#I had a lot of fun drawing them and adding a spooky spin for the gift

[hitwiththetmnt]

Happy Halloween @bluesgras !★彡

Thank you @rottmnt-secret-gifting for putting together this event! It was a lot of fun getting to gift some spooky drawings for the holiday :}

[chicksung]

One Last Time || Park Jisung

Genre: Fluff, best friends to lovers!au, nonidol!au. Part of the @neo-the-stars-net halloween collab

Pairing: best friend!jisung x fem reader

Word Count: 2.9k (I didn’t intend for this to happen)

Warning/s: Mentions of fake blood (red paint), singular mention of alcohol (not consumed by either party)

Synopsis: Senior year. Full of teenagers trying to pack the most into their last year of high school to make it memorable. You and Jisung have decided that this year will be the end of your tradition, trick or treating. Better make it count, right?

A/N: I was so happy to be able to be a part of this collab and a special thanks to @ncitythoughts for letting me bounce ideas off you. I really appreciate it, elle! This concept also one my favourites. I also couldn’t find a gif of it but the costume that jisung is in is his one from Halloween 2018! Enjoy, spookies!

Adding the final touches to your makeup, you smiled brightly at your mirror image and stood up, looking the same reflection up and down at your costume. You had recently found your obsession with Stephen King horror movies, your favourite of which being It. You knew that was basic, but the character design of Pennywise was something that continued to fascinate you. So, with your slowly growing sewing capability and enough dedication, you created your genderbent Pennywise cosplay. White top with ruffled sleeves, ruffle white skirt, a lot of white, but for a bit of fun (and what was pretty much canon) you had splattered the clean material with red paint, creating fake bloodstains.

Now your face was coloured white and your lips were shaded into the creepy and sinister smile that Pennywise always harboured. Once satisfied with your reflection, you turned to your best friend. “What do you think?” You called out to him, drawing his attention away from the whiskers he was drawing on his cheeks. He looked you up and down for a moment before smiling.

“Truly terrifying.” Jisung smiled, turning back to his reflection to add the last whisker. He placed down the eyeliner pen and stood up. Jisung’s costume was also mainly white, but his taking on a more animalistic and innocent portrayal, polar opposite to your ‘blood’ splattered clothes.

“Look at you, Jwi. So cute.” You said, playfully pinching his cheeks, causing him to groan.

“Y/N stop~ We’re not five anymore.” He stated.

He was right. You weren’t five anymore. You were both eighteen and in your final year of high school. Funniest thing about this whole thing is that you didn’t even know Jisung when you were five. The two of you didn’t meet until you were eleven and the seating plan the teacher had set up had graciously introduced you to Jisung, the soft spoken, gangly boy who spent way too much time in the gymnasium for your liking, yet the two of you became inseparable.

To be quite honest, you had no idea how it happened, it just did. Asking for solutions for the math homework ended up turning into the most important friendship you’ve made.

“Y/N! Y/N! Are you ready?” Your little sister, Gyuri squawked, running into your room in her cheap Halloween store Princess Aurora dress. The young girl was six and only came up to Jisung’s knee, but her excitement was measured to approximately seven feet tall. It was the first year that your mother had let her go trick or treating but only if you went with her, and knowing Jisung, he wasn’t going to mind the girl tagging along. You knew he was very much whipped for Gyuri and she looked up to Jisung like the older brother she never had.

“Give us a minute, GyuGyu. We’re almost done here. Why don’t you go and get the little bags I bought. They’re the purple and black bags I put on the kitchen table. There’s one for each of us, and our names are written on them. Can you do that for me?” You said, slowly shrinking down to her level so she hopefully wouldn’t be to intimidated by the creepy clown makeup, but thankfully she remained bubbly.

“I can do that!” She said, her hands curling up into little fists before running back out the door she had entered not long before.

“Does she ever just...stop?” Jisung asked. He was honestly jealous with how much energy the six year old had. You shook your head, a reminiscent shine glazing over your eyes. You didn’t recognise the trance you were in until Jisung was waving his hands in front of you.

“Hello? Earth to Y/N? Do you copy?” Jisung huffed, his big brown eyes almost touching your own. Your eyes finally snap back to now and you see how close in proximity your face was from his.

“Yes, I copy. Now get out of my face.” You rolled your eyes, shoving Jisung away from you. He chuckled and stepped away from you, a warm feeling buzzing in his chest. A buzz he recognised way too well, and one he only felt when he was with you.

“Okay you two, stand in front of the door. I think you know the drill.” Your mom smiled, camera clamped firmly in her hand as she gestured towards you and Jisung.

Another one for the scrapbook

You shuffled towards the tall boy, looking towards your mom and smiled. Jisung did the same. His heart shaped smile revealed his teeth and gums to the camera and your mother couldn’t stop herself from fawning over him a few seconds after the shuttering of the camera was heard.

“Aww, Jisungie, dont you just look adorable?” She cooed, making you roll your eyes. “Mom, stop it~ It’s embarrassing~”

“What? Am I not allowed to compliment someone?” She teased back before you rolled your eyes and strutted over to see the photo, a soft smile gliding across your face. This was really the end of your tradition, huh?

You and Jisung retreated back to your bedroom and from under your bed, you pulled out a scrapbook with its spine cracked from how many times it had been opened.

It had been your mother’s idea to scrapbook your friendship. Although you thought it was dumb at first, you’re really glad she had suggested it. Calling for Jisung to pass you one of your many orange gel pens, you made small decorations in the page before writing ‘Halloween, Senior Year’ at the top in cursive and glued the picture onto the page.

You couldn’t help but flick back to your very first Halloween together, you dressed in a cheap princess dress and crown (very similar to your little sister’s), and Jisung in an equally as cheap vampire costume, complete with fake teeth. Your pumpkin shaped candy buckets clutches tightly in your hands.

The more pages you flip, the more you watched yourselves grow. Jisung went to being shorter than you to being five feet taller than you and you grew into your body and developed as every girl did.

“God, I was so cringey back then.” Jisung groaned when he saw what picture you were looking at.

“And what makes you think you grew out of that?”

“And what makes you think that...that...” He tried to find something to fire back at you but all he came up with were bent bullets.

“Better luck next time, Sungie.” You smirked slyly, your hand creating a ‘V’ on his face and squishing his cheeks. He puffed his cheeks out and stood up, walking towards your little sister, who was busy imitating a spinning top in her dress.

“Gyuri! You silly, if you keep spinning like that, you won’t be able to come trick or treating with us!” Jisung told her, placing his hands lightly on her back to stop her. Gyuri stumbles for a second when she stopped before smiling up at Jisung.

“I’ve stopped now. Can we go?” She asked excitedly, bouncing on the balls of her heels and with a singular nod from your mother, she squealed (which rang through room in a pitch you didn’t like to think about) and grabbed her little black and purple bag and raced to your side.

“I take it you’re ready to go?” You asked the little girl, who nodded her head enthusiastically. You looked back to Jisung, but his eyes were trained to your sibling and an unconscious smile touched your lips.

“Have fun, kids!” Your mother voice broke your train of thought and you nodded.

“We’ll see you later, mom!”

As dusk turned to nightfall, you, your best friend and your little sister went to the doors of the decorated houses, which broke the familiarity of the normal picket fences neighbourhood. The excited rap on every house’s door was opened with an equally excited parent, placing candy into each of your buckets. There were a few who questioned you and your friend, asking if you were too old for dress up.

“It’s been our tradition for years. It’s what brought us closer together.” You would always tell them before taking Gyuri’s hand and skipping back up the path and onto the next house.

By 9pm, Gyuri was in Jisung’s arms, fast asleep, her pudgy cheek squished up against her eye. The stars were out now and the moon’s reflective rays were the only thing that lit up your path aside from the occasional streetlight. You opened up the front door, Jisung pushing passed you to deliver the six year old to your mother.

“Are you two going to stay out a little later?” She asked the boy. He nodded. “Yes, we are but not too much later.” He promised. Your mom smiled. If there was anyone who was just as whipped for Jisung as you were, it was your mother.

“Alright but no later than midnight, alright kids?” She called out as Jisung made his way to the door. With a call of reassurance delivered, you and Jisung left the house once more and began to wander the streets.

The memories from the past seven years crashed over your mind like a tidal wave, images of a younger set of best friends, running like crazy through the streets, playing chasy with all the other neighbourhood kids while the parents sat around and drank and conversed. The memories of your younger self. A younger friendship, a younger mindset, a younger crush.

Neither you ever confessed your feelings but you lost count of how many people (particularly adults) who assumed you were a couple.

“Do you remember when I would sleep over, if the sky was clear, we would say we would sleep under the stars but chicken out and just sleep in your room?” You reminisced on the story aloud, Jisung giggling in return.

“Yeah. We were so scared something like a cougar was gonna eat us or something.” His laughter picked up again, his eyes squinting as he did.

“The wild imagination of a child, I guess.” You concluded, falling back into comfortable silence before stumbling across a part of the neighbourhood that was all too familiar.

The woods.

Many games of hide and seek and murder in the dark were played here, the latter being played with other friends and children on the same street. You remember the nights of giggling until your sides ached, hiding until you had to find the seekers, being too good that you were always made the seeker.

“We basically know every inch of that wood.” Jisung cocked his head to the side, trying to peer into the wood, seeing if there were any creatures of the night lurking around. There weren’t but it wouldn’t hurt to check.

“I remember making so many cubby houses with Yuna and Seulgi. You, Renjun and Chenle wouldn’t let us into yours so we made our own. Turns out ours was much more stable when it came to windy days.” You teased, letting your shoes tease the edge between the woodly maze and the street. Jisung scrunched his nose up and folded his arms, mumbling something about Chenle being dumb and Renjun being just as dumb when it came to stability.

