#and like. in general. but especially fellow game devs.)

[goddessofblood]

@valkiliar So looking into these claims… First I checked your examples (and a few others) of similar designs. One Eevee-like Pal was just a fluffy dog, the other was pretty eevee like I'll admit, though eevee is just like, a dog lol. And the Lucario-like pal is Anubis. Like even named Anubis. I don't see them as particularly compelling examples of plaigarism since theres pretty good non-pokemon reasons most of these look like their uh, lookalines. I think the only really compelling ones is the blue eevee with a vest and the Meganium lookalike, and having 2-5 fairly similar mons out of 100 is not unreasonable I think. I would personally have preferred more interesting & unique designs, but I wouldn't say the palworld designs are 'immoral' or plagiaristic. I then looked into their older games. The game from 3 years ago is called Craftopia… and uh, its just worse Palworld. So yeah thats extremely shitty development practice. Almost as bad as the Don't Starve Together debacle, I'd say. Whether or not they'll continue updating the old game is unclear though- it got two updates last year, one in January and one in December. I wouldn't be surprised if it has been genuinely abandoned, and fans seem to believe it has been, but a studio big enough to create palworld probably has more than one team- and thus palworld and craftopia could be worked on by separate teams concurrently. Not completely damning, and frankly I do understand the decision to create a new game in a different engine, but if craftopia doesn't get any updates this year then i'd say its indicative of a scam (or at least scammer behavior).

As far as AI generation goes, I've not seen anything that actually suggests this game uses any kind of generative AI. I wouldn't be surprised per say, but it also isn't obvious to me that such things were used. The dev has worked with AI before, but afaik has not indicated its been used in this project. Now the game that has AI is just, a copy of a jackbox game but with generative AI instead of doing it yourself which is. you know, interesting to say the least. Theres a pattern of behavior emerging lol. But that isn't something I'd consider proof AI was used for Palworld.

Finally, regarding NFTs, I found one not-trustworthy source saying Palworld already has NFT integration? But since nobody else is saying that I kind doubt this is the case. However I did see that the CEO is a tech weirdo, including have built an entire crypto exchange. So previous scam experience for sure and a definite possibility that NFTs are integrated in the future. Just no concrete evidence that I've seen.

In all I'd say there is compelling evidence that the company (or at least CEO) behind Palworld is fairly likely to be scummy & I wouldn't recommend people support them (for their own sake, given the NFT stuff and possibility this game might be abandoned). That said, there isn't really anything super concrete there, so its largely speculation as to how & why they might be scummy. I can't say I'd blame anyone for playing it, but I do think its a bad idea nonetheless.

Not the least of which is because Cassette Beasts is right there! Its good! Better than Pokemon! Go Play It!

personally I am very turned off by the concept of a mon' catcher where you shoot & kill the monsters. That said, I also don't personally see the validity of the "plagiarism" accusations. From what I've seen, most of the monster designs are fairly unique & the actual gameplay is obviously substantially different. Theres a couple designs I'd say are obvious homages (the luxray like in particular) but for the most part similarities tend to be like, oh thats a sheep. Yeah thats what sheep look like. Not really plagiarizing from pokemon as much as... god?

[greenflamethegf]

Hi! Fellow game dev here, would you be willing to help me out? I'm very new to this and could use a mentor

Hi, I'll be glad to help. Especially on public forum, so perhaps some find this to be a useful guide. Are there any particular area you want advice in, or specific question you have?

For general stuff:

Make thing and play your things. Before art, story or programming even, try paper prototype is possible. Then make an MVP (minimal viable product). Just enough to test core concepts and see if they are as fun as you imagined. Be sure to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Like even if it's a buggy less with stick figures, or even just white squares playing what you made yields the greatest insight.

Game engines are also nice, helps to skip the fluff such as (rendering and collision detection). I am using Unity, but that's far from the only great engine.

[geodetojoy]

so cozy in this inbox- you’ve even got fruit snacks in here! im stayin forever if that’s okay

rng selected questions from the “distracting asks” this time! and yes more proofreading yayyy

23, 18, 10, 15, 3

carry on fellow pb blossom member o7

hello again dearest mads!!!! little did you know the fruit snacks were a lure you have no choice but to stay now >:)

23. talk about a WIP?

oh man ive got a lot on hold at the moment, buuut ill go with my tati/barb painting im working on (that I believe i sent you the current version of- its been a bit lmaoo)

i mean first of all i just really wanted to give my girls at least a bit of happiness. is it temporary? in canon? definitely not. but they deserve to have each other to lean on and to feel safe with

and i really love the concepts of bi/aro barb and lesbian/aroace tati so. they dont have a defined relationship, they just love each other and thats all that matters.

ive got a few ideas in my head of how their relationship would come to be, but i think its something they both tried to view from analytical lenses if that makes sense? especially with barb, my poor heteronormative victim. she definitely does not like the idea that she might care for tati in a more realistic way than she did with curt until she tried to put her fears behind her and consider it from a position of just what would make her happy. when she realized the answer to that question was tati, she was both extremely relieved and utterly terrified. with tati, she was so afraid of how easily barb was peeling back the walls she had built up so meticulously, but after she realized that it was probably healthier for her, she accepted the care with loving, almost desperate arms.

they definitely started out as incredible friends, both being able to bond over their shared experiences of discrimination in their jobs over being women in the 50s and 60s in such male-dominated places of work. and for some reason, tati finds it extremely easy to open up to barb and barb just cares so much and just wants to take care of her so bad and that love is always reciprocated, out of fear of losing barb at the beginning, but then out of sheer appreciation and adoration as time passed.

theyre in an incredibly healthy relationship, both because they had no pressure as women to be devoid of emotion and because i think they would talk about their emotions sooooo much with barb as a scientist and tati as a healing trauma survivor.

anyways! got a bit sidetracked, but my WIP is a painting of them cuddling on a couch in their shared apartment :3 the blinds are closed, ofc, and the place is scarcely decorated aside from the necessary furniture, but to them its the most beautiful home ever because they have the other there with them

the idea for the finished piece is to have the orange glow from the sun beaming through the blinds illuminating the room just enough to see them, but have it dark enough to enshroud them in shadow, hiding from the rest of the world. but what we can see is safe, warm, cozy, and quiet :3

18. Dream Job?

Game dev baby!! I wanna make every single aspect of a game entirely on my own one day, but honestly id settle for doing any part of the process in a company or group as long as i can pitch in!!

10. Favorite animal?

im so bad at choosing just one. so im giving you two :)

fennec foxes and red pandas!!!!!

15. Favorite subject?

(im assuming this to be school subject bc subject in general is. entirely too vague lmaoo)

Any and all math!!! im a nerd from head to fucking toe and i am PROUD OF IT

3. 5 songs you have been recently obsessed with?

YIPPEE MORE MUSIC QUESTIONS I LOVE TALKING ABOUT MUSIC I LOVE

(btw one of these is gonna be an album bc it has five songs on it and i cannot bear to exclude others for the sake of putting all five of them)

DoNotReadMe.wav by Charlie Slimecicle. is anyone surprised by this? if so that means i need to post about it more

The Wisdom Saga from EPIC the musical!!!!!! been listening to it since its release im obsessed!!!!

Facade from Cinderella's Castle!!! its just!!!! gah!!!! it sounds so good!!!!

Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter. im blaming joel for this one even though it was like a month ago

Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads. i thiiiink this is the one? if not they keep playing a song just like it at work and every time i try to remember it later to figure out what song it is i forget how the melody goes and i lose my shit but its taken over my every thought I JUST WANNA KNOW WHAT SONG IT ISSSSS

ty for the ask again mads!!!! love ya forever and always my pb blossom buddy <333333

[jonquilandlace]

HA ALRIGHT THEN let's go for Yuki's sibling the lovely Iori my love with 7, 12, 21, 30, 36, and A for you >:D

AHHHH MY FAVORITE GENDER FLUID CHILDE MY FUNKY LITTLE ULTIMATE GAME DEV

7. What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?

Old video games, especially when playing with a player two! Their feelings on nostalgia are a bit complicated; they have generally only positive feelings about Yukine, as their player two, and playing games together was some of the best time in their childhood (am I implying enough that it was rocky?), but given a lot of the sadder or scarier events that often bookended these sessions, she winds up mostly thankful to not have to be in the past anymore.

