#food...water...fishing minigame...

[gojohatemail]

The Termina update needs to come out so I can go fishing and catch a big ol' tasty fish for Abella and Henryk and they both kiss for me for it AND I get extra kisses for turning said fish into a good dinner. I need to kiss and cook for my sillies, Miro.

[moonofmercury]

human reader, mild spoilers for 2.4/5/6

A deep sigh from just behind him has Jiaoqiu pausing in patting dry his feet, still tingling from the snowmelt chill of the river nearest to the campsite.

The sensation of you - well you wouldn't know to call it that, but grooming his tail, smoothing the strands even as you occasionally buried your face in the warm fur, making sounds that by now didn't even warrant an ear flicking your way to see what they were, they were so familiar - rose back to the forefront as you sighed again, rubbed your cheek against the voluminous pink fluff.

He waited. You pillowed your head heavily, almost irritatingly so, while also hugging his tail. And then there was another little sigh.

He leaned an elbow on his knee, twisting his ear back to hear you over the whispering water. "What's gotten into you?" he asked, bright, a shiver going up his back as a splash caught up higher up on his calf, almost wetting his rolled-up trousers.

He could feel you pouting, turning your face the other way, strands of fur moving with you and tangling with your hair.

It made him snicker even before you said. "Sometimes I wish I had a tail too."

You eased your grip when he jerked it a bit towards his body, making enough give so it didn't tug so oddly when you laid on it again. "And why's that?"

"I mean, if I was foxian I'd at least have the ears," you conceded considering tailless foxians like Feixiao who never seemed to suffer more than ridicule for the lack. "But you use it for so many things." There was so much body language associated with Foxian tails. "Sometimes, I know immediately if you're uncomfortable, and you twitch it just a little when you're happy," you voice was so mushily fond, it made Jiaoqiu practically wince with embarrassment right there. He could feel his ear flicking with it. Especially when you mentioned that he wagged his tail.

"Obviously it's nice to hold, so soft. Oh, I can even tell when you want something, especially food." You chuckled, only to trail off and sigh again. "I wish it was that easy for you to tell when I'm happy, or when I think you're so cute I could just eat you up."

He can feel you stiffen slightly when you realized your choice of words, which was a bit funny, but he doesn't mention it. It doesn't frighten him, and there were more important things to say.

"I already know when you're happy, or when you're sad," Jiaoqiu reached back, slower than before so as not to appear too clumsy as he groped for your hands. Everything of him was suddenly softer, his smile a little shy and reminding you of the kinds of flowers that grew in the cliff cracks of Meilin Peaks. "When you're impatient you lean on your heels, and when you're excited you balance on your toes." That was easy to notice, especially when you stood next to him. "I have plenty of ways to tell when your appetites are more like a tiger's than a human's, and you're just fine to cuddle," he recovered, rounding back with a more typical tease even as his cheeks heated.

But as he'd known, you perked up, likely also warmed by his gentle mocking, although he hoped you could tell he didn't hate it when you behaved a little more wildly with him.

You coughed, throat suddenly dry, and Jiaoqiu was handing you a thermos, not smirking, but you could feel the self-satisfied lift at the tip of his tail. Menace, you smiled as cold water soothed the cough.

"I suppose all couples have things they just know, and things that still need to be said," you admitted quietly, handing Jiaoqiu back the thermos, pressing it into his palm and watching carefully before letting it go.

"Luck you, I've got plenty to say."

This time, it was you reaching over to press one of his hands. Yeah, you were pretty lucky he'd somehow stuck around.

"If you really mind, we could always try getting you a tail for your Immersia persona."

You groaned. "No. I hate it. It's a total waste of time."

"Moze's beating your high score in the new fishing minigame.

Your eye twitched, and Jiaoqiu's prim posture told you he knew exactly what he was doing. "I'm going to get fired if I try catching up to him."

"Oh please, they never fire diviners. He's got an oarfish the night we left." He was grinning now, the tip of one fang showing and his ears set back playfully.

"I changed my mind. I'm not going back there."

"Even for me?" he fluttered his eyelashes, the barest hint of dull gold gleaming from underneath.

You grumbled and growled and combed back the strands of his tail you'd ruffled out of place. "Only for you."

But you were smiling as he wagged his tail, just a tiny bit.

[yupuffin]

Marine biology nerd reacts to Wuthering Waves fishing minigame! Part 1

Hi, I have a BA in biology with an unofficial specialization in marine bio (my college didn't offer anything more specific) so I love everything that has to do with sea critters, and since my enthusiasm about salps got positive reception, I would love to yap about some fun facts relevant to the obtainable fish present in the new fishing minigame in Wuthering Waves 🐟🌊

We're going to start with the...

Fried Egg Jellyfish

The fried egg jellyfish in Wuthering Waves looks like a pretty out-of-pocket design, but fried egg jellies are, in fact, real animals!

Sharing this photo again of one I took near a body of water in my region -- they do legitimately look like fried eggs. 😂 They belong to the genus Phacellophora and are found in most of the world's oceans. (Not to be confused with Cotylorhiza tuberculata, which is also called the "fried egg jellyfish" but is a different species.)

I'm not sure if it varies by region, but where I live, the best time to see them is between mid-July and mid-August, when they appear in droves -- so I see them often enough that I was positively ticked to see them featured in Wuthering Waves essentially unaltered. The caveat would be the note about them purportedly tasting like fried eggs; while some species of jellyfish are indeed edible when prepared properly, I'm not sure about this one specifically, so I can't say I endorse trying -- and even if they are, they probably don't taste like eggs, as jellyfish supposedly bears little to no flavor.

Yarn Eel

I'm going to guess this one is a play on the real animal called the ribbon eel, which is indeed quite colorful, but not necessarily found in large knots. Apparently, while they don't do so well in captivity, they can live for up to twenty years in the wild! (So, depending on who all is reading this... there might be ribbon eels out there that are your age or older. 👀)

(Image source)

Sob Blob

Many of us might be familiar with the infamous, meme-worthy photo of the "blobfish" on which this critter is quite clearly based. However, did you know that said photograph does not accurately portray what blobfish usually look like?

Blobfish live on the seabed at depths of up to over nine thousand (!!!) feet; to maintain their integrity against the immense pressure at that depth, the blobfish's soft tissues are full of water and fat. So if a blobfish were to get caught in a net and very abruptly moved to sea level, where the pressure is much lower, its "water-logged" tissues effectively explode, giving it the unnatural "blob" appearance featured in the infamous photo.

(Image from NOAA, in the public domain)

This is a real blob sculpin shown in its natural habitat -- and in a much more fish-shaped state! Moreover, unlike the in-game Sob Blob, blobfish don't have a lot of natural predators and can get away with a rather sedentary lifestyle in which they remain largely stationary unless it's absolutely necessary for them to move. Moisturized, unbothered, flourishing.

And, saving probably my favorite featured critter of the bunch for last:

Salp

Salps are much less well-known critters than any of the ones I've described so far, I think! Aside from in Wuthering Waves, I've only ever heard mention of them in the 2007 video game Endless Ocean (of which I was also a huge fan back when I had a Wii). I would say they're not prominent in popular culture by any stretch of the imagination, as far as I'm aware.

