#I was gonna do an engage character but the lack of 2d art of the characters is killing me

[snowflop]

obligatory I'm changing my icon post ^w^)/

[peoplelikegames]

Steam Games Festival: I played so many demos. My thoughts...

I spent a few days playing as many of these demos as I could and wrote down some rough impressions.

Black Book (Morteshka): Heavily atmospheric and steeped in Slavic mythology. You play as a Slavic woman named Vasilisa, attempting to bring back her husband, who has committed suicide, back from hell in an effort to save him from the eternal damnation that their religion believes befell those who commit suicide. She becomes a witch after venturing through the gates of hell and back. The gameplay takes several different forms, depending on what you’re doing. It’s got some point-and-click adventure game elements during the more exploration focused scenes. Sometimes you’ll find herbs that can be used as items later during combat. The combat plays out like Slay the Spire and other deck builder games of the ilk, with the key exception of the spell slots. Instead of the standard 3 energy system restricting card usage each turn, here you have 3 slots that can be filled with spells that correspond with the slot type. You have 2 Order slots (big spells) and 1 Key slot (little spells) you can fill each turn. It’s a small twist to the formula that opens up a lot of interesting possibilities and combinations. In between fights and the point-and-click scenes you’ll get to interact with people you meet along the path to your destination and make choices that effect the story and your character. Vasalisa’s journey looks bleak and full of death, and I’m interested to see where it goes.

AK-Xolotl (Daniel Piqueras Constantin): Fast paced, adorable and aggressive top down shooter. Very simple gameplay of shooting down waves of enemies picking up weapons and items that drop when they die. Feels great to play. Good movement, good dash, not much else to ask for. Really quick and snappy shooting and simple gameplay loop me keeps playing again and again just to get a higher score and see what new stuff it has to throw at me. It’s got really cute pixelated graphics and lots of forest critters with guns. The game also features an absolutely filthy death metal track that’s a perfect representation of how aggressive the game really is. Just a really quick and dirty time that definitely makes me want to see the finished product. Also, I love the lil axolotl guy.

Despot’s Game (Konfa Games): Rogue-like dungeon crawler where you control a mob of humans. It’s a pretty cool and complicated battle system my only problem is I can’t help but feel like I don’t have enough control on the outcome of the fights. It’s almost a little like Totally Accurate Battle Simulator in that way. Basically, your run begins with you purchasing a bunch of little humans and different weapons to give to those little humans which will give them a class. Give a little guy a medkit and now he’s a healer, give someone a gun and they’re a shooter now. Humans with classes have special abilities they can activate when there are enough classes of that type on the field. Like an Auto Chess (Auto Battler?) game, if you have, say, 2 or 3 Fencers on the board, your fencers will now have access to their special ability, a dodge roll. Position your people in what you hope is a tactical formation and start heading for the dungeon exit. Most rooms consist of a fight, which plays out automatically. When you press go on a fight, your troops and the enemies will all start fighting until only one side remains. This is where the game loses me a little bit as it’s unclear how much of a difference positioning makes or what more I should be doing to change the outcome. Did I win this time because that unit was farther up than last time, or did the AI just play it out slightly differently that skewed in my favor? I can’t tell if the changes I’m making are actually making a tactical difference, or if the AI routines are just clashing with slightly varying results each time. You’re gonna lose units a lot but they are pretty disposable, with frequent shops for buying reinforcements or new gear. And every unit contributes to your mob’s total hunger meter, which deplete with every new room you enter. You have to buy food to feed your troops to keep them from losing effectiveness. Bigger team=greater food consumption. Gotta find a balance with your money and spending it on new units, new weapons, and food. I really wanted to like this game more because I really dig the hook of building up a mob of little guys with cools powers and I like the unit synergy system as well, but the perceived lack of control over how the fights play out and the game’s edgy humor ultimately pushed me away.

Dead Estate (Milkbar Lads): Fairly generic zombie shooter rogue-like (there’s gonna be a lot of rogue-likes). Your standard twin-stick kind of shooting you’d find in the Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon, except here you can jump, adding some verticality. Explore each room, kill the zombies, find the key and then find the elevator to the next floor. Sometimes you find a new gun or shop along the way. The movement feels pretty slow and the rooms feel small. Too many times would I walk into a room, fight three of the same zombie then walk int next room just to see two more of that same zombie. Too many times did I have to walk back across a whole level at a snail’s pace. Needs more enemy variety and to move a little quicker. The shooting is a little better, I like how the game makes its weapons feel distinct by how much it kick it has. More powerful weapons will push you back with each shot. Unloading the mini gun felt chaotic and rumbly that make you slide back and wiggle in a fun way. You can usually kill most enemies before they’re even able to do anything makes them unique, rendering most enemies the same “zombie that walk towards you for second before you finish them off.” Didn’t really draw me in or entice me to see what I might encounter on higher floors.