12. How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?

Oh my god this is such a cursed question

Y’all Iori has absolutely no sense of personal space their instinct is gonna be to a) ask Yuki, b) ask nearest trusted individual, and c) simply. wait till he’s alone enough to not be judged for it and either use corner of laptop or corner of wall to scratch that itch till it’s gone.

21. Why do they get up in the morning?

Sounds preachy, is true: to make that day better than it would be without them.

30. Who do they most regret meeting?

Junko Enosh— *shot*

Okay but no actually, for Iori, while Junko did kinda fuck em over and sideways, she is not the person who had the most negative affect on their life. That would be the as-alluded-to (yet-unnamed-because-writer-sucks) Nanny :)

36. Do they actively seek romance, or do they wait for it to fall into their lap?

“HA ain’t nobody got time for that” - Iori Kanno, precisely 24 hours before realizing their efforts to befriend an “unbefriendable” person have resulted in a bond that crossed over into both the romantic and platonic love homestuck quadrants categories and whoops now we’re bonded for life :)

A. Why are you excited about this character?

My fellow game dev I love them and also I sincerely love a lot of the plot shit I have written for them! Ofc I have to con myself into writing it out into a narrative, actually, but I love them, I love their romance, I love their backstory and dynamic with Yuki, and honestly I’m also really excited about having a gender fluid POV character? Like that in and of itself isn’t anything too unusual but it has really made me think about like how I’m gonna literally write for them as someone who writes in third person when their pronouns change by the day! (In general I think I’ve decided they/them pronouns across the board other than when it’s made very clear they’re going by a different pronoun that day, or in dialogue!)

I love the Kanno siblings so much guys,,,

[exeggcute]

in general I would not hesitate to describe tumblr as a website that both attracts and cultivates an extremely emotionally immature userbase (it is absolutely not better than twitter in this regard lol) but people's attitude about the site itself and feature requests/updates, specifically this unchecked tendency to take out their frustration on random employees, is like off-the-wall entitled nutso shit. it really should not surprise me at this point but every time I see it I'm like legit shocked that people feel emboldened to behave like that just because there's a level of digital abstraction between them and the employee they're blowing up on.

this website is not a public commons, this website is not some natural property of the universe, this website is a privately-held company. it's run like a company. it's a company that offers a service that most people use without paying a cent (especially if you're using an ad blocker, which means you're not even generating ad revenue). like most social media sites, tumblr does primarily exist to turn a profit—and understanding that profit motive genuinely goes a long way towards understanding why certain things shake out the way they do in the land of web development—but I feel like tumblr is unique among social media platforms in that it's not actively hostile to its users and isn't headed by a billionaire manchild egomaniac.

the internet in general is not an ethereal magic box where your complaints go in and cool new features come out. I feel compelled to once again return to my rant about how the internet is built on nearly-invisible labor (much of that being unpaid or underpaid labor), and while tumblr falls into the category of paid labor, it still relies on real human people who have to physically make and maintain and deliver the product you use every day.

there is no coherent way to, to use a common example of something tumblr users do understand about digital labor, push back against crunch in the game dev industry and advocate for better working conditions for the workers whose games you're buying and then turn around and verbally harass random IC-level employees at a social media site that you use every day for free. this is totally fucking deranged behavior. you should know better than to yell at a call center rep about your insurance premium going up and you should know better than to yell at a random employee because you don't like a policy that their boss's boss's boss implemented. please demonstrate a shred of understanding for your fellow man and act like an adult.

and yeah, there's always room for improvement. I think tumblr's capacity for genuine improvement, especially in recent years, is another thing that makes it unique. the pitfalls that tumblr does suffer from are more or less universal pitfalls suffered by every other social media site (e.g., content moderation is an endless, labor-intensive game of whack-a-mole played by underfunded and overworked support agents).

personally I'm just grateful to have been using a website like this for so long without ever being compelled to subscribe to a paid service, and with a core experience that's remained unchanged for over a decade. this is one of the last remaining places online where you aren't bombarded by shitty reels and trending topics and mandatory "best posts first" timelines.

[reaperbabegaming]

When the Night Comes Game Review

Reviews can contain a few spoilers. Heavy, in-depth spoilers will have a warning. All opinions are my own and I have not been paid to do this review.

Dev Team - Lunaris Games Romance Routes - 6 individual and 2 polyamorous routes Rating - M17 Available On - Windows, Linux, Mac Price - $12.99

Overall Rating 5/5

Summary (retrieved from Lunaris Games website)

When The Night Comes is a queer, narrative-driven, supernatural visual novel originally released for free over a year from October 2018 - November 2019. When The Night Comes: The ReVamp is set to release in late Spring 2021 and will be a definitive version of the original game with a number of improvements, including voice acting and updated UI and artwork. 

Play as a renowned Hunter; a creature slayer who has been called to the quiet, strange little town of Lunaris to assist the local Enforcers with an investigation into a series of unsettling and unexplained supernatural murders. Immerse yourself in the world of witches, vampires, demons and lycans as you slowly unravel the dark mystery that lies deep within the roots of the town.

The question is, are the creatures of the night the ones you should really be afraid of? 

A story of finding a home and a family in the most unlikely of places, and a lesson in learning to bare your teeth at your maker.

Reaper Review

When the Night Comes was a game that I had no intention on loving. I was dipping my toes into playing dating sims/otomes on stream and I really liked the art style so I decided to play it and it was the best decision of my life.

The city of Lunaris is cursed by an unknown creature, leaving its citizens living in fear whenever night falls, especially every few days when the beast habitually hunts. 

You play as a Hunter (fitting huh?), called in by the Lunaris Hunter team to help them put an end to the attacks. With customizable name and pronoun options, you’re slowly introduced to the main cast who are primarily all your romance options. 

CAST (in order of appearance):

Ezra (VA - Adam Faison) He/Him : The local witch with kind eyes and a heart to match.

Finn (VA - Gideon Emery) He/Him : Vampire clan leader whose comments made me blush on more than one occasion.

Augustus (VA - Jonah Scott) They/Them : Major General of the Hunters and one of my all time favorite romances.

Piper (VA - Ione Butler) She/Her : Fellow Hunter with the cutest laugh and loyal to her comrades to a fault.

Alkar (VA - Jalen K. Cassell) He/Him : Resident mischievous Lycan who honestly shouldn’t have as bad of a reputation as he does.

Omen (VA - Chris Patton) He/Him : Cinnamon Bun of a demon who is too good for this world.

Throughout the game you meet side characters, work with the main cast, and investigate as much as you can about the creature that stalks the town. While it is an otome, the level of mystery in the game about the investigation and deaths is quite high and I found myself falling deeper into the story that when the big reveal came I was overcome with emotion. You find out just as much about the MC as you do about your companions and the mystery of the town.

One thing I appreciated was that there is no split between romance and story either, but rather the romances add to it, showing in their own ways how they grow to care about you and your wellbeing as the MC. The characters also have moments with each other, not just in the polyamory routes but in friendships and when you learn about their intricate backstories with one another. The banter between them all is on another level and I’m especially fond of the end of the game when all of the main cast come together in one big plan to find the beast and destroy it for good. Nothing annoys me more than being engrossed in a story only to be then thrown into lovey-dovey mode (and don’t get me wrong I love lovey-dovey mode). 

Other things to note:

There is a festival scene which you can explore and spend time with your LI with a beautiful CG (a special full-screen static image) at the end of the moment that I just wanted to stay in forever.

Clear heart icon for dialogue options that are explicitly for romancing a character. So if you don’t want to romance anyone you can easily do it or on the other hand if you want to lock in a romance you don’t have to stress about what to say.

All of the best lines have voice acting however I’d say only about 75-80% of the game has voice acting. It’s a little annoying but only because I love the cast so much.

There are over 60 CGs and post-game mini stories (which I actually didn’t learn about the post-game stories until I was writing this…time to go play again!). 

Of course bad endings are possible…but to be totally honest I’m too scared to play that route!

Lastly, my favorite part of the game would have to be the spicy scenes with your LI, if you so choose to pursue them. Without being visually explicit, you get to enjoy some sweet sweet spicy time with your favorite characters and this is where the voice acting is present a majority of the time if not completely. Now I love me some spice, but sometimes CGs can put me off from it. I prefer to imagine what’s going on rather than be shown AND if you’re trying to play sneakily, CGs are just a huge announcement to what you’re doing. The script is so well done that in my opinion CGs aren’t necessary.

This game has all of my love and I’d recommend it to anyone and everyone, so if you’re looking for a story with mystery and well developed characters I would say you’ve found it.