Salps are tunicates, a type of marine invertebrate that is nevertheless part of the phylum Chordata that includes all vertebrates, as tunicates possess notochords (the embryonic precursor to the vertebral column), as well as other chordate features, in their larval stage. In this case, the in-game description is at least partially accurate, as salps are a key component of the marine ecosystem and are thought to be a food source for a great many other animals, including fish and seabirds -- though it's difficult to tell exactly which ones, since they're gelatinous and don't leave behind much evidence of being eaten in their predators' digestive tracts. They're also purportedly one of the fastest-growing multicellular animals in the world.

Their life cycle involves an alternation between solitary and "chain" phases depending on the generation. While the salps' in-game entry describes them as sometimes "too small to bother with," IRL the biggest salp colonies can literally grow to lengths of one hundred feet!

(Image source)

That's about all I have time for today! I've got more critters I can talk about, so be sure to let me know if you're interested in a part two 😉

Part 1 (you are here) -- Part 2 -- Part 3

[i-rate-horse-games]

rating Horse Life on Roblox

i made a roblox account just to play this game, and i’m glad i did. this game is what Horse Isle 3 wishes it was.

gameplay: horse breeding!!! FAST horse breeding!! not limitless, but not paywalled! there are in-app purchases, but i barely noticed them the whole time i was playing. there’s little quests to complete in order to unlock the ability to tame cooler horse-like species, and while doing them you get a better feel of what the game is all about. there’s tons of coat variation, size variation, and there’s always the chance for spontaneous mutations to show up and grant your horse 10% extra speed, jumping ability, wings!? wings that have different levels to them, and at which level 3 allows you to fully fly around the map? the coat variations don’t seem to have to do with genetics, which is a little annoying when you breed a black and white horse with an Orange horse and you get a poor foal that looks like a moldy jack-o-lantern got trampled into mush. there’s a cosmetic challenge, where you try to breed a horse that matches the one on display, which i feel like is a challenge some of you guys would love!

you can catch horses two ways, by lassoing it on horseback or by feeding it by hand, which presents you with a fun little minigame sorta like that locks task in among us that most people don’t like but that i love because i got rhythm muahahah. you can breed any two horses together, even horses that are different species, although the offspring will always be just one species and fertile. after you breed two horses together, your mare will only be pregnant for about four and a half hours, which you can just completely skip for free by feeding them whatever food you foraged while training your horse’s strength stats! and then you can just. Keep Going until you run out of food or stable space. and you can upgrade stable space and inventory space just by playing the game, for free! love that!

also, you can play as the horse, which makes for some funny interactions. i just tried to tame a horse who i think was a person because i couldn’t feed them and they kept shaking their head at me. but . i’m also not SURE that it wasn’t a wild horse. it was acting perfectly like a wild horse. oh man. no i think that was just a normal horse. but what if

between catching wild horses, breeding your own, and training them to raise foals into adults or just make your favorite mount even tougher, this game has a lot to offer! there’s a few NPCs to talk to every day to level up their bond, there’s giant statues and ruins that allude to a mysterious past, and there’s even a centaur ominously standing on the edge of the map, gazing out over the ocean. and the game isn’t even finished! recently it got an update that allows you to fish for kelpies (water horsies) with a fishing rod, making them slightly easier to find. there are a few buildings in town that have almost nothing in them but are clearly intended to be a saloon and a jail, so i’m interested in seeing where that goes! i’m also curious if they will ever fix the fact that if you walk into the ocean you just instantly plummet through the world & teleport back to town, or if you’re lucky (like mee) you’ll respawn underneath town on the secret Second Floor, which you can then fall from and get stuck in an unceasing loop, watching your home slip away from under your feet, your poor horse falling after you, over and over and over again. that’s just part of the magic, honestly, no complaints there. it was fun. i’ll do it again.

also while i was playing, they launched an update that adds horse races! it's a fun little mariokart-ish loop that lets you lap your opponents, and winning gives you fun prizes! they called me the horse king in college

one small thing is that the in-game not-paid currency is in these horseshoe coins, but in the shop if something costs more than 1,000 coins, they’ll abbreviate it as… 1.5k $ .   dollar sign. that’s a little odd, but alright. when i was a kid I had an ipad for exactly 1 night before i accidentally spent $50 of my parent’s real money to unlock giraffes in a zoo game. i remember hesitating at the sudden shift from in-game coins to dollar signs, then thinking “surely this isn’t real money! nobody would spend fifty real dollars to buy giraffes in a zoo game!” and then i clicked it and got in trouble lol

playerbase: chat tends to stay pretty quiet, except for when two players who are already friends come online and use the global chat like their own dms. i saw many references to playing while in the car & someone bragging about staying all the way up until 10pm so safe to say most of these people are ipad kids. i was impressed with the amount of organization before one of the spirit totem summonings, an hourly event where players work together to win goodies. 

they were shouting out directions to new players, suggesting which lassos to use, reminding everyone to turn off the Show Player Horses setting so that we wouldn’t lag and disconnect in the middle of the fight. when i neighed in the chat eventually people started neighing back. i only saw one person being slightly annoying and it was just kinda funny. there is a chat filter but i can’t tell if there’s any active moderation or anything. you do have the ability to report players, and that goes through Roblox, not the horse game, so that’s probably good. Internet Safety! also if you look up questions about the game most of what comes up are tiktok videos which is a first for me lol

graphics: pretty! low-polyish so it loads nicely but colorful and feels right for the setting. there’s just the right amount of Stuff in the world for it to feel filled but not crowded. whenever the day/night cycle or weather changes, the whole world quickly switches lighting effects, but not all at once. it sorta rolls over the map. but things that are far away look bluer! nice touch. love it

music: a very short loop that got old fast, but it lets you turn off just the music in settings and still keep the lovely ambiance! i always really appreciate this setting. i wish splatoon 3 would let me do this. i play that game so much i have every battle track seared into my memory. but this isn’t really a part of rating a game lol i just like to mention it in case a game has really great music that i can add to my Horsey Time playlist. what the game does have is ambient bird noises which i LOVE. that’s a W from me

all things considered, i’m rating horse life on roblox FIVE OUT OF FIVE STARS!

★★★★★

this is the first 5/5 horse game i’ve rated!! that puts it above alicia online which is kinda funny.

here’s me with the largest and smallest horses i’ve bred so far!

side notes: why does roblox stop me from naming my player character “butch” but not “butchy”? no one else can see what i named it, it’s just so i can quick change faster. also, that means that their filter doesn’t search for words inside words, which isn’t a great system. also, butch is also a name? also, what’s wrong with butch? i did try playing this on my old 5th generation ipad to try and get the Roblox Kid experience, but my ipad wasn’t strong enough. it got a memory full warning before it crashed and felt concerningly warm, which it’s never done before, so that’s neat!

[flyingwargle]

sunaosa week day 1: festival

suna has a secret: he's wickedly good at the goldfish scooping minigame at festivals.

it's a skill that osamu witnessed firsthand in their first year. he went to aichi with him for a week during summer break, which coincided with the local festival. they didn't dress up, simply scoured the food stalls and games, when suddenly-

"here it is." suna stopped him at the goldfish scooping stand. an elderly man supervised the children failing to scoop a fish, paper sieves crumpling. osamu watched him toss a coin to the man, take the sieve, and crouch in front of the plastic tanks. "pick a fish, any fish."

"ya know these things are a scam, right?" osamu asked.

