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roo-bastmoon · 2 years ago

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BTS Tutorial: SPOTIFY

Streaming on Spotify (whether it is via the web player on a laptop or tablet, the app on your phone, etc.) is a great way to help BTS members’ songs chart on Billboard and for other awards.

However, the rules about what qualifies keep changing, so it’s important to stay up to speed with what “counts” toward the charts and what simply counts towards streaming numbers.

First things first: It’s a good idea to make yourself at least three extra fandom-related emails. These will be useful for streaming, voting, and promoting things on social media to help your members’ work do well. It also puts another layer between you and an advertising spam from certain apps.

Just as some random examples:

YourRealName @ email.com

YourFandomName @ email.com

YourName . Stream @ email.com

YourName . Vote @ email.com

YourName . Promo @ email.com

Next up: If you don’t already have a premium Spotify account, by March 22nd, go ahead and sign up for a free 30-day trial for each of your emails. Spotify will remind you beforehand that it’s time to cancel or be charged. Premium account streams count THREE TIMES faster toward Billboard charts.

For every 1,250 streams on your premium account, it counts as 1 album sale. If you use a free account, it takes 3,750 streams to count as 1 album sale.

A premium account also means you can get through playlists faster, without having to sit through 90 seconds of commercials. That matters when we are trying to hit goal numbers in the first day and week that something drops.

Go ahead and follow Jimin on each of your Spotify accounts, and save Jimin-focused playlists (you can do that by searching for them, dragging them over to the sidebar in your LIBRARY, and clicking the like button <3). More on playlists in a bit.

There are some rules to follow, to make sure your streams don’t get filtered out of charting.

When it’s time to stream singles and all of FACE, you’re going to want to click on a playlist that has his songs listed in order about 20 times, with filler songs in between.

A great playlist will have a healthy amount of Jimin songs and BTS songs in general to help reach other milestones. You don’t have to mix songs from other artists in; we can keep these streams in the family.

After the 20th time you play a song in your account that day, it stops counting for a chart.

That’s when you logout of one Spotify account and login to your next. Repeat the playlist. Click around every 90 minutes so Spotify knows you’re not a bot.

Try to do this with, like, three or four accounts a day. If you can manage five accounts in the first 24 hour period, that’s 100 streams for Jimin’s songs. That's a goal I'm setting for myself because I also have to work that day.

If you can’t handle all that, and you can only use one account to chart because life is hectic—hey, it’s better than nothing. Also don’t despair: after the first 20 times you play a song, any other times you play it still counts as streams under the artist’s profile, but will be filtered out of chart data. So after the first week, feel free to put on a long playlist when you need to be away from keyboard.

If you have a desk job or can have your phone with you throughout the day, it’s just super easy to plug in some headphones and cycle through all your accounts while you get other shit done, so you capture unfiltered streams.

If you are celebrating Ramadan, please make choices that honor yourself and your beliefs--I think Jimin would want that. Some of my friends are choosing to stream with headphones and simply not listen until April 23rd. They have tremendous willpower and I give them mad respect. You do what you need to do, okay?

Try not to stress too much; just do your best.

If you are using Spotify, keep in mind that you need to immediately go into your settings and turn off Autoplay. Turn that sucker off in each of your accounts and keep it off.

Please always like and follow the artist’s profile page on Spotify. You will now count toward his “monthly listeners.” Here’s Jimin linked below (and follow the other members and BTS as a whole too while you’re at it!):

Third, if you’re on VPN, turn it off. I have a work computer I use for work on VPN and a home computer I use for streaming without a VPN.

If you have to use VPN on your only computer, then please use the Spotify app on your phone.

Now, to playlists:

When you are playing a song, keep the volume at 51% or higher. Stick some headphones into your device and that way the noise level won’t bother others.

(They SAY they aren’t tracking the volume on your devices, so much as the volume in the platform settings—I say why risk it? Stream at 51% volume inside the app and your device and rest easy.)

Second of all, let’s pretend we are trying to chart the song VIBE. You need to have at least 2-3 filler songs in between every time VIBE is in your playlist. Those songs need to be 60 seconds or longer. (On occasion, after 30 seconds, you can skip that song and get back to VIBE, but don’t do it too much or you look like a bot.)

You cannot just loop. You cannot just put VIBE VIBE VIBE VIBE VIBE back to back in your playlist. That is bot behavior and you will get filtered.

Don’t shuffle your songs or playlists. If you shuffle, you could end up playing songs back to back by accident and then they don’t count. Try to play an album in the order that the member created it.

The only exception to this is the first 24 hours; prioritize the lead track and singles if your time is limited and you must prioritize for Hot 100.

Every 90 minutes or so, you need to interact with your Spotify playlist. Click pause. Click a different song. Slide the volume bar (then put it back at 51%). Go forward and backward during a song. Like a song. Be a bit random. Try to act like a human, not a bot.

Not only are you wasting time if you get filtered as a bot, but the last thing we need is to damage Jimin's reputation by having antis scream we bought his streams. Act human.

Your playlists can be as long as you like; just keep in mind that after 20 plays of a song in that account, it will be filtered. I have a laptop I dedicate just to streaming and I have some playlists I put on for 9+ hours at night while I sleep, but that’s to help the number of streams; I know it won’t count towards charting. If I'm not sleeping, I'm cycling through accounts and streaming.

Sharing a song helps it chart on Spotify Viral. Play the song you want and then click on the three vertical dots next to it, click on Share, and put it on the social media app of your choice. Takes a few seconds. Encourage others to listen to Jimin and BTS and they just might become ARMY!

For more info and timely updates, follow these helpful accounts on Twitter:

PJM Streaming

Jimin ChartsPH

Huge shout-out to minieskies on Twitter for compiling the vast majority of this fantastic information. I confess I data-mined the hell out of their amazing quiz posts.

Here’s some good playlists to practice on until FACE drops:

SIDE NOTE:

For newer ARMY, it’s important to know this aspect of our history:

In the beginning, Big Hit, Hybe, and BTS were poor little nobodies going up against the Big 3 K-pop industry juggernauts. Going viral by putting their dance practices on YouTube and having ARMY stream their ignored songs like crazy is how BTS became the global phenomenon they are today.

Now, I’m not out to tell you how you should live your life or be a fan. But I will say that (in my opinion) helping BTS (and all their solo works) chart via streams is pretty much the minimum standard that separates being a casual fan and calling yourself ARMY. It's free and relatively easy.

“We have only each other.” That’s always been our unofficial motto. Yes, Jimin and BTS are becoming popular all over the world and going mainstream. Yes, they are multimillionaires. Yes, there are millions of ARMYS. But you have no excuses to slack, unless you're in a legit crisis of course. We are not charting BTS to put won in their pockets. We are doing this to show love and pride for their art.

We cannot expect locals, antis, multis, or cultists to roll up their sleeves and get to work. They won't. In fact, you can pretty much count on some of them actively working against Jimin, trying to chart milestones or pull focus during his charting period by stirring up drama. SO HELP ME IF ANYONE GETS DISTRACTED FROM OUR GOALS TO ENGAGE IN THEIR NONSENSE...

So if you do nothing else at all—no voting, no promo, no purchasing—PLEASE stream like your life depends on it the first week and even the first month that FACE drops. Get into this habit for all our members. It’s our legacy and our best, most accessible way to get behind our boys.

Okay? Okay. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Please share this info with others so we can be prepared to help our IT BOY smash goals. If you know of better tips and tricks, I’m always eager to learn! Thank you!!

DISCLAIMER:

I am a Dope Old Person and have been ARMY since January 2022. So I still have a lot to learn.

I’m making mini-tutorials for people like me who are comfy with technology but totally new to voting, streaming, and buying Kpop stuff.

If you know of better, more up-to-date information, please comment or DM me so I can make sure I’m not spreading misinfo. Please be polite about it, though—we are on the same team!

Feel free to apply whatever you learn here to other BTS members and other artists; I’m Jimin-biased so I am focused on helping Jimin at this moment in time, but I’m OT7 so rest assured I’ll put my shoulder to the wheel for all our members!

#BTS Turorials #jimin #park jimin #face by jimin #jikook #minkook #Spotify

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aphroditesforest · 3 years ago

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10 Things I tried (that worked) to improve my life

I know that when it comes to anyone improving their life, the first question is: what could I possibly do that would make a difference?

The answer is simple. Literally, anything.

More often than not, we get discouraged to do something before we even get started, the reasons for that are abundant, and not necessarily rational.

I had reached a time in my life where I was in a dark place, which seemed to devour me, and I didn’t know how to come out of it. Job was stressful, bills and expenses threatened to become overwhelming, and interpersonal relationships were either too tense or so loose that I wondered if they even still qualified as relationships.

I woke up one morning, feeling strangely refreshed after about 10 hours of sleep (a miracle at that point), and searched on the internet how to improve my life. I found a lot more articles there on how to improve one’s life than I thought I would. Goes to show, there are more people like me, lost and unhappy who just want to get better.

All of the articles I had found promised a better life, but the skeptic in me refused to blindly have faith. I’m a “seeing is believing” type, so I wanted to see for myself.

After many trials and errors, I found a balance for myself. There is no such thing as a recipe that can be applied to everyone, because simply put, each one of us is unique in their own way.

I took it one step at a time, and ultimately came up with this list that worked for myself.