Purchase the game HERE.

[ospreyeamon]

malgus’ empire: doomed from the start

Why can’t you side with Malgus during The False Emperor? The guy does have some good points – not the fighting everyone in the galaxy at once thing, but about the stupid Sith infighting and stupid xenophobia holding the Empire back, and about the Sith Emperor being unworthy of loyalty.

One of the reasons is the devs can’t offer player decisions that would significantly diverge the overall world-state; creating a break between players who stayed loyal to their faction casting down Malgus and players who joined Malgus and propped up his empire would be hugely resource intensive, especially since the two-faction system is deeply baked into the game code. Another complicating factor is that, because The False Emperor is open to all classes, the logic of gains players making for their faction being promptly offset by the heroes on the other side can’t be used to justify a continuing stalemate the way it can be for Ilum, Makeb, and the class stories.

But those are Doylist explanations. What about potential Watsonian ones? Why would the player character, regardless of class, always turn down Malgus’ offer to join him? Why would a character who broadly agrees with Malgus’ position refuse him?

Maybe because there are hints that, even if they did join Malgus, they would be joining the losing side. Malgus’ new empire was doomed from its proclamation because Malgus just didn’t have the numbers.

With the exception of the imperial troops under his personal command, the two most prominent groups Malgus recruited – the Schism Collective, Talsa-Ko and her fellow voss – are from outside the Sith Empire. While Malgus is said to have “carefully cultivated the opinions of likeminded Sith leaders for years”, recruiting people like Darth Serevin, it’s not clear that Malgus’ primary aim was to bring them into his conspiracy rather than just promoting his more equal and diverse ideology for the Sith Empire. Notably missing from Malgus’ list of supporters are his apprentice Darth Karrid and his old ally Shae Vizla. As a falleen you would expect Karrid to be an obvious proponent of doing away with the Empire’s entrenched xenophobia, and the Mandalorian creed has never been one that looks down on a warrior merely because of their species.

Karrid’s absence is the one that is most suggestive because she is promoted to the Dark Council after Malgus’ defeat with no stain of his treason on her reputation. Given that knowing beforehand about Malgus’ plans but remaining silent would have also constituted a betrayal of the Sith Empire, it is likely that her Master left her ignorant of his plans. That would match with his behaviour towards an Imp-Side player; even though Malgus has been trusting you with missions for years, you still don’t warrant a personal invitation into the plot after delivering the crystals into his hands on Ilum.

It seems that, while Malgus worked hard to secure alliances outside the empire, he failed to properly canvas support for his plan inside the empire ahead of time. He assumed that the desire to see the Sith Empire reformed would translate into the willingness to abandon it. He assumed that discontented imperials would rally to his cause without his needing to make any effort to court, caucus with, or even inform them about his intentions.

This was not only arrogant but extremely stupid because Malgus needed the support of those dissatisfied imperials. Malgus’ first act after proclaiming himself emperor was to declare war on both the Galactic Republic and Sith Empire. Fighting a war on two fronts is something that leaders generally try to avoid for good reason. Because he refused to take the practical route of just picking one and engaging diplomatically with the other Malgus needed more troops, more ships, more supplies. Waging war on the galaxy is not a cheap exercise.

Malgus was depending on his support snowballing once he got going – winning some impressive early victories to raise his new empire’s profile to draw more followers in. Unfortunately for Malgus, not having as much initial support as he expected made snowballing more difficult, especially since attacking both the Republic and Empire meant that both sent their best and brightest to stop him.

Usually I would try to write about the player characters in more general terms, trying to account for the different classes and paths you can take through a story, but in this case it will be more coherent if I stick to mine. Malgus only asking the player character to join him after naming himself emperor means he decided to not preemptively approach:

The new Councillor of Ancient Knowledge, a twi’lek whose career Malgus actively helped further by assigning her plum missions. Darth Occlus has publicly supported Malgus’ position on removing the species-restrictions around military enrolment and imperial citizenship.

Lys’trel, who while younger than Malgus with a narrower support base is his equal in Force-skill and rank, finds herself genuinely offended that Malgus failed to so much as attempted to suborn her. As the only alien on the Dark Council she should have been an obvious potential ally. If he didn’t approach her, who else hasn’t he talked to? His apprentice Karrid apparently. Not a good sign. Malgus has already screwed up so throwing in with him will be very risky – but for how much reward? Lys’trel doesn’t care about war and conquest; violence is a means, not an end. Equality is something she wants, but she believes she can achieve it within the Sith Empire. For the Sith Empire to immediately implement its equality reforms after Malgus’ short-lived rebellion the policy changes must have already been in the works before it began; Occlus is an active participant in Darth Marr’s schemes to that end and had been trying to arrange an in-person meeting with Malgus to bring him in since with both Military Offence and Defence onboard they would have it in the bag. From Lys’trel’s perspective, Darth Serevin being invited in but not her and out of Malgus’ own apprentices Lord Cytharat not Darth Karrid – the lower ranked red sith but not the higher rank aliens – suggests that Malgus’ own subconscious biases are already undermining the equality he’s trying to create and the viability of his faction. It doesn’t help that in some important respects Malgus’ declaration just isn’t radical enough for her. Lys’trel wants to see slavery abolished and Malgus has said nothing about that.

Barrak Akkee of Clan Lok, Champion of the Great Hunt, is the most romantically famous of the aliens among the Sith Empire’s mercenary forces. Her underdog victory in the Great Hunt and adoption by Mandalore the Vindicated made her an honoured ally of the Sith – a feel-good story that improved the perception of fighting for the Empire among Imperial mirialians and mirialians among Imperials generally (which the Empire really needed because they are forcibly occupying Mirial). Then there was the whole being grievously slandered by the late Jedi Battlemaster only to clear her name by… besting the Battlemaster in single combat? forcing the late Chancellor Janarus to repent his lies at gunpoint? dramatically confronting Janarus with the evidence she had been framed before the Chancellor was assassinated by the late Darth Tormen? …the retellings vary but it was certainly very exciting.

As a Mandalorian, Barrak adheres to the Resol’nare and follows the Mandalore. Unless Mandalore abandons the alliance with the Sith Empire to make a new pact with Malgus, her loyalties will remain unchanged. As a bounty hunter, Barrak knows honour and glory won’t mend your gear or feed your family. Unless Malgus’ new empire can pay as well and reliably as the current one can, that’s going to be a problem; you can only pay your troops with loot if you win and keep winning which easier said than done, and it’s one thing to take people’s gold but another to take their grain. Anyway, it’s not like she or Mandalore got more of an “invitation” than Malgus’ widenet broadcast. What a snub.

While the Emperor chose another red sith of exalted lineage as his new Wrath after the previous one ran off with a Jedi, said new Wrath plainly doesn’t hold to the Emperor’s edicts on alien inferiority; he followed Malgus’ advice on tempting the kaleesh war-band on Ilum out of the Republic’s service into the Sith’s. Becoming the Wrath would give any Sith enough insight into the Emperor and his Hand’s behaviour to see the disregard he holds for his Empire. Vitiate’s Wrath publicly disowning him in favour of Malgus would send a powerful message to the Empire.

Tsojât accepted the mantle of the Wrath for personal reasons, not out of loyalty to the Emperor or to serve the Empire. But, having done that, he can’t turn away from the duty it implies. Having met the Hand it is clear that what people have been whispering since before the Treaty of Coruscant about the Emperor’s poor leadership is true – he doesn’t care about the people of the Empire, only his own powers and plans, whatever they may be. In the face of the Vitiate’s absence and apathy what should be the duties of the Emperor, the protection and guidance of the Sith Empire, instead fall to the Wrath as his emissary. Tsojât is honour bound not to betray the Empire and duty bound to attempt to fix it. Despite Malgus’ belief to the contrary, his breakaway is just another example of the destructive Sith infighting Malgus’ is railing against. This split in the Empire’s strength and attention right as the new war with the Republic begins leaves its worlds and its people in even more danger than they would be otherwise; it must be resolved as soon as possible.

(The infamous rattataki Cipher Agent is still officially listed as KIA and is not answering commcalls from the Dark Council at this time. Malgus couldn’t have gotten a hold of Cipher Nine if he’d tried, which he didn’t. Cipher took the Black Codex and ghosted the Imperial establishment with as much of the remains of ImpInt as vhe could safely disappear. To Yjimir, Malgus is just another self-absorbed and selfish Sith; another Dark Councillor unfit to lead the Sith Empire or any empire. His vision of a new empire is neither workable nor desirable.)