"just pick one."

he raised a skeptical eyebrow, crouching to have a better view. all the fish are about the same size, moving through the shallow water, orange fins gleaming under the lanterns. "uh, that one." he pointed to a fish swimming in the corner. "it looks easy ta-"

quick as a flash, suna's sieve dipped into the pool and scooped the fish. it flopped helplessly as he held it to the man, ignoring the kids' stares around them. "i'll take this one."

“that was slick,” osamu commented afterwards, as they weaved through the crowd to find a place to watch the fireworks. suna carried a small plastic bag with water, goldfish inside. “’tsumu an’ i could never scoop one o’ ‘em.”

"it's a skill. you know the fish tank in my living room?" at his nod, suna smirked. "those are all fish that i got from past festivals." when they left, the trio of fish became a quartet.

in their second year, osamu accepted his request to visit, again. the festival took place the weekend of their arrival, and suna asked him to pick out a goldfish for him to scoop. he added it to the tank when they got home, the quartet now a quintet.

"why d'ya scoop a fish every year?" osamu asked that night, sprawled on his borrowed futon on the floor of suna's bedroom.

"it's something that my mom did. i'm just keeping the tradition alive." it was the second time he mentioned her, the first being that she was no longer in his life.

unfortunately, during their third year, the festival overlapped with training camp a week before. although suna acted nonchalant during their visit, osamu sensed his disappointment and brought him to a pet store to buy a goldfish instead. “it ain’t the same as scoopin’ it, but at least we can keep the tradition alive,” he said. suna kissed him.

the tradition crumpled in the face of adulthood. suna moved away to play for ejp raijin, and osamu became occupied with work and school. the fish tank became empty after suna’s sister graduated and moved to hokkaido for university, their deadbeat dad barely able to care for himself, let alone fish. it was never mentioned again, and summer festivals became a fond memory from their adolescence.

until now.

osamu waits in front of the torii gate that leads to the festival grounds. a steady stream of people moves in and out, clad in yukata or normal clothes. he, himself, is in a yukata that his regular, a granny, gave him, a gray-striped garb that her son used to wear. his arms are folded in the sleeves, toes wriggling against his sandals.

“hey.”

he looks up. suna is also in a yukata, a beautiful shade of red with a checkered pattern and goldfish along the sleeves and hem. his eyes are soft, trailing toward the torii gate. “wow. we haven’t gone to a festival since high school.”

“that’s why i suggested it.” osamu extends his hand. “shall we?”

they follow the crowd. the delicious smell of yakisoba permeates the air, along with takoyaki and ikayaki. a long line is in front of the shaved ice stall, cutting in front of the games stalls. osamu doesn’t stop until he finds the goldfish scooping stand, turning toward suna. “let’s get a goldfish.”

suna frowns at him. "i'm not bringing it back to shizuoka, and you don't have a tank at the apartment."

“are those excuses i hear? d’ya lose yer edge?”

“of course not.” he scoffs, reaching into his wallet to toss a coin at the vendor, taking the paper sieve from him. he crouches, and osamu joins him. “pick a fish, any fish.”

it really doesn’t matter which fish it is, so osamu points at one along the edge of the pool. suna dips his sieve in the water to scoop beneath it, successful on his first try. “yer pretty good,” the vendor remarks, bagging the fish and handing it back to him. “ya do this a lot?”

“in the past, yeah.” his smile doesn’t quite reach his face, though, weighed by skepticism. osamu smiles to himself, pulls him along so they can buy cotton candy.

after the fireworks, the crowd begins to leave. osamu and suna wait until the initial rush leaves before exiting beneath the torii gate, but instead of heading to the train station, osamu tugs him toward the street. “let’s bring this lil’ guy home.”

“where?"

“you’ll see.”

they walk through the darkened streets, small bars still alight, until they reach onigiri miya. osamu brings him to the back, unlocking the door and pulling him inside. “why are we here?” suna asks.

osamu doesn’t answer, simply drags him into the seating area before stepping away to switch the lights on. suna blinks, stares, eyes widening. “i figured, now that we’ve got our rhythm back, we could pick up some traditions again,” osamu explains. “the goldfish mean a lot ta ya, so i thought we should start with that.”

they face a full-sized fish tank beside the wall of memorabilia, already decorated with colorful pieces of gravel at the bottom, fake coral, seaweed, and a filtration system. osamu switches the backlight on, so the fish will have light in the darkness. “i couldn’t quite remember everythin’ that yer tank had, but i think this is mostly it.”

“yeah,” suna whispers. “this is it.” he bites his bottom lip, lowers his eyes. “i…tried to keep up with it. i’d go with my teammates, but i never scooped any fish because it didn’t seem right. my mom taught me how to do it, but after she was gone, it became you. thank you, ‘samu.”

together, they add the first fish into the tank. over the years, it gains a companion, then two, then three, then four. although goldfish don’t have long lives, the memories of their lives will never fade, forever etched into the minds of those who brought it home.

--

inspiration: lots and lots of fanart of festival suna <3

[idiototheinternet]

Y'all I have a horrible idea for a farming game

Your character is a swordsman, who's tired of fighting, so you and your party members make a deal to start a town together. The catch? A bet is made that if you can do everything you've agreed to do for your work, only using your sword, for a year, then they'll throw a huge celebration for you and the town.

The work includes:

Farming(digging, and later tilling and such, and you use the sword to splash water at it to water them)

Digging for cool stuff

Chopping down trees

Raising monsters to produce food and such(you don't butcher your own monsters, but sorta like rabbits' feet in stardew, if they are happy enough, you can let them around the town and they'll come back with different types of monster meat. Your character will have a funny reaction to this, and will say "I'm just going to ignore this...") (The fifth time a monster gets something, another one of them will be dragging a passed-out character to your doorstep, and they'll become your roommate until you build them a house.)

Fishing. The fishing minigame is pretty much just tying a string to the end of your sword. The fish include: Fish, bigger fish, smaller fish, not a fish, and a potato.

Mining. You stab rocks with a sword until they explode comically

Building buildings and structures and paths by hitting them with your sword

Making a train station

Crafting things

Blacksmithing is one of your party member's jobs, as to not melt your sword.

The buildings can be mixed and matched to customize them

You can gain friendship with people who decide to visit your town, as well as building on it with your previous party members, and if you show off your ☆cool sword skillz☆ and offer to build them a home, some of them will open businesses, and a few of them will get together after a few different families with school-age children move in, to open a library and a school, and the cleric who was in your party becomes a doctor, and their small friend who they meet up with becomes the town menace(and banker, they are good at their job)

The friendship system is less focused on romance, and more focused on friendships formed, although romance is an option.