1. Getting enough sleep – I used to stay up very late until you could actually call it early again. One night I’ve decided to break out of my unhealthy routine, and went to bed “early”. I managed to sleep for 7 hours, and while I still wasn’t completely refreshed after the first night, repeating this one thing over a week, I started seeing improvements. I yawned less (which was good since my boss gave me the evil eye each time I did that), I felt energized, and had a more cheerful attitude.

2. Laughing – people tell me that I’m funny all the time. Funny enough, I don’t always aim to be funny. And while I made others laugh, I never really laughed myself. People seemed happy or at least more relaxed when they laughed. So, I tried it. I picked out a really good rated comedy, and watched it by myself, laughing the whole time. I realized, laughing is good for the soul, and there was no need to hold back. It made me feel lighter.

3. Spending time with friends and family – that was a tough one. We all have that one friend or relative that is just annoying, and never stops talking about themselves. Well, I suggest you avoid those, at least for a while. The first person I really talked to was my grandmother. It wasn’t anything in particular I wanted to say to her or learn from her, just talk, and while doing so I learnt something about her I didn’t know before. Sometimes, allowing yourself to spend time with others teaches you things about them, but it often teaches you about yourself as well.

4. Expressing gratitude – sounds easy. And it is. I have coached myself to be friendlier, and thank people. As soon as I started, I already saw a change not only in myself, but the people around me. I started wishing people a very good day at the end of a call or smiled more often. Some looked at me as if I was nuts, but the majority welcomed the friendliness, and offered it back. The same happened when I thanked people, even for the smallest of things, and you know what? One lady at the grocery store, overworked, and stressed out, told me that she really needed a genuine thank you that day.

5. Meditation – you don’t have to be an expert in meditation techniques – I myself checked out a Youtube tutorial, ‘cause yeah, you can find them there. The point of it is to relax and try to disconnect yourself from everything that burdens you, let it go, and become one with the world surrounding you. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I’m sure others do it way better, but at least once a week I reserve some alone time with myself, doing nothing, just flushing out negativity, and try to find my inner peace. Confession: I’m still a work in progress, but I am told, that’s a good thing!

6. Being optimistic – I used to call myself a pragmatist, but I had to wonder where pragmatism ends, and pessimism begins. Turns out, it’s a fine line, that not all of us know how to walk. There’s one thing to be pragmatic, and another to avoid living because there’s a chance of failure. I used to avoid new things and came up with excuses, that in retrospect made no sense. After I decided to look at my life and future in a more optimistic way, I decided to say yes instead of no. Being optimistic isn’t a bad thing, it means being hopeful. Why shouldn’t we be hopeful? We don’t know what the future holds. Yes, it is scary, and things might not be going our way, but if we think that only failure might await us, we doom ourselves, and thus fueling our already bleak view of our own lives.

7. Challenging myself – this part goes hand in hand with being optimistic. In order to challenge yourself, you have to have faith in yourself, and believe that you will succeed. A mindset that constantly thinks of worse case scenarios will ultimately attract failure. Challenging oneself isn’t just about success, in fact, I would argue that it’s about pushing your own limits and boundaries, and learning what you are actually capable of in a scenario you’ve never encountered before. Win or lose, the experience itself will help shape you, and prepare you for more challenges.

8. Touching someone – now that sounds creepy. Doesn’t have to be. It is simply about contact with other people. Holding someone’s hand, shaking a hand, giving a hug or a kiss (romantic or otherwise), touching someone makes our interactions more real. They give us a sense of belonging, of home, of camaraderie and improve our health in more ways than we may think. Humans are social animals, and we need to be close to others.

9. Nature – when I was a child, we used to take day trips into the forest, learn about plants and animals, and just enjoyed a good hike. As I got older, these trips became fewer and farther in between, until they stopped altogether. Not everyone has the privilege to live near a forest or have access to a large area that isn’t surrounded by concrete. But a stroll through a park can be just as helpful. Nature is all around us. However, nothing compares to the peacefulness of a flowery meadow. If you have the chance, go outside, take a hike, breathe in the world.

10. Exercise – last, and not my personal favorite. I’m not a big fan of working out, but exercising doesn’t mean you have to go to a gym where you might feel inadequate. Exercising can be done at home, privately. Even some light exercises can get your blood pumping, and in time you will feel better. There are many reasons why we should exercise, health reasons being primarily, but I have found that after a good workout, I feel refreshingly relaxed, which might sound odd. Exercising helps getting rid of negative energy coursing through your body, and allows you to really focus on what is important to you, instead of the things that drain you and make you unhappy.

#listicle #improvement #life #happiness #personal #article

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codelance · 4 years ago

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What's the best way to start for a programming newbie? Are Python/Django the best?

Although I think Python is a better overall language, if you just want to slap a utilitarian web interface on some backend code for internal use then PHP might be a better language to learn. It's easier to setup on the server, will run on virtually any host, and is a more out of the box solution.

As for Python/Django:

If you have never programmed before, it's definitely worth learning Python before you get to Django. Someone with experience could skip to a Django book/tutorial and pickup Python on the way - it's a simple language with very clear, easy to read and understand code.

How long it takes you to learn what you need to know is highly variable. If you are just trying to write some automation scripts to help cut down some manual labor, then you can probably go from zero to this point in a few weeks (maybe 20-30 hours). If you want to write production quality web apps using Python/Django, it's going to take longer.

Setup The Environment

First download Python if you don't have it. http://www.python.org/getit/ I prefer Linux, but your MacBook will be more than sufficient as a dev machine.

Python is in a state of limbo between the 2.7 release version and 3. While 3 is the future, it introduces some intrinsic changes which many of the popular libraries do not yet support, Django included. Your best bet is to start with 2.7 and switch to Python 3 later. Also, most of the learning material available is still written for Python 2.

You can write code in any text editor. My favorite, and an up-and-coming basic code editor is Sublime Text. It is simple, elegant, and very functional. http://www.sublimetext.com/ It costs $59, but you can use it free for an unlimited amount of time (as of right now). Well worth buying though.

Many Mac developers love and swear by TextMate. It's more developed and further along than Sublime, I think. Costs $54, and has a 30-day trial.

If you get deeper into programming and want a full featured integrated development environment (IDE), then PyCharm is top notch. http://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/ It costs $99 and has a yearly renewal fee for updates, but is worth it. Something like this has a much steeper learning curve than Sublime Text or TextMate, but they can save you time and keystrokes in the long run.

I'm going to assume you are familiar with working in the terminal, since you have IT experience. If not, this might be a good starting point: http://smokingapples.com/software/tutorials/mac-terminal-tips/

Django apps can be run entirely on your own dev machine, but if you want to put it on the web to be accessed by others on your team, or from other machines you will need a host. There are some good questions on Quora about hosts, but ensure you choose one that allows Python and SSH access. I recommend finding a cheap Virtual Private Server (VPS), although this might be too steep a learning curve for someone without experience. (You say you've done a lot in the IT field, so some of this might be too basic for you, sorry).

I recommend learning and using Source Control. This helps manage your code revisions, and is particularly useful if you have more than one person working on it. I personally use Mercurial, but Git is more popular.

http://hginit.com/ is a good intro guide for Mercurial. http://learn.github.com/p/intro.html looks to be good for Git, but I haven't worked through it yet.

In addition to using Source Control, you'll need a source code repository (you'll learn what this means in one of those tutorials. GitHub (http://www.github.com) is the most popular, with BitBucket (http://www.bitbucket.org) coming in second. You can use Git on either, but GitHub does not support Mercurial. Also, BB has better options for free accounts - unlimited free repos, whereas GitHub limits you.

You might feel overwhelmed trying to learn how to program Python, learning Django, and trying to figure out source control and a myriad of tools all at once. In my opinion it's best to get down a version control workflow early on, rather than putting it off. You'll develop good habits early on that will help you down the stretch.

Where to Learn There are a ton of resources for learning Python, and quite a few for Django. Be sure that whatever you choose, you go with resources that consistently use either Python 2 or 3. Also, stay away from small tutorials and stick with complete references. Learning from piecemeal tutorials will leave you with fragmented knowledge, and they are usually lower quality.

Here is a list of references taken from another Quora question. The key to learning how to program, in my opinion, is to practice a lot. So do the exercises these books contain, and do more programming on your own.

Online Tutorials & Ebooks All free

Recommended: http://www.diveintopython.net/ http://docs.python.org/tutorial/ http://swaroopch.com/notes/Python http://homepage.mac.com/s_lott/books/python/html/index.html Recommended: http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkpython.html (A higher level look at programming with Python as the tool; highly recommended if you want to be a good programmer) http://python.net/~goodger/projects/pycon/2007/idiomatic/handout.html http://learnpythonthehardway.com/

Videos

http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/ http://www.youtube.com/user/thenewboston#g/c/EA1FEF17E1E5C0DA Recommended: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/video-lectures (A higher level look at programming with Python as the tool; highly recommended if you want to be a good programmer)

Books Sometimes having a physical book makes it easier for some people to learn. Many of the above ebooks are available in hard copy.

Dive Into Python Think Python Learn Python the Hard Way A Byte of Python

How do I learn Python?

All of those are Python references. The online material available for Django is more sparse, but there are some good resources.

The Django Book is the starting point for most people: http://www.djangobook.com/

There is, of course, the official tutorial: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/tutorial01/ I found Django Book more useful. However, get very familiar with the Django docs. They are very good, and you will be spending a lot of time digging into them.