And they’ve all heard the story about Malgus and Elena Daru; Malgus taking a twi’lek slave as a lover, arming her to fight beside him, before murdering her because his love was a weakness. It doesn’t paint Malgus in a flattering light, even by the measures of the Sith. Murdering someone you love so they can’t be used against you is a tacit admittance that you aren’t strong enough to protect them. Turning on someone who has followed you loyally without provocation makes pledging service to you less attractive, for a leader who betrays his followers once may do so again.

[just-a-carrot]

Hi hi Carrot! Do you have any rec on finding people to bounce ideas off of/ talk to about games (esp. horror). Nobody I know plays horror games or even knows what I'm talking about most of the time (even when I'm not talking about games lmao :') ) and I tend to find inspiration in discussion. I'm extremely awkward, so if you have any advice on getting to know any gamers/devs please let me know. You can ignore me if this is uncomfortable for you :). Thank you!

Ohhhhhh so like... writing buddies / potentially alpha readers type thing? 🤔 That's a good question tbh as I don't really have anyone like that either, though that's because I generally like just keeping everything up in my head and am bad at talking about ideas that aren't fully formed lakdjfladk I have a lot of dev friends but I don't really do things like bounce ideas off them or talk about undeveloped stories, I just like interacting and having fun with them about silly game dev stuff lol

So for this reason I'm not really sure??? I guess my best advice would be to try to find some sort of community you can ease your way into, whether that's a VN community or a writing community or a horror community depending on what your main goals are. I know in DevTalk there's a writing channel where a lot of people like to bounce ideas around. Or you could also put like a request there or something that you're looking for writing buddies or alpha readers. There are probably also other more general writing servers or game dev servers where you might be able to do something similar? Or if you don't like Discord you can also just start interacting with other devs on various social media platforms and try to build some relationships there, which could potentially lead to finding writing buddies that are also interested in having someone to bounce ideas off of.

It's hard though!! I only have beta testers when it comes to like, sharing my first versions of stuff and getting feedback, and even then I just put out a sign-up form for interested people and got almost zero interest originally LMAO since then I've gotten more just through friends and fellow devs, but in the beginning it was very hard, especially if you don't know anyone. My best advice is to just pick a place where you feel most comfortable, whether that's discord or social media, and trying to slowly interact with people until you start making some friends or finding other like-minded people who might be interested in something like that. If you show interest in other people, then it's likely they'll respond in kind and you can make some friends! I am also really awkward when it comes to interacting with people so my advice might not be the best tho LOL

[ultyso]

Hold on wait a minute, what’s going on with Square Enix, what did they do (or going to do)? And why should it effect any of us who just want to play regular games like future kh and FF games? Please explain (it to me as if I don’t know a single thing about NFT’s, explain it to me like I’m someone on the street who’s never even heard of it). What does this have to do with kh?

Square Enix wants to make nft games. If this game they have in concept phase continues onwards and does well, Square could see it as profitable and could possibly start making nft things of their other current ips and/or make even more of these games. They already apparently sold some stickers through LINE that have sold out. Which is concerning since they’re going to go on the nft bandwagon further because of $$$$.

Here’s info about what an NFT is and why it’s bad for the environment: https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2021/3/15/22328203/nft-cryptoart-ethereum-blockchain-climate-change . There’s more you can read up on but this gives the general gist of it.

Square is using Ethereum for some card sticker things through LINE. And based on that article above, they chose to use the worst energy guzzling one. So what Square is saying now by making nfts and especially with this specific type, is that they’re okay with damaging the environment severely for profit. Y’know contradictory to the message they put off in FFVII with Avalanche vs Shinra. The whole damaging the planet. It just makes it even worse that a company that has a game about saving a planet from dying is going to use these stupid nfts to destroy OUR planet. Idiotic.

Now why it’s a concern for KH and other Square titles is not so much the games themself (unless Square decides they want NFTs for all their IPS, then they all become bad.)

Why I find it bad is pretty much buying Square Enix goods now, that money could be going towards Square’s plans with NFTs which I do not want to do. I want to support the devs and the games they create, but I do not want to support the company’s desire to continue making NFTS.

Supporting a company that is detrimental for something, to me ,is like saying their practices are okay. Think of like online spaces, someone says something very bad and harmful to people. Would you want to support them? Would you want to give them money knowing what kind of person they are? Think of Chik-fil-A, a company known for being anti-lgbtq. Would you want to give money to a company that actively supports harming your fellow lgbtq+ friends/family for some stupid chicken????

Think of it like that with Square. While the intention of the consumer is buying the games and merch, Square as a company gets that money and they could use it for their bs nft shit. I don’t want to kill our planet :,,,) It’s already so bad as the wealthy companies do not give any shit or remorse for the damage they do already.

So it’s what makes it hard. KH is important to me and I am for the KH staff. But it’s hard knowing me supporting the KH staff and series could possibly support Square’s nft practices as well :c So I am super conflicted about how to handle it b/c I buy a lot of KH merch and all the games. I enjoy them and want to keep collecting but it feels icky now. The most I feel I can do right now is just not buying directly from Square. I already have so many merch already taken care of for pre-orders and it has me worried about how the money I used to buy those merch is being used :c

[halfusek]

I have a random theory. The end of Abomination, Joey trying to.... y’know and Bendy makes him the ink demon, is that canon? Cause in chapter 5 he reveals he couldn’t d!3 but by only the end reel. Also in a hidden line from Henry as Ink Bendy is turning into Beast Bendy, Henry says “Joey?” At the ink demon. Could it be the reason why he has one human hand and the other is cartoon like? that Joey is actually the ink demon? That Joey tried to... y’know and couldn’t d!e so Bendy “helped” him and turned him into the Ink Demon? I dont know this just popped in my head and my brain thinks it’s canon-

Okay, so, to answer this ask to the best of my ability I’m gonna divide it to a few sections.

I would like to call the whole thing “Bendy canon is confusing and nothing is certain, and to have a coherent interpretation of the canon you need to either have some reaching conclusions or ignore things that are vague or suspicious”.

tldr: What you’ve said in this ask was more or less also my theory and why i made Abomination in the first place.

[Everything’s under the cut because I went off.]

1. Joey is the Ink Demon theory before Chapter 5 came out.

I’m not gonna waste time here trying to explain why we thought Joey could have been the Ink Demon when you can just read @adobe-outdesign​ ‘s post about it.

Whether you liked this theory or not you gotta admit it was very reasonable, connected Joey’s speech about cheating death with the wheelchair and Ink Demon’s bad foot. And it wasn’t like a person becoming a cartoon wasn’t a thing already: the game made it very clear that Susie became (Twisted) Alice.

However, this theory relied on Joey straight up being the Ink Demon.

Because you have character’s motivation, design and story all coming together:

Joey dying and being in a wheelchair -> Joey wants a perfect Bendy and not to die -> Joey becomes an ink creature but it goes wrong because he’s not a perfect fit -> The Ink Demon is born and has Joey’s bad foot and in general very human anatomy

But up until Chapter 5 we didn’t know if Joey was still “alive”, and an assumption we had to make for this theory to make most sense is that he’s dead but died as the last person or one of the last (because someone had to have made all those murders and other people were less likely except for Sammy perhaps).

If you didn’t want to accept this reasoning for Joey to be the Ink Demon you had to ignore the Ink Demon’s bad leg, a literal arrow with “Demon” written on it pointed at Joey’s audiolog and things like that. Of course all theories are valid, I’m just talking about how evidence is collected here, how some evidence supports theories and how some get in their ways.

2. Chapter 5 comes out.

Chapter 5′s release shed a lot of new light on the Ink Demon’s creation:

- he’s soulless,

- he was the first attempt of making an ink figure,

- he was the last and only Bendy attempt.

And on Joey:

- he was still there fine and dandy when the Ink Demon got created, acting all disgusted and disappointed about him, locking him up somewhere the investors wouldn’t see,

- he is alive when Henry enters the studio.

So, an easy conclusion drawn from it is that the Ink Demon can’t be Joey in a literal sense: Joey couldn’t have turned into the Ink Demon.

However, it doesn’t put an end to the connections between those characters, some things revealed in Chapter 5 even enhanced them:

- Joey is confirmed to be the one that needs to use the wheelchair.