The sorcerer from before your party settled down also discovers her grandmother lives there and so together, they decide to prank you by either turning a single one of your floorboards into a slightly darker shade of wood than the rest of the floor, or by turning one of your ground tiles into a tile that will always grow a potato.

although i feel like it would get copywrited, I really wanna make the name townsword

[videogames-i-wish-were-real]

Videogames I wish were real #85

Oh to live in play a pixel art Pokemon farming sim. You have a cute lil house you can decorate to your liking. Every day you get to take care of your berries and apricorns. You get to feed and pet and take care of your pokemon. There's minigames where you get to bath them or play stuff like hide and seek or tag or tic-tac-toe or with them. You can pick one pokemon to follow you around. When you reach a high enough friendship level with one pokemon they'll sometimes bring you gifts and you can ask them to help you with some chores around the house or the farm. You use the wool you get from Mareeps and Wooloos to knit sweaters and socks and blankets. You make cheese and butter with the milk you get from Miltank. Once you progress enough in the game you get to open a cute lil store in the town where you sell all your homemade wares to the townspeople and also items to visiting trainers such as the pokeballs you make from apricorns. Every couple of months you turn on your tv and hear about a ten year old saving the world and half the time you know the kid because they've been to your store. Sometimes you'll find wild pokemon you can approach and befriend. No combat mechanics, you feed the pokemon or pet them or offer them shinies and they usually leave you alone except sometimes they'll follow you home. The cute lil town you live in has a ton of festivities and charming npcs. You can ask npcs to be your (platonic or not) roommates, you can marry npcs, you can have kids or adopt them (without being on a relationship) or stay single. There's no limit to how many pokemon beds you can place inside your house. You can place pokebeds, food and water bowls anywhere in the world. You can also fish and dive and mine and forage. If you leave a bunch of berries in an ancient hidden shrine to Groudon/Kyogre you can ensure that the next day is rainy or extra sunny. One time you ran into Palkia and Dialga and offered them some really tasty pokepuffs so now you have the gods of space and time at your beck and call and you can basically time travel and teleport as long as you give them treats first. You like to stay up late on the nights when the tv says there's going to be Minior showers to watch the colorful falling stars with your pokemon cuddled at your side. Life is good.

Similar games that actually exist: Stardew Valley, Pokemon, Moonstone Island, Ooblets, Monster Harvest, Critter Crops, Ova Magica

[lotus--pond]

fable Pokemon au stuff because I love fable and I love pokemon!!!

maybe we get protagonist Athena as a treat

Rae is the professor, or maybe like professor in training under Enderian

I'm a big fan of altering the gym structure of the base games (having gym themes instead of types, dual type gyms, more gyms than just eight and you get to choose which gyms you do, trainers having multiple different teams with different themes, etc.) so that's what this'll be based on!

I am torn between Fenris's gym challenge being something food related or just a dog show

dogs and food would be his gym's theme by the way, cat cafe but dog yk?

World sisters have the most straightforward gyms in the region, being sole grass/water types respectively. It's just because they're like idk veteran gym leaders and have been doing this kinda stuff since before more different gym structure was popularized and they have a "if it ain't broke don't fix it"/ "idk man I just like plants/fish" mentality

as I've previously stated, Icarus is legally required to have morpeko as a partner I will be taking ZERO arguments

I'm also torn between having them as gym leader or a more N type role

because N fits however comma we could have mad scientist/alchemist gym leader

I like mad scientist role because you could have Rae, the kind Pokemon professor who's a bit on the quieter side but clearly has a great passion for his work and maybe a few times he'll offhandedly mention to Athena"my older brother is a scientist as well, he's an alchemist and lives in [x] city! make sure to say hello to them for me if you're in the area."

and he's picturing a guy pretty similar to Rae, maybe a bit more outspoken. but he is certainly not picturing the person with a labcoat stained purple and yellow from one too many failed potions, with giant goggles, running on nothing but energy potions and madness, mumbling to themselves about alchemical properties or something, pacing around their gym, barely acknowledging them as they enter the room.

and you know it's a while from when Athena set out on their journey and it was really just a few comments from Rae so he's forgotten about what he said, so he beats the gym and everything and they're talking when all the sudden... Professor?

and it's Rae! he's come to visit his brother and Athena just blurts out without thinking, "I'm sorry, you guys are related??"

and Rae and Icarus laugh, tell him they get that all the time. that, genetically, they're only half brothers and both take after the parent they don't share.

also despite Icarus's gym being like poison/alchemy themed there are many birds flying around. One of them has probably made a nest in Icarus's hair that they have either failed to notice or just don't care about anymore.

Rae mostly uses psychic or dark Pokemon, especially any space/star themed ones

there's a similar "you're related?" moment in both Momboo and Ocie's gym (I'm thinking Jamie/Bruin as a rival) where both mention that they've heard a lot about Athena

and depending on how far into their journey they are, they could think these two are just weird, or that the gym leaders talk about the challengers who manage to beat more than one of them.

but no actually this is their indirect way of teasing Bruin

wait no maybe Ocie and Momboo have a joint gym. like partner battles. cuz sisters n stuff. I like that.

Aax specializes in Cave-y/dragon pokemon. idk man just go with it.

wait dragon type gym leader Aax goes kinda hard

Aax's gym is in a coastal town and their gym challenge is a fishing minigame

not like the regular pokemon fishing mechanic but a completely seperate minigame

and maybe on the docs near the town you can find this old fisherman who will tell you stories, that if you pay attention to the endless diaglogue, actually give some pretty helpful tips and secrets

I keep switching between talking about this as if it were an actual game or a narrative peice so my bad

of course maybe post game that fisherman has a little quest where you have to go and fetch things for him from libraries around the region or solve riddles about myths and retrieve the correlated item.

and of course the last riddle is about the hero perseus, and you don't have to actually go to a library, but go and ask Aax about it. they ask you if that rambling old man by the docks put you up to this. when you say yes they give somewhere between a laugh a joking sigh and just tell you to follow them. They go down to the docks besides the old fisherman and just tell him

"you know, you can just ask me to come over for dinner, you don't have to keep doing this whole roundabout way" and the fisherman just laughs and says "gods forbid I find a way to have fun in my old age"

that's where the quest ends but if you go back to Aax they'll explain that the fisherman is their father, and they actually washed up on shore near this town as a young child, their current theory is that they were in a shipwreck that their parents were either lost or passed in.

but they were found by a young professor Rae, but since Rae was only traveling through the town he soon had to leave, but the two kept in touch through letters for a long time when Aax learned how to read.

Ulysses found him one day by the beach and after finding out this child had no parents and was just wandering the beach finding shells and other things, decided to take him in.

you really thought I'd do a fable au and not include fish dad in some way shape or form??? him and Aax are my favorite. I am pushing him as hard as I can into my band au even though it makes no sense for him to be there. so far he is only mentioned but I promise you fish dad will show up where and when you least expect it when it comes to my writing

I'll probably have more thoughts but y'know

[bluntshavingrazor]

Five more games I played recently on Steam, rated entirely by if they involve fishing and/or trains.

Before I begin: I have since completed Grounded and it involves no trains. My rating stays at 0/5. The ziplines, especially the improved zipline that can go up- and downhill is sort of like a cable car which is maybe similar to a train, but there are no points given for that level of disassociation.

KENA: BRIDGE OF SPIRITS

Like Grounded in the last post, I have not actually finished playing Kena because it is a combat focused Soulslike game and I suck at those. So pending any further news, I'm going entirely on what I have experienced. Kena herself cannot actually fish, but there is plenty of fishing equipment left lying around and fishing appears to be a significant source of food for the villagers. 2/5

No trains, which is probably for the best because this is a very picturesque mountainous forest environment and a train track, while nice in its own way, probably wouldn't gel with the classical Southeast Asian themes they've got going on. Still 0/5

SUBNAUTICA

This is a game entirely about diving deep onto a planet covered in an endless ocean, and discovering all kinds of strange and exotic fish, which you can eat. You'd think it would be a 5/5, easy peasy. Sure, you probably could play through the game without catching or eating a fish, there are other foods available, but good luck with that. Same deal with Raft, and I gave that a five. Unlike Raft, Subnautica does not have a fishing rod. You just swim up and catch them. It gets a 4/5.

