#and out of game

[hypnos-tized-ao3]

yknow what I did some more unknown, found some more things. There are still a couple things that I can’t figure out for the life of me (where do the numbers go. what’s file seven. wtf are they saying) but I’ve decided to start sincere deceit. Hoh boy (that is part of my vocabulary now, thanks unknown) that’s way more video game. I think it was maybe made after home? By some of the same people. Anyway imma talk about that now. First settings are sound puzzles, color puzzles, disable addons/tammates. I think I prefer this over the three difficulties home had for puzzles and combat, especially since sound puzzles can be disabled while letting all other puzzles be done. First puzzle in the game took me a few listens to get it, puzzles are maybe a little less frequent but way higher quality. (Btw ive like just gotten out of the smoke mines) Like. Zone ZERO took actual thought and multiple attempts with some of its puzzles, way more interesting than just entering numbers. Also the tutorial was a nice change I think from the standard formula(?). Other things I noticed quickly were the dialogue/general sprite changes, as well as the overall moodiness of the game.

In the intro sequence, blue voice kept skipping over red voice’s dialogue, assuming that was intentional? Anyway from what I know there’s three main paths: red voice, blue voice, other(neutral? player? batter?). A quick scroll through the files reveals over 1000 maps (that’s like. three times as many). Since I’m on Mac I’m using an emulator despite the readme telling me not to (don’t wanna learn how to run a virtual windows machine rn, mac can’t run exe files) and I had to put it in the data folder because in the main one it just gets confused. ALSO this game just seems more recent than the others, on the itchio page there were comments from like 2022. wild

Smoke mines/getting into the meat of things a little paragraph. Design of everything feels Intentional. Puzzles, encounters. I talk to one npc and they’re like ‘everything hurts…’ and I talk to the one next to them and they’re like ‘have you heard of our lord and savior-‘. Curious where this goes. Where the fuck is Zacharie, this might just be me coming from unknown but where did he go. Anyway I found a secret merchant and my first orb. The orb felt actually meaningful since I disabled addons and I’m using multiple items in the mcfucking smoke mines. Also. That jumpscare. What the fuck man. Why. It better have an actual purpose beyond literally making me jump. Like not a major jumpscare just one frame of a face but like. Dude. I wanna be scared from the atmosphere and the potential of a strong encounter, not The Scary Man showing up on screen for 0.0001 seconds. Anyway I’ll keep playing cuz the rest of the games good. Also when I looked at the nothingness for the first time (really the whole opening of the game) and saw the text of the really fucked up zone. Ough. Also is zone zero fucking gone. Don’t answer that. Anyway my first game over was after the burnt elsens in the barn I was running back to heal and a random encounter got me.

Anyway looking forward to more sincere deceit. I’ll probably look back into unknown at some point (I spent a good while reading through the game files and did not in fact figure out wtf I was supposed to do) but do know that I’ve mentally adopted Zack. Yoink. I walk into the final area and Zacharies like ‘who the fuck is that’ and I’m like ‘a smoothie’ (holding a waterbottle with water in it) (new son is getting his first piggyback ride)

I’m sorry if anyone following me expected me to be hinged about anything. I’m not. I’m not sorry. Still mad at Senaca for thinking I had to accept the gift what the actual fuck man no that’s not on me that’s on you dude wtf

[eaglerayys]

Suzanne Collins just said fuck you to everyone who’s ever critiqued the Hunger Games as being a “teen girl saves the day” story. She said oh, Mockingjay didn’t make it clear enough? Here’s a book about how people have been rebelling for decades only to have their efforts suppressed and propagandized. Rebellion takes time and it takes failure and Katniss may have been the spark that ignited the wildfire but she did so standing atop the doused flames of everyone who came before her.

[grimbeak]

woag. i'm sure this character who i've never heard of before in my life would do completely ethical things to me in my Smart Home and that there are not two games entirely based around why this is a bad idea

[tawnysoup]

Found my fav Slay the Princess route recently. Dragon my beloved. Your horrifying beak mouth was an impossible-to-refuse lip syncing challenge 💖

Shoutouts to @blacktabbygames for making such a cool game!