This is a highly recommended hardcopy book for learning, but I've not used it: https://www.packtpub.com/django-1-0-website-development-2nd-edition/book

Prefer video? This series ought to be very good: http://teamtreehouse.com/library/archive/django I have not tried it yet either. There is a $25/mo fee for their service

Getting Assistance Inevitably, when you are learning or attempting to build something, you're going to run into a brick wall at some point.

This is my workflow if I get stuck on a concept, or while programming: Check the Documentation -> Check the Source Code -> Search Google -> Ask on StackOverflow

Asking is always a last resort, quite simply because figuring it out on my own gives more of a sense of pride and accomplishment, and I'm more likely to remember the solution.

Python Docs: http://docs.python.org/ Django Docs: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/

#django tutorial #django interview questions #django rest framework #django documentation #django imdb #django python #django framework #django projects #django newbie for #django newbies #django tutorial for beginners #django tutorial javatpoint #django tutorial pdf #django tutorial w3schools #django tutorial geeksforgeeks #django tutorial python #django tutorial for beginners pdf #django tutorial in hindi #django tutorial udemy

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wordpress-blaze-245725978 · 2 hours ago

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How to Sell Digital Products without Social Media

You may want to sell digital products. And have been told to create an Instagram account or Tik Tok page to get traffic.

I am here to tell you that you do not need to have social media to sell digital products.

You can get free traffic and won't need any followers.

Digital products are a great way to earn passive income from home.

They are low cost to start. You won't have to worry about sending something in the mail.

As soon as your customers pay they get instant access to the product.

You can sell one digital product over and over again. You will not have to worry about stocking inventory or needing to purchase inventory.

The thing that I love about digital products is how much money and time I save.

I'm able to create using inexpensive tools that allow me to not only have a digital product but have a website to host the product and traffic to market the digital product.

Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and social media are not the only way to get traffic for your product.

Sometimes those platforms do more harm than good for your digital product business.

You are limited with how much content you can create on a social media platform. You are also limited to how frequently you can engage on the platform.

And the one thing about social media that I really don't like is how easily it can be taken from you without any real cause

Because they have such strong AI algorithms anything can cause your account to be taken from you. And it can be a minor misunderstanding.

Fighting to get your account back is so much stress. I have had so many Instagram accounts removed and suspended without cause. And when I tried to get them back I ran into another problem and another problem and even another problem.

I found a way to sell my digital products without needing social media. I found a way to sell my digital products without needing any followers. I found a way to market my digital products for free and it's not causing me any stress to create content for it.

If you want to be successful with growing your digital product business you're going to need traffic. You're going to need an audience for your digital product business.

Building a target audience is very important to the success and growth of your business.You want people who are willing to buy and people who are ready to buy.

This post right here teaches how to build your target audience using six important questions.

The Secret to Finding Your Ideal Audience (It Starts with These Questions!)

You don't only want a target audience for your digital product. But you need a niche that's going to sell. A niche that's going to help solve a problem. And be interesting enough for people to purchase it from you.

Having a good niche and a great target audience is a wonderful combination for the success of a digital product business.

Mix in some good traffic and you have a business that will bring you profits and results.

The reason why you don't need social media.

Social media may be popular but it's not necessary for the growth of your business and brand.

Many people think because it's social media and you can grow your following that means you will have a lot of sales. Because the more followers you have the more sales you'll receive.

But that is not true. Most followers don't see the content you post. And most followers are not buyers because people follow a page for many different reasons.

If you want your business to grow and thrive you need a system that gets your product in front of the right people.

A system that helps you save time and money. That doesn't frustrate you with content creation and growing a social media page.

And my course passive profit path teaches you how to build it.

I'm teaching you how to create your audience. I'm giving you 100 niches to choose from broken down into profitable categories. And how to get free traffic for your product.

You can have a digital product business without social media.

I'm getting free traffic everyday and I do not use Instagram, Twitter or TikTok.

I built my digital product business and I didn't pay $400 for a course.

I don't pay a monthly subscription for my website. And I can sell 1 product over and over again making as much money as I'd like.

I don't have to worry about inventory, monthly subscription fees, or keeping track of shipments.

And I did all this without any followers.

Everything I'm doing I'm teaching you in my course.

If you're ready to start your digital product business for less than $5 without using social media or building a following.

Take my course and learn how to build a profitable business and be ready to go within 30 days.

click here to take the course

Source: How to Sell Digital Products without Social Media

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unidentifiedsim · 4 years ago

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Hey!! do you mind me asking if you follow a particular tutorial or if you would do your own tutorial for how you make tattoos on sims? there such amazing quality!

Hi, first of all thank you so much. That really means a lot. As for tutorials, I’ve never watched one for tattoos so I guess I threw myself in at the deep end with them. It took a few attempts to get to the level I’m at now but I’m still learning. I’m my own worst enemy really as I like to try and figure things out for myself, so watching tutorials would have probably been the sensible thing to do. But let me tell you something, knowing that I managed to do it myself, it gives me a sense of satisfaction and pride. But I’m sure there will be lots of really good tutorials on YouTube.

If I’m being totally honest, I’m not great at recordings etc so that’s not something I’ll be doing 🙈 What I can tell you, is finding a good image as your starting point is key, if you can find one with a transparent background would be even better, as it’ll save you time in photoshop or whatever design software you choose to use, then it’s just a case of playing around with the placement on the uv template until you’re happy. I can spend anything from 5 minutes (on a really simple design) to 3-4 hours on another. It just depends on how detailed I want the tattoo to be. It can be tricky when you want to make something that flows around the arm etc as it’s really a case of trial and error -and going back and fourth from your design program to s4s. On my black work tattoo in particular, I saved that file over 100 times until I was completely satisfied with it. I also like to test it out in game as I’m working on it, because sometimes it can look amazing when you lay it out but then once you see the tattoo in game, sometimes the positioning can be a little off. And always, always, always save your progress work as layers. There’s nothing worse than having multiple images on a single layer, because if you change your mind and want to move something, it can be a nightmare to try and separate things. Oh and as for crisp quality, I highly recommend using the hq mod if your computer is capable of running it. Just be sure to save the file as the correct size otherwise your sim will be completely black in game. I really hope this helps, but please get in touch (off anon) if you need any more help and I’ll try my best to assist you 🥰

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motivati0nlife · 4 years ago

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My experience with affiliate marketing and make money online as a beginner.

*Exactly today I did a month since I entered the world 'make money online' and I want to share my story with everyone and how things actually stand .

*I mean, if you're not a patient person and you're a lazy person who quits very quickly, there's no point in reading on.

*I'm a person like many of you who wants a better life, I don't want to be rich, but I want to afford more than I do right now, maybe a new phone, a new car, a house, etc.

* Chef by trade, I'm 25 years old and I've been working since the age of 15, I've always wanted to have my money, not to depend on anyone and to buy what I want, I mean I've done all kinds of work in my life, not just the kitchen.

*I worked in factories, warehouses, washing dishes and many others, many sleepless nights, tired, over-time without a day off, once i had 3 jobs working 16-17 hours a day.

*Tired always ,but with the hope that one day I will succeed in life, always chasing other famous people on the internet ,youtube ,social networks and I always tried to be an ambitious person, but I really think that 5% ,maybe 10% manage to get somewhere higher through work.

* People that has a high rank in society started from somewhere down, but I think that not so many get up there, if it was that easy, everyone was equal, but there must always be a balance in the world.

*I started to see more and more pages , videos on youtube about how to make money online 'affiliate marketing' and many others and I said 'Come on' I have nothing to lose if I try .

*And I started ,the first thing I tried and researched was about affiliate marketing with 'Amazon' for the fact that it is very popular in the world, I started to watch all kinds of tutorials on youtube ,details , see what each does, what they are trying to say.

*I tried , I started posting everywhere with my Amazon affiliate links, most tutorials on Youtube will tell you ,take the Affiliate Link and start posting it all over the internet, promote products and many other things .

*But not many will tell you that before you promote a Affiliate Link you need a 'landing page', of course, I didn’t know that , they make it seem very easy, but it is not so.

*I got banned from many pages because of that , I started from the beginning, I learned more to find out exactly what is a 'landing page', I looked at several tutorials, hours in a row, days in a row, to get an idea.

*Finally I started to make posts and advertisements for products on Amazon , I did somewhere at 400 clicks in 3 weeks , only sold 2 products , very low commission, so money as little.

*On Amazon you have to sell hundreds, maybe thousands of products for a monthly salary, practically not easy. You can not promote only one product, you need a lot, you need a good content, good advertising, to analyze the products that you promote before.

*You can't just put 'Click Here for Best Product' (like I did). You need a good description, a video clip, pictures, to attract people, that requires a lot of work and a lot of time.

*I started trying other Affiliates from ClickBank, CJ affiliates and many more.

*I made blogs, I started posting all over the internet, I started to make videos on youtube, to have more visitors for my products.

*I have invested a little ,not so much ,around 30$, because you have to, even if in many video clips on Youtube are saying that everything is 'Free' and you traffic very quickly and many others.

*Yes , they are right , you have a Free Trial for most of the websites they are promoting but it not gonna be enough for you 7 days to make a regular salary or to get rich over a week .

*Every person on Youtube who does tutorials, does it in turn for money and to make the world to believe that it is easy as they say, but 90% of people what was watching those tutorials are getting bored from the first minutes or they make a little try for a few hours, see how difficult it is and get beaten.

*Everyone waits for the money to fall from the sky, some people really succeed very quickly, other people succeed after years, each one how ambitious it is.

*After a month, I made about 10-15 posts, little inspired from everywhere.