Again, no underwater train system. I'm expected to believe this alien civilisation can build a doomsday device capable of destroying the planet but not a working public transit system? 0/5

SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION VI

Fishing Boats are one of the main Improvements in the game. If you're playing on a map with any significant amount of water, it's gonna be tricky to not have at least one somewhere. 5/5

W-why are there no trains? Where did my railways go? All I have is roads, there used to be an upgrade to railways later in the game... Civ 5 had trains. The Steam Power technology even has a picture of a train on it, why is the train not there? 0/5, and if I could give it negative marks then I would. Screw it, -5/5 for removing the trains. Yes, I know the Gathering Storm DLC adds a Railway improvement, I don't care. That's not what I was playing.

CORE KEEPER

Fishing is not only a source of food, not only a source of unique items, and not only has its own skill tree, but it is also mandatory for game completion because one of the plot relevant bosses has to be fished for. 5/5, and even the faintly irritating minigame involved doesn't lower that. You can turn it off anyway.

Trains are not so much; there is a minecart system but it's not really industrialised. You can get two varieties of minecart, neither are powered and neither connect together with other carts into a train. 4/5

THE CURSE OF MONKEY ISLAND

Guybrush does not go fishing, not does he use a fishing rod for any kind of hilarious puzzle solving. 0/5

There aren't any trains per se, but there is a roller coaster towards the end of the game which is close enough. It's only in the last chapter of the story and you actually spend most of your time jumping in and out of if to get to different areas, but I guess if you really wanted to you could ride around in it for a bit more while LeChuck chases you. 3/5

[mistakenot4892]

Nebula devblob Feb '24

This is a crosspost from cohost.

Thinking I'm going to start doing a weekly or fortnightly summary of changes on Nebula in a given week. Probably not going to be the most super thorough or well structured post, as I am a bit scatterbrained at the best of times, but heigh ho.

Nebula SS13 is an open source project based on the Baystation 12 version of Space Station 13. SS13 is a topdown multiplayer simulation game where you play the crew of a ship, station, colony, etc. depending on your fork and map, with the Nebula and Bay forks having a focus on roleplaying and simulation interactions.

Notable changes

Traitors (sort of like mafiosos in Mafia, secretly assigned antagonists) were getting tasked with assassinating their own informants among the crew. That has been fixed.

Quite a bit of work has been going into the fluid simulation. The current sim is a bit haphazard and allows you to use crewmembers or monkeys as sponges to soak up any flooding, since the water goes into their touching reagent holder and vanishes into thin air.

Lots of optimization work being done by Penny, mostly around initialization time, event registration/deregistration, and various smaller fixes and streamlining from her downstream project Lighthouse.

Outstanding bugs of note

There's a fun issue with the dev branch currently where, due to some changes to how atoms handle temperature changes, if you put a human in a 100C environment, all their blood will instantly coagulate into one giant clot. This has absolutely no negative impact on the human.

A serious client crash issue has been narrowed down to specifically trying to cut the tail off a humanoid mob with one. As soon as you dismember the tail, everyone within viewing distance will experience a hard client crash to desktop. This may simply be God's punishment; investigation continues.

Using an elevator to descend a level can drop you into a small patch of vacuum for unclear reasons. If you're very unlucky, that one tick of total pressure loss can explode your lungs. Use the stairs for now, it's better for you.

Current priorities

We have a few PRs waiting for merge into the 5th staging period, where we shake as many bugs as we can out of the dev branch before marking it an official release and pushing it to the stable branch. When those go in, we'll start r5 staging. Exciting stuff.

I'm working on some changes around enhancing the cooking system and the general experience of interacting with food. So far I've rewritten utensils to work a bit better - previously they liked to just teleport a chunk of food from your meal into your guts, bypassing all checking of petty things like 'can I actually fit this food in my stomach' and 'am I physiologically capable of eating this mint without exploding'. Next up: Soup(tm).

I kinda wanna add fishing? But I don't just want to use Polaris fishing where you click a rod on some water and wait for 300 years. Pondering how responsive a Stardew Valley fishing minigame would be in BYOND...

[jadequarze]

I’m considering getting Fields of Mistria. Can you give me your best sales pitch/thoughts on the game so far? Main point would be is it worth its price or do I wait for it to be on sale? Alternatively is it just a shit game (based on what I’ve seen I don’t think so but you’ve actually played it, so I’d love your opinion pls and thank)

Keeping in mind, it is an early access game and I haven't full gone too deep into the game yet. So, take it as you will.

It's a really chill farming game. There's no mini game when it comes to fishing, though you need to throw the cast near the fish, basically cast the hook in the fish line of sight. It does get tedious though especially when you're still in early game and the fish doesnt spawn immediately (afaik). But it is great, I do like that there's no minigame and the fact that you really need to be ready to reel them fishies in. Farming is as usual so, nothing to add there. At the moment, you basically have infinite watering can. The game have skill points that you can put into as you're leveling your skills. You gather your skill points by farming, fishing, chopping trees etc. i do want to say, you have to make sure you have ample stamina if you unlock mining. It's difficult (at least to me because I wasn't focusing on cooking) to have food stock up. Gameplay wise, it's a fun little pixel farming game. The characters are charming and you can pet the animals. There are animals NPC that you can build friendship with and you can pet them!

This went longer than I thought. Technical for this game, the audios sometimes glitch and the music cutting out. It does come back when you get into an instance and went back in again. The combat is clunky so be careful if you're going into the mines. It's not game breaking, it's early access shenanigans. It is a fun game, it's still in development and don't expect anything much. Romance wise, there's a lot of romance options in this game. So, have a look into them if you're curious who there are.

[alln64games]

Hey You, Pikachu!

JP release: 12th December 1998

NA release: 6th November 2000

PAL release: N/A

Developer: Ambrella

Publisher: Nintendo

N64 Magazine Score: 56%

Hey You, Pikachu! took almost two years to make it from Japan to the USA, and never came out in Europe. This was mainly due to the Voice Recognition Unit that came with the game – which is essentially a microphone were you could say words for Pikachu to understand.

This may sound like something trivial now, but it was very advanced with the times. That said, many people (especially adults, as the recognition was centred around a higher pitch) had issues with it. Using a modern microphone in an emulated version of the game seems to be a bit better, although I still had an issue with some words.

With Hey You, Pikachu getting fairly negative reviews, I was surprised as to how much I enjoyed it. For how much it cost when new, I can definitely see why, but the game reminds me a lot of more recent downloadable titles which are little stories with some gameplay.

Professor Oak gives you a device that helps you speak to a wild Pikachu, who you quickly befriend. You hold the Z button to speak, then your words will travel in a bubble to Pikachu. You have to grab his attention before you give him commands, and he’ll only understand certain words (which are highlighted in red).

At the start, the controls are quite basic. The camera is locked on Pikachu and you can move about relative to him. In the starting section, you can look after some Caterpies, explore a field, help Bulbasaur prepare a meal and do some fishing. You’ll wake up, meet Pikachu outside, go on an adventure and say buy to him.

On these adventures, Pikachu will ask about items, ask for advice on what to do with them and be very curious. After a while, you’ll be able to ask Pikachu to stay at home with you.