Foregone (big blue studio): This one feels a little like a watered down Dead Cells at first, AT FIRST. It’s a little slower and less snappy but it’s still very fun. Plus it’s more of a linear 2d action platformer with lots of loot. I like the loot aspect here quite a bit; watching a bunch of currency fly out of enemies is satisfying in a “headshot kill in Destiny kinda way.” Just a bunch of fun particles and a frequent gear drop that has you constantly popping open your inventory to equip your new gear and make those numbers go up. If that’s your kind of fun, you can definitely find it here. Lots of weapon variety on show here and most, if not all, of them feel unique. Just wish the combat was little tighter, which since this is a demo, I assume will come in due time. The game could also do a better job of informing the player that they’re taking damage, which made it difficult to hone the timing on the dash to avoid taking damage. And I’m hoping the environments of the full game become a little more diverse and sprawling, right now it feels like it’s mostly individual rooms/levels of engagement at a time. Excited to see how the full release pans out.

Tunche (LEAP Game Studios): Immediately drawn in here by the beautiful hand drawn art style. It’s a brawler roguelike and if you know what those two words mean in the context of video games, that’s all you really need to know. The brawler combat is what it is, very combo and juggle heavy, enemies that take dozens of hits to kill, fairly bland and just flat land environments. Walk forward until you’re stopped, fight a bunch of waves of enemies, rinse and repeat. Except this time you occasionally get upgrades after finishing rooms like “chance for attacks to cause burn” and “chance to regain health on hit,” your standard rougelike fare. With the territory comes the roguelike difficulty, and this game is plenty tough with the amount of enemies it throws at you and how limited your health pool can be. All of the art and the animations are what really shine here, and if you’re into that brawler style combat, this seems like a pretty good one of those.

Power of Ten (Pew Times Three): Next up we have a top-down space shooter roguelike. I like the minimalistic pixel art style in this one. It helps with atmosphere and you making you feel like a small ship in a large system. Your goal is to power planetary shields on inhabited planets throughout the system by gathering resources from asteroids. While you’re hunting asteroids, pirate ships will randomly attack a planet, pulling you away from resource gathering into a space dogfight against the pirates. That push and pull of gathering resources to fuel a planets shields while simultaneously protecting the planets whose shields are not yet charged is the core loop here that I really like. Conveying solid, core gameplay loop that’s engaging is exactly what you want to get across in a demo, and they definitely deliver that here.

Jelly is Sticky (Lunarch Studios): A lovely, casual sokoban puzzle game. Sliding around and rearranging cubes of jelly into oblong structures to match highlighted areas within a given space. You’ll encounter jellies of different qualities along the way, all with their own quirks around how they like to stick. I really like the non-linear structure in the over world, letting you navigate around between levels from all of the jelly-archetypes at any time. Solving sets of levels will unlock jelly in the over world you can stick to and rearrange to give you access to further levels gated behind walls and other triggers. It’s an appreciated extra layer of depth you don’t expect from a puzzle game that could have very well presented it’s levels in an ordered, level-select screen.

Potion Craft (niceplay games): In this game you play as a budding alchemist trying to make your mark on the world in your newly acquired (stolen possibly?) alchemy shop. Its an alchemist simulator. It’s presented in an “alchemy text book diagram-style” that’s immediately endearing. Every day, you collect ingredients like herbs and fungi from your garden and then it’s time to open shop. Customers come and share their plight, asking for potions of different types. They’ll offer different prices for potions of different potency which you haggle up further (or lower, if you mess up) through a simple timing mini game. The actually potion making is puzzling and unique, if not occasionally limiting. Ingredients you add to the cauldron determine a path that the potion icon in the center will follow across a fog covered map. Add more ingredients to add length and direction to the path, trying to build the path in a specific way that will lead to a “?” destination marked on the map. Name the potion, choose a bottle and label, and brew it. You’ll learn what it does, and can save the recipe for easy use again later. The only downside is how limited the ingredients are makes it very punishing when experimentation results in failure, all those ingredients are just lost. It seems like the game really wants you to just fill the orders at hand instead of blindly exploring into the fog to see what weird stuff comes up, which is my favorite thing to do so far. This is still easily one of my favorite demos of the bunch and has to be seen for oneself.

Aeon Drive Prologue (2awesome studio): This is definitely one of the ones I wanted to like more than I did. A self proclaimed “speedrun action platformer” and it demands that go fast. Very short 2d platformer levels with an ever ticking clock. If the timer reaches zero before you reach the exit, you fail the level. Consumables lined throughout the level can be used to add more time to your clock. This game is very punishing, one hit from anything, from enemy to stage hazard, will cause you to fail and restart. Very quick movement and a focus on chaining together different moves to find different paths through the level. There seemed to be benefits like special collectibles for taking more inventive, alternative paths, but the ticking clock really kept me tunnel-visioned on the most clear cut route through the level, meaning I only ever small a very tiny portion of each one. I’m not the type of person to butt my head against how to pull some crazy route as opposed to the clearly laid out one in front of me. Unfortunately, that clearly laid path just isn’t very fun to take. There’s also a dagger you can throw and teleport to, which I found difficult to aim and not as fun to use as it sounds. There is definitely something here, it’s just ultimately not for me.