- Ink Demon turns into Beast Bendy and Beast Bendy is straight up missing the foot that was bad - he additionally moves on his hands alone, kind of like a wheelchair bound person does.

So here’s some options (not the only ones but most popular and coherent takes):

- Joey is not the Ink Demon at all, the bad foot is just a meaningless design choice, or one that’s supposed to connect him to Joey for no reason (or as a “red herring” but this is not how red herrings are supposed to be executed).

Problem: ignoring a lot of evidence - because it’s meaningless due to the assumption of the conclusion.

- Joey isn’t exactly the Ink Demon but BATIM’s world is strongly implied to be some sort of a story, so the Ink Demon represents Joey and what kind of boss and person he used to be.

Problem: reaching, relies on Joey having control over the BATIM world and/or that world being a story + the “Joey?” question Henry asks is an unused file, meaning it’s not to be treated as canon information but perhaps one that used to be canon (or a meaningless easter egg/red herring, again, not how they should be working).

- There is not meant to be an answer, the viewer is supposed to pick one.

Problem: the devs are teasing for there to be a definite answer and not an open interpretation kind of ending, especially with another game being around the corner.

3. My post Chapter 5 conclusion and Abomination.

I’ve decided to run with the take that I enjoyed the most and build from here.

I’ve always been a Huge Fan of Joey being the Ink Demon.

But also, I didn’t want my take/comic to be an AU, I’ve wanted it to feel like a genuine interpretation of the BATIM canon, because that is simply what interests me most.

Therefore, I couldn’t ignore how strongly it is implied that the story of BATIM is... some kind of story in-universe.

You don’t just drop a “Tell me another one, uncle Joey.” for no reason.

But also also, BATIM being “just a story” in universe didn’t sit right with me (not to mention how disappointing that thought was).

So, I’ve started looking for proof supporting both the Story Theory and Not Just a Story theory and trying to piece them together. I’ve made a post about it long ago, and other people also made similiar posts, and hell even MatPat made a theory video basing off of these theories, I think no one wanted to just accept BATIM being simply a story with nothing real to it, hahah.

In my edition of it, the people who actually died in the real world were represented by the coffins with their names in the game - we can only find a few of these in the game and the rest are nameless.

And then I thought: ok but what about those people that don’t have coffins but do have some sort of ink creature that is most likely them like Allison Angel and Tom Boris? And on top of that there is Allison’s letter on Joey’s board which technically proves she outlived the studio, right?

So, then I’ve noticed that the number of named coffins, unnamed coffins and sacrificed items on pedestals in Chapter 1, roughly adds up to the number of characters we know (that are most important).

Based on all that I’ve decided to go with the idea that the characters dead in the real world are represented by the coffins and the characters dead in the story are represented by unnamed coffins and/or sacrificed items. That is because sacrificed items would explain why there is an ink creature connected to them without them themselves being sacrificed - as another kind of sacrifice has been made. Also - that was my partial explanation for the ritual taking place, because the game never bothered to give it more reason than “pleasing the gods” and then never mentioned the gods as an important part of the process ever again.

Then we get to another crucial part: what is the “story” world?

And here you can have plenty of takes but let’s boil it down to the most substancial undeniable thing: it’s connected to Joey’s regrets about his life. So here it can be either a direct results of his actions that he regrets, or a manifestation of his regrets.

Which is in a way... similiar to the Ink Demon/Joey dilemma.

Direct result or some sort of symbolism, manifestation.

Then the thought came to me: if there is a “story” version of Allison, Thomas and Sammy despite them not having coffins with their names, then is it possible for there to be a “story” version of Joey?

And the answer is: why not?

And then I look for proof. And, to my surprise, I find it.

This flashback is honestly one of the unexplained mysteries of Bendy.

Is it just a stylistic choice? If so then why are we clearly seeing Joey’s wheelchair being in the cartoony story studio?

It could be just that whatever makes Henry see those flashbacks made them like the rest of the world or Joey, a wheelchair bound Joey, has been in this story studio at some point.

There is also more complex evidence for this which I covered in this post, not gonna go over it here.

But that’s how I got the idea of there being two Joeys: real world one and story world one. And you can simply distinguish them in Abomination: one of them has more of “pencil” black and another more of “pen” black. Because I’m funny.

Having two Joeys solved a lot of issues: there can now be an alive Joey we see at the end of BATIM and an Ink Demon!Joey that we encounter in the game and who we have all of that evidence tied to.

And here’s where I come back to your ask.

This is more or less always how I’ve imagined Joey turning into the Ink Demon and I’ve wanted to give homage to that:

- The Ink Demon being made out of both Bendy and Joey and having them be represented by his different hands: a gloved, 4-fingered one and without a glove, human, 5-fingered one.

- Joey being the last one to die and filled with regret -> that’s why it’s a suicide. There is no one else to sacrifice him (anyone else would have just wanted to murder him in revenge) and suicide is a conclusion to the character development I gave him.

- Joey’s leg in the comic gets progressively worse, finally landing him in a wheelchair, his posture is not good -> Ink Demon’s bad leg and his sticking out vertabraes.

- There is also a reason why I made Joey’s death so gorey -> the Ink Demon is extremely thin, almost just a human skeleton wrapped in inky goo -> my Joey design is a tall, thin, lanky fellow who also died emptying his stomach.

- Holes in hands relate to cartoon Bendy’s gloves and Beast Bendy’s holes in hands.

- Joey stabbing his eyes out -> The Ink Demon not having eyes, the ink covering where his eyes should be -> Sillyvision = silly grin + eyes -> Vision is one of key words in the Bendy universe, very important to Joey, something he claimed he had as the main quality of his character, getting rid of his vision is the main part of his sacrifice.

- But Joey isn’t just turning himself into the Ink Demon. There already is a Bendy figure - which I have with premeditation made the Beta Bendy design. And here’s why: I’ve wanted to connect previous versions of BATIM but also Thomas’ and Joey’s Chapter 5 tapes gave me an impression that the first Bendy figure doesn’t exactly look as threatening as the Ink Demon does. So, I made him be just unnerving and off-model - the Beta Bendy design. The Ink Demon gets born when Joey and Bendy “fuse”, not making him another figure attempt, since there has been implied to be only one Bendy.

So, that has been my take of interpretating Bendy. 

It isn’t canon, we don’t know what exactly is canon.

Does it make sense? Probably more or less, yeah! Is it reaching? Yeah, absolutely! But it’s a conclusion I’ve had and have been happy with! :)

That is until new info started getting revealed which changed me from calling Abomination my interpretation of the Bendy canon to an AU.

4. The Handbook, DCTL, TIOL and BATDR.

Mainly DCTL, honestly. Because DCTL straight up drops some facts on us:

- A character can be turned into an inky creature even without a coffin: it’s what happened to Sammy, he wasn’t straight up murdered, just due to ink consumption he became his ink version. Now a coffin means that whoever died has left their body behind. And here’s the kicker: there is clearly no differentiating between the story and real version of the character. He’s just one. So it kind of goes against the story theory but not in a way that I’ve expected it to (and I’m sure a lot of people didn’t see it coming either).

- Buddy explores the real world studio which seems to be shifting: Joey’s office seems to be both down in the Administration and on top of the building. Adrienne has made a comment that how she described the studio is portraying it changing from a normal studio to this cartoony one from the game.

However, DCTL and TIOL both question reliability of what characters say and if characters even were ever real in the first place. Especially TIOL since it has Joey making up characters and lying left and right. If BATIM is his story, then who knows who is real and who’s not.

But if BATIM is Joey’s story that is at the same real so to tell it how he pleases he needs to be in control then how come Buddy makes sure to tell us he is not and then Joey in DCTL says that the director is not in control but the vision is but then in TIOL he says that he is control and ooohhhhhhhmygoooood.

And then they Keep On Giving Us Ink Demon/Joey parallels while making it less possible to explain why there is a connection between them.

And there comes BATDR, kicking the doors, that it has two Bendy’s even though BATIM established there was just one. Also Joey is Dead. Can he be this other toon Bendy now after establishing how he fits an off-brand Bendy in the Handbook???

- Problem: I built a house of cards and the devs slammed some books on the table and it fell apart.

[thefirstknife]

As someone who hates sunsetting but also didn’t act like I got my ass pinched by bungie personally for it, I think I have a generally fair view of sunsetting.

There were a plethora of guns from the red war era and the trials of the nine and the Osiris forges and black armor stuff that were absolutely fun to use and even better to look at, and it sucks to see them made forcefully obsolete (especially the Trials of the Nine weapons 😩).