From this point on, you get to choose what to do, you can replay the stuff from the first chapter, or do a bunch of new activities, such as guiding a blindfolded Pikachu towards a pinata, finding lost Poliwags and watering some Oddish. If you do well enough at the pinata game then you’ll also gain access to an island for treasure hunting.

You also have a bit more freedom of movement and gain access to an inventory to store items, some are permanent items while others are sold at the end of the day. You can also play some little minigames, like tag or a name that Pokémon game on the N64 in your room.

Once you’ve done everything you need to here, the third chapter will start. You’ll be introduced to some new view modes: one which locks the camera onto Pikachu and another that lets you look up and down. Now Pikachu will understand what you’re pointing a as well, so you can give more specific instructions. The increase in control complexity was definitely a way to not introduce too much to kids at once, although, annoyingly, returning to older missions will remove these abilities.

The third chapter is mainly more difficult versions of what we’ve seen so far. A diglett will try to trip Pikachu up, a Haunter is roaming the lake and the Caterpies are much hungrier than before. The Caterpie mission was very difficult to begin with (you have to get Pikachu to thunderbolt trees), but I realised that I could get the food myself and help that way.

To progress you need to have performed certain tasks in the various missions, including fully completing the Caterpie ones. Professor Oak will ask you to send Pikachu on his own mission, and you’ll follow him in a cardboard box as you see him remember what you’ve taught him.

After this is done, there’s a surprisingly emotional ending (that also kind of makes Pokémon Trainers look bad).

Hey You, Pikachu is a cute little adventure. While the graphics are fairly low quality, Pikachu himself is extremely well animated and the Pokémon having their show voices is nice to hear in a game. The voice control was a novel idea at the time, but isn’t something people like using that much, due to how few games support voice control when it’s much easer to do now.

I really enjoyed my time with Pikachu, and it was a fun, short experience.

Trying to get Pika to drop the vegetable or keep it for the stew is a nightmare. On more than one occasion he eventually grabbed the right object, but, instead of obeying our ‘Okay, sure’ command, the little swing proceeded to munch on the veggie, swoon and keel over. The result – Pika no like you.

- Geraint Evans, N64 Magazine #50

Remake or Remaster?

A remaster would be really nice for this. Voice commands are much better now and this would suit being an eShop title. Perhaps they could give you full control form the start (at least in terms of movement), as it is more of a second nature now.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Hey You, Pikachu.

[bubblewonderabyss]

Corrugated starbound ask game

🌈Which of the basic sb color palettes do you find most pleasing?

💺What is your favorite furniture set? What is your favorite standalone furniture item? Do they go together?

🏠Wood starter house or brick starter house?

👾Which vanilla race is your favorite and which modded race is your favorite? If a representative from each fought, who would win?

🎣What emotion does the fishing minigame make you feel?

🤕Which boss is the hardest?

❤️‍🩹If your save data was somehow lost or corrupted which character would you remake first and why?

🌶️What do you think is your most unpopular sb opinion?

🧰What huge, super ambitious mod would you make if you had the time/energy/skills?

🚪Imagine you are a resident of the starbound universe and you are running away to make your forever home. In your inventory is: two crop seed types of your choosing, a stack of logs, a stack of stone, a stack of water, and some glass. Which biome on which planet are you moving to?

🤿Which ocean type is the best?

🚀Which ship design is the best?

💀Save the cat or save the bunny?

🍴Which alien food do you really really really wish was real?

⛽Gather erchius or buy erchius?

🧸Teddy bear or bear plush?

🌌Favorite expansion mod? Eg. Shellguard, Maple32, Elithian, K'rakoth, Arcana, Frackin, etcetera

🧱Favorite block(s)?

🔦Best flashlight color?

🏪What outpost vendor do you utilize the most?

🎳Funnest toy?

🛋️Top 3 furniture mods?

👤Which npc would you like to know more about?

👥What race would you like to know more about?

💄What's a cosmetic item you wish existed but doesn't?

🪞Which starbound oc made you discover something about yourself, or inspired you to try something new?

🥁Favorite musical instrument?

🔭Favorite celestial body to see in the sky?

🔎What's a small, easy-to-miss detail that you just love?

[lyricwritesprose]

Am I correct in remembering that the water was sorta cursed? Like, I think you're explicitly told that the only fish in it are the guys you can summon with fish food, and they aren't getting a whole lot to eat because there isn't, like. Much of an ecosystem down there? The reason that Windwaker doesn't have a fishing minigame (besides probably not having the space) is that the sea is sterile.

There was probably a reason the Zoras didn't want to be in that water. It's Not Normal.

(Looked this up before posting it, and actually—while Ganondorf and maybe a couple of other characters say that there's no fish, the game also contains some characters who define themselves as fishermen. So, in conclusion, ?????)

unrelated: why did the zoras in the windwaker timeline evolve into the rito

like apparently the encyclopedia says that the water that covers the world is uninhabitable to zora so they had to evolve and do other stuff but like

you made an entire world covered in ocean and then got rid of your water people

we could have been exploring more under the water they could have evolved to still be able to inhabit the water like why did you get rid of your fish people

[crownconstellation]

so. Rune Factory 5[a] is a role-playing simulation video game developed by Hakama and published by Marvelous for the Nintendo Switch. It was the first entry in the Rune Factory series since 2012's Rune Factory 4 and was released in Japan in May 2021 and worldwide by Xseed Games in March 2022.

Unlike most of my long posts i’m actually willing to attach a readmore to this because it 1.) is going to be VERY, VERY long, probably, and I don’t want to subject anyone to having to scroll through that and 2.) will have story spoilers. Anyways.

Hi I beat Rune Factory 5 (after. nearly 250 hours of play time <3) and I wanted to write a comprehensive review of it because it’s been nearly a decade since we’ve had a new RF game and I have a lot to say!!! This is gonna be done full pro / con style for like, smaller things and then go into actual depth for what I want to say in full detail.

CONS:

I’m not the first & I won’t be the last person to say this, but Rigbarth is too big!! At least the way they set it up. It’s fun getting to roam around, but there’s so much empty space that the town feels a little empty in places, and there are so many unnecessary areas as a consequence of the size. Like we don’t NEED that beach by the festival plaza, no one uses it. We don’t NEED the lake(?) up north or its associated beach to be that huge. (Honestly, it’s so big I was expecting an underwater dungeon to be there instead of just wasted space. Man that would’ve been stellar)

Stacking is incredibly inconvenient. (This relates to a much larger criticism but I had to bring it up here) Still 9 items max... Still unable to stack food or fish...

Brawling is really badly adjusted to the console proportions and it went from being my favourite weapon style in 3 & 4 to my least-used one because of that </3 Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but you should be able to make contact with your foe 90% of the time when your combo chains into an ultimate attack instead of it constantly launching you into kicking against empty air?

Some of the festivals are really lacklustre. Also we don’t need 4 harvest festivals in a game where you can grow any crop year-round.

Dungeons are too small. Back in my day these things had 4-7 floors!! Not 1-2 floors and then a boss!

The game is a little too easy -- which I understand is a result of them wanting to make story progression more relaxed, but even on Hard Mode it’s still, like, easy.