Medievalien (dOOb games srl): Action RPG roguelike in a medieval world that has been invaded by aliens. You play an amnesiac protagonist trying to undo the calamity through repeated attempts from within a magical (or scientific?) time loop. Commence genre mashup. Nothing particularly stands out here. Two weapon slots and two throwables slots, lots of different items to fill them. Your weapons consist of bows, crossbows, and staves, and the throwables are bombs of varying elemental effect. It’s fun to play but fairly middling. The low poly art style doesn’t do anything for me and the soundtrack was forgettable. Still, if you’re like me and enjoy ARPGs and roguelike, it does the thing well enough to scratch the itch.

Minute of Islands (Studio Fizbin): Right out of the gate this 2d narrative platformer hits you with gorgeous hand-drawn art. A poisoned, decaying world that is beautifully drawn and animated. I’m gonna day this is not the best demo. The pace is very slow and the objectives are linear and don’t even register as puzzles. This game calls itself a puzzle platformer yet there were no puzzles to be found in this demo. I’m assuming the demo is trying to preserve story details so it starts at the beginning and only gives you a small slice from there. So maybe the game introduces more puzzle elements later in the game. But what’s left in the demo is not very compelling to play. The impressively detailed environments and atmosphere are only driving forces so far. But extremely strong forces at that.

Alekon (The Alekon Company): This feels like spiritual follow up to Pokemon Snap in all of the best ways. In its most basic form, the game plays exactly like Pokémon Snap, but builds on the nearly 30 year old classic in several key ways. Creatures in this game are called “Fictions” and whenever you take a picture of a new fiction, the creature also appears back in the game’s hub world. Once back in the hub world, you can talk to the fictions who have moved in and they’ll give you small quests to do that’ll usually reward you with key game features, like a zoom function for the camera. There’s a great feature that involves capturing photos of a fiction in all of its potential poses, which will unlock the ability to “see through the eyes of the fiction.” So when you’re looking through the album of your saved pictures, you can apply a fiction filter to see the image as a particular fiction would see if through their own eyes. Also, once you’ve unlocked all of the different routes in a specific biome, you gain the ability to “wander.” Wandering is free from the rails of the standard routes and allows to explore every inch of the biome and find other fictions that were previously hidden. It’s also a great space to snag that perfect picture of a fiction you couldn’t get while riding the rails. The creatures themselves are kind of hit or miss so far in their design. Sometimes it’s literally just a seal, sometimes it’s a ridiculous alien thing, but it seems like the personalities of the fictions are what makes them unique. Even though I didn’t care for the designs, I found myself endeared toward the creatures once I found them back in the hub and helped them with their troubles. There’s some good writing in these bits that really helps sell me on these creatures. Lots to love here if you’re into games about snapping pics of critters and throwing donuts.

Eat’n Eaten (Gaëtan Benoit): A cartoony tower defense game with bug plants. Bugs that grow from plants. It has a really fun and easy to understand “food chain management” system for building up units. It almost feels like it was designed to translate easily to touchscreens for mobile devices. Your soil has 100% nutrients, plants grow and feed off nutrients, plants grow apples which you can pick who will then become your units. When an apple dies it’s corpse returns nutrients to the soil and it’ll drop a seed that will grow into a new plant. If you don’t pick the apples off the plant long enough for them to consume extra nutrients, the apples will become a caterpillar. Pick the caterpillar off the plant and now you have a more offensive unit, who needs to eat apples to survive. The game only builds on the loop from there; the way bugs will level up into new or stronger forms after eating enough fruit, or how the game will add spiders to your team who will then need to eat caterpillars to survive. Manage this whole food chain to keep a steady supply and distribution of units against waves of enemies. I don’t know if that seems confusing when put into word like that but it’s really quick and simple to pick up they way it is presented. It can definitely get a little frantic at times but that’s when the game is at it’s most fun.

Dorfromantik (Toukana Interactive): Chill, colorful, tile placement puzzle game about building a village landscape. You start with a deck of 85 hexagonal tiles, and it doesn’t end until all the tiles have been placed. You’re placing tiles with the intent to line up as many like edges between adjacent tiles, making longer and longer networks of landscapes of matching type. The way the scoring works and how the game conforms matching sides together does a good job of making the best place to put your tile one that not only scores well but also looks good in the context of the interconnected village landscape you are ultimately trying to craft. I would kill for this game on Switch.

Unsouled (Megusta Game): An isometric pixelates dark souls-style action game. Described as an “ultra-brutal” game with “fast-paced and savagely rewarding combat,” Unsouled comes exactly as advertised. The combat in this game is very difficult and I am simply not the person to conquer it. It’s really fast paced yet proper movement and combat requires consistent timing and punished button mashing. Every thing you do has to be deliberate and calculated as it’s easy to lose control of the battlefield very quickly. Even just a few enemies can be dangerous as they all can dodge and block and roll just like you. The game is unafraid to put the pressure on and throw ten enemies at you all at once engaging from different ranges. The game demands that intimately learn the combat systems if you want to keep your stamina and health high in the heat of combat. I’d bet that if you’re a fan of Dark Souls or souls-like games, this game has all that difficulty but a different pace of combat that doesn’t feel derivative.