Jisung stood there for a second longer, before his eyes lit up with an idea. “We should play hide and seek.”

You snapped your head towards him so fast, it almost gave you whiplash. “Huh?”

Jisung looked at you and felt his chest was about to explode from the warmth inside it. “I mean, if we’re stopping our tradition tonight, might as well finish it properly. Let’s play hide and seek one last time, before we become boring adults stuck in office jobs and getting more paper cuts than hours of sleep.”

You couldn’t see why not

“Since it was your suggestion, you’re the seeker.” You declared as you dashed into the woods, looking for the same pile of old plywood that you would hide behind and no one could ever seem to find you. Jisung tried to protest but you were too far into the wood that his complaints fell onto deaf ears.

You could hear Jisung’s footsteps approaching and distancing themselves from the spot you sat. ‘Even after all these years, that idiot still can’t find me.’ You thought to yourself. You checked your phone and you had been crouched in the same position for ten minutes.

“Y/N! Y/N! Where are you?” You heard Jisung’s voice echoing from the other side of the wood.

“Over here, you stupid!” You called out, knowing that he was nowhere near close to finding you. He dashed back to the centre of the forest, looking around and trying to pinpoint where your voice had called out to him moments ago.

“Where’s here?” He asked, but this time, no reply. He groaned before calling your phone. You were quick to decline the desperate boy’s plea and watched as he tossed his head back in annoyance. You watched him slowly make his way closer to you, and you were in perfect alignment with his ankles. Yes. Yes. This is what you wanted.

One step. Two steps.

When he reached his third step, you grasped his right ankle, causing the boy to screech in a high pitch and high decibel rating. You were laughing your ass off, while Jisung calmed his racing heart (mind you, you were dressed as a psychopathic clown). You pouted at him before wrapping your arms around him.

“I’m so sorry. I saw the opportunity and I had to take it. Please please forgive me.” You pleaded, squeezing him tightly and listening as his heart slowed, but his heart still had a skipping rhythm to it.

“I suppose I can. But I can’t promise anything.” Jisung sighed out, plonking down at the base of a thick oak tree whose branches reached over the night sky, obscuring the stars that dimly shimmered above. You sat down beside him and sighed, your head resting against the tree.

Jisung watched over your smiling form, your fascination with the stars saving him from being caught staring at you. His heartbeat quickened once more and unbeknownst to him, a soft pink hue poked at his cheeks and reddened his ears.

“Y/N?” He called out to you, pulling you from your starry trance. You caught the flaming red that flowed on the tips of his ears.

“Yeah, Sungie?”

“Can I tell you something? Something I’ve been hiding from you?” His question was hesitant and his tone was shy, like he was scared of your reaction.

“Jisung, we’ve been friends for years. You don’t need to ask me to tell me something.” You chuckled, nudging his arm to try and get him to lighten up. The blush in his cheeks darkened crazily fast and he sighed.

“I’velikedyouforareallylongtimebu-” His words were jumbled and close together and you couldn’t understand anything he was saying.

“Woah, woah, woah. Slow down, Jwi. Take a deep breath and try again.” You reassured him, turning your body towards him and rubbing his shoulders. Jisung followed your instructions, sighing out his breath and trying again.

“I’ve liked you for a really long time but I didn’t know how to tell you. I felt like tonight would be my last chance before I chickened out again.” This time, you understood him and you couldn’t quite still your pounding heart.

“You don’t have to accept and I know this might ruin our friendship but I had to shoot my shot, you know and Haechan said-”

“I like you too.” You interjected, your own cheeks dusting pink. There was a silence, filled with processed emotions and spiked heartbeats.

“So...”

“Guess Renjun was right.” Jisung snapped his head towards you. “What do you mean?” You chuckled at the boy’s confused face and hummed.

“He said that if we didn’t like each other by the end of high school, there was something wrong with us.” Jisung scrunched up his face and mimicked the words you just, imitating Renjun’s voice. “Well, he wasn’t exactly wrong.” You smiled, picking yourself up and dusting off your knees and butt.

“How long have you liked me?” Jisung asked, standing up himself as the two of you started to wander aimlessly. You looked up to the sky in thought, the stars helping you connect the question to the last seven years.

“Since I was like...13? 14? We had been friends for a while but I kept it quiet because you were still dating Heejin.” You could hear Jisung audibly cringe at the name of his ex-girlfriend. Yes, he and Heejin were only together for two months but she was awfully clingy and had tried to drive you and Jisung apart.

“You know what’s good about this though?” Jisung said, looking back to you, still seeing the sparkle in your eye despite it being almost pitch black.

“What?” No sooner had you said that, you felt Jisung’s lips touch the burning skin of your cheeks and your face flushed red. He laughed at you before pulling your arm towards the street once more.

“I should get you home. Your mom said to be home by 12, didn’t she? Don’t want her thinking I’ve Up and left with her daughter.” He smiled at you.

As the two of you walked side by side, like you had done for years, your pinky fingers wrapped around each other as you set off home. Down the same road you had walked for years, with the person you loved more than anything.

[hyliangrace-a]

oh, i ended up spending so much time on this, but - it’s done ! it’s far from perfect but i’m pretty satisfied that there’s a visual guide to my idea of hyrule, post-seven years war. & now, god help you all, i’m gonna talk about it lmao. click here if you want to see a full-sized version of the map, but i’m also gonna put it under the cut in this post with the original map for comparison, & go on for a bit about how hyrule has, in my interpretation, changed under zelda’s rule.

( this gets long. like, really long. like, over 4,500 words long. read at your own risk. i’d say i’m sorry, but i’m really not. & fuck drawing water features forever. )

first thing’s first - the map !

( apologies for the giant watermark underneath it all but i’ve had my shit stolen before & i’m not enthused at the idea of having it happen again. clicking it open in a new tab should make it bigger if the link above doesn’t work. )

so, it’s slightly bigger than the original map which is featured in the game, haha. here’s a comparison of the two, actually, with my map over the top of the original so you can see what’s been changed or added & where. i’ll talk about what got added & why in a bit, i want to speak just about the actual map, first.

i did my best to keep the main locations of hyrule as specified in the game in the same place, & i think did an okay job, tbh ! my biggest nitpick was just how many dang cliffs & rockfaces there are on the original map. i know they serve a purpose in-game, which is completely fair, but they limited worldbuilding a little by making the map so small, so i took some liberties. not with every cliff, of course - i kept some in the southwest to keep the border between gerudo valley & hyrule field intact, & kept the ridge the river runs through - partly for the sake of continuity, & partly because i’ve always loved the fact that falling into the river in the valley washes you down to the lake. expanding them into a new area was fun, too, because at least then they go somewhere, rather than just locking you in to a certain place.

my main point of contention, to be honest, was the giant rockface in south hyrule field. again, i understand why it was there, but, come on ! so i ended up just doing away with it all, letting it lead a path to two new areas i’d like to work into zelda’s canon. the map just fades out in certain places, too, particularly the gerudo desert, so i ended up expanding that a little more & having it lead into the cliffs above lake hylia - the river already runs from the valley to the lake, so why not have more of the desert lead into the mainland ? the mountains, too, got their range expanded, because they just seem so ... small, in canon, when they aren’t being used specifically as dungeon locations. i’d say the only place on the map i didn’t expand in some way is that little gap between zora’s domain & the kokiri forest - the forest is so hemmed in & the domain is literally inside a mountain, hidden behind a waterfall, so i was happy to just let that be empty space. if you manage to climb over the cliffs surrounding the domain, or break through the treetops in the forest, you get a view of the ocean, & that’s that !

it was fun to look at the maps of the games that came chronologically before this one & see how the position of things in hyrule change, but i’m kind of glad that there was only the three before ocarina of time, because the mountains alone move across the map at their leisure, good god. there was a bit of freedom in it, too, because in zelda’s canon timeline, the gods are going to flood hyrule anyway, so i could make whatever changes i wanted because it’s all gonna end up underwater & unseen in the end - plus, it meant i could add in more mountains to take up empty space on the map, because the hylians have to flee somewhere to escape the flood, & i don’t think the peak of death mountain could hold them all. most of the new locations were inspired by the minish cap, more than any other, so i’m going to start at the top of the map & move down to talk about them.

i always loved royal valley & the royal crypt in the minish cap, to be honest. it was spooky & cute, & i’m surprised it, or a concept like it, hasn’t made much of a comeback in later zelda games. the royal family’s tomb being in kakariko village never bothered me much as a kid ( other than the fact their headstone gets utterly destroyed & you get assaulted by what we can only assume are the zombies of previous hylian rulers ??? & then it’s just left open for anyone to stumble in & possibly loot slash get murdered by said zombies ??? actually, y’know what, this bothers me a lot more as an adult, what the fuck - ) but kakariko was a village founded by the sheikah, originally for the sheikah, so i did always find it a little strange that at some point, a ruler of hyrule went ❛ that’s cool, you do you, but make space for us in your graveyard. ❜ i know the history between the hylian royal family & the sheikah is implied to be murky ( thank you, shadow temple ) but that’s a meta for another day, so i’m not gonna go into too much detail, but it’s still something that sticks out as strange to me. call it the sheikah continuing to guard the royal family in death or whatever, but, hm. weird. anyway !

