Sonic games! Wonderful to see!

[calextheneko]

Mario Maker 2 Self Promotion: Super World and Sky Tower Saga

So getting back into Mario Maker 2 and for those who don't know I freaking love Mario Maker. I currently have 80 levels uploaded in the second and forgot how many I have uploaded in the first. Never as many cause I never got enough likes to expand my upload pool in that one. Glad 2 through that mechanic in the trash.

Anyway, this post is just to blow my horn and talk about some of my favorite levels I've made. I'm far from the best or most popular level designer but I do put my heart into them! If any strike your fancy it means the world to me if you play them! So let's go on.

First off if you want to find me and pull up all my levels

Creator ID: GKP-1RT-HNG

Can use that to pull up my profile. If you see the name Calex and my little guy wearing the cat suit you got the right one!

So first up, my Super World found on my profile.

This follows basic 8 world progression, made in the Super Mario world style. I did my best to make it feel like a Mario game while adding in some unique twists. Worlds 1-6 have four stages including a boss stage, and world 7 and 8 have 5 levels including boss stages. I try to stay true to form with fighting the Koopalings and progressing but giving them unique mechanics or battlefields to fight on to freshen the fights up.

The levels start on the super easy side as I've attempted to scale the difficulty up as you progress through the worlds. I'd say world 7 is where you notice a big bump up.

I recently redid the final level of it 8-5: Seat of the King. Mainly, while I liked the original version the boss fight with Bowser took way too long. I wish they had a way to adjust his HP. So I updated it so Bowser will get damaged much, MUCH more quickly, as well as adding in a couple secrets that can let you skip round 1 with him. It's not nearly as hard, but I'll take fun over difficult any day of the week.

Most of the levels I'm proud of are later in the games as I made them more complex as part of turning the difficulty up. 7-1: Blast Off! might be my favorite of the set. As for hardest, for me personally I think 8-4: The Koopaling's Last Dance! As it contains rematches with each Koopaling that you fought throughout the game and then a fight with Bowser Jr. I put two checkpoint flags right on either side of a pipe for this one so you can reactivate them any time you want to save your progress in this level.

I could gush about each level but there are 40 of them total in the Superworld so going to move on so we're not here all day.

Sky Tower Saga

Sky Tower Saga is a series of levels I made back before the game had Super Worlds using the Mario 3 layout. Sky Tower Saga contains much more and often difficult twists on its boss fights and each of the levels has its own boss.

Sky Tower Saga is a five level collection that basically tells the story of Mario's journey to Sky Tower after it mysteriously appears in well, the sky, and his effort to stop Bowser from seizing the tower's strange powers for himself.

Sky Tower Saga Part 1: Journey

Course ID: 402-DQ9-LSG

Journey has you start in a winter themed level, as you platform your way along before reaching the Tower's entrance. Once inside you climb the first few floors before facing Boom Boom. This level is the only completely normal boss fight in the series, as it serves as a warmup level before you enter the tower proper. So Boom Boom has no mechanics. There is sadly a Soft Lock in it, there's an area you can go down under after hitting a P Switch and find a 1-up. But if you don't have the Super Leaf then it's not possible to get back up and eventually you die once the P-Switch runs out.

Sky Tower Saga Part 2: Ascent

Course ID: 1DT-J87-6RF

Ascent where the series starts using vertical levels as you climb higher and higher into the Tower. This level also has far more secrets in it than the first, including eight key coins that if you gather you can unlock a special bonus door right before the boss fight. You can also use the key to skip the boss fight if you want, but kind of ruins the fun. Up to you if you want to get through faster or if you want to fight it! Whatever you feel like! But the fact the boss can be skipped is why I later stopped using red coins in boss stages to prevent that. I just like putting in secrets for people to find. XD I feel it makes things more fun.

Anyway, this time the boss fight is against a Flying Boom Boom but now we start to have new mechanics introduced. This fight has a time limit beyond the actual course timer. As the fight continues one of the walls will closely close in giving you less and less room to move around in. You need to defeat Boom Boom and unlock the exit door before the wall closes in completely and squashes you flat. I left the timer very generous.

I designed it by using a Bill Blaster as the wall. It doesn't shoot anything, but I put it on a conveyor belt that tries to carry it right. However there are switch blocks in the way blocking its progress. Below it is a shell that is fired onto a conveyor belt that tries to carry it right but the shell is shot left making it travel very slowly. At the end of it is a Switch Block. So each time it hits the block the Bill Blaster is released from a switch block and moves right. Meanwhile the shell is quickly delivered back to where it started before bouncing and slowly moving towards the switch again. During the fight you can see it moving so you can see exactly how much time you have before the wall moves again.

Sky Tower Saga Part 3 Secret

Course ID: K47-5M0-5RG

Sky Tower stretches so high into the sky you start to leave the atmosphere. As a result any time you are physically climbing the outside of the tower there will be less gravity. Thankfully it seems the Mushroom Kingdom invented artificial gravity so inside you're fine.

Once again we have red coins to unlock a secret room as you travel up. And once again it can be used to skip the boss fight if wanted. But surprise twist! There are two boss fights! More on that in a second.

Secret introduces something important in the form of the three Fire Orbs with wings that will be seen again. These are used to represent an entity called Tower Soul who will be a problem in a later stage, but for this one you just get a glimpse of them. Meanwhile, the challenge takes in the form of scaling the place while managing the lowered gravity. There is also a snake block to ride, but don't worry there's a two-way pipe right before it so you can exit and re-enter if you fall off and need to respawn it.