Rogue Invader (Squishy Games): Immediately I love the look of this game. It’s got this old school 1-bit black and white look to it. It also opens up with a fully animated and voice acted cutscene. The game is actually pretty difficult. It’s a side scrolling shooter where you’re part of an army in invading an alien planet one soldier at a time. You’re also managing weapon heat and breakage, and carry weight effecting run speed. Each soldier gets body armor and a pistol but you can equip them with a rifle and helmet from your armory. Which you’ll definitely want to do considering you die in one shot if hit in the head. When you’re soldier dies, they lose the gear you equipped them with and the new soldier needs to be equipped with whatever you can craft in the forge. This is where I ran into issues with hardy ever having enough materials to craft a helmet, go into a mission and die early to a single stray bullet to the head, and subsequently not earn enough materials to make a helmet. The evasive controls like jumping, running, rolling and taking cover all felt clunky in my hands, add that to fact that bullets often just miss even if you’re aiming right on an enemy, and it made for a pretty unsatisfying game to play.

Devastator (Radiangames): How is this not just Geometry Wars? Because this shit is just geometry wars. Fortunately, Geometry Wars slaps so this game is still pretty fun. But just go play Geometry Wars. There, I mentioned a different game like five times more than the game this was supposed to be about.

ANVIL (Action Square): Co-op top down shooter roguelike with space marines. It’s like a run-based Starship Troopers game. It’s pretty great. The three characters unlocked in the demo all have different weapons and abilities resulting in very distinct play styles between classes. There’s a fairly simple loop to each floor: search the floor for the boss, along the way areas will be filled with enemies, who’ll drop money, which can be used to buy passive upgrades from chests found throughout the floor. The upgrade system allows you stack multiple of the same upgrade for increased effect. Lots of variety in the enemy type really keeps you on your toes. Unsurprisingly, it just feels good to mow down mobs of space bugs.

Orbital Bullet (SmokeStab): A 360 degree shooter platformer. It’s a really cool gimmick actually, you move in 2d but in ring around a 3D space. It’s makes for some cool looking environments and depth from having inner and outer rings you can switch between. Really fast and arcade-y feeling. Snappy movement and gunplay. There’s seems to be a lot offered here among different weapons, in-run upgrades and meta upgrades that persist between runs. Which makes this a roguelite, as opposed to roguelike, which I tend to prefer. I like having something upgrade outside of my runs to make me feel stronger or different going into the next run. The games has a sort of ancient alien aesthetic, it feels industrial and monolithic. The bursts of neon in the walls, enemies, and weapons really pop among the ruins of the stone temple. Watching your weapons’ shot glide along the curve of the world is an effective visual as well. Just because I clearly like to compare to games so much, this game feels a lot like Resogun meets Downwell, and that’s just fantastic.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale (Greg Lobanov): A colorful and cartoony adventure game about painting that takes a small but welcomed bullet hell turn. You play as a cute little pup that claims the power of The Brush after it’s wielder (and your master) disappears along with all of the color in the world. Searching for cause and hopefully the solution, you embark on a journey to repaint the world and make your mark as the new wielder. Once you pick up that brush you can start coloring in literally everything in the world. It’s fun and charming the whole way through. You can help the townsfolk bring color back into the lives and color in their houses to their satisfaction. Use the paint to navigate the world by growing and shrinking plants by erasing/coloring them. The demo is a little thin but definitely makes me interested to see what fun stuff the game has in store for these paint mechanics.

Genesis Noir (Feral Cat Den): Okay this game was a trip. I barely have any idea what I just played but I know I really liked what was happening. It’s a heavily stylized point and click adventure game where it feels like you exist within an improvisational Jazz album. Train tracks becoming notes on a cello. Getting into a cosmic jazz-off that plays like a game of Simon and ends with your opponent on the wrong end of a mob hit. I think? Honestly this game is so trippy it was difficult to keep track of what was going on. And occasionally it was a little ambiguous as to how you’re supposed to proceed, which lead some random click and dragging around the screen until something clicks. It actually seems like it could turn out to be a really good example of a story and experience that can really only be through video games. Not quite an animated film, not quite a comic book or visual novel, but instead a fantastical, interactive amalgamation of many things. Whatever this thing may be defined as, it’s something unique and special.

[lunapixu]

Pixu Ponders: My Favourite Games of the Decade

As the 2010s come to a close, I wanted to take a look back on my gaming experiences of the past ten years. I wish to look back on the games that I believe shaped my teen and young adult years, games that defined this decade for me, and all my treasured memories with them.

As we go into this, please bear in mind that these are my opinions. If you don’t like what you see, cool.

Furthermore, just because of long this darn post is, I’ve had to keep my list pretty short. If there’s a specific game you think I’ve missed, it’s because I had to cut it out.

Among the games cut from the list are: * Portal 2 * Super Mario Odyssey * Undertale * A Hat in Time * Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild * Stardew Valley * Monster Hunter (3U and World) (If you wish for me to write up about these games like the list below, shoot me an ask.)

The Binding of Isaac (2011 and 2014) (Franchise)

To me, the Binding of Isaac is a trend-defining indie game that, along with a couple other entries on this list, I believe contributed to the indie game boom.

