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harushinkai-daily · 4 years

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Happy Birthday Haru Shinkai!

Given that so few characters in the Digimon universe have canonical birthdays, Haru’s birthday on July 1 is a day worth noting! Here are a few ideas for how to celebrate a very memorable Digimon protagonist.

🍅 Revisit a favorite moment from Appmon

As the series’ resident gogglehead, he features in plenty of episodes. You could start with his reluctant beginning in Episode 01, or pick and choose some more highlights:

Episodes 02, 04, and 23 show his ability to strategize and come up with creative solutions to tough problems;

Episodes 03 and 41 involve high-stakes showdowns that highlight his ability to alter the outcome of a situation with words alone;

Episodes 04, 19, and 45, and 50 demonstrate the strength of the bond he shares with Gatchmon (and in one case, a particular Agumon!);

Episodes 12, 13, 18, 25, 27, and 32 all illustrate his compassion and concern for others--whether it’s his crush, his best friend, an innocent-seeming Appmon, or the brooding hacker who stole all their Seven-Code Chips (and if you’re watching 32, don’t miss his attempt to sound like a tough-guy delinquent!);

Episodes 51 and 52 demonstrate his bravery and resolve when the chips are down and the fate of humanity is at stake!

And if it’s available in your country, don’t forget to rate and leave reviews on the officially licensed sub on Crunchyroll!

🍅 Listen to Haru (and Gatchmon’s) themes and character song

Haru has one character song that he shares with his Buddy (“Hallelujah”), which plays in the show near the end of Episode 52 (you can listen to the full thing here, and view the lyrics here!). The pair also share a bouncy instrumental track (“Haru and Gatchmon’s Everyday Life”), and there’s a more melancholy instrumental theme (“A Protagonist’s Agonizing”) if you’re looking for something with a different tone.

Both Appmon openings (“DiVE!!” and “Gatchen!”) have verses hinting at Haru’s growth in becoming a protagonist. Last but not least, the fourth ending (“Perfect World”) and the watercolor-esque sequence depicting Haru’s friends throwing him a surprise party were, of course, timed to be released on July 1, so they’re all great listens as well!

🍅 Create fanwork, or revisit some of your favorites!

Drawing fanart of Haru for his birthday is certainly a popular option, but there’s nothing stopping you from trying your hand at writing some Appmon fanfiction, or making a Haru-themed moodboard, playlist, or other tribute! And even if you’re not in the mood to create your own, it’s still a great day to share existing Appmon fanwork via a reblog or a link. If there’s a piece that left a particular impression on you, a friendly comment to the artist or author is a great way to show support and keep our small fandom alive.

🍅 Curl up with a good book

One of the first things we learn about Haru is that he’s a bookworm, preferring narratives with strong protagonists. You could follow in his footsteps by rereading that creased and dogeared copy of an old favorite, or use your preferred search engine to discover something new (some sci-fi involving advanced AI, perhaps?).

Speaking of which, you could...

🍅 Dabble in artificial intelligence

Haru’s ambition is to become an AI researcher, and even without being able to visit an AI-controlled city or rebuild your best friend from scratch, there are plenty of ways to explore the past and present landscape of AI.

Super

Read about Pepper, the robotic assistant that helped inspire Appmon’s Sugar units.

Read about the Dartmouth Summer Research Project, which the AppDrivers briefly visited thanks to Timemon.

Ultimate

My favorite source for some of the weird things that can be produced with AI is… well, aiweirdness.com! Collaborate with an AI to create a surreal text-based adventure, browse some paint colors, or check out the terrifying knitting patterns that may as well have been created by Leviathan himself!

Play Pictionary with an AI, and help train it to recognize doodles at the same time! (Read more about “Quick, Draw“ here).

God-Grade

Read up on the ethical concerns modern AI researchers are still working to address. More than a sudden hostile takeover like SkyNet or the Human Application Project, an increased reliance on today’s AI involves safety, security, and privacy concerns, as well as the issue of biased and discriminatory datasets.

🍅 Play some video games

Haru is by no means an avid gamer, but he does seem to enjoy games casually and as a social experience, including a few that involve strategic/puzzle aspects. Why not recreate the Pokemon Go craze of Summer 2016 by logging back into your account and hunting for rare monsters with your friends (keeping in mind good social distancing practices, of course!).

Lots of other games have gone virtual, so if you and your friends are a more spread out you could meet online to play a party game like Drawception or Jackbox, or even something that requires a bit more deductive reasoning, such as Codenames, Hanabi, or Werewolf One Night. If you prefer solo play, you could download a new mobile puzzle game (as long as it doesn’t become infected and lock you out of something important!), or relive the story of your favorite recent-generation game by playing it on Easy Mode. And if you were feeling really ambitious, you might fire up an or an old-school RPG, dungeon-crawler, or adventure game-- just make sure to have a walkthrough on hand in case you get stuck!

🍅 Engage in a physical activity

Haru is also not what you would call a super-coordinated athlete, but there are a few things you could try if you wanted to experience his more adventurous moments for yourself:

Get a friend to kick a soccer ball at your face (not recommended).

Set up a game of hide-and-seek, tag, or Quidditch. Anyone that catches you wins the grand prize! (not *currently* recommended, but maybe around Halloween...).

Hike up a snowy mountain and then sled down to avoid the ice monster at the top (not recommended).

Tool around on a Segway (...maybe?).

Go bungee jumping (not recommended).

Whatever you do, avoid activities that involve the ocean or other large bodies of water, because Haru himself says he can’t swim!

🍅 Choose to be a protagonist.

If, like Haru, you occasionally struggle to see yourself as anything more than a side character, use today as an opportunity to change the narrative. Set aside some time to pursue one of your goals that’s fallen by the wayside, or something you’re deeply passionate about. Step out of your comfort zone. Give yourself permission to make mistakes. Make a conscious decision to improve some aspect of your life, even if it’s something small. Every little bit helps!

🍅 Be humble, caring, and kind.

More than anything else, Haru is defined by his desire to be kind to those around him. To that end, you might consider reaching out to someone you know is going through a difficult time. Practice empathy and respect. Donate time, money, or supplies to a cause you really believe in. Don’t be afraid to be a main character in your own story, but realize there is just as much value being a supporting character in someone else’s. Take steps, even small ones, toward making the world a better place.

🍅 Other ideas:

Eat a hamburger, Haru’s favorite food.

Make plans to hang out with a friend you haven’t been able to spend time with for a while, whether it’s due to your secret double life as an AppDriver or just being busy (just maybe... avoid going to school rooftops at sunset).

Ask a family member to share an embarrassing story about your childhood on social media.

Ask an eccentric older relative to yell at you in the middle of the night. The louder the better!

Happy Birthday, Haru!

#text #birthday post #happy birthday haru!

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raijinhasverybigpecs · 5 years

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pokemon au stuff

continuation of my pokemon au you can find on my au page here! this lil collection has achilles, erlang shen and he bo. i’ll make final edits once i finalise teams lol. also if you have any suggestions then @ me ;)

achilles

role: trainer/contest champion (he’s a lil vain so i figured he’d fit well into the contest category :P)

partner pokemon: pyroar

pyroar’s got a beautiful mane like him and lions are p regal like achilles is. i’m not 100% on this tho so if anyone’s got better ideas then hit me up lol

pokemon team:

furfrou just because we need a beautiful hair team asdfkjljlkjl

aegislash for his stance switching obvs

headcanons:

contest king! he’s close friends with fellow contest champion aphrodite. he’s not a half bad trainer as well, while not at elite four level he’ll provide a challenge to worry any gym leader out there

spends too much time grooming his pokemon. patroclus gets annoyed but helps out bc he actually wants to do things

ship stuff

patroclus is his husband. duh. patroclus is also a trainer :)

erlang shen

role: top ranger/trainer (he’s a mix of both, his ranger duties come first but he loves the thrill of a good battle from time to time)

partner pokemon: lucario

from his pokemon skin it’s a generic dog w/ a stripes, lucario is partly jackal like so he’s kinda like the celestial howling dog lol. lucario is honestly what erlang would be if he was a pokemon imo so :^>

pokemon team:

i’d give erlang the 3 first gen starters honestly. at the very least blastoise fits well w/ his turtle form and obvs he’d have wide coverage of types bc he’s smart like that lol

headcanons:

uncannily connected to his pokemon (yes he goes all mystery dungeon when no one’s watching). challenges wukong for how connected he is to his pokemon

master of strategy, if he doesn’t win the first time he’ll win the next. won against elite four member wukong bc he too advantage of his cockiness and wukong gets annoyed whenever you bring it up

trains all of his pokemon to a crazy degree, they’re incredibly self-restrained just like the trainer himself and are usually all out of their pokeballs. always spoils his pokemon after a good fight

ship stuff:

erlang first encountered cu chu when he visited the fighting gym on a work visit. he caught cu chu playing with his yamper and erlang was instantly smitten by angry blonde milo. it didn’t mean that he wouldn’t crush the leader though later on when he had the opportunity :^)

erlang lost at first but eventually beat cu chu with strong strategy, from then on they sometimes fight as sparring partners with and without their pokemon.

erlang’s lucario always leaps at cu chu to greet him. if that isn’t love then i don’t know what is

they do eventually get together, cu chu gives his leader position to bellona and they travel around the region together. cu chu helps out erlang with the ranger activities even if he doesn’t want to become a ranger himself :^>

he bo

role: 2nd in command for the water gym/part time researcher

partner pokemon: quagsire

quagsire is a chill dude like he bo. he’s a water type as well. what more could you want lol

pokemon team:

seismitoad - big boyes gang! he bo could care less about appearance

carracosta - same as above, he bo will love literally anything...

whiscash - ...and we love him for that!

headcanons:

naturally a chill guy, lots of people in his town don’t actually know that he’s a second to only ao kuang in the water gym bc he seems to hang around the museum more often than he’s at the gym. goes on research trips from time to time so ao kuang gets to actually fight trainers bc he bo’s a v strong trainer

he used to be a cocky lil shit before he got humbled by other water trainers from different reigions. will put 100% of his effort into destroying you if you’re cocky and rude to anyone around him

has basically adopted jing wei, the current junior of the water gym, along with nu wa. she doesn’t like his long boring lessons about pokemon theory and would rather watch him go all out against a strong opponent. she does appreciate the help even if she won’t admit it

#writing.........#yay me #yes i can write outside the context of asks #i'm too lazy to do so most of the time. but shh #i won't tag this bc it won't get many notes anyways lol #this is more for myself like usual hehe #i;m smrt #Pokemon AU #wow it's been like. a year since i used that #ooops!#please look at the erlang headcanons bc that's what i put work into lol

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nelvana · 6 years

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In which they go around town

First: In which the human is transformed Next: In which they get back to work Previous: In which they return to the town

Keahi let out a sigh, “and there they go. We really need to hang out more often,” he hummed, watching the rest of their team depart to do missions.