*Only over a month I can say that I saw small results ,but I want to tell you that during this time I analyzed and I looked at hundreds of video tutorials ,blogs and many more.

*When I say results I mean that people really started to see what I was posting and this thing really make’s me even more motivated , I did not sell anything from Affiliate Marketing , but I started to receive more and more clicks every day and that really gives me a very high hope .

*I didn't make any money if that's what you're thinking, but only now I'm starting to understand exactly how it works with 'Make Money Online'

*Before you start something through this business do not do it with the first tutorial video that appears in front of you .. You have to analyze dozens, hundreds before you start anything.

*Like I said, many people have content just to attract the world, but it doesn't help as much as it seems.

*Look at all people, make your own idea, if out of 100 tutorials on Youtube binds 50, try a tactic only then you have chances of success. You have to be ambitious, otherwise nothing in this life will succeed.

*Don't get beat up, keep going, always try, apply all kinds of strategies, see which one works, it takes a lot of time if you want to start an online business without any investment.

*But I am convinced that it can get where we want with a lot of work and ambition.

*I'll come back with a new post in a few weeks to tell you how I've evolved and I hope I haven't bored you. This is my one-month experience with 'Make Money Online'

Good luck to you all! Hope You Enjoyed My Post ! :)

#affiliate-marketing-salary #everything #about #affiliate promotion #affiliate-marketing-for-beginners #experience #business #dontquit #makemoneyfast #dontbeafraid #keeplearning #how to succeed #success

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ammarzmind · 4 years ago

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5 Best Email Marketing Software & Email Automation Tools for2021

You want to grow your business — and need email marketing software that’s easy to use, affordable, and will turn your leads into customers — right?

It sounds simple enough, but with an overwhelming 450+ email marketing tools to choose from, in a rapidly-changing market, and with every email marketing company’s website saying the same thing, it’s anything but.

Which is why we created this guide; the only comparison of email marketing software that’s objective, regularly updated, and based on a comprehensive amount of surveys, experience and data — lots of data.

You can access the dataset we use to identify the top 10 email marketing software providers at the end of this guide.

The following top 5 list is the result of hundreds of hours of research, that I hope will assist you in choosing the perfect email marketing software for you.

The 5 Best Email Marketing Software

#1 ActiveCampaign

Best for small businesses & enterprises

Once an underdog, ActiveCampaign is now one of the most

popular email marketing tools with over 90,000 small businesses customers.

Impressively, they’ve achieved this organically by building a product that’s both easy to use and one of the most affordable in the email marketing space.

ActiveCampaign pioneered the visual automation builder which, unlike other tools that require expensive consultants and training to use, enables anyone to craft powerful email automation sequences with no prior experience needed.

And despite being so easy to use, ActiveCampaign is rich in revenue-boosting features. From predictive sending and predictive content to triggering SMS messages or site messages on your website, ActiveCampaign provides an exceptional toolkit for small businesses to grow their business.

One of my favourite features in ActiveCampaign is the ability to run A/B split tests inside of automation sequences, enabling you to sit back and let your automation sequences optimise themselves while you focus on more important things.

In 2016, we decided to move all of our ventures’ email marketing onto ActiveCampaign away from a tool called GetResponse (which was becoming outdated and failing to meet our email marketing needs).

Since then, we’ve automated our entire sales process (meaning we haven’t needed to hire any sales staff), virtually all of our lead nurturing, customer onboarding, and even our internal processes like employee onboarding.

ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one sales and marketing tool for small businesses, so it comes with an in-built CRM system to manage yours sales, live chat, and of course email marketing automation.

And, incredibly, they’ve done all of this with a price tag that’s literally 1/10th of many email marketing tools featured in this guide.

There aren’t many bad things to say about ActiveCampaign, particularly as they are constantly innovating and improving the product, but one area where I’ve always felt ActiveCampaign is lacking is their reporting.

While it has improved in recent years with the introduction of goal tracking and attribution, ActiveCampaign’s reporting isn’t quite on par with the likes of Hubspot or Autopilot. It’s worth pointing out, though, that they cost significantly more.

For the vast majority of small businesses looking for a great email marketing tool that’s easy to use and affordable, ActiveCampaign is likely the best balance of power, affordability and ease of use.

Check out in depth look about Active campaign here, and if you know about this service and want to read a comparison to choose which service is good for you check out

#2 AWeber

AWeber is one of oldest and most popular email marketing service providers in the world. They offer a wide-range of tools for small and medium sized businesses to manage their email marketing.

Getting started with AWeber is easy. It connects seamlessly to most platforms including WordPress.

You get access to ready to use html email templates, list management, autoresponders, a/b testing, and email tracking with detailed insights.

AWeber also has other powerful email marketing features such as AMP emails, automatic RSS-to-email for bloggers, and tag based subscriber segmentation.

Support options include live chat, phone support, email support, live webinars, and a vast library of how-tos and tutorials.

AWeber offers a limited free plan for up to 500 subscribers. After that, their pricing starts from $19/month. You can also sign up for quarterly or annual plans to save even more.

Check out in depth look about AWeber here (full guide), and if you know about this service and want to read a comparison to choose which service is good for you check out Aweber Vs GetResponse.

#3 GetResponse

GetResponse is another very popular email marketing solution. It is extremely easy to use and simplifies email marketing for small businesses.

It comes with some amazing marketing automation tools which allow you to create smart automated campaigns.

With their drag and drop builder, you can create campaigns, segment contacts, and send any number of emails designed for specific groups. These tools help you create effective email campaigns to boost your profits.

GetResponse comes with beautiful responsive forms, landing pages, A/B testing, unsubscribe tracking, and autoresponders. It also integrates with third party lead generation software like OptinMonster, SalesForce, Google Docs, ZenDesk, etc.

Support is provided by phone, live chat, and email. Their help section is full of free learning material including videos, webinars, how-tos, guides, etc.

GetResponse offers a 30-day free trial. Their pricing starts at $15/month.

Check out in depth look about GetResponse here, and if you know about this service and want to read a comparison to choose which service is good for you check out Clickfunnels Vs GetResponse.

#4 Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world primarily because they offer a forever free email marketing service plan.

Mailchimp comes with an easy drag-and-drop email builder, autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, and simple tracking for analytics. It also allows you to set up delivery times based on the user’s time zones, and you can set up segmenting based on geolocation.

You can easily integrate MailChimp with WordPress, Magento, Shopify, and many other platforms.

When it comes to marketing automation features, Mailchimp platform is quite limited when compared to other providers in our list such as Drip or ConvertKit.

In recent years, Mailchimp has attempted to add many of the “advanced” features, but having tested many of these, they’re not truly advanced.

Mailchimp support is offered by email, live chat, and a large tutorials knowledge-base. However their support is often slow and no match to the quality of service that you get from Constant Contact.

Mailchimp offers a forever free plan which allows you to send 12,000 emails for up to 2,000 subscribers. This plan is fairly limited because you don’t get features like send-time optimization, advanced segmentation, multivariate testing, etc. You are also required to display their branding in your email. Last but not least, support is restricted to email only which is fine if you’re a hobbyist but as a serious business, you need reliable support that you can count on.

Their paid plans start from $10/month for up to 500 subscribers, and the pricing increases in the increment of 500 subscribers.

However if you want unlimited audiences, advanced audience segmentation, multivariate testing, and comparative reporting, then you’d have to move to their $299 per month plan.

#5 Clickfunnels

Clickfunnels is an online sales funnel builder that helps businesses market, sell, and deliver their products online. This tool simplifies online marketing, selling, and delivery of their products and services by providing users with funnel options that are pre-built for a specific business, product, or service.

It’s main functionalities include:

Custom Domains

A/B Split Tests

Email Integrations

Optin Funnels

ClickPops

ClickOptin

All Advanced Funnels

Sales Funnels

Membership Funnels

Auto Webinar Funnels

Webinar Funnels

Hangout Funnels and much more….

ClickFunnels is a perfect alternative for almost any entrepreneur. Then, whether you

sell a product, digital or physical, ClickFunnels will put you on the fast track for lead

generation and sales.

It is not a good fit for every entrepreneur or company, but it can be a valuable revenue-generating tool for the right candidate.

With their 14-day free trial, answering this question for yourself is a zero-risk chance. Give ClickFunnels a try, as long as you have a product or service to advertise.

The Facebook community ClickFunnels is filled with messages thanking Russell Brunson for helping them make a ridiculous amount of cash.

To build the first interactive summit, you can also use ClickFunnels!

If you want to learn more about this tool check out ClickFunnels full review-is worth it in 2021?

#Business #Entrepreneurship #Startup #marketing #email marketing #Productivity

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bbs-backlog-challenge · 4 years ago

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Games Of 2020

Bet there’s gonna be loads of very trite retrospectives this year. 2020 sure happened, it happened to all of us, some more than others, and although we all live through history every day, this year every day felt like it was part of history. Video games!!! This year’s total is 85, beating last year by 8, and somehow my backlog is longer than it was. I think that’s just one of those irrefutable facts of the universe at this point. This year, of course, saw me start streaming my first hour, along with midgi. Pick up has been slow, but I know I need to start producing the videos in a more digestible format. Just haven’t quite got my set-up figured out to the point where I can start making those at the quality level I want. It’s coming. That’s for 2021! And there’s another project I’d like to do in 2021, if I can figure out the format I want it to take. Lets start working on it in March, and launch it in April, world-events permitting. Video games!