But at the same time, I prefer when a game is capable of being updated and running as efficiently as possible, because it puts less stress on the devs for balancing AND on the engine.

It sucks that we’re in that state to choose between two evils because in a perfect world sunsetting wouldn’t happen, but Having a functioning game is more important than having a sick gun in a sea of sicker guns

Also, despite all those weapons existing, they were totally underused or not used at all because of the very few amount of "meta" weapons that already made the rest obsolete.

Sunsetting was perhaps a bit too much of a drastic measure and things could've been implemented step by step. Or they could've addressed the most problematic weapons first. There's honestly a lot to be said about how they did it and that's a good conversation to have, especially when we include the average players: people who play casually and don't really follow metas like their lives depend on it.

Unfortunately, that conversation was poisoned by a very specific group of people who just didn't want the pvp meta to ever change. We're in a similar situation now as well, despite Bungie nerfing meta weapons and weapon archetypes many times, they're still dominating. There's also the issue of certain exotics and "god roll" combinations of perks being too powerful making them basically 100% demanded in LFG groups and it's making the community increasingly inaccessible.

I know Anarchy is the best way to nuke a boss, but if you're such a pro gamer, you can finish a raid without it and help out fellow players who don't have it.

[rpgmgames]

April’s Featured Game: Nobody's Home

DEVELOPER(S): oates ENGINE: RPG Maker MV GENRE: Survival Horror SUMMARY: After a night of extreme drinking and partying, you wake up in stranger's bed to discover... Nobody's Home.

Buy the game here! Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! *oates: Hi, this is oates! I'm a pixel artist and game developer, I've started making games with rpgmaker in 2016 with VX Ace and now currently using MV for recent projects. Previous projects I've worked on were the FNaF-inspired Souls-like One Night at the Steeze, my first rpgmaker game and it's prequel, the FNaF-inspired roguelike No Delivery. Other games I've worked on include the fangames Day Dreaming Derpy, made in VX Ace and Spike's Day Off, made in MV and the latest in a series of previous fangames previously developed on Adobe Flash.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *oates: Nobody's Home is largely based on my experiments to find and apply horrific elements in modern situations or phenomena. The scenario being explored here in Nobody's Home is the aftermath of some crazy party. Sound design is especially important when crafting a horror scenario, so I often look to music to draw inspiration. Much of the atmosphere and house design was inspired by music and imagery associated with '70s yacht rock (a sub-genre of soft rock). Another important note is a lot of the general mood and 'weirdness' was inspired by a band I listen a lot to, Dance Gavin Dance, specifically their "deathstar" album. However they have a tendency in all their albums to switch genres mid-song, often going from their post-hardcore sound to funk, pop, and even rap; aside from that, some of the subject matter covered can range from disturbing to unpleasant to nonsensical, but combined with the amazing music, it creates an experience that pulls the listener in all different directions. It got to the point that I was naming events in the game after some their tracks so I had to be careful not to inadvertently make a fangame haha But there are some easter eggs in Nobody's Home that were intentionally left in, and I'm fairly certain players have identified it already.

How long did you work on your project? *oates: I used much of the same framework left over from my previous project No Delivery for this development cycle, so the hassle for setting up asset pipelines was very much mitigated. I started in earnest, making assets back in January this year so it took roughly 2+ months to finish development for this project.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *oates: Aside from the previous music inspirations, I was really intrigued with the way Resident Evil 7's Beginning Hour demo was able to pick up where Konami's cancelled PT left off in terms of survival horror games to look forward to back in 2017. Prior to later updates, the initial demo really only included a few set pieces, basic item interaction, and almost no puzzles from the full game. It was largely able to pull off scaring players from almost atmosphere alone (if you exclude the Jack Baker and ghost encounters). It was later in the full game that it was able to show off it's metroidvania-esque design to its fullest. After my previous project, I wanted to step away from roguelike design for a bit and focus a little more on an exploration-based experience, so I took a few notes from the way RE7 and RE2: Remake handled map design and progression.

Did you come across any challenges during development? How did you overcome or work around them? *oates: I was coming off a severe cold last year and it took most of January for me to recover, so it was a little hard to start full-on development immediately like I normally would on top of other career matters. And looking at events today, it's even more imperative that developers practice healthy habits during development.

Did any aspects of your project change over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *oates: I've had the idea for Nobody's Home as a concept for a while, but filling in those gaps with actual gameplay between centerpieces was a big variable. I went back and forth between the turn-based item combat from the previous project to cutting out combat entirely. While I didn't implement it, I also brainstormed a few concepts for overworld action and combat ala Zelda, but it seemed too complex given the time frame I set for myself. Eventually I settled on a middle ground between full combat and separate encounters, with "enemies" acting as essentially a toll gate. The rest of the game followed suit with various tolls and "mouse traps" for the player to trigger at their own behest. This wasn't necessarily the design I had in mind at first, but it helped to concisely fill a relatively small location with specifically "deadly" content.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *oates: I largely work solo for both development and art, but I do regularly work with a few musicians for an original soundtrack. I first started working with other composers for the fangame Day Dreaming Derpy, where after the initial demo was released, I received emails from a few musicians volunteering to contribute some tracks for the game. In all, the original soundtrack contained 9 tracks in total, with 3 tracks from each composer; each of them doing an amazing job and, in my opinion brought the project back then to a higher degree of quality. This was how I met some of the composers I still work with today and they all have some really great work! TheNGVirus @NGVirusNG1 Kaminakat @thekaminakat dRedder @HornyGremlin

What is the best part of developing a game? *oates: It's a toss up between the initial brainstorming/research and the first run-through when you have your desired maps linked together. For the brainstorming, it's pretty fun to learn about subject matter you want to do justice to as well as stretching your creative muscles for the first time in service to a certain concept. However this obviously wears off when you devote too much time to a particular concept, but it's still enjoyable nevertheless. For making that run-through, it doesn't necessarily mean to have all the events implemented, but to experience your game the way players will experience it for the first time does give a sense of completion/cohesion to what you, as a developer, are trying to accomplish. It essentially puts what you're working on into a different perspective for you.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *oates: I do keep an eye out for what other rpgmaker projects are doing, and to see what others can do with the engine helps get the creative juices flowing; it's also fun to try to mentally reverse engineer how certain mechanics or effects were made. And it's always great to see fellow devs showcase what's possible with the engine.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *oates: Nobody's Home has a relatively small cast of characters, whom you do interact with but never see, this is largely to done to create a sense of "un-relatability", but if I had to pick a character, it'd be "car guy", the guy you find stuck in the car. They have a good line, " ...there'd be a good reason for this, but there isn't..." Story of my life.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *oates: There were a few areas I would have liked to expand on or add, specifically- the attic + roof, the front lawn, behind the walls, and an entire second floor. Unfortunately that meant potentially adding more questlines and NPCs while the first set of questlines were pretty interwoven so it would have been way more complex, also again, given the time frame I set, it would have extended the development cycle way beyond what I had time for. But if I had implemented those extra areas, the game's length would also go way beyond the 30 min - 1 hr it takes to complete the game as it is now.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *oates: I'd like to do both really, each installment of the VCRPG line of games is definitely a stand-alone story, or an isolated incident, but I would love to explore the aftermath of the game's events and how the passage of time ravages and twists the story into urban legend. I like to treat places and environments like characters as well, capable of making memories, being misunderstood, preserved, destroyed, and ultimately capable of change.

What do you most look forward to upon finishing the game? *oates: Both the fan reaction and free time honestly speaking. Once the development cycle finishes and the game is published, your work isn't really finished as there's always a chance someone's feedback can apply to immediate changes or patches you can implement, even during the release period. Marketing is also another large step to take into consideration after release, this includes tweeting, sending keys for lets plays, etc. Watching playthroughs is also a really good way to collect data on what parts of your design fall through and what fail to land. But after all that is said and done, some free time really helps the brain recuperate.

Was there something you were afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *oates: Just whether or not I handled the game's subject matter tastefully. Like horror cinema, everything done is in service the the themes and message of the piece as a whole.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *oates: The game engine is essentially a tool, and like any tool you can find plenty of creative ways to get the same result. And don't be afraid to research whatever it is you need help with, it also helps to be specific with what you want.