“Yeah, we should invite them over again sometime. Let you two get to know them better too,” Nelvana agreed, stretching idly, and then smiling. “It’s nice to be back here,” she commented, glancing around town.

“Yup, where the climate doesn’t want you dead,” Alex chuckled.

“There are a lot of pokemon here…” Tsuki murmured, standing up again.

“It’s not that big of a town… guess it’s more than what you’re used to though, huh? That’s okay!” Keahi replied.

“Felt pretty big to me when I first came in,” Nelvana mentioned.

“We weren’t used to it either though,” Alex pointed out, “guess you don’t remember though…”

“Anyway!” Keahi began loudly, “let’s go around and check in on everyone! I bet we were missed! And we can introduce everyone to you, Tsuki!” he exclaimed.

“Oh… alright, lead the way then,” Tsuki responded, pawing the ground nervously.

Keahi cheerfully lead the group straight over to the Kecleon stand, “hello Kecleons!” he greeted.

“Ah Keahi, good to see that you all made it back safely,” Green-Kecleon hummed.

“You too,” Nelvana replied, “thanks again for coming out to the Frosty Forest for us.”

Green-Kecleon waved her away with a hand, “ah, don’t worry about it at all. Been awhile since I had gotten out, and you’re a good team.”

“Say, did you end up using that TM I left you?” Purple-Kecleon asked, leaning across the counter.

Nelvana nodded, “yeah, I got it. It really helped in the Frosty Forest area, thanks!” she responded, “do you want to be paid back now?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Purple-Kecleon hummed, “but if you’re interested, I have another TM that could help you all out in the future…”

“Ooh!” Keahi hopped closer to the counter. “What is it?”

“Flamethrower,” Purple-Kecleon told them proudly, “I believe most of you can learn it too.”

“Everyone except the grass-type, of course,” Alex chuckled.

“I bet we can afford it right now actually, since we haven’t had access to the bank for a few days,” Keahi said.

Alex dug through the bag to pull out the small sac of coins they had collected, as well as some loose change that hadn’t gotten put in the money pouch properly. After adding everything up, they did have enough for the TM, and made the purchase.

“Thanks!” Purple-Kecleon cheered, putting away his received money into a drawer under the counter. “Make sure to check in again later to see if I have anything new!”

“We will!” Keahi chirped, “oh, we almost forgot, this is Tsuki! She’s with us now, as you might have gathered from the recent commotion.”

“Yup, and I believe I actually saw her the last time I was at Frosty Forest, or am I mistaken?” Green-Kecleon replied.

“Oh, yeah, we did see each other a long time ago. I bought some berries from you,” Tsuki murmured.

“Ah yes! It’s good to know that despite my age, I never forget a customer!” Green-Kecleon hummed, “it’s nice to see you down here in Pokemon Square, hope you enjoy your stay.”

Tsuki blinked in surprise at the cheerful businessman, “…thank you.”

“Well, I guess we should stop by the others now, thanks for your time brothers!” Keahi exclaimed, turning to leave.

“Oh, actually one more thing,” Nelvana blurted out, “uh, thanks for helping out our other teammates that were staying here while we were gone. We really appreciate it.”

“Oh yeah! Good thing you remembered, Nel. Thanks, Kecleons!” Keahi added, and Alex nodded.

“You’re very welcome Team Galaxy, it was no trouble at all. Let us know if someone starts trying to cause unnecessary conflict again, and we can take care of it.”

The team waved bye to the two brothers, and wandered down to visit Kangaskhan next, who seemed to be waiting for them, sporting a welcoming smile from behind her counter at the Kangaskhan Storage shop.

“Hello dearies! I’m so happy to see that you made it back safely!” Kangaskhan greeted as they approached. “I got so worried when you didn’t pick up the snack I left you this morning, what happened?”

“The storage statue got buried in the snow and we couldn’t find it. It had been a stormy night,” Alex answered.

“Oh my! Were you all warm enough out there?” Kangaskhan asked.

Keahi nodded, “yeah! Tsuki let us stay at her place and we had a nice campfire.”

Kangaskhan looked over at the absol, who ducked her head slightly at the attention, not meeting the larger pokemon’s gaze. However, Kangaskhan smiled warmly at Tsuki.

“Well then, thank you for doing that. And thanks for helping them out earlier as well,” Kangaskhan said softly, “Tsuki, right? You’re quite a long way from your home, aren’t you? You’re quite brave for coming out here, I hope you enjoy our humble town.”

Tsuki lifted her head again, cracking a small smile, “thank you.”

“Thank you for helping us out too. Having extra items before each dungeon was pretty handy,” Nelvana said.

“No problem! I’m glad you found use of them in the end,” Kangaskhan hummed, giving Nelvana a gentle pat on the head, which startled the cubone for a moment, but then she relaxed again.

Alex stepped closer to Nelvana, and the counter, “yeah, the clothes were especially nice,” he commented, “you wrote that you made those yourself?”

Kangaskhan nodded, “knitting is an old hobby of mine. Luckily, I had some spare clothes around to donate to you guys.”

“Speaking of, will you want those back?” Nelvana asked.

“Not at all, you can keep those. They most certainly don’t fit me anymore, and Junior has quite enough of their own stuff. I may have spoiled them a bit,” Kangaskhan replied.

“Junior? You have a kid? How come I haven’t heard of him?” Keahi asked excitedly.

“Ah, yes, yes I do… he used to stay here with me while I worked, but it got boring for him, so he insisted that I leave him at home when he was old enough. And he doesn’t like me talking about him when he can’t hear, so I do my best to respect his wishes, even though I’ve love to talk about him more. He’s such a good son,” Kangaskhan explained.

“Well, you’re a good parent, so that isn’t surprising!” Keahi hummed, “hopefully we can meet him sometime. How old is he?”

“He turned thirteen this past spring,” Kangaskhan answered, “I asked him if he wants to join a team, but I believe he has his mind set on something else,” she added, “I’ve mentioned you guys to him before though, and I believe that he’d enjoy meeting you sometime too.” She shook her head. “Anyway, is there something you need or did you just want to chat? I’m alright with it either way.”

“Oh! We just wanted to talk to you, I don’t think we need to store anything or take anything out… right?” Keahi replied, glancing back at his teammates.

“I don’t think so… oh wait! We could give our black gummis to Tsuki,” Nelvana suggested.

“Yeah! Good idea! We can make them into a smoothie at Spinda and Gulpin’s Café! Give you a real taste of the area,” Keahi exclaimed.

“Do we still have those red gummis from Mt. Blaze? You could have a smoothie too,” Alex commented.

“No… I ate them all already as snacks…” Keahi admitted, “I got pretty hungry…”

Nelvana giggled, “of course you did. We can always just get some smoothies for ourselves without the gummis,” she said.

“All the black gummis then? You have six stored here,” Kangaskhan said after digging through the back of her store for a moment.

“Yup!” Keahi chirped, then turned to Tsuki. “You’re going to love this! Spinda and Gulpin make the best smoothies!”

“I’ll trust your judgement on that,” Tsuki replied, “I haven’t ever had a smoothie before, so I suppose it’s instantly the best, isn’t it?” she added.

“You haven’t had a smoothie before? Oh right… too cold for that…” Keahi responded, “welp, looks like this café gets to be a first for someone again.”

As Keahi chattered with Tsuki, Kangaskhan passed the half of a dozen black gummis to Alex, who dropped them into the bag for the moment. Nelvana glanced at the storekeeper and her partner, before turning to her other teammates.

“You guys ready to head off then?” she asked.

“Oh! Yeah, see you later Kangaskhan!” Keahi exclaimed, turning to bound away.

“Goodbye kids! Hope to see you again soon! Have a nice afternoon,” Kangaskhan replied.

“She wants to adopt you,” Keahi told Nelvana the moment Kangaskhan was out of earshot.

“Would you stop that?” Nelvana hissed, kicking a pebble on the ground.

“So… to the café next?” Alex asked, glancing over to the location in question.

“Nah, we should probably make that one of our last spots so we can just sit around and relax. I’m thinking we should check in on Makuhita next,” Keahi answered, turning towards the south.

“Makuhita… the others mentioned him. He runs the dojo?” Tsuki commented, continuing to follow.

Keahi nodded, “yup! You’re getting the hang of the area quickly!” he chirped, “c’mon, it’s right down here!”

Arriving down by the dojo, they spotted Makuhita outside, changing the sign by the window to say “open” instead of “closed”. He didn’t seem to notice them at first, too absorbed into this menial task to overhear the quartet. Finally, finished with the simple job, he turned around, spotting the team’s arrival.

“Oh! Hello there Team Galaxy! You’re back! It’s good to see you,” Makuhita greeted, brushing his hands off on his thighs idly.

“It’s good to see you too Makuhita. How are you? We heard these recent days were rough for you,” Keahi responded.

“Surely worse for you kids,” Makuhita sighed, shaking his head. “But yes, I dislike that sort of conflict, and I have to admit that my coping skills… aren’t the best. But some others from your team came by to visit, and I’m very thankful for their company,” he continued, “I’d love to stay and chat with you kids as well, but I have a lot of catching up to do. Hope you have a nice day!”

“Uh, you too! Good luck catching up!” Keahi replied.

“Well that was quick,” Nelvana commented quietly as Makuhita entered his dojo.