Furniture placement is kind of frustrating and the fact you can’t put anything against the wall because you need enough space to be able to walk behind something is really annoying. In general I hate the free-roam item placement tbh but that’s just me

Fields get cluttered way too easy. I know it’s so you have a steady stream of materials but :(

This is probably a budget issue and I can’t fault them for that at all but I think that they should’ve done full voice acting for the endgame sequence instead of having some lines voiced and most others just using like, stock voice clips you could hear in any other game interaction

Slight lack of interactivity; people don’t respond if you try to sleep in their bed or if you examine their things when they’re there, which was a cute detail and I miss it. It’s nothing big, but it added a nice touch.

A lot about how Fuuka is handled quite honestly. She’s a sweet character but....

They still haven’t fired the portrait artist guy and I really need them to and replace him immediately with someone who actually knows how to draw adult women

PROS:

The cast is REALLY good. Like, it’s a very fun cast with a lot going on. Rigbarth as a community is easy to get invested in and it’s fun keeping up with characters and seeing all the events for them. Also, Randolph and Yuki invented love and that’s great

Related to that: having a DSC whose main gimmick isn’t just making them a constant food-based fat joke and having that DSC in a game people actually see and play (vs Beatrix, who is in the black sheep game in what is already a niche series) in itself makes Palmo up there as Best Member Of The De Sainte-Coquilles. Like, he’s great as a whole, but it’s nice.

The story as a whole is fun and the end of Act 1 into beginning of Act 2 is imo really strong writing. Also in general I love how they set it up with its premise involving the culmination of 4′s story and the consequences

Despite not liking it for Rigbarth itself, how big the map is is a bonus IMO for the rest of the world. It’s fun romping around in free roam & it gives me way more reason to actually take my monsters along for ride purposes

Events are actually like, easy to access. Even at the consequence of maybe accidentally activating multiple in a row, I’d take that any day over taking a literal Real Life year to get married in RF4 because of how bad my event luck was.

Fake vegetables are the best monsters this series has EVER added. Ever. (Also I love the frogs so much)

Meteor showers and starfall crops are a really cute mechanic! I wish we could do more with them (like ask someone to watch the meteors with you on the day of a shower) but they’re so cute

The music is FANTASTIC. Like this is a given for any RF game but the music is really good. Also the OST that came with the bonus edition having remixes of the tracks is great. Have you all listened to it? You should.

Cloudheim. “Is that it?” Yeah i just really like Cloudheim

The outfits are so cute!! Even outside the DLC ones the options are adorable & I love how everyone has unique PJs and swimsuits. Now in RF6 we need seasonal outfits for everyone like what Harvest Moon did in ToT & AP. Or people outside of romanceables finally also getting PJs or something. Or both

Even if they’re too short the dungeons have really great designs & the later ones have fun puzzles and / or obstacles to them. Forest of No Return i have feelings for you. Eternal Darkness i have feelings for you too i have never enjoyed being inconvenienced this much

Game has what if a really overall cozy vibe to it, it hit that great Rune Factory feel that the previous games had and it’s easy to settle into

So, with all that out of the way: let me say that as a whole I liked RF5. I really, really, really liked RF5. Like, it’s probably #2 in my top 3 RF games now (with that top 3 now being Oceans > 5 > Frontier). I like the console games, what can I say! It was a really solid game overall, with fun farming, fun combat (for the most part; despite having to give up on brawling, this is the first time I’ve ever actually enjoyed the longswords), a fun story, and a really fun cast. This is 100% my favourite RF cast now and even despite my complaints about town size, I liked Rigbarth and I love the community.

My biggest criticism, though, is what I alluded to when I complained about stacking limitations: that this game takes after RF4 a lot more than it should in several places. I’m not going to fault the developers for making it resemble RF4; it’s the first game in around a decade and RF4 is the most popular in the series, of course it’s going to take after it. But as a fan of the console games, I really do think they should’ve looked more at Frontier & Oceans for certain things (at the very least: town layout and spacing, because of how nice Trampoli & Fenith but especially Trampoli are to traverse and also especially because of how gorgeous RFF looked for a Wii game), and given RF5 a little bit more of its own identity. Like the stacking. While the 9-stack limit might’ve fit better for the DS and 3DS with smaller space limitations (or maybe those didn’t need that either considering Harvest Moon game stack sizes who knows!), Frontier & Oceans had 99 item stacks. AND you could stack food & fish. (Fish / food stacking was also, notably, in 3. 4 probably removed them to pad out artificial space necessities to get you to use more royalty points. 5 didn’t need this limit, even with the same point system. Like, at all.) Or the 2x2 fields instead of the 3x3. I hated that in 4 and I hate it here. Why do you have 2x2 fields if you’re going to implement a 9-item stack. That just makes things incredibly awkward when you’re trying to lay down seeds and instead of one stack being a patch of 9 being two patches of 4 and also one awkward leftover.

That’s just two examples, though. There’s also using the same weapons & crafting items (back in my day [the Wii games] the cat ears accessory was an actual pair of cat ears, not whatever those ugly Palm cat ears are!!!!!!), the ability to pick furniture up and move it around willy-nilly as opposed to having one set spot for things like cooking tools & the shipping bin + watering hole (which honestly makes these things look kind of bad and out of place and is enjoyed by no one based on how many complaints the furniture system across 4 + 5 has gathered), the festivals being largely the same (and lacklustre because of it).... I think they shouldn’t have leaned on RF4 so heavily even if again, I 100% understand why they did and I won’t fault them for it. Like I said it already, but we don’t NEED four entire harvest festivals in a game where you can grow any crop no matter the season (and where seasonal dungeon farms have been removed) just because RF4 had that. That’s 3 festival spaces that could’ve been taken up by something more unique. Frontier, for example, had some really good and unique festivals -- the Bianca-centric one where you have to keep getting her what she requests, the boat race that takes advantage of Frontier’s gondola system, the Coming of Age scavenger hunt, the watermelon smashing minigame on Beach Day instead of just making it a wasted festival where nothing happens except Now  You Can Go To The Beach!, the Hot Pot festival (which RF5 should’ve also had instead of the Winter Harvest Festival because the guys’ convo in it is literally about Making hotpot)... then Oceans had the seasonal lotteries, the Lantern Festival (where you would set a little boat onto the ocean to honour sailors who’d fallen at sea iirc and make a wish), the warrior fest where you have to fell training dummies and you have to actually be careful with your weapon of choice because you have to avoid hitting certain ones, the fashion contest where instead of just judging a single accessory you make like the Handicraft contest your entire outfit that you’re actually like, Wearing is graded...  Et cetera et cetera you get the picture I think it could’ve been improved by having its own unique festivals that cater to Rigbarth’s unique properties as a town instead of mostly using the RF4 festivals and throwing a few new minigames in. Like there’s a town mini event where Simone talks about how the local pond used to be revered as a holy place because of a legend that its waters cured a dying village of a plague, and that Rigbarth grew from that village because people kept coming to use its waters. A festival to honour that legend and the fairy that blessed the pond would’ve been a fun one! Or a mystery festival run by Terry & Cecil that works like a scavenger hunt where you have to find clues around town and try to find a prize before everyone else. Or a festival of thanks dedicated to the farm dragons. I think instead of utilizing the Directive system for this, there should’ve just like, been these festivals and you can unlock new ones by having certain things done or talking to certain people (like how having Bianca unlocks the DSC festival, or talking to Stella after beating Frontier unlocks a quest to get a new festival that honours Whale Island and the spirits it harbours.) They could’ve used this to like, on that note, create a festival about the light & shadow dragons by bringing up the legends of them without revealing just Who said dragons are...