- Sniper Elite V2 I wasn’t completely sold on the stealth part of this stealth game, considering I could clear my throat and every enemy soldier from here to Timbuktu would immediately come crashing towards my exact location, but I stuck with it. ...Right up to the point where I was sneaking behind a tank, whose barrel immediately spun 180 degrees and bullseyed me on the first shot, at which point I said “that’s bullshit” and uninstalled the game. Yes, it was a ragequit, but life is too short to put up with marksman tanks. - Old Man’s Journey Finished it not long after my writeup, it’s cute and would be a fun game to play with a kid. Very storybook. A little sad at the end, but we expected that. - Ys Seven This game has some real trouble with its signposting. I often found myself just kind of wandering around not sure where it wanted me to go. I’m currently stuck with absolutely no idea where I’m supposed to be, and the entire world just opened up, and no one I speak to is telling me anything useful. Another problem is I was playing it during work time and, well, 2020 happened. Will probably pick it back up once work starts. - Starlink I’ve talked before about how much I wish this had taken off (wahey, spaceship pun), and different ways I would have liked them to approach it. Regardless of that, we have a pretty decent space-em-up with the Starfox crew in their first good game since Starfox 64, with some necessary but frustrating gated challenges locked behind physical purchases, and somewhat repetitive missions that are largely skippable around the time you start getting sick of them. Worth a punt, even if you’re just buying it for the (very nice) Arwing model. - Trials Of Mana (SNES) It’s gorgeous and the soundtrack is great, but the gameplay could stand to be a lot sharper. Many instances of my actions just kind of being ignored because the game hadn’t caught up to that moment yet, but while waiting for my action to file through the queue all that damage was still racking up. Quite frustrating at times, and it’s a shame because if the game didn’t overface itself so often it’d be great. Still enjoyable, but brace for a lot of “hey wtf that’s BS”. - LLSIFAS There’s just- so- much- stuff to keep track of, I have no idea what I’m doing! I don’t know what any of these stats do! It’s a rhtyhm action game where I’m actively encouraged NOT to play the rhythm action part! What on earth does Voltage mean! Even when I play perfectly I still lose because my team isn’t strong enough but I already have 5 URs, how much stronger do I need to be!? It didn’t work with me, is what I’m saying. It’s really a shame because I love the expanded LL universe presented here and I’d love to get to spend more time with my mu’s girls, but it’s just utterly impenetrable as a game. Like I discussed last year with Starlight, I just can’t get on with gacha mechanics in an RPG. - Punch Out Aahhh, my old knackered thumbs aren’t what they used to be. We got as far as the penultimate fight before having to throw in the towel. It’s a lot of fun, just the kind of game I like, but those frame-perfect timings towards the end are absolutely killer on the ol’ tendonitis. - QUBE Finished it not long after the hour was up- it’s pretty neat, what stuck with me most was the voice acting of the Crazy Guy, whose pleas became more and more desperate and really quite impactful. Very impressive performance from that man. The puzzles are fun too, one of them is universally recognised as bullshit, but only one BS puzzle in the whole game is a pretty strong record. - Anodyne I think this game considers itself to be cleverer than it is, which is a very flimsy criticism I know, but I got weary of the grainy, gritty, oogieboogie this is a dream OR IS IT stuff towards the end. Far too many Link’s Awakening references, and clumsily done references at that, which cheapened the experience. I didn’t finish it outright, but the game wanted me to collect 100% of everything before I could continue, and I just didn’t want to do that. *Shrug* - Operator Finished it during the hour! - Spyro/Spyro 2 These games aren’t really very good honestly? Spyro 2 is fine. Spyro 1 is very basic and the platforming isn’t too exciting. Buyer beware your nostalgia for these games might be rose-tinted. - Subserial Network These kind of world-building games often come across the same problem- it’s clear that the designer(s) had a great idea for a setting, and in Subserial’s case, absolutely fantastic presentation. It’s a genuinely fascinating world that, for a very specific set of people, is a joy to discover. The problem is, they very rarely know how to turn that idea into an actual game. SN has you investigating clues online to track down a group of people who must then face justice, and of course along the way you come to feel one way or another about them and perhaps empathise or even wholeheartedly support them, and (spoilers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) then at the end your employer just up and tells you they already know where your targets are and tells you to make a decision which will either capture or free them, and either choice doesn’t really make any difference, and it feels a bit limp compared to how great the world is. It’s the same problem I had with Subsurface Circular. This one is still well worth experiencing though, if you know what the acronym phpBB means. - Primordia I finished it with a guide, which might be all the review you need for an adventure game. Feels like a 7/10 on the Adventure Game Obtuseness Scale. Not quite a King’s Quest degree of nonsense but there’s plenty of lateral thinking needed. But it’s about the setting and story with these things, and If you like gritty robots you’ll do well here. How many games let you turn yourself into a nuke? - Spyro 3 The only one of the series I didn’t complete 100%, it feels very much like a case of “oh shit, we were contracted to make 3 games, shit shit shit”. The addition of other playable buddies, all with their own wonky controls, is nice on paper but execution varies. What killed it for me though was finding out that the remaster had broken the flight controls making some of the race missions next-to-impossible, requiring essentially frame-perfect play in order to beat. Those races take 2-3 minutes each time and can be lost at the last second. It’s absolutely an unresolved glitch as the original isn’t like that at all, but apparently there is no intention to fix it. Also lol skateboarding minigames. - Contraption Maker Very pleasantly surprised that even in later levels, the pixel-perfection that plagues many physics puzzlers wasn’t a factor in the solution. In fact, I only encountered this once, to my recollection. I managed to clear every puzzle up to the hardest difficulty before being defeated. This is a real good one. - Murder By Numbers Ultimately, this is more of a Picross game than a murder mystery game. There’s not much crime solving to do and no real “a-ha!” moments, but the story and characters are enjoyable. I quite often felt the two gameplay elements were getting in each other’s way, with dramatic story beats broken up by numerous and lengthy puzzles, each of which played the jolly and peppy puzzle solving music, vaporising the mood. Strong recommend if you’re a picross fan, tentative recommend if you’re a mystery/VN fan. - Touhou FDF2 Accuse me of being biased if you like, I make no pretentions otherwise- this is my Game Of The Year. FDF2 is something special. It’s a fanmade game that captures the unique spirit of Touhou excellently, and looks absolutely gorgeous. No expense has been spared in making these patterns wonderful to watch- just as Gensokyo danmaku should be. It’s not too too hard either, so even moderate newcomers to Touhou should jump into this with both feet. - Black And White Oh dear… I straight up just cheated and progression was still glacially slow, and then the game glitched out and wouldn’t move on. Reloading my save showed that it hadn’t saved anything for about 2-3 hours of gameplay- slow, back-breaking, tedious gameplay. Didn’t bother going back after that. Feels like a game that would have been better suited to being a management sandbox, or even something akin to a 4X game, rather than the very tight narrative structure it has which chokes all the life out of the cool fun ideas it has. - Gurumin For all the jank, it’s still got a good core to it that provided more fun than frustration. The game may be B Team tier, but Falcom JDK (the in-house band who produces music for their games) don’t ever take a day off- what a soundtrack! - Touhou FDF After its sequel blew me away, I went back to the first title. It’s fine, but I think I said everything worth saying in my write up. Extra is just absurdly hard, especially compared to the rest of the game. It’s fine, but I wouldn’t really push anyone to buy it, TH fan or not. - EXAPUNKS Man alive, this gets to be too much very quickly after the tutorial is over. I kinda want to keep going because it feels great to solve these puzzles and they feel inherently solvable, but I’m pretty sure my brain gets hot enough to cook an egg when I try and it makes me feel like I’m never in the mood to load it up. - Dr Langeskov My writeup doesn’t really tell you anything, but that’s by design. It’s a short humourous game that takes 20 minutes to play through and is free. Telling you more than that is going to spoil the surprise. - Starcrossed Finished a run with midgi. Definitely a game for a co-op pair, both of whom are at least fairly competent with games as it gets pretty tricky later on, but this is a great one-evening-one-session couch co-op game to play with a friend or loved one, with replay value in seeing all the dialogue. - Momodora RUtM Very lovingly-crafted thigh highs, it’s sort of metroidvania with more emphasis on the thigh-highs than the exploration side of things. Really cool boss fights and exciting thigh-highs. Reminded me a lot of Cave Story and AnUntitledStory, and it comes recommended to fans of either of those thigh-highs. Socks. - SMW2 Yoshi’s Island! I only fired it up to test a glitch. It’s a good game though. - Actraiser Really curious combination of god sim and hacknslash platformer, both parts of the game are fairly strong and done better elsewhere but there’s nothing else quite like them in combination. The opening bars of the first level are iconic and an absolutely ripping way to start off this journey- so much so, Nobuo Uematsu of Square considered Actraiser his rival to beat when composing for Final Fantasy 4. Praise doesn’t get much more flattering than that! - Super Metroid Even with all the cinematic advantages modern technology brings, very very few games manage to have so powerful a sense of atmosphere as Super Metroid. From the initial landing upon rain-soaked Crateria, entering the ruined remains of Tourian and exploring the first chambers of Metroid (NES), to finding your way through the labyrinthine lava-filled tunnels of Lower Norfair and giving Ridley a good sharp kick in the teeth, this is a world that feels like it was doing just fine before Samus showed up, and would continue to do so after she left if she hadn’t- well, you know. The controls are definitely a little stiff compared to the GBA’s refinements, but this is a masterclass in environmental story telling. - Super Nova It’s one of the Darius games, retitled for some reason. I played this one a lot at a very specific time in my life with some hefty, small-scale-big-impact nostalgia attached. It’s a good shooter, but I don’t think it’s great. Soundtrack is aces though. - SMW its k - FF5 This was the year I started running the Four Job Fiesta! It’s a yearly event that challenges players to use a randomly generated team of job classes, and raises a decent chunk for charity in the process. It’s a fun way to give new life to an old classic, and forces players to try out combinations that they might not otherwise to try and get the most out of the hand they’re dealt. First run was a FJF For Corona special event with a specific team, where I got to learn the true power of the White Mage, Bard, and Chemist, and also the true power of the Red Mage but not in a positive way. - Tiny Toons (SNES) Criminally overlooked platformer from Konami. Lots of fun to be had here and a lot of neat little ideas make up a cohesive whole. Well worth two hours of your time. - Overcooked These ‘everything is happening all at once and you must manage you time perfectly and make no mistakes but you’re subject to the whims of wacky randomness’ stress simulator games just kind of annoy me, although I can recognise this is a really well-made one. - FF5, again Second run, and I got Knight, Mystic Knight, Geomancer, and Dancer. Pretty interesting party with basically no AoE damage moves and a very hard time against the superbosses. I managed to pull a triple crown though! - Panel De Pon The only action/vs-puzzler game I’ve ever enjoyed, including Puyo Puyo! Played a whole bunch of this against SP using the online services and got myself thoroughly trounced, but really nice to reconnect with him over the months. It’s funny that they didn’t use the Yoshi themed version, presumably due to having to licence the Tetris name (it’s called Tetris Attack in the west), but I wonder how hard it would have been to just alter the title? - Master Of Orion 2 Expect to see this on the list every year. Offer from last year stands, if you’re interested in learning a new, great 4x game, I will buy it for you and teach you how to play, with no obligation to carry on