“Yeah… maybe we should’ve offered to help him?” Keahi agreed.

“We’ve got some catching up to do ourselves. Maybe if we’re less busy tomorrow we can offer to help out,” Alex said, “where to next?”

“Hm… how about Whiscash Pond? We don’t really know him much, but I get the feeling he might want to talk to us,” Nelvana suggested.

“Alright! After that, let’s go to the Pelipper Post Office!” Keahi chirped.

“I have no idea what any of these places are so I’m just going to keep following…” Tsuki murmured, chuckling to herself.

“Would you rather I give more details on each spot?” Keahi offered, beginning to walk up to the pond.

Tsuki shrugged, “I think I can manage. But thank you.”

Whiscash Pond was filled with laughter that they could hear even before the area was in sight. Caterpie, Metapod, and Diglett were all playing at the sides of the pond, with Whiscash watching peacefully to the cheerful children.

“Team Galaxy!” Caterpie called, crawling over to the group. “I’m so glad you made it back!”

“Yeah! And the way you guys stood up to Gengar in the square was so cool,” Metapod added.

“Thanks, and it’s good to see you guys too!” Keahi chirped.

“Kecleon told us you fought Moltres and Articuno, is that true?” Diglett asked.

Keahi puffed up his feathers proudly, “you bet we did!” he proclaimed, but then paused. “Well, actually, Articuno�� we-“

“You guys are so cool! I wanna be on your team when I get older! We’ve even been training! Wanna see?” Caterpie interrupted excitedly.

Without waiting for a response, Caterpie turned to Metapod and spat a wad of string at his friend.

“Ah! Caterpie! Come on…” Metapod whined, wriggling on the ground in a futile attempt to get the string off his shell.

“Hey Absol… my dad says that your kind are scary… but I don’t think so! You look really cool!” Diglett said, “you live in the Frosty Forest, right? You must be really strong to stay up there! Do you know Articuno? Did you beat them singlehandedly?”

Tsuki blinked for a moment, caught off guard by this child’s enthusiasm, “uh… thanks, and I do know Articuno, but I haven’t really fought them before…”

“Hey kids, it’s good to see you again, but we were hoping to talk to Whiscash for a moment, is that alright?” Alex butted in.

“Sure! We’ll go back to training. Come on guys! We have to be strong to join a rescue team!” Caterpie rattled off before crawling off again, his friends following hastily.

“They’re… really energetic,” Tsuki commented.

Nelvana laughed, “we should take you to meet Keahi’s family sometime.”

The quartet walked across the stone path over the pond to get to the center, where Whiscash was waiting, his head just barely poking out of the surface of the water.

“You have a very pretty pond,” Tsuki complimented, staring down the sparkling clear water reflecting off the sunlight.

“Thank you,” Whiscash hummed, “I do my best to keep it nice and clean.”

“Yeah, I forgot to mention it last time, but it’s really nice!” Nelvana agreed, sitting down on the edge of the largest stone to peer down at the water as well.

Whiscash’s gaze fell, “ah yes… last time. I’m terribly sorry for what happened to you kids. I’d hate that just a simple story could cause so many problems,” he murmured.

“Ah, it isn’t your fault old man. Just doing what was asked of you,” Alex replied.

“Old man? Ohohoho,” Whiscash laughed, “I guess I am an old man now, aren’t I? That’s what I get for calling everyone a kid.” He smiled. “I’m just happy that things turned out all right. All’s well that ends well, as I like to say. Ohohoho.”

“We’re glad too,” Nelvana replied, But this isn’t the end yet, lingered at the back of her mind.

Keahi noticed the somber look appear on his friend’s expression, “well, it was good to talk to you again Whiscash, but I think we still need to get around to seeing everyone else,” he said.

Whiscash nodded, “of course. Come back anytime Team Galaxy, maybe I’ll have another story for you some time soon. Have a nice afternoon!”

Waving goodbye, Team Galaxy headed to their next stop, the Pelipper Post office. The message board outside looking the same as usual, the help of the B Squadron kept it from overflowing while the A Squadron was gone. Entering the brought them into a flurry of pelippers and other flying-type pokemon hurrying about, preparing more copies of their most recent newspaper.

“Maybe we should come back another time…” Nelvana murmured, slowly stepping back.

“Agreed,” Alex mumbled, closing the door.

“Wait! Team Galaxy!” a familiar voice called.

The door opened again it its own, revealing Peaky as the one who had called for them. The spearow exited the office to join the team outside, closing the door behind them again.

“Hey guys! Sorry it’s a bit chaotic in there, we’re trying to get the news out as soon as possible!” Peaky chirped, “there’s only so many photocopies you can make at a time, but so many pokemon that haven’t heard about this update.”

“This is still pretty fast though! How’d you guys pull it off? You had some copies for town only a few minutes after we got here,” Keahi replied.

“Oh! Team A.C.T. dropped in! They let us have a quick interview before they went to go fight Groudon,” Peaky explained briefly, “it was really cool… I had never been so close to them before. You guys are lucky to have actually met them properly! I only got to watch Pidgeotto interview them…”

“Er, yeah… lucky,” Nelvana coughed, “how have you guys been holding up while we were gone?”

“Pretty good, all things considered,” Peaky replied, “actually! Team Meanies stopped by! They wanted us to put up wanted posters of you guys,” they giggled, “they made them themselves. I’d show you guys… but, you know.”

Alex snickered, “you kept them?”

“Yeah! We didn’t want to put them up, but throwing them off the cliff would be a waste. They’re worth a good laugh, and some good fire fuel when it gets colder,” Peaky replied.

“Are they that bad?” Tsuki asked, tilting her head to the side slightly.

“Well… I’m no artist myself, but they were pretty bad… I don’t think any of them have had to draw before,” Peaky answered.

“I guess we’ll have to visit again when it’s less busy and take a look!” Keahi said, “Nel is pretty good at drawing, so maybe she can offer critique!” he added, wrapping a wing around his mentioned partner, who buried her face in her scarf.

“Nel, you can draw? That’s really neat!” Peaky chirped, then paused, “I, uh, would love to keep talking, but I think I should go back to work now… see ya! Come back soon!” they said, hurrying back inside just as a pelipper opened the door, looking for the spearow.

“Heh, they’ve got a sixth sense for when they’re in trouble, nice,” Alex chuckled.

“So, they just… make newspapers?” Tsuki asked.

“And deliver letters, yup! That’s what a post office is for, after all,” Keahi answered.

“Ah, right. Almost forgot for a moment there,” Tsuki murmured, flexing her large claws in the dirt and sparing a glance at the cliffside. “Anyway, is that it? Where are we heading next?”

“Hm… I think the bank, and then we can finally go to the café!” Keahi exclaimed, “c’mon!”

Leading the group away again, the torchic bounded down the path over to Persian’s stand, where the feline was casually counting some coins. At the sound of footsteps, Persian swept all the coins off the counter with a paw, letting them fall into a drawer with the satisfying clinking noise.

“Ahh, hello Team Galaxy, it’s good to have you around again,” Persian purred, her tail slowly swishing behind her.

“It’s good to hear you think that way, Kecleon told us you thought otherwise,” Alex replied, leaning on the counter, meeting Persian’s gaze.

Persian’s fur bristled slightly, and her ears pinned back against her head sheepishly, “er, yes… I reacted irrationally, my apologies,” she admitted, “but don’t fear, all of your money is still safe with me, and I’ve learned not to trust that lard of poison gas and his friends,” she said, her voice ending in a growl. “I hope that you’ll continue to trust me to guard your cash despite that slip-up on my part,” she added, calmer.

“Yeah! Don’t worry!” Keahi hummed, “and we have some money to deposit after that trip…” he paused, “we gotta save some for the café afterwards, and four smoothies would cost… uh…”

“Just… we’ll hold on to a couple hundred to be safe, no big deal if we have extra change,” Nelvana said, looking to each of her teammates.

Alex nodded, handing over most of the coins that had collected, only saving enough for their planned treat. There wasn’t much chatter to be had with the banker otherwise, and the group headed down to the café. Inside, it was oddly quiet, but still held the warm and welcoming feel that it always had. Nelvana found herself relaxing in the familiar surroundings in this friendly atmosphere. Spinda was sitting behind the counter, leaning his elbow up on it and his head in his hand, boredom painted on his expression. Suddenly, he sprung up, grinning wildly at the group, before hopping behind the curtains.

“Gulpin! Team Galaxy is here! Get your sludgy butt out here so you can talk to them!” Spinda yelled.

Spinda presented himself at the counter again just as Team Galaxy had walked up to it. A few moments later, he reached down to pull up his partner, Gulpin, who was looking quite ashamed, and set him down on top of the counter.

Spinda cleared his throat before anyone else could speak, “welcome back Team Galaxy! It’s so nice to see your faces here again, and even a new one! What’s your name again?”

“Tsuki,” Tsuki introduced herself courtly.

“That’s a nice name you’ve got there. Means ‘moon’, right? Very nice… I’ve never seen an absol before, just heard rumors, but if this career choice has taught me anything, you can’t always trust rumors,” Spinda replied, and then clapped his paws together and spun around in place suddenly. “Which brings me to let Gulpin here speak. I think only Nel and Keahi have met him, actually. Anyway, anyway, he has something to say to you all, isn’t that right?”

Gulpin furrowed his brows, “yes…” he sighed, “I’m sorry, Team Galaxy. I truly believed Gengar, and it was wrong of me to judge you like that,” he mumbled.

“There! That wasn’t so hard, now was it, Toxic Lips?” Spinda exclaimed, patting Gulpin on the back, who only gave more incoherent mumbles in response. “Now then, what can I get for you guys today?”

“Usual magost for me, and-“ Alex began, only to get cut off by Nelvana.

“You’re the one that likes magost?” Nelvana blurted out.

“Uh… yeah?” Alex replied, raising a brow at this comment.

“Augh! Every time I come here, I think about getting a magost smoothie for someone! But I couldn’t remember who! It’s you!” Nelvana yelled, pointing at Alex accusingly.