the point is, after the seven years war ends, zelda decides that what originally belonged to the sheikah should be given back to the sheikah. kakariko village was opened up to non-sheikah by impa prior to the rise of ganondorf, & that’s her perogative & not something zelda would ever dream of interfering with, but that applies to the living, & those who die within the village deserve to be buried in the same place. it takes time to get around to the rebuilding of hyrule castle & its’ town, but when it’s time to plan for it, zelda chooses to utilize the abandoned valley which lies behind the castle as the new home for the royal crypt, but not solely for that ! she establishes & sponsors a university on behalf of the royal family, with special consideration going to the preservation of hylian history ( a lot was lost in the hyrulean civil war prior to her birth, nevermind the seven year war following that so quickly, & we can see in other zelda games, such as twilight princess & breath of the wild, historical preservation within hyrule is ... terrible, to say the least. of course, it will all be washed away when the goddesses flood hyrule, but fuck, at least she tries. ) the university also covers a range of other subjects, but history is the one zelda takes an active interest in, & she spends a lot of time with scholars who specialize in it. the royal crypt lies at the very back of the valley, the university being closer to the castle, & then ... watch this space ! i’m likely to add more things to areas around the map in the future.

hyrule castle & hyrule castle town i’ve left in the same spots, pretty much - i imagine the castle is rebuilt to be something like the one we see at the bottom of the ocean in wind waker, but i intend to put my own spin on that, too. zelda wouldn’t be focused too much on getting a castle up agaiin ( i’ve mentioned in a thread before that two years post-ganondorf, she is still sheltering at impa’s house in kakariko village, as rebuilding for the civilians is her main priority, & whilst i haven’t figured out exactly how long that lasts for, it’s a safe bet to say a good few years ) & she definitely wouldn’t want to be living anywhere especially y’know, grandiose & opulent, if her people were still struggling day to day. the castle town bounces back better than ever, expanding a little more to the left over time, but that’s a gradual thing. no real change except a distinct lack of redeads, which is always a bonus !

death mountain & its immediate surroundings, i was happy to leave as they are - it’s marginally wonky in place compared to the original map but it’s not a severe drift from canon, so lets just pretend it sits a little more to the left, shhh. it’s a volcano built into a mountain with a network of caves both inside & adjacent to it, plus a place of worship built into the heart of it, & you can’t really go wrong with that, so i focused on all that empty space beyond them left on the map. minish cap came in clutch again, because by fuck, did they have a mountain range, so i ended up dipping in to it for the names of this one. the gorons are clustered at the forefront of the mountain because everything beyond their city has been mined to the absolute death by those who came before for its resources, & abandoned by the same in turn, but they still send patrols to make sure it’s fine. 

there’s a story of how, before the gorons settled into the mountain, a man of great strength climbed the mountain alone to make his home within it - he faced eruptions from a then-hostile death mountain, fought off the creatures who called the range home & weren’t fond of sharing, & forged on to what was said to be the edge of hyrule itself. it wasn’t, not quite, but it was far enough away from the central provinces of the kingdom that the mountains became capped with snow, contrasting the temperate mountains to the west. the story goes that the adventurer decided to call the furthest reaches of the mountain home, & singlehandedly carved out what would become the beginning of the mines, in order to gather materials for his forge. it’s been disputed whether said man was hylian or goron, as the biggoron family claim lineage from him, but the mountains he once inhabited are named for him now, & are one of the places zelda hid whilst on the run & masquerading as sheik - despite the extreme temperatures playing havoc with her & nearly killing her, it’s one of the harder to reach spots in hyrule, so it provided a measure of safety that other places could not. melari’s hold lies in the northeast, but the cold spot on the mountain travels further south than would be expected, resulting in a cold spot - the ice cavern - to the north of zora’s domain.

real quick, fuck zora’s domain. there was no way to make the water feature coming from here look decent, or properly portray the types of cliffs it’s surrounded by, so please don’t judge it too harshly. at the end of ocarina of time, zora’s domain is still said to be frozen, but recovering from the curse ganondorf placed on it, which, great ! i’m gonna say, i could be completely off here in how it works, but i wanted to change things up a little, so if i am, i don’t mind that much. i like a bit of artistic license. also, if we can have literal fish people, a genderless species made of rock, children who don’t grow up in a magical forest which horrifically warps those who don’t belong, & a giant fucking overworld field where the skeletons of what look like fucking children come out to fight you at night ? i’m okay with this reckoning being off a little.

so, eventually, zora’s domain unfreezes. i personally imagine, as ganondorf’s power ebbed from hyrule, that the process started slow, until one day, it wasn’t. it’s said that zora’s fountain is the source of all water in hyrule, with the domain lying under the mountain it rests on top of, & a few secret passageways here & there, which is fine, usually - the fountain never froze, just the domain beneath it. that becomes a problem, though, when the magical freeze put in place by ganondorf wears off, & the excess water from the melt ends up flooding the domain. not a problem from those who live within it, with the zora being essentially amphibian in nature, but when that excess water begins seeping out into the fountain, through cracks in the mountain, through the entrance granted to those affiliated with the royal family ? that all goes over the fountain, down the sleepless waterfall, through the river, & that river completely bursts its banks. the water level of the river rises significantly, washing away much of the path previously taken by those who wished to go to the domain on foot, causing minor flooding in hyrule field as it travels downstream, & resulting in the waters of lake hylia rising when the overflow reaches it, hence the lake being larger in my version of the map. the rebuilding of a path to zora’s domain ends up becoming one of the earliest projects zelda undertakes as queen but it’s a bit of a logistical nightmare for a while, considering that, with princess ruto ascended as a sage, zora’s domain is now in a succession crisis. does it have much bearing on zelda’s life ? not especially, but i thought it was a nice bit of worldbuilding, so here it is.

kokiri forest, the lost woods, & everything within doesn’t change much. with the dark magic vanquished from the forest, & the great deku sprout able to thrive, the forest continues to grow, & overgrow. it’s still dangerous to outsiders to go within, still dangerous for anyone to enter the lost woods without a fairy companion to guide them & save them from a grim fate, but the children of the forest do grow somewhat braver about stepping out from their home to see the rest of hyrule. it never lasts long - not all of the kokiri are as brave as link was, after all, & hyrule is so vast compared to what they’re used to - but it sparks their curiosity & their desire to explore hyrule which eventually trickles down to the wandering koroks.

the area to the south / southwest of the kokiri forest is entirely my invention. as i said, in-game, it’s just cliffs to hem you in & prevent you from breaking the boundaries of the world, but there’s none of that in roleplaying, so i just … did away with them entirely. part of this is lake hylia not being as hemmed in by these walls as it is in-game, opening up into a new river & streams which travel through the south & southeast. crossing this river leads to three paths - take middle path, & you may find yourself in what’s known as the rito village. now, i’ll say here, i know that the rito don’t technically appear in hyrule until after the great flood, when the zoras somehow sprout wings, but nintendo’s strange decisions don’t change the fact that there are many wonderful people in the zelda rpc who play rito characters with crossover verses that let them interact with those who play characters in other parts of the timeline. in order to better facilitate interactions with these roleplayers, i decided fuck it, rito village in ocarina of time. canon can be easily bent. if, however, i’m writing with someone who wants to adhere to strict canon, then it’s just other hylians who live within the village, & rito is just the name chosen for the village, with no connection to the as-of-yet-unevolved race, just a nice little coincidence. regardless of who lives in it, though, the village & its name are fixed here in a southern woodland, with the village nestled amongst the hills within.

cross the bridge to the south & take the third branch in the path, you’ll find yourself inside the bremen woods. i honestly haven’t got much to say about the bremen woods here, but it’s not because i don’t have ideas for it - i have another headcanon brewing concerning myths, fables & fairy tales within hyrule, because … i am just that type of nerd. about eighty percent of my blogs before this one involved fairy tale characters in some way. it is, as the kids say, extremely my shit, & i’d like to tie the bremen woods into that, so i’m going to save what i have to say for that headcanon, but don’t worry. it’ll probably be a lot smaller than this one. ( thank god, i hear you say. i know, i know. i’m still not sorry. )

cross the bridge, then, & take the first branch in the path, & you better have a sword with you. the castor wilds are a lawless place, which is fitting for the corner of the world where the last remnants of ganondorf’s forces lie. any that weren’t killed during the restoration of the kingdom were beaten back to the edge of the world, & it’s not a friendly place. the last of the monsters shelter in a run-down settlement known as dragmire’s hold, the last place where those who sympathize with the king of evil can speak freely, & it’s murder to get to. the entrance to the wilds is a marshy swamp, thanks to the run-off of lake hylia, but if you manage to get through the mire, the land begins to dry out until you reach the hold, where the earth struggles to bear fruit & it seems the grass refuses to grow. it is, in a few words, fucking grim, & as a result, the go-to place for banishments within the kingdom. zelda isn’t a fan of harsh punishments, but she’s no fool, not anymore, & she won’t abide those who plot to throw the kingdom back into chaos, be it in service of ganondorf, or their own selfish natures. it’s rare that anyone actually finds themselves wandering the castor wilds, unless they actively choose to adventure there, but it is a very good threat, considering its reputation as the land where the devils live.

jumping across the map entirely, we come to the cliffs of coroa to the left of lake hylia. another spot on the map which is notorious for being hard to reach, the cliffs are an inviting challenge to those who want to boast of their climbing skills & durability. if getting up the cliffs doesn’t kill you ( & there is a very real possibility that it will, especially if you fall, ‘cause this water ain’t soft ) the journey down might do it instead, & that’s if you survive your trip at the top. there has been rumours of a great treasure hidden away in the cliffs for years, though the debate on what it might be was pretty intense, if you got into it. for a time, some thought the legendary blade rested within the cliffs, & only those who could brave the rockface would be able to lay a hand on it; others argued that it contained more mundane, but still desirable, treasures, such as a great haul from a band of thieves, left behind when they were hunted down by the crown, growing only more valuable by the minute. some, with sense, said that the only thing atop the cliffs was certain doom for the morons who tried to make their way up them. the truth ? there’s nothing up there. sometimes, cliffs are just cliffs, & those who try to scale the ones facing lake hylia truly are fools. the gerudo people, however, had the right idea of how to get to them.