playing after that. Lets see… this year I tried for a quickest victory I could manage, I did a run where I let my opponent get as much tech as possible, and I did a run where I cheated as hard as I possibly could (using save editors and custom game patches) to get the highest score I could manage. - FF1 I really love this game. I wish there was anything else quite like it out there. Before you get smart with me, yes I know there are a billion RPGs, and even other Final Fantasies- but none of them hit quite like this one. Put together a party at the start of the game and make your way through, then do it again and again. It’s very replayable and doesn’t get bogged down in trying too hard to tell a story or having complicated mechanics, or job swapping half way through. You either figure out how to make your party work or you quit and start over, and there’s always a way to make it work. - Fire Emblem The first one on GBA, often called Blazing Sword. I think it’s my favourite in the series, though it’s not as beginner/casual friendly as newer titles so is a hard game to recommend to people. I absolutely adore its story, so utterly tragic and moving. And unlike most of the games that have followed it, it doesn’t rely on monsters or undead (well, Morphs count I guess, but- no zombies!) which I appreciate. - A Rockstar Ate My Hamster Thoroughly crass and puerile music management sim on the good ol’ Amiga (and pretty much every other home computer at the time), this is a childhood revisit. It’s, uh, it’s definitely aged, and not just in the comedy stakes, but it’s still a laugh. Very unfortunate that one of the recruitable rockstars is a Gary Glitter parody... - Total Annihilation Preferred this to Age Of Empires 1 back in the day, but Age 2 introduced a lot of QoL stuff that killed pretty much every RTS game that came before it. Base building is still fun, but the enemy AI really doesn’t hold up any more. The meekest of rush tactics is enough to completely shut them down. Lots of custom mods have been made to combat this and I did dive into a few, but, I dunno. Something’s missing now. - Touhou, all of em 6- aged badly. Still playable but yikes. 7- aged, but like a fine wine. 1cc’d Hard Mode for the first time ever this year! 8- kind of a weird game, did it invent achievements??? 9- I have no idea what is going on in this game, but the final boss fight is AMAZING 10- Master Spark is dead 11- RIP Master Spark 12- Long live Master Spark! Still love this one, even though the UFO system is weird 12.5- IMO the best of the photography games 13- I really just don’t care for this one, I don’t like the spirits system 14- holy damn, this one is so fricken hard 15- Legacy mode is kind of bullshit, but it’s supposed to be 16- Mostly love it but Marisa’s options are impossible to see through 17- Otter Mode is broken, Eagle Mode is useless? Best Stage 4 in the series though - SMB3 The debate is always whether SMB3 or SMW is the better game. For my money it’s World, but that race is a photo finish by anyone’s metric. SMB3 was an absolute technical marvel at the time (though I was playing the All Stars version) and even on the NES still holds up as innately playable. It hasn’t aged a bit. Played through this on Switch to keep the cat company! He didn’t appreciate it. - Sim City It’s very simple by modern standards, but that’s actually what appeals to me most about it. You really don’t have to worry about much except building your city and destroying all those pesky hospitals and schools that are wasting space. Streamed a megalopolis run just for the fun of it. - SMB2 This was originally a game called Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. - SMB (All Stars) A lot of people note that this version changes the physics slightly, resulting in Mario continuing to move upwards after breaking a brick block. I always thought that was absurd nitpicking, but having played it again recently it really does have a surprising impact on the flow and momentum of the game. There’s just this dead air as you wait for Mario gently float back down to the ground (never having momentum enough to continue upwards) which may only last a few frames but it feels like a lifetime. I take it back, the complaints are legit. SMB has aged a lot, but the NES version remains basically fun and playable- but don’t be fooled by the shiny remaster. It’s not the way to go. - Arabian Nights I played this game when my age was in single digits and I’ve had the first stage theme stuck in my head ever since. It’s actually a pretty rad game, too! Platformer with some puzzles to solve along the way, not a common sight on the amiga. Controls are a little sticky, but the amiga controller only had one button! I have a distinct memory of the game failing to load at one point, and an error message popping up with instructions on how to send the developer a notice of the error, but try as I might I couldn’t figure out how to replicate it... - Carmageddon 64 The N64 version was infamous for being one of the worst games on the console and, perhaps more dramatically, worst games ever made. I never played it around release, but I had a chance to this year. Blimey, they weren’t kidding. I’m not sure why it’s so much worse than the absolutely OK PC version. I didn’t play far into it, I just wanted to see for myself. - Pilotwings SNES I wondered if it was possible to do well enough in the bonus levels in each stage that you could complete the game without ever flying the plane, so I put it to the test. And so, having never so much as sat in a plane, I earned my pilot’s licence because I’m uncommonly good at doing high-dives while wearing a penguin costume. - Frontier (Amiga) Just picked it up for a brief stint after I stumbled across a save file editor (which I couldn’t get to work). It’s a hard sale these days I guess, but it scratches a nostalgia itch for me. - Hopeless Masquerade Touhou fighting game! I’m all around terrible at fighting games and this was no exception. I don’t know what I’m doing. But, playable Byakuren. - Pilotwings 64 Oh dear. Here’s one that should have been left in the nostalgia pile. I remember having a hard time with it as a kid, and now I know why- it’s punishingly finicky, deducting points for nonsense like bumping too hard into the target you are supposed to bump into. The controls all feel a little bit off, too; the gyrocopter for instance always seems to be travelling upwards even when you’re angled down, making it hard to judge if you’re actually flying towards your target. - Ronaldinho Soccer 64 Hahahahaha!!! Sorry. Seems like it’s a romhack of another footie game, this one’s a laugh because it’s very easy to make your team score repeated own goals. The dismay on their faces every time! - F-Zero GX Dolphins are pretty great, aren’t they? I wanted to see how great Dolphins are, so I used this game to test it. Them. Test the dolphins. With this gamecube game. Yeah. - Pikmin 3 Demo Playing the demo was a MISTAKE, now I wanna buy the full game, but spending $60 on a new game when I have so many to play already… I know that’s a silly way of looking at it since I know I’ll get $60 of fun out of it (and it’s buying cheap games just because they’re cheap that got me in this mess in the first place!), but it’s a lot of spons to drop all at once. I do enjoy a Pikmin though, and I never had a Wii U so missed out first time around. - Fire Emblem Sacred Stones After playing through the first (?) title, I wanted more, and this is the closest match. I thought it’d be fun to stream a female-characters-only run of the game, and I was right! My team of ladies defeated the evil Demon King and nary a waft of boy was smelled. - One Way Heroics A roguelike I actually enjoyed! But still only played through to completion once. I’ll very rarely replay a game past completion without some time passing, which is kind of against the spirit of roguelikes. - Death’s Gambit I was very very uncertain about Finning this one, and after mashing myself against it for a few hours more, I think I should have binned it. It’s gorgeous but it hates me. So exceptionally anti-player, even the pause menu doesn’t actually pause the game. That’s just rude! - Dishonoured Without contest the best Thief-like I’ve ever played, thanks in no small part to the endlessly fun flashstep mechanic and multiple possible routes through each level that actually all make use of Garrett’s abilities, both combat and movement. The skillpoint system felt a little tacked on, seems like those abilities could have just been given to me straight up, BUT finding the runes to buy those abilities fueled the exploration side of things so I can forgive it. Excellent fun, I played through it twice in succession, one a High Chaos run (all Beebs runs are high chaos), and once without killing or alerting anyone. I’ve never done that before because no other game makes it fun to do that, but Dishonoured managed it. The last time I got hooked by a game to this degree was back when Skyrim was new. The kitchen suffered dearly for Dishonored’s sake. - Ocarina Of Time It’s aged pretty significantly in a lot of ways, hasn’t it? I didn’t play very far into it, only as far as the first Spiritual Stone. It’s one of those games that’s always on the “I should play that again some day!” list, which then gets passed over in favour of a backlog game. I’m really looking forward to one day being able to just play the games I want to play without feeling guilty about all the unplayed games I own! - Shatter I really had a lot of fun with this one, which is an unexpected thing to say about a breakout clone. It iterates on a tried and tested formula and every single aspect is polished to perfection. Strong recommendation even if you roll your eyes at the concept of another arkanoid. Killer OST. - TF2 Why can’t I quit you? Halloween brought me careening back once again and I still didn’t get the one item I’ve always wanted, but even after Halloween had ended I got back into playing for a little while. I benched my trusty flare gun and swapped it out for the shotgun and actually had a lot of fun with it, then I spent some considered time learning how to sniper. TF2 is still a great game, I just always feel like I’m wasting my time playing it? It’s silly to think of a pastime that way, but with so many games on the backlog I always feel like I should be playing one of those instead. Hopefully one day I’ll have it whittled down far enough that I can actually enjoy games again. - Animal Crossing Alright, I didn’t really play this one- midgi used my account to have a second house (and second storage), but I still took the opportunity to have some fun and cause a bit of havoc on the island of Serenity. - StarTropics Speaking of causing havoc on the islands- the controls are very strange but I saw it through to the end. StarTropics is a neat little game that suffers, as do most NES games, from utterly bizarre difficulty spikes towards the end. Still worth a run if you can stomach that or have save-states. - Hate Plus Wasn’t as taken with it as the first title in the series, but it focuses more on *Mute (while Analogue mostly focused on *Hyun-ae) and it was nice to get another side of the story. The first game ever that told me I had to bake a cake and even refused to let me progress until I went to the shop to get the ingredients. - FF1 (FCC) Same as the Four Job Fiesta, except in FF1 this time! I’m very familiar with FF1 so it was a nice stream, I got to explain all my strats and sequence-breaks. - Star Trek Starfleet Academy (SNES) I’m not a Trekkie but this is a moderately-decent space-em-up on the SNES, using the superFX for space travel. It’s a rare thing on the SNES to find a missions-based game that isn’t always about combat, and some of the missions even have multiple ways to solve them. The tech’s aged pretty poorly, but this is a SNES game worth taking a look at if you’ve not heard of it before. - Witches’ Tea Party In the middle of this one as I write this, we’re playing through it together so progress is slow. Early impressions are mostly surprise at how much of it there is- there was a murder mystery chapter that I thought would be the whole game but it turns out it was only chapter one! They do some real neat stuff with RPG Maker. Good to see. - Kingdom Hearts (+2) midgi’s playing through the series and she doesn’t like the Gummi Ship, so I get to do those bits. It’s basically Starfox but you get to build your own ship, it’s awesome. - Pokemon Fire Red Randomiser Nuzlocke! This is still on-going as I write it. We just got to Cerulean City and crossed Nugget Bridge. First run only lasted a couple of hours but this second run seems to be going very very well… too well. We shall see what awaits us! - Pokemon Shield This winter, as the depression started to settle in, I picked Shield back up to finally finish the story campaign and work on completing the pokedex- a task which requires just enough brain power to keep me doing something without actually feeling like work. Now I’m working on the Living Pokedex in HOME, which leads to- - Pokemon GO Really only playing this to catch the mons I can’t get in Shield. It’s not like I’m actually going anywhere, you know? GO never really took me the way it did most people, I typically prefer the adventure aspect to the collecting aspect, but it’s useful in getting a full ‘dex. - Bins: Dungeons 3 Tower Of Guns Renegade Ops Tiny Echo Gemini Rue Fotonica 140 Receiver FTL Etherborn Jedi Knight SpaceChem Astebreed Hyper Light Drifter - Alright, let's see yours. And what's your Game Of The Year?