Alex looked surprised for a moment, before bursting into laughter, “of course that’s what you remember! Dear Arceus…”

Nelvana buried her face in her hands, “dammit…”

Spinda cleared his throat again, regaining the team’s attention. Nelvana lifted up her head, rubbing her forehead and sighing, while Alex calmed down from laughing and gave his partner a gentle pat.

“As I was saying, magost smoothie, and a, uh, black gummi smoothie?” Alex continued, rummaging through the bag and pulling out the six gummis.

“And two pecha smoothies please!” Keahi chimed in.

“Alright! Coming right up!” Spinda hummed.

Gulpin grabbed the gummis and flopped off the counter, heading back to the kitchen to prepare the drinks. Spinda bounced in place impatiently, with no sense of balance, almost falling on his back a couple times.

“Hello there! You’re Team Galaxy, right?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

Just entering, were a chikorita and a machop, who walked up behind the quartet. The machop had some odd markings on his skin, a pink splotch on his chest, and dark grey dots on his arms and legs. The chikorita looked fairly average, and she sported a determined grin on her face.

“Yes, we are! Hello!” Keahi greeted.

“Hi! Nice to meet you guys face to face!” the machop, now recognizable as the one that had just called out to them, hummed. “I’m Everett, and this is my partner, Melanie!” he introduced himself and the chikorita.

“Yeah! And we’re Team New Blooms!” Melanie proclaimed proudly, “better watch out, ‘cause we’re the next big team!”

Keahi let out a friendly chuckle, “wow! It’s nice to meet you guys too! Good to meet some other rescue teams,” he replied.

“Mhmm!” Everett agreed, “we just started, but we’ve been doing good so far! You guys are really neat!”

“Smoothies are ready!” Spinda interrupted, placing the orders on the counter.

“Oh, well, thanks you two, but we, uh, are going to enjoy our drinks now. See ya!” Nelvana said.

“Okay! See you around then!” Everett hummed.

Team Galaxy collected their drinks and sat themselves down at a table not too far right from the counter itself. They had just sat down, when Nelvana jumped up again and gathered some bendy straws for everyone. Tsuki didn’t use her’s, opting to just lick out the liquid from the cup, but thanked the cubone for the effort regardless. Alex took a sip out of his, and then reached into the bag again and pulled out their recently bought TM.

“Alright, who wants this?” Alex asked, placing the disc down in the center of the table.

“I don’t need it. It’s a special attack anyway, and I’d like to have the least of those as possible,” Tsuki replied, and then took a drink of her smoothie. “Oh, this is really good!” she commented.

“Keahi can have it, I think he’ll find more use out of it anyway. It’ll make a good upgrade from ember,” Nelvana said, sliding the disc over to the mentioned torchic.

“Oh, alright! Thanks guys!” Keahi hummed.

Before anyone could offer to help Keahi with using the item, the torchic slammed his head down on the TM, causing the table to erupt in a mixture of laughter and concern.

“Shush! I’m fine, but I need to concentrate!” Keahi hushed, not bothering to move his head.

After a few quiet moments of attempting to retain more laughter, there was a crack sounding from the disc, and Keahi lifted up his head again.

“Ta-da!” Keahi chirped, way too proud of himself for how he used that item.

“You know, if you wanted, I could have helped with that,” Nelvana giggled.

“Well, it worked like this too!” Keahi huffed, “but thanks anyway,” he added.

Team Galaxy lingered in the café for well over an hour, chatting amongst themselves, and generally having a good time, even after the smoothies were long gone, and Keahi had blown all the bubbles he could in his drink. They found it nice to relax and let loose after the recent events, really enjoying the rest of the afternoon. Alex decided to hold off on explaining to Tsuki about where he and Nelvana had come from and the whole time travel issue for until they got home, and everyone agreed. It just wasn’t right conversation to have in this location. However, they did take the time to explain to the absol in more detail about the incidents with Team Meanies, and Nelvana ended up mentioning her dreams with Gardevoir, including the encounter in the Frosty Forest, which she had neglected doing before.

Finally, they left Spinda and Gulpin’s Café, finding themselves back home. It had been left in the same state as before, likely that the B Squadron hadn’t actually done much inside, or at least had taken the time to clean up before leaving. Once realizing that Tsuki didn’t have a bed, or even a seat in general like Alex, they had to hurry back off to the Kecleon Shop, despite her insisting she was fine on the floor, and that she didn’t really sleep much as a dark-type anyway. In the end, Tsuki convinced them to get her a mat to sleep on instead of a nest or another bean bag couch, since she was accustomed to sleeping on hard surfaces from her time resting in caves around the Frosty Forest, and they returned home again. Which left the evening free to play board games and continue taking it easy before they would have to go to work the next day.

Cameo: Team New Blooms (Melanie/chikorita & Everett/machop) belongs to @kaidacreator / @kaidacreatorart

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theultimateegghead-blog · 6 years

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Truly Tropical! Some of games best beaches.

The image of a beach is often a sandy tropical paradise. Palm trees, tropical fruit, oceans, birds and wildlife. Of course, let’s not count the blistering hot sand and sunburns. In games, the beach level is often an early level, it symbolizes fun and relaxation as opposed to difficulty. This is not always the case however. I have lived either on or near a beach for the near entirety of my 22-year life. To celebrate where I came from, I present to you a list of beaches in video games! Grab your sunscreen, your umbrella and your towel and get ready to get sandy!

Emerald Coast (Sonic Adventure) Ah, the first level of sonic Adventure. This level is set on a tropical beach and a series of islands and stone pillars. Four of the six characters have a stage here. As sonic, Tails and Gamma, you race over sandbars and jump from boardwalk to boardwalk. As big you just…fish…but it looks nice at least! Spike traps litter some paths, a lighthouse stands tall and proud on the islands, and a giant whale is in the mood for some sonic food. Overall, as the first true 3d sonic level, it does a good job! The music is great too!

Beach Bowl Galaxy (Super Mario Galaxy) A fun tropical beach that Mario can visit during his intergalactic adventure. This small area is primarily underwater. The surface is of several islands and a cliffside that overlooks the bowl. Underwater there are pillars of rock, some giant eels, and penguins taking fishing lessons. Try to jump onto the rope swing and dive in! Overall this level is small but fun.

Treasure Trove Cove (Bajo Kazooie) Every time I hear about the levels in this game, people talk about this one. This level is a great example of a good beach level. The music fits, the palm trees, the boss crab, the pirate ship… A lot of cool things can be found in this level, including new moves! Now be careful swimming out into the water, because there is a very hungry shark that wants to eat you. On the top of the level is a lighthouse. So this level seems great for exploration and I can see why its considered one of the most iconic beach levels.

Destiny Island (Kingdom Hearts) Ah, where it all began. Destiny island is the first level of the original kingdom hearts. This tropical island served as a hangout for the main characters, Sora, Riku and Kairi. Also some final fantasy characters can be found here too. A small island that serves as a tutorial, Riku was not content with just this small island and wanted to go somewhere else, in a weird twisted way he got his wish. The island was swallowed by darkness, and was only restored at the end of Sora’s first journey. The island would later appear in future installments, but Sora has yet to return to his home. So this island represent the humble beginning to what will eventually become one of the biggest franchises of the past 20 years.

Phon Coast (Final Fantasy XII) The Phon coast is one of the many locations you will traverse in order to reach the end goal in FFXIII. This coast is one of the few places where the main characters relax for a bit. Some hunters have set up shop here and the concept of rare game is introduced here. Along the sandy shores are many treasures and many monsters, be careful because some of them can fly. Even though you will come back here often for the rare hunter quest, the overall beach is often left unvisited. Enjoy it while you can.

Virmire (Mass Effect) This planet is a tropical paradise with massive waterways and cliffsides. On any other day it would be nice to kick back and enjoy the beach, unfortunately today is not a good day. The planet is under siege and its up to commander Shepperd to confront the main antagonist here. The commander and his allies will have to fight their way through an army of Geth soldiers, and even confront a reaper, in order to reach the end goal. In the end the villain gets away anyway… However this battle remains as the most memorable moment from mass effect 1 for me.

The Beach (Donkey Kong Country Returns) The beach isn’t just a level, but an entire world to traverse in the wii game. True to its title, this level is primarily set on a beach. This beach has boardwalks, wooden contraptions, caves and sunken ships. Giant crabs patrol the beach and will attack the Kong duo. After overcoming a barrage from a pirate ship, a giant squid attack and dodging tidal waves you will be able to face the boss. This level is some tropical fun and a good romp.

Ryoshima Coast (Okami) One of the largest areas in the Okami series. This coastline houses a city and several npcs. Cliffs, beaches and trees dot the coast. Initially it is cursed and has to be cleansed in order to explore. The ocean is home to a sunken ship that is said to hold treasures. Unfortunately for everyone, the sea dragon is rampaging and causing havoc. A lagoon can be found nearby too. This place is beautiful and is visited relatively early in the Okami game.

Sunny Beach (Spyro 2 Ripto’s Rage!) This beach is home to some peaceful turtles that are being captured alive by poachers. The majority of this level is underground or in caves, but there is a beach there as well. In this level Spyro will help guide baby turtles to safety and defeat the poachers that want to turn them into stew. Explore every nook and cranny of the underwater portions to find all the gems. Once the level is complete, the baby turtles will be safe once again.

Outset Island (Wind Waker) The beginning of Wind Waker takes place in Link’s home island of outset. This small tropical island is primarily a beach with a forest on the very top. A relatively quiet island that is far away from the more populated areas, and thus it does not see much action. Link’s adventure starts when his little sister is kidnapped by a giant bird that comes to this island. Later on, a mythical creature makes their home here as well. The inhabitants are friendly towards Link as well, giving a sensation of home. This island is also home to a special secret dungeon.

The beach (Pokemon Snap) The first and arguably the most iconic level in Pokemon snap. This tropical trail has a decent amount of pokemon to take pictures of. Some pokemon won’t be exposed until later on, so this level will be revisited often. The beach is sandy, the ocean has a Lapras that occasionally raises its head. There are grass patches with pokemon hiding within them and some creeks and ponds as well. This level serves as a great tutorial, not fast pace or extremely hectic with who to snap a picture of. It remains one of my personal favorite beach levels of all time.