Question from last month's featured dev @moca-pz: If you can collaborate with any game developer in the world, who would it be? What would be their role(s) and what would be your role(s)? *oates: Game developer I'd like to work with: Hidetaka Miyazaki His role: Story Lead and Director My role: Drinking buddy Game we're working on: SciFi Souls

We mods would like to thank oates for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Nobody's Home if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Intractable

There’s a game dev convention (GDC - Go watch their videos on Youtube, they’re amazing) discussion of what the author calls “cursed” video game problems. What he means is you get into a situation where the stated goals aren’t really achievable because of entrenched player expectations. Before you can align the two, you’ll have to modify one or the other; either sacrifice some portion of your stated goals or perhaps use clever marketing to modify player expectations.

Something of this was visible to me when a player stated that the MMO genre hadn’t “really advanced” in the last ten years or so. He was looking for something where MMOs enabled players to dynamically impact their world.

But there are some basic problems with the premise.

See, in most MMOs there are story villains. These epic characters or dark empires can give us a) something to aspire to get stronger in order to overcome and b) something so powerful that a sense of community can form around the need to band together to be capable of confronting it.

These are great things to have, great feelings to evoke in an MMO space!

If the story of an MMO is driven by players, however, you have a different phenomenon. In this case you have player villains. And most players want to win. From a writing perspective you want your villains in your RPGs to want to win, too. Writing your villains like they’re pins waiting to be bowled into by the players quickly feels flat. So that isn’t a problem in itself. The problem is that a player’s sense of what winning is and an in-game character’s sense of the same are not fully aligned, and player villainy draws attention to that disconnect.

A player villain “wins” by getting other people to quit the game. For obvious reasons, this doesn’t really gel with most MMO developers’ goals. Imagine if the great dragon Onyxia spent all her game time trolling new players around the starting zones and then flying away and shutting off access to her lair for weeks at a time so nobody could raid. That’s player-generated villainy. The problem is that the challenges posed by actual assholes are not fun to interact with in the first place. They are, frequently, the very thing we’re coming into a game to forget about for an hour or two.

I can see an argument that recent MMOs haven’t done enough to instill a sense of shared community around defeating an overwhelming enemy force, on the macro level. You don’t have a sense of anti-Garlemald togetherness in the FFXIV community for instance, even if we individually want to defeat this or that imperial general or prince. But you DO have a sense of micro-level camaraderie in the form of game mechanics players use in dungeon content that enables other players to have a better time in the same content, and dungeons that can only be completed by a group of four or more people working in concert.

But I think the alternative proposed - where the moment-to-moment player experience is defined by the whims of fellow players who don’t have the goal of “let’s make this fun for other players” even on their list of objectives - is so much worse.

“Fun player-generated MMO events” is kind of a cursed design problem, because while there will certainly be stand-out exceptions the average player who would be generating events doesn’t have the fun of their fellow players at the forefront of their mind when deciding how to act. Solving this cursed design problem would call for incentivizing players to generate enjoyable content for one another; like an “MMO Dungeon Maker” version of Mario Maker.

This kind of thing actually existed a long time ago in the form of the public servers for Neverwinter Nights and the more action-oriented Neverwinter (same setting, VERY different games, but both tried curated player-made dungeon generation). The trouble they found on THAT end was one of reward; How to make the experience of going through player-written (and thus often amateur) content feel rewarding enough to be worth it, without giving players the opportunity to just use the systems to hand loot to themselves or their buddies. When MMO reward systems - especially loot systems - get involved, the concept of “player-made events” that aren’t simply online asshole behavior gets really tricky to adjudicate.

Throw in the fact that players have grossly different amounts of time to devote to a given game - literally ranging from “less than one hour” to “more than forty hours” per week - and allowing players to set their own level of challenge quickly becomes completely unfair.

It’s up to developers to make games challenging, fair, and fun. When you give the carrots and sticks to players they generally have player-oriented reasons to either just swing sticks at their fellow players all the time and chase them out of the online spaces entirely, or to generate infinite carrot utopias. Neither option manages to deliver on “challenging, fair and fun” all at once. Personally, I’d argue that a lot of the MMOs we have right now do manage to deliver on that, a decent quantity of the time. And in my experience the game systems that hand over more of the content development responsibility to the player base end up delivering on that set of goals less often.

[technicallycraftypost]

Social Media Management Schedule Tips

Hi everyone! I hope everyone has been well. Today I wanted to share a simple checklist that can be used to help keep priorities in mind on a weekly and monthly basis to help manage your game or studio's social media.

Let's break this down. It's super important to have consistent content on your social media. This doesn't mean there has to be content posted every single day but just that there's some sort of schedule going, for example: Can post 1x a week, 3x a week, or 1x a month but as long as that schedule is consistent that's okay! Once you start having more stuff to show on your account I do recommend posting more, especially if you're near release (but that's a whole other topic!)

Weekly To Do's

Schedule/Plan content! Whatever type of content schedule you decide on, it's great to have a day out of the week or month to schedule the content ahead of time so you can focus on developing your game. The first to do here is to schedule or plan that content. You can use awesome tools like Buffer, Crowdfire, and more to schedule content OR you could use integrated scheduling tools like FB Scheduling features or Tweetdeck. I find these the easiest to use. Engage with users

Depending on how active your social media is you'll have to find time every other day (or every day depending on how active it is) to catch up with comments, DM's and more. Engaging with other accounts is also great! This also means helping to support fellow devs, got a friend that released their game? Retweet or share their post about it!

Gather and Create New Content

Create a folder to store content that can be scheduled in the following weeks, also don't be afraid to reuse the content in a creative way! This can be a lifesaver if you didn't have time to make new content one week, don't reuse too much though! Try to update this on a weekly basis.

Monthly To Dos

Analytical Reports

These are phenomenal for finding out what content is working and what isn't. This data is also super helpful for picking out screenshots later on for your steam page or adding certain scenes in your trailers. Side note: Make a list somewhere with your best performing posts/content so you can reference later!

High-Level Content Plan

Sitting down at the beginning or end of the month to think about what your goals are for marketing helps prioritize what content you want to show off and whether your social media met that success metric you set. Having a general idea of what you want to share and focus on for the month is great, remember to make time to do that! This also ties into our third point. Events

On a monthly basis it's great to do research on what events are coming up the following month or a few months ahead. This gives you time to consider if its an event you want to participate in, promote your participation, and get materials ready for it!

Side note: Creating a spreadsheet of annual events you'd like to participate in is great to reference! Things like PAX, GDC, IndeiCade, and more are reoccurring events you can plan for. I hope this helped! Let me know if it did or not. If you have questions for future topics let me know and I'll do my best to answer them :D

[space-researcher-lexa]

Monster Prom: EXPELLED (Spin Off Challenge!)

Oh no!  Something terrible (and wacky) has happened to the school!  Your monster friends (and crushes) are the primary suspects and are at risk of being expelled right before the end of the year prom!  

In this detective themed narrative adventure game, 1-4 players must work TOGETHER to prove the innocence of their classmates over the course of a 12 hour school day.  Talk to witnesses, find clues, and piece together all of the pieces of the puzzle in order to make sure your classmates get off scott-free! 

The core game play mechanics will remain pretty much the same, but with a few new features as well!  

1) THE MAP

The map is very similar to the original, but the school has been absolutely destroyed.  Maybe there’s a giant tentacle monster in the gym?? A portal to another dimension in the library?  Some strange occult stuff in the classroom?  Every location in the school can be destroyed in a different silly way.  Easy visual humor for the artists to add in to a map that we all know and love!  There can also be many different scenarios written up and depicted in the different areas of the school so the players never know which clues they need to be looking for at the start of the game.    

  2) THE EVIDENCE “LOCKER”

The store is being replaced with the “Evidence Locker”.  Valarie is there to man it, of course.  Maybe she’s interested in helping out because her dear sister is about to be expelled from school?  Who knows!  Hovering over different items with the mouse will give you a brief description of the item. Hovering will also reveal who the item belongs to and how it’s relevant in the case if the player’s CREATIVITY stat is high enough.  Evidence that has not yet been found will be blacked out and you won’t be able to interact with it.

3) STATS

 The stat system is pretty much the same, but the stats are now used for gaining information and evidence.

BOLDNESS will now be used to intimidate your fellow classmates/witnesses/teachers.  The higher the BOLDNESS stat, the easier it is to intimidate someone.  A failed intimidation check might lead to Damien claiming not to be easily frightened, or a snitch for that matter because he was raised on the streets of hell (despite actually having been raised in a loving home).  Stronger students might require an extremely high BOLDNESS stat in order to be intimidated, such as Dahlia, for instance.  