again, another aspect of canon i was happy to leave as it was. the gerudo desert is a vast, harsh swathe of land, continuously assailed by sandstorms, bordered to the north by what is called ❛ the great sand sea ❜ & to the south by the haunted wasteland, & it’s not hyperbole. spirit guides appear to those who seek the temple of the goddess of the sand, but very few have ever made it through the wasteland if they enter in pursuit of something else. one of the few who did was the gerudo heroine, ashai. a well respected warrior amongst them, ashai was the younger sister to the exalted rishika, the chief of the gerudo at the time, & one of the first to vow to conquer the wasteland & see what lay beyond the storm. though her sister cautioned against it, as tales of people becoming lost in the wasteland were not uncommon, ashai was a headstrong young woman, & she could not be swayed. she took with her a party of twelve, & in time, three returned to tell their story. ashai had forged a path through the ever-shifting sands & left it well enough marked that her companions were able to find their way back. it’s said that some succumbed to madness during the journey, tormented by the ghosts of the wasteland, whilst others fell ill whilst they traveled, choking on the sand which gathered in their lungs. seven of them made it through the wasteland to the valley which lay beyond, but ashai had grown sick during the crossing, & knew she would not make it back. instead, she spent the time she had left exploring the valley, & found a way through it to the peak of the cliffs of coroa. the legend says that is there she died, watching the sun rise atop the cliffs, speaking only of her sister, & her companions laid her to rest within the valley, which her sister then named in honour of her. whilst the gerudo are happy to let those who have proven themselves attempt the journey to the desert colossus, no outsiders are permitted to walk the valley of ashai, where a shrine was built for its namesake - it is considered sacred to them, & the journey to pay respects to ashai is now part of the trial given to those who wish to become chief of the gerudo, should the bloodline of the previous chief die.

that covers just about all the main areas & landmarks of hyrule, i think, so to move on to the last thing, the various settlements, villages, hamlets you see across the map. hyrule is a big place. yes, quite a few of the races are localized to certain areas, & yes, it’s entirely plausible the hyrulean civil war could have decimated the population, with the seven years war exacerbating that problem, but hyrule field just looked so … empty, once everything else was finished. so, rather than stick to a number of locales i can count on one hand, i threw a few more settlements across the map to try & make hyrule feel more like a real kingdom. not to breath of the wild’s extent, of course, but just something a little more than what was given. all those who survived the fall of hyrule castle town apparently fled to become refugees in kakariko village, which was opened to all by impa, which is fair, but i imagine as the world returned to something close to normality, & families started growing again, the village would quickly find itself overwhelmed. as queen, zelda would make it a priority to make sure none of her subjects go homeless - she knows all too well that struggle - & so she would begin a program to make sure there was enough villages or townships for every one of her subjects. those who volunteered would be given a set amount of money & plots of land across hyrule to build a home, which zelda would then personally visit to inspect, to make sure her people were thriving.

there’s little to say in detail about them all as of right now, as i’m still fleshing them out, but i have a few basic ideas. most of the settlements were named after the first to attach themselves to the project, but the names have the potential to evolve over time. they certainly won’t retain the hamlet / settlement status, that’s for sure. the offer wasn’t restricted to hylians, either - any other race in the land was free to join, though only a small number of gerudo accepted it, the others preferring to stay in their homes & travel as they need. ciela’s settlement was the one spearheaded by the gerudo who accepted zelda’s offer, hence its proximity to the valley. a lot of young men volunteered to go to this settlement, but zelda was happy to let ciela make her own call, & many were knocked back - only those with what ciela deemed viable skills were allowed in, & still, it’s very much a female dominated settlement, but it is thriving under her leadership, & blossoms into a successful village as time goes on. lon lon ranch is, well, lon lon ranch. with funding from the crown, talon was able to take on more staff & expand it at his leisure, but it is one of the very few places in hyrule which has stayed constant over time, & he was quite content to keep it that way, & zelda content with his decision. 

to the south of lon lon ranch lies damia village, the largest of all the settlements from its inception. led by a fearless young man who gave his name to the village, it is a hub of activity which could rival hyrule castle town. with damia came many like-minded people, all eager to forge their own path in the world & prove themselves as he had, as he had been part of the group which volunteered to help beat back the remnants of ganondorf’s forces. many of the families within damia village are the families of soldiers who work at the castle & it has gained a reputation for being a village full of strong, capable, trustworthy people. arborwood, which lies further to the south in a more rural location, is an outlier in that the one who volunteered to lead in this settlement didn’t wish to put their name to it - they didn’t want glory, just a place to call home where they could finally live in peace. arborwood is an agriculturally focused village, filled with farmers & those who possess green thumbs. a lot of trade is done between arborwood & all the other villages - everyone in hyrule became proficient at growing & hunting their own food in the past thirty years, as was necessary to survive, but it’s nice to have a place to get food from which specializes in high quality meat & crops. why hunt rabbits, when arborwood can provide venison ? 

last but not least, lynna’s hamlet, which settled at lake hylia at the request of the owner of the lakeside laboratory. as he was getting on in years, he wished to find someone to continue his work, & so specifically requested that any like-minded hylians settle close to the lake so that he could impart his wisdom & let them take over. he got quite a few more people volunteering than he bargained for, be they scientifically inclined, interested in cataloguing the history of lake hylia, or just desirous of a change in scenery. the smallest of the new settlements, lynna’s hamlet never truly flourished the way others did, but the buildings were never empty - as time went on & people began to move elsewhere, it became a popular spot for those who traveled the land to rest at when they came to the lake, with a very successful inn eventually being run by the lakeside, its doors open to any who wished to visit.

it’s not a lot of worldbuilding when it all comes down to it, compared to other things, but this is something that i’ve wanted to do for a long time. as i’ve mentioned in the section regarding the bremen woods, more headcanons are likely to follow regarding places on the map & how they change & evolve as time passes during zelda’s rule, but for now, there’s this ! something which makes hyrule feel less empty than what it was before, whilst still respecting canon, somewhat which was the goal all along. if you’ve made it this far, holy shit, go outside & feel the sun on your face. it’s been eighty-four years - but i can’t thank you enough for reading ! at least next time, the headcanon won’t be so long. i hope.

[radramblog]

My Commander Decks Pt.1

I was supposed to be going to a Commander night tonight, and that fell through, and now I’m just sitting here, staring at my deckboxes. So I thought I might channel that sorta fixation into a discussion of some of my (many) commander decks, the history behind them, and how my own deckbuilding ethos folds into them.

  The Mimeoplasm- Sultai Reanimator

My oldest and most storied deck, though it has changed a lot over the years. I first heard about commander not long after I started playing magic, and I didn’t have much of a collection at that point, nor did I have that much money to drop on a 100-card deck. I might not have even had the basics necessary at that point. When I heard of the upcoming release of Duel Decks: Jace vs Vraska, I ended up agreeing with my brother to split it- we pay half each, he gets Jace, I get Vraska, with the intent of turning that into my first commander deck, with my copy of Varolz, the Scar-Striped at the head.

Getting cards isn’t easy in Perth, as there aren’t many card shops and their stock is limited- ordering online is an option but it can take upwards of a month for cards to arrive from the US stores. As such, when I saw a significantly better generic BG “stuff” commander in Sapling of Colfenor in a local store, I was easily conviced to pick her up, sleeve her up, and lead with her for a long time

At this point the deck was still just a pile of (mostly bad) cards I liked, with somewhat of a graveyard theme, but it was my pile of cards, and I loved it. I have a lot of sentiment attached to most if not all of my commander decks, actually. Eventually we got to the release of Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged, and while somehow I never got convinced to run Sidisi, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, would eventually take command of the deck, adding Blue to its options.

Blue didn’t add much at first, and it’s still the least present colour of the three in the deck, but a looter or two and some funky spells were a fun time. I was never good at playing Tasigur, never really willing to delve too much, not willing to exile my own graveyard, a sentiment that would continue into the current configuration. Not long after this, one of my friends organised an online order, and I decided to order enough cards to completely retune the deck.

I’d like to argue I got lucky, seeing as a lot of the cards I picked up spiked not long after, but it was then that the style of the deck solidified, and it started resembling where the deck is at now. Despite the huge changes, however, I didn’t think to change the commander to the Ooze that now helms the deck until after, and it would take some time until a friend spotted a Mimeoplasm in someone’s binder at a draft for me to finally get the deck’s final commander, solidifying it as a Mimeoplasm deck rather than just my Sultai Reanimator deck.

Even now, this deck is an eclectic collection of my history with Magic. Ostensibly, it’s a deck that either tries to win on turn 2-3 by reanimating an insurmountable threat, or by grinding out value steadily lategame between engines, possibly ending the game with a convoluted combo. But that’s not really what the deck is, is it. It has the Vraska from that old Duel Deck, the misprinted Flooded Strand from my Khans of Tarkir prerelease. It has two of the 5 Masterpieces I somehow managed to open over the 3 entire blocks they did those, and it has the damaged Reanimate my best friend traded for for me (He needed value in the trade and I paid him back for it, but it still counts). Cutting anything from this list is like killing my darlings, maybe with the exception of the manabase (It’s still pretty awful).