As for the fights. It's Bowser Jr with a round 1 and a round 2 against him. The first round is simple, some Throwmps slam down activating an on and off switch which drops Bowser Jr and two red Bill Blasters into the room. You have to hit Bowser three times while dodging homing Bullet Bills and you're done. But round 2 things kick up a bit. Bowser Jr is now protected in the safety of the Tower and you must fight him while dealing with the Tower's defenses. Your only platform is a seesaw that goes up and down but this is to your benefit once you realize what you need to do. You need to jump on Koopa Troopas and then shoot their shell into a small hole where they'll travel down and hit Bowser Jr. If you stand on the left side of the seesaw it will form a perfect ramp that you can slide the shell along right into the hole instead of having to jump into the air and fire it. While you continue to fight the tower will release other defenses including buzz saws so watch yourself as you take it down. This fight is good training for a future fight that's a much bigger problem.

Sky Tower Part 4: Apex

Course ID: W7B-R7W-XKG

Finally you reach the apex of the tower. But as you reach the top, you will find none other waiting for you than Bowser! Charged up with the Tower Soul the entire Tower is now at his command as he attempts to destroy you!

Once again, up in space so low gravity when climbing the exterior of the tower, but most of the platforming takes place in the interior as you climb up the last few floors. Beware of Bullet Bills as they'll be a constant threat when you climb. When you have to charge forward towards a Bill Blaster remember to look for holes in the area you can jump or duck in to dodge the bullets. Also, as you navigate flying beetles and other surprises there might be a chance to grab an unintended upgrade along the way.

Apex is where the red coins stop as I realized I was undermining the levels, as well as this is where you face a much bigger threat for the boss. Bowser himself is the boss fight this time. When you finally make your way up to him, the arena will look familiar. You fight Bowser in the same was as you did in Mario 3, but with a slightly simplified arena. Naturally a you can guess from the previous fight this is just a warmup for the real fight.

Grab the Fire Flower after round 1, it will make your life much easier, I promise. For fight 2, you'll be facing Bowser in a Fire Car, but you have a Fire Car of your own. If you grabbed the Fire Flower you shoot three fireballs instead of one which will make things much easier. Dodge Bowser's attacks and take him out with your own fireballs to proceed forward! However, Bowser is probably the smallest worry you'll have at the moment. The Tower Soul will be seen flying around the map damaging you if it impacts you, as well as there are tons of cannon balls being fired. Navigate the maze of obstacles carefully as you fight Bowser and finally finish off the fight... Except, not quite. At the end of the level you'll see though Bowser is gone, Tower Soul remains.

Sky Tower Saga Finale: Soul

Course ID: 5S2-81B-XGF

It's the final level. With Bowser defeated Tower Soul has gone berserk. If the tower is left unchecked its destruction power will spread to the Mushroom Kingdom. Are you ready to fight an entire freaking tower? Cause you're fighting an entire tower. Or at least the heart of it.

This is a boss stage, no platforming to get here. Instead, you get some power ups and then are instantly thrown into a battle with Tower Soul. That's right, the final boss is a completely original thing instead of being Bowser again! I know it turns out I am capable of originality at times!

Now then...This is what the Bowser Jr fight earlier was practice for. You will see the Tower Soul inside a huge contraptions once you step into the heart of the tower. The ticket is once again to kick shells into a small opening so that it can damage the tower. But it's going to be much harder this time. There's no ramp you can shoot it up through. Now you'll need to either throw the shells from the air, jump up to the hole or time it perfectly off a moving platform to get a hit in. Each time you land a successful hit you'll see the tower start to fall apart as bricks fall from overheard.

This fight took a long time to design and went through a lot of versions. First I had to get it to actually work so that you could get a key for defeating a thing the game doesn't regard as an actual entity. I hit an enemy that's never visible on screen but is killed right after you land your final hit on Tower Soul. That enemy holds the key so that's how I made it look like defeating Tower Soul gives you the key. After I got this working though the fight was too insanely hard. So believe it or not this is the tuned down version of it. Keep aware of the threats around you and practice your timing with shells until you earn victory.

But the level isn't over yet. The Tower Soul flees as the entire tower begins to collapse. It's time for a Metroid this place is gonna explode escape sequence with some fun music. But, how do you escape Sky Tower? Well... You'll see when you get there. Defeating Tower Soul is the hard part the rest of the level is super easy and I don't want to spoil the fun of what's happening.

Anyway that's stuff about my Super World and Sky Tower. I may post more of these with other levels I worked on and their course IDs as it goes on. We'll see how it goes. Will also be trying to come up with some new level ideas cause the itch to make levels is bugging me like crazy now. Thanks for taking the time to listen to me rant, and super special thanks to anyone who plays any of the levels too!

[st0rygirl3]

Modern Day Gentleman - Chris Sturniolo

══ ❀•°❀°•❀ ══ ═ ═ ═ ══ ❀•°❀°•❀ ══

Part 1?

Part 2 coming soon!

Summary:

Your friends invited you to go out to the club with them tonight. You were hesitant but decided to go out anyway. When you get there, there are plenty of wasted people around you. A random drunk man comes up to you and begins hitting on you, all for your friend to step in claiming you had a boyfriend when you definitely didn’t. The man was persistent anyway, not buying a word. What happens when you have to flag down a random stranger to play your pretend boyfriend to scare the creep away?