Ash Lake (Dark Souls) A truly cinematic area, quite a shame its optional. This small portion of the game is primarily a sandbar that connects some giant trees suspended in a large calm lake. Upon your first visit, a large menacing Hydra will antagonize you until it has been dealt with. This area is calm and almost eerily serene, after said hydra is dispatched of course. Be careful going into the trees because basilisk make their homes there. At the end of the long sand bar is one of the last everlasting dragons, who will give you the ability to join a covenant. There is not much to gain from coming here, but the experience alone is worth the time.

Cape Claw (star fox adventures) A jungle peninsula full of boardwalks, secrets and of course, beaches. This location is visited later in the game and is home to some enemy soldiers. Explore through sandbars, waterfalls and ruins to find the treasures of the area, including bars of gold! There is a friendly dinosaur here as well that Fox can talk to. Eventually there will be a temple that needs to be navigated as well. This level, or zone as it would be considered, is a great beach level. Tis a shame people don’t seem to view this game very fondly.

Goo lagoon (Spongebob battle for bikini bottom) Ahh, Goo Lagoon… This level is one of the first levels in the childhood classic spongebob game. This level takes place on a beach and on a boardwalk. You’ll have to navigate over platforms, redirect beams of light and play mini-games a plenty. Be careful though, because none of the characters can swim, so the water, or goo more specifically, is an obstacle. Some new enemies will pop up here as well.

Sentinel Beach (Jak and Daxter) One of the first levels of Jak and Daxter takes place on a beach. Some grassy cliff aligns this coast as well. A waterfall and a pool that is safe for swimming. Some ruins can be found farther back on the coastline. Be weary of the hermit crab enemies. There are some blue eco vaults here to allow some sky-high jumps, use them to explore the rock pillars. Overall this is a fun easy beach level, just take care not to swim out to far or else you might not make it back.

Wam Bam Island (Borderlands 2) One of the most colorful locations on planet Pandora. Wam Bam island would be a vacation paradise, if said vacation was full of pirates, monsters, cannibals and assassins. A giant sea monster resides here, just itching to do battle with the vault hunters. On top of that, some assassins have been hired to take out the dwellers but they… lets just say they failed at their job. The few locals here are just like anyone else on Pandora, crazy. So have fun in the sun. explore an underwater tunnel, fight giant crabs and try not to meat your end by the hands of the locals.

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Well that was fun wasn't it? Hope you don’t feel burned out or have sand in your eyes! Next time we are gonna look at some characters, who you may ask? Well lets just say they all share one thing in common, and that is a love for miniguns.

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xrayleader-blog · 7 years

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Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Team Switchback - Lutha

-*I don't have my original memories, but it doesn't matter anymore, i rather have memories of my two best friends, of my team....., of my brothers*

Name: Lutha

Species: Treecko

Age: 12

Misc. Characteristics: Slight green iris tint

Lutha is a humble and noble Treecko, he doesn't talk too much, only around his friends or people he considers very close to him, he can help whenever the situation allows him to, and even if some look up to him as a leader, he rather be considered as just one of them.

BIO:

Lutha's past is a bit sketchy, he barely remembers his parents, or his original birthplace, side-effect of the Temporal tower's colapse creating another reality and wrecking past, present and future, he just remembers living in a cave, wondering if the darkness could be vanquished.

He tried to explore the ruins of the Temporal tower in one of his many escapades, encountering Primal Dialga and Dusknoir, trying to "fix" the timeline by eliminating key Pokemon responsable for it's collapse, with Lutha matching the description of one of them.

His life would have come to a premature end, weren't for a Grovyle and a Celebi, who helped him escape the tower's ruins.

They later introduced themselves revealing their names, Jason and Melody, and their mission: finding the passage of time, and travel to the past to truly fix the timeline, before Dialga became insane, dragging Dusknoir along his delusional ideas.

They went through a lot of dead leads, illusions, traps and dissapointments, before finally finding the real passage of time and going along with the plan, with Melody staying behind to, "buy some time".

However, just when they entered, something attacked Jason and Lutha and separated them, an unknown dark entity....

Lutha woke up with the sounds of a worried Charmander, the Charmander introduced himself as "Clarke" and asked him who he was, and where did he came from, but Lutha didn't remember anything, except his name, and foggy-mixed memories of himself as a human, something he never was...

Lutha kept relating the few things he remembered to Clarke, until a worried Butterfree requested their help with bringing her son Caterpie from the depths of the forest, Clarke accepted and then requested Lutha's help, who then accepted with the hope of recovering his memories along the way

They did a good job, and Caterpie returned safe and sound, which inspired Clarke to form a Rescue Team with Lutha, who, unsure, gave it a try, having literally nothing to lose.

Now part of the newly-formed Team Switchback (a name that popped on Lutha's mind), Clarke and Lutha's actions eventually gained notorieship, as more Pokemon praised their actions, and some other, lohated them, which was the case of Team Meanies, specially it's leader, Gengar who atagonized them whenever he could.

Lutha noticed the uneasiness of the region, which, acording to Clarke, is caused by the recent natural disasters that torment the region, which is why there's been a rise in Rescue teams recently.

They later traveled to the Great Canyon at Clarke's suggestion, since there was a Xato there that could give them more insight on Lutha's memories, what they got instead, was the legend of ninetails, which told of a human who dared to touch one of his tails and was cursed in retribution....or so was what it was intended, his accompanying Gardevoir taking the hit for him, only for it to be abandoned by the human, the legend also foretolds of the same human, being reborn as a Pokemon around the time the natural disasters begin to occur.

Coincidence or not, Gengar eavesdropped on the conversation, and misplaced the guilt of the natural disaster on Lutha which prompted him and Clarke to run away in pursuit as Team A.C.T and the town try to kill him in order to stop the disasters, only after being cornered by A.C.T and saved by the Ninetales of legend is where they gained the full story and are pardoned.

However, there were other matters at hand, earthquakes wouldn't stop, it was assumed that it was the legendary Pokemon Groudon who was causing the earthquakes, which prompted A.C.T to head to it's location and defeat him, when they didn't came back, another team was formed with "the best of the best" of other teams to asist them, when they didn't came back either, Lutha and Clarke rallied whoever was left and head to Groudon's location to defeat and rescue the other teams, they were successful, but the earthquakes didn't stop, and it was only when they noticed a meteor that was about to destroy the planet that they formed a plan to go to the Skytower to request Rayquaza's help in destroying the meteor, they managed to convince him in the nick of time, however, the proximity of the meteor caused Rayquaza's attack to explode and engulf Lutha and Clarke in an explosion, which Clarke miracoulously survives, materializing back at the Great Canyon, with Lutha materializing a few seconds after, Clarke started to worry because his friend wasn't breathing, only for Lutha to reveal that he was hugging him so hard, he couldn't breathe.

A few months passed, and everything went back to normal, with Lutha and Clarke doing more rescue work and fortifying their friendship, until one day, Lutha took a morning walk on a beach nearby, where he found a scroll with a strange symbol, which gave him visions of a faraway town and Pokemon Square, both frozen in time, and a Squirtle with a rock with the same symbol which lead to a still-standing Temporal Tower

Believing that it was his mission to find the Squirtle, and avert the events of his vision, they went to A.C.T and asked them about it, who then told them about Treasure town, a faraway land where Pokemon do the task of rescue, exploration, and treasure-scavenging.

Lutha decided to head there, feeling that his memories must be linked to that place, with Clarke asking to go along, they requested the assistance of a passing Lapras, who took them to Treasure town.

However, just before arriving, a fierce storm started, and Lutha was separated from Clarke when he fell from Lapras and into the ocean.

He managed to swim to a beach, but not before hitting his head on a shallow rock, and blacking out, only to be found by a passing Squirtle, who went by the name of "Kyle", and he, just like Clarke, proceded to ask the same questions, which sadly, Lutha couldn't answer, since he once again gained amnesia when he hit his head, with only his name and the vague memories of him as a human coming back to him.

Kyle was then approached by a Zubat and a Wheezing, who saw his treasure his failed attempt at being recruited by Wigglytuff's Guild, giving them the chance to steal his treasure.

Desperate and scared, Kyle asked help from the only Pokemon nearby: Lutha, to recover his precious treasure, his Relic Fragment, as he also called it.

The followed the thieves into the depths of the Beach Cave, where they confronted and successfully defeated them them, Zubat and Wheezing running away empty-handed.

Kyle an Lutha's amazing demonstration of teamwork convinced Kyle of asking Lutha about joining him in becoming an exploration team at Wigglytuff's Guild, Lutha accepted, with the hope of recovering his memory.

Kyle and Lutha went back at the Guild's entrance and stepped on the front grate to have themselves identificated and granted entry, inside, they met the various guild members, amongst them Chatot, the "head of intelligence" and the leader, Wigglytuff, who then proceded to welcome them and assign them their new room, and now part of the similarily-called Exploration team Switchback, Lutha and Kyle went to sleep, ready to face the coming days.

One night, after aprehending Drowzee for kidnapping Azurill, Kyle told Lutha one of the tales his grandmother and his grandfather used to tell him: The Legend of the Time Gears, artifacts tasked with mantaining the Planet in movement.

Kyle and Lutha participated in various tasks in the upcoming days, such as exploring the Waterfall Cave, enduring Team Skull's bullying, and participating in the Guild's expedition to Fogbound Lake, where they saw first-hand the lake's Time Gear.

After returning home from the expedition, they met the famous explorer: The great Dusknoir.

Dusknoir returned with news of Fogbound lake's Time Gear being stolen, recruiting help from the guild in protecting the remaining Time Gears.

In his stay at Treasure Town, Dusknoir learned about Kyle and Lutha's first meeting, Lutha's "Clairvoyance" and revealed that Lutha's power was known as the "Dimensional Scream", which grants him visions of the past and future.

The Guild eventually cornered the Time Gear thief at the Quicksand Cave, which turned out to be Jason, who at first, didn't recognize Lutha and managed to knock him out with ease, with Kyle holding out on his own for a short time before the Time Gear was secured.

Jason was eventually captured, and everyone went to Treasure Town to bid farewell to Dusknoir, the Guild included.