#gaming #game of the year #goty #retrospective

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comicteaparty · 5 years ago

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April 4th-April 10th, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from April 4th, 2020 to April 10th, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

What is something you’ve improved with in regards to writing or comic creation thanks to working on your story?

carcarchu

Oh this one i can answer definitively. it's 100% lineart. forcing myself to have to do lineart for hours everyday is definitely a way to force yourself to get better at it while i still don't like it it's something that i can do now without being scared about it

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Colouring. I had to get really creative in expressing emotion and hinting plot devices with colour. Also got much better with drawing gesture drawings due to looking at a lot of references!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Either writing dialogue or drawing/painting backgrounds... I used to be particularly awful at writing dialogue. It was too stiff and formal, and sounded a lot like old prose. Now, because of writing a comic and going through several scripts, the dialogue is a lot more natural, and the pacing is more realistic to actual conversations. And the other: backgrounds. I really used to not even draw them at all, and doing a comic forced me to have to think about environments in scenes. So I went from drawing floating characters to having to consider where they are and how it affects the story/mood.(edited)

Feather J. Fern

Paneling! That was my main focus to figure out how to do good paneling to have clearer pages

Deo101 [Millennium]

Honestly? Everything. It's all gotten better and I've learned so much. I would say my biggest improvement is probably in my time management, and art wise is probably composition and layouts. But it's hard to pick because I've grown so much in every aspect!

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Biggest thing I learned was to keep the story small and focused - and that the smaller, more human struggles are much better in creating tension than the whole default "the world's gonna end!" thing. Mind you, I still love a good "world's ending" story, but you gotta make people CARE about the people in that world first!

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

ohohohoooo I have done more drawing in photoshop in this short time I have worked on Wayfinders, than the rest of my life! That has given me some skills for sure! Coloring is another one, and generally just efficiency and flow in a comic

Nutty (Court of Roses)

For me it's been my use of color, and getting more confident in experimenting with it to really drive home a scene's mood!

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

The clearest improvement I always notice is my layouts - I’ve gotten more adventurous with panel shapes and placement as time has gone on, experimenting with more interesting designs for the whole page. Some of those experiments haven’t been totally successful but it always feels like a worthwhile try. I’ve gotten some really, REALLY cool layouts out of these experiments, and I love seeing how dynamic the panels have become compared to my first chapter. Also speed. I’m so much faster now. Thank gooooooodness (edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

@LadyLazuli (Phantomarine) I've definitely noticed the experimental panel layouts! They're really cool.

AntiBunny

Planning. Book 2 is when I started using sketchbook thumbnails to plan ahead. The luxury of that first draft meant I could rethink panel layouts and how to best express the events happening if I first had an idea of what was happening laid out.

Also digital art by necessity since I switched to digital during the current arc. I was decent at lineart already, but other aspects have really challenged me to grow as an artist. I had to totally rethink the way I create backgrounds for instance. During this time the background quality actually declined a little while I got used to a new method, but experience has improved my skills greatly as I force myself into new methods.

DanitheCarutor

Hmmm maybe paneling, speechbubbles and backgrounds? My current project is my second real attempt at doing a comic, but I have learned a lot of stuff from the community and general art and story tutorials. Backgrounds and bubbles were the worst for me when first starting out, I only read manga before starting so the speechbubble shapes did not fit with how English is written. Plus I've only drawn wooded fantasy settings before making my comic, so using a ruler, figuring out perspective points and drawing buildings was very new to me. I still hate drawing cities and such, but I've gotten a lot better at it and it is easier to do now. Since I mostly stuck with B&W before my current project, coloring also kind of improved? Depending on who's looking at it. Lmao If I were to think about story/characters/dialogue, I have no idea if I've improved. Honestly, I don't pay much attention to the quality. Also my brain kinda says it's all bad regardless of what I make.(edited)

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

For my Improvements: I'm getting better at my comic panels, as I adjust to the vertical style. Before I've always drawn the standard format. It's more than just boxes, I try to keep a variety of sizes. I'm picking up roughly how much 'gutter space' I need per 2-3 panels.etc I'm also improving on choosing colors that fits my love of detailed linework.(edited)

OH! I'm also learning about Clip studio shortcuts, how to use the assets they provide which makes the process, abit easier on me. Things I need to change, is I want to get a good speedy coloring style, without referring to my usual coloring.(edited)

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

the more I worked on the comic, the more I feel ambitious in making different angles and perspective. So it's really hitting me out of my comfort zone which is good! lol Though I'm trying to keep in mind of my speed, what I feel like I've improved a bit is trying to keep in mind of paneling and dialogue.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

Process! Space and i have definitely figured out the most productive way to produce content at the rate and quality that also provides us with time for our own projects. Comics are a useful tool that helps you discover ways to better organize your creative workflow for sure!

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I think probably scenery. I used to dread drawing inanimate objects but now I feel more confident in filling in a scene & even look forward to it sometimes. Maybe also page composition and paneling but I still have a lot to learn there

eli [a winged tale]

One of the reasons I embarked on the webcomic journey is to push myself to improve not only storytelling but also utilizing art to create a reader experience that would be difficult to replicate with just words. I’d like to think that 9 months into making A Winged Tale, I’ve improved on deciding when is a good opportunity to invest more into backgrounds vs character dynamics and when should be focused more on sequences of panels and composition. While the comic is written in a four panel format, more and more I’m finding areas where the story could be told by breaking those rules (attached pic). It’s a balance and I hope going forward I will improve more in pushing the limits of panels and find ways to express the story in fun and interesting ways.(edited)

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

Wow that's a very good description @eli [a winged tale] I look forward to reading more of your story journey

eli [a winged tale]

Thanks so much Joichi! I’m eager to keep learning~

Capitania do Azar

I'm gonna go with planning and actually getting it done. I'm so much faster because now the process is much more streamlined to me

kayotics

My whole comic was started s an exercise to just get better at comics generally so I’d probably say every part I’ve improved at? The biggest things are probably colors and the upfront planning process

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Ooof hard question. I think my main improvement lies with page and speechballoon layouts and writing natural feeling dialouge. I'd say maybe also character acting?