The Binding of Isaac, created by Super Meat Boy's Edmund McMillen, depicts a young boy trying to escape his mother (and his inner torment) by delving into his basement and slaying countless monsters with his tears. Amongst many things, The Binding of Isaac stands out due to its simplistic art, unusual fleshy monsters, frequent depictions of... excrement, and a variety of other unsavoury material.

In spite of the crass material and immature nature its contents carry, The Binding of Isaac is a surprisingly deep and heavily replayable game. Many Roguelites that have sprung this decade like to say “No run is the same” but nowhere is this more clear than in the game that kickstarted the modern Roguelite trend. Within the game, Isaac can collect a wide variety of items that can help better slay monsters or navigate the labyrinthine levels of his basement. Isaac can pick up an item that allows him to shoot a large laser of blood, he could obtain a knife to throw at enemies, he can pick up an item that suspends his tears in midair and then release in a volley of bullets Kylo Ren style. When this game says “No run is the same”, it means it.

On Steam, I have over 250 hours on the game’s 2014 remake (Binding of Isaac Rebirth). I have approx. 300 of the 413 achievements the game has to offer. To say that I love and play the heck out of this game is an understatement. And it’s not even my most played game on Steam.

Hollow Knight (2017)

Hollow Knight was a surprise favourite of mine. Being a big fan of metroidvania games, I knew I was going to like this funky little bug game. After all, the game seemed fun and was going to be something of a hybrid between Metroid-style exploration and progression but a Dark Souls health system and storytelling. What’s not to like?

I will be real here, the first two areas of the game weren’t all that amazing. Though there were pleasant sights, neat characters, and simple but kinda fun gameplay, I couldn’t help but feel like wanting... more. Something more captivating. Perhaps something more amazing might await me if I push on through. A hurdle that I needed to overcome. Would it actually happen or will this fun but unimpressive saunter through the world of insects be all there is? And boy were my instincts right.

I will not go into the specifics but the game’s appeal and charm finally clicked for me after a few hours in. It was a combination of taking on two very specific bosses and entering a specific area of the game that instantly made me fall in love. I was enamoured. What had simply been me crossing a game off my bucket list had turned into an adventure I was whole-heartedly engaged in. This game’s adventure was now my own. It was an adventure that I hadn’t been quite as engaged with as... Kingdom Hearts, honestly. And if my posts on here are any indication, that’s quite the feat.

Hollow Knight’s usage of atmosphere, clever writing and worldbuilding, and simple but challenging gameplay are something of a brilliant recipe. I was fascinated by every single snippet of dialogue, smiling as my little insect buddy clashed with perilous foes, wowed by some of the levels, and charmed by every character who I happened to stumble upon.

Though I only played it so recently (Spring 2019 for reference), I can very confidently put it as one of my favourite games of all-time. A list shared by greats such as The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, Cave Story, Kingdom Hearts 2, and Super Mario Galaxy.

Terraria (2011)

Ah, Terraria... The “2D Minecraft”, the “Minecraft but not as good”, the “Starbound but not in space”.

Terraria, as you may know, is a 2D action-platformer sandbox. It’s a game that drops you into a large (but not unlimited) world and says “You’re gonna need to gear up, bucko.” So, you tear down some trees and dig up the land a bit in a bid to gather some resources. After all, this is a sandbox! It’s mine, mine~ Mine for the taking~ It’s mine, boys. Mine me that gold! *ahem* Seems I got a little carried away. Anyways...

Within the first few minutes, the sun starts to set on Terraria’s world and you’re being mauled apart by zombies. That is unless you built a house and hunkered down for the night to avoid the ghouls that intend to ruin your night. Seem familiar? Well, it should. And it’s why people drum up the comparisons above, flag it as just another sandbox game, and leave.

This, I believe, is not really a fair look at Terraria. Yes, you mine blocks. Yes, you fight monsters at night to survive. But that’s it. Those are the only substantial comparisons to be made. Terraria, as I described earlier, is an action-platformer. To me, Terraria’s sandbox nature and simplistic Minecraft-esque survival come secondary to what I consider to be the meat of the game. The exploration, the combat system, and the shenanigans.

Within the game are several set pieces to explore and countless bosses to fight. Players are expected to plunge headfirst into the rotting landscape of the Corruption (or the more eldritch and bloodied Crimson), delve into the skeleton-filled Dungeon, brave the perilous Jungle, and even venture into Hell itself. In exploring and slaying the many powerful foes that await the player, one can go beyond just “I swing my Iron Sword at a Zombie. Yaaaaaay... =_=“ and into extreme levels of zaniness. Wanna beat up Martians with a lightsaber? I don’t recommend it but you can. Wanna kill a giant robot worm of doom with a minigun? You bet your butt you can.

Minecraft (2009, 1.0 release in 2011)

To say Minecraft didn’t define the 2010s would be a blatant lie. As the #1 best-selling game, a spot hotly contested with Tetris, it’s hard to deny the influence and critical success of this simple voxel-based sandbox game.

What is it that makes Minecraft such a perfect and fantastic game? To me, it’s all in the simplicity of it all. The lack of goal, the blank slate of a world you’re given, and the openness and accessibility of the game. Minecraft expects you to take whatever inspiration and ideas you may have and construct them in this blocky world.