Not proof read

⚠️Warnings⚠️:

fem!reader x dom!Chris Sturniolo, Suggestive content, drinking, mentions of alcohol, alcohol abuse, side characters drinking, takes place in a bar/club (this is pretty cheesy but stick with me)

A/N: hiii! This is my first story on tumblr. I just tried going with what others were doing for the layout. Thank you for reading and there will be a lot more to come!! Hope you enjoy!

Your fingers lazily scrolled on your phone, trying to find anything interesting on social media. Just then a text from your friend Megan popped up on your phone. ‘Heyy girl! Some of the girls and I are going out for drinks at Topper’s tonight! We’ll be there to get you in an hour or so!’ The text read. You groaned, about to reply and tell Megan you’re not going. But something stopped you. It had been awhile since you went out, and what harm could a few drinks do?

You got up and walked to your closet, scouring through your many dresses in hopes to find a club-appropriate dress that wasn’t to small. Finally you settled on a black halter mini dress, with gold pins in the front. You slip on the dress, feeling a bit weird in it, since you haven’t worn something like this in so long. You went to your bathroom and put on a light face a makeup, and messed with different hairstyles finally settling on one you felt best suited your outfit. Once that was finally all done you walked down to your kitchen, where your black leather clutch purse laid out. You tangled your fingers in the gold chain and slipped it over your shoulder. Lastly you put on black lace up heels with rhinestones. You felt good in your outfit, ready to face the club world.

Soon enough you heard a beep outside your house and you knew your friends had arrived. You walked outside and hopped in the car. The drive there was pretty fun, blasting music and everyone excited to go out. Once you arrived at the club you all climbed out the car and walked to the door. As you followed slowly behind your friends you scanned the room, observing all the people in the club. It was pretty packed, and most people were pretty wasted already, tripping over their own feet and talking aggressively loud but the music drowned most of it out. A modern country song was blasting through the speakers, and the bar tender was talking it up with some regular at the bar.

The lights flashed all different colors in your face. You followed your friends to the bar, slowly maneuvering through the crowd. But as you tried to pass a taller man he stood infront of you, blocking your access to your friends causing you to loose them. You looked up at the tall man, who looked down at you with whiskey soaked eyes, and another stirring in his hand, half empty. His smirk was uneasy, like an animal stalking its prey. “Excuse me-…” “Well hello gorgeous. What’s a pretty girl like you doin’ roaming around here?” He interrupted, slurring every word, making a gibberish sentence. I didn’t say anything, just attempted to step to the side of him, and get around him. But he stepped infront of me, his big frame blocking me from getting passed. “No need to be scared. I don’t bite…unless you ask nicely.” He said in a sluggish tone. His breath reeked of alcohol, especially with as aggressive of breaths he took, it filled your nose. You laughed awkwardly looking anywhere but at him. He wrapped his free hand around your waist, pulling us stomach to stomach. You let out an uncomfortable gasp and began pushing mildly softly, in hopes it was some misunderstanding.

Luckily Megan saw you, and saw the man you were struggling to get away from. She grabbed a handsome strangers hand, pointing the situation out to him, and he followed Megan’s instructions. The handsome man charged towards you and the taller guy holding you. The handsome man steeped lively over, before grabbing the guy by the collar, causing him to drop you, as you fell to the floor. “The fuck are you doing touching MY girlfriend like that?” The handsome man said. You blushed, your stomach stirring with butterflies. “Sorry man- I- I didn’t realize she was taken.” The drunken guy said, quickly scurrying off in fear. The handsome man looked at you, holding out a hand to help you up. “Hey, I’m Chris, Chris Sturniolo.” He said. His brown locks dangled in his face, his piercing blue eyes catching you off guard. “Y/N….Y/N Y/L/N.” You said, stuttering a bit from the intense interaction you just had. You took Chris’s hand, and helped yourself up. You looked over your shoulder to catch the drunken man from before leaning in a corner watching you closely, examining if Chris was in fact your boyfriend. You pointed it out to Chris, who just laughed. “Looks like we gotta put a show from him sweetheart.” Chris smirked still holding your hand. Your heart skipped as you looked the other way. Chris’s pointer finger curled and snuck under your chin as his thumb rested on the surface of your chin, tilting your head up to look at him. His other hand snaked to your waist, softly resting on your hip. He scanned your face for consent, which you returned with a soft nod. His lips crashed onto yours, and the chemistry lit up immediately, Atleast you felt it. His tongue found entrance to your mouth, fighting your tongue for dominance his hand gribbed your hip creating an exciting tension. When you guys finally came up for air he pulled his hand off your hip, looking back at the corner that the guy was standing in. Luckily, he was gone. Chris then just walked away, like none of that even happened causing you to become a little flustered and frustrated. You brushed it off anyway, as much as you could that is. Megan came back and slipped her arm around your shoulder, followed by comforting words to affirm you, but she saw your disappointed face. You scanned the room to find Chris being berated by some drunk girl, and he looked to make eye contact with you, giving a friendly wave. You quickly turned away and Megan led you back to the rest of the friend group.

That night was awkward, uncomfortably so. You didn’t have this man’s phone number, you only knew his full name, and stalking him didn’t sound appealing. But at this point you didn’t care. You pulled up instagram and searched his name, finding only one Chris Sturniolo, but two other Sturniolo brothers that looked similar. You decided to wing it and dm him a quick message.