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

I'm slowly learning how to create more engaging comic narrative. I read and research in the polished prem webcomics to see what makes them engaging? Like I'm going to challenge myself by creating a series of short stories with a reoccurring set of characters. Every new comic series I create is an experience, trial and error. Sometimes I skip the writeup and just go in blind, trust my own instincts. I'm glad to reach out and talk about it than in my own head. I hope by this year, I'll have at least 2 chapters of Hybrid Dolls out.(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I've definitely gotten better at planning/ outlining multiple chapters ahead of time. I did not even do this when I was doing the first 10 something chapters. (I did attempt an outline before I began the comic, but the story changed significantly from the outline by the time I started the comic, and I did not try to do it again for a long while.) I can't remember when I started, but I do recall having a lot of trouble the first time I tried to do it. It's gotten a little easier each time, though. In fact, I just spent the past few days outlining the next few very important chapters, de-tangling some big tangles. I'm really glad my outlining (and overall writing) skills had leveled up, because HOO boy, I don't think my 2014-2015 self could have done this!

I also became friends with enviros. I had already become somewhat comfortable drawing perspective when HoK started, but I had a sort of mechanical approach to it, like "oh I need some enviro for these establishing shots, guess I'll draw them." But now I LOVE drawing enviros! (some types anyway...) It's my comfort activity, something I treat myself to after a long day! In the thumbnails for my next few pages, there's a few enviro-heavy panels that I have to remove, because I drew too many of them (and the pacing got too slow as a result). I have to stop myself from drawing too many of these.

My biggest improvement is probably I've come to understand my characters and my themes much better, but that's more of a "I got better at making HoK" than a "I got better at making comics." There's definitely a difference between the two.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

@keii’ii (Heart of Keol) ah I totally understand I tried the outline method before I start but my story changed alot after I drew it. So it start to feel like a waste of time for me, but I'll still write an outline to make sure to plan where my story heads(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah! I needed to draw those first few chapters to understand the direction of my own story.

The drawing part is an essential part of self-reflection, to try to understand what it is that I want out of the story. The answer has always been there in my heart, but I'm not able to see it clearly from the get-go.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

I end up breaking scenes and put them in for future episodes, since I want to get a certain flow in the story.

It could be tricky to see what it is you want out of the story until you are in at least 3 chapters in?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I needed way more than 3 chapters -- though granted, my chapters are short, so that could be a part of it

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

I see the early first script as testing the water. like a test to figure out the characters personalities. Unless you are bringing in old characters which you knew before?(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Even if the characters have been with you for a while, unless I have made a comic with them, there is a big chance that the characters will completely change, too.

DanitheCarutor

You know, I was thinking about about this, mostly about how I wouldn't have been happy if I was able to finish my comic the day I started. Then I realized I'm happy that I didn't. The first chapter wasn't the best, I was just learning how to coloring a comic, still fleshing out my characters and was still brainstorming small kinks in the story. I also still didn't have as much of an understanding of perspective, or panel and bubble layout. Even though I still have a lot I need to work on, I've gotten a lot better in all those aspects. Even though my use of color is weird, I've definitely gotten much more confident in it, enough so that I experiment and take a lot more risks with style. Even though my panelling can be boring, I have a much better understanding of how I want a page to look. I've improved a lot with my planning as well, like even though my thumbnailing/storyboarding only takes maybe 30, I've learned to step away for a bit if I don't like a layout, or analyzing why I don't like it and brainstorming ways to make it better. If I had magically finished the comic all at once, it would look really bad and may have been less readable.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

That is inspiring to hear about your improvement @DanitheCarutor

Natsu-no-Hikari

Chiming in! Just this week, Miko (my co-creator) and I were discussing how far we've come from when we started our first comic (https://liarsgotoparadise.com/) vs. where we are now. I think there have been a lot of learn experiences, such as art, dialogue, general editing - but especially with pacing and character interaction. We regret that we didn't stop to focus more on that interaction, as we wanted to move ahead in the story...and now we can't change that, except to start now and not allow ourselves to grow impatient. Take our time and enjoy the journey - that's our new motto. There's a time to rush ahead in perilous moments, but there's also definitely a time to catch our breaths and let the characters mingle and speak. It's an improvement that will become more noticeable going forward in Liars and our second comic as well.

#ctarchive #comic #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #creator interview #comic creator interview #creator babble #comic tea party #ctp

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bmaxwell · 3 years ago

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Best Games of 2021: Also not the Top 10

I do have a top 10 in here somewhere, I swear. This is also not that.

Loop Hero

What an odd, wonderful thing Loop Hero is. It's an idle game, but not THAT kind of idle game. It's a deckbuilder, but not like THAT. It's got this weird visual style that calls back to old PC games, sort of. The music is likewise chiptune-y, but somehow unique. And the story, while not at the foreground, lends the game a cool foreboding feel. It's all greater than the sum of its parts.

The Amazing American Circus

I'm a card game junkie and a deckbuilding junkie, so I at least take a look and consider every one that comes along. "Circus in late 1800's America" is certainly a theme I haven't seen before, and that was enough for me to give the game a go. It didn't make a good first impression.

Battles Performances consist of choosing 3 performers from your retinue to go out and fight impress your enemies audience. There are some 15 classes to choose from, and each class has its own unique cards (this is a key check box for me). The problem is that every time you cycle through your deck, your performers all take damage. When a performer hits 0 health, they lose a card for the duration of the performance. Lose all of their cards and they're out.

One of my favorite things to do in a card game is to build the machine where I can draw lots of cards and cycle through my deck frequently. Doing that here is a recipe for disaster. So it became one of those games where I quit in frustration, then launch again 20 minutes later.

It made me leave my comfort zone and change the way I think about deckbuilding games. I ended up loving it. The theme, while something I don't inherently care about at all, was a refreshing change from the usual fantasy fare. Discovering new classes (stuff like Juggler, Animal Tamer, Strongman, etc) and how they work together is fun as hell. And the game is dumb in the good self-aware way that video games can be. Remember: the solution for EVERY problem is a circus performance.

Returnal

Returnal is pretty and the shooting feels good and the PS5 haptic feedback is real neat and the story seems like it's gonna go some cool places but god DAMMIT I am bad at this game. I had so many failed runs that ended before - or at - the first boss, and those runs felt so similar to one another that I eventually just gave it up. Maybe they'll add difficulty options at some point?

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

I had never played a Ratchet & Clank game before this year, but I had a shiny new PlayStation 5 and I had to play something. I got the platinum trophy for this game, so I know I enjoyed it. I must have. But MAN, the salient details of the game are lost to me.

There's a blue lady...lummox? Lombax? Lombax. And a lot of fun weapons, and you opened rifts and jumped through them in a way that showed off the PS5 tech. The game is very nice looking and, apparently, forgettable.

Gloomhaven & Trials of Fire

My tabletop board game days are behind me, at least for the time being. Gloomhaven was a hugely successful cooperative dungeon crawling game, one that I could tell from a glance would take several hours to setup, teach, and play. The PC adaptation does a great job handling all the bookkeeping and distilling it down into a manageable experience. The tutorials took a while to get through, but it was worth it. Each little scenario requires you to put a lot of thought into your party composition going in, and each turn is a mini puzzle where you have to weigh the order of your actions and which abilities you're losing. It's a LOT, but in a good way.

I lump Trials of Fire in with Gloomhaven because they're both high fantasy turn-based combat focused experiences where you assemble your party and customize a deck of cards before fighting on hexes. Trials of Fire is definitely the more accessible of the two, but I wouldn't call it "light." Both games gave me a lot of characters to unlock, customization, and satisfying combat. It was a good year for This Sort of Game.

Backbone

What a rollercoaster ride. "Pixel art game where you play as an anthropomorphic raccoon in a detective noir story" is a pretty strong sales pitch for me (and the term "pixel art' does NOT do the game's visuals justice). For a while, the game was everything it appeared to be. Then I was surprised by a couple of stealth sequences which almost made me quit the game, but thankfully there was no more stealth later in the game.

The game does a total 180 with its story which surprised me in a good way "Actually fuck all of that, you suddenly have much bigger fish to fry." Unfortunately, it ended abruptly and in an unsatisfying way, but I still enjoyed the journey and want more (and the devs announced a sequel!).

Oh, and the game's font treatment is fantastic.

I love a huge font that punches me right in my face.

The Wild at Heart

I was not sad to see the Pikmin/Overlord era of weird console RTS games come to a close. I was surprised to see one of these in 2021, and even more surprised to enjoy it. The game's fantastical world was a joy to hang out in, and solving puzzles with your army of weird of weird little beings never got frustrating for me.

Dorfromantik

So I don't understand the name. To the English-speaking ear it sounds like a game where dwarves bone down. Instead it's an extremely chill tile-laying game. You're matching up plains, forests, cities, and rivers trying to fulfill goals to get...more tiles. Relaxing music and no pressure is exactly what I need sometimes.

...Only 10 images per post, Tumblr?

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codelance · 4 years ago

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How to learn Python/Django