 Radha, Heart of Keld- Gruul Topdeck

From my oldest deck to my newest. Radha is a deck borne of one evening- it was a friend’s birthday, everyone was peacing out and walking back to our cars, both me and the birthday girl are parked next to the local game store, which, hey, it’s still open, let’s take a peek. I ended up buying everyone a round of Modern Horizons packs, as well as a Japanese Ikoria booster for myself, and apparently my good deeds were repaid in the packs I opened.

From this, I decided I wanted to build a more unique deck. See, it hadn’t been that long since the Commander precons where WOTC had decided to make a new archetype in the form of Esper Topdeck, printing Aminatou and Yennet as commanders to promote this. But with M21 recent, and Vivien’s ability to play off the top, I wanted to see what the other two colours could offer for such a deck. Hence, Radha, Heart of Keld became the leader of my own Gruul Topdeck deck.

There’s a lot of ideas coming together in this deck. The options for topdeck manipulation in Gruul are largely just the artifact ones, so I wanted more options to manipulate the deck- hence, I made sure the ramp was largely Rampant Growth type effects so they would still be relevant as shuffle effects in the lategame. I knew I wanted to run Wrenn and Six, so I made sure just about every nonbasic in the deck was a Evolving Wilds type effect- they synergize with Wrenn, they are shuffles when I want them, and they mean I can put all of my actually good Gruul lands in my other Gruul deck.

Unfortunately, the most you can abuse topdeck manipulation in Gruul to do is mostly just using it to cheat creatures into play. So that was the angle I went for, throwing a variety of spooky creatures in that would let me have a variety of options if I had the capacity to manipulate my deck. The sheer number of basic-searching effects I had gave me an excuse to run the Conduit of Ruin toolbox package I had in mind, letting me play Deciever of Form, a card in my collection that I’d had my eye on for quite some time, off of a one-of Wastes. I wanted to run Oath of Druids, so the deck doesn’t play any creatures under 3cmc just in case I’m flipping blind.

The deck does a lot of powerful nothing, but it’s not a blue deck, so I think I can get away with that. It’s far from perfect, and despite my disgust with the card it probably needs a Sensei’s Divining Top, butt I think this deck is an elegant reflection of my own deckbuilding process, if I do say so myself (and I do!)

 Callaphe, Beloved of the Sea- Mono-Blue Devotion Voltron

I built a Callaphe deck because I saw a foil showcase one at a card shop for cheap, thought it looked gorgeous, and had a bunch of blue cards sitting around without a deck to put them in. It’s not as well thought-out as some of my other decks, but I’d argue it has a lot going for it. Turns out the best way to play a bunch of blue enchantments with devotion also happens to you stealing a bunch of stuff and drawing a bunch of cards. Neat!

Callaphe has a bunch of new cards in it that I haven’t gotten to try yet, but I’m excited to do so- it’s probably the first deck I’m going to pull out at my next commander night. It’s not particularly powerful, but she gets big surprisingly quick, and no-one expects the old Corrupted Conscience my own Commander trick. Infect is a perfectly viable way to win a game of magic! Especially when I’m using someone else’s creature!

 Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist- Cat Tribal

The first round of Secret Lairs were announced in December 2019, as I recall. My birthday is December 11, and so I decided to spoil myself a little and pick up the “OMG Kitties!” pack, all the cards of which became the basis for this deck.

I’m a cat person. My cat Ruby is a brat but I love her to bits. This is the cutest deck I own.

Building around the Ikoria companion restriction was interesting, as it meant cutting staples like Sakura-Tribe Elder and…actually I think that was it? Turns out when you build kitty aggro you don’t want a lot of things that aren’t kitties. I opted for Mirri over Arahbo, however, partially because I despise Eminence as an ability, and partially because I like that Mirri lets you swing with impunity without getting cracked back too hard. A bit of a nonbo with Kaheera, unfortunately, but you can do worse. Kaheera usually gets blown up at some point anyway.

I’ve had a surprising amount of trouble getting all the tokens for this deck. I’m working on it.

 Roalesk, Apex Hybrid- Simic Superfriends

The idea for this deck is actually a spin on one from Ben Doolittle, from his Conditions Allow series on EDHREC. It inspired me, and while I took the mechanical core of the deck from the article, the Superfriends spin was my own idea. Essentially, the plan is to use Clone effects to convert cards in hand into copies of Roalesk’s powerful enter the battlefield and dies triggers (as the clones are sacrificed to the Legend rule), making the main man himself big very quickly and proliferating counters onto a wide variety of spicy planeswalkers.

The deck was built not long after the dissolution of my first Cube, as such many of the cards were taken directly from it- just about every UG walker in that cube or in my binder ended up in the deck, which proved problematic when I rebuilt the cube. It also ended up with the Doubling Season I opened in it, giving it combo potential, but the only tutor around is Jace, Architect of Thought’s ultimate, so it’s not a guarantee (Though the one time I did get it off was incredible…). Most of the deck is filled with Clones and a whole 22 planeswalkers, fulfilling a variety of roles in the deck, leaving not a whole lot of room for more traditional answers but since I have superfriends that ramp, superfriends that draw, and superfriends that are removal, it has yet to be too big an issue. Outside of ramp, however, I find myself allergic to “staple” cards, and so relying on the planeswalkers that the deck is built around and that synergise with Roalesk and the other Proliferate effects in the deck is fine by me.

The deck actually got strictly better with the recent Commander rules change that made dies triggers work even if you put the commander in the Zone, but I was a little salty anyway, since I’d built it with the idea in mind that I wasn’t getting that double proliferate unless I worked for it. Ah, whatever, can’t complain about the devs making my deck better for me, right?

 Much like many of these rambles, I’m going to leave this one here, halfway through. In the second half, we’ll discuss my awful but hilarious 5 colour deck, my awful to play against monocolour deck, and 3 others. ‘til then!

[anewfreind]

Hey so, you played DeltaRune right? What was your first impression on the main cast? i.e. raslei, lancer, Susie, Kris.

Oh fucketh yes thou kindeth basterd, let thine doith this.

Alright, so imma talk about the game and new characters, and if you would like, send asks on the undertale cast, and how they changed, because i would love to talk about that! I would also love to talk about theories for both Deltarune and Undertale! Do send asks! Now lets begin:

*ahem*

I was NOT expecting it to be this long for what I thought was a free demo

I loved ALL the characters this time. I didn't think I'd like Susie and Lancer much, but they grew to be my favourite characters of the story this time.

Also, I knew Deltarune was an anagram of Undertale, but I went through the entire goddamn game without realizing that Ralsei was an anagram for Asriel. Yes, I'm stupid.

I really like the new party battle mechanics! I didn't use the fight option, but still.

I wasn't able to find part B of the key that would unlock that mysterious cell in the prison. Did anyone else find it?

This was a very easy game to get a Pacifist run in, and I got the good ending straightaway! Seemingly.

SEEMINGLY.

WHAT WAS THAT ENDING?!?

Still here? Cool lets go

So, some interesting points and thoughts I had about the game and characters, and other things and tropes I noticed:

Ascended Meme: Toriel mentions that Kris and Asriel enjoy playing Super Smashing Fighters, a clear Shout-Out to the Super Smash Bros. franchise. At the time of the release of Deltarune Chapter 1, a popular meme was that Sans would be confirmed as a character for the then-upcoming Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Anti-Frustration Features: Should you make at least three unsuccessful attempts to clear either timed-tile puzzle, Ralsei will offer a hint on how to solve them

Attack! Attack! Attack!: Susie's main method of fighting: She'll keep attacking enemies and won't listen to Kris. Fortunately, she gets better during the final dungeon. Perhaps this is how she was raised?

Awesome, but Impractical: The Top Cake heals your entire party for 160 HP, but your entire party only has 90, 110 and 70 HP anyway and can't be increased at all. Furthermore, giving the Top Cake back to the Top Chef makes him give you the Spin Cake, which, while only restoring 80 HP, is unlimited and any encounter that isn't a Boss fight will probably not shave off your entire HP.

One thing that annoys me with the game is that Lv can’t increase, but we will get back to that later

Bait-and-Switch: A lot of the plot details are set up in a similar fashion to the previous game, only to subvert expectations.

Susie threatens Kris early on and is a berserker who attacks monsters on sight and doesn't care about the quest she's nominally on, much like a No Mercy run from the previous game, but she refrains from killing anyone and ultimately makes a Heel–Face Turn.

Lancer is similar in both a recurring antagonist role and has a skeletal appearance with a blue color scheme, which might lead players to believe he has a connection with Sans and Papyrus from the previous game; he and his father turn out to just be Darkners who resemble skeletons and have no apparent connection with Sans and Papyrus at all.

A mysterious doorframe appears early on and savvy players (or fandom nerds) might expect them to tie into Gaster as they did in the previous game. They end up being a fast travel system (which is lame).

Lastly, there's Lancer's dad, the King, who might look like a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Asgore, right down to one of the people close to him trying to persuade both you and him not to fight (Undyne for Asgore, Lancer for the King). However, when you actually encounter the King, not only does he threaten to throw Lancer off a roof if the Lighteners don't kneel before him, he also tricks Ralsei into bringing him to full health so he has them at their mercy again. He ends up being defeated by Ralsei putting him to sleep while Kris and Susie escape, or captured by Lancer when he turns his own troops on him.

Big Door: There's a large bunker-style door built into the landscape in the forest to the south of town. Locked, unfortunately.

One of the encounters can be resolved peacefully by getting Ralsei to sing a lullaby, which also puts Susie to sleep. This later turns out to be the key to peacefully resolving the fight with Susie and Lancer. It comes up again in the "bad" ending to the King fight, where Susie notes that while she can't take the King down, Ralsei can. Susie: “I'd never forget something I made fun of you for.”