Wanna build a plane? Wanna build a sweet mansion? A bit too normal for you? How about a working computer? What about recreating settings from your favourite games? In Minecraft, you can do just that. And let’s not even forget about the enormous modding community this game has. Automation, adventure, aesthetic, graphical enhancements, quality of life. Mods have everything and more!

Above all else, Minecraft helps to connect. With its huge player base and countless public servers, you’re bound to find a community that will welcome you and treat you right. Minecraft is best played in multiplayer, in my honest opinion. Explore caves with friends, collaborating on build projects, or just plain old chatting and hanging with folks.

For me personally, Minecraft is an invaluable game. Through it, I met countless people, made many friends (several of which I consider my best friends), I even found love through it. Minecraft came to me at a time I needed it most. As a late teen, I was at one of the lowest points in my life. The game allowed me to express myself and work past what issues I had developed over the years. In finding friends and a way to express, Minecraft helped shape me into a much better person. Were it not for this game and the folks I met through it, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.

[italicwatches]

GAMERS! Episode 01

Nobody participated in the game! Jerks.

I kid, I kid. I love you all.

So now that we’ve hit some of the big shows I’ve wanted to do for a while, it’s time to get at some of the lighter things! And mostly, I mean lighter workload. One-cour specials that I can burn through in a fortnight. Is that how you spell the actual word? The game has been so massively omnipresent over everything I look at that I can’t tell anymore.

…Anyways it’s GAMERS!, episode 01! Here we GO!

-We begin, with a blue sky, a flying plane, and a title pop! Then we scroll down from a school roof, down into a classroom. Everyone’s staring. It’s nearly 4 PM. Two figures stand against each other. Some folks have some pretty amazing faces on. Time is still. Like, full-on ZA WARUDO level time is still.

-And then…The clock finally clicks over. The cicadas start to buzz…And then die. Alas, poor cicada.

-SPRING!

-Hard cut to a game store advertising some naughty materials, as a narrator explains how some people are ‘above the clouds’. All the hottest titles for the PZ4 are out in force, and I’m pretty sure I recognize at least one cover. A young man gathers up some older, cheaper games on sale, as the narrator explains how these people might be an idol, a world-stage athlete, someone you truly adore…And for some, it might be a 2D character. As he picks up the game Golden Memories and I swear to god that girl in the center of the cover looks like she was in New Game. Is this from the same studio?

-Most can only watch these figures from afar, a source of distant admiration…So, when the cutest girl in school walked into the game store at the same time as this young man narrating, and suddenly spoke to him, one Amano Keita lost all capacity to get his body and brain to communicate. The entire stack of games (including titles like LEGION OF THE FANTASY, BASE COMBAT, and a baseball game I can’t read but I know I’ve seen that art style in a Japanese baseball game before) falls from his hands, and his eyes turn cartoony as his thought process just breaks.

-And Tendou Karen introduces herself properly…As Keita’s brain hooks together what he knows of her. The rich, call, curvy, flawless young lady of the school, the sort that draws admiration from her fellow girls and adoration from the boys. She’s smart, she’s beautiful, and she’s got amazing athletic results too. She seems almost too perfect to be real.

-The visuals make it clear that all this is going to fall apart. And our sloppy goofy hero is the reason why.

-She’s not famous, but she IS the kind of girl who has to hold a bag under her locker because of how many love notes are gonna fall out when she opens it every day. The idol of the school. Meanwhile, Keita’s a goofy loner dork who’d rather play vidjagames and is firmly in the middle of every metric the school tests him on. Average height, B- grades, damn near perfectly in the middle of all his athletic tests. Like, it’s almost impressive how nondescript he is by the on-paper metrics.

-And his brain is snapping and oh god he’s freaking out HE’S FREAKING OUT OKAY DEEP BREATH CALM DOWN CALM DOWN. She ends up helping him pick up the games, as he begins to wonder if this is going to lead to extortion or something. (The X makes it sound cool) Because he just cannot ponder why Tendou Karen of all girls would be talking to him, in a game store, and not the kind of family-friendly super mainstream one that only sells E rated games your little brother’s heard of, either. There’s an eroge poster right outside.

-As they pick up such games as STOIC BATTLE 2, and Evil ElEmEnt. But then she asks him if he likes these games, and he freaks out so bad he drops them, and now she’s gotta pick them back up because his hands don’t work. And OKAY DEEP BREATH CALM DOWN SHE’S JUST A NORMAL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT LIKE YOU NO NEED TO FREAK O—

-She picked up Golden Memories.

-…OookAY IT IS TIME TO FREAK THE FUCK OUT MAXIMUM PANIC ENGAGED

-Oh god it’s even worse.

-The game advertises itself as specifically selling blonde-girl fantasies, and includes wardrobe malfunctions.

-You get three guesses as to what color hair Karen has and the first three don’t count.