You: Hey not sure if you remember me, but I’m your fake girlfriend from Friday night. I was wondering if you wanted to get coffee sometime?

You took a breath and then went to bed, not expecting much in response.



[tails-artwork]

Gaming Thoughts - July 2023 - Sonic Frontiers

(I'm looking at doing a sort of long-term project to hopefully slowly get my art back into the groove amidst some of my studying. Basically at the end of each month to do one really small doodle based one a game that I play during the month and also give my thoughts on the game as well. Some games may end up getting covered twice depending on how much I keep playing it or such too. But maybe it might serve as a way for me to get back into doing some fanart and keeping myself from getting too rusty)

Anyways, to kick this off, we're starting with a game that while I did end up starting it in June, I managed to finish it off in the first half of July. Which would happen to be Sonic Frontiers.

Nonetheless, I have been a bit of a Sonic fan ever since my first game being the old PC port of Sonic 3D Blast, but back then I really didn't play super long or seriously with games like I do now, thus in all technicality the first Sonic game that I had ever beaten was Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on the GCN. I think ever since then I ended up having a stronger bias towards some of the 3D sonic games as opposed to the 2D ones despite the huge variance in quality a lot of the games have had over time.

Anyways, the moment I started Frontiers, I swear I ended up getting drawn in VERY quickly. I honestly struggled really liking going back to any of the boost era games (Generations and Unleashed included, so go ahead and grab the pitchforks) and the fact that to me Sonic felt as smooth as I remember in Adventure and Heroes already helped me enjoy more of the game. And honestly i found it really easy to control for most of the game as well while exploring in the actual world.

The cyberspace zones were…well…despite the fact that some of the boost era games have just never fully clicked with me, I think those were not tooo bad. There is an obvious dissonance on how Sonic controlled in the open area and in the cyberspace levels though and thus he felt a lot more stiff in those. But…damm some of the level layouts did tickle my fancy so much (Even though I feel like they missed some potential with the music for some of them, but that is a different matter.)

Regardless, I don't think I've ever been THIS sucked into a Sonic game since Heroes though, and I definitely am looking forward to the final update with this game as well with the different playable characters. I've been itching for Tails to have been playable in a 3D sonic game since almost forever and I really hope it comes out well in the end. All in all, still ranks quite up there as being one of my fav Sonic games, though I don't think it has dethroned Heroes or SA2B quite yet. (also yes, in my playthrough of Frontiers, I absolutely HAD to use the SOAP shoes for Sonic as well)

Also, throwing this last part under the cut because final boss spoiler potential.

I played the game on hard mode and was able to get the final last true fight. I heard a lot of people complaining about it before because it was a complete genre shift from a majority of the game, but like..it did feel like the game was preparing you for it with some of the small minigames there were so it wasn't 100% left field. And well…having playing Ikargua as much as I had before, this final boss literately just felt like a stage of that so that might be why I had quite a lot of fun with it and didn't have a hard time with it either. Though speaking of which, for those who DID enjoy the final boss though or those similar minigames. This is 100% a shameless plug to go and give Ikargua a try as well. And Radiant Silvergun while you're at it too.

Also, Sage's development in the game was just dawww. I really loved her a lot and I hope she shows up in future games as well considering the last scene in the ending.

[glassmarcus]

Konami gave me an excuse to write about the trajectory of Bomberman campaigns

*Played in November 2023, Written in December 2023

For those who know me, it’s apparent that I’m one of those deviants who plays Bomberman games FOR the story mode. We’ve all played multiplayer Bomberman games, and we all had a blast doing so (Pun intended, the pun will always be intended). Multiplayer Bomberman just works and as long as you don’t fuck it up, it guarantees a Bomberman game is at least a 7/10 if you staple it to the side of any of them. It is pure distilled chaos in its most enjoyable form. But it’s also kind of perfected at this point. Yea, you can add a few more mechanics and characters to play at once, but nothing you can do really changes the feelings that multiplayer elicits. That’s why Single Player modes have always been more intriguing to me. There’s so much potential there, and every few games there’s a new take on the gameplay that could be pushed a little bit further.

Bomberman started out as a Single Player home computer game. The goal was to erradicate the enemies on the screen and then proceed to the next level. This became the default Bomberman Single Player format and didn’t die out until Bomberman Portable on the PSP. In fact it was basically the only gameplay type for a decade. I refer to this style of gameplay as “Genocide” as the goal is to completely clear out the map with no exception. It is the most plentiful Single Player mode and has honestly run its course. Having the goal be to kill every enemy really pins down what the level design and objectives have to be and just ends up dragging out the content. It was probably done the best in Super Bomberman 4 and by then the other gameplay types it created were inherently more interesting, so it was weird that they kept making them for a decade afterwards. There are many more types of Bomberman Single Player modes, and I’m about to break em down and bestow a title corresponding to whatever crime can best describe them.

After Multiplayer modes started getting added to Bomberman games, they pretty much took over the franchise and became the focus going forward. Some games decided to take the Multiplayer and pass it as a Single Player experience by pitting you against AI opponents. This gameplay type I refer to as “Homicide” as it focuses on killing players who have the same abilities as you. The first one to do this was Bomberman Gameboy, also known as Wario Blast in North America. Why is it called Wario Blast? Because they added Wario as a playable character and opponent. Why did they do that? I...I don’t have any answers for that. It still puzzles me to this day.