Similarly, Susie attacks automatically during the first battle with Lancer (who can't be killed), which is an early hint to the player that Susie attacks on her own and you'll have to prevent her from doing damage if you want a pacifist run.

Cliffhanger: The chapter ends with Kris (most likely being controlled) pulling out their/the player's SOUL, shoving it in a cage, and drawing a knife, at which point Kris's eyes glow red like Frisk's do if Chara's permanently corrupted your save after a genocide playthrough back in Undertale. This ending felt like a punch to the gut, and gave me so many questions to ask. Also, in the final scene, you can control the SOUL while it's in the birdcage. It won't change the outcome.

Lancer appears to be this for most of the initially-bad guy cast of Undertale, possessing a Sans-like color scheme, Papyrus's kid-brother nature and general enthusiasm for "evil," and Alphys's emotional attachment to the Big Bad.

Kris seems to be a hybridization of Frisk and Chara: their face, skin color and silent nature lean more towards the former, while their clothes and relation to the Dreemurr family (especially Asriel) scream of the later. Of course, after what happens in the ending, who knows how the three are connected? But here is something people have forgotten about, since I haven’t seen anything on it, but Kris looks exactly like the unused Frisk sprite, besides the sweater

Even if you go out of your way to beat encounters by force, enemies just get knocked off-screen. Contrast with Undertale and its infamous Genocide/No Mercy route.

After you beat the game and it closes itself, restarting shows Ralsei's legend as the intro and provides a new background for the file select screen.

Susie's hair is wild and covers her eyes, symbolizing her wild and violent outcast vibe. After the fight with the King, it's cut to reveal her eyes, and she becomes a lot more expressive and open with her emotions from them on.

All main characters are this, or have a Face Framed in Shadow. Them revealing their faces is usually a big deal.

Kris and Susie's outfits change when they fall into the dark world. Kris also becomes more blue in appearance, while Susie becomes more pink.

On the walk home, talking to numerous characters heavily hints that something is up with Kris. Numerous people refer to them as "creepy", or "quiet", and Noelle notes that they're usually quite distant from others. The game implies that Kris was being possessed by the player ala the first game

Ralsei makes direct reference to interface elements and controls as part of his tutorial-giver role. This leads to an amusing moment in the first block puzzle, as this trope doesn't apply to Susie.

Susie: (Who the hell is "[Z]"?)

Susie's solo fight against Lancer parallels the first game's fight against Toriel in a number of ways. In both cases, the foe is a family member of the king that guards the protagonist's way back home, and they're trying to prevent the protagonist from meeting the king in order to avoid bloodshed. Once the fight goes on for long enough, the foe starts attacking exclusively by dropping projectiles from above that are guaranteed to miss, showing their reluctance to fight someone they'd started growing close to.

This chapter has a lighter tone than all of Undertale. The game mechanics are more focused on solving puzzles and befriending enemies than fighting, and no one can die, even if you DO decide to attack all your enemies.

After returning from the World of Darkness, talking to several of the NPCs imply that Kris isn't acting like themselves. Noelle comments on how Kris is really talkative compared to normal, Noelle's dad implies Kris has forgotten things that they should know, the hospital clerk comments on how Kris isn't normally so bad at playing piano, and Kris in general seems a lot less "creepy" to the townspeople.

After arriving at the fountain, Kris and Susie find themselves back at the school, in a room with a chess board, playing cards, and some toys that look like the characters they encountered. But both of them remember what happened, and it's left ambiguous as to whether it really was just a dream or not.

If you have the Spooky Sword equipped, your "weapon" upon leaving the dark world will be the Halloween Pencil, leading to more questions.

If you follow the Jevil sidequest plot to its conclusion, mentions of The Queen are made, as well as Seam describing the event that drove Jevil insane as "Dark yet Darker" adding even heavier implications to Gaster's presence in the future story.

If one talks to Rouxls Kaard after starting his first puzzle, he will verbatim quote I. M. Meen. (Also Rouxls Kaard, thou art must marrith me)

When Burgerpants talks about his fellow pizzeria employees, he mentions a "Purple Guy" and wonders if he even works there.

Ralsei removing his hat and hood at the end, revealing that he looks exactly like Asriel. Judging by Susie's reaction, this is one both in and out of universe.

Right at the end of Chapter 1. Kris is tossing and turning in the middle of the night, when they jump out of bed and start walking around very slowly. They then stop in the middle of the room and pull their own soul out of their body, before throwing it into the birdcage from earlier. They then turn their head around slowly, revealing Chara's trademark smile and glowing red eye, before materializing a knife out of nowhere. Anyone who's played Undertale (so most of people playing this game, as it was recommended to those who already played Undertale) should have some very horrific guesses about what this mean

The King grabs Lancer's throat when he finds out that they let the heroes get away

[thomasroach]

The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages

The post The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages appeared first on Fextralife.

The following post is this author’s opinion and does not reflect the thoughts and feelings of Fextralife as a whole nor the individual content creators associated with the site. Any link that goes outside of Fextralife are owned by their respective authors.

This started out as just a Steam review but I wanted to post due to the fact I enjoyed the game so much. But after the second paragraph, just after finding out that the Devs are releasing Season 2 in the coming year after a successful kickstarter, I realized that this is a game I want as many people as I can tell to know about. Just adding another positive rating to the already existent mass of them would be as helpful as getting a windmill to spin by blowing on it. So let’s do a full review, published courtesy of Fextralife so I can waste your time tell you about a pixel styled, point and click adventure game, so you can waste spend your money on it.

The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages

Genre: Adventure/Point & Click Developed by: Spooky Doorway Published by: Spooky Doorway Release Date: July 27th, 2017 Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam (Review Platform), Mac, Linux, Windows Price at the time of the review: $12.99

This is probably one of the funniest adventure games I’ve ever played and has got me back into occult fiction and fantasy. This is a mix of Ghost Busters and the X-Files, added with two thirds of the three stooges. It’s silly, spooky, laugh out loud fun and deserving of more investment, and no I am not a member of the dev team or affiliated with them in any way, but yes you should give them lots of money. If you have little to no interest in occult fantasy, buddy cop comedies, pixel graphics, or point-and-click adventure games, then I’m sorry to say you have lost approximately fifty seconds of your life reading the introduction to the review of a game you probably won’t want to get anyway. If you do, then let’s begin.

Story & Setting

The Darkside Detective tells the story, or rather many stories by Francis McQueeen, a seeker of the occult and eldritch as well as an investigator of all things paranormal and supernatural. Teamed with his goofy cop sidekick, Officer Dooley, Detective McQueen investigates multiple cases dealing with some form of ghostly apparition, crazed cultist, demonic entity, or cryptic creature. Despite its many horror themes and monsters, this game is a satire through and through, making fun of everything horror B-movies have tried to scare audiences with. It’s filled with parodies of various popular horror flicks and myths.

The satire, however, is really only a small facet of the comedic hilarity, as The Darkside Detective excels with its writing of ridiculous characters, situations, with plenty of jokes and jabs, that revolve around what is terrorizing New Yor-I mean Twin Lakes at the time being. Twin Lakes is a city rife with crazy paranormal encounters, and equally crazy (if not more so) people to deal with. Its a bevy of kooks and weirdos who range from a pyromaniac eight-year-olds, a paranoid anti-government sea monster, An occultist train engineer, a rival detective so douchy he literally takes candy from babies (then fines the baby for crying about it) and more.

It’s just…a mess, a beautiful mess of madness that makes progressing through each story a treat, with dialogue so funny that I want to interact with every possible thing just to hear it all, and everything seeming to have some kind of oddity or quirk just to make it all that much stranger. I could go into further detail on each individual story, but honestly the best experience with this game, is going in blind. Truly it’s the storytelling and writing that makes this game fantastic, as it seems to be for the most part of these classic adventure games.

If my mother had that much storage space in her closet, she’d still run out of room by the end of the month.

It’s the major selling point, and what I most loved about The Darkside Detective. I wish I could say more, but unlike thoroughly explaining gameplay, visuals, audio, and all other more technical components of a game, story and humor are some things you can’t go into full detail  without spoiling the plot, or weakening the experience compared to a first time playthrough. Again, if you enjoy buddy cop comedies, Ghostbusters, and horror movie satire, this is a sure thing, heck, even if you don’t like point-and-clicks, I would still say get a guide and play through it like that, cause the humor is top notch. Simple at times, witty at others, but splendid all around. Not every joke was equally funny, but there wasn’t a single one that didn’t at least put a smile on my face.

Audio & Visuals

Simplistic, is one word I could use to sum up the pixel art style and colorful is another. Blocky, square, and geometrically appealing are a few more. “The Darkside Detective’s pixel graphic style lends a nostalgic return to classic point and clicks of old, that is reminiscent of titles such as Monkey Island and Dark Mansion” is a pretentious sentence I could also use to describe the art style. However, when it comes to pixel art, there only three things I, and likely what most people care about.

There are no words to describe how I feel about this.

Does it look nice? Can you tell what’s going on and what’s what? And will it possibly give me an epileptic seizure? To all these questions I can pretty much answer yes, yes and you may want to consult your doctor about that. Really though, given the decades of practice game development has had in 2D pixel art, I think it should be the basic standard for any pixel game to look “nice”, decent at least, and The Darkside Detective has certainly accomplished that.

Though simplistic to the point of not having facial features for most characters outside of facial hair, and hardly any dynamic animations, the game looks vibrantly colourful, and is especially beautiful at certain points in the story. It’s…like a child’s drawing actually, made into pixel form. Lots of strong, crayon colors, simple details, and some cartoonishly designed characters. which is quite fitting given the game’s comical nature.