Anyways that’s my biggest criticism and despite how much I wrote about it, I understand why they did it (it’s just a shame) and it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the game. Which was a lot of enjoyment. Actually can I talk about the cast here for a sec on that note because I was about to comment again that I love them -- I don’t get why people are saying they’re bland or that Rigbarth doesn’t feel like a community (because I’ve seen many criticisms that match up with this and I don’t... I don’t get it.) Like, not only are they a cast full of life and personality and also everyone has something at least a little bit wrong with them in a good way, the town & character events do a very good job of making people interact outside of their typical circles like with the group playing Hide & Seek in Fuuka’s 3rd event (that being Lucy, Ryker, Reinhard, Fuuka, and Alice / Ares) being a group you wouldn’t expect to interact normally, or Reinhard and Martin having an established friendship based on Cecil’s 3rd event of all places (as well as Reinhard’s own 3rd event), or Lucas doing his magic tricks for everyone, or Livia and Yuki teasing Darroch because they pretty much watched him grow up... Even outside that, they also mention each other in dialogue, like Randolph’s comments about how everyone shops differently (his line about Cecil buying fruit sandwiches when he needs more vegetables, how Reinhard never buys the same thing twice, how Beatrice insisted he overstuff his sandwiches and they did in fact sell better that way), Elsje + Simone + Misasagi talking about each other, Palmo mentioning that Ryker got huffy because he complimented Martin and Cecil, Ryker & Martin bitching about each other, etc. I think they have a great sense of community idgi

Also on that note of having a sense of community I think it integrated itself into the story well (which is related to my earlier PRO of how I think the end of act 1 and beginning of act 2 was really strong writing). To cover that quick: it’s when the protagonist quits their work as a ranger because they find out that, while SEED does good work on an individual scale and the entirety of Norad essentially relies on it, it was created entirely with corruption in mind and created that reliability by lying to the people because the Warden & other higher ups reached out to bandits that had taken advantage of the fall of the Sechs Empire to create chaos and made under-the-table deals with them to let them still operate behind the scenes but would SEEMINGLY be caught, and anyone who didn’t comply would be caught for real or sold out by their allies. This false sense of justice on a grand scale is what led to the country trusting in SEED and nobody is happy about it after getting told by Livia about it, so Scarlett has a breakdown and Alice / Ares quits. Which, while thinking it’s just a vacation, the entire town comments on and offers their support and encouragement. When Terry invites them to work for him, everyone is supportive again (and Cecil absolutely over the moon), and when they decide to rejoin SEED for the sake of overthrowing the Warden, everyone is once again supportive. It’s a nice detail, and it starts off the act well with the protagonist’s like, legitimate moral quandary. Like they lost their memories and this ranger base took them in and they like what they do for the people of Rigbarth only to find out that my god there’s something wrong with this and it’s rotten to the core and they can’t even let anyone know because too much is reliant on it at this point. Really good storytelling imo. The story kind of slips at the end (not because of the Fathomless Dread or anything, I actually thought that was interesting as was the reveal of two extra dragon gods because they’re essentially like, forgotten gods that were lesser than the main 4 to begin with so nobody really remembers them in legends unless people that REALLY DIG for the info like Gideon), but because the way they set it up with the dread it kind of takes some responsibility away from Gideon and I hate when stories do that. Like PKMN Sun / Moon trying to make Lusamine redeemable by setting up her actions as a byproduct of her exposure to Nihilego, RF5 trying to present it as Gideon initially having good intentions and getting influenced by the Dread instead of like, seeking it out of his own volition at the very least sucked. Although they did establish that it fed only on what already existed -- his own pride and greed and desire to make the world bend to his will for the sake of his “justice,” which is what created SEED to begin with, so it doesn’t suck as bad as some other uses of this kind of thing, but it’s still a media trope I don’t like. I LOVED Calamity’s Edge, though. It really reminded me of Frontier (as did his overall plans, speech, etc. there). Reminded me a lot of Gelwein, which is fun because Gelwein is my favourite RF antagonist. Not in an I-like-him way, but like, I love when the RF series dives further into the mechanics of the runes and what you can do with them bc it’s great worldbuilding so I loved RFF establishing the rune studies and experimentation with Gelwein (and also the fun little detail of rune orbs being black if you grow crops in the Snow Ruins because of the runes there being corrupted and fucked up due to it being a former laboratory or whatever) and I loved 5 going further into that with Gideon’s fucking around with rune science.

Anyways. Like 5 separate essays later. I had my criticisms regarding it and I wish some things were handled a bit (or in Fuuka’s case a lot) differently, but overall I’m just really happy to have another RF game again, I’m not going to hold 5 to unfair expectations because I understand the situation the series is in considering Neverland went bankrupt and we thought RF just. Died out. (and also because I’m sick of people comparing it to 4 to throw it under the bus when it has plenty of its own merits, 4 was made at a series high point vs this being the revival of a dead series, and also I feel like a lot of the people making these complaints would really hate to try like, any other RF game based on the specific complaints I’ve seen people make) ((like yes I criticized how it takes after 4, but that’s not a comparison between it that’s just me saying I Get why it did things but I do wish it had more of its own unique identity. I still ended up preferring it to 4 in the end too so like. lol!)) But I really enjoyed it and I still have PLENTY of playtime left not just because I have yet to get married but also because I have plans already to do an Ares file for the sake of hearing the JPN voices and also for harassing Reinhard even more than I already do. 10/10 loved this game would play again

[ca-highway49]

We need insane mods for Stardew

Ordering stuff online, minigame about getting the tape off the box (hard) and then popping the packing bubbles (fun!)

Various pet foods (cat and dog) you can forage (with scythe like hay) scything peas, snow yams so hard they flip up in the air, scything fish out of the water (you can make bait and cat food but the fish are not wuality to sell as a fish) and scything the Stew Meat Plant that grows meat (described: squirrel, rabbit, pheasant)

Longer books (fiction and real nature/farming facts, no lore) (works with Real Gunther mods :)

Rarecrow that is Prince Justin, new areas and NPCs but it's Howl fanfic not just put the movie dialogue straight in Stardew (a noble pursuit) And it's insane fanfic! It's like the sequel book where their kid is purple

Aliens visit and you have to play snake because they're dangerous

Longer maze in harvest fest that makes you spawn knocked out post 2am if you complete it. It’s worth it! And it is scary at some points, and fun NPC dialogue at others

Yandere Farmer: everyone is Scared of you

Talking skeleton yeah!!

TV plays shows that appear and take up 3/4 of your screen unless you press B to quit. It's murder mystery with Nero Divergant or Commercial. Half the NPCs have opinions

Painting with Emily, hang or gift finished product

Coffee tent has more npcs (etc etc)

There’s a new villiager, who is a punk, and he has a voice line, “aye-aye!” he says whenever he says yes or ! and the voice line is fried like a Gameboy. Marriagable.

Mystious figure sometimes on the beach, will ferry you to the lake for 5G, asks you deep questions.

Stink meter and washing mechanic (shower or river/pond)(are there farms with no pond? it adds a pond by the well)

Game Console with pong and Detective Nero dating Sim (but made by someone else, like as a cute fanfic)