Homicide is far and away the worst Gameplay type for Single Player Bomberman games. Single Player Bomberman is fun because it’s for the most part Asymmetric. Multiplayer is fun because everyone is on the same level and has to navigate through the same chaos. These games take the worst of both worlds. The inherent equality is stripped from you as you’re forced to play with at least one AI opponent who will dodge every one of your bombs flawlessly, yet will accidentally kill themselves 80% of the time. Defeating them is not satisfying because it always feels like there’s no behavior or strategy you had to learn in order to win, you got lucky because the AI decided not to read your inputs or blow themselves up. And this is all in exchange of potentially great level layouts, varied enemy design, and a genuine feeling of progression. I don’t say this a lot, because I try to appreciate the hands I'm dealt with in life, but I’d truly rather have nothing.

Around the same time as the Homicide gameplay type was created, Bomberman 94 for the Turbo Grafx 16 blessed the world with a new style as well. Instead of the goal being to kill every enemy on the screen, it was to destroy certain enemy structures to open the exit of the level. Due to the goal being shifted to destruction of objects rather than enemies, I title this style as “Property Damage”. I’m a big fan of Property Damage. It gives you more options for how to handle the level now that you don’t have to kill every single thing on the map. Having certain points that the player must travel to allows for more creative map design as well.

It’s a better version of the Genocide gameplay style in every way. Super Bomberman 4 is a dynamite game on in a vacuum, but was ultimately disappointing because Super Bomberman 3 was a Property Damage Game. I would say the gameplay in Super Bomberman 4 is a step up from 3, but its inferior structure drags it down. Property Damage is the best gameplay style that I don’t have a desire to see again. I earnestly believe the formula was perfected in Saturn Bomberman, Aka The Best Bomberman Game. After playing it I was truly satisfied. They don’t need to go back to this well again, just re-release it on modern hardware. It’s the definitive Classic Bomberman Experience.

Not all styles can be as fully realized as Property Damage though. I think the most known gameplay style that fans clamor to make a comeback for is what I’ve come to refer to as “Loitering”. This is the gameplay style created by the N64 Bomberman Games. There is no specific requirement to unlock the exit, you only have to figure out how to get to it while goofing off on the way there. Adventure is the main focus and while all these games have had their problems, they were all solvable problems. A truly amazing Bomberman title is waiting to be made under the Loitering frame work.

Bomberman 64 has some undeniably gilded level design and is an impressive first attempt at a 3D Bomberman game. It frustrates the hell out me when I play it because of the camera and how stupid punishing it is, but that can all be fixed in a follow up or remake. I can say the same for every game of this style. Bomberman Hero would be amazing if it had a slight double jump action to spruce up movement. Bomberman 64: The Second Attack might become one of the best Bomberman Games if it explained and utilized its mechanics with a hint of sanity. Bomberman Generation has the least problems out of any 3D Bomberman game, but feels a bit sterile and safe compared to its predecessors. I’d love to see a version of the game with more open and creative levels. Bomberman Jetters...is a lost cause, but 80% of them are still bursting with potential. I’d prefer they return to this style, but due to it being the most resource intensive option, I doubt that will happen.

Over the years, Konami/Hudsoft has occasionally opted to lean towards somewhat of a fusion of the Property Damage and Genocide archetypes. Games where instead of the objective being to destroy an amount of enemies or objects, the objective differs in every level. This assures variety in level structure and gameplay and it’s basically what I expect Bomberman story modes to be at a bare minimum now. When Super Bomberman R came out and had this gameplay type in place, It felt as if that was the story mode that won out in the end after years of evolution. It’s not my favorite style, but “Crime Spree” felt like the future to me and I fully expected Super Bomberman R 2 to follow suit. The frame work had to be similar to classic Bomberman due to being a sequel to R, so the Loitering games I pined for were assuredly not going to return. The most I could hope for was a Bomberman Blast Story mode scenario where it’s still top down gameplay but with linear levels. Of course there are more options for the series to return to, but I deem those as even less likely. But that won’t stop me from writing about them though.

I will never not be salty about the fate of the Top Down Bomberman Adventure games. This series is at it’s best and most interesting when it’s shamelessly emulating The Legend of Zelda and I wholehearted wish they leaned in harder. Bomberman Quest is a wonderful game buried by a mountain of embarrassing technical issues. The bombs are literally transparency.jpgs and it’s the funniest shit I’ve ever seen. This game is barely held together, but traversing the world at your leisure and finding new abilities to use just feels right for the series. Its Gameboy Advance follow up, Bomberman Tournament is hands down one of the best games in the franchise because it cribs even more from Zelda including the tendency for Zelda games to perform decently. Tournament is the best Zelda game on the GBA, hands down. And this sub series peaks here, as its only follow up was Bomberman Story DS, which is a bad game I don’t want to talk about because it makes me VERY angry.

There’s a quality to Bomberman that lends itself to collection and exploration more than other franchises. I think it’s due to the work you put in to collecting and clearing out an area. Most adventure games have you travel to a place, do a quest, and then you have what you need for your quest. In Bomberman though, you have to do those same things...without accidentally killing yourself. It feels a bit more earned and exciting that way. Blasting the land and fracking resources fills me with glee, and that glee is all the better when those power ups and rewards are permanent. This is why I call this gameplay type “Looting”. The tools you acquire have lasting impact on your journey and a lot of the fun is indulging in the grind.