-And thus now SHE’S having a bit of a freakout and both try to play it off and woooooo boy this somehow managed to get even more awkward. Could a spout of flame please consume him now to end this torment thank you Satan. He has to try and play off why he had a blonde-gals dating sim in his hands and he insists he just was reading it to see what it was about and of couuuurse, she totally understands, yes let us both just lean on this easy explanation that lets everyone walk away…

-But of course Keita is actually kind of a total dork for the design process of them and how tightly they managed to sell a game which is when he realizes he miiiight have oversold it OH GOD TOO FAR PULL OUT PULL OUT

-Yep she’s staring.

-PANIC.

-But she breaks out into the giggles, because she’s amazed with his passion about it…And she’s…She’s like him to…To join her…

-In the game club!

-The what now?

-Hard cut to an arcade, with a small group of folks from the same school playing a flashy mahjong arcade game, when a pink-haired young lady needs the help of one guy, Tasuku! There’s an amazing(ridiculous) looking stuffed cat in the claw machine, and he’s got the magic touch…And of course, having a desperate young lady needing his help would turn the eyes of any straight young man.

-But you’re paying for the play. You’re not cutting into his game budget with this thing.

-EVEN BIGGER EYES. Why you little…

-But, okay. Deep breath. In goes 100 yen, and okay, focus, watch the toy…And Tasuku pulls the magic trick, hooking the stuffed cat’s tag with the claw! One play, and it’s in this young lady’s hands! He tries to play it cool, but inside he feels like a total badass having pulled this off for his cute, if slightly ditzy, girlfriend. The visual cue would like to let you know that his pride will soon fall.

-That night, the whole gang finally leaves the arcade…When Tasuku spots Keita over by a bench, just kinda staring down onto the bench? What’s going on with him? …Well, it doesn’t matter. He’s just some dork without a hot girlfriend.

-The visual cues want to let you know that soon this dork and Task’s hot girlfriend will be meeting in secret and Tasuku will fail.

-So Keita is staring, because Karen is explaining. She just started the gaming club, since, well, there isn’t one. It doesn’t even entirely exist yet since she hasn’t done the initial round of recruitment to get the school to accept their existence, and youuuu are her first recruit! And wow, you’re polite. …Chill, Keita. Even her classmates are all super polite. Her teacher is polite to her! Hell, when she plays Mario, Bowser himself is polite! Okay that one has to be bullshit. Maybe it was a bug?

-It did happen after three straight days of trying to beat the speed running world record for the game… You were unconscious and dreaming! Your body collapsed from lack of capacity! The only bug is the one in your damn head that led to you thinking that was a smart thing to do!

-And Karen breaks out into the giggles, having finally gotten through Keita’s shell…As she admits that the gaming thing is a bit of a secret. Her friends don’t really know about it…She even picked this school because it once had a famous gaming club. But…It collapsed, in the time between her testing in and her first day at the school…She spent her whole first year politicking behind the scenes to get the school to let her revive it, and now she’s ready to make it stronger than it ever was! That’s actually impressive.

-But what will it be, exactly…? Well, playing games, of course. But not just that. They’ll be playing them seriously. Competitively. This isn’t just about the love of games. This is about games as self betterment. And for that, she needs the kind of souls who can slam themselves against the wall again and again until they finally, finally break through. And she found one, in you! The wind picks up, the springtime cherry blossoms swirl around them, and Keita is in awe, as he finds himself…

-Finds himself…Unsure what to say…When her mother texts her! She has to get going she’s already breaking curfew wait for her after school tomorrow BYE! Ohgodrunrunrunrunmom’sgonnabesomad

-That night in his tiny little apartment, Keita slacks upon his bed, playing his totally-not-a-PS-Vita. I think I will call it a PZ Vivio, because stupid references are the best references. So anyways he’s playing it, and he can’t help but feel like this game club thing…This could be huge! The event in his youth that he’s been waiting for! Is this a dream? A magical wonderful dream—He just got a text.

-Okay. Deep breath. Pick up the phone. See what it says.

-Oh, it’s just an alert. A game friend, Mono-san, is requesting help in a mobile MMO type deal. Sure. Sure thing. PZ Vivio go down, phone goes up…

-And then we fade over to the cutesy, curly-haired girl who is Mono-san…Just to make it clear what we’re dealing with here.

-Cut to the next day! Class just wrapped, and Keita takes a deep breath, as he has to decide what to do…And Mono-san needs help again? Well, he can take a couple minutes to dive into a boss battle, besides Karen was probably just fucking with hi—

-HEY KEITA

-Yipe!

-Yep she went and found him because waiting for him to find her sounded boring. And dang, you play mobile games too, huh? And everyone’s starting to stare. Okay. Okay deep breath they should go to the club room right now! He races out after Karen, having just declined the help request and please forgive him Mono-san…As Tasuku and his group watch this hapless dork walk off with the hottest girl in school.

-To the stairwell! Where we meet Misumi Eiichi! Keith is confused. He’s her other first recruit! She found him at the arcade playing vintage puzzlers! And he’s all kind of embarrassed, as Keita quietly realizes how much of a fucking idiot he was thinking he had a chance at this…

-But then Eiichi extends a hand, and admits he’s not a super sociable guy. But he’d love to be friends with Keita. And…You know what? There’s not a damn thing wrong with ‘just’ making some good friends who he shares a passion with. Keita shakes that hand with both of his own, and it might not be the dating sim fantasy he had in his head, but this still could work out just fine…

-As all three head for the clubroom, where Karen admits she had to do some very cunning work to get them to approve the club…But they get there, and she flips the door sign to reveal it is now OPEN! She even did a custom club sign with cute pixel art on it!