CREATIVITY isn’t used for collecting information from your fellow students, but it is useful for examining evidence and learning additional information from said evidence.  The CREATIVITY stat will help you identify which pieces of evidence excuse which students as well as giving you more information about the evidence you collect.  The higher the CREATIVITY stat, the more info you will be able to see when hovering over items and evidence.

CHARM is used to manipulate your fellow classmates and witnesses.  The higher your CHARM stat is, the more likely people are to tell you the truth.  With a low CHARM stat, the players will waste more time questioning NPC’s because they will be more inclined to lie.  The player is never given an option specifically to CHARM students, the stat will just be active in the background at all times, effecting game-play accordingly.   

MONEY can be used to bribe students.  Some students such as Valarie and Vera will need an extremely high MONEY stat in order be bribed.  Also, the MONEY stat works the same as the base game, once you bribe a student, the MONEY stat will decrease accordingly.  The more MONEY you use for bribery, the better the information. 

SMARTS will be used to question student.  This is generally a good place to start, especially when the players have low base stats at the beginning of the game.  A higher SMARTS stat will produce more questions and dialogue options.        

As of right now the FUN stat has been cut from this version of the game because there’s nothing FUN about your favorite monster classmates getting expelled ;(

4) GAME-PLAY

Vera, Polly, Miranda, Zoe, Scott, Damien, Liam, and Calculester are being held in DETENTION with the threat of expulsion looming over them.  You will no longer run into them in the main school rooms from the base game, but you can find them in DETENTION (which is a similar set up to Lunch time in the base game.  

Each game session is broken up into a 12 hour school day, starting at 7AM and ending at 7PM.  From this point the player can choose where they want to go, who they want to talk to, what they want to do etc.  A clock in the top left corner of the school map will always show which time it is.  If there are multiple players in one game, they will all be working against the same clock and working together to prove the innocents of the main 8.    

Trips to the EVIDENCE LOCKER will use 10 MINUTES

Questioning/Bribing/Intimidating witnesses will use 15 MINUTES

Visits to DETENTION to confirm/deny claims with the 8 main suspects will use 15 MINUTES 

Using HINTS will use 30 MINUTES

The players must manage their time wisely between gathering information and evidence, and bringing it back to the DETENTION room to get more info and confirmations from the 8 suspects. 

5)  HOW TO WIN 

The level of success of each game session depends on 3 things.  

1) How much evidence was collected  

2)  How many TRUE statements did you receive from your classmates, and confirm with the suspects  

3)  Deducting who actually did it

It is possible to find no evidence and have everyone be expelled, while at the same time ts is possible to find everything, have a perfect run, and save all of your classmates.  Most likely, though, some classmates will be expelled, and some will be excused, based on your detective work.  

6) MISC. 

In Monster Prom: Expelled, all of the characters that were at the school during the time of it’s destruction have torn and tattered clothing.  That’s why all of the character’s look all beat up and worse for ware in the image above.  (That’s probably why they’re all main suspects to begin with!)

Many times during the main game, the characters bring up concerns over getting expelled (especially in Damien’s rout) so I thought it would be fun to explore why they don’t want to get expelled, and what super horrible thing could happen that would end in all of them getting expelled?  Also I’m a sucker for a classing “Who done it?!” story!! 

This format gives a chance for the side characters to really shine, since the main characters can only be interacted with in detention.  This also gives the devs a chance to think of some cool new rivals!  Maybe some rival students from another school?  Some lame school bullies?  Maybe even some teachers?  The sky is the limit!  

Thank you for considering my entry @btflglitch!  I have no idea when the challenge ends so it might not even make it, but I had fun making this mock-up anyway!

 Good luck to everyone this month!    

[ssnakey-b]

I figured out where the ballroom is!

One of the great things about Final Fantasy VIII, and what I believe to be one of the main reasons why this game is so enduring to its fans, is its large amount mysteries and elements that are only hinted at, which still keeps us guessing and theorizing two decades later (also, yes, FFVIII was released 20 years ago. Terrifying).

And one of the biggest, oldest of these enigmas isn’t Squall’s heritage, or whether Linoa ends up becoming Ultimecia,or what becomes of Timber post-game, or the Deep Sea Research, or what is Adel’s workout routine, or any of that. Oh no! It’s something far more important:

Where the bloody Hell is the ballroom?!

Seriously though, this is an itch that fans have never been able to scratch so far, and it seems odd that with how much of Balamb Garden we get to see, even when all of it doesn’t really have much purpose story or gameplay-wise, the ballroom can’t be accessed. It’s a very big room too, so it’s not like it’s something you can just miss. And yet, even the Final Fantasy wiki is stumped:

Now granted, it’s fair to assume that we don’t see Garden in its entirety, especially since we only see one classroom when the 2nd floor appears to be quite large from the outside, and there are probably some smaller areas we don’t get to visit, and maybe the Ballroom got destroyed alongside smaller areas when Garden went airborne and narrowly avoided being blown up. And of course, maybe it’s just the devs not thinking ahead and not really having anywhere logical for it to be, and hoping we wouldn’t notice. So either way, many of us have come to terms with the fact that we’ll probably never know.

Or will we?! because as the title states, I am 100% certain that I have figured out where the ballroom is and you’ll be pleased to hear it wasn’t destroyed and it IS featured on the Balamb Garden model (both the CGI one and the in-game one). And to explain how I came to my conclusion, we need to take it form the end as indeed, my first clue comes from the ending cutscene.

I always kind of assumed that the party at the end was taking place on the 2nd floor, around the classroom areas, and they quickly set up some tables and chairs and stuff, since they needed all the room they could get and it was presumably improvised very quickly after the victory and Balamb Garden was able to pick up our heroes.

But then, as I was watching the brilliant camcorder cutscene for the 17 649 226th time, I couldn’t help but feel there was something familiar. And then, I noticed something in the background, as seen in the above screenshot.

It’s the same pillars as the ones seen during the dance scene! Which means what we’re seeing isn’t just random corridors, it’s the 2nd floor of the ballroom, which is presumably some kind of general party hall. Now at first, I thought that was just a neat little detail, once again showing that the devs really through through how daily life at BG was organized. Nothing mind-blowing so far, of course, and I assumed many people had already realized this before me.

But then, it occurred to me that it probably means that the balcony on which Squall and Linoa kiss is probably the same one where Quistis interrupted Squall during his “what do I do with this boner now?” introspections. Again, something I assume many people probably figured out long before me, but it also made me realize something else: the camera zooms out after the kiss, and pans around Balamb Garden, meaning if we can locate where the balcony is, we can probably work out where the ballroom is as well!

Again, at first, I couldn’t find anything useful. It just seemed to me like all it showed was that it was SOMEWHERE in Garden, and I couldn’t locate it, to the point I began wondering if they tried to trick us by pretending it’s in a space that doesn’t actually exist in-game. But then, I noticed the oddity of the platform in the bottom left corner. It’s all destroyed. That’s when it hit me: that’s the quad!

“Ah-HA!” I thought. “Now we’re getting somewhere! We at least know the general direction in which it is located”. But it still seemed odd to me as I didn’t remember a building between the quad and the cafeteria. So again, did they cheat with Garden’s layout? There’s not thing there. It’s just the quad and a big wall.

Wait...

That’s when it all clicked into place. It’s not just a big wall. It’s a big circular, OUTSIDE wall. To a building. One we never get to visit during regular gameplay. One big enough to hold, say... a ballroom!

And there you have it, the answer to the small yet frustrating enigma. The ballroom is located in the circular building adjacent to the quad. And it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Since the quad is obviously the “entertainment” centre of the academy, and this is where the concert was supposed to be held, one can reasonably assume that the building stores all manner of supplies for various celebrations and events, it makes sense to have them in the same area.

And indeed, during cutscenes (especially the ending), you can see the ballroom does actually appear on the Balamb Garden model so yes, the devs did include it in the design, so it’s not a case of them just making a room that exists in its own universe and going “Oh erm... blergerflerg crazy weather we’re having, huh?” when asked where it actually is. You can even see it on artwork, before Balamb garden got a makeover:

I don’t know how many of you had already work it out, but it seems that to this day, it remains a major point of confusion for a lot of people (like I said, even the wiki doesn’t know) so I hope that cleared it up for many fellow fans, and I’m alos just glad that after all these years, this game keeps finding you way to fascinate me and to show how much thought and care went into its creation.