Dusknoir called Kyle and Lutha to him, pretending to personally bid farewell, untill he suddently grabbed them both while announing that they where coming with him.

Lutha woke up in a dark cell, inhabited by him, Kyle, and a lone Charmander, later revealed to be his friend, Clarke.

Clarke claimed to know Lutha, who sadly didn't remember him because of his incident on Treasure town's beach, unable to remember the particular catchphrase he and Clarke made neither.

Clarke gave up before giving a slight hug to Lutha, who then grabbed his head in pain: some of his memories were flooding back to him, up to Clarke and Lutha's meeting in Tiny woods, Kyle explained that it was his Dimensional Scream ability, which gave him visions, but it didn't happened like that until that point.

With his memories back, Lutha gave a big hug to Clarke, a scene that warmed Kyle's heart with the memory of his grandparents.

Their wonderful reunion didn't last long, as they were programmed to be executed by Dusknoir and his Sableeye minions along with Jason for trying to change the timeline.

Lutha, Clarke, and Kyle managed to escape with the help of Jason, who then revealed his name to Lutha's friends, and proceded to escape the Lair, with a distrustful Kyle wearing them down on the way, it wasn't after rescuing Jason from a Spiritomb and explaining himself that they doubled their pace.

Meeting with Melody at Deep dusk forest and arriving at another Passage of time, Lutha and his friends were preparing to return to the present, only to be found by Dusknoir and his minions, with Dialga appearing not long after. Dusknoir then revealed that Lutha was the Pokemon who accompanied Jason on his first trip (Lutha landing on Tiny woods with mixed memories of being a human and Jason near Treasure Town a few months later).

Jason felt discouraged and defeated, but Kyle and Clarke's quick thinking managed to formulate a plan to teleport behind Dusknoir and sprint for the passage of time, which was successful.

Back on the present, Jason figured out that their dissapearance would mean that they cannot stay in Treasure town, which lead to Kyle offering his old home in Sharpeedo's bluff as a Shelter.

Clarke then asked Kyle if he knew anything about the symbol a scroll he was carrying, which Kyle answered yes, while showing his Relic Fragment that had the symbol on the scroll, Jason then revealed that they needed to head for a place called the "Hidden Land", which is where the Temporal Tower is located, out of options and with a few little months to spare Lutha, Kyle, and Clarke revealed themselves to be alive to Wigglytuff's guild while Jason went for the other Time Gears.

With help from the Guild, they reached the depths of Brine Cave, and managed to summon a Lapras, who then took them to the Hidden Land, only to be beaten to it by Dusknoir, who was waiting for them to take them back to the future, but they managed to overpower him, not before revealing that if they change fate, Jason and Lutha will fade from existance.

Even with that revelation, Jason decided to sacrifice himself by taking Dusknoir back to the future with him in order to buy some time for Lutha and his friends to complete the mission.

After witnessing Jason's sacrifice, Lutha, Kyle, and Clarke head to the temporal tower, where they confronted Primal Dialga, and after failing to reason with him, defeated him just in time to place the Time Gears on their respective places, averting the tower's collapse.

However, the blast of energy caused from the reacting Time Gears caused debris to fall from the roof of the tower's pinnacle, Lutha being severly injured by it, with Dialga still recovering from the battle, Kyle and Clarke raced to Lapras to try and save their friend, but they were too late, and Lutha perished from his wound, not wanting Treasure town and the guild to see him like this, they left him behind after taking his bandana, and left the Hidden Land.

One year later, on a newly-restored timeline, Jason and Melody decided to check on the Temporal Tower and the Hidden land, there, they learned from Dialga that Lutha sadly perished while restoring the Hidden land to it's current state, however, Dialga revealed that, since Lutha perished in the Hidden Land, there was a way of bringing him back, but he would only do it with one condition: Melody would have to renounce to her Time-altering ability, since Dialga didn't want anyone else to disrupt the timeline, or use her, either maliciously or not, to do so.

She accepted, and together, they brought Lutha back to life, who then woke up, and gladly hugged Jason and Melody, he then remembered Clarke and Kyle, and worryingly asked for them, but Jason revealed that it all happened a year ago, and they probably aren't even in Treasure town anymore.

Lutha understood, with tears in his eyes, but a reassuring Jason, dried his tears and told him that they can look for them, together.

Lutha, Jason and Melody then headed for Treasure town, where they found out what they already knew: Clarke and Kyle left Treasure town and head for a faraway kingdom, with a mysterious princess calling Clarke in a dream.

The trio then headed out for said faraway kingdom together, as a newly-formed family.

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This might get confusing, so let mem explain: i have two realities for my canon stuff: one where Lutha died and one where he didn't, the one i'm currently following is one where he "almost died" under similar circumstances

Pokemon Belongs to Nintendo

Garry's mod belongs to Facepunch Studios

Team Fortress 2 belongs to Valve

#Pokemon #pokemon mystery dungeon #treecko #oc

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violetsystems · 5 years

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#personal

It’s been nice to finally emerge from the cocoon of the last two weeks with nothing to do. I’m very happy about certain things that have found their way into my life. I’ve gotten the feeling people understand a little more the reasons why I keep things to myself. It’s gotten me to thinking more about living in America these days in particular. In other countries, I have been a tourist at best. My first visit to Hong Kong was to see a cousin I’ve never met. I embarrassed myself at the dinner table one night mistakingly referring to her as blood. I found out that day she was adopted. She was a teacher at a World Peace school that I spoke at about music. She had pulled me aside to let me know one of the kids was from Iraq and hated Americans. I spent a good half hour talking about fruity loops after class with that kid. I didn’t really talk about America or politics. We talked about eq’s and street music. She later told me that he really appreciated me taking the time to speak. Years later nobody really knows or care these little things happened. I remember walking away from that feeling humble. I can remember the temperature and the humidity in the atmosphere. That felt productive and free. But it had nothing to do with China or Hong Kong at the time. It was between America and Iraq particularly when I think of it. It played host to a conversation that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t step out of my comfort zone. This was as far back as 2011. Eight years later I’m still just a whisper on the internet nobody knows anything about. I haven’t overthrown any governments. I’ve outrun my own enough to know recreational marijuana is a tremendous feat for this state. People will forget about us either way. It’s some weird hush that swoops over Chicago. Sometimes it can be deafening. Oppressive waves of peer opinion. Self doubt echoed through alienation and stares. These days it’s a lot loss of that. People around the neighborhood wear Captain America shirts and celebrate Mexican Independence day. I trade flowers with my neighbor in broken Spanish. When I’m not working I’m relaxing at home. The pressures and expectations of local government sort of drift off into progressive civilization here. We have enough problems of our own to deal with than to overstep our perspective. That doesn’t mean I don’t care. But like Mao said talk is cheap. Or was it Tupac. I respect both equally. It actually was DMX. The pokemon evolution of the two. I’ve evolved too. Into a meta cocoon most likely. The Deep State or the Deep Dish. Heavy on the cheese either way.

All this is probably just me apologizing for not buying the daybreaks. Truth be told, I was more excited about Stranger Things. They closed Nikelab downtown but I copped a sleeveless shirt from the USA soccer collection. I’ve been wearing clothes as a statement for awhile. I wear a Daul Kim backpatch on my messenger bag to work every day. I walk a lot. I don’t think anybody has ever asked me what that means to me. These days I just say it’s feminism. I bought some tea on the way into work on Friday. The cups were rainbow in design to celebrate pride. Did it make me think about what that means to America? Yes it did. In fact, it hit extra hard when I heard Putin say he thought the West was tired of liberalism. Speaking of countries imposing their own agenda on democracy whether it was proven or not. It was actually proven in Florida. So there is a lot of kool-aid being drunk these days when it comes to power and who has the right to wield it. Conan taught me the riddle of steel. Basically that weapons are useless against magic. Magic is a form of religion I guess. It’s also a collectible card game. Every morning I walk into work with a lot of people. Orthodox Jews, Muslim Women, Street Wizards like myself. Actually there is only one street wizard allowed per political ward. I don’t write the law. There’s an unwritten rule in Chicago that when it snows you can leave chairs in your spot to claim yours dibs. Woe unto those who relocate a Jesus statue just to claim a convenient parking spot. The more creative you are with how inclusive you can be the more clear the air is. Clean air is important for everyone on this planet. People talk loud enough and suffocate the conversation. Mao said basically you had to walk the walk. So did Jane Addams. So did Face to Face. I haven’t been face to face yet with any of the dreams that keep me faithful. I have a vision of love. Mariah Cary notwithstanding. The simple fact I can have the freedom to have that vision is a statement in and of itself. I live in a city where it’s possible for everyone. Or at least we try our hardest. Even Eric Trump the shit head he is. I for the record would have spit on him too. I’d punch a Nazi too in an earlier version of me. I think you know where I stand. I think you all know my life is complex. I’ve been behind a wheel of pain for years. Less sensitive about some things. More sensitive to others. But I definitely feel like a better person because of it. Which means the biggest secret is I’m happy.