Now there are tons of other gameplay types that I don’t expect to return in any way because they are very unconventional for Bomberman gameplay and are essentially spin offs. I say essentially and not definitely in this case because I don’t know how to split a franchise as unfocused as this one into mainline and spin off categories. Basically, when the gameplay strongly diverges from the norm is when I don’t expect any return. So all those Bomberman Racing games that came out are irrelevant, as well as the Bomberman Land party games. But there is one spin off that I feel doesn’t stray from the norm too much and I still have some hope it can return in a future game. In the past we’ve had Genocide and Homicide, but neither of these crimes comes close to one of my favorite Gameplay Styles: “Regicide”.

Bomberman Wars is a goddamned gem of a strategy game that doesn’t deserve to be stuck on the Japanese PSX catalog. Many games back in the day didn’t get localized because they were too hard or didn’t have a tone that appealed to target demographics enough. This one I’m pretty sure was held back because they thought Americans simply weren’t smart enough. My brain was forced to expand when I played this game. If you don’t think 4 steps ahead at least, you can lose it all in a mere instant. Understanding each unit on the map and their function is key to victory and when you execute your assassination plan of the opposing team’s king, it's euphoric. The thing is, it’s still Bomberman gameplay. Only now it’s turn based. Bomberman games being on a grid makes it convert into a strategy game seamlessly. It’s not a strategy game with a Bomberman coat of paint; It’s a Bomberman game that is slowed down so you can plan for all the chaos that a 5 v 5 Bomberman match might entail. It might never come to the forefront of the franchise, but I believe that if the balance of Bomberman Wars is ironed out, we will have created Chess 2. I regret to inform you that these last two paragraphs are irrelevant to the main point of this write up and my motive was to gush about Bomberman Wars.

So with all this knowledge of Bomberman gameplay, I came into the newly released Super Bomberman R 2 fully expecting a Crime Spree game. There was no reason for it to not be that. But to my surprise...Konami cooked up something entirely different. To be fair the original Super Bomberman series shook things up a bit too between games. Sure, Super Bomberman 2 is pretty much the same as the first, but 3 shook things up by being a Property Damage game, 4 added mechanics that added value to the genocide gameplay style, and Super Bomberman 5 set itself apart by being a completely impenetrable cluster fuck. So there is precedent set in the series they are attempting to reboot, but not to this extent. When you boot up Super Bomberman R 2, you are not greeted with a mission to complete. You are not tasked with an object to destroy. You aren’t even given a hit list on who to kill. Because Super Bomberman R2 is a Looting game.

Now, it’s not a Looter the same way the previous 3 games are. You don’t get any unique abilities or bombs along the way which is a huge bummer. But by following the description I gave earlier, this clearly fits. The whole game is centered around collecting. You bomb softblocks and enemies to gain experience points which grant you basic power ups that last for the entire world. It’s not much, but it is an RPG mechanic and I’ll take all I can get. Exploration is at the forefront of story mode, as your objective is to comb the area and search for alien creatures called Ellons. Ellons look similar to Chao and have the same surface level appeal. They even have a discount Chao Garden on each planet you visit. But mechanically they work much more like Maiamais from The Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds. Each planet is gerrymandered into districts that have a certain amount of Ellons. Ellons are hidden all over the place and their locations can be sussed out by listening to their squeaks in the distance. When a district has all of it’s Ellons collected, it will be indicated on the map, and each Planet has 100 total. These are functionally Maiamais and again I must praise Bomberman for shameless cribbing off Zelda. This aspect of the gameplay loop shoots this game up to being one of my favorite Bomberman Campaigns.

Find a bunch of collectibles in an open world with no direction? I sleep. Find a moderate amount of collectibles in a series of divided areas? You have my undivided attention. Completing each section one by one hits that anxious spot in my brain real nice because once I’ve completed a section, I don’t have to worry about it again. More games need to do this and I’m glad Bomberman caught on. It also helps that searching for them in soft blocks isn’t the only way to obtain Ellons. There are also small puzzles and mini challenges you find throughout the level that award you with multiple Ellons at a time. Bomberman Story DS had puzzles like this too, but I’m pretty sure they were all awful. I can’t be sure, I prefer to not remember that game. The puzzles add a lot to the gameplay loop so it never feels stale. It would get tiring if the entire game was blasting soft blocks to find Chao and level up stats. What’s interesting about this stat element is that it’s not simply the standard fire, speed, and bomb amounts that increase. After a while, your gimmick maximum increases too, which is a stat that doesn’t appear to be relevant to the story mode at all.

As it turns out, this Story Mode is only half of a Looting game. The other half is comprised of a new gameplay type. One of the main selling points of Super Bomberman R2 was a new multiplayer mode that involved some sort of tower defense. The way it works is that there are two teams, one defending their treasures and another attempting to steal them. When time runs out and the defending team still has treasures left, they win. If the invading team successfully captures all the treasures before the time runs out, they win. This game mode in implemented into the Single Player campaign using AI opponents with some twist. Now, based on my feelings on Homicide style Bomberman games, this seems like something I’d hate. It’s a chaotic multiplayer mode being slapped onto the Single Player. But there are a few things about this implementation that make it not only work, but be a really fun experience.