But this is a quite an important feature that can damn a point-and-click pixel game into the nine circles of game development hell. If a pixel game’s standard is to look attractive, then knowing what anything and everything is at a glance should be the barest minimum. This is so I can tell the difference between a baby rattle and a bomb so I don’t accidentally recreate a morbidly dark version of a loony toons skit. So, how hard is it to tell what the hell I’m looking at and clicking on? I’m happy to say, hardly difficult at all. Unlike some point-and-click titles, this is one where I can tell exactly what’s what and who’s who.

Pretty much everything of interest is definable from the background and usually large enough and colorful enough to catch the eye. Anything that doesn’t easily stand out can be found with a little mouse waving. The point is, I never had a “What the $&%! Am I looking at?!” moment, or ever got stuck because the thing I needed to find was so obscurely hidden in a mess of visual clutter, so that it ended up being a hidden object game on top of a logic puzzle.

Finding things was fairly easy, and the game hit that sweet spot of being visually interesting and fun, but not so much so that I ever got sick and confused from looking at it. The game’s visuals are neither boring nor over stimulating, and the valuable items are easy to distinguish with a little looking at the most, giving the Darkside Detective a pass and thumbs up in its visuals department. While I do admit some more dynamic animations would have be welcomed, I can’t say there was any point in the game when I didn’t enjoy what I saw on my screen.

When it comes to audio, yeeeeah, don’t expect award winning vocal performances because as well as having no mouths, no one has voices either. Does this bring down the game? Well if you hate reading of all kinds, then yes, yes it does. However, if you do enjoy the written word as well as or even more than the spoken, then you’ll have no problems here. For me, the silence is actually preferable in this case. The lack of vocal sound leaves one in a quieter atmosphere, as well as it draws more focus on the music, which I’ll get to in a minute. Also, personally, I would bet that the voices the devs would get for the characters if they did, wouldn’t be as good as the ones imagined in my head.

Sound Effects

As for sound effects, they do their job, quite minimal and only occur during certain events such as putting out a fire but are well used as they do add to the scene or action. I can’t really complain about nor commend the sound effects, but given how little significance they have to the game as a whole, I don’t think it really matters. In a more action focused game, this would be a problem, but in an adventure title having sound only when something’s happening is probably for the best. Having constant, distracting noises would probably just get annoying over time, and like I said, when they do occur, the sound effects do add something, so they’re not a waste.

Soundtrack

Finally and most creepily, you have the music. If the voice and sound effects were largely ignored to focus on the music, then I have to say it was a smart choice. Simply put, the music for this game in fantastic, a beautifully fitting soundtrack of creepy and spooky pieces, paranormal and ghostly in tone and execution, amplifying the horror side of this horror comedy. Each song a similar yet unique brand of subtle horror, not truly scary or spine chilling in the sense of wandering around an empty house with Michael Mires walking in pace right behind with that classic Halloween music playing. It’s more on the side of what you would hear in say a supernatural mystery documentary, or a ghost story narrative such as tales from the crypt.

The Darkside Detective Soundtrack by Ben Prunty

It’s whimsical, with a good deal of creep factor, not to cause terror, but to draw one into a state of calm eeriness. It’s somewhat enchantingly haunting all at the same time, more serene than disturbing, in a way that soothes the nerves rather than putting them on edge like the aforementioned Michael Mires theme music. It also gives the feeling that something’s not quite right, that proper paranormal vibe like a specter may be looming over you.

Gameplay

As a point-and-click adventure game, the biggest thing you would want to know is this “how hard is the gameplay?” Because when it comes to games like these, difficulty can range from being fairly easy, just click the big shiny red button with “press this” in big, bold letters. To being more challenging in terms of gameplay with “you better have a detailed walkthrough on hand cause this will be like figuring out the Divinci Code, upside down, in a bad translation of J.R.Tolken Elvish speak…………and the paper’s on fire”. Thankfully, the Darkside Detective is not the latter and far from it.

The answer to this conundrum is easier than you think, though it does require extensive understanding of fourth dimensional quantum physics.

Puzzles

The puzzles are on the easier side of the scale, with the majority of puzzles giving strong hints as to what you need to do and what does what, as well as being largely involving “use this on this” style of puzzle solving. A staple of point ‘n’ clicks, with a few fun little mini games such as clear the tiles, make a pipe chain, or connect the wires without crossing them. Most of the use this on this puzzles usually took but a minute to put two and two together, after finding the needed objects. The only times I ever got stuck was because I didn’t know exactly how to use the items and on what. This was largely due to not knowing what order certain things had to be done in, but even then, that was only during a few problematic minutes.

Only once did I ever run into a situation where felt particularly stuck which I feel is worth mentioning. This happened due to an arbitrary order of operations where in this particular instance I had actually worked out what I had to do, before clicking on the hint that would lead me to the action.

Aaah, if gamers of the past could see us now. Futuristic graphical technology that can render beads of sweat dripping off of a realistic swimsuit model, and we’re still playing games you could run on a calculator.

Aside from that, the gameplay is, admittedly pretty average, though I did find the occasional mini game quite colorfully fun and a welcome exception to the standard point ‘n’ click affair. The puzzles that had logical solutions were in no way hard, and any puzzles whose sensibility and reasoning deviated from common logic were clearly explained. I never really encountered a situation where I’d solve a puzzle and then say “how the hell does that make any sense?!”, or, “how the hell was I supposed to figure that out?!”, or “how many drugs were these developers taking to think this up?!” And you know what? That’s the way I like it.

The puzzles are easy but not too easy, thus giving quite entertaining and not too frustrating obstacles between plot segments or events. The short length of each case (level as it were) makes it so that they don’t get stale before the next case, and helps change things up a bit.

Final Thoughts

The Darkside Detective isn’t revolutionary, it isn’t mind blowing and it isn’t a brain buster. However it succeeds where it matters most, it’s fun. It’s fun to look at, it’s fun to listen to, it’s fun to watch, it’s fun to read, and it’s fun to play. From start to finish, I had a great time playing this wacky little game and enjoying all the humor, mystery, and added spookiness that it had to offer. While I can definitely see room for improvement, this is still a solid experience as it is, and I wholly recommend it to anyone who wants a light-hearted adventure into the world of the supernatural and occult.

However, though the find and use puzzles are a common staple of the point-and-click genre, I do genuinely think they’re becoming too common place in gameplay in these games. I would rather see more of the kind of puzzles that diverge from the well-treaded design. In The Darkside Detective these worked well to a certain extent, but it was the puzzles that didn’t have them, that really stood out for me, even if they were ones not completely original.

I much prefer adventure games with clear, simple, logical puzzles rather than the extremely obscure moon logic puzzles the “classic” adventure games present me with, and you know why? Cause that’s not what I playto adventure games for. I come to them for enjoyable, entertaining stories as well as characters with clever dialogue, colorful plots, and interesting worlds to explore. That’s exactly what The Darkside Detective gives players.

If you enjoyed this review be sure to read more with our latest thoughts on action shinobi Sekiro Review: Shinobis Die Many Times. Or you can check out Capcom’s demon hunting title Devil May Cry 5 Review: Ssstylish Perfection.

The post The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages appeared first on Fextralife.

The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/

[thomasroach]

The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages

The post The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages appeared first on Fextralife.

The following post is this author’s opinion and does not reflect the thoughts and feelings of Fextralife as a whole nor the individual content creators associated with the site. Any link that goes outside of Fextralife are owned by their respective authors.

This started out as just a Steam review but I wanted to post due to the fact I enjoyed the game so much. But after the second paragraph, just after finding out that the Devs are releasing Season 2 in the coming year after a successful kickstarter, I realized that this is a game I want as many people as I can tell to know about. Just adding another positive rating to the already existent mass of them would be as helpful as getting a windmill to spin by blowing on it. So let’s do a full review, published courtesy of Fextralife so I can waste your time tell you about a pixel styled, point and click adventure game, so you can waste spend your money on it.

The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages

Genre: Adventure/Point & Click Developed by: Spooky Doorway Published by: Spooky Doorway Release Date: July 27th, 2017 Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam (Review Platform), Mac, Linux, Windows Price at the time of the review: $12.99

This is probably one of the funniest adventure games I’ve ever played and has got me back into occult fiction and fantasy. This is a mix of Ghost Busters and the X-Files, added with two thirds of the three stooges. It’s silly, spooky, laugh out loud fun and deserving of more investment, and no I am not a member of the dev team or affiliated with them in any way, but yes you should give them lots of money. If you have little to no interest in occult fantasy, buddy cop comedies, pixel graphics, or point-and-click adventure games, then I’m sorry to say you have lost approximately fifty seconds of your life reading the introduction to the review of a game you probably won’t want to get anyway. If you do, then let’s begin.

Story & Setting

The Darkside Detective tells the story, or rather many stories by Francis McQueeen, a seeker of the occult and eldritch as well as an investigator of all things paranormal and supernatural. Teamed with his goofy cop sidekick, Officer Dooley, Detective McQueen investigates multiple cases dealing with some form of ghostly apparition, crazed cultist, demonic entity, or cryptic creature. Despite its many horror themes and monsters, this game is a satire through and through, making fun of everything horror B-movies have tried to scare audiences with. It’s filled with parodies of various popular horror flicks and myths.

The satire, however, is really only a small facet of the comedic hilarity, as The Darkside Detective excels with its writing of ridiculous characters, situations, with plenty of jokes and jabs, that revolve around what is terrorizing New Yor-I mean Twin Lakes at the time being. Twin Lakes is a city rife with crazy paranormal encounters, and equally crazy (if not more so) people to deal with. Its a bevy of kooks and weirdos who range from a pyromaniac eight-year-olds, a paranoid anti-government sea monster, An occultist train engineer, a rival detective so douchy he literally takes candy from babies (then fines the baby for crying about it) and more.