This doesn’t mean I take any shit on my home turf. People get offended by that often. So often that I’ve come to evolve my ways of dealing with it. Some of the most creative things I’ve done in the past two weeks has been with my finances. You can blame Forbes for that one. I also bought the six month subscription to WoW for the mount. I spend most of my time resting at home on the weekends. I occasionally leave the house to run or get food. I’m not antisocial in that respect. Ironically when people film on my block it’s the least invasive it has ever been. It’s a different story when you are exhausted and hassled by small invasions of privacy. I used to get more bothered by it. These days I know how hard to push back. I’ve been at spit level trust me. I feel like it just causes more aggro to react to these people. You can piss them off so easily by supporting your own team. Your vision of America. That is kind of how we work here. Freedom. Freedom means a lot of things to a lot of different people and you would think we would want to know them all to make them happy. That sounds Orwellian to me. And generally that’s when I pull my famous Ai Wei Wei trick and flick people off. If I were in mainland China or even Hong Kong the joke would not be so well taken. If you know how pissed off I get daily when it comes to Russian meddling then you know I care about freedom. My sense of freedom is not sensitive enough to cause trouble outside my own stomping grounds. I don’t believe that Russian election meddling has done anything but make people into beasts like me. America’s strength has always been its resiliency to reimagine itself. Sometimes that is frustrating when there is no consequence. I stay at the World Trade Center enough to know. We brought that on ourselves as a country. We have an opportunity to learn from that. And it’s a harsh reality looking in the mirror to see what you’ve become. When I look outside my window I’m actually kind of pleasantly shocked. Rainbow or big X in the sky I know it’s all worth it. Clearing the air so that we can breath and love again. That’s really where you can help this weekend if you are here in America. Support your communities. Support pride in your own way. And if you are straight like me shut the fuck up, stay home and play dungeons and dragons or something in your Stranger Things Dover Street Market drop. You’ll thank me for it next month. <3 Tim

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Despite being a fairly mediocre artist, I get a lot of comments and compliments on the artwork and visual design in Ikenfell. This makes me very happy, of course. Obviously, those who dislike it are much less likely to say so to me personally, but I love that lots of people are very receptive to the look and style of the game. I’ve been asked several times to talk about my approach to the pixel art, and what kinds of rules, palettes, and inspirations I use for the game. So this will be a large, orderless, and rambling post about all of that!

About Ikenfell

Perspective

Inspiration

Colours

Process

Characters

Portraits & Dialogue

Battles

Ikenfell is a heartwarming turn-based RPG about a school of magic and its troublesome students. It is currently in active development, and we're aiming for a 2018 release on Steam and the Humble Store. Humble Bundle Inc. is publishing the game.

Official Website / Official Press Kit

If you write about the game in a blog or article, please use assets from the official press kit!

A note about "good" pixel art

As with most art styles, there is a lot of contention about what good pixel art is and what best practices should be. I follow some general guidelines, but most of what I do is from just repeatedly doing lots of pixel art and tweaking my style until I get the results I desire. A lot of amazing pixel artists produce work that is far beyond my capabilities, but I do the best I can within my limits.

This overview is not about how to make good or popular pixel art, it is about my design decisions regarding my own game, my inspiration, and my reasoning behind them.

Now, let’s begin!

Ikenfell’s camera, like a lot of 2D games (especially RPGs), has a birds-eye view of the game world.

The camera is looking down at the world, if you imagined it in 3D, at about ~60 degrees (this is a rough estimate, in this screenshot alone you can see I am very liberal with the actual angle of objects). The projection is orthographic, meaning that as objects get further away from the camera, they do not actually look smaller (as in real life), they are “flattened” onto the screen.

Often game developers will just make 2D games and take all this for granted, and just draw the art, but I like to think about camera and perspective a lot, as it’s one of the key relationships in the game between the player and the world itself. Knowing the details of this relationship can make the difference sometime when you’re making a visual design decision, as even technical details can help you highlight where and when it’s most important to break these rules.

Ikenfell’s visual design is inspired by several games. I found a screenshot from each game that was relatively similar to the Ikenfell screenshot I posted above, so you can easily see where I drew ideas from each!

Link's Awakening

I love Link's Awakening’s extremely reserved use of tiles, and efficiency with space. Every room has an interesting shape, the background tiles use a very minimal amount of antialiasing to occasionally introduce interesting shapes and curves, and rooms are often reduced to their very basic ideas. But you don’t want multiple rooms to feel the exact same, and Link’s Awakening does this wonderfully. Here’s a simple 4-screen graveyard in the game:

This simple area is wonderful. You get an off-purple colour and haunted trees to give you a sense of unease (ghosts will pop out of graves and attack you, but the visuals make you ready for it). The little rubble tiles and weedy overgrowth convey that this is an old, run-down graveyard, not well-kept. The cliff in the bottom screens gives you a sense of location (the graveyard is on a raised-up plateau, giving some sense of the burial rites of whoever owned these graves). The exits to the left and top have different terrain types, indicating that this graveyard is a bridge from one area to another, so we know we’re leaving our previous location. And, finally, despite the 4-rooms containing all the same elements, they are each differently shaped and detailed. You have multiple paths to walk through each room, so there is no correct path, just a strange haunting area to navigate through (while avoiding mean ghosts).

I could talk this much about every single screen in Link’s Awakening, so I’ll stop now, but this kind of overthinking is what drives a lot of Ikenfell’s inspiration. What a gorgeous game.

Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire

While I am not particularly fond of the character designs (or the pixel art in general) of Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire, I do like their buildings and interiors a lot, so they served as inspiration for a lot of Ikenfell’s architecture.

I like how, to create the least amount of view-obstructing details, these games often just eliminate the side and bottom walls of interiors. In this screenshot, there’s some subtle shadows on the side to give a sense of the ceiling’s height, and the bare minimum amount of details scattered about to give a sense of this character’s lifestyle:

Interiors were often cramped, but so many buildings in this game have completely unique artwork, which was very inspiring. When a building or a house looked completely different from others, I was always inspired to search it, and it was always pleasing to explore its interior with its wonderful new details. This bike shop, with its tiled floor, yellow/orange highlights, thin interior walls, and details scattered about was such a cool looking little area:

This game inspired me to research dozens and dozens of building styles and designs, and always to try to make new houses, buildings, and interiors look and feel distinct.

Mother 3

The simple lines, bold flat blocks of color, and almost childish flat look of Mother 3 wonderfully disguises its immense cleverness and wonderful use of space. I thought this game was a huge step-up visually from Earthbound, and if, after playing, you go back and just look at a few rooms, you start to see how nicely arranged a lot of them truly are.

Just like in the above screenshot, this screenshot below shows another night-time scene. Rather than use a real lighting system (difficult on a small system like the GBA), the game uses beautiful blue/purple palettes for dark areas.

The game just has this wonderful way of breaking up monotony as well. In the next screenshot, it’s a simple room with a stairway leading up to a door. But the building is run-down, so they create little 3D indents in the walls, break off pieces of the siding, carpet the stairs, stain the walls, and just create a series of interesting edges that turn a room that would look very boring into a very visually appealing place to walk through. All you have to do here is hold right, but somehow it feels like so much more, this place has a history and you can feel it down to its very skeleton.

The dark outlines around characters and objects in Ikenfell is very inspired by Mother 3, as well as the bold colours and inner-edge lighting. If you look at this side-by-side comparison (Mother 3 on the left, Ikenfell on the right), you can see how solid objects have dark outlines at their edges, but edges inside the sprite use a highlight colour instead, rather than another dark line cutting across them.

I really like how minimal this is, makes objects seem whole, and gives a strong sense of shape and body to things without cluttering them up with detail. If all the edges of an object use dark line, even in their interior, they tend to look really messy and ugly when done at such a low resolution.

Minish Cap

This game is so utterly gorgeous, I wish I could do it any justice by saying I’m very inspired by its visuals, but I can’t really. I often look at dungeons, buildings, forests, and mountains of this game when creating artwork for Ikenfell, but rarely can I even come close to making it look even remotely as good.

When colouring, I like to look at this game, because it does a wonderful job of ramps. The way these trees darken closer to their base is just beautiful, and the little way so much detail is suggested rather than shown is expertly done. Notice how the grass is mostly flat, but there are just a few tufts here and there?

Minish Cap, like Mother 3, also makes tremendous use of huge bodies of flat colour. Detail is often suggested with little bits, like the clouds in the screenshot above. It also serves a helpful gameplay purpose: very often, flat coloured areas are places you can walk, and highly textured objects and tiles are solid. I take great inspiration from this when pixelling Ikenfell's scenery.

Ikenfell actually does the inverse of this. Often, floors and the ground are textured, but objects like furniture and walls are flat, so they look like big obstructing blocks of colour, and you know you cannot pass them. If we highlight all the large flat blocks of colour in this room, we can see a very clear shape, making the room very easy to read, despite being cluttered with a lot of details and characters.

So while I take a lot of inspiration from the games above, and it is very clear how they inspired me, I quite often will deviate from their rules where I feel it works best for my game. By doing so, I have a huge amount of other screenshots and locations from those games I can look at for reference, but I’ve managed to give the game its own unique look and feel, despite having very strong influences.

I find colouring very difficult, and it often takes me a ton of experimentation to end up with something I’m happy with. In Ikenfell, lots of the areas will still probably be changed and re-coloured a lot before the game is done, but I still have a few patterns I find myself repeating.

Most areas of Ikenfell can be divided into two colour groups: a base and a highlight. There is usually one or two base colors, and one or two highlights. Here are a few screenshots and their respective main colour pairings:

Here’s an image that shows my general process when creating environment tiles for a new area. I usually pixel a room, and then break it up into tiles after I know what I want it to look like. Then I can use those tiles to piece together new rooms.

Here is an animated version of that same image, so you can see how each step improves the look:

This example environment doesn’t really have much colour. Sometimes I colour it right away, other times I’ll just work with values (like the above example) and then colour it after. It depends how I’m feeling, and how complex the tiles are.

Since the entire game occurs in a single place, the titular school of magic itself, it’s quite a contained story. This makes character design really fun, because I don’t have sprawling cities or huge towns to worry about. There are probably only about 30–40 characters in Ikenfell, and each has a unique design. There is no character template I use, I pixel each one from scratch, and usually have a couple others next to it for reference so I can make sure it fits in the game.

Here you can see twelve of the game’s characters and their respective silhouettes. The legs are the only thing that they really all have in common, and looks kinda templated. If I was able to start the game from scratch again, I think I would like to play around with size more (make kids shorter, have fatter characters be fatter, and taller characters be taller, muscular/etc.) With so few characters, though, they’re all very identifiable, so I’m pretty happy with them like this.

Not much else to say here. You’ll notice that most characters also follow a two/three-colour scheme. The choice to leave out eyes was because their sprites are too small: eyes ended up just looking the same on all characters (which I didn’t like), or they were comically large. Since the game has portraits during conversations, I felt like it was more important to emphasize their faces and expressions there.

Speaking of which…

For a good several months of development, Ikenfell actually didn’t have portraits for dialogue. The sprites would just move around and have conversations, and that was it. I didn’t have confidence to draw large character portraits (I am terrible at drawing humans and anatomy), and I already felt like the game was becoming too large for me to handle.