-The place is already kitted out with tons of games and setups, fight sticks and spare pads…And the other recruits. Kase Gakuto, who Karen has to introduce because he’s busy playing. Then, over there playing Guilty Gear is Oohiso Niina. Both of these two are the senpais of the group, and Niina is not listening because all that matters is the Guilty Gear.

-And Gakuto here is one of the top FPS players in the world, as he wrecks face at CSGo. Or as Keita calls it, COS. And Eiichi admits that he really only knows vintage puzzlers. Well they’ll have to teach you!

-And the best part? Everything here was bought over the last year by entering in local tournaments! The school may not be super into games, but they damn well like having trophies to display and students bringing in their own club funds! But what good is a game club if there’s no game playing? Come on, guys, pick something and play~!

-And Gakuto wants to see what these guys can do…

-Straight up first round, team deathmatches in Battlefield. Gakuto wrecks face, with Karen close behind, and the rookie guys do…Poorly. Next round! By the fifth match, Keita is better than two of the bots on his and Gakuto’s team, while Eiichi is slowly but surely improving a little. MORE ROUNDS. 30 rounds in, Keita is actually slipping from sheer exhaustion and Eiichi is getting intense too…

-A full two hours later, and Keita collapses. Karen even has to ask Gakuto to go a little easier on the new recruits, but no. He’s not running a damn training school. You learn or you fall behind. Do you want to be stuck here all on your own again, jerk?

-Also as an aside, they have a legit straight-up Guilty Gear XRD Rev2 poster up on the wall. No BASE COMBAT for that franchise.

-Also Gakuto strongly questions whether Eiichi has really never played one of these before. You got the hang of twin-sticking it really quickly for someone new…And you got three kills on him. Eiichi insists he just got lucky, but at this point I’m pretty fuckin’ sure he’s lying. But whether he’s secretly got practice or just is a fast learner…

-But as for Keita, why the hell did you just stand in that corner jumping up and down on that car in the last round?! He, he wanted to see the scenery past the wall…Well you’re making everyone else on your team’s life harder, you jackass!

-And soon Karen has to calm everyone down and call for a break, as she and Eiichi step out onto the balcony…And Keita just stares, as Gakuto goes right back to CSGO on the PC and I’m not entirely sure Niina even realizes the two newcomers are here. Karen ends up asking what got the two into games…And Keita realizes he doesn’t, really, have one…

-Contrast, say, Gakuto, whose father is in a PMC and so he came into the FPS genre with tons of core practices already in his head that got translated into game mechanics. Or Niina who is trying to pull her best friend back from the dark side. (Your friend turned out to be a Gator, huh? I’ve been there, lass. May your trials serve to bring them back to sanity.)

-And Keita suddenly feels very, very awkward…At least Eiiichi doesn’t have any good reason either, so Keita can just relax, and take a deep thorough drink from his coke can…

-He just lost his memoirs and when he came to, the only thing he was good at was vintage puzzlers.

-SPITTAKE

-Keita suddenly feels like the only sane man in a world gone mad. And Karen tries to lighten the mood and encourage them to stick around. This isn’t about being some world-class gamer. It’s just about the core idea of self-betterment through games, and anyone can do that, no matter where they’re starting off! Eiichi is sold. Give him the form, he’ll be joining!

-And Keita? Well…Keita…

-As he steps out of the room, Gakuto promises to teach him proper team play, and Niina silently shoves an old fight stick into his hands. They might be weird, they might be a bit intimidating, but there’s a kind and genuine heart in their core. This might just work. He can make this work! So he can most definitely say that he’ll—

-Pass! You guys are all super competitive and he’s into single player stuff and RPGs.

-Pardon?

-New day! Class! Keita has realized by now how much of a FUCKING IDIOT he was, when his phone buzzes! Mono-san needs his help…Sure, sure thing, that’ll clear his mi—

-Karen appears! And she’s not giving up. Join. Her. Club. She’s interested in you! And that gets everyone to go silent, as she holds out her hand…And the timer on Mono-san’s request ticks down, lower, lower…Keita reaches out, and…Taps it at the last second! What were you saying, Karen?

-…He…Look. He can’t join the game club.

-Why? Is it because you don’t think you’re good enough? They’ll take care of you, rookie or otherwise!

-…No. He’s…He’s not into competition. He likes the love of games. He’s not a competitive guy at all. Your focus is fantastic, but it’s just not for him, so…

-So Karen suddenly feels like she just got dumped. And everyone’s staring. She goes tsuntsun to try and save face but god dammit quit trying to be nice to her! She walks out in tears…Only to slip on a banana peel and faceplate so hard that she’s got to flee at top speed in a panicked sob…

-As Mono-san sends Keita a thank-you note for the save.

-Episode 01: Amano Keita and Chapters of the Chosen

-TO BE CONTINUED…

…You fucking stupid idiot.