My main issues with the Homicide Bomberman games was how there was no asymmetry and the AI were a little too slick at times. This is not a problem here. For one, the AI opponents are kinda dumb compared to previous titles, which I’m not sure was the intention, but I appreciate it at points. There is also no issue with symmetry, as this game mode is inherently asymmetrical. When you are on defense, you have the entire map working in your favor as you can adjust the fortress design to funnel enemies into traps(gimmicks) that push them away from the objective or kill them. You can also achieve special abilities such as a sword that kills enemies directly or a shield that takes a certain amount of hits. When you are on the invading side, you don’t have a lot going for you aside from numbers. Sure you’re likelier to die, but there are far more invaders than defenders. Because you don’t need to be stronger than the opposing side to win, you only need to be sneaky and clever with how you move around the fortress. While Looting also wouldn’t be a bad term for this gameplay type, due to both defense and offense being required, I think “Home Invasion” fits better.

For Home Invasion’s first outing it doesn’t do too shabby. The gimmicks and gimmick limits you obtain and increase throughout story mode allow you to bolster your defenses whenever enemies attempt to raid you. It’s hilarious to build your own fortress and watch the opposing forces fail to navigate your house of horrors. A lot of the time I felt like I was just blocking enemy paths with bombs though, so maybe the AI could have stood to be a little smarter. On the invading side of things where you have to take the enemy’s treasure, many elements don’t transfer over perfectly. You are on a team of 8, but they aren’t really your team. There is a single treasure to steal when you play in story mode and if you aren’t the one who steals it, you lose. White Bomberman has to be the main character. I think the idea was to assure the player character didn’t stand still and wait for the AI to maybe take care of the problem. Instead of an 8 v 3 it ends up being a 1 v 10, which isn’t even a challenge anyway. Most matches last 30 seconds if you know where the treasure actually is. The raiding side of things feels half baked and it’s really disappointing how you have to compete with your siblings instead of work with them.

One big change Super Bomberman R made was reestablish lore and make all the Bombermen be siblings with distinct personalities and I’m still not sure I’m a fan of this decision. While it’s great they are distinct, they can also get very annoying. There’s not a ton of story in this game, so they are all fighting for screen time due to 8 characters being an absurdly high number for a main cast. I think the story of this game integrates the individual characters better into the plot, but a lot of the time they do often come off as White Bomberman’s wacky side kicks. On the first invasion I did, I was kinda hyped to see all the Bomberman siblings together about to wreak havoc. They actually felt like a team. For a split second. Then you realize they are only getting in your way. I couldn’t help but imagine how cool it would be if these characters had their own little gameplay segments or maybe individual campaigns. Maybe then they could be cured of the annoying sidekick syndrome they’ve been bedridden with for 2 games. I desperately want to be endeared to these characters, but this game isn’t built for that. For as ambitious as it is, it’s only ambitious compared to the past few story modes.

I really need Konami to make the next Bomberman Story Mode with a budget. Aside from some qualms I have with the raiding side of Home Invasion, all issues with the game stem from a suffocation of new assets. You explore 3 planets in this game, which mean only 3 motifs. That’s on the lower end of Bomberman Games. 5 motifs is the expected minimum. While I never tired of the gameplay, I did tire of the visuals after a while. 3 Planets means only 3 over world themes, and while they do good to provide multiple mixes of those themes, that means there’s only 3 unique melodies for the majority of the campaign. It’s not even half as many as its predecessor. Sadly, I’ll take the soundtrack of the first game over this one any day. Asset diversity is the one thing I feel R1 completely trumps its sequel in.

3 planets also means a limited number of bosses. The Boss fights in this game have the quality and bombast I desire from this series. Well the third one is kinda bad, the rest are pretty great. There are clear patterns the boss goes through and the better you are at reading the boss and knowing what their openings and weak points are, the faster you can finish the fight. But because the story wants to do a cool finale with a multi-phase final boss fight, they decide to throw in a boss rush instead of a what they clearly wanted to do. It’s a bit deflating to have to slog through all these past bosses to get to the new content which there isn’t much of. And it’s shame because I was actually a bit invested in this villain’s motive and the lore they built here.

This Home Invasion Looter hybrid feels like a promising proof of concept for the future of the franchise, but I’m not confident it will be followed through. I don’t think this game is gonna sell as well as Konami wants it to, so it might be a while for an R3 to happen. But even after enjoying what they created, I would still prefer they make a pure Looting or Loitering type story mode next. I’m mainly just happy this team is trying new things. While Home Invasion has potential, it’s not the end of the world if it isn’t followed up on. But this game has really convinced me of something that I’ve always known deep down.

I can’t hide it anymore. I just want Bomberman to become the new Zelda. I’m not kidding. For a decade I have hungered for a new traditional Zelda game and Nintendo seems to have no plans for making them. I’m playing through The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom savoring every morsel of traditional Zelda shavings it leaves behind, but it’s not enough. If you’re ever curious why I’m obsessed with this franchise, it’s because I’m a Zelda fan who is projecting. There has been a lonely rift in gaming for years now and it’s begging to be mended. Bomberman can fill that spot, I promise. Look at the level design in Bomberman 64: The Second Attack. Some of those are straight up Zelda dungeons! Tournament is the second best Bomberman game because it thinks it’s a Zelda game. The potential has always been there and I binged 40 Bomberman games in 2021 to see if there was anything else in the franchise that pushed the concepts those games introduced further. But I found nothing but a pile of mezzanine single player modes, a few gems, and Saturn Bomberman, the Best game I will never play again because Saturn Emulation is a nightmare.