It’s just…a mess, a beautiful mess of madness that makes progressing through each story a treat, with dialogue so funny that I want to interact with every possible thing just to hear it all, and everything seeming to have some kind of oddity or quirk just to make it all that much stranger. I could go into further detail on each individual story, but honestly the best experience with this game, is going in blind. Truly it’s the storytelling and writing that makes this game fantastic, as it seems to be for the most part of these classic adventure games.

If my mother had that much storage space in her closet, she’d still run out of room by the end of the month.

It’s the major selling point, and what I most loved about The Darkside Detective. I wish I could say more, but unlike thoroughly explaining gameplay, visuals, audio, and all other more technical components of a game, story and humor are some things you can’t go into full detail  without spoiling the plot, or weakening the experience compared to a first time playthrough. Again, if you enjoy buddy cop comedies, Ghostbusters, and horror movie satire, this is a sure thing, heck, even if you don’t like point-and-clicks, I would still say get a guide and play through it like that, cause the humor is top notch. Simple at times, witty at others, but splendid all around. Not every joke was equally funny, but there wasn’t a single one that didn’t at least put a smile on my face.

Audio & Visuals

Simplistic, is one word I could use to sum up the pixel art style and colorful is another. Blocky, square, and geometrically appealing are a few more. “The Darkside Detective’s pixel graphic style lends a nostalgic return to classic point and clicks of old, that is reminiscent of titles such as Monkey Island and Dark Mansion” is a pretentious sentence I could also use to describe the art style. However, when it comes to pixel art, there only three things I, and likely what most people care about.

There are no words to describe how I feel about this.

Does it look nice? Can you tell what’s going on and what’s what? And will it possibly give me an epileptic seizure? To all these questions I can pretty much answer yes, yes and you may want to consult your doctor about that. Really though, given the decades of practice game development has had in 2D pixel art, I think it should be the basic standard for any pixel game to look “nice”, decent at least, and The Darkside Detective has certainly accomplished that.

Though simplistic to the point of not having facial features for most characters outside of facial hair, and hardly any dynamic animations, the game looks vibrantly colourful, and is especially beautiful at certain points in the story. It’s…like a child’s drawing actually, made into pixel form. Lots of strong, crayon colors, simple details, and some cartoonishly designed characters. which is quite fitting given the game’s comical nature.

But this is a quite an important feature that can damn a point-and-click pixel game into the nine circles of game development hell. If a pixel game’s standard is to look attractive, then knowing what anything and everything is at a glance should be the barest minimum. This is so I can tell the difference between a baby rattle and a bomb so I don’t accidentally recreate a morbidly dark version of a loony toons skit. So, how hard is it to tell what the hell I’m looking at and clicking on? I’m happy to say, hardly difficult at all. Unlike some point-and-click titles, this is one where I can tell exactly what’s what and who’s who.

Pretty much everything of interest is definable from the background and usually large enough and colorful enough to catch the eye. Anything that doesn’t easily stand out can be found with a little mouse waving. The point is, I never had a “What the $&%! Am I looking at?!” moment, or ever got stuck because the thing I needed to find was so obscurely hidden in a mess of visual clutter, so that it ended up being a hidden object game on top of a logic puzzle.

Finding things was fairly easy, and the game hit that sweet spot of being visually interesting and fun, but not so much so that I ever got sick and confused from looking at it. The game’s visuals are neither boring nor over stimulating, and the valuable items are easy to distinguish with a little looking at the most, giving the Darkside Detective a pass and thumbs up in its visuals department. While I do admit some more dynamic animations would have be welcomed, I can’t say there was any point in the game when I didn’t enjoy what I saw on my screen.

When it comes to audio, yeeeeah, don’t expect award winning vocal performances because as well as having no mouths, no one has voices either. Does this bring down the game? Well if you hate reading of all kinds, then yes, yes it does. However, if you do enjoy the written word as well as or even more than the spoken, then you’ll have no problems here. For me, the silence is actually preferable in this case. The lack of vocal sound leaves one in a quieter atmosphere, as well as it draws more focus on the music, which I’ll get to in a minute. Also, personally, I would bet that the voices the devs would get for the characters if they did, wouldn’t be as good as the ones imagined in my head.

Sound Effects

As for sound effects, they do their job, quite minimal and only occur during certain events such as putting out a fire but are well used as they do add to the scene or action. I can’t really complain about nor commend the sound effects, but given how little significance they have to the game as a whole, I don’t think it really matters. In a more action focused game, this would be a problem, but in an adventure title having sound only when something’s happening is probably for the best. Having constant, distracting noises would probably just get annoying over time, and like I said, when they do occur, the sound effects do add something, so they’re not a waste.

Soundtrack

Finally and most creepily, you have the music. If the voice and sound effects were largely ignored to focus on the music, then I have to say it was a smart choice. Simply put, the music for this game in fantastic, a beautifully fitting soundtrack of creepy and spooky pieces, paranormal and ghostly in tone and execution, amplifying the horror side of this horror comedy. Each song a similar yet unique brand of subtle horror, not truly scary or spine chilling in the sense of wandering around an empty house with Michael Mires walking in pace right behind with that classic Halloween music playing. It’s more on the side of what you would hear in say a supernatural mystery documentary, or a ghost story narrative such as tales from the crypt.

The Darkside Detective Soundtrack by Ben Prunty

It’s whimsical, with a good deal of creep factor, not to cause terror, but to draw one into a state of calm eeriness. It’s somewhat enchantingly haunting all at the same time, more serene than disturbing, in a way that soothes the nerves rather than putting them on edge like the aforementioned Michael Mires theme music. It also gives the feeling that something’s not quite right, that proper paranormal vibe like a specter may be looming over you.

Gameplay

As a point-and-click adventure game, the biggest thing you would want to know is this “how hard is the gameplay?” Because when it comes to games like these, difficulty can range from being fairly easy, just click the big shiny red button with “press this” in big, bold letters. To being more challenging in terms of gameplay with “you better have a detailed walkthrough on hand cause this will be like figuring out the Divinci Code, upside down, in a bad translation of J.R.Tolken Elvish speak…………and the paper’s on fire”. Thankfully, the Darkside Detective is not the latter and far from it.

The answer to this conundrum is easier than you think, though it does require extensive understanding of fourth dimensional quantum physics.

Puzzles

The puzzles are on the easier side of the scale, with the majority of puzzles giving strong hints as to what you need to do and what does what, as well as being largely involving “use this on this” style of puzzle solving. A staple of point ‘n’ clicks, with a few fun little mini games such as clear the tiles, make a pipe chain, or connect the wires without crossing them. Most of the use this on this puzzles usually took but a minute to put two and two together, after finding the needed objects. The only times I ever got stuck was because I didn’t know exactly how to use the items and on what. This was largely due to not knowing what order certain things had to be done in, but even then, that was only during a few problematic minutes.

Only once did I ever run into a situation where felt particularly stuck which I feel is worth mentioning. This happened due to an arbitrary order of operations where in this particular instance I had actually worked out what I had to do, before clicking on the hint that would lead me to the action.

Aaah, if gamers of the past could see us now. Futuristic graphical technology that can render beads of sweat dripping off of a realistic swimsuit model, and we’re still playing games you could run on a calculator.

Aside from that, the gameplay is, admittedly pretty average, though I did find the occasional mini game quite colorfully fun and a welcome exception to the standard point ‘n’ click affair. The puzzles that had logical solutions were in no way hard, and any puzzles whose sensibility and reasoning deviated from common logic were clearly explained. I never really encountered a situation where I’d solve a puzzle and then say “how the hell does that make any sense?!”, or, “how the hell was I supposed to figure that out?!”, or “how many drugs were these developers taking to think this up?!” And you know what? That’s the way I like it.

The puzzles are easy but not too easy, thus giving quite entertaining and not too frustrating obstacles between plot segments or events. The short length of each case (level as it were) makes it so that they don’t get stale before the next case, and helps change things up a bit.

Final Thoughts

The Darkside Detective isn’t revolutionary, it isn’t mind blowing and it isn’t a brain buster. However it succeeds where it matters most, it’s fun. It’s fun to look at, it’s fun to listen to, it’s fun to watch, it’s fun to read, and it’s fun to play. From start to finish, I had a great time playing this wacky little game and enjoying all the humor, mystery, and added spookiness that it had to offer. While I can definitely see room for improvement, this is still a solid experience as it is, and I wholly recommend it to anyone who wants a light-hearted adventure into the world of the supernatural and occult.

However, though the find and use puzzles are a common staple of the point-and-click genre, I do genuinely think they’re becoming too common place in gameplay in these games. I would rather see more of the kind of puzzles that diverge from the well-treaded design. In The Darkside Detective these worked well to a certain extent, but it was the puzzles that didn’t have them, that really stood out for me, even if they were ones not completely original.

I much prefer adventure games with clear, simple, logical puzzles rather than the extremely obscure moon logic puzzles the “classic” adventure games present me with, and you know why? Cause that’s not what I playto adventure games for. I come to them for enjoyable, entertaining stories as well as characters with clever dialogue, colorful plots, and interesting worlds to explore. That’s exactly what The Darkside Detective gives players.

If you enjoyed this review be sure to read more with our latest thoughts on action shinobi Sekiro Review: Shinobis Die Many Times. Or you can check out Capcom’s demon hunting title Devil May Cry 5 Review: Ssstylish Perfection.

The post The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages appeared first on Fextralife.

The Darkside Detective Review: Occult fun for All Ages published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/