But, on a whim one day, I drew little portraits for each of the main characters in my notepad, with a pencil. I loved how these little drawings looked, so I drew them again with a few expressions, and I couldn’t unsee them. I decided that it’d be a lot easier to pixel them if I drew them in pencil first, then translated that to pixel art, which is how I’ve done most of the character portraits now.

Here are a few and their respective silhouettes. Notice that every single character is asymmetrical. I learned early on that if a character’s left/right side is a mirror-image, they look really creepy and strange. This is probably normal art school stuff, but I learned it the hard way.

I’m very happy I did this. I think the characters come alive so much more when you see them talking and expressing themselves like this, and now I can’t even imagine the game without it.

Here you can see how they look in action. The portrait and the textbox slide in, but there is no text immediately. Your eye goes to their face, so you first see their expression. Then the text prints out, and your eye naturally moves to follow it. I pushed the face down into the textbox, instead of on top of it, to reduce how much screen space the dialogue took up as much as possible.

Characters can only speak in short sentences this way, longer sentences being broken into multiple chunks, but this allows me to shift between micro-expressions while they talk. Here you can see Maritte’s anger transition into more of a general frustration, which is a lot easier to notice than if it only had the text.

When I originally was working on the game, it was actually an action RPG, more like Link’s Awakening. It was quite a few months into development before I had some issues with this, and transitioned the game into a turn-based tactical RPG instead.

The reason for this was that I didn’t like how, because the gameplay took place in the school itself, all the rooms had to be designed for fighting and maximum movement. Interesting room shapes and cramped spaces suddenly weren’t viable when I wanted them to be, because real-time fighting wasn’t very fun or interesting in those kinds of rooms.

So I moved battles into a completely separate screen, which allows me to design them however I want, while also designing the overworld to be whatever shape I want as well. The battles are much different than the overworld. Suddenly the graphics are huge and details, and the characters are much more animated and alive!

These battles are 12 x 3 tiles, so they are much more horizontal than vertical. Because of this, characters can also only face left and right. This means I can flip animations, greatly reducing my workload. You’ll also notice that the battlefield is skewed as well, but why?

If we remove the skew, it becomes readily apparent:

Without the skew, we have a problem with occlusion: characters on a tile immediately above another character are almost completely covered if the sprite is large. As soon as we skew the battlefield, though…

We no longer have this problem, since characters can only ever be vertically aligned if they are two tiles apart, and most sprites aren’t tall enough for that to be an issue. I also think it simply makes battles look more dynamic and exciting anyway.

I hope you enjoyed reading this! There’s a lot more to talk about, but this is a simple overview to explain a lot of my graphical choices while designing the game. I might do some smaller posts talking a bit more about the technical details of how I approach the pixel art, but this was a good introduction.

I can’t wait until you can all play this game! I’m having so much fun working on it, I hope you enjoy it when it is released. Please email me if you have questions about anything, my inbox is always open.

@ChevyRay / [email protected]

Artwork by Darcy Dee

#IFTTT #Blogger

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symbianosgames · 8 years

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I follow various developers on social media, from big guys to small guys, famous guys to unknown awesome talented guys.. and some of them even follow me back! From these developers, some are purely focused on mobile, others stick to PC, and it’s surprising to see how few are really targeting both.

However, there is some frustration I have, and it comes from the many comments I’ve seen from developers saying “hey I’m sticking to [this platform] because the other one is crazy/hard/difficult/not-worth it” even tho they have no on-hands experience and purely base this on other developers saying it or looking at statistics.

I’ve been releasing on mobiles since 2004, and I started porting my games to PC and releasing on Steam in 2015. It took me a while to include the PC platform, mostly cause the tools I was using simply weren’t allowing me to cover both platforms at once. When I made the switch from my own sloppy framework to the LibGDX engine it did allow me to release stand-alone PC games, so I dove in with full force and currently have six games on PC (Steam, Humble, and Itch) with two more coming this year.

Being on multiple platforms, means there is multiple ways to make revenue, there are multiple ways to (hopefully) get some coverage on your game, multiple ways to do sales and discounts later on, and more importantly: multiple ways for the games to find and enjoy your games. You might notice here the keyword is: multiple.

So why are so many PC game developers still not doing both platforms? I honestly don’t know.

Most PC game developers seem to say that the App store is oversaturated with mostly free to play games and that you can’t make money on premium games on mobile anymore. And it’s true! very true, a quick look at the top lists will show you the same couple of f2p games at the top spots. Silly Pokemon Go (nobody seems to love it, yet it’s still up in those lists) followed by stupid match-3 games (nobody likes those) and of course the “angry-face-shouting-icon” games that are always up there and are stupid games that nobody plays (just check them, and they all share the same icon!).

The thing is.. those games are not your competition! Those games are from companies making billions (literally BILLIONS) per year, and spending millions (literally MILLIONS) per year on marketing. That’s like saying your new rogue-like dungeon-crawler with pixel-art graphics and chip-tune music has to compete with Rocket League and Grand Theft Auto V.

The same thing happens with the top-lists on PC (Steam, GoG, Humble) and you have just as much chance breaking into those lists as you have on the app-store. So stop looking at them!

Yes the app store has a lot of games being released according to the stats, but just a handful of those games are really a problem to you as they are interesting enough to steal front-page or chart list spots. Most of the games being released on a daily basis are present in the statistics and look like it’s a crowded place, but what the statistics don’t say is that most of those games are not standing out in anyway and are not showing up on the bigger game sites or top download lists as they only get 1-10 downloads (possibly friends from the developer).

Guess what, you have just as much chance to show up in a top downloads list on the app store as you have on Steam!

So.. why are so many mobile-game developers still not doing both platforms? I honestly don’t know.

It seems that if you mention PC games, you also mention Steam. Which is funny but not unlike mentioning mobile games and forgetting there is a world full of Android users and a Google Play store that goes with it. Much like a Humble store, Itch.io or GoG are there for your PC game needs.

However, saying Steam is oversaturated with games, is true! Yes, it’s not as bad as mobile app stores, but it is still oversaturated, and the competition in general are bigger and slightly more polished games and more likely games that are direct competition with your game.

I’ve seen people expecting big things from getting their games on Steam, and then I tried to tell them that they might not sell millions.. not even thousands, and most likely, maybe, just a few hundred copies when they release (and I was right). Steam is changing some things now, with shutting down Steam Greenlight and replacing it with a pay-per-game barrier of some sorts. There’s a lot of talk about this, and I’m not going into it, but it will possibly change the landscape.

Releasing and earning money on PC is really just as difficult as it is on mobile. I’ve actually been there and done that in both cases!

But.. but.. then what’s the best platform to release on? Well in case you haven’t been paying attention:

If you can release on it, release on it!

ALL PLATFORMS are the best platforms. And to be perfectly clear on that: that includes consoles!

“But if I release my mobile game on PC, the gamers will bitch about it being a mobile port” – true! so don’t do that! I did that, my first few PC releases were Gunslugs and Heroes of Loot. Now both those games were designed with gamepads in mind, I originally created them with android consoles like the Ouya (remember that?) and other AndroidTV devices from the start. So the controls were fully designed for gamepads.

But PC gamers still weren’t happy about it. It seems that PC gamers want more settings and statistics. Seriously! Adding stuff like separate volume controls for music and sound-effects. Adding extra things like statistics (how many games played, how often did you die, fun things like that).

PC gamers don’t want a simple interface, they want extra stuff to show them you are serious. And guess what? mobile gamers also profit from adding those things! So yes, don’t release your mobile game on PC with it’s mobile interface, big bold “touch” buttons. Create a proper interface, preferably one that works for all devices and controls.

“But if I release my PC game on mobile I have to dumb it down” – well, yes and no. Of course you want to simplify the controls a bit where needed, but you can keep this in mind from the start of development, and it often only improves your games interface design for all other platforms if you make it leaner and meaner.

The days of having slow mobile devices that can’t handle large scenes or lush graphics are pretty much over. Technology wise there is very little limiting yourself from not releasing on mobile!

What ever it is that’s holding you back on covering all platforms, I promise you the work involved to fix that is far less than creating a new game.

Well for one, most mobile games don’t really make a lot of money, and most pc games don’t make a lot of money either! You can, in theory, double your revenue from the same game by putting it on twice as many platforms. Besides that it also grows your possible user base.

I know that multiple people have bought my game on multiple platforms that I released it on. Either because they wanted to play my games both on the move and from the comfort of their game rooms, or they simply wanted to support my work and purchased my game a couple of time because of that. Which is awesome!

Coverage from the press can also be more spread out, as you can now reach out to press for mobile games and pc games, and possibly even console games if you plan on releasing there.

So where do you prefer releasing on? or why do you only release on one hardware-platform? Let me know in the comments, cause I’m very curious!

#IFTTT #Blogger

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symbianosgames · 8 years

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So why are so many PC game developers still not doing both platforms? I honestly don’t know.

The same thing happens with the top-lists on PC (Steam, GoG, Humble) and you have just as much chance breaking into those lists as you have on the app-store. So stop looking at them!

Guess what, you have just as much chance to show up in a top downloads list on the app store as you have on Steam!

So.. why are so many mobile-game developers still not doing both platforms? I honestly don’t know.

Releasing and earning money on PC is really just as difficult as it is on mobile. I’ve actually been there and done that in both cases!

But.. but.. then what’s the best platform to release on? Well in case you haven’t been paying attention:

If you can release on it, release on it!

ALL PLATFORMS are the best platforms. And to be perfectly clear on that: that includes consoles!

The days of having slow mobile devices that can’t handle large scenes or lush graphics are pretty much over. Technology wise there is very little limiting yourself from not releasing on mobile!

What ever it is that’s holding you back on covering all platforms, I promise you the work involved to fix that is far less than creating a new game.

Coverage from the press can also be more spread out, as you can now reach out to press for mobile games and pc games, and possibly even console games if you plan on releasing there.

So where do you prefer releasing on? or why do you only release on one hardware-platform? Let me know in the comments, cause I’m very curious!

#IFTTT #Blogger

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