Because Bomberman is such an unfocused franchise and because its multiplayer has subsumed its identity, I know it’s just not gonna happen. But the heart wants what the heart wants. My heart wants a different type of bomb in each dungeon that you use to solve complex puzzles. My heart wants consistent lore and culture between games. My heart wants a sick Rival Boss Fight between Max and Bomberman. My heart wants to use Louies and Tirras as mounts as you roam the overworld. My heart wants to place a bomb on a suspicious wall and find a secret, because that’s what both franchises are really about at the end of the day. Maybe my brain is still fried from the Great Bomber Binge of 2021, but I really do think this makes sense. This franchise has been around for over 40 years, yet feels like it never truly exploded. But it’s not too late Bomberman. The mantle is yours to take. Seek the throne, for it is now empty and calling out to you.

Anyway, here’s a diagram of all the categories I’ve divided the games I’m familiar with into. You’re Welcome.

[constellation2330]

Starfield, Final Thoughts

'cause no-one else I know has finished the game and I have to scream into the void

Starfield is a good game. There have been a couple of bugs so far (namely one where almost everything in my player home disappeared after a certain stage in the main quest, due to New Atlantis refreshing after a 'invasion' state, and a couple of naked guards), but everything has been stable and plays really well.

I like the combat, enemies will take cover, duck, run to new cover, run away, charge you. After playing a ton of FO4, it's refreshing. Outpost building and decorating is fun, and placing things is easier than in FO4. Scanning and exploration are not very exciting, but when you do them at the same time as other things (scanning a planet, flora and fauna whilst you're there for a quest, collecting resources), it can be a relaxing little side jaunt, particularly on an interesting looking planet. The random encounters, which Bethesda has always done so well, are also great.

The faction quests are genuinely fantastic. I've not completed them all entirely, but the UC one has been my favourite so far. There's some genuine 'oh shit' moments, the NPCs are compelling, and the missions are fun. I had an absolute blast with that UC one, particularly because by that point, I had learnt enough about the universe I had started taking certain things for granted that were turned on their head. There was a jump scare moment that was very delightful.

Companions are likeable, feel very grounded with 'real people problems,' and are tremendously well voice acted. I had fears they would be caricatures, particularly Barrett, but they're all solid.

Here's the bad, then.

No ground map. Particularly early on, this is a huge pain in the ass. There's actually a lot to see and do in the established settlements, but running around like a headless chicken when you're new to the game and just want to buy more ammo is frustrating. Luckily, there are some good maps online already, and after a while you'll find the layout of these places is pretty simple and you'll remember where everything is. Taking some of the 'activity' missions is also a fun and natural way they get you to explore the settlements.

Exploration, whilst as I said is a decent enough little side diversion as you do other things, is not the promised point of this game. It's boring, and I would like these points of interest to either a) have interesting enemies you need to fight b) have rare or unique loot to make them worth going to c) have random encounters or d) give you some much needed extra XP.

Companions, whilst likable, are maybe... too sane. The fact that all the main four 'full' companions are from the same, lawful, good faction is a real issue if you want to play a 'bad' or crime filled playthrough. Whilst I really like their backstories, one of the attractions of companions in games is that you get to hang out with some absolute nutters, and there are none here. We needed a mix, like in Fallout, of rival factions who would bicker and snipe at each other, at least one you can't get or lose in your first playthrough if you choose a 'side,' and at least one you can sway from their original faction. I would maybe have picked two from Constellation and one from the UC, Freestar, Crimson Fleet and House Va'runn. Sam could easily have been from the Freestar questline, as you take his place in the Rangers so he can get out to spend more time with his daughter (onto that later), Andreja could easily have been House Va'runn, who stays or leaves depending on your actions. We come to those two too late, really, when all the interesting stuff in their lives has essentially happened.

Edit: I should say, you can 'sort of' sway Andreja, but I would like to have seen YOU uncover her as a House Va'runn spy, and either let her continue (keep her secret), have her kicked out (and encounter her later as an enemy) or convince her to leave the house and join Constellation for real. The companion comments on that would have been amazing tbh.

So, the main quest. It's... a little unsatisfying. You don't get any answers about what the artifacts actually are (I'm thinking the DLC will explore this), and if you romance Sam Coe, something that really annoyed me was how easily he was willing to become Starborn, let his daughter become Starborn too, knowing the risk that they would be separated. In WHAT universe would a father as loving as Sam take the risk that he would never see his daughter again, just to fulfil some vague explorer's desire? This is done for gameplay reasons, you can't exactly wait for her to grow up, act out living a life with your family and then move on when you're all ready (although I like to think this is how it happens for my character). But it's very, very jarring. This is sort of addressed with one of the New Game+ openings, where adult Cora appears looking for revenge from a universe where Sam died, and is clearly resentful of the artifacts. But it just didn't really sit right with me.

It is, however, a really interesting and fun way to take your character into New Game+, if you're the kind that likes to do another playthrough with the same character. It's a bittersweet ending as you leave behind 'your' universe, but by the time you've done everything you wanted to do, you sort of feel 'ready.' It was nice to see the little epilogue tableaus, too.

So, yeah. Is it worth playing? Yeah. Was it worth the money I spent? Well... yeah, to be honest, considering the money off I'll get for the DLC included. But I would also recommend waiting until it comes down in price. You'll have fun and be absorbed, but I don't think it'll ever make the same splash (especially on Tumblr) that Fallout and BG3 have made.