[batcavescolony]

the difference between Haymitch and Katniss's narration is so funny. Haymitch would give us everyone's social security number if he knew them, while Katniss wouldn't even tell us her mom's name.

[bluesky-out-of-context]

[andstuffsketches]

they're a fun trio

[blaithnne]

Shoutout to Vic Michealis for being the first person to ever score negative points on Game Changer. The only person to truly understand that the game is the players vs Sam and stick to that no matter the cost. The real winner, if you ask me.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

He should be at the Adventurer's Guild.

[rambling-robot]

crazy that gravity falls was like, hey what if we made twin brothers, and one of them is the worse one. he gets bad grades, he likes to punch his problems, everyone thinks of him as “the other one.” he’s engulfed in a shadow that’s shaped like him. he doesn’t even have his own name—it’s derived of his brother’s name, the only one his parents planned on having and using. everything about him is derivative—imitative of another person (his twin brother) (the one everyone likes and wants) and is disapproved of for that reason (he isn’t just “bad at this thing,” he’s “not as good as his brother”). and then he ruins his brother’s science fair project (the one next to his own—no one noticed it because it’s not good, it’s almost stupid next to a “perpetual motion machine” made by a high schooler) (he tried to fix it) (he doesn’t know how; he’s not as smart as the guy who made it) and he gets kicked out. the potential of the money his twin could’ve made is enough to throw him onto the street, and he can’t go home until he makes that money back (the money that was never gained and therefore was never lost. he never had a chance of making enough). he took every job he could (his brother went to school). he got banned from multiple states (his brother bought a house). he traveled internationally and went to prison and had people try to hunt him down and kill him because he couldn’t make enough money (his brother’s house has three basements. he made them himself, as secure as can be). and when his twin finally summons him for help, things go wrong (he messed up this machine like the last one) (he doesn’t know how to fix it. he isn’t as smart as the guy who made it) (he tries to fix it) (he was never any good at reading and these blueprints are impossible, coded and fragmented and in a science that he didn’t know existed) (he tries to fix it). the townspeople ask who he is, and he doesn’t even say his own name (it was hardly his to begin with). and he invites them to a house that isn’t his to show off experiments that aren’t his because he needs to make money that can’t be his. everything he does for the next 30 years is in his twin’s name, for his twin’s sake. he had two funerals for himself and it isn’t even his body in the casket; he had to wear his brother’s name to both of them. if he had died before he fixed the portal, that funeral wouldn’t have been for him. we meet him as a funny and unique character, but in-universe, he’s only ever been defined by someone else.

and then they went, this is entirely in the background btw. most of that is going to be revealed in one episode and won’t be addressed again. he’s a primary comic relief, even. I’m ill about this.

[egophiliac]

missed the mark by (looks at calendar) uhhh. hm. but I really wanted to do something for the 5th anniversary! happy five years to these idiots 🎉

[stopiwanttotalkaboutcheese]

actually i love the reveal that the only reason effie got involved with the hunger games at all was because her little sister needed her.

[evermarch]

haymitch sending katniss the bread from 11 in the aftermath of rue’s death hits so much harder with the knowledge that mags sent him the coffee and strawberry ice cream after maysilee died

he was inviting her to cry to him the same way that mags had for him, the same way katniss does in mockingjay

he turned out to be so much more emotionally cognizant with katniss than we gave him credit for

[eldritch-elrics]

obsessed with the april fools day joke from the another crab's treasure devs

[paperlit]

Thinking about how Wyatt Callow is proof that Dr. Gaul’s and Snow’s assertion that humanity’s essential nature is violent (which is part of their argument for the Capitol’s control being necessary) is false. That “What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed… A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state.” is false.

I’m sure he had it all calculated. He knew exactly what choices would give him the best odds of survival. He knew that the faster he got out of the initial bloodshed the better his chances would be. He knew that letting other kids die would benefit his odds of survival. He knew exactly what he should’ve done to preserve himself.

And yet, he threw all those statistics and odds, all that reason and logic out the window in the name of protecting Lou Lou, a girl that wasn’t even from his district. He threw it all out the window in the name of helping another human being that was in an unfair situation and had worse odds than him. He knew who the real enemy was; he knew it wasn’t the other kids being taken advantage of by the Capitol just like him